#add gay tag just bc i can

[dzhfaer]

Interaction with people #1.1

aaaand done! thanks @mira--mira for the character. special edition with madara coming soon, dont worry.

next colour will be... purple

[muckyschmuck]

ultimately!

[the-meme-monarch]

people can Famously do whatever they want especially when it comes to enjoying media and generally i find this to be a good thing. but unfortunately i am a strange and unusual autistic that generally sticks very very close to canon. all this to say i don’t Get It when people headcanon k_k deltarune as using they/them Only or even she/her Only when he has literally been referred to with ‘he’ by one of the people presumably closest to him(brothers to me)

for the record i think he is he/they. i think all three of them are he/they. maybe even canonically but people fight me on this one (really just capn and kk since sweet has only indirectly been referred to as they like in the following screenshot from the wiki (bc I didn’t want to watch a video of their fight to screenshot and crop flavor text) BUT they’re still called by generally masculine terms alongside the other two like ‘guys’ (ost “almost to the guys”) and ‘young men’ (by seam)) (and they use overly-masculine self-referential pronouns in japanese, along with capn)

like im Fairly Certain the individual of scc are still the only one being lost in the groove in dance x. the “they” in ‘they’re totally lost in the groove’ is still Just One of scc. I don’t believe the fun gang are lost in the groove bc honestly they don’t talk like any of this fight was fun for them HSHSHDNDHDJDJ

also incase it isn’t clear i think it’s chill to add on she/her to k_k’s pronouns. people can famously do whatever they want especially when it comes to enjoying media and generally I think this is good. but saying they use she/her (or they/them) ONLY and not In Conjunction With is where I go “well. no. the game called him he. so he/him has to be part of their pronouns?” and i recognize it’s probably petty and stupid to care about to like any degree but know I don’t say this with hate in my heart

and of course there’s nuance like maybe the idea is they Change their pronouns later on but idk no one ever says this

[weaponizedducks]

whenever i get sad i think of the 2005 adaptation of macbeth- macChef when macbeth was an overworked chef played by james mcavoy where he made out with banquo for a full minute

[scionshtola]

like i do for my own purposes (affair au) headcanon some homophobia in ishgard due to the importance of heirs to the nobility but it would not then follow that there are no gay ppl ahdjdkskdk

[slowprocessart]

I rarely post art here but. Might as well share some of my oc art ig. Been trying to cure art block by taking pose refs from pinterest and drawing them.

[o-wild-west-wind]

A Biracial Reading of OFMD, ft. Iggy’s Revenge Izcourse

a.k.a. I typed out a sentence that turned into an accidental essay of meta, whoops!

Y’all…I love this fandom to pieces, but I don’t think some of you realize why not all of us love Izzy/may be critiquing him. And major disclaimer—I am in NO WAY telling anyone to stop enjoying him as a character. This is NOT an anti-Izzy post (I will go into more detail on why I in fact encourage you to keep doing so later, and to the people who are sending unsolicited hate mail to Izzy fans & haters alike: please don’t!)—I’m just tired of seeing vitriolic hate against the people writing about him as an antagonist, or critiquing his actions based on canon, or post after post of “why don’t people love Izzy like I do!!” and then aggression when people explain their honest opinions. Look: we all have our skrungly little bad guys. I get it!! I’ve got my own collection!! I too have become a consumer and enjoyer of the Izzy fanon!!! PLEASE don’t take this as an attack—I just want to provide some personal, potentially fresh context from at least one (obviously non-exhaustive) perspective for those who want to know why Izzy isn’t universally adored, and also to make a plea for a safer fandom space where we can talk about our perspectives on these fictional characters without escalating to unnecessary vitriol, especially as s2 be upon ye (bc holy shit fandom is supposed to be fun, we’re having fun and that’s an order 😤)

(Oh, and I know I’m potentially stirring the pot with this post, but this should go without saying: don’t send each other death threats. What the fuck. Nobody do this?!)

So now that the legalize is out of the way: I want to share that the reason I initially imprinted on this show—and on Ed specifically—was because I’d never seen an explicitly biracial character treated with such complexity, nuance, and grace. While our ethnic makeups are vastly different, I too am half-white & half-brown—which means we’re absolutely nothing culturally alike, but our worlds view and treat us as pretty much the same regardless. And like Ed, my dad resents my mom and my racial makeup, and is prone to what I like to call “white violence.” Not going to overshare on the internet, but let’s just say that all this compounded makes Ed feel highly relatable to me (although for legal purposes I promise I have not krakened my dad 🙃).

