#additional post with anecdotes because i love sharing:

[cloudbends]

i told you i was cooking and i meant it!!

[lune-moon-nuit]

A small addition / PS to my post on heteronormativity. Link on the post :)

A few weeks ago, I shared with you a childhood anecdote to illustrate how heteronormativity and conformity subtly influence us from a very young age and how this dynamic shapes our beloved characters in Stranger Things, set in a rural American town in the 1980s. I demonstrated that despite the progress and shifts in mentality between the 1980s and 2007 (the year of my anecdote), stereotypes and preconceived notions still persist, whether we like it or not.

Well, let me share with you another recent anecdote that further confirms this observation.

For context, I work as an ATSEM (Agent Territorial Spécialisé des Écoles Maternelles, as it's called in France) in a preschool (it's the equivalent of "Nursery assistant" or/and "preschool teaching assistant"). Since I’m currently part of the city's substitute pool, I also work in daycare centers (with babies as young as six months up to toddlers of three years old), but mainly in preschools (with children aged three to six). And let me tell you, despite all our efforts to avoid gender stereotypes, many of my youngest students already mimic what they see at home or on TV when interacting with their peers.

I've seen children trying to kiss their friends—or even adults—on the lips, simply imitating “Mommy and Daddy.” Keep in mind, these kids are only three or four years old. This means that the seeds of heteronormativity have already been planted in 2025, despite all our efforts to shield them from stereotypes.

I can’t count how many times I’ve had to remind them that pink isn’t just for girls, or that kissing someone on the lips isn’t appropriate—that only adults can do that with each other, and that no adult should ever kiss them on the mouth. And the worst part? It’s not their fault. The adults around them—especially their parents and family members—are their role models, their pillars, the ones they trust most. To them, adults are inherently right because adults know everything. And in a way, that makes sense—children know nothing about the world yet; they are in the process of learning absolutely everything.

This also reminds me of another childhood memory from a summer camping trip. I must have been six or seven years old, playing in the park with a little girl I had just met. I remember initiating a game where we pretended to be in love, and I kissed her on the lips. I was merely copying what I saw around me—adults in love, scenes on TV, music videos, etc. (Looking back, I also think I was unconsciously influenced by the abuse I endured at that age without fully realizing it. I distinctly remember feeling a strange pressure, a need to keep it secret, as if I had done something wrong. That feeling intensified in my mind, making me believe I had misbehaved. In hindsight, I suspect that, on some level, I was reenacting what a certain bastard had done to me, though everything blurred together in my head anyway.)

These memories resurfaced, making me realize just how deeply ingrained these patterns are—whether in 1983, 2007, or 2025. No matter how much progress we make, no matter how open-minded society becomes, heteronormativity is still here. And it still reigns.

[alacants]

hi! just wanted to say that i was recently looking for lore on the ferru ferri relationship so ur lore post is perfect timing and *chefs kiss* 🤌 i fully support ur unhingedness about them bc i'm getting there too LOL i would love to know more about the facts/lore/thoughts u have on them if u'd like to share ! :D

i actually need to thank you because it was the tags on one of your rbs + talking with another mutual that pushed me to finally finish and post. so thank you!! …and sorry for what's about to happen here. would i like to share more thoughts, YES I WOULD.

(eta: this thing is LONGER than the original and also significantly more unhinged. so like… fair warning.)

first of all here are an assortment of facts/links/quotes that didn't make the final lorepost cut:

about all those times ferru drops by the academy: for example, this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this.

then there is this classic roland garros 2011 "choose a player" questionnaire. ferru picked juanki for THREE separate answers: who would you share a nice bottle of wine with, who would you open a bar with, and—wait for it—who would you hit on girls with. 

i mean, i get it. juanki's looks are ideal bait. i see it happen every day on tumblr dot com. but a truly unfortunate number of scenarios do immediately unroll before the mind's eye.

david ferrer's official 2004 atp media biography included "says his most inspirational player is countryman juan carlos ferrero"

juanki's official atp tour dot com bio includes this typically restrained ferru testimonial: "He was and is my best friend on the tour. He's a person that is very close to me... He’s a very humble and noble person." elsewhere: "He's an even better person than he is a player, which is very difficult."

(juanki's bio is a wholeass novella and ferru's is THE most bare bones bullet points. ferru stop being so fucking modest challenge!!)

juanki used to visit javea to play football with ferru and his hometown friends. ferru are you making your girlfriend hang out with your friendsgroup.

select topics from the david ferrer official forums: "stayed with juan carlos before leaving for the davis cup." (juanki himself was not called up.) "went to a nice restaurant with juan carlos and had paella." "spending new year's eve at juan carlos' hotel."

according to juanki's blog they would watch world cup matches together at ferru's house?? cute.

especially cute since juanki is a real madrid fan and ferru is a barcelona fan. (although he's more outspoken about supporting valencia cf.) here is an amazing photo of a clasico watch party in the cincy locker room.

honestly this is just some sponsor promo content but i am dying to know what the inside joke at 1:15 is about. what are you smiling about juan carlos. why is ferru trying not to laugh. answer me.

ok easy stuff out of the way. i'm just going to warn you in advance that there are a cool 3000 words under the cut so uh... brace yourself i guess. don't open on mobile. topics include: 

some Narratives

thoughts on the dynamic (past)

101 reasons to love david ferrer

behind the music: juan carlos ferrero

thoughts on the dynamic (present)

i didn't link more than a few quotes but if you want sources for anything in particular just drop me a reply or an ask.

finally, in addition to Facts and Anecdotes this includes what is by definition rampant speculation because i don't know these guys and never will. we cannot fully know public figures, we are making the shadows on the wall of plato's cave kiss, you know the drill.

the Narratives

first of all. the opposite narratives of their careers are soooooooooo compelling to me. like, juanki was a child prodigy—junior world champion, junior roland garros finalist, bursting onto the pro scene age 19 and winning his first title just a month later. then clinching spain's first davis cup, roland garros sf-sf-final-title, us open final, world number one. all by age 23! expectations were through the ROOF.

