#I don't really care about controversies so i avoid talking about them

[melyapperofthecentury]

I'm from twitter, new to Tumblr actually and technically maybe TKDB too since I've played for like only 2 months. But I'm a part of SEEC fandom for like years I didn't count- I may fumble the Tumblr etiquette and yap alot because this has a long word count and you bet I am going to use that ( :

basic info rq why not

Mel, She/Her, Lesbian, Multifandom, Fujo/Himejoshi

More stuff on my art acc which is @marshmelia !

do you perhaps like dad jokes...

[disneyprincemuke]

for the girls * fem!driver

she isn't worrying about being on track for the first time - she worries about the media.

pairings: sebastian vettel x fem!driver, f1 grid x reader

warnings: literally a piece of garbage, SO inaccurate, no idea what i’m doing…

notes: this is sOOO BAD PLS I DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO WRITE THIs man

also, please feel free to send it some scenarios for this series! you can send them in here freeflow~ none of these will be posted in chronological order so don’t worry about it

(series masterlist) | (📂 the rookie season)

"here is sebastian vettel's personal addition to the grid, (y/n)," the interviewer grins, turning to face the girl. "welcome to the 2023 formula 1 season. thank you for coming in."

"thank you for having me," she smiles, hands clasped together in front of her. she's been following sebastian around all day - she doesn't want to be left alone in such a tough crowd.

"how does it feel to be the first woman in formula 1 in almost 2 decades?"

"i'm very thankful for the opportunity given to me to achieve this spot on the grid. i hope i'll be good enough to create a difference and be the stepping stone towards more women in the sport," she answers cordially, moving her arms slightly.

interviews, unfortunately, were also a very big part of the job. she didn't really mind it, but she knew the controversy of her being in the sport, and it's been driving her insane since the pre-season testing.

"and of course congratulations on your move from formula 2 to the main league. how do you feel about the doubters or naysayers who are saying you don't belong here?"

"i think it's unfair to assume my placement in the season before it has even started. i have worked as hard as everybody else to get where i am today, so i'm just really hoping that the fact that i am a woman does not overshadow all my achievements."

she's seen all that's said about her. the news articles, the videos criticising sebastian's choice to vouch for her, and the comments under her posts and announcements - it's very disheartening.

sebastian has tried his best to tell her otherwise, telling her time and time again that he wouldn't have vouched for her if he didn't think she had the potential to be here.

"and how are you getting along with everybody else on the grid?"

"very good. i mean, we've already been acquainted for years and that really helped me out a lot," she laughs, locking eyes with sebastian doing an interview right next to her. "but it is still a competitive sport. it's going to be a climb out there from my starting position at 18th. hopefully it will be a good race."

"of course, good luck out there."

"thank you so much."

"just like we talked about. you'll be fine," sebastian folds his arms over his chest, leaning back into the wall.

she's pulling the sleeves of her race suit over her shoulders. "why don't i believe you," she mutters, looking down at her shoes to avoid his eyes. "think about what the media would say if i don't finish in the points today."

"who cares about what the media has to say? just do your best out there today," sebastian repeats, patting her shoulder lightly to get her attention.

he flashes her a grin when she looks up, only to have her roll her eyes as she zips up. "me. i have to face the interviewers later, remember? not you."

"just race like you always have. you're doing this for yourself. not the media, not the insecure guys hiding behind a screen, and definitely not the interviewers." he grabs her shoulders, shaking her just slightly to lighten up the mood. "i'll be in your ears to help you out, okay?"

she sighs, leaning slightly to the side to grab her balaclava off the table. "promise to tell me when i'm being reckless?"

"i'm your race engineer. i've got you."

he turns her around, towards the track where the cars have lined up. "get out there and shut them all up. you're doing this for the girls, remember that."

"right. for the girls," she huffs, wiping her hands on her race suit. she takes the helmet that sebastian is holding out to her and gives him a smile. "okay. i'll talk to you through the radio."

and she does everything she has to do. she’s in the race car, anticipating the formation lap that’s about to start.

days leading up to this moment, she didn’t think she would be so nervous to be behind a wheel. she doesn’t typically let the feeling get to her so much.

but it’s different now that it’s being broadcasted to the entire world. she’s now watched by ten times her normal viewership.

“radio check,” sebastian’s voice comes into her ears. his voice has become a significant point to calming her down behind the wheel. you would be surprised how well he can calm her down just by his voice.

“copy.” she breathes into the mic unknowingly as she exhales, looking up and taking in her view.

her car was surrounded by the engineers, making the final touches on the car and triple checking all the components.

within a few seconds, she can see the sky as they disperse — the sun is shining bright and there are barely any clouds. to her right is yuki, also looking around the grid and the grandstand.

she locks eyes with him as he looks around, her eyes crinkling at the corners to acknowledge him. he returns the gesture with a smile through his eyes then a thumbs up to wish her luck.

she lifts her hand above the halo and returns the thumbs up.

“okay, the first car has taken off for the lap. i’ll check in on you again in a while.”

her grip on the steering wheel is tight despite the engine being turned off. she’s proud of herself for making it through her first race in the league, even parking the car neatly in parc ferme.

“you did amazing.”

“you’re only saying that. i didn’t even finish in the points,” she answers dejectedly, rolling her eyes to herself.

sebastian tries to make light of every situation, even if the normal person would not be able to find that in a frustrating position. but he was also a rookie once. the least he could do is empathise and try to make this experience less daunting for her.

he’s investing in her — her talent is impeccable, but he has to make sure that he fosters and encourages her into the best version of herself. the racer that he knows she is, she just needed someone to actively believe in her.

“the climb from p18 to p11 is good progress. the season just started, kid. the only way is up.”

“sure,” she chuckles. “i’m getting out of the car. see you in a bit, seb.”

taglist: @wcnorris @treehouse-mouse (comment to be added)

[anheliotrope]

Rambling About C# Being Alright

I think C# is an alright language. This is one of the highest distinctions I can give to a language.

