#Those are two things that should not coincide in any other context

[ghostfacd]

YES I KNOW THAT HE’S MY EX! | TOM BLYTH

pairing. tom blyth x fem!actress!reader

summary. you knew tom was your ex, and that you should probably stay away, but that’s never stopped you before

part 1 | installment of this au (please read for more context!)

ynuser :)

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user1 im loving the aesthetic

user2 THE BIKINI TOP IS SO CUTE

user3 put them toes awayyyy

rachelzegler i pay attention to things that most people ignore (this isn’t your car.)

➥ user4 PLEASE?? not rachel using yn’s own lyrics on her

➥ user5 IS THIS TOM’S CAR??

user6 i may be delulu but those r tom blyth’s mfing hands.

user7 he has her hair tie on; i repeat, tom blyth literally has yn’s hair tie on

When Tom had messaged you saying he wanted to talk, no matter how much you knew it was a bad idea, you decided to agree to it anyway.

The breakup had ended pretty badly. Although it was an agreement between you and Tom, that didn’t mean that’s what the both of you truly wanted.

The reason the two of you broke up in the first place was that Tom was talking too much about your future, which wasn’t a bad thing — but it overwhelmed you. You weren’t ready to settle down, not yet, at least. You and Tom had only been dating for a few months, and although it was all sweet and loving, you knew that getting engaged this early was like asking for a disaster to strike.

He was upset. Clearly. He loved you, you loved him, so why was it such an inconvenience for you to agree to take the leap in your relationship? That caused a blown out argument between you two, and by the end of it, you had agreed breaking up was the right thing.

You had a acting and music career to focus on, and Tom had an acting career that was just at the beginning of its success. You felt that it wasn’t right to put a distraction into his life.

“Is this a bad idea?” You ask breathlessly as you pull away from the kiss. You can’t help but stare into Tom’s eyes, which held a language of their own.

“Maybe,” he says, wiping the corner of your mouth. “But who cares?”

Who cares. Right. Well surely, it was a bad idea to meet up with your ex, much less kiss him, and although alarms were baring in your head that you probably shouldn’t—you go in for a second kiss, this time, Tom doesn’t let you go, cradling you close to his body.

“I don’t care if you don’t want to take the next step in our relationship, I’m fine if you’re not ready yet. I just want you, okay?”

And how could any girl possibly reject Tom Blyth when he’s begging so prettily? Certainly not you.

tomblyth and ynuser both posted an instagram story !

ynsbiggestfan THE GIRLS AND I AFTER SEEING THE STORIES ON INSTA

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user8 IM ACTUALLY DYING BC NO WAY WAS THAT A COINCIDENCE

user9 they’re connected they cant be far away from each other

user10 she’s my Heather 💔💔

➥ user12 fr i wish tom was that inlove w me

user13 so this is why rachel said that wasn’t yn’s car

➥ user14 ITS ALL MAKING SENSE NOW

sean.kauf photo dumpy

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ynuser pic creds ?? 🤬

➥ sean.kauf 🤓🤓

user15 wait im confused, is she together with tom again or is she with sean..

user16 Ykw i cant even be mad, if i was as hot as yn, i’d have two bfs too!

➥ user17 REAL SHIIT

tomblyth fun fact: the 2nd pic is sean third wheeling after forcing me and yn to speak to each other

➥ user17 TOM CONFIRMED IT IM DEAD

user18 all the yn haters must feel stupid asf rn after accusing yn of being with sean

➥ user19 literally cause all 3 of them are literally close 😭😭 like why would sean date yn, he’s literally friends with tom

user20 if yn isn’t dating sean let me have him omg

ynuser yes i know that he’s my ex but can’t two people reconnect !!!!!

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user21 this took the cake.

user22 time to cry again bc tom blyth is off the market

user23 she got him wrapped around her finger FR

user24 THE THIRD PIC OF THEM 🥹🥹

user25 THE CAPTION OUUU GIRLY IS BRAVE

tomblyth i only see you as a friend (the biggest lie i’ve ever said)

➥ user26 I CHOKED

➥ user27 THEIR SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS ARE CRYING RN

[goddess-of-eyes]

I feel like the Neo Swords don't get enough credit. Like sure they're not as drastically different as the Legendary Beasts are but I feel like there's so many subtle details about them that people haven't noticed yet.

Let's start off with Iron Crown's Scarlet dex entry.

>It resembles a mysterious object introduced in a paranormal magazine as a cutting-edge weapon shaped like a Cobalion.

Let's think about the context of that for a second. Of that wording. A weapon shaped like a Cobalion. Now, why would anybody build a robo-Cobalion in the first place? What purpose would it serve?

Well, let's take a look at Iron Crown's Base Stat Total and compare it to Cobalion's!

Iron Crown has a slightly higher base stat total than Cobalion does, but take a look at how different some of their stats are. Iron Crown is a VERY strong special attacker, with a special attack of 122. Then compare that to Cobalion's special defense. It's their weakest stat at 72.

Take their typings into consideration too. Iron Crown is Steel/Psychic, while Cobalion is Steel/Fighting. What are fighting type Pokemon weak to? Psychic types.

You could probably brush this off as a coincidence, but I fully believe that this was intentional. Let's compare Iron Leaves' Base Stats and Virizion's Base Stats as well real quick.

Once again, we've got a huge difference in stat distribution. Iron Leaves? Very strong physical attacker. Virizion's lowest stat? Physical defense. Iron Leaves' physical attack has almost twice as many points as Virizion's physical defense.

So coupled with the fact that not only do the Neo Swords have a higher base stat total than the Swords of Justice, but they all seem to exceed in places where the Swords of Justice falter, not just in stats, but also in type matchups.

Iron Crown and Iron Leaves were built to kill and replace Virizion and Cobalion. By taking advantage of the strengths that the Swords of Justice lacked, they could bring them down from just how much stronger and more powerful they are, having the higher up in advantages in every single way.

But things get a bit different when we look at Iron Boulder and Terrakion.

In contrast to Iron Crown and Iron Leaves, Iron Boulder doesn't outclass Terrakion in any stats other than special defense and speed. Sure, it can move faster than Terrakion, but Terrakion isn't much of a special attacker anyway and it's still much bulkier and stronger than Iron Boulder.

Not only that, but it could still reasonably go toe to toe with Iron Boulder. Sure, fighting types are weak to psychic types, but Iron Boulder is still a rock type, and rock types are weak to fighting types. So, what gives? Why do Iron Crown and Iron Leaves take advantage of Cobalion and Virizion's weaknesses while Iron Boulder doesn't?

Let's refer to Scarlet's dex entry on Iron Boulder.

>It resembles a Pokémon described in a dubious magazine as a Terrakion that had been modified by an evil organization.

And therein lies the difference. It's not a robot made to take down Terrakion, it IS Terrakion.

When you compare them side by side it's clear they had to take a few liberties to get Iron Boulder to be as fast as it is. Terrakion is much bulkier while Iron Boulder has more of an armored shell thing going on with its body. Its structural integrity probably leaves much to be desired, but perhaps the idea is you wouldn't need to worry about it getting hit when it's too agile to get hit in the first place.

Iron Leaves and Iron Crown were built to kill Virizion and Cobalion, and then when those two were gone, they likely had to weaken Terrakion so they could bring it back to be modified, since Iron Leaves and Iron Crown all outclass Terrakion in terms of stats and typing, leaving Terrakion with no advantages at all.

Living beings tend to make mistakes, lapses in judgement. Often times, it might be critical, and in the heat of the moment, one might slip up, miss something, leading to justice not being served as it should be.

The Swords of Justice cut themselves off from humanity after the war ended, hid themselves away after realizing how much of a burden people were to Pokemon, and the harm they could bring. Even in the years past, they still refused to believe humans and Pokemon could co-exist, attacking anyone who drew near for the longest time. A stubborn mindset, a flawed one, the fault of the mind. A machine would have no sense of selfishness.

Why waste time with human error when a machine is less likely to make mistakes, if at all? Surely, a machine must have a better understanding of justice, of righteousness than a living being. Thousands of calculations per minute to determine the best possible outcome, the best course of action. A machine would be a far better protector than the Swords of Justice ever could be.

Right?

[demethinkstoomuch]

A Survey of House Leadership Titles

We know just enough about each house and its founders that I think there might be some threads to pull at in terms of what different house titles say about the house intends of its leadership, or some other interesting observation  -- in some cases, not a lot, but I’d say enough that there’s enough for me to play with and gnaw on like a naughty cat who should not be chewing embroidery thread.

The Second: No Known Title????

This is so interesting to me. Like, Judith is heir to the House of the Second, and this is a fact that, nevertheless, never at any point makes anything about the internal structure of the second even the slightest bit clear. What is she even heir to? I’m assuming it’s hereditary, because that seems to be the case across the board except for the Sixth. But what is she actually heir to? The training facility? The cohort command within the system??? Something else???

We don’t know, we just know their cohort ranks. Judith’s father was an admiral -- but I am sadly forced to conclude not Sarpedon, because Judith’s father projected a career for her that would force her to stay mostly within the system, and Sarpedon’s career has mostly kept him out of system. This constitutes the entirety of what we know about the Second... But, there’s information in this non-information. What this all says about the Second is that they try and present their cohort ranks as the important ones, the ones that Really Matter...But, then again, Judith, a mere captain, is the heir of the house, so...Are they what Really Matter, really? We don’t know the rules about which contexts things matter in, which I would call not encouraging. That said, I’m betting that Judith a) tries to avoid this contradiction sincerely and steadfastly by honoring the Cohort’s chain of command, and b) she isn’t the only one. If there’s an illusion that there is no mess or complication or strangeness here, it’s a precious illusion that no one intends to disturb until push comes to shove. What the Second cares about most, between their hierarchy and the cohort’s, is a question they do not want to answer.

The Third: King/Queen(?) of Ida, assumed

Man, that is such the most attention-whore title. The pageantry! The showmanship! Crown princes! Princesses! I bet there’s a literal crown, don’t you? (Also, while I’d assume from numerical order that the 5th came after the 3rd, I get the vibe from the general atmospheres of the houses the title order might have been different, that the 3rd picked King and Queen because it’s like Lord and Lady, but bigger and better. If it isn’t, then this is what would have happened if the chronology had played out differently.)

By the way, I do want to know why Babs is a Prince. Like, is that a family rank? A cavalier primary rank? A combined Cavalier-Family rank? A courtesy title? Answer the question, Naberius Tern!

The Fourth: Baron/ess of Tisis

I don’t have much to say about this one, except that my guess is that it’s kind of like the Third or Fifth titles, but, like, different (and a little bit Less Fancy.) I think that is not a coincidence even a little. Also, Baron sounds very cool.

The Fifth: Lady/Lord of Konniortus

Oh, man. I have takes on this one. For one, this is 100% an Augustine decision. For two, Oh, good heavens, he was so smug about it for centuries. It’s powerful, yet understated. Grand as all hell, but not showing off. Everyone would have wanted classical nobility titles, but the specificity of some makes them a bit weaker. I’m thinking of, like, the Lady of the Mercians, or Empress Matilda going by “Lady of the English” as an uncrowned queen for the way the term can sort of gently elide over questions of specific rank. It’s simple, classy, brief.  Augustine is judging half the titles on this list and laughing with a sad shake of his head, like it’s cute that you tried to go as hard as “Lady of Konniortus” and you absolutely failed. And those are the ones where he’s not actively rolling his eyes. But more on that in, oh, about 3 houses from now.

The Sixth: Master Warden

OK, but you know who deserves to be smug for her rad naming skills? Cassie. And I say Cassie, to be clear, because I know it’s her name. Or, the name someone who knew the things Cassie knew about the Sixth. Because, really, I think this refers, in an oblique way, to the Break Clause. Because that clause is, well, it’s the key. It’s the key to the literal and metaphorical lock binding the Sixth House to the empire and to the planet. The whole facility is a prisoner, in a way, overseen by its warden. The whole facility is a lock. And do you know what we call the internal jaws of a lock?

