#I genuinely have no idea if this meme is big on tumblr at all

[hydraulicpressedspaghetti]

I love this thing,,,

Non animated version:

(Colors are brighter due to gif compression!)

[musashi]

is the eminem cosplayer from breaking bad actually a bisexual trans man or has tumblr mislead me about this show again

HFDKLJGHDFGDF ok i want to answer this genuinely and in earnest because a lot of tumblr sees the memes and i think might internalize some ideas that breaking bad deserves ridicule for being like, a show that middle aged men like, so i actually want to say this for anyone who might have even the slightest interest in the actual story--

jesse is literally homophobic in canon but has been adopted as a transmasc icon because even though he is a cishet man, a lot of his traditionally masculine bravado resonates with trans men who had that period of conforming to ideas of toxic masculinity in an attempt to feel secure in their gender. this is something men of all gender alignments often deal with, but for trans men it can hit twofold, as they obvious have more at stake in "proving" their manhood.

furthermore, jesse is not the hypermasculine facade he presents. he is sensitive, open-hearted, protective in ways that are more nurturing than combative. jesse does not stone-faced background noise the traumatic things he goes through in brba, he cries openly and breaks down often, in ways that even just the 'i see breaking bad memes' crowd knows because those scenes are often made fun of, bolstered by aaron paul's emmy-winning performance and the sheer amounts of raw emotion he puts into them:

the villain of breaking bad is toxic masculinity. full stop. it is not subtle, it is present throughout. jesse is meant to be one of walter's narrative foils and this is the biggest place they clash--walter is insistent on being hard and masculine and never letting his image or personal pride falter, but jesse cannot do that. jesse emulates an idea of masculinity to protect himself but when pushed to his limit this idea crumbles and he allows his true colours to show without shame--what he is is gentle. he is not hard, he is not destructive, he is not a killer. every crime he commits and every life he takes, he takes with tears in his eyes. he literally cannot find it in his heart to hurt even an insect.

jesse pinkman is not a trans icon without reason, even though he is a cis man. jesse is a trans icon because he is introduced as someone who wears toxic masculinity like armor, desperate to prove to not only the world but to himself that he is strong and worthy of his place in society. and while i will not say the things that happen to him in the series are deserved in ANY sense of the word (he is a victim--plain and simple) they do serve a function--teaching him to shed that ideal for himself and be who he really is. and who he really is, is a big brother with an open heart, who cries easily and loves wholly, who likes woodworking and comic books and making art, who just wants someone to tell him that he has done a good job.

tl;dr: no, jesse pinkman is not trans. but he is ours.

[deathstrokewilson]

OOC: Hi all, Roleplayer behind JJ and Slade here. (mentally insert Zuko meme if you so choose)

I'm feeling a bit calmer now. I was quite hurt by that anon from last night.

To explain my reaction, for anyone who is confused, I am a person. I'm sitting here on my computer or phone to have fun and write stories with others, the same as everyone else here. This is my first time trying to RP on Tumblr, and for some of you it may be your first time trying to RP at all. To which I say, I'm so glad you are! Genuinely, roleplay is a great way to make friends and to explore all sorts of stories and themes safely and supportively.

Additionally, this is my first time writing Slade. I never expected so many people to enjoy my writing, and listen, I love that he's so generally terrible, and that I seem to write him well enough that you want to rally against him, that you love to hate him, that you send love to the Dick who's agreed to be Slade's Renegade. It's sweet. It's intense. But it's supposed to be fun.

Whoever did send that anon may have just been caught up in the intensity of having Slade seem like such a big threat, and wanted to try and ding his ego, or something to that effect. I don't know their intent. But as a person writing for both my enjoyment and yours, it was like a punch to the face. It was incredibly hurtful, since firstly, I don't think I've written him that way, and secondly, that just… isn't something you send. It's a serious thing to say or imply, it can be easily twisted out of context, and shouldn't be slung around. I would also like to state that I have checked in several times with people who are either directly part of the story or were emotionally affected by it to make sure they were all right to continue. I know it's an intense character, an intense storyline. I genuinely don't want people feeling uncomfortable or scared. I want people to enjoy what I make, like any creative, in a safe and healthy way. And I also want to be happy and comfortable.

So there's that.

As such, I want to offer something to you all- a poll. I am asking you all to consider the options carefully and genuinely, and vote honestly. Please, please be honest. Because I won't be dealing with that sort of thing again. A large part of roleplay is considering both the characters and the people behind them, and how your writing can affect them. I never expected Slade to be more than a brief thing, and thanks to everyone's interactions that grew and changed. I did appreciate it, and at least up until that anon, it was fun. I would like it to be fun again. This is also to either subdue or confirm my anxiety, so I'm sorry if this seems dramatic, but it will help me. So, let's vote.

1. I continue to roleplay as Slade, the storyline that has been started continues. I request if you are not comfortable with him and this choice wins, you unfollow for your own comfort.

2. I set Slade on the high shelf for an undetermined amount of time. The storyline is cut off, blogs that were more personally involved return to more normal posting if they so choose. Until more people can learn to separate the fiction from the person behind, no more big bad villain to hate. I will only RP JJ, or other non-villainous characters.

3. I stop roleplaying here on Tumblr entirely. If for whatever reason you think I shouldn't be roleplaying here at all, and this vote wins, I'll stop. No more Slade, no more JJ, no more of my ideas. I'll also request that if you don't want me around you at all, you DM @littlefaefeather with the blogs you want me to block or unfollow.

I do intend to take this day as an RP-lite day for my own sake, but if there's anything you really want to RP or include Slade or JJ or my Robin blog in, you can still @ them for it, I'll be checking in every so often. Thanks for reading all this. 🧡💛💚💙💜

[sentience-if]

seeing the ask where the anon keeps forgetting Io isn't Io's forename (tangent: Io Io is the Moon Moon meme of this game lol) and you said "well, i keep thinking Io's first name is $Name", genuinely made me want to share my Io's forename and i hope other people feel compelled to share their Io's names because i LOOOOOVE name-meanings and made-up names and everything in-between

(also, i apologize if i have already shared my Io's name on this tumblr; i have chronic memory loss and do not remember doing that. i searched the blog, it said nothing, but tumblr's search-engine is ass. so. i assume i havent shared mine yet. but i wouldnt be surprised if i already had, period, or even just off-handedly or something. anyway)

my Io is named ✨️Promethea✨️

it is a feminine version of the Ancient Greek legend of Prometheus. a God who had so much sympathy for humanity's plight that he shared sacred fire from Mount Olympus with humanity (what was once as godly-only a thing as ambrosia, until Prometheus shares it with humans) so as to save these hairless/fur-less creatures from the cold and give them an advantage over other creatures. and Zeus, out of anger for this mutinous act of compassion, proceeded to punish Prometheus by chaining him to a rock where eagles (Zeus' symbol was eagles btw) would eat out Prometheus' liver everyday, then due to immortality, Prometheus' liver would regrow the next day to be clawed and pecked out yet again come morning. it is important to note now that, for the Ancient Greeks, where WE see the heart as "our soul" metaphorically, they saw the stomach-liver as the same in terms of poetics, because of the feelings of knots in one's stomachs or butterflies or so on. so, if we were to translocate Prometheus's punishment to our current era and poetic cliches: Prometheus' HEART would be eaten by an eagle everyday for punishment for, well, having a heart. this went on from the dawn of humankind all the way until Heracles (or Hercules, if you prefer) freed him. there's different reasons why Heracles freed Prometheus, but basically, Zeus wanted Heracles to free Prometheus for Zeus' own selfish gains (usually, it was because Prometheus had some kind of secret and used that as a bargaining chip; but what the secret was, depends on the storyteller). i do also always play an Io who turns off the sun for Klaus, so that fire/sun connection feels important, to me, for that event specifically lol

the other big reason i picked Promethea is because of Mary Shelley's book, "Frankenstein", whose full title is actually "Frankestein; or, the Modern Prometheus". the book equates Frankestein's creature to be the equivalent of an abandoned Adam and Frankenstein himself to be Prometheus, as he gifted the "spark of life" and deciding life/death (as the Creature is made up of corpse pieces) when all of that's ✨️God's thing✨️ and thereby commited blasphemy like Prometheus and the fire. personally, i always saw the Creature as more akin to Prometheus than Victor Frankenstein. because Prometheus didn't abandon humanity unlike Frankenstein, and the Creature had to metaphorically steal his own fire so to say. and Victor isn't immortal, but Prometheus and the Creature are. and the Creature uses the artic as its own "chained to a rock with an eagle" punishment. and i could explain more, but I dont want to start bringing out quotes and page-numbers lol

lastly, the name "Prometheus" itself famously means "foresight, forethought". and i like the idea of "thinking ahead" paralleling Io's whole understanding of magic, of "You don't need a formula to count to ten"; or how Io argued with the lecturer about said lecturer not understanding magic well by not "seeing" magic the way Io did. and, rather similarly, if you look up the word "Promethean" in the dictionary, not only does it mean "relating to Prometheus" but it also means "especially creative or daringly original"

i also checked myself just now to see if there were any other "Prometheus"-related meanings and, besides a moth, there is also a type of Lucifer-Match called the "Promethean" which is having a match be lit by breaking a glass tube containing acid. which. idk, i only learned about Lucifer-Matches in general and Promethean Lucifer-Matches 5 minutes ago, but that now reminds me of a certain explosion? sure. Prometheus has connections to fire and explosions anyway, why not ALSO THIS lmao

anyway, i just love researching names, being intertextual, and stuff. i hope more people share their Io names, because i was happily kicking my feet thinking of $Name Io and Io Io, just rotating them both in my head (i do genuinely find them clever. Io being named after a bit of coding?? amazing. i love that for them, unironically. and Io being named the equivalent of 1010, which means "ten"/"10". so, legit, Io Io = 1010 = 10, which i see "Io" as being binary for "10". so. that's so funny and faacinating, "Io Io" means "Io" lol). so id love to hear people's other name ideas for their Ios!!

I am ALWAYS hungry to hear about people's Ios. and this is delicious. little italian chef's kiss. it's even extra triple delicious because of things I know you that you don't 😏

also whenever binary comes up all I can think about is my friend's dad who has a shirt that says "There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary, and those who don't" and it makes me laugh every time

[bluedalahorse]

Hi! I hope everyone is doing well. I am popping up to let you know that I’m alive, that there’s a lot going on, that I still love YR, and that I’m thinking about boundaries and priorities.

I loved Young Royals season three. I especially love how it engaged with the legacy of Erik and the systems of Hillerska. I love that it took the idea of the legal system providing catharsis and that it threw that out the window. I love the way characters got words for what they were going through, how Felice got to name the racism happening to her and August got words to name his disordered eating. Most of all I loved the way Lisa wrote Sara’s relationship with her father and her reconciliation with Simon. That meant so much to me, and I can’t wait to imagine a future for the Eriksson siblings.

Here is a brief list of things I loved about the finale. They were all written in the afterglow of seeing the episode. I stand by them. Especially how much I loved Wille’s ending, and what happened there.

In the coming weeks, I’m sure there’ll be stuff I’m more critical of or don’t feel as strongly about. I especially have mixed feelings about the way Lisa seemed to structure 3.5 in a way that mimics the emotional roller coaster of trauma. I’m not really focusing on that stuff here or now, because I don’t want to. But it’s on my mind, and I don’t know if I’ll end up posting about it here and elsewhere.

At present this post isn’t rebloggable or tagged with much of anything. That’s because I’m trying to figure out the best way moving forward with tumblr. I don’t know if I want to delete this blog and abandon it entirely, but the pressure to present a curated version of myself is too much, and is a pretty big trigger for things like rejection sensitivity and anxiety. The pace here is also too fast and there is no way to keep up with everything, and (forgive me for this cardinal sin in tumblr-land) I wish I had some easier way to not see the same sets of gifs a hundred times with the same commentary. I’m experimenting with slower ways of doing fandom, where I can enjoy myself more.

I do, however, want a way to get the cultural footnotes for Young Royals, especially when they help me write better fic and create better fanworks. I know there’s some pretty darn useful posts about how lines get translated and various holidays and traditions (and looking forward I would like to know more about universities in Sweden, and how the monarchy works and such.) So I want to be able to find the stuff I need without having to spend as much time on what I don’t need. The resource posts people make are truly helpful.

And I also have some other fannish things I want to see here, like Les Mis and Interview with the Vampire. And the memes are nice. I miss the memes.

Before I make the decision about how I engage, I think it will be useful for me to know my priorities. So I’ve thought about them a bit, and I want to make the decisions that align with my priorities. Here’s what I want to focus on moving forward:

I want to spend more time creating. The thing that has always brought me the most genuine joy in this fandom is writing fic. YRS3 ended in a place of possibility for so many characters, and I want to keep writing about them and learning about them that way. (I won’t even lie, of course most of my ideas are about August—August and Kristina working on their intergenerational cousin relationship, August getting pulled into weekly DND sessions with Wille and Simon so they can all get better at being human together while pretending to be elves or something, August doing the personal and liberatory work that allows him and Sara to one day have a Second Chance Romance with they’re older, even August/Nils because oh boy did that season give me ideas about them I never knew I had.) One of my goals is to cut down on browsing time significantly so that I spend more time writing, especially so I can finish Heart and Homeland. I think it’ll make me happier.

