#Not even a long time considering tumblr’s history but damn

[tsunauticus]

What do you mean???

[ms-demeanor]

i mean realistically many people do deserve to be the victims of targeted harassment campaigns. if you're being an asshole you deserve to be screamed at by everyone present until you stop. some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

damn following up the last ask, ig it was someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out. my bad lol thought that was part of ur main post

I mean this is something that's still worthwhile to bounce off of even though you're not actually responding to me.

First of all, no, I pretty much don't think that anybody deserves to be the focus of a targeted harassment campaign. At least not the kind that are spun up on tumblr or twitter. I generally think that targeted harassment campaigns don't work to change minds, they only work to torment, isolate, and attack people, which will often further entrench them in their positions.

Sometimes people doing serious antifascist work will make a discovery like, for instance "the principal of X school is a vicious antisemite" and will run an *exposure* campaign to get them removed from a position of power, but with very few exceptions when you see an online callout post for a random internet user it's nothing but abuse and an attempt to bully them off of a specific website, not an attempt to protect victims or inform people of a genuine threat. "ABC is the new alt of this person with a documented history of starting cults, DNI, block and move on" is very different than "This specific user who is on staff posts harry potter fanart and is why fascists continue to exist on tumblr, let's make sure they know what tumblr thinks of them."

You are trying to frame bullying campaigns as normal consequences for antisocial behavior, but the antisocial behaviors under discussion here are "user posted fanart broadly disliked by the community and associated with specific ideologies long after the initial fandoms were crystallized" and "is the CEO of a social media website that is implementing features that the users dislike."

"People deserve to be screamed at until they stop the bad behavior" is punitive and shitty and so broad and open to so many interpretations that you're basically saying "it's open season on screaming at people." I think that it's bad behavior to support neoliberal political candidates who prop up capitalism but it would be horrible for me to run harassment campaigns against everyone who says "vote blue no matter who" even though I think that attitude perpetuates real world harms. (And it also wouldn't convince those people to change their minds! The fact that I think they are doing something harmful doesn't give me the social license to send hundreds of people to harass them! And it wouldn't work! These kinds of campaigns don't effect change they just isolate people and erode trust and civility jesus fuck we need to be coalition building not posting callouts over whatever activity has been deemed "freak behavior" this week)

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

oh buddy, I think I get where you're coming from here but considering the kinds of behavior under discussion this is just straight up fascist. You are literally saying that people should be banished from society for wrongthink because nobody under discussion here has actually committed an act of cruelty.

(one of the things that i'm putting under the heading of "tumblr conspiracist thinking" is "staff is currently and continually intentionally flagging certain LGBTQ tags and bloggers" - there is ample evidence that the current staff is working to unfuck flagging and blocked tags that was done long before this crew was working on it. People talk about "tumblr had to settle because their filtering disproportionately impacted lgbtq+ creators" and that is TRUE however that was a filter that was established under different owners with different policies and different staff; the implication that the current staff is guilty of trying to stifle LGBTQ+ content because a lawsuit started before the Automattic purchase of tumblr ended in a financial settlement is just bad, wrong, incorrect, faulty logic. And if I might indulge in a bit of my own conspiracist thinking: I actually suspect a lot of the flagging and tagging and blocking of trans women specifically might actually be targeted attacks of individual users by terfs - many of the things that are getting flagged as needing a community label are things that use tags that terfs follow to attack and if enough users click "this needs a community label" the post will get flagged - I don't know that that's what's going on but just operating on occam's razor I think it's a lot more likely that terfs are coordinating attacks on trans people than that there is a secret group of cryptoterfs on staff taking time out of their day to ensure that trans users get flagged, if only because I think that the vocally trans positive former members of the staff would have said something about it.)

So, given that my position is "it is unlikely that anyone on staff is intentionally targeting LGBTQ+ groups HOWEVER prior policies enacted harm against LGBTQ+ groups and there is visible evidence that the current staff is trying to repair that damage" I'm not seeing any behaviors here that call for individual employees or users to get targeted with harassment from thousands of users.

But anyway, back to the specifics of the ask:

some people commit acts of cruelty and subsequently forfeit their reasonable right to participate in society until they've made amends.

Do you have any idea how frequently amends are made and never circulated as widely as the callout post? Do you have any idea how frequently callout posts are incorrect, and exaggerate the things that need to be amended? I'm reminded of Lindsey Ellis, who was the victim of a years-long targeted harassment campaign and made multiple apologies over the years who was finally driven off of her primary platform because she carelessly misspoke and the people who had been targeting her for years were able to make a post that she had long disavowed and was a relic of her dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence go viral. The internet doesn't let people make amends; people see accusations. They see the first post, not the follow up. That's why starting these campaigns is shitty and dangerous even if you *personally* believe that you'll forgive an individual once they "make amends." (and the "amends" people usually demand are "i want this person gone from the internet forever and cut out of this part of their life" - that's not really something that's fair to ask of people when so much of the world is online these days.)

the people of wendy's have a moral right to scream at the manager if said manager sprays them in the neck with milkshake every time they go to pick up their order

No they don't. Straight up. If the manager of a wendy's sprays you in the neck with a milkshake you have the right to escalate your complaint right up the chain, take your business away and never come back, warn other people "hey the manager sprayed me with a milkshake, stay away," but you don't have the moral right to escalate the situation by screaming at them (and you certainly don't have that right if you happened to get sprayed with some milkshake while the manager was attempting to fix the frostee machine when you came to pick up your order, which I think is actually more analogous to what is happening here).

someone in ur notes constructing an equivalence between @tting staff and getting nuked to yelling at a wendy's manager and getting kicked out

A big point that I think you're missing here is that @-ing staff when there is a problem on a post or you see harassment is generally pretty acceptable (though much less effective than filing a support claim), but the issue under discussion isn't @-ing staff, it was pointing thousands of angry people at two specific people who are *part* of staff and holding those two individuals responsible for all the problems that users see with tumblr.

partyjockers got nuked because their post directed a flood of harassment at one staff member in a post where they had highlighted that user's URL and name:

This is explicitly saying "users like the one I screenshotted are the reason you're being attacked by terfs" because one member of staff posted fanart from two franchises that tumblr-the-userbase has deemed off limits.

(Do you have any idea how extreme a bubble this is? Do you walk into barnes and noble and sigh because the managers are fascists who want trans people dead because there's harry potter merch everywhere? JK rowling is a terf and a horrible fucking person and I am no longer personally comfortable engaging with that fandom but people posting fanart of a franchise are not personally attacking you even if it feels like they are disregarding your humanity; you cannot consider other people's participation in huge, popular, mainstream fandoms as a sign that they are plotting against you this is why i'm calling this conspiracist thinking the entire scorched earth conspiracy spawned from someone interpreting a staff member's art as esoteric signposts signalling their hatred of trans people. Do you remember when the stupid harry potter game came out and this entire website was despondent because it meant that people didn't care about trans people? That's not actually what it meant! What it meant is that the vast majority of people on the planet have neither a twitter nor a tumblr account and have no idea how shitty JK rowling is to trans people and they don't interpret "harry potter imagery" as "covert terf signal" they interpret it as "possibly the most mainstream fantasy series in the last fifty years")

This isn't someone calling out the manager after they spray you with a milkshake. The manager asking someone to leave after they started screaming that the cashier's earrings were hate speech.

This analogy got out of hand but please just understand that there's a difference between @-ing an account that people are paid to monitor as part of their jobs and that they have support and coworkers to help with and @-ing someone's personal account.

Nobody got a post deleted because the used @ staff, they got their posts deleted because they focused viral negative attention on individual users.

[osakanone]

UPDATE: The Destiel/Supernats aren't taking this well -- explaining my reasoning for the history I gave, and why Destiel is not the big bitch of shipping that it thinks it is

An update to THIS:

"This is just a marketing thing, Gundam is a giant robot show, only men watch it!"

Gundam's fandom is silent majoratively feminine:

"But its not gay, its about giant robots!"

Gundam is very gay. The entire climax of the first story is a riff of Yukio Mishima lmao

The climax of the Amuro/Char arc of Universal Century Gundam (expounding from first Gundam circa 1979), Char's Counterattack is somewhat on the history of Japanese disillusion with liberalism which notably climaxed with the life and history of Yukio Mishima.

You know. THAT Yukio Mishima.

The one who wrote FORBIDDEN COLOURS.

It was so gay that the fanfiction inspired by it became its own damn anime:

And that's just Charmuro, let alone Charma or a billion other ships just in OG Gundam alone.

We've got This is before we get to Guin Sard Lineford and Yamagi Glimerton (both verrrrry gay), Tieria Erde (a genderqueer trans-coded character who transcends gender entirely in their arc) and a bunch of others.

Gundam was always gay.

"I don't see the numbers"

"That doesn't seem like much, Supernat is at least 2x this"

Sooooo the amount of content you do see isn't representative of how much even got written, given FFN had a huge content purge.

First, let's start with the relative proportion of users: If we're analysing the concept of fandom, we first have to look at who had access to the internet in the first place to publish works.

Yeah that's a pretty sizable difference.

Wing's fandom actually exploded in 2000, but got capped VERY early, distributing itself to fansites when FFN fragmented and collapsed.

Why?

Content purges!

"Isn't there some sort of online archive of this stuff?"

Sure, if you wanna dig through tons and tons of Angelfire and Geocities pages which have mostly disappeared. Otherwise, no! There is no archive of this stuff?

"Why?"

They've since rolled back on this but it means there's a massive amount of lost media out there, including the discussions on it and thus there's an entire history you didn't get to experience.

Its actually very difficult to reach people who've been involved, since it was so long ago that very few people remember, and a sizable proportion of that population have actually died.

"But what about SF fandoms? We have ancient records of stuff like Spirk!"

See unlike physical media like zines, when a server goes offline or there's a data-loss, or something like that there is no surviving copy of the thing in question.

The net result is we have this weird hole where content just vanished, and its now considered lost media. The work of many artists, designers, writers, even videos of events are just lost media because we didn't have the archival mentality adults develop.

You're not gonna hear about all the X-Files stuff or Frasier fanfictions or GW stuff because of these purges and the lack of physical media. FFN users were teens, not adults with resources like US/EU/JP SF fans, who had archival tendencies due to their long history.

So there is this supermassive black-hole in the history of fanfiction running between 1998, and 2008 and some of the only evidence of it are worksafe works and fansites which the owners have long since forgotten about because folks moved on. Moving on is a normal part of fandom.

So to those of you just saying "supernatural is losing to a pair of dumb anime girls" or "urgh this is just a trend tumblr will get over it and go back to supernatural"...

Uhhhhh no they won't, actually?

Supernat's fans mostly seem to be waspy Americans. Gundam is kind of a global phenomenon, one which has traditionally had a silent majority female audience, a vocal minority male audience -- and every time that majority has spoken up, its coincided with a content purge, or a TOS change that mysteriously biases American derived fiction over Japanese derived fiction.

