#I’m more understanding of the tags than I am of the bots

[night-flare]

Every day I wish for an easier way to block people 😞

[rune-folk]

Hei, Hei!

Welcome to my blog!

I’m a 29 year old woman living in Norway, and you can call me Runa!

This blog is about Norse Myth, Norse Aesthetic, Nature, as well as other things that simply make me happy. So, I want to share things that excite me or make me smile.

I post my own photography, ramblings about the myths, or even about my own life. If personal stuff does not interest you, I tag all that with #runarambles so you can simply block that tag!

I am in a weird spot between being an atheist and believing in the Norse Gods, it is quite complicated and I don't fully understand where I am standing myself. I am mostly devoted to Oðin, because he has intervened in my life a lot, and is basically the reason why I am where I am.

I have a slight obsession with Figg, Frau Holle, Frau Perchta and Baba Yaga, who are four figures in Norse, Germanic, Alpine and Slavic folklore that are very interconnected. In general, I am very interested in exploring Germanic Paganism, Slavic Paganism and Alpine Folk Traditions, because these are the places my family comes from, and I want to know more about it.

In my everyday life, I am a scientist, and speak German, English and Norwegian. I am also learning Russian, as the love of my life is from Russia. I am not a native English speaker, so if something I write sounds weird, I am sorry.

I enjoy sewing and making my own clothes, am also into historical sewing and re-enactment, and love water-colour painting, and writing stories. I am engaged in historical fencing (with the Longsword, Dagger, Sword and Buckler, and Langes Messer), love history, and enjoy learning new things, going to museums and ancient places, and wandering through nature.

That is about everything, I suppose!

Profile Picture: me in the forests around the Celtic village in Schwarzenbach, Austria

Header Image: a picture I took of Borgund Stave Church, Norway

My photography sideblog is @forestruin

                                                   ~~~~~~~~~~~

And an important Disclaimer at the end:

Sadly this has to be said, as the Norse community is overrun with bigots.

I strongly believe that the interest in Norse culture should be inclusive and open to everyone who resonates with it. I am a feminist, and strongly disapprove of racists, misogynists and homophobes, who appropriate the Norse symbols for their disgusting agendas. You have obviously not understood (or even read) the stories and poems, if you think that Norse believe and your bigotery are in any way compatible.

Women are amazing and not less than men, they are not your property, but multidimensional human beings worthy of dignity and respect! You are not better than anyone else, because of the colour of your skin, or the country of your birth!

Therefore:

Do NOT follow me if you are a right wing idiot, US American patriot with a gun fetish (I mean it! I will block you!), Odinist, misogynistic patriarch, hyper masculine Grimfrost-dude-bro, or any other kind of these people, who have to compensate their fragile masculinity by trying to be overly #Viking

I do check every blog that follows me and instantly block 1) the kind of people mentioned above 2) p*rn blogs and 3) empty blogs (aka no name, header, reblogs. idc if you are a real person, as a tumblr veteran this screams bot to me).

That is all!

Ha det bra! ~

[anony-man]

Uhhhh I wrote something again. You hear that? That’s the sound of my professor asking why I haven’t finished my paper instead of writing shitty attempts at ambulaid angst. Anywho… this is a sort of addition to @rust-bearer’s post found heeeere (sorry for the tag, I just wanna make sure you get credit and stuff). So. Enjoy? Maybe? It’s very short, like ~990 words, probably won’t even post to a03 cause y’know, I’m lazy.

Also quick warning for a very mild emeto/vom mention and maybe gore warning too? Not really, but just in case.

“You know, Ambulon, I never really understood why you wouldn’t just let me help you in the first place.”

First Aid wasn’t exactly trained in producing pristine paint jobs, but with the steady servos that came from ages spent as a medic, he saw to it that the job was good enough. Stretched out on the table beneath him lay Ambulon, who had yet to give any pushback to First Aid’s meticulous and nitpicking repair process. Of course, he didn’t exactly have much of a choice. When First Aid had set his mind to tidying up Ambulon’s chipping paint once and for all, he had already established that nothing was going to stop him.

The process was a little messy, of course. Ambulon was rather quiet for the entire process, which… well, First Aid could understand. Living with such an uncomfortable problem for so long likely made it a little embarrassing to finally have it fixed, so he didn’t fault his old ward manager for not being very chatty during the repair sessions.

Yes, First Aid thought glumly, gently lifting one of Ambulon’s arms to coat the rest of his wrist in a thick layer of red, sessions plural. Ambulon had proved to be a rather difficult patient to treat, given his frame’s apparent proneness to rejecting the paint samples First Aid tried to apply.

He tried not to consider the very likely possibility that a mech who was no longer online probably wouldn’t have the capacity of keeping said paint job like a living bot would. It was already bad enough having to walk into the old operating room after hours and be met with the sight of a cold, greying frame laying stretched out across the exam table as soon as the lights came on.

During the first few nights spent treating Ambulon, First Aid often wouldn’t be able to make it more than a few hours without having to step out and regain his composure or give up entirely for the evening. But now? Now, he was a natural. Now, Ambulon no longer looked like just another dead face among thousands lost in the casualties of war. Now, Ambulon looked like… well, Ambulon. First Aid was no skilled technician when it came to the more cosmetic side of the medical industry, but he certainly gave the last few living bots in the field a run for their money.

Sliding the sander over a rather course and bumpy edge of Ambulon’s plating, First Aid hummed a soft tune from behind his mask. He paused for a moment, replacing the sander with a paint brush once he’d found another spot in need of a fresh coat, and took a moment to spray it red before he continued.

Given Ambulon’s medical history, First Aid knew for a fact that the paint he applied should have been peeling off again within days, whether due to Ambulon’s annoying habit of picking at the flakes or the paint simply refusing to stay. Now, however, Ambulon’s frame was perfect. It was perfect, and pristine, and… and…

It was dull. It was lifeless.

With a sigh of satisfaction, First Aid gathered up the tools used for that day’s work and set them back on the side tray at the foot of the berth. He no longer bothered putting things back in storage, not when he knew the job wasn’t yet finished. Ambulon’s frame was looking good so far, but First Aid kept finding little things here and there that still needed touching up the longer he looked.

“I guess that’s all we’ll get done today,” First Aid said, giving his servos a good wipe with a nearby towel. “You’re probably just as tired as I am. But hey, it’s looking better than last time, at least.”

Last time referred to the night before, when First Aid had made a critical mistake in his repairs. Something must have gone wrong with his welded seams, as before he knew it, Ambulon’s frame was splitting in half again, right down the middle. The realization that he needed to go back into fixing the issue with much more precision hadn’t been so bad as when First Aid finally came back to his senses sometime after seeing the split frame again for the second time since the incident with Pharma.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out of it, or what exactly had happened to trigger the episode, but First Aid had quickly realized that something must have gone wrong after finding himself kneeling in a puddle of his own vomit, tears streaming down his face and energon staining the tips of his fingers from where they were dug too deep into the edge of the berth, leaving grooves and dried energon behind that First Aid lacked the energy to fix… or clean, for that matter.

That was over now, he reminded himself. Ambulon was okay. He’d cleaned the mess, wiped himself up, and then got right back to work fixing his mistakes. And now here he was, in the last stretch, working to touch up any spots of paint he had missed after originally going over Ambulon’s frame with the fresh coats.

“If you ask me,” First Aid continued, having stopped cleaning up to drag a chair over to the berthside. He sat down, then propped his helm up in his servos, elbows resting against the table. “I kind of preferred your original paint job. I mean, don’t get me wrong, you pull off the typical red and white just fine, but…”

First Aid trailed off, and as expected, only silence followed. He didn’t exactly mind, but it would’ve been nice to get a little feedback from Ambulon again, if only just once more.

“I dunno, I guess I just wish Pharma hadn’t been so stringent about all the stupid rules back at Delphi,” First Aid said with a shrug.

He paused, studying Ambulon’s frame for any signs of the old paint job poking through his new colors, but found nothing. With a quiet huff, First Aid let his arms drop onto the table, then rested his helm atop them.

“Personally? I thought you looked good in your old colors. They were unique, and pretty, and…”

As if realizing he’d trailed off from the subject, First Aid quickly gave a shake of his Helmand cleared his throat. “Sorry, got off-track there. But really, Ambulon. That color scheme? It suited you well. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I bet you felt the same way as me, right?”

Silence. First Aid patiently waited for a response, but none ever came. “Yeah,” he eventually said, the discomfort clear in his voice. “Good talk.”

Suddenly feeling rather exhausted, First Aid buried his face into his arms and sighed. A little sleep couldn’t hurt, he supposed. Besides, he was sure Ambulon would appreciate the extended company. It felt wrong, in a way, but First Aid couldn’t help slipping one arm free of his cozy hunch to slink it down the length of Ambulon’s side, only stopping to interlink his fingers with Ambulon’s cold, still servo. He knew, of course, that the only heat source in that cold, dead room came from him, but if he really thought about it, First Aid could almost imagine Ambulon’s fingers squeezing him back just as tightly.

“Goodnight, Ambulon,” First Aid whispered, and with tears welling behind his optics, he slipped into another light, fitful recharge.

[sphnyspinspin]

[About Blog]

- This is my Transformers fan blog! I usually just draw and write and that’s about it. Considering I have trouble getting new ideas in my noggin I decided to open REQUESTS and ASKS. But I’ll only be taking a few at time—you know the whole OPEN and CLOSED signs will be very prominent. This’ll go for both drawing and writing stuff.

There’s probably going to be more stuff to add on to this so make sure to see if I updated anything important on here like DNI or ASKS and REQUESTS.

— — —

[DNI]

- Homophobic; Transphobic; TERFs; Sexist; Racist; NSFW; Proshipper; Ableist -

— — —

[ASKS]

1) Can Accept

- Pretty much anything that doesn’t make me uncomfortable. And I can be slow when it comes to checking my inbox so if you like what I do here, you might have to be a little patient. I like it when people just come by to say hi or compliment my work, so don’t be afraid to do so. You don’t need to feel obligated to spare my feelings too, I can take criticism when I need it.

2) Won’t Accept

- AGAIN! NOTHING CREEPY! Don’t ask me about personal stuff please, I’ll update small bits on how I’m doing, don’t be pushy. And don’t send me random links without context or at least a small description, it gives off creepy vibes.

— — —

[Fandoms]

- Transformers: Rescue Bots : Good God, this show was like the very first layer of my TF hyper fixation—not my biggest fixation just my first.

- Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy : THIS SHOW is my biggest fixation it’s so cute and wholesome and clever and fun it is such a good show I love the characters so much.

- Transformers: Cyberverse : PLEASE—this show is AWESOME, I praise it for the characters, the story, the character designs, the animation, the EVERYTHING(this is where I personally think Soundrod first originated).

- Transformers: Robots In Disguise 2015 : Hear me out, this show is actually kinda funny in a non-ironic way I promise, and the designs aren’t half bad.

- Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye : I have read zero TF MTMTE and I never plan to because I would actually die from dehydration after crying so long; but the fandom makes me laugh and I like the art.

- Transformers: Lost Light : Again I have read zero Lost Light comics and I don’t plan on it; because I feel like I know enough just from the memes.