Warning: This post is verbose and rambly and probably only good at telling you why someone might like C# and not much else.

~~~

There's something I hate about every other language. Worst, there's things I hate about other languages that I know will never get better. Even worse, some of those things ALSO feel like unforced errors.

With C# there's a few things I dislike or that are missing. C#'s feature set does not obviously excel at anything, but it avoids making any huge misstep in things I care about. Nothing in C# makes me feel like the language designer has personally harmed me.

C# is a very tolerable language.

C# is multi-paradigm.

C# is the Full Middle Malcomist language.

C# will try to not hurt you.

A good way to describe C# is "what if Java sucked less". This, of course, already sounds unappealing to many, but that's alright. I'm not trying to gas it up too much here.

C# has sins, but let's try to put them into some context here and perhaps the reason why I'm posting will become more obvious:

C# didn't try to avoid generics and then implement them in a way that is very limiting (cough Go).

C# doesn't hamstring your ability to have statement lambdas because the language designer dislikes them and also because the language designer decided to have semantic whitespace making statement lambdas harder to deal with (cough Python).

C# doesn't require you to explicitly wrap value types into reference types so you can put value types into collections (cough Java).

C# doesn't ruin your ability to interact with memory efficiently because it forbids you from creating custom value types, ergo everything goes to the heap (cough cough Java, Minecraft).

C# doesn't have insane implicit type coercions that have become the subject of language design comedy (cough JavaScript).

C# doesn't keep privacy accessors as a suggestion and has the developers pinkie swear about it instead of actually enforcing it (cough cough Python).

Plainly put, a lot of the time I find C# to be alright by process of elimination. I'm not trying to shit on your favorite language. Everyone has different things they find tolerable. I have the Buddha nature so I wish for all things to find their tolerable language.

I do also think that C# is notable for being a mainstream language (aka not Haskell) that has a smaller amount of egregious mistakes, quirks and Faustian bargains.

The Typerrrrr

C# is statically typed, but the typing is largely effortless to navigate unlike something like Rust, and the GC gives a greater degree of safety than something like C++.

Of course, the typing being easy to work it also makes it less safe than Rust. But this is an appropriate trade-off for certain kinds of applications, especially considering that C# is memory safe by virtue of running on a VM. Don't come at me, I'm a Rust respecter!!

You know how some people talk about Python being amazing for prototyping? That's how I feel about C#. No matter how much time I would dedicate to Python, C# would still be a more productive language for me. The type system would genuinely make me faster for the vast majority of cases. Of course Python has gradual typing now, so any comparison gets more difficult when you consider that. But what I'm trying to say is that I never understood the idea that doing away entirely with static typing is good for fast iteration.

Also yes, C# can be used as a repl. Leave me alone with your repls. Also, while the debugger is active you can also evaluate arbitrary code within the current scope.

I think that going full dynamic typing is a mistake in almost every situation. The fact that C# doesn't do that already puts it above other languages for me. This stance on typing is controversial, but it's my opinion that is really shouldn't be. And the wind has constantly been blowing towards adding gradual typing to dynamic languages.

The modest typing capabilities C# coupled with OOP and inheritance lets you create pretty awful OOP slop. But that's whatever. At work we use inheritance in very few places where it results in neat code reuse, and then it's just mostly interfaces getting implemented.

C#'s typing and generic system is powerful enough to offer you a plethora of super-ergonomic collection transformation methods via the LINQ library. There's a lot of functional-style programming you can do with that. You know, map, filter, reduce, that stuff?

Even if you make a completely new collection type, if it implements IEnumerable<T> it will benefit from LINQ automatically. Every language these days has something like this, but it's so ridiculously easy to use in C#. Coupled with how C# lets you (1) easily define immutable data types, (2) explicitly control access to struct or class members, (3) do pattern matching, you can end up with code that flows really well.

A Friendly Kitchen Sink

Some people have described C#'s feature set as bloated. It is getting some syntactic diversity which makes it a bit harder to read someone else's code. But it doesn't make C# harder to learn, since it takes roughly the same amount of effort to get to a point where you can be effective in it.

Most of the more specific features can be effortlessly ignored. The ones that can't be effortlessly ignored tend to bring something genuinely useful to the language -- such as tuples and destructuring. Tuples have their own syntax, the syntax is pretty intuitive, but the first time you run into it, you will have to do a bit of learning.

C# has an immense amount of small features meant to make the language more ergonomic. They're too numerous to mention and they just keep getting added.

I'd like to draw attention to some features not because they're the most important but rather because it feels like they communicate the "personality" of C#. Not sure what level of detail was appropriate, so feel free to skim.

Stricter Null Handling. If you think not having to explicitly deal with null is the billion dollar mistake, then C# tries to fix a bit of the problem by allowing you to enable a strict context where you have to explicitly tell it that something can be null, otherwise it will assume that the possibility of a reference type being null is an error. It's a bit more complicated than that, but it definitely helps with safety around nullability.

Default Interface Implementation. A problem in C# which drives usage of inheritance is that with just interfaces there is no way to reuse code outside of passing function pointers. A lot of people don't get this and think that inheritance is just used because other people are stupid or something. If you have a couple of methods that would be implemented exactly the same for classes 1 through 99, but somewhat differently for classes 100 through 110, then without inheritance you're fucked. A much better way would be Rust's trait system, but for that to work you need really powerful generics, so it's too different of a path for C# to trod it. Instead what C# did was make it so that you can write an implementation for methods declared in an interface, as long as that implementation only uses members defined in the interface (this makes sense, why would it have access to anything else?). So now you can have a default implementation for the 1 through 99 case and save some of your sanity. Of course, it's not a panacea, if the implementation of the method requires access to the internal state of the 1 through 99 case, default interface implementation won't save you. But it can still make it easier via some techniques I won't get into. The important part is that default interface implementation allows code reuse and reduces reasons to use inheritance.

Performance Optimization. C# has a plethora of features regarding that. Most of which will never be encountered by the average programmer. Examples: (1) stackalloc - forcibly allocate reference types to the stack if you know they won't outlive the current scope. (2) Specialized APIs for avoiding memory allocations in happy paths. (3) Lazy initialization APIs. (4) APIs for dealing with memory more directly that allow high performance when interoping with C/C++ while still keeping a degree of safety.

Fine Control Over Async Runtime. C# lets you write your own... async builder and scheduler? It's a bit esoteric and hard to describe. But basically all the functionality of async/await that does magic under the hood? You can override that magic to do some very specific things that you'll rarely need. Unity3D takes advantage of this in order to allow async/await to work on WASM even though it is a single-threaded environment. It implements a cooperative scheduler so the program doesn't immediately freeze the moment you do await in a single-threaded environment. Most people don't know this capability exists and it doesn't affect them.

Tremendous Amount Of Synchronization Primitives and API. This ones does actually make multithreaded code harder to deal with, but basically C# erred a lot in favor of having many different ways to do multithreading because they wanted to suit different usecases. Most people just deal with idiomatic async/await code, but a very small minority of C# coders deal with locks, atomics, semaphores, mutex, monitors, interlocked, spin waiting etc. They knew they couldn't make this shit safe, so they tried to at least let you have ready-made options for your specific use case, even if it causes some balkanization.

Shortly Begging For Tagged Unions

What I miss from C# is more powerful generic bounds/constraints and tagged unions (or sum types or discriminated unions or type unions or any of the other 5 names this concept has).

The generic constraints you can use in C# are anemic and combined with the lack of tagged unions this is rather painful at times.

I remember seeing Microsoft devs saying they don't see enough of a usecase for tagged unions. I've at times wanted to strangle certain people. These two facts are related to one another.

My stance is that if you think your language doesn't need or benefit from tagged unions, either your language is very weird, or, more likely you're out of your goddamn mind. You are making me do really stupid things every time I need to represent a structure that can EITHER have a value of type A or a value of type B.

But I think C# will eventually get tagged unions. There's a proposal for it here. I would be overjoyed if it got implemented. It seems like it's been getting traction.

Also there was an entire section on unchecked exceptions that I removed because it wasn't interesting enough. Yes, C# could probably have checked exceptions and it didn't and it's a mistake. But ultimately it doesn't seem to have caused any make-or-break in a comparison with Java, which has them. They'd all be better off with returning an Error<T>. Short story is that the consequences of unchecked exceptions have been highly tolerable in practice.

Ecosystem State & FOSSness

C# is better than ever and the tooling ecosystem is better than ever. This is true of almost every language, but I think C# receives a rather high amount of improvements per version. Additionally the FOSS story is at its peak.

Roslyn, the bedrock of the toolchain, the compiler and analysis provider, is under MIT license. The fact that it does analysis as well is important, because this means you can use the wealth of Roslyn analyzers to do linting.

If your FOSS tooling lets you compile but you don't get any checking as you type, then your development experience is wildly substandard.

A lot of stupid crap with cross-platform compilation that used to be confusing or difficult is now rather easy to deal with. It's basically as easy as (1) use NET Core, (2) tell dotnet to build for Linux. These steps take no extra effort and the first step is the default way to write C# these days.

Dotnet is part of the SDK and contains functionality to create NET Core projects and to use other tools to build said projects. Dotnet is published under MIT, because the whole SDK and runtime are published under MIT.

Yes, the debugger situation is still bad -- there's no FOSS option for it, but this is more because nobody cares enough to go and solve it. Jetbrains proved anyone can do it if they have enough development time, since they wrote a debugger from scratch for their proprietary C# IDE Rider.

Where C# falls flat on its face is the "userspace" ecosystem. Plainly put, because C# is a Microsoft product, people with FOSS inclinations have steered clear of it to such a degree that the packages you have available are not even 10% of what packages a Python user has available, for example. People with FOSS inclinations are generally the people who write packages for your language!!

I guess if you really really hate leftpad, you might think this is a small bonus though.

Where-in I talk about Cross-Platform

The biggest thing the ecosystem has been lacking for me is a package, preferably FOSS, for developing cross-platform applications. Even if it's just cross-platform desktop applications.

Like yes, you can build C# to many platforms, no sweat. The same way you can build Rust to many platforms, some sweat. But if you can't show a good GUI on Linux, then it's not practically-speaking cross-platform for that purpose.

Microsoft has repeatedly done GUI stuff that, predictably, only works on Windows. And yes, Linux desktop is like 4%, but that 4% contains >50% of the people who create packages for your language's ecosystem, almost the exact point I made earlier. If a developer runs Linux and they can't have their app run on Linux, they are not going to touch your language with a ten foot pole for that purpose. I think this largely explains why C#'s ecosystem feels stunted.

The thing is, I'm not actually sure how bad or good the situation is, since most people just don't even try using C# for this usecase. There's a general... ecosystem malaise where few care to use the language for this, chiefly because of the tone that Microsoft set a decade ago. It's sad.

HOWEVER.

Avalonia, A New Hope?

Today we have Avalonia. Avalonia is an open-source framework that lets you build cross-platform applications in C#. It's MIT licensed. It will work on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and also somehow in the browser. It seems to this by actually drawing pixels via SkiaSharp (or optionally Direct2D on Windows).

They make money by offering migration services from WPF app to Avalonia. Plus general support.

I can't say how good Avalonia is yet. I've researched a bit and it's not obviously bad, which is distinct from being good. But if it's actually good, this would be a holy grail for the ecosystem:

You could use a statically typed language that is productive for this type of software development to create cross-platform applications that have higher performance than the Electron slop. That's valuable!

This possibility warrants a much higher level of enthusiasm than I've seen, especially within the ecosystem itself. This is an ecosystem that was, for a while, entirely landlocked, only able to make Windows desktop applications.

I cannot overstate how important it is for a language's ecosystem to have a package like this and have it be good. Rust is still missing a good option. Gnome is unpleasant to use and buggy. Falling back to using Electron while writing Rust just seems like a bad joke. A lot of the Rust crates that are neither Electron nor Gnome tend to be really really undercooked.

And now I've actually talked myself into checking out Avalonia... I mean after writing all of that I feel like a charlatan for not having investigated it already.

[kiefbowl]

What do you think of the Olympics boxing controversy

Very disappointed how fast "online radfems" jumped to quick conclusions with no evidence. Same thing happened to Caster Semenya. I appreciate how much feminists want female sport issues to be taken seriously, but it's clear there is a racial component to this. Many white feminists are incapable of avoiding weird race science b.s., incredibly disappointing. I think people are exposed more than ever in very casual ways to a lot of black political theories, and instead of trying to understand them and internalize them, are eager to leverage them for online clout and self-aggrandizing even if they completely misattribute them. That why you get weird takes like "black women have masculine features" because it's like a weird bastardization of black feminists who have discussed the ways culture will prescribe gendered cultural implications to black women at the detriment of black women. Black women are always, always women. They're female. They aren't a biologically different category, to believe so is both misogynistic and racist.