…and then 2004 hit and he fell off a cliff and never recovered. (injury, mentality, and incredible bad luck, like oh this man is CURSED cursed. he missed multiple tournaments because of chicken pox.) in september 2003 he was world no. 1; 17 months later he was no. 98.  he never did make it back into the top ten.

meanwhile, ferru was—i mean obviously he was talented. he won stuff in juniors. but no one was talking about him as the future of spanish tennis, yk? he even quit when he was 17… for a week. (lol.) he was inconsistent, vulnerable to meltdowns. he first appeared on most people's radars when he beat agassi in rome in 2003, but then not again until a brief spike in 2007—made the USO semis, made the master's cup final, world no. 5. and then he, too, slumped.

but he did not give up. ever.

he climbed out of the slump and just kept climbing up, and up, and up. the best year of his career was 2012-2013, age thirty—seven titles, masters title, roland garros final, world no. 3. the second-best was 2015, age thirty-two. top 10 for 292 straight weeks, 2010-2016. ferru is like. the ultimate proof of how dogged persistence pays off if you just. keep. trying. ← wow tumblr user alacants is he your favorite or something.

the arcs intersect in ~2008-2010, when they were especially joined at the hip. they're both struggling—juanki dropped out of the top 100 for the first time, ferru's treading water in the low teens and saying he'll never reach the heights of 2007 again—and both right on the verge of a revival. juanki won his first title in 5+ years in 2009, kickstarting an 18 month last-gasp renaissance that included davis cup hero, more titles, more finals, as high as no. 14. for a few weeks. ferru slowly and surely got his feet back under him. (he calls the dc 09 final a turning point.) around those back-to-back finals in 2010, they were hovering right around the same rank—juanki even jumped ahead a couple places. and then juanki's body finally called it quits, and ferru started to really take off. 

so that window is probably the peak of the pre-retirement dynamic. what IS that dynamic, you ask? great question.

the dynamic (past)

first i must note that although i myself led the lore post with the quotes about how they've been friends forever, something i find super cute/funny is that there seems to be an element of historical revisionism at work there? like, ferru didn't come to the academy until he was 17 (1999, the year juanki went pro), and their hometowns aren't THAT close. and ferru spent a couple years in barcelona as well. so although they clearly knew each other from an early age, it's unlikely that they were like. besties. but if you ask them, it's oh yeah we've been friends foreverrrr.

anyway. dynamics, 2002-2012:

mutual security blanket

introvert (situational) 4 introvert (intrinsic)

senpai/kouhai

chronic patient/emotional support rescue dog

fighter/sacrifice

king/lionheart, where the king was overthrown 10 years ago and now they're living in exile and the loyal retainer is earning their keep by the sword—

what do i mean by 90% of this—ok, first, web 1.0 tangent: beginning relatively early in ferru's career there was a fan forum on his official website. ferrru, who in those days was blatantly uncomfortable with the fan/star dynamic, immediately set about trying to like. befriend everyone on it. no fans here, we're all just friends! he would post regular life updates and then hang around in the thread just. chatting. he would remember details like where posters lived and who their other faves were and TEASE them about it. he hosted a christmas dinner in his hometown for anyone who wanted to make the trip. this is obviously unsustainable past a certain point of success but while it lasted it was just. so charming.

so ferru took his self-appointed role as juanki handler very seriously. like, i joke about "xx news and publicity bureau," but ferru really was. he would regularly post updates about juanki's health and recovery progress. he would answer questions. juanki's fans would come to ferru for updates!! couple this with the comments about how they tried to enter the same tournaments and generally traveled together/stayed in the same hotels, along with juanki's incredible run of illness and injury, and it's just like. ferru is juanki's designated spokesperson, his interface with the cold cruel world, his shield arm/support animal.

mutually supportive, but also: ferru clearly gets a lot of validation out of doing things for other people. he is always describing himself in terms such as, "i'm nothing special, i just try to be a really good friend." this is an acts of service guy all the way down.

(you ARE special, ferru, listen to me and juan carlos—)

i do think it was an evolution—ferru especially credits juanki with supporting him in the early days on tour. so i see it as like... friendly face showing the new kid the ropes, giving him advice, and then suddenly they're pulling even, and then even more suddenly ferru is the one equipped to provide the support.

introvert (situational): namely, juanki describes himself as shy, but he loves being the center of attention. he doesn't act out to get it but he very much enjoys it when it comes. (early quote re: what he likes about tennis: "all the people cheering for me in the big stadiums.") (it's also worth noting that he was the youngest child and the much-anticipated only son. lmao.) at the same time the media describe him as reserved, and he visibly dislikes talking about personal stuff. direct quote: "you can see how uncomfortable he is talking about his family…" 

so at first the press calls him "the monk of villena", he lives in the middle of nowhere, his lifestyle isn't flashy*, he's so humble, wow. but alllllso he loves fast cars and throwing parties at his hotel. he befriends other famous spanish athletes like sergio garcia and sete gibernau. and there are some wiiiiiiiiiild pictures from players' parties through the years. 

(*the contemporary gossip was also that maybe he was out having a little more fun than he let on, lol.)

so maybe it's accurate to say he's doesn't like being out of his depth? doesn't like unfamiliar situations. but like—i have seen the records and they do not lie. juan carlos looooves being—sorry—doted upon.

(this btw is why someone dedicating their tournament victory to him in front of god and the city of valencia and everyone was probably what you could call an effective tactic.) 

meanwhile ferru's favorite hobby is READING. he is famous for always having a book in the locker room. "i can get through 3 books in a 2 week tournament and i keep every book i read." (← man who ebooks were invented for.) his idea of a perfect day is going to the beach in his hometown ("the best beach in the world") with his family and his friends and then having paella. he's a cat person. he's perfect? SORRY. I'M TRYING SO HARD TO BE NORMAL. anyway genuinely think this is the person you would find in the corner at a party befriending the host's cat.

