#Shows I have watched through Tumblr moots posting about it though.

[iero]

I keep forgetting Michael Sheen played an antagonist in the Twilight series because I’m sitting here like, “Wow, Aziraphale really outdid himself.”

[twomanyfandomshelp]

I’m rewatching Heartstopper because I literally cannot wait until October 3rd and I need more of this show pumped directly into my veins. It comes out two days after my seventeenth birthday, which is kinda exciting. But I digress.

I literally watched the whole first season today, which is quite impressive considering I actually did a lot of other things and didn’t start watching it until about two in the afternoon. And I finished it at like 10 pm, so it’s not like I stayed up super late to finish it either.

Rewatching this show I was giggling and kicking my feet and also yelling at the screen because sometimes the characters make kinda dumb choices and even though I already know how everything ends I still get way too invested. I just love this show so much, it’s such a comfort show for me.

My friend got me into the graphic novels right after season one released on Netflix, and after reading the whole series in two days (at the time there were four books, and soon after I found the WEBTOON and sped through that as well), I binged the entire show that day.

Heartstopper is such a pure show, and it just shows that representation is so important. I’ve heard so many stories of people realizing their sexuality (ME!) or finding the courage to come out to their parents or their friends or at school, and I think there’s just something so magical about this show.

Minor spoiler here, but Issac’s arc in season two was one of the things that kinda helped me realize that I was aroace because when I was watching the show and watching how he interacted with James and romance it made me think “huh, that’s kinda how I feel” and then I did some research (mostly comprised of scrolling the aromantic and asexual tags on tumblr, but a bit of googling as well) and realized that I’m aroace. So this show, that I already absolutely adored, suddenly became the catalyst for realizing my sexuality, and it just has such a special place in my heart. Whenever I’m sad I always rewatch the show or reread parts of the WEBTOON because it never fails to make me smile. To give me hope that there are others out there who are like me, even though all of my friends are straight and cis. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I love my friends, and they were all very supportive when I came out to them, but they just don’t understand sometimes. They don’t really understand what it’s like to be a part of the LGBTQIA+ community. To be different. It’s not like I’m out publicly, only a few of my close friends know, but it’s still hard sometimes not having anyone to talk to about all this (besides all my wonderful aspec moots of course). My irl friends just don’t understand that sometimes I feel broken, or like there’s something wrong with me. Because, even though I’m very comfortable with my sexuality, I’m in high school, and romance and sex are such a big thing, and it can sometimes be a little overwhelming or isolating when you don’t feel those forms of attraction. Especially when two of your best friends have boyfriends. And I’m very happy for them, but sometimes it stings a little knowing that I can never have that. Obviously queer platonic relationships exist, and that’s definitely something that I want for myself in the future, but it’s just different.

My mom watched the first season with me after I wouldn’t shut up about it, and then again when season two came out we watched it together (it was like my third watch through both times lol). Once season three comes out, and we see more of Issac’s arc of self discovery and figuring out his sexuality, I might end up using it as a bit of a starting point to come out to her, but I don’t know. I know that she and my dad are very supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community, but it’s just so different and scary. Any advice?

P. S. I did not mean to write this much, if you read this whole post, thank you. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read about my ramblings.

[lynxthewolf1]

Wrote this at like 2am yesterday and I’m feeling sappy so screw it I’m gonna be sappy for a second. This probably gonna be a lot of me repeating myself I tried my best to make this coherent but this post is long and it’s almost 2am again

I don’t think it’s fully processed that fables story is over but when it does hit im gonna be sad but until and after then Im so thankful for being able to meet the people I have through Fable Smp. If any friends/moots I’ve met though fable sees this y’all are so cool and I’m so glad I got to met you. If someone told me when I started watching fable I would be as active in the community as I am even tho I’m a lurker who occasionally appears to ramble about my thoughts and feel so at home here I would’ve thought ur lying and honestly teared up at the thought a community like that could exist. Now I can sit here teary eyed knowing I found that place and people I can talk 2 who get the emotional pain that is fable smp. Also they’re all just neat and fun to hang out with and talk to.

I was in a really dark place when I found fable and ended up gravitating a lot to certain characters I related to a lot at the time Caspian and c!Athena mainly. Seeing there stories progress and the characters get through what they have gave me the confidence to deal with my own personal stuff and situation. I remember watching my first stream it was ether S1 Halloween or a bit after that seeing it the whole way through has been such an incredible and emotional experiences of trying not to cry and rooting so hard for these characters to have one nice thing. Through this community I found a the safe space and in a sense that I gave up looking for. Thank you to the cast for giving me and so many others a safe space and comfort series and characters that we can watch to get through the hard times and representing not just minorities but struggles that aren’t shown often and the different ways it effects people.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to describe the feeling of Rae and Caspian show not telling the fact they’re Demi and going “they’re like me! It’s not just a me thing there’s a name for it??” And feeling so seen. After being called weird and broken for what I found out was because I’m demiromantic aroace was such a moment I remember being so excited because for once I didn’t feel broken. It felt like if a fictional character I relate to is Demi then why should I care what other people think of how I feel about people. Whisper duo was my wake up call to my own situation with my “friends” that I needed at the time and overall this series showed me how much family isnt blood it’s the family you make and I found a home in this community as a lurker who sometimes appears to ramble on Tumblr and go back to the void.I wanted to feel seen and fable did that through its characters.

Thank you to the cast for making a series and community that so many people can enjoy and characters who feel like call outs even tho anytime I relate to a character in any way I take 1d6 physic damage (/j) and a safe space for people who was looking for it or found it by accident and now we’re in the rabbit hole. I don’t plan on leaving this fandom I’m gonna continue to rewatch fable and just cry about it. For prob not the finale time my counsler and friends will be hearing about how much fable Smp has changed my life for the better /pos.

[queenlybeastly]

I normally don’t make my own posts on here because of certain reasons however i do want to say something about the newest Planet Of the Apes movie.

Specifically the shipping. The shipping of the MC Noa and the human character Mae.

Stop here if you don’t wanna get spoiled about the movie or if you’re already hating what might be said.

TW for: general cursing, mentions of incest and sexual stuff.

To clarify, i love interspecies relationships. Ask any moots of mine or even look at what i reblog when it comes to those types of ships.

However seeing this ship has rubbed me the wrong way.

I haven’t seen the movie, I’m planning to just not in theaters, but ive gone through the POTA tag on both here and on tiktok. From what I’ve seen and gathered the arguments for this ship are “look! They have chemistry! Noa wouldn’t have done all this for Mae if he didn’t like or have some feelings for her!” “the cast and crew hinted a love story for them!” And even “if you hate this ship even though you like interspecies, youre a hypocrite”

But i have some thoughts on all of this.

1) Chemistry doesn’t mean romance. Two or more characters can have the most amazing chemistry and still likely be friends or platonic soulmates/kindred spirits. And that’s what I’m most likely leaning towards when it comes to these two characters.

Yes they have long gazes, yes he saves her and she saves him, yes they both look up at the stars at the end. But i feel like that’s what two people may go through if they’ve went through the events Noa and Mae have gone through.

And if anyone thinks I’m not for this ship because of the lack of sexual nature of these two then get out. Leave. Block me. I may reblog funni haha horni posts but that’s not all of my damn personality. Thinking that is inherently gross.

2) The interspecies aspect is… odd. Mainly cause I don’t think these two are a interspecies relationship at all. Genetically we share a lot of DNA with primates. Culturally the apes in the current movie are currently going through their own age of civilization that can be comparable to pre Sumeria. They’re developing their own tools, customs, language, are training animals for hunting and are gathering. While interesting from an anthropological perspective they’re evolving the same way humans have.

You can apply the last bit to any fictional species but to me its like watching a distant cousin learning how to ride a bike.

I would deem interspecies romance as shipping characters that aren’t related to the human race at all. Apes and us shared a common ancestor. So, not interspecies.

3) This entire franchise may be fictional… but that’s what worries me. People as of late will shut off their brain if it means shipping something that is obviously problematic.

Case in point? House of Dragons.

I will not touch that show because of the shipping wars. I hated watching tumblr go googly eyed for when a young teenage Rhyneara was crushing over her uncle. Hell i even saw a post where someone got a pic from a trailer that showed a hand over hers and going ‘oh my god guys shes finally gonna bone her uncle!!’ As if incest was suddenly okay even from a literary standpoint. Even if it happened in the lore and books. This is why I think the entirety of The Game of Thrones universe should not have been created.

But this is what we have been seeing.

Just because something is fictional doesn’t mean it can’t happen in real life. And if we normalize something that should remain fictional people are gonna think its okay.

TLDR; I will only see Mae and Noa as platonic soul mates. And that will remain unless something happens where its not gonna be problematic.

Oh! And please don’t bring up the Harkness test when it comes to the validity of this ship. That’s a whole other rant for a whole other day.

[kyopmi]

name at least one reason for all of your moots why you love them

!!! ok >:)

starting out this post by saying i think all my moots are amazingly talented and all so lovely and i love and appreciate them so much !! highly recommend checking their blogs, but please do read through their rules/byi beforehand. so without further ado here are my beloved moots, in no particular order!! ♡

@justmyownreality if i scroll down to the bottom of my following list, jmor is my first moot :) i love talking to her, whether it's about coffee or 2d men! and i don't think i show it much but i love reading about her oc rukia too hehe

@icedhoneyy i think if you look at isa's tumblr page you will immediately fall in love because LOOK AT HER THEME!! HER NAVI TAGS!!! her brain is so seggsy for that and i will never get over it. besides her writing that i also adore, i think isa is an actual sunshine. has AMAZING music taste. always so sweet and funny. makes me blush. i have a crush on her.

@maitaro my bby mai gives off such ~cool older sibling vibes~ even though i'm older than her lmao, but everytime i see her on my dash, my brain goes !!! i hope i can be as cool and amazing as her one day!!! mai is also so sweet and so fun to talk to!! i remember one of our first conversations was about the percy jackson franchise mehehe love her sm <3

@niverine niv is also one of my first moots and friends on tumblr! i love her sm and always look forward to chatting with her <3 her writings? immaculate. her themes? amazing. she's so adorable and lovely and funny!! always makes me feel warm and fluttery inside when i see her on my dash <3

@emmyrosee emmy is responsible for any and all hq uncles brainrot i have. come and take responsibility emmy >:( hehe i love talking about them with her and isa too! i also adore the characterization she has in her fics!! especially for ushijima, sakusa and osamu!! always makes me fall even more in love w them everytime i read emmy's works

@kitsunekanojo MILO MY WIFEY. ok first of all her themes and layouts are always SO PRETTY. and have you seen the events she comes up with? big, wrinkly brain. and the writings she produce are always top-tier!! the sweetest and funniest, and has adorable cats. also talking to milo is so fun i love her sm! but i'm sorry i've accidentally fallen asleep sometimes </3

@ohtokki genuinely i am so obsessed with laura's writings! she's also so very sweet, friendly, gives off warm, comfy vibes and is always so nice to chat with! deserves all the best french fries. i have to give an honorable mentions to her plants also, which always look so lovely!

@writingbymoonlight luna is so sweet and kind! besides her amazing writing, i also love the stuff she reblogs and am always happy to see her on my dash or notifs! also has amazing taste in bubble tea🧋🧋

@kagejima RAE AND HER BIG BRAIN! rae never fails to make me simp for characters i didn't know i was in love with and also fall even more in love with the characters i do! has such amazing range from the cutest softest fluffiest fics to the hottest spiciest ones and my fav is when it's both lmao also i think rae is so funny, i think our sense of humor matches up hehe

@epkatn k makes my heart flutter everytime i see her in my notifs, whether she's sharing fanart, pictures of lisska and marcian, her amazing creative ideas or anything else, she's always so sweet! one of my fav things to do on this site is to gush about au's and scenarios with k!! the descriptions in her writing also never fails to amaze me, always feels like watching a movie!

@bananapolis banana has such amazing writing and fics and i'm upset i have yet to read all of them >:( but omg i always love their sukuna plushie pics HEHE and gushing about merch with them <3

@yuutakittie heids is so sweet and talented and i still can't get her recent omi fic out of my brain :( i love the flow in her writings, like it all comes together and fits together perfectly! she's also so very lovely to talk to, with top-tier taste in music!!

@snnybnny jules has such a creative mind! their fics? events? themes? all so immaculate. also so very sweet and i love talking to them!

@atsumeii dilly <3 always so sweet she's gonna make me CRY. also her theme is so damn pretty!! i love her writing and i need to go through her masterlist asap >:( has the hottest, truest takes on everything and interacting with dilly is always a great time!

@mattsunkawa i love seeing echo on my dash! i love her fluff SO MUCH and i am waiting for my next free time so i can go through her sakusa series in one sitting >:) her fics and series are all so interesting and enjoyable, plus love talking to her!!

@sunkeiji first of all, sayu's themes? perfect. gorgeous. immaculate. love her writings sm and i need to properly go through her masterlist asap!! sayu is also my tears of themis dealer on tumblr LMAO bcs i love seeing TOT content and reblogs from her. everytime she reblogs a fic i am always immediately on the floor in tears.

@hyeque kurisu is so sweet from our interactions and from what i've seen! i've seen her interact with other moots before we became moots so does that make us moot-in-laws? hehe :) her blog is so pleasing to look at! still sobbing at kurisu sending me outfit inspos the other day :(

@oooohno i'm always so happy when i see nana on my dash and notifs because she's always so lovely <3 also i LOVE gushing about 2d characters and also dogs with nana hehe, she always has amazing ideas!!

@onigirintarou i love hazel's writings so much and also the moodboards she makes for her events? so pretty and gorgeous.

@virtue-and-beneviolence virtue is my tokrev dealer on tumblr HEHE i love seeing her posts and always enjoy our interactions!

@kuroosdarling aims is so sweet!! always melt at the tags she adds in her reblogs ;(( she's also so warm and friendly and gives me ghibli vibes hehe

@alienbitch iannah's tags on her reblogs always make me CRY like she is so sweet!! love seeing her on my dash and notifs <3

last but not least my moots i have yet to interact more with! but they are all so sweet and lovely and i can't wait to get to know them more !! @keifairie @lunaevangeline @satisfactooru @ariellogy @rinsramenshop @gojospit @toshji @miya-dynasty @vilevvords

...

in conclusion: i'm in love with all my moots <3

[pelideswhore]

moots appreciation incoming

uhh this is gonna be unlike my other posts, but basically i love my moots too much to not make a Long Post about them so here you go, besties. if you don't wanna read through this, just skip it, it's okay lmao. anyway, l love you all <3

so, basically, i'm just gonna tag you guys in the order you show up on my laptop and tell you something i like about you :3

@incorrectgreekgods eesh, first person i ever followed on tumblr and bro. i love your posts, your vibes, you're also super pretty. but you're still super kind and humble. also, did i mention your vibes?