I want to spend more time helping others create. Some of the most meaningful experiences I had in this fandom involved being a beta reader or hearing out another person’s fic ideas, and getting to live in that space of creation and collaboration. For that reason, I’d like to still make new YR connections on occasion, especially with people who wanna share their writing process with me. Tumblr may or may not be a place to do that. I’m still figuring out where stuff should happen.

I want analysis to be something I do as part of my creative process, and that’s it. I don’t know if this is fully true, but it felt like ten years ago there was more fandom meta focused on what fans wanted to write in their fanfics, and how their interpretations of canon led to them creating cool art. There was some meta that was about how to interpret canon “correctly” but that wasn’t the priority. Now, it feels like—and this is true even outside of YR fandom, so this is no reflection on YR specifically—there is more emphasis on having the “correct” interpretation of canon. About getting it right, and having the right predictions and interpretations. It feels competitive in a way that wears me down. From this point forward, when posting analysis, I’m going to ask myself, is this furthering my creative pursuits and my understanding of the writing process more generally, or am I just trying to win an argument? If the answer is just to win, then I’m not going to post my argument. That runs counter to my goals.

I don’t want to engage in any space where anonymous discourse flourishes. Even when well-intentioned. Being away for a while was clarifying for me on that point. Turns out one of the biggest triggers for my anxiety and shame are extensive, heated conversations where I don’t know who is saying what and who I can trust. Spaces where there’s a lot of anon conversation are probably going to be ones I block and unfollow first moving forward. It just seems like a good baseline for how I engage.

So this is where I am as of now. I’ll probably continue to hold off on doing much posting in the coming days, but I did want to poke my head up for air for a second to let people know what the state of everything is.

Here’s one picture of the plushes for the road:

And here’s a picture of the waffles I ate on finale day:

Oh, to have cloudberry jam and time spent with friends. These things are truly joyous.

[callmearcturus]

what do you mean by TC is a black box? what does that mean?

/pops gum loudly.

Sure, I've been avoiding this landmine a while lemme shove my foot onto it.

TC doesn't do serious interviews. He barely does press. everything out of him is a soundbite, and that's obviously a very deliberate choice on his part that probably has a few motives behind it. He consciously, actively avoids sharing anything beyond his enthusiasm for cinema and his work.

As someone who clearly has found a Problematic Fave in McQuarrie-era Cruise, I have thought about all that a lot.

One. I think that TC had to work consistently and deliberately to rehab his image after everything, and I think he's damn careful not to endanger the tentative equilibrium he's managed to build over literally about twenty fucking years.

Two. I'm old enough to remember Tom Cruise Crazy era, and one of the things that's... interesting to me with the maturity and hindsight of sitting here in 2023 is that, yes, a lot of TC's actions and associations were concerning back in that period, back when he was in the news. But the world didn't react with concern. The world, broadly speaking, called him a fag and a freak in a way that I hope we wouldn't today. I hope that "hey this huge star is part of a cult and is acting erratically" would cause even superficial concern today and not... what it did back then. Because I def remember songs and memes about that shit, and my family made jokes about him being a lunatic. Classmates talked about him being a closet case. It's what everyone did. I didn't realize that was fucked up for a long time.

I do genuinely wonder what TC's relationship with his audience and with the media would be if there was literally an ounce of compassion in the coverage about him. But we'll never know.

Three. TC has been literally world famous since 1983. Forty years. I....... literally cannot fathom that. What that does to someone. The very idea of it hits me with existential terror.

Four. I don't know anything about his life today. I don't really want to know because I've always been of the opinion that... I don't want to know shit about celebrities major or minor. I don't need to know, and I think it's weird that we accept that people must forfeit their privacy for even minuscule fame.

(The disgusting hounding and harassment of Jonny Sims, writer of The Magnus Archives, comes to mind. This is why I don't follow anyone like Neil Gaiman on Tumblr either, it feels invasive to me personally.)

Like, I know this cuts both ways. I am relieved when a famous person is a cool person. But also I would rather know nothing about them, because that inherent demand that they present their self for scrutiny and entertainment seems like bullshit to me. I don't think any of us are entitled to that. I think the fact so many entertainment industries demand that is repulsive and I wish that was a bell that could be unrung.

Point is: I don't know shit about TC's personal life. My genuine hope is that in this part of his life, as he's surrounded himself with people who seem passionate and supportive, i hope he's found his way out of the turmoil of the CoS (or is in the process of doing so). But while that is my hope, I don't think the details are any of my fucking business. And frankly, I think its obvious that he agrees.

Hence, he is a black box. Which I respect, as I'm a big fan of boundaries.

[yermes]

PAC: ❄️ 

Deinfluence your life and practice

I am a hypocrite. Me buying a vintage moomin shirt before I do a reading on deinfluencing magic and living. First of all I am HUGE on buying cute and pretty things because you like cute and pretty things but I think since theres so many cute and pretty things on the pump and dump being made unethical and contributing to waste we may need to think about what, how, and where we buy (IF YOU HAVE THE RESOURCES TO DO SO)

Disclaimer: please take what I say with a grain of salt and not as the gospel. I just want to share some ideas of practicing and giving advice using the medium as often as I can with school, work, and my own personal studies and practice.I was going to record Prometheus Rising today but I am so awfully tired I am going to do it early Saturday morning Instead. Sorry for the delay posting my tumblr was not working! Liking and sharing does a lot 🥰

Socials: TipJar | Follow me!

Pick a meme

1 2 3

The cards

Mice + Bouquet 💐 🐁 

You don’t have to bend over backwards, be nice, or be gracious in every situation. The more you sacrifice your self respect for the betterment of someone else the more that it eats away at you causes more and more stress and makes it harder and harder to be genuinely kinder to yourself. Stop eating the lies that you owe people kindness and understanding especially in relation to YOUR life and YOUR practice.

Coffin + Tower ⚰️ 🏰 

I know boycotting some businesses and establishments can be hard but honestly if they’re not serving you and you can get yourself a better product why not do that? You don’t even have to de glamorize the experience of it either. But you should look at the companies that you support currently and see if they actually suit your needs, wants, and personal morality.

Ring + The Lady 💍 👠

You don’t need big friend groups with empty ass people who serve you nothing. You need friends and relationships who ACTUALLY LOVE AND CARE FOR YOU. If they do not reciprocate your love its time to downsize. Do not let people who don’t care about you make decisions for you or claim importance in your life. This also refers to covens too.

Extras: 🛌

Story/vent:

I am so sleepy.

[private-bryan]

It's my update-the-age-in-my-bio day today, and, considering what kicked off in the world this time last year, I've decided to be spread a little love as my gift to myself this 7th of October. I was originally thinking to do a callout like this next year, when I reach the big 40, but fuck it, there's no time like the present.

I'm not particually good at sharing stuff like this, but I want to get better. Apologies for the forthcoming sop 😜

There are five particular people I want to call out on here, all of whom have made my life better in small ways since I joined this hellsite.

Firstly, to the two people I consider my "tennis partners", volleying memes and posts from Portsmouth to Glasgow and back in @queer-cosette's case (who was one of the first people to like and comment the first fic I'd written in years), and half way around the world in @soratobukujira's! You two make boring days at work so fun and silly, and I've learnt more about bunnies and Heathers and Maiko than I expected!

Next, @imstressedx, who has listened to me spitball ideas and who has provided inspiration for several of my fics, and genuinely moved me by making the very first piece of fanart for something I've written, in the form of a dustjacket for one of my binds. You're an awesome person to know and a talented artist, and, to repeat to you what you once said to me, the world needs more people like you in it.

Speaking of bookbinding, I owe so much thanks to @areseebee. Without the endnotes in your works I would have never decided to join tumblr in the first place, and the want to put your writing on my bookshelf was the direct impetus for me picking up at least two new hobbies (in the form of bookbinding and tablet weaving for the book ribbons) - my bank balance and crafting table probably thanks you less so, considering how much equipment and supplies I've bought to practice! You're inspiring, friendly, and an all-round great human being. Thank you for putting up with my fanboying with such patience, both on here and AO3.

Lastly, and by no means least, @derrygirlstrash aka @carouselunique. Miranda messaged me within hours of me signing up here to say hello, and I don't think I'd have engaged half as much as I do if she hadn't. We've discussed headcanons and future fic, fed each other with prompts and jokes, shared her amazing art and my makes, and she was the first person outside of my immediate family that I gifted a book I'd made to. You are always a ray of sunshine when we chat, even when things around you aren't necessarily going in the direction you'd like, and one day I'd love to be able to thank you in person.

I'm so grateful to be able to call you all my friends, and please know that I love you all!

Right! I'm off to eat a whole birthday trifle in one sitting now, and pretend that I'm not going greyer day by day…

[im-a-king-baby]

Hi!

I'm done with my re-reading of ELYN, and THE line I will keep with me is this one :

“I don’t want anything from you.”

Simon pulls back to look at him. He’s applied concealer to the bags under his eyes, this close Wilhelm can see the streaks of it on his skin as he gives a weak smile. “You want the most of anyone.” Which isn’t fair and isn’t true. Except that it is. “I just want you to be happy.”

“Yeah,” Simon says. “That.”

This is sooo powerful ! The weight of the expectations of your loved one... 😭❤😭❤

And I would love to know why Simon gave Wille a key for his room... What was he expecting ?

And if it's not too much, what do you think made August get clean and turn his back to royalty ?

Again, thank you so much for this story ! ❤

Hiii, sorry this took so long. Can't believe I am expected to work a job instead of just having fanfic related feelings on tumblr all day every day. Very rude. None stars.

(if your ask is in my inbox I promise I am getting to it! If you still want to submit questions for any of the memes I reblogged, I will happily ramble all day every day so the ask box is always open <3 )

"I just want you to be happy."

(I need you all to know that doing this meme is really reinforcing the 'a first draft does not have to be perfect or even good' mantra because guess what was also not in draft 1! All of this!)

There is a side of Simon's character that I think is justified in canon which is that he doesn't like letting people down. He switches schools to support Sara, he agrees to date Marcus even though he clearly doesn't want to because Marcus asks. So this moment starts with Simon talking about how he started on coke because he didn't want to let the fans down by being exhausted. Originally there was another step in the middle where he talks about how Candace wanted him to get clean but also be the superstar (and do a documentary!) and he couldn't see a way to have both. And then that his breakthrough was hiring Joseph, and Keira and realising that having money means you can pay people to care about you in very specific ways.

Wilhelm swallows. “Sometimes people help you just because they want to.” Simon’s mouth quirks slightly off to the side, like Wilhelm’s said something amusing. “That’s what they tell you. But they always want something from you, you just don’t realise what until it’s too late.” “I don’t want anything.”

Wilhelm I think genuinely believes that he's telling the truth here, but Simon has had to become a lot more aware of how he is perceived and the expectations of him from having this very public career. Like, for all Wilhelm saying 'you can take time, the fans won't disappear if it takes you more than 2 months to make an album', Simon has also seen the fan tweets complaining when the tour skips certain cities/countries, when they have to wait for the album, when they don't release a tour vlog. (One of the big reasons he doesn't have a phone is to stop him from reading all of that because at a certain point you can't satisfy everyone and Candace is like 'this is not helping you so let's put a stop to it.')

So in this moment Wilhelm is saying 'I don't want anything' but also he wants them to be together and happy and Simon is very aware that the easiest way for him to be happy is by drinking and taking the drugs. He's spent the last week and a half in coke withdrawal which is basically just being miserable all the time and going into rehab is going to be more of that. And then, the Simon who comes out of rehab is going to be very different from Simme-the-popstar and different to Simon-from-high-school and current-Simon has no idea what that person will look like or if it will even be someone Wilhelm likes.

So for Simon getting clean means getting away from anyone else's idea of who he should be. And that's hard. And sometimes you hit on the perfect line to articulate what would otherwise be 5 paragraphs of rambling tumblr post and those moments are the best part of writing for all that they come so rarely <3 (and also they do not always come in draft 1 and that's okay)

2. Why does Simon invite Wilhelm to the hotel room

I think SImon's base logic is the same as why Wilhelm went, this sense of 'if we can get away from the cameras we can be Us instead of Simme and Crown Prince Wilhelm and things will make sense again.' But on top of that is this thing that Simon is doing where he is attempting to use sex to solve his problems (arguably this desire is coming from the same place as the drinking and the coke. It's the 'I don't know how to feel good when I'm not performing, but if I invite someone up they'll tell me I'm amazing and then we can have orgasms and that'll feel good for a little while').

So Simon is thinking 'I need to see him in private' but then he doesn't have any plan beyond that so it's back to the usual plan of sex=feeling good, with a side line in 'if I give him a good enough time he won't notice anything weird or ask any questions and everything will be fine.'

(I do have a while Simon POV scene of the hotel after Wilhelm leaves that will probably be posted somewhere at some point so here is a teaser:

Wilhelm must have left by now. And if part of Simon was hoping that he’d still be there when Simon opened the door - so SImon could say what, he doesn’t know - that part is quiet enough not to show surprise when there’s just Gareth in the hallway in his perfectly pressed suit with his perfectly neutral gaze. Does Gareth feel emotion? Nobody knows. He has all of one facial expression so if he’s judging Simon for bringing the prince of Sweden up to his rooms or judging him for failing to keep the prince of Sweden there for longer than an hour, or not judging him at all because he has full respect for the whore lifestyle, Simon never has to know.

