#I need to do an inbox purge at some point.

[total-drama-brainrot]

I forgot how many assistant Noah and p!Noah asks I have just rotting away in my inbox.

My bad.

[bonesandthebees]

I'm not sure if any of this is as important to say as I feel like it is, but just in case, here it is.

Idk about you, but I'm really tired of having things taken from me because the cc's were abusive. I say this with an emphasis on the fact that supporting their victims and condemning their actions is far more important, that I'm not giving that man a single cent anymore. The most important thing the community can do is support the people he hurt. But It's still gonna hurt to purge my playlist because we, as a community, were lied to. And something I derived comfort from, especially in the wake of recent personal events, has been taken from me. Not by the community or by the people coming out; by him and his actions.

So seriously thank you for creating a space for people to talk about what's going on, because it's so easy to feel guilty right now for having feelings about this situation. Especially as a neurodivergent person whose main comfort is music, including music (and YouTube videos) he made.

I just feel like it's important to put this out there. The community as a whole needs to support the victims, but it's also okay to feel betrayed and it's okay to look at his songs in your playlist, dreading deleting them, for a while. No one will hate you for that. You're not a bad person for that. They're just songs or videos, but they're content that mattered to some of us. How dare he ruin that for all of us. How dare he.

Now that I've written a whole entire novel, please take care of yourself. I know I'm an internet stranger but I almost didn't write this because I think that it's important to emphasize that while I'm glad to see Tumblr users creating a space to talk for those of us who don't post and such, I also think it's way more important that your blog be a safe space for you yourself.

- a rambly anon 🪐

yeah, trust me, I'm fucking sick of this too. you're not selfish for feeling upset about deleting his songs from your playlist or not being able to watch vods of his for comfort anymore. you are not a bad person for having an attachment to someone who lied to his audience about who he was. you are human. you are allowed to be upset.

also, to veer slightly from your point but to bring something else up, while I know there are varying opinions on the community in this I personally don't think I want to let this make me stop hoping for people to be good. yes, it might seem like an endless pattern of people you like being revealed to be assholes. and for some people, they might want to leave the community to avoid that disappointment again. for me, I'm not going to put cc's up on a pedestal and expect them to be great people, but I'm not going to expect the worst from them either. keep my expectations realistic, but not pessimistic. content creators are flawed human beings like the rest of us, and sometimes they can be really shitty people, but sometimes they can be good people too. and I'm always going to hope for the latter.

and thank you for thinking of me. honestly the reason I've slowed down answering asks the past few days is precisely because I've been trying to take care of myself. I've gone up and down in terms of how I'm doing, and when I'm not feeling up to it I don't touch my inbox.

and despite everything that's happened this morning, I've had a good day. I got myself a cinnamon roll. I'm drinking green tea and it's sunny out. I saw flowers blooming on the side of the road and it made me smile. focusing on the little things, you know?

[britts-galaxy-brain]

Do you hear yourself right now! Poppy has never had cub art made of any of her fursonas! “She's admitted to sexually abusing an underage family member.” was when Pooppy was an extremely young child and recreated the abuse an adult was already doing to her. This is extremely common in CSA victims and is called COCSA. You defended Courtney Orchard to the death when she admitted to doing the same exact thing! The only reason you're calling Poppy a pedophile over it is because you’re a Milena wannabe. Given these blatant lies you told, why would I trust a word out of your mouth. If you're willing to lie about a tragic COCSA chain to hurt a trans woman, there's nothing you won’t do.

Do not tell me I didn't see what I saw with my own fucking eyes. Poppy posted images of Pepper in compromising positions, the same sort of common poses lolicons and cub artists use. On Twitter. That was part of why she purged it.

Poppy was 17 when she committed the abuse. She changed her story when people pointed out how fucked and unforgivable it was.

Courtney capitulated because Poppy had been badgering and coercing him for days on end, taking advantage of the fact that Courtney had JUST started unpacking some really dark fucking abuse and needed a platform to warn others about her predator sister. I can back that up because Poppy tried to do the same shit to me, then turned around and told her server I "reciprocated" when I very clearly did not.

You're listening to an abusive gaslighting PEDOPHILE.

Get the fuck out of my inbox.

[treacherousrift]

Same anon who asked your trans Sam childhood hc. See here are some things: Sam started going on hunts later than Dean and I believe that bc he’s transmasc and John being shit didn’t think girls could hunt. A crucial Sam thing is autonomy. Over his body in every sense. No John I’m your son. No my body shouldn’t look like this. I need to better stronger the best guy. Of course he eats mostly salad and works out, it’s another means of control. Both gender affirming and helps him be a better hunter. It proves something. Because his body has always been wrong. Wrong gender. It’s a depth of wrongness that’s cellular. To his blood and abilities from it. The pros and cons. He’s always felt like a monster. He feels terrible how much he loves the power and Control when he drinks demon demon blood. (Hc holy water & salt is itchy to him) He was born as a catalyst promise. His mother sold him to hells king. His mother burned for interrupting. Sent them on a hunt. He feels responsible despite it being Mary’s fault. He feels he deserves the punishment of demon blood. Whenever he met a girl he liked she was a monster. His first kiss was with a monster. Trans Sam is a rebel in every way. He’s a hunter who’s a monsterfucker and ends up booking of hell. Hc he drank demon blood again became hells king and still hunted in earth because he has purity issues. He needs to cleanse the world of evil since he can’t purge it from himself. Nothing felt better than when he accepted the demon blood in him and how thirty he is for it. How he loves being a psychic. He grew his hair out again bc when he was teenage boy he gave himself a buzz cut to look more manly. Later realized he missed his long hair and it has nothing to do with how much of a man he is. He’s stubborn and angry and has control issues and is obsessive about purity. He prayed everyday and the angels when he met them call him out by his blood. Just. Sam and purity and powers and being trans. Also gay. So gay. Like esp first five seasons with him always being the freak and something abt him just not aligning with the other kids who didn’t like the strange new kid. He’s a freak and I wanna make a home inside his ribs.

This is potentially the most thought out and important thing I’ve ever read in my inbox. Thank you so much for this I am thoroughly agreeing with this, it’s different and I like it, and I’m also thinking abt it a lot and will think a lot about it for a long time. And I like the point abt him being a rebel in every way because he’s also exceeding gender roles and gender constructs but also the conventions of who he is supposed to be morally? I love this ah so gay exactly

[bytebun]

📒🙏

Put "📓" or some other version of a book emoji into my inbox and I'll explain the plot of a fanfiction that I haven't written but daydream about.

hohoho ok. I feel like I need to give some context for this one.

Basically, I had a long time travel story idea that can be summarized as such:

Cody: supreme chancellor's haunted Alpha-17: what? Cody: [cocking a blaster] supreme chancellor's haunted

(in which Cody, accidental time traveler, immediately attempts to assassinate the nearest Sith Lord.)

My characterization of Cody, who is in many ways an everyman for the clones in a way that Rex very much isn't - is that he's caught somewhere between being a weapon and being a person. And for Cody in particular, he always has to be a commander before he's a brother. So in all these different ways this person of "Cody" doesn't exist without the war, and what the community around him needs from him (his duty), which is great fun when you take him out of it and give him a little shake. And when he realizes that he's never really had a choice in his entire life, that everything he thought he'd chosen was basically not really a choice at all... how does he go on?

The easy choice at those crossroads is to become a weapon - to define yourself by some mission, and lose yourself in its pursuit. (It's almost like religion, in a way - not derogatory but. giving yourself up for something greater, and making your suffering mean something - isn't that what humans want? To believe?) Like crazy murdering a Sith Lord. But of course, Cody on kamino, even half out of his mind with grief and anger, is going to pick his duty to his brothers first before doing a murder - for better or worse.