@something-sappho-would-say you're not on tumblr much, but your posts are always so relatable but still somehow aesthetic. idk you make the most mundane things seem very poetic.

@wh0reforhekate ahhh bestie!! you're so smart and sweet and the other s-h-o-r-t word that i can't say. anyway, i love hearing you ramble and analyze stuff. you honestly mean the world to me.

@thanatoastie I'm just very happy when you post cus your posts are objectively hilarious. you're also just awesome. i love the photos you take, you're also super pretty and your confidence is contagious.

@greekschist i still can't believe you followed me since your posts inspired me to make a tumblr in the first place but you're honestly so funny and an amazing human. your energy is so lit.

@yngwiemalmsteens kjsdfhkg you're so awesome! i love hc's, your posts about the Egyptian gods are getting me back into Egyptian mythology and you're also super kind. and you're a good artist on top of that?!

@dionysus-winelord / @lokis-right-nut i love watching you enthuse about Loki and Hades though i haven't watched/played either (I'll get to it eventually lol). your passion really shines through and it's so fascinating to see.

@corvidonia / @fizzkiz hjfhgsfd i love your art style!! so much!!! but also you're just fantastic as a human being, you're very chill and your aura is very casual. i can't wait to read Lying In Wait!

@call-me-gibby you're super approachable and down-to-earth which makes your vibes very grounding. i bet you're very comfortable to be around and silence isn't awkward around you.

@possiblyhomer i love your enthusiasm!! your happiness is super catchy! your art is amazing and i love your pets sdhfgkj. I'm always so happy to read your hc's and your incorrect quotes!

@anonymousgeekhere time for baby grandma! you're such an awesome person, so independent and strong; thank you for always being there. i love hearing about your oc's and cant wait to hug you fr

@some-fool-over-the-rainbow your vibes are very intimidating and you're very tall, but still somehow approachable. idk why but you seem like you'd make a good old person (this is a compliment).

@cotton-ball123 we don't interact much, but you are indeed a cotton-ball that must be protected at all times. you're sweeter and more innocent than my little sister so we protecc

@lounging-trash-glitter your posts/reblogs are the only reason that I know what is going on on the other side of tumblr and i thank you for that. beyond that you're a great person with ideals and beliefs

@hermes-left-nut my mean, tall bisexual friend... i love seeing you ramble about dr jekyll and hyde because your enthusiasm is contagious. we don't interact much but through your posts I can tell you're super kind!

@a-chaotic-dumbass what can I say, you're very chaotic in the best of ways. i get weirldy happy when you post because l am always practically 100% certain I won't know what's going on but I love to see your interactions (is that weird?)

@rurifangirl seeing you on my dash and notifications make me weirdly happy and I feel like your vibes could bring world peace. or they could cause complete and utter pandemonium.

@simpingforsatan we don't interact much but I love your vibes and you seem super awesome. but most importantly, Skipper Supremacy >:)

@greek-myth-bitch eek only the sweetest person to have ever existed! i love your art and your vibes, you're very kind and a very important source of affection.

[mochi-marie]

Compliment your mutuals

‘m gonna do this one separately from the seven others i have! :’) i’m gonna try and do most, if not all, of my moots! <33 if i forgot you, please just reply to this post and ill add you!! my memory’s trash bbs! 😔 i’m also expanding this from not just mutuals, but also to people that i see in my notifs or asks that make my day so much better! <33

@astrorae — reliable / stable / constant

you are super, super sweet!! i always see you in my notifs and it literally brightens my day every single time, no matter how insignificant the interaction may seem to others! you’re a very constant person that i truly appreciate having — it’s nice to know that there’s always at least one person standing by, and i really love knowing you’re always somewhere around hun!! <3

@catwithangerissues — sweet / supportive / constant

you’ve basically been around from the very birth of my blog, both you and sunalma actually — and ever since, you especially have been a constant source of support and encouragement!! when we do interact with one another, you’ve always been so kind and such a comforting presence around my blog that i’m so so happy to be your mutual! <3

@eunoianthia — support / excitement / daily

there is literally so many things i could say about you, and that wouldn’t even be able to cover the half of it. girl, we talk literally every day — you’re such a sweetheart, and so reassuring and nice about everything!! you are always so supportive of everything i do, and super super generous, and so so so talented!! and don’t you dare forget it!! you’ve definitely became one of the closest people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing here! <3

@fushiguroll — sisterly / supportive / kind-hearted

you’ve pretty much always been there for most things! you also give off such huge big-sister vibes that most of the time, i think I actually just view you as a sister? sorry if that sounds weird!! but anyways, you’ve always been so sweet, and you’re literally so kind and considerate to others around you, as well as the community as a whole! <3

@floralkawa — fun / comforting / sweethearted

babes, you are such a fun person to chat and interact with!! every interaction with you makes me leave feeling so much better about myself and my mood so much better than before — and your presence is one so comforting and safe, in a way? you just have this really sweet and home-y vibe to you ( but i also perceive you as my fun, sweet gremlin friend? ) <3

@hajkyyuu — talented / considerate / easygoing

you, you are so talented in what you write! and you’re so kind and laid-back, and such a stress reliever. speaking with you is so much fun, and watching your interactions and seeing you be so sweet and kind on my dash is so cute and nice and!!! <3

@kohi-zeri — friendly / dependable / charming

you’re another moot that has been around for a long while now, and i’m so happy you are!! you’re so charming and friendly, and you just have this presence that lurks around tumblr that leaves me ( and im sure a lot of others ) feeling better about themselves!

@kozu-zumi — good-natured / honest / courteous

we don’t talk often, but oh when we do you’re so so sweet and nice that i think i’m blessed to be a mutual with someone such as yourself!! you always seem to have the absolute best intentions, while remaining honest and respectful to everyone you encounter! you’re such a sweetie!! <3

@kirishimas-manly-eyeliner — creative / humble / sweet

you are SO affectionate?? and loving?? like, what did i do to deserve you? you are always such a cute and fun person, and i get so giddy when i see you cross my dash! and your content? *chefs kiss* it’s top tier work, bubs!! <3

@kozumegamecollection — sweet / kind / friendly

you have literally been around since forever! you’re always so nice to me, even though we never really talk!! I truly hope you know how much i appreciate you, especially with the loving pictures you send me when i’m feeling down!!! <3

@noir-blanches-blog — friendly / kind / wholesome

you. are. so. nice. need i say more? you’re so supportive, and when you interact you’re so friendly and such a sweetheart!! you’re always so nice to me, and i truly appreciate seeing you in my notifs!!

@serowotonin — supportive / dependable / sweet

you were literally my first follower, and first mutual on tumblr! you were the first for my blog, and i truly truly appreciate having you around!! it’s so nice when i do see or chat with you, because it reminds me how much I’ve grown, and you were the start of it. thank you so so much! <3

@shoyotime — sweetheart / affectionate / passionate

bubs — SUCH A SWEETHEART?! you are so passionate, and so kind, and so so creative and talented!!! your writing is god tier, and your personality as a blog owner is such perfection!! and your theme?? *chefs kiss*

@sobaluvr — passionate / bold / talented

honestly, i don’t know you that well, but from what i can tell, you seem to be very passionate and bold, not to mention the raw talent that shows through your writing!! and you’re so nice?? :0 i always get nervous when talking to you or when considering tagging you because you just seem to talented and so bold and charming!! <3

@sunalma — talented / home-y / charming

you! you! you’re another mutual who’s been around since the beginning, and you’re so charming!!!! i cannot stress enough how talented and on-point your writing and characterization is, and your general kindness to those who interact with you is so sweet — i genuinely admire you and your writing skills!! <3

@tsukkisfatsimp — kind / supportive / affectionate

i know we just became moots like a couple of days ago, but honestly, i couldn’t leave you out — from our brief interactions, you were such a sweetheart and so much fun to interact with!! you seem so supporting and affectionate, and i hope we can become better moots and friends!! <3

@tetsurouandushigirl — mature / talented / charismatic

hun, you were my inspiration to starting a blog. if i never found you, i don’t think i ever would’ve even started watching haikyuu as excitedly as i did / do now, and i don’t think i would’ve started a blog if not for you! you’re such a mature, kind person, and give sisterly vibes that truly make me feel appreciated!! and you are so talented with your writing too, plus your self ships?? immaculate!! <3

you are all so, so talented and sweet, and i truly hope you don’t forget it! you all make my life so much brighter than ever before, and honestly, i adore and admire you all so much. thank you for being my mutuals! <3

[unlocktxt]

hi 😄 i saw your reblog and i want to ask the same thing: what was your first impression of your moots?

First i want to say that I may of gotten a littleeeee carried away. I wanted to include as many people as possible, but some I don’t have enough to say. Despite this I might add more. I’ve met so many various people on this app and I’ve loved interacting with them all or just seeing them around. So much so that I can’t list everybody. I really love all my moots and there are so many of them that I’ll forever be grateful for. (yes i added a keep reading because this was so long and please excuse my gramtical errors)

@hoes4hoseok - our first impression was playing among us WHICH WAS SO FUN. I don’t remember much about talking to her in the game BUT I do remember that she was the first one to ever make the group chat filled with those who played with us. honestly I’m so grateful that she did that because I wouldn’t have been able to become friends with her and many others. I remember thinking that she was beyond kind and that she was good with trying to include everyone. After that I just remember hearing her voice and then DYING because she has a wonderful voice. I felt as though I related to you just a bit. Now I’ve gotten to see different aspects of her and really value her as a person and friend. She keeps things real and is so helpful. Sometimes I wish I could see what goes on inside her head because sometimes I think she reserves herself or overthinks and I’d like to give her a big hug.

@binniebutter - amie... oh amie 🙄 just kidding 😂 amie well... I also met her while playing among us in that same group. we played a lot with each other and I find that nice BECAUSE I CANT REMEMBER WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT DURING THE FIRST TIME WE PLAYED. I think I do remember laughing about her and gen tho. In our first gc I remember thinking that she had a bright personality and could keep the conversation going. I also find out we live about an hour away so I was able to connect with her about that (I also was so excited just because IVE NEVER MET AN ONLINE FRIEND IN THE SAME STATE) After that we played among us a lot together and I just remember thinking amie was EVIL. She was funny though and I felt comfortable around her. Now... I honestly think I’m pretty close to amie emotionally. It’s very rare that I put down my guard and talk to someone about certain things (I don’t really think I’ve talked to her about certain things tho) I still feel as though I can talk to her or that I can cry or rant to her without feeling judged. I don’t know how much she’s come to me about, but anytime I try to comfort her i feel like I get to know her better. I usually don’t start joking with my friends and being “rude” to them unless I know that they know I love them, which is why I’m starting to show amie sarcasm at times ☺️ I may of written too much 😅

@hyukaite I ACTUALLY REMEMBER MY FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF KAT. oml we’d send asks every now and then and I remember thinking she was a crack head. From the videos I’d see her post to that one drawing. Man if only I could go all the way back to it, but it was monthssss ago. I also remember relating to her about having to help our sisters with math 💀. I wanted to be her friend after seeing her interact with some of my other moots, but I was too shy to actually message her so I stuck with sending in asks every now and then 😂 then we started playing among us together. I remember thinking “NOOOO SHE STOLE YELLOW” which led to me falling in love with the dark green among us color JFKAJFLW. After that I remember getting betrayed by her in the game SO MANY TIMES. she killed me during the Simon says task... to tell you what grudge I hold... I still remember it. ITS SUCH A HARD TASK AND SHE DIDNT LET ME FINISH IT. She also killed me in electrical when I thought she was INNOCENT. Now... kat I don’t even know how to describe her. She has many aspects to her that I love. She also is able to help me think straight whenever I let my anger get to me.

@yawnjunie - I thought she was shy at first because when I first met her she didn’t talk much, so I felt bad because I thought she didn’t feel all that welcomed by us (no specific reason we were just introduced to blu so abruptly 😂) After that I think I was intimidated by her at first JFJAKFJERI. We also compared our schools and our grade mindset which I think really opened my eyes a little bit more. I still believe she’s really smart Zknfaltn. She makes me laugh though and she also started the network moacabinet. She’s really sweet with so many ideas, but I feel bad because sometimes I think she gets stressed easily. She’s not on much, but everytime she’s online I’m blessed with her presence.

@kkuming - gigiiiii! my first impression of gigi was fairly simple. We met on the au group chat and she seemed really sweet. I wanted to try and give gigi a warm welcome and make sure she felt comfortable. I wish I remembered more about our first meeting. I DO HOWEVER remember thinking she was v v innocent. I sat back and watched gigi get thrown into the group and laughed my ass off at how she interacted with kat. I was worried that because the others were already so comfortable with her and joking around about things that she may actually think that the “divorce” or whatever it was that kat and her had would make her upset, so I wanted to remind her that I appreciated her Zofnakfjeof. She also was taking a lot of stressful classes so I could only hope this girl didn’t die underneath all that stress. Now I- she’s crazy guys. Just kidding 😂 she’s still really sweet and jokes around with all of us. I’m glad she’s online a lot more now. she’s also really funny.

@lipbeom - I’m like 99.9% sure rynn was the first person I ever really talked to on tumblr. I thought she was a really good writer and saw that she was a senior as well, so I was glad that I wasn’t the only one on tumblr that was going to suffer through the last year of school. I was so glad when she messaged me first like Y’ALL HAVE NO IDEA. When I first met her I remember thinking she was really sweet AND BEYOND SMART. I’m really grateful for rynn and I actually miss her a lot because I feel like I don’t interact with her as much as I should. She was very supportive and still is. It’s only been a few months since I first talked with her but I’m reminiscing 😂 She also got me hooked on selling sunset WHICH WAS AMAZING but I was talking like the girls on the show for WEEKSSSSSSS.