3. August

Oh hey! I thought this choice might get me more hate so thanks to everyone for coming on board with me for the off-screen August redemption arc 😅

So fundamentally ELYN (and, yknow, YR) is a story about legacy and inheritance. Both the big glaringly obvious thing of the crown, but also the other things: the secrets, the class culture, and the genetic predisposition to addiction. (I can't remember right now if August's father's suicide was drug-related in the show, but for the fic I definitely had that in my mind).

So August functions as a parallel for both Simon and Wilhelm. The obvious 'was taking drugs to cope with stress, stress kept increasing, ultimately broke under it' . But also on Wilhelm's side, August is desperately trying to live up to the legacy of a dead man. He's idolising his father, wanting to make him proud and unable to acknowledge that this culture of appearing perfect and not talking about problems is what killed him.

The way I always pictured August's arc was that he hit rock bottom somewhere in the military - he'd been relying on pills to get him through stress, this was infinitely more stress than high school, plus the fallout from Sara's confession (which had been covered up by the court, but was still impacting him). I never had a concrete idea of what the exact rock bottom was (maybe stealing pills?), but he was dishonorably discharged and checked himself into rehab where he basically got a big dose of Welcome to Real Life. Meeting normal people. Realising they're not so different. 'There's a whole world out there that's not our careful circle of cultivated Heirs and Heiresses and people have problems but they also have whole entire lives where none of these things you're so worried about matter at all.'

And he did the work. He re-evaluated his biases. He grew up. He met a girl, who I think was class-adjacent but more practical than the Hillerska-royalty types (I like to think she was maybe an art assessor who came to help him auction off large parts of the estate holdings) and they got talking. Their relationship seems to have moved pretty fast, but hey August took some pride in the elements of being prefect that involved taking care of people so maybe he's ready for a family. (Originally there were going to be 8 years between the show and the fic so I gave him 3 kids, and then when I cut it down to 6years it felt mean to delete a baby so that's why he has twins.)

The 12 step program has a step for 'making amends', I think August probably got in touch with Wilhelm and was like 'I owe you an apology and amends, and I understand if you don't want to talk to me but if I can ever help you or Simon, I'm here.' And that went ignored until Wilhelm called him from basic training, and then five years later when he got a call from Simon in hospital like 'So Malin gave me your number...'

One other bonus August ELYN headcanon I have is that Wilhelm phoned August from the car on his way to the debate and was like:

"I think if I do it now I can bring it all down, but if I can't they're going to come after you, and then the children. I'm sorry I can't protect them anymore." "It's my job to look after my family," August says. "And I promise I will not let any of this shit touch them. You have my full support, go do what you have to do."

(there is a whole other tumblr post about how I don't believe in writing bad people just people who sometimes make bad choices but this is already Very Long and I'm not sure if I actually answered the questions so we'll leave it there 😅)

[sparklepocalypse]

🥑☁️🐝🎨 please.💜

🥑 ⇢ you accidentally killed somebody, which mutual(s) do you text for help?

I'd get in touch with @cha-melodius for her anatomical knowledge (y'know, maybe I can resuscitate whoever it is?) and @happiness-of-the-pursuit for his legal expertise, in the likely event that the resuscitation doesn't work.

☁️ ⇢ what made you choose your username?

You know, I've had this username since about 2010, and I honestly can't remember the backstory. I'm fairly sure it has something to do with some sort of arts and crafts project and then-untreated ADHD, though...

🐝 ⇢ tag your biggest supporter(s) and say one nice thing about them

This might get long, so I'll come back to this one and toss it under a jump. 🤣😅

🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it

You know, prior to the latest RWRB zine being published, I wouldn't have been able to narrow it down to just one, but this JC Leyendecker-inspired piece by @artofobsession is possibly my favorite piece of fanart that's ever been created. It's just -- even nearly a month after it was first posted, it causes beauty aggression in me and I just want to bite it because it's so pretty and glowy and ethereal and lovely and they're just so blushy and so into one another. It's the first fanart print I've ordered in years, and it's going to go on my wall of ephemeral pretty things with my Lindsay van Ekelenburg art and my various tarot card prints from Kickstarter decks.

[Send me emoji from the Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game and I'll answer the corresponding questions!]

Aight, back to 🐝 ⇢ tag your biggest supporter(s) and say one nice thing about them

I mean, obviously I'm tagging you first, @ad-astra13, because you're the Most Excellent of Doc Gremlins and your flailing in my Google Docs has been so, so motivating. Your fiber work is really cool and creative! I'm always intrigued to see which project you'll take on next.

And then there's @hgejfmw-hgejhsf, who even with a bunch of stuff going on IRL still takes the time to DM me a screenshot when someone has recced one of my fics, which -- warm fuzzies just everywhere. Val is one of the sweetest, most deeply passionate RWRB fans I have ever met, and her encyclopedic knowledge of all things book and movie have come in handy on like, dozens of occasions in the few months since I've gotten to know her.

@kiwiana-writes and I basically have the same brain in different bodies on different continents, the vibe is so consistent. Half the time I read his work it feels like it could've emerged from my brain instead of his, and now it turns out he's a pretty gifted songwriter too? Incredible, awe-inspiring, iconic, etc.

@artofobsession and I have a Spider-Man meme thing going on where I yell at Hann about their art, and they yell at me about my writing, and it's just a never-ending cycle of yelling. Pretty amazing to consider that I was Too Scared To Say Hi ™️ for awhile there, because I'm a big ol' introvert. Regardless of what Hann's got going on, I've never read an unkind word that's emerged from their keyboard, and they're super well-spoken and yeah, really glad I started making unhinged bulleted lists of art reviews as a way to break the ice, because they're good people.

Speaking of Spider-Man memes, @seanchaidh7 and I have also been Spider-Manning back and forth these last few months. She's created some really, really incredible art for my Big Giant AU, and just genuinely seems like a cool person. I'm happy we stumbled across each other in this fandom!

@duchessdepolignaca03 is one of the best unhinged idea riffers I've met. She deserves at least partial credit for the idea for my RBB fic, because a simple "fic where [x]" message can lead to a thread of dozens (or hundreds) of messages back and forth just flinging ideas out there to further the prompt. Half the time the riff is all that happens, but occasionally, the riff spawns something way bigger.

And there are folks who either I haven't found on Tumblr, or who left Tumblr behind in like 2013 and haven't looked back -- super grateful for everyone who's enabling my weird little brain to do the thing!

[mariacallous]

The internet sucks now. Once a playground fueled by experimentation and freedom and connection, it’s a flimsy husk of what it was, all merriment and serendipity leached from our screens by vile capitalist forces. Everything is too commercialized. We commodified the self, then we commodified robots to impersonate the self, and now they’re taking our damn jobs. We live in diminished and degrading times. I miss when memes were funny. I miss Vine. I miss Gawker. I miss old Twitter. Blogs—those were the days!

Stop me if these gripes sound familiar. In 2023, the idea that the internet isn’t fun anymore is conventional wisdom. This year, after Elon Musk renamed Twitter “X” and instituted a series of berserk changes that made it substantially less functional, complaints about the demise of the good internet popped up like mushrooms sprouting in dirt tossed over a fresh grave. Some people even complained on the very platforms they were mourning. Type “internet sucks now” into X’s search bar, you’ll see.

The New Yorker published an essay by writer Kyle Chayka on the subject, calling the decline of X a “bellwether for a new era of the Internet that simply feels less fun than it used to be.” People loved it. (Sample comments from X: “Relatable.” “Exactly right.”) Chayka claims that it’s now harder to find new memes, websites, and browser games than it was a decade ago. He also argues that the rising crop of platforms popular with young people—Twitch, TikTok—are inferior, enjoyment-wise, to the social web of the 2010s.

Both of these arguments are baffling. Memes fresher in the past? Yes, it’s tiresome to see Tim Robinson in a hot dog costume for the 500th time, but c’mon. In the early 2010s—the years Chayka longs for—the internet was all doge and doggos. It was the era of reaction GIF Tumblrs, the Harlem Shake, the Ice Bucket Challenge. Give me literally any still from I Think You Should Leave over “You Had One Job” epic fail image macros. Only glasses of the rosiest tint could recast the 2013 internet as a shitposting paradise lost.

The argument that the 2010s social web was superior amusement to the platforms now popular with Gen Z is even stranger. TikTok has major issues, but being unfun is not one of them. It’s been a springboard for some genuinely talented people, from comic Brian Jordan Alvarez to writer Rayne Fisher-Quann to chef Tabitha Brown. Binging Twitch streams certainly isn’t my thing, but people aren’t being held at gunpoint and forced to watch seven straight hours of Pokimane. They like it! They’re having fun! And how can one say with a straight face that gaming got worse? Roblox alone is a gleeful world unto itself; to pretend it doesn’t exist and isn’t a vibrant digital hangout is goofy and obtuse.

Corrosion of specific platforms on the internet—X, to pluck the most obvious example—is an observable phenomenon. (I, too, mourn old Twitter.) Musk’s changes to how X operates have made it harder to surface and verify information; his antics have driven away both advertisers and power users and allowed the cryptogrifter class to spam inboxes with invitations to NFT drops and meme coins, resulting in a digital space that feels abandoned and crowded at once. Other platforms, though, are flourishing.

Look at Discord, for instance. Its siloed structure is a throwback to the pre-Facebook internet era, when socializing online often meant logging on to specific forums. The disintegration of the Big Tech-dominated 2010s internet is creating a more balkanized social web experience, what Kickstarter cofounder Yancey Strickler calls the “dark forest” theory, where people turn away from big, open mega-platforms in favor of more private or niche digital spaces, from nonpublic Slack channels to invite-only WeChat groups or special-interest podcasts. While some people might find that boring and hard to navigate, it’s not universally boring, or inherently difficult to navigate.

There are serious problems with the internet right now. Platform decay—“enshittification”—is real, and it’s not limited to X. Search is in shambles. Plus, the flood of AI spam has just begun. But there were serious problems with the internet 10 years ago too. Arguing that the decline of certain corners of a previous version of the internet means that the entire internet isn’t entertaining anymore is a preposterous leap.

The impulse to describe the internet as being in a dire existential crisis is an understandable one, especially if you love going online—it’s easier to get people to pay attention to emergencies, isn’t it? All sorts of decidedly not-dead things get declared dead periodically, from literary criticism to monogamy to Berlin. “My favorite platforms are faltering and I don’t like the new ones” isn’t as compelling a pitch as “The basic experience of goofing off online is on the brink of extinction!!!”

But the basic experience of goofing off and being creative online is not on the brink of extinction. Ten years from now, there will be writers—even if they’re AI chumbots churning out shitty prose on SubstaXitch, the demonic merged iteration of Twitch, Substack, and X our poor children will use—earnestly reminiscing about the good old days of 2023, when that affable menswear guy showed up on everybody’s feeds, and TikTok wasn’t banned in the US. I know this. I know it because during the era that Chayka is now nostalgic for, people were also complaining that they missed the old, good internet. (Real headline from 2015: “The Modern Internet Sucks. Bring Back Geocities.”)

This brings me to my theory about the internet. To understand how people feel about being online, look at how they feel about the long-running sketch comedy television show Saturday Night Live.

Bitching about how SNL is so much worse than it used to be is a time-honored tradition. It has been declared ��Saturday Night Dead” regularly since it debuted in 1975, nearly 50 years ago. In 1995, for instance, a New York magazine writer bemoaned the “slow, woozy fall of a treasured pop-culture institution.” The cast at the time included Chris Farley, Adam Sandler, Norm Macdonald, and Molly Shannon, all widely considered comedy legends in the present day. In 2017, in fact, New York ranked that cast’s run as the third-best era of SNL, ever, describing it like this: “At its peak, it’s hard to argue the show was ever better.” Quite the reassessment!

In 2014, writer Liz Shannon Miller examined the impulse people have to favor whatever era of Saturday Night Live they grew up with and watched during their formative years. “It’s a generational problem that leads to parents and kids just not being able to agree on the talents of John Belushi versus Will Ferrell,” Miller wrote for IndieWire.

A similar sort of generational problem is playing out right now about what it’s like to spend time online. Millennials grew up logging on in the 2000s and 2010s, maturing alongside Facebook. The internet from this era is the internet of our salad days. Of course watching it get eclipsed by a different iteration hurts. Of course some of us look at TikTok and wish it was Twitter—it’s the same impulse that propels family squabbles about whether the Lonely Island guys were funnier than the Please Don’t Destroy boys. Saturday Night Live has always been wildly uneven. Every era now heralded as golden was once pilloried as corny dreck.

To insist that the fun is over is to adopt an overly nostalgic stance, and one that rests on a pathetic fallacy: Just because you aren’t having fun on the internet doesn’t mean the internet itself is broken. It’s what it always has been, a flawed mirror of the cultural moment. It’s fine not to like it. But don’t pretend there aren’t young people alive right now who are having the most fun they’ll ever have online, just as there are young people alive right now who will be raving to their kids about how hilarious Bowen Yang was on SNL—especially compared to the synthetic clones of Gilda Radner and Jimmy Fallon the AI programmed to imitate Lorne Michaels cast in the 2061 season. We don’t need to make the present sound worse than it is. The future will come, soon enough.