Ok all of that is the pre-amble. jaslkdfsdlkf.

I thought, ok so Cody is like this on Kamino. Because he's a man defined by what the people around him need him to be. Let's take him even further out of that - what happens if he gets dropped off somewhere else? Where his duty to his brothers is not so immediate, not so present?

AU of my own AU where our dear Commander, in control of himself for the first time since Order-66, wakes up on Tatooine.

And the nearest future-Sith is Anakin Skywalker, age 8.

He ends up with his blaster pointed at this child ensconced in his mother's arms, trembling with fear, helpless. It would be pitiable, if he didn't know exactly what kind of monster the boy would grow up to be.

Commander Cody of the 212th Attack Battalion, under one General Kenobi, had never killed a child. Would never.

Purge trooper CC-2224 never had a choice.

He has one now.

[dreamii-yume]

I would like to thank these kinds of anons and everyone else for checking in on me every few weeks and saying great things about my work up until now, despite the fact that I haven’t been active for a while ☠️

I’ve been gone for almost six months now, and I just want to clarify that I am not dead, my darlings (Yay~) ☠️ Some of y’all in my inbox are worried that something might have happened to me and while I do appreciate the concern, I’m really just trying to survive right now lol

I fucked up college a little while back and it made me just a little bit depressed, This is a lie, I cried myself to sleep for three days straight so I proceeded to distance myself from the world in order to cope. It’s a toxic trait of mine, y’all don’t have to worry about it lol I got into a really bad place, and I couldn’t find it in me to enjoy the things I used to enjoy for a while–That includes hornii and writing (Yes, those are my only strengths, please don’t laugh)

I guess I became so lonely at some point and in desperate need of a distraction from the big sad, so I tried to exploring back on my hobbies. Thankfully, I’m slowly getting myself back together and I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel I’m not dying, I swear to God– I’m reverting back to how I once before, and would like to feel the thrill of Hornii again lol

Anyway, I may not be as active as how I once were, but I still love writing hornii and would like to keep this blog as a safe place for me to archive my own ideas, as well as other darlings who have the same mindset and interests as me.

…With that said, however, I will now announce that I will not take any more Sinfic requests, but would be open for some suggestions and ideas for those who just wants to talk about Hornii. I no longer want to stay in just a single fandom, I want to explore! I want to write more Yandere Non-Con about characters that people rarely touch! (The previous Blue Lock Sinfic was the result of this impulse) I’m willing to learn more for the sake of Hornii.

Finally, I will also soon purge my inbox as every time I see it, I get burnt out and it overwhelms me, though it really pains me to do this. I had wonderful anons whose message/requests/ideas never got reply from a long time ago because I don’t know what to say and it just made guiltier and guiltier each day.

With that said, (Whew) Thank you for understanding! I hope you have a good day, and stay Hornii as always~! 👀💦

[omegapausestuck]

So you killed Homestuck². Let’s talk

Hello, hello.

It’s me; 5ider.

Now, I know that you all don’t care about me, and maybe you shouldn’t, but I have been one of Homestuck’s most stalwart supporters. I’m one of the old guard, from back when the MSPA forums were still up and running — when "Karkat steals hands” was still considered the peak of comedy... and I have waded through Andrew’s knee-deep bullshit through hell to high water, patiently waiting for the pay-off that will surely someday come. I do this because I believe that there is something pure, and genuinely wonderful, buried beneath all the self-effacing and irony and melodramatics; and I wanted to make sure, that as long as there is one more person out there with any level of investment with this fandom, I would be there to show them that we care.

Through all the pauses and retcons and hiatuses and everything, I have remained steadfast. Even during the godawful GIGAPAUSE, where I watched in horror as hundreds of my friends wandered away to greener pastures, I made a promise to post something wholly original EVERY DAY!—just to keep the fires of fandom burning even a little bit longer—and when it turned out that the thing lasted more than the three weeks I feared it would, I never relented. 365 days gave 365 new pieces of content; despite the inexplicable strain it put on my mind, my body, and my spirit. I wound up in the hospital for overwork, and I never even mentioned it. The posts still flowed nevertheless.

Now, like I said, I have been a part of this community for a very long time, and I have, indeed, born witness to all manner of malice, and childish savagery. Of course, I’m nowhere near happy with the stories I’ve been given. I’ve been very vocal about my reservations, and my dissatisfaction, along the way; but I have always been a staunch believer in the respect of your fellow peers. You can only expect to be heard when you take the time to listen to others! No belittling, no bullying, no exposing, no.. no fuckeries!!! As such, I made a specific choice not to lend credence to these people, and neither respond nor denounce their behavior, because it’s not my job to be your babysitter, and it’s not my responsibility to educate other thoughtful, intelligent people in how to carry themselves. I just figured that eventually people will figure it out, and those who can’t play nice will eventually burn out all their own goodwill. I wanted to magnify what is good, and uplifting about us. By spotlighting the best of us, those with intent to spark wildfires of confusion and rancor might see that there were other ways to express their feelings. Powerful ways. Maybe even forms that are Objectively Beautiful.

But I can’t keep quiet any longer. I fear that my silence has allowed others with more short-term, violent ambitions to fester forth, and grow, unchecked, with time. I’ve seen hosts descend on misinformed, ignorant, and even innocent parties; with ruthless ferocity, unquenchable in their bloodlust and fervor. I’ve watched you bully, and gaslight, and purge, and raze through people; using them up like they’re no more than firewood to be cast into the pyre of this never-ending witch hunt for “equality,” and ..what’s that other one? “Employee benefits of the what pumpkin team?”

What a load of bullshit.

Many of you just want an excuse to go vent your frustrations at someone, and you’ll use any hot buzz word you can get behind to lash out with your venemous tongue. Thousands of people descended on Hussie at one point because of some weird “Narrative Rights” meme, and once those ides were thankfully depleted, you doubled down and kept deluging his account with more and more words, “for the joke.” What purpose does it serve to send a windfall of pustulant notifications in a volume so grand that you can be absolutely certain that he won’t be able to apprehend it all?! All he can do is ignore you. Perhaps if a couple hundred meaningful messages were sent his way in a non-confrontational matter, he might be able to process them. Maybe he might even consider them, and eventually come to an understanding. But the way that we spearhead monolithic campaigns against people like an orchestral carpet-bombing of these people’s inboxes and notification feed! IS NOT CONSTRUCTIVE! A person drawing a picture of a he/him John Egbert IS NOT RECPTIVE! A writer involved in a fandom they are highly passionate about IS NOT VINDICTIVE! These are human BEINGS, you guys! They are people! Just like you or me! No one deserves to be crucified in this way! It doesn’t matter how much you dislike the thing that they’ve done, It doesn’t matter how inspired by emotions or opinions or trauma or sorrow, or any other such justification you dream up! You cannot talk to people in a way that is designed to crush their spirit, and bury them under a bottomless deluge of vitriolic malevolence. Every hour of every day. Twenty-four/seven. Day in, day out. Without ceasing.

You are not their Executioner.

You have no right to cast judgement on these people you have never met, and know nothing about. Very few of you have tried to initiate a genuine conversation with any of these people you are so consumed with resentment towards. Very few of you care. It needs to stop. I’m sick of seeing it. I’m sick of hearing about it. I’m sick of fearing it. You’ve harassed your way into your own detriment, and the bad faith of a few hundred-thousand has forced all the millions of us to suffer. MAYBE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT HOMESTUCK^2. MAYBE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT HIVESWAP. MAYBE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT PESTERQUEST. MAYBE YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT PSYCHOLONIALS. BUT MANY OF US DO. AND IT IS NOT YOUR RIGHT TO SPEAK FOR ALL OF US. GROW UP. SIT DOWN. LISTEN.

that’s all

[titleknown]

have you seen sarah z's new video? i feel like it goes hand in hand with what you say a lot about the concerning movement of proshippers/anti antis (obvs your stance is a lot more nuanced, which i appreciate! but like thats the best way i can summarize it)

Oh, I did in fact watch it (Tho, it is not new anymore, I just have a very backed up inbox), and I do agree with a lot of the conclusions, in terms of the core premises  Tho, however, I do have some quibbles with it that I may as well tag in @dingdongyouarewrong if only to have a civil dialogue....

