#Their gender is so complex for beings who discovered read and write

[schrondingers-dumbass]

Catching up to burrow’s end and just now realized that the stoats of Last Bast are not only incredibly advanced, they also discovered gender idiology.

The stoats have pronouns, good for them!

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game… and thankfully people can also submit their summaries of games they played and help me (and others) find games that cater to their interests!

submitted by @lairofsentinel

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from HARMONY: The Fall of Reverie

Mysterious Visual Novel game, focused on branching options.

This game was developed by Don’t Nod, the same studio who did Life Is Strange, Vampyr, Tell Me Why, or Banishers. All these games are stronger in their stories and characters mostly.

Choices are the strongest aspect of this game that play like a narrative-puzzle.

There is an inner currency related to Power, Chaos, Bliss, Glory, Bond, and Truth. Each choice you pick, it takes or gives you some of these currencies. The amount of each of them unlocks paths and options. This system sometimes clashes with the playability.

No customization of the main character: You play Polly, a woman who returns to her childhood home.

Characters are quite diverse, racially speaking, in age, and in their gender/sexuality.

It has two romance options: a man and a non-binary person [so far I played]. But it doesn’t focus on it. Its resolution is basically at the end.

This game has a strong focus on characters, the choices you pick, and how these alter their relationships.

It's a game that reminds you of Sandman and The Longest Journey.

The writing is good. All dialogues between characters are voiced in an emotional way. However, the narrator is not voiced.

It has accessibility options for dyslexia.

Multiple endings. So, it has high re-playability. It has a demo.

It’s a game that treats heavy topics: anti-fascism, anti-capitalism, anti-corporate states, depression, loss, grief, and violence [in terms of fighting corporations]. It’s a politically strong story without being preachy, with a plot that treats the danger of the corporate-states, the need for revolution, the types of revolutions, and its social consequences. These topics of the main story are knitted with the inner conflicts of the characters and their needs, desires, and relationships.

Unfortunately, the endings are the weakest aspect of this game in my opinion, considering all the beautiful, complex built situations along the story. Despite its limitations with a system that doesn’t work well when the story gets more complex, it’s a game very thought-provoking due to the topics it treats.

Short game of around 10 hours.

——- Plot? ——-

You play Polly, a young adult woman who returns to her home-town in an island to find how much everything has changed. Her mother is missing, and a giant corporation called MK has monopolised every service, entertainment, supply chain, etc in the isle. Polly discovers she has a connection to the Reverie, another plane of existence inhabited by the Aspirations, creatures that are quite similar to the Endless from Sandman, who claim to have a greater connection to the events in the real world. They embody six aspirations: Bliss, Power, Bond, Truth, Chaos, and Glory. You have to investigate what happened with Polly’s mother by jumping between universes and interacting with all the characters.

——- Gameplay? ——- 

Basically, it focused on choices. As the story progresses, you have access to branched choices that you can foresee to some degree [Polly has the power of seeing the future in a short-term]. As you pick options, you obtain crystals related to the six Aspirations that work like an inner currency in the game: they allow you to have a track of what you need to unlock desired options in the future. Choices have requirements [amount of certain type of crystal needed] and rewards [additional crystals or unlocked options]. In case it causes some confusion: there is no grinding in this game. The currency is obtained and subtracted through the choices you pick along the story.

——- Characters? ——- 

A lot. You play Polly, who has a complex, unconventional family with an elderly mother in an open relationship, her step-father who brought his trans granddaughter to the house, and several neighbours that can stay as mere acquaintance or develop deeper into friends or romance interests.

At the same time, you have six more characters in the parallel universe of Reverie: Bliss, Power, Bond, Truth, Chaos, and Glory. These characters are the embodiment of what their name represents, reminding us to the Endless from Sandman.

 ——- LGBT? ——-

Many characters are queer. There are trans [binary and non-binary] characters, a lesbian couple, and an open relationship couple, so far I played.

——- Sadness level? ——- 

Some level, depending on the choices. Some characters can die, and Polly passes through some stages of grief.

——- Happy ending? Deaths? ——-

There are some potential deaths depending on your choices. Endings depend on your choices.

[mightyflamethrower]

Between 1939 and 1945, around 10% of concentration camp guards were women, yet these Aufseherinnen (overseers) as they were known, barely feature in Holocaust history or literature. On the few occasions they do appear, it is most commonly as a masculinised sadist when the reality was much more complex.

I first became interested in the Aufseherinnen after reading a New York Times article about Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan, the first person to be extradited from America for Nazi war crimes, and decided to write a novel around her story. In the camps she earned the nickname “the Mare” – which would become the title of my novel – because she was known to kick prisoners to death. After the war, she fled to Vienna and faded into obscurity.

In 1957, American engineer Russell Ryan met Braunsteiner while holidaying in Austria. She did not tell him about her past. They fell in love, married and moved to New York, where they lived quiet lives until she was tracked down by Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. Russell could not believe she had been a Nazi concentration camp guard. His wife, he said, “would not hurt a fly”.

Despite discovering everything Braunsteiner had done, Russell Ryan stuck by her through her extradition, trial and imprisonment – she was sentenced to life in 1981 and served 15 years in a German prison before being released on medical grounds in 1996. Hermine Braunsteiner died in 1999 at the age of 79.

The questions this story raised led me to a doctorate at the University of Sydney, in which I examined the history and representation of the Aufseherinnen. My new novel The Mare is the result of this work.

Women and brutality

In the post-war years, the overwhelming narrative was that all German women were victims of Nazism. The Aufseherinnen did not conform to the categorisation, so were written off as gender-defying monsters. For example, in Charlotte Delbo’s memoir Auschwitz and After:

All along the Lagerstrasse, a double row of the camp’s female personnel, SS women, female prisoners wearing armbands and blouses of every color and every rank, stood there, armed with walking sticks, clubs, straps, belts, lashes, whips, ready to flail and scourge whatever passed between the two rows.

Another post-war trope was to link female guards to sexual deviance. In Five Chimneys: The True Chronicle of a Woman Who Survived Auschwitz, Olga Lengyel depicts Aufseherin Irma Grese (who was a guard at Birkenau and Belsen) in a sexualised, predatory way:

The beautiful Irma Griese [sic] advanced toward the prisoners with a swinging gait, her hips in play, and the eyes of forty thousand wretched women, mute and motionless, upon her … The mortal terror which her presence inspired visibly pleased her … Those who, despite hunger and torture, still evidenced a glimmer of their former physical beauty were the first to be taken. They were Irma Griese’s special targets.

Grese appears again in Martin Amis’ novel, The Zone of Interest, published in 2014. Amis combines the caricature of the masculine woman with the pornography of Stalag fiction that proliferated in Israel in the 1950s and 1960s:

I found I was gazing at Ilse with all the freshness of discovery: the strong legs mannishly wide-planted, the hefty trunk in a black serge uniform gullibly studded with signs and symbols – lightning flash, eagle, broken cross.

In the 1960s, a more complex understanding of Holocaust perpetrators beyond innate sadists began to emerge. German historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the Eichmann trial in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, concluded that Adolf Eichmann was driven by “sheer thoughtlessness”, an unquestioning detachment from his evil acts.

Historian Christopher Browning expanded this theory in his book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, outlining other motivating factors: job security, peer pressure, acclimatisation to violence, being plied with alcohol.

In his book Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, author and academic Daniel Goldhagen disagreed, finding “eliminationist antisemitism” the main cause of genocide.