When I first watched the show (and honestly also until my 3rd or 4th rewatch), Izzy IMMEDIATELY made me think of my dad. He also immediately made me think of Ed’s dad. Their mannerisms, word choices, and tones of voice; the obsessive need for control; the default of violence; the gradual dehumanization until an ultimate kraken-ifying breaking point—it all read to me like an intentional parallel. A shadow of white violence following Ed around that he hasn’t been able to shake, and mirroring to him the things he fears the most, including the things he fears within himself and feels forced to become (he is half-white after all, and this is a whole other post, but tl;dr there can be a lot of baggage that comes with being half-white/half-poc in regards to grappling with your toxic relationship to that white side of yourself, and especially if your white parent was racist and/or violent). And you can claim a different reading of all of this if you want (I genuinely mean that, like I’m in favor of meta & I think it’s great to analyze these things) BUT. that does not change the fact that I felt what I felt as a result of what was portrayed on screen and combined with my lived experience. Because fictional characters are just that—fictional—and are vessels by which you can process the world; we will always bring our personal lived experiences to anything we consume, and that’s okay—that can be the point, even. Art imitates life imitates art. Interpretation is the name of the game!

(more under the cut)

So when I watch this show, it’s a helpful tool for me to process my own feelings of being victimized by the white violence that’s followed me around my whole life, as well as the ways in which I’ve rebelled against it/tried to make peace with a non-toxic version of whiteness (in parallel to the more overt theme of masculinity, which is—ding ding—inexplicably tied to whiteness and western colonialism) via chaos, love, hurt, and sometimes giving up and giving in—and in this process, Izzy is a safe target. And you know why that is? Because he’s FICTIONAL. I can feel rage towards him because he’s NOT REAL. I can better understand and process the pain I’ve felt and rarely seen societally acknowledged by watching it paralleled on screen via actors and writers who have likely also grappled with similar feelings (I mean, I genuinely have made more progress with my personal biracial trauma via this show vs. years of therapy), and if I want to assume the worst of Izzy based on my interpretation of canon to help me through this? That’s fine! Because I can’t hurt his feelings and he can’t hurt mine!! Because he’s not real!!!

And here’s why I still support the Izzy-enjoyment: I am sure that many of the people who love Izzy and defend him to the ends of the earth probably feel a similar way that I do about Ed. It’s why we get all riled up and protective of these characters, why we might take attacks on them as attacks on ourselves; recognition of the self in the form of the other, and all that. Izzy is a vessel by which to safely work through the dark feelings and the pain you’ve bottled up—and he’s a safe way to do that because he’s FICTIONAL. And that’s a beautiful thing imo!! That’s truly the beauty of art—it is what we make of it, and what we make of it helps make ourselves better. It’s good to be open to interpretation.

HOWEVER: that does not give you permission to discount my relationship to this show (as I will not discount yours), and more importantly: that does NOT give you permission to reject the notion that canonically in s1, Izzy is literally and thematically (emphasis on thematically) an antagonist who is purposefully written to cause harm that can be interpreted as a hate crime, especially to those with lived experience of homophobia/racism/ableism/bullying/etc.—and you cannot harass people about this when conversing about theories of canon. If someone sees Izzy’s dialogue as cutting, degrading, and even triggering, that’s extremely fair of them to do so—clearly Ed was written to feel it that way! Con himself has paralleled Izzy with Judas! And can interpret it all differently? Sure! But you CANNOT assume that everyone else will, and then get upset when people don’t. I can’t believe I need to spell this out about an angry white guy in a show about toxic masculinity, but if someone does not like Izzy, it is likely due to a personal history of harassment (or worse) that he is reminiscent of; by making a point to defend him to someone—even if you are well-intentioned—you are very much putting salt in a wound.