Additionally, I find it frustrating that so many feminists decide that intersex athletes are this huge priority. The anxiety over natural testosterone levels in otherwise biological female athletes veers on weird gender science of how women should be, what women should be, and other bio-essentialist views. All for a very tiny portion of the population who are already vulnerable and marginalized. The best faith argument is that in some sports, high testosterone in women may skew averages and create records that are near impossible to break, but given enough time outstanding performances become outliners, so I just don't see the big deal to have this much anxiety over intersex athletes. Doping, yes. Male, actual unambivalently male athletes invading female sports, yes. One singular born and raised female African athlete performing exceptionally, and well within the means of human performance? Good god there's a lot at risk here if we become insensitive, unnuanced, racist pieces of shit. Even from a pure optics point of view, if you disagree with me we certainly don't move the needle in favor to critical examine how trans gender ideas impact female athletes if it appears to everyone we really do believe "women = dainty, women are incapable, black women are men."

And since I always get the weirdest responses whenever I talk about this, please spare me you rote arguments because I've heard it before. I'm truly not moved by the argument that female intersex athletes tend to outperform in the sports they're in. I don't care. Good for them. I hope they make big bucks and live well for the rest of their lives. I don't need to know their medical history, I just don't care!! :)

[cringecompanionapologist]

Moffat, Sexy Women, and More 80s Who Complaints:

Note: I am a woman and everything I'm saying is my opinion as an individual woman and not an attempt to represent women as a whole. We're like half the world's population. We're not gonna agree on everything.

I'm just gonna randomly say a bit about the Moffat era and women that's sort of a defense in an "this still feels better than other things" sort of way.

Look, I will not deny that the Moffat era (mostly 11's part) has some issues with women. Most of it, at least for me, has less to do with how the female characters are written and more to do with how the male characters address them (Let's Kill Hitler, I'm looking at you).

But, one thing that bothers other people that doesn't bother me as much is the sexualization. This is mostly compared to what came before it.

For me, because sexuality isn't an inherently negative thing, a character of any gender being sexualized isn't automatically a bad thing. It's more of a matter of subject vs. object.

To illustrate my point, let's bitch about 80s Who for a bit.

Now, when I say 80s Who, I'm mostly referring to the Saward Era (seasons 19-23/5th and 6th Doctors). Ace wasn't really sexualized in the same way the companions before her were.

If you dig through this blog, you'll find that this is sort of the third in a miniseries about various issues with 80s companions that mostly come down to something about gender. With Tegan, it's that she's an outspoken woman and treated negatively for it. With Turlough, it's that the EU tries to downplay the more gender-nonconforming aspects of his character, which admittedly mostly happened by accident.

This time, I'm talking about Peri. Peri was heavily sexualized but in a way that I don't particularly like. It ultimately comes down to how the era handles sexuality in general.

JNT was more of a marketing guy than a creative guy, but his ideas of marketing the show ended up contradicting one another. On one hand, he wanted to avoid controversy. Doctor Who had a bit of a history of controversy, though most of it was about how violent it was, something this era of the show clearly did not care about. Instead, the primary JNT/Saward obsession was with sex. It had to be clear that the Doctor did not fuck and never had. But, this sort of extended to the companions as well. 60s and 70s Who would occasionally give companions one-off love interests. This didn't happen a lot, but there was a history of it dating back to The Daleks, where Barbara makes out with one of the Thals for a bit. In 80s Who, the only time a companion got a love interest was right as she was leaving the show and that was a last minute change.

(Side Note: I'd once again like to comment that Doctor Who wrote women better in 1964 than in 1984 and that Barbara is a great character. The worst thing Moffat every did was have Twice Upon a Time trick people into thinking of this era as The Sexist One.)

You might be wondering, "so what? It's a kids show. Of course nobody's gonna be horny!". And yeah. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the show isn't horny, but it is sexy.

What I mean: Horny is sexuality in-universe. It's the characters having sexual attraction and interests. Sexy is sexuality out-of-universe. It's characters being attractive to the audience.

Peri is the ultimate example of this. She's completely normal for this era of the show when it comes to sexuality. It's not really a thing and when it is it leads to almost immediate marriage. But, she's always dressed in revealing outfits. In Planet of Fire, she's on vacation in a warm region, so that makes sense, but she continues to dress that way everywhere she goes.

Peri is sexualized as fanservice for the audience and for villainous characters to leer at to make them more threatening. Her personality doesn't really match her choice of outfits. It's all for the benefit of the audience and a justification for creepy bad guy behavior.

I mentioned before the sexual subject vs. object. A subject does while an object is done to. A subject looks while an object is looked at. When a character's sexuality isn't an aspect of their character, existing primarily as something for the audience and other characters to leer at, she's a sexual object. And that sucks.

The reason Moffat's sexualization of characters like Amy and River doesn't bother me is that they do not have this problem. The women in this era are just as horny as the men. It's clear that these characters are the sort of people who'd choose to wear the outfits they wear. Yes, it's still fanservice written that way due to Moffat's horniness, but the female characters he writes have sexual agency. They're sexy because they're horny. They flirt with people they're attracted to. They're not just being leered at by the audience and other characters. They're looking as well as being looked at. They actively participate in the show's sexuality. They are sexual subjects.

Of course this doesn't work all the time. There's a lot of "men are horny idiots about women" jokes. When it comes to other aspects of female characters, there's a lot of talk of them being overly emotional and focused on romantic relationships. This did get better over time, being less of a thing with Clara and basically not a thing at all with Bill. I think Moffat was aware of the criticism he was getting and learned from his mistakes. But mistakes were certainly made.

But, though Moffat was obviously horny for his female characters, he them sexual agency. It might not be for everyone but it meant that the horniness of the era didn't bother me.

Besides, I'm horny for Moffat's female companions too. Is it morally different because I'm a woman being horny in a gay way?

[valyrfia]

We talk a lot about weird shippers behavior and all that fandom etiquette and all that, which is right. But not enough about the people that get borderline violent towards lestappen. Because why are people on twitter lowkey having a meltdown over that meme video. Saying stuff like "omg he's so done with that already 😭" like yeah of course, it's an overused meme. But like it's not that deep, I'm sure he just, sighs and moves on?? And people get lowkey weird about it like "He's tired, he's angry 😡". Idk. Or the typical "lestappies are so delusional, they don't even talk to each other" like okay?? what's the problem then? If it's SO delusional, why don't you just, ignore it? But anyways, some people that are so fervently against it are kinda weird too. Because, me for example don't see why people would like Landoscar so much, it's one of the most rancid ships for me, yet I would never be so loud about it because what do I care??. Idk. Also you should see the quotes in some post that could be just a picture of them two, is like people get triggered or something (???

Twitter for me generally is something to avoid because it’s so ill-suited to fandom. Stuff that’s considered more controversial is always going to get more interactions because of the algorithm so people tend to cry about RPF being “morally wrong” and then use ships to interaction bait anyway. Don’t get me wrong RPF is definitely a grey area but tumblr in general has always been slightly more adult about it because it’s its own self-contained ecosystem. None of you know my real name or my face and we’re going to keep it that way. None of you know my follower count and we’re going to keep it that way. None of this is done for interactions it’s all done because we LIKE being here and know this is a safe space for something that yeah, is a little weird, but the self-containment means that the chance of us doing any sort of harm is practically zero.

I saw a tweet the other day being like “omg im so scared to have 16 and 33 in my bio because I just like them I don’t want people thinking I want them to fuck nasty because that’s gross” and I’m just—I would be willing to bet an extraordinary amount of money that person reads RPF. I would be willing to bet similar for a huge amount of people leaving lestappen “hate”. It comes from some misplaced sense of justice to “police” RPF and it being more important for an individual to be seen to be “morally correct” than protecting a community who really, isn’t harming anyone and just trying to keep to ourselves. I’m definitely not walking around in my everyday life telling everybody about how I think Max and Charles are #truesoulmates, in fact I have friends who are very chronically offline who I often chat about F1 with and I would never DREAM of telling them about this blog or expressing anything I say here because I know the only time and place for that remains either with my friends I’ve met through here or on here.

TLDR: Twitter is filled with people who need to be seen as morally right and for some reason have decided that Lestappen is their current crusade of choice, despite the fact all that really does is increase visibility of the ship to people who may be involved. I would just try your best to ignore it.

[talas-first-lady]

Can we discuss how Evil Gideon was lying, though?

I was thinking today about how completely unrealistic the Astra runs for President prediction was and the more I think about it, a lot of the other predictions don't add up. I'm going to go through in the order they were in the episode.

(She may not have been purposefully lying but she definitely just showed them whatever Chat GPT popped out.)

Zari: Seems plausible on the surface, but I have some concerns.

Her award show dress is UGLY. The red color is pretty but the orangey overlay ruins it. The ruching is in the worst possible place and makes her look larger than she is right through the middle. The bottom is kind of wrinkled. And then she has really small, understated jewelry and her hair up, so there's nothing interesting at all going on in the shoulder/neck region. Zari dresses better than that.

She makes billions with her cosmetics company. Despite the fact that we have repeatedly been told throughout the show that she is terrible at selling cosmetics. Her lip kits don't even sell. Everybody has lips! Her perfume destroys people's sense of smell.

Audible lipstick. Not a thing anyone wants. Not a thing that makes any sense. Evil Gideon is making this stuff up. And yes, it's the future, but nothing we've seen of the 2040s on Legends really looks all that much more technologically advanced than what we have now.

EG fails to consider that Zari has grown as a person since whatever info she has in her files, which is the whole reason Zari is upset about the prediction. It's plausible that she would go back to her career as it was, but she cares about people now. She would absolutely be doing some sort of philanthropy.

She's so pretty. But also, I'm not 100% convinced that that even is a dress because it looks like they may have just shoved a piece of fabric at her and said "here, hold this under your arms."

Behrad:

Totally plausible that he could become famous, either for his talent or via his connections, but he has never wanted to be famous. You expect me to believe that the man who hid in bed to avoid imaginary TV cameras is going to purposefully go into a career of being on camera?

He can't account for his whereabouts for several years of his adult life. He is not passing a background check to become a children's performer.

His record is called "Grey Hound to the Moon." Which is great, except that both the bus company and the dog spell it Greyhound. One word.

Avalance:

Knowing what we know now about Sara's biology, this is plausible.

But I feel like they might run into some issues trying to sign their kid up for school when one of them is legally dead and the other was never legally born.

Do kids get to do video calls from camp these days? I don't know. I am old. I had to bring quarters to the designated calling home payphones at a predetermined time to talk to my parents.

Gwyn:

He knows too much. They can't send him back to the 1920s. All of the Legends are aberrations waiting to happen, but sending anyone to the past is a no-no.

If they are going to send him back, wouldn't it make more sense to send him back to New York? Since that's where he last was?

Nate:

He has to somehow convince someone to publish a book about how time travel is real. Nate Heywood. Who you may recall from that controversial fake documentary about time travel a few years back. He seems like a reliable source.

You don't grow a hideous beard over the Heywood jawline. You just don't.

His TV interview is totally bogus. Nate knows how to schmooze. He's not going to be all "I can't answer your simple question about what time travel feels like because you must first read all 500 pages of my book."

"I never said that out loud before but that is the title I picked out." Gideon can literally monitor your dreams, dude. I know that she's never personally kidnapped you and put you into a time loop, but she knows things.

Astra:

Remember how she couldn't find a job in season 6? Because she's legally dead and legally still a child? She also has no education, no work experience, and a grand total of like 6 people who can vouch for her existence. She is a mess. No idea if she's legally eligible to run.

And she definitely wouldn't win, given that all of the above would definitely come out. She also doesn't look her legal age (which barely makes her old enough to qualify), she's terrible at keeping her temper, and she's literally a witch.

Also, she runs in 2040. We know for a fact that Dwayne Johnson is the President in 2045. So at best, she gets 1 term.

That wig is preposterous.

Spooner:

Again, she definitely knows too much to go back to the 1920s.

Everyone is already suspicious of Gloria Cruz. You don't think they're going to have questions when her daughter goes missing and then some 20-something shows up out of nowhere?

They are not running an apothecary. They are getting burned at the stake.

[suffarustuffaru]

Scrolling through your blog is such a fun experience, you bring an absolutely great vibe to this fandom and I love it SO MUCH. Could even say you restored my hope in it, since there has been some aspects that made me force myself to leave it, and I hope me bringing one of them up here won't upset anyone.