Funny that.

tl;dr:

NATURE IS HEALING

[ape-apocalypse]

Road To The Kingdom - My Planet Of The Apes Retrospective

With the hype for Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes on the rise, I decided to do a bit of a deep dive into the trilogy of reboot movies starring the incredible Andy Serkis and the various tie-in titles.

Why ramble on about a series that most people seem to overlook? Well, I think back to an interaction I had here on Tumblr in 2017, just one week before War For The Planet Of The Apes came out. While scrolling through the POTA tags, I found a post that wondered if anyone was actually excited for the new film or if the studio hadn't gotten the message and was making it for an audience that didn't exist. I responded that I was genuinely excited for the new film, that I loved the motion capture apes and the action scenes and the surprisingly engaging story, and would be seeing it opening weekend. The other person seemed surprised by my honest answer and apologized for their snarkiness (a truly shocking turn of events in the history of the Internet!).

I explained that I'd gone into these films thinking of them like Jurassic World series; I wasn't there for a great story and deep writing, I just wanted to see dinosaurs destroy things. So when I went into the POTA films, just expecting to see fun action movies with monkey chaos and apocalyptic results, I was surprised that I was swept up in the characters and their stories. I loved seeing the life of Caesar from tiny carefree baby to resilient revolutionary to fearsome leader, and the lives of all the humans and apes around him. The other poster said they hadn't actually seen the movies, just expected them to be shallow cash-grabs on reboot nostalgia, but they might have to reconsider giving them a shot after my enthusiastic response.

So if I can sway the minds of anyone who has written off these films, more movie tickets sold might mean more films and other media told in this ape apocalypse world!

And even if you already know and love the films, I also want to give some love to tie-in materials. Books, comics, YouTube shorts, video games; POTA has a surprisingly large catalog of bonus material for a series not considered mainstream like Marvel or Lord Of The Rings or Star Trek. I don't see them get many mentions in the fandom so hope a little spotlight on them can help them shine. They have delicious tidbits of world-building and character backstory, filling in gaps between the movies. I already have my fingers crossed there will be some tie-in material covering some of the huge time jump between War and Kingdom. With three hundred years passing between them, there is so much to learn about the ever growing and changing ape societies. I'm eager for any scrap of info they'll share!

But really, even if nothing I write changes anyone's mind about this franchise, it's still fun to gush about one of my favorite fictional universes.

My brief history with POTA was that I didn't know much about the original films before going into the new Andy Serkis trilogy. I'd heard enough about the original film to know the main beats of the first movie (quotes like 'damn dirty ape', the reveal of the planet being Earth with the Statue of Liberty). I saw the Tim Burton film which didn't leave any kind of impression other than the incredibly realistic costumes/make-up, so much so that I was apprehensive of the CG apes. Since getting into the new films, I've started watching the originals and may cover those just for fun.

So whether you're a long-time die hard fan or a fresh face to Caesar's legacy, I hope you'll enjoy my thoughts on the Planet of the Apes franchise!

Links to all my posts as they are released:

- Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes Film

- Prelude and Contagion Comics

- Motherboard YouTube Shorts

- Firestorm Tie-In Novel

- Fall Of Man Comics

- Dawn Tie-In Comic

- Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Film

- Revelations Tie-In Novel

- Last Frontier Video Game

- Crisis Video Game

- When Worlds Collide Comics

- War For The Planet Of The Apes Film

- War Tie-In Comic

- Caesar's Story Novel

[waitmyturtles]

Turtles Catches Up With Old GMMTV: Until We Meet Again Edition

[What’s going on here? After joining Tumblr and discovering Thai BLs through KinnPorsche in 2022, I began watching GMMTV’s new offerings -- and realized that I had a lot of history to catch up on, to appreciate the more recent works that I was delving into. From tropes to BL frameworks, what we’re watching now hails from somewhere, and I’m learning about Thai BL's history through what I’m calling the Old GMMTV Challenge (OGMMTVC). Starting with recommendations from @absolutebl on their post regarding how GMMTV is correcting for its mistakes with its shows today, I’ve made an expansive list to get me through a condensed history of essential/classic/significant Thai BLs produced by GMMTV and many other BL studios. My watchlist, pasted below, lists what I’ve watched and what’s upcoming, along with the reviews I’ve written so far. In a LONG POST, I’m writing today about New Siwaj’s incomparable drama, Until We Meet Again.]

TW: suicide, suicidal ideation, psychological trauma

Gah. I am so psyched to be finally sitting down to write my thoughts on Until We Meet Again, but I’m actually at a bit of a loss on where to start. There is SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT.

I think, where I can start, is to first say that this was, in my opinion, AN ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR SHOW. I did NOT expect this, at all. I’ve been around the way with New Siwaj, the UWMA screenwriter and director, a few times now for the OGMMTVC -- his writing on Love Sick, his work with Cheewin on Make It Right, and his work on MAME’s novel in Love By Chance have all been on the OGMMTVC list. I know that Between Us, the UMWA WinTeam continuation, was considered mostly a let-down for weak writing, and that New’s more recent shows, including A Boss and a Babe and Double Savage, were viewed quite critically (although I am a Double Savage apologist, for which I’ll explain my viewpoints later in this post). 

So. What I did not expect from 2019′s UWMA was to experience so many layers in a drama à la the work of Aof Noppharnach. Yes, I cannot believe I’m going here, to compare a New Siwaj drama to Aof’s oeuvre, but damn if I will, because good lord, New took his magic hat of tricks, pulled out THE GOOD STUFF, and made it all work. 

This is a list of themes that I saw in UWMA, that will help me structure this long write-up, but by no means should it be considered complete, as I’m sure I’m missing themes that you all likely caught in your watches and re-watches:

1) A new narrative structure for New -- balancing the impact of side couples by leveraging focus, equally, on two MAIN couples 2) The continuation and end of the 2019 trend of reincarnation and spiritual connections to love 3) Intergenerational queer trauma (micro-level) 4) Generational acceptance of queerness (macro-level) 5) Food and its Proustian effect on memory 6) Reflections on filial piety and the devastating effects of expectations -- and how children and parents seek redemption, particularly in New’s work

And before I even dive into THIS list, can I just say: MY GOD, FLUKE AND OHM. And Earth and Kao! But FLUKE AND OHM. Jesus, does New have an eye for talent -- from the Make It Right guys, to Perth and Saint, and then to Fluke and Ohm. I was seriously TAKEN with their chemistry. I did hear from a number of folks during my UWMA live-blogging that they can’t rewatch UWMA because of Fluke/Pharm’s rendition of the blushing maiden trope, but for my tastes -- I think the way he rendered the trope was really necessary to communicating Intouch’s story, history, and emotions, and just -- Fluke just ATE this role, my gawd. And Ohm/Dean responding in kind vis à vis Korn’s regret. YOW. It’s been a few days since I finished the show, in a total RUSH of drama hunger, and I’m still shaking my head and MARVELING at their performance.

Okay, back to the themes list. So, early in my Thai BL journey in the fall of 2022, after I had watched KinnPorsche and The Eclipse as my first two Thai BLs, I watched A Tale of Thousand Stars (way before the OGMMTVC was born), and noted that I appreciated the lack of side couples in the ATOTS storyline. I now realize, through the OGMMTVC, that side couples are both a BL trope and a byproduct of the drama styles from which BLs were born, the ensemble-based dramas like Love Sick, Senior Secret Love, and Kiss/Kiss Me Again.

New’s Make It Right -- while beloved in my heart, for the chaotic duos of TeeFuse and FrameBook -- WAS messy, with all the other couple stuff happening around it. That, along with Love By Chance, made me wonder -- why do BLs that center fabulous dyads with sizzling chemistry take away from that energy with all the side couple action? Even Together With Me, a non-New Siwaj and non-GMMTV drama, got sidelined in part with a VERY questionable side couple plot in BrightFarm.

Reflecting back on KP and The Eclipse, I had that question in mind as I started UWMA, and wondered where the Alex and WinTeam storylines were going to go. But, frankly, I ended up appreciating what NEEDED to happen with DeanPharm and KornIntouch, because -- the original novel storyline clearly demanded that these two couples, who were NOT side couples, but MAIN couples, needed a MAIN spotlight for their collective story to be told. @clairificusrex mentioned in a liveblog comment (THANK YOU, LOVELY HUMAN!) that New Siwaj benefitted in the screenplay from having a wonderful original novel to work with, and while I don’t read Y Series canon, I can only imagine that this was indeed the case.

So, New, in order to hew to the novel, had to perhaps hold back his usual instincts to muss up the main couple vibe, by centering DeanPharm and KornIntouch. With that control necessary to the story -- I think the narrative STRUCTURE of the drama just blew open. It was FASCINATING, it drew me in, and the structure allowed for another New predilection to be leveraged WELL, in his love for flashbacks. @lurkingshan, you mentioned that your taste wasn’t necessarily aligned with New’s fancy for flashbacks, which I totally understand -- I think flashbacks hurt the overall narrative structure of Double Savage earlier this year. But I think, here for UMWA, they were necessary, and I might very well be apologetic to that considering what I DID see in Double Savage by way of the story that New ended up screenwriting over there in regards to intergenerational family trauma (again, more on this later in the post).

This narrative structure lent itself handily to the next four themes on this list, all of which deal in memory, in spiritual roots, and/or in the generational passage and inheritance of trauma and emotion. 2019, as we know now, was a big year for shows themed around Thai spiritual culture and/or reincarnation. We have He’s Coming To Me, we have Dew the Movie��-- we have art here, queer-centered art, that does not lend itself to happy endings, that depicts, through reincarnation or, in the case of HCTM, a ghostly purgatory, how DIFFICULT it had been to be comfortably queer and/or openly out in past and present Thailand.

And then UWMA comes along, telling TWO generational stories, intertwined by the red thread, but also, in the words of the WONDERFUL @bengiyo, connected by Korn and Intouch’s intergenerational queer trauma, the most PERFECT coinage of a theme for this show. In 1988, when Korn and Intouch die, they cannot be out. They cannot even be SECRETLY in love. Their bad dads use the foulest of language to describe their love (much like Phop’s dad in Dew). And Korn kills himself, and Intouch follows.

And what we learn, through Dean and Pharm, are the emotions, the regrets, the LEARNED BEHAVIOR that Korn and Intouch have picked up on in the afterlife, embedded in Dean and Pharm, that keeps Korn and Intouch’s love alive, with CORRECTIONS and ADJUSTMENTS made by Dean and Pharm that reflect on how not only Korn and Intouch’s love has changed and improved, but also how Dean and Pharm are learning how to love EACH OTHER, themselves, as they adjust to their OWN belonging to each other, in Pharm’s own words. GAH -- my aching heart. (Thank you to @lurkingshan for talking this through with me early on in my UWMA watch.)