I want to take this opportunity to further emphasize some tenets of fandom in general:

you can like characters who do horrible things without needing to jump hoops to argue their morals as pure 👏

conversely, you can critique their actions and still like them (encouraged, even) 👏

you can like characters who do horrible things simply because they’re cool and hot and interesting—don’t worry, we know it’s not the same as liking people like them irl 👏

your liking a villain archetype says nothing about your own moral virtue 👏

you can like horrible characters and see reasons for why they are the way they are/view them as tragic/note sympathetic dimensions of their personality/root for them to have redemption arcs while acknowledging that said redemption arc may not have happened in canon yet and that these are implicit, not explicit, readings of canon 👏

and you can also reimagine canon and change their contexts in fan works so that they ARE morally virtuous 👏 but PLEASE just be mindful and accountable when you do this in a context where not everyone will see a character the same way as you, and where multiple of people of marginalized identities have spoken out about the harm not doing so can cause. Just be honest, sincere, and kind, listen and learn, and don’t harass people for understandably needing space from a character that symbolizes something different to them than it does to you.

Also: blocking tags or people just because they have character opinions different than yours is totally okay and does not mean anything other than “I am curating my online space to have a better time,” it’s NOT personal

And most importantly: FANDOM IS FOR FUN! This isn’t our day job! We come to fandom to decompress. Don’t ruin people’s safe spaces!!!

Like I said, I’ve grown to enjoy Izzy over time thanks to fandom and fanon, and I think it’s fantastic that fandom can have such diversity in the way it interprets canon. I can’t wait for his probable redemption arc (it will likely be a healing thing to witness for many of us) and I’m truly glad that we can all have different relationships to the same characters. But please—when some of us need Izzy to be a punching bag, just let him be a punching bag. No, it’s not homophobic and DEFINTELY not misogynistic to view him as an obstacle in Ed and Stede’s relationship (baffled by the amount of times I’ve seen this take—it’s a funny joke but if you actually think Izzy is treated the way female characters related to other mlm ships have been treated, the point is very much going whoosh). You don’t have to engage; it’s not personal. It’s not about YOUR relationship with him—it’s about MINE. Please let me feel and even discuss rage towards him when I think about episode 10. Please let me throw as many sandwiches at his head as I need to. Because I PROMISE, it won’t hurt him—because he, and none of these characters, are real; and yet we, the fans, very much are.

[kiwibirdlafayette]

chaos and balance- the capsize

"i don't think you understand what's actually happening here. If you'd just open your bloody fucking eyes, it's pretty obvious."

Chaos and Balance is a narrative playlist that basically comprises, in a chronological order, my headcanon for the progression of cTom Syndicate and cJordan's relationship through the course of S1, S2, the divorce arc (post-canon part 1), Mianitian Isles and the Aftermath (post-canon part 2, aka Gays on A Boat, Aitheaca, etc.) It started mainly because I really love the potential of using music to tell stories, and how lyrics can be representative of feelings seldom expressed any other way- based on both canon moments, moments I've interpreted as significant to their relationship/overall arcs, and little interludes I've written that take place in between episodes/"off camera" that connect things together in my head. All this being said, it is primarily headcanons, and is purely for fun. dont like dont read lmao

This specific being how keeping in the canon nonsense of capsize x jordan plays a role in cSyndisparklez from my pov :] enjoy!

(Red lyrics are representative of Jordan’s voice, green is Tom! Bolded black is both of them)

The shenanigans of Capsize happen just after falling for the villain,

in which Jordan is forced internally for the first time to come to terms with the fact that yes, he is in love with his friend/enemy/however you wanna put it. Despite how much he annoys him, despite all of his questionable behavior, despite it all, he has fallen head over heels for this absolute bastard of a man, and hates to admit it, but deep down has longed for a kind of affection that he could have.

I'll take my timeI'm not the forward thinker; you read my mind-

But a part of him still remains hesitant, and for one reason or another, refuses to give in, to openly admit it to not just others but himself. It’s at this point (I’ve written in) that Tom’s kissed him twice. The first, just a little peck on the lips he was able to brush off as a joke, just a hahaa ok cool bro that's funny. But the second time, as a cheap play by the zombie to get a purge kill having already caught the Ianitee off guard. It's irritating for sure, to have him weasel his way into free points by taking advantage of a distraction that worked a little too well, but why could he not get it out of his head? It hadn’t felt so wrong, actually, and… he had almost hoped it had been genuine. If it had been genuine, maybe he would have returned the gesture.