@bbhyeoliskooks - I don’t really remember how I came across her, but I realized she was a new moa writer and wanted to check her out. My first impression... hmmm I guess you could say that I believed she was very grateful even when she didn’t have to be. Sometimes she makes me feel old 💀 but she’s reminds me a little bit of my sister... just way sweeter. She’s very loyal and anytime you tell her you’ve posted something oml she’s wonderful. She’s the type of person who is really supportive and I appreciate that, but sometimes I feel like I don’t give her enough of ittttt. I really need to go stalk her blog now as for some reason I don’t see her notifs half the time. I’m really proud of her and think she’s one of the sweetest people on tumblr NOT TO MENTION SHE SINGS BEAUTIFULLY.

@txthearteu - oml cj 😂 she is also one of the first people I talked to on tumblr. I don’t really remember our first impression tho :/. I DO REMEMBER I READ ONE OF HER STORIES THO and i sent an ask about it because she deserved the recognition for it. Hmmm at first I believe I was intimidated because she is older than me 😂 however she was so extremely sweet and I loved talking to her. I tried talking about various different things with her because I wanted our conversation to continue hehe. She stays feeding me 😌 and even if I can’t physically eat del taco I get full off of the love and support cj gives me. My eyes light up when I see her in my notifs. I think she deserves the world and I always want to be there for her. I don’t think I can ever repay her for the love she’s given me.

@sung4oon - SAM I SWEAR IF YOU CHANGE UR URL BEFORE I HAVE A CHANCE TO POST THIS! I met her when her url was... 👁👄👁 lixxie sumtin. I think it was lixieebear. I truly don’t remember her first impression 💀 the only thing I remember was thinking that she was also a crack head. She was really funny and sweet and DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE WHOLE BRAINCELL THING. I should’ve given her my brain cells for christmas. I still think she’s really fun to talk to and I literally try to remind myself as much as possible that I need to go stop by and send an ask every now and then. Even so she still says hi to me ☺️

@beomiebear5 - R A I N A. hehehehehehe I actually love this first impression for me. At the time I saw her anon asks to rynn. I saw that she was going to start posting stuff on her blog soon and she gave a hint about how to find her. Ofc I let rynn do that herself BUT I went searching KFJSIFIWFKW I couldn’t help it I saw it as a challenge. My first impression was rlly just that she was sweet. Then after a while KFJAOFJWOF I really love interacting with her and seeing her rants. Gosh she’s so funny and ✨inspires✨ me. I’m always down to talk to her because she’s amazing and sweet.

@magicisland9-34 - lillie ☺️ I honestly don’t remember our first impression? I do however remember when she first sent an ask! I would always get so excited when I got an ask from her 😂 I loved talking to her and she let me ramble on and on. Whether that be about gymnastics or ballet. Once again even lillie is sweet, but she’s betrayed me for siding with amie about Christmas 😤. She’s also one of the people that I try to remind myself to go and visit their blog and see what they’ve posted.

@spookybias - if I remember correctly gen was the first one who reblogged my about me post, which ended up allowing others on this app to see that I was a new writing blog. She was also one of the first people I followed and one of the first who followed me, so I was really grateful and thought she was beyond helpful and nice. I also really believe she’s a great writer and i admired how she would tell things how they are. She’s always been sweet to me even if she’s threatened to shoot me a while back 😤. OH YEAH we also played among us together in that group as well and I always suspected her at one point. IT WAS BECAUSE THE ONE TIME I TRUSTED HER SHE KILLED ME.

@bffsoobin - My first impression of Sara was pretty simple like I found her blog and fell in love. she writes so well and I’ve loved everything I’ve read from her. I thought she was really pretty and pretty funny too. When she’d talk about some of her stories revolving school it honestly made my day as well. I admire her especially because she’s such a good writer and LET ME TELL YOU when she followed me back I think I did a little cheer. I was reading her fics before I even started writing on tumblr.

@soobcxre - I saw Sara around because we had a lot of moots in common and when I saw them interact I would just think about how I wanted to befriend her 😂. When she texted me I got so excited, but I WAS SO CAUGHT UP IN SCHOOL TOO. She’s also really sweet ajfjwkfjw and I’m glad to have met her.

@lovesickchoi - MADDIE 🤩 I.... I don’t remember my first impression of her 🥲. It may of revolved around asks? I think I ended up trying to get to know her more at the time I was trying to get to know yoonie. I say this because I remember always seeming to get their urls mixed up... I think it’s because the h at the beginning. I LITERALLY DONT REMEMBER HOW WE STARTED INTERACTING. She’s also an amazing writer tho! Now I still think she’s sweet and we’ve talked about yeonbin together 😂.

@sunoo-luvs - 🥺 zaara JFJAJRKSKF literally my first impression was “cute.” That still stands btw. She’s absolutely the sweetest and is really considerate of others IM SCARED BECAUSE SHE MAY APOLOGIZE FOR THINGS THERES NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE FOR. Even so she can easily add happiness to people’s day with just a hi and a hug.

@i2gyu - I- first impression: scary. IM KIDDING wait... actually even though that was a joke because she used to stop by and say “boo” I MAY OF ACTUALLY FELT INTIMIDATED BY HER AT FIRST. I think one of the first times we interacted was about a network and at the time I was ready to join a network SO I FELT SO BAD FOR SAYING NO. Afterwards tho I realized how nice she was and I always end up getting a little energetic once I see she’s sent in an ask. One day I’m scared I won’t see her change her url or blog, but that’s if she does again.

@fairycore-gyu - I haven’t interacted with anyone new recently and when I saw kira that obviously changed 😂. I related to her with music taste and stuff. LET ME TELL YOU when someone seems to have the same music taste I JUST my eyes light up. She was really welcoming and I instantly felt like I could message her anytime. I also just realized she’s a pisces 🥺.

@yoonjunie - I just remember thinking ooooo new moa writer! I think anyone who comes across her can say she’s very welcoming and sweet + she deserves everything she has. I really just wanted to support her 😂 I need to interact with her more and read more from her blog.

@hyeyoonwrites - yoonie 🥺 AHHHH okay 😂 first impression: LITERALLY THE SWEETEST. I know I’ve said that so many people here are sweet but yoonie is a different kind of sweet. I don’t know every single time I’ve interacted with her has felt like a soft hug. She’s supported me a lot and I really need to check up on her more frequently I feel guilty about it aifoshf.

@txtextme - gon I- even though we haven’t talked much she’s extremely funny and relatable. she just has this vibe that I love about her. I know I don’t have much to say, but I had to add her because she’s left an impact.

@yeonbins - VIVI HAS WONDERFUL GIFS. Every now and then I’ll see her post some stuff just talking and akfjskf. I mainly remember (I think) Starbucks getting her name wrong. Her names so pretty tho. I DIDNT EVEN REALIZE HOW MUCH OLDER SHE WAS THAN ME. I also played among us with her for a lil... I was scared she was gonna murder me 😂.

[causticsunshine]

twenty questions

tagged by @are-you-quite-finished-giovanna thank you babe!! 🥰

1. why did you choose your url?

simply put i adore louis and i like purple and it just rolled off the tongue lol, but i also had a list of possible urls i also liked and i had to snatch this one up while i could!

2. any side blogs?

yes i have four....i'm not one of those 'everything goes on main and you can deal with it' type people.... but i have an inspiration blog @prickelndauge (art insp, lots of fashion, cool photography), an art-only blog @swmpwxtch, one just for spooky/creepy content because i'm really into horror manga and scary movies and that kind of stuff but i keep it off of main because i know a lot of it can often be triggering to others! (i also don't post much there but @bonepickng) and one for art references, life tips, random resources, and more donation sharing @am-ref!

3. how long have you been on tumblr?

soooo long i thought i'd be gone by now tbh. i know i signed up in 2011 after just browsing the site through random blogs and tags for ages, but i didn't start actively using my own account until early 2012!

4. do you have a queue tag?

when i actually remember to tag things i have queued i'll use 'i'm sleep queue' because all my early morning posts everyday are queued....i am an insomniac rip

5. why did you start your blog in the first place?

keeping up with my interests better! i was like 15/16 at the time so it made sense. back in Ye Olde Days much like now—i really have come full circle lmao—it was mostly just for 1d and then some random tv shows/franchises i just to see content of semi-often, as well as finding cool art!

6. why did you choose your icon/pfp?

rn it's just a regular pic of louis! as much as i like using my collages or little edits as my icons, you can't see much of anything and it looks too busy sometimes (but also the photo i have rn....i am always thinking thoughts about it soooo)

7. why did you choose your header?

it's pretty! i wanted everything to follow a color scheme + i love embroidery and fancy gowns!

8. what's your post with the most notes?

ok i thought it was gonna be one of my old larry chibi doodles because i know a few of them hit 1k+ notes, but i deleted those in 2017 and apparently now it's this 6 year old like....funky photo study i did of dan howell from 2015 when i still watched him and amazingphil a lot?? i mean at least it's something i was once proud of lmao....there's a few art posts i have with semi decent notes that i pretend i Do Not See

9. how many mutuals do you have?

i think rn 40 something so not very many, although i unfollowed a lot of people i was moots with when i left my last fanbase so that's probably why 😬 i've been meaning to check out more HL/ot5 people though!! i love mutual interaction but i'm afraid of being annoying if i'm any degree of attentive

10. how many followers do you have?

overall i have almost 2.4k rn, but there's a decent amount that are totally inactive or at least don't interact with me so it feels like....a lot less lmao but since re-joining 1d i've already made up like all the people i lost when i left my other fanbase of almost three and more so thank you for actually liking my work and maybe me as well 🥺💗

11. how many ppl do you follow?

around 370 rn!

12. have you ever made a shitpost?

half of the stuff that comes out of my mouth is a shitpost fdngjkdf like my tags are bad enough lmao, no one needs to properly share the bs i have to say

13. how often do you use tumblr?

pretty regularly rn but there are times i'll go completely MIA depending on what i'm into/how busy i am!

14. did you have a fight/argument with another blog?

in the past i have had some....issues with other people i've met on here but never directly had confrontation with them? most of the time that's happened i figure it's been one-sided though because i can get irritated with certain behavior really quickly—like i always say my heart is big and open but my bullshit tolerance is dangerously low—but when that's the case i'll just unfollow or block without saying anything?

although back in the day there was one instance (and seriously if anyone remembers this you deserve a medal because this shit was Ridiculous) where i kinda but not really called out another 1d fanartist who posted untagged noncon fanart they'd done of at least two of the boys, and then acted like it was no big deal (like. 1. those are irl people my dude and 2. untagged noncon art?? in front of my salad??) and their friends kept defending them for it and tried to come for me claiming i was a proponent of Purity Culture when i'm not and literally all i said in my post on it was that in my own opinion it was kinda fucked up to draw noncon art of real life people—not characters played by actors! but actual real people as themselves—in the first place, but if you felt the need to post highly triggering content like that the least you could do was tag it accordingly

but i think that was the last time properly so i guess times within this fanbase are still chaotic as ever just in a different way?

15. how do you feel about "you need to rb this" posts?

Annoyed™️ like don't guilt trip me over a post lmao i do what i want !!

16. do you like tag games?

YES i love to talk about myself after years of trying not to show any personality online out of fear of judgement dfjkngdf

17. do you like ask games?

yes! i want to do them more but i'm always afraid of reblogging one and then getting nothing and looking like a Fool :'(

18. which one of your mutuals is tumblr famous?

i guess i have a few moots that are kinda well-known or at least get good interaction within the community we're a part of? also isn't that phrase kind of an oxymoron at this point adfjkdf

19. do you have a crush on a mutual?

not past platonic friendly affection lmao but honestly what is it like to have a realistic crush on an actual tangible person versus someone in the public eye who doesn't even know i exist.....it's been so long and i am so lonely please send help

20. tags?

@niallnailme @bolitodequeso @milkcurls @exzouis @ialwaysknewyouwerepunk @got-my-devotion @aliensyndrome uhhh anyone who'd like to please consider yourself tagged by me! literally if there was an 'all my moots' button i'd just pick that lmao and as always no pressure/sorry if you've already done this and i haven't seen!

[phoenix-downer]

Hello! I haven't played KH III yet but I plan to. I have come across some really hateful posts on tumblr and even twitter about Sora and Kairi being together. It appears some people are really upset that Sora and Riku didn't become a thing and have downplayed Sora x Kairi's relationship as something as forced and not having chemistry. I had no idea this was even a thing. Can you tell me where this hostility came from? I thought it was obvious that they had feelings for each other.

Hello! Thanks for the ask! There’s a lot to examine here, but I’ll do my best to try to tackle the whole issue with tact and empathy. Light/very vague spoilers for K/H/3, E/ndgame, and F/M/A follow (with slashes so they hopefully don’t show up in the tags).

First of all, I’m so sorry you’ve stumbled across those kinds of tweets and posts. If I could, I’d shield everyone from having to deal with such hatred and negativity about something they enjoy. Doesn’t matter what you ship; no one deserves to deal with that level of toxicity. 

Imagine going into a room and hearing people talk loudly about something you love, talk about how much they hate it and how much it sucks. Doesn’t make you feel very welcome, does it? But that’s exactly what’s happening here - you’re not the only one who’s noticed this. I have had to block or mute so many people because of the kind of bashing you describe. People purposely tagging their hate so that fans can see it, saying nasty things and picking fights in a way that makes you wonder what they get out of being so cruel and vicious. 

I’ve seen it so much that I’m extra sensitive to it now too; I block much more quickly than I did in the past. And I would advise other people to do the same. You don’t owe anyone access to your social media. They’re not entitled to your time or energy, either. You don’t owe it to them to read their hate. By blocking them, you take away part of their audience, you take away their attention. And the thing is, they want that attention. They want to make other people angry and miserable because they’re angry and miserable. And you don’t have to give them the satisfaction. 

Sadly, because twitter and tumblr have such poor moderation, no one running these sites is doing much to stop these people. In fact, the platforms even encourage that kind of behavior, because the loudest people get the most attention. So that encourages and emboldens the kind of nasty behavior you’re seeing.

Now, this is not to say there is never room for criticism, because there is, but that is a very different thing from what you’re describing, which is plain old bashing. Criticism and critique are offered in the hope that something will improve; bashing is done to express pure vitriol, and it isn’t productive for anyone. It might feel good in the moment, but in the end it just leaves people bitter and empty. 

There are plenty of people critiquing K/H and how the games went and how the various character arcs unfolded and how the relationships developed, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Shutting down all criticism isn’t healthy; it should be allowed and encouraged, as constructive criticism leads to healthy dialogue, both with other fans and with S/quare E/nix. And Square has listened to fans in the past; they’ve fixed issues with gameplay that occurred when 1.5 and 2.5 were ported to the PS4 and converted to 60 fps, for example.