[dangerouscommiesubversive]

Fic Stats Meme

Rules: Give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and your fic with the least amount of words.

One more thing I was tagged in by @materassassino, even longer ago, because these past two days I've just. Really been in the mood to clear out some of my drafts and do fun stuff?

Most Hits: Make A Wish (Young Avengers) - 17,527 hits

Wealthy scientist Nate Richards has been shot, and the legendary sapphire he owned stolen. Noh Varr, a private investigator, is hired—not to track down his killer, but to exonerate one of the suspects. It all gets much messier than he'd expected.

This is a Young Avengers noir AU that I wrote for the Young Avengers Reverse Big Bang and one of my very few attempts at first-person narration, and frankly its hit count mystifies me. I guess people re-read it a lot or something? I'm glad that it has staying power, I'm just puzzled.

Second Most Kudos: Lay That Heavy Trick On Me (Guardians of the Galaxy) - 1,248 kudos

The Guardians take a job robbing an expensive resort, and their floorplans indicate that the best access point to get to where they need to be is in the honeymoon suite. Which means that two of them need to play like they're married. Peter's not quite sure why he has to be one of the lucky newlyweds. Drax doesn't understand subterfuge. Gamora just keeps laughing at them and it's terrible.

This was actually my most kudos'ed story until fairly recently, when it was overtaken by hard work. It's a fun story--not my best, but it's in a much bigger fandom than I normally write for and it has a couple of super-popular tropes in it, so I suppose it's not so weird that it's up there stats-wise.

Third Most Comments: Gaiden: Neo-Heisei Kamen Rider (Kamen Riders W through Zi-O) - 133 comment threads

Not bothering with the summary because this one's a collection of short pieces, mostly from Tumblr prompts, and it's got 108 chapters. Some people comment on every piece they read! It's very gratifying!

Fourth Most Bookmarked: Lay That Heavy Trick On Me (Guardians of the Galaxy) - 297 bookmarks

"Heavy Trick" again! I mean, for real, this one used to be my leader in everything, for a while it was by far my most popular fic.

Fifth Most Words: Into The Black (Young Avengers/Firefly) - 44,537 words

Mercenary space captain Kate Bishop's got a loyal crew (mostly), an unreliable space ship (hey don't you say that Dawn's Archer is perfect), some unresolved anger issues (some faces that need grinding that is), and a lot of moral gray areas that she likes to play around in as she roams the galaxy, taking whatever jobs she can find. When her ship takes on some unusual passengers, however, everything goes completely off the rails.

This one--my tragic forever-unfinished Young Avengers/Firefly mashup--is genuinely surprising to me. I had no idea I'd written so much for it. I ought to be honest with myself and everyone else and update the tags/summary/chapter count to indicate that it's unlikely to ever be completed, but I haven't got the heart. And who knows, maybe at some point I'll rewatch Firefly and re-read YA Vol 2 and get inspired for it again. As I recall, the next chapter I'd had planned before I got distracted was the "Objects in Space" one, which was going to have Deadpool as the bounty hunter.

Fewest Words: various fandom poems

Discounting my few podfics, which naturally have low word counts because they have no words, I have 12 poems up on AO3, 9 of which are between 100 and 200 words. It doesn't seem pointful to link any specific one, they're all short.

---

Instead of tagging anyone I hereby encourage literally anybody who read this far and who has fic up on AO3 to do it, it's an interesting exercise. For me it's also very funny--I've been posting fic to AO3 since 2012, so with the way these questions are scaled they tend to duck around almost all of my most recent work and hit the older stuff that's been up longer and had more time to accumulate numbers. My AO3 account is a bed of oysters, and these are their little embarrassing pearls.

[thatndginger]

Get To Know Your Moots Writeblr Interview

I was tagged by @ceph-the-ghost-writer (their post here!) for this ^.^ Thank you very very much my dear <3

apologies if any of you have been tagged in this before, I've been away for a bit, but I'll throw this out to @chauceryfairytales @theprissythumbelina @theroseempress @aalinaaaaaa @serenanymph @scribe-of-stories @scribble-dee-vee @writernopal @rosieartsie @afoolandathief

The blank question template can be found here!

How long have you had your writing Tumblr/Writeblr?

My writeblr has been alive since around 2022 or something. I can’t be 100% sure because I just turned my regular blog into a writeblr one lol

What led you to create it?

Two things – I really wanted people to talk to about writing and I wanted to start taking my writing seriously. Cryptid is my favorite person in the world but he’s not a writer and doesn’t *get it*. I wanted other writers to talk to and be weird with about our stories. And having outside accountability in the form of posting about my story on my blog is exactly the kind of low-stakes drive I needed to keep writing.

What’s your favorite thing about the Writeblr community?

Just how supportive and nice and welcoming people are. It’s really easy to feel like you belong here. And all you have to do is be a little weirdo obsessed with your oc’s, because everyone else is doing the same thing and cheering each other on. It’s truly lovely.

What’s one thing you’d like your mutuals to know about you?

I have what I call a ‘feral cat friendship style’ where it takes me a long time to warm up to someone, but once I have you will *never get me to leave*. I’ll start leaving dead mice & memes at your door, just you wait.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

I genuinely love when people are just Weird about their characters. It makes me more interested when people pop in just to say “character x would eat Weetabix with no milk for breakfast” because now I need to know what the hell is going on with that character. I don’t even care about the important facts anymore. I just want to know what weird little thoughts y’all have about your ocs.

What tips/advice do you have for someone who made a Writeblr today?

Completely unoriginal but honestly just be yourself and have fun. There’s no point in anything if you aren’t enjoying it. Follower counts don’t matter, the number of likes or reblogs you get don’t matter. All you gotta do is start posting about your writing. If you want to make friends, the easiest way to do that is to join in on tag games or the weekly ask games writeblr plays. (tag games are also great ways to find more people to follow.)

WIP It Good

Which Works-In-Progress (WIPs) or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

My big writing project is Shapeshifter. It consumes all of my waking – and some of my sleeping – thoughts. But within that I’ve currently got two stories going: Into the Storm and The Runaway. Both are set in the same world and have some overlap of characters, but The Runaway takes place about 5 years after Into the Storm. It’s fun because ItS is more of a typical urban fantasy mystery/intrigue while Runaway is hardcore a romance story. Switching genres while in the same world is really fun.

How long have you been working on them?

Technically, I’ve been working on The Runaway since 2014/2015. I made one of the main characters, Dean, around then, but I didn’t do a lot with him or the world until 2019 when I ‘officially’ started the Shapeshifter project. I usually lean towards saying I started it all in 2019, unless I want to be dramatic and talk about the ‘full story’...

Do you remember what inspired/what got you started?

Ah, dammit, the full story it is. SO. Baby K was really into internet rp forums as a teen, and had just graduated to one-on-one rp. Along comes a girl who wants to make an rp about shapeshifters – humans who can turn into many types of animals – and Baby K could not be more enthused about this idea. That’s how Dean and Temperance got started, and where they remained for many many years. Eventually not-so-Baby K gets tired of the girl they’re rping with contributing absolutely nothing to the worldbuilding and strikes off on their own.

I joke that I took Temperance in the divorce. It’s okay though, that girl will never read this and if she does she can talk to my lawyer about it.

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

All of it? I plastered my bedroom/office walls with Shapeshifter. I plastered my *ceiling* with Shapeshifter. I bought stickers for the laptop I’m currently typing on that remind me of Shapeshifter characters. I am deeply, deeply mentally unwell about this story.

When someone asks the dreaded, “What do you write about,” question, what do you usually say?

I’m working on an urban fantasy story about three shapeshifter friends who inadvertently become ‘fixers’ for their community when the authorities turn a blind eye.

What do you want to say (if it’s different from what you do say)?

I spend the majority of my life writing about three queer disasters who also happen to turn into animals sometimes, and the problems they get into that are only occasionally due to the fact that they turn into animals sometimes.

Let's Rotate Blorbos

Name any characters you created.

Just in Into the Storm there’s: Kerr McKay, Warrick Salehrad, Jay de Lange, Carlisle Morrish, Reese Tucker, Lex Causey, Gabriel Beckham, Portia Beckham, Kanda Salae, Mayuri Salae, Aleksei Rybkin, Jaime Sheridan, Mags, Lucian Bardem, Rose MacGinnis, and Enora Nolan. For now.

Who’s the most unhinged?

Depends on what kind of unhinged you’re looking for. The fun kind? Warrick. The ‘actively harmful’ kind? Lucian Bardem.

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

Kerr, Jay, and Warrick. These three live in my head so much that sometimes they commentate my life. It’s not nearly as entertaining as it sounds.

Do you ever cringe at them?

*Constantly*. They are disaster people. I love them.

How much control do you feel you have over your characters?

About 60%? I know where the story needs to go and what I need the characters to do, but I leave them a lot of room to decide how they want to get there.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters?

ABSOLUTELY. Ask me all the weird questions. I’m slow to answer because my life is hectic af, but I love getting questions about my idiots.

On Writeblr Engagement

What makes you want to follow another Writeblr account?

I’d say ‘vibes’ but that’s a copout answer. I don’t go off someone’s intro much besides seeing what genres they’re into and if they’ve got any glaring red flags for something I might not like. Mostly I notice new writeblr accounts because one of my mutuals is interacting with them and they seem cool. Then I do a quick scroll through their blog to check out what they do/interests they have/how they interact with others. Like I said, it’s vibes.

What makes you decide against following?

If someone is too self-absorbed – ie doesn’t interact with anyone, talks about their work like it’s the next Great Novel That Will Change The World. I don’t want to deal with that in my tumblr space.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

I try? I’m not very good at remembering to look outside my little circle, especially when the burnout and anxiety are bad. Like now...

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

I’m sewing dolls based on my mutuals’ characters. They’ll have multiple outfits and tailor-made accessories. I’ve had *dreams* about some of my mutuals’ ocs. I can be just as mentally unwell about my mutuals’ characters as I am about my own.

[naffeclipse]

*Breaks down the door with my foot. Cue me throwing on a pair of shades and sliding right into your blog.*

*Pointing, while screaming at the top of my lungs*

WHAT ‼️

IS ‼️

UP ‼️

NAFFECLIPSE ECLIPSED GANG ‼️‼️‼️

The chronically online Instagram user…/hj

The one who makes those meme comps…

FANDOM has finally arrived to TUMBLR 😎😎😎

Party rocking in the house tonight frfr. Someone start the celebratory music STAT ‼️

Now after waiting since 2021 I shall lurk and invade, making my way, my presence known in the DCA Tumblr community. I have been perceiving Naff for the longest time since bUT I shall not stop there.

I shall go around and appreciate more of my favorite creators from this community and you shall NOT ‼️

I repeat. Shall NOT ‼️ Stop me in my silly quest. Or with my silly commentary.

>:)

Now Naff.

:)

<3333

Lovely lovely Naff you.

I can make my silly comments known to you properly about your lovely fics and AU ideas 🙌

I have been perceiving your blog since my dear friend who helped me create those posts told me that you had one. I’ve been around since your MerMay oneshots. I have been here, when the Sleuth Jesters series was new and I’ve been loving. LOVING. Your work since then

You’re an excellent writer! I love your writing style so much, you put so much life and care into the characters you write. I can close my eyes and daydream about what they look like, what they’re doing, like I’m watching a movie about them.

Sleuth Jesters series? Smh. That is mentally a Netflix TV series in my head with bonus features behind the scenes 🫣

Cryptid Sightings series? Meep’s design of the boys pops up in my brain, and it’s in full 3D playing on the big movie cinema screen in my brain. Popcorn and everything 😮‍💨😮‍💨😮‍💨

All of your other fics too work the same way, I can genuinely imagine them getting an adaptation of sorts/srs

Naff the Eclipsed Squared you are truly goated.

Every time you write something, I go unhinged. I devour on all of the words like multiple Mukbangs back to back. I blend them like a nice milkshake to drink. Idc how many words there are Naff. I feast well on reading whatever is provided anyways >:0

Now farewell…Eclipsed gang. Farewell MB!Clip simps and everyone alike. I shall continue now in my goofy ahhh appreciation for my fav content creators in this community.

Naff I am throwing flowers, coins, chocolates, hearts at your doorstep and whatever else you will enjoy. Take it all.

💞💞💞💞💞💞💗💗💗💗💗💗‼️‼️‼️

*Now cue me running out of your broken down door.*

*I shall perceive Bean next mwahahaha*

AHHHH HI HELLO I'M MELTING!!! YOU'RE SO SWEET EEEEEEEEEE!!!! You're here, Fandom! You're so sweet and I'm melting at every word, ahhh! Welcome to Tumblr!!!