Better to leave it unsaidWhy can't I leave it unsaid

Instead they dance around it in banter, blathering on and on to one another in often complete nonsense, refusing to address what’s really on his mind. (You know I talk too much) He could confess, sure. But what happens then? All the meanwhile, Tom is scared he’s losing him. (As I hold your face, I can't find the words I need, and soon the opportunity is drowning)

Never someone all that good with words, he kind of hopes that Jordan will catch on. He has to catch on, sooner or later.. Right?Z

And then Capsize and the Ianitee pirates show up. To Jordan, it seems like she’s interested in him beyond him just being another follower of Ianite, and there’s his escape. Play along, play the part and maybe- maybe he’ll get over this.

You know my type, tightrope across the table I can't keep holding my breath

She seems to be into it. She’s responding to his flirting at least. See. He doesn’t need Tom. An Ianitee and another Ianitee seems more acceptable to him in his head, and maybe would be easier. That about, he’s not really sure.

New wave, no time Red velvet under pressure

But what Jordan does know is that he’s drawn to her. To him, it could be a way to forget about Tom. To the varied onlooker, it could just be that he’s happy to have another Ianitee around. Someone who can relate to his experience, someone who’s out to find their goddess just as much as he wants to. But he continues to conflate the two and pursue her in a way that he won’t realize for years is less than ideal.

It sparks my memory when we parked aside the shore, I kissed you there, the ocean air enchanting It escapes me quickly

Tom on the other hand, is for lack of a better word furious. Not in like a “I’m gonna murder this pirate captain for stealing my man” (because if he’s honest she’s one of the coolest people he’s met and he’s gonna befriend her whether Jordan likes it or not, with him claiming it to be ‘Mr. steal your gal’ which is??? Because does it really seem like he wants Capsize, if not as a spiteful thing)

When Jordan’s not around, Tom and Capsize hit it off, as she finds this zombie who doesn’t want to flirt with her at any given moment a lot more of an interesting person. As a Dianitee, he’s supposed to be their enemy, but for someone so supposedly dedicated to his god, he knows how to carve his own path away from being more than his god’s messenger- something she’s always admired in champions.

You call me poison, but you won't stop coming around- No, you won't stop coming around

For the purpose of perhaps getting Jordan to get the hint, Tom plays into their supposed love triangle, pretending to do things to ‘steal away Capsize’, only feeding into Jordan’s confusion. *Now Tom’s interested in her too? Is he trying to move on from me too? *- clearly to dense to realize Tom’s trying to get his attention back. She even admits to Tom that it's amusing that men seem to keep coming after her, when she’s very much more into women (abridged, but direct quote)

All I want is you- Your violet disposition, My unsound intuition

It all sort of culminates in that moment on Jordan’s ship where Tom, annoyed from his perch, watches his friend make an absolute fool of himself over Capsize, and decides to intervene, taking on the role of “fighting” Jordan over her. Capsize in a way is having a good laugh watching them roll around on the deck of the ship (I’ve drawn this, this is where it all started), starting to see it all sort of come together as to where Jordan could be coming from. At some point, Tom’s got Jordan pinned to the deck, and as one last desperate attempt at trying to communicate what he’s been trying to all along, he kisses Jordan, and much to his surprise, he kisses him back. They pull away, to Capsize’s approving nods, and it's all over.

(Jordan’s attempts at saving this are my interpretation of this conversation, aka one of my favorite chat threads of S1)

In the aftermath of all of that (If I had any semblance of a memory I’d pinpoint when exactly this interlude takes place, but im just ballparking it somewhere after Jordan dies in Tom’s vault bc Capsize doesn’t save him); in which he’s still thinking about what happened that day. Jordan reluctantly confronts Tom who spills it all. He tells him how much and how long he’s been in love with him, and how frustrated it made him that every time he kissed Jordan, Jordan never seemed to reciprocate no matter how obvious his feelings were. He’s tried so hard to make it clear that all he wants is Jordan, he wants to be loved back, he wants to be able to call him his lover. He did what he did in front of Capsize cause the fake ass courting set him over the edge because it pissed him off that Jordan would so quickly go after someone he just met just because she was an Ianitee or whatever to get away from him, because was he really that bad that Jordan had to try to hard to stay away from him? Tom knows he had himself to blame as well, but it felt like a step too far.