Neither is there anything wrong with venting to a close friend in a private setting - DMs, PMs, on your personal blog or twitter account with the ship you’re criticizing censored somehow so that everyone who likes it doesn’t have to stumble across your venting. Heaven knows I’ve had to vent a lot to stay in the fandom without lashing out. The issue is when someone thinks it’s okay to force their anger and negativity onto other people who don’t want to see it or hear it. 

So the question is, why are we stumbling across such strong feelings? Because it’s clear people feel pretty strongly about all this. 

I don’t think there’s an easy answer as to why this is happening, but I’ll take a shot at explaining what might’ve happened all the same. I’m sure if you asked someone else, they might give you a different answer, and it’s worth getting multiple perspectives. This is just my two cents, and naturally, it’s going to be biased towards my experiences and preferences. 

The shipwars in the K/ingdom H/earts fandom have been nasty for years. From what I can gather, they got really bad when KH2 was released, though I’m sure there was probably drama before then. S*kai fans and S*riku fans did not see eye to eye on how that game went, and it’s all been downhill ever since. People on both sides have been mean and nasty, I’ve seen them be nasty, hurling insults and slurs and accusing each other of awful things to the point that the question of “who started it” is pretty much moot at this point. A more productive question would be, “how can we end it and get along, or at least start treating each other better?” 

Now, since I ship S*kai (obviously), I’ll share why this is such a touchy subject for me personally. I’ve been in fandom for a while now, and something I’ve noticed is just how much fans tend to hate female characters because of sexism and internalized misogyny.   

I was in the M/C/U fandom before this, and Sh*ron’s actress got death threats around the time C/ivil W/ar came out from angry shippers. And then P*ggy’s actress has likewise been harassed after E/ndgame came out by, again, angry shippers. I was a big F/M/A fan back in the day, and W*nry got so much hate from, you guessed it, angry shippers. I remember a friend back then rolling her eyes and bashing W*nry, and when I asked her why she hated her, she couldn’t really give me a clear answer other than that she was “whiny.” 

Heaven forbid a female character not be completely perfect. 

Over and over, I saw this pattern repeating. A female character gets hate because there is a popular alternate pairing that she “gets in the way of.” Even before I had the vocabulary to talk about it, the hatred just struck me as very gendered. I never saw that level of hatred for any of the male characters unless they were written to be hated (hello Shou T*cker). And I was likewise harsher on female characters than on their male counterparts. It took me years to realize what I was doing and to try to put a stop to it. 

So then I came to the K/ingdom H/earts fandom with all that background and baggage, dealing with years of people hating characters I liked and looked up to and identified with, and I saw the same thing happening again. Yet another female character getting nasty hate because of her gender, because she dared to like a boy who was shipped with another boy. Because she dared to fall in love. How dare she have feelings, how dare she be feminine, how dare she wear pink and have a flowery Keyblade. How dare her strength of heart be stronger than her physical strength. There is only one kind of strength that matters, and it’s how hard you can kick someone’s ass (wrong, wrong, wrong, and one look at the whole power of friendship thing this series revolves around would tell you that). 

How dare K*iri not be an instant expert at fighting, which is cruel and ironic because if she was an instant expert at fighting, everyone would be crying Mary Sue. How dare she sass and tease S*ra, she’s such a bitch. Oh, she doesn’t tease him as much in K/H/3 and is more gentle and supportive because he’s going through hell and nearly loses everything and she knows he needs her support now more than ever? She’s a complete pushover! 

See what I mean by how hard people are on female characters? K*iri can’t win no matter what she does. She could have the best character arc ever post K/H/3 and people would still find something to complain about. That’s not to say I don’t have issues with how she’s written, I just think the criticisms against her tend to be way overblown. There aren’t enough discussions about how she could improve moving forward (though I have seen them, and thank you to those of you who do have them!), instead people just write her off completely as useless and worthless and want to improve her character by… dropping her out of the story completely (and yes, I’ve run into someone who actually thought this would be a good thing and always felt the need to talk about it, and it absolutely drove me up the wall). 

And worst of all, she can’t win because S*ra fell in love with her. Really, it’s ironic that she gets as much hate as she does for something S*ra did. She had no control over S*ra falling in love with her, and yet she is absolutely despised by people because he did. She isn’t “good enough” for him apparently, whatever that’s supposed to mean.  

I share all this to explain why I was so sensitive to the issue coming in. I saw the same thing happening I’d experienced time and again and I was so exhausted. So tired of it. I didn’t want to deal with it again, and I was on my guard right from the start. Especially because it’s so normalized in online KH communities to bash K*iri and S*kai. The major ones, too, with lots of people and a wide range of (or lack thereof) of shipping preferences, not just dedicated shipping groups. Try to go an entire discussion without seeing it come up… it’s a lot harder than you might think. 

At first I tried to be patient and understanding. Other people have different tastes, and I wanted to be understanding of that. But after years of watching the bashing happen, my patience ran thin. I was sick of seeing it enabled in major K/H communities, sick of seeing mods refuse to put a stop to it, or worse, low-key join in with the bashing, sick of having to put up with so much negativity when all I wanted was somewhere to discuss something I enjoyed. Some people seemed almost gleeful, almost eager in their bashing; any time K*iri was brought up, they felt compelled to express their hatred for her. They were more obsessed with her than her actual fans were; felt more passionately (albeit negatively) about S*kai than some actual S*kai shippers did. 

When I reached that point, the point where I was tempted to be negative and snappy and rude, I knew I couldn’t engage with certain people anymore. So I stopped trying. I searched for S*kai fans here on tumblr and stuck with them. I didn’t want to add to an already tense situation, and thankfully, there are other people who feel the same way (but more on that later). 

And on the S*riku side of things, some of them have shared that they have been told nasty homophobic things for shipping S*riku. And for many of them, I’m sure S*riku is a way of expressing their identity, a way of exploring their feelings and expressing them in a safe, welcoming way with fellow fans who get what they’re going through. Representation has gotten better in recent years (though it still has a long way to go), but back when the K/H games were first coming out, things were different, and people had to take what they could get from canon and run with it if they wanted to see more content that represented them. 

I’ve also seen a few people say that certain S*kai fans went out of their way to message them and rub what happened in K/H/3 in their faces. That kind of gloating is bound to upset anyone, yikes. Canon has become the new gold standard for shipping in the last decade or so, and it has sadly been weaponized in the ever-nastier ship wars, when really, a ship’s value shouldn’t be based on how “canon” it is but on the joy it brings to people. 

So yeah, we have a situation where enough people on both sides were treating others poorly that everyone got defensive, because how could you not when people keep attacking something you love, especially if you feel strongly about it/associate it with your identity? And that made people more likely to lash out, and when they did, people got even more defensive, and the cycle repeated, over and over and over again. 

And you know how I mentioned I sought refuge with likeminded fans? I think that happened all over the fandom. People seek out those who will support them and support their beliefs and form identities and communities based around them… and that’s a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it’s great to get so much support, especially if you’re seeking refuge from a particularly nasty ship war. Having a safe place to vent and unwind and finally get to talk about what you love without fear of getting hate over it is awesome.

On the other hand, things like echo chambers, confirmation bias, groupthink, and the false consensus effect flourish in those kinds of situations. If all you hear is that XYZ pairing must be canon or will be canon in a future game from the group of people you’ve surrounded yourself with, and everyone enthusiastically agrees because everyone ships the same thing you do and of course no one is going to rain on that parade, it can come as quite a shock when a new piece of canon comes out and doesn’t align to your expectations. Especially if you’ve spent years expecting canon to align with your expectations. 

We lose something when we can’t engage in healthy dialogue with people who disagree with us. Our perceptions get warped, our memories might even get warped, and what we could’ve sworn was canon… we might be surprised to see wasn’t, when we revisit the source material with a more critical eye or listen to someone who sees things differently than we do. 

But how can we have that healthy dialogue when there’s been so much bad blood? How can we listen to each other when there’s no trust? It’s nearly impossible, so instead we reinforce the beliefs and ideas our own communities already hold fast to, and the cycle continues. We draw lines in the sand separating “us” vs. “them” and don’t give each other a chance. Not only does this alienate people on opposite ends of the shipping spectrum, it also alienates multishippers because they’re considered “traitors” to both sides, and that is an uncomfortable place to be. 

I think that’s why you find the whole thing so jarring. I’m guessing you might not be as heavily involved with the fandom as I am, and have thus been largely immune from the perils of echo chambers and confirmation bias. So for you it must seem really weird that something that seems clear to you is so contentious to other people. I don’t say this to throw shade at anyone, because I know the same thing would’ve happened if the pairings had gotten switched around. It’s more of an observation of a phenomenon I’ve seen happen over and over again throughout the years. 

So all of that is to say, things are tense because of all these backgrounds and experiences and histories people bring into the fandom. No one exists in a vacuum, and things were already tense before K/H/3 even came out. K/ingdom H/earts has been such an important part of many people’s lives and growing up experiences that they feel a deep connection to it and almost a sense of ownership of it. It’s a shared story, a shared experience. It belongs to all of us, in a way, and yet it’s still N*mura’s baby.

And that’s where we run into more issues. How much say should fans have in a work of art? Does the creator get the final say in interpretation, or should she accept that once her creation has been released into the world, it’s up to other people to interpret what she meant? There are no easy answers to these kinds of questions, and they’re widely debated and discussed (see: the whole death of the author debacle). 

However, while I think feeling a sense of ownership and investment in a piece of art is totally fine, it crosses the line when it gets into the realm of entitlement. By this I do not mean asking for more representation, because that is a perfectly good thing to ask for; I mean demanding that the creators cater to your whims… or else. I mean contacting people who worked on the game on twitter and demanding they change the story to make it “right.” I mean directly telling one of the VAs you want her replaced because you thought she did a bad job. And yes, I am talking about actual stuff I’ve seen happen in this very fandom. All of that has also left me with a bad taste in my mouth, and other people I’ve talked to have felt the same. 

That being said, shipping in and of itself is not the problem. For every nasty tweet and bashing post out there, there are plenty of kind and good people who are just there to enjoy their ships. Lovely artists and talented writers and skilled gif makers and editors creating a wealth of beautiful content for something they love. People who would never harass others for their shipping preferences and are disgusted by those who do. Unfortunately, they’re not the ones getting the attention, and they’re probably not the ones you’re going to run into if you ship a different ship, as they tend to stick to their own spaces out of courtesy and respect. 

This means that the people you are more likely to run into are the ones who want to pick fights. The ones who bash and stir up drama and tell people to kill themselves for shipping XYZ. While there are plenty of people being cruel and nasty and toxic, there are good people in the fandom too. Kind, caring people who will see you as a person first and not an XYZ, even if they don’t agree with you on everything. They’re quiet(er), because kindness isn’t usually flashy and showy, but they’re here. You just have to know how to find them.   

Thanks for the ask! I tried to answer this as fairly as I could, based on my observations and things I’ve been stewing over for a while now, so I hope it sheds more light on the situation. 

[chromecausation]

why atla’s ending is bad

so this post has likely already been made before, but I’m new to tumblr so what the hell. I recently finished watching atla, and I thoroughly enjoyed the series. This post is in no way about how the series itself is bad; I really did enjoy the series. Rather, it is about how the ending does a grave disservice to aang and the philosophical theories in question.

One of the reasons I love atla is that it is willing to ask the hard psychological questions: the scene in the library about how everybody thinks their war is justified? That is an amazing scene, it recontextualizes the entire series up until that point and forces us to ask: is fighting the fire nation really as justified as we claim? This question is brought up even more as we actually meet people who live within the fire nation: we see that they are not taught history as it actually happened and they are often ruled by fear. They are not the monsters that they seem to be. However, and this is the huge however, atla refuses to actually address the biggest question of the series: is it morally correct to kill someone in the service of a greater good? 

Up until this point in the series, atla mainly avoids this question by making all forms of bending essentially the same: sure, they all have different animations and such, but at the end of the day they all serve as different ways to knock people backwards until everyone is far away enough that they seem defeated. Obviously, this is a children’s show, so it makes sense that they would do this. But, while its ok to knock around enemy henchmen, no one (even kids) is going to buy that one of the greatest firebenders of all time is properly subdued by a kid, especially when aang is shown to be clearly weaker in some of the bending forms than he would like. So, the philosophical question of killing has to be brought to the forefront. However, while the writers seemed to get that killing had to be brought up at some point, they narratively structured the story to prevent the question from actually being brought up at all. 

At the core of this question is the push and pull between consequentialism and deontology, the two major schools of thought on what defines a moral action. Consequentialists (broadly speaking) argue that an action is right if the consequences brought about by that action are right. Deontologists argue (broadly speaking) that an action is right if the action itself is right, regardless of the consequences. This post is not going to go into a full-throated analysis of either philosophy, but will simply state that despite what everyone on the internet likes to claim after having read the trolley problem briefly, there are some legitimate benefits to deontology (and consequentialism can often lead to some things that we would think of as morally dubious.) 

Anyway: suffice it to say, aang is a deontologist. He is focused on doing right actions because they are inherently right, and he doesn’t believe in bending his principles just because it would be convenient or because it could lead to a better outcome in that specific instance. Principles are principles for a reason, goddamnit, if you bend them all the time, how useful are they? And despite the fact that a lot of people here on tumblr would definitely describe themselves as consequentialists, we applaud aang throughout the series for his decisions to be morally upstanding, even when it makes his life harder. 

Here’s the issue though: deontology, even though it has some serious benefits (I am somewhat of a deontologist and pacifist myself) it also has some serious downsides. Sometimes, when you stick to your principles, bad things will happen. Sometimes, those bad things will happen because you weren’t willing to stop them. And while there is a larger argument that can be made about how sticking to what is right leads to a better world overall, that doesn’t help the fact that in the moment, deontology can seem like a really sucky philosophy.

The writers of the show never actually make aang face that issue with deontology, and they trivialize it as a philosophy. Throughout the second half of the third season, aang is portrayed as not having the stomach to kill ozai, or not wanting to do what needs to be done. It is implied that aang is weak for his beliefs, that he must overcome his weakness and pacifism to become the strong avatar the world needs to undo the horrible damage of fire nation imperialism. The issue with this, though, is that it never confronts the actual issue at play? What if (ignoring energy-bending entirely for a second) aang is entirely right to not want to kill ozai? 