Nothing, actually, because there isn’t a part of a lock that one calls “the internal jaws,” I’ve looked up locksmithing terms when google could not avail me. But...I do know that, if Palamedes and the Sixth thinks of a part of the lock as the Internal Jaws, he’s talking about the little metal pieces inside the lock that the key’s teeth and cut are meant to fit into and around, so only the right key will fit. They are jaws in the sense that teeth fit into them.  When Palamedes makes this little riddle during the Fifth’s dinner party, he’s talking about The Wards. And that it can be unlocked, if a key that fits the ward(en)s is produced, is how the Sixth House is like a lock.

I love that for the Sixth. I got so excited about this realization that I went to some lengths to include this line of thinking in a sixth-house centric fic, because it was simply too good to leave out.They went for an elaborate, multilayered self-created reference that refers back to their secret secession plan, and they’ve stuck with that for 10,000 years without giving away the Bit. Good for them. Really, just delightful.

The Seventh: Duchess/Duke of Rhodes (Assumed)

So, this is more or less just like how I read the Fourth’s nomenclature, except they went with Fancy over Cool. It’s very nearly as important as King/Queen, but not quite, which suits them well enough.  Unless there’s a higher rank and Dulcie’s parents have that rank, which they might. It seems implied. They also keep up the theming, with Pro being a Knight of Rhodes. Point is, they, the Third, the Fifth, and the Fourth are all a part of a system of names, with the Fifth a tiny bit set apart, and the Third probably clawing for the top.

The Eighth: Master Templar of the White Glass

I love this title, and part of what I love is that I know Augustine hates it and rolls his eyes every time he hears it. Because I think it’s a Christabel idea. And I say that for a couple of reasons. The biggest being, it sounds very cool but it makes no sense. Like, flash your mind through literally every point at which Silas or the Eighth house are mentioned. How many of them refer to, in any way, anything pertaining to White Glass? Once, only once. Harrow refers to “White glass mysteries,” but that’s it. It’s a mystery. Outside of that, this title only exists, is only referred to, is only acknowledged at all, in the Gideon the Ninth Dramatis Personae. Sure, the Eighth get described with White, and Templars seems reasonable. They are even referred to as White Templars, because, sure, sensible. But White Glass? Is a throw-away concept here, one only Harrow seems to ever think about. It is a cool-sounding title that refers to nothing of any significance. Its only justification is that it’s rad. It’s just a little stupid, but joyfully so.

Which is not a Mercymorn thing. But I can totally see it as a Christabel decision, one she got very excited about. Like, this is the woman who made One Flesh, One End a thing for the next 10,000 years. Christabel seems to love this stuff, and I think if she got cheerfully enthusiastic about it, Mercymorn would go along with it, and that would enshrine it forever.

The Ninth: The Reverend Father/Mother

So, this is another very good one. Like, Anastasia and Cassiopeia are over here thinking of legitimately good and clever titles, ones which contain a duty, and a secret, and it’s the duty at the core of the house’s leadership, at that. Obviously, the idea of a Reverend Mother is one suitable for the Abbess of a nunnery, so that checks out to begin with, but there’s another layer to it, too. A reason why it’s Reverend Mother and not, say, Abbess, that catches my eye post-Nona, but really ought to have caught my eye before that. “Reverend Daughter,” as a position of heirship, is something important because it’s a Ninth invention. The existence of a Daughter or a Son, as opposed to just having Sisters or Brothers and Mothers or Fathers, creates a direct family line within the ruling family. It becomes a bloodline and an abbey in the same breath.

Harrow insists from the Pool Scene onward that it was critical, the whole future of their house, to have an unbroken bloodline of necromancers descended from Anastasia. And at the end of Nona, we see why: Because Anastasia made a pact with Alecto that is recognized as being attached to Anastasia’s descendants, known by blood. They are the unfulfilled vow, Harrow is right! A line of parents and children, reaching back to their original parent, who made a promise. Mothers and Daughters, all the way down. That’s what the House is really for.

A+ Naming, Anastasia. Fantastic. Beautiful.

[cursedvibes]

Am I wrong to think that Jin wouldn’t resent Sukuna, even when he’s the vanishing half that got absorbed by the surviving twin?

We still know so little about him, but he doesn’t seem to be the type to care about something that happened in the womb a thousand years ago. Not because he’s particularly forgiving, I just don’t think he would hold a grudge.

But that still makes me wonder how I should interpret his relationship with Kenjaku after this reveal, how exactly being eaten in the womb affected his soul and how it impacts his current life and how that led to him engaging with Kenjaku.

And also, the reveal make me rethink his whole relationship with Wakuse, too. He seemed dismissive of his father while holding Yuji and I thought it was just because he brought up Kenjaku, but maybe he was just always like that with his father?

Sukuna, too. I like potential dynamic of the twins being opposites, with Jin being the ice to Sukuna’s fire, aka Jin being calm and collected but still fundamentally fucked up while Sukuna is outwardly sadistic and inclined to gratuitous cruelty and violence. Does that make sense?? I’m not sure if they would hate each other or get along, if they were to somehow meet now or if it were in a universe where they were both born.

He’s just such an interesting and mysterious character, I’m afraid we’re going to end this series without learning much about him.

Hm, it might be that Jin doesn't hold any particular bad feelings towards Sukuna, but then why would he ominously bring up how well babies remember their early life and you should therefore not expose them to anything bad? I think there must be some...discomfort at least around that topic, his past and Sukuna absorbing his body and thereby taking the life he could've lived. I don't think he doesn't care at all. It's probably not as straightforward as wanting revenge or something, but with the hints we've been given so far, I think Jin is certainly not happy about what he does remember. Also, if he was somewhat aware of Kenjaku's plans or at least knew what Yuuji was supposed to become and maybe witnessed/helped seal the first finger inside him, he must want some form of payback for Sukuna. Maybe just put him a bit in his place, make him feel what he felt. Doesn't necessarily have to be out of pure hate. Because Yuuji's existence, him being Jin's child (aka having some of his essence inside him) and the sealing of Sukuna's finger inside him would inevitably lead to Sukuna at least getting trapped, if not also beaten up and put in life-threatening situations. Maybe Jin didn't know about that or like you said he merely contributed to that by not stopping it due to disinterest, but personally, I think it would be interesting if he got some sort of satisfaction out of creating a cage for Sukuna like Sukuna used to be for him.

That would also make his relationship with Kenjaku more personal. He's aware of what's happening, they work towards a shared goal (even if I don't think Jin would want to take things quite as far as Kenjaku did or it wasn't a major interest of his) and Kenjaku might've been the one to awake his memories in the first place or give him context for what he remembered before.

Like you mentioned with Wasuke, I think his relationship with Jin wasn't always great. Might've also to do with the death/divorce of his mother, but Wasuke never quite managed to connect with his son, there was always a distance between them. If Jin didn't remember everything at first, he still might've felt displaced, like he was missing something or maybe he had some issues about his body due to the buried feeling of being absorbed by another. It is a neat coincidence that he ended up marrying a woman whose special ability is putting space between two objects and repelling them. Pretty much the opposite of what Jin experienced in his past life. Kenjaku might've then come in and explained all those strange feelings to him and uncovered the buried memories from the Heian era like they did with Shiro. That special connection and understanding between them must've driven Wasuke even further away because now Kenjaku and Jin share something he has no access to and couldn't provide Jin himself.

Also this goes into fanfiction territory, but I've been playing with the thought of Jin having a particular attachment to Kenjaku because they were the first person to see him as himself. Back when Kenjaku divided Sukuna's soul into 20 cursed objects, they might've found the twin's soul as well, it could be what set the soul free in the first place and there they were the first person to really acknowledge the twin and look at him alone when everyone else always just saw Sukuna. Well, this assumes the twin still had some sort of consciousness after being absorbed and that his soul didn't move on earlier. I just thought this would be a nice touch for Jin and Kenjaku's relationship.

The recent cliffhanger of ch 264 has made me somewhat hopeful for flashbacks. It would be very fitting depending on what Yuuji and Sukuna talk about and it might also include info on Jin, his motives and how involved he was in Yuuji's life in the past. Or Sukuna talking more about the twin he absorbed. Hope I'm not being too naive, but I could see something of the sort coming up soon. I mean, when would there be a better opportunity than when Yuuji and Sukuna are on their own. Unfortunate that we can't hear Kenjaku's POV on this and their time with the Itadori family, but I'll take what I can get.

[trashlie]

hello there! I recently read I Love Yoo for the first time and first off, wow what a series. as I've been diving into the fandom I found your blog (your analysis posts are absolutely amazing) and since you've been around the fandom a long time I was hoping you could help clarify a few things for me. obviously there's seven years of fandom and meta context I'm missing out on, but I keep seeing references to two planned time skips and seasons that I'm a little confused about. everything that's out now I think is still the first season? but I'm wondering what exactly the author has shared over the years of the planned timeline, time skips, etc. thank you in advance for any clarification you can provide! very excited to dive into more of your analysis in the future

Oh wow! I feel like getting to jump in and just binge ILY from this point is SO amazing - having this much of the story already out, so many episodes and being able to see how those threads connect and where they go! 🤩 The dream! (Also thank you!!!! I really appreciate that! Esp since I haven't made any ILY posts lately; they're in my head, I just haven't gotten around to finishing typing them out lol)

But to answer your question, quimchee has told us there will be two timeskips. The first is a short timeskip that will bring us to graduation, and the second is a much bigger timeskip of around 4 years or so. 👀 I have a little write up in the ILY Discord server about this that I should finally add to my blog today after work about how I think the timeskips coincide with Yujing's article - that is, I think she's likely working on two articles.

Now, this part is speculation and not from quimchee - she's only told us when the timeskips are and how long they'll jump us. But Nol's sentence is 120 days (less if he's good, as Yujing noted) and 120 days takes us to April. What else is in April? Shinae's birthday! Timing-wise, it depends on if quimchee is using a Korean calendar for school; after all, she did use the college entrance exams that Korean school systems utilize. In this case, graduation happens in February, but given that ILY doesn't strictly add to Korean or U.S. culture rules (quimchee refers to the setting as The United States of Asia lol) we might see this budged to adhere to a more U.S.-centric graduation era where Nol's release times up with Shinae's birthday (no way are we skipping over that!) and graduation. This is likely when Yujing will drop her first article about Nol, possibly exposing that he was framed for a crime he didn't take, made to take the fall, and most certainly exposing that he's the true legitimate heir of the Hirahara family by Mukoyoshi law. Yujing noted that Nol pleading guilty actually helps them/their case, and I think this is so because it isn't the first time he's taken the fall for someone else because he's the "other son"; it's heavily implied that the altercation that occurred between him and Kousuke was not Nol's fault/doing.

Now, the other timeskip will likely see our cast reuniting after Shinae finishes college. I think she will end up taking Yui's offer - whether because she's backed into a corner or because makes the choice we're yet to see - and I think we might actually see her come back as Kousuke's assistant to finish off her contract (or perhaps as part of the Yui trap). Nol will likely go to college abroad and Kousuke... well. I think we can see where he's headed 😭 This is also when I think Yujjng will REALLY go after Yui and Gun, what all those articles she was researching are leafing to.

Something quimchee mentioned on a patreon stream is that during the timeskip (and it wasn't specified which), she'd like to show the passage of time by showing the characters keeping in touch via letters, emails, texts, etc which I'm REALLY looking forward to!

In the past, we were told ILY would be divided into 2 seasons, and that season 2 would start after the big timeskip, but quimchee has said before that's not going to happen? However, sometimes a lot of us still refer to season 2 as "post-big-time-skip" for brevity lol. Maybe we'll still see it as s2 in the future but last I heard it won't be broken up into seasons.