Always been looking for something to lose, when I needed something to hold onto.

(This sequence is followed by Pull Me Up, which. If you haven’t seen my CMV that’s the one xD)

Note. For my sanity I choose to perceive that any capsize x jordan moments following are more related to Jordan’s ‘holiest of all Ianitees’ attitude and feeling like he has to be her savior (which is a different aspect of his character arc from the romantic side, which is what I mostly wanted to focus on with this ramble, but i do touch on it a little. It's not as ever present as it could be because I haven’t found the right song to incorporate it into outside of Violet and Talk Too Much) But there is definitely more. This is from what i have notated in my stuff for these two sequences :] enjoy!

[theinfinitedivides]

ELIOT + TMG IS SO EVERYTHING TO ME. i fully have been working on a playlist of just mountain goats songs that make me think of eliot.

YES. yes. you get it. it's like they sat down inside his brain years before he even existed and decided to dedicate entire albums to this man's psyche and that's so so so insane to me

[waywardsalt]

Have you ever thought about how Linebeck describes Jolene as "crazier than a rabid squid"- only to then be possessed by a literal rabid squid later in the game?

Cause I sure have- especially after seeing a lot of your BellumxLinebeck stuff

mmmmghmm im gonna be honest i haven't thought about it much at all

linking it to my bellum x linebeck thoughts, im not too sure what to make of it in context with my other linebeck notes and w/e

there's also my idea that linebeck has a special interested in shellfish and by extension squids, and the idea of him having a weird thing for bellum, and just... enjoying sealife, and it's kinda of...

he compares her to a rabid squid to link in order to i think... offer a shorthand explanation of what she's like, and i think it (with some other stuff) is kinda just another little peek into how he might feel abt her?

i mean he also compares link to a dog in that one letter? i'm not sure where im going with that one. i dont think linebeck particularly likes dogs

i'm not sure abt the link between that and him getting possessed, jolene is kind of just... there a lot of the time and doesn't really do anything except 1) show that linebeck has enemies and 2) show that people know about link's quest by the end, linebeck generally references sea creatures a few times in ph

relating to bellum x linebeck, i dont see him comparing jolene to a squid an indicator of anything in relation to that, with linebeck having a thing for bellum its more of like. there's a lot of complicated ideas i have with what goes on between them during bellumbeck and bellum being a squid thing is more linebeck having a bit of a monsterfucker streak and having a bit of a thing for like. being tied up. as for literal squids he kinda just likes them as food and to dissect and learn about

like i think 'rabid squid' is more like linebeck just tossing out some derogatory shorthand to explain how he thinks of jolene as some fucking. violent annoyance he has to deal with that he doesn't fully understand

tbh i see the comparison but imo it comes down to a difference in characters and interactions and histories, there is the rabid squid thing (and i think in the manga too theres a vague parallel drawn ig) but im not. sure. what there is there just beyond. linebeck talks about sea creatures and wants to get the fuck away from jolene

i'm not entirely certain what you've been thinking about with that comparison, but i haven't been thinking much about it and it's kinda. eh ig???? its something

[opaleyedprince]

new oc just dropped

[vote-for-eggman]

seeing how deeply racism affects gay men of color’s whole fucking psyche sometimes is genuinely frustrating like damn people just do NOT see it for them

[m-aximumjoy]

in celebration of my/our love Angel being introduced this past week I’ve been working on a re-paint of the Handkerchief Moment and not to toot my own horn, but I’m really proud of how the background came out and particularly of these two

Ignore the big ol’ hole it’s for Aki (heh)

[vampire-core]

[id: the first image is a reply by @.demilypyro that reads: That doesnt sound very cis

the second image is a reply by @.homosexualmorelikehomiesexual that reads: respectfully adding to this in agreement with op: i think its true that no, it DOESNT sound very cis, but thats bc according to the very same gender system that sucks so much, anyone who disagrees or complains about it is Other, and i think thats......part of the exact problem op is talking abt..? so yeh idk. speaking as a trans person myself- op youre valid youre right and you should say it i support you go cis boy go

#this is what i call cis+ #youre cis but youve seen the void. the truth. and then you pulled back and went Ok Got It. Keeping My Gender Though #which i think is just as respectable. like amen #consciously opting into your assigned gender when you know you don’t actually have to..... #thats cis plus. cis prime. cis upgraded. you feel? /end]