Historians Claudia Koonz and Gisela Bock extended this discussion into female perpetration, in what became known as the Historikerinnenstreit (quarrel among female historians). Koonz (an American) asserted that German women were complicit in the Holocaust, while Bock (a German) insisted they had no power beyond the domestic sphere.

The truth is less binary. While Nazism was indeed sexist, women were undoubtedly involved in perpetration.

The only literary portrait of an Aufseherin in any depth is Hanna Schmitz in Bernhard Schlink’s award-winning novel The Reader. Hanna’s illiteracy is a metaphor for the “unthinkingness” of Nazi crimes discussed by Arendt. However, Schlink gives us no access to Hanna’s consciousness, so any other motivation remains a mystery.

German historians such as Sabine Arend and Simone Erpel have begun to explore the Aufseherinnen with nuance. It’s now thought most were ordinary women who took the job for the high pay but, once in the camps, acclimatised fast to brutality. Political prisoner Germaine Tillion describes the speed of this process in her memoir Ravensbrück:

One little Aufseherin, twenty years old, who had so little knowledge that she said “excuse me” when walking in front of a prisoner, and who was visibly frightened by the first round of brutality she saw, needed exactly four days to adjust her tone and procedures, although it was totally new to her.

This historical nuance does not exist yet in fiction. Robert Eaglestone hypothesises that writers “swerve” away from perpetrator ordinariness, afraid they will be accused of sympathising with the devil.

I attempt to address this in my work because, as Zygmunt Bauman wrote in Modernity and the Holocaust: “The most frightening news brought about by the Holocaust and by what we learned of its perpetrators was not the likelihood that ‘this’ could be done to us, but the idea that we could do it.”

The true horror of genocide is found in the similarity between us and the perpetrators, not in the difference.

[i-was-a-teenage-eldritch-horror]

Hi! So I'm rewatching Evangelion and just discovered this section of the fandom (including some of the other accounts you've mentioned in the past). I'm reading through a lot of critiques of Shinji (that I agree with) and gender in the show, but I'm sort of confused on what you think the show critiques and what y'all think the show is bad at? Like, if you talk about how Shinji acts towards Asuka in EoE, is that to a detriment of the film and you feel like it wasn't resolved?

Wrt gender, the show extensively critiques Shinji's misogyny, especially in end of eva. However, this can sometimes be difficult to spot for the first time viewer (especially if they're coming off of less complex media) because so much of the show is from Shinji's POV, and of course he justifies this to himself!

I'll go on record stating that I think end of eva is basically a perfect film, I wouldn't change a thing about it. You can argue it both ways wrt if Shinji's treatment of Asuka is resolved or not. I think the film would lose a lot if the most disturbing scenes (hospital scene, hell kitchen scene, and the beach scene) were removed. They're not detrimental, they're integral. Because the thing is, the show had been building up to these scenes showing us how Shinji objectified Asuka. Just go and rewatch episode 8 and 9, it's there from the start. But even before that, Shinji is making wackass misogynistic comments to Misato from episode 1. Is Shinji's treatment of Asuka resolved? Kind of? I'm erring on the side of no, because the last thing he does is collapse onto Asuka and start crying. But also I don't think that makes the ending of the film bad.

The main thing about asking if eva treats the women and girls in a misogynistic way is that, well, is this misogynistic writing or is it just writing that's true to life? I grew up in a home where my mom's life was habitually in peril, I'm no stranger to this stuff.

Asuka is repeatedly beaten down by the narrative -- the narrative allows Rei to get even with Shinji in a way that it refuses to Asuka. I wrote a post about this some time ago that you may have read. Even though Rei's situation is objectively worse than Asuka's the narrative respects her and uplifts her more.

Then there's Misato, who is complex yet also kind of sloppily written. But "complex" and "sloppy" in some ways are basically synonyms. What do I mean by this? Misato has the Electra Complex thing going on with her dad and Kaji. And then you also have her assault and weirdly seductive relationship with Shinji. So, you have two major, major flaws in her character. Then add the fact that Misato is at once attracted to her dad and becoming her dad. THEN add the thing with Shinji into the mix and things get super weird and messy. Because one thing eva excels at is that you can analyze characters through other characters (I have a post about this in the works), so it's like...was Misato's dad predatory towards her? Her seductive relationship with Shinji would suggest that. But the key word is "suggest" -- there's nothing outright in the show that states this. But there also doesn't have to be? It's A Lot, and there are lots of things in the show that are never explicitly stated yet are obvious.

Personally, I have analyzed the show's writing choices before in a sense of human beings sat down and decided to write these events into the show. That's necessary and valid, but looking at eva in-universe, I'm more inclined to interpret these events and traits as simply being true to life.

As far as more surface level critiques, the way the women and girls are drawn at times is just so yucky and objectifying that it really gets in the way of the show's attempts to develop these characters. Much of the nudity is unnecessary -- Utena tells a similar story focusing on abuse with only a fraction of it. However, I also really think people should quit huffing Utena and Ikuhara's farts. Utena also suffers from patriarchal entrapment, there's a good essay on ohtori.nu about it.

Does this make sense? It's ok if not. But I hope it does!

[butchreg]

Omg I love your page SO MUCH OMG😭 it’s like the best thing I have ever discovered and I love everything you write I literally read all your arcane stuff🤭 I do have one question tho can I ask why you write vi as a boy and use he/him a lot. I dont want to be rude just curious

i don't :C i have made it clear he is a butch lesbian :C i've said it before but i see a lot of myself in vi and as a gnc butch who uses he him pronouns i see vi as the same. also with vi canonically being a butch who binds i personally see that as transmasc vi and use that as fuel for my he him vi thoughts. i have lots of complex thoughts on why i view vi in this way but it primarily just ties into butchness and gender queerness relating to being lesbian and furthermore being butch. it may be hard to explain to an outsider but being butch is a complex and layered identity and many butches such as myself and vi ( to me ) use he him pronouns as a way to express butchness and masculinity while subverting traditional gender norms and expectations. it's a way to challenge society's view of femininity and womanhood while also feeling more authentic to many butches to be referred to with typical "male" pronouns despite not being male.

[biggestsimp12]

I saw your comment about my "last" request so I rose again in confidence!(I thought that line better in my head)

Btw, I like the way you write characters and dont neglect their way of lifestyle, etc. Keep it up.

Can I get Akane Toriyasu with a gender neutral reader that is the opposite of her? Idk, I just really love Opposites Attract dynamics. :)

The reader doesn't have to be aggressive or violent btw, just.. different from her. For example, If Akane's known for being sweet and friendly, then the reader is known for being calm and maybe nonchalant/timid?? Both their styles and lifestyles are different.

I would like to think that the reader prefers to hang out with Akane when there's not so many people around and she doesn't have any duties in that moment, or maybe visit her during her patrolling sometimes. Who knows? :)

Thank you(for the fourth time) and have a good day/night!

Of course! I'm glad you like the way I write, I always make sure to read about the character before I write as I like making the character, well, the character lol. As for request, Sure, I like the idea. Though it has been confirmed Akane is sadistic and the kind and friendly attitude is only a facade. So I might add that a little bit to the dynamic if you don't mind! I'll make this headcanons as I have too many ideas to put up in a story as it will be waaaay to long lol. Enough with my yapping, let's get this fic started! <3

--–—

Akane Toriyasu x Opposite! Genderneutral Reader!