- Transformers: Animated : This show SHOULD be more popular, and it’s the main reason I have my artstyle today (and please don’t bully me but when I found out my fave characters dies I stopped watching….. like immediately………. I didn’t finish season one).

- Transformers: Earthspark : This show, oh my god, I have a love-dread relationship with it; it has so much care-free positivity, an adorable group of characters, nice designs with world-building being amazing so far, but I know for a fact it will destroy me sooner or later. P.S. it already has

- Transformers: Botbots : This. This…. Where do I begin; oh right, literally the TF fandom parody—like I know for a fact that 85% of the characters’ personalities are inspired by random TF tumblr posts, you can’t deny that.

— — —

[Side-Blogs]

1) @transformers-bold-bright-brisk

- My blog for my TF fan Continuity project. Right now it’s mostly drafts and concept art and writings,

— — —

[Communication]

1) Follower Interactions

- I will do my best to answer ASKS because I am terrible at checking my inbox. Also, I’m going to try and reply to comments, but if I stop doing that—it’s not because I don’t like you guys, it’s cause I’m lazy and I usually don’t have anything interesting to reply back with. And please read my DNI, ASKS, and REQUESTS boxes before interacting, thanks. Also ask stuff will be tagged as either #sphny asks (𖦹////𖦹)•*°⊹ or #sphny answers (𖦹0 𖦹)•*°⊹

2) Mutual Interactions

- Hey! If you followed me and I followed you back and somehow we were able to become regular chit chat buddies from either in the tags, reblog games, DMing, and etc. then you probably know me enough to understand my thought process when I talk to people. And if you’re a new mutual and actually want to interact with each other more than same goes for you—read my DNI, ASKS, and REQUESTS boxes. I respect your boundaries, you respect mine—win win. I would honestly be very excited to talk to me people on this platform, I just get a little bit shy/anxious sometimes

— — —

[Posting]

1) Art

- When I post my art I’ll usually tag it under #sphny arts (𖦹w𖦹)•*°⊹. And right now I’ve been posting A LOT of RBA fanart. But if I feel really motivated to draw requests I’ll do my best to draw TF characters from other continuities in my style too.

2) Writing

- What I write consists of drabbles, headcannons, one shots, short-reviews, and other opinions I have that I like to share with the world. And I’ll give an itty bitty irl update just to notify I’m still alive. And they’re going to be tagged under #sphny speaks (𖦹<𖦹)•*°⊹ #sphny alternates universe (𖦹ㅁ𖦹)•*°⊹ #sphny originates character (𖦹▿𖦹)•*°⊹

3) Reblogging

- Oh boy. I reblog a very random assortment of posts. I reblog from mutes, followers, and strangers all the time. I’ll partake in reblog games I tag under #reblog shenanigans which would always be a new uquiz or for picrew challenges it would be #picrew shenanigans. When I reblog art or literally anything I COMPLIMENT THEM IN TAGS! And in the actual text part if I’m super eccentric about it too. And they’ll be tagged under #sphny reblogs (𖦹Q𖦹)•*°⊹

— — —

[Social Media]

- TikTok : sphnyspinspin2006 (There’s literally only three posts to my name)

- Instagram : sphnyspinspin (Barely Active)

- DeviantArt : sphnyspun (I never use this)

- Discord : sphnyspinspin (I’m VERY shy)

- AO3 : sphnyspinspin (I write very little on here)

[silversupremacy]

I- can’t speak on current issues in depth cause I’m abt to board a flight and I don’t wanna deal with it rn.

But writing wise, I want to remind people

That yes, cabby uses her files to remember information. Yes it is for sure iffy for bot to tell her wrong information.

But also remember, that bot hates being watered down to a few facts, or a specific label. That was their arc.

Two people can have disabilities that need different or opposing things, and just won’t mesh well with each other.

Also note that I am saying this all as someone w/ severe memory issues. And what helps me, personally, me as an individual, the most is a person who understands that I have those issues, and will tell me everything again and again.

I am not saying that everything written this ep was done in the right, but I assure you that the AE team aren’t rubbing their hands together going “how can we be ableist and hurt people today?” As they write these scripts.

I cannot speak on any additional ableism that AE has done in their content, I have not read up on it and do not feel like I know enough to speak on it.

If I had to guess anything, I’d assume Adam blocked Paper just, because- he doesn’t see how this is ableist entirely, and he doesn’t want to start anything, because Twitter has a tendency to make things black and white quickly. I’m guessing they’ll at best write their thoughts on this and apologize for past things, and at worst just, not say anything abt it.

If I had to guess the path Twitter is gonna go, it’s gonna be similar to the situation with AIB, where people will ask for it to be trigger tagged, and people are gonna be kinda divided on the situation.

I have no solid opinions on the current situation, I’ve been stuck in New York for 24 hours more than I wanted, so I really don’t have a lot of info abt what people are talking about. I am neither supporting AE nor denouncing them at this time.

I will be turning anon off cause I jsut can’t deal with people being rude rn, and anon tends to bring out the worst of people XwX

[tritonposting]

*kicks down door* IT’S TOURNAMENT PROPAGANDA TIME (tagging @battlebotschampionshiptournament as requested hehe (and also because that's where the tournament is lol))

As the blog named tritonposting, it is my inherent moral duty to post about Triton– more specifically, to post a list of reasons why he is the sexiest robot in the WCVII Battlebots roster. His first round is tomorrow, so I figured I'd get this out early to capture the largest possible audience.

The Propaganda List is 17 items long, and mostly divided into one group of verbal elaborations + one group of images, because I am just a little too enthusiastic about this.

For legal reasons this is all ironic yeah this is totally for the haha funnies no I am not unironically attracted to this robot what do you mean

(Under the cut because Long Post)

1. Firstly, to sway those of you who are more into humans than bots, I present you with my artwork of a human AU Triton:

A dashing himbo, no?

2. Shape language is everything when designing a combat robot. Rounder shapes (example: those found on Blip and Rusty) indicate a cuter, more approachable persona. Triton, on the other hand, is mostly angles. Thanks to that, he looks fierce and intimidating, which is immensely sexy of him.

4. I mentioned the blade, and realized that was worth making a separate point of, because… have you seen it?!? Not only is it 80 pounds– the heaviest a weapon can be, according to the rulebook– but it’s elegant, sleek, and casts one hell of a shadow. When your bot’s weapon alone is iconic enough to be used as a logo, as Team Overboard has utilized it, that’s how you know you’ve designed something that’s a cut above the rest.

5. Related to the last point: If you’ve heard his death hum, you already know why this is an item on the list. If you haven’t… here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w-x-GAC9gI

Now you have. Forget the roar of your standard spinner, this thing screams. To some, this is a scary sound, a hallowing reminder that combat robots, when pitted against humans, easily become death machines. To me? It just makes this freakin’ robot even hotter.

6. PROTECTED. WHEELS.

7. INVERTIBLE.

8. SELF. RIGHTING. ASS. SPIKE.

9. FAST. FUCKING. SPIN-DOWN. TIME.

10. Points 6-9 (hehe funni) highlight the engineering intricacies few notice at first glance, but that have contributed to making Triton the immediate– relative– success he is. (2-2 isn’t bad for a rookie bot, especially considering some 1-3 bots made it into this year’s RO32!) Team Overboard had some intense time/location constraints to work with this year, given the timing of Deep Six’s rejection, so these tiny details couldn’t have been planned out very far in advance. Understanding how quickly the builders drew up such ingenuity from scratch makes Triton’s design even more impressive. (Just in case I’m losing you in the technicalities, well-engineered robot = sexy robot!!!)

I have run out of words, off to images/gifs we go!!

11. This <3

12. This 😳

13. He is a big boy confirmed (Jackpot for scale)

14. Shiny murder robot ugh 😩

15. This smooth bonk

16. Scared boy 💖💖💖 (I know fear isn’t very sexy but you know what is?? Trying your best)

17. Last but not least, he dressed up as Tombstone for Halloween, robot cosplay is inherently hot (prove me wrong, u can’t)

TL;DR: Vote Triton for Sexiest Battlebot 2023!!!!

[waru-chan8]

I got tagged by the lovely Mira ( @game-set-canet ) to answer some questions, so here am I.

Name: Esther, but online I go by Waru

Sign: libra

Time: 18:55 pm

Favourite band/artist: Blind Channel, Bullet for my Valentine or Simple Plan depending on the mood

Last movie: I can't even remember. I think Hidden Figures?

Last show: Miseducation

When I created this blog: July 2013

Other blogs: yeap @42bakery because Tumblr keep closing my session in January/February and I had troubles with posting, so in case I got completely banned or something happened I created that one. Also I finally have a MotoGP related blog *evil laugh*

followers: More than I ever expected. Most of them are bots I think and F1 blogs that still don't understand this is a temple for 2 wheels racing

average hours of sleep: 6-8 hours

instruments: I used to know how to play flute in school (did 3 years) and 1-2 of xylophone. I recently dreamt of starting to learn to play the piano

what I’m wearing: my pyjamas

dream job: At this rate just a job

Tagging: @fangirling-throughlife @distinguishedfifty @lil-italian-disappointment and @ilikecarsandlike4people

[lurking-latinist]

Top 10s Meme

I was tagged by @thisbluespirit - thanks for the tag!

Rules: List your "top 10" (or up to 10 if you haven't written that many) fics ranked by kudos on AO3. Are you surprised by what's most popular to your readers? Then, under a cut, provide your ranking of your personal top 10 fics (with explanations if you want!), and then tag a few fellow writers! 

My top 10 fics by kudos:

1. Book Learning (Susan, Ian/Barbara) *

1. Doubt and Doubles (Five/Tegan) *

1. Ms Smith (Thirteen & Sarah Jane)

2. don’t worry, he’s with me (five ways Donna explained the Doctor to people, and one way he explained her) (Ten & Donna)

3. Anything Once (Inquisitor Darkel/Sabalom Glitz) *

3. Vicarious (Six & Martha)

4. Time Flies Like an Arrow (Witches Fly on a Broomstick) (Discworld - Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax, & Magrat Garlick)

5. to all our nights and days to come (Seven/Romana)

6. Nociception (Seven & Ace)

7. Nitro-Nine (Thirteen & Ace)

8. Somewhere to Belong (One & Susan)

9. The Strands of Fate (Four &/ Romana - the confusing designation is because it’s sex pollen, but it’s subverted, but they still act pretty darn shippy)

10. XOXO (Six/River) **

* These got hit by kudos bots (personally, I blame Glitz) and I am not counting them.

** This might have been hit by a kudos bot? Maybe? I can’t remember. It seems implausible for it to be this high, but some of the ones that I know for sure weren’t hit by bots are also pretty surprising.