I mean. THE DEPTH OF THIS. Intouch is a terrible cook, and Pharm is like, a restaurant-level chef?! Pharm is so resistant, and Dean is so FORWARD? (OHM THITIWAT, GAH!!!) (Listen. Pharm. P’Deeeean can grab MY butt, okay?) (See what I did there, @lurkingshan and @bengiyo? THANK YOOOOUU.)

And Pharm’s blushing maiden approach. Yes, I will also admit, that sometimes, it was a little cringey. But I think the blushing maiden trope was really necessary to the story -- ESPECIALLY IN THE CONTEXT of Intouch’s anger, ciphered through Pharm in the last episode. And I think that Fluke Natouch ultimately rendered the trope beautifully -- again, especially against the gorgeous ending of the show. Oh, THAT CONDO SCENE, PEOPLE. I LOST IT. 

Of course, Intouch would want to hold back through Pharm in the present day. If Intouch DIDN’T hold back vis à vis Pharm -- he might lose Korn again, if Pharm missteps with Dean. Intouch may have felt that HIS forwardness lent to their troubles -- so Intouch holds back, through Pharm. And Intouch ultimately communicates his love for Korn differently in the afterlife, more hesitantly -- through a resistance to intimacy, and through food and cooking in Pharm, which itself was another amazing move in this show.

Listen. Even my pinned post says what I value in dramas, not just in BLs. You give me food in BL, and I give you my heart. But also, let’s talk about the meaning of food in Asian dramas for a second. It’s no coincidence that MANY Asian dramas and doramas center food, including my favorite BL of all time, Kinou Nani Tabeta/What Did You Eat Yesterday?. If you don’t know Asians, of any ilk -- let me make a BROAD continental and sub-continental judgement. ALL WE THINK ABOUT IS FOOD, lol. While I’m with my family, while I’m working, while I’m writing meta -- I’m thinking about food, I’m thinking about what I want to cook, what I want to order, how I can mix the cuisines I love (Thai-Indian curries, anyone? YUM). Malaysians literally boast about having multiple meals, way past three meals, a day. We Asians are proud of our cuisines, and we want y’all to be EATING, A LOT, and to try all our dishes. (ITSAY, your Hokkien mee is calling me...) 

But, also: FOOD MEANS FAMILY. Let me say it again: FOOD MEANS FAMILY. You FEED the people you LOVE, with delicious food. Shiro and Kenji. Kurosawa and Adachi. The guys in Jack o’Frost. The guys in The Eighth Sense. Omg, even Kinn and Porsche. We’re seeing it in Tokyo In April Is... And Pharm, to Dean, Intouch to Korn.

And BESIDES Intouch/Pharm becoming a great cook, GOD, the story ALSO INCLUDED the Proustian reference of the madeleine and involuntary memory -- but in SUCH a stunning way, as to RECALL DEAN’S FAMILIAL MEMORY of eating his grandmother’s Thai desserts -- his grandmother, Intouch’s sister, and how Dean could get an indirect spotlight into Intouch and a depth of an understanding of Intouch’s happiness besides his love for Korn. And how Pharm EMBODIED that love for Thai desserts through Intouch’s family lineage. Oh, just get me MESSY, PEOPLE. FUCKING GENIUS SHIT. 

Memory on memory on memory. Dream on dream, nightmare on nightmare, tears and red threads, inherited trauma, intergenerational trauma. The micro-level of what Dean and Pharm had to live with on a daily basis in their recollections of Korn and Intouch. The macro-level of what Pharm and Dean experienced when all of their parents accepted them for who they were as queer individuals, and their partners, as well. How Dean’s dad could ACTUALLY RELATE to Dean himself, because Dean’s dad had been rejected by Dean’s mother’s family. And how that ALLOWED Dean’s dad to accept Dean and his choice to be with Pharm. How that trauma was relieved, how Dean and Pharm DID NOT HAVE TO PHYSICALLY RELIVE what Korn and Intouch had gone through, and how those involuntary memories that Dean and Pharm carried vis à vis Korn and Intouch traumatized them until Dean and Pharm could RECEIVE their OWN familial acceptance.

The LAYERS OF THIS SHOW. Before I get to the last theme on my list, I really just need to metaphorically slam my palms on an allegorical table and give New Siwaj a huge hug, because THIS SHIT IS NOT EASY TO PROCESS ALL AT ONCE, and I can’t wait to do a UWMA rewatch to try to catch more (and I’ll likely need to write another meta, ha, when I do that). I mean, again, just to use food as an example of a kind of storytelling TOOL to INDICATE memory, especially in the context of lost and found love, of intergenerational trauma and relieving regret -- BRILLIANT. BRILLIANT.

And. The last theme on the list, the theme of filial piety, of Asian family systems and devotion and loyalty and expectations, and the devastating effects on the micro-individual level (and even the macro-social level as well) that those expectations can have. 

So, I watched Double Savage, screenwritten by New Siwaj, out of order from UWMA. Very quickly, since many of you have likely NOT watched Double Savage because it’s not a BL (but it DID have Ohm Pawat and Perth Tanapon in a hose-off scene -- you can’t take the New Siwaj out of New Siwaj, amirite): Double Savage is about Korn (Ohm P.), a middle son who is branded a jinx by a HORRENDOUS Thai-Chinese father, and how the abuse leveled on Korn by his dad has intergenerational ripple effects across their family and community. 

Let’s break this down. I now know that New Siwaj does bad dads from Thai-Chinese lineage very well. UWMA’s Korn is expected to take over a mafia business. His dad is disapproving that Korn doesn’t want to take over the business -- which is an UNQUESTIONABLE and EMBEDDED expectation in most Asian family lineages (hello, Jeng and Step By Step) -- AND Korn’s dad is ALSO disapproving in Korn’s love for Intouch and vice versa. Separately, Intouch’s dad is disapproving that Intouch is in love with Korn, a mafia scion. 

Modern times are modern for a reason. 1988 was 31 years from 2019. I want to emphasize here the understanding that Korn and Intouch likely had -- that besides running away, there was no other existence for them to be together than to kill themselves and be together in the afterlife. And running away, and still living and existing, would have been a guilt-ridden and dangerous existence, for what Asian children are expected to do and live for vis à vis their parents. Korn likely HAD NO OTHER IMAGINATION for a life that he could live OTHER THAN to take over his father’s business and to be a heteronormative adult in the late 1980s. And, to top that all off, both of their dads were fucking assholes. 

I really liked how this was juxtaposed to the relationship between Dean and his father. Dean was clearly set up to be as stubborn as his dad. Meaning, at least to me -- that Dean was FAR less likely to be told what to do by his dad, that Dean would and maybe COULD, stand up to his dad. We didn’t see it happen, but I could have imagined Dean not accepting “no” for an answer from his dad to accept Pharm. (Makes you think about Pat, Pran, and Ming, no?) Dean had Korn in him. Dean/Korn was NOT GOING TO TAKE THAT SHIT AGAIN, and that was CLEAR. I want to emphasize: THAT’S BIG. That was BIG on New Siwaj and the UWMA novel writer to include that in the story. That’s parental defiance. That needed to happen in order for Dean and Pharm to survive. As an Asian, that gives me a kick of welcome energy.

But I also really want to note what New Siwaj did at the end of the show, something so deft, it might have left non-Asian viewers wondering what was going on. In the condo scene, Dean and Pharm are ciphering Korn and Intouch -- and when Korn’s father shows up in the wheelchair, Korn’s father knows what’s happening.

And Korn apologizes to his dad. Korn had already apologized to Intouch, but Korn also apologizes to his dad, and to his brother, and to his nephew in Sin. This really gets me, y’all, I understand this as an Asian. Korn is APOLOGIZING for the PAIN he caused in his family AND in Intouch, because -- filial piety. He knows what he did to himself was devastating to the Asian family system he was born into, to the Asian society he was born into, and he apologized for the suicide he committed unto himself that caused that extra-social pain. 

Like. As crazy as that sounds, it’s also an INCREDIBLY SOPHISTICATED way to ACKNOWLEDGE that Korn had broached a social boundary, and Intouch had followed him. THAT IS A HELL OF A LAYER TO ADD TO THIS STORY, ONE THAT I DID NOT EXPECT, and that SHOOK ME at the end of this series.

A similar situation happened in Double Savage. Despite the horrendous psychological abuse that Double Savage’s Korn received from his father -- an adult Korn ends up apologizing to his father for the trouble that HE may have caused. Now, what I appreciated about Double Savage was that THAT dad was like -- no, no, *I* should be the one apologizing. BUT, I want to indicate and emphasize here, that BOTH storylines acknowledge that Asian children NEED to know, SHOULD know, ARE BORN TO KNOW, that their actions have collective effects on a wider family system. We are born to understand and think like that. We are not dealing with an individualist Western perspective here. (I literally FLIPPED when I realized that New Siwaj has had MULTIPLE CHARACTERS NAMED KORN APOLOGIZING TO BAD DADS, and I’m an Asian over here UNDERSTANDING WHY, and I’m just like, pfffftt GGGAAAHHHH.)

Why am I harping on this? BECAUSE: vis à vis EVERYTHING ELSE that is lineage-based in this story -- from children being born, to intergenerational trauma, to reincarnation -- UWMA is structured around an über-macro theme of worlds being linked, by threads, by genes, by history, by spirit, by trauma. We are collectively linked. Babies are born -- we saw many babies in this show. Children belong to families. Lovers belong to lovers. Dean PHYSICALLY belongs to Intouch’s family, and Pharm to Korn’s family. A happy existence will be when a family accepts a child’s partner. Happiness is in a family growing, not a family shrinking. Warmth and growth and love happens when a happy family sits at a table and eats together. 

As Pharm says at the end of the show -- oh, my HEART -- “I belong to Dean.” Yes, you do -- because you have become Dean’s family, and Dean has become Pharm’s family. Korn’s family BELONGS to Intouch’s family, and vice versa. They are destined, MEANT to be linked together, AND TO BE FAMILY, ALL TOGETHER.

Kurosawa and Adachi become family in the Cherry Magic movie. WDYEY’s Shiro and Kenji become family by way of living and eating together. Even if BBS’s Ming doesn’t acknowledge Pran -- Pran is Ming’s family. LOVE. MAKES. FAMILY.

What Korn apologized for was the impact his decision had on his family — WHILE HE WAS IN LOVE WITH INTOUCH, WHO KORN’S FAMILY WAS NOT ALLOWING KORN TO MAKE AS KORN’S NEW FAMILY in the 1980s. Korn was able to apologize in the afterlife — BECAUSE Dean and Pharm DID WHAT HE AND INTOUCH COULD NOT DO, by way of generations, by way of family acceptance, by way of inherited trauma and STOPPING that inherited trauma in its tracks -- very much like Pat and Pran banding together and doing the same for themselves. Dean and Pharm did the hard work of making the relationship a real one, in every aspect of their intimate, micro-level family lives, to a public, external existence in the world. Korn could FINALLY experience the release of GUILT he had towards Intouch and towards Korn’s family, now that Korn’s love for Intouch could FINALLY flourish outside the constraints of filial piety through Dean. THIS IS HUGE. I have no words to tell you what the BRILLIANCE of this means to me as an Asian. LOVE MAKES FAMILY, and LOVE THAT IS ALLOWED TO FLOURISH GIVES YOU THE RELEASE TO BE YOUR TRUE SELF. 