—ok fuck normal i need to talk about ferru some more.

some very normal thoughts about david ferrer

as a player ferru had uhhhhh well maybe it was an inferiority complex or maybe it was a self-defense strategy playing in the big four era or maybe he was just unbelievably hard on himself. but for a long time he was out there saying stuff like, i'm the worst player in the top hundred. i'm the worst player in the top ten.

the thing is. it's impossible to talk about ferru without bringing up the closet story. you can read it here. c. 2007 this was reported as like, a humorous character-building anecdote????? because ferru brushed it off ("once in there i didn't think much" <- bad sign!!!) and said things like "i learned everything from him, about tennis and how to be a person." ok ferru, but what if you learned the wrong things. 

i mean, what do i know. i don't know any of these people, i'm (mostly) not here to pseudo-psychoanalyze. i just don't think it's UNrelated that ferru explicitly compared their eventual coaching split to a breakup and later implied that he should have cut the cord earlier but couldn't bring himself to do it. or that afterwards he started going to therapy, "personal, not sport," and says he wishes he'd started when he was 20. 

he stayed with that coach until he was 31 btw. there is loyal and then there is whatever the hell this is.

how do you reconcile this with today's happy and well-adjusted davis cup captain? many possibilities, such as his very own family (they're so cute, they are so cute) and 20 years of personal growth. also probably the therapy. and tbf by the end of the career he'd already gotten a lot better about the self-deprecation. but he still has a worldview that is uh refreshing verging on eye-watering. he's repeatedly said that being a professional athlete doesn't make you particularly special or interesting. asked whether as a known reader he's thinking about writing a memoir: "I'm not that important and I don’t believe I can contribute that much to the society… there are so many people that can contribute much more." ← ferru STOP.

(speaking of the adorable family: although this post is mainly about silly shipping nonsense and not irl romantic relationships i DO think it's instructive that ferru appears to have dated exactly two (2) women in the entirety of his adult life. one gf age 17-26, one age 27-present. this man's natural mode is Devotion.)

anyway my main point here is that it probably felt real good to have someone on tour in his corner. someone who hadn't ever locked him in a closet.

(there is a lot more to unpack about ferru but if you're sitting here like "but what about uso 2008" or whatever trust me it's solely for the sake of not making this insanely long post EVEN LONGER and i am happy to share my thoughts upon request lol.)

some very normal thoughts about juan carlos ferrero 

IN CONTRAST... one of the funniest things about revisiting old press is constantly hearing juan carlos ferrero described as "humble" when my man has a VERY healthy opinion of himself. this isn't a bad thing. it's arguably better than calling yourself the worst player in the top one hundred. it is however a problem when the person you feel threatened by is. rafa nadal. 

i initially had an 800 word tangent here that has now been exiled to its own post. the short version of this is juanki got dropped in favor of rafa in the 2004 davis cup final and never forgot it, lol. a number of other perceived sins were committed including 1) rome 2008 media coverage 2) dc 2009 president's speech 3) valencia open 2013, how dare rafa spurn juanki's beloved child tournament. but really it was that rafa became who juanki was supposed to be. :(

juanki's got a lot of pride! another example: madrid master's 2008. yet again juanki is in bad shape. at no. 44 he just missed the main draw. so he asked for a wild card… and didn't get one. that was genuinely an insult considering he was the 2003 champion and that wc #3 went to (consults notes) fabio fognini, ranked 73. the spanish sports media were up in arms. juanki said he was so insulted that even if they offered him a spot he wouldn't take it.

…so when carlos moya pulled out they didn't waste their time. "he said he didn't want it so we gave it to someone else." oh, juanki.

(ferru's measured thoughts on this decision btw: "The absence of Juan Carlos Ferrero is outrageous and insane. This only happens in Spain. It's a huge tragedy and, above all, an injustice for a player like him, who's been number one in the world and previously won this tournament.")

so, juanki: proud, outspoken when he's angry, reserved when he's not. to the extent that when he started saying ferru was his best friend on circuit his fans were like wait. what. this is brand-new information. 

you will notice that throughout this post there are a Lot of heart-on-sleeve quotes from ferru, and fewer from juanki. what happens is that when you don't talk about your feelings, they explode without warning in Grand Gestures. juanki LOVES a Grand Gesture. ferrufest 2k19 is the most notable but far from only instance, see also organizing special surprises at their special tournament. (the open letter is somewhere in the middle, i would be fascinated to know if he would have been that forthcoming if asked point blank. i mean, maybe so!!!! personal growth!!!)

sidenote, but imo you can see the exact same dichotomy at work with juanki and carlos, where he goes out of his way to reject the we're-like-family premise and then acts the exact opposite. ("i leave the father thing to his actual father." ok juan carlos.) he used to do the same thing wrt his own coach since childhood, "i wouldn't call him a father figure, that would be weird…" this is how you end up naming things after people and bursting into tears in public! ← the fact that he's a capital-c Crier makes it even more obvious.

you will ALSO notice that despite that 7-2 h2h juanki sure never had any problem with ferru. lol. the appeal presumably goes without saying of a friend who is shouldering his way in among the ~big four and STILL out here in the year of our lord 2009 saying things like, “[Ferrero] is one of the best players in history on clay… I think he can win Roland Garros again. Nadal and Federer will be there but Juan Carlos will be right there behind them. Why not?"

(fwiw i think all of this is very like… normal and human. it's why it's so fun to put him under a microscope.)

and what is also true is that no matter how much you think juanki's life is the academy, it's more than that. he is the academy. like it was founded specifically for him (well, his cohort of young players, of which he was far and away the most promising), and his coach included him in conversations about the Vision and the long-term goals from day one. he lived there with a ROOMMATE for years and years after going pro, despite owning like… a nice house in the city of valencia. (← maybe also a reason he didn't get married until well after retirement lmao.) so when he starts naming parts of the academy after you... it's a Big Deal.

