#I understand its the internet and you can post whatever the fuck

[marswasntthere]

what in the FUCK is wrong with this fandom I am so fucking tired.

rant in tags ig - its kinda late so excuse if my ramble makes no sense.

[bayleaf-2]

Artist's rendition of walking up to a friend's house, happy I'm putting my energy toward Ferrous instead of Lyra only to have a song that I IGNORED because I thought it would be too romantic come up in the shuffle queue and HAHA!!!!! OH NO!!!!!!! OH NO BESTIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LIKE THE. THE SUN LINE, ON THE 2ND LISTEN THROUGH, IS THE EXACT MOMENT I JUST HAD TO CUSS OUT LOUD. BUT THAT'S NOT EVEN THE FULL FUCKING STANZA THAT MAKES ME HOLD MY HEAD, LIKE DO YOU SEE THIS??!?? DO YOU SEE THIS?????

I'M GONNA GO FUCKING INSANE Y'ALL AAAAAAAAUGH

ENOUGH LINES OF THIS SONG FIT. THAT I COULD ANIMATE IT. AND THAT IS SAYING FUCKING SOMETHING. AUUUUGH

[centrally-unplanned]

IRL (In Real Life) - Buffydom Propaganda And The Internet-That-Was

It is 1997. You just got back from the latest Hot Topic run to restock on whatever the most raven-black bomb of Manic Panic they have on the shelves is, so you can do double-duty bleaching your hair in the shower while watching a CRT TV precariously mounted on the lip of your sink. On that TV is the Season 1 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and you are obsessed. Unfortunately for you, no one else in Bowling Green, Ohio, shares your passion for a CW WB show about vampire hunting teens who purposefully fumble their line deliveries. You are alone, and you have shit you gotta say about it to someone, anyone, who will understand.

Fortunately for you, the marketing team at ye old WB anticipated that their audience would be a bunch of fucking nerds, and boy do they have a solution to your problem! Welcome to the Bronze:

A while back I stumbled upon the inexplicable existence of "IRL (In Real Life)", a 2007 documentary about the community that formed around the aforementioned Buffy fan discussion forum/chatboard. Officially running from around the launch of the show until it switched over to UPN after its fifth season (with the forum dying a dramatic death in the process), The Bronze was a highly active center for the Buffy fandom, which generated several spillovers into real life. In particular, it was famous for the creatives and even actors on the show occasionally posting on the forum, which culminated in members of the community organizing a yearly party in Los Angeles where posters would fly out and be joined by said cast and crew. This documentary charts its culture & history via interviewing an array of its members.

As always, I am not here to give the blow-by-blow; instead, what is the narrative this documentary is trying to sell?

My previous documentary write-up was about nerd culture in the 2010’s; newly ascendant, growing confident in its own values and looking to justify that to itself, wealthy and with a developed enough ecosystem for crowdfunding to create professional, polished documentaries of its own heroes. None of that is true for IRL. Filmed on whatever camcorder/potato hybrid proto-Ebay would cough up from its zero-bid listings in a series of hotel rooms and people’s living rooms in 2003-2004 after the forum had died, this is the era of nerd culture at its most conflicted and insecure; mocked by the mainstream and unsure if it should be proud of that fact or deeply ashamed of it. And this documentary wears this conflict right on its sleeve; one of its opening lines is a confident assurance to the audience of “don’t worry, we aren’t like those nerds”:

Throwing Trekkies under the bus in the process, cold! Particularly given how it proceeds to barely even blink before pivoting to explaining their hobby of running “WITTs”, multi-day-long collaborative roleplays:

You are exactly those Trekkies my dudes; you weren’t just at the devil’s sacrament you were hosting it! "WITT" stands for Whedon Improvisational Theatre Troupe, you can't recover from that guys.

(I love how “dozens” is large by the way - it was for the internet in 2001, right?)

Anyway, beyond documenting the forum and its members, the conclusion this documentary wants you to hold is that the Bronze was a special place of real community, and it is a community of “normal” people, who made real relationships. And in particular, that internet relationships can be just as real as those found in meatspace, that these relationships transcended the digital and entered the physical; and that this is what fandom can be about.

I want to start with the ways that narrative was correct within the context of the time. I can actually explain that Klingon comment! I have one extant interview with the director of the film, Stephanie Tuszynski, and she put her motivation as follows: 

FFN: What made you decide to study Buffy fandom, particularly the Bronze, for your documentary? ST: The idea to do a documentary film about the Bronze actually came to me very early on, because "Trekkies" came out in the late 1990s so I was already a Bronzer at that point. And when I saw it I started throwing things at my television. I was incensed. That wasn't a documentary about the fandom experience, it was "hey let's find the most extreme examples possible and have a freak show!" It infuriated me […] It reinforced every awful stereotype about media fans while purporting to be objective.

It wasn’t a random example - the 1997 documentary Trekkies set the “standard” view of fandom as extremist oddballs, and Tuszynski specifically wanted to counter that. It was the early 2000’s after all, nerd stereotypes were strong, you had to fight them explicitly! In a society where there is strong background hostility to one’s identity, you will attempt to normalize it using known reference points; and certainly the people on these forums were more “normal” than the stereotypes admitted to because that entire binary framework is a dead end.

More importantly to the narrative is the online aspect, “making friends on the internet”. Another find I have is a blog post from a professor who used the film in a class; and in the film’s narrative of “people with no one ‘irl’ to share their hobby with finding friends online” triggered a debate around if the online relationships are “taking away” from in-person relationships that are presumed to be more valuable. A debate that still rages to this day over social media! But the contours were different back then, the internet was presumed to be niche, ancillary, and relationships made online in a completely separate box from “in person” friendships. The documentary goes to great lengths to explain that they were a real community because that idea is so contested. Ironically, they do this by emphasizing that they met up in person, hung out, attended each other's weddings, etc; as if only by meeting up in person could the relationships be validated as real? But you can’t truly fault them for meeting their implicit critics halfway in making their case.

So what can I fault them for?

*****

I was perpetually amused when watching the doc that they included two married couples in the filming, and for both one of the spouses would talk and the other would sit there, in silence, the entire time. Maybe they were members of the community and just not talkers; maybe their lines got cut in post. But what I kept thinking was that they were there selling normality to me; married couples are just inherently less oddball, less threatening, and in the era where “nerd = virgin” just less nerdy. Like with the Klingon line, there is an intentionality to the “just like you” vibe.

Which, as mentioned with the extensive forum roleplay, inevitably breaks down once the reality of forum activity is dug into. And I buried the lede here - you may have seen the title of the “longest” roleplay was “RTBS Soul Restoration Project”, but what does that mean? RTBS was a forum member’s name, and well:

Oh yeah, we are saving our friend from “a fate worse than death: worshiping Britney Spears” - welcome to 2001 baby! This is peak “nerd wars” stuff, the normies hate our shit so we hate the normie shit right back. Which is exactly how nerd culture was in the 2000's. I am not at all throwing shade at their tongue-in-cheek roleplay, resplendent in the ludicrously purple prose and asterisk-laden action descriptions as required by the early internet; but it sits in clear tension with some of the other messaging in this film. Leave Britney alone guys!