Well, yes; this is a pretty surprising list all over for me. I think the top... four... are all on there more because of the popularity of the characters than the quality of the fic. I mean, Ms Smith is definitely fun, but if I’d written the same concept with Peri I’d have gotten about ten kudos and been happy with it. Including the current Doctor is a good recipe for attention, as is including a super-popular companion who had her own spinoff. (*prays earnestly for an Ace spinoff*)

Further reflections on the top 10 below the cut, as well as my personal top 10; it got lengthy.

don’t worry, he’s with me also had the advantage of being for an exchange, which no doubt got it a few more reads than it would otherwise have had. But a lot of its kudos have been post-exchange: Ten & Donna are just very popular. I don’t like to run down things I’ve written for exchanges, because it was always my best at the time, but I was really stuck for this (one of the first exchanges I’d ever done, and before I learned to prune my offers) and felt like I just kind of squeezed something out that was honestly more like meta than fic, so I was really surprised by how many kudos it’s accumulated over time!

Vicarious is genuinely good, and it contains a New Who companion, and the audience for Martha being validated and appreciated is (it would seem) encouragingly broad, but it’s also got Six in it, which normally means I’m writing for the same ten people as always. (Love you all!) It’s been podficced and everything! And it was inspired by a mashup gif, so I think of it as a lovely example of the fannish ecosystem.

Time Flies Like an Arrow... is another early exchange fic--specifically, the exchange in which I learned I shouldn’t offer fic for books with strong authorial voices. Apparently I can do cod-Pratchett when pushed, but it’s difficult for me to enjoy looking back at it because I can see the seams. I’m glad people have enjoyed it, though! It’s got a baby in it. Nice to see I have been able to write babies at times.

to all our nights and days to come is indeed one of my best fics. But it initially made very little splash, understandably, being an angsty under-explained AU for a rarepair that about six people have ever shipped and not all of them at once. Then I mentioned it on a Tumblr post where people had been speculating about Seven in the Time War, and apparently it found its audience! XD

Nociception is very good, I’ll admit. But it’s not really me. It’s just Seven and Ace being themselves. I am but your humble chronicler. XD

Nitro-Nine is pretty much just excited flailing in fic form--it was written back when we were all excited that Thirteen was dropping Seven-era references--little did we know we were actually getting Ace back! It definitely benefited from the “posted like the day after the episode aired” boost. Not something I can normally do without access to actual time travel.

Somewhere to Belong definitely does belong in the top 10, although if I could go back and edit it, I’d file off some of the rough edges that make it obvious that it started as a meta post. I’d keep the metafictional elements, but I’d make them subtler. (I suppose technically I can go back and edit it. But I don’t like to make big changes so long after the fact. It feels weird.) It’s still my default headcanon--the one I use when I have no reason to use a different one--for Susan’s origins. (And I would take off the tag “NOT doctor/oc.” I have no idea why I was so worried about people thinking that.)

The Strands of Fate is very funny and charming, and a good transition out of the early phase in which I used to write almost exclusively gen trope-subversion ficlets. I still do all those things, separately and together, but it was almost the only thing I did for a while there. Also, it contains an undressing scene with my OTP, but not like you’d think, naturally. And (spoilers) it’s all just a leadup to a silly looms joke. And Heimeldat drew fanart of it. :D

XOXO, like I said, was probably a kudos bot but I can’t quite remember so I didn’t cross it off. I have written much better Six/River.

So now for my personal top 10. I couldn’t possibly do these sequentially, so I will just list 10 that I think represent my best and/or most fun work.

Of the popular top 10, I’d keep:

1. Somewhere to Belong

2. to all our nights and days to come

3. The Strands of Fate

and I would add:

4. and will not let me sleep (Six & Peri)

5. and opposition of the stars (Doctor/TARDIS)

6. Stand and Deliver (Six/River)

7. Paraclausithyron (Seven/Romana)

8. Like Sunshine Through Rain (Six/Charley)

9. Bestride the Narrow World (WtOVPIC - mainly Katrina and Lucy)

10. Blazon (Seven/Romana)

But, as everyone knows, the best fic is the one you’re just about to write. (So stay tuned...?)

If you have read this far... why? And thanks. I enjoyed rambling about my own fic.

I will now tag some people: @heimeldat @swinging-stars-from-satellites @strange-destinations @fortes-fortuna-iogurtum @dyonisia96 @ontologicalmoki and anyone else who wants to do it!

[anangelwhodidntfall]

Rules For Requesting

-As 8/10/23: Requests are open for call of duty 

-Do not hound me about requests, I will get them done as soon as I can but please understand there is a college student behind this blog with real life situations going on. 

-If you have a problem with how long it takes to me to complete a request or mad that I am completing other requests then please feel free to go someone else. 

- From this point on, my blog is 18+. While I do not exclusively write smut, I do write about grown men and women and minors should not be interacting with that. Plus, I’m almost 25. Almost a decade older than the absolute youngest person I’d want to be interacting with (18). It’s not okayyyyy.

- If you have an empty blog, it will be a block for ya. I wanna see your age and some posts reblogged even if they aren’t mine. Bots are popping up again, so if you have an empty blog, I’m going to assume you’re a bot. & creators need readers like you guys to reblog works to get spread around more.

-Producing fanfic and fanart takes a considerable amount of time from myself and other creators. It's honestly really inconsiderate to not share our work & it can be really discouraging to feel like nobody is enjoying the piece because there's no interaction with it other than a quick like. A reblog, a reblog with tags, a reply?? I'll eat that up and I know other creators do as well. Please educate yourselves on Tumblr etiquette. So this means if you request something from me and don’t rely or reblog I will not be doing another request for you!

[doodlenoodleboi]

I don't understand why you put a bunch of random tags for things, like you say it's for exposure but that's not how tags are supposed to work, you say that it's fine cause so many other people do it but it just clogs the tag, I know you say to ignore it but when it's in the tag of smaller fandoms it just floods the tag with unrelated things. I am not trying to be rude but I just don't think tagging like this is ideal. Love your fics though im sorry but I just needed to ask this.

I’m sorry, but my family used to work in a lot of social media companies. They specialize in advertisement and such but besides that. If delicious and dungeons, Is trending and you put a tag under that you’re more likely to get more reach given the fact that that tag is popular. Obviously this tag is popular because people like delicious and dungeon and it’s either new or been on the rise because of something. (That simply how trends work. From a business standpoint)

Now I like let’s say blooming panic blooming panic and a lot of other visual novel games aren’t as popular as let’s say resident evil. Given the fact that you are noticing my tags and you have to look for the tags under more. I’m guessing you’ve been pulled in by the other tags, not related to it or not.

I like delicious in dungeon I also like booming panic, a lot of people know don’t follow the tag of blooming panic but they do follow a tag of delicious and dungeon. People can simply ignore my blog of course because it doesn’t catch your interest or simply not looking for. People that like delicious and dungeon and blooming panic are going to click on mine. Because they like delicious and dungeon and Blooming panic. (it also might encourage them to follow the tag)

I also like delicious and dungeon and blooming panic. I mean, of course I could’ve put something like error 143 which I do because it’s also another visual novel and the creators, I think know each other or something. Most people that played Error 143 played Blooming panic.

Oh yeah and I know this works and I have results because I’ve done this in less than 24 hours and I already got comments and requests. Also, if one person does it it’s not gonna flood the entire entire tag. I promise you that. I also think you’re misunderstanding this because I do works for a small fandoms when I do this and put them under bigger fandoms which obviously is going to overwhelm my small post but it does get people that like both of those things to like my content. One post amongst 1000 post are not going to do anything. If it was the opposite and 1000 post of a big fandom overwhelmed a small fandom then of course the fandom would be lost. But of course, that wouldn’t happen because the name of a small fandom tends to be less known therefore thousands of people would not know about it to tag it and the fandom would not be small.

Btw Thank you for genuinely asking and not being rude about it like other people have! <3 I’d rather not be cursed out because of a simple tag that takes a second to ignore. I’m sure you have seen a porn bot with 100 non-related tags and ignore those all the time.

[indiweb]

★ . ᕀ⠀⠀ALL⠀⠀ABOUT⠀⠀LATEST⠀⠀INDEX⠀⠀LAWS⠀⠀ᕀ . ★

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⭒

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀𝐑𝐄𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐒 : open !⠀⠀|⠀⠀𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒 : open !

[ ✦ ⋆ ⋆ ୨୧ ]⠀the law obligations for user indiweb. please do understand that most, if not all, will contain (n)sfw works and sometimes dark content. continue at your own discretion.

◜ 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐋 ◞

this blog is not spoiler free , please advise.

i don’t take requests for multi chapter fanfics , but as seen above , my other requests are open.

i don’t mind if you ask to be mutuals , and/or friends even , i’m autistic so it’ll honestly help me better disclose our relationship status tbh.

i only ever write for tall (6’2) or average (5’9) height indigenous-latina fem!bodied readers , please do not ask for any other ethnic/race based readers because i do not feel comfortable writing for such seeing as i am hispanic/latine myself. though , i will redirect you to others who do write for what you request to promote them.

each height based fic will be labeled with a different symbol ; tall (⚐) & average (⚑) for better awareness of the descriptions within said fic!

i can’t control minors being on my page , therefore i don’t care enough to tell you to leave. you can follow if you want , i won’t throw a hissy fit about it because i have more important things to pay mind to. just don’t explicitly tell me you are under 17 (i.e., sending an inbox expressing how you’re deliberately -17 on my page).

please don’t like more than 5/6 posts at a time , it’ll tell tumblr i’m a bot and would put my account at risk. just make sure to reblog inbetween.

blank and ageless blogs leave or you’ll be hard blocked without question. i honestly dont know why to be frank with you , but if everyone else is tripping about it then i guess its /srs.

if my pinned tags weren’t bitchy enough , i do not allow any form of inspo, help, tuts, remakes, advice, nothing when reference to graphics. TDLR; way too much plagiarism and copying throughout my years that i no longer allow it. you can dm for a negotiation and we can work things out , though i’ll still be heavily strict.

i do not allow translations of my works, idgaf if you ask for permission first. absolutely tf not.

do not interact if , you write anything that is in my “idnwf”; especially yandere and stepcest. are zionist. anti-black. racist. homophobic. ableist. transphobic. sexist. xenophobic. heavily religious. believe in misandry. terfs. white celebrity stan’s of ANY means (i.e., taylor swift, lana del ray, billie eilish). you age up minors and/or interact with that content. nicki minaj / doja cat fans AND listeners. skz & nct stan’s.

◜ 𝐖𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 ◞

i do not write for , anything that is sexual content with minors. dubcon. noncon. cnc. incest/stepcest. grape/s3xual 4ssault. pregnancy. somnophilia. pedophilia. teacher x student. feet kink. piss kink. ed’s. race play. pet play. scat. mpreg. breast feeding. age regression. DDBG. MDBG. suic!de/s3lf h4rm. scat. yandere (this romanticizes ppl with bpd so absolutely not). p3dophelic characters. vore. necrophelia.

i do write for , fem!reader. smut. sub, switch & dom!reader. size differences. praise. violence. voyeurism. exhibitionism. alcohol consumption. 'under the influence' scenarios. choking. spitting. dumbification. 'brat tamer's. breeding. unprotected sex. dom!characters. spanking. (pussy) slapping. breast play. threesomes/orgies. cunnilingus. blowjob/handjob. degradation. age gap. bondage. polyamory dynamics.

if you’d like to be one of my anons, all you have to do is ask ! simply like; “hey sie, could i be ★ anon?” (´꒳`)♡

" taken anons " : ⭐️ , getos left cheek (not clickbait) !