–—--

--–—

They met in unlikely circumstances, perhaps in a situation where the reader's calm and composed demeanor contrasted sharply with Akane's warm and bubbly personality. The reader initially found Akane's friendly and outgoing nature overwhelming but soon began to appreciate her sunny demeanor. Conversely, Akane was drawn to the reader's calm and reserved presence.

Despite their calm demeanor, the reader often found themself feeling jealous of Akane's effortless ability to make friends and draw attention. However, they concealed this jealousy behind a facade of nonchalance, pretending like it didn't bother them. They acted tough and uninterested, but deep down, they yearned for the kind of popularity and easiness that Akane seemed to have.

Initially, the reader had a low opinion of Akane, dismissing her as a cheerful airhead. However, as they spent more time with her, their perspective began to shift. They started to see beneath her bubbly exterior and discovered a more complex and intelligent side of Akane. Slowly but surely, they found themselves falling for her, despite their different personalities.

What Akane found most intriguing about the reader was their cool and aloof demeanor, which she perceived as evidence of an apathetic and detached personality similar to her true self. Unaware of the reader's true nature, Akane felt instantly drawn to them and was intrigued by the perceived mystery surrounding their character.

After spending more time together, the reader finally gathered the courage to confess their feelings to Akane. Surprisingly, Akane reciprocated the feelings, and the two began dating. Initially, both Akane and the reader were hesitant to reveal their true natures to each other, keeping their darker sides hidden from their newfound partner.

As their relationship deepened, Akane gradually came to understand that the reader wasn't as aloof and apathetic as they had initially appeared. Although she continued to keep her secrets hidden as a means to shield the reader from her dark side, she loved them deeply and wanted to protect their relationship.

As Akane spent more time with the reader, she noticed that they seemed to prefer hanging out with her when there were fewer people around. This worked out for Akane, as she was also happiest when she didn't have to put on her usual cheerful and sweet persona. As long as the reader was comfortable, Akane was happy to be with them in more private settings.

From time to time, the sly reader would sneak up on Akane while she was on patrol, intending to surprise her. On one occasion, they approached her unannounced, causing Akane to reflexively reach for her pepper spray. Fortunately for the reader, they ducked at the last moment, narrowly avoiding being sprayed. Akane was both startled and amused by the reader's playful antics.

From time to time, the reader started to leave small gifts in Akane's school shoes as a way of expressing their affection. However, Akane would often miss these gifts, occasionally accidentally destroying them. While she understood the sentiment, she wasn't always fond of the surprise gifts, sometimes scolding the reader for hiding things in her shoes. Despite her mild annoyance, deep down, she secretly enjoyed the thoughtfulness and effort behind the gestures.

The reader secretly marveled at Akane's beautiful eyes, captivated by their sparkling, vivid color. However, they were too shy to ask her directly to show them more often. Instead, they took every opportunity to steal glances at her eyes during their private moments together, silently wishing they had the confidence to express their admiration.

The reader couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy when they saw Akane surrounded by a crowd of admirers. Despite understanding the nature of her friendly and extroverted personality, deep down, they longed to have Akane's undivided attention. Although they didn't outwardly show their jealousy, it occasionally caused them a flicker of frustration and sadness, to which they were definitely teased for.

After a moment of vulnerability, Akane admitted her true self to the reader, confessing that she harbored sadistic tendencies. Expecting the reader to react with shock or disgust, she was pleasantly surprised when they responded with understanding and acceptance, acknowledging that everyone had their quirks and flaws. The reader's unwavering acceptance and kindness towards her made Akane feel both relieved and loved.

–—--

The end <333

--–—

Hii, i hope you liked it as I'm scared i didn't do it well lol. I initially intended to write this as soon as you gave me the question but last night i got hacked on my roblox ac and lost some of my sister's stuff, which made me extremly angry and lose all motivation. But, I pulled myself up, contacted roblox and moved on a bit just to write! Have a nice day/night!

[mythawolf]

Remember my assassin’s creed Tudor era post? I decided to make an OC. Tbh I’m more pleased with the ‘hoodless’ image than the rest of it lol. I did spend all day on this on IbispaintX though so be nice.

She’s a bit of a WIP. I’ll post an updated and more detailed character sheet sometime.

Name: Alice Aigle

Gender: Female

Age: 17-22

Time period: Mid to late Elizabethan England

Occupation: Master Assassin (by default), Lady-in-waiting.

Affiliation: Assassin Brotherhood (English branch).

Personality: Jittery, over-cautious and nervous when it comes to Assassin missions when she first starts out (grows more confident as time goes on), and also has an acid wit and sarcasm not unlike that of Edmund Blackadder. Despite this she is kind towards her friends and allies. Has a tendency to overthink things.

Quote: “I send you a message two months ago to fortify your defences, and here you are, snoozing while your blooming servants and useless guards help Templars carry off your valuables! I suppose you don’t want me to assist by giving your jewels a kick! Well?”

Likes: Peace and quiet, science, teaching, cards, books, painting, cats, blanket burritos.

Dislikes: Loud noises, itchy sensations, London’s part of the river Thames, William Shakespeare’s plays.

Backstory: A descendant of one of Henry VIII’s illegitimate children, Alice’s mother was the grandmaster of the English Brotherhood and even helped put Elizabeth 1 on the throne. Being minor nobility, she grew up in a country house near a village, where the family enjoyed an unusual relationship with the villagers - one of friendship.

However, spies in the Brotherhood lured the Chapter to an ambush at the pretence of discovering a Templar plot to conquer Europe and with the help of several other Templars, massacred the lot of them. Alice’s mother escaped, but was soon hunted down and shot with a Templar crossbow bolt. As she lay dying in Alice’s arms, she told her to look in the chest in her room. After the funeral, Alice looked and found:

-An ‘if you’re reading this, I’m dead’ letter from her mother.

-A book on the Assassin Brotherhood.

-A hidden blade with a hidden pistol (which she broke by mistake).

Thrust into this new life and feeling like she had to rebuild it for the good of the people of England, Alice cobbled together a makeshift Assassin outfit shortly before getting a letter from the Queen - she had been given a job offer as a Lady-in-waiting (which, to those who don’t know, was a paid friend to a rich Lady - particularly Queens). This was done partly because they were related, partly because she felt sorry for the girl, and partly to keep an eye on her, as she had had a somewhat complex relationship with Alice’s mother.

To summarise, at this time of writing the canon is that she’s-teaching herself assassin skills, managing Lady-in-waiting duties, and trying to fight the Templar order all by herself! No pressure, then!

[nightrazor3242]

Decided to finally post Nightrazor's lore on here! It's not too detailed, I wanted to keep it short but I might add on to it as I go. If you have any suggestions or questions feel free to let me know!

Introduction:

Nightrazor is a long-thought-out OC of mine, originally I created her back in 2019 under the name Wildfire, this was during my Transformer Prime obsession, and her name would later change to Nightrazor after I discovered IDW. Since then I have given her a complex lore, including a book I am still writing as of now. This essay is a much simpler lore, made for people who are interested to read. (None of my friends or family are Transformers fans so I'm super hyped to share!)

Basic Info:

Name: Nightrazor (initially Nightwing)

Gender: Femme/ Female (She/Her)

Faction: Mercenary

Age: Around the same age as Megatron (IDW)

Hight: Same height as Drift (IDW)

Skills: Combat Proficiency, Survival, resourcefulness, Tactical Planning, Stealth, and Infiltration.