The documentary highlights a number of common practices from the forum - people doing daily greetings, the way that it being one unending massive chain of posts with no threading or topics meant people would mass-tag individual people to respond to and form “circles” that way - but there are things it leaves out. I did what any normal person would do after watching this documentary and read through over a year of archived posts on The Bronze to understand the community - but man did I not have to, as on literally the first page of my archived link I see:

And through God’s good grace that second link is archived:

Yes there are pictures at the link, and yes later on it does compare Buffy’s cleavage to the Mona Lisa. (The Giles link is not quite functional, but I was able to find it; sadly it is not nearly as thirsty)

I also found these “onboarding” sites for new members. Remember, this forum was the official forum, which meant there were no community mods or ability to “pin rules”, it was pure anarchy - so advice filled the gaps. And one of the bigger ones, in its *sighs and rubs forehead* blue font on black background, warns against “hottie posting” aka talking about how hot say Angel is, not because it isn’t allowed, but because it is like “pointing out the sky is blue” - it is so common that it will just get washed out.

It might seem like a similarly sky-is-blue comment to note that this forum was heavily about shipping, hotness discussion, fanfiction, and the like. Of course it was, right? These website “senior members” were trying to minimize it, police it, but it broke through constantly and also simmered under the surface through discussions and RP’s from my own review of the forum. The documentary, however, spends incredibly little time on it. Brief mentions of Angel fics, and no mention (iirc) of discussion of how hot the women were at all. Because once again those details really don’t fit into the narrative it is trying to sell.

At one point in the documentary someone notes how diverse all the friends they met in this community were? Which I broke out laughing over. In one way it is not wrong, I get it! Midwest college kids meeting people from all over the country, ages 40 to 14, talking about something no one in their podunk town understands. But on the other hand, you could not come up with a more standardized slice of humanity if you tried to rig it. Everyone here is an American+ with computer access in 1998, it is a grab bag of sys admins, nerd creatives, and comp sci majors.  I did a random sampling googling the people interviewed to see what they are up to now, and literally a third of them are librarians. Even their fashion is like God played a prank on this director; not even a 2000’s anime con panel lineup is this stereotypical in the combinations of alt-goth lit girls and nerdcore computer bros.

The evolutionary process of joining this forum -> liking it enough to go to the live meetups -> liking that enough to participate in a documentary about it was a pressure cooker spitting out only a certain kind of person. Which is truly fascinating to see on display! This is the internet-that-was; and it bleeds through the grainy film despite the director’s efforts at times to the contrary.

Though even then it was only a very specific slice of the internet-that-was, because this is a very special breed of Online; namely, the professionals.

*****

Something that is decidedly not typical of The Bronze as an online community is that, as mentioned before, Joss Whedon and other creatives posted on the web forum, answering questions and also just playing around, and how that led to in-person parties where both forum members and cast/crew attended - the Posting Board Parties, or PBP’s. At these they hosted fundraisers, talked about the show, and in the documentary one girl reverently describes with incredible Repressed Lesbian Energy her experience of seeing Eliza Dushku dancing next to her. The PBP had a panel of party organizers, admission systems to keep out the “undesirables”, budgets, the works.

All this the documentary shares openly; it is a peak moment where the digital becomes real in a transcendent way, opening doors analog reality never could. It is also a cold-sweat-waking nightmare story from the lens of a modern Hollywood social media manager; one person in the documentary tells the tale of how one time lead actress Allyson Hannigan posted her phone number on the forum asking people to leave her cute voicemails. The person in question immediately called, and got Hannigan herself instead of the voicemail, so they chatted for a bit (The guy telling this tale is obviously lovestruck; his wife is sitting in typical silence next to him). Today this would be a code-red, nuke your phone situation; but the circle was so cloistered, and the rules so unwritten, that no one cared in these early years.

What they share less openly is all the drama that went into this event. They wax nostalgic about how the parties brought them together, but what isn’t mentioned is the church schism it caused, as the moment cast from the show started attending the party it got mobbed by outsiders. By its ~3rd year there were approximately 400 guests but only ~50 or so were from the forum. They had a huge fight about it, the head of PFP planning committee - “Morbius the Vampire”, who was later jailed for financial fraud btw - told the dissenting faction why don’t they just throw their own party if they hate his so much, and so they did. There was more fighting about it, and eventually they held a peace summit at an LA joint called Mel’s Diner to merge the two factions together. (My source for this is a book, which I will link later)

Hilarious, for sure, but while so much of what we have discussed is “proto online nerd communities”, this part is most decidedly not. The typical web forum absolutely cannot replicate the experience of roleplay-posting your way into shaking hands with Joss Whedon and having a shitfight over party budgets in LA. But most posters never got to attend these parties, of course, this didn’t mean much to them. While for those who did, you cannot help but imagine that this played a gigantic role in making them all become a “real” community. And care enough about that circle to, well after the forum was gone, schlep to a hotel room to be interviewed for a documentary about it. Participating in a documentary is always, in some way, an exercise in selection bias; but here the pruning is turned up to 11 - this is a very elite slice of a very unique fandom experience.

*****

I have one deeper level to go on this thread, somewhat buried in time today, that further shaped the participants here: “Whedon Studies”. The 2000’s was not the birth of media studies as an academic discipline; but it was the birth of fandom-driven media studies, and Buffy was nearly unassailably the leading light of that movement. Academics hosted entire conferences (and inexplicably still do!) on Buffy, Firefly, etc; almost all from the lens of gender & media, as Buffy’s brand was deeply entrenched in that deconstructive milieu. This movement would die a fiery death during the 2010’s shift in media & gender politics, and when the controversies around the toxic working conditions on the set of Buffy/Angel led to Joss Whedon’s near-total expulsion from creative pursuits. The whole edifice is, in a deep way, “cringe” for many of its former participants today.

But what is relevant for our story is that director Stephanie Tuszynski was a full member of that movement; while composing this film she was, for example, giving talks like these at conferences devoted to the Buffyverse:

God that is a lot of talks. This film itself was her thesis project for her I believe philosophy masters, and in our scant interviews lists other fandom-academic film projects she wanted to tackle (which as best I can tell fizzled out later). And the interview subjects were often participants in the same space as well! Academic-types doing media studies with a Buffy bent, or things like culture writers for new media outlets. One of them, writer Allyson Beatrice, even published a book about the Buffy fandom that was in regular bookstores:

To quote the blurb:

A hilarious collection of true stories from Allyson's days as one of the Internet's leading cult TV fan gurus, her mind-boggling escapades include meetings with network executives in dark steakhouses to try to save doomed TV shows and one hastily arranged wedding for two committed Buffy fans. 