Now I completely understand if you wish to not answer my ask, but I figured it's worth a shot. So, one of said aspects was a controversy regarding one of the rezero characters that made me feel like you can't mention them without being called names (mostly on tiktok, but other social media also, tho not as much).

Yeah I'm talking about Felix. I'm not transphobic by any means, and I'm fine with people headcannoning whatever they want, but seeing thousands of people calling others transphobic for calling Felix a 'he' made me so unsafe I forced myself to look for other interest. Which is funny since most of the people saying this weren't even part of the fandom. I was wondering if anyone else here had similar situations and just.. how do you deal with it? It seems silly, I know, but feeling like I can't speak about a rather important character from a media I love made me so upset.

No matter how much I tried explaining it, they either dismiss it or say Tappei made him a trans girl without knowing.

Now, if you do decide to answer this and say that Felix indeed may have been 'trans coded' a little bit (Did I used that term correcly? Idk) I'll understand (hell, I would probably agree, you character analysis are great), I'm just upset at the absolute lack of respect for any other way of referring to Felix other then she/her.

(Also in case people don't know, their proof of Felix being a trans girl is the scene from EX1, with the whole calling himself a girl in front of a mirror thing)

Sorry for this is being long and probably messy I just had to get this off my chest.. also I hope I didn't came of as offensive in any way, if I did I'm really sorry.

hi there anon! first of all - aw thank you for your compliments about me and my blog. im super passionate about rezero (though thats probably super clear to anyone whos seen any content i make for a while aljsdlkf) and well. ive been lurking about in this fandom since summer 2020 so i definitely understand having to leave/distance yourself from this fandom because outside of tumblr, the rezero fandom is kind of . well. to put it simply, theres a lot of metaphorical landmines unfortunately!! T^T and admittedly i wouldve left this fandom a lot sooner if i didnt stick to my own corner and curate spaces with other people who were super chill (like lots of people lurking about here on tumblr + rz tumblr in general!!). so i totally understand how you feel anon (and youre not silly for being upset, i promise!), though admittedly im not super super familiar with some rezero spaces (such as rz twitter) bc i 1. dont speak japanese and 2. i try very hard to avoid the negativity whenever possible!! T^T

and also i apologize for taking a while to answer your ask!! you're one of my older asks that kinda got lost in my drafts hah but i also just wanted to like. take extra care with your ask bc its a super important topic. like not just to me (though its definitely important to me) but its important in general. and i really like felix so. <3

a quick disclaimer is that i myself am not transfem. i am however afab and most likely genderqueer!! (im winging it as i go hah.) felix is also not a character id say im as well-versed in yet, but i do like felix a lot and ex1 changed my entire brain chemistry. and ill also be defaulting to he/him pronouns in this post because thats what he uses in canon.

felix is - at the end of the day - a fictional character, and tappei is a cis man who doesnt Entirely write characters like felix through a queer lens. arguably tappei is Self-Aware when he writes characters who are into other characters of the same sex (though the Representation is arguably a little bit questionable at times depending on how you look at it), but when it comes to characters like felix or subaru who have some Gender Stuff going on, it's more nebulous there. i dont know if tappei 100% realizes he's made characters that could be read as Trans/Genderqueer (emphasis on "read as", because i support different interpretations of these characters), but tappei Definitely Is Very Aware that gender and gender presentation and gender roles are super important when it comes to characters like felix, subaru, and crusch.

i think tappeis own perceptions of gender and gender roles do bleed a bit into the text as much as tappei is pretty purposeful with themes surrounding gender in rezero, but rezero itself still has all sorts of identity issues to explore with a lot of its characters and gender is a big part of that!!

so first and foremost im gonna be examining felix the best i can Purely Off Of The Canon Text, though i do like viewing rezero from a queer lens myself (and it is arguably very queer). im gonna talk first about felix and then ill move onto talking about my personal feelings on rezero fandom stuff :o !!

so felix's relationship with his gender is complicated and he Absolutely does not fit into traditional gender roles or gender presentation right now. these are undeniable. and if people headcanon felix as transfem thats totally understandable and valid!! but to say a headcanon is 100% canon and that other interpretations of a character as complex as felix are invalid isnt exactly it. for sure. i mean i myself interpret him as nonbinary haah. but felix's relationship with gender is so so so So complicated that i dont think you could just say hes transfem and then Not Elaborate More.

but regardless of how Exactly you label felix, i think you could possibly say that hes trans coded. tappei, even if he probably doesnt entirely know hes made pretty genderqueer characters, is Aware and Purposeful of how gender affects felix and his perception of himself and his identity and other peoples perception of him and this is brought up Over and Over Again in canon—felix’s gender identity, at the moment, aligns more with femininity in his presentation in every way, though he still perceives himself as masculine. felix’s case is complicated, and while im not entirely sure on this i think you could argue that hes trans coded—“coding” suggests a level of intent when making these characters, and i think that intent is present in some way with tappei. because tappei Knows just how important gender is with felix’s character and you can tell with how often and how Integral it is to felix’s entire character.

(more under the cut) (i do have a habit of being rambley/wordy sometimes if. if you couldnt tell already. but i hope this response is up to your standards!!)

these three analysis posts on felix's relationship with gender have all discussed this topic in-depth before i have, and i 1. really like the rezero content i see from all three of these people and 2. they All have slightly different takes based on the canon we have but also some similar points. because felix is complicated!! of course our takes are probably gonna be a bit different - he's a multifaceted character with such a complex relationship with his gender that it's hard to tell what every single one of his personal feelings on it is (especially when at the moment he hasnt appeared in the main story since arc 5 and he still has a Lot of character development to do). and of course fiction is fiction, we can all take away any sort of meaning from a story like this.

but you know. this is my post so im gonna try to analyze felix right now and say my two cents on what i think of his relationship with gender.

so im gonna try not to retread too much on what liquidstar, sufferu, and gourmet of gluttony have already said about felix (and i think theyre all very smart people with interesting analysis posts and theyve all explained their thoughts pretty well) and instead add on with my own thoughts - theres this felix excerpt from arc 4 wn that i think about sometimes. im gonna put it down here!!

and also important to note—like other people have mentioned, crusch and felix made a “deal” of sorts in the past where crusch takes on felix’s masculinity and felix takes on crusch’s femininity. and also like other people have said—and i myself have said in the past—i do have some mixed feelings on this wkdndn and as i said before also i do wish tappeis feelings on gender bled a little less when theyre Not Integral To The Story. bc i dont think tappei 100% knows hes made trans coded characters, but. anyway yeah so thats the whole deal with crusch felix. and in its own right i think it has So Many Interesting Implications!!

i think when it comes down to it, gender presentation IS a bit of a performance, isn't it? like i love to wear dressses and skirts and i love to keep my hair short and wear suits, but you know - these sorts of things tend to be gendered. our gender is often perceived through how we present ourselves, but in recent years gender roles being attached to clothing has gotten a bit less Rigid. but these rigid roles associated with presentation are even more dialed up to Eleven in a medieval world like the rezero fantasy world. and i dont use the word "performance" in a negative way -

what i mean is that when it comes to felix's character, does felix think he's a boy because that's what he's been told? does he think he's a boy because he TRULY sees himself that way, or does he THINK he has to see himself as one? does felix try to present and perform femininity, ie as or like a traditionally feminine girl, purely ONLY for crusch's sake, or is it because felix ALSO WANTS to? what does felix think of gender outside of crusch? who is felix outside of crusch? who is felix outside of tying his entire personality to other people? does felix’s femininity show the “radiance of ferris’ soul” bc of the deal he made with crusch or bc this truly is felix’s soul? these are like the big questions behind his entire character and character arc that would determine in the end how felix identifies in both his gender and In General.

so what is felix's identity at the moment? bc right now, felix is stuck between his feminine self, tied to crusch, a symbol of crusch, tied to his own reliance on crusch and worship of her—and his masculine self, someone broken off from crusch. felix is tied to crusch right now to worrying extents with his obsessive devotion to the point of changing himself to mold into her image, and beyond that, hes still tied to guilt surrounding fourier’s death. gourmet of gluttony puts all of this way way more intelligently than i ever could, but at the end of the day, i think the best narrative decision here would be for felix to accept himself in ALL of his entirety.

healing in rezero is noted to be a kind power, specifically by fourier and fourier saying this right to felix when hes the most talented healer in lugunica, and healing itself is often stereotypically feminine activity. knighthood is stereotypically masculine, and on top of all this, we see in ex1 that biehn argyle twists the power of healing into something grotesque—trying to bring back the dead and revive what cant be revived, which is once again another reoccurring theme in rezero.

how far can “from zero” go? what HAS to stay dead and what can be revived? who is allowed to live? HOW do you live freely? felix is someone born from a horribly abusive and neglectful family who twisted healing magic’s kindness into cruelty, felix is someone who was taken into a family that showed him kindness and now hes desperate to pay them back with everything he has and everything he is, felix is a healer who lashes out when hes cornered and a healer who treasures life and a knight who cant physically fight like the others, felix is someone stuck with the horrible knowledge that he cant save everyone—that some things just Couldnt end better no matter how much he wished for it to.

felix is stuck between all kinds of worlds, and in terms of gender, hes quite literally still stuck between boyhood and manhood in the biological sense—hes purposefully made it so that he hasnt hit puberty yet so he can better pass as feminine. he hasnt Physically Grown past puberty—which is the mark of becoming an adult. and he hates himself in a number of ways, but he also hates himself for failing to be traditionally masculine. his abusive family stole ten years of his life and the torture left him physically weaker, so he cant be strong physically, which is something associated with traditional masculinity. felix is the best healer, a traditionally feminine job and skill, but he cant save everyone. felix becomes more feminine as part of his deal with crusch, but while crusch accepts her femininity and masculinity readily, and while crusch’s memory is erased by gluttony—felix is left behind, alone, still holding onto femininity while not entirely being able to hold onto it while he also cant entirely hold onto the traditional masculinity he expects out of himself. and with arc 3 on, felix feels hes failed both fourier and crusch. the two most important male and female figures in his life.

felix is basically stuck in this liminal space where hes not Enough for himself in literally every direction, and the only way out is to accept every part of himself and move forward by trying to define who he is without other people—his birth family and his found family dont define him. they can shape him, sure, but he has to stop shaping himself to meet them and figure out how to let himself just. Be. and take up a space thats firmly his. from a queer lens, this kind of thing is pretty queer—because to stop being in between worlds, you have to accept everything instead of splitting yourself into halves over and over again. killing or maiming yourself or parts of yourself is no way to live, and felix is Life itself.

and i think regardless of the Exact Labels you could give felix, i think his arc—which is perfectly in line with all of rezeros themes—is inherently about self acceptance and the bridging of the gap and combination of femininity and masculinity. felix is both and identifies, in one way or another, with both, similar to how he loves someone who identifies with both (crusch) and just as hes loved her and fourier. imo it wouldnt be right for felix to choose one or the other in terms of feminine vs masculine—he needs to be the one learning and navigating his honest feelings on both sides bc i think he Yearns to be both. hes a boy who dresses like a girl and its up to him to know if he wants to be a man and/or a woman due to his own internal desire or if parts of that is Only due to external pressures.

--

and alright now that ive said all my thoughts on felix atm im gonna address the other questions you had in your ask!! note that this is just my opinions and thoughts regarding my own experience in the english fandom, you dont have to agree or anything 👍

but i AM very sorry about your negative experiences in this fandom. T^T people calling other transphobic for using he/him for felix (and also people being transphobic about characters like felix or subaru/natsumi in general) is something ive seen as well. the rezero fandom is sadly very often toxic and Bigoted in a lot of ways (with the exception of rezero tumblr and certain segments of rezero ao3, from what ive seen), which is Ironic for a story thats so clearly about love and self-acceptance, which is also ironic because arguably tappei and otsuka and the rezero marketing team (i Love the female characters in rezero but theres just so much sexualized or vaguely sexist merch/moments that dont add to the story, you know? kind of just. misses the point of their characters sometimes.) sort of contribute to it a little bit as much as tappei does do some really great things with his writing.

rezero is the first fandom ive been active in but its definitely not the first ive ever been in, and ive been in some insane fandoms before. like i said earlier though, i think i just cope by curating my experience to what i like, yknow? liking posts i enjoy, looking at stuff i enjoy, etc :O !! fandom is a hobby so i try not to look at negative stuff when i can help it wkdnd. which im sure youre aware about already but i always have to keep reminding myself of this bc places like rezero reddit or twitter get pretty rough!! but its really helped me just following artists and creators i like, enjoying their content, chatting with cool people i vibe with, rezero tumblr being the chillest rezero space in the whole fandom, and its also helped me a lot making rezero content of my own—like this whole blog!! its really shocked me how much people seem to value my thoughts enough to ask me things frequently but i appreciate it pfft. and i hope you guys like reading my posts!!