I know this was more than what you asked but I always get so excited talking about the timeskips, I can't wait for them!!! I know the first one is SO close! I think quimchee was trying her best to get to it before her birth so she could do a little break before the first timeskip but alas. But we are SO close, I can almost taste it, AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

I'm so glad you found ILY and are enjoying it!!! It really is not what it first appears and the way it subverts those expectations will always be one of my favorite aspects of this series. Seeing nre readers find it at this time, when there's so much of the series to consume and feed on is so exciting! 🥺 Happy reading! Please let me know if you have more questions!

[chaifootsteps]

I am one of those people who did not want to call Miss Medrano a terrible person. Yes, we have a bunch of different material in our hands about her attitude towards others, how she constantly sees herself as a victim, what a narcissist she is, but I WANTED to believe that things were taken out of context, that in real life she might not actually an angel in the flesh, but at least a pleasant person to talk to (and still a terrible creator. For me personally, she has become an image of the WORST things I can see in modern animation). However, everything has a limit. And the situation with Salem and Viv's recent tweet has already pissed me off.

We need to listen to victims of violence, but if they talk about Viv or someone from her team, like that fucking pervert Raph, then everything they say is a lie, provocation and hate? And if you also support victims of violence or simply do not throw rotten tomatoes at them, then you are also a hater and a bastard who DARE to think badly of Medrano? And, of course, we should just close our eyes to the bunch of screenshots, rumors and stories that have been accumulating around Vivienne for YEARS. And I may say something stupid, but there cannot be so many scandals surrounding an innocent person. I can still believe that some stories are embellished or exaggerated, but once is an accident, two times is a coincidence, and the third time is a pattern.

And I have a question for Viv and her team. They, of course, won’t see this or will simply not care, but still: aren’t you ashamed of your behavior? You constantly make excuses, engage in outright self-admiration (Viv's recent like about the success of TADC, for example), outright lie, shit on others and allow your crazy fan base to harass, insult and threaten ANYONE who even slightly disagrees with you . Do you really like that the Hellaverse fanbase is despised and hated by everyone around you? And no, I'm not exaggerating. In many other fandoms, it is Vivienne's fandom that is considered crap and the most glaring example of what the audience is a mirror of their favorite artists.

And these people are followed by millions? Are they an example for someone? These pathetic narcissists who just happened to be popular? I really don't want to belittle other people's achievements (especially poor animators), but after all these behind-the-scenes stories, I no longer have any sympathy or respect for them.

That's one of the crazy, awful things about it, isn't it? So many people really did do everything in their power to give Vivzie the benefit of the doubt -- hell, I even did it for a long time -- and then there comes a moment when you realize no, she really is that bad. She's worse.

She's got her nutcase fanbase, but she also hijacks something fundamentally good in people, the part that wants to believe in underdog success stories (also a lie on Vivzie's part, she was always rich as hell) and defend those who are being kicked around. And that's so fucked up.

[amalgamezz]

About your aro post in your tags you said you don’t care for any loves (romantic, familial [<- I don’t feel that one too :D] etc.) does that go for friendships as well? Or are you more of a person who doesn’t care for connection at all? I hope I worded that right…

heya, thank you for this ask, and no worries, your wordings are fine! sorry, this will be a long one because my audhd demands that i should provide full contexts 😔

as i interacted and got to know more about aplatonic and loveless communities, i found a certain solidarity/kinship with them. ever since i was in elementary, friendship has never been something i actively seek myself. i still got along well with classmates. my relationships with coworkers are chill and good. i have mutuals and friendly acquaintances here and there to talk about our shared interests. i try to maintain a good relationship with my family because capitalism sucks ass, especially for single people. in a way, this, too, is how i practice relationship anarchy — to give each casual and non-casual relationship i have a function and learn to appreciate them instead of putting the burdens on one or two committed relationships. for me, friendship has become a label for happy coincidences born out of those relationships after long and frequent interactions, if both parties desire a name for it. i have some positive connections with friends who i trust with my life, and i would mourn intensively should i lose them, but tbh, im not sure if i would personally call it "love".

i was lovequeer before i am loveless. im actually still considering myself lovequeer in a way that i strongly believe that love doesnt have to be romantic and that no kind of love is superior to the other. my personal relationship with love is complicated, but mostly sour. as an aro, i am a fierce defender of non-romantic loves. it annoys me greatly when people casually throw amatonormative phrases such as "there is no platonic explanation for this" or "friends dont do that" around. it is usually a hopeless and lonely battle because people dont really care about "not all loves are romantic" until you reject the concept of love altogether. more often than not, it becomes a gotcha towards aros who express their frustration with obsession over love by society.

this frustration, too, drew me closer to the concept of lovelessness. lovelessness means different things to different people, but for me, its the rejection of love being a superior, necessary, or moral trait of a human being. i had a knee-jerk reaction at first when i learned the term, but the more i read about it and introspect, the more it resonates with me. i remember how my parents hit me when i was a kid. i remember my aunt chewed me out in front of my entire family for expressing my wish to stay single and childless. i remember being driven to tears as my dad sneakily threw out a gift from my friend that i hung on my car and replaced it with a rosary. when asked why, they said because they wanted what was best for me. because they wanted me to be happy. because they loved me. it all sounded contradictory, but i have been with them long enough to know that they were being genuine. i dont wanna think its not a real love because i dont find it useful and more often than not, it only makes me question myself if i have been a fair evaluator and get guilty when i think im not. instead, i just have to accept that good intentions dont always bring good outcomes. their love is real, but its like a sun that burns and hurts more intensively the closer i get to it. i started coming to terms with love being a neutral but strong emotional motive that drives humans to do something — just like pleasure, joy, anger, sadness, envy, etc. whether you do good, bad, or neither because of it solely depends on you. i can acknowledge that they love me, but that doesnt mean they should be able to use it as an excuse to hurt me. this applies to all kinds of love.

i have nothing against love or the people who cherish it, but as i start dissecting and understanding more about love, it becomes less and less significant in my life. i start to realise that i dont need to love someone to bring them happiness or do good for them. i dont need to love my friends to care for or emotionally support them when they need it. i dont need to love my mutuals or even strangers to consider donating for their groceries. i dont need to love the victims of war to condemn the hideous crimes committed against them by some certain govts. love doesnt make me human. i just simply am, and im happy with the loveless relationships/connections i currently have.

[calliecat93]

So here is my silly little prediction regarding Ruby storyline for Volume 9.

To say that Ruby has had it rough would be an understatement. The past two volumes really pushed her. Those coming after Volume 6, the volume that really cemented her strength and hope, are not a coincidence. We’ve been waiting for the ‘Ruby breakdown volume’ for a LONG time now. I’ve been waiting since Volume 4 for it. And going off the first chapter, the trailer, and the opening I think I have a good idea of what to expect.

We know that RWBY is in Remnant’s version of Alice in Wonderland, which was referenced in Volume 8. As in they are in the actual story somehow. It might be why it looks like Blake's going to be taking the lead. While all four probably know the story, Ruby and Blake are probably the most familiar considering their love of books but with Ruby out of it, Blake's the one who knows what direction they should go. It also shows how for the most part she, Weiss, and Yang are in better mental states. They certainly have things to address, but they've already confronted and bested their pain and gone through their breaking points. Whatever they have to face they can do so.

Ruby though? She hasn't. She's come close to breaking, but she always managed to just pull herself back. That was her greatest strength. That's why she was the only one on her team who kept going after the Fall of Beacon. It's why she didn't fall into The Apathy like the others in Volume 6. It's why she inspired everyone around her since the start. Even Oz noted it in Volume 5. But Volume 7 and especially Volume 8 have broken her down. Atlas has fallen. The Relics are lost. No help came when she was so sure that her message would work. And worst of all Penny, someone that Ruby cares for so much and went so far to help, has died. That hope and optimism ultimately failed her. She is NOT okay. She's going to try and press on, but she can't this time. She can't push back her emotions, especially in a world where her emotions affect the environment around her. She doesn't want to address her issues and emotions, wanting to just smile and bear it. But that's not going to work this time.

Going off all that we've seen, the Ever After will NOT let you leave unless you confront your issues. The first line is literally an excerpt about a girl 'with a lot of issues'. As I said WBY has dealt with most of theirs and whatever remains they can and will face. But Ruby has spent so much time internalizing it in favor of focusing on what's before her. In a world where she HAS to confront it in order to leave? Nope. She can't do it. She doesn't want to do it. So then what happens if she can't? Well going off certain context clues in the trailer and opening...

Some others have also pointed this out but I think the longer you remain the Ever After and refuse to face your demons, the more you become assimilated into it. In the trailer, we have someone telling Ruby how she can leave Ruby Rose behind and asking what'll happen if she doesn't. We have the girls having to follow the fairy tale and the figure of the Alice character (Alyx apparently is her name?) in the opening. We have lines in the opening like "What I'd give in exchange/To be happy without trying" and "I've gotta let go but could I lose my mind?".

We also possibly have Jaune in some kind of knight get-up. If it is in fact Jaune it may very well mean that he's already assimilated or is going to due to what he had to do and not having any support like Ruby at least does. He left Jaune Arc behind and become The White Knight. Maybe some of the other characters like the Jabberwalker ended up the same way. It's probably gonna be a pretty nasty reveal for RWBY and what's in store if they don't get out. What will happen if Ruby leaves Ruby Rose behind? Will she become Alyx? The Red Queen maybe? Something else? Who knows? But simply put she will succumb and never be able to leave.

This is probably where the scene with her talking to her younger self comes in. It's either going to be a bad thing that pushes her even more into despair. Or it's the reminder that she is going to need. Of all that she believed in. Of her belief in those fairy tales and in helping people. Of the hope and determination that she's always carried with her that has pushed her so far. She needs to break, but then she needs the reminder of who she is. Yes, she failed. Yes, she may fail again. Yes, she's lost so much and gone through so much and that's not going to just stop. But she can't keep masking it. She has to accept that it hurt and let it out. Then she needs to pick herself up and go forward. Only then will she be able to reclaim Crescent Rose and likely pull Jaune back if this is gonna go like I think it will. She'll be able to re-ignite his hope just as she has done for her team. Thus they'll all be permitted to leave (IDK about Neo, maybe she'll finally find out what actually happened with Roman, we'll see) But first Ruby has to reignite it within herself, by far her greatest challenge yet.

...or I could be thinking WAY too much about this. Like I said I've been waiting for this for so long and it's finally happening.

[akitamafumis]

trying to go through life thoughts

I wrote some thoughts on the l/n starira AU that i am putting here for posterity . mainly .

I don’t really know where to start or how to go into this. I made a comment to frog about how i thought that thematically l/n weren’t too far off, at least with some things. There’s the difference between revue’s focus on selfishness, but i think in a way you can see those as the difference between theatre and music (non-theatre) as art forms. Does that make sense? It’s an interesting part of a band, that the thematic idea of selfishness literally can only go so far—anyone can hope to be the lead in theatre, but a drumset player can’t hope to play the melody (you’re about to pitch your idea for a set of chromatically tuned toms. There’s nothing i can say to you that would stick in your brain).

So that was kind of my general vibe. I felt like there were enough similarities to justify the differences to make it make sense. I was only doing it as a writing exercise and it kind of spiraled. Ppl have talked about how it’s rly hard to revue something else because besides just fun aesthetics for art, it requires upward work to try and justify the occurrences in the AU to make it actually work. So i thought, maybe, it’d be fun to try and work through those thoughts a bit and see what I could come up with.

The most major change of note is that Shiho’s parents work in theatre in some way—it’s super vague and I didn’t want to come up with any concrete answers just because it felt pointless to. One of her parents might be a rinmeikan graduate or a family member was a teacher there or something, hence how they ended up with an old Rinmeiki vhs, and a result of her parents being in theatre means her desire to be a professional musician is switched to a desire to be a professional actor. A lot of what ripples out from there in terms of their childhood is pretty self explanatory: they watch Rinmeiki, put on little plays together just the four of them, and then things fall apart as they grow older.