[yoinkschief]

totally random question man have you heard about this thing called the markiplier cinematic universe (mcu for short)

I'm going literally obliterate you I know where you live (I'm currently entering in you coordinates to the president's nuke)

I wanna try and say this shit without getting wildly off topic and I'm praying that Tumblr doesn't have a word cap but also low key hoping it does to put an end to this because I'm not sure I have a stopping point, but be warned, underneath the cut is my LONGEST rant yet

Starting with some background knowledge of "the birth" or Darkiplier versus "the birth" of Wilford Warfstache

Darkiplier was truly born from an internet meme of edgy people seeing people like Markiplier and Jacksepticeye and such making "edgy jokes" and "acting deranged" because at the time on youtube that was seen as funny and comical (similar but not the same as when Pink Guy was around and people thought he was the height of comedy at the time but the skit being retired by the creator because "it's not funny anymore, get over it", except Mark brought it a different life rather than killing off the character entirely, instead of retiring the character he gave it meaning, think like how you make an edgelord OC as a kid but later think of a really good backstory for it and end up revamping the entire OC instead something not even remotely related anymore)

So the community latched onto that idea and started calling him "DARK iplier" because we as human are incredibly creative

I say, knowing "markiplier" is just Mark and Multiplier combined

Which brings me to how Wilford Warfstache was created, actually

Wilford was created for the express purpose of things like "The Slenderman Interview" and "Wilford Plays: Slender" (warning: very early YT jokes that wouldn't fly today lol), he was created to do funny skits for games Mark would play as Mark's reason for naming his channel "Mark Multiplier" is because he wanted to make skits of the characters in the games he would play, making his channel a half gaming channel and a half skit channel which was honestly ingenius ingenuity, he had the fortune of taking a chance with two genres that ended up being VERY successful on early youtube and that is one of the biggest reasons why his channel is so big today

which is also just incredibly insane to think about that he has managed to have very little if not any controversies within his channel and community, at least not any GENUINE concerns he hasn't already alleviated

And for the most that's all these characters were: completely separate parts of Mark's channels where are Darkiplier would only appear in Mark's more "edgier" videos and Wilford purely in skits

That is until his video "Don't Blink", whic was also featured in his much later series: "A Date with Markiplier" where we see Darkiplier in his own video rather than some edgy joke made online and his first "official" appearance and is around the time when people began to refer to the different personas Mark had online as his "egos"

In the video we see Dark slowly fade in to the dark background of the picture that's posted on screen (and this is why I get kinda upset when Lixian, Mark's editor, is attributed to the image alternation horror of Mark's series as this has ALWAYS been a staple of Mark's channel - Lixian fucking hits it out of the park with his editorial and atristry stills, don't get me wrong, he's a true artist when it comes to that kind of horror, but he didn't create it on Mark's channel, it's always been a thing and you can always tell who is new to the channel with this)

But we don't see much of Dark's actual attire and how he looks anymore than he's a one to one comparison of Mark just a creepier, edgier version of him, I mean, he doesn't even get his iconic grayscale self yet ! "Don't Move" is technically the first time we see that but I don't count it since the entire video is in grayscale, I would kinda attribute the first "Dark is in Graysclae" sighting to the "October of Terror" video he did explaining his charity event but I wouldn't say it's officially attributed to him then, I think it was more of a "putting him in grayscale brings out the drastic lighting contrast and makes it look spooky" versus it actually being apart of his character design, because I don't think Dark was "officially" introduced until "Mr. Kitty Saves the World" where he actively brings up Darkiplier as an entity and not just him being edgy to get views (but also is being edgy to get views lol)

But what I find interesting is in that video it says "Containment Breach" which is because this was roughly a year after Mark started playing SCP: Containment Breach and suggests that Darkiplier was originally supposed to be an SCP !! That's super fucking cool to me that Dark went from being edgelord to being an SCP to being "I'm super tortured but like mentally and physically my body can't even stay in one piece" (which is funny cause Antisepticeye, which yes I'm bringing up cause they're intertwined just by the nature of Mark and Jack being friends and their egos happening at the same time and in tandem with each other thanks to the "Darkiplier VS. Antisepticeye" video, went from being edgelord jokes to I'm fucked up an evil to SCP but different flavor,, which like yeah it's a joke video and is seen widely as noncanonical but it still applies to how they are connected if just by similarities between them)

But within the community, Darkiplier isn't officially an ego or real character until "Best Friends Forever", which is widely hypothesized or accepted to be Dark in the video because, again, edgelord humor, though in my eyes it's not until "relax" is released that Darkiplier is officially considered a character because this video shows that he is a different entitiy than Mark and he's also given an official outfit,,, plus it's his 14MIL milestone so I figured this would be the perfect time to canonicize Darkiplier as an official Markiplier Ego :)

I also think this was another video featured in ADwM (A Date with Markiplier) if I remember correctly

The "relax" video is also when we see him trying to torture Mark and not just other people or being generally edgy and this later is Dark's main character plot point is to kill or hurt Mark (specifically "Actor" Mark, or otherwise Mark's characterization on screen, the character seperate from the creator,,, which is why I now have grown away from Septiplier (DO NOT ASK I WAS FUCKING ELEVEN) because "Actor Mark" is the characterization of Markiplier in my eyes, and that man does not deserve to be in any relationship, I like seeing him blue balled for all of eternity thank you) so that in my eyes is the best point of "yes Dark is an actual character now"

But this video is also why I don't think the earlier installments of Dark being in grayscale are when that officially becomes a character trait, as in later episodes after the previously mentioned with that characteristic are just heavily saturated photos or clips of Mark and aren't grayscaled, it's not until his ADwM series that Dark is oficially attributed this trait as whenever he's seen onscreen and the screen (and later just himself) switches to grayscale

Now, the introduction of Wilford Warfstache is wildly different but is the last Ego I'll be giving a timeline of (at least a very detailed one) because all the others are usually one off or are more recently added into the series and only show up fully fleshed out when they're first mentioned so I don't have to do a deep archive dive for them lol

Wilford, like I said earlier, was always a character, always supposed to be seen as such at the very least, and isn't just some "silly voice Mark sometimes does" but is definitely where his voice comes from, as it seems vastly different for the purpose of trying to differinciate the two of them and why it's a lot easier to do so versus how it was with Darkiplier as Dark and Mark, until more recently, sounded - and even looked - very much the same

Wilford is first seen in his Amnesia Series, the video of which I can't QUITE remember and I'm not about to search the entire fucking series just to figure out which one was his first appearance, but one of the earliest times he's name dropped is in "Amnesia: Rain - Part 6", but even then he's fully kitted out with his pink mustache and all (I think this video was supposed to be an April Fools video, but that's too on brand for Wilford Warfstache for me to think it wasn't more than just "it would be funny teehee", it definitely was but I feel like Mark was also thinkin "it would also be perfect to show off this kooky character" because like I said, Wilford was low-key planned from the beginning of Mark's channel,,, not specifically but his concept was)

But me personally I wouldn't see him as an official character until "The Warfstache Affair" which is one of the funniest fucking videos to me, even to this day and is such a silly video all on it's own, but this is his first appearance in my heart of hearts because, like Dark's need to torture Mark, this becomes one of Wilford's key character plot points later down the line

And when I say that Mark truly turns these characters from funny skit plot points to full fledged, series bingeworthy characters you want to see have a happy ending, I MEAN IT

His love for the creative process and writing shows through in his "official" series or skits, in his "official" MCU, it's literally insane. You can tell he loves these characters and truly wants to write a story and is the sole reason I think that, bias aside for the nostalgia and special place in my heart that FNaF has on me, Mark's Iron Lung movie is going to be SO MUCH BETTER than ANYTHING the FNaF movie could do

I love FNaF's storyline (and it's crazy how long it took me to mention FNaF in a MARKIPLIER related rant but it was bount to happen) and I think it's incredibly intricate, and it's very similar to Mark's MCU where it started off simple but get deeper as it gains more traction, where it's different is Scott Cawthon rushed a lot of his games and whatnot due to popularity, because of the fear that if he didn't pump it out fast enough it would lose traction and he'd lose his fame, whereas Mark not only had the security of that not happening, he also does not care if it did happen - he doesn't do these skits to appease people, he does them because he enjoys it, something's he's said a hundred times by now. Yes, because of the support he has he's able to make the story look very good, but fans or no fans the story would be the same, it would just look a lot different

Back to the timeline of events in the MCU, we don't techincally see the other Egos "introduced" or "canonicized" until "Markiplier TV", which even that can be argued due to both the irrelevantness and obvious of how one off of characters they were as well as Cyndago's unfortunate attempt at ending his own life and Mark taking it upon himself to not continue the characters he created so as to not disrespect Cyndago's legacy or "take away" those characters from him

But this is the first time we see Wilford and Darkiplier actually interact with each other, and is where that "Darkstache" ship REALLY took off

It's hard to say is people really shipped it beforehand, and if they did it was definintely considered a crackship or rarepair due to that exact fact of these characters never interacting up until Markiplier TV

I will always hold Markiplier TV in my heart, I remember frothing at the mouth when it came out and it was 100% what got me so autistically attached to Markiplier, I mean besides FNaF, but that was more of a "I can't wait to come home from school and watch my favorite YouTuber!" thing, and MTV (which yes I see the joke in that) was more of "OH MY GOD IF HE DOESN'T EXPLAIN WHAT THIS MEANS AND WHY DARK ONLY USES A NICKNAME ON WILFORD I'M GOING TO CLAW OFF MY SKIN OH MY GODDDDDDD"

Which by the way that happens, he calls him "Will" and that's NEVER EXPLAINED ???? I DON'T THINK ??? But this is the only person he refers to in any endearing way

(side note I wanted to add: intro to MTV has a Lantern reference in there,,, I know you (Shran, the person who asked this) is the only one who will understand that joke, but if you ever end up watching it: timestamp: 0:16, truly a blink and you'll miss it moment tho)

Also this series is the introduction to a character who later becomes canon: The Jim Twins,, though we're not sure if it stops at just twins as the joke is like all of the news anchors, castors, camera men, weather men, etc. are all named Jim,,, and because they occur again as an easter egg in "Who Killed Markiplier?" (not directly in,, but there was a website you could go to when WKM was airing and you could see them post extra, joking, content that also lowkey gave hints to the story but didn't directly interfere with the actual show so you didn't need to watch it) that I think made them canon as they're shown to be on set at the same time as canon characters (because ALL of WKM is canon, unlike MTV)

Also also MTV is where the popular headcanon that Wilford cries bubbles comes from ! (I can't not bring my other hyperfixations into this - Tom has a similarly popular headcanon where his tears are either black and/or smell/taste like pineapple juice)

MTV is 100% where I get my "random noises" stim that I do, by the way, where I just do the tune of songs I know with wildly incorrect words,,, and now that I think about is probably why I'm able to so clearly remember my friend's meme parody of "I Write Sins Not Tragedies" but every other word is rat: "I Rat Sins Not Tragedies"

Fucking hell Middle School was a different time I'm not sad to be gone from it

In other news the gag joke of Wilford casually pulling out a gun and shooting someone with it kills me every fucking time (literally I'm currently dead on the floor unmoving he's shot me sendf an damnbuclance)

Anyway back to the actual plot of MCU, this is also where we get the actual first introduction of Wilford's character trait of being beyond the screen he's played on, as he's seen manipulating text on screen shown to not really be "all there" for lack of a better term, being an enigma who doesn't understand the concept of death, and personally that was why I originally started the enjoy their character dynamic because it made sense to me that Dark would want to befriend someone who didn't care for murder when he wanted Mark to die so obviously Wilford is the natural choice, but I didn't think for Wilford to have such a FUCKING MESSED UP REASON BEHIND IT MARK I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU MADE ME WANNA THROW HANDS WITH A FICTIONAL VERSION OF YUOR PERSONIFIED EGO I'M GOING TO RIP YOU APART !!! I WOULD NOT LIKE TO APOLOGIZE !!! I STICK BY IT !!!!!!