Dean had learned from the inherited trauma that he got from Korn that he needed to stop the trauma train in his tracks, and he did, and he confronted his father, and his father blessed the union of Dean and Pharm. When Dean took the gun away from Pharm, and embraced Pharm, Korn and Intouch KNEW that they could finally be safe in the afterlife. Dean and Pharm were the ciphers that finally ALLOWED Korn and Intouch to exist happily together in spirit. Korn, especially, could exist freely, now that he was relieved of his guilt. Dean and Pharm were, LITERALLY, Korn and Intouch’s FAMILY -- the FAMILY that ALLOWED the FINAL RELEASE for Korn and Intouch to be together as their true selves and spirits. 

And Dean and Pharm confirmed that in FRONT of the family member, in Korn’s father, that had originally caused all this pain. The intricate layers, communicated to a primarily Asian audience, of Korn apologizing to his father, and then of Dean embracing Pharm and confirming their love AND Korn and Intouch’s love, in front of that former barrier -- that is GROWTH and FLOURISHING in the face of generational defiance, and about as sophisticated and eloquent a communication of familial transcendence as I could possibly imagine seeing in Asian drama art. WHOA. I’m a little out of breath with this.

Wow. And speaking of being one’s true self: I deeply loved that Dean and Pharm took a three-month break. I loved that Pharm was smart and strong enough to demand a break to understand if DEAN and PHARM -- INDEPENDENT of ANYTHING they had INHERITED from ANYONE -- actually loved each other and belonged together. Fuck. Pharm was like, no -- this one’s on me. I need to see, outside of ANY INFLUENCES, FROM ANYONE, ANYWHERE -- if I love Dean, if Dean loves me, and if we belong together. Brave. Badass.

AND, I truly loved how Korn and Intouch -- DEAN AND PHARM’S FAMILY -- came BACK to Dean and Pharm’s dreams to offer thanks. I loved how, in the end, the past and his family came back to give Pharm that little contextual nudge to say to Pharm, it’s okay to love Dean for Dean, AND to love how you two came together, through Korn and Intouch. And Pharm could acknowledge, finally, that he belonged to Dean. God damn.

This story was so multilayered, SO complex, SO filled with a respect for love at its highest and most complicated levels. This story was filled with CRITICAL SCRUTINY towards Asian family systems and the trauma that those systems can render. This story was filled with an acknowledgement for the power of LOVE that those same family systems can offer unto children who NEED pillars of love and support (Pharm’s mom and brother, badasses!). 

Y’ALL. I just, I DID NOT KNOW that New Siwaj could DO THIS! I know that UWMA is considered his best show, but like, this is his best show BY A LOT, A LOT. Double Savage, in contrast, had a lot of narrative and structural issues that detracted from the core stories of filial piety that were ultimately very important to tell. 

UWMA did not fall into that trap. It was SMART, it MOVED (FOR SEVENTEEN EPISODES! I SLAMMED THIS SERIES! I could have watched MORE, I cannot believe I’m SAYING THAT!), it was. It was just BRILLIANT. It was an ode to romantic love, to family love, to the power of memory. In 2019, it joined He’s Coming To Me in a burgeoning echelon of cinema-influenced BLs in storytelling, soon to be joined by I Told Sunset About You, ATOTS, and others. It took the sad endings of He’s Coming To Me and Dew the Movie and said -- not today. Today, we will let love LIVE, let QUEER LOVE live, in REAL LIFE, in REAL TIME, and we will not let our lovers live in regret. We will take queer love, we will give queer love FAMILY, and we will give it the HONOR IT DESERVES.

Until We Meet Again is a must-watch of the highest order, and goes on the shortlist of shows that I will refer to as one that makes me proud to be an Asian. It was easily one of the most important shows I’ve watched in this project. All credit to New, Fluke, Ohm, Earth, and Kao for a PHENOMENAL experience -- my heart and mind have been bettered because of this show. 

[FLUKE. AND. OHM. Fluke and Singto coming thru in Shadow the Series? Sign me the FUCK up. Actors on actors. WOW. Did UWMA ever introduce me to another crop of dudes who can fucking tear up a screen. I had SO much fun watching UWMA, whew!

And, yep. I had to follow this up with 2gether, ha. I’m going to spare myself a little pain, if y’all don’t mind, and combine my write-up of 2gether with Still 2gether. I know there’s a lot to be said about the lack of intimacy in 2G, which I can’t wait to dive into, but I can’t help but to also run into another wall of analysis with dear P’Aof’s work in S2G. I’ll make it all work!

After I get myself together with 2gether (HA) -- it’s ITSAY time. I will be planning on watching ITSAY TWICE before writing, as I’m preparing myself to catch EVERYTHING I can before I pen words. Stay tuned.

Status of the list below. As always -- if you have feedback, send it my way!

1) Love Sick and Love Sick 2 (2014 and 2015) (review here) 2) Make It Right (2016) (review here) 3) SOTUS (2016-2017) (review here) 4) Make It Right 2 (2017) (review here) 5) Together With Me (2017) (review here) 6) SOTUS S/Our Skyy x SOTUS (2017-2018) (review here) 7) Love By Chance (2018) (review here) 8) Kiss Me Again: PeteKao cuts (2018) (no review) 9) He’s Coming To Me (2019) (review here) 10) Dark Blue Kiss (2019) and Our Skyy x Kiss Me Again (2018) (review here) 11) TharnType (2019-2020) (review here) 12) Senior Secret Love: Puppy Honey (BL cuts) (2016 and 2017) (I’m watching this out of order just to get familiar with OffGun before Theory of Love -- will likely not review) 13) Theory of Love (2019) (review here) 14) 3 Will Be Free (2019) (not a BL or an official part of the OGMMTVC watchlist, but an important harbinger of things to come in 2019 and beyond re: Jojo Tichakorn pushing queer content in non-BLs) (review here) 15) Dew the Movie (2019) (review here) 16) Until We Meet Again (2019-2020)  17) 2gether (2020) and Still 2gether (2020) (watching) 18) I Told Sunset About You (2020) 19) YYY (2020, out of chronological order) 20) Manner of Death (2020-2021) (not a true BL, but a MaxTul queer/gay romance set within a genre-based show that likely influenced Not Me and KinnPorsche) 21) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) (review here) 22) A Tale of Thousand Stars (2021) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake Of Rewatching Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS 23) Lovely Writer (2021) 24) Last Twilight in Phuket (2021) (the mini-special before IPYTM) 25) I Promised You the Moon (2021) 26) Not Me (2021-2022) 27) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) (thesis here) 28) Bad Buddy (2021-2022) and Our Skyy 2 x BBS x ATOTS (2023) OGMMTVC Rewatch 29) Secret Crush On You (2022) [watching for Cheewin’s trajectory of studying queer joy from Make It Right (high school), to SCOY (college), to Bed Friend (working adults)] 30) KinnPorsche (2022) (tag here) 31) KinnPorsche (2022) OGMMTVC Fastest Rewatch Known To Humankind For The Sake of Re-Analyzing the KP Cultural Zeitgeist 32) The Eclipse (2022) (tag here) 33) GAP (2022-2023) (Thailand’s first GL) 34) My School President (2022-2023) and Our Skyy 2 x My School President (2023) 35) Moonlight Chicken (2023) (tag here) 36) Bed Friend (2023) (tag here) (Cheewin’s latest show, depicting a queer joy journey among working adults)]

[typicalopposite]

BuckTommy | G | 4,903 words | AO3 Link

Summary: “What would it take…” Evan asks, keeping his back towards Tommy.

“What would it take?”

Evan turns, brows furrowed very seriously. “What would it take for you to actually believe?”

or...

The tumblr fic idea I got about Evan getting Tommy and Eddie to go into a haunted abandoned school... and spooky shenanigans ensue! <3

“You’ve got to be kidding me…” Tommy and Eddie manage to groan in perfect unison as Evan’s jeep turns off the road into a dirt lot filled with dozens of other cars. The extensive— and so far over the top it’s actually kind of comical— decor all around the lot tells what exactly they are in for, before either of them can even ask.

Evan is overly giddy as he hops out of the driver’s seat, and Tommy exchanges an exhaustive glance into the back at Eddie before getting out as well. He has heard his boyfriend going on and on about this place for weeks— hell months even— and he knows for a fact he made it a point, each time it was brought up, that he didn’t do “haunted attractions”; so he knows he did not give his consent to this. (However… he would not be surprised if Evan had slipped in the request to tag along during a time Tommy was not focusing on what Evan was saying as much as he was on what Evan was doing… the sneaky devil.)

“Did you know?” Tommy whispers to Eddie, the two falling back behind Evan who is practically skipping towards the line.

“Do you think I would have willingly come if I had?” Eddie whispers back. “He said we were meeting Hen and Chim for drinks!”

“Yeah… same,” Tommy sighs. “He’s damn lucky I love him…” It slips out before Tommy can contain the words to a thought to keep inside his head. Eddie’s brows shoot up, and a smirk teases his lips. “Shut up,” Tommy says, rolling his eyes; he shoves Eddie up towards Evan so he can control his own smile.

They near the line— the dreadfully long line— and find Hen and Howie waving them over, huge excited smiles and arms loaded with popcorn bags and drinks. “To tide us over during the wait,” Howie explains, handing a bag to Tommy and gesturing back towards the line.

“I can’t believe Buck actually managed to get the skeptics to join,” Hen says, impressed— the impression quickly fades when she sees Tommy and Eddie’s unenthused faces however. “Or maybe not…”

“I have my ways,” Evan says with a smirk.

“We were tricked,” Eddie counters, crossing his arms over his chest and Tommy quickly follows suit.

“Come on guys, it— it’ll be fun!” Evan pouts, looking between them both. Tommy sighs giving Eddie a look of defeat; Eddie sighs, likely because Evan is his ride so he is backed into a corner. Evan grins triumphantly.