but yeah like. curate, curate, curate. it helps a LOT and it gets me excited to experience rezero not only by myself you know? not that i didnt have fun by myself but its its own level of fun finally finding spaces to have fun with others!! and i LOVE finding beautiful fanart!! chef’s kiss. and trying to be the change i want to see is satisfying on its own :,) i want to post random shit about rezero, so i post it. i want to make fanart for fun and share it. i want to brute force people into loving otto more so i ottopost (dont worry, i still hate him bc true otto fans also hate him at the same time <3 /lh). i want more queer rezero content so i try to make some more!! brings more personal power i think and its very fun!! and it helps with lessening the quiet despair of fandom toxicity ;-;; (which is something ive done many times and will continue to do sometimes so i feel your pain 🫂) and i promise theres cool people in the fandom 👍 i may reply late to asks or dms but im ALWAYS down to talk about rezero things its so fun 👍👍

and its really really hard sometimes to deal with fandom toxicity especially if its forcefully knocking at your door—definitely dont force yourself to stay or look at things if you cant, bc thats totally understandable!! and i myself have been harassed a little in the past. but definitely having some sort of coping—the block button, backing out of things you dont agree with or like, lots and lots of curating, etc—helps me a lot. and i think mental health wise i feel much better trying to look on the bright side of things!! its MY hobby goddammit!! ill fight people subaru-style if they try to poison it!! and however long anyone reading this decides to spend with rezero and rezero tumblr—you are welcome here 👍

but yes my very Long rambling aside - i hope this post somewhat helped you!! felix is a very important character that i like very much and need to learn more about and i have Many Feelings on the english side of this fandom, but im very grateful to all the cool people ive met over the years here for sure!! :o

also ill probably post the finished version soon but if youve read this far here is a sneak peak of felix art i did recently (just as a reward for once again reading all of my Endless Yapping)👍👍

[kaythejay]

Sometimes I forget just how privileged my life is as a queer person. I mean, I live in the US. It is completely legal here. When my partner and I decide to tie the knot, we will be able to do so. Though I am old enough to remember when that became legal, so I'm not in any deniability about the fact that I know it can be taken away (especially knowing that Roe v. Wade has already been taken away and they will certainly do the same to Hodges v. Obergefell if given the chance). But regardless, I do not have to worry about going to jail or getting killed because of my sexuality.

I have a lot of family that supports me. My partner's entire family has been absolutely wonderful in accepting me into their family. I mean, her mom has already started calling me her daughter-in-law, and we're still several years out from that being true (mostly for financial reasons/I'm still in school because I changed my major and added time to my degree). My grandma is always asking about my partner because she absolutely adores her. The reason I don't really talk to my parents has nothing to do with the fact that I'm gay (they like my partner more than they like me). They don't care about the gay thing, there's just a lot of other stuff that happened while I was growing up (before I even knew what gay was) that makes it hard to talk to them.

I'm growing up in an era where queer pride is becoming more and more mainstream. I know a lot of young kids whose parents have gone out of their way to teach them about queerness and that it is ok. There's one kid that I knew that was even taught things beyond the "basics" (he knows what pansexual means for example). Rainbow capitalism is proof that the world is shifting. I can walk into Target right now and get myself a bold (though, admittedly probably ugly) pride outfit. When I was little, that just was not a thing.

I get to see the shift in how controversy is handled with celebrities. For example, the whole thing with JoJo Siwa at the moment is all about her as a person, not the fact that she kissed a girl in her latest music video. When I was little, if you were gay, you had to hide it or be ridiculed for that reason.

And honestly, in my day-to-day, I really don't have to think about it that much. I mean, if I'm out in public with my partner I still have to think about if we're in a safe space if I wanted to like. Hold her hand or anything because we do live in a red state, so we're not 100% safe from being harassed. However, I don't have to think that much about it otherwise.

I mean I will once I'm a teacher (and my partner who has just gotten her teaching license has already talked to me a lot about that). I have a friend who is teaching in a district that simply putting a poster up that has a rainbow on it (even if it has nothing to do with pride) is enough to get yourself put under fire. She got into trouble for introducing herself with her pronouns (and she's a cis, straight woman, no queer shenanigans going on there).

J talks to me a lot about the fact that she feels bad that she can't about me in a professional environment like a straight couple could. She assures me that it is not because she doesn't want to. But honestly I have to remind her that like. I avoid the topic probably even more than she does. I haven't been out for nearly as long as she has, so I haven't gotten as comfortable with people knowing that stuff as she has. She's also talked to her mom about it, but her mom doesn't fully understand that it is a safety thing. J's mom's response is almost always "I don't really talk about my husband much either." She kind of struggles to understand the point of "but you could if you wanted to without repercussions." Whereas if me or J tells the wrong person that we have a lady partner, we've immediately put ourself (and possibly the other) in danger. Sometimes I forget just how deep the danger goes.

But then things happen.

People in our dorm have put notes on our door (because we were ✨roommates✨) that were less than kind. We had to get our RA and RLC involved, but they couldn't do anything since there aren't cameras in our building. But boy did my RLC want to (she's also a queer lady, freaking awesome, Imma miss her when I'm over RA-ing in a different building). And I'll be honest with you. Even in our dorm, we were super, super careful about how we presented ourselves because we knew it wasn't safe. And still, someone with ill intentions somehow found out about us.

Someone crawls into your Tumblr inbox to call your slurs and tell you that you're faking for attention and that you'll never understand what it really means to be gay. Only for them to disappear when you turn the anonymity off.

Someone yelled "faggots" at us out of a car window while we were all decked out heading to lunch after the pride parade.

And I know, I know I'm incredibly lucky that that is the extent of the harassment that I've faced because of my sexuality.

But honestly it just goes to show just how important pride, and pride month as a whole, still is to this day.

For me, pride is a huge celebration of who I am as a whole person. It is the one time of year when I can take the mask off completely and just feel free to be me, knowing that I'm safe from judgement. Like my partner was saying the other day, I don't really realize just how much of myself that I sanitize for the majority's consumption until I'm at a pride event and am no longer doing any of that. There's certain ways that I would carry myself/dress/etc if I didn't have to worry about the people around me saying or worse doing something to me just because they pick up on my queerness.

Pride events are a chance to be around a very large group of other queer people. It is a chance to show people who are important to me a massive aspect of my life in a way that isn't sanitized for public consumption. It's a place where we get to be freaks and weirdos and not have to worry about getting looks. Because honestly for as weird as you might look, there's someone not all that far away that looks even weirder and it is so freaking cool to get to see.

But pride is so much more than that. They're also an "in your face" of the people who hate us. It is a show that we are not going to back down and stop being who we are as people just because people don't approve of our "lifestyle." It is the community banding together to welcome everyone who is accepting and protect people from those who aren't. It is a place for "baby gays" to find that it is ok to be be queer and find their place in the world.

I hope you all have a happy pride month, whether you are celebrating out and proud, or hidden in the closet.

[heretherebedork]

Not to dwell on the fanservice issues since I also cannot engage with that part of BL for similar reasons, but I am truly concerned that the industry still doesn't have a way for brand pairs to end without causing massive harm to the actors, both personally and professionally. Sometimes I think we've made massive strides in fanservice, but then I see all the massive brand pairs currently in existence and how companies have not figured out how to let these actors move beyond them. I'll try to avoid using specific names, but there are some HUGE brands at GMMTV right now that one day might want to branch beyond BL . And we have seen how the breakup of a certain GMMTV pair caused fan devastation, harassment of a new actor, and frankly something that isn't talked about enough - actors now have to contend with a loss in job stability and probably income. Sure, their personal fans and casual viewers (me) won't care - but I am not paying money to go to their fan meetings or brand events or their concerts, and those pair fans won't either. And companies seem to just be sticking their head in the sand and hoping they can recruit the next big thing before a pillar explodes.

Even in a less controversial moment, it was just announced that a pair is ending as one needs a health break. And, thank god he's getting one. But it's also insane that their careers are going to have to undergo fundamental changes and potentially job losses (aside from dealing with angry and heartbroken fans, of which I've seen many) because they might have new onscreen partners.

I can only think of a handful of examples (I'm specifically thinking Max and Tul but there are others I'm sure) where actors have been mostly able to end their specific brand partnership (or move to other projects) without imploding the BL universe. But in those cases, I never get the impression it's because the company has a well thought out safety plan that they've discussed with the actors to minimize the impact on their careers and move them in a new direction. It seems like the lucky few have great working relationships with their co-stars and are basically able to leverage either their personal friendship or stellar working relationship to put the brand pair out to pasture with very gentle hands.

There's other issues about fanservice that really grinds my gears, but in light of the fact I believe some pairs will be ending soon, this has really made me extra angry. It feels like company negligence is going to stab some of these actors in the back when they feel like it's time to fly the nest. And fans are enabling their poor behavior.

This is all a very valid worry and one that I definitely share. Fan's response to actor pairs breaking is extreme and the ones who are really dating are even worse. I think of MewGulf every single time and the vitriolic response that people had to them and it's just... so scary, honestly.

I still see people on the some of these shorts and posts lamenting an actor pair that did one show together and never planned on doing another and people expressing how heartbreaking it is that they're not still together and just... yeah.

And having no plan for ending these pairings and their careers after does absolutely trap these actors in a portion of their career until or unless they're willing to give it all up in order to move on to something new. Which is not how it should be! Fanservice is meant to be fun and compliment to the shows, a fiction for the viewers that they enjoy, not the end all be all of an actor's career.

And there are just... there are so many actors that, right now, if they announced that they weren't dating... they would be destroyed. Utterly. Completely and totally and people would be rending their clothing and screaming about true love and it just scares me.

Fanservice has a place but I think there has to a pull back on them.

I, admittedly, don't know much about pairs that have moved apart in the longterm but I've seen people still mad about short term ones and making up longform fictional excuses for them not being able to work together but still being in love and it's just... it's wild. It's scary. They are actors! Acting! I promise!

I don't trust anything until or unless they're not working together anymore. They have to not be working on any shows together before I'll believe anything because look at what the shipping gets them. The dedicated fans, the hugely defensive fanbase, people so loyal that they will look for any sign they're in love and buy every single fanmeeting ticket, music event ticket or piece of merch based on their relationship.

Truly wild.

[under-lore]

The absolute state of Undercards

This isn't the kind of post i usually make, but well, theorists can make call out posts too. And regarding this topic, it seems that no one else is going to do it if i don't so...

I need to talk about Undercards. And particularly what's been going on behind the scenes in this fangame & its community and that it seems no one wants to speak up about. I've been thinking of doing this for a while and at this point i think i should just go ahead and explain it.

Okay, before we get into the controversy, i'll present the game a little bit for those who haven't heard of it. (And for those who don't care about this part, just scroll down a little bit until the next bold text.)

Undercards is an online multiplayer Undertale/Deltarune fangame which is basically just Yu-gi-oh or Hearthstone, except that cards, spells and such are all Undertale & Deltarune themed. It was popularised a few years ago mostly by youtuber Merg.

The gameplay looks something like this :

This game has a bit of a Gacha side, but it is entirely possible for any new FTP player to climb the ranks quite quickly or to obtain anything a P2W player could obtain somewhat easily, making it not unfair in that regard.

The game has an entertaining mastery curve and progress in ranked leagues (the main part of the game) is primarly decided by improvements in one's strategy regarding synergy of your deck, artifacts & soul, which are all to be chosen by the player to get the best chance at victory.

So, this all sounds like a pretty neat fangame, doesn't it ? So what's wrong ? What is the point of this post about ?

The issues

Whilst the game itself can indeed be quite fun, there exists a very serious problem regarding its community, and particularly its moderation team which sabotages its own game.

I'll start with some of the more minor issues before moving on to more important ones. I will also mention that i will not cover personal experiences (as much as i want to) and rather focus on larger trends to avoid biases or fallacious generalisations of individual cases.

The balance bias

The game has a very severe balance issue, which is nearly entirely caused by the moderators serving their own interests over that of the game.

Because here is the thing :

Many of the moderators (and by that i mean, the ones who's opinions seriously count for the balancing, really) are also the game's top players.

This game not only has greater rewards for achieving higher ranks every month, but even beyond the highest rank, it also has a live public leaderboard of the top players of each month.