Also I think it's very funny that MTV canonicized that Santa is, in fact, still dead from when Wilford killed him in I think a charity live stream ?? I may be getting my memory mixed up but I think for one of Mark's Christmas Chairty Livestreams he had Wilford kill Santa Claus as a milestone reward ?? I'm not quite sure but I have a very vivid memory of Santa with his face blurred out for "security reasons" being suddenly executed by Wilford as like an interview thing,, but that could've been made afterwards as a joke reference to this clip lol, either way Santa is canonically murdered and Christmas is ruined forever by Wilford and I think that's fucking hilarious

For those who watched MTV or are watching it after this rant to see what I'm talking about let me explain every ego shown in the boardroom scene of this video and it's got nothing to do with me wanting to flex my obscure knowledge I have of Markiplier's channel:

Wilford and Dark don't count I've talked about them before

Googleiplier (Seen with in a blue shirt with the Google logo on it): comes from a skit done with Matthias called "Google IRL" in which Google comes out with an android version of Google Home to help with every day assistance, but what Matthias fails to know is that Google IRL is actually incredibly evil and is trying to kill Matthias

Ed Edgar (cowboy with the world's least flattering mullet,,, and that's saying something): Cyndago's character from the "Ed Edgar's Adoptallott's Baby Bulk Buy", where he tries to sell his son

Bim Trimmer (other guy in the suit also yes his name is a joke on Bum Trimmer): Another one of Cyndago's characters from the "Hire My Ass!" skit where Bim brutally murders and cannibalizes his contests (surprisingly unsurprisingly a fan favorite character)

Silver Shepherd (the alien looking motherfucker): Yet another one of Cyndago's characters from the "Super Infidelity" skit, where you can assume what happens; superhero marital affairs (this character is not be confused with how Jacksepticeye's Jackie-Boy Man came into creation, that was from a superhero maker (? ish) game)

Dr. Iplier: Heavily debated if it's Cyndago's character since it was posted to Mark's channel, I'll call him a Cyndago character since it's under the pretense of being a "Cyndago Original", even though people say he comes back in "In Space with Markiplier", he kinda really doesn't because that's Porniplier (LET ME EXPLAIN- PLEASE I TALK ABOUT HIM MORE LATER), but he gets first introduced in the skit "Worst News Doctor" with the same running joke as seen in MTV of "I'm sorry but... you're dying" to the most mundane of ailments

The Host (the guy with the bloody bandaged around his eyes): One of my favorite Cyndago skit characters, he comes from "Danger in Fiction", a skit parody of "Stranger Than Fiction" (at least the name is,,, I haven't actually seen Stranger Than Fiction lol), where he's first introduced as "The Author" (insert Gravity Falls joke here)

King of the Squirrels (Guy who runs in with peanut butter smeared on his face): Joke ego who came around in the same vein of Tiny Box Tim but instead it was introduced somewhere in Mark's "Don't Starve" playthrough, again, not watching the entire series again to remember where he first mentions him

The canonicity of the TV show though is flimsy at best as there is a Septiplier joke where he's begging to be killed and like 90% of the heads of the table are Cyndago's characters, but I think it is important to bring up because this, in my eyes, is the start of Markiplier actually trying to give his characters some depth to them and wanting to explore them more than JUST skits, or at the very least this is the last time they're seen in skits and treated as just egos and not seperate characters

When we ACTUALLY see the timeline somewhat officially begin is in "A Date with Markiplier"

Yes it technically airs before Markiplier TV but it didn't really have Wilford in it, and I wanted to get that last Wilford knowledge out there because Markiplier TV marks where the skit Timeline ends and the for realsies time line begins, the reason ADwM comes after this despite airing before it is because it technically wasn't supposed to be canon, and only became canon once "A Heist with Markiplier" come out because this is when Mark creates his "Adventures with Markiplier" series, canonicizing ADwM

With that out of the way, ADwM is where we see a lot more of Dark's character specifically, because again this is kinda not super canonical but more canonical than MTV, as it was made as a Valentine's Day joke post (Fun fact: The whole "Movie" portion of the date where we see Mark do a one man play is to make up for all of his broken "Markiplier Promises" to Ethan CrankGamePlays/Ethan Nestor and Tyler Apocalypto_12) but it IS the first time we get introduce to "Actor Mark" as a seperate character who becomes very important later on in the timeline with the next installment:

Who Killed Markiplier

My precious

My Favorite

Right after In Space but we'll get to that

Speaking of Reoccuring Characters introduced in ADwM: The Chef !! He comes back in WKM AND A Heist ! I fucking love this guy

Okay before I continue I need to preface something:

This is not where the actual timeline technically begins,,, it really begins with In Space but to explain that I need to explain this first because... by technicality this entire series? Like the entirity of the canonical MCU? Time loop. Thank you Mark for making me want to [REDACTED]

For the ease of me not jumbling shit together, I'm going to give a brief synopsis of every Chapter of WKM,,, I have no idea what I'm gonna do for Heist and Space but we'll see

Chapter 1

Another Lantern Reference at 0:14

We enter the fray as Y/N or better known as the District Attorney (DA for short), as we see on our invitation letter, meeting our main characters:

William J. Barnum, "The Colonel"

Damien Doom, "The Mayor"

Abe, "The Detective", and

Mark, "The Actor" and "The Victim"

Other noteable characters are:

The Chef and The Butler, played by Robert Rexx and Tyler Schneid respectively (Side note again: Why is every butler ever in the history of forever always gay?)

The time period in which this is set in is the 1920's, no specific date I don't think, but the 20s no less, (because of the time period you're offered a seltzer with cocaine in it to help subside your headache, I fucking love Mark's humor jesus)

The reason we're all gathered in the manor is because the Mark Iplier (Canon Last Name I believe) has invited us all to a celebratory party at his manor, in which we are all to get absolutely shitfaced and party, during which we have the most banging music playing in the background, we learn our beloved Mayor is King of the Keg, we get the first tease that William and Abe have history and don't rather like each other, at least in a one sided manner as Barnum playfully puts Abe in a headlock and Abe is NOT having it, we see William has violent tendencies trying to swing at the Butler now acting as bartender, William is also seen playing Russian Roulette, before we pass out in bed at 1:30 AM before waking up seven hours later only to find that our beloved friend, Mark, has died. But not only died - but has been MURDERED ! So says the detective

Thanks to a convenient lightning storm trapping everyone inside the house, which also seems to only strike anytime someone says the word "murder", Abe take it upon himself to take charge with you as his assistant and quarantines everyone inside the house until he can figure out what happened, and after rectally taking the corpse's body temperature Abe is able to determine Mark was murder just as you went to bed: 1:30 AM.

Later we see Damien and William fighting, Damien suspecting William of being the one who murdered Mark or at least being suspicious of him as they've had prior disagreements and seem to hate each other, though William swears he didn't do it and instead suggests Mark slipped and fell because he's a dumb idiot

It's also revealed that the Chef's "Little Buddy" is actually a security camera and has recorded the entire night, showing that Abe and Mark talked earlier, discussing the fact that Abe was invited to do background checks on Mark's staff conveniently at the same time as when the murder took place,,, hmm,,, at 1:13 AM, seven minutes before the murder

And then suddenly, we end on Abe announcing that the body had just suddenly disappeared

Also I'd love to add the bonus contents of what happened on the WKM website but it was taken down like shortly after the last chapter of the series aired, so I can't exactly give a play by play of what happened. Just know like how I said earlier it's just the Jim Twins being goofy (I vividly remember them playing with a oujia board rug going "S-U-B-S-C-R-I-B-E-T-O-M-A-R-K-I-P-L-I-E-R" which is still really funny to me but that's basically all the substance they gave,,, save for giving up a better look at the manor layout and rooms we didn't get to see much of in the official chapters) but like I said they're very inconsequential the main story so there's no harm other than me having one less thing to talk about which at this point is doing more good than anything

Chapter 2

We reiterate that the body's moved, seemingly on it's own, as we have the house residents find out one by one in the same (or at least roughly the same) order as they found out that the body was dead. Also William is revealed to believe in zombies (it IS the 20s) and also makes a "The Most Dangerous Game" reference (it IS the 20s,,, also in the outfit he was wearing it and who his character is it was bound to happen) before offering to kill Actor!Mark again if he truly is a zombie and justifies it with "well back in the war"

After Abe makes his nth homoerotic joke of the series he poses the question of: why? What's the killer's motive ? What do they gain from Actor being dead ? He reiterates that we were all invited here for a celebration but it was never specified what kind of celebration, not even Mark's grand "what we're celebrating" speech he didn't actually explain what they were celebrating, just that it wasn't about any in particular or himself which, obviously at this point, was a lie because he's dead so he was always going to be the main event

We also get that, after Abe probing Actor's ass, he found out that not only was he stabbed 37 times, Actor was also poisoned, beaten, strangled, drowned and shot - in that order. This is my favorite thing about this entire series because I remember making a ton of theories about this and what this meant because there's no way the killer did that in one night and it heavily suggested that Mark had died multiple times, on account of the fact that he was "drowned" and then later "shot" but the corpse we see is dry and isn't asphyxiated at all like he would be if he were strangled or drowned

And then my theories were blown out of the water when In Space came out so fuck me I guess

To be fair they weren't totally solid and at best were headcanons lol

Back to the main events of the story: we're introduced to Actor's room which is a MESS, truly it looks like a hurricane went through it, and as much as it seems like that would be the place he died within a struggle, Abe quickly dismisses that and urges us to continue looking when we find that he has multiple pictures frames of the friends in vairous amounts... First it's the three of them: Mark, William and Damien. They all seem super happy and in the photo they're laughing and causing a rukus. next there's suddenly four of them: Mark, William, Damien and Celine (I will get to her later), and they look less happy, well, for the most part. Damien and William and standing like the man emoji and it could be because William came back from war is like whoo boy do I have trauma and Damien could getting a little more stressed with mayoral duties but it's never quite clear, all we know is that Damien and William are straight faced whereas Celine and Mark and Celine are chatting it up like old friends. Continuing we see a third photo of just Damien and Mark together, Damien looking like he's giving his best customer service smile and Mark maybe looks anxious ? It's hard to tell, there's a glare on the glass of the frame for most of the shot

However, the last one we see is turned over and the glass is smashed, revealing a picture of William alone.

But the scene continues and William reveals that Mark has quite the amount of enemies, it's not just him who has a mysterious gripe with the bitch before Damien pulls us away to discuss who the murderer might be, instead bringing to the metaphorical magnifying glass to the Detective who we've been following around

Throughout the entire series we have fingers pointed at Abe and William the most, William with his violent tendencies and hatred for the victim, and Abe for the fact we know the least about him (within the immediate friendgroup but because he's also just kind of a reclusive guy)

Before he can continue with eluding to the idea that maybe there was one more person among them we hear a gunshot and glass break, revealing Abe and the Colonel pointing guns at each other and screaming. We hear that William was trying to use Abe for target practice as they are accusing each other of being the murderer, making their way to the door where we get a late arrival:

Celine.

Chapter 3

I said I'd get to her and I've gotten to her

Whoo

Fucking

Nelly

Listen before I continue this I will say I have a bias cause I AM HER BIGGEST HATER I HATE HER FUCKKKK

As an actress, she played phenomincally, Pamela Horton does a fantastic job playing her

As a character, beautifully written, I enjoy occult like characters and her title as "The Seer" is perfect, brings that mist of supernatural and mystery that surrounds Mark's untimely death wonderfully

As a person

As someone I could meet on the streets

I want to [REDACTED] until [REDACTED] so that she [REDACTED] and I won't stop until [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] or so help me.

That aside let's actually get the synopsis/play by play

The house guests fill Celine in on what happened and the fact that Mark's dead, but also she is the first person to bring up the fact that the lightning strikes everytime someone says the word "murder", what passed as a running gag is now pulled into question for possibly being supernatural as she proclaims it to be "powerful dark magic" for lightning to strike EVERYTIME someone says the word "murder"

Also William canonically was sucked into the board game Jumanji so via the pipeline he's connected to Dwayne the Rock Johnson which I think is pretty funny

Celine then proposes that they all hold a seance to speak with Mark beyond the grave to get an answer as to why this is all happening where she shuts down Abe and the Butler makes another gay ass remark to us before Celine proclaims we're trustworthy and have a "far greater part to play" which is hella suspicious, thank you Celine, and everyone pretty much agrees with the Detective that it's suspicious that Celine suddenly wants to take us on alone to get more answers and take the investigation further. Well, everyone except William.

Simp.

But it doesn't matter cause we end up going with her anywhere where Damien tries to talk to her about this and offer comfort but also wonders what she's doing getting mixed up with the muder, but the way he phrases it: "I just didn't think you were the type to get mixed up with all this" makes me think that he's actually talking about the occult and medium stuff she's been doing or at least suddenly announces that she's doing, where she argues that there's more to this world that he could ever understand and then continues to run off with us to seperate room of the house

There we see her lay out tarot cards and whatnot before making a "Series of Unfortunate Events" joke, and before anyone asks I don't think the layout of her cards and what cards are where means anything - I know in Tarot that that's like SUPER IMPORTANT but I do not think Mark poured hours of research into tarot for this one scene. But also because there's a magic eight ball there, as a joke yeah, but I mean c'mon

Shockingly enough though, as we're sitting in the room with Celine we start to have visions about what's happening, what's happened, and what's about to happen, or the past present and future, so she asks us to draw it down where we meet our second late arriving gueststar:

The Groundskeeper.

But she doesn't seem pleased with our answer and orders us to go back into our visions before she's interrupted by Abe and Damien where Damien seems very concerned with her affiliation with the occult and the fact she's become very volatile before Abe rushes us out and leaved Damien to try and calm down Celine

The Chef reveals that the Groundskeeper, previously thought to only work on weekends, actually has been living on the grounds secretly, so naturally they go to him to investigate where he was during the murder - except they get interrupted by the only reason he'd ever go into that house after he says "You'd better pray to god that that reason never comes to pass" before it happens, all of them rushing inside to see red and blue light shining onto Celine with the most ominous Debbie Ryan smirk known to man before they close the door on her

Chapter 4 - The Final Chapter

We see the groundskeeper lock the door to the room Celine and Damien were both last seen in before William runs in asking where Celine is where the groundskeeper explains that "she's gone, and so is everyone else"

PAUSE

I feel it's important to note that in order to keep true to the timeline as we are OFFICIALLY in the timeline now, I have to talk about "DAMIEN", because as Mark explains, DAMIEN, although premiering after the WKM series, does happen DURING it, specifically after Celine and Damien disappear, but before we see them again later (which I will be explaining later after this cause duh in my Chapter 4 analysis)

We open in on being stuck in a dead winter, trees barren and their roots buried deep under snow, following the sound of a tree getting hacked into, before finally crackling and falling to the floor where we see a heavily breathing Mayor Damien, hair long and dressed in a thick winter coat

After he's done sledding his chopped down logs back to a cabin and chopping them into fire wood we see Celine in the house with him where they start bickering and this is where we see just how truly different their personalities are:

"I saw a flower today, shouldn't be long before Spring is here"

"OR there's still a few more weeks of Winter and that flower will die COLD and ALONE."