I’m a cis man sure but i also wanna opt out of the gender binary. None of that shit is my fault or my responsibility and i don’t want any part of it

[fairyhaos]

How To Fucking Write: a guide by fairyhaos

[masterlist]

this post details:

DIALOGUING INTERESTINGLY

hi gays and gals! the first post on starting and pacing a story did really well, so "how to fucking write" is back, with yet more advice and tips for everyone ^^ please feel free to let me know if there's something you want me talk about, because i'll be more than willing to see if i can help. also a reminder that i have a taglist for this series as well, and please reblog if you find this helpful :)

# - HOW TO DIALOGUE.

.. bullet point one : grammar

okay guys, as a native english speaker, i'll be the first to tell you that this language fucking sucks in terms of its grammar, but when it comes to dialogue, understanding how it works even to some extent will help you branch out and vary the way you write dialogue, which makes it so much more interesting.

with dialogue tags (said, asked, etc) if the punctuation mark in the dialogue is not a ! or ? then it should be a comma.

example : [junhui + castle]

as you can see in the first line, a comma is used rather than a full stop, because the sentence hasn't been finished yet. there's a dialogue tag, ('you correct'), that comes after it. and since the pronoun 'you' isn't a proper noun (i.e. a name) then it shouldn't be capitalised, because, again, the sentence hasn't been finished.

with action tags however, (he smiled, he stood up, etc) then it should be a full stop.

example : [i just made one up bc i don't use this a lot lmao]

"I disagree." He stood up, and walked over to close the door. "This isn't safe. You shouldn't go alone."

and now, since there is a full stop, it indicates that the speech is a sentence all by itself. that means the next word ('He') ought to be capitalised.

but the key part when grammar-ing dialogue in order to make it interesting depends on where you put the action and grammar tags.

if you constantly have lines that are just:

"dialogue," he said.

"dialogue," she said.

"dialogue but a bit longer," he said.

... then it can get repetitive, and annoying. by varying your dialogue structure, it can create more interesting dialogue.

example : [minghao + password]

there's a variety of dialogue and action tags being used with each line of dialogue, preventing everything from sounding too repetitive.

the first line starts with a normal sentence, and an action tag. the second is a standalone line of dialogue with no tags. the second has the action tag in the middle of the dialogue. and the last has a dialogue tag in the middle of the dialogue.

by varying the ways in which you write your dialogue, it makes everything a lot more interesting.

.. bullet point two : verbs and adverbs

the easiest way to make dialogue interesting, though, is to use fancy words.

this can be by replacing 'said' with a range of other dialogue tags (see this really comprehensive list for a whole variety of different words), but i'd advise against overusing these. 'said' is your friend! it's the invisible dialogue tag, helps your reader read through your dialogue in comfort, but of course, if you wanna add a nuanced way of describing the dialogue, then replacing 'said' is the easiest way to make your dialogue interesting.

but don't overuse these. for me, i'd focus on action tags and adverbs.

use interesting adverbs that add description to how a character is saying something can go miles. and using action tags that break through what could have been a long section of characters just talking? it helps so much.

i'd recommend having onelook thesaurus open as you write. you don't have to type in just words: phrases, the overall vibes of the word you're thinking of, all of that can be typed into the thesaurus and they'll provide you with pretty good results each time.

it also really helps when you've forgotten a word and can only remember vague bits of what the word should feel like.

.. bullet point three : voices

the best way, however, is ultimately to create a character. write a personality for them, bring them to life, think about the way in which they would talk and then put that down onto paper.

it's difficult, perhaps the most difficult to do, because it's also so tricky to advise someone on how to do this. it's all about the character you want to create, the personality you envision for them, and the only person who can fully write that is you.

however, i would find a few 'ticks' of theirs and use them as indicators in your writing.

for example, in my seoksoo long fic, seokmin's tick is that he always "chirps" what he's saying. and beams. a lot. this identifies his character, makes him unique(ish), and establishes his personality and differs him to the other characters.

but ultimately, it comes down to word choices, when you're writing a character voice.

like, your character describing something with elegant, floral language vs them going "this is so pretty". or perhaps making them stumble over their words when they're panicked vs them simply just going silent when they're flustered.

it's about being specific. about making choices with your words that would have english teachers analyse and unpick your writing, hundreds of years later.