...Or, as it became while drafting this, diatribe because wow this got long.

Firstly, while I agree with the general idea that “anti” and “proshipper” are way too broad, I also think that the latter is significantly more united as a “side” due to…

Well, basically Ao3. Which has a tons of racist shit along with the likelihood they may have actually got their wholeass start due to racefail and even beyond that their support of pedoshit, and ; most releveant for this discussion, an actual institutional power to give their positions actual material impact and to create a “party line” to toe.

Meanwhile, all of us lumped into the so-called “antis” can do is yell, often at each other, because we don’t have our own Ao3. The grand majority of “Maybe we shouldn’t let NAMBLA shit on our archive” people I've seen fucking hate the “The Only Solution Is Federally Mandated Midna Porn Ban” people, to give an example.

But, the point is, it’s way easier to say one side is defending pedos if the hill they’re dying on is an organization giving them the ability to operate freely.

The second quibble is the whole… well, while I agree that a lot of the idea of  “irredeemable media” as a critique is incoherent when looking at the media in and of itself, the way people apply the label makes more sense when you see it as targeted less at the shows themselves and more at the social circles around the shows.

IE, it’s not that the shows are irredeemable, it’s that the people who like them are, and while that can be… overly-harsh on the direct text, it often comes from a very real place of getting a full-frontal face of the way that people use those seemingly “lesser” failures as carte-blanche for way more extreme shit, or even; like; just this hellish Florida-esque microagression-swamp few mortals could withstand.

Which, for the record, is why the colonialism Thing RE: the Avatar shipping shit mentioned in the video has become such a thing, because nobody in fandom in general gives a shit about imperalism, and that’s just a conveniently visible opening for BIPoC affected by it to vent.

Or why I’m so pissed at people saying YA authors had brainrot from their subject of choice for criticizing the morals of the classics when there were PoC in the fucking reblogs talking about how the white students in their class used it as an excuse super fucking racist to them, I’m still super mad about that.

The point is, like, as much as everybody loves Naobokov, his essay “Good Readers And Good Writers” is horseshit, media criticism cannot be isolated from the social circles they are in like a goddamn bubble, otherwise you get blindsided by shit like Gamergate or; to be more relevant again; Racefail.

So, I kinda reject the idea that so much of this comes from a hatred of being challenged, and while defending transgressive art, we need an answer to the tumors like; say; fandom racism or pedoshit, or even the “soft” defensiveness that lets the more extreme forms flourish. And I do mean tumors, because they are like a healthy concept (freedom of expression) turned to something strangling and grotesque...

...Tho, this is presuming fan-run platforms (Ideally ones better than Ao3), shit like Strikethrough or the Great Porno-Purge Betrayal by @staff is still godawful and should be roundly condemned.

But yeah, as… baroque as my quibbles are, I still do find a lot to agree with, because the point about how this conversation as it is is basically the death of nuance is vital, ditto for the points about the problems with the proshipper movement.

Hell, as much as I quibble with the whole view that people who call themselves “antis” just don’t want to be challenged, I have seen at least a few people who were real dickweeds about it, and the internet is being gentrified and sanitized, albeit as friend of the blog @pbscore has pointed a lot of people are way too quick to blame The Kids for what Men In Suits are doing.

I also may as well mention, for further reading, thelillithmachine is doing a series of posts on it, and their first one is also quite good in terms of nuance!

[bittydragon]

Update Time!

I do a lot of these don’t I?

So now that I’m starting to try and get back into being more active, I’m gonna change a few minor things regarding requests

So up until recently, I’ve had requests closed as I tried catching up. It came to the point where everything was just sitting in my inbox and drafts for way too long, like, I had some stuff in there for over 6 months. I ended up purging most of my inbox due to the growing stress of leaving stuff alone for so long. Admittedly, I feel bad about some of the ones I deleted, but at the moment I needed to relieve myself of stress.

So I am now officially reopening requests! Prompts and oneshot requests are open for you guys to send in. When the writings are shorter, I will still use the #drabble tag. Those are just the smaller writings that I personally don’t warrant as one of my normal oneshots. The drabbles still won’t be named. Drabbles also won’t be found in my masterpost unless I find plenty of time to work on that. I will try to start using #bitty writes instead of #bitty reply for the drabbles, to help find those writings a bit easier instead of cycling through every single ask I’ve answered (I realize that is a pain... I will never search my blog with that tag again unless necessary...)

Now, this does not mean every single prompt/request will get a story. I will however, try my best to answer them all with ideas at the very least. I hope y’all don’t feel demotivated over sending asks because of that. I am going to make attempts at writing if I believe it is a prompt/request. Understand though that I am not required to write for everything, as that mindset from readers is what took me out of the first few fandoms I tried writing for. People have gotten upset when I didn’t write their request in a timely manner, effectively pushing me out of fandoms. I am happy to say that this fandom has been by far the kindest fandom in this regard. Everyone is constantly telling me to take my time, something nobody else in other fandoms took the time to do.

So thank you. All of you. I am excited to try getting back into writing more, especially since it looks like I won’t be slammed with classes this upcoming semester! I have already taken an ask I was sent and am in the middle of writing something for it, so except something little to come in the near future!

[fattlestacks]

(Just gonna answer this way ‘cause it might run long and Tumblr’s reply system suuuuuckssss... also [redacted artist name] ‘cause I don’t need to bring another artist into my bum out session, haha)

Thanks. :) You’ve always been very supportive of my work and I really appreciate it! Especially on days like this. I don’t know if you’d wanna be named so I left your name off the comments.

As far as my activity goes... my output is probably my best selling point... I do try to do at least one drawing every day which is a good amount, I think. It doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the aim.

As far as the Tumblr purge goes, it seems irrelevant to my experience. Yes, traffic has slowed down some and things have been harder to find/search for but like I said, this has been my experience for many years, long before the Tumblr purge happened. I also follow a good number of chubby kink artists here and from my observations, they have no problem getting 300-1000+ likes on their artwork so... Even many of the artists I have as mutuals, I share their artwork, they share other peoples’ artwork, they never share mine. I don’t really know what to make of that other than it’s not Tumblr... it’s me.

Same with Twitter. We all moved over there at the same time, all of us started fresh over there and most of the chubby kink artists I know/follow there have double to triple the amount of followers that I do now and have no issues getting huge amounts of like/retweets on their work. I don’t know what to make of that either other than, you know... it’s me. 

And this isn’t exclusive to artists who draw super sizes (though yes, those artists will always be more popular in the community than someone who draws realistic or small chubby kink sizes) the majority of chubby kink artists I follow draw smaller sizes. Not all of them of course, but most of them. That is what I seek out after all...

My experience with DA was much of the same, I’m afraid. I never had a huge following there either, despite that being the site I was on for the longest. My work wasn’t very popular, I struggled just as much for any sort of attention there as I have everywhere else. But a lot of what chased me away from DA (other than for whatever reason their site always made my art look grainy and awful) was just that it seemed like the chubby kink community there, while active had started to emphasize way more on like huge farting blobs and such (which like, if that’s your thing, no shade. It’s just not for me). Every day on DA was just another sweaty farting blob in my inbox after another and it got to be too much. I very rarely see that on Tumblr or Twitter. 