—incidentally it must be comforting to have a ready-made identity on hand when "generational spanish tennis talent" turns out to go. not the way you thought it would.

hm not doing a great job avoiding the pseudo-psychoanalysis, am i. well. i tried.

thoughts on the dynamic (present)

dynamics, 2024:

will-they-won't-they x 20 years

(life) partners

✨✨✨ co-parents ✨✨✨

that one is so overwhelmingly dominant it sort of overshadows everything else. lmao.

king/lionheart STILL only now the one-time king has returned from exile to be an advisor to the new prince—

tbh now that they are both retired and both have their own families they are a little less codependent. normal best friends, i almost said, before remembering the fucking portrait commission. do you think that's hanging up in ferru's house???? i ask myself this every day.

what do i think has changed? ferru is (wonderfully) much less self-effacing. juanki successfully reinvented himself as a top coach. after juanki retired i think they finally started to relate as… i'm not saying they weren't equals before that but maybe to some people (ferru) it didn't feel like they were. and ferru is clearly in his element as dc captain, where his job is literally to be the entire team's emotional support dog. emotional support pack leader? once again: who needs hierarchy, we're all friends here. (he gave coaching a brief shot but it didn't stick—this my personal theory as to why. based on nothing other than intuition lol.)

hm this section is suspiciously resembling "ferru: the postscript." well we all see a lot of juanki, he's doing great lol. if anything i think having ferru around is good for him, keeps him from getting too martyred. every time ferru and carlitos TEAM UP to tease juanki is jfkldajf;l so delightful. (to modestly quote my own tag, "just two dogs yapping at their favorite cat.")

but shipping nonsense aside: i genuinely think it is really lovely and heart-warming to see two people who clearly mean so much to each other and are still such a big part of each other's lives after so long—even/especially despite the changes. some people grow apart. some people grow together. :)

and if you want to throw in twenty years of pining SO MUCH THE BETTER

--

christ that is. so much text. uhhhh hopefully this was informative/entertaining/morbidly fascinating, and everyone who reads it will feel mysteriously compelled to start including ferruero subplots in their sincaraz fic. :D?? :D????

you have SO many options. practically married. one-sided pining for many years. (whooo in this post sounds like they would do that.) MUTUAL pining for many years. practically married but haven't realized it. tour arrangement but they caught feelings. second-chance romance years after a youthful failed fling. the parent trap, starring carlitos alcaraz— [curtain falls as i am forcibly dragged from the stage]

[bestworstcase]

So, regarding your Tai post,

https://www.tumblr.com/bestworstcase/748954216598470656/the-perennial-tai-discourse-is-really-interesting?source=share

I had some thoughts: I technically cover it in a separate post

https://www.tumblr.com/tumblingxelian/749060919422861312/really-solid-addition-here-much-like-with-qrows

But I'm unsure if the links will work so here is a slightly edited & expanded version:

Now, the idea that Ruby & Yang had very different childhoods is not an idea I strictly disagree with. But, I also think it is a bit inaccurate to treat it as outlined in your post.

What I mean is that while Yang is definitely more overt in the fact she feels Tai and the other adults failed them and defaults to centering family moments on Ruby. (For instance she frames the Zwei package as something to cheer Ruby up, its not for her & Ruby's the one really excited, Yang's just kind of there about it)

Despite that, Ruby herself doesn't have a simple relationship with Tai, or in fact she just might but that's not a good thing.

See, Ruby does not think about Tai very often, he's largely an afterthought in her letters for one. But more to the point he is not someone Ruby goes to for advice or guidance or even comfort.

Post Beacon, she mostly gets an update from him and is not bothered to see him go. She is OK being a bit more vulnerable around Qrow.

But the person she actually seeks out and seems utterly shocked at not receiving comfort from is Yang. It was also Yang who she questions for what to do next and Yang whom she confided her plans in before leaving.

Again she is shocked when Yang cannot supply these things to her.

Tai is her dad, but its a superficial relationship, he's nice, he can be fun, she does love him. She does not however, seem to perceive him as a reliable or responsible adult from whom she seeks protection or guidance.

The person she always defaulted to for that was Yang until she could no longer fill the role post V3 which likely fed into her issues with showing vulnerability in V9.

I tend to think she might have been more open to it in V5 given the breakdown tears & hug, but then Yang demonstrated she was still very much not all right & Ruby had no clue what to do. So she just sort of locked into her head that Yang needed 'her' protection now, not the other way around.

I would also just straight up note that even Ruby said it was Yang who raised her. Like, that wasn't even subtle, she knows who the parent was in that house and it wasn't Tai or Qrow. I don't think she'd say that if their childhoods were 'so' different that Tai was a functional parent to her but not Yang.

She definitely has a less... frosty relationship with the two grown men who she grew up around, Largely because they project the saintly Summer onto her and the Wretched Raven onto Yang.

Again, let's not forget Qrow's entirely willing to accept Yang brutalized a kid for shits and giggles or is "crazy". Or that Tai outright sees a lot of Raven in Yang, despite most of the traits he described not meshing with Yang's demonstrated or self described persona.

But even with that more positive relationship being projected onto and still raised by a sister two years your senior isn't exactly ideal. Both sisters had a shitty childhood, both were deeply neglected and failed and suffered because of that fact.

all true! but the nature of parentification is that the children experience the neglect in very different ways; the elder child is forced into an adult role, parenting the younger child, who is harmed in more invisible ways because they do have a caretaker—their sibling. anecdotally nearly every account of a childhood i’ve read by an adult who was raised as a child by older siblings has either alluded to or outright described 1. a much better childhood than their caretaking sibling(s) got, 2. because their sibling(s) shielded them from the worst neglect or abuse.

with that in mind and taking into consideration things like the different reactions to the package from tai (this will cheer ruby up vs ooh, something from home!) and yang staying behind at beacon when tai takes ruby to visit the memorial stone, and now these clear differences in how the girls feel about the boba shop (yang: unsure, downplaying the surprise, maybe it’s dumb / ruby: boba!!!) which probably reflect their emotional experience of the outings with dad (yang: fun, happy that ruby is so excited, not that special otherwise / ruby: magical)…

well, let’s put it this way:

yang did not have a real caretaker starting from age five, when she became the de facto main parent to her three-year-old sister with at best sporadic breaks when qrow wasn’t too blackout drunk / tai was having a good day.