It takes over an hour to get through the line. The bags of popcorn are devoured— almost entirely by Tommy and Eddie out of pure boredom— while Evan, Hen, and Howie go back and forth sharing personal ghost stories, each of their dives into the history of this place, and their excitement to potentially gain two new believers by the end of the night.

~~~

Misty Oaks Junior High was built in 1975 and it was closed indefinitely after receiving extensive damage in the 2019 earthquake.

Even though today the abandoned school is considered one of LA’s most haunted locations, it garnered its spooky reputation long before its doors closed for the final time. This is largely due to the school being built over top of a cemetery.

When the school was open, the students, staff, and visitors would often report seeing or hearing unexplainable things. Night maintenance allegedly experienced the most activity, and the school had much difficulty keeping workers for the third shift— most only lasting around a month before quitting.

After the earthquake the paranormal activity is said to have increased due to the earth splitting open and releasing the spirits of the graves beneath the foundation. In the years following its closure Misty Oaks has become frequented by urban explorers, and paranormal investigators trying to uncover the mysteries that surround the abandoned school.

Then, in 2022 the property was bought and the doors were reopened to the public one week a year for the extremely popular haunted attraction Misty Oaks is today.

The intro has been playing on repeat over the (not so much eerie as it is annoying) staticy speakers, and by the time they were finally at the entrance Tommy could recite it, in full, by heart. Now it is finally their turn to enter the school. The ghoulish greeter gives them a sinister smile and extends his arm out towards the creaky front doors. Tommy and Eddie share a look behind the rest of the gang— who are all three wide eyed and already giggling and on edge as they make their way through the cobwebs and artificial smoke into the school.

It’s so cliche. Tommy and Eddie call the jumpscares before they even happen, and they are all but doubling over in laughter at the cheesy 80s horror flick audio track chosen to set the mood. The costumes aren’t great, the full story given to them on a pamphlet with the receipt to the tickets is not great, and the store bought smell of death and decay is not great either; it’s almost unbearable and probably going to get the owner a Toxic fumes charge.

Evan seems to be having a blast— Hen and Howie too. They are going to be hoarse from screaming, and their knees sore and popping. Evan swears he sees shadows lurking around every corner, Howie says he hears footsteps on a hall where there were definitely no actors, Hen says she just has had a bad feeling since she got out of her car in the parking lot. Tommy and Eddie’s eyes have rolled more times than they care to count. “Come on guys…” Eddie finally groans. “You can’t be serious right now.” Howie had just sworn he heard a disembodied laughter, to which Evan and Hen quickly said they heard it too.

Evan looks to Tommy who had been right beside him at the moment, and if he is being completely honest, yes… he heard it too. “However,” Tommy is quick to clarify before Evan’s face can light up too much. “It was definitely just part of the act. Probably a hidden speaker.”

Howie groans and calls them both party poopers. Hen says they should have never agreed to come if they were going to ruin the fun— to which Eddie reminds her they were tricked into coming. Of course all this sets in motion a deep pout that will last long past them getting back to Evan’s loft; cuddles and any chance of sexy times kissed goodbye.

Continue reading on ao3

[many-but-one]

i dunno if you guys answer asks but what’s the best way to start… remembering? our social worker suggested hypnotherapy but i don’t know if that works well. we’re aware of the possibility of ramcoa trauma happening and have a few memories but we don’t know how to go about piecing things together

We do answer asks! We just forget we have an askbox sometimes. This one caught my attention in particular due to the mention of hypnotherapy and a possibility of RAMCOA trauma.

Obligatory “I’m not a therapist I’m just a random system on tumblr and you should make your own informed decisions on your own mental health.”

So if you suspect RAMCOA trauma in your history I would advise to be extremely careful and/or cautious about pursuing hypnotherapy. We have never done hypnotherapy and never will because hypnosis is a very common mode that programmers will use to create a dissociated state in a child. Hypnosis therefore is extremely triggering to us and if your system has parts who are programmed to run when hypnosis begins, it could cause a risk to your system’s stability.

As for tips on how to remember, all I will say is that you should probably consider the factors that make you unable to remember at this time.

Common reasons why amnesia can be strong/worsen for systems (side note: these are all personal experiences or experiences I’ve heard from other systems):

stress in daily life often causes amnesia barriers to strengthen or worsen

a lot of trauma has already recently come out. Especially in the case of HC-DID or C-DID where higher ups can often control amnesia levels to an extent, your gatekeepers will often increase amnesia levels if trauma has already recently slipped out to avoid even more slipping out

you are still having to consistently interact with someone who was involved in or complicit in your trauma. If you are living with your dad who you think is kind of a dick but not that bad and suddenly get memories that he tortured you, living with that person will become nearly impossible for your wellbeing. Gatekeepers will often keep stuff locked down when you are still having to be in contact with past abusers

you are not in a stable position to begin to receive trauma memories. People with CPTSD, a CDD, etc often report that they function fine enough when they are living in an abusive environment, but once they leave that environment and can truly relax, that’s when memories and flashbacks start hitting them and they become nearly nonfunctional despite being in a significantly calmer and safer environment. That’s your body and mind finally leaving fight or flight mode and when you truly get to relax for the first time it’s going to hit you like a truck.

Take it from a host that dug too much too soon and learned things way too fast: slow the fuck down. /meant gently. Your memories will surface in time. There is no rush to figure everything out. Trust me, the more you start learning the more you will probably be like “damn actually I don’t wanna know any more this is getting pretty bad” and by then your system will be like “WELL THAT’S TOO DAMN BAD.”

I had to get pulled from the host team for nearly a year because of how bad digging for memories fucked me up. Granted, I ended up taking up inner caretaking and inner deprogramming and now that our system is very nearly completely deprogrammed, my inner world job is less necessary so I can return to full time host business. There were several other factors that also led to me being unable to host again for so long, such as programmed parts constantly attacking and harming host team members (couldn’t handle that I am Fragile) and also having a harder time speaking in an American accent and masking my English one due to a series of splits that happened after we got divorced from our ex wife. I can mask my accent better now and my distress tolerance is much higher now due to having worked with programmed parts internally for so long, which makes me able to return to main host stuff and not get absolutely mentally destroyed anytime I experience a flashback or programmed response or an attack from a programmed part anymore.

If you have RAMCOA trauma, no matter if it was stuff from a single parent or a high control group, none of it will be fun to learn. It will be some of the most devastating, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing things you will ever experience, seeing flashbacks of your kid self being harmed in ways no human should be harmed, let alone an innocent kid. And I’m not saying you’re trying to learn for the fun of it, I’m assuming you want to learn for two reasons at least:

1) you’re in denial and need proof

2) you want to help your system heal

What I did to help myself through these two things were this:

When I experienced denial, such as when a part told me something or showed me something, I would just default to believing them no matter if I thought something like that could ever happen. My kid self deserves to have someone believe them. We were never believed as a kid, nobody paid attention, we were ignored. I’m never doing that to myself ever again. If the memory turns out to be a pseudomemory, or you realize maybe this didn’t really happen the way you thought, you’ll figure that out when you get there and that doesn’t mean you were faking it.

As for wanting to help my system heal, I learned I actually didn’t need to know as much info as I thought I needed to know to help my system heal. The extent of what I know now is a few visuals, that’s it. I have seen maybe about a dozen visual memories (not even in their entirety, often just 1 or 2 seconds of something) and the rest is just “this is what happened” as told to me by my parts. It’s like reading a horrible story, I’m incredibly detached from it. But the things I have seen have helped me learn to take my parts seriously when they tell me what happened. I catalogue their triggers, I learn what to avoid, I learn how to positively trigger out other parts who can help, I work on inner communication, etc. I don’t need to know all the details yet, that will come later. For now, I can teach my parts who haven’t seen the light of day for 15 years how to ground in the present and show them healthy coping skills. I can give them the comfort and love they always deserved. I don’t need to know what happened to do that. I can know it’s bad because they got triggered out when I looked in the mirror and they saw my red lipstick and freaked. I can know it’s bad because they internally look like a doll with no limbs or a young girl with no eyes and only a mouth full of teeth. I don’t need to see what made them that way/remember what made them that way to help them.

I hope my answer helped anon! Good luck!

-Dori 🌹(she/he/they)

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I read October recently (and loved it, I enjoy that is basically a cosmic horror romance where Tom and Azrael have to end together since they are immortal, even when Tom and Lily's romance is so much sweeter for me to the point that I now completely joined you in shipping them), and I wondered where did you come up with the idea for Ubik, as well as it being placed in Mars? Did you consider it being somewhere else instead while writing the fic?

I hope I'm not just asking something you have answered before, but I don't remember reading meta about it. I may be wrong, of course.

October

Thank you, anon! Glad you like it. And no, I don't think I've answered any of this before, at least not on tumblr I don't think.

What's the Deal with Ubik/Why is it on Mars?

The Mars answer is easy. It's because there's a long history of speculating if there is or isn't life on Mars, and up until fairly recently (e.g. the last century) there was real speculation of if there was or had been a civilization on Mars.

There were things in telescopes that looked like canals/waterways, Mars is in the habitable zone and in theory with a better atmosphere could have water/life, and it's also just one of those neat things people would like to be true (as we live in the depressing world of the Fermi Paradox where life probably is out there in the wide universe, but we're all so damn far apart, short lived, and creating the technology to receive and send those kinds of signals is even shorter lived, that we will very likely never contact one another).

So, in the mid 20th century, before the space race has begun, before anyone's putting satellites in space, it's one of those things where "oh, ancient technologically advanced civilization on Mars that sort of died out except for one alien dude" is... unbelievable and exciting but not completely unbelievable.

I also love Ray Bradbury so it's got to be Mars.

I feel like I considered the moon very briefly but it was really always going to be Mars.

Europa, Jupiter's moon, also gets a shout out for similar reasons that Mars does but I wanted something a bit closer to Earth that people had already been thinking about for a long time.

The name "Ubik" comes from one of my favorite Philip K. Dick books "Ubik" which doesn't really have much to do with Azrael but is... thematically similar to what Tom goes through throughout the story.

As for the look--I wanted something very alien with shock appeal that doesn't look like what people would expect Mars to necessarily look like. And so we get a bunch of mystical glowing shit.

[random-iz-stuff]

Alright, for fanfic purposes and pure headcanon purposes...

How do Irken injuries work?

Like, my book has a character that has a robot arm and half an antennae because he lost them in battle. But I also have another story where Zim and Dib get crazy superpowers, and a whole bunch of stuff happens, and they both get pretty nasty scars, but Zim's are like permanent. I just wanted to see if your headcanons could help with this. :)

Sorry this took so long I had no idea that I even received the ask because Tumblr is held together by duct tape (and also because of other hyperfixations getting in the way of this blog).