I don’t really know what to do about any of this, other than feel bad about it and keep chugging along I guess. I know I need to just come to terms with the fact that I will never really be a popular artist. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing... being relatively obscure is probably a blessing when it comes to social media. I’ve seen enough popular artists being harassed and it’s definitely no fun.

Still... I do wish the other chubby kink artists wanted to be my friends, haha. At the very least. But they all don’t seem to like me for whatever reason.

[babyybitchhh]

Announcement

Alrighty, then. This post has been a long time coming so lets get right into it.

After much deliberation, I've decided not to push the self destruct button. I thought about it. Oh, when I say I was SO damn close to deleting this entire blog and all my fics right along with it. I'm frustrated and angry with myself, and I can't exactly say I'm doing well atm, but I know when things start to get better I'll want to write again, in earnest, and then I'd have to start over from scratch. Egg all over my face. Clown shit. We don't know her.

BUT. I think its clear to any and all that this is not working. It's just not. I expect too much of myself, for starters. And when it feels like others expect a certain level of performance from me that I just can't nail consistently due to my own ineptitude, my brain powers off. Is it some kind of executive dysfunction? Is it a fear of failing? A fear of success? Plain old anxiety? Who knows! I certainly don't. Whatever it is, it's hanging over my head like a guillotine. I'm beyond stressed and barely staying afloat irl, but then when I turn towards what should be a fun and therapeutic outlet all I see are expectations.

"When will you post the next chapter" on works that I WANT to finish but yet fear putting out a subpar product for and disappointing people.

"Will you write a follow up piece" for works that I WANT to expand on but don't know how to in a way that will make everyone else happy, let alone myself.

"Are you working on my request" for WIPs I have partially drafted and yet no way of knowing if that person - or anyone! - will even enjoy it.

I honestly feel guilty working on my own ideas instead of the multiple prompts in my inbox. I'm pretty sure that's part of my malfunction with my Ogun fic and others like it that are close to being done but remain unfinished simply because I'm thinking about what everyone else wants. It'd be one thing if I could just churn out content without a second thought but I can't. Like, it genuinely upsets me thinking that people are stuck in limbo waiting because I'm too chicken shit to just go with the flow instead of obsessing over every single line of text to the point of nausea, all for the sake of putting out "quality" content. I feel bad. I want to enjoy the writing process again, just like I did when I first got back into it with OsoSan. I shouldn't have started taking requests if I wasn't going to deliver, I know, and I sincerely apologize for my lack of foresight but it is what it is. I can't change the past. But what I CAN do is start fresh. So, long story short, there are going to be some changes coming to this blog.

A total revamp. I'm going to do an overhaul on the whole thing so don't be surprised when it starts to look different. I'm going to work primarily on navigation and organization, and try to tidy up a bit.

I'm turning off anon. Both because people looking to have a go with writers aren't so brave when that's no longer an option and also because I want to get as far away from those expectations as possible. I wont be reading or responding to comments on AO3 anymore for that same reason. I love you guys, and you're more than welcome to talk to me in DM's if you're more comfortable that way, but the long list of asks wanting to know wtf I'm doing in my spare time if not writing this or that is doing more harm than good.

I'm getting rid of the requests page and also purging any that I haven't already started working on - hopefully once I get into a better groove I'll actually be able to finish them, because I genuinely would like to. I really am sorry to everyone who's been waiting for their request to be fulfilled but I'm clearly not talented or confident enough to juggle my own ideas with someone else's. Maybe at some point in the future, when I'm a better writer, I'll start taking them again and we can all be happy.

And finally, I'm going to start experimenting with my writing method. As in, you're probably going to see shorter, less obsessively curated pieces popping up on my page that may not always be sexual in nature. I just really need to buckle down and work on this - all of it - and I'm determined to improve my skills even if it kills me. I have the urge to write every single day but it's hard when I'm the way I am and I've backed myself into a corner like this. I need to learn how to stop overthinking everything and just DO it. I know my productivity would increase and, with it, so would the overall quality of my work so I'm going to be focusing on different areas that need improvement. Not everything I put out will be good but that's part of the process, right? Right.

I totally understand if I lose followers for any of the above reasons, or even just personal ones, so don't hesitate to do so if you feel like you can't jive with this blog anymore. I appreciate you taking the time to read all this and I hope you understand my reasons for needing to do a reset on this page. This is exactly why I didn't want to start taking commissions and I would once again like to apologize to anyone I've let down.

P.S. I've had this distinct feeling that certain people in the writing community are not happy with me for a while now and although I'm not entirely sure what I've done wrong, I would still like to issue a formal apology for any toes I might have stepped on. That was never my intention. I can't claim to be a saint by any stretch of the imagination, but I have no ill will towards anyone. If its about the patreon I subscribed to and then left a month later, it had nothing to do with the author in question. I just belatedly realized I had more money coming out of my account than I could handle at the time and yes that weighs heavy on my shoulders. If its about the way I suddenly disappear in private chats, that's also something that shouldn't be taken personally. I genuinely have a hard time keeping up conversations with people, and I feel like a bother more often than not. If it's about the discords I join and then never participate in, see the above. If its about the way I fangirl or enthusiastically support some writers but not others, I never meant any harm by it. I just can't conceivably read everything that comes across my dash and, yes, my favorites are prioritized. Either way, whatever the grievances may be, anon will remain on until I start the revamp process some time tomorrow night so if whoever wants to air out their problems go for it. I probably wont post them but I will read them and try to learn from them, so have at it.

[kinakoscenario]

Alastor x Demon! Reader ( SCENARIO ) Christmas Miracles.

꒰Alastor  ♡ Reader. ꒱ �� Hazbin Hotel

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘

New to Hell and struggling to let go of your mortality, you decide to convince your boyfriend to celebrate Christmas in Hell. 

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Request status in bio! Please check it before dropping something in my inbox. ♡ 

Thank you in advance for hearts, comments & reblogs on my work (◍＞◡＜◍) it’s always super appreciated.

› Alastor |   © Vivziepop ╱ I am in no way affiliated with Vivziepop & do not own the characters in this work unless stated otherwise.

Headcanons & Writing  | © Kinakoscenario ( Tumblr )

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𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄.  ↷

Hey, hey! Merry Christmas to those that celebrate it, I really wanted to do something with Alastor being soft and sappy with a Christmas-loving reader ;; w ;; i hope you enjoy this! 

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◍ To most everyone in Hell, Christmas was nothing more than an afterthought. Once you were dead, time was barely something that was monitored at all ━ It’s not like anyone was going anywhere. It was already over, what did you have to look forward to? What was the point? The only countdown that really mattered was the annual purge. Not really a holiday, not really something to celebrate. Hell didn’t have many (if any) holidays.

◍ You were a new arrival down here, just scraping a year now ━ It felt like no time at all since your last Christmas. No one would have thought it would have been the last one you celebrated with your family, alive and well. Not even you. 

◍ Each day you felt your humanity slipping further and further away from you. You were no longer a human and that was difficult to face. It wasn’t actually like you even deserved to be here! Wrong place, wrong time some may say. You were sacrificed by a cult. The leader of which… Well, it wasn’t something you liked to think about. 

◍ Maybe… Celebrating a human holiday, even in Hell, might make you feel a little less, you know, dead? It was clear to those around you that you were having trouble adapting to your new life and were still desperately clinging to the life you once had. You still wished to celebrate birthdays, you were afraid of the dark / bugs / spiders, and you would find yourself breathing out of habit. You didn’t need to, none of your friends did… they all said it would be a habit you would drop with time. 

◍  They all kept preaching to you that with acceptance, it would get easier. 