Weaknesses: Short temper, impatience, lack of empathy, refusing help of any kind, and vengefulness.

Personality: Nightrazor comes off as stoic and cold. Small talk? Unnecessary and annoying. Bonding? How about no. She refuses to let her walls down even just a little, no matter who it is. She tends to blow up when agitated often resorting to violence depending on her mood and who you are. Deep-seated hatred for both Decepticons and Autobots.

Hobbies: She enjoys working on her ship, experimenting with modifications, or fine-tuning her own systems in her spare time (This includes her combat training). Being a flyer she heavily enjoys zipping around in her alt mode, high in the skies. She also keeps a log of all of her missions, each log is very detailed, and even Ultra Magnus would be impressed.

Moral: Loyalty to oneself.

Deepest fear: Loss of autonomy, anything threatening her independence such as being captured, controlled, or experimented on (She refuses any medical attention, she will tend to her own wounds).

Nightrazor

Before the war:

Born during the golden age of Cybertron, Nightwing of Vos transported cargo along with her fellow consignors, she took care of the orders and helped organize the cargo for send-off. Although she was just a simple transporter she prioritized helping others in need, on several occasions she helped fellow Cybertronians out of poverty and gave them a job aboard her ship, because of this she made several close friends. One of these friends was named Echo (This is my friend’s OC that I am currently redesigning) Nightwing had saved him several eons ago, and since then the two had been inseparable. Overall Nightwing was a sweet and outgoing bot, going out of her way to help others but still taking no shit, she taught many bots how to navigate through life with a clear mind and strong spark, and many looked up to her as a mentor.

Beginning of the war:

During the fall of the golden age, Nightwing and her crew became very paranoid, the fear of a civil war plagued everyone, but as it was they all still had work to due. Soon the Decepticons began to take over Cybertron and with it, the Autobots fought against them, finally, the war broke out. Nightwing and her crew were off-world when the war broke out, unable to reach her commanding officer they turned back to Cybertron to see what was going on, a detrimental mistake. Upon arrival, the ship was instantly targeted and fired at by Decepticon troops, during the panic Echo had managed to steal the ship's only escape pod leaving his friends and mentor to die. When the ship finally crash-landed it killed nearly everyone on impact, but amongst the rubble Nightwing held on to her life by a thread. Decepticons soon scavenged through the wreckage taking anything of value, eventually, they stumbled across Nightwing, and due to her showing signs of life, the troops took her in. Nightwing was initially relieved to be rescued not knowing the horrors she would soon face.

Nightrazors Genesis:

When Nightwing was brought to a Decepticon medical ward she was fixed and repaired, during the repair a few scientists noticed her abnormal spark patterns, and after further investigations, they discovered Nightwing had outlier abilities. Something she had hidden very well, was her ability to blend into shadows and completely shut off her spark signal making her undetectable. Because of this discovery, Nightwing was handed over to the science ward, where they did numerous tests, and experiments, wanting to harness outlier abilities for the Decepticon cause. At the start of this torture Nightwing was horrified, why were they doing this to her? Were they going to kill her? Was anyone going to save her? Would she die here? Over time Nightwing came to accept no one was coming for her, she was alone, and this angered her, greatly, after building her life around helping others and taking in those in need, when she was the one who needed help the most, no one came. Days turned into months, and eventually, Nightwing escaped, stealing a small Decepticon ship she fled Cybertron. She rebuilt herself, not only physically but mentally, changing her name to Nightrazor she vowed no one would dare hurt her again without the consequence of death.

Later on, Nighrazor became a mercenary, originally the job was going to be temporary, she just needed the money to fix her ship and buy some weaponry, but over time the job stuck. Nightrazor was well hidden from other bots, no one knew what she looked like or where she was, they just knew she was a mercenary, effective and deadly.

[wahlpaper]

Radio Silence Review

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman

CW: Suicidal Thoughts, Abusive Parent, Animal Death, Underage Drinking, School Stress, Depression, Arson, Death Theeats, Toxic Internet Culture, Stalking, Unhealthy Weight Loss, Positive References to Harry Potter and Scott Pilgrim, Anxiety, Racism, Queerphobia, Classism, Fire Injury

5/5

I've wanted to read Alice Oseman's Radio Silence for quite a while, but it was the most recent season of Heartstopper that motivated me to read it now. If you're familiar with Oseman, you might know that all of their stories are set in the same universe. You may also know that they don't always connect to each other. I had assumed that Aled (a character in the Heartstopper comic and Radio Silence) was renamed Issac for the show. When I realized his story was very different, I looked into why. Aled was left out in hopes that Radio Silence will get an adaptation. So, if you were wondering, you do not need to be familiar with Heartstopper to understand and enjoy Radio Silence. The story takes place after and is very much its own thing!

In Radio Silence, Frances Janvier is head girl of her school and achieving top grades. She's on track to go to Cambridge, but she's been missing out on a fulfilling social life because of it. The only two things she does in her free time are art and listen to a podcast called "Universe City". When she accidentally finds out that she knows the anonymous creator of the podcast, she starts to help with the show and get close to him. This is Aled Last, a depressed boy with an abusive mother and a missing twin sister. Time spent with Frances allowed both of them to embrace their true selves. Unfortunately, the problems in Aled's life may be too much for their friendship.

Being used to Heartstopper and Loveless, both by Oseman, I was unprepared for how dark Radio Silence was. While no main characters die, there are feelings of hopelessness and fear that can affect a reader. It's the first book I've needed a reading break from since Jennette McCurdy's memoir. In addition to the topics I've already mentioned, this book covers racism, single parent-hood, mental illness, flaws in the education system, suicidal thoughts, toxic internet culture, and stalking. The topics are all handled quite well, I just wish I had read a content warning going into it. For me, it helps to prepare for what I'm about to read instead of going in blind. All reading needs are valid!

The thing that drew me to Oseman in the first place was their inclusion of asexuality. While you do not need to be ace yourself to write ace characters, I do see it as a nice bonus. Being ace, Oseman tends to include that rep in most of their books. Over the course of Radio Silence, Aled discovers that he is on the asexual spectrum. It's something he's afraid to share as he doesn't know how others will react. I've had this same fear every time I've started being interested in someone new. Seeing realistic representation of my identity will always feel rewarding.

Oseman is great at writing varied and authentic queer identities. Aled is also into guys and potentially gender fluid. The podcast he creates often pulls from his own life and the main character of it is gender fluid. Frances knows she's bisexual before the book starts. She doesn't get a romance arc in this book, so it's not a big part of the plot, it's just a part of who she is. There's also a gay character and a lesbian character. Queer people flock together and it's clear that Oseman knows this.

I think that Radio Silence is mostly written very well! The pacing allowed the book to take up many months and feel like it. Every mysterious part of the story was revealed at the right time. The characters were all complex and interesting. The messages all got across. What I struggled with was how Frances was telling the story. Though it's all from her point of view at some time in the future, this feels uncertain and inconsistent. It's as if sometimes she was just describing it in the moment. She was also annoyingly repetitive at times. I think it would have worked better if she was either an unreliable narrator or if it was all in the present. It wouldn't need to be present tense, but lines like "I would always" or "I never saw [person] again" could be left out. There's always going to be something a book struggles with and that's okay.

Radio Silence is not just a must-read for Alice Oseman fans, but a great book for anyone upset with the school system, wanting a friendship love story, or looking for a serious read that turns out okay. If you decide to read it you'll be treated to bits of the fictional podcast, fashion ideas from the characters, and lots of queer rep! If this sounds like a book for you, trust your gut and pick it up!