Irken injuries:

Irkens can heal from a LOT of damage in canon, with Zim mentioning that his spine can heal from being completely broken and most injuries we see Zim receive begin healed in about a day at most (or in an unspecified amount of time between episodes, but given how quickly we see Zim recover from other injuries it can’t be very slow).

Irken eyes specifically seem to be damn near invincible, healing from extreme damage extremely quickly and even being able to be completely removed from the socket and shoved back in and still work with no problems or pain. I headcanon that they’ll even completely regrow if removed entirely.

With my headcanons, Injuries near or on the Irken’ back heal extremely quickly even by Irken standards because that’s where the PAK and big metal plate installed in the Irken’s back to help connect the PAK exist. Antennae also heal extremely quickly and thoroughly, just as fast, if not faster than the eyes.

I also headcanon that Irkens molt every 5 years, which tends to remove smaller scars visible on the skin and makes larger ones harder to notice.

However, there’s still stuff that can either permanently scar an Irken or at least make very long lasting ones.

Firstly, Irkens can heal extremely quickly, but can’t regrow limbs or digits, so a lost arm, leg, finger, etc is gone permanently. Just look at the Tallest for proof there.

Second, large enough amounts of damage will leave scars that just don’t go away, even after multiple Molts. At a certain point the injury is so severe that the Irken’s body just can’t heal over that area enough to remove or even fade the scar. For canon, just look at Sizz-Lorr’s huge scar on his face, most likely from serving in the military.

Also worth noting that not only does this scar remain on Sizz-Lorr, the injury was so bad that it not only had to be stitched shut (which is a lot considering how quickly and thoroughly Irkens seem to heal), but the stitches are massive and most notably, are still visible decades, possibly even a few centuries after Sizz-Lorr received them depending on how old Sizz-Lorr is and his exact history.

Whatever this injury was, it was completely beyond the limits of Irken healing, and given the proximity to his eye and how Irken eyes can heal completely from any injury, it’s likely that the initial injury may have completely decimated that side of Sizz-Lorr’s face, with his eye completely healing and much of the scarring gradually disappearing over the course of many, many molts, leaving only the absolute worst part of the injury that was so damaged that the scarring simply would not go away behind.

There’s also a headcanon I have for Zim himself here because i headcanon that Zim has a whole lot of permanent and semi-permanent scars from various points of his life. Most notably grease burns all over his body from Foodcourtia and a massive electrical scar on one his hands from the Blob Incident.

The grease burns are semi-permanent, fading a bit after Zim goes through a few molts but reappearing just as strongly as before after Zim gets sent back to Foodcourtia, but the electrical burn from the Blob Incident is beyond the capabilities of Irken healing, not fading or lessening after multiple molts because it was simply that bad.

[opinated-user]

It's funny how lily accuses County of changing their story and adding worse and worse stuff when that's what she does as well.

The first time she ever talked about Courtney it was a story about how they were a brat who they beat up for scratching her. But now she's been heavily implying Courtney sexually abused her in some way, months after playing up her sister as nothing but a run of mill asshole.

It's just ironic that lily deflects Courtney's a claims by saying "but her story changes and gets more and more outrageous so it has to be lies", while also doing the exact same thing. Like idk if we go by her own logic, she's just as unbelievable.

there's a difference between a story changing and more details being added. Courtney always said that the molestation started when she was 6 and LO 7. now he's saying that it started in LO's room. Courtney always claimed that LO would sneak into their room to molest her. now Courtney is saying that she specifically started doing that at 11. Courtney has always claimed that LO must have done something to him during their sleep, when he was unsconscious so he wouldn't know for sure what it was and could only see the consequences of it the next morning. now it's that he is realizing that the SA probably escalated considering everything in retrospective, just like only now in retrospective she can aknowledge that LO was more than likely SA as a kid. most of the things LO accuses Courtney of being are things we have proof LO has done. i don't mean the allegations specifically, but the putting minors in danger (by grooming them and exposing them to NSFW content, both in her channel and tumblr), the being a violently abusive person (LO bragging about stabbing some guy on the streets with a pocket knife), the being transphobic (and unlike Courtney, LO never apologized for misgendering other trans people) and constantly actually changing her story to whatever it suit her at whichever moment. originally LO would say that Lizzy never did anything physical to her. but the moment Lizzy came out talking about how LO would coerce her into doing NSFW she was never comfortable with, emotionally manipulating her into it until she could literally not take it anymore. now it turns out that she did physically abused, and not only that! she totally raped her! do you see the difference there? if Courtney had said "LO was a creep and i didn't like her, but she never did anything to harm me physically" from the start and only later said "actually she molested me/abused me sexually" then we can talk about changing stories, but he never did. his story has always been the same. unlike LO who constantly switches from "i beat her up a thousands times" and "she was beat up by me" to "she actually abused me all along, don't ask me how or in what way, just know she did that to me" (after months of she accusing me, but that's a coincidence) from "Courtney is the violently abusive one" to "grab the heaviest object that you can grab and smash it against the head of your bullies" as an advice to give to children at school. you can dislike Courtney all you like. you might even doubt her story. but it's no way that in good faith someone can see everything we have in LO, all the archives, all the videos, all the receipts, and come out thinking that is a innocent well adjusted person who has "never done a damn thing wrong" her entire life. LO is the one who has a history of coercing people into doing sexual things for her against their own boundaries, not Courtney. LO is the one with a long history of sexualizing and romanticizing incest, even to this day, not Courtney. LO is the one who has flip flopped all over the place when talking about Courtney, not him. LO is the one who is desperate to deny that Courtney ever went through any kind of abuse, even the one that had nothing to do with her, just to save face herself, not Courtney. LO is the one who wants to sell you this image of her being the perpetual victim who never harmed anyone and never did anything wrong she needed to change, not Courtney.

[castielspahdehrah]

Post-Therapy Vent

Keep reading or don't. Either is fine, but just know that my therapist gives y'all her seal of approval.

So, I told her about my experience w/coming back to Tumblr and how empty and meaningless it seemed.

First, she was proud of me for being vulnerable enough to take that step of even logging back in. She knows how isolated I've purposely kept myself for a long time now, so the fact I'm even back here and talking to people is a giant leap in the right direction.

Second, I told her what I write and why. Believe it or not, it's not just for the smut lol. The angst stuff I've written was me workin' through things, maybe not specific to my life, but workin' through general pain nonetheless. She said it beats her advising me to start a journal because she can see the value in writing fanfic and bringing about catharsis via fictional characters which is a safer, baby step towards IRL catharsis.

Like you guys have all said, she also hopes I keep my foot in the door, at the very least, because shutting this door and locking it back up now would only unravel the progress I'm making on my own, even without her help. She's told me before it's not so much that I need therapy, per se. I know very well where I stand and I know what's wrong and why it needs fixed. I just need a support system to keep going forward and she'll gladly be that for me.

Now, for the heavy.

When I first started seeing her, I told her I wanted to start fresh. I didn't want to tell her about my past history with therapy; the good, bad, or ugly, and I wanted her to give me her 2 cents after getting to know me. Now, without me ever saying a word, she knew I've already been or damn well should've been diagnosed w/C-PTSD.

She was absolutely correct on that one and I told her that I am ready and willing to do what's necessary to start working through it. She was surprised and impressed that I'm open to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and/or DBT (Dialectal Behavioral Therapy). I do draw the line with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Group Therapy though. Even without giving my reasoning, she's not a fan of them either, but at this point I'm open to almost anything that will allow me to feel again, instead of shutting down like a damn robot. I don't even care that I could potentially feel 12-24 years of trauma all at once...at least I won't be both numb AND heavy at the same time.

Today, I felt comfortable enough to give her another breadcrumb...a diagnosis I was given at 16 yrs old and believed wholeheartedly that I had up until about 10 yrs ago. Like she said, it's like my symptoms had upended themselves and did a complete 180. Well, not only is that diagnosis "fluid" or "transitional" or can go into "remission" in a sense, it can also exist alongside a diagnosis that my surrogate sister thought I had. This is all to say that she agrees with me that a "re-diagnosis" is in order especially considering it's been 30 fuckin' years since the last one.

So, here's where we stand...

I'm gonna get referred to a psychologist for the "re-diagnosis" testing. In that same building, there should be a psychiatrist who can not only handle the C-PTSD therapy, but take over for my Primary Care Physician and put me on some meds that might actually help me.

Don't get me wrong, my PCP gets major points because he thought ahead enough to do a GeneSight test to see what medications I can metabolize and what ones I can't which is a damn sight better than anyone else has cared to do...however, he still didn't quite pick the right ones, as far as she's concerned.

In the meantime, she wants me to channel my inner nerd and really research my previous diagnoses compared to how I feel now. She's adamant (and correct) that nobody knows my body as well as I do and if I have a general direction to go in, the psychologist that "re-diagnoses" me won't waste anyone's time by looking in the wrong places first.

This is my healing era and it's been a VERY long time coming...but I had to be ready and willing to face it in order for it to do any good. The fact that I recognize this speaks volumes on how much I've already healed and just didn't realize it.

I'm no longer upset with myself for waiting this long to get back into therapy. I'm proud of myself for recognizing that it was finally time.

[pandasmagorica]

Third (?) Re-watch in progress - Bad Buddy - first 7 minutes

Okay, I'm torn between blogging this re-watch - and wanting to make sure I get this whole re-watch done before Bad Buddy disappears from YouTube. But these first 7 minutes before the opening credits are such genius that I have to blog something before settling in to watch two or three eps in a row this evening.

My review of Stay By My Side is going to have to wait a few days as well. While I enjoyed it, there is more going on in these 7 minutes than in that entire series. Okay, maybe an exaggeration. Okay, definitely an exaggeration. But that series didn't send me running directly to Tumblr's Create button and these first 7 minutes did.

All of this is from Episode 1 [1/4], before the credits:

1:09 Okay, I didn't know yet (on first watch) that this is one of the two mains (and that Wai isn't), but, damn, Pat (unnamed as yet, unless Korn said it in Thai and it got subbed as an English pronoun as often happens in Thai series) looks like a tough guy. We learn later about him having to sleep with his Nong Nao doll and otherwise being a softie, but he does have this tough side as well.

1:59-2:23 Love the audio in this series. Watch what they do with the sound: dramatic classical music as Pran opens and arranges his drawing kit, until his friend interrupts him and we get the sound of a phonograph arm scraping across vinyl then just the dialog. (Would the main audience for this series even know that sound I know all too well?)

2:33-2:42 But when Pran hears it's Wai in the fight, suddenly we hear a heavily distorted metal guitar riff which continues until Pran takes the first earbud out at which point it suddenly cuts off. Hmm, technically I'd consider that an edit error. I'd expect the volume to drop when he takes the first one out and cut off when he takes the other out. But that's a nitpick. Audio-wise, it's a great choice.