I wanted to get them relatively close to pjsk canon at the start moreso than starira’s, so the perf department is already closed while they’re in their first year. I think in the context of this story they had more members at the start of the year, but people (upperclassmen) dropped into general education just because they knew the department was going to close down, until it was just Shiho and Ichika. Upperclassmen are only 2nd years, bc the part of my brain that cares too much ab logistics thinks the school would let any third years graduate in their department before shutting it at the end of the year but ANYWAY.

Kanade and Shizuku showing up is just because i needed two people connected to two of our people. I don’t know what school kanade/25ji go to. MMJ are frontier they’re. Idols. I have no idea who frau platin is. Actual answer probably Iori. But instead. Haruhi Minamoto. Fuck you.

There’s a lot about what I did with honami that ends up feeling like favorite character favoritism. And it IS. But it was also tied to the fact she did brass band in middle school, so she’s converted to being the most theatre oriented behind Shiho. Rather than Honami being ostracized for what she is in canon, it’s for acting, which was mainly because i needed a reason for her to quit acting specifically. Centering acting does shift the fact that for both honami and shiho acting becomes the center of their straining relationship with ichika/each other, rather than their interpersonal problems. But revue generally ties personal problems and the stage up together, so i think it’s not an unfair thing to change, and it’s not so much a change for Shiho, anyway.

Also honami’s weapon IS NOT A SCYTHE. It is just a lance. They have pretty boring revue weapons. The scythe joke is ABOUT HER NAME ONLY. IT IS UNFORTUNATE, BUT MERELY COINCIDENCE. WE SHOULD KILL KOCHO SHIZUHA.

The. Story is meant to conceptually cover what would be the school story (partially)+opening arc… a hypothetical main story (which you will never see from me because SCOPE) would large scale consist of them trying to form an official association and performance festival, etc etc etc, alongside their individual character arcs.

As far as the characters, shiho’s follow up would cover um. Obviously. Saki and Ichika have both taken Shiho helping/joining the association to mean that she’s not planning on transferring but that is still very much on the table for her. Only Honami is aware that the . Fights within their group aren’t over yet which is meant to compound with a certain lack of confrontation.

Honami’s would center around that whole revue weapon business, and the sense of regaining her brilliance. There are certain elements that tie into pjsk canon in terms of her (re)finding the confidence to speak her mind and put her foot down more, slowly. I think also as a secondary thing she gets into directing, over time.

Saki’s the most vague in my mind. I think she’s got passion and conviction but a sort of lack of direction, even though those two usually lead to the third. It’s the least developed in my brain so far. There’s also maybe something about her illness, both in terms of recognizing her own limits and acknowledging them, but also in not sidelining herself from going for lead roles, or something.

Ichika sort of lacks a lot as a stage girl initially. In her idea that she has parts of the rest of the group in herself i thought about including some implication that she doesn’t know what she would pass on to the three of them in return, but i couldn’t fit a line in about it without drawing a lot of attention to it, and it would fly under the radar after that revue and not come up again for a while. She’s also still carrying baggage for assuming the fault of the department shutting down.

Point is, when saki and ichika agree about not fighting each other and only facing other schools from now on, they are entirely off base. Things aren’t really fully aligned.

Okay. Now for my least favorite part. I thought revue intros would be fun and now i have to talk about them a little bit briefly. All of them contain an element of their name, alongside. Okay.

Saki’s is a mess well okay that’s not fair they’re all a mess to me . The “Bright skies” in the opening references the her last name, and the reference to blossoms her first name. Hers also overtly. References Rinmeiki.

Shiho’s isn’t tied to rinmeiki at all and the name references are the most vague, but her is very. Situationally accurate and i think remains so. She does the hard carrying for the revue conversion and i think up until the transferring confrontation comes to a head she’s often sort of . Antagonistic in trying to push the rest to either rise to the challenge or give up. “Brilliance pierces through the artificial shades” is the reference to her name. Brilliance standing in for sun and um. Sun piercing through the treetops. Also the final line the use of the word rises.

Ichika’s guided by the light of stars is her name reference, alongside the “melody of our song” thing. Rinmeiki are referenced as well, “against the flow of history” and the thing about her being a hero.

Honami’s is so heavy handed it hurts me and that’s what she gets for being last. She references all four of their names, and doesn’t have a specific Rinmeiki reference.

They also all specifically reference themselves differently. Ichika and Saki as students of rinmeikan, shiho as merely a stage girl, and honami as part of the performance association (which technically doesn’t exist officially when she says that).

I think…that’s kind of everything I’ve got…at least for now. That’s the bulk of it, really, i think. I hope. I don’t know :)

[darkstarofchaos]

Opinion: Optimus is at his best when his narrative role is mentor, not hero.

Like. From the beginning, Optimus was meant to be this wise, noble leader. G1 is full of moments where he imparts some nugget of wisdom on the other characters, even if said nuggets are... not always context-appropriate (telling someone not to give up on their dreams is fine, but maybe not when they’re lamenting the failure of a mind control plot?). And of course, this was the 80′s, so the good guys always won in the end. Which meant that Optimus' decisions were always right - or at least, there weren’t lasting consequences if he was wrong.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with having a character like that. The problem is that, if they’re already the wisest and most capable member of the cast, they have nothing to learn. And usually, when a character has nothing left to learn, they aren’t the protagonist. And, okay. It was an episodic cartoon without any real overarching plot. None of the characters grew or changed in any lasting way. But you still had lessons put in there for the kids watching: Spike and Sparkplug both had “you don’t give up on people you love” episodes, Bumblebee had a similar moment with Optimus, the Dinobots and the Aerialbots both had rebellious phases that resulted in their decisively siding with the Autobots, and more. As long as the kids were getting positive messages, it didn’t matter if the characters changed.

Again, nothing inherently wrong with that. But Optimus never has one of those moments where he learns from his team. Because he has nothing to learn (well, he does, but we never see it happen). And that makes him... not very interesting, except as a power fantasy with a side of dad jokes. Which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most fanfiction portrayals of Optimus don’t have the dad jokes and trash talking during battle. Which brings me back to my main point: Optimus is at his best when his narrative role is mentor.

I know I have a something of a reputation for not liking Optimus, but that’s not a blanket statement. There are several Optimuses I don’t like, and at least as many that I haven’t met, but I do like two of them: Armada and TFP. Armada Optimus was very much a mentor character. He had no major plotlines of his own, save for his obligatory phoenix moment (and even that served more to advance the character arcs of Hot Shot and Starscream - our main protagonists by that point in the series). Most of the time, especially as the Autobot cast grew, Optimus was just there in the background. He fought battles and said wise things, and that was pretty much it. I can understand why one might say he had no personality, because his character didn’t change much over the course of the story.

But honestly, he didn’t need to. His purpose in the story was to help others grow, and he did just that. A plot-reliant story doesn’t benefit from having the character who already knows everything hogging the spotlight (and whether you liked Armada’s early episodes or not, most of the series did have a plot). TFP Optimus was the same. The only real change in his character - not counting the woefully brief Orion Pax arc - is when he accepts that the war is never going to end while Megatron is alive. The rest of the time, he’s in the background, and outside of battles, his main role is to provide wisdom for the other characters (though, again, it’s not always context-appropriate. “Revenge isn’t worth it” is a good lesson, but I still think Arcee should have killed Airachnid).

And yes. I know TFP Optimus is what some might consider boring. As an introvert, I don’t care. Let me have the Optimus I relate to and go watch G1 if you prefer basketball and jokes.

As a final note, I’m not saying Optimus can only be good when he’s a mentor character. Fans can write whatever they want, and even in canon, Optimus isn’t always the Wise One. TFA took a very different approach to his character, and while I’ve only seen a few episodes, it was an interesting approach. That version of Optimus could absolutely fill the role of a protagonist with much to learn, and he might not even be too annoying while he’s at it (his voice, sadly, is not as pleasing to listen to as Peter Cullen’s Optimus, or David Kaye’s Megatron. Which is sad, because I love David Kaye as Megatron). TL;DR: if Optimus is going to be wise and infallible, he’s better suited to a mentor role. Also, the Optimuses I like are probably the ones no one else does, which means I have gained exactly no ground with Optimus’ fans, and may have actually lost points for liking Armada (don’t care, it was my first Transformers series and I love it).

Opinion concluded.

[niuttuc]

What do you think about the power level of recent sets as pertaining to eternal formats?

Ok, so, how do you define "recent sets"... And "eternal formats" too. I will try to give my thoughts according to my interpretation of that, but it's fuzzier than you'd think.

I will say anything recent is anything more recent than any set legal in standard, and eternal formats cover Legacy, Vintage, Commander and Modern. I'll also put in a read more because that ended up being a pretty long ramble.

First of all, I'll clear up a bunch of them at once: Standard set have been fine, and in fact pretty great. They've provided powerful pieces to older formats, of course, be it Fable of the Mirror-Breaker, Sheoldred, Ledger Shredder, Channel lands,... And all and all, if you ask me? Those have been pretty natural additions to the formats. Cards at the upper end of the standard power-level finding synergies and homes in decks.

Of these, channel lands are maybe the biggest offender here, as easy one-of answers any deck in their color can play, but in those formats playing a non-fetchable one color land that isn't a basic is actually a cost, even if it's one that people end up paying for Otawara and Boseiju.

I also need to address the beans in the room: Up the Beanstalk has been making some pretty impressive waves in older formats. Mostly because of its interaction with those formats' access to many powerful cards that have a "mana value" of 5 or more but can be cast for zero or one mana. I'd argue that this is an issue with those free spells and not Up the Beanstalk, but also I feel like this is a very normal way for cards to break into Eternal formats: through unforeseen interactions within the huge pool of cards of those formats. That's typically how Legacy and Modern got their most iconic cards, and that's why the Vintage restricted list can look so weird to a casual observer, with Ancestral Recall hanging around next to Lodestone Golem and Monastery Mentor.

Now, that leaves us with Baldur's Gate (ie the Initiative set), Warhammer 40,000, Unfinity, Transformers, Jumpstart 2022, the Lord of the Rings set, and very recently Doctor Who. Plus the smattering of commander precons.

From this list, Transformers and Jumpstart had no effect on eternal formats. Doctor Who hasn't had a huge effect so far, but also it released two weeks ago and isn't on Magic Online, so we don't really have any significant amount of data for Legacy or Vintage about that.

This leaves us with Baldur's Gate first, which added Initiative to Legacy, and also Minsc & Boo. Oh, and Pauper suffered Initiative too. While it might have been a mistake, it wasn't really one of power level. Or rather, the power level was fine for the multiplayer formats it was intended for, but unbalanced in the context of 1v1 competitive magic. This was entirely foreseeable even without testing, Monarch did the same thing after all. The question then become: should they tone down commander designs in commander sets that might make them less interesting in commander out of prudence for older formats? I do not have a definitive answer to that. Ideally, they'd be able to balance the two off of their differences.

40K introduced a few cards into eternal formats, but none that I'd qualify as "broken", just some new powerful option, mostly synergy-based. Same with Unfinity, although Unfinity had other issues than power-level. Nothing was too strong, but making half the set eternal-legal including stickers and attractions, underpowering them to avoid competitive issues, and them still sneaking into competitive play, was pretty much the worst of all worlds. Comet and Embiggen and Pair O' Dice Lost are fine. ______ Goblin not so much, but again, not a power level issue. Kappa Cannoneer is a strong card, but I feel about it the same as I do about Up the Beanstalk: situationally strong and dependent on the environment and naturally added as part of a batch.

Which leaves us with the Lord of the Rings set, coincidentally the only one of these to enter Modern on top of legacy. To recap, the cards that mainly see play from this are the landcyclers (chiefly Lòrien Revealed), Orcish Bowmasters and the One Ring. And Forth Eorlingas! in Legacy only, as it is a commander precon card. There's a few others that might see occasional play, but those are the main ones you're likely to see.