I posit that a non-murdery approach to the final battle is the actually correct decision for the world. The fire nation has been steeped in fear and anger for over a century, and their leaders have based all of this division and fear and nationalism on the idea that might makes right, that if you are strong and just and powerful enough, it is your right to spread this glory to the rest of the world. If aang were to beat ozai handily and murder him, all that he would prove is that the firelords were right all along: it is the right of those who have power to control those who are powerless. Aang killing ozai just proves that ozai was right all along. The only way to break the fire nation cycle of fear is to prove that there are other ways to approach conflict, to prove that a non-violent approach is not just preferable to killing someone, but is actually what is necessary for the world to heal and grow?

It is at this point that the readers who have read this far into this abominably long post say, “but wait chromecausation, aang didn’t kill ozai. That was the whole fucking point of the final episode!” And to those of you still reading: kudos, you have my gratitude. My issue is not actually with the ending of the story (despite the title of this piece) but the way that it was presented. 

Because I just recently watched avatar (and I had seen some spoilers earlier on tumblr so i knew that something called energybending was coming), I realized that energybending was introduced AS A CONCEPT in the last 2 episodes, and it was explained as aang was using it to defeat ozai. This is literally the definition of a deus ex machina, a plot device that solves a previously insurmountable problem that arrived out of basically nowhere. I really really hate that the entire conflict of the series is solved through deus ex machina. It cheapens all of the struggles, and it makes the conclusions of the story that much weaker. 

Think of how all of the arguments aang had with sokka, zuko, katara, the other avatars, and like a billion other people would have gone if it were known that energy-bending were a possibility. Instead of being “hey I don’t want to kill the firelord because it is morally wrong, even if that is a more dangerous path to take, but I think it will be better for the world as a whole” it becomes “hey instead of killing the firelord, I would like to take this equally easy option to not kill him but subdue him instead.” (The reason I say equally easy is because killing the firelord is shown to be fucking difficult to do). The existence of energy-bending renders the whole point of the argument moot, because of course in a vacuum it is better to not kill people. (I say of course here because the moral discussion at play is not whether retributive punishment is better than rehabilitative punishment, or whether the death penalty should exist. Those moral discussions rest on the premise that the victim is helpless and we in the position of power must decide their fate. The moral question here is whether aang should try to kill the firelord, because if he tried to hold back with bending so that he didn’t kill ozai, aang might actually lose the fight). Energybending does not exist with enough screen time for us to learn if it has drawbacks or is difficult to do. We are told that it is difficult, but so is killing the firelord during sozin’s comet; we need to actually see it in action first or discuss it ahead of time to actually know what the stakes are. Instead, with it being presented at the last minute, it seems like aang is given a cheat code out of his moral dilemma. He is never forced to confront the actual consequences of pacifism, and is never given the chance to prove why it is a good idea to stick to your principles even when you don’t have a deus ex machina up your sleeve. 

I believe that aang was right to not kill the firelord, but because the mechanism was energybending, it means that aang is never forced to confront the idea that pacifism and deontology require a difficult route and that there is a good chance he will not succeed. Conversely, he is never given the chance to prove how his way of thinking is better for actually breaking the fire nation cycle of fear. Imagine, instead of energybending, aang was forced to learn all of the techniques taught to him by his teachers. When fighting ozai, he must take a heavy blow that he must heal through waterbending he is taught from katara. He is only able to dodge attacks because of the seismic sense from toph, and he must become comfortable enough with fire that he can redirect ozai’s lighting, as shown by zuko. This techniques are shown to be incredibly difficult, and by clearly setting up a path where aang is forced to take the more difficult route in order to stick to his convictions, it would strengthen the moment when he actually does, as well as provide a nice way to remember the journey along the way. If it were shown that aang had a way to kill ozai and chose not to, instead choosing to rely on his skill, it would show that he is committed to his convictions. Instead, the use of energybending almost implies that all of the knowledge up until this point was useless. What is the point of learning to bend if the only way to defeat ozai is through energybending?

Finally, I will say this: aang needed to defeat ozai in a way that did not rely on murder so that he can finally join the ranks of the avatars before him. When conversing with the previous avatars, it is clear that they think that aang should kill ozai. However, the actual words they speak matter too: aang must make a decision, he must serve justice. The other avatars do not actually speak on whether or not aang should kill ozai, but rather they speak to his conviction. Up until this point, aang is a kid who has the world thrust upon his shoulders, and he is trying the best he can, but at the end of the day he is still a kid. He doesn’t want to kill people because the monks told him it was wrong, and while he feels deeply that he wants to uphold that, he also doesn’t want to kill people because he is young and it would scar him. I choose to see the meetings with the avatars not just as them arguing for aang to kill ozai, but them also having a meta discussion with aang: he must make an actual moral commitment, and stick to the path he has chosen. In order to claim the mantle of avatar, he must strike out on his own and become an independent person with independent beliefs who is willing to talk to the avatars as an avatar. When aang walks back from the battle with ozai, he is able to talk to the other avatars on an equal level because he has committed to his own path and succeeded. He is no longer dependent on guidance; even though he is young, he is a fully realized avatar. By introducing energybending, the writers rob aang of that ability. They prevent him from joining the ranks of the avatars as someone deeply committed to pacifism even when there are no more tricks up your sleeve, and this is a damn shame. 

[tinkdw]

hi tink ^_^ was wondering if you think both endgame human!cas and endgame angel!cas are both valid interpretations? im genuinely interested as I can't see the whole human!cas being a thing, and I'm open to learn more if you think that's what is actually going to happen. idk his experience as a human was miserable, i feel like maybe im missing something?? :0 u dont have to answer this if u dont want, as it may cause wank. ty

Hi!

Here’s my “overall” Cas meta from a while ago, nothing’s changed and a few other meta writers added to it so it’s a good view I think as to the whole concept:

https://tinkdw.tumblr.com/post/165781313412/why-do-you-think-cas-should-becomechoose-to-be

It’s a really crappy topic for divisiveness, in my experience the people who have, relatively, as much as possible, objectively analysed the author intent in the show have come to a pretty solid conclusion within the meta community that Human!Cas appears to be endgame based not on his experience as a human but the outcome, his overall arc since season 4 and the Chekhovs gun style flamingly blatant reminders throughout the show such as the repeated asking him if he wouldn’t rather be human, his choosing to be an Angel to go into battle powerful enough to save the people he loves and putting what he wants to one side and his clearly not wanting to be a soldier anymore.

It’s kind of like saying endgame Dean is for him to be emancipated and being able to openly watch Oprah and Disney etc even though on the surface he says he doesn’t like that stuff. Because the pretty obvious sublimation is there.

With Cas the sublimation isn’t quite as clear but it’s really all there. Yes he suffered as a human but he literally came out of it and said he missed it, while previous to being human he was curious and wanted to try human things (eg kissing meg) and afterwards we’ve seen him actively choosing to act more human, smiting less and fist fighting instead, acting more human, I mean the big one for me was when Dean asked him “and you’re okay with that?!” When he told him he got grace back to be able to fight and he just totally brushed it off saying he needed it to fight:

https://tinkdw.tumblr.com/post/171244776157/kanayaks-tinkdw-cas-i-got-my-grace-back-i

He later takes more grace which he had been previously rejecting but only to save Dean and then took his own grace back when again it’s needed for a fight whilst telling us the quote that the craziest thing a man can do is die.

He’s literally saying he’s killing himself / his wants for the greater good.

He needs grace for the fight and to be a good useful soldier and to save his family but does he want it?

Want v Need.

One of the biggest themes of the show.

Cas needs his grace to be useful when times are hard but is that what he wants?

In my opinion the show has repeatedly emphasised that it isn’t. I also think it’s clear he doesn’t want to be a soldier anymore and these things go hand in hand.

Others may use canon to say they think it is. Both interpretations are totally valid as long as they are based on canon and actually analysing the canon in a consistent manner.

The issue I have is certain people cherry picking and projecting their stories into it and claiming it’s an overall Cas’ arc since inception meta. That’s just not how meta writing works.

You can absolutely write that stuff but you can’t claim it’s objective and fully inclusive of canon and logical when it is just picking parts that fit your own desire for the character. Like, I didn’t want Lucifer to be centre stage in s13 but I didn’t just ignore it when it was.

Cherry picking things ie the one time Cas said “I just wanna be an Angel” when he was depressed, distraught at Dean’s death and wanted to stop feeling things as proof it’s what he really wants isn’t what I’d call meta writing of the whole story. That’s like saying Sam really wants to be a hunter and tag along beside his brother in the impala on the road for the rest of his life because he was a depressed, vengeful mess after Jess’ death and said ok let’s go. Is it really what Sam wants for himself and the rest of his life though? No way! That’s been clear too.

Even worse when some people claim to be bullied or triggered by other view points. Someone even screenshotted a few sentences I wrote that if you took away the top and bottom sentence looked like I was making no sense and anti Cas (me anti Cas. Lmao) but in the context obviously made sense and decided to create a wank storm about it because they didn’t like human cas meta and wanted to make me look bad. People need to grow up. This isn’t a meta discussion about interpretation it’s being a dick and being unable to contemplate another interpretation.

It makes a discussion totally impossible which moots the entire point of blogging on tumblr in the first place.

Absolutely all interpretations are valid, it’s just a case of how you pitch your interpretation. If you want to state your interpretation of a character absolutely go for it! I used to be all up for Angel!Cas meta until a few utter assholes decided to be personal and ridiculous about it. Now I don’t touch it with a barge pole. Same as M*gstiel.

But that doesn’t invalidate anyone’s good, thought out, canon analysing endgame Angel!Cas meta.

For example my own interpretation of the siren episode is different to many other meta writers, we can discuss it and have polite and great conversations without getting triggered / defensive because we aim to discuss author intent, our own interpretations and do so in a civil manner. There’s one meta writer in particular I’ve had altercations with in the past over some differences of opinion on speculative things and ways of writing meta but who I get on well with, admire and like talking to because we are adults and literally get over it.

There’s also a few people who unfortunately though I agree meta wise about things on the show have been so nasty irl to myself and others that I’ve cut them off completely.

Interpretations are interpretations until they are canon, I’m lucky that most of mine have become so or are clearly on their way but I can also be wrong ie I thought Asmodeus would be more important to character exposition than he was, life moves on. I also didn’t realise quite what it would mean that he would be a Bucklemming own concept and not really used by anyone else, I thought perhaps he’d be used by others by the wasn’t, now I have that knowledge in my pocket meta on anything that sets up for Bucklemming use is kinda meh don’t bother analysing it much it’s probably not hugely important to the overall story being told by the showrunner, ie Nick.

All interpretations are valid is very true. Eg. I can interpret Cas’ story as a metaphor for a queer kid (and in particular trans) coming from a conservative family and emancipating themselves and someone else can interpret it as an immigrants story.

If the show starts changing this then I will change my meta, because my meta is an analysis of what the show is doing, not what I want. For example I never wanted Dean to be queer representation, I was totally heteronormative and would have been totally cool with him ending up alone or with a woman, it’s the show that made me want something different for him through consistent and repeated canon blatant hints at something else. Same as Cas, I was totally ready in season 4 to just like him as a cool character and for him to bog off back to Heaven after being useful but he was captivating as an ally and it grew from there. For ages I would totally have put to one side the hints at a romantic part of his story and loved for him to become the third brother, it’s the show that made me see more between him and Dean, I never would have imagined that myself, I was a boring heterormative adult more interested in the individual characters’ stories than shipping, I thought shipping was just maritime transferral of goods before I was like wtf and googled Destiel after 10x05 cos I’d finally found a name for what I’d been seeing evolve for 6 years.

Sam goes for Cas’ own individual arc and what he wants. I never had a clue what I wanted from him until the show told me what I should want by repeating something clearly over 10 years. If they suddenly change any part of the story then they change it (and I’ll be annoyed they changed something so entrenched but I’m not going to bitch @ tptb for it or whatever, it’s their choice, they’re the creator and once it’s changed I’ll meta that) but so far it’s been the same, clear story to me for 10 years.

An interpretation is an interpretation but it’s when you start, as I do and some others do, saying you believe this one is the authors intention that you have to be more careful about backing it up with canon and logic and not getting #triggered when someone disagrees.

If you’re going to pitch it as what you believe the author intent is then you have to leave your personal projections at the door and work solely based on the canon, the production, what the author may have said outside of canon etc. It has nothing to do with your own wants for the character or show.

It also means when someone has valid canon supported arguments to the contrary you can have a really interesting discussion and I love that.

[maryellencarter]

What is your middle name? -- You know, about a year ago in a D&D session, I was attempting to sass the big bad (I’m much better at sass when I have time to think about it, D&D is such a time pressure that I’ve wound up playing much more of a strong silent type than I intended), and I said “Defiance is my middle name” and the DM wound up making Defiance the name of the country my character is from. Which is a delightful sort of NYC/Vegas mashup, quite different from Defiance, Ohio. ^_^ Also the capital city is called Skreuyu (pronounced, of course, Screw-you). :D

What are you passionate about? -- Dear god. What aren’t I passionate about? O_O I could attempt a brief and incomplete list, but this is a long meme anyway. ;-) Besides, you’re here, you’ll hear about it all sooner or later. XD

Zebra or leopard print? -- Either one, but only if it’s in day-glo neon rainbow colors. And not to wear, particularly. Fake-fur blankets and pillows, mostly. Lisa Frank was... a formative influence. ^_^ If I ever have money to actually decorate a place of my own, it’s gonna look very much like Wes Janson decorated it, although possibly with fewer Ewoks. (I do have a BB-8 penny bank, though.)

Do you have any fears? -- Honestly, at this exact moment, I’m too damn sleep-deprived to know. XD When I’m awake it’s probably social anxiety stuff. When I wake up at 4am tomorrow in my car, I may or may not be having the kind of weird quasi-psychotic fears that come with a certain level of sleep deprivation, where I’m suddenly convinced my laptop is going to eat me. Right now, nothing especially comes to mind.

Silver or gold? -- To wear? Gold. My skin corrodes silver. But as a color, I like silver better.

Top three places to visit? -- Ooh. Um. That I’ve been to, or not? I want to go back to Washington DC, and someday I want to be extremely sane and go back to Indiana, and someday I’d like to go back to the Black Hills and see all the geology tourism things, because the only one I saw as a kid was Mount Rushmore, which is more of a colonialism tourism thing. That I’ve not been to... Scotland, maybe? And Hawaii and Yellowstone, again for the geology nerdery? I feel like there are places I’ve very specifically wanted to go someday that I’m blanking on.