(even if it's fanfic. especially if it's fanfic: because who knows how many fans may join your fandom in the next few years?)

... and that's it ! if anyone has anything else they want advice on (how to structure, how to write dialogue, how to plan etc) then just shoot me an ask, because i'd love to help however i can :)

tagging (comment/send ask to be added!): @selenicives @stqrrgirle @weird-bookworm @eternalgyu @blue-jisungs (tough luck guys btw but youre gonna be tagged in this entire series ehehehe)

[coridallasmultipass]

If it's okay for me to add something related because I first saw this on Tumblr: In the mid-2010s, I heard about there being a gay Filipino deity romance (from one culture in the Philippines - there are many different cultures and beliefs) here on Tumblr. It wasn't until years later when researching Philippine deities for fun while trying to broadly connect with my culture that I found a deep dive where someone found that the Bulan and Sidapa love story originated from the same fictional blog source, and had been circulating from new sources and fan art claiming it was historical for years before the author tried to find a non-modern historical source for the rumour, creating a kind of Berenstain/Berenstein effect on the people he asked, claiming they'd heard about the love story from a forgotten source much earlier than the 2010s, but unable to give a specific name, or the source cited claimed they didn't actually know about the romance.

While I think in this instance, a shift in narrative is obviously okay when you consider it is still a living Filipino culture, and people from that clearly find identity with this modern take (which should be asked of people from the cultures directly affected by misinfo), it should also be important not to rewrite it as 'historical fact' particularly when it has a fictional modern source that someone can directly point to as the origin when they question and search down the telephone line (like the game).

(I use the word 'fictional' only in reference to the originating blog, because the blog was unable or unwilling to provide any sources that mentioned that relationship to the deep dive author. I'm not implying said gods can't be/aren't gay. I'm not from that specific Philippine culture, and I don't have enough background knowledge to make any claims of my own. There's also no like, singular religious text/'bible' that pre-Hispanic Philippine beliefs followed as a rule/that can be consulted about this - it's not like a translation debate. There's just no textual source pre-dating the blog making the claim of the romance, and historians/oral historians aren't making the claim either.)

I get variations on this comment on my post about history misinformation all the time: "why does it matter?" Why does it matter that people believe falsehoods about history? Why does it matter if people spread history misinformation? Why does it matter if people on tumblr believe that those bronze dodecahedra were used for knitting, or that Persephone had a daughter named Mespyrian? It's not the kind of misinformation that actually hurts people, like anti-vaxx propaganda or climate change denial. It doesn't hurt anyone to believe something false about the past.

Which, one, thanks for letting me know on my post that you think my job doesn't matter and what I do is pointless, if it doesn't really matter if we know the truth or make up lies about history because lies don't hurt anyone. But two, there are lots of reasons that it matters.

It encourages us to distrust historians when they talk about other aspects of history. You might think it's harmless to believe that Pharaoh Hatshepsut was trans. It's less harmless when you're espousing that the Holocaust wasn't really about Jews because the Nazis "came for trans people first." You might think it's harmless to believe that the French royalty of Versailles pooped and urinated on the floor of the palace all the time, because they were asshole rich people anyway, who cares, we hate the rich here; it's rather less harmless when you decide that the USSR was the communist ideal and Good, Actually, and that reports of its genocidal oppression are actually lies.

It encourages anti-intellectualism in other areas of scholarship. Deciding based on your own gut that the experts don't know what they're talking about and are either too stupid to realize the truth, or maliciously hiding the truth, is how you get to anti-vaxxers and climate change denial. It is also how you come to discount housing-first solutions for homelessness or the idea that long-term sustained weight loss is both biologically unlikely and health-wise unnecessary for the majority of fat people - because they conflict with what you feel should be true. Believing what you want to be true about history, because you want to believe it, and discounting fact-based corrections because you don't want them to be true, can then bleed over into how you approach other sociological and scientific topics.