The landcyclers I think add to the format's manabases, mostly for graveyard decks. Orcish Bowmasters is an answer, a strong answer, and I don't really like its design, it does a bit too much without even trying. It does one too many things, I feel. Either don't make the token, or only ping the opponent and make the token, or ping creatures but not players and planeswalkers. I'll put Forth Eorlingas in that bag too.

The One Ring is incredibly strong,... But I feel less annoyed by it. It is the One Ring, and it feels appropriate. It's also a 4 mana artifact with counterplay to it, and after spiking up in popularity, it's somewhat stabilized as a staple with both decks playing it and deck preferring other options. Regardless, I don't think its main strength should be being able to play multiple copies of it to dodge any consequences though. It barely cracks the top 50 most played noncreature nonland cards in legacy. So the main issue is in Modern, and again, it's a good problem to have, one that can be handled and isn't by a landslide.

So overall, the few pushed cards in LTR are the only ones I'd qualify as a "problem of power level in recent sets for Eternal formats". A huge part of the problem is that they were injected into Modern alongside Legacy, but also the cards were pushed a bit too far. Overall, not too bad a track record though, most of the additions have felt more or less organic. However, if I looked back six months more and we were discussing Modern Horizons 2, I'd have some more choice words about pushed staples, that was like LTR, but with half of its mythics and a third of its rares instead of a literal handful of cards. I sincerely hope Modern Horizons 3 isn't like that. And I hope future direct injections into modern aren't quite as pushed as LTR's targeted Competitive inserts were.

Oh, and I haven't addressed Commander, for two reasons. One, commander, as a format that isn't competitive, is much, much, much more resilient to any "metagame" or "power level issues" because it basically self-corrects. Two, is that there's less issues there because it's where most of these cards are aimed at. I will say, I don't think the One Ring is a positive addition to commander... But it's also a card too expensive for me to see anyone play it, so...

[chargetheintruder]

Wrassle Gibberish, and a Poll? Sure, why not?

Because you know what? Windham over there, a.k.a. Bray Wyatt, might need something to irritate and/or motivate him? Yeah. So first the Poll:

And with that out of the way? Okay, my apologies for being harsh but I was looking forward to some Wyatt, Uncle Howdy and Bliss weirdness at Wrestlemania, damn it. I'm not sure what happened, but here's my guesses. Educated hunches.

-- Maybe Windham legitimately got sick at a bad time. I don't know. The first reports I heard were that Windham had a finger injury or two, but that's not usually something you can't rest and recover from in 2-3 weeks. Ditto with a stomach virus. It just seems strange that nobody really knows why the guy behind Wyatt just quit?

-- Or maybe Lashley and Wyatt just couldn't work with each other. There did seem to be a HUGE personality conflict going on, with Bray Wyatt not wanting to do anything but his usual horror/cinematic style of match, where Lashley refused to do anything but a bare-bones beatdown of the kind he usually favors.

-- The Uncle Howdy presence didn't help matters, sure, given Lashley's track record of not taking kindly to head-games of ANY sort. But he had to know something like that was going to happen, he's not stupid. I don't know really. What I do understand, though, Is that I was asked to "lie for him" and "Can you keep a secret?" And as of right now I did both of those, a bit middling, but I did them, and for nothing? Yeah.

So I lied by pretending to give the secret away, saying "Oh, it's going to be a huge cinematic thing, and that's the issue: it was recorded weeks ago, it's in the can already and it's put a lot of people ON HOLD waiting for real time to catch up with 'Mania." I don't think people bought it but then again, nobody asked me, and I did spread quite a few lesser lies too.

As for the Damned Secret. Here it is: Fictional character Bray Wyatt is a fan of Fictional TV Station Local 58. This is a GIGANTIC clue as it regards Uncle Howdy, and Bray Wyatt's narrative. Or at least it WAS.

Here is a sample of Local 58 Broadcast material:

The hint here is the key to the narrative: in the Local 58 setting, The Moon is a living, cosmic horror type of entity, and the theme of that channel and its associated materials is that "the Moon will Eat the Earth." And people in that setting, some of them worship the moon, hoping they won't get devoured.

So where's the clues? The Main one reflects on Uncle Howdy. The resemblance isn't 100 percent clear in the mask, but in this new context, Uncle Howdy is supposed to be The Man in the Moon. This should be considered closely: who has routinely said "to the MOON!" in his promos? Who's intro is nearly identical in posture and body language to Uncle Howdy's?

Cameron Grimes. NOT Bo Dallas. Consider that the mainstream wrestling press on YouTube knows Grimes has been promoted to Main Roster, but "doesn't know what he's doing", they just know he's a) grown his hair out, and b) that he's "jacked", meaning extra muscular lately. Does that sound like the guy who attacked Bobby Lashley in Bray Wyatt's place?

The second clue is less obvious. The Moon Phase for tomorrow, April 1st, night one of Wrestlemania, is Waxing Gibbous, or the rising three-quarters phase right before the Full Moon. This could coincide with either the Return of The Fiend (whether it's Bray Wyatt or not) or Uncle Howdy's becoming his own force to be reckoned with, although it did look like Bray was trying a new, seventh character with the new Black Mask, and with the hint in the Uncle Howdy Weather Forecast during the Firefly Funhouse's tribute to Local 58. That clue was that the temperature ranges in all cities on that weather map were identical and showing the same seven-degree temperature spread. Seven, and not Wyatt 6.

So it LOOKED like, past tense, we were going to get either The Fiend, or a Fiend Alternate, with Bray, more insight into Uncle Howdy, in a match involving Bobby Lashley that could have been a banger, and all this with some Bliss on the side. But nah. Illness and maybe egos getting in the way.

Do I have more hunches? Sure, but they're less clear, and more in Bliss-fit country. And they assume a bit. Point is, someone had the whole world in his hands, and he choked. It happens. Maybe don't do it again? Or maybe do better at Wrestlemania Backlash: the Backlashening? The hell if I know. (*shrugs*)

[phyltopia]

The Miracle of Mundanity

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” 

~Tennessee Williams

            Upon arriving at the seminar, I immediately felt out of place. This is not a rare occurrence for me- I feel out of place pretty much all the time, regardless of circumstance. I’m autistic, so I often don’t understand social cues, I struggle to make friends, I struggle with overstimulation and processing emotions, and I absolutely hate eye contact. I often describe it as feeling like everyone else is in color, while I exist in black and white.

 I was able to settle down once introductions turned from one large group discussion to several small groups, to one-on-one dialogues. I felt a calming energy from my partner which lessened my anxiety and allowed me to focus on just her. I don’t recall the context, but I mentioned a quote from Einstein, who said, “there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” It may seem mundane, but it’s a miracle that we don’t have to tell our lungs to expand and contract in order to breathe, it’s a miracle that we don’t have to tell our heart to beat… beat… beat. It’s a miracle that any one of us was in that room at that time, let alone all of us, and it’s a miracle that my partner sat next to me. I get an email blast every day with a bunch of readings and quotes, which I usually read first thing in the morning, but due to a different schedule I didn’t read them until I was done for the day. One of the quotes was the Einstein quote I had referenced in the morning. That could be considered a coincidence, or simply a miracle of the mundane. I wrote her a thank you note for our talk.

From there I was able to focus on the program and took a lot away from the overall seminar. I found things I can use in my own work, from the dissertations on the God Box, Friendship, and Identity to exercises in Lucid Dream Reframing and Embracing the Void. I decided at that point that I want to be up on that stage presenting my research, whatever it turns out to be. I have references in my notes to finding the “plane of bliss” by silencing the mind, either with meditation or substances, and the Eight C’s of Self. I learned more about the nuts and bolts of the school and the program, but I still ate alone, kept mostly to myself, and focused on who I am not rather than who I am. I felt like everyone spoke with an elocution of such earnestness and compassion that it almost felt like flirting (Editor’s note: this feeling may be the result of the author’s Narcissistic Confabulation Dysmophia[1], in that he believes everyone either is or should be always flirting with him), which is a language I’m certainly not fluent in. I am not a person who wolf-howls, or beats drums, or practices much in the way of ceremony or ritual. 

The coolest people I’ve ever met have the most colorful pasts, they’ve lived lives of risk, made bad choices, learned lessons, explored, and they’re not afraid of being real. Tattered tapestries woven of similar threads, they’re my kind of people. My favorite shade of crazy. ~Stephen L. Lizotte

It wasn’t until Sunday evening when I truly felt at home in the program and in myself. I found myself eating vegan butternut squash and mushroom enchiladas with a coach from Texas, a therapist from Australia, and an Ayahuasca guide from Lebanon. And at the time it felt completely normal- four peers and, dare I say, friends, enjoying a meal and each other’s company. But once back at my hotel, I found myself thinking, how did I get here? I saw the miracle for what it was. How many circumstances, good, bad or seemingly indifferent had to fall into place for me to find myself in that room at that time, with those people? How many circumstances had to occur for each other person to find themselves in the same place, eating with a socially awkward if extremely attractive man from Central California? And what kind of brilliant sanity did we experience just by being together? Taking all of that into consideration, I felt grateful that I had the opportunity to enjoy their company. I felt like I was in color along with them, and I didn’t feel the need to write more thank you notes. Because we are all unique in our weirdness, beautiful in our flaws, and perfect in our authentic selves. We are all a special kind of crazy, and we are all a miracle in our own right. 

The final day I felt at home, and I truly saw my peers for the first time, all of us in color. Before I started the program, people would ask me what Transpersonal Psychology is and I would say, “hell I don’t know. That’s why I’m studying it.” Now, I still can’t articulate it except to say that it feels like home. It feels like exactly what I’m supposed to be learning, exactly when I’m supposed to be learning, it, surrounded by exactly the people I’m supposed to be with. 

Driving back to my house, I found myself wishing that I had shed my protective layers earlier, but I realize that wouldn’t have ever happened, because that’s not who I am. I come to things at my own pace, and I accept that. Mono No Aware is a Japanese term which refers to the beauty of things passing. So instead of regretting what wasn’t, I choose to relish in what was, and am excited to return and I can’t wait see and experience my new friends again, because as David Byrne said, “home is where I want it to be” and I’ve found my home. 

[1] Narcissistic Confabulation Dysmorphia almost certainly does not exist, but every disorder must start somewhere.

[itgirlofnowhere]

Top Gun Maverick HCs: How They Got Their Call Signs

i'm sure there is some official explanation for all of them, but this is what my silly little brain enjoys

Hangman- Hangman absolutely failed English class. This man cannot spell, punctuate, anything, especially over text. Someone said "texting Seresin is like playing a f*cked-up game of hangman" and it stuck. Any other innuendos meanings are pure coincidence

Phoenix- She refuses to give anyone context, but long story short, she lit her hair on fire. That's why she's always wearing her signature bun, to avoid any more accidental arson

Rooster- Roosters are known for two things: being early risers and loud/annoying asf. Our bestie Rooster is also known for those same two things around base

Payback- He's a legendary prankster, especially fond of a long con. Every so often, karma (aka Fanboy) does decide to hit him back

Coyote- Coyote has many interesting hobbies, one of the main ones being karaoke. He can rap any Nicki verse with style, but his howling singing voice led to his call sign

Bob- Much like in the movie, Bob misunderstands the question 'what should we call you?' and he answers 'Bob.' This leads to his frineds trying to make Bob stand for something. Ex, 'Baby On Board', etc.

Fanboy- In the movie, it's implied that he's a Star Trek fanboy, but what it doesn't show is that he's a fanboy over everything. Music, movies, shows.. he's also the best at hyping everyone up before a date, mission etc.

BONUS!! My OC Margo 'Wildcard' Mitchell- She was given her callsign because of her notoriously bad poker face. Also she's way too competitive for her own good and will do reckless and dumb things to win

[aestherians]

Choice or Chance?: Exploring voluntarity and categorization in the otherkin and therian communities

Under the cut is the full script for my Othercon 2021 lecture, in which I examine the way we categorize nonhumans based on the perceived amount of choice they had in their identity and how this practice is detrimental to both questioning people and our community as a whole. At the end, I propose a new way to define otherkind and otherlinkers to hopefully move our community forward.