Where are you from? -- Indiana, once upon a time. Love the place, cannot deal with the people. Miss the snow. And the autumn leaves. And the library.

First career you wanted as a child? -- Paleontologist, best I can remember. Some things stay pretty constant. I don’t have the physical health to be a geologist anymore, if I ever did, but damn, I still want to take some more classes or keep up with the field somehow.

What’s your sign? -- You know, I’m not being bothered with this at the moment. I’m sure it’ll come up in a reblog pretty soon, I do those memes a lot.

Future names of your children? -- I refuse to have any. Five generations my bio-family has fucked up, all by trying too damn hard not to be their mothers. I will be a weird adopted relative and not name anybody anything.

What are you listening to right now? -- A fifteen-minute instrumental cover of “Turkey in the Straw”, to block out the myriad noises of the fast food place so I can think words. I’ve been looping it for hours and I’ll presumably be looping it for hours more.

Do you believe in fate/destiny? -- I have a lot of weird conflicting opinions about things like fate and destiny. I think if the universe is being... directed, by a god or fate or destiny or anything with intelligence or purpose, it’s an asshole and ought to be punched. It’s not actually any less depressing if the universe is being run by random chance and just happens to shake out in ways that make it seem like it’s being run by an asshole, but it’s less angering. *tries to word* I do get the feeling, the... desire for shit to have a purpose and to make sense, but a big part of me thinks that’s pareidolia or something related. It’d be nice if all this bullshit was eventually gonna shake out to me being either a stable human being or an epic hero, but I strongly doubt it. (And even if it did, a smart enough god should be able to get me there with less suffering, if it wanted to. So at minimum, if there’s a fate or god or destiny directing me, it’s either sort of incompetent, or motivated by priorities like taking the most direct route rather than minimizing the chances for me to die along the way, or it’s kind of a sadist. Sorry, I have Feelings about this one.)

Ethan, however, has a take that I think is... relevant, to the state of the world at the moment. He thinks the specifics of the world at any given time are all determined by chaos and random motion, but that there’s a cosmic balance between... stuff that’s very hard to give names to. “Good and evil” is part of it. “Order and entropy” might be a little closer. “Light and darkness”, whatever. But there’s this cosmic balance, and if, say, the Forces of Evil or whatever you want to call them... if something pushes too hard in one direction, tries to make one side win, the universe is gonna bounce back. There’s always gonna be that push-pull. Lots of people can get hurt or killed in the process, but because Ethan and I both read LOTR at formative ages, where we wind up at is the line “They cannot conquer forever”. You can’t have... you can’t get stuck. This is probably terribly Manichaean or something of us, but right now that’s the best I can word. That there’s always gonna be the thing you are Against, but there’s also always gonna be the thing you are For, even if one of them gets pretty squished for a while.

What are your career goals? -- Sometimes what you want to be when you grow up is “paid”. ;P I’d like to reach a point where I never have to ask the internet for money again, while continuing to be alive, and maybe can even give other people money. Help support my friends, travel around doing meetups, go to conventions or whatever, maybe do some cosplay. What exact job I’d be doing, Chaos only knows.

What is your favorite color? -- Blue. Royal blue, midnight blue, cobalt blue. Often with stars on.

What is your favorite flower? -- Uh. I’m gonna say these little striped white and purple crocuses that would come up through the snow in the spring? I loved those.

What was the first concert/show you attended? -- The Monkees 45th anniversary reunion concert. I said at the time that I’d blown five years of luck on the improbable string of coincidences that led to me getting there, but I’m so damn glad it happened, because I enjoyed it immensely, and Davy Jones died before what would have been their 50th. And hey, that was 2011, maybe I’m accumulating some luck again. ;-)

Something you are working on right now? -- This meme? XD In more general terms, reblobbenating some really old posts from my previous blog, as well as filling up my queue from same. It’s pretty slow going.

Have you ever had a near-death experience? -- Not the sort where you see a tunnel of light or go out of your body. Just the kind where you nearly die. :P

Are you a procrastinator or do you get things done early? -- Pfffft. Time management is something that happens to other people. ;P Occasionally I do get something done right away, but mostly it’s the night before deadline, or sometimes the night after. o_O Maybe when I have some spoons I’ll be better at that.

Left or right handed? -- Right. Very much so. My left hand is clumsy enough that I never did really get the hang of playing the piano with both hands, and I still struggle with video games that aren’t Mass Effect. (I’m good at Mass Effect because I’ve been playing it for something like five years at this point. ^_^)

TV Shows and anime you watch regularly -- Hah. I don’t watch anything regularly. I don’t even read books regularly, I go through phases where I don’t read a book for months and then suddenly I’m reading ten in a day. And I don’t do open canons, anyway; they interact badly with my particular anxieties and stress levels.

Halloween costume idea for this year? -- I generally default to a cowboy or a pirate. I also have a witch hat now. But I might come up with something else. Living in an apartment complex, though, there will be no trick-or-treaters, so unless I wind up working somewhere that does Halloween costumes, the point is rather moot.

What is your relationship status? -- Single, aromantic, have never dated anyone, would rather like a primary relationship at some point but that’s an issue for when I can support myself. :P

Last movie you just watched? -- I genuinely don’t know. Probably Black Panther? No, that was like February. Hot Fuzz?

A song that’s been stuck in your head? -- This very seldom happens to me. I think the last one was Janice Buckner’s “Strange Friends”, a little-known ‘80s children’s song, of which I can remember neither the tune nor the lyrics. Usually I can at least remember the lyrics even if I don’t know what tune they went to.

A book you want to read/have recently read? -- Erm. I just reread Aaron Allston’s X-wing books, if you can call it rereading when I was mostly skimming looking for good tumblr URLs (I found a lot, but none that felt like me). I’m not really in a reading phase at the moment, so.

[itsbenedict]

No Driver’s License: Session 8

[adventure log- read from the beginning]

[omake 7.5 + 7.6, which was really kind of its own session]

I’m not sure how to say “last time on No Driver’s License” here, since one of the omakes turned into a whole impromptu session- I’ll just assume the session 7 recap there was sufficient.

But anyway, what happened after the whole “witch shows up at school and they team up with a mystery girl to stop it” situation, some of the team decided to go and find Ibara’s friends, who, whoops, witnessed Yukari using magic to jump up to the roof, and need The Talk about how magic do. They fail to dissuade them from magical girling, but when the asshole incubator Fumi-chan shows up, she points out that Ibara’s friends, for whatever reason, don’t have the requisite magical potential to contract, so it’s a moot point. They decide against letting Fumi-chan wipe their memories, though, so now the team has a couple of muggle sidekicks.

This time... whoof. A lot happens this time. Big reveals ahoy!

(Oh, by the way- after character creation, and after she took the Knight specialization, there were some changes to Makoto’s design- here’s her new look, courtesy of @drazelic again)

So, the first thing that happens is that Yukari calls everyone together for a meeting- she wants everyone to try and train their magical powers to become stronger. That’s... not exactly how magic works in this setting, and Yukari’s roll for organizing this get-together is bad, but they don’t get absolutely nothing out of it. 

Everyone’s practiced artificing a little- Yukari wanted to see if they could use their magic to create permanent magic items that they can use to augment their own power, and get an edge against their cannibal foes. Unfortunately... this is extremely draining. They all take pretty substantial Overcharge penalties, and some of them even take Trauma. At the end of this training session, they all have a handful of crappy consumable magic items, and a few permanent trinkets that provide intrinsic bonuses. It’s not nearly enough of a boost for the cost of making them, but it’s not nothing.

Oh, and here’s the status of everyone’s Trauma Tracks after this exhausting training session:

Tsutsui Makoto:

[x][x][x][ ] Feeling alienated from “normal” people

[x][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Lacks basic knowledge most people would have

[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Can’t handle the spotlight

[x][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Has a sense of inadequacy

Gomu Sakura:

Fear of Female Failure- XXXXO

Isolation from Peers- XOOOOOO

Escaping into Books- OOOOOOOOO

Kazama Ibara: 

Disdain for “victims”: [√][ ][ ][ ][ ]

Can’t admit to being wrong: [√][√][ ][ ][ ]

Feeling unnecessary and unloved: [√][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ]

Lifestyle of a burnout: [√][√][ ][ ]

Kotono Yukari:

🔲🔲🔲🔳🔳🔳- I should have done something- everything that happened was my fault.

🔲🔳🔳🔳🔳- My purpose here is to gather power, and this cannot become my home. I must return and fix things.

🔲🔳🔳🔳- I am alone, a stranger in a strange land.

🔲🔳🔳🔳🔳🔳- I no longer fear death, nor wish to live. I persist because my job is not done, and nothing more. 

Takamine Seina, who has somehow managed to still avoid taking any Trauma this entire time:

"No-one will help me." ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕

"I don't care anymore." ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕

"I tried to help, but I hurt someone instead." ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕

"I missed my opportunity." ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ ⭕ 

So we’re pretty close to filling a few of these up- Sakura’s dysphoria has reached a fever pitch, and Makoto feels more isolated than ever after being left out of the previous few group activities and being bullied at school. Ibara’s starting to feel the burn(out) too.

As for the loot- there were three permanent magic items from this- we haven’t nailed them all down yet, we’ll decide them later. One confers a minor stealth buff, one’s undecided, and... Sakura made a cat carrier. Designed to contain Incubators and stop them from teleporting out from inside. Interesting!

But yeah, everyone’s feeling pretty bad after that.

Everyone’s distracted, though, by two things that happen at roughly the same time.

The first thing is that they see a creeping, shimmering distortion in the air, approaching through the woods towards the abandoned greenhouse they’ve chosen as a place to train their magic.

The second thing is that they hear screams for help and a BOOM noise from the opposite direction of the shimmering distortion.

Let’s rewind a bit:

Kazama Ibara did not attend the artificing/training session. She was supposed to, and she was on her way, but her patrol route took her way out of the way, and she was very very late. While hopping between buildings to get to the meeting place as fast as she could, she heard a cry for help coming from an alley she’d just leapt over.

Ibara, naturally, jumps down and interposes herself between the two. She lands with a BOOM- and the girl in the white cloak yells for help, and the monster snarls, and...

*cut back to the rest, fast-forwarding noise*

The rest of the team has to decide what to do about this. They try to split up into teams of two, but some miscommunications mean that Sakura, Makoto, and Seina all run off to intervene in the Ibara situation, leaving Yukari all alone to confront whatever it is that’s causing the distortion!

I’m sure she’ll be fiiiiiine.

Anyway, cutting back to Ibara, the combat starts- and she sorta gets her ass handed to her a little bit. Like, a major success on her Glide Curse attack only does one damage, and then despite being knocked away, the monster’s special movement abilities let her close the distance and hit Ibara for 3 damage. It’s not going to go great for her if things continue like this.

Thankfully, the magical girl who was being attacked decides to help protect Ibara with her defensive magic!

She rolls poorly on Steelflash, and turns Ibara into a motionless steel statue! Whoops!

Thankfully, this is the point where the team catches up and intervenes. Sakura finally rolls well on her Morasses Taffy ability, snaring the angry monster-thing with a crit 15. She’s unable to move, and howls her rage. Ibara, though, also still can’t move. So she does...

So they try to interrogate the trapped beast-girl, making an effort to calm her down and ask why she’s attacked hood girl. They... don’t get far, though, since between the taffy and the hood girl’s Steelflash, the beast is very very upset at them and isn’t being very articulate. The most they’re able to get out of her is...

She seems to be furiously angry at hood girl- who herself claims that she’s never met beast girl before and doesn’t know why she’s being attacked. Sakura, suspicious of this, taffies hood girl, too, just in case.

Sakura manages to calm her down, at least- hood girl understands that Sakura’s just trying to be careful. 

The witch that emerges from the Trauma Track “I want to hurt people” is... a giant ball of guns. Loads of guns, of all sorts, shifting and grinding against each other and firing off indiscriminately. If you look closely, there’s a cruel and taunting-looking face in the pattern of shifting firearms. It’s the witch called “ＴＲＩＧＧＥＲＥＤ？”. 

Before we fight that, though, let’s check back in on Yukari.

Right next to the incubator, drifting through the air out of the woods, is... 

According to the incubator, she’s been tasked with babysitting this sorta drifty happy magical girl, who floats around doing magic to the world. The incubator’s job is to make sure her magic gets undone and she doesn’t float through anywhere too heavily populated. This isn’t, apparently, something that’s going to stop at some point- but the incubator says it’s under control.

 The girl floats around, redecorating the greenhouse in stained class and making flowers bloom all over the place. ...Including on Yukari’s hat.

The incubator sort of freaks out at this- planting the idea of “visiting her parents” in her head sets her on a course to head into the middle of a populated area, which the incubator- who introduces herself as Asa-chan- is very upset by. Yukari thinks quick, though, and convinces Masumi that her parents are on vacation, and if she follows Asa-chan, she’ll take her right to them.

Asa-chan, relieved, gives Yukari a few details. 

Masumi is the only one who’s like this, whatever this is.

Masumi is “one of Tama-chan’s”, and Tama-chan entrusted Asa-chan with the job of handling her.

Masumi’s been like this for somewhere between one and two years, but Asa-chan’s only been watching her for ten months.

Oh, and there’s a witch fight happening a few blocks away, Yukari might want to steer clear of that.

Yukari, of course, instantly takes off to go back up her team. Less than ten minutes, and they’d already landed in a big steaming pile of witch!

This witch... apparently isn’t all that. It appears to lack melee attacks, and Makoto conveniently has a labyrinth-summoning power that can completely block ranged attacks in a given zone. After taking a hit from Seina’s dual kama, it tries to jump away to get a better shot at them, but doesn’t manage to do any damage- it just manages to blast apart the labyrinth, which Makoto can easily resummon.

Ibara gives chase, and pours her boost and Power Strike into one serious melee attack for 7 damage. The witch is in bad shape- and goes down completely when Sakura follows it up with a critical candy blast. It really wasn’t much of a fight- it’s already over by the time Yukari arrives on the scene. It drops an amber grief seed- Grief Gem? Soul Seed? which Makoto picks up.

Just as the witch falls, another late arrival shows up.

Earlier, Sakura tried to get Tama-chan’s attention by posting a bunch of magical information on Tumblr. Since incubators scrub the web of secrets, Tama-chan would have to see it and take it down, right? So she added a message asking Tama-chan to come help deal with Fumi-chan, back when they were talking to Nails and Shibu.