ruby had a primary caretaker who struggled but was always there (yang) and a dad who had to work a lot but made time to do special things like the boba trips so that he could spend quality time with his family (tai). plus an uncle she sometimes needed to help her sister deal with.

yang being parentified has the effect of insulating ruby from the severity of tai’s neglect; in a functional single-income household where one parent stays home and the other works to support the family and both parents are adults who chose this dynamic and enjoy their respective roles, the working parent is not bad or neglectful simply because they aren’t around during the day to take care of the kids, and they can foster close, loving relationships with their children by making the most of the time they have at home. the childhood ruby had was a dysfunctional imitation of that dynamic.

and then factoring in the summer-vs-raven projection, when tai was around he focused on bonding time with ruby moreso than yang.

the net result is that the harm to ruby is much more invisible (yang by virtue of being a child herself could not provide ruby with healthy parent-child boundaries or the emotional stability children need from their parents to feel secure and develop good emotional regulation; tai’s favoritism of ruby being intertwined with idealizing of summer fucked ruby’s sense of self really badly; in the first few volumes ruby feels hurt and bewildered every time yang acts like her sister instead of her parent).

ruby sees clearly and states in volume nine that yang raised her; i don’t think she would have been able to articulate that so plainly in volume one, and this is something she’s come to realize after leaving home / living independently. in v1 it’s “yang used to read to me when we were little” and i’d bet that’s how ruby would phrase everything yang did—as discrete habits, not the combined pattern of “yang raised me.”

whereas yang like. the first thing she does at beacon is try to step away from ruby: encouraging her to meet new people then ditching her to catch up with friends, not wanting to partner up with her for initiation… much as yang loves her sister and enthusiastically supports her, it’s also pretty obvious that yang saw beacon as an opportunity to focus on herself for once. which says to me that she’d already grasped that their home life was messed up and that she needed to break those patterns once she left.

[butchsophiewalten]

there has been ANOTHER kyle-martin twitter space and i missed all of it :( do you happen to have any info on what was in there??

I was there the whole time! But because this wasn't a Q&A style space like the one from last week, I didn't take as many notes. A lot of it was just Kyle and Martin talking about their own personal interests and life anecdotes, which I found really interesting and enjoyed listening to, but felt uncomfortable writing down as like, Walten Files News, y'know? A lot of it was pretty candid and personal, not really something I want to be sharing as a Series Fun Fact.

The stuff I did jot down is pretty sparse, but here it is anyway:

-Martin mentions that he's actively working on a scene involving Rosemary while he's in the space. He talks about how he saved a lot of the Rosemary stuff for last, because he's excited to work on it.

-Martin says "No, I love the fans but I don't trust them with fucking Jack and Felix plushies". Kyle mentions an anecdote about how Martin didn't want to make human plushies because he didn't want people tormenting the Felix one.

-They spoke a lot in very vague terms about scenes in TWF4. Many distinct times of someone going "Hey, you know the thing about This scene? Hold on, I'll DM it to you" as a launching point for a different conversation, with few or no additional details about the scene in question. Late in the stream Martin mentions finding it funny to imagine the twitter space audience trying to 'peek into the room' to see what they're talking about, like a kid trying to peek at their Christmas presents.

-Martin talks about a scene in TWF4 which is inspired by a real nightmare he had that woke him up in a cold sweat.

-They mention how Showbear was retconned, and Martin talks about how the role Showbear was going to fill in the series has been broken up and split between two separate characters who supersede him, one of which is another white bear named "Mr. Snow".

-Martin talks for a bit about storytelling techniques he's learned from his favorite media/artwork. He brings up Better Call Saul a lot here, speaking mostly about the things it's taught him in the way of subtlety in storytelling and characterization, and how it's often much more effective to convey something in few words than to over-explain it in the hopes of absolute clarity.

-Martin mentions that when he inevitably has to recast Felix, he is not going to open auditions for him, he's going to hand-pick the VA himself, and it's most likely going to be someone he's already worked with or someone he knows through someone he's already worked with. He says that his concern is less to find someone who can emulate Coker's Felix voice, and more to find someone he thinks is most appropriate for the character.

-On the topic of Felix, Kyle brings up a vision he has in his mind of a post-crash Felix leaving Brighton for years, and coming back having gained a lot of weight and otherwise in a significantly poor state. Martin says that it's actually true that Felix gains some weight later in his life. (The implication here I imagine being that 1982 Felix is heavier than 1974 Felix was.)

-There's a pretty long conversation here about a fear Martin has of a specific scene in TWF4 starting a Fandom Ship that he really doesn't want to exist, and on the topic Kyle brings up the first random Terrible Walten Files Ship Idea he can think of, and lands on Jack and Susan. Martin has a very visceral reaction of disgust.

-Martin then starts talking about how he hasn't really fleshed out an idea for what Susan and Jack's relationship is like, but he thinks it'd be fun if they teamed up to scare people, since they're both pretty tall and intimidating.

-Martin ends the stream saying that he didn't finish the Rosemary scene he was working on, but that he's tired and wants to go to bed. He also goes "FUCK Rosemary Walten, man, why does she have so many fucking scenes."

[darklinaforever]

https://www.tumblr.com/darklinaforever/755917759191334912/i-always-wonder-what-exactly-the-accusation-about?source=share

There's nothing wrong with loving a couple of problematic couples. But you literally have ALL the couples like - pedophilia, violence against women, incest, zoophilia and so on. ALL of them. So yes, it's weird and creepy.

I've already explained why it's bullshit to say that I like ships specifically related to women being abused. I'm not going to bother repeating a post that you have obviously already read, proving to me that you have no form of understanding...