Reading time: 30-40 minutes.

The focus of this lecture has changed a bit since I started working on it. My earliest idea was to discuss the grey area between otherlinks and kintypes - in fact one of my working titles was Grey Zones and Silver Linings. And I still plan on talking about this, though not in the way you might expect. I originally wanted to argue that those who found themselves in this grey area should be able to choose how they wanted to refer to their identity, but the more research and thinking I did, the more I realized that this would still leave a bunch of people torn and confused and wouldn’t solve any of the greater problems in our community. It also seems like such a water-is-wet statement with how the conversation has developed… and you know me, I’m only happy when I’m starting controversies.

So I went looking for the root of this whole categorization debacle.

The nonhuman community, as we know it, didn’t always exist, and though we often say it has roots in elven communities from the ‘70s, that’s only half the truth. While the Elf Queen’s Daughters and related successors such as the Silver Elves are the earliest known organized nonhuman communities, they’re by far not the only pioneers.

Because nonhuman identifying people have always existed, and our numbers have always been relatively small, some of us ended up grouping together without even being aware of the other groups that existed. And of course, all these independently formed groups ended up with their own cultures and traditions and philosophies.

Mailing lists, like the Elfinkind Digest, were generally open for anyone to join and read. But they also weren’t widely known or easy to stumble upon for folks who didn’t already have an interest in these kinds of spirituality and identification. This resulted in a culture where people’s self-identification was generally respected, and they would only be questioned if they made extraordinary claims.

Compare this with the newsgroup Alt.Horror.Werewolves, which was open for anyone to access on Usenet, and which was originally created as just a place to discuss werewolf media. On AHWw, the therians (or ‘weres’ as it was back then) would frequently have to defend their existence against strangers who just found them by coincidence. This would lead to a culture more focused on appearing respectable, which in turn would lead to grilling of new members and shut-downs of “fluffy” topics.

Other independent groups, such as Alt.Fan.Dragons, which was centered around dragons, or Always Believe, which was centered around unicorns, had their own cultures as well. For example, AFD generally accepted dragons from modern fiction, which would not have been tolerated on AHWw.

The Silver Elves is another semi-independently evolved group of elves, fae and similar beings that still exists to this day. They only represent a fraction of our community, but for today’s discussions I find their writings very illustrative. They’ve written about choice of identity on multiple levels. For starters, they believe a lot of elven spirits have actively chosen to incarnate into human bodies. More provocatively, and more interesting to me, they’ve stated multiple times that simply wanting to be an elf means you are an elf.

This is in contrast to the therian community on AHWw, where there was a big focus on involuntary shifts and theorizing on why some people were born with and animal side. I think it’s reasonable to assume this focus on involuntary experiences is due to the werewolf narrative that the community stemmed from. In werewolf media, a person’s wolfish side is rarely, if ever, a choice, while in new age and spiritual communities, like that of the Silver Elves, there’s a greater emphasis on choice of spirituality and subsequently on choice of identity.

It wouldn’t be right to say that every therian back then shared the same idea; however, the idea that involuntary shifts are a core trait of therianthropy does seem to persist in the AHWw’s userbase. Nearly all introduction posts include a line about involuntary shifts. Another idea that repeats itself is that the therian either had a “sudden awakening” or “just always knew” they were animalistic; contrasted with the Silver Elves’ idea that simply wanting to be an elf is enough for you to be one.

-

There are two main ideas about origins that seem to persist in all of this: That one is either born nonhuman or becomes nonhuman. Both are equally true. The ‘born-this-way’-narrative is quite a bit more common than the ‘becoming’-narrative, though that’s not to say that the idea of becoming nonhuman is rare, or even all that controversial in most communities - with a few caveats, that is.

The idea that one can become nonhuman tends to rest on the idea that what we become is outside our control. On the more metaphysical side of things there are stories of people being spiritually transformed into an animal after encounters with an animal spirit, or of having a shard of a god put into them. And on the more mundane side, there are stories of imprinting on a species during early development, or of taking on the experiences of a character after being engrossed in a piece of media. Most people I’ve talked to don’t have a problem with these ideas of ‘becoming’ as something outside your control.

What really gets people’s goat is when someone describes specific choices they’ve made on their journey, which ultimately led to their nonhuman identity.

This finally leads to the theme of this lecture: The topic of choice itself and how we categorize others based on the perceived amount of choice or chance there’s been in the development of their identity.

Questions I’ll discuss include: What kind of choices do we have regarding our identities? What the heck does ‘choice’ even mean in this context? And how does the idea of choice (or lack of choice) affect the way our community functions?

There are many kinds of choices that we inarguably do make on our journey of self-discovery. Probably the first universal choice is to undertake the journey and to seek out a nonhuman community. Choices that naturally follow include choice of labeling - whether we want to call ourselves otherkin, therian, fictionkin, nonhuman, and so on - and the choice to accept or reject whatever feelings caused us to seek out a nonhuman community in the first place. In this line of thinking, being otherkin is a choice - you choose to label yourself as otherkin. However, the feelings, on which you base your decision to label yourself, are not a choice. The feelings that pushed you towards the community were already there.

Another choice that follows pretty naturally in this line of thinking is the choice to strengthen whatever connections you already have. This is something I’m intimately familiar with, as I’ve been doing it since I awakened as a bison. Before I even became aware of my species identity, I knew I was nonhuman. I’d been having simultaneous bison and gnoll feelings for a few years, but couldn’t separate them, and had, without much introspection, decided that I must be some weird kind of wolf. I think a lot of us with uncommon theriotypes have gone through a phase like that.

However, one day I experienced a very strong flashing image - basically a flashback - of being physically a bison. The vision was so vivid and tactile, I immediately knew what it meant, and for the next few weeks I ignored every experience that wasn’t quite bison in nature, and just examined the recognizably bovine feelings. This helped strengthen my bison identity, and in total my questioning process only took around 2 months.

Though I’ve settled in my identity as a bison, and I’m comfortable referring to myself as a bison, I never quit reinforcing it. While I didn’t create the original bison-like feelings, I’m very conscious of the fact that I do choose to connect every trait to my bisonhood that I can. Whether I see the traits as a cause of my current bisonhood, or a result of it, things like being stubborn, preferring physical fights over verbal ones, and even liking the taste of those Beanboozled jellybeans that are supposed to taste like grass… all these traits, that any human could have, are things I connect to my identity as a bison.

I’ve experienced some pushback towards this idea from a few therian communities. A very common rebuttal I’ve run into in introduction threads and grilling threads (which, introduction threads should never be grilling threads in my opinion, but that’s another story)… a very common rebuttal to considering these kinds of traits part of your nonhuman identity is: “Isn’t that just a regular human thing?”

I have so many problems with that question, I’m honestly not sure where to even begin. Yes, those traits are experienced by humans all the time. I think some of the only experiences in the community that regular humans don’t experience are, perhaps, species dysphoria and shifting. But if your identity began and ended with having dysphoria and experiencing shifts, it would hardly qualify as an identity. Treating an identity like just the sum of its parts, rather than a whole and complicated construct, is reductive and it doesn’t just hinder discussion, it stifles discussions.

I don’t know, maybe I’m the odd one here, but my whole nonhuman identity can not be encompassed by my horn dysphoria or the fact that I sometimes feel more like a prey animal than an apex predator. My identity is so much more than that. It’s how I view the world and how I view myself in relation to the world. It’s how I react to things, what I like and dislike, and what I want out of my life. When you envision an identity in this way, as a way to describe who you are, rather than a summary of every individual thing you experience, you absolutely will see some overlap with humans, like it or not.

Another reason I dislike the question “Aren’t those just human traits?” is that it’s often asked in communities where the consensus is that you were born nonhuman, and that your identity is somehow more real or ‘valid’ if it can be corroborated by childhood memories.

While looking back at your childhood and seeing how your current identity might have formed or changed throughout the years can help paint a picture of the identity as a whole, that kind of reminiscence should always be secondary to what you are currently experiencing. Your identity is not based on the fact that you played dog when you were a toddler. Pretty much every human child has played dog or been obsessed with cats or wished they were a dragon. It might be related to your current identity, but if those were your primary nonhuman experiences you would hardly consider yourself nonhuman, nor would you find a home in the community.

No, your identity is based on who and what you are right now, and what you’re experiencing this moment. The validity of your identity should not be judged based on the number of times you pretended to be that creature in kindergarten. Your kintype should be determined based on your current experiences. And if your current experiences include things that humans can also go through, that should have no impact on the validity of your identity.

-

Alright, back on topic: Hopefully, we can agree that there’s no shame in strengthening your connections, reinforcing what traits you already have, and in drawing connections between a nonhuman identity and seemingly human traits. Which is a nice segue into a statement that might ruffle a few feathers:

Linktypes are typically based on preexisting traits that are reinforced to fit a certain narrative or ideal. A copinglink or an otherlink is rarely if ever pulled out of thin air. You just can’t craft an identity from nothing. Yeah, crazy, I know?

This parallels otherkin identities, which, as I mentioned earlier, are based on preexisting experiences and connections that one chooses to give a name and to strengthen.

The process of becoming a linker usually starts with recognizing certain traits that one either wants, or already has but wants to reinforce, by focusing them through a linktype. For example, wanting to become better at handling stress can be difficult to accomplish on its own, but is made easier by thinking about what a specific character or animal would do in a stressful situation.

But you can’t just establish a connection to any given character. There needs to be a resonance between you and the linktype, and if you don’t already have that resonance with the character, it’s impossible for you to craft an identity around them. And in that sense you could easily argue that there is an involuntary aspect to linktypes.

Once the prospective linker has recognized a connection with a character, they will begin the process of reinforcing the identity, which can include anything from writing fanfics in 1st person to wearing clothes reminiscent of the character to asking people to treat you like the character. All things that an otherkin or fictionkind might do when first establishing their identity.

A key trait of linking is that a linktype should fade away once you stop reinforcing it… Linktypes are supposed to go away if you just ignore them and push them away long enough. They’re built to be temporary.

However, a significant number of linkers or former linkers have talked about their linktype becoming an inseparable part of how they view themselves - even the ones who might be able to force their linktype away would at this point become completely different people if they did so.

In other words, their linktype has become an inherent part of who they are as a person. This integrality can appear regardless of how much effort they put into creating the linktype in the first place, and regardless of how nonexistent the linktype was before they created it… What I’m getting at is that some people describe creating an identity from scratch by their own choice, which later becomes an irreversibly ingrained part of them. It’s an experience completely contrary to the idea that we are born nonhuman. I’ll refer to these people as ‘linkers-turned-kin’.

There are a few regular rebuttals I’ve seen to this idea: That linkers-turned-kin just had a late awakening. Or that, perhaps, they felt compelled by their inner true species to seek out the identity. Or even that they were actually born nonhuman, but just didn’t realize until later.

All these rebuttals are disrespectful of the linker-turned-kin’s experiences and intelligence. I won’t even try to hide it: They make me angry. The rebuttals ride on the idea that the born-this-way idea of nonhuman identities is a fact rather than a common belief. I know that for a lot of people the born-this-way narrative rings true. I see you and I am not trying to invalidate your beliefs. Instead, I want you to acknowledge that others may not have the same belief as you. For several people in our community otherkinity is an identity that develops in response to certain traits they have - for some, those traits are inherent, something they’re born with. For others they’re traits that developed later in life, or that were worked towards. And I want to argue that, for some, these traits were expressly chosen.

The reason these arguments against linker-turned-kin make me so angry, aside from the fact that they’re built on the idea that linkers-turned-kin don’t understand their own experiences, and the assumption that your idea of how nonhuman identities work trumps someone’s lived experience… Another reason the arguments make me so angry is that they prescribe more importance to the why than the how of our identity. When you define otherkin by the way our identity formed, you’re basically saying that the cause of otherkinity is more important than the experience of otherkinity.