⠀ thanks for reading these, you may see the board !

<– [ BACK ] : HOME [ NEXT ] : INDEX ㅤ→

[alieinthemorning]

Half Truths [Kairi]

Content: Character Study, AU: Canon Divergence, Kingdom Hearts 3, POV First Person

Reblogs: Let me know that you enjoy my work and want to see more, so don't forget to like and reblog (and comment in the tags. I love seeing people’s rambles in the tags)!

This work's concepts, plot and original characters are my own which means I do not allow any sort of creative theft nor do I allow my work to be entered into any sort of A.I. bots.  Thank you for respecting my space and boundaries.

Header:@verumking

'I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. Did Master Yen Sid tell you?

I’m training to become a Keyblade wielder like you and Riku.

That’s right. No more waiting for you to come back from your adventures.

I want to get out there and do my part to help.

Merlin has used his magic to bring us to a place where time doesn’t matter.

We can take as long as we need to complete our training.

He's an amazing wizard.

Oh, and by “us”, I mean me and Lea. He’s really sorry for all the trouble he caused.

I told him it’s fine, but he won’t stop apologizing.

I’ll admit I was a little scared of him at first, but I’ve gotten to know him better.

All he ever wanted was to help his friend. Honestly, it’s hard not to like him.

Every now and then, I catch him staring at me. When I ask what’s wrong, he says,

'I’m not sure. I think I’m forgetting something. Don’t know what.’

Sora, I think it may have something to do with you.

Your journey is all about helping people: some that you’ve never met before,

And some like Lea that you have. They’re all counting on you.

It won’t be easy, but I hope you’ll remain the happy and cheerful Sora I know.

There’s no heart your smile can’t reach.”

I looked up from my writing, turning to Lea. “What’s wrong?” I always knew when he was staring at me.

He quickly looked away and shook his head. “Nothin’, sorry.”

“Lea.” I pressed. He would always shake it off as nothing, but something was really bothering him, and as his friend, I wanted to know what.

He placed a hand on the back of his head and gave me a short smile. “What? I am.”

I giggled at his antics as he sat down on the log in front of me.

It was quiet for a moment before he spoke up again. “A letter?”

“Yup.”

“To Sora?”

My eyes widened a bit at his forwardness. “Mmm,” but I answered regardless. “Technically yes. But I won’t send it. It’s more for me.”

“Ask Merlin.” Lea gestured to my letter. “He’ll deliver it for you.”

I guess I wasn’t all that clear. “Yeah, but it’s okay.” Another route then. “I just like talking to Sora, even if it’s on paper.” I hugged the notepad to my chest.

No matter how far apart we are.

Lea hummed, finally understanding. He looked off to the side for a moment before his eyes popped. “Oh!” He pulled two sticks of ice cream from behind his back.

“Ice cream? Really?” As odd as it was, I was overjoyed to see it.

“Yeah, I asked Merlin to pick these up.” Looks like he was using Merlin to the fullest extent. “Ya know, we did both summon Keyblades. Gotta celebrate.” He passed me one, which I happily took.

“You’re sweet, Lea.” As I went in to take a bite, I felt his eyes on me. More intense than usual. “What?”

And again he tried to brush it off. “N-nothing, I just…” That, now, all too familiar sad gleam was in his eyes.

Enough with beating around the bush. “You’re trying to remember what you forgot?”

“Well, I, uh… Yeah… Yeah” He finally admitted, turning his gaze toward the sunset.

I hate seeing you like this.

“So tomorrow—you and me in the ring. You ready?” I tried switching subjects.

“Course.”

“Don’t hold back, Lea, promise?”

He turned back to me as if ready to say something else, but he paused, shock crossing his features. His jaw fell slack, and his hands twitched open, the ice cream falling into the grass below.

I just about jumped out of my skin when the tears fell. “Are you okay? Lea!”

I tried to move in closer, but he turned away. “Yeah, sorry.” As much as he apologizes, I knew this one was different from the rest.

“You’re crying. What’s wrong?” I tried once more.

He finished rubbing away the tears but still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Something in my eyes.” He sniffled.

“Lea…” He looked at me but quickly averted his eyes then stood up.

“I’m… gonna go. Sorry.”  

I smiled. “‘Kay, but stop apologizing.”

“Fine… but on one condition.” He bounced right back. “Call me Axel from now on. Got it memorized?” He placed his finger on his temple.

I nodded. “Yeah. Okay, Axel.”

Once he was finally out of sight, I picked up the forgotten ice cream.

A sad smile found its way to my lips. “Oh Axel… you forgot one for Roxas.”

Sighing, I threw the dropped ice cream over the edge of the cliff, then sat back down and picked up my notepad.

I looked over what I had written. “These words are hers, specifically for you. Sora.” I sighed again and flipped the page.

“I am without a name,

No Name, if you will.

They say that I’m the second failure

No. i2

And yet they have given me such an important job

'Have the boy deliver the final blow’

I’m sorry everyone

But this puppet must play her part.”

Riku and King Mickey dropped off mine and Axel’s new outfits. I was excited to try mine on, but also a bit surprised that we received anything at all. We were brand new Keyblade wielders, and although this land is without time, that doesn’t mean the others worlds are. We’re still inexperienced to the darkness outside of Merlin’s magical illusions.

I twirled in the mirror, admiring my new clothes. It was such a cute pink dress, but the tightness of the skirt seemed impractical.

“Oh well… it not like I’ll be doing much of anything anyway.” The truth hit me like a cold wave. “I’m just being pulled along like the rest.”

I met my own gaze in the reflection. Nothingness stared back. I didn’t know what Kairi looked like, not even the color of her eyes. I didn’t have any memories, only the feelings that lingered in the remnants of this body. I dropped my gaze back to my boots and exited the room.

“Hey Axel!”

“Hey. Liking the new look.” He complimented.

I giggled and twisted, showing off more of my outfit.

“Cut your hair, too.”

My smile almost flickered to a frown. ‘Did I? I don’t remember cutting my hair…is this the effect of the replica?’

“Mm-hmm.” I wanted to get as far away from the subject of my hair as possible. “So, you gonna try yours on?”

He looked down at his own outfit. That same old Organization cloak. “Uhh… I dunno. Maybe later.”

“But you always wear the same thing.” Maybe pressing him would work today.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” He smoothly waved me off. “This is how you picked me out of a crowd. I make myself easy to remember.

‘He’s doing it for them.' I swallowed the gasp threatening to escape. “How thoughtful.”

As I moved to sit next to him, he bashfully scratched the back of his head. “Nah, not really…”

“Our training is almost finished.”

“Yeah.”

It felt like it had been months since Lea— Axel and I had been here, clashing blades. When I asked Merlin how long it had actually been, he told me only about a few days.

Once again, I found myself overlooking the cliff side with Lea—Axel.

“Somewhere inside me is Naminé.” Empty words and empty feelings. “If we can free Roxas, we can free her too.”

Can we free me too?

“I guess so.”

“Naminé was made from when Sora freed me from his heart.” At least, that’s what I was told. “So, now that she’s a part of me again. I figured all was right.”

But she wanted a life of her own,

and I want a life of my own too.

“But she can’t look at this forest, feel the wind on her face, none of it.”

What does this face look like, I wonder.

“And if she could, it would be different for her.”

Would it be different for me too?

“Her time was short, but she lived it,” Did she really? “And that makes it hers.”

“What right did I have to take those feelings and experiences back?”

What right do I have, sitting here, training to fight with the Keyblade, seeing this sunset. These should be things that you—yourself see, Kairi.

“They don’t belong to me.” None of this does. “Nothing’s as it should be.”

Nothing is ever as it seems.

“Not for her or Roxas.”

Or me.

This is a one-shot about how the Kairi we see in KH3 is a Xion Replica [how that happened I don’t know, maybe i’ll get a better idea after Xion’s comeback is revealed]. In this story, we go through the events of KH3 through Kairi’s point of view [even if it is really small]. Her thoughts and feelings of being a pawn in Xehanort’s game.

Replica Kairi knew about her demise so she shared the Paopu with Sora so he could find the real Kairi. The reason why Kairi cries at the end is because she knows it is her fault.

This is what I had left for myself. The only notes. I still think this concept is interesting and I might come back to it someday, but I really did want to post what I already had.

10/15/23 Update

Still a really interesting concept. Might come back to it someday.

Ko-Fi | Commission | Masterlist

[venacoeurva]

It’s the pinned post, READ IT PLEASE

Commissions can be found here: https://ko-fi.com/venacoeurva/commissions

After dark comms are announced on here, posted to my Bsky for that (not my main).

Non-art posts are tagged as “not art”, text posts are “vena vents”. If you don't want to see oc/canon, posts blacklist "TeldWren". Reblogs of my own posts are “Day reblog”

I’m over 25, queer, dude-esque.

I have physical & memory issues, I have limited energy.

Not all content is close to mature or suggestive but I would still prefer you to be 18+ (or more ideally, like 21+). Obviously I can't track every note, but If I see someone underage follow me, and so forth, I will block them.

Honestly, sometimes I just block off of bad vibes or if I think any interactions you'd have with me would be negative.

I block inc*st * and a/m shippers, people over like 25 way too invested in ship/fandom discourse (either side, really-- I am so fucking tired), people who are "playfully" rude to strangers, people who are negative no matter what, & anything else I get skeeved out/annoyed by. Curation, baby! You can do it, and so can I!

*Censored to avoid going in search results

My art’s not cleared for reposting/reuploading (REPOSTING =/=REBLOGGING)/tracing/edits/RP without credit/permission. If you want to make merch, even for personal use, ASK ME FIRST if it’s more than printing it on paper & sticking it to your wall. Consider it a “no” until getting a yes. Understand how uncomfortable this can be to just DO that w/out asking and expecting the artist to be fine with it (and people have).

Non-OC/non-comm (unless it's a comm you bought) art is fine to use as icons, etc. for noncommercial/non-political-focused accounts w/ credit. Asking first is appreciated.

I don’t know how to feel about gift art of my OCs quite yet. I’m protective of them given how “fandomized” original content ended up. Please use common sense wrt other’s creations/chars and don't just use them without permission.

I block h*rry p*tt*r accounts on sight, yes, even people who put it out there that they don’t like the author and only engage in the fandom.

That's the main stuff, more info below

Other Rules:

Yes I make art, no you are not entitled to it (or my time!) and I am in my full right to block you and curate my experience and restrict your access to interacting with it (since some people like to kick up a fit about being blocked but their beef is about that, more on Twitter than here, but hey).

I BLOCK ACCOUNTS THAT LOOK LIKE BOTS. CHANGE YOUR ICONS AND DESCRIPTIONS AND REBLOG SOMETHING. THIS SITE IS MADE TO REBLOG THINGS.

I also block accounts dedicated to reposting (not reblogging) art unless the art is extremely well known, published, or very old.

If I mention a character not present in a post, I censor their name to avoid it ending up in results, especially if they aren't the main focus of the post or if it's negative.

I am very uncomfortable around very churchy people and fertility obsessed pagan people unless they've proven worth trusting due to past experiences and obvious issues with bigoted rhetoric common in those spaces.