I highlight this not to say that academics cannot make documentaries, they certainly can. What I am saying is that if you point your camera at career Buffyverse writer Allyson Beatrice, and label her as a typical forum member giving you the hometown everygirl perspective on the community, you are, however unintentionally, lying to your audience. In its quest to give you the just-like-me Buffy fandom experience, what this documentary elides is that it is often giving you the lens of people who are fans of Buffy as a career. Those people are going to be bringing very different experiences to the table - of course they are concerned with sanitization, with nerd culture debates, the works. That is their bread-and-butter trade.

This dynamic bled into the forum’s day-to-day; there was a very clear hierarchy of “veterans” and “top” posters, who organize the live parties, have deep roots in the community, and even the ear of the show team...and everyone else. Particularly because as mentioned there were no rules on the forum, but since that can’t actually function in practice they self-generated community rules and thus their own leadership class. Cliques and groups were common and named, and veteran posters even had formally designated groupies:

I had also by this time become a groupie. I so enjoyed one particular Bronzer’s posts that she allowed me to become the seventh of her groupies. It was through groupie-dom that I got my first taste of firsthand WITT: several Bronzers, on the occasion of the birthday of she-to-whom-we-group, each took turns grabbing the microphone and praising the day that she was born. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we did this. But it was fun, and very funny, too, as we each took turns waxing melodramatic off the top of our heads. And from work, no less.

The source for this by the way is a 400 page ethnography of The Bronze posted by academic who did *cough* “field research” there; I am sure their membership in the “Bronzers Adoring Darla” fangroup was purely for comprehensive data collection purposes.

And to emphasize, I am not saying this is problematic or anything - the groupie things were all in good fun, best I can tell. I simply aim to showcase how the Bronze wasn’t just a baby version of online fandom forum dynamics; but also a baby version of e-celebrity mechanics. Something the documentary does not even attempt to touch on because that would be something normal people would not understand.

*****

All of the above may have come off like one big roast, and it is a little bit, but as I have mentioned before every documentary is propaganda. It is just impossible to have a tight film building a narrative out of the pieces of letting people speak to the camera without that narrative being but a slice of the truth those people want you to know. The Bronze web forum was a very special place to these highly invested fans, and this documentary is not lying to you about that.

But it is also a big part of early internet fandom! The Bronze was famous at the time, and it is right there at the beginning of so many shifts; the first generation of non-technical internet users, a new era of ‘fantasy’ media with the trappings of prestige and social critique, a boom in critique-as-community, and more. I very much want the full picture of that community; who made it up, what did they want from it and what did they get from it, and so on. No film could offer the full picture; this film’s homebrew rawness gives a valuable piece of it, and I enjoyed it for that. I just aimed here to draw out not only what the broader, more accurate dynamics of The Bronze were, but also the cultural question of why the film focuses on what it does, hides what it refuses to show, and what that says about 2000’s internet & nerd culture. Hopefully I succeeded in that.

And also to have fun looking at some incredibly dated Buffy fandom bullshit. May it have been fun for you too! {hugs you and waves goodbye}

[saltydkdan]

Salty i wanna get into Baki which one do you recommend,the manga or the anime?

Oh you just woke up the fucking beast (I'm so sorry).

I LOVE this question, and as a recent Baki fan myself, I can tell you that getting into the series as a Western consumer can be rough if you don’t have a basic guide to know what you’re getting into…. so that’s what I’m gonna make this post (TEEHEE).

This series has gotta be one of the most insane shonen- actually no- one of the most INSANE PIECES OF FICTION I've ever experienced, and I NEED more people to check it out. Like, LOOK AT THIS SHIT DUDE.

Baki out of context somehow even puts Jojo's Bizarre Adventure to shame. The way I usually pitch it to people is that Baki is as insane as people THINK Jojo is before they read it. Shit is just... MAN LMAO. OBAMA IS FUCKING IN THIS.

Unlike more popular stuff like Dragon Ball and Hunter x Hunter, a lot of this series has just never been officially localized, so knowing where to start, and even how to support the series, is a hard task if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Thankfully THAT’S WHAT YOU HAVE ME FOR. This Tumblr post is gonna be your one stop shop for how to get into Baki as an English speaker (and it’ll give me some space to ramble about one of my latest favorite series).

But uh before we get into the nitty gritty, wanna put some trigger warnings for the series for those who may want to know. Listen, I know how some of these are gonna look to the average person, but this series just be like that sometimes, if you can’t take stuff like this trust me it’s insanely valid. You’ll understand if you choose to take the plunge.

SERIES TRIGGER WARNINGS:

Animated Blood/Violence, some animated gory imagery, Incest (???), Nudity, Urine stuff, Bigfoot/Animal Violence, Death, Uncomfortable looking muscles, and one instance of sexual violence (offscreen)

If you are comfortable with all that (and again, valid as fuck if you aren’t) then let’s talk BAKI!

First off, Manga or Anime?

You would think that either would be fine, but my personal recommendation for Baki as a beginner, is to watch the anime over reading the manga. Simply put: The anime is a lot more widely available and accessible in English speaking territories, and is fairly easy to support officially with its current iteration.

For whatever reason, the manga just never really took off in the West when compared to other series, so it was only ever officially released in English a handful of times, and they only ended up publishing the first few volumes. Theoretically, you can read the first few books to start, but the entire series all together is legit longer than One Piece at a whopping 1,203 chapters, so you are gonna run out of material real quick. The fraction of officially available manga barely scratches the surface of the series.

Even if you’re stubborn about reading the manga and want to try reading fan translations, they come with their own separate batch of issues. Plenty of fan scans you can find online range from wildly outdated, to generally being poor quality at best. There’s even some fan translations that just straight up make shit up and don’t even properly translate the original script. Adding in extra dialogue and slurs randomly to make the text seem way edgier than it actually is.

Full disclosure, I wanna cut through my bias here and say that there are indeed some great scans available on the internet if you look hard enough, especially for the more recent content! But they aren’t super easy to track down with how the series is formatted, and you may accidentally find yourself reading the story out of its proper order.

The watch/read order of Baki is a bit of a toughie for new people, but is actually pretty simple once it’s explained. The story of Baki is split up into multiple different series, kind of similar in format to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Though instead of “Parts”, Baki is split up into completely different manga and TV series. This is why many fans get confused initially, especially with the watch order, because it isn’t laid out in an easy to understand way at first glance.

The most well known series are currently streaming on Netflix, but those aren’t the ones you wanna start with. Nope, the story of the Baki anime actually starts way back in 2001, in a TV show that isn’t streaming officially online. Now if you want to watch out of order, I’m not gonna stop you. You can do whatever you want, by all means, but you’re gonna be missing some VERY important story context, and some characters just won’t hold the same weight.

So if you DO want to watch in order, come with me my friend. Let me show you-

BAKI’S SUPER COOL AND NOT AT ALL CONFUSING WATCH ORDER:

Baki the Grappler (2001) (24 episodes)

This is the original 2001 anime adaptation, the very start of serialized Baki anime. You’re gonna wanna start here trust me.