Literally, you repeating something I've already taken apart, specifically in this same post that I did and you fired me ! 😂

This level of stupidity is crazy...

Once again, if you think that Sessrin, Daemyra maybe for you, and Sareth are pedophilia you also have a problem understanding the subject through the historical context, and the importance of the symbolic...

Sebaciel is yet another story for me personally, see here :

And again, if you look at Planet of the Apes and see the apes involved as pure beasts /animals when they literally have human consciousness and talk, there is also a problem. Not only that but you also obviously didn't understand the message of this story.

Or maybe you're telling me about Catwin ? Which would be even more stupid...

And then, once again for incest, I still don't see how it's weird ?

Literally go after those who write these problematic romances instead of going after those who appreciate work that is supposed to be appreciated.

How loving an incestuous fictional romance is weird in 2024 ? It's fiction. Not reality. Do you understand the difference or not ?

Especially in a historical fantasy context where the question doesn't even really matter ?

And here I am talking about the Targaryens. Feudal context where incestuous unions were common and in addition this particular family has magical blood ? You need to relax a little.

As for Cesare & Lucrezia, once again it is literally the screenwriters who wrote this romance made to be appreciated and which in any case has either an open ending or an unhappy ending depending on the version ?

The incest trope is as old as enemies to lovers. Another form of prohibition for the spectator which stimulates interest.

Again, most of these ships are very very popular. So everyone who ships this is weird and creepy to you ?

Or is it more morally appropriate to love some and not others in your opinion ? Like, don't you have the right to like all these dynamics at the same time ? There's an appropriate number of problematic categories to like in fiction perhaps ?

Wtf what is this stupid logic ?

Besides, liking this kind of problematic dynamic doesn't stop me from liking healthy dynamic. 😂

Literally, these are things that I have already more or less explained here :

But you make me want even more to ship problematic things, just to annoy you in your visibly meaningless life for enjoying coming to annoy me on a subject as stupid as judging me for liking fictional ships...

So... for a little free anecdote, I like the mother-son relationship between Paul and Jessica, but I admit that because of the chemistry of the actors I ship it a little. Hey, add that to the list of things that make me weird and creepy, it's a gift ! 😉😚

Anyway, you really don't seem to be able to distinguish between fiction and reality anon. I advise you to cultivate yourself a little, it might help you.

[kalamity-jayne]

seeing your addition to that post about kids gendering you correctly, seeing how it says "my kid" made me so happy. I'm so glad there's a generation of kids growing up with moms like you 💛🫶🏼

OMG This was such a sweet surprise in my inbox! Thank you!

This is precisely why I share lil anecdotes from my parenting adventures. So other trans folks, especially the youngins' out there, can see examples of transsexual motherhood. I've met a few other trans moms but we're, at least anecdotally it seems, a rarity. All of the trans moms I know share the same complaint: there are literally ZERO examples of trans motherhood to follow. Sure there's lots of examples of Cis motherhood that are nonetheless helpful, and lots of good parenting books/philosophies out there like "123 Magic" and "Baby lead weaning," (the closest book I have on trans parenthood is "The Argonauts" which I highly recommend reading) but we trans moms have all had to create the meaning of trans motherhood whole cloth out of nothing.

Part of that is because for too long in the medical world it was believed that not only we couldn't have kids, but that we shouldn't even if we could. For too long we've been treated as unfit mothers. However, I think actually the opposite is true. I think we make exceptional mothers. I got on HRT about a month into the second trimester of my wife's pregnancy. In other words, I became a woman and a mother at the same time, so to speak. My sense of womanhood is inextricable from my motherhood, and ultimately I think that makes me very good at the job. Mothering my child, seeing them thrive on my love while developing into a lil person with a kind and generous heart, fills my cup and I thrive in turn. The positive feedback of good mothering is it's own potent kind of gender affirmation. It's also so healing, knowing that my child can freely explore their own gender without anyone getting in the way because I will be there to protect them. And at the end of the day, no matter what any transphobe out there thinks, my kid has always known me as their mom, and everytime my lil one says "I love you Mama!" I am reminded that no one can ever take that away from me.

So thank you dear for your kind words 🫶

[bohdank]

> Users aren’t stupid, but we are all human. Revealed preference is often the complete opposite of the stated preference, and we have the data that shows that. Our goal is to optimize the experience not kill features because “tumblr staff just wants so”.

I absolutely agree that data, research, user interviews, a/b tests, all that stuff is a far better source of information that "posts about tumblr." But the thing about data is that it's also very easy to draw incorrect or misguided conclusions from it. It's pretty well known that if you're good enough with statistics you can bend data to say nearly anything you want it to.

I don't think tumblr is doing this -- y'all want the site to succeed and deliberately misinterpreting your own stats would be beyond stupid -- but you absolutely may be doing this by accident. And the stakes here are Really High. The set of numbers you choose to pursue will drastically change the way you plan and impliment changes.

And internally, it's very easy for a conversation about statistics to become something of an echo chamber. I really really wish that y'all would actually share the reasoning and justification for the feature changes that you make *and listened to user feedback while open the the possibility that you aren't perfect.* I know that's a lot of work but I think the benefits in goodwill and trust that you reap from working with that level of transparency would be highly worthwhile.

I feel very strongly about this because I've recently come from a site that has effectively fallen apart due to the company chasing the wrong numbers -- I won't go into it because it's all over my blog but I really hope I don't have to watch it happen again. :(

First off, I appreciate the nuance you’ve brought to the conversation. Data is indeed a powerful tool but, as you pointed out, it’s also a tricky beast that can easily lead one astray if not handled with the right level of caution and diligence.

The risk of falling into an echo chamber is real, and there’s something to be said about the danger of falling in love with our own ideas to the point where we ignore contrary indicators.

But I want to reassure you and the rest of our community ��� we’re not just blindly chasing after numbers. To be frank, I don't know why people think we are just looking at numbers and not talking to real humans. We indeed strive to make data-informed decisions, not data-driven ones. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. It means we take into account qualitative feedback, anecdotal evidence, and even gut instincts in addition to the quantitative data.