-

We can’t talk about this without also exploring the community’s animosity towards psychological beliefs.

Through my years in the community, I feel like I’ve had to handhold some folks through the concept of religious tolerance. I remember a little over 4 years ago someone on tumblr asked me my opinion on fictionkind - it would be another 2 years before I had my own awakening, so my response was basically that I was fine with fictionkind, though I didn’t understand their experiences and the only way it could fit into my own worldview was as a psychological phenomenon. Even after my awakening, the latter still holds true. My fictionkinity is primarily psychological. But yeah, somehow my statement that I didn’t believe fictionkinity was caused by past lives got twisted into me saying that fictionkind were all just roleplayers.

Rereading the whole debacle that ensued, this twisting of my words had little to nothing to do with my own personal beliefs - it instead exposed a widespread antipathy towards psychological otherkin. When I have talked about my current experiences as a gnoll, my shifts and my flashbacks and my hiraeth, people generally accept it without a second thought. But when I mention that I believe it’s caused by various psychological phenomena, I have on multiple occasions been told that it must not be a real identity. Some people have even treated my parallel life as just an elaborate fantasy, rather than something that’s completely real to me. I have, word for word, been told that there’s no way I could identify as a nonhuman, or be another species than a human, without believing I have a nonhuman soul. A direct quote: “To say “I am fae” when [you] don’t believe in fae is illogical.”

What I take from these kinds of responses is that a subset of people within our community take it for granted that whatever beliefs someone has about the origin of their identity are objectively true, rather than understanding that our beliefs about our origins are just that: Beliefs. Whatever conclusion we’ve reached based on our experiences, reincarnation or imprinting or something else entirely, and no matter how much we believe in it, it will always be a belief and never a fact. I’m fully convinced that my bison identity is caused by a past life, and that my gnoll and Ben 10 identities are caused by various psychological phenomena. But if that doesn’t fit into someone else’s worldview, they have all the right in the world to explain it away however they want. I have friends who believe my bison identity must be caused by something psychological, and I have friends who believe my gnoll identity must be caused by something spiritual. That is their prerogative.

It doesn’t matter how people make sense of my nonhumanity, as long as they’re respectful towards my own experiences with my identity and don’t try to impose their beliefs on me. If you have to quietly believe that someone really has a faerie soul in order to accept that they’re really a fae, so be it. As long as you don’t try to deny the reality of their current identity. As long as you don’t try to claim that they aren’t really nonhuman, just because they have the quote-unquote “wrong” beliefs about their origin.

There is another, more recent and more prominent, example of the animosity towards psychological otherkin that comes to mind. I will not mention the term itself for fear of people harassing its creator. For the purpose of this lecture, I’ll refer to the concept as “nonhuman by birth”, which is essentially its meaning. If you know which word I’m talking about, I ask that you please don’t mention it in the chat. If you need to know, you can DM me. Also, don’t misunderstand this as me hating on people with past life or soul beliefs. Remember, my own bison identity is based on a soul from a past life.

So, last year a rather old community member on tumblr coined a term, separate from ‘otherkin’, to refer specifically to those who believe they have a nonhuman soul. Which wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself. After all, terms like animafidem and cerebrumalius have been around for half a decade with no issues. However, “nonhuman by birth” is specifically described in its coining post as a “less bastardized” alternative to the word ‘otherkin’. What this post describes as “less bastardized” is spiritual experiences, and specifically those spiritual experiences that are based on soul transfers and reincarnation. Essentially “nonhuman by birth” defines all other beliefs as bastardizations of what otherkinity is supposed to be. All beliefs, including spiritual beliefs that aren’t based on souls or past lives, psychological beliefs, beliefs of becoming nonhuman, beliefs based on magic, neurological beliefs, and archetypal beliefs… None of these are quote-unquote “true otherkin” according to the “nonhuman by birth” concept.

The word thankfully never gained much traction off tumblr, but I have seen individuals use it, and it always, without fail, makes me feel unwelcome, and unwanted. Not because there’s anything wrong with a strong belief in past lives or souls, but because those who choose to use that label specifically believe themselves to be the only true nonhumans. Because the term itself is not based on a respectful, individual belief, but on what its coiner believes to be an objective fact. Because this subset of our community has an almost-evangelical conviction that all nonhumans have nonhuman souls, and those who don’t have nonhuman souls are not nonhuman.

And like I mentioned earlier: The cause of otherkinity can affect the experience a lot. That’s why we have these discussions in the first place - we come together due to our similarities, and we try to understand each other and ourselves by discussing our differences. And this is exactly why proclaiming any version of nonhumanity as the One True Kind of Nonhumanity is so damaging. It completely stifles any exchange of ideas. It makes it impossible for us to understand our differences, and it leads to more and more narrowly defined subcommunities that all believe themselves to be more real than the others.

To define is to limit. We need some limitations, otherwise a dog is a cat and no words have meaning. But we need to be extremely careful where we want those limits to be, otherwise we end up with a community where psychological otherkin are bastards, and only those who are born with nonhuman souls are really nonhuman.

-

The next thing I want to discuss is subjective truth… Subjective truth is one of the most important concepts to understand and really internalize if we wanna have fruitful discussions and respectful experience sharing. In short, a subjective truth is something that is not real because it can be proven to exist through scientific measurements but is instead real because a person experiences it as real. If I make the claim that tea tastes better than coffee, for example, you cannot refute that simply because you think coffee tastes better. We have to understand each other’s experiences and accept that we experience the world in different ways. It’s equally true to say that coffee is better than tea and that tea is better than coffee. This is what I was talking about when I said that the “born-this-way”-narrative and the becoming-narrative are equally true.

So, how does subjective truth apply to this discussion?

A phenomenon in the community I’m sure we’re all aware of is kin memories. If you’re somehow not aware of them, in short they are images, episodes, sensory information, and similar experiences that are thought to stem from another life, usually a past life. They have all the qualia of a memory, except they didn’t happen to the body currently recalling them. These experiences, though, are not restricted to those who believe their nonhumanity stems from a past life. They aren’t even restricted to spiritual otherkin. Plenty of folks with psychological beliefs, mixed beliefs, and other beliefs report the exact same experience: Images, episodes, and sensory information that does not originate from this world or from this current life.

For decades there’s been a lexical gap in the community to describe these memories that aren’t memories. Which is where I can’t avoid tooting my own horn a bit. I have an extremely rich and detailed parallel life as a gnoll, from which I can quote-unquote “recall” events, people, traditions, names, and so much more. It’s all integral to my nonhuman identity.

However, because I believe it all stems from some deep unconscious part of my brain, and because it feels like a parallel life, not a past life, I never felt right calling these things memories. So almost two years ago at this point, I undertook the quest to fill that lexical gap. And after looking through dozens of obscure web pages and dictionaries and articles, I found something useful: The word ‘noema’. Noema is a rarely used Greek word that translates to concept, idea, perception, or thought. And I’ve been very happy to see the term catching on in my corner of the community, where it’s often used as a broader alternative to ‘memory’.

In philosophy, a noema is defined as “the perceived as it is perceived.” At first this might sound a bit vague or esoteric, but when looked at through the lens of subjective truth it suddenly starts to make sense. A subjective truth is something that’s real just because a person experiences it as real. A noema is the perceived as it is perceived. So when we’re using noema as a substitute for memory… when we’re discussing memory-like experiences in the community and we explicitly refer to them as noemata, instead of referring to them as memories, the actual cause of the noema is then irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that it’s in one way or another perceived as a memory. When talking about noemata, it’s completely and utterly irrelevant if they’re real in any objective way - the only thing that matters is that the individual experiences the noema as real. Essentially the word ‘noema’ makes the cause irrelevant, so we can instead focus on the experience alone.

And I think the fact that this word has caught on (at least on tumblr) hints that our community might be moving in a positive direction. I at least dream of a community where we care a lot less about our origins, and a lot more about our actual presence in the world.

-

I had a conversation with a friend a few months ago, about this community-wide worry about the origins of our identity. And just to reiterate, I’m not saying your spiritual beliefs are irrelevant, because they can be really important when forming a whole picture of your identity. I’m more so saying they can be a bit of a distraction. In my opinion, the whole discussion about spirituality vs psychology is a red herring. Most of us didn’t seek out the community because we had certain spiritual beliefs. We sought it out because we felt not-quite-human, and it was only later that we reached any conclusions about why we feel nonhuman.

So, my friend and I talked about the role this discussion of origins plays in our community, and we reached a few interesting conclusions. For starters, it’s really upsetting to some folks to have to earnestly consider the idea that reincarnated souls are no more real or ‘valid’ than psychological imprinting, or any other non-spiritual beliefs for that matter. That’s part of what started the whole ‘nonhuman by birth’ idea I mentioned earlier. And it seems this uncomfortableness stems from a place of insecurity.

At the risk of offending some folks, I’m gonna draw a parallel to the trans community. In the trans community there’s a discussion of origins that parallels the one in the kin community and is likewise an attempt to draw lines between the quote-unquote ‘real’ trans people and the so-called transtrenders - which are supposedly people who pretend to be trans for clout. Those who attempt to draw these lines proclaim that being trans is a medical condition that they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy, and one that’s marked by intense dysphoria and stress. They’ll also regularly state that being trans is only real or ‘valid’ because it has been proven through MRI brain scans that some female-assigned people have supposedly male brains, and vice versa.

(And just to make things clear, those brain scans are not real. It’s malicious pseudoscience spread by people who want to ‘cure’ transness by preventing trans kids from being born.)

But I think this attempt at validating your identity - in this case with science - stems from a dislike of one’s own traits, or more likely from the outside world’s dislike of those traits. When certain trans people try to prove themselves more valid than others in the eyes of the public, it’s not because they just hate those they deem ‘not trans enough’ - it’s because they’re afraid of being rejected by the rest of the world. These people are basically saying: “I didn’t choose to be trans. This is how I was born, so you have to accept it because it’s unchangeable.” It’s a cry for acceptance in an unaccepting world. And all this is not to say that some trans people aren’t born trans; I really think most trans people have a narrative like that. I’m more so trying to get across that, someone else’s narrative of choice should have no impact on your narrative of involuntarity. Both are real ways to experience being trans. And in many ways, having a narrative of choosing to be trans is necessary for the community, because it closes the doors for eugenicists who would try to eliminate quote-unquote “the trans gene”.

Viewing transness as a purely medical phenomenon where you need to meet certain requirements to get a trans diagnosis is a really reductive way to look at identity. Like I mentioned earlier: An identity is not just the sum of its parts, and it cannot be summarized by being forced to feel dysphoria. The fact of the matter is that we don’t know trans people are real because we have brain imaging technology, or even because certain people meet the medical criteria for having gender dysphoria. We know trans people are real because there are real people who identify as trans. We should be able to trust that people are trans when they tell us they are. And I think we need to look at nonhuman identities the same way.

Before I move on to the conclusion, I want to explain why this topic has become so important to me. A couple of months ago, after a good year or two of introspection, I realized I had created a hearttype. Not a kintype, but nonetheless an equally integral part of how I view myself and engage with the world. And changing something so fundamental about myself sent my thoughts racing.

When I was a kid I picked up a fear of spiders. It wasn’t bad enough to give me panic attacks, but it was bad enough that I couldn’t pick up a spider and carry it outside, even though I could do so with other bugs. I was around 10 years old when I decided that this was dumb, and I wanted to change it. So as a tween I quickly started on my own exposure therapy, looking at photos of spiders, reading about them, photographing them in nature, and after several years it had gotten to the point where I barely had a reaction to seeing them. But as I continued on, getting used to the idea of holding them and touching them, something changed in me.