◍  During your time down here, you had become particularly fond of a certain overlord that was sniffing around the hotel. To your surprise (and everyone else’s) it seemed he had become rather fond of you too. It wasn’t an official relationship, he just seemed to tolerate you more than he tolerated the others. With the occasional romantic gesture. 

◍ You were the first person that made him feel something he didn’t quite understand — like a squeeze in his chest. Emotional intimacy was not something he was at all used to! But he was trying to get there. Have mercy on anyone who thought they could upset you and get away with it… Alastor had made it apparent that he would show no mercy to anyone who dared upset you. 

◍ With these newfound emotions, Alastor also had a hard time letting you down or saying no. So when you had brought up to him that you wanted a Christmas, as much as you had expected him to laugh in your face and flat out give “no” for an answer, he considered it for a few moments. His hand outstretched and took your face between his thumb and forefingers, crimson orbs focusing on your very best puppy look. The fact you felt like you needed to give him that look amused him. At least you didn’t see him as a push over just because he had made life in Hell a little easier for you, and you were still very much putting some effort and thought into the things you requested of him.

◍ “Dear, does our setting not take away from the entire meaning of Christmas?”

◍ He had tried to understand your request. Alastor could only remember one time he had celebrated Christmas, and it wasn’t in Hell. It was as a boy with his mother, sat by the fire on the 25th, the two of them bed-headed and still in pyjamas. A fond memory of his, though he didn’t remember the day well other than those few moments. He couldn’t even remember what laid within the decorative paper once he’d torn it open. 

◍ You knew Alastor wasn’t a demon who had ever had much interest in ANY holiday, whether it be celebrated in Hell or not, and even though many referred to him as “a mortal soul”, you found it hard to believe the demon you had grown to love was EVER human. Perhaps wielding a human body… but you doubted he truly understood what it meant to be alive. 

◍ After a few whimpers spilled from your lips, your small hands gently clasping against the wrist of the hand that held your chin, you noted that his shoulders bounced in a chuckle — perhaps in a frequency too low for your ears to pick up on. 

◍ How could he say no to you, to that face? That adorable little whimper. He let go of your chin and returned his hand to its place atop his microphone. You could practically hear the gears turning in his brain, weighing up the options. Should he let you have this? Would it be something beneficial for you?

◍ That was usually how he decided what demands of yours he would give into, and which ones he wouldn’t. Would it be beneficial for you, would it help you adapt more to THIS life? 

◍ “I just want to feel like me. Every day I feel my humanity, the person I used to be, slipping further and further away from my grasp. Like if I reached a little farther I could hold onto it just a little longer. I’m not ready to let go of it all yet, Alastor… This all feels like a horrible nightmare. The only silver lining to his dark cloud has been you…”

◍ You were practically biting back tears as you spoke, explaining why you desperately wanted to celebrate such a holiday. He was quiet once again, perhaps revaluating his first decision. 

◍ He hated seeing you upset. He hated seeing you cry. Not that you liked throwing a little pity party to get your own way, he was very susceptible to what we’re real tears and which were crocodile tears because he hadn’t given into you. He said yes. Yes to your very own Christmas in hell. 

◍ A flick of his wrist was all it took, a flash of green melting away, leaving behind heaps of perfectly placed faux snow, twinkling Christmas lights and reefs hung on every door. It was like something from a Christmas movie, the very scene before you unlocking some childhood memory you had forgotten you even had — the time you went to the Christmas light gardens at the snowy park with your parent(/s).

◍ You twirled around, the awe clear on your face as you took in the picture perfect sight. “Perfect” was really the only word to describe the scene before you… you felt your grin falter ever so slightly. Of course he noticed.

◍ “ You do not like it. “ 

◍ You felt yourself wince at the comment, a comment you were sure was supposed to come out a question. But he was right … you didn’t like it. There was nothing comforting or homely, loving, about this. 

◍ In a desperate attempt to prove yourself wrong you spun around once again, searching for the smallest piece of misplaced snow, a reef without a candy striped bow, a light that was out of sync with the rest or that didn’t work at all — you couldn’t find a single fault with it. 

◍ “ It’s not that I don’t like it!”

◍ “Then what is it?”

◍ “I was just hoping that the Christmas would feel a little more homely, and not as much magic would be involved. The fun part is putting UP the Christmas decorations! Sure they won’t be as perfect as this… but that’s what makes Christmas special. It’s a holiday you build together.”

◍ The smile on his mouth never faltered. Never, ever. Not even when you were rambling about the Christmas you wanted to put together yourself — with him. With the Hotel staff, your friends. The demons you had come to love over the last few months of residing there… 

◍ Another flash of green, the hotel walls were bare with nothing but Charlie’s family portraits littering the walls once more. However, the same decorations were crammed into boxes, red, green and white spewing out of the bursting cardboard. 

◍ You seemed happier at the sight of the tearing boxes than you did at the Christmas wonderland he had created for you in mere seconds. Some things just couldn’t be reached with magic. 

◍ It wasn’t long before the word had gotten around to the rest of the gang that you and Alastor were putting up Christmas decorations — They decided to join you. Charlie seemed the most enthusiastic about it! 

◍ In order, they joined Charlie & Vaggie ( together, coming back from business elsewhere ), Angel, Nifty and the last to join was Husk, who had earned himself the nickname of “Hinch” ( Husk / Grinch ). He was not in the Christmas spirit, however Nifty couldn’t reach the top of the portraits to hang tinsel from them! He enjoyed watching her struggle for a few moments, then it got sad. So he decided to step in and help! You think he liked it really.

◍ And what good would Christmas be without Christmas music, Santa hats and funky hair accessories, and ugly sweaters? 

◍ Alastor was not a fan of the itchy, red sweater. He also wasn’t a fan of the jingling reindeer horns that were placed on his head and the light - up red nose clipped to the tip of his, courtesy of Angel. But… he tolerated it for an hour or two. 

◍ He thought you looked rather adorable in a sparkly Santa hat … 

◍ It took hours to decorate the seemingly endless floors of the Happy Hotel, and by the end it was getting worse and worse. Even you were putting less effort into your own plan! It looked nothing, nowhere near, anything like what Alastor had created for you. The faux snow was too sparse in some places and over flowing in others, tinsel was messily draped and thrown everywhere and on every string of lights you could spot at least one that didn’t work. It was perfect! 

◍ Having left with Angel about an hour before you guys finished up the last few floors remaining, Nifty had baked Gingerbread demons. They were like gingerbread men, only some of these had limbs missing, extra appendages, and funny faces drawn on with icing. Angel was having fun drawing boobs on them. 

◍ You decided to watch horror movies in place of Christmas movies, since finding Christmas movies for rental in Hell was like looking for a needle in a Haystack. Hot cocoa, gingerbread demons, you were content on the lap of your love, one arm lazily holding your waist.

◍ None of you had gotten each other gifts, due to none of it being expected or plans, so instead you shared the happy memories you had! Happy memories in Hell were few and far between, but you were glad everyone could think of at least one to share. Even Husk joined in with this one!

◍ The night drew in, it got later and one by one the Hotel Staff retreated to their own rooms. It was just you and Alastor now… still perched on his lap, the cold dregs of once-hot cocoa remaining in your cup, you nestled your back into him. His arm tightened around your middle protectively, a purr sounding against your right ear. It always made you shudder. 

◍ “Thank you for making today special, Alastor.”

◍ You turned on his thighs to face him, smiling pink-cheeked up at him. He pressed a claw to your lips, his other arm leaving your waist momentarily. A flick of his wrist, a small flash of green — he was holding a piece of mistletoe. 