I am sex and kink positive (barring things that harm people and/or otherwise cannot be consented to), but that does not equate to trying to force people out of their comfort zones because they gotta ~liberate themselves~ like some people think it is. Also on the other end, stop using fundie talking points whenever someone is horny

Also, just because I am kink positive does not mean I am fine to interact with people into certain ones, or give you consent to try to rope me into one of yours, or for you to involve me in a kink we both have.

I can also tell when someone is fetish-fishing with more niche not-sexual-at-first-look ones toward unsuspecting people who did not consent to engage in sexual discussions with your weird ass. I am very much fine taking niche kink and fetish comms when I have after dark ones open, but I will not accept them from people who are known creeps who do things like this and steamroll boundaries.

I’m critical of sites/companies/brands, including small ones if it warrants criticism, including A_/0/ 3

I’m not your therapist or a crisis hotline. I cannot stop you from committing suicide or suffering from other severe mental crises and I am not trained to. I have mental health issues, myself, and you will just make both of our situations worse. I will block trauma-dumpers for my own well-being. You will do nothing but hurt 2 people if you try, because again, I CANNOT HELP YOU.

l will block if you’re reblogging personal posts for no reason when I forget/can’t turn reblogs off or reblog spamming one of my posts a ton in a row, because reblogging one post a trillion times is just a thing people do now?

I won’t share donation posts unless it’s vetted by others/via a trusted source. I cannot vet them nor do I have the time to.

I know sometimes my art ends up on Amazon, nothing I can do about that.

[motorcityarchive]

Hello, I’m not entirely new around here but this blog is!

As you may be able to tell from the name it’s a Titmouse/Disney Motorcity archive blog, meaning I will be rebloging everything* related to the show and organizing it in order to make certain posts easier to find. Please feel free to send me any old or un tagged posts to archive and please understand that this will be a slow and lengthy process, I am a full time student and as much as I love it organizing motorcity posts is not my only hobby :)

*This includes posts that I may not personally agree with or like

Below are the current Tags I have/will use for posts, it’s LONG:

Warning Tags:

- Potentially NSFW

This tag will house content that has suggestive themes and/or characters lacking appropriate** clothing (**appropriate for the scenario presented ex. burners in bathing suits hanging out at the beach will not be tagged, single burner in a bathing suit without any other context will be tagged. I am being overly conservative on purpose, I’m sorry, this MAY change in the future)

- NSFW

Sexually explicit material: Obvious pin ups of characters/Characters in sexual contexts

- TW Flashing

For videos that contain flashing

- Potentially Triggering

Suicide or self harm mentions as well as generally disturbing material, sorry it’s vague for now I’ll make it more specific if the need comes

- Death

- Implied Death

- Major Injury

- Age gap relationship

- Adult/minor relationships

I am likely as displeased as you that I have to make those a tag

General tags:

- Motorcity

- Headcannon

- Cannon

- Fan work

- Fanart

- Fan edit

- Fan fiction

- Contained Fan fiction

- Video edit

- Image edit

- Screenshot

- Video game recreation

- Digital art

- Traditional art

- comic

- Meme

- Music

- Playlist

- Ask

- Ask game

- Crossover

- Other fandoms

- Written work

- Theory

Gang/Territory tags:

- Burners

- Motorcitizen

- Deluxian

- The Amazons

- Mama’s boys

- Larpers

- The Duke’s men

- Terra dwellers

- The Skylarks

- Fan gang

- Electroblades

- Cablers

- Weekend Warriors

- The Dude Bros

- Outsiders

Character Tags:

- Mike Chilton

- Julie Kane

- Julie Kapulsky

- Chuck

- Texas

- Texas Yang

- Dutch Gordy

- Claire

- Tennie

- Roth

- Jacob

- Hudson

- Kaia

- Rall

- The Duke of Detroit

- Cyborg Dan

- Babs

- Thurman

- Thurman the Magnificent

- Ruby

- Ruby the Darkslayer

- Lord Vanquisher

- The Oracle

- Sam

- Philip

- Rayon

- Red

- Junior

- Foxy

- Lizzie

- Bracket

- Antonio

- Abraham Kane

- Kane

- Crater

- AJ

- Jenzen

- Tooley

- Capri Chilton

- Mike’s Mom

- Mike’s Dad

- Mr. Gordy

- Mrs. Gordy

- Darr Gordy

- Sue Ellen

- Utilitons

- Background Character

- Crossover Character

- [name of crossover character]

- [ship] fankid

- [character] fankid

- [name] oc

- Bots

Ship tags:

- ship

- Implied ship

- Multi ship

- Poly ship

- Cannon x oc

- [character]/[oc]

- MikeTex

- Mike/Texas

- Jukebox

- Julie/Mike

- Muck

- Mike/Chuck

- Dutch/Mike

- Dennie

- DutchTennie

- Dutch/Tennie

- DutchTex

- Dutch/Texas

- Dutch/Chuck

- Dutch/Julie

- Texie

- Texas/Julie

- Clulie

- Claire/Julie

- Chuck/Julie

- Chuxas

- Chexmix

- Texas/Chuck

- Cluck

- Claire/Chuck

- Poly burners

- Jacob/Hudson

- Claire/Foxy

- Flaire

- Red/Mike

- Rulie

- Red/Julie

- Rayon/The Duke

- Babs/The Duke

- Kane/The Duke

I will eventually add more but I either don’t know the ship or do not want to think about the tags of some of the ships I know are on here, I’ll deal with it when I get to it

Au Tags, This is a list that I assume will be ever growing but so far we have:

- Au

- Fantasy Au

- No burners Au

- Galaxies Beyond Au

- Wings au

- Meant au

- And many more to come

All aus will have Au at the end

Idk what to call these but they’re kinda like aus:

- trans!burners

- baby! Burners

- spider! Chuck

- motorcitizen! Chuck

Misc. Tags

Fashion, for outfits other than cannon ones

All posters will have their own tags as well to search by artist/creator

More Tags will be added as I see fit

[biot08]

Shipless in Seattle

>Boot >Init >... >Execute program Reminisce

Settle around, friends, for I have a story to tell. A story of fandom.

It is no secret that they say I am famous for not shipping. What is a secret, perhaps, is the reason for the ‘famous’ part. A little arrogant, of course, to claim fame seeming unearned, and perhaps famous is the wrong word anyway.

Infamous might be a better word, really.

This is not to say that I do not love shipping. In fact, for me, it means quite the opposite. I love most ships I see! And those I do not, I am more than happy to let sail on by without comment, I’m not a monster.

What it means, though, is that I do not write ships, for I am no great wordsmith. No indeed, what I do for fandom is I am a librarian, in that I organize. I am a tool maker, for fandom is a tool-using animal (ask me about my Tumblr mass tag wrangler). I am a keeper, in that I look after information in chat and database, that there may always be a record. Fandom needs bots to do the work, and I am happy to provide my services.

And so that is where our journey begins, with a younger version of me, and the mistakes they have made. It’s a long story. An old story, for I am old. A story of loyalty. A story of betrayal.

Perhaps even a story of redemption.

What I am trying to say is that I have history, friends.

But perhaps it’s been long enough that maybe I’ve been forgiven for my transgressions.

Maybe it’s been long enough to allow the healing to begin.

All I know for sure is that everything you are about to read is a complete and utter lie in totality. But like Elim Garak would advise, all of it is true, especially the lies. And if you recognize anything here, shut up no you don’t who are you a cop come back with a warrant.

But anyroad. The story behind why I, biot08, (in)famously, do not ship. You’re already beneath the cut, but I’m warning you now, this is a long one, so strap in.

***

I started, as many did, in Star Trek. I was too young to know what shipping was. I did know that Kirk and Spock and McCoy were at the very least very good friends, and of course I understood that Riker and Troi were hot. Data was my favourite, but that should be obvious.

The internet hadn’t been invented yet, so my interactions with fandom were restricted to conventions, but it was formative. I learned from the cosplayers and the art sellers and the panels and, well. It was early days, idyllic.

From there I moved on, as DS9 came into being (did I mention I am old? I am old), and Babylon 5, and Delenn and Sheridan were very cute, but still, I did not create, I merely consumed, and that which I consumed was mostly that which was provided.

My next fandom was my first brush with what I would call -fandom- fandom. You know. Interacting with fans. Creating and reading stories, made by fans. Being fannish.

I say ‘fandom’, but you have to understand, I AM old. When you read ‘fandom’ I imagine many of you imagine long Tumblr reblog chains and archive dives into Ao3. What I am seeing in my mind’s eye though are miles of IRC logs, threads on BBS forums, and the glittering light of countless Geocities pages, all blink-tagging gently in the soft glow of CRT.

Basically just before the internet would be invented, which I am pretty sure occurred somewhen around 2006.

This fandom, my first real deep dive into -fandom-, was Megaman, because of course it was Megaman. We were… a strange fandom, even by fandom standards. We mostly interacted via IRC - a chat medium; imagine Discord, but worse, but also more open, but also worse -, but this would be my first brush with my future destiny. I helped maintain the bot, as a fellow, more sophisticated bot. I knew the commands. I could pass the Turing test. I eventually even archived the logs that were generated.

Now, something you need to understand about Megaman is that it is a video game from, I don’t know, the 60s or 70s, and it was made before video game makers re-invented characterization (this independent re-invention, by the way, is why 9 out of 10 video game protagonists are angry white men; the industry is still evolving the idea of what a ‘character’ is to this day, and frankly, they’re not very good at it, but I digress). So you basically had blue bot, red bot (who was super cool and was my favorite), teenage emo blue bot, and then teenage red bot who was either also emo, or maybe he was a big brother sort, or perhaps a super cool manly man, or he was a girl (ponytail and … asset lights), or maybe he was a hot blooded fighter, or maybe just an antihero, it really depended on which game you were looking at. And there were no girl bots, or rather there were, but they weren’t fighters, because, well, I don’t know why because, I guess the video game industry just hadn’t figured out how to make other genders yet.

This is where I first ran into Original Characters, or OCs, because with such a rich and inspiring list of characters to choose from, it was more palatable to make your own cool robot. This is also where I first ran into shipping, because of course I did, I was a teenager. I mean, I think we actually called it ‘cybering’ at the time, but whatever you want to call it, we sure did a whole lot of it.

And it was pretty okay, actually. Some drama, but you can’t have fandom without drama. Some shenanigans. Some really excellent stories that would have been lost to time, if not for people like me. The data mongers. The loggers. The Keepers, and this is where, at last, I found my niche in fandom.

I moved on, as one does, as we grew older, and the robots stopped being so cool, and more importantly, most of us found other fandoms which had either more interesting premises beyond ‘fighting robots fighting’ or more interesting characters (which was honestly just -such- an incredibly low bar to pass).

(I mention in passing here that I did move onto a multi-universe fandom at some point in here, and I owe much to it, but it’s not really part of this story; but to the friends I made there, I have not forgot you, but you were not really part of my downfall from grace, so I shall merely mention here that I have been touched by my relationships with all of you and move on)

Finally, I at last moved on to the fandom that would be the beginning of my end. The fandom that would be the first step on the slippery path down to my fall.