This series isn’t streaming anywhere officially online, but you can find it… places. Seek it out, trust me, because otherwise you’re gonna pay way too much for out of print DVDs on Ebay. Thankfully though you have options! The series is both subbed and dubbed (as well as every series I discuss from this point forward.

This show is the very start of serialized Baki anime, the very beginning of Baki Hanma’s story. Although it’s not in the way you may think. Despite this being the earliest point in the Baki timeline, it’s actually an adaptation of a later story arc from the manga.

Now I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t you just say this is where I should start? Why is it adapting something from later in the story?”, and yeah it’s valid to be confused. While yes this is the first ever Baki anime, for some reason the staff behind it made the decision to move this later arc up a bit from the original manga. In my honest opinion, I feel like this is actually a great decision.

As you will see as you watch, this honestly FEELS like this should be where the story begins. The escalation of power and storytelling from this point onward feels very natural, and you won’t miss out on anything or spoil yourself whatsoever on later events.

This is the de facto best starting point.

Grappler Baki Maximum Tournament (2001) (24 episodes)

This is effectively the second season of Baki the Grappler. For whatever reason they decided to title it something else, and while this is the norm for the series later on, this name change is weird because it adapts an arc from the original manga just like the first season of anime I just talked about.

Whatever lol.

Anyway this series, much like the previous, isn’t officially available as of now. So your best option is to SEARCH for it. SEARCH on the INTERNET. Or y’know. The good ol’ expensive out of print DVD on Ebay route.

In my opinion, compared to the first season, this one feels a bit slower paced and a bit of a slog at points but HOLD STRONG TRUE BELIEVER. This season is the introduction to a lot of mainstay characters in the series. Many of which you will come to love, even if you don’t know it yet.

BAKI (2018) (39 episodes) (NETFLIX)

This is the modern adaptation of Baki. After the last series ended in 2001, the anime went on hiatus for 17 years before it was announced that it would be coming back with a modern coat of paint.

Contrary to what you may think, this isn’t a ground up reboot. It’s a continuation of the exact point they left off years ago, right after the Maximum tournament. The only thing that kind of sucks about this is that, at least for the English dub, they replaced most of the voice cast. Most of the new VAs do a great job, however you may need to get used to Yujiro Hanma having Shadow the Hedgehog’s modern VA from the games haha.

Thankfully, you can officially support this series easily via Netflix. Normally I’m pretty eh on Netflix as of late, but this being the only way you can support the show officially in the west, I personally recommend it.

Baki Hanma (2023) (39 episodes) (NETFLIX)

This is the most recent anime! It’s also on Netflix.

Me and my friends just got to this on our watchthrough together.

Anyway, this is my list! If after you catch up you wanna hop into the manga and read the fan scans, I’ve heard that you can start on Baki Hanma/Baki Son of Ogre (chapter 183).

Hope you enjoy the funny man punching show! Feel free to report back and tell me how you feel about it (positive OR negative)!

Like I said, I've been watching the series with friends on Discord every night or so when we're free and MAN. Baki is fucking AMAZING WITH FRIENDS. It just never slows down after a certain point, and it just gets stranger and crazier.

[venus-haze]

Homelander x Supervillain!Reader Headcanons

Note: Mildly fem-coded reader, but no other descriptors are used. This is mostly from Homelander's perspective. I always thought it was interesting how apart from the "superterrorist" arc in season one (and into season two), supervillains aren't really a thing in The Boys universe, pretty much everyone with superpowers is affiliated with Vought.

Warnings: Violence, some mentions of sex, Homelander being Homelander. Do not interact if you’re under 18 or post thinspo/ED content.

Your powers emerge later in life, so you aren’t one of the many lauded child prodigies who accidentally burned down their own birthday parties or took out a school bus, but almost as soon as you spit at a cat-caller and the side of his car melted from the acid, Vought had its eye on you

Unfortunately for them, you aren’t interested in the slightest. The money’s good, but signing your life away to a mysterious corporation was never in the cards for you. Why let a bunch of suits call the shots when you were the one with powers? Pretty soon you’re melting bank vaults, wreaking general havoc, and living on the run. You love every minute of it

Homelander knows he can take you on, but to his shock and fury, he finds himself in a meeting with Stilwell and the marketing team who tell him that having a supervillain “arch-enemy” would further mythologize him. As much as people love having someone to root for, they’re just as intrigued by the evil thing that goes bump in the night. Besides, you mostly damage property, not people, so they figure you’re not too much of a threat to the general public

He thinks it’s ridiculous, not letting him laser you in half or snap your neck makes him look weak, or even worse, that you’re as strong as he is. The first time he takes you on, you spit at him as a Hail Mary, and to both of your shock, he hisses in pain and his skin blisters–comparatively mild to the outright bone-melting your toxin was capable of, but it cements your space in his mind as his arch-enemy

To his frustration, the suits at Vought are right, social media posts that mention you in regard to Homelander get a lot of engagement and the general public sees him even more as an otherworldly protector figure

You don’t have a supe name, but Vought dubs you ‘Rosethorn’ because you’re “beautiful yet deadly.” They slap your face on comic books that fly off the shelves. You find it ironic that Vought still finds a way to make money off of you despite your refusal to work with them

Homelander isn’t nearly as amused. The first time he sees one of the Homelander Vs. Rosethorn comics he sees red. “More like thorn in my fucking side,” he growls at the cartoonified version of you. He resents you for taking half of his spotlight, but part of him knows his resentment comes from the fact that you don’t have to answer to anyone. You do whatever the hell you want, and some people regard you as a kind of anti-hero rather than an outright villain. He doesn’t understand, you’re a criminal. You rob, cheat, and steal, and just because you hand out fistfuls of dollars every once in a while, you’re turned into some kind of underground folk hero? 

Social media is buzzing with theories that you’re actually a Vought plant to make Homelander look good or that you’re stronger than him and holding back. Naturally, people begin shipping you because of course they do. He has mixed feelings the first time he sees #Roselander trending on Twitter. It doesn’t help that sometimes you leave notes at your crimes scenes that read ‘Give Homelander my regards, XO’ 

Despite the internet frenzy and Vought marketing, you and Homelander have only been face to face a few times following the first encounter, each one giving more fuel to Homelander’s fire as he broods, stewing in his resentment toward you. You laugh at him, taunt him, literally spit at him, and he can’t do shit because Vought says not to

He definitely fantasizes about hate-fucking you, they’re all extremely deranged and elaborate. Overall, he has a lot of really complicated emotions when it comes to you. There’s some underlying affection that he’ll deny to anyone who asks. Sometimes he lets his mind wander, and in the ideal situation you’d reform and join Vought and–who the fuck is he kidding, part of him wants to break the invisible chain that keeps him tethered to Vought and see if the grass is really greener on the other side

Homelander decides he’s going to end your reign of terror once and for all when Vought indicates they want supes in the military. They now think your existence is just one of the barriers standing in the way of that, making the other Vought supes, but especially him look weak and incapable. With you out of the way, it’ll show their supes can handle military missions

Easier said than done, because when he finally corners you, ready to laser you in half like he should have all those years ago, he hesitates, and that’s all it takes for you to pounce

“Why do you let them tell you what to do? You’re stronger than them. Why do they call the shots?” you ask, and he doesn’t miss the conniving ass twinkle in your eye. He knows what you’re doing, and his gloved fists ball up at his side as everything in him screams to just kill you already. He knows you’re right. He’s the one with the real power, but he lets them order him around like a dog

“Shut the fuck up,” he hisses through clenched teeth that he wishes were clamped around your throat–except he doesn’t, not really. You’re giving him an out, but he can’t take it, he’s too afraid to. After all, who is he if he’s not The Homelander?