[nyxelestia]

I have an addition to this but that will require some addendums / additional points.

This got a lil long so I threw the rest under the cut but tl;dr

The interrelation and complexity of marginalized identities irl makes authors' usage of them as protective labels on content counterproductive and discourages community and empathy.

Either don't mention your identity, or at most save it for the author's note instead of the tag when it's a contribution instead of a protection.

We don't need to hide what parts of ourselves inform our writing, but we do need to avoid normalizing the sharing of personal information to justify writing choices.

Too Long But Reading Anyway:

I know the degradation of privacy is getting normalized everywhere else on the Internet, but that sounds like all the more reason to avoid dragging that new norm into fandom.

A lot of this comes from the fear of making mistakes in public. After all, many fans (especially young one) grew up with the hyper-awareness that damn near their entire lives -- or at least their entire lives since entering social media -- would be documented and therefore could be dragged up from the depths of the past and used against you. People are trying to achieve "perfection" not for a sense of superiority, but a sense of safety; "if I do everything right, no one can call me out." I'm telling you right now, bullies don't work that way. They'll find a way to twist anything and everything into harassment campaigns. It is much better to be willing to write outside your lived experiences, to learn and grow, to own up to any mistakes you do make, and be ready to tell anyone who tries to castigate you for mistakes you didn't make to go screw themselves.

A lot of these identities are fluid. Maybe you're still trying to figure out your sexuality or gender, maybe you'll convert religions, maybe you'll discover something new about your heritage, maybe you will be able to treat your disability such that you won't have it in the future, etc. The fact that your identity might change in the future doesn't change your past, so it doesn't affect why you are putting that label for yourself on a fic…but, it does mean that if some bully wants to cause you trouble, they can absolutely turn around and use this against you. Just throwing this out there as a follow-up to both the first and the second points.

Being close to or part of a marginalized group doesn't give you carte blanch to write whatever you want. You can absolutely be part of a marginalized group and also perpetuate stereotypes or problematic tropes. (e.x. Transformative fandom is heavily dominated by women, yet so much of the het fanfiction is also saturated with sexist or downright misogynistic tropes. Obviously, being part of the marginalized identity group didn't help anyone writing that marginalized identity group. This is just the most prolific example but hardly the only one.) And that's if your own marginalization really matches the character's to begin with. Some axes of marginalization are incredibly vast (ethnic experiences and disabilities come to mind) and encompass a wide variety of identities, so being part of one doesn't give you magical insight into all the rest.

I feel like this also ignores the way identities and marginalization experiences intersect with each other. If we're so focused on labels for one identity, we end up discarding the others. This applies even when thinking about fictional characters in completely fictional settings. Most of these settings will, to varying degrees, reflect our real world. By using an identity label for only one aspect of a character's in-universe identity that happens to reflect a real world identity, what does this about all their other in-universe identities that reflect real world identities?

Circling all the way back to OP's point (sorry for the hijacking!):

Fandom is made up of communities. That doesn't sound like much on the surface when everyone uses that as a buzzword, but what I mean is that fandom isn't an institution or object that exists without people participating in it. Fandom is the participation, fandom is the interaction, fandom is the mutual connections fans build with each other. The 'mutual' there is important; a lot of social media makes it very easy for people to feel like they are friends with someone, when that other person barely knows them or doesn't know them at all. (The word is "parasocial relationships" if you wanna learn more.)

The "Author Is X" tag is about the author as an individual. Sharing facets of yourself as an individual isn't an inherently bad thing. Sometimes, we're proud of that and want to share that; or our specific experience is relevant to the specific story we're telling; or we want to make others with the same identity who feel alone know that they can reach out to us. These are all ways that sharing part of your identity with your audience can build a community. (Hell, even just writing out this long ramble right now, I find myself debating whether or not I should mention my own ethnic heritage on the fanfic where my heritage is influencing the way I'm worldbuilding.)

But using it as a justification or as a defensive measure is inherently contradictory to the spirit of community and the pursuit of empathy. It's implying that an individual author is supposed to be on their own and only relying on their knowledge and experience to write something; or that the author who already wrote something had no input from people around them. Quite frankly, that's never true. It's extremely rare for someone to just start writing fanfic without some semblance of community, even if it's literally just the single fandom friend. (Never mind the fact that fanfic by default always has at least two creators, the author of the fic and whoever made the canon thing that the fanfic is about.)

When we ask each other how our various experiences affect our lives, that is a connection we are building. When we ask multiple friends for their various inputs, for the different ways they experienced the same marginalization as their identity, for the ways a marginalized identity might have impacted their lives (even if that identity wasn't their own), all of that is building connections and thus building a community. These are threads of empathy fans build with each other.

And we should be doing more of that.

One trend on ao3 that I feel uneasy about is the increased use of “author is trans” “author is disabled” “author is ace” etc tags.

On the one hand I can understand how it can feel like a reassuring sign for readers who are trans/disabled/ace etc that their lives are less likely to be misrepresented in that fic because the writer has lived experience.

But at the same time, when we’re writing fanfiction—about kids who can manipulate the force of the waves, about necromancy, about flying on dragons—I think the suggestion that you need to have lived experience to write sensitively about something is so limiting.

Like if we aren’t exercising the full force of our imaginations and empathy in fanfiction, where exactly are we doing it?

It also makes me sad because sometimes you can tell from the nervousness of the author’s note that the writer felt they had to justify their writing with their lived experience. And I don’t think you should feel ethically obligated to gesture toward personal and often painful aspects of your identity to justify writing you do in your spare time that makes you happy.

Some of the best fics I’ve read about disability have been written by authors that didn’t have experience with that exact condition and did heartfelt research and really let themselves inhabit it. And I think that’s a bravura display of empathy and the very best that fiction can offer: caring about a character enough, and caring about your readers enough, that you want to understand what it’s like.

Sometimes friends have asked me about my visual disability to better understand Zuko for their stories, and I’ve always found it really moving. It means they care so much about the fictional world that they want to get the real world right too. It means they’re learning and growing so they can make stories about disability.

It means they love the show, and it means they love me.

[paperlovesadness]

I'm sitting outside in the sun in wet jeans - following advice on how to stretch denim to better fit you - making breathing room for myself and my thighs who are hated by jean sizing everywhere - and I'm getting sappy about Tumblr and fangirling and this community of lovely, unapologetically excited people I've met here.

This is something not many will probably read (long posts can be tough, I get it) - it just kind of all spilled I guess? Incoherently but with passion. So why not set it free when it's already here.

You see - I can't help but credit Tumblr as this huge part of my inner child healing journey. And particularly the girlhood part of it all.

Subconsciously & even consciously I've felt so so ashamed of these "girly" sides of me all my life. Especially in their "prime time" of my tween and teen years. I'd love things secretly - or at most - talk about them only after loudly labelling them as "guilty pleasures" (quite a terrible concept) or acting like it's all done with a tinge of self-aware irony.

But being a hopeless romantic; loving your favorite characters with your whole being; squealing over your favorite music and the musicians who make it; talking about your favorite songs and lyrics and photos; drawing, editing, making fanart of things that make your heart sore; sharing your fantasies and dreams; crying about quotes and big ideas; writing stories - those are all such beautiful things.