◍ You swore you felt your heart leap in your chest, whether that was even possible or not, you felt something. You felt a twinge of excitement and anxiety. You knew what he was after, and you had been hoping for this for a while too. 

◍ “May I?”

◍ His voice was much softer, a hand cupping the side of your face gently. Lips parted and ready for him, you gave a single nod before his mouth was pressed to yours. The kiss was slightly clumsy, yet it was passionate and needy. One hand on your face, the other half-heartedly holding up the piece of mistletoe as he melted against your mouth with a purr of pleasure.

◍ That was the first time he had kissed you, and for someone who didn’t know what he was doing too much, you had loved every second.

◍ “Merry Christmas, my sweet.”

[ceruleanmusings]

new year, same blog, new resolutions

At the end of last year, due to work, a lack of motivation, and a lack of energy, I took a step back from tumblr for a couple weeks. Sometimes I let a queue run and sometimes I just didn’t touch tumblr. And the way it made me feel, so free, without pressure, without feeling the need to keep up to everyone just for some form of attention or validation, is something I’m definitely going to carry into 2021.

Art (such as edits, manips, my own drawings, etc) will only be posted because I want to make them and because I feel like it. I don’t want to feel like I have to post these to keep myself fresh in others’ minds again. How I even got to this point I don’t even know but for the sake of my sanity and to recapture the love I have for my own work, it ends now.

I want to fall in love with my writing again and get excited for my ideas  rather than feel that odd sense of shame and panic when I open a doc or a wip that I haven’t touched in weeks that I feel like I have to update because it’s been so long. Nope. Not doing it. I write what I want, I write what I want to read, I write for me first and foremost. I will update when it’s done, whether that’s every week, every month, or every few months. I think I torpedoed my own motivation because I put stupid deadlines on myself and I now realize I can’t do self-imposed deadlines because, when I miss them, I feel like shit. I don’t want to make myself feel like shit when it comes to writing anymore. I love to write. I’ve been writing fanfics for over 15 years now. It’s time to have fun with it again.

Which brings me to prompts on tumblr. I’m a prompt hoarder. I ask for prompts even though I know I have a list I need to do. The issue is, when the days turn into weeks which turn into months of a prompt sitting in my askbox unfulfilled, it makes me feel so much shame. Shame because I can’t kick up my motivation to do it, shame because sometimes the inspiration I had at the moment of receiving said ask waned and I can’t seem to get it back, shame because people take time out of their day to send them to me and they just sit there collecting dust. And the more shame I feel looking at them if I answer a random question, the more I avoid them. So the longer they sit there, which makes me feel more shame, the more I avoid them. (I have some prompts that have been there for two years!!) It’s a vicious cycle I want to end. And I need it to end. I don’t want to feel this dread anymore. That being said, since it is a new year, with the exception of maybe a few, I’m going to completely purge my inbox of old prompts to start fresh and relieve this weight on my chest. I shouldn’t be feeling so much guilt anytime I log on and see them sitting there. (I really need to shed my people pleasing ways.)

I'm not going to wait for people to ask me questions to post my own thoughts and ideas and headcanons and such about my OCs and my ships/writing. If I want to gush about an OC? I'm gonna do it. If I want to delve into why a ship makes me giddy? I'm gonna do it. If I want to write a long post about about the importance of touch between a touch-starved ship? I'm gonna do it! I have to remember this is my blog and I curate and share the content that makes me happy.

Long story short, TLDR: I’m making my blog mine again, making this a space to get my creative juices flowing again, and making this a space where I can drop the weight of my day rather than adding more due to misplaced guilt and shame.

Thanks for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts! Happy New Year!

[unforth]

Year End Assessment of 2020 Goals...

I wasn’t using Tumblr at the start of 2020 (I was still on my post-purge hiatus) but I did set goals, in the PB Discord. Here they are, with my progress...(italics are my original goals as written early last January.)

Personal: Once both boys are in school in September, finally find the spoons to gets docs to figure out my fatigue issues. A lot of changes here. First, they're not both boys, turns out one is a girl, and I'm glad she corrected us. Second, because of COVID, she didn't go to school (the big still did, though he was off from March through mid-September), so that threw a wrench in things. However, I DID still make progress. In August I started trying to get a referral to psychiatry, to adjust my meds cause my depression spiked over the summer, and because I did some reading and it's possible my fatigue is linked to my undiagnosed but almost certainly existent ADHD/maybe autism? I've been trying for four months and have gotten no where, but my PCP did up my dose of anti-depressants and on their advice I'm taking sleep aids and I'm still tired all the time but it has been helping a little. So...progress, but more needed. Also, finally fricken deal with the mess of my savings account. I did this in like February. That was a win.

Community: I succeeded at comment on every fic I finish reading. However, that's not saying much, cause I failed at Try to finish reading more fics. I haven't been reading much at all...I don't think I've read a single fic since the summer (though I have read three danmei novels in that time so that's something). Reply to at least some of the comments people leave on my work. I started the year with a backlog of about 3300 comments in my inbox. It's currently at 2500 or so, so I made some progress on the backlog, and I answered at least a thousand new comments. I had it down to 1800 at one point but then I got kinda overwhelmed and fell behind again. I tried?

Creative: Post a new work or chapter every week. Even if it's just a drabble. Aside from December, which I intentionally took as a month off, this was a raging success. I managed to do this all year! Sometimes it was just a Tumblr post, but I do count long posts (like this one) toward my writing goals, and I posted something every seven days all year (except December.)

To expand a little more on the Creative goal...I intentionally didn’t set a daily word count goal in 2020 because I had set them in 2018 and 2019 and had failed dismally. Like, 2018 was so crazy (the little was born in February) I didn’t even keep good track of my writing (AO3 says I wrote 233k that year but that’s certainly inflated by finishing Halflings, I wrote closer to 150k I think, maybe less). And 2019 I did a little better but it was still just all over the place on a daily and monthly basis. The rhythm I’d developed by the end of 2019 was working, though, and it involved writing on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings when my MIL (weekdays) and wife (Sat) could watch the little. I’d planned to continue that and had a decent time of it in January and February...and then Covid happened and the entire schedule went to hell. I expected this to demolish my writing time and was mentally resigned to having the year be an epic failure, but that didn’t happen at all, because Covid also meant my wife was working from home, which meant she no longer spent an hour+ on commuting, and also there was a second adult around so I had more freedom to do shit. The end result is that I had the most productive year I’ve managed since 2015 (ie, before I had kids and when I worked full time at a job where I could write on the clock). 

I wrote 805,101 words in 2020. I also edited 1725 pages. What the actual fuck, guys? This came in waves, I noticed, where I’d be super productive for a couple months and then be burned out for a month or two - the biggest bursts where April/May, when I wrote Vermillion Ribbon and a combined 257k words, and October, when I wrote 115k words. Getting into the Untamed definitely helped my productivity. Man, inspiration felt goooood. Given how the rest of the year had gone, and that I ALWAYS have trouble being productive during December (it’s our anniversary, and Hanukkah, and my birthday, and Christmas, and New Years) I decided to take December off. I still wrote 10k but that’s peanuts by my standards, and I’m looking forward to getting back in the saddle on Jan 1. I have big plans for 2021 as a writing year...more on that probably tomorrow when I actually put my 2021 goals together (or maybe I’ll just do that now idek).

[nurfhurdur]

Hard Enough Left Modern AU

Because I miss Ruth

There hadn't been activity on that particular channel in weeks. Every few days Emily would log on, only to be dissapointed to see that nothing had changed. The only activity being comments from other viewers asking when to expect another video.

It had gotten to the point where she had checked to make sure she was still subscribed, and she edited her settings to make sure she'd get a notification the next time there was anything uploaded. It was another three weeks after that, that she had checked the time on her phone to see the banner across the screen.