However, if you check the monthly rankings of the game in any given season, the top spots are practically entirely monopolised by the moderators and by the alternative accounts of the moderators. (Some have had up to 5 accounts at once)

In other words, those who decide which cards should be buffed or nerfed are also the same people who will benefit or suffer from rebalancing their own cards, or know what tiny change to make to a card to suddenly make it very valuable in their specific decks.

This leads to some pretty silly situations, such as moderators buffing cards that genuinely deserved to be nerfed to secure their own interests. Or, on the other side of the issue, there are regularly cases where 9 out of the top 10 players all use the same clearly overpowered card in all of their decks, but the moderators will continue to deny that the card needs to be nerfed, because they do not want to have to nerf their own decks.

These things are all still happening, and they have been for years.

Because, well, they are the moderators, they have the authority and some of them have been here for up to 7 years, who is going to monitor them ?

After all, moderators are the law, they can do no wrong, right ?

Moderator incompetence and toxicity.

See, the team isn't just biased, they are also frankly incompetent at handling their own game in a facepalm-inducing manner.

For instance, remember how the main entertaining thing about this game was the strategy aspect of how to select your cards, artifacts and soul in order to get the best possible deck you can create and use it to make progress ?

Well, the game also has a spectating function. Which isn't a bad idea at all in itself. But it does have some major issues, like deck copying.

It is extremely easy for anyone to spectate the games of a very high rated player, and simply note down all the cards they play until you have their whole deck figured out. After this, you can easily copy it, and just play with this stronger person's deck and rank up that way, skipping what is quite literally the main interest of Undercards.

Not only does this ruin a large portion of the point of the game for the person that does it, but the more people do it, the more everyone everywhere starts running around using copies of the same few decks and making the game incredibly blend for everyone else overall as the thousands of possible way to make interesting decks slowly get reduced to no more than a dozen considered "viable" possible decks as you climb up the ranks.

...So what did the Undercards team do about this ?

...They created a hub menu where you can publish and downloads decks.

Yes, this is completely counter-productive.

Yes, this means that anyone can publish any deck for any player to find and use, they don't even need to copy the deck, it does that for them automatically.

Yes, this means that someone else can spectate your games, note down your deck, and publish it online for everyone to see, copy, or specifically prepare counters for. And they do.

Not only has the team not fixed those issues, but they have added features to make things more convenient for the perpetrators. They are actively encouraging people to be copycats and anti-fairplay, severely damaging their game's main strength on the way.

Oh, talking about stalking people and anti-fairplay...

The spectate feature has another massive problem : Sniping.

See, a game in Undercards lasts around 5 minutes & involves just two players, and there is rarely more than a couple dozen games going on at the same time. The game also has a very large matchmaking pool, meaning that you can pretty easily be paired against somebody considerably higher rated than yourself.

What this all means is that, by spectating somebody and then entering the playing queue right after this person's game ends, it is very easy to purposely stalk somebody in order to have a match against this particular person.

So, not only can someone stalk you and post your decks and/or strategies online, but anyone even much lower rated than you can look at it, build a counter deck that exists specifically to crush your particular deck, and then stalk you to repeatedly beat you and leech off your rank points.

And there is absolutely nothing that you can do about this.

The only solution is to log off and come back online when the sniper won't be present, or stalk the person back yourself to make sure you only launch games when you know they are already playing and can't be waiting for you, which is quite tiring.

Okay, well what did the team so about that one, then ? Surely even they wouldn't like the idea of being sniped, right ?

Heh... Well, its a bit trickier.

Officially, the practice is not allowed and a couple of them are actually against it. But in practice, most of them actually do not care, for the simple reason that part of them are guilty of doing such things themselves, and simply only take action when someones tries to do it back against them.

In fact, while i actually do not actually have proof for that one, i do also suspect that at least part of the moderators who have several accounts decide on which account they're going to play at a given time by checking which other players are online right now, and picking a deck/account accordingly for easier wins.

Their crappy behavior does not stop at only in-game things, though.

For instance, one person brought up to me that members of the staff have called his religion "garbage". Which needless to say, is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful.

Beyond being scummy, the team also just doesn't know how to handle their player base in general. For example, not so long ago, they shot themselves in the foot by creating two new ranks despite the fact that their player base was already too low to fill up the many ranks they already had. This means stretching up the rank differences between the players, which makes rank gain/loss disproportionate compared to one's actual current level and renders progression even more frustrating for medium level players, as well as generalising higher differences between players for matchmaking, which thus makes all the previously mentioned problems like sniping even worse. (All of that just to make things feel a bit more comfortable for those at the very top like the mods, who won't have to match with lower rated players as much.)

There could still be a couple more things for me to say, but i think the picture is already fairly clear. The team is purposely throwing the quality of their own game under the bus for little more reason than to stroke their ego by seeing their own names at the top of their leaderboards and overall just don't make very good decisions for their game even outside of all that.

Okay, but that was a whole lot of speaking, now how about i give an actual direct example of what the situation is currently like ?

Consider the existence of a user named "Sktima".

Skitma plays the game every day, but practically only ever uses the public chat to either :

Trash talk his opponents either during a game or after a loss.

Complain about the game's RNG, calling it "rigged" or "scripted".

Condescendingly mock and talk down on players rated below 2200 ELO (that is, over 98% of players) for being bad at the game.

If ever called out on this behavior, Sktima will infantilise the whistleblower, calling them a "whining little kid" or similar term before painting them as the bad guy instead, and attempting to bully them into leaving the chat. (and holding grudges against them later on, too.)

All the while, of course, being arrogantly mocking and acting like he considers himself as superior to others.

The question is : How long do you think it took for this player to be banned ?

I encourage you to think about this for a second, before continuing to read.

...

...Okay, have you made your guess yet ?

Well, it was a trick question..

Sktima was never banned at all, for the very simple reason that Sktima is a part of the moderation team.

He even has a YT, too. And it kinda speaks for itself, honestly.

For those interested, here are a couple extracts from a conversation he had in the comments with somebody pointing out that with the size of that community, issues like sniping or hand peeking (another big problem i didn't bring up caused by another bad feature that allows you to directly see the opponent's hand with another tab via the in-game friend option) were bound to happen with the way the mod team handled some features.

Be warned, a good amount of rudeness as well as lying & manipulating to try and turn the situation backwards...

Im not going to analyse or detail more any of that nor point out some of the blatant irony in this conversation, but what i will bring up is that throughout all this, they've made their stance rather clear :

None of this is the fault of the moderator team, they consider that only the player base itself is to blame for the current state of the game, not them.

The underground status.

The thing is, a lot of players aren't oblivious to this, but won't speak a word when staff is present.

In just a couple weeks for instance, at least three separate users have admitted in the chats they thought Sktima was insufferable, including one which claimed he was "the most toxic person on the site." But all this was only at low activity times when the team members were offline.

This was even more obvious on discord, where the only results you could find when searching for "Undercards" in the history of other Undertale/Deltarune related discord servers were people complaining about how toxic the Undercards staff was.

People frequently complain about a lot of the previously mentioned gameplay issues like sniping, but it seems nobody dares to speak up about the actual responsibles, likely due to their position of power and because they consider it as a fait accompli.

Undercards is a great game with has the potential to be very fun, but it and its community are practically being held hostage by the game's staff, and yet it seems the community has just given up on itself and mostly accepted this unfair status quo. This kind of thing shouldn't be allowed to continue.

[ljf613]

Alright, been a while since I said anything really Problematiqué on here and I'm bored, so I'm going to stick my hand in the hornet's nest and say that this so-called Barbie/Oscars "controversy" is dumb and contrived and incredibly absurd.

For those of you who've been living under a rock for the past couple of days (or just avoid listening to anything about Barbie and/or the Oscars, which is very sensible of you), here's a Twitter post that summed up the situation:

In other words, the very fact that Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor while Margo Robbie was passed over for Best Leading Actress and Greta Gerwig was passed over for Best Director is Terrible and Misogynistic and entirely the fault of the Patriarchy.

This has got to be the most absurd take I have seen this year. (Granted, "this year" has only been about four weeks, but the point stands.)

Let me explain some things to y'all:

Barbie received EIGHT Oscar nominations. (That is, in fact, a fairly impressive showing for a glorified toy commercial.)

One of those nominations was for America Ferrera as Best Supporting Actress.

Are you guys following? Eight nominations, and apparently none of it matters because the movie didn't happen to get the two specific nominations certain people wanted it to get. And not only that, but y'all want to tear down an actor who was nominated for an award that neither Greta nor Margo was even eligible for. Seriously? Don't you people have lives?

Now, I've heard that Ryan Gosling has come out and basically said that Margo should have gotten the nomination instead of him. (I haven't looked too deeply into this because I just Don't Really Care Enough.) If that's true, it's pathetic and nonsensical.

Ryan didn't take the nomination away from either of them. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. It's not like Margo or Greta would have been nominated for that award if not for him, and I am almost certain that nobody on the nomination committee (or whoever decides these things) was sitting there saying, "Well, we gave Ryan Gosling a nomination, and therefore we shouldn't give one to Margo Robbie or Greta Gerwig." (I am so tired of the "someone else has something I don't and that's Not Fair and therefore they must be oppressing me" narrative.)

(As someone who didn't actually watch the movie or follow it all that closely, I can tell you this much: I saw lots of people talking about how hard Ryan Gosling was working to get this part right, and how well he did. I don't remember a single post saying the same thing about Margo Robbie. Maybe, just maybe, he got a nomination because he did an above-and-beyond spectacular job and deserved it-- and she didn't? Just possibly?)

Also, an actress getting passed over for a Best Leading Actress nomination CAN'T be misogynistic. You know why? Because who gets that nomination instead? That's right-- some other woman. And as for Best Director, there is a woman who's been nominated for that award (Justine Triet for "Anatomy of a Fall"), so it's not like they were deliberately trying to make sure no woman got the award-- they just didn't feel that Greta Gerwig made the cut.

And even if you pretend we're living in some imaginary universe where the nomination committee deliberately snubbed Margo and Greta while nominating Ryan for Sexist Reasons, why would they have given a nomination to America Ferrera?

In short, whatever the reasons Margo Robbie didn't get nominated for Best Leading Actress and Greta Gerwig didn't get a Best Director nomination, they do not and cannot include:

The committee hated "Barbie" for unspecified Patriarchy Reasons.

Ryan Gosling stole the nomination away from them.

The committee liked "Barbie" but hated all of the women involved (for Patriarchy Reasons).

[littlemoonastrology]

All About: GEMINI ♊︎ - The Zodiac Signs

This post will cover all the basic information needed to understand Gemini, the third Zodiac Sign!

Take a look at my other posts to see information on: Aries and Taurus!

I bet you can't guess what Zodiac Sign is coming next... Maybe you can. If you still don't know it's Cancer, so keep a look out!

If you feel like this post has helped you feel free to Follow, Reblog or Repost (as long as I'm credited! I'm relatively new to Tumblr so I'm still learning about how all this works)!

~

Gemini ♊︎

Date (Only applies to Sun Signs): May 21 - June 20

Symbol: ♊︎ - The Twins

Associated House: Third

Associated Degrees: 3°, 15°, 27°

Associated Energy: Masculine

Planetary Ruler(s): ☿ Mercury (Modern and Traditional)

Element: Air

Modality: Mutable

Keywords: Charismatic, Intelligent, Curious, Independent, Communicative, Multipassionate

Playful, fun, communicative and charismatic are all words that can be used to describe those with Gemini placements! This sign may be an intellectual and enjoys exploring different hobbies, interests, opinions for their own enjoyment (although there may be one or two things they have a natural affinity for), they're the multipassionates! This sign is insanely curious and always ready to learn more, although they may not do well in a structured environment and prefer to do things in their own way - going with the flow. A Gemini friend will appreciate those with a sharp mind and don't take things too seriously, will hear out their opinion and have interesting debates! If you have similar hobbies with a Gemini friend then the bond will only strengthen further as they are not the person to bond over small talk. These placements need mental stimulation and look for that in most if not all aspects of their life.

To some extent, a Gemini placement may have a knack for "smooth talking" and may beat around the bush in order to get a response or avoid aggression. Whilst Gemini does love speaking about different hobbies, controversial topics and the such they still deeply care about people's opinions of them whether they show it or not and do their best to stay out of drama (however this may not stop them from gossiping every now and then). A Gemini placement usually never has any kind of bad intent and if needed, they will care for their friends and can be pretty wise. (Some natives of this placement however may not care about other's opinions at all and are very stable in themselves, not really caring about getting in drama - they might actually find it fun).