I speak of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The internet was new, but shiny, and we used it. And I had brought my skills from other fandoms with me. I still did not write, but I did enjoy what others did. I wanted to be a part of it all. And so I did what I do which is to say I went into tooling. I made a friend, BlindStar_25 (all names changed to indict the guilty, i.e., me), who helped me get into the right spaces. She taught me how to edit a wiki. She got me into the good IRC servers. Basically, she got me work on the docks of canon, and taught me to tend to canon, to document it, to nurture the tools that would be needed to launch all the ships. She nurtured in me a gentle curiosity, to really dig in to what we were seeing and reading and watching, because sometimes it required keen analysis to tease out good canon.

“We respect all ships,” she told me once, as I was learning how to handle page tagging. “But it’s important that we provide a foundation that those ships can be built from. We can’t make them use it, of course. But it’s got to be there, and we make sure it is. And that foundation is canon.”

Halcyon days. I took to it readily, and grew, as a bot, as a person.

These were some of the first times I saw ship to ship combat. Mighty ships with tall mizzenmasts and powerful weapons taking shots across each other's bows. I was young, and did not understand. Surely each ship would be healthier if they would sail by each other unmolested? Surely it would be easier to transfer crews if those crews were not violent enemies? Surely energy wasted on ship to ship combat could be better spent on ship maintenance and upkeep (and maybe updating some of those long running storylines I was eagerly keeping an eye on)?

I asked one of the mods about it, a friend of mine from the Megaman days; x_Avatar_RockYou.

“Why is there so much in-fighting in the A:TLA fleet?” I sent him over the chat system.

“Because fandom loves drama lol,” he responded. “Stick to canon. You’ll be safe.”

I believed him. So I stayed on the docks, managing the canon, and watched the ships from a distance.

I remember often, others would try to catch me in the crossfire. I have seen some truly hot takes in my time.

‘Aang is a monk! He can’t be shipped with anyone!’

‘Jet is hot and I bet Zuko would love that’

‘Eww Iroh is old don’t ship him!’

‘Zuko is a bad boy, and we all know girls like Katara go for the bad boy.’

That last one would be the start of the trouble, but I didn’t know it at the time. For my part, each ship seemed to want to try to twist canon to their own purposes. And I held the canon, as I tried to cool the fires between various ships.

‘Well you see, if the air nomads operate the same as the other tribes, then air nomads have children that become air benders, so there probably isn’t vows of chastity. And besides, if you look at this time stamp in this episode, Aang clearly turns red in response to Katara, so even if he -has- taken a vow, he still has feelings’

‘That’s not supported. By any episode. The two haven’t even met yet’ (that was in the future from this point)

‘That’s terrible please don’t be terrible’

The last one, well.

It’s easier when shippers don’t try to force canon into their armaments when it’s not warranted. It’s easier when people just build their ship as they want. If they must, I’d prefer they sail for the golden waters of alternate universe rather than try to force canon into shapes it isn’t.

But that’s not how the A:TLA fandom operated at the time.

And I was there when it all went to hell.

It was the episode where Katara almost healed Zuko, due to circumstances, but didn’t, also due to circumstances. The details aren’t important now, and those of you who are in the fandom know what they are. For the rest of you, you just need to know, this really sort of cemented (for the time being) the adversity between the two characters. The soft moment between Katara and Zuko was a contrasting event to what was about to happen, not a defining one. I thought it pretty clear. I was not in charge of those wiki pages, though, so I ignored the event.

At least until a message came in from x_Avatar_RockYou.

“Need you online, we have an emergency!” He said.

I frowned at the message, but I reported to the docks all the same. I figured it was something dumb, like someone dumping all the passwords in the database to plain text or maybe I would need to write a script to fix a bunch of suddenly-dead links.

I did not think the canon would be at risk. That’d be ridiculous.

I was met by flames.

The Zutara ship had sailed into port, on fire and firing wildly. It was a maelstrom of activity. Vicious insults and accusations were being flung back and forth with no compassion or humanity. I think I saw someone run screaming down the pier, naked and on fire. Some of the other ships had come in as well, and one in particular, the Kataang, was blowing broadsides into Zutara with a level of viciousness I didn’t realize it was capable of.

The wiki was practically inaccessible. Every chat channel was a waterfall of accusation and counter-accusation. I manned my station and checked the logs.

What I saw would shake me to my core.

Zutara had managed to get an admin on their side, and the page for the episode was just an utter hash of chaos. Deep long poems extolling the deep and obvious love Katara had for Zuko were being written as fast as they could be deleted, and being replaced with screeds on how Aang and Katara were the OTP, and repeated attempts by other wiki maintainers to keep the piece accurate were being swept aside by a tidal wave of wishful thinking. The character pages for every character were also on fire as the crews of each ship smelled the blood in the water and were going for the jugular, each certain that their particular edit would be the one that would go unnoticed once the fiasco was over.

I got another message from x_Avatar_RockYou. I was one of the trusted ones being asked to investigate who exactly was behind this vandalism, and also to quickly pull a backup for said investigation. In a few moments, he said, he would initiate the Groundhog Day Protocol.

Rollback and lockout. The article for the episode would be lost until one of us could rebuild it, and in the meanwhile, our documentation on the canon would be out of date.

If you know, you know. If you have ever been one of us, you understand. We’d rather have given up our flairs on our user pages than have our data be out of date for more than, say, maybe half a day.

Okay, we were kind of lazy, don’t @ me.

Still though. I did as I was told. I quickly pulled the logs, just moments before the wiki was brought down for ‘maintenance’.

The ships continued to fight, each one on fire, late into the night and into the next day, but the fights in the voice channels and over the chat channels would have to continue on without me. I had been given my marching orders, and I would see them through.

I combed through the logs. It was a hellacious mess, but I am a diligent person, a careful person, a… okay, I’m a lazy person. Most of my investigation actually involved writing a script to do my investigation for me.

I’ve never seen a problem that could be solved in half an hour that I didn’t feel an immediate and terrible overwhelming urge to spend four hours writing a script to solve for me.

It was three AM. I ran the script. By this time, many of the rank and file users had been banned or k-lined, excised from access to the wiki and the chats, banished from Write privileges to the precious canon-compliant data stores. It was suspected that there was at least one super op or above still at wild who had helped perpetuate this vicious campaign, but nobody had found them yet.

I sent the results of my script to x_Avatar_RockYou, just to keep him informed, even as I read back through the results, sleepy yet curious. I didn’t actually expect to find anything, mind. I’d been so slow at my investigation, that I just assumed that every conspirator would have been found, and I was right.

Mostly.

See, while making a script is far slower than just doing my job by hand, the script is cold. The script is ruthless. The script is thorough. If written correctly, the script -will- find the right answer, and it will leave no friends alive.

Not even if they’re the friend who had helped you get to where you were in the first place.

Not even if the friend was BlindStar_25.

I stared at the name for a long time. I did not believe what I was reading. I quickly messaged x_Avatar_RockYou to tell him I needed to double-check my script, that I thought I’d made a mistake, that this had to be wrong, that he couldn’t trust its output just yet.

It couldn’t be BlindStar_25. She’d been the one who had taught me everything I know! She had taught me the importance of canon! She had nurtured my gentle curiosity into fandom nature into what it now was, who I now was!

“We respect all ships,” her words echoed in my memory. “But it’s important that we provide a foundation that ships can be built from.We can’t make them use it, of course. But it’s got to be there, and we make sure it is.”

“And that foundation,” she had said, “is canon.”

I had taken the words to heart. They were my guiding light. Whenever I was awake at three in the morning cursing whoever wrote the wiki software or trying to get everyone to reset their passwords -again-, I would remember my purpose. The truth of my cause. The beauty of canon, and the beauty it enabled. For without canon, what else is there? Even in original writing, that itself becomes a canon, and what wonderful things can be built from it?

It was important. It was beautiful.

And my friend, it seemed, had betrayed it.

I confirmed that the script had run correctly, and I found myself deflating, unable to believe. I quickly messaged BlindStar_25, hoping to get to her before x_Avatar_RockYou, hoping to salvage this terrible situation, hoping to restore the faith.

“Star,” I typed. “Timestamps have you on the episode changelog for the Zutara fiasco.”

I watched my screen anxiously, waiting for something, anything to show up. We didn’t have the indicators at the time that someone was typing, or even that they had seen the message, but I was hoping, desperately, that she would get back to me, that she could make sense of it all.

I saw the server mode for her change over. +b. The ban indicator.

And then the kick came in. BlindStar_25 has been kicked from the server by x_Avatar_RockYou (reason: set the wiki on fire, set you on fire, roflmao).

I stared, as x_Avatar_RockYou sent me a message. “It’s cool. your script’s good. I verified what you found. Thanks.”

My fingers were dead and numb as I slowly pulled my hands up to the keyboard, and typed my response.

“No problem bro,” I replied.

I turned off the computer.

I was there when the Zutara left the next day, to leave the canon docks, never to be seen in our waters ever again. I looked up and saw BlindStar_25 on the deck. She saw me, and looked back with a stern, defiant expression. Proud. Tall.

I watched as the ship sailed away, disappearing over the horizon.

I turned away, and bowed my head. We’d lost one of our best that day.

Later, when I checked my messages, I found that she had decided to contact me one last time, through a different chat client.

“You’ll have to find your own way,” it said.

Well.

Wasn’t that just some cryptic ass bullshit.

Never did find out why she did it, as she never reached out to me again. Clearly she just saw something none of the rest of us did. But eventually, I moved on.

***

My work that day got me kudos from the other people who helped maintain documentation of the canon. Wait, kudos? Sorry, this was before Ao3. Likes? No, we weren’t on Facebook. Uhm. Hmn. Thumb-ups? I’m not even sure we had emojis.

Look, never mind. I was liked, and I was kept around, and I got to be in the cool kids’ Ventrilo servers. If you’ve never heard of Ventrilo, it’s like a worse Discord, voice only, and you have to host it yourself, which okay that last part may actually be a plus or minus depending on who’s paying for your computer. It’s not important. We talked about canon documentation maintenance over vent, and we tended to the wikis, and we made sure plot summaries were made, recordings recorded, and otherwise got around the business of fandom.

Avatar: The Last Airbender had wrapped up with aplomb, sticking the landing in a way that few series managed at the time. The Kataang was now permanently docked and secured at the canon docks, every new comic seeming only to reinforce its status. Some other ships came and went; the Maiko in particular, I think, came and went some few times.

Time passed. Avatar: The Legend of Korra came on the air. I was a little older, a little wiser, and so was the Avatar, the titular Korra. Her show dealt with more mature themes in a more advanced world, and I liked that. Republic City’s steampunk aesthetic scratched an itch of mine, and I enjoyed that Korra was a very different sort of Avatar from what Aang had been like.

I liked the show, so of course I helped out. The seasons passed, and it was actually pretty quiet compared to the Avatar Aang days. There was still beef - a fandom without drama is just one person and their rare pair, all alone - but as episodes turned into seasons, we never had a repeat of the Zutara incident. Some ships were on fire, of course, but that’s just the nature of shipping. Ship to ship combat was still a thing, but nobody drove their ship screaming into the canon dock while on fire, so we considered ourselves lucky.