There's more bickering, mainly from Celine's side, before she goes out hunting for food now that Damien's back home but there is a moment of tenderness before she leaves, where she asks if he really did see a flower where he says "yes, a little pink one... though it's probably dead by now" and she wishes for him to get some rest

Just as we see Damien head to bed, we watch the window panes freeze and the screen glitch, watching Damien's body from the outside of the window before the next morning starts and we see the pink flower again

If you wanna know it's a Sweet William and that is the loudest part of this entire series as Damien goes "Huh... Well you don't die easily, do you?"

And we begin to hear the echoes of "Wilford Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache"

I'M NOT GONNA PAUSE IT AGAIN I PROMISE

Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache, while heard in DAMIEN , doesn't technically happen until AFTER Chapter 4 of WKM is done, Wilford is just a fucking enigma to time and space so he's heard throughout the echoes of time

Also DAMIEN was shot after Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache so they had the audio lol

But according to the timeline WMLW doesn't happen until AFTER the events of WKM and DAMIEN happened DURING the events of WKM so, continuining on

Damien continues to hear the voices of Abe and Wilford peaking through the vast forest, growing confused, concerned and anxious before he just decided to keep on chopping, chalking it up to "just another day in the life of me" I guess

As Damien comes inside for the second day, we hear Celine say the same line of "Don't slam the door, Damien" and Damien continues the similarities with proclaiming how he saw a flower and it "shouldn't be long until Spring" before he trails off, realizing he said the same thing yesterday

He mutters along with Celine as she says the same line as she did yesterday, furthering the notion that they've been through this before, so he breaks the chain with Celine like how the voice broke the chain with him, claiming he heard a voice today which instantly gets Celine on edge before she says she's going out "hunting" again, with a much different tone

Instead of going to sleep right after Celine leaves like he did last time, Damien stays up long enough to watch as the window panes freeze over, a voice whispering Damien's name before he jerks his head to the left, noticing a mirror on the wall to his left, noting how he can't see himself in the reflection of it, and when he manges to make out the outline of himself in the mirror, it reveals itself to be a rotting version, telling him that it's time to wake up (directly opposing what Celine's been telling him to do: go to sleep)

When he opens his eyes again he's back in the woods, confused on how he got there - he was just in his cabin and now he's in the middle of the woods where he hears Celine calling for him

In distress, he immediately runs after the voice, trying to find his sister only for the snow to get thicker and the wind to get stronger, like it's actively trying to keep him from his sister as they keep yelling for each other

He makes it to a frozen lake when the voice stops calling for him, noticing foot prints on a lake he's never seen before leading to a bright light in the lake where he reaches into a hole, fishing Celine out of the lake where he sees that face again that he saw in the mirror with the words taunting "it's not fair, is it?"

The corpse ends up grabbing Damien and tries pulling him while we watch the ice crack and break beneath him, images of a Sweet William and various skulls flash on screen before Damien gives a distorted scream, falling into the black abyss of the frozen lake's water

When Damien regains his bearings, we're in a dark void where we see none other than the man himself:

Mark

He taunts Damien and how hard it was to find him, telling him that he's only come to apologize to him where Damien wonders if he even ever knew him, but manages to slowly bring back his memory of what happened, remembering that it's Actor standing before him and everything he's done

Side note, the line "Celine really did a number on you didn't she?" solidifies my earlier comment on Celine wanting Damien to go to sleep whereas Mark is trying to get him to wake up, wanting Damien to stay in the loop

He also makes a joke about "knowing [Mark] as well as he knows [himself]" which is a joke about how he's snatched Damien's body and is now living in it - hence how we see him in the same Tuxedo Damien wore at the party with his cane, except for the fact it's red now instead of black

Mark continues to explain how this kind of went downhill and not how he wanted it to go, that yes this WAS planned from the beginning by him but as the events unfolded it didn't go according to plan, "right people point the finger at the wrong people" as he puts it "mistakes were made"

Also it's eluded that Actor made a deal with the devil to make sure Celine didn't "go around breaking anyone else's heart", but it's not explicitly said, just that he made a deal to make sure that it didn't happen, we're not sure if it's with a supernatural force but we can assume that it is based off everything that's happened

Mark continues his speech about how every "good story needs a villain and a hero", suggesting that he thinks himself of the hero in this story and he needs a vindictive villain to fight against, someone to root for their downfall by the audience, and honestly the scene is beautiful, beautifully written, beautifully preformed, beautifully drawn which yes, by the way, DAMIEN was drawn as an Animatic style video, not live action like how the rest of Mark's content is for the MCU, but oh my gOD it's so beautiful

And in a terrifying scene, we see Damien slowly suffocating as he realizes that he's actually been dead the whole time before Celine breaks past the barrier Mark had put up (the frozen lake, they're beneath it) and ends up killing Actor, seeing his face contort into the Comedy Mask as he's blown away like ash

A third Lantern reference when Damien goes "I'm so sick of being a pawn in other people's games" as he begs Celine to explain what the hell just happened, truly at his wit's end with all of this but she denies it, she claims that everything she's done she's done for Damien, that this whole state of constant repitition was to keep Damien safe and secure but now Actor's come and torn it all apart

There's a really tender moment between Celine and Damien where they talk about how Celine doesn't need to basically give up her life to protect Damien's, that she doesn't need to spend the rest of her life trying to fix the mistakes she's made, where he offers his hand to help her

And she agrees,

On the condition that he "makes sure that bastard stays dead."

Before they're swallowed up by the lake flooding in from the cracks Actor made on their "world", and as the water gushes out of the door is sweeps away the endless Winter and shows the blades of grass fighting to stay alive beneath the blankets of snow, and the countless amount of tress Damien has chopped down in the time he's lived there

After the credits roll we're left with a bonus clip of Damien stepping out from the destroyed house, where there was once snow now the earth burns under his boots before he walks off screen

This video was actually cut for time by the way, there was supposed to be a whole nother day where we see the Sweet William blossoming again to give the sense of repetitiveness and endlessness

But I think that Wilford's cry out in the abyss along with the Sweet William is what broke him from the limbo cycle and was why they were able to break free

UNPAUSE

After this, everyone begins to leave, quitting their jobs and imploring the others to take their leaves as well but William swears against it, threatening to kill everyone unwilling to die with the friend's he just lost in this house

Abe follows after the Colonel because of his threat where we're left alone to have the screen ominously loses it's hue along with the song in the background distorting before we hear a heartbeat and a whisper asking for help that sounds awfully familiar hmm (I'm like 90% sure it's Celine's voice)

We begin to hear distorted talk about "Madness" and how it's "stealing your best friend's wife" before we continue to hear distorted versions of Mark's speech to us in the first Chapter and voice lines from the rest of the cast as we walk around the manor, lead to a room we've yet to enter where we see our screen go back to normal

In the room we find that this filled with news letters of a "Safari gone wrong" with William at the forefront of it as well as a cork coard of red string and loose ends.

Important stuff to note from this room:

A paper filled with the word "colonel" messily scribbled all over it

A layout picture of the house

The aforementioned "Safari Gone Wrong" Magazine cover

^ the top line of this also asks is Mayor Damien is secretly a demon in disguise

Stickynotes saying "DON'T TRUST" "THE SEER"

Not important but I think it's funny: Picture of William with a sticky note saying "Not Marriage Material"

Multiple News headlines proclaiming Mark's death (but previously to this, obviously)

A typewriter filled with speculation against the colonel before it too gets chaotic

After we have a run through of the room we see William walk into the room and is immediately put off by it, exclaiming that Abe's been keeping tabs on us, but mostly it's just him and Celine, we're ambivelant to this, but it suggests that because Abe and him were good friends, he probably was hired as a private investigator on Celine for the express purpose of finding out if she's having an affair on him, hence why he's been keeping tabs on mostly William and Celine (they've had an affair on each other as earlier stated with the voice saying that "madness is cheating with your Bestie's wife" and the fact that Colonel's first worry is Celine which is odd as he's seen tender to her but willing to deck anyone else over less than she's done)

After finding out this knowledge, William blames Abe for this and believes that this was a ploy to ruin him, that Abe had set him up from the beginning where he clearly begins to spiral and he begins searching for Abe to kill him getting increasingly more and more violent until he ends up accidentally shooting Abe right in the chest, and soon after you meet the same fate as you try to calm him down, falling off the balcony

As the screen fades to black we hear that heartbeat again and we suddenly see Mark's dead body once more, signfiying that this is after the events of "DAMIEN", that is until the body of Mark looks gaunt, or at least shift to look like Darkiplier saying "It's not fair, is it?"

We're met with Damien and Celine in their red and blue forms where they explain what happened in DAMIEN (briefly, anyway) that Actor had trapped them in this state of limbo or some inbetween where they were stuck doing the same day over and over with seeminly no difference where Celine breaks that she thought it was the house causing it but it was actually Mark and Damien explains that Actor is walking around in Damien's body

The two of them propose that everyone in this odd state of liminal nothingness can escape the same way Mark did before suddenly we wake up, assumably back in our own body

This is where we get my most gut wrenching scene I HATE YOU MARKIPLIER WHY DO YOU THIS TO ME

We see William sitting in a chair by where our body once was, coat and hat gone while he's anxiously clutching Damien's cane and we see William go from spiraling to downright mad as he convinces himself that he didn't kill you, obviously he wouldn't he cherishes your friendship, and begins to believe - genuinely believe that death does not exist, that there is no such thing and that everyone in the manor was playing some big prank on him, going around calling his friends' names while we stop to look at ourselves in the mirror only to find that we have become Darkiplier

I want this motherfucker dead, I want a ten paragraph apology for the way he changed my brain chemistry because of this how DARE he

But I do I like this series so much because it was my Umbrella Academy before Umbrella Academy was a thing, you know ? And is wildly better because the only incest being shipped is in the dark side of the fandom and not the canonicity of the show, but it has that same feeling of "We only get together for weddings and funerals", because to be frank, no one know why they're here, just that they're celebrating. Before this party they were all estranged from each other with few exceptions and with various reasons

For a good explanation, Damien's line:

"Then again, I'm not exactly sure as to what we're supposed ot be celebrating here. I mean it's good to have the gang back together, but... out of the blue like this seems... anyway,"

LIKE THAT'S NOT SUSPICIOUS AS HELL ???

Also, I feel it's important to note that in Mark's "Who Killed Markiplier" playlist on youtube he does add the bloopers but also "DAMIEN" and "Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache" which I find very interesting but I think it's just because it's similar to the WKM series rather than the Adventures with Markiplier series even though they do tie in together

Fun fact about Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache before I get into it: The name of it was originally gonna just be "Wilford Warfstache" in the same vein of DAMIEN is called just Damien's name, BUT when Abe's actor gives the somewhat improved line of "Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache" Mark changed the title name to that cause he thought it better fit :)

This part of the WKM series is what inspired me to (eventually) write a mock script for a noir crime show surrounding Detective Abe, it was me and my partner joking about it on call together and then I got too much brainrot about it and ended up developing a plotline for three seasons that I need to write out eventually

With that aside, the video opens with Abe who we last saw shot by William, giving an internal monologue as he longing looks out the window with a cigarette in his mouth and Abe's first line already super gay so I'm waiting for the day Mark just goes "yeah Abe likes men" cause he's already confirmed Wilford is Pansexual I NEED ABE TO BE GAY PLEASE MARK

Ahem

Anyway

The monologue is pretty long, it's the entire intro to the video, and it's just a bunch of gay euphamisms and suggestive comments that Abe says as if he's unaware of the interpretations of it which I think is peak old noir films joke, and failing to stab the cork board multiple times - which wasn't planned, by the way, but was really really funny

Also Abe's suggested to be Jewish with the line "just like the clown at my bar mitzvah, I knew he was trouble from the moment I laid eyes on him", which is actually really cool ! Birthday clown terror is an obvious joke but the subtle change from birthday to bar mitzvah is nice, especially since Abe is a character from the 20s and it's easy to just write everyone as white and christian because, well, it's the 20s America, and I like when the cast is diverse (again, Wilford is canonically Pansexual which we were all waiting for with his pink and yellow ensemble, I love that "In Space With Markiplier" confirmed it with Mark explaining that the pink, yellow and blue lights seen in the secret Wilford scene wasn't accidental :))) !! )

Another fun fact: small budget films don't have to be poorly made ! Mark was getting a lot of praise from how the car Abe "drives" looks super realistic and people were wondering how he was doing that it really just came down to good editing and lightly shaking the car, literally they just were jostling the car from it's hood and it cave the illusion of driving on uneven roads which, if you've ever driven a car in america, is every road