Rushing through the last of her course work, she threw her backpack on the floor and reached for her tablet. She tapped a fingernail against the screen impatiently as YouTube finally loaded, hitting pause quickly so she could dig her headphones out of the nightstand drawer.

She'd binged Ruth's videos in the span of a few days. She didn't know how girls on YouTube did it, especially with a DIY channel. Starting back from the first videos posted a few years before, the video quality had improved, the girl's editing had improved, and she'd become more comfortable in front of a camera. From cooking, and baking, to personal desk size succulent gardens, or organizing and purging a closet, somehow the girl had made a name for herself on the internet and the most mundane of tasks seemed more interesting when discussed and explained on this girl's channel.

Comfortable in her bed, she finally pressed play and tilted her head as the personalized graphic of a constellation came on screen, which the girl had done a tutorial on also....

When did she have the time to do all this?

She was pulled from her thoughts, and rather startled, to see an exhausted looking version of the girl who ran the channel. Ruth's dark hair was pulled in to a messy bun, circles under her eyes and she looked like she hadn't taken the time to get out of her pajamas. What was most startling, was what looked like a medical oxygen tube beneath her nose.

Looking up into the camera, she waved vaguely with her usual greeting before continuing.

"I've never really shared this, because I never had any reason to-" She held up the small tank of oxygen sitting beside her and grinned flatly. "-but now I do.....so today's video is a bit of a PSA."

Her expression dulled and she stared at the screen a moment. "Get out of the shot."

"I'm not in the shot," came a low response from the corner.

Ruth addressed the camera again. "I have help today."

A few clips were edited in of Ruth and....was that Jesse Hudson?

The Piston Cup driver?

The two were figuring out where to stage Ruth's things, and Ruth watched in exasperation before telling him to leave her stuff alone and let her do it.

"I'm just trying to help."

"This isn't my first video or anything-....no, leave the tank there-"

"Wh-"

"Because that's where I keep it when I'm working here-"

The clip cut back to Ruth's slightly more professional expression and she reached for the camera. "For those of you who keep up, yes, that was Jesse Hudson. Jesse, say hello."

"Hey." He muttered with a glance up from his phone.

"We're twins. Before you flood my inbox, I'm older, it's not that exciting to have a celebrity sibling and-....." Ruth paused and stared at the screen again. "Did you just kick the footboard of my bed?"

Just barely in the frame, Jesse's Nikes could be seen as he kicked off from the bed again, spinning the chair slowly. "Yeah, cause you lie."

"I do not lie. You're- you know what, this is my video, and I'm not spending ages editing it so now the world can see how sulky you are."

The chair rolled further in to frame and Jesse only shrugged a shoulder before going back to his phone.

Ruth took a slow breath, for effect or because she needed it, it was hard to tell, before launching in to a lengthy explanation of why she had been absent for so long.

"I don't have an actual diagnosis, no one can give me a specific name for it-"

The more she spoke, the more emotional the video became. The natural lighting of her bedroom made the video a little surreal, the way it picked up the threatening shine in the girl's eyes wasn't staged, or planned, or even wanted. It was apparent that a portion had been cut. She looked like she had been crying, and instead of lazing in the background, Jesse was sitting beside her at her desk, chin rested on his hand as he looked between her and the screen silently.

"Some of you wonder how I have time to do any of this, some of you are very rude in your questioning of how I have time-"

The clip had been edited again and a more composed looking Ruth stared at the camera before speaking and glancing over her shoulder. "Our older brother thought there was a problem and I'm sure Jesse is getting lectured for something...."

She'd edited captions in, and color coded them for each brother. They appeared at the bottom of the screen while she made a show of her impatience on camera.

"Can you for once in your life-"

"She asked me to help-"

Ruth made eye contact with the camera a moment before continuing, explaining that her illness started back in the early 2000s. Doctors had originally treated her for bronchitis, then walking pneumonia. X-rays, blood tests, screenings and different antibiotics had all been tried with only mininal results. There was the possibility of an autoimmune disorder but they hadn't started that round of tests yet.

"I don't always have an oxygen tank, this is a bit of a new development...." She eyed the small cylinder beside her and it was obvious to see that she was still trying to wrap her head around it. With a shaky and watery smile she looked back at the camera.

"It's extremely hard to be looked at the way people do when you have something like this basically tied to your side."

She ignored her twins' return to his chair beside her.

"For some it's an insulin pump, for me it's an oxygen tank, for others it's chronic pain. We know we have it, while the general public tends to look at us like we're looking for sympathy or leaching the system. Just because it's an invisible disease doesn't mean it isn't there."

She looked at her brother before leaning back in her computer chair. Drawing her knee up, she wrapped an arm around it.

"Where had we gone the other day? Was it the grocery store-"

"Doctor appointment."

"Oh, yeah. It was." Ruth frowned. "I've been issued a handicap sign for the mirror of my car....they haven't sent the new license plate yet. I didn't even want to use it but it was a really bad day for me. My family convinced me to use it to park as close as possible, and then wanted to get me a wheel chair."

She pursed her lips, taking a moment to gather her thoughts and looked in to the camera.

"Some middle aged woman came right up to me and told me she thought it was horrible that I would do such a thing for a closer space. That as a young woman in my twenties, I was more than capable of walking the extra hundred feet and had no right to be using my grandparents' issued sign like that."

She looked away from the camera and swiped a tear from her eye. Barely seen on camera, it looked like Jesse might have nudged her chair with his foot.

"I was so upset I showed her my signature on the back, and then my driver's license. Just because I'm in my twenties doesn't mean-"

She shook her head and sighed while rubbing her forehead.

"It's hard enough for people like myself to be so restricted when we're supposed to be 'enjoying our youth'...don't be that person. Just.....take a moment to realize that we're not always how we appear. It's a smack of pride to even have to use that handicap sign. I just stared at it hanging from the rearview mirror, convincing myself not to take it back down for some complete stranger to then treat me that way?"

"That was the appointment they gave you the tank." Jesse muttered lowly.

"It was." She agreed. "Like that wasn't a hard pill to swallow already...."

There was a brief pause, and it was obvious she was mentally shaking herself. She diverted the topic somewhat, sitting up straighter and getting composed.

"So that's where all my time comes from. This started as a hobby a few years ago and because of you-" she gestured to the screen. "-faithfull viewers and subscribers, I've networked with a few different small businesses, I work from home. I have my Etsy shop, I've been able to review different products and be sponsored by those companies. If you haven't visited, be sure to check the links in the description. There's my Etsy shop, Instagram, Twitter, and links to my favourite channels."

As an afterthought, she added. "Maybe I'll do more videos on this, I'm not really sure. Leave your thoughts in the comments."

It was her usual send off, but for some reason it meant so much more after a fifteen minute video explaining something so personal.

"Remember guys, there's always a reason to smile. Until next time."

The personalized LittleDipperCo. appeared on screen alongside the subscribe button and list of links before the next video in the playlist began to buffer.

She hit cancel and set the tablet aside, trying to digest the last fifteen minutes. She'd ordered from the Etsy shop, LittleDipperCo. before and had recieved a little handwritten note alongside all the little items she'd ordered.

Stickers, bookmarks, a personalized mug for her dad, the earrings she was currently wearing....because she'd ordered so much and had been so patient, Ruth had added a few small items and a personal thank you card.

She was her favorite shop, there was something unique about LittleDipperCo.-creations by RuthAnne- that had always stood out to her.

Grabbing her tablet, she went back to find the link and glanced up at her open doorway in surprise when her brother appeared.

"Did you see what he's saying about me?"

"What who is saying-"

"Hudson thinks he's being funny-"

"Get off of Twitter, Alexander."