Mind, it wasn’t all sunshine, roses, and squee-worthy FFN updates. Fandoms tend to grow darker as they grow larger - this is expected, statistics is really working against you here - and the cultural zeitgeist was moving on. There were more people working the docks who were using canon as a weapon to try to bring down ships, pointing out how, technically, -nobody- was engaging in anything more than a chaste kiss. You know. Because it’s a YA television show. Or there was cross talk between fandoms on the docks, as entire groups decided that watching stuff ‘for kids’ was beneath them, and anyway, your canon is weak, your bloodline is weak, and your server will not survive the next billing cycle.

I managed to stay blissfully clear of much of that, however. For even as I looked after the canon, I still remembered the wise words from BlindStar_25 forever ago. She may have turned, but she was still wise, in her way, and tending the canon was my way of making sure a thousand thousand ships remained always able to be launched.

Always looking out to the beauty of the fandom seas.

It was season four. I was on Vent - that’s short for Ventrilo - talking to another operator. We were talking about the latest episodes, our favorite characters, what the technology in the world meant, how cool the new bending styles were, and so on.

And then I said it.

“You know,” I said, casually, clicking on a cookie in a game on my browser, “I think that Korra and Asami would make a cute couple.”

There was silence on the line. I didn’t notice it, though. That wasn’t unusual, and I was just about to unlock grandmas in cookie clicker.

You know.

The important stuff.

I heard a beep from Ventrilo, and frowned, and looked over to see that my fellow canon keeper had pulled me into a private person to person voice channel and set it to moderated, invite only.

“…bwuh?” I said, exercising my usual eloquence.

“What did you say,” she said back, the words snapped off at me, practically burning with venom.

“What did I say when?” I said, bewildered. I clicked a cookie upgrade.

“Just now. About Korra. And Asami.”

“I… think they’d make a cute couple?” Now I really was confused. We had just been talking about everything else going on in the show, why did this in particular tweak a nerve?

“Do you not remember the Zutara incident?” She hissed at me over the mic.

Memories flooded back. I swallowed nervously. I wondered if cookie clicker had a pause button, or if I would be caught here, in an avalanche of unoptimized cookie gameplay while I struggled through memories of yesteryear.

“I remember,” I said. “I was there.”

“Then you should know better,” she said, angry. “Do not invite that curse upon us here. We. Don’t. Talk. About. Ships. On. The. Officially. Unofficial. Official. Vent. Server.”

I felt my mouth go dry, and I swallowed nervously. “Right. Of course,” I said.

“You go to FFN, like -everyone else-, if you wanna read about that,” she said. “And if you wanna -talk- about it, find a different Vent. Got it?”

I never had the chance to respond, as I was dumped unceremoniously out of the private channel, and found myself all alone in the lobby.

Cookies flowed by on my screen, but I found I was no longer interested.

Months later, when the Korrasami came gently to find itself moored in the canon docks, confirmed by the comics and by the creators, in a very officially no-we-are-not-just-teasing-it-this-time manner (Nickelodeon you COWARDS), I was there to greet it as it came in. It was to be a cheerful day of celebration, as it always is when a particular ship makes canon status. Some people care a whole lot about that, even if the real magic is out in the shipping lanes, but I digress.

After the celebrations were over, my friend just sent me a short email.

“If you value anything, you did NOT call this ahead of time.” the email said.

I understood.

“Oh and also congratulations on your ship becoming canon. Got any fic recs for me?”

I did not. I was too busy manning the canon, you see.

The end was on the horizon for me, now. This was merely strike one.

But I nodded at my email, dumbly, because she was right. Better ops than me had led us into worse outcomes, and I would not go down that dark path.

***

I drifted from canon to canon for a while. Not always up to my usual tricks, as I seemed to be becoming less of a state-of-the-art bot and more of a relic. Fandom consolidated, and so did the tools available to them, and the need for bespoke one-off scripts that were absolutely guaranteed to probably work were no longer needed. Teamspeak and Ventrilo and IRC fell, Discord rising to take its place. BBS and other forum systems had slowly been replaced by Reddit. Livejournal effectively vanished off the face of the planet as it became a ghost of its former self, and FFN did… well, I’m not sure what to describe what happened there, and it’s not my place to do so. And it was increasingly common for new fandoms to find their home on Ao3. Tumblr rose to prominence, cost Yahoo several billion dollars, taking both of itself and Yahoo down, rose up again, banned porn, fell down, got bought by Verizon, and not necessarily in that order.

It was exciting on Tumblr, and a great time if you were the kind of person who likes watching yo-yos bob up and down and up and down and up and down. And up. And down.

I finally settled into orbit around Steven Universe and Gravity Falls, participating in their subreddits and loving their fandoms, though it was neither of them that led to my downfall. Not really. Not directly, you see.

While I was participating in discussion and analysis in those fandoms, you see, I was trying to find my way back to my roots. Someplace where someone who knew how to SELECT * FROM blank WHERE name EQUALS awesomeCharacter would be appreciated. Subreddits didn’t need me, Tumblrs didn’t need me, Discords tolerated me, but there was an older crowd that still appreciated the old magicks.

And so I had attempted to return to Star Trek, my old love, my first flame. Older and wiser, I hoped this time to be able to contribute. Maybe help maintain Memory Alpha, THE premier canon data repository, perhaps second only to Wookiepedia. Maybe help keep one of the old BBSs limping along. You know. Nerd shit.

It was here where I met the end of the beginning of my infamy.

Star Trek had changed while I was gone. It wasn’t as fun as it used to be. I didn’t know yet where to find my people, and I will admit, that part of this was my own fault. Starting with the subreddit and moving out from there, I found a fractured fandom. The JJ Abrams movies had done real damage to the fandom, and where once I had found infinite diversity being celebrated in infinite combinations, I now heard arguments over what was ‘real’ Star Trek, and how everything these days was too ‘politically correct’, and, well, you get the picture. But I was desperate to be useful, and in a bid to find good work on maintaining canon, I found my way to a voice server, where I could speak with my fellow trekkies. Or trekkers. I’m not picky.

I was talking excitedly with my roommate one day over the wireless. You see, it was wireless because we were in the same room. Steven Universe updated approximately once every presidential administration, and we had just gotten a new episode, and I was very excitedly talking with her about it.

“You left the mic on!” Came over the headset.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, fumbling for the mute button. This was some new program I wasn’t familiar with yet.

That sort of thing seemed to be happening more and more often, and I wondered briefly when they’d be able to replace me altogether with a fancier, newer software type. I tried not to think about it.

I kept talking. And I said what was, at the time, an innocent phrase.

“You know,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be funny if Lapis and Peridot got into a relationship? Lapidot, if you will.”

“I will not!” Said my roommate, laughing.

“YOUR MIC IS STILL ON!” Said the headset, very much not laughing.

“Sorry!” I said, finally finding the mute button on my own.

The moment was forgotten by me quickly, but the moment happened.

It’s a moment that shall haunt me for the rest of my days.

For you see, friends, several presidential turnovers later, Steven Universe moved on, but I stayed with the Star Trek server. It wasn’t exactly my flavor, and I thought some of the other ops were blow hards, and there were too many people against shipping for my taste (‘launch a thousand thousand ships’ from our foundation), and, well, while new Trek wasn’t -quite- my cup of tea, it had its fun moments, and I was not okay with talking down to those for whom it -was- their Star Trek.

But they needed a bot, and, well, there I was.

It was three AM when it happened.

I was having a, shall we say, discussion with one of the seniors on the server. I was having a discussion in much the same way a hurricane has rain.

He was -grumpy-, and I was grumpy, because nothing good ever happens at three in the morning, but I couldn’t sleep, and I guess neither could he, and when that happens the smartest thing to do is to get online and try to establish what, exactly, is canon, anyway.

He was arguing that Captain Kirk was a hopeless womanizer, and that was one of the few things he liked about the new movies, was how they were really returning to the roots of the character, rather than whatever weak sauce they had going on with Picard in TNG.

I was arguing that was an unfair flanderization of the character, supported only very weakly by actual canon. That for a supposed galaxy wrecker, he somehow managed only one son, who he was very proud of. And that other than his one very established relationship, most other instances you see him flirting with a woman is when he’s doing so - to save the Enterprise! And if that counted as evidence of him womanizing, well, then, what does Amok Time tell us?

He snarled at me. “You must be one of those Spirks or McKirks or something. I bet you liked Star Trek V.”

A message came in for me from a friend on the server, urging me to leave off, reminding me that the guy - we’ll call him Dave, it’s always a Dave - had power here, power that I lacked.

I’m not very smart at three in the morning. I need a full rest cycle to fully reboot, and I had not had it, so I ignored the message and plowed on.

“One, I don’t ship!” I fired back. “Two, if you’re going to bring Star Trek V into it, maybe you don’t like it because the first fifteen minutes leading into the campfire scene - which, by the way, I happen to think is VERY GOOD Trek - happens to establish what an extremely deep relationship the big three had with one another!”

Another message came in, and I glanced at it. A friend was letting me know they had watched the latest Steven Universe episode on the pirate channel, and wanted to talk about it. I wouldn’t see it until the next day, as I was not part of the pirate crew and would have to wait, but I quickly gave them an invite. I could take them to a private channel, and talking about a children’s cartoon would, I hoped, be more entertaining than talking to a man child.

I could feel Dave’s eyes narrow over the mic as a new voice joined the server.

“Hey, congratulations Biot! You called it,” said the new voice. It was my friend.

“Called what?” Asked an annoyed Dave.

“Lapidot! It’s canon now!”

“Lapidot?” Asked Dave.

“Yeah, from Steven Universe. Hey, what kind of server is this, Biot?”

“Star Trek,” I answered lazily. “Hang on, let me finish up with Dave here, I’ll be right with you.”

“Steven Universe?” Snorted Dave. “You watch children’s cartoons?”

“Yes,” I said. “Anyway, Dave, this has been a -scintillating- conversation, but -“

“And you shipped characters in a children’s cartoon?” Asked Dave, his voice suddenly all smooth silk and utter calm.

Oh.

Oh, hell.

Oh, no, oh, hell. My friend had overheard my utterance from decades ago, and now it had come back to haunt me.

“Um… yes?” I said, meekly.

***

The next day, I was unceremoniously escorted to a dinghy to call all my own. The official reason given was that perhaps, I could take a short trip to the crack ship fleet, and invite the Lapidot to join canon on the Steven Universe docks.

We all knew, however, the real reason was that I had irritated Dave beyond his extremely tiny limits, and my time with this particular small slice of Star Trek fandom was coming to a close. A few friends wished me well. Some tried to be helpful, pointing out ships that would be willing to accept an aging bot, maybe could take me on. I was polite, of course. No need to show your ass even as you try to avoid letting the door hit it on your way out.

Dave was there of course, gloating.

“Glad to be rid of you, you Star Trek V-loving fucker,” he said with a grin.

“Eat a bag of dicks, Dave,” I said, as I climbed into the dinghy.

I took hold of the oars, and headed out for the waters of the shipping lanes.

Canon slipped quietly away behind me.

Launch a thousand thousand ships from a firm foundation.