When insecure, feeling stuck or stagnant a Gemini placement may become completely fixed on a goal or end up overindulging in something in unhealthy ways - maybe they have a tendency to become controlling or fall into some kind of addiction as a way of escapism. They may unintentionally start to depend on other people and can come across as clingy - maybe to some extent depending on people for their own self-worth which may hint towards codependency issues. In some cases, a Gemini may resort to manipulation and deception in order to get what they want.

A Gemini placement is at their peak when they are enjoying life, exploring their hobbies, talking to people but also when they are able to go by some kind of structure in order for them to stay committed... This sign's biggest lesson is to not stay in a stagnant energy, but also on the other side not become someone destructive (whether that's towards themselves or other aspects of their life).

~

Notes/Keywords/Phrases

Zodiac Sign

Each of the Zodiac Signs are a constellation. The Zodiac Sign shows how a Planet/Asteroid/Fixed Point/House is being represented and expressed. Once a Planet/Asteroid/Fixed Point/House falls into a Zodiac Sign, it adopts the energy of it.

For example: if Mercury falls into the constellation Sagittarius, Mercury adopts Sagittarian traits. If the 6th House falls into the constellation Aquarius, the 6th House adopts Aquarian traits.

Associated House

The Houses in Astrology are dependent on the time and location of birth in a Natal Chart and there are 12 different ones. Each of these 12 Houses are then assigned to a Zodiac Sign and 1 or 2 Planetary Rulers. The Houses in Astrology show you what area of life the energy of the Zodiac and Planets/Asteroids/Fixed Points is appointed to and helps provide depth into the chart.

For example: Capricorn's Associated House is the 10th House.

Associated Degrees

When a Planet/Asteroid/Fixed Point/House falls into a Zodiac Sign constellation, it will be appointed a Degree. This Degree shows how far along the Planet/Asteroid/Fixed Point/House is in a Zodiac Sign. Each Degree is also associated with a Zodiac Sign, meaning when this Degree comes up it can nuance the way the Zodiac Sign of a Planet/Asteroid/Fixed Point/House is being represented.

For example: Mars is 6° in the Zodiac Cancer, 6° represents Virgo - therefore the Cancer Mars also takes on Virgo traits. The 2nd House is 23° in the Zodiac Scorpio, 23° represents Aquarius - therefore the 2nd House in Scorpio takes on Aquarian traits.

Planetary Ruler(s)

This phrase refers to the Planet(s) that rule a Zodiac Sign. When a Planet falls into the Zodiac Sign it has rulership over, the energy of both the Planet and the Zodiac Sign is amplified.

For example: Pisces' Planetary Ruler is Neptune.

Modern / Traditional

These words are associated with two kinds of Astrology: Modern Astrology and Traditional Astrology. Traditional Astrology refers to Astrology that was practiced before the 19th century, whilst Modern Astrology refers to Astrology that is practiced now. Some people choose to practice Traditional Astrology, some people choose to practice Modern Astrology, whilst some others might practice both types or combine them together.

Element

Each Zodiac Sign/Planet/House/Degree is associated with an Element and this covers certain traits which are unique to the Zodiac Sign/Planet/House/Degree they correspond to.

These Elements are: Fire, Air, Water and Earth.

Modality

Much like an Element, each Zodiac Sign/Planet/House/Degree is associated with a Modality. The Modality describes what the focus of a placement is and how the energy is expressed.

There are 3 different Modalities: Cardinal, Mutable and Fixed.

[dia-souls]

Yall are so talented and good at writting reaction. I know you all are going through bunch of controversy and all that stuff but I gotta admit one thing that you all got talent and honestly as a dl-fan that's what matter to me the most who cares if you did wrong or were misunderstood as dl-fans we all gotta chill and enjoy instead of taking things to hearts and getting angry at each other afterall we all create contents for each other and than fight amongst ourselves lol its so idiotic thing in my opinion but I don't create content so I might not understand I guess. Anyway back to the topic what other project are you working on cuz I just got free from exams and touched tumblr and there are no updates on any novel or cd drama (I repeat I am not complaining don't block me) I am just asking.

🦋 Admins talk:

Thank you very much, dear Anon, for your kind words, we appreciate you very much. To be honest we all were surprised by your words. You're so kind, thanks for your word of encouragement we all really appreciate the way you comforted us. We are happy to know you like our contents.

We didn't try to steal any content. Our main motive wasn't to steal any content. It's a misunderstanding we just didn't want to bother the admin with unnecessary notification because she left fandom and that's why we added slash but anyway things did get out of hand and we were misunderstood unfortunately in future we will avoid doing it because let's be honest if we knew this would happen we wouldn't have done it in the first place. But it's very good to speak with people before judging them. Because sometimes you don't know anything about them and your wrong judgment will break their hearts. We don't want to discuss this issue more we have already explained the reasons, apologized and all stuff......

Anyway we think you are concerned for us, as admin Afra recently had small issues regarding her health but she is back in town and is better now she will start posting soon once she is better. Admin Irsa is going through exam phase. Admin Ava is also busy too. All three admins have already plans to release some of their fics and Drama CDs as soon as they get free from their busy schedule. The thing is that we all are young and students so give us some time we all will update soon. Your asks will also be answered soon.

We must say that all the admins love this fandom and like to continue producing contents as long as they feel safe and happy. It was a new novel that will start on December 1st. But this will happen if the admins have good mental conditions. Admin Afra has bigger plans for new novels and games you can see here and a vey big project that called diabolik lovers series. She is not in a very good condition now. We will have to wait and see what happens in the future. If everything goes well, the new novel will be published soon.

Again thanks for your lovely message! People like you is what that keep us going in this fandom! One more thing none of the admins plan to leave the fandom and in near future too so don't worry we aren't that weak it's just admin Afra issue did surprise us. She is young so do go easy on her as she receives a lot of hate for stupid reasons and just for a misunderstanding. Please give her some time to regain her mental health back. So remember don't judge people when you are not aware of their situations. Before sending any hate message try to speak with them first and remember mabye you are judging them in a wrong way. We all are here to enjoy and all three admins love publishing contents so let us enjoy doing it and be nice that's it.

[menlove]

1 2 3 4 😈

unpopular john opinion? hmmmm lord i guess it depends on what circles i'm in bc there's smth unpopular about every john opinion i have depending on who i'm around. i guess just the one that would be most unpopular to the widest audience imaginable is that his relationship w yoko was a lot more complicated than anyone wants to talk about. like she was neither the diabolical scheming witch that hypnotized him and tortured him... but she was also not the cool girlboss wife that did no wrong. i think the truth is somewhere in the middle and falls more along the lines of that they were both Not Good to or for each other, but ofc where men like john & paul are given grace to fuck up in relationships, yoko is not bc she is a woman and a japanese woman at that. i guess that's more of a Yoko Opinion but. i mean it's john as well. their relationship was very odd and sometimes incredibly unhealthy but i don't necessarily think he was either The Victim or The Abuser. they just kind of sucked together.

unpopular paul opinion? i really really do not think he is as oblivious as people make him out to be re his sexuality/john. like obviously i'm not in his mind i can't outright make that call but the idea that he's just a straight man emotionally in love w john who Can't Understand It is so... does not ring true to me. To Me i think it more likely that if he has realized anything, there's a lot of shit he's up against. he's 1/4th of the most popular band that has ever existed and 1/2 of the remaining members. the most famous of those two members at that. he was born in the 1940s and homosexuality was still illegal for the first 25 years of his life. not only that but if he Did ever mention anything about him and john, it's not just his legacy he has to protect, but his dead best friend's whose widow is still alive & would only catch more backlash than she already has. like. it's just not a simple situation and it bothers me when people act like the Only possible reason he could be saying weird contradictory things abt his sexuality & feelings for john are bc he's straight and stupid. like sure that COULD be! but idk! i'm just not convinced.

unpopular ringo opinion? fadfasdfasf the other two are so long and these next two are gonna be so much shorter rip. but idk i'm gonna be real i avoid thinking about ringo bc i think out of the 4 of them he's the one i'm most uncomfortable interacting with in a fannish way. especially bc he is still alive and (at least according to people i know that've met him) still kind of an asshole. ofc as a john girlie i have 0 room for judgment here i really don't care one way or another how people interact w him and his legacy i just, myself, tend to avoid it. which i guess is an unpopular opinion in of itself. just will never forget about him beating his first wife so badly she couldn't walk. like. that's so fucked. and like i said ik it's hypocritical but that's why i just Avoid The Ringo Discussion.

unpopular george opinion? idek that i HAVE an unpopular george opinion tbh....... he was the coolest one out of all of them though, bar none. he could walk circles around john & paul when it came to his guitar playing and while my guitar gently weeps is one of the best guitar songs of all time. UH i guess the only unpopular one i have is all things must pass is not a favorite album of mine like it's got some gold on it but overall i'm not listening to it on repeat

controversial beatles asks

[mageofseven]

MC Asks the Brothers for Another Baby (Part 3)

This has been in my drafts for a while now. It already had a chunk of it done so I decided to finish it. Plus, I always enjoyed writing these baby posts lol

Anyway!

Part three for Beel and Belphie! Part one and two can be found here and here.

Once again, I aim to answer these questions with the post:

How likely is it that each brother would be willing to give MC another baby if she asked, especially since the first time was so dangerous?

How well do they handle the second pregnancy and are they any more prepared physically, mentally, or emotionally for it?

How their kids react to their Mama being pregnant and how they feel about getting a new brother or sister?

•▪︎▪︎◇°●♡●°◇▪︎▪︎•

Beelzebub:

Okay, with these two, the question wasn't whether they should have another child or not, but rather, when.

Beel and MC have honestly been talking on and off since their twins were born about having more kids.

Beely is very much a family man with a lot of love to give; he doesn't wanna stop at just two kids. If MC didn't want anymore kids, he would have been extremely disappointed, but still accept her decision.

Luckily, MC is just as excited at the prospect of having more kids so the couple has been on the same page since Day One.

So why has the couple waited three years to add to their family? Simple. They were debating how they wanted to add to it.

Both of them agreed that they should avoid getting MC pregnant again; I mean, she did almost die last time.

MC brought up all of the other methods from Human realm that they could try, notably surrogacy and adoption.

It took three years to go think through and search out to see if they could make either method possible.

Surrogacy got ruled out rather quickly. It wasn't really something known about in the Devildom and honestly, it'd be too risky to trust another demon to carry their child because children are a very precious resource in their realm. Fertility rates are very low because of a demon's long life span so demon children are very rare and treasured greatly.

And obviously, the couple couldn't even humor the idea of a human doing it for them. After what MC went through, how could they wish it on another human?

Because of this, the two were very focused on the idea of adopting and explored this possibility very thoroughly.

This was another method not available in the Devildom; again, children are a rare treasure in this realm, one that demons have a long history of literally killing for. Demons generally don't care too much about bloodlines and genes, but adding to their family's power and passing down beliefs? Historically, it's always been very important in demonic culture.

Though when I say not available, I mean not by MC and Beel's morals. Yes, it's culturally acceptable in the Devildom to kidnap children and do whatevers necessary to 'win' them, but that's just so fucked up and overall, not something the couple would be okay with.

That left the two with adopting a human child instead a demon one. The couple spent a while going back and forth with Lucifer and Diavolo, trying to see if such a thing was possible, but it was essentially a game of 'we'll see'.

The cultural exchange has opened up a lot opportunities between realms, especially between the Devildom and the Human realm, but to the degree of the humans trusting them to raise their children? Not quite, especially since the exchange is still considered highly controversial by both demons and humans a like.

Essentially, three years of waiting cause the two of them to become a little antsy. Not just them, but their daughters too.

Though MC and Beel never directly told their girls that they were looking to have a child added to the family, the girls have to still heard many conversations between their parents over the years.

It's okay though because their girls are just excited! Like seriously, you know those car situations where kids are asking like a thousand times, "Are we there yet?"

That's essentially the situation with the girls and their potential baby sibling.

"Are we having a baby now? Why not?"

And yes, the twins say 'we'. This potential baby has kinda become a family project and it's honestly kinda cute to think about.

The parents aren't even annoyed by the daily questioning. In fact, it warms their heart to know that they are all in agreement for this as a family, especially Beel's.

Their daughters' loving impatience was part of why the couple gave in; obviously, they were not gonna be able to adopt anytime soon (though the two agreed that if the opportunity ever arises, they will 100% adopt a child regardless of how many they have at time)

So the two sat down and talked about...well, making their own. They knew the risk and originally wanted to avoid pregnancy because of it, but the wait along with their daughters' enthusiasm just broke their hearts everyday. The longer they went without a third child, the more it hurt their hearts and took up space in their minds.

MC was the one would brought it up. As much as Beel wanted more kids, he would have never asked his Muffin to go through something so dangerous a second time for him. Since she asked for it though...well, that made it easier.