Unfortunately, Tama-chan doesn’t handle the web-scrubbing. That’s a different incubator, Ran-chan, who didn’t bother telling Tama-chan about it until just recently. Tama-chan came as fast as she could, about a day late, not aware of when the message was sent.

Still, it works out. She’s there, and she can take the beast girl’s Soul Seed. ...Right?

They still don’t trust Tama-chan, remember. And Tama-chan is acting kind of shifty- implying she won’t bring back the girl immediately.

Whatever’s wrong, the team insists they can help.

It’s eventually explained that they didn’t beat her- not exactly. They managed to hold her down temporarily, and then she witched out- and they were able to beat her witch, which was a lot less dangerous than her real self.

The team is still dead-set on helping, somehow- they don’t want Sokoko to be stuck like this, whatever this is. Eventually, they managed to persuade Tama-chan to explain.

Sokoko- although that’s not her real name, Tama-chan doesn’t know her real name- was a magical girl before Tama-chan showed up, contracted by Kyubey. She did the normal thing- hunting witches, using their Grief Seeds to stay alive. And then... one day, she defeated a witch with a really weird Grief Seed. And it went badly, and she tried to get more seeds to fix herself, but it just kept getting worse and worse and worse...

Well, actually, Farn got pretty close a little bit before the reveal:

Consuming someone’s Soul Seed doesn’t give you “power”. It gives you the victim’s Trauma Tracks, which can be converted into power by repeatedly witching out.

No one knows what to do about this. It’s... pretty horrible. There’s no easy solution. Tama-chan’s solution was going to be to take her to some remote, isolated place, and revive her there, where she at least couldn’t hurt anyone. According to Tama-chan, the other incubators would just revive her on the spot, who cares how strong she gets or how many people she’s hurt? That’s how she got to this point, anyway.

That’s why Tama-chan told them it was impossible, that they should just give up. The cannibals aren’t just too strong to defeat- even if you did defeat them, what would you be able to do? Bring them back, stronger? Eat their gems and become just as bad?

...Well, there’s one obvious third alternative.

Tama-chan is not amenable to this solution, for some reason. She gets very very angry and defensive, and demands that they hand over the Grief Seed.

The only explanation Tama-chan gives- apart from a few feeble attempts to point out that killing is bad- is that if they did it, the results would be “worse than you could imagine”.

There’s a lot of arguing here. Everyone is trying to come up with ideas for how to fix this, no one can agree on a solution. Yukari’s furious at Tama-chan for being so set on protecting this life when she hadn’t done anything to stop Honoka (the murderous MG who killed all Yukari’s hometown friends). Sakura is determined to try the “revive her over and over no matter how hard it is” route. Makoto...

Well, then things get hairy. Because Sakura decides to make use of her cat carrier, to imprison Tama-chan. First taffy, then- scoop!

Makoto, though, doesn’t interpret this as the protective gesture it was meant as.

Sakura- Makoto’s closest friend- ignoring her concerns and forcing someone to be a prisoner- that doesn’t feel good. With all the tensions running high, and with her suddenly feeling alone...

Well, she takes 1 Trauma on “Feeling alienated from normal people”.

Let’s review her Trauma Tracks:

Tsutsui Makoto:

[x][x][x][X] Feeling alienated from “normal” people

[x][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Lacks basic knowledge most people would have

[ ][ ][ ][ ][ ] Can’t handle the spotlight

[x][x][ ][ ][ ][ ] Has a sense of inadequacy

Congratulations, Tsutsui Makoto! You’re the first member of the party to level up! I wonder what “leveling up” could possibly mean, knowing what we do now? It’s a big mystery, I bet!

Next session: probably nothing bad happens to her at all, and everything’s going to be fine.

[hadjii-blogs-undertale]

[23 days later]

In reference to https://hadjii-blogs-undertale.tumblr.com/post/163800444030/

@lynns-art-blog

...

And honestly, @everyone-needs-a-hoopoe because there's things in here that go for you too. Please read it through to the end. Or just skip to the very end at first and then go back and read through if you need.

I really, really, really didn’t actually want to get off my butt and do this, for multiple reasons. And not just cuz I’m a lazy jackhole with depression who doesn’t want to do anything in general. But recent events have brought things to a head, and I cannot remain silent any longer.

First, I should like to clarify just where I stand as regarding the Undertale fandom.

The Undertale fandom is a beautiful thing. It is extremely imperfect but I love the fandom and will continue to do so for as long as I am able.

Second, I should like to clarify where I stand as regarding Undertale itself.

It will be difficult however, because I love Undertale more than I am capable of putting into any transferable medium that I know of.

Am I a bit emotionally over-invested in Undertale?

Heck. Yes.

I also don't care that I am.

Undertale has brought more joy and happiness and meaning to my life than literally anything else save my family who raised me and loves me, my religion, and a shortlist of friends, some of whom I only have so dear to my heart because of Undertale, so the point is moot.

I can't say that Undertale cured my depression, because it didn't.

What it did do is it showed me at a critical point in my life that there's something outside the grey murky mire.

I'd considered myself an emotionally open person before Undertale. This was only vaguely true. Current me cannot comfortably say that old me was emotionally intelligent without severe disclaimers.

Old me was an emotionally awkward dirtbag who had some idea of how to be a person but on the whole was completely clueless.

I had forgotten how to feel. Like, really feel. And not just from the depression.

I could occasionally get hits from certain songs and I absolutely lived for those moments but the songs would rapidly hit their saturation levels and I'd be cold again.

Then Undertale came along. I loved the game long before I played it, discovering things about it slowly through an endless flood of my tumblr feed.

It looked like a rather good, cute, compelling little game. Eventually I decided to write a bit of fanfiction about it because it looked really good and I wanted to churn out what would happen if GLaD had an interaction with a murdery timeline.

So I went and researched. I dug and I dug and I dug. This wasn't all of my research, but on one particular tumblr alone I went through 700-odd undertale posts.

Between that and pouring out my heart and soul into the writing as I discovered just how much I could care about these things, or care in general really, I found that I'd left the door open, and something came back. A whole lot of something.

Undertale is a Happy™ game about Happy™ things.

I had learned that maybe sad things weren't all bad back from the days of Background Pony. The difference being, Background Pony had a disappointing, absurd ending. They'd won the right even by my sappy heart to have a sad ending, then they completely botched it. I'd associated one of the most significant songs I know of with it, and they failed terribly.

But Undertale had a good ending. As aggravating as it is to not be able to keep Asriel, much less Chara, in the bounds of the game itself, that's part of the point of the ending. So there was no knee-jerk shock. While it is true that in a practical Undertale implementation, unbounded by the Game Maker engine, fuelled by the raw power of Determination, human spirit, and imagination, surely something more could have been achieved. But that does not take away from the coherent ending of Undertale.

There is a lot of pain in Undertale. So much pain.

It is overwhelming and vivid and searing and scorching and so very, very tangible and understandable and real. Not that the events of the game are real, well, as far as I can tell. The emotions are deep and real, I mean.

This was to me as the gas leak was to Vinny Santorini in Atlantis.

Due to the combined pressure of the mental overhaul Undertale was giving me, and the softness and vulnerability it re-introduced, throwing in re-learning certain cold facts about how much the powers-that-be at my previous job didn't care about doing good work, only making money, more severely than I had previously believed from last year, I lost my ability to continue driving there and showing up every day. Now, due to the way the contract works, and my having left the job gracefully, I am free to go back whenever I want. I was not fired. There are many employees who just go there, work as long as they can, then leave and wait for next season to come back. Their efforts are appreciated, especially when all heck breaks loose at the beginning of the on-season because all the bugs in the software that weren't found yet are harsly exposed. What happened with me is not ideal, nor is it rare or even unusual at this place. In about 3 months I could walk in the door and they'd welcome me with a smile and I'd get back to politely telling people that they're wrong and clueless and fixing their crap for them and half the time doing their job for them. (as if that's terribly different than my current job... just in person now instead of over a phone)

Anyways, so, Undertale hurts. Loving Undertale so deeply hurts a lot.

But it's also happy. It has so much happiness. It's so bright and wonderful. It's a warm, soft, fuzzy hug from goatmom and a slice of butterscotch pie. It's making spaghetti with Papyrus, only using an actual recipe this time and making it turn out well. It's watching anime until 4 am with Alphys and Undyne and suppressing giggles at seeing the two precious gay babies asleep and cuddling. It's hugging Sans and telling him it'll be okay. It's having a lovely tea party with Asgore and Muffet.

It's kissing a sad sapient golden flower on the forehead, buying a bar of chocolate and raising it in the air as a toast before eating it.

Bittersweet happiness sometimes but so very, very good and I love it and I really cannot get enough.

I'm addicted. Addicted to feeling again.

As the band Ghost says, "From the pinnacle to the pit, it is a long way down."

I haven't been to the absolute bottom, in that I haven't been institutionalized/hospitalized/just straight up killed by my depression, But I have been in the shower for 4 hours before from 2 am to 6 am at college, for one thing, so uhhh, nobody can say that I'm utterly clueless about such things without looking like a lunatic.

https://hadjii-blogs-undertale.tumblr.com/post/164567314340

Posts like the above still rip my heart out every time I see them. I've long since re-associated the song mentioned earlier with this particular point of note of Chara.

It's not entirely pleasant, no, but it makes me feel so alive and real and like I'm an actual human being and not an emotionless, soulless automaton covered in flesh.

And the happy posts are just that much brighter because of the contrast.

https://hadjii-blogs-undertale.tumblr.com/post/164689197750 https://hadjii-blogs-undertale.tumblr.com/post/164498003145 https://hadjii-blogs-undertale.tumblr.com/post/164161681835 https://hadjii-blogs-undertale.tumblr.com/post/164061257705

Some people can get by on just fluff alone. There's nothing wrong with that. This is just the way I personally operate. As for me, I've had too much saccharine positivity and "oh dont be sad everything is completely fine and theres nothing to be sad about youre not depressed just get up and go to work son!"

sorry got sidetracked and a little oddly specific there anyways

So the point is from the above wall of text that I have a lot of investment in Undertale and it means a lot to me.

Now, it's time for me to pull receipts.

One receipt, to be exact.

On a semifamous Undertale blog, that I still have not responded to, and quite possibly never will, unless you count this post as a response.

http://charadreemurr.tumblr.com/post/157052680490

I literally couldn't even read their last response for a solid two months because my eyes would skim off the words because they were full of so much utter crap. When I did, I was sorry for it, because it was still so much crap. And no, this isn't like the average tumblr receipt pull, because a lot of the time, a given person has changed for the better, and the receipts you're pulling are for a dramatically different person. This person has not changed and as best as I can tell will never change, or at least not for the next decade or so, unless something dramatic happens. They were the OP of the twitter bustercluck. If you don't know, don't ask, because I don't feel like getting into that right now. I may do so later though in a different post.

All I was trying to do was share a little positivity, and I was met with discourse, hostility, and self-righteousness.

"And second “biological gender” is a statement rife with discontent-"

Pardon my french but wtf m8?

Since then I have learned more thoroughly that in more modern usage, that sex and gender don't have ambiguity and don't need "biological" and "identity" modifiers for clarification, so to a limited extent, they were correct.

However, this does not excuse their behavior. There are many people, myself included back then, that because of their upbringing are uncomfortable saying the word "sex" in any context. I am not now, but I was then, which is why I used "gender" with modifiers for clarification. I gave them multiple chances in earlier reblogs to realize that I was just trying to share a bit of happiness. I clearly conveyed the belief that what's in one's pants doesn't necessarily align with what's in one's head and that it's not a problem. I also clearly stated that when referring to Frisk and Chara, one should use they/them.

And yet, they chose to perceive a threat where there was none. They prefaced their statement with "Yikes" then "Im gonna assume the best here though because i wanna assume people are good"

And completely did not follow through on that.

Statement rife with discontent, indeed.

I was rather hurt by this. Especially, especially because of the uniqueness of their url. They are the one and only charadreemurr. That's a very particular title, and they ought to live up to it.

And here, they did not. Unless Chara Dreemurr really is supposed to be a pretentious self-serving self-righteous paranoid uptight jackhole of a binch. In which case, congratulations, they succeeded.

I showed the post to a different trans friend of mine, and they were shocked by the post as well, looked through their tumblr, and declared the person "basically their least favorite type of person".

To this day, I feel uneasy just seeing the word "yikes" sometimes.

I have mentioned it a few times to some people but this really sent me for a loop. I almost left the fandom on the spot, like far too many good people have done when they were burned by the toxic side of the fandom.

And honestly, if I'd lost Undertale at such a key point in my life, with my job already falling apart, and the other crap I was going through at the time, especially with the election, I cannot safely say that I'd still be here. With the friends that I wouldn't have made solid yet, I probably would have attempted suicide.

And believe me, I'm an engineer. I would not have survived. Knives, pills, guns, rope, water, heights, motor vehicles, police, fire, bleach, all are too unreliable for me. I know exactly how I would do it, if I were to ever do it.

Yeah, I know, it's not anyone's job to make sure I don't commit suicide beyond my own. People who threaten others with their own suicide are horribly manipulative. I am not threatening anyone with my suicide here. I'm not saying "ermagersh dont break up with me or ill literally kill myself" What I am saying is "X happened to me in the past and it's made me want to kill myself" Suicide baiting someone is a terrible thing to do. Accidental baiting someone is not someone's fault, as it's accidental, but generally one should try to avoid it. Very similar to triggering somebody. Don't trigger people. If you do, apologize, and do better in the future, and be more consistent about tags and crap.

Just for the record, due to that and other things that have happened to me, I know that I am not now and not ever going to die by my own hand.

Because, I stood up. I turned around. And like Captain America, I said "No. You move."

Well, in my head. I didn't actually say anything to them.

And I stayed.

And that has made all the difference.

I have a great job now that pays moderately well. I have a wonderful aspec girlfriend now. My life still sucks in so many ways but I actually oftentimes see a light at the end of the tunnel. The world is crap and it's going to get crappier but not everything will be bad forever.

Now, we get to the center of the issue, having explained some needed context.

Nonbinary Frisk and Chara.

I love nb Frisk and Chara.

I have not and will never make a Frisk or Chara that is anything but nb.

At one point, a certain Frisk was going to maybe use She/They (or He/They, hadn't decided yet) instead of just They when they became a parent, but I scrapped that idea long before any of this.