I've immersed myself back in the worlds of blogging and fanfiction and musical fangirling and... In many ways I haven't felt this good since I was a kid - still untouched by society and it's shaming of the endless supply of passion I had in me towards the things I loved.

And fangirls are a force. Fangirls are what made the music industry what it is. They're who discovered the Beatles and Leonard Cohen and Frank Sinatra and David Bowie - amongst so many others - and when they did the hard work - only then was it all taken over and appropriated by men who claimed only they can "truly and objectively" appreciate it.

It's girls - bright, unapologetically excited, passionate girls who care for pretty things and things with a soul and things with a story, with romantic connotations - girls who love to curate aesthetically pleasing landscapes and spaces around themselves - it's those girls who contributed hugely to an actual analogue photography and vinyl pressing revival & re-popularization.

I'm in my late twenties. I've only recently let myself pierce my ears and start wearing makeup sometimes. And care openly about my appearance and fashion choices. It's very much still all queer coded and slightly gender-mixed. Because that's me. But caring about these things has always been categorized as a "girl thing" = therefore = shameful, shallow, not something to be proud of.

I'm continuously curing my incredibly hurtful and internally misogynistic complex of "not being like other girls". There are still biases and automatic-judgements I'm fighting on the daily. But it's become so much clearer and easier to do so.

Im more ways than one I want to be exactly like other girls. I want to grab the hands of all the fangirls around this site and dance with them in a circle and tell them they look great whatever they choose to look like and I want to sit down in a meadow and make flower crowns together and squeal over our favorite things.

And to be clear I'm not saying be girly. I'm saying embrace you inner girlhood.

And that could be so many things. Just... Never be ashamed of the parts of it that society deems shallow and embarrassing or worthless.

And just... Thank you for being girlies with me 💗

(girlies & girls as usual used as more of a state of my mind and being; not a strictly gendered term. This applies in all, most or many ways to queer people & of course non-binary and trans experiences).

[levok]

What are your thoughts on Erik? I feel like we only got to see him for a very short time, and only through Wille's eyes, and then we were all shocked by his death and people tend not to speak ill of the dead, but... I don't know. He seemed really nice and a good big brother, and yes it was nice that he didn't use any gendering words when talking about Wille's "crush", but he was also August's friend, and part of the Society, whose values are... Not the nicest. Also, in the first episode he insisted for Wille to let August carry the bag even though it clearly made him uncomfortable, he laughed when August said that horrible thing about girls and he told Wille he had to keep up appearances. I don't think he was nearly as bad as August or the queen, of course, but I don't think he was absolutely perfect either. Maybe through Wille's eyes, yes, but I think the fandom thinks a bit too highly of him, and I don't think that would be realistic for the show. As you said before, they all screw up, so why wouldn't Erik?

Okay this will be a bit long....

I definitely don't think Erik is a picture perfect human, but I think he is a perfect character (again, I can't praise Lisa's character writing enough).

He has about 10-15 minutes of total screen time (?), but we still manage to see the complexity in him, and get mixed feelings.

I think we all have sympathy with him and mourn his death because of Wille. There is no doubt he was the most important human in Wille's life and that Wille has put him on this pedistal, as you tend to do with bigger siblings when you are young. And there is no doubt that Erik loved Wilhelm and cared about him being happy, but! There is a big but...

These two boys was raised differently, simply because Erik was the crown prince. His destiny was decided from before he left the womb, and he was raised to follow his mother's footsteps - the monarchy above all.

We see that peak through, when he speaks with Wille before he leaves him at Hillerska. A mentality Wille does not have. He didn't need to, because he was not supposed to secure the monarchies future and carry the duties on his shoulders.

I have no doubt in my mind that Erik was a good brother to Wilhelm, but I also think Wilhelm didn't see the flaws he had, because he looked to much up to him. He saw Erik as perfect. And I genuinely think Erik would accept Wilhelm's sexuality, because as long as Erik was alive, the monarchy is safe. And he would also accept Wilhelm fooling around with Simon, because he would see it as the teenage/boarding school fling you have.

I'm sure Erik fucked around a lot. He knows how it is, and he would see Wilhelm as the teen he is, and not as a piece in this big institution (as the queen does now).

I actually think Erik would love to take the whole weight of the crown's duties, for Wilhelm to be a happy carefree teenager. He has major big brother energy, and as long as Wilhelm behaved and didn't cause trouble, Erik would want nothing but his happiness.

But as you point out, we see his sketchy behavior as well, and I love that it is there. That he wasn't made to be this unrealistically perfect brother/prince, because why would he be. He was brought up in this privileged environment surrounded by people like himself who collectively decided they are above everyone else. And I don't think Erik fully understand why fitting in is so hard for Wilhelm. Erik fits in with this group of friends. He has more in common with August, that Wilhelm may realize... for now.

Now that Wille has to put on Erik's shoes, I think he might discover other sides of Erik he wasn't aware of before. His polished image of his brother might not be so perfect after all. I don't know how I feel about this tbh, because I don't want Wilhelm do distance himself from Erik and his memory of him. And maybe I read too much into it. But the "Once a brother always a brother" thing, and Wilhem being reminded how close Erik actually was with August might hint it?

[homophyte]

okay im going to be vulnerable and admit though ive owned house of leaves for a few months i was spurred to start reading it the other day after watching that video on myhouse.wad . no one make fun of me. that being said.

im not necessarily going though it super in depth and more just trying to unravel some stuff for funsies with some various help from old forums and what strikes me as sometimes glaringly missing from discussions on the book is the way it relates to women. like the fact that the house itself is treated as though it has a female identity will get talked about but theres not rlly discussions about the ramifications of that--how will and holloways posturing--named as explicitly about 'male dominance'--is essentially a fight over who gets to get the girl. wills early venture into the house is literally likened to karen kissing wax, like theyre BOTH infidelities, and thats not nearly the first time karen herself treats the situation like the house is her romantic rival or at least rival for wills attention (im not far enough in to have too solid a grasp on the implications of the name delial--but lets just say i have a suspicion?).

anyway whats maybe even more interesting than that is the way its kinda ALL about gender--its men who keep entering the house desperate to know what its about, its men driven to write about it and uncover its secret knowledge, and it drives them fucking crazy. like...you can read that--VERY EASILY--as men 'discovering' the ""hidden"" interiority of women, like, the very idea that women are complex people with their own ideas and emotions and inner worlds. the fact that the house has a secret inside is huge fucking news and just about every man in the novel reacts to it as such, but the reactions from women are like...not that. idk im not done with it by any means but the similarity between the conversations between karen & wax at the end ch VII and johnny & thumper at the end of VIII really apparent. when thumper is listening to johnny, seeking to understand him, being really invested and interested and not reacting with annoyance or disdain or boredom like he expects, it genuinely really knocks him out to the point he nearly cries--and then he bottles it up, writes it off, even when she echoes karens exact words flirting with wax he doesnt register it.

the text displays a consciousness around gendered expectations here, particularly bc thumper is a sex worker, that she cant be expected to intellectually engage w it, but she can and does...and then johnny doenst know what to DO about it, how to engage w a real moment of understanding between the sexes or whatever so he very consciously falls back on gender expectations for men and refuses to feel that connection, severing the tie he inadvertently built w her and consigning the moment to unknowable blackness. the void is invented by people determined to treat it as foreign--which often means treating it as hostile (holloways gun, johnnys suspicions when thumper didnt call him back).