Beel still had his worries though, which he talked through with MC. Even outside of all of his love and concern for her, there was still the girls. How would Arsi and Anais feel, watching a baby starve their Mama over the months just like they did? And...what if, Devil forbid it...what if she died this time. The first time, it was just Beel who have been destroyed if MC died, but now...now the girls would be crushed as well.

Beel just feels so complicated, stuck between his strong protectiveness of his girlfriend and kids and his (as well as MC and the girls') strong desire to add to their family.

Likelihood of him agreeing: (a guilty) 89%

If yes:

Pretty much no 'if'. It's definitely a yes.

It's a guilty yes though because he worries...is he being selfish by agreeing to this? He keeps telling himself that it isn't because all three of his girls want this so much, but he can't help feeling like he should of been strong and said no for MC's safety.

Big Guy feels so conflicted 😔

But he loves MC and the twins more than his own life and the very moment he found out MC was pregnant again, that same powerful love extended to this new baby.

It helped a lot to see how excited the girls were at the news. Anais was so hyped up about it that her parents couldn't understand her for a full minute because she was talking so fast.

Arsi was much calmer, but her smile never left her face for the rest of the day and was scarcely gone during the week.

MC her was so happy she cried. Beel kissed her and held her tight as she smiled through the tears.

All the while she kept telling him over and over that it's finally happening.

This pushed away a lot of the guilt he held inside him because how could something that makes his Muffin this happy be the wrong decision?

Not to mention that even he cried a few happy tears. I mean, he's having another child with the woman he loves. What could be more perfect than that?

For a while, it seemed like nothing could make this family happier than this baby made them.

There was some anxiety between the couple when MC's appetite started to pick up though.

All Beel could think about was when his Muffin was pregnant the first time and just how starved she looked. Sunken cheeks, all flesh and bones...

Hell, MC lost weight back when she was pregnant with the twins and that's not how it should be.

After discussing his concern with Lucifer, the two managed to get MC on an IV drip to consistently push water and nutrients into her body.

Yes, the human still ate an ungodly amount of food like last time, but unlike before, she didn't look like she was at Death's Door for the majority of the pregnancy.

Obviously, it was uncomfortable having a needle in her arm for months on end, but MC was grateful that her daughters didn't have to see her like she was before.

The couple decided to keep the gender of the baby a secret, even from themselves.

Satan, being the one who periodically checked up MC with his spells, was the only one who knew the baby's gender and it was only through him that the couple knew for sure that it was only a single baby this time around.

Beel wasn't disappointed though. Yes, this man would have loved it if they were to have more twins, but what matter to him right now was that they were having a new baby at all

And he already loved this child so much that his heart was practically bursting with it.

Because of the secrecy with the gender, the girls would argue about what the gender would be.

It was done in a playful way though so their parents actual enjoyed listening to their banter.

Arsi wanted a baby brother, but Anais said boys (others than Daddy) are stinky and that a sister would be better.

Well after being pregnant for nine months and six days, MC gave birth to a baby boy.

Sorry Anais, I guess you have a stinky baby brother now~

Still, everyone is happy and loves this new baby so much

And now MC and Beel have three children that they love more than anything in the three realms

Arsenia, Anais, and...

Amias~

Belphegor:

Ok so...Belphie is complicated one, to say the least

This man never used to like kids, not after having to deal with Satan as one

So when MC was pregnant with their twins, this man was not the least bit thrilled.

It really, really took time for him to adjust to being a dad

But he grew to love Judas and Lilith more than his own life.

I mean, he still can't stand other kids, but his are the best.

Despite his love for them, this man was right about one thing: kids are exhausting.

The Avatar of Sloth was tired enough without those two little gremlins (which he calls them affectionately)

But with them? Parenting takes a lot out of him.

Still, Belphie has no regrets. His kids mean everything to him.

Hell, he doesn't even want to imagine life without them.

Things are going good for the little family

And when things go good, MC can't help but to let her mind wander...

And her heart hope that...maybe they could have just one more?

Honestly though, the human was too worried to even talk about it with their boyfriend.

It took a long time to get things to settle for their family

And MC...she was scared that if she so much as uttered her question aloud, the peace and happiness the two of them have built would come crashing down.

Could she really test her luck like that?

She fretted over this for weeks.

Belphie could tell something was up and repeatedly ask her what was wrong.

All she did was wave away the question, give an excuse, or even avoid answering all together

And there was only so much of this that the seventh brother could take.

"How am I suppose to fix it if you don't talk to me?"

The twins were out getting ice cream with their Uncle Beel so the couple could talk in private.

"Belphie...I dunno, okay?"

The human still wasn't sure if she should risk it and the last thing she wanted was her boyfriend interrogating her about it.

"I can tell something's bothering you, Butthead."

Silence.

The demon sighed and plopped down on the bed before taking her arm and leading her to his side.

"Just talk to me."

And just liked that, it occurred to her that they were in the exact same spot they were over three years ago

And the women was afraid of things repeating.

She remember back when she and Beel were here in the attic, telling Belphie about her pregnancy

And how that didn't end well.

Would he be mad like he was that day? Would he tear her down for even asking for something he never even wanted before?

"MC..."

The human didn't realize it before, but she was crying

And Belphie was now wiping each tear off her cheeks with his sleeve.

The tears came faster

And so did his lips.

The demon kissed his girlfriend, keeping his forehead pressed to hers for moment.

After the kiss, MC slowly grabbed his hand and just stared at it for a long minute.

"I want another baby..." She whispered. "But I don't want to upset you."

The man froze, just staring at his human.

She's crying...about this? She's really that scared about upsetting him?

That's when all of his sins towards her came back to choke him.

Belphie felt like he's made so many fuck ups when it comes to her.

MC remembered this room as the one where she told Belphie she was pregnant

But Belphie remembers it as the room where he stole her life from her, all those years ago, just for being human.

If it wasn't for Barbatos, he...everything he loves about his life wouldn't exist and instead he would still be just a miserable, resentful man grieving his sister.

MC brought him closure. But she also brought him love and perspective and two kids that he never knew he needed till they were thrusted upon him.

Though MC (strangely enough) seems to have forgotten what he did to her most days, Belphie never has and that incident has been the driving force to make it up to her, if such a thing is even possible.

Yet he still fucked up. The night she told him she was pregnant, he screamed at her, told her shouldn't have their twins, told her she would only die again.

But he's been working on things so hard, both during her pregnancy and since the twins were born.

The demon though he was doing ok, doing better. If MC's this afraid to talk to him though...how could he actually be any better than before?

"Belphie?" He felt her squeeze his hand as she said his name.

"I'll always be a fuck up, won't I?"

He pulled away from her, his back to her now.

"I--no! Belphie--"

"You've been worried about asking me this because you think I'd act the same as before...even though I've tried to be better."

The man was depressed. I mean, he's been depressed for a long time, but in this moment, it was really hitting him hard.

Silence hung in the air, one just as potent to the couple as Belphie's miasma powers. It was filled with so much pain and confusion on both sides; Belphie wanted to know how to be better and MC wanted to know how to soothe his heavy heart.

Wordlessly, MC leans in and hugs her boyfriend from behind, laying her cheek against his back.

"They...my people have a saying, 'All good things must come to an end'. I just...I just don't want everything we have to be one of those things, ya know?"

Belphie closed his eyes. He...he had the same fear. I mean, he once lost everything that made him happy in life. Since starting his new life in the Devildom, he always felt like anything good in front of him would shatter just like before. Her fear...he shared it.

What does a person do when they want to keep good things? Do they continue to search for more good to add to their life or accept well-enough and hope nothing falls through the cracks? Or do you pray to some deity, god or devil, to keep life worth living?

He didn't know...but he knew one thing.

The demon turned around and kissed his girlfriend. Unlike last time, however, MC found herself laying on the bed with Belphie over her.

After the kiss, Belphie just stared down at his human, causing her to blush.

"B-Belphie?"

"Let's have another baby then."

All Belphie knew is that he wanted to make her happy--no. He needed to make MC happy

So if having a third kid does that then he needs to do it, for her.

Just as Belphie leaned down to kiss her again, the couple heard a shout.

"Daaaaaaaaadddddyyy!" Lilith called from the bottom of the stairs. "I gotchu mint chocolate!!!!!"

"Don't yell so loud." Judas scolded her before calling for MC. "But uhh I picked devils n' cream for ya, Ma!"

Welp. No baby-making was gonna happen now.

Likelihood? Well I've written this like it's definite thing, but in truth, I simply wrote more detail in the best scenario. Belphie could easily fall on his old ways and be hurtful to MC before he realizes. I wanted to write him in a way that shows more growth though. In truth, this would be a more 50/50 for Belphie.

If yes:

The heavy atmosphere between them, though doesn't completely go away, gets mixed with some positivity.

Though its not easy to find alone time when you have twins, when the couple managed it, it was nice.

The two had forgotten what it was like to just be the two of them

Which is kinda sad in a way, but the trade off was worth.

Still, the couple now had plenty of 'fun' together

So it didn't take long for MC to wind up pregnant

And unlike last time, Belphie took care of her every step of the way.

Telling the twins about the baby was...an interesting experience to say the least.

When they told the kids, they were essentially like 'why?', but seemed neither upset nor excited for the baby.

Lilith's words "That's weird." essentially summed up their mostly indifferent mindset

And in truth, the parents found it almost funny.

From there on, Lilith was pretty whiny because her dad didn't always have time to play with her; he had to take care of MC after all.

Judas was extra clingy with his mom, always needing to stay by her side. He just wanted to take care of her just like his Daddy did

And when this pregnancy made her just as exhausted as the last, she needed the extra help.

Everything was good. It was definitely an adjustment, especially for Lilith, but the little family was happy

And luckily, MC didn't fall into a coma this time.

During the last pregnancy, she fell into occasionally comas because of stress.

This time, her relationship with Belphie was much and she had the sweet support of her kids. This made this second pregnancy much easier on her.

Still, her mind was almost always foggy so it wasn't safe for MC to do any cooking or really be left alone. There have even been a few times that the tired human almost fell down the stairs because of her mental fog.

The first time that happen, the only reason the woman didn't tumble down the stairs was because Judas was with her and her son reacted quickly enough to pull her back by her arms.

The pregnant woman landed her butt and it remained sore for the rest of the day, but it was a hell of a better outcome then sliding belly-first down the stairs.

Both Belphie and Judas hovered over her a lot after that.

Overall, this pregnancy was nearly as bad as the last though.

When MC started to go into labor, she was actually in denial.

She had only just entered her 8th month; the contractions had to be fake.

But they weren't; they kept getting worse and woman was honestly freaking out.

Belphie stayed with her and eventually asked Beel to send Satan their way.

Satan used his magick to check on the baby and, more than anything, give MC some peace of mind. Belphie too.

The sloth demon didn't actually think anything was wrong. I mean, the twins came a bit early too and they were find.

That's what was stuck in his mind though. Their twins were early.

So...did that mean--

Satan was trying to repress a smile.

"What? Is the baby okay?" MC practically begged.

The fourth brother nodded.

"They've both developed enough so they should be fine."

"Both?"

Oh dear devil. Twins? Twins again?

Belphie started laughing, as if he heard the best joke of his life.

"B-Belphie?" MC stared at her boyfriend, worried that the new just broke him.

'I'll never sleep again.' He thought, humorous disbelief on his face.

Instead of speaking this, the man just leaned down and kissed the human's forehead.

"They're fine. It's fine. So you don't need to worry, okay?"

Satan grabbed his tome and started heading towards the door, but not before leaning towards the 7th brother's ear.

"You have some luck." The blonde whispered with a smirked.

"Shut up." The dark haired brother elbowed him before the other continued towards the door and left the couple alone.

Belphie turned back to MC and found her staring.

"Belphie...are you really okay with this?"

The man huffed and joined his girlfriend on the bed.

He pulled her into his arms.

"I told you; you have nothing to worry about, Butthead."

If truth, the demon could see the humor in this. He, the Avatar of Sloth, the man who once couldn't stand being around any child, is about have not one but two sets of twins; four kids in total.

If he was the same man as he was before Judas and Lilith were born, this new would have set him off, made him think that all this world wants to do is punish him.

Now...well, the whole reason these kids are here is that he wanted to make his girlfriend happy. A second one doesn't change that.

No matter how much work it will be (and this man knew it would be a lot), Belphie knew it would be worth it; he knew he would love these kids just as much as he loves Judas and Lilith.

Beel had been trying to keep the kids occupied, but as more and more time went on, the kids (especially Judas), kept trying to slip into the room.

Eventually, the parents decided to let their kids into the room. Judas was incredibly antsy, wanting to make sure his mama was okay.

Obviously, the kids couldn't be in the room for the birth, but they got to keep their mama company for a while.

Despite MC's worry, the birth went without issue

And eventually, she was graced with two little boys in her arms, Cain and Abel.

Belphie could only stare at the three of them at first

"Belphie..."

That when he noticed MC crying. Only then did he notice that he was crying too.

MC was happy and Belphie was happy that she was happy. Yeah, he definitely got more than he bargained for with them having another set of twins, but still, he had hope for the future, probably more than he ever has.

Belphie felt like the six of them will be happy. Himself, MC, Cain, Abel, Judas, Lilith...he felt like they all had a good life ahead of them

And he was going to be the best dad and boyfriend he could be.