It is completely correct to use they/them pronouns when talking about Frisk and Chara in general. These are all that are used in the game itself.

The pertinent question though is does this mean that Frisk and Chara are canonically nonbinary, and what of people who make variants/instances that aren't nonbinary?

Thus far, most of the argument I've seen in favor of nonbinary being a forcible requirement is only slightly more solid than claiming that the Boss in the Saints Row series must be nonbinary, as an example.

Yes, it is true that in SR2 and later, one chooses the boss's sex.

However, they also choose a voice, and the voice doesn't necessarily have to match the physical sex. Trans and NB Bosses are completely plausible within the game's canon. All dialogue just refers to the Boss as They/Them, regardless of player choice, to the best of my knowledge. Or just refers to them as "The Boss". In SR:GOOH, Satan (yes, the literal Prince of Darkness, ruler of literal actual Hell) refers to The Boss as "They" so yeah. Anyways.

Honestly the strongest argument I've seen in favor of NB Frisk and Chara being canon is "Because NB people could use the representation!" Which boils down to "Because I said so!" Which boils down to "Because f*** you, that's why"

Now, I personally love this reasoning and I'm already on board, but with three quirks.

1. I can see why other people may not be so satisfied with this. 2. I cannot see this as an absolute requirement preventing any other possible interpretation of Frisk and Chara being okay. 3. I do not find this a remotely strong enough reasoning to condone attacking other people over it.

I personally headcanon NB Frisks and Charas being by far the dominant kind across the entire Undertale trunk. And I look across the internet at the many, many wonderful creative people who have instanced Frisk and Chara, and I see that this is so. And this is how it should be.

Frisk and Chara are excellent NB representation.

I quite firmly believe Tobyfox intended this to be so, and created them as such.

On a side note, I just found out the "my last wish for undertale is that when discussion of it fades it dies peacefully instead of morphing into a garbage cesspool" tweet was faked. Probably should've figured that out a long time ago, that's not quite how toby tweets.

...

Anyways,

https://twitter.com/UnderTale/status/644614840925978624

Tobyfox, the one who made Frisk and Chara so readily NB, who put so much NB representation into the game in general, did not ask for this. He did not create them to be sticks to beat others with. They were a gift of kindness. To say "Hey. Hey you. You matter and are important and are valid. Have two complex characters who have no indicated and strongly ambiguous gender, not even barriers blocking a particular interpretation."

Thats the kicker. No barriers blocking a particular interpretation. The road goes both ways.

Frisk and Chara were meant to be characters one identified with. "It's me, Chara." "It's you!"

Frisk and Chara ought to be NB, yes. Unless otherwise specified, they're NB.

Thing is, not everyone who plays Undertale is nb.

real shocker there yeah

Point is, hurting someone who's not nb for identifying with Chara or Frisk is on the same level of behavior as yelling at someone for being kin with the same character as someone else, or yelling at someone for selfshipping with the same character as someone else.

It's immature, unkind, greedy, and completely unnecessary. Even illogical.

Even if Frisk and Chara were real in their own timelines and not just pixels on a screen, there are an infinite number of instances and infinite number of variations of them.

Even if infinities don't appease one, and they demand to examine the situation proportion/representation-wise, NB Frisk and Chara dominate the multiverse.

And if that does not satisfy, then what will?

Even if the entire infinite expanse was filled solely with nb Charas and Frisks, and there was only one Frisk across the trunk who was not nb, because they were created by one author in memory of a cis person who played and loved Undertale and fought through the entire game reset after reset, in a fruitless effort to save Asriel, will you rip that from their hands, in the name of "equal representation"?

Will you be like David in the bible, who had more than anyone could ask for, and lost it all because he wanted one last thing? One more person to be theirs as well?

There is a song by Tool which is very relevant here.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tool/rightintwo.html

"Don't these talking monkeys know that Eden has enough to go around? Plenty in this holy garden, silly monkeys, Where there's one you're bound to divide it. Right in two."

I'm sorry, but I cannot condone vitriol over this. I cannot condone such hateful attitude and behaviors.

Just like the antifa who was punched by another antifa at a protest because they judged them by mere appearance to be a fascist, hatred doesn't accomplish anything.

There are times and places when due to the actions of other people, there is no valid choice remaining but violence.

This is seen in Undertale. Even when attempting to run a True Pacifist route, one has to beat down Asgore, and/or Flowey. This was seen back in WWII. We could not allow the Axis powers to enslave the world and murder whomever they wished.

This is not the case here.

Yes, there are those who purposely seek to misgender Frisks and Charas all around. Such folks correctly are rebuffed and banished to the shadows. And people who argue that Frisk or Chara canonically have to be a boy or girl really need to find a new hobby.

Those, if anyone, are the enemy. The lost, clueless, angry, bitter enemy, who need to be talked to and brought into the fold of those who know better, in true Undertale MERCY fashion. Or, if they will not listen, to be sent away, and blocked if harassment continues.

Random creatives on the internet who create a Frisk or Chara, maybe modelled after themselves, maybe after someone else, doens't matter, anyways, who happen to create one that isn't NB are not the enemy. Some young unlearned cis 12 year old who wants to be like Frisk and thinks Frisk is just like them, or that they are Frisk, and has little involvement with NB matters, or perhaps just hasn't yet heard of or seen how well NB and Chara and Frisk go together, is not the enemy.

NB folk have a lot of very, very real enemies. We have a long way to go as a species. Please, do not make up enemies where there are none.

I ask anyone who attacks others solely for having a different idea of Chara and Frisk's gender to please reconsider.

Please, spread NB Frisks and Charas all around the net. Let them enter the hearts of everyone who can appreciate this beautiful game. Not through anger and aggression, but through love and kindness and patience.

If you cannot abide my having such a stance on this, Mel, then I suppose this is farewell if you must break off all contact. And if you must leave, you may keep that commission money, whether or not you ever finish the art.

Thank you to anyone who reads the entirety of my words.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

2017 Re-Watch: 5x03 - Four Walls and a Roof

Okay, weirdest thing ever but I don’t seem to have done a rewatch post for 5x03 last year. I have no idea why. I couldn’t find it on my Tumblr account, and though I must have just accidentally deleted it. But I went back through my IG account, and it isn’t there either. So I don’t know if I just forgot and skipped that episode, or decided not to because I didn’t see anything important in it (that doesn’t sound like me and I don’t remember thinking that or anything) but it’s definitely not there. So this isn’t a repost, but a new one, simply because I don’t seem to have anything to repost for this episode.

Luckily, the events of this episode are pretty straight forward. Bob is returned to TF, legless, and he dies. And TF kills the Termites. That really is pretty much everything that happens in this episode.

It’s kind of the epitome of the TF’s brutality arc. There’s some brutality before, and there will be more after, but this is the pinnacle of it, and I am seeing ties between this episode and 5x16, where the brutality arc more or less ends.

On that subject, I think the title, and how they relate it to the episode is interesting. After they kill the Termites (very brutally) Father Gabriel emerges from the back room and says, “this is God’s house,” implying that such atrocities shouldn’t be committed there of all places. Then Maggie replies, “No. It’s just four walls and a roof.” I think that goes well with the brutality arc. The sacred places are being violated, and TF as a whole is in a very dark place/frame of mind. I also can’t help but see it as the religion being taken away from TF, by their own actions. And Beth, the epitome of Christian symbolism, is taken from them only four episodes later. Just saying.

Okay, let’s get going.

Gareth talks about the glass breaking eventually (Broken Glass Theory) and about how “nothing lasts anymore,” which I think is also an overall theme for the show. This is why none of their communities will ever last forever. Something will always happen eventually to make them fall. *coughs we never saw the downfall of Grady*

He also gives a bear analogy to explain why they’re cannibals. I’ll have to think on that some more. I know we’ve seen some very subtle bear symbols, specifically in S7. Perhaps we should have been tying them back to Terminus, but I don’t think we ever did. We just noticed the recurrence. Hmmm.

Sasha’s line to Father Gabriel stands out to me here. “You show up, we’re being watched, and now three of us are gone." 

The three was what really caught my attention. I’ll have to talk to a few of my fellow theorists about it, but it seems to me there have been theories about three major deaths before Beth’s return. A few possibilities occur to me here. It could have foreshadowed the rest of S5. We saw Bob, Beth’s, and Tyreese’s deaths here. And notice that she doesn’t say three of us are dead, but three of us are gone, which parallels, "She’s just gone.”

In S7 we also saw three big character deaths (Glenn, Abe, Sasha) and Sasha even says three of “us.” Also we have three missing characters right now: Beth, Heath, Sherry. So this definitely could foreshadow a lot. Not to mention, almost right after she says this, Bob is returned to them (proxy for Beth) and it follows some whistling (Whistle Theory) which foreshadows the Saviors who did the epic whistle in 6x16 just before Negan appeared.

I also think there’s a definite parallel between Sasha nearly attacking FG in this episode bc she doesn’t know where Bob is, and her actually attacking him in 5x16. 

In both cases, they’re in a church, both in a lot of pain, and both dealing with a lot of guilt. I think it probably shows the beginning and ending of an arc, which is why the mirror scenes. Starting in 6x01, we first see Gabriel actually being helpful to TF, rather than a hindrance. And we see a lot less anger and brutality from Sasha. Incidentally, 6x01 also kicks off Sashraham. Once she’d moved past this immense anger and guilt (which starts here with Bob’s death) she was able to move forward in a romantic relationship with Abraham.

Other great, thematic dialogue:

Rick: “We’re not going anywhere without our people.” He says several variations of this, talking about not wanting to leave Daryl and Carol behind. He says unequivocally that they’ll be back. That they don’t leave people behind. Perhaps a foreshadow that, later in S5, they’ll leave SOMEone behind?

Abraham: “Come noon, we’re taillights. (Taillight Theory) Not waiting for the other shoe to drop.” (Lost Shoes Theory). Lines like this just make me smile.

We see a heavy connection between Sasha and Ty as siblings, which is super important as we head toward the missing stuff after Coda, followed by Ty’s death.

Ty talks about how he knows what Sasha is going through because of Karen. He says, “forgiveness is facing it,” which I think is really beautiful, especially in light of The Grove. Sasha completely rejects the notion, though, and this is the beginning of her anger/brutality arc.

Some random details: We see red carpet prominently in the shot where Gareth and the Termites enter the church. Foreshadow that they’re about to die.

There’s a sign I love that it shows next to Eugene during this part. It reads, “Stupidity is also a gift from God but one mustn’t misuse it." 

Makes me laugh. I think it’s a funny reference to how stupid the Termites are being. They totally fell for Rick’s leaving-the-church fake out. Could also be a foreshadow for Eugene. He stupidly decides to "become Negan” in S7.

Gareth has some foreshadowing for TF here as well. “You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry.” This was fulfilled in 5x10 when they had to go so long without food before eating the dogs. But I really like this because it shows that even when they were subject to the same things Gareth and the Termites were, they didn’t become the monsters they were. Aaron even comments on it in 5x11 saying that he was impressed the group never turned on one another, despite their hunger, desperation, and being surrounded by monsters.

The clock in Bob’s room. This is super important and I’ve been talking to some fellow theorists about it. It reads 8:40, which points to something in episode 8x08, which will be the MSF finale of this coming season. Now, on the surface, that doesn’t make much sense. Both Bob and Sasha are dead now, so what’s this pointing to?

We think it has to do with the whole “good out of the bad” game that Bob and Sasha always played. They made a big deal about that game. The last thing Sasha says to Bob is, “what’s the good that comes out of this bad?” Meaning his death. Bob dies before answering, so Sasha is left to wonder and grieve.

At the end of S7, we can see that one good thing that came directly from Bob’s death was Sasha sacrificing herself for TF in 7x16. This is another cause and effect thing. Her anger everything led to her relationship with Abraham. His death led to her mission to kill Negan (it’s way more complicated than that, and there’s way more detail, but I’ll probably give it its own post later). Because of that, she gave them a chance to fight another day.

But I’m wondering if there’s more to it than that as well. Maybe we’ll finally understand something in 8x08 that will make Sasha’s entire arc resonate in a way it hasn’t yet because we don’t yet have all the missing information. In other words, I think Sasha’s question here will be answered in 8x08. Just a theory, though.

Also important to note that 8x08 will be exactly 3 seasons since Coda, so it could point to a Beth thing as well. 

I also want to point out that in this pic, there’s a cross, and what looks like an egg shaped stone holding a page open on a bible. All kinds of biblical symbolism going on there. Including, perhaps, an Easter egg?

I realized a major pattern from this episode: no one ever “puts down” their romantic partners. In this case, it was a conscious decision. Ty didn’t want Sasha to have to stab Bob in the head, so he did it for her. In other cases, it was largely out of the characters’ hands. Rick didn’t put down Lori. Neither Lori nor Andrea put down Shane. Rick also didn’t put down Jessie. Ty certainly didn’t put down Karen, nor she him. And of course Sasha’s love interests both died before her, so Maggie and Jesus put her down. Don’t know if we could tie that to Beth (we don’t think anyone put her down, so it’s kind of a moot point) but just something interesting that occurred to me.

Important to note that Bob and even the Termites get a burial. We first see the D.C. map here, which is an important symbol and will eventually bring Morgan to TF.

Finally, @boltthrutheheart pointed out an interesting detail from the end to me. Rick asks Ty how it was for him, getting to Terminus. Ty replies, “It killed me.” A very sad line, and to me, definitely a foreshadow of his death. Everything that happened on the way to Terminus (Lizzie, Mica, Martin, and now Bob) contribute to his guilt and he muses on them while dying.

Actually, now I’m writing this, something else occurs to me. The only two aspects of Ty’s hallucinations that DON’T occur between the prison and this moment with Rick are the Gov and Beth. The Gov is about Ty’s roots and reaches all the way back to S3, along with numerous other arcs that are still going right now. But how does Beth fit in? She’s kind of the one odd thing in that hallucination that doesn’t entirely fit. At least, not as well as the others.

To me, it’s just more evidence that things happened we haven’t seen yet.

But anyway, the other thing @boltthrutheheart pointed out was that Tyreese refusing to change led to his death. And he even proclaims it here, as though he’s having a premonition or something. “It killed me.”

In Beth’s time with Daryl, she proclaimed over and over again that she deserved to be alive. That she had changed. “I made it.” “I am strong.” “I’m getting out.” So it becomes an anti-parallel and in many ways an anti-foreshadowing. Great catch!

Okay, I think that’s it for this episode. Anyone have anything to add?