that she ends with the comment 'you just need to get out of the house' is like...almost laughably on the nose especially w the way chauvanist culture has proliferated on the internet. like in the book too, dont get me wrong, its just so startlingly accurate to whats going on it seems like she really must UNDERSTAND in a way johnny fails to capture in his narration but still comes through due to her being kinda fucking great--sorry i REALLY like thumper in this actually she may be my favorite. its sort of difficult for me to look at the line and divorce it in my head from the phenomenon of the incel--read a certain way, you have johnny ranting and raving about how he just cant ever figure out what the collective 'woman' is thinking and all this time hes spent driving himself crazy about it, and thumper listening and understanding and very sympathetically and honestly saying 'that wouldnt be a big deal if you interacted w women instead of holing up inside trying to theorize about it.'

i dont necessarily think its a mistake that johnny is the kind of person he is, a partying womanizer or whatever, bc sex becomes his only interaction w women (his failure to talk abt the book w kyrie in favor or fucking her) just as entering the house becomes wills only interaction w it (or at least he rages when he cant have that interaction, he values it above others). the book is pretty clear about both of these acting as forms of penetration. as johnny gets more invested in the text he interacts more and more w the women zampano used as interpreters and comes more and more into contact w women and less and less able to deny their interiority.

the reaction from men that women are people is simple and plain disbelief, followed by disconnected, invasive, rigorous study, study that is likened to war, to surgery, to expedition--anything but understanding. its kind of baffling idk maybe im just not looking in the right place to see people talking about it but this sorta feels like...the point. hell even earlier in ch VII on page 91 you get will and holloway excitedly talking about calling the press about their huge discovery that no one will believe...and then just, karen, living her life, treated like an enigma. i literally have this written in my notes as "men discover women have internality; their wives decline to comment"

[yellowocaballero]

HEY!! Your trigun swap au is so very good!! I've always loved roleswap aus as a concept, and yours is the perfect example of why. it's all about the balancing act of twisting the (swapped) character's background/mentalities for maximum domino effect while not actually *destroying* the character ya know? you still gotta recognize them, it's half of the fun. just some little nudges here... and there... with the delightful result of a changed plot/world that you can discover anew

Also I surprisingly vibe with Dr Knives. a lot. what can I say I guess it's the fucked up superiority-inferiority/guilt complex with a dash of imposter syndrome. also the transgenderism. he's just like me fr fr (minus the speciesism and bloodlust) 1/3

SPEAKING OF! I'm literally a week late for that but chapter 4 may be my favorite so far. it's got it all: Ww's bloodlust coming through and being given a GUN, M&M being #JustNormalGunsmokeKidsThings about it, Knives being incredibly tired and enthusiastically murderous in turns, TRANS PEOPLE!! Funky morally dubious trans men ! Intersex nonbinary Knives (in humans terms) !! small internal rants about ecosystems!

I particularly like that one bc I too found myself twitching whenever I see (in fics or fandom at large) Gunsmoke being shown as a ~hostile, barren~ planet when, like.... *waves agitedly at the Tomases* *waves frantically at the WORMS, in all their INCREDIBLY DIVERSIFIED sizes and shapes* tell me there isn't an entire ecosystem supporting and including these bad boys. And god do I wanna know about it. Terraforming this terraforming that. Enough. I want bio-worldbuilding fics that are just as weird and unhinged as the rest of trigun (2/3)

To go back to Nicholas : I loved his discussion with Knives about fate and predestination and stuff (esp since -I may be reading too much into it, but it’s interesting that Knives says he doesn’t believe in predestination anymore, and just a bit later goes about how his personality is Like That bc he’s Biologically Programmed for it), and his last words in it are especially ominous. WHAT were you gonna say about Vash. How does it concern Nicholas. This is gonna bite them in the ass later isn’t it.

Also ur last asks/answers REALLY doesn’t reassure me about woowoo’s fate. Is he gonna die. Is he gonna end up going thru the same things than his canon counterpart (concentrate of medical-and-general unethicality). Idk what those flags are for but boy They Are There.

Aallll that to say I absolutely love that fic and can't wait to see what you do next with it, thank you so much !! (3/3)

This is so nice thank you so much :D :D :D To comment in order:

Roleswaps are no fun if you can't recognize the character. You're absolutely right - the funnest part is to make the smallest changes possible, and see how they cause the biggest differences. That's true of every AU, honestly - you guys know those 600k shonen manga aus where something major is different but every story beat is identical to canon? Or they're identical to every other au? They're addictive but without substance. Also sounds boring to write.

It's so funny that you (and others) vibe with Dr. Knives! From my end, he has my own very wry deadpan and self-esteem problems. Characters who have both a ridiculously inflated ego for comedy purposes and some real self-esteem problems for drama purposes work great.

I was surprised that so many people enjoyed the trans thing so much! I didn't expect it to make people so happy. Of course it's a nice surprise. I don't remember why I made the BDN decision (funny, probably) or the 'Knives invented gender reassignment surgery' thing (funny definitely), but a very active decision and something that made Knives above every other character fun to write is that he is not a human being and does not think of himself as such. The way his body experiences emotion is different, his body itself is different in a way that probably includes genitalia, and there's no reason for him to experience gender the same way. As I'm about to talk about in the upcoming chapter, he casually refers to himself as a thing and with it/its and it doesn't affect his superiority complex whatsoever.

I...would not have said that this is trans by myself, if that makes sense, because I wouldn't have wanted to say "in order to really hammer in how this character is INHUMAN then I'm gonna make him not male or female and prefer neopronouns!". It's just the shape of the character, to me. BUT LIKE IF Y'ALL LIKE IT! NO PROBLEM! I was just worried I might be saying the wrong thing, so I didn't want to say it, if that makes sense. Y'all can say it though.

Trigun worldbuilding is nonsensical and hideously vague and as a writer if you stop and think too hard about silly questions like "where does the wood come from" or "why is Vash eating salmon sandwiches" then you go insane. But...yeah, Gunsmoke's like any other ecosystem, and its worms and thomases seem to be doing great! It's not Gunsmoke's fault it is almost completely uninhabitable to humans. It sucks for us, but...does Knives care about that??? Lmfao???

There is a shitton to say about Knives' relationship with predestination and inevitability, because it's why he made the worst decision of his life. I think of it as...reasonable, in a lot of ways. If all you knew about humanity was what you read in history textbooks, and human history ended with the destruction of Earth and themselves, how would you feel? Everything humans have done, they do again. And if they dissected your sister, in an act of cruelty that they had done to even themselves...of course you'd worry. Of course. If you're young and scared and you can hear the screams of the dead in your ears, of course you feel like it's going to be you or them. And if you're.........Millions Knives.......and reverse!Vash.....then eliminating the threat is just good business sense.

And you aren't reading too much into it - Trigun in so many ways is about choices, and the impact of your choices. Your decisions are you own, and you must take responsibility for them. Decisions have weight in Trigun. I think what ppl miss sometimes about Vash is that he also wants to fuckin' murder people sometimes. He wants to be violent, he wants to hurt. He just chooses not to. Sometimes choosing pacifism is a hard fucking choice, and I think wiping that away does a disservice to the character. So if Knives would say, "Well, it's just who I am, I had no choice, I had no control, I just go nuts and murder it's not on me..." - what does that mean, in Trigun? It's??? Like??? A pussy thing to say???