Alex held his phone up and read the time stamp. "An hour and a half ago-"

Emily glanced back at the upload time of Ruth's video. It was only about half an hour old.

Jesse Hudson was apparently roasting her brother in that video.

She blinked a few times and hid a smirk, busying herself with reaching for a hair tie. "Don't you have some kind of conference to get ready for?"

Another alert popped up as he made a show of leaving her doorway and Emily shook her head while clicking the link.

Let's lighten the mood! PSA- BLOOPERS AND REAL TALK.

[kurokoros]

Smut in Fandom Spaces: Taboos and Why People Write Them

Okay, two people said they wanted my thoughts on why taboo subjects are becoming more popular in fandom smut circles (and in the porn industry as a whole) and that’s good enough for me!

Warning: this post is going to discuss topics NSFW such as porn, rape/assault, dubious consent, incest, and pedophilia. Everything will be under a read-more, but I still want people to be aware of that if they decide to continue reading.

I’m going to preface this post by saying this post isn’t to insult anyone who does write about taboo topics. Personally, I don’t like it. I won’t read fics that romanticize certain topics. And while I’m not a morality purist by any means, I do think that incest and dramatic age-gaps shouldn’t have such a large presence in fandom spaces. That being said, I do understand why those fics have become popular to write, at least to a certain extent, and I, myself, have also upped the ante when it comes to writing smut fics.

I get it.

The presence of taboos in smut fics and the porn industry as a whole, are a direct result of porn becoming more readily available to people. I wouldn’t even call porn an open secret anymore, because there’s nothing secret about it in this year 2020. I’ve watched porn. Most of my friend’s have watched porn. My younger sibling has probably also watched porn at some point. It’s easily accessible, and so long as your mom and employer don’t know about it, no one really cares who does or doesn’t watch it.

I’ve been reading smut for the better part of a decade, maybe longer, but definitely younger than I should have been while reading it. At that time, AO3 was still getting off the ground, tumblr was still pretty quiet when it came to fandom spaces, and FanFiction.net was still the primary place a lot of people were reading fics. FF.net was, and still is, a smut purist website. I was there for the fandom explicit content purges. I saw all of the fics that were removed because they had even the smallest hint of smut.

At the time, writing even super vanilla smut on FF.net felt like you were doing something scandalous. I don’t think I ever read something more hardcore than “Character A ties up Character B” on FF.net, but that isn’t to say the smut wasn’t incredibly explicit. Harder kinks just weren’t necessary when you were already flirting with trouble just by writing basic smut. Most fandoms had maybe one or two big name fans (BNFs) who wrote smut, or were at least well known for writing smut, even if other members of the fandom did as well. These BNFs could write more softcore smut and still be hailed as “smut queens” simply because they were the only ones writing smut with any kind of frequency.

In my experience, this continued until about circa 2013-2014 when tumblr and A03 started to become bigger writing platforms than FF.net was at the time.

So, writers make their move to Tumblr and AO3 where explicit fics were and still are allowed to openly circulate in fandom spaces. For the first time, people are able to share their smut with no restraints. What used to be one or two BNF smut writers becomes a dozen. Everyone is writing smut because now it’s normal and there’s no real sense of shame in doing so. You get smut requests in your inbox. Your smut fics get more hits and kudos than your SFW fics. People just really like to read and write smut.

In fact, writing and reading smut becomes so normal that suddenly people aren’t getting the same feeling of taboo or shame when they post a fic or read about Character A tying down Character B anymore. You need something a little more extreme than that.

I can’t say for certain if the rise in non-con/dub-con smut came before BDSM leaning fics became popular, or after, but I know that seeing non-con/rape fantasy fics was definitely a huge shock when I first saw them in fandom spaces. It was the most scandalous thing ever to 16-17 year old me who was probably still too young to be reading smut fics to begin with. And you know what? Those fics were always pretty popular, especially on AO3. I didn’t get it. I definitely made anti posts about it back in the day. And now that I’m twenty-three and seen some shit in fandoms, I kind of get it.

Yes, I have read non-con/dub-con fics. Yes, I do still think rape isn’t something that should ever be romanticized. That being said, I do kind of understand the appeal. Not enough to ever write a non-con fic or rec one to people, but I do get it to some degree. A lot of non-con smut reads more like dom/sub smut with a powerplay aspect, but written by people who don’t give a shit about writing aftercare.

(Note: this is not me saying non-con smut falls under the category of BDSM smut, I’ve just noticed that there are some similarities I’ve noticed in the way they’re written.)

So, non-con becomes a popular smut sub-genre. It’s controversial. It gets people notes. People start to feel that little burst of shame again whenever they click post on that rape fantasy fic or consider clicking on that dub-con fic they keep seeing in the tags.

You know what else was popular around this time? That’s right: rape fetish porn.

Okay, so non-con smut gets popular and over-saturates the smut pool. People don’t feel quite so dirty for reading non-con anymore. The fics don’t necessarily lose their appeal, but it’s not as shocking to see them anymore. You see a non-con fic, sigh, and move on with your life because that’s just how fandoms are now.

Non-con just isn’t as taboo as it was before, so fandoms have to move onto the next thing. Again, I don’t know if adult/child smut was more popular before or after incest smut, but I think it was adult/child. I haven’t read any of it. I don’t want to. I think large age-gaps are gross and they’re a huge squick of mine. My parents were nine years apart in age, I’m allowed to say that.

So adult/child smut starts getting popular. Again, this plays into power dynamics. People could just write dom/sub fics instead, but I guess those just aren’t shocking enough for people, or BDSM is still seen as weird (even though people are literally writing about teachers fucking their students, but whatever), so instead we get age-gaps and unhealthy power-dynamics instead. Loli characters in anime are a huge part of this. Student/teacher, dad/babysitter, etc are popular categories on pornhub.

Oh, but what about when age-gaps stop being shocking to people? Boom. Incest. Incest is the new popular taboo subject in smut, porn, and general media. Most of the big ships in Game of Thrones have some level of incest (I blame GOT and that fandom for incest becoming popular in fandom spaces, but that’s just me). Jon/sa are cousins raised as siblings. Jon/arys are aunt/nephew. It was present in Star Wars when people were so sure that Rey and Kylo Ren were cousins, but people were shipping them anyway. “Incest” porn is probably the most popular category on pornhub right now.

By now you guys know where this is going.

People don’t read/write smut fics about non-con, age-gaps, and incest because they’re actually into those taboo things, they just want the shame and “dirty” feelings that come with them. Fandom spaces went from leaving everyone so repressed that some heavy petting was enough for people to get off on, and now there’s so much smut available that now people have to resort to some of the most inexcusable things in order to get that same rush.

I’ve noticed in a lot of fandom spaces recently that you’ll have large groups of smut writers that are all friends, and they seem to try to out kink one another with their fics, pushing boundaries until suddenly people are writing rape, or borderline pedophilia, or incest fics that get super popular.

And you know what, I’ve been guilty of this myself. I haven’t written any of the things I’ve talked about here, but I’ve definitely written kinkier fics with the sole purpose of having them be a little shocking. Fandoms are a very slippery slope when it comes to what’s acceptable. And it is so easy to want to push those boundaries because you know you’ll get a reaction if you do.

I’m not quite sure how to end this rant/analysis, but this is my experience with fandom and what I’ve seen over the last decade of participating in fandoms. Over time, you become desensitized to some of the “nastier” aspects of shipping and smut, and I think it’s kind of fascinating to look at the way things snowball. Things like non-con and incest are less about actually romanticizing the horrible things that happen to actual people, and more about feeling that shame people used to get while reading smut on their family computer back in the day. That’s my takeaway on all of this.

If you got this far, thank you for bearing with my thoughts!