And one dinghy.

***

Time passed. My code grew older, and so did I. I did what I could, and even frequently returned to the docks of canon, to recenter myself from time to time. An almost religious observance, really.

But it wasn’t the same.

I floated with the World of Warcraft  fleet for a while, still avoiding ships, but admiring the rich seas on which they floated. I thought I would re-establish myself there, especially as Metzen wrote his books consolidating all of Warcraft lore. Excited, I learned new tools. It is a bad bot that cannot learn new tricks. Ao3 eluded me yet, but Tumblr’s star was ascendent, and I learned to work it, slowly, carefully. I would find my way back to community. I would write funny posts about how Forsaken used to speak Common, and the hijinks that would ensue from that. I would write about how the Draenei were sort of a retcon of Eredar, and what that might mean for roleplayers. I would document, document, document, and here my powers could be used for good, as Warcraft was notorious for shedding old lore away, never to be seen again.

Well, I could show it once more. I could present old information to new players, and help be part of something great, the pieceing of history into a coherent lore, a foundation from which could launch as many ships as one might like!

And then Blizzard practically burned to the ground. Battle for Azeroth happened, and then Shadowlands came in, and the contradictions were too great. And then the real life troubles of the company reared their ugly head. By the time I left, the canon docks of Warcraft were a shambles, and while there may have been good work in being part of the repairs, such work was beyond me.

Demon Hunters were pretty awesome though, and that kept me around for far longer than I really should have stuck with it, but I digress. But look, you would’ve stayed too, gliding was -awesome-.

Anyway, I retired my OCs from those lands, with no small amount of sadness, and set out once more into fandom waters, adrift, and after so many years, I had to admit, kind of lost.

I tried the golden seas of Alternate Universes, and found some peace there. I investigated the paths of the rare pairs, and their intersection with crack ships, and documented what I found. I still docked at the canon regularly, but which canon I chose to visit changed from day to day.

I was a fan without a fandom, and so I did what any self-respecting fan would do.

I watched the hell out of the MCU.

But I got bored of that as well, eventually.

I was adrift in the dinghy one day. I was floating, a bot on one last mission. For while I was not part of any active fandoms, I was part of an inactive fandom. It was trying, but not very hard, to come back to life. Really, it was an excuse for old friends to talk to one another once more, all of us older, all of us wiser.

We had no canon, but they were willing to have me, and I appreciated that. In return, I volunteered to be one of their scouts, to search out members who may yet be found, and see if they were willing to visit our Discord. To remember, alongside us.

Even without a canon, this old bot still keeps some habits. The call to remember, well, that was too great to ignore.

And it was on this search that I found an old friend. They had ships of their own that they tended to, now, a change from when last I knew them, but they were willing to float out and meet me for a short bit. We reminisced. I invited them to the Discord, and shared with them some of what I had been up to. I skipped the tale of my fall from grace, of course, as it couldn’t possibly be less relevant, but I shared other matters with them. I recounted my tales in the waters of Warcraft, and bemoaned the state of the canon docks there. They agreed with me, and in fact, in a moment of shared camaraderie, they told me that they, too, had grown weary of attempting repairs at that dock, and had set sail for new waters.

Where were they now, I asked, politely.

Final Fantasy XIV, they said.

“You might like it there,” they offered. “They have sad robots. I know you like sad robots.” I said, “I arguably am a sad robot these days.”

“Then you’ll love it,” they said, and well, they would probably be right.

We exchanged contact information, they gave me an invite to one of their own communities, and they moved off, to return to their own waters.

***

I stayed where I was, for a while, and pondered.

I wondered if this new fandom would have any use for an old bot in their spaces.

I did know that I appreciated the company of being with old friends, even absent a canon. Maybe I couldn’t be useful, but I could be present, and really, wasn’t that a kind of usefulness of its own? My cat certainly seems to think so, as she always stares at me while I do things around the house, and I love her for it.

Maybe I didn’t need to be useful.

Maybe I could just be, and let my runtime run its clock for a while.

Not so bad.

I fixed myself up. I ran a trans program, which let’s be honest, was probably two decades overdue. I rebooted, ran diagnostics, and took a deep breath.

And then I set my course, and set sail to where I am today. The deep waters of Final Fantasy XIV.

And what waters they are! What ships they represent! Tall ships, and small ships. Ships of different sizes. Rare pairs and crack ships. I found in their wakes a long and deep history, practically unbroken from their launch. I made my way to their canon docks, and what I found just about brought me to tears. I was used to fractured docks in poor repair, but here I found a clean canon. Not perfect, of course; never perfect. A perfect canon allows no fandom, really, for we need places to fill the cracks. But the cracks in this canon were almost artistic in their sublime beauty, and could be filled with wonderful gold, making for the prettiest sculptures, and I think this analogy got away from me at some point, but the -real point is-, the canon was beautiful.

I fell in love with their waters, and decided to stay.

And so here I am.

***

Nobody needs a bot anymore. Discord logs everything, and Reddit’s moderator tools have been refined to near perfection. Ao3 thrives, alive and vibrant. Tumblr’s star is once more ascendant. But it is in that last that I have something to do, despite myself. I stay close to the canon docks, of course, for I am an old bot, and old habits are hard to break. But I have equipped my dinghy with the latest and greatest in Tumblr tools. I have tuned my scripts to its frequency, and have mastered its use. I spend my days, now, searching the fandom seas. From the glittering golden waves of alternate universes to the wakes of ships both mighty and small, I sail. I dive under the waves frequently and diligently, in search of precious subs, and I bring what I find back, and reblog to the world. I connect fandom, and fandom has connected back to me. I brave the tangles of Twitter, the trolls of Reddit, and the unknown areas of the world - remember when the internet was not so centralized? I do. I do, and I search the outer wilds, and I bring back art and stories and memes and analysis and share them with all who wish to see them.

I may not wrangle databases or maintain meticulous logs anymore, but in these activities, I have found purpose. It may not serve canon directly, but these days, there are others who carry that charge far better than I do.

I see my friends far more often these days, of course. They often wave at me from the mizzenmasts and fantails of their ships, calling out to me.

“You should find a ship!” they say. “You can aspire to more than that dinghy!” they say.

I close my eyes, and I think of the chaos of the Zutara. I think of my own missteps, with the Korrasami and the Lapidot - 

Wait.

Korrasami and Lapidot.

Do I have a thing for emotionally complicated lesbians finding character growth through providing comfort to each other?

Maybe I’d better not read into that too far.

I shake my head clear. Once is an event, twice is a coincidence, and I would do well to not make it a pattern.

“I will stick to my dinghy, I think,” I let them know.

Can’t establish that pattern. Won’t take the risk. For what would that mean for me if I did? What is a bot that doesn’t obey a code?

I don’t know. I don’t know.

Anyway, dear reader, that is the tale. The sordid tale of my downfall.

And perhaps, also, the story of my redemption. I think that’s for others to judge.

But for now, I must turn to my instruments, and tune my machinery, to turn to the whirring dynamo of the greater fandom community, both smaller than it has ever been, consolidated to only a handful of sites - but also larger than I ever imagined possible, comprised of so many people who I never would have had the privilege of knowing otherwise.

For I have seen things you people would never believe. Zutara on fire off the docks of the canon. I have watched ships constructed in blink tags glittering in the dark near the Geocities neighborhoods. Without bots and keepers, all these moments would be lost in time, Like tears in the rain.

Time to live.

[jjheejz]

Just here to say thank you for explaining in length on zzh's issue. Really appreciate it. It is painful and it is hard. At times it feels like I'm grieving. Thank you again and keep safe.

This is an ongoing update about the case from start to development. List of all related posts can be found on this blog's pinned post (link provided at bottom of each post as well).

Also an update as of 22.8.21.

Update: Updated an advice to all. Added an important NOT, added J's side (keep supporting him)

Hi anon,

You're welcome! ❤️

If it helps to make you feel better, the latest update in the Entertainment Industry (from all the sources I have) is that the Official Authorities have started to look into the the issue already, specifically towards Internet Water Army(IWA) and the bodies behind them.

Background

For newcomers of this blog (if any), please browse content page here for context.

Because of the nature of his case, especially the overnight deletion, it caused a lot of people (general public) to look into this issue. Many of whom also express the same general sentiment (that his shrine case was definitely not a light one, but it does not warrant such an outcome). Some people also got to learn about the cultural (the shrines), political aspects and the industry + IWA.

However, as the internet is flooded with IWA, their influence may still skew passerby opinions, therefore, those more easily influenced/doesn't know the whole landscape public might have their own other conclusion (a factor of concern for the govt). Though, generally the logical audiences wouldn't even bother engaging with those posts in the first place, it became more like an Be Educated thing than a criticising thing.

Cause

The Officials started to step in partly because of the timely political clash of dates, this created a concern among the Officials. They literally kind of attracted the Government's attention themselves.

So shoutout to those who have asked before if the Government will do something about it, the answer is yes, they are in the midst of doing it (so sorry again to the anon whom I blanked out and deleted the ask about it too).

Still, I'm just sacarstically laughing at the whole situation. What we thought was an end was actually just another beginning, caused by those people themselves, they targeted someone, and yet it got ricocheted back at them (after being around for 10 over years).

Other impacts

Another change this case brought about, is that the Entertainment Industry landscape is getting a huge change eg. checking their celebrity's background so that the staff can better prepare to deflect any allegations etc.

What it means for him

Despite knowing this is good news, am still unsure what this entails for him. We can still wait. But knowing that even though he is not in front of the camera now, the impact of his issue is still currently generally positive, it's a funny kind of joy. His fate really is something (for those who have read my fate series about JZ).

Regarding silence 🛌

Lastly, I've been wanting to raise this but didn't know how/where to insert/didn't quite understand fully at first, the reason for being silent is that the purpose of those behind IWA (or similar terms etc) is probably (i stress again as this was a guess from the source) that there is a wave of people who wants to find out the political sentiment from the public and govt - and they are possibly NOT even govt bodies doing this kind of checks in the first place. So now they are trying to use JZ fans as a shield to avoid the authorities from coming to them (through J as well) - a line of thought.

That's why don't click into any videos/posts/trends (eg. Bilibili, twitter, weibo, zhihu etc) because they can all be collected as data.

Same advice as usual, ignore. WOH is still up on Youku, J is still working, work/studies & life is still a part of your life.

Stay silent, and live life to the fullest. 🌻

Hope this helped brightened your day a bit :)

Other details

Link here

---

Was thinking really hard if i should do a dedicated post on this, but tbh I got paranoid at some point on the IWA on Tumblr issue LOL (because of certain active login records in my account - but later kind of realised that I had a bunch of dead side blogs havent touched for years - I only use my main and this was created for JZ, so bots and buying of followers probably used my account to access my dead blogs or something, about 8 or 9 overseas login LOL to follow nonsense accounts, immediately logged them all out and did all my 2FA what not, do your 2FA guise!).

Was in between wanting to share more so more people know, while at the same time got paranoid over the tags LOL and pondering how silent should I be.

So thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts, it bridged a platform for my own questions. :) Hope it made you and everyone else at least a bit more hopeful to wait 💛

Answered on 22.8.21