How we think about history informs how we think about the present. A lot of people want certain things to be true - this famous person from history was gay or trans, this sexist story was actually feminist in its origin - because we want proof that gay people, trans people, and women deserve to be respected, and this gives evidence to prove we once were and deserve to be. But let me tell you a different story: on Thanksgiving of 2016, I was at a family friend's house and listening to their drunk conservative relative rant, and he told me, confidently, that the Roman Empire fell because they instituted universal healthcare, which was proof that Obama was destroying America. Of course that's nonsense. But projecting what we think is true about the world back onto history, and then using that as recursive proof that that is how the world is... is shoddy scholarship, and gets used for topics you don't agree with just as much as the ones you do. We should not be encouraging this, because our politics should be informed by the truth and material reality, not how we wish the past proved us right.

It frequently reinforces "Good vs. Bad" dichotomies that are at best unhelpful and at worst victim-blaming. A very common thread of historical misinformation on tumblr is about the innocence or benevolence of oppressed groups, slandered by oppressors who were far worse. This very frequently has truth to it - but makes the lies hard to separate out. It often simplifies the narrative, and implies that the reason that colonialism and oppression were bad was because the victims were Good and didn't deserve it... not because colonialism and oppression are bad. You see this sometimes with radical feminist mother goddess Neolithic feminist utopia stuff, but you also see it a lot regarding Native American and African history. I have seen people earnestly argue that Aztecs did not practice human sacrifice, that that was a lie made up by the Spanish to slander them. That is not true. Human sacrifice was part of Aztec, Maya, and many Central American war/religious practices. They are significantly more complex than often presented, and came from a captive-based system of warfare that significantly reduced the number of people who got killed in war compared to European styles of war that primarily killed people on the battlefield rather than taking them captive for sacrifice... but the human sacrifice was real and did happen. This can often come off with the implications of a 'noble savage' or an 'innocent victim' that implies that the bad things the Spanish conquistadors did were bad because the victims were innocent or good. This is a very easy trap to fall into; if the victims were good, they didn't deserve it. Right? This logic is dangerous when you are presented with a person or group who did something bad... you're caught in a bind. Did they deserve their injustice or oppression because they did something bad? This kind of logic drives a lot of transphobia, homophobia, racism, and defenses of Kyle Rittenhouse today. The answer to a colonialist logic of "The Aztecs deserved to be conquered because they did human sacrifice and that's bad" is not "The Aztecs didn't do human sacrifice actually, that's just Spanish propaganda" (which is a lie) it should be "We Americans do human sacrifice all the god damn time with our forever wars in the Middle East, we just don't call it that. We use bullets and bombs rather than obsidian knives but we kill way, way more people in the name of our country. What does that make us? Maybe genocide is not okay regardless of if you think the people are weird and scary." It becomes hard to square your ethics of the Innocent Victim and Lying Perpetrator when you see real, complicated, individual-level and group-level interactions, where no group is made up of members who are all completely pure and good, and they don't deserve to be oppressed anyway.

It makes you an unwitting tool of the oppressor. The favorite, favorite allegation transphobes level at trans people, and conservatives at queer people, is that we're lying to push the Gay Agenda. We're liars or deluded fools. If you say something about queer or trans history that's easy to debunk as false, you have permanently hurt your credibility - and the cause of queer history. It makes you easy to write off as a liar or a deluded fool who needs misinformation to make your case. If you say Louisa May Alcott was trans, that's easy to counter with "there is literally no evidence of that, and lots of evidence that she was fine being a woman," and instantly tanks your credibility going forward, so when you then say James Barry was trans and push back against a novel or biopic that treats James Barry as a woman, you get "you don't know what you're talking about, didn't you say Louisa May Alcott was trans too?" TERFs love to call trans people liars - do not hand them ammunition, not even a single bullet. Make sure you can back up what you say with facts and evidence. This is true of homophobes, of racists, of sexists. Be confident of your facts, and have facts to give to the hopeful and questioning learners who you are relating this story to, or the bigots who you are telling off, because misinformation can only hurt you and your cause.

It makes the queer, female, POC, or other marginalized listeners hurt, sad, and betrayed when something they thought was a reflection of their own experiences turns out not to be real. This is a good response to a performance art piece purporting to tell a real story of gay WWI soldiers, until the author revealed it as fiction. Why would you want to set yourself up for disappointment like that? Why would you want to risk inflicting that disappointment and betrayal on anyone else?

It makes it harder to learn the actual truth.

Historical misinformation has consequences, and those consequences are best avoided - by checking your facts, citing your sources, and taking the time and effort to make sure you are actually telling the truth.