As Abe's tobacco of choice keeps changing from cigarette to cigar to vape sticks, he explains how Wilford had gone through multiple aliases (later it's confirmed that he's sticking to Wilford Warfstache, obviously) but no matter how many times he's changed his name he would always fall back his usual dancing, fighting, flirting, and dancing - which brings us to where Abe finds him, the Moonlight Rollerway which is the most 80s fucking club ever

The scene also changes from noir black and white to bright, saturated colors as we see Wilford come onto screen with bopping funk music and a shiny pink shirt and matching afro as Abe gives the line that changes history "Wilford. Motherlovin'. Warfstache." and my brain literally explodes and I'm suddenly obsessed with Wilford for like months after the video comes out it's abysmal

Also, more pink, blue and yellow lights :) and yeah I know that pink and yellow are gonna go with blue because that's how triangles work but like, this motherfucker has been screaming pansexual since "The Ned Affair" which that video still makes me laugh and I kinda miss that outfit,, the entire video is gay jokes and as a gay person it's so funny

Back to WMLW, Abe disperses the party in order to get Wilford off stage and ends up accidentally shooting some electrical box I don't care for the proper term off, causing the music to stop and the saturation of the area to slightly dull as Wilford's dance comes to a stop and no one appreciates Abe's destruction of property when it killed the boogie

As Abe orders Wilford onto the ground, he claims to not remember who Abe was, asking for his name and failing to recall it multiple times while we see a second Wilford appear in the background, despite the fact that Abe is currently talking to the other one (yet another fun fact: the Wilford we see in the background of this disappears behind some tinsil curtains and we find out that this is actually connected to In Space, the room we see him again in directly connected to that which, holy fucking shit Mark what the hell these were produced like so long apart from each other,,, I mean I suppose they were written closely at the same time but what the butt man)

As Wilford claims he's never killed anyone, trying to get a sip out of martini glass he pulled literally out of the air, Abe tazes him and throws him into the back of his seat where we find out that Wilford, ever the enigma, can not only hear Abe's inner monologue but can internally comment on it as well, the both of them having an internal conversation much to Abe's shock and confusion - also Wilford continues to try to get a drink from his glass but never is able to :(

in Abe's panic he tazes Wilford again and next time we see them it's in the detective's office, Wilford bound to a chair in a cartoonish manner while he interrogates him, and it's when he accuses him for the murders he's commited and shows him red string board from Who Killed Markiplier that we see Wilford finally realize who he's talking to as he goes ".... A-.. Abe... Abe! Abe it's been years - how are you? How are you doing? How's the family?" and Abe loses it on Wilford, blaming him for everything that's gone wrong in his life in his pursuit to chase down Wilford (It's hilarious that this aired before my Lupin III hyperfixation because this is literally Zenigata and Lupin III, it's crazy, this video is literally why I had that obsession and it's insane to me - it all leads back to Markiplier, my pipeline is fucking linear at this point)

Wilford basically ignores Abe as he manages to get free from his binds as he refuses the law of nature and physics, staring at the wall with pictures and news paper clippings pinned about, and Wilford begins reminicing about the past and his sorrows - also he makes a joke about how Celine would "carve his heart out" which I think is a parallel to how Actor Mark said the same thing to Damien with a VERY different undertone

Also, we're getting close to the territory of where my absolutely infuriating hatred for how good Mark is at storytelling and leading us on and how well he knows his fanbase so fair warning to that, like how the screen has a rubberband glitch with a frame - ONCE, THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE FILM and it's when he's talking to Abe about how his memories tend to get jumbled and fuzzy from all the years and also probably the fact that space and time don't affect him properly anymore

But also Wilford starts to bring up memories, dismissing Abe's doubting or misremembering as things that "probably haven't happened yet", again, this man transends space and time I CAN'T

AUGHHHH

Wilford is an enigma and I love him for it he's chaotic whimsical

Later Abe, in a jumpscare as Wilford is suddenly in front of him shoots Wilford but it has absolutely no affect on him - we don't even see a gun shot wound or hole on his shirt as he gentle silences the gun and kisses it like it's some poor child, pushing it down to continue talking to a very terrifed Abe who's now questioning everything he knows and believed to be true

Wilford starts explaining absurdism to Abe as he starts questioning reality, the detective blowing up at him again for practically ruining his life but Wilford starts asking Abe about their history - about how long he's been chasing him, how Wilford got away in the past, what their closest encounters were, and as Abe can't seem pin point any specific time besides the time of the WKM party, Wilford dawns on him that "no one can survive a bullet to the heart" and it all seems to click

And in the most infuriating scene of my life, Wilford offers Abe a release, a way to enjoy his life, as figures appear behind him, all adorned in a white mask with a pink mustache on it

I

It

That

WHOOOO

I must've watched that scene a HUNDRED TIMES BY NOW - and Mark keeps teasing it !! In Space did a small thing with it and even in the stream Mark did of explaining WMLW HE SAID NOTHING ABOUT THIS ??? WHY IS HE KEEPING THIS SO TIGHT TO HIS CHEST I'M GONNA EXPLODE

Fuck the FNaF timeline THIS IS MORE CONFUSING IT MAKES ME SO

AUUGHH

[REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]

Anyway, the video ends with Abe shrugging, giving in and dancing to the end credits music as the color is saturated once again, the cast partying and dancing together with the credits rolling

God fucking damn do I love Markiplier

I wanna try and sum up my different autistic obsessions with the different characters cause I love Darkiplier and Wilford in very different ways

Dark I love in the way of "I want to intimatey know your character so badly that if someone were to ask me how does Dark feel about bowling? I could give a three hour powerpoint presentation on why I think he would enjoy it"

Wilford I love in the way of "FUCKING SCRIMBLO !!!!!1!!!1!!111! THE AUTISM !!1!!1!1!!11!111!1! OH MY GOD !!1111!!!1 FUCK I'M GONNA RIP YOU INTO A MILLION PIECES I LOVE YOU SO MUCH RAAAAAAAAAAH"

Personal headcanons birthed from this series:

Because Celine dabbles in the occult and The groundskeeper had swore never to go into the manor save for one reason and that reason being suggestively demonic or otherwise supernatural on top of the fact that Damien was questioned to secretly be a demon, I believe Dark, having Damien and Celine's soul within one body, might be some demonic force, whether it be a demonic ritual that created Dark or Dark being a different demon entirely, my personal headcanon/theory (kinda ?) is that Dark is a demon or demonic source

More specifically, I mentioned a while back that Tom is a demon of Wrath, well I believe Dark to not only be a demon of Pride, but the demon of pride

But this is more than a headcanon than a theory so I don't think anyone'll bite into this more than me lol

EDIT: The video where Santa has the blurred face did come from a charity livestream ! it came way after MTV though, roughly like two years after during the "Stand Up To Cancer" Livestream as one of many milestone reward skits

EDIT 2: Remember how I said I was gonna talk about Porniplier later? Cut due to time, I cannot go any further than three days to write this my autism may be insane but even it has it's limits

[southshoretides]

There was a post that went viral here a few weeks ago where a popular user talked about her father, who would insist he is not anything other than "neurotypical" despite having stringent high standards about seemingly trivial things, sticking to a very strict schedule, hoarding certain things, and so on. She went on to describe other family members and herself all having a seeming touch of the Endies, with the clear implication that these were not (or at least not merely) choices/eccentricities/learned behavior but fundamental differences in brain function from the normies. It reminded me a bit of my mom, who has 250+ birthdays/anniversaries/etc. of family, friends, and even former co-workers recorded on her wall calendar, on her tablet, and (99% of the time) in her head, insists on having no fewer than three clocks visible from her living room chair, and has probably consumed every available televised documentary on John F. Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II. For my own ND credentials, well, here I am posting on my tumblr sideblog, so.

Another recently-popular post gave a measured counter-argument against viewing everything through the lens of mental illness, ending with something like "Don't ask yourself 'Am I X?' Ask yourself 'Is viewing this situation through the lens of X-ness useful to me?'" So, my question is, to what extent is the neurotypical/neurodivergent framework so popular on tumblr useful for understanding people?

There was a big pushback on the 'NPC' meme when it emerged from 4chan: the idea that some percentage of people don't have internal experience, they just kind of mindlessly fill their social role, was too misanthropic and (for me at least) contrary to lived experience to countenance. And yet, the way some people in more progressive spaces talk about normies, allistics, or neurotypicals makes me wonder how much they actually disagree with the underlying assumptions, vs. the phrasing/framing, and what kind of monstrous caricature of 'normal people' they carry with them as a mental default.

Because in posts like the first one, where having unusually high standards about things, or unusual hobbies that most people don't share, or presenting oneself in unusual ways is all due to (or, at least, plausibly explained by) some kind of neurodivergence or another, then what is left for neurotypicality? Apparently it means mindlessly filling one's social role with little-to-no internality, having no particularly unusual qualities of one's own.

"How Tumblr bloggers talk about normies" is something pretty far removed from the levers of power at this point, but my suspicion is that viewing seemingly-mundane things through the lens of a bimodal normalbrain-weirdbrain distribution is in 2023 about where viewing everything through the lens of a bimodal oppressor-oppressed distribution was in 2013: something the internet's cool kids were already exploiting for self-promotion purposes, the internet's uncool kids were already tired of, and the normies were just beginning to notice. To the extent that I can, I want to encourage the formation of healthy discursive norms for the culture that's coming, not the one we left; to try and stop the in-motion revolution before it goes too far instead of complaining about how the last one went too far.

And I think we are on the verge of a genuine revolution in mental health, where behaviors and social interactions and norms that previous generations took for granted are picked apart and reclassified as a myriad of different brains working in different ways. This is not an anti-psychology post necessarily; being able to say "I have an anxiety disorder, and it affects me in these ways" is certainly more legible and efficient than "I am different from others in these days and I can't understand why or whether they might be connected," especially for the purposes of seeking treatment or finding community. But legibility and efficiency are not the only terminal values in life, if they're terminal at all.

The 'NPC logic' where you can divide people into Ensouled Beings and Automatons and luckily you and your friends and all the people you admire are in the first group, is a dead end. I don't even mind having a few genuine misanthropes running around--keeps people honest--but more than it leading invariably to hatred and bitterness over the Automatons not knowing their place, I just don't think it's true. I don't see the evidence for either the hard version (genuine lack of internality) or the soft version (most people are dumb and do what they're told) in my interactions with people who most of you would call normies, and I find it hard to believe that a lapsed-Catholic test-prep-tutor living in the suburban Midwest would encounter fewer normies than the average Tumblrite.

But OK, say it's a hard-truth-about-humanity thing. Where do you even draw the line in any meaningful way? My mom also enjoys repeating a lot of the same jokes and observations about everyday life that I've heard before, to the point where it drives me a little nuts sometimes. Is this the autistic desire for routine and comfort (good and valid) or the pointless, weaponized normie ritual of small talk (bad and oppressive). Does the JFK/Queen Liz stuff rise to the level of "special interest" (cool and relatable!) or just the same shit that lots of boomer white middle-American ladies in their 50s/60s are into? (cringe!) I suspect the answer to valid-or-not type questions (for her or anyone) hinges basically on how much you like or respect someone already, which is the fate of almost any ethics system that makes nods to progressive/liberal thought but still wants deep down to put a moral gloss on inborn qualities. Vibes, once again, are not a substitute for a rigorous ethical system.

One possible way to square this circle is to go the opposite route; instead of trying to squish eccentrics into a normie-mold, just say that "normal" is a meaningless concept. Everyone is weird in their own way, and very few people are "average" along every single metric--and the few who are are, well, weird! Which is a reasonable take, but also makes the NT/ND bimodal distinction pretty meaningless itself.

But more than that, if 'normie' has any worthwhile definition, I think it's something like "Someone who is worried about fitting in with their peer group relative to time-and-place cultural norms", and that's something that's never going away. People are going to want to be normal, not in the hyperconformist Mrs. Grundy/speaker-at-CPAC way, but in the sense of "Am I doing the right thing? Will my life choices lead to satisfying outcomes? Am I going to be shunned or exiled if I make the wrong ones?" Some people are always going to have the wherewithal to simply reject that entire framework and go do their own thing, but an ethical system that requires people to do that in order to be taken seriously as moral agents...do I need to explain why that's doomed to failure? Or to put it another way, I think it's beneficial to both the normies and the weirdos to have a cultural understanding of normality that goes beyond just "What the neighbors think"/"What my dead Catholic grandma would think".

So, in that light, is it helpful to view sufficient deviation from a (somewhat imaginary, somewhat self-serving) rump of non-agentic hyperconformists as evidence of neurodivergence? To whom is it useful to say "I really like collecting things and rewatching movies because I'm autistic, and I like the books and movies I like because I'm traumatized and depressed, and I like strict schedules because I have OCD about being late to things"? In my opinion, that healthy cultural understanding would include that "normal people" can have a "weird side" and it doesn't say anything about them necessarily--certainly it doesn't draft them into a war between normies and weirdos that they never actually wanted to fight in.

Personally, I prefer just "being a little weird", quirky, eccentric, etc. as a mental model. The above one does not make me feel seen and understood, it makes me feel like a lab animal. And to the people for whom it does make them seen and understood, the philosophical problem of people unlike that existing, and having different needs, should give them pause about using it as a universal framework.