We regularly run user interview sessions and use other qualitative research instruments to inform our product decisions. To say more, we want to involve our community in the decision-making process as much as possible, not just as passive recipients of the changes we implement but as active contributors.

That being said, it’s a tough balancing act. We’re constantly trying to find the sweet spot between sharing enough to make people feel included and informed, and sharing too much that it becomes overwhelming or confusing. But rest assured, every piece of feedback is invaluable in helping us strike that balance.

[snezfics-n-shit]

Sicktember Day 26: [Allergic] Conjunctivitis

Fandom: Ace Attorney Characters: Larry Butz, Franziska von Karma, Adrian Andrews Notes: The “[allergic]” part is my own addition because if you’re squeamish like me (no shame in that), what’s often called conjunctivitis or “pink eye” is kind of an uncomfortable image so I wanted that clarification out of the way. Allergic conjunctivitis is just the “official” name for allergy symptoms in the eyes. I lasted these many days, I think I should be allowed to bend the rules just a little as a treat. Larry gets his time in the spotlight because I love him. He’s staying at Franziska and Adrian’s house (believe it or not he doesn’t live there, though) and has managed to give Adrian quite the scare upon his return from running some errands. There’s established married Fradrian and set post-SoJ purely for timeline purposes, as always. If you like the things I write, I always appreciate reblogs and comments; they really make my day!

     The nearly ten years of friendship Larry and Franziska shared taught the two a lot about each other. There were important things, like Franziska and Adrian requiring the utmost privacy and quiet whenever either of the couple said even insinuated designating an evening as a Date Night, which Larry had accidentally neglected to respect when he needed help using the air fryer. There were also small things, like Larry’s vehement denial of having any interest in the celebrity ballroom dancing show that was frequently on the Andrews’ household TVs was merely a façade he would put on before secretly enjoying the show from the corner of the room. 

At this point, there was no sense in the friends hiding anything from each other. Various life details often found themselves sprinkled in when sharing embarrassing anecdotes involving Phoenix or Miles, too. That said, while hiding information was never a problem, there was always the rare instance of things that Larry would just forget. 

Over the past two weeks, Larry and Franziska had actually been in a sort of lightning round of sharing information vital to have on record for an upcoming collaborative project they had planned. Adrian contributed as well, but her role would have more of an impact later on. There were even some things Larry didn’t consider important to this at all, like his higher education transcripts, that made it into the almighty manilla folder Franziska had been filling with more papers than Larry thought possible to fit in there. 

This diligence on Franziska’s part was probably why Larry could feel his heart sink into his stomach as Adrian frantically led him into the living room as a visual aid for expressing her worries to her wife. 

“What in the world…!?” Franziska made a face perfectly blending confusion and disgust. 

Larry didn’t think he looked that bad, though.

“Do I need to disinfect everything?” Adrian wondered aloud, fretting. “I’ve never seen pink eye before, so…” 

So that’s what this was about. Thankfully, Larry knew well enough that pink eye was not the problem here, and he trusted Franziska to know the same.  Unfortunately, that still meant Adrian was drawing attention to the considerable swelling and visual irritation of Larry’s eyes, something he didn’t realize would be that easy to notice. 

“I don’t believe that to be the case, sweetie.” Franziska spoke calmly, soothing Adrian rather efficiently. She stood up to approach Larry to better assess the situation. “What were you doing to get yourself like that?” 

“Does it really batter?” Larry was about to rub his eyes, but was stopped by Franziska’s superior reflexes when she grabbed onto his hand at what felt like lightning speed. “It’s dot that big of a deal.” 

“It is a ‘big deal’ when you make Adrian worry like she’s doing now.” Franziska firmly lectured him. “You will not put my wife through any more of this and you will provide an explanation for the allergic response you have on full display.” 

“Allergic response?” Adrian repeated quietly. “It’s just allergies?”

“Yeah, like I said–” Larry started before being promptly interrupted.

“Yes.” Franziska nodded. “If you recall, Larry Butz, you were to inform me of every flaw in your health record. Considering the combined efforts of the three of us to keep this house impeccably clean and the gardens’ intentional lack of the flora you explicitly described as giving you trouble while living in France, I am of the firm belief that you are withholding valuable information from both me and Adrian.” 

When Franziska put it like that, it almost sounded like Larry was hiding something on purpose, but in his defense, the cause of his current symptoms was something he frequently allowed himself to forget. It was only just last year when his introduction to a litter of puppies born in the home of a fellow writer went awry, something he had never experienced before. Maybe there was a bit of denial, since the dogs Larry had met in recent years were just so friendly it would be hard to just stop welcoming all that love, but Larry could swear on his life that he would never purposely pretend he forgot about his newly developed allergies. If Franziska needed someone to blame, she should take things up with Larry’s subconscious. 

“Oh, I don’t think Larry would do this on purpose.” Adrian’s defense prompted a look of sincere gratitude from Larry; well, it was as sincerely grateful as he could manage in his face’s current state. 

“Yeah! What she said!” Larry agreed, punctuated by some sniffling. “You see, I was picki’g up food for Shoe like you asked for, and there were just the cutest puppies brought by the local dog shelter…” 

“Puppies did this to you?” Franziska sounded either puzzled or in shock of what she might have perceived as a great weakness on Larry’s part; Larry wasn’t actually sure of which. 

“Hey, dod’t put it that way! They’re just babies!” 

“That’s not–” Franziska stopped herself and pinched the bridge of her nose with a heavy sigh. “Just… Please explain why you waited for us to see you in this miserable state before you said anything.” 

“I’b dot biserable.” The congestion heavily affecting Larry’s voice did a poor job in supporting that claim, especially when followed by a thick sniffle. “I swear I just forgot.”

“Larry Butz, you are very lucky that Adrian and I have known you well enough for us to find that claim credible.”  Franziska finally let go of Larry’s hand and pulled out a pouch of pocket tissues from the pocket of her very comfortable loungewear sweatpants. The irony of the pouch having a puppy theme design was not lost on any of the three occupying the room. “Now, blow your nose, and most importantly: do not rub your eyes simply because your dominant hand is out of my grasp.” 