2:41-2:45 We actually saw a glimpse of Pran's OCD starting at 1:59 when he was neatly arranging his drawing kit, but now we really see it as, despite being under time pressure, he takes out his earbuds and carefully stows them. (Earbuds will play an important role in the first few episodes.)

2:50-3:57 This fight is so chaotic and disorganized. This is where my bestie decided she had no interest in this series, although I did eventually convince her to watch episode 5 [1/4], [2/4], and [4/4]. Also thinking about how I didn't know at first watch that Ohm is skilled in martial arts. Don't know about any of the other actors but hope they had a good fight coach to keep them safe.

3:24-3:29 Funny to think the actor playing Wai is a doctor in real life.

4:13-4:17 And suddenly everything comes to a stop when Pat and Pran see each other face to face.

4:18-5:54 For all the Tumblr discussion in which the first 4 episodes are seen as being primarily from Pran's point of view, then episode 5 being Pat's, it's an interesting choice to start their introduction as being the main characters with Pat's view of Pran. Interleaving the shots of their life now with shots of their life in grade school and high school establishes immediately that they have a long history, as well as their history of competition and their parents' clashes.

5:54 Bringing the focus back to the two of them as main characters.

5:55-7:00 And continuing the introduction.

6:11-6:14 Lol at the Buddhist monks eye-rolling at the mothers' competition.

7:00-7:11 And now the fight is Pat and Pran one-on-one. And we go to the opening credits.

Whew! Can I just say the editors are brilliant? Not one wasted second.

I don't get reaction videos and have no interest in watching them. But I guess there is something to be said about being able to share my reaction to each moment.

Okay, I'm going to have to lock my keyboard while I watch this. Going back to moment zero so I can watch this uninterrupted.

[adamantinetower]

Gerbilgod Year 3: Mausoleums

I’m next in line for the Tumblr Succession Fort, with @proudautisticcomrade having preceded me. The game is overseen by @dorfposting​. I’ve had my attention split quite a bit these past few weeks n’ days so I admit I’m not as well versed in the Fortress’s history as I probably should be. But its an angle I can make work.

This ended up being quite a long post with many images, so here’s a readmore for everyone’s sake.

First of Granite, year 153 in the fortress Ërtongnòm: Gerbilgod

Well this is a right mess I’ve found myself in. The latter end of the past year has not been kind to this fortress, so much so that I - a passing stranger - have found myself thrust into the role of overseer for the time being. As shocking as this is, I am loathe to turn my back on my fellow dwarves.

My first order of business is to carve out a place to put all those poor souls to rest. Monuments for those wholly lost, and coffins for those whom we can still find some remnant of. No dwarf will go unhonored. It is the patience, or rather the lack of it, of the dead that has me worried.

The design is something concocted in quick desperation to appease both the living and the dead. A central hall for monuments, large enough for our immediate needs. Off of this will be dug space for coffins. The rooms are meager and the hallway narrow, but I’m afraid that such spaces is the limit of luxury we can presently afford.

After all, a vile force of darkness is upon us.

 It hasn’t even been one day yet.

8th of Granite:

Praise the Gods, the siege was short. The small band of invaders swiftly dispatched by visitors loitering outside the gate. With that settled, I’ve ordered it lowered. I hope to gather what wood we can.

13th of Granite:

I’m convinced this fort is cursed.

A terrible winged beast with the gift of flame has come to us. The thing arrives by way of the muddy caverns that much of this fort is built into. I pray that the hands that this fort was previously in had managed to plug any unsecured holes.

Not making matters any better are the returned spirits of our fallen warriors.

Ah, brave souls! If only you yet lived to protect your home!

17th - 19th of Granite:

The beast has disappeared from sight, and we are out of wood. If there is a way for it into the fortress, I hope it takes it through the monster hunters and poets that live under our roof.

It is not all ill news, however. Despite the goblin attack, we are met with an elven caravan. In the chaos I haven’t had much time to assess any needs trading could alleviate, and with the rain of abhorrent sludge impeding the gathering of plants and trees I have to consider-

What.

This... Odd little warrior has scarcely stepped foot in the bog surrounding the fort before his intention to steal one of our beloved rings was made known.

Huh.

He does not seem compelled to act peaceably, and so I send the militia to contend with him.

24th of Granite:

Tragedy and outrage!

While my attention was elsewhere a deadly brawl broke out between some monster slayers and citizens. Our poor Mayor and one other of our own died in the conflict.

To add to the outrage the beast Ongor had snuck up and, just outside the very tavern, claimed the lives of two children.

The rampage continues unabated. Fire and fang claim dwarf after dwarf.

The hunters continue to do nothing.

Tragedy after tragedy, crisis after crisis. I don’t know if I can salve this.

The beast did fall, its last victim - and opponent - a stray puppy. It decapitated the poor creature, but died soon after. I know not the cause. Did a God finally take offense to this last act? Did it die to its own fire and smoke? I don’t have the time to find out. The dead keep piling up.

13th of Slate:

twice now within the past week two humans have come with ambition to steal Tamemoon, and we are unable to really offer much in the way of resistance.

Damn it all. I’m shutting the gate.

20th of Slate:

Migrants! Oh, praise the miners. A large mass of manpower that brought our struggling population up to 77 from a floundering... 44? 40-something. With all the death I didn’t dare keep count, lest I tempt fate.

I hope we have enough room for everyone.

3rd of Felsite:

The construction of the catacombs is going achingly slow. Not helping matters was our manager having no office. With that fixed, hopefully all will go more smoothly.

The fortress also has a new artifact to its name!

A grate will be useful in some project later on, I’m sure.

2nd of Hematite

Summer graces the land, and some measure of stability has been tentatively achieved. The mood in the fortress is dour and our wood supply has run fully dry. I have assigned some to work as woodcutters, but the lack of action has me suspecting a shortage of tools. Hopefully some new iron axes will solve that problem.

11th of Hematite

A human caravan from Erianthath has come! Bless them. Hopefully they come with tools.

14th of Hematite

The rock itself trembles. Another great beast has come to claw at our walls.

Fortunately for us it lurks in the lowermost caverns, of which there is no present entry to our fort. None that I am aware of, at least.

Unfortunately, that means my plans to breach the cavern for a sludge-free source of wood will have to be put on hold. Without a military proper I dare not face it.

1st of Malachite

Our human guests are still here, and have handily dispatched a prospective thief. Why so many seek Tamemoon, I’ll never know.

The caravan, alas, had slim pickings. I bought two bins of both woolen cloth and leather, as well as some cheese and cheap cages. In exchange we gave them a bevy of stone trinkets and worn clothing. Not the most glamorous of goods, but I made sure to be generous enough to entice them to bring a larger selection in the future.

[breaking character to note that I’m experiencing a bug where the diplomacy menu is unavailable. The diplomacy popup just disappears when I click on it. Hopefully that wont have any lasting consequences.]

There are rumors of a new overseer to arrive by the start of next year. I confess that I hope the rumors to be true. I was an ill pick made of desperation. Still, Hopefully I can stay the course well enough that the fortress will be prime material to be shaped by more brilliant hands.

The catacombs, though rough, are slowly being filled with coffins and bodies. Ghosts are being laid to rest as monuments start to fill the hall.

Outside the fortress our new lumberjacks make quick work of producing lumber for our otherwise idle carpenters.

4th of malachite

A small wave of migrants brings the fortress up to a population of 84.

Tamemoon has also been stolen. It appears that it was held within one of the bins of goods I had brought to the depot. Out of pride I will have the guard investigate this. Privately, however, I am glad if the thing would disappear. Perhaps now we’ll have less trouble with wayward brigands.

24th of Malachite

Our broker accused a human maceman of the theft. Good enough for me, I thought, and ordered the conviction. The man now lies dead.

I should probably care more. Meh.

Unrelated to that I’ve decided to cover up and wall off the pit outside the tavern. There was probably a plan for this, but I’m desperate to avoid another Ongor disaster.

14th of Galena

A monster of the surface, for once!

Thankfully it is one vulnerable to cages. With traps in place in the entrance. I had thought to simply raise the alarm and let the thing stop itself. Unfortunately, a spat of children and one dimwit of a carpenter remained outside. The carpenter, one Urvad Onuculdist, perished. The children, however, seem to have made it out alive. One of our two hammerdwarves slew the beast.

This does bring to mind, however, our woefully sparse defenses. We also lack a water supply within the fort itself. I doubt I have time to fix it wholly, but I can try.

Ghosts continue to rise as we struggle to find corpses and engrave slabs fast enough.

23rd of Galena

The Oily Chestnut has been enclosed!

The drawbridge is linked to one of four new levers I purpose built for new defenses, on the main floor, off to the side of the central stairwell.

It has been labelled for clarity of use. With industry on pause I doubt I can make a fully outfitted death tunnel in time, alas. But perhaps I could get one started...

1st of Limestone

Autumn has come, and with it a vile force of darkness. Raise the gates! Hunker down! We still have food and drink enough down here to last us. What we don’t have is manpower enough to fight them off.

Unfortunately, a Gelder was lost when trying to lower the gate for them. Our outside livestock is also being slaughtered. The herbalist Dumed also didn’t make it back in time, and was slaughtered in a tree.

9th of Limestone

The cheesemaker Olon Cattenbidok is not accounted for, and we can only assume they to have perished outside. Damn it all, if only there was some way we could properly fight back...

18th of Limestone

The raiders have dispersed and a caravan from the Mountainhome has arrived. With them comes news that, yes, a new overseer will arrive in the coming spring. All I have to do, then, is keep the place from falling apart.

For next year I requested an all-around spread of weapons, clothing, trap components, cages, cloth and leather. Toys for the little ones as well.

An axedwarf, meanwhile, has slipped into a depression. This can’t be good.

15th of Sandstone

Another axedwarf has slipped into depression, the both of them being among the monsterslayers currently residing in the fortress.

I have been permitting any and all such warriors to stay, even if there are no monsters to be had. Hopefully they will eventually petition for citizenship as a soldier, wherein they can help quickly bolster our military.

I’ve made a new squad to host two human warriors who have already done so, along with some other citizens that have some skill with weaponry. For now the squad is simply standing by. They’ll need barracks and a place to train, hopefully I’ll remember to get around to it.

In other news, a small band of migrants has come to the fort, bringing the population up to a servicable 92. With some careful management I’m sure much can be done to bring this fort back on track. Straight after that, a stonecrafter by the name of Fikod was possessed by a strange mood, and claimed a crafter’s workshop.

17th of Sandstone

Another forgotten beast has come.

Thankfully, it would appear that the Oily Chestnut is secured enough to keep the beast out. We can hear its rampage outside the walls, and feel the heat of its fire warm the rock. But for now, we are safe.

1st of Timber

Fikod emerges from his mood, holding high the newest artifact to the forts name!

A bright moment amidst all the gloom.

I have also allowed entry to the inactive magma workshops, that the bodies left there may finally be buried. I’m embarrassed that they slipped my attention for so long. Hopefully this will greatly improve our ghost problem. I’ve had to extend out the memorial hall for all the monuments!

18th of Timber

A guild of craftdwarves, aptly named the Company of Crafts, has formed and requested a guildhall.

Following the sensibilities of my predecessor, I have designated for one to be dug out in the shape of a hammer.

1st of Moonstone

Winter is upon us. My tenure as overseer is nearly done. For these last few month’s I aim to get some things cleaned up and smoothed out. Try to finish more bedrooms, perhaps. The catacombs continue to fill up with what few remains can be found.

In hindsight, a few erected slabs may have been made in the honor of those that languished in the magma workshops. Ah well, the poor souls aren’t undeserving of it.

9th of Moonstone

Damn it all! The depressive slayer, Zaneg, has toppled the still in a mad tantrum. Hopefully the damage wont go beyond that.

1st of Opal