You give him a sad smile, the kind old friends give to each other in movies when they see each other for the last time. He lets out a shaky breath. He won’t miss you. He won’t even think about you once Madelyn hears what he’s done and he gets supes into the military and Vought a lucrative contract with the Department of Defense. Another success for Homelander

“I really do like you,” you say. “I just wanted you to know that before you kill me.” Your heartbeat is steady, gaze locked in on his glowing red eyes. No one’s ever looked him in the eye upon facing their certain death from him before

He grabs your face, resisting the urge to squeeze it hard enough to break your jaw, “You’re a real piece of work. I don’t answer to anyone, got that, Rosethorn?”

You whisper your name to him, your real name, and he repeats it softly before letting go of your face and taking an unsteady step back. “You owe me. I didn’t kill you, and now you owe me.” You nod in understanding before disappearing into the night

He returns to Vought covered in blood, claiming victory over his arch-enemy once and for all. He never played poker, but you’re an ace up his sleeve if he could ever have one

[i-eat-mold]

do you think we're humans because we're gay, or we're gay because we're humans

Im going to answer this as someone who grew up closeted queer and trans in a very conservative place, as a scientist, as one hell of a neurotic person, and as the accidental leader of a strange internet cult. We arent humans because we are gay nor the other way around. We are gay, queer, different, diverse, unclassifiable, unlableable, baffling and strange because we are alive. Science has no fucking idea why we are that way, probably never will. We dont know why we are that way and probably never will. Existing as a spectrum, as everything we are, is the most utterly alive thing there could be. We are alive and therefore we are gay, it is inherently in its meaning, to exist is to differ, to create, to live in uncountable different, chaotic ways. Just like we arent just sad, or angry, or happy, we are often many of those at the same time and often we dont understand it or know. Being gay is like being everything else about being alive: uncertain, unique, chaotic, strange, baffering. We know nothing of very big things, we know nothing of very small things, and we barely know shit about things our size. The only thing we can do is love as messily, as undefinedly, as strangely as possible. Who fucking cares.

Pd. Apparently I wrote this last night after taking 3 xanax and i do not remember it, but seems like i forgot to hit post, probably because i passed out. Make whatever of this piece of useless fucking wisdom my brain formed while high as a kite

[tinystepsforward]

i've still been keeping tabs on what's happening at automattic. a couple of things i've observed:

toni schneider (who is a man btw), the interim ceo, has been quite open with staff in ways that mean they generally seem relieved to have him leading the company for now. i've heard people speak optimistically about him from all parts of the spectrum (by which i mean: staff who are trans tumblr users right through to staff who are "anti-woke" or whatever and were absolutely intolerable to work with as a trans person), which seems like... a good sign? maybe.

this relative transparency includes things like weekly updates from an executive level, as well as openly saying that he did have to directly speak to matt and encourage him to, you know, stop posting.

matt is back to his usual milquetoast blogging, and replied to someone on mastodon about the AI issue saying he'd comment on it when he's back in may, so whatever toni said to him seems to have worked for him keeping out of it for now.

people have no idea what it's gonna look like when matt's back.

the best case scenario is that schneider manages to create a significant enough boost in morale and productivity that "it'd be nice if we just kept him" becomes a sentiment that isn't held just by the rank and file. i don't know how likely that is, but there's a sense of cautious hope and of making the most of this reprieve from matt's increasingly erratic decisions no matter what.

the tumblr staff statement was approved by schneider and hr, so i am also hopeful they won't face repercussions. what they said might seem pretty mild from the outside, or carefully worded, but it's pretty clear to me and to most people who've worked at companies like this that it's a pretty bold one.

i'll quote a friend:

keep reminding the more histrionic elements out there that: 1. there really are trans people, INCLUDING TRANS WOMEN, in the fight here. 2. we don't have nearly the power they seem to think we do. 3. we're fighting anyway. was the statement we wrote enough? fuck no. does it fix everything? fuck no. but we literally called out the CEO, and got the greenlight for it from the interim CEO. i don't know where this will end, but that's not nothing.

i'm not sure automattic deserves the immense honor of having this many of its brave, dedicated trans staff put effort into trying to make it better. but it has them, and it would be wise to do its best to keep them. so many of us — even me, even now — believe in the ideals that drew us to the work automattic does, and hope that it can return to them. we will see!

other things i want to say:

the wellbeing of my friends on staff is my priority. i am interested primarily in their safety, and won't pressure them to give me goss. the ways i've spoken publicly are already pretty scary to people who might worry about retaliation against them just for being known to be my friend.

this is a regular personal blog. i'll keep updating if there's shit to update about, but i also don't work at automattic any more (thank fuck, again), have a life, and am not interested in declaring matt my specific nemesis or otherwise acting purely out of spite.

some of youse really deeply do not understand companies, the internet, generative ai, or pretty much anything else i've said. that's okay — big tech in particular is fucked up on purpose bc it benefits those in power to have it be incomprehensible! but maybe it's not a great position from which to get mad at me specifically or at staff for idk not personally assassinating matt.

got tired of blocking transphobes so i've turned anons off. i'll probably flick them back on eventually.

[strangestcase]

i think the proship community is dangerous because it encourages the presence and participation of minors in sexually charged contexts (which often leads to them being taken advantage of. who would have guessed the adults defending loli would be a danger to kids)

No exactly, exactly, like… the thing w proship spaces is that they do have good points about media literacy in a vacuum, I think everyone should be against censorship and happily writing about whatever they want. The thing is that pedos will ALWAYS insert their abusive preferences into any political ideology (look up post-Nazi Germany) if they can get away with it— they’ve done it to the left, to the right, to progressives, to conservatives, they always work backwards.

I can’t stress this enough: anything, any ideology, any set of beliefs, can be a twisted into justification to interact inappropriately with kids/teens; anything can be a good reason to coerce a child into sex in an abuser’s eyes. And, as it stands, the statement “there’s nothing wrong with having taboo sexual interests”, true as it is , is FERTILE SOIL for pedo and pedo enablers to take root in. What should drive morality re:children and sex isn’t disgust, isn’t politics, isn’t aesthetics— it’s the fact that children can’t consent to sex because they simply aren’t mature enough to fully understand what it is.