But, the way I thought about it - what Knives is fighting is his internal sense that he is predestined for cruelty. He knows "who he really is" and any attempt at goodness is futile, because he's secretly bad and will always be bad. And he fucks up sometimes and starts exploding worms. But Knives chooses goodness, and I don't think he's really cottoned on that his choice to do good is more important than his internal desires to do bad and his history of badness. Because he hates himself.

I think what Knives knows now as an adult is that our lives have paved a path for us to tread. Sometimes that path is innocent, and sometimes your life paves a very nasty path. But it's our choice if we walk it or not. Knives knows what his path is, and it gives him extreme shame - but he chose which one he walked, and that's what I judge him on. Still funny how much he loves murder though.

[awhisperinthenight]

writeblr intro

call me klo, and hi, i write stuff. i'm a french writer, but i post everything in english here.

i've been there for a while, i honestly just post stuff for myself bcs it's fun. this post is mostly me trying to be organized.

i mostly write fantasy and pretty much all my ocs are lgbt+

i post abt my original writing/wips, and reblog writing tips/inspo. i post my writing under the very original tag : #my writing or #my stuff

a little more about my wips under the 'keep reading' !

wips part of the nhymisa's verse :

Memoirs of Nyhmisa

my main wip, about a girl discovering she has magical powers, goes to another world filled with magic and creatures, then fights in a war, with friends she made along the way. she'll go through pain and many horrors but she'll do whatever she can to win, defeat her enemies and bring back peace.

genre : fantasy

themes : magic, horror, war, politics, friendships, fighting, overthrowing a gouvernement, betarayls, found familly, gods, vengence, queer themes,

ocs : jo owen, zoé black, phoenix black, griff crawford, lya hyakuha, lysandra solis, raven le, nathaniel, yelana

As Bright as the Sun

a princess named lumina has magical powers and is learning in secret how to use them thanks to her mentor, azalya who's a powerful mage.

genre : high fantasy

themes : mentor/student relationship, politics, magical powers, queer themes, war, teaching/learning, travels, discovery, legends, lies, manipulation

ocs : lumina, azalya

Under the Moonlight

two girls becomes friends at a magic school, and together they create magical runes in secret, because this specific art is illegal. as they grow closer and closer, they come up with the idea of putting the runes on their body, creating the concept of runic tatoos.

genre : high fantasy

themes : rune crafting, queer romance, friends to lovers, magic school, politics, magic systems, tatoos

ocs : ary, khal

other wips :

Crystal

a person who has been living their whole life in mines digging up some crystals, is finally rescued and has to learn how to live, and how to be loved.

genre : urban/modern fantasy

themes : found family, identity crisis, gender crisis, laws and corruption and justice system, revenge, (also heavy themes of abuse, death, slavery, trauma)

ocs : krystal

Apocalypse

four best friends, living in a bar, but being vigilantes at night. set in a futuristic sci-fi city.

genre : kinda sci-fi, fantasy, and also cyberpunk

themes : found family, queer themes, post-apocaliptic stuff, politics, vigilanties, self discovery/acceptance

ocs : todd, miya, vonya, sov

The Witch & the Redhead

a love story between two girls who are each hiding a complex and dark past, one's a redhead who loves dancing, the other is a witch who loves painting.

genre : urban fantasy

themes : secrets, queer relationship, magic, painting, dancing, hidden past, family problems, orphanage, love

ocs : keara byrd, jay blackrose

As Above, So Below

two different worlds, one underground and one upperground, ignorant of each other. two girls from each words decide to go exploring, and find each other.

genre : high fantasy

themes : exploring, travel, discovery, magical worlds/creatures/places, friendship, queer romance

ocs : kyu, myst

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also u can check my pinterest and see what my wips and ocs looks like in more details.

[ninadove]

For the recent ask game: Korra from TLOK!!

(Idk if you’ve seen it but I know you’ve seen ATLA so if you haven’t seen TLOK yet then let’s hear what you think about Uncle Iroh)

I have seen both series, so now you get to hear me rant about two fictional characters! Lucky you!

KORRA ( THE LEGEND OF KORRA )

First impression:

Pretty girl. Muscles. Short hair. Queer.

Need I say more?

Impression now:

I love how much Korra grew throughout the series.

I’m sure many many Tumblr folks have expended on it in proper essays, but it’s refreshing to see that the writing team approached her as they would any protagonist, instead of treating her differently because of her gender ( which makes sense, in a world where cool warrior ladies like Kyoshi have been a thing since the beginning of time ) !

Favorite moment:

No surprise here, I’m going to say the ending. I knew about it beforehand and it is the reason I started watching the series in the first place.

Idea for a story:

I’d love to see more content about Baby Korra discovering her powers and her parents absolutely F R E A K I N G O U T about it! What little we saw of her at that age was so cute.

Unpopular opinion:

Not sure if this is an “unpopular” opinion, but the relationships between the Main Four were the weakest point of the show in my opinion.

I was extremely annoyed by the whole love triangle debacle, and even Korrasami felt a bit underdeveloped ( There were HUGE instances of flirting between the two in S1, and then they kinda… Paused… Until halfway through S4? ). That one is understandable, though - we all know the challenges of trying to sneak a queer storyline into a kids’ show.

Overall, I didn’t get the “found family” feel that made ATLA so great from Korra and the gang. I’ve heard good things about the comics, though, so I might get my hands on them someday!

Favorite relationship:

Despite what I just said, it is Korrasami, 100%.

I like that they didn’t let the love triangle ruin their friendship ( any negative feelings they had were directed either at Makko or themselves, rather than each other ) and how well they work together despite being so different.

And Korrasami did so much for queer representation in general. It might not seem like much when we look back on it now, but these girls really kicked the portal door open for all of the great stuff we’re getting today!

Favorite headcanon:

Many people have created great art of Korrasami getting engaged using a Water Tribe betrothal necklace. I especially love scenarii in which Asami is the one to propose ( engaging in your partner’s cultural traditions because it’s important to them is a huge pro-gamer move in my book ) .

IROH ( AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER )

First impression:

A funny old man who might or might not be sabotaging Zuko’s efforts to find the Avatar on purpose. For his own good, of course.

Impression now:

A much more complex character than I originally expected. He’s great, obviously, but also imperfect, and I love him for that. More on that later.

Favorite moment:

Probably not a surprise either: the reunion with Zuko in the White Lotus camp. Cleared my skin and watered my crops.

Idea for a story:

I’d like to see more fluff of Iroh in his later years, when he can reflect on how much Zuko has grown throughout the years. Maybe play with Izumi as well! Intimate character pieces are my favourite type of fics to read and write.

Unpopular opinion:

He’s not as perfect as the fandom makes him out to be… And that’s a good thing, actually!

I especially think he could have done more to protect the kids from Ozai ( we see him look away when Ozai burns Zuko’s face, and his whole attitude towards Azula, A LITERAL KID, makes me uneasy ). The complexity only makes him more compelling though, and I think we could all benefit from recognising that even good people make mistakes sometimes.

Favorite relationship:

Iroh and Zuko, obviously. I absolutely ADORE the adoptive father figure / troubled kid working through his trauma dynamic ( something something Professor Layton, something something Hershel and Clive ).

Favorite headcanon:

I really hope he got to meet Baby Iroh and understand how much of an impact he truly had on Zuko’s, and probably Izumi’s, lives.

I could also see him b*tching about his nephew with Mai over tea. If they can’t embarrass him a little, what’s the point?

Thank you for these @crestofshame!

For anyone interested, the ask game can be fond here.