Better late then never is my motto for these last few months. I have constructed the beginnings of a death tunnel. Though we don’t have much materials as of yet, with enough weapon traps this worm of a passage should defeat most any invaders without us having to lift a finger.

The drawbridges and their levers have both been labelled. The levers themselves being among those Constructed on the main floor.

Along with this I thought to dig out a section of the dirt portion of the mountain to become an enclosed grazing area. It seems that it’s shaping up to be more stone than dirt, but it gives me an idea. Why not expand up into the mountain? After all, just this much into the area has revealed limonite and coal both.

3rd of Obsidian.

Word has come from the Mountainhome that the next overseer is on their way. Looking back, there's much I could have done differently. Hell, there’s much I could have just done.

My biggest regret is not making a special place of rest for our fallen major. Jv rests among the rest of us. But who knows, perhaps that is what they’d want.

10th of Obsidian

One more beast to see me off!

This one, to, arrives via the muddy caves. I wonder if its kin with Paboz? I had hoped the two would kill each other, but Omus would soon fall after a prolonged battle with a blind cave ogre.

25th of Obsidian

My last act as overseer is the designation of digging out an inside pasture further up the mountain.

To you who succeeds me: good luck.

[luesmainblog]

Hi there, is there a link to your about page that people can access via the tumblr mobile app?

you can try my direct About link but I don't know if it's readable on mobile, I'm a strictly desktop user and I've been here since before the site became mobile-centric, so I genuinely don't know what's accessible and what isn't :( my phone can't really run the tumblr app half the time, so it's not something i'm able to check for.

honestly it's nothing that isn't pretty much covered by "i'm here i'm queer get used to it" or looking at the political stuff i do reblog. brief summary being i'm nb, aspec, anti-terf, anti-swerf, anti-cop, and anti-harassment. longer summary: I do my best to be an ally to jewish and muslim folk, but i am very under-educated in that area. same applies to mental illnesses. i was around during The Ace Raids(period of tumblr history where the site went extremely anti-ace for, at the time, no discernable reason. now we know it was general anti-queer getting its hooks in early.) and i watched the birth of the mogai community and the bi v pan debate. as a result my attitude towards identity is "you're the expert, just use whatever label suits you best and i'll believe you about it". i respect older/"outdated" identities and do my best to learn about queer history and incorporate that knowledge into my views. i can get kind of anti-christian at times due to the general trauma of living in the united states and watching "religious belief" become the excuse for massive levels of abuse and control, but i do respect people who use that belief to help people and push positive change. i view Missionary Work(i.e. going to another location and doing charity specifically to spread the word of your religion, like the god damn mormons are constantly doing) as inherently colonization and fundamentally do not understand people who consider it to be a good deed. i am against arranged marriage, but respectful to those who are comfortable in theirs. I support poly marriage(i am poly myself), and i think we need to severely change how disability aid is handled so that disabled people can marry who they want without losing their coverage and don't have to literally count pennies to make sure they're not over an insanely low limit. i can get kind of loud about intersex people's existence and rights. I support landback, but i am under-educated in native issues. I consider neurodivergency a positive thing, but i also acknowledge it as a disability. i consider the political lesbians of the 1960s to have been infiltrates and traitors, as their beliefs were foundational to modern TERF rhetoric. I don't have a DNI(if some asshole decides to follow me they're gonna see exactly what i think about them very quickly, and if they stick around anyways, maybe something i post will shake their beliefs a little), but TERFs, SWERFs, nazis and MAGAs get blocked on sight. harassment will also be blocked and reported. I am a strong believer in online anonymity; i don't think it's wise to share your age, sex, race or location unless it's something you WANT people to be aware of. I also don't think it's a good idea to share your face, but i don't harp on people who do make that choice unless they're underaged(and even then it's gonna be a very light 'hey maybe this is a bad idea'). double points on location, stop telling people where you live. that should NEVER have been normalized.

i'm also into a lot of fandoms, and i don't usually tag unless asked. current tags: NSFC(not safe for crystal, basically any mention of death will be under this), Facepaint, Spiders, Cats, Horrible Things, Important, Signal Boost, For My Wife, Frosty, Crinket, and Awesome Music. if you dig too deep into that last one you'll find some OLD tumblr culture. i also try to tag for content warnings like abuse, flashing lights, and sexual assault.

in short, i think other people should be able to exist how they want to as long as it's not inherently harmful to others, and i love to learn more about the world and spread that knowledge. i'm gonna see if i can make this my pinned post, this is honestly a better summary of what you're gonna see on this blog than my about page is. also, not the most important thing, but I do have memory problems, so i usually use Likes as a way to show myself i've already reblogged/seen something. ff to block if this ain't your rodeo, and welcome aboard if you stay!

[applesfallingfromblondehair]

You’ve written it so well that you’re like no Ross isn’t a rebound or a plan B but when you do a reread (different anon btw just also did a recent reread) I truly think that Matty would still choose George if he was given the opportunity. It’s not like George is single and Matty has chosen Ross, Matty literally can’t have George in any real way right now and is choosing the safe and stable option, just like what George is doing. I truly believe that if George showed up in NY and was like I broke up with Charli, let’s do this then Matty would grab that Italian take out and follow him anywhere (just a quick pit stop for a tattoo cover up before they go anywhere). They just have a history and connection that sadly I don’t think can be matched by Ross no matter how sweet he is. The thing with Matty and George just seems like something you don’t move on from and there will always be a what if in the back of their minds. The NY chapter was so sweet but they’re also in a bubble and that isn’t realistic for life. In a few weeks they go back to living in tight quarters with George 24/7 and I don’t think Matty has moved on, more out of sight out of mind. Especially if George is going to be nice and understanding now which is harder to hate than when he was being an asshole.

I know we have the tattoo and the remix coming up which is cringe, but is it wrong? They said goodbye to each other and Matty is now with Ross. Just like George couldn’t be mad at Matty’s actions because he had a girlfriend, Matty has Ross now and George doesn’t belong to him in any capacity. He made his choices and I don’t think George owes Matty anything in this regard.

And come on, that goodbye scene in the last chapter. That was heartbreaking, clearly two people that truly want each other but the timing and situations aren’t aligning.

God DAMN this is long. This is like one of those emails I usually reply "please see my answers below in green" to, except I can't do it here on tumblr and also this is MUCH MORE FUN, obviously. 😂 Alright, here we fucking go. *cracks knuckles*

Matty would still choose George if he was given the opportunity: I feel like this is correct in some way, and I feel like Normal People has both made me and ruined me as an author, because I am now an absolute sucker for the will-they-won't-they star-crossed lovers dynamic, the couple that seems to be destined to be together but also who doesn't ever seem to align at any time. Or better, they do, but it never seems to last for whatever reason. (Mostly, because they don't talk to each other much.) And I know I shouldn't draw comparisons between me and actually celebrated published authors because now you'll all think my writing is shite, but please be aware that that's the kind of heartache I'm shooting for. So no, you're not wrong here at all.

If George showed up, Matty would immediately go with him: honestly, I don't think it's that simple. And I'm not saying this because I'm rooting for the healthy relationship here, even if in some capacity I am, but because it's just not that simple. But again, I see where you're coming from with this and it seems to be that eternal loop of going back to the One Person You Think Is Your Person even if the Person hurt you over and over again, or maybe more accurately you can't seem to stop hurting each other. I get it, and it's a valid point too.

The NY chapter was so sweet but they’re also in a bubble and that isn’t realistic for life: yeah, very true. More on this next week, you're definitely bang on on this. But also, let them be happy for a while you monster 😭

I don’t think Matty has moved on, more out of sight out of mind: I mean, it's hard to 'move on' from someone like that, especially in such a short period of time. Have you ever considered Christmas bringing about surprises, though? 👀

In conclusion, I'm not saying what's right or wrong because I don't want to ruin everything (and honestly because I'm still making key decisions but shhhh don't tell anyone okay?) but I love your analysis and how in depth you go, and all of the points you brought up are extremely good.

I am so blessed to have such engaged readers like you and I LOVE discussing these things, so please never stop sending these in. I adore you guys ❤️

[triscribeaucollection]

I loved your recent Good Day Coming on AO3, and if you're so moved, another chapter would be very cool.

Zoya1416 on AO3

ZOYAAAAA, my favorite re-read commenter!! Dude, I am SO delighted to see you on tumblr! :D

The first year follow-up to Good Day is *definitely* coming, but I am Attempting to make it a long-shot rather than a multi-chapter fic. Which is- not something I usually do, hence why it's taking a while.

But! In honor of your arrival, here's a sneak preview:

“Is there a reason people keep looking at my forehead?” Harry asks, in a deliberately perplexed manner, after the sixth time he introduces himself to someone new only to get the exact same squinty-eyed reaction. He’s figured out by now what they’re searching for: the scar that looks like lightning spread across his brow, hidden by a layer of concealing makeup. He asks anyway, just to see what reaction it gets.

Neville winces. Ron lifts one shoulder in a shrug, grimacing awkwardly around a mouthful of food.

“Oh! It’s probably because of your name,” another new Gryffindor speaks up, leaning halfway onto the table so she can peer down in Harry’s direction. “I read about a famous boy named Harry Potter, and he’s supposed to have a scar where the Dark wizard Voldemort hit him with a deadly spell, except something happened to make it rebound, saving him but killing-”

“You-Know-Who,” Ron hissed, half hunched away from the bushy-haired girl. “We all call him You-Know-Who.”

“There’s no need to be rude,” Harry can’t help but say. “After all, what if I don’t know who?”

His new mates can’t give him a straight answer for that either, but Hermione Granger beams, elbows still digging into the table on either side of her dinner plate.

---

Harry quickly figures out which teachers he likes, along with which ones he definitely doesn’t. It’s an adjustment all the way ‘round, considering he stopped attending primary school a couple of years beforehand, but some classes are immediately more tolerable than others - and not just because of the subject matter. History of Magic becomes the top favorite, if only because Harry can read something else entirely without getting in trouble, or just take a nap.

He also figures out which students to label in his head as Potentially Helpful, Not to Be Bothered, and Future Targets. Neville and Ron get the first automatically, by way of being Harry’s brand new friends, but Hermione does too - she’s a fiend when it comes to study schedules and research methods, which is definitely something Harry could use a hand with. See again: two years of ‘homeschooling’, with a great deal more lessons that involved sleight of hand as opposed to, say, writing essays.

Ron’s brothers Fred and George go into the ‘Not to Be Bothered’ category. Harry likes them, appreciates the showmanship of some of their pranks, but there is no way in hell he’s going to try swiping anything from their pockets any time soon. After a few days, most of his new Housemates end up gaining the same label, at least for the foreseeable future.

Pretty much every single first year Slytherin, however, becomes a Future Target.

One, because several of them like to flaunt their wealth. Two, because even those who don’t will still sneer and snigger at ‘lesser’ students, which Harry really can’t stand. And three, because no matter what actually happens in class, Professor Snape shows each snake some truly blatant favoritism while taking every minuscule opportunity to yank more and more points away from the lions.

If Harry’s going to be a Gryffindor, he’s damn well going to stick up for them in the best way he knows how.