The thing is . Children are intelligent and deserving of autonomy and freedom; taking advantage of their inexperience for sexual purposes is the opposite of giving children autonomy and freedom, but it’s very easy to spin it into a narrative of sexual freedom and children’s rights to have sex with adults (as if that ever happened magically On Its Own, lmao).

I say it very often that “ship discourse” is an incredibly bad way to discuss these sorts of things. Media literacy, censorship, and internet moderation are all very nuanced topics that you can’t divide into little sports-like teams. This sentiment I’ve seen reflected in a lot of other Tumblr users. I’m not anti or pro I’m an adult with a job etc etc . But that said I am immediately distrustful of proship spaces even if I agree with some of their points, much more than I am of anti spaces when I think they also make good points, and the reason is that proship spaces, as Anon says, have taken sexual liberation the wrong way and tend to either not care or be all for children interacting with adults in questionable contexts re:sex. Those spaces make it very easy to groom kids under the guise of kink/queer/sex positivity (which IMO is frankly insulting as a sex positive kinky queer). The end result is a community that is against pedophilia in theory but fails to protect children in practice.

The other reason I favor “antis” over “proships” is because proshippers are (in my experience) annoying as fuck and weirdly high and mighty about liking incest, as if it was subversive. A quick glance at the family tree of Greek mythology characters says otherwise.

[snekdood]

the only way i could be anonymous online at this point is if i deleted everything and stopped caring about my comic and gave up and stopped trying, and while that is tempting sometimes, im honestly just too dedicated to my characters and honestly myself and defending myself and my own dignity to do that.

[theunbrightside]

(this is not a fanfic, if that is what you are looking for, please scroll on by)

hello everyone, i would like to put my two cents onto the internet for everyone so they can look at the perspective of my own thoughts. alot of people are not going to LIKE this, but, whatever your two cents about this topic is also appreciated! you are totally free to put your opinion on this topic as well. however, your opinion will not be considered valid if you did not read the entire post.

TLDR: please dont pretend to care about minors on your blog if you use "minors dni" or "age in bio" it is NOT the correct way to combat minors. infact, its stupid. you cannot use "minors dni" as a way to combat minors. you also cant use "age in bio" as a way to combat minors, its dumb and as an adult, you should know that it's dumb, which really makes me question if alot of fanfic writers are actually the adults they claim to be.

given that the statement is true, there are two possible options for the people who use this statement on their own blog; they are either REALLY oblivious, or they don't care about minors in their spaces as much as they say. to be honest, i think they care more about how many notes they get.....they just also want to look like the good guy at the same time. before i start the yap session, i would like to make it clear who i am blaming and adressing in this post, if you are not mentioned, you do not apply..... i am blaming ADULTS who write PORN and PRETEND to care about MINORS reading their content when they don't use the NEEDED PRECAUTIONS in order to keep them out.

I am NOT saying you need to care about minors reading your content. As long as you are following the rules of tumblr, you can post whatever you want. you also need to understand that it goes the other way around, people can read whatever they want to, that includes the contents of your blog.

if you DO care, you can't be fucking stupid about it, you need to take the VERY IMPORTANT REQUIRMENTS in order to do so.

minors, i know you read the porn on tumblr, and you can because alot of the adults don't care about you reading their content. however they act like they do, which makes me angry if you think you are mature enough, you have the ability to do so. this is not meant to target you, it's meant to target the adults for trying to act like a saint while being the problem at the same time, okay? (tw large amounts of opinionated yapping. oh boy i might be ambushed for this....oh well)

given that obliviousness is one of the options here, i will explain my standpoint as to why it is stupid. this is tumblr. and alot of you are writing porn around a fandom that gravitates towards minors, especially certain anime. ESPECIALLY ones like my hero academia, demon slayer, jjk, those type of things. YES, i am aware adults also watch anime, and some adults want to read porn about their favourite characters in said anime. but do you want to know who reads porn about their favourite characters more than adults do? MINORS! and because most of you have a really airheaded way of combating minors, guess who the main consumer of your content is??? MINORS! it's mostly minors reading your content, sorry to break it to you. and i have decided to point the finger here, people who write about MHA are the absolute worst when it comes to this situation. because not only are you creating a toilet paper wall to "stop" minors from reading your content, you are writing porn where the fandom is pretty much all teenagers and some young adults. AND ON TOP OF THAT! MOST (keyword most) of the characters you are writing porn about are literal minors in the show! LIKE??? i personally dont care too much if it stops you from writing porn about ACTUAL children....but like...please do not pretend to care about minors reading your content it pisses me off if you actually want minors out of your blog, I have a solution for you! let me help you! Solution, promote your writing with SFW content only on your tumblr blog, and put your NSFW content behind a wall that requires age verification. you have multiple ways to do that! for example, use something like patreon, or if you want to bump it up a notch, use something that requires genuine age verification, like an ID. the down side? you won't be as popular, infact you'll most likely be unpopular! and you will realize how little the amount of adults in your blog are, because your likes will be VERY LOW on your nsfw content. but.....that's okay! as long as minors aren't in your blog! ....right?

[zivazivc]

I'm gonna take some time to digest and think about that comic before I come to a decision. The decision being whether to continue to support you or just leave you be.

If I decide to leave you be, just know that there are no hard feelings, okay?

You are on anon so I don't know if this is someone who I've talked to before, but either way, yes, no hard feelings. I completely understand. It's the internet, anyone can unfollow anyone for any reason, but also I know this is an uncomfortable topic and even triggering to some, and some people are just not here for that. I was contemplating posting it for a while for this reason.

I do kinda want to point out that the purpose was/is not to fetishize a relationship with a minor and I will never fetishize or glorify that ever. It's wrong and unhealthy even if there's no malicious intent present. (am pointing it out because I got a bunch of asks about it and I'm 🧍) But this is fiction, and I portrayed the scenes the way that I did mainly because I made the comic from Floyd's perspective and I wanted to get in his head and show what exactly he was feeling in that moment. If the end result makes you feel uncomfortable or "flustered" (I don't think I'm using the right English word) in a certain icky way, that was kind of the point and I believe should be a normal reaction from an adult.

I spent my high school years (normally 15-19yo, but it was more like 14-22+) living in a dorm in the country's capitol and I attended a vocational school for visual arts that is pretty notorious for having a drug problem (I'm talking about mostly weed) and being full of weirdos (students free and comfortable expressing themselves and experimenting with expressing themselves but weirdos is the used term lol). The dorm is also located very near the city's subcultural center (look up Ljubljana Metelkova if you want, it's kind of what I imagine the underground scenes the bandmates visit looking like) which is like a hangout place for subcultures like punks and metalheads and the lgbtq. Anyway coming from living my whole life in a rural village where I still played with toys to somewhere like that was an insane shock to me. I sometimes felt like a toddler around young adults in a big city. And it was whiplash for many other teens too, some of whom quickly fell into bad crowds and spiraled, often those who came from bad home situations or controlling parents (heck some even came from elementary schools already doing problematic things). The amount of rumors of things happening in that dorm and school (drugs, sex, messing around with older teens/adults, whatever)... (I'm not saying it was like a concerning percentage of students but it was happening) Some of these people who made some bad choices were and some still are my friends, some of whom still struggle with some things today and it's heartbreaking.