Where I had previously felt fear, I started to feel admiration and love and a sense of familiarity. I wanted to surround myself with these animals, I wanted to work with them, and I started spending a not-insignificant amount of money on terrariums. And now, after more than a decade of rewriting my own thoughts and changing a mild fear into a love so deep it affects my sense of identity itself, I feel confident saying I created a hearttype. It was not an easy process. Like I said, it took more than a decade. Changing your entire mindset like that can’t be done with just a snap of your fingers. But evidently, some people are able to do it.

Though I have to add that, even here, it’s very easy to argue that there was some level of involuntarity. I already had an emotional response to spiders when I was scared of them. I don’t think I could form this kind of relationship with something I’m completely indifferent to, like, I dunno, a Toyota or a Marvel character. You can’t really form a relationship from nothing. And I appreciate this argument, because it really highlights just how confusing the entire concept of choice is, and how it doesn’t make sense to define ourselves by our lack of choice, when we can’t even define what counts as a choice.

But yeah, realizing that I created a hearttype, an identity that at the time was considered involuntary… realizing that I didn’t just play a part in creating this identity, but that I did create it, period. It sent my mind spinning, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what else might be possible. If I could create such love in myself, could I also do the opposite and tear down my own hearttype and recreate the phobia? Not something I want to test. But I think I could. And which other identities could be created like this?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the creation process has no impact on the nature of the identity itself, and I ended up posting a really controversial thing on tumblr. In hindsight I understand why some people got so pissed off about it, but I still stand by those thoughts. I’ll read it to you in full: “Theoretically I probably could force myself to not be otherkin. But it would take a decade or more, the way my hearttype creation did, and it would require constant work throughout those years. However, I see no way I wouldbenefit from that work, the way I did when I unintentionally created a hearttype in the process of getting rid of a phobia. It would just rid me of a part of myself that’s intrinsic to how I recognize myself. That’s not something I in any way want - and because I don’t want it, and because the choice would have to happen continuously on a timescale I can barely comprehend, I couldn’t make that choice in practicality.”

A very long and very complicated discussion came out of this post that I’d need a whole separate lecture to recap. But a few important ideas were developed, which I need to mention here. For starters, when discussing shadowwork and the Jungian archetypes, Jasper accidentally coined the term ego alteration. Through that discussion we ended up defining ego alteration as the process by which you proactively alter your conscious mind, your self-perception, and your thought-patterns. It’s not something to be taken lightly, as you’ll essentially be changing your sense of self by it. And it’s also not something everyone has the ability, desire, or drive to do. To integrate something into your sense of self, or to remove something that’s currently a part of your sense of self is serious business, and, like my hearttype creation, is something that should be thought about on a decades long timescale. I don’t have time to get in-depth about it here, but to consciously change your identity and your sense of self is definitely possible for some folks, and it’s nice to have a name for the concept.

Something else that came of that discussion is my own thoughts about how we define otherkin. The most common definition I’ve seen is “to identify, wholly or partially, as something nonhuman on a nonphysical level, by no choice of your own.” … I suggest we drop the last bit.

Okay, it’s a bit more complicated than just deleting a few words. In order to drop the “by no choice of your own” bit, without losing the meaning of otherkinity completely, and letting kin for fun take over, we’d need to rethink that entire definition.

Instead of defining otherkin by the amount of choice we had in the formation of our identity, I suggest we define otherkin by how integral our identities are to us. It was briefly mentioned on in one of the other panels (though I forget which one), but a pretty big source of conflict is that kin for fun just don’t understand the gravity of otherkin identities. If we define otherkinity as something that’s inseparable from who we are as individuals, it would not only make it clear to kin for fun that this is, well, not for fun. It would also get around the problem of people who worry that their identities might be invalid because they’ve made certain choices.

Your otherkinity is inherent, and by that I mean you would be a fundamentally different person if not for your kintype. At its most basic level, your kintype is what you recognize yourself to be. It’s the kind you belong to, rather than, or in tandem with, belonging to humankind. You kintype is an intrinsic part of you, and even if you could get rid of it, it would fundamentally change who you are is a person. If you chose not to be otherkin, you would also choose not to be you. In that sense, I suppose otherkinity is involuntary, in that you yourself can’t choose not to be otherkin, because as soon as you make that choice, you aren’t you. Though you could also argue that it is a choice because you wake up every day and choose to be you. And thus, the topic of choice leaves us running around in circles like it always has.

Being otherkin… being otherkind has never been about being forced to feel species dysphoria. It’s about being of another kind. It’s about knowing and recognizing humankind, and accepting that, in one way or another, that does not describe us.

And all this is not to say that copinglinking shouldn’t be a concept, but we need to rethink that as well. From the very few copinglink writings that exist, one topic I’ve seen several times is the idea of copinglinks becoming inseparable from you. This is not the point of links, and those who do go through a change like that find themselves more at home in the kin community than the link community. I don’t want to impose myself on linkers, but if we want these two words to make sense and have a use, we need to redefine both. I suggest defining copinglinks and otherlinks by their lack of integrality or by their ability to be dropped when necessary.

The line that has been drawn between otherkin and copinglinkers doesn’t help anyone as it is. There are far too many nonhumans who straddle the line, who feel torn between either community, or who only call themselves linkers because they feel pressured to do so. There are far too many nonhumans who don’t feel like they have a community they can call home.

So, I’m gonna propose a new and much more inclusive definition: To be otherkin is to identify as something nonhuman on an inherent or integral level. There you go, clean and simple. No more caveats or nested sentences.

[yanderecandystore]

(nsfw kinda?) what would the twins do if they went to a party and then woke up next to someone after you-know-what and realize its s/o g/n? would they be shocked? scared? also remeber to drink water and get good sleep!

The irony boo is that I'm doing neither of those things lol-

But something I will do it's your request! It sounds really fun, boo!

I'm sorry this isn't better- I wish I could try this concept again on a full fledged fanfic but I'm not feeling the right mood yet, I think I would half-ass it because of that.

TW/Tags: nsfw/mentions of nsfw // short headcanon // the twins being both tsunderes and yanderes, I just really like the mixture XD // a slight memory loss before regaining everything cause I don't want to make this too dramatic // delusional thinking and possessive thoughts

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Surprise slumber party [Yandere!Bully OCS x GN!Reader - Headcanon]:

→ Adrien Coldwell:

Ya know, the twins are known for bringing different people to sleep with them, normally just so they could have a one time fun with them and then leave- But this time it seems to be very different.

Adrien can't remember what happened the day before but after looking around and analysing his clues he has come to the conclusion that A: This is not the Coldwell mansion and B: HOLY SHIT why the FUCK are YOU sleeping next to them?-

Normally they tend to not care for who is sleeping next to them, just assuming that the warmth that comes from the body next to them is just another toy- Someone who is worth enough to sleep with them, but also not high enough in their standards to be considered a romantic partner.

But you?? You're not just a mere toy to them, you fool.

It's obvious that you two spent the night together in someone else's house, probably a friend of the twins. This confuses Adrien to no end, how were even invited to the party in the first place?? How did a loser like you get in here and how did a loser like you slept with him- YOU SLEPT WITH HIM, OH MY GOD-

Did you two… If you two really did fuck then why can't he remember anything?? This was supposed to be the most important memory in the moment yet he can't recall how you two ended up like this.

It's not his imagination either, there seems to be enough proof to support that you two did something together, but he can't tell how far it went- He wishes he could remember how it was.

Your body, naked next to him- Love bites that seem to be his on doing (he fucking hopes it's his on, or we're going to have a problem-), there doesn't seem to be any other marks- It wasn't rough and ruthless like he normally is with you, well, outside this scenario. Sounds like the perfect time that he can't. Fucking. Remember.

How inconsiderate. He can't even remember what he had imagined doing for so long. Maybe the memories will come back soon enough, he hopes they do.

Could you still remember? Probably not, you seem to be more unconscious than him- But he does hope you remember how it was, how HE was, was it like how he imagined- Was it how you imagined?

"- … Did you ever think about doing this with him at all? Was it- Was it actually love and not just-"

He is more confused than anything else, it was a very pleasant surprise but also so frustrating how he couldn't remember exactly how it went- Some parts seem to be coming back but not the whole scene, and in a foolish attempt at regaining his memories, he tries to redo his actions as his hand tries finding its way around your body once again-

If you wake up right now, you'll see the most confusing mixture of feelings into one single expression: fear, lost, yet an look of pure wonder- The scene before him is beautiful but the fact that only a couple of moments seem to play in his head makes him feel lost and fearful of what you might think of him.

Right now he feels so vulnerable, regretful that he couldn't have done this sooner- Sounds of last night echo through his mind. No one entered in this room except you two, and it's still really early in the morning so he can just go back and enjoy this moment- After all, what could be the best way to celebrate this moment if not by savouring his victory?

He finally got you by his side in the most intimate way possible and finally you can see that you belong to him- He won. He finally won...

→ Alexandra Coldwell:

Ya know, the twins are known for bringing different people to sleep with them, normally just so they could have a one time fun with them and then leave- But this time it seems to be very different.

Alexandra can't remember what happened the day before but after looking around and analysing her clues she has come to the conclusion that A: This is not the Coldwell mansion and B: HOLY SHIT why the FUCK are YOU sleeping next to them?-

Normally they tend to not care for who is sleeping next to them, just assuming that the warmth that comes from the body next to them is just another toy- Someone who is worth enough to sleep with them, but also not high enough in their standards to be considered a romantic partner.

But you?? You're not just a mere toy to them, you fool.

It's obvious that you two spent the night together in someone else's house, probably a friend of the twins.

Which by the way- How dare you?? Who invited you? Who allowed a loser like you inside this party in the first place?? Did you come with someone else- wait- why are you- WHY IS SHE NAKED?? Why are you BOTH NAKED??? Alexandra feels embarrassed as she can't remember how you two came to be in this position in the first place.

If you two really- Well, fucked- How can she not recall it?? Why can't she remember every single detail from last night?? It was supposed to be "the moment" yet she can only get a couple of scenes inside her head.

It's not a coincidence, it can't be! You two wouldn't be sharing a bed like this unless… No, it's clear that it happened- But why can't she just- Argh! How stressful, YOU are so stressful. You make her go to cloud nine every time she sees you yet she can't even remember if she made you pay for making her feel so- Bashful…

Look at you, naked and… A-And filled with stretch marks- It's clear that she used your body as a canvas for her sharp nails, yet they clearly don't look as painful as her other "victims". Your soft skin looks just as delectable as it always does, but the context of what could have happened makes this scenario so much better- But she still can't remember what got you two to this point, how inconsiderate.

It's the moment she would dream off every night, yet only a couple of scenes and sounds seem to be appearing in her very foggy mind. Maybe later she'll remember how it all went down, but she still needs to know some very important details right now-

Was it… Fun? To you, that is- Was it, like she dreamed off? O-or maybe it was more like one of your dreams- Although she shouldn't expect you to have nice dreams about her, they're all probably nightmares…

Was she good to you like you are to her?

"- Was I sweet… like you are? Was this love or just…"

She feels ashamed more than anything else, now she can't even remember if she looked good while topping you (if she finds out she went bottom mode with you on your first night she'll commit "not living anymore"-). As she caresses your body in hopes of triggering her memory back she can't deny that you look really appetizing, like something she could just take another bite off but never feel satisfied- Or maybe like someone that she can love, and love and love again yet never feel bored of it.

Her expression would be one of- Well, embarrassment mixed with a look of worship- This is probably the most vulnerable she has felt in a long time, yet this is the first time she feels so close to someone, that's a part of her that wants to wake you up and try to show you how much she adores you all over again.

But right now she should control herself, it's already morning, it's a new day. There are probably lots of party guests around the house, and even if the door is locked she doesn't want anyone to know of this. Let her enjoy this alone with you, goddamnit.

She won… Can you believe that?? She won. She won, she won! After so long she finally has you here with her, and even if she can't tell what happened and how far it went, it is still pretty clear that after so long of you denying it- You have accepted it.

You have successfully accepted your place next to her, not only just in bed. This is perfect- This moment, it's perfect.

You are hers now- Always have been!...

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