Anyway where I was going with this is that in high school I was always kind of the anti all of that (to the point it had the opposite effect on me where I didn't even try out the normal teenage things) and just thinking "what the fuck is wrong with these people?" And recently, when my headcanons for Floyd started going in the direction that they have, I started wondering the same thing. Just not in a judgemental way this time. More like I want to dissect this situation carefully and understand it from everyone's perspective and see what lead up to it. I've always been very fascinated by morally gray and dark fiction for this reason and this is right up that alley.

So yeah, this isn't for everyone, and I can't hold a grudge if anyone unfollows me for it. But what I'm doing here is inspired a lot by real life situations and my weird deep dives into articles about trauma and its effects (also pretty sure I'm also processing some of my own personal emotions through these blorbos but I am not going into that), and I feel like I'm taking a pretty realistic approach to it (if you ignore the fact that this is fucking Trolls). I'm just slowly exploring how a relationship between a teen who comes from a sheltered almost cultish upbringing (pop trolls live in a concentration camp and are dealing with the horrors by singing and enjoying every minute of their every day like life is a ticking time bomb) and a young adult who never got a chance to grow up because he never experienced a childhood and is suddenly being liked by someone for the first time in his life (I'll talk more about Les some other time), would develop into hopefully something okay for both of them. Because I do want them to both be okay in the end. And I'm sharing some of my brainworms online for anyone who's interested. I just can't share ALL of my brain worms and sometimes I forget that people don't have a view of what's going on in my head. Yeah... This answer became long for no other reason except that I can't sleep because I posted that comic, damn. That's what I get for dropping that bombshell on top of what was mostly fun "comedic" posts about the AU so far.

[sawyer-is-eepy]

Oh. Good thing you said that you're a proshipper so that people can fucking unfollow you. I can't believe I've been following someone like this and reblogging your shit. Ok

look, guys, i should probably address this officially at some point, but i havent because of one simple reason: it really doesnt matter.

i dont really like the word proshipper for myself becuase it seems to have the connotation of "i like shipping these things myself" which i don't. it's more just that i think those kinds of ships have a right to exist. profic would be a more apt term but eh who cares?

my policy is dont like dont read, and ship and let ship. i dont ship anything illegal personally and even if i did i wouldnt post them here, because this blog isnt a proshipper blog. i'll occaisionally rb things that would be considered proshipper beliefs but for the most part this blog is for outer wilds and other random stuff, it's not really that deeply important to me.

if you still would like to unfollow me, go ahead. i don't personally see why you would unfollow me for that since im not. posting. proshipper content. but you are allowed to do whatever you wanna do and if a stupid shipping discourse label is that much of an issue for you then , alright, fair, do what you want.

i'd love to have you if you'd stay but i also understand that most of the people who would unfollow me for this arent gonna read this or really internalize it anyways. i know that the cool kids are still gonna hang around and theyre gonna be the ones that realize its really not that deep if i think fiction with dark themes has a right to exist

anyways. im tired. im going to hop off the internet for a bit.

[rajbow4ever]

my rajbow hcs, copy and pasted straight from my tt cz what else do i post...

(some of these are in full grammar for some reason?? idk all of these were from various middle-of-the-night decisions)

raj: did figure skating for a while when he was younger but stopped because people called him un-manly

bowie: tries to persuade him to try it again

raj: goes to stroke every stray animal he finds on the street

bowie: 'babe that probably has 20 diseases...' lets him do it anyway because he wants to see raj smile

raj: can talk about his interests for hours at a time

bowie: thinks its the cutest thing ever and loves to listen

bowie: owns one of those small business jewelry shops online

raj: learnt how to make little beaded bracelets for it

bowie: naturally very good with instruments

raj: doesnt even know how to hold a guitar

raj: got banned from his local arcade for raging at a claw machine

bowie: claw machine pro (gives 80% of the prizes he gets to raj)

bowie: loves pointless internet debates like how many holes are in a straw

raj: doesn't understand a single one of them

raj: didnt think narwhals were real because they're like 'unicorns of the sea'

bowie: had to search them up to prove they existed

raj: chronic weezer fan (same raj same)

bowie: listens to whatever's popular most of the time, but he listens to a lot of upbeat stuff

raj: is able to notice if bowie gets stuck in his thoughts

bowie: is able to notice if raj is stressed about something

raj: Gives Bowie cool rocks he finds.

bowie: Keeps. Every. Single. One.

raj: Was shocked to find out most people can't down five burgers after a simple hockey game.

bowie: Is just ever-so-slightly terrified.

raj: Sleeps at 9pm, wakes up at 5am - but them goes back to sleep and waked again randomly.

bowie: Sleeps at 4am, wakes up at 10am.

bowie: Took Raj to watch one of his basketball games.

raj: Was just staring, absolutely ENAMOURED, IN AWE at him the whole time.

raj: Scared of birds (cassowary incident).

bowie: Scared of spiders.

raj: Attacks every spider he sees.

bowie: Scares away every bird he sees.

raj: Surprisingly a very good cook, but is banned from the microwave.

bowie: Also a very good cook (is not banned from the microwave).

bowie: Bought Raj star-shapes sunglasses to match with his heart-shaped ones.

raj: They became his most prized possessions ever.

raj: uses stupid words like "coolio" and "awesomesauce"

bowie: "what the FUCK are you saying"

raj: incredibly tactile, loves physical affection

bowie: always initiates it because he knows how much raj love it

bowie: worries sometimes because he thinks he's 'ruining raj'

raj: took after some of bowie's snark

bowie: is good at skating, but falls over a lot so he continues to do it just for fun

raj: genuine pro at skating, if you name it as long as it's on ice he can probably do it

bowie: monopoly demon. takes the money from everyone, wins everything

raj: fairest monopoly player ever but is incredibly competitive

raj: struggles with panic attacks every now and then, wayne usually helps but he's started letting bowie see him vulnerable too

bowie: taught him fancy breathing techniques (that i don't trust myself to name)

they play 2 player princess tycoon on roblox together

bowie: kills everyone

raj: actually does the tycoon

bowie: is a big fan of horror movies but screams every time something even slightly scary happens

raj: is terrified of horror movies but watches them with bowie (he hopes that bowie will get scared and latch onto him)

raj: hates talking to the waiters when ordering food

bowie: does it for him

bowie: had an emo phase when he was way younger

raj: found his old emo clothes "HOLY SHIT??"

raj: believes in ghosts n that stuff

bowie: thinks its the most stupid thing ever (secretly believes in them)

thank you for listening to my ted talk. next post scheduled for 2025 i think

[wishmaker-astra]

Name: Astra Tsiolkovsky

Pronouns

• Default Preference: she/her

• Friends Can Use: it/its

• Though honestly as long as you're not a dick about it whatever works

Species: "Jirachi" (?)

Occupation: Astrophysics Doctoral Student

Other: Mute, psychic, former human

[Credit: Amber Aria: https://www.sunset-aria.com/]

Hey internet, I'm Astra Tsiolkovsky. I'm a doctoral student studying astrophysics in Unova. Ask me about science, engineering, and Space Stuff™ if you want rambles.

See my full about page

My Website

I use the "cw: topic" format for tagging that kind of thing.

//Mail: [reinterpreted as parcel post]•Mystery Gift: [discretionary]•Magic Anon: [off]•Union Circle: [off]

//[OOC Notes Below Cut]

EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

Check with me OOCly before sending anything ICly transphobic to her. After a couple instances of this, and one OOC Totally Normal ask, you guys have lost privilege of me accepting and rejecting on the fly with the hope you'd know when to stop.

If you fuck this up more, I'm going to mandate all asks about IC transphobic stuff get approval OFF ANON first and will start blocking anons over not asking OOCly. That said, I know some of these are hard to recognize for those of you who've never had to think about it in depth. Just think twice on if need to ask please?

EDIT 10/10: Congratulations on first OOC block about this. I am less likely to start off with warnings from now on.

Similar applies to her jirachi status. I'm a bit more lenient and open to this one, but, like, please use your brains.

Will Not Interact:

Magic Anon

Fae deals/name stealing

Meta Horror

4th Wall Schenanigans

Very dark topics

• This includes post-apocalyptic stuff to be clear

Mental Alteration/Mind Control related subjects

• I WILL just ignore things, have Astra behave utterly OOC, blanket refuse to interact with characters, and/or just suddenly drop interaction as if never happened if required for this

Other Notes:

I try to treat her experiencing rotomblr as *just a website* as much as possible. Granted, one with weird multiversal connection that she will assume is due to ultrahole shenanigans she doesn't understand yet

Lose combination of games and anime setting, leaning more towards the games

Pelipper mail will be interpreted as regular parcel mail being sent to her via student services.

Please keep mystery gift to minor items at most. She's a grad student as part of her character, part of that is putting up with tight money situation.

Astra's got the full abilities of a jirachi potentially, but is completely unable to use them yet. Think of it as getting a new limb suddenly.

Assumes sentient pokemon are rare, and mostly limited to:

• Ones with decent canon support (rotom inhabiting devices with a CPU, mewtwo, one off instances such as Meowth, latias, etc)

• Certain humanoid and/or psychic types raised in human society in a way that  "bootstraps" them during critical development periods (e.g. Gardevoir line treated as effectively human from birth)

Feel free to treat her as a kid screwing around on the net with a character if you want or similar if it makes sense for your character's setup or personality

She's an adult lesbian, please block the tags "suggestive", "cw: boob joke", "cw: dick joke", "cw: sex joke", and "cw: sex mention" if you are not comfortable with those topics. Please let me know if you need something tagged.

[should-i-go-outside]

hello, this is an alt account...main is cluelessdelta.

discord user is "ineedadrinklmao".

blog is about my shitty life! its rather boring. but i cant stand being lonely, and i thought i'd post about my extremely slow progress towards potentially sorta overcoming social anxiety. and like about stupid things.

it all starts by going out of your comfort zone. that means talking to people online. im going to talk to people online.

dms are open! inbox? sure. i like a whole bunch of things: frouse, tadc, sonic, musicals, cartoons like fairly oddparents, ninjago, lego monkie kid, teenage mutant ninja turtles, etc etc...art sometimes, fashion, playing games because im chronically online (i LOVE fps games!!!) and more.

now, i can play some games if i can afford them, poor af (haha living the luxury life), but my internet is crap and my privacy is nonexistent in this house. i wont be able to vc for a while 😞 passion for having my eardrums blasted by cs2 players no...

keep in mind: im probably neurodivergent and i talk like a homeless hippie that gives you side-quests. i have difficulty understanding tone, sometimes i use tone tags. and i yap a lot. and i have social anxiety. be patient plss..

dni if: homophobic/transphobic/xenophobic whatever, racist, sexist, if ur a goddamn creep, ped0s, z00philes, if u romanticize real fucked-up issues.. not cool guys! or if youre an annoying asshole in general. dont waste my time

hey guys no pedophiles. i'm 14, looking 4 people to talk to around my age range.

[scaphismpriest]

Tiktok is a cesspool of ableism against narcissists and usually I shake my head and roll my eyes, but i just saw a Tiktok comment that made my blood boil.

Keep in mind that this was on a cluster B safe post, and someone manages to think its okay to blame abuse on NARCISSISM. I am a person with BPD and NPD, im not going to get personal in my life because this is the internet and not everyone needs to know what ive fucking been through, but i know for damn sure that "narc abuse" is not a fucking thing and generalizes narcissists to be abusers and dangerous people. Sure, you can get abused by a narcissist, but you can also get abused by literary ANYONE, this is why you dont see people say "im suffering from blonde abuse" or "im recovering from christian abuse" because nobody in their fucking right mind would use someones appearance, race, mental health, religon, physical ability, gender, sexuality, ETC as a excuse to label and generalize a group of people to describe abuse. I had a ex girlfriend who would abuse me and she had BPD, I have a mother who also emotionally and verbally abuses me and shes schizophrenic. You dont see me say "im recovering from borderline abuse" or "im suffering from schizophrenic abuse" because that generalizes people with BPD and schizophrenia to be abusers. Do you see the fucking problem here yet? Oh but when its narcissists, or people with "scary mental disorders" like ASPD, then its suddenly okay to label us as scary abusers or dangerous people? Some of You claim to be advocates for mental health but when it comes to us then you suddenly give up because we're "too much for you to waste your time on" or that we're "Hopeless" and "Helpless" if you so called "Empaths", egotypicals, and neurotypicals actually gave a fucking shit about us, you would understand that we've also been hurt, we've been treated like shit and neglected by the world, we bite because we are scared, we are constantly in a battle of self hate and fake ego, we are insecure, we depend on attention and success to survive, we are neglected children at our core. if you really gave a shit about mental health and our well being, i wouldn't be here thinking "wow man i should really rid myself because the world views me as nothing but a monster so therefore i should off myself!" "but you've also hurt people!" I know, I am aware, I've already taken that accountabilty and MAJOR steps into becoming into a better person and have recovered greatly these past months and you dont know or understand me more than the people ive hurt personally, you dont get a say in what happens because thats NOT your ground to stand on and say whatever YOU think and ive had people disrespect that. I am FORTUNATE to even be loved and cared for still by the person ive hurt, and even I myself dont feel like I deserve that such mercy, I am forever grateful but It also makes me truly sad, not for myself, but for the person I love the most. I genuinely cried writing this, this is more so a vent but I hope someone sees this and atleast understand me on a true empathic level, instead of a perception. I hope i dont regret posting this, because this is the most youre gonna see me vulnerable for a LONG time.