“Alright, alright.” Larry grumbled as he followed Franziska’s command. The tissues were really soft. Maybe if he used these tissues to tend to the lingering itch…

“Don’t even think about it!” Franziska scolded.

Was Larry that predictable? He looked at his left hand steadily lifted near his eye while holding onto a fresh tissue… Maybe he was. 

“I’m really sorry, guys. I’m completely honest when I say–... K'ttchshiun!! Ht'sshhiiu!! Kk'sshhnn!!” Those sneezes actually felt pretty good compared to the ones that plagued Larry at the pet store an hour ago. That last little bit of dander must have been on its way out, he figured.

The duet of barely stifled giggles from both Franziska and Adrian in response to Larry’s sneezes seemed to greatly lighten the mood. 

“Adorable.” Adrian let the word slip out.

“I told you about that, didn’t I?” Franziska didn’t even attempt to whisper to Adrian. 

“So, uh, I’m forgiven, right?” Larry hoped any unintentional interruption from asking that didn’t ruin his chances altogether.

“For this offense?” Franziska pretended to need a moment to think, struggling to suppress the amused smile on her face. “Yes. Especially given the improvement of Adrian’s mood.” She blew a kiss to her wife after saying that. “Now, I will fetch you a damp cloth and some antihistamines.”

“Aw, thanks, Franzy.”

“However,” Franziska added sternly, “should Adrian tell me you were rubbing your eyes again, I will use you to give my whip a proper send-off before its planned retirement!”

Larry knew then that he had better be careful from now on.

[eskawrites]

Any advice for new fanfic writers?

heck yeah! i love talking writing and writing advice let's go

first of all there's this post from a while back which has a few of my biggest tips for writing in general. but for additional advice

always start with the story you want to write. don't worry about appealing to a certain ship because it's popular, or writing a specific trope because you think it'll get a lot of reads or whatever. write the idea you want. the story that gets you excited. trust me, people will be able to tell the difference between what you write for attention and what you write because you genuinely want to write it

i think i've said this before but a blank page is always always always more intimidating than any kind of writing. so just start writing. even if it's just an outline. even if it's bad or messy. you can go back and fix it later, and when you do it'll be much easier than trying to start from scratch with a blank document

you don't have to follow grammar rules in creative writing (in fact, breaking rules is part of the fun), but you do have to know grammar rules. you can't break rules effectively if you don't know them in the first place

find ways to get excited about your writing (and, more importantly, about the fandom in general) without posting. because even if you write hundreds of thousands of words for a ship, the reality is that you're going to be not posting way more often than you'll be posting. and if you only enjoy it when you're actively posting fic, then you're going to lose interest pretty quickly. this is why i post so many excerpts and weird little anecdotes about writing. it's why i love reading about everyone else's wips. it's a way to stay involved and engaged even when i don't have something i'm actively sharing on ao3 or whatever

unless you've already spent years building your writing skills, your first fic isn't going to be perfect. hell, even if you're a professional writer, your first fic can still be a little rough. my first stranger things fic feels pretty disconnected from the rest of my work because i was still getting used to characterizations and stuff. my first fic ever that i wrote like 9 years ago is utter shit because i didn't have nearly as much experience as i do now. but i wouldn't have all the work i'm proud of today if i didn't have those or any other early pieces under my belt. writing is a skill that takes years to master, but every step of the journey is still worthwhile

and to that point, fanfiction is like the perfect medium to practice your writing. because no matter what level you're at or what you want to write, there will be people who want to read it. and we're all just chilling here because we want to have fun and because we love the same characters and media. you're not being graded. you're not being judged (at least, not by anyone that matters). it's the perfect place to try your hand at writing and see what happens

[elodieunderglass]

Oh wow, this crossed my dash and that was my post addition!

Present Practice something that didn’t come easy to me either (in keeping with the topic of the post.) it was something I thought about after realising how hurt I was that my child never said goodnight to me. I would say goodnight I love you so much and do all these things and have this whole special story and they’d just complain, until I realized I had to explain about how you’re supposed to say goodnight and extra points for I love you.

I’ve realized Present Practice has recurred in my writing, indicating that it’s near the top of my mind in terms of important things I can give to the world, and once I figure out what I’m doing with this story this it’s OVER for you guys you’re getting TOLD, you’re getting kissed on the forehead:

This was where he did the only thing so far that he was proud of in this day. He did not start shouting, even though his temper was going something like What the fuck, kids, but worse. He stopped, took a minute, and remembered he'd had this whole thing where he'd wanted his kids to love him. He rubbed his nose, said, "Remind me," and his daemon reminded him: "What do we want them to actually do?"

And he said, "The bare minimum fucking acknowledgement would be nice."

And Bee said, "Have we explained that to them? Do they know?"

Which I believe is worth working on because of the very hard-won long-practiced belief that it is easier to share a lesson if you do it through a little story. An anecdote about my kids or my life or a little fanfiction. Which is exactly what you just said

Anyway thank you so much for reading one of my post additions and writing a post in which you hold up some of what I’ve said and show it to people and say “this is a philosophy” and I’m like “o shit! It IS!” And you’re like “you could apply it to other things” and I’m like “DAMN!”

I've been musing a bit on that one post that went around during the recent holiday season, to which someone added their family tradition of Present Practice. My god! Imagine actually telling kids what behavior is expected, instead of expecting them to intuit it and punish them when they get it wrong!!

Separate post because this topic is a little tangential to that, but I think it does a great job of unearthing one of our very well-hidden internal biases, which goes as follows:

Good people don't need to be taught.

A good person (in this case, a good child) shouldn't need to be told to be gracious and grateful when given a gift. A good child should just know that a holiday tradition of gift-giving is a social performance to strengthen family bonds and that personal preference or genuine reactions are secondary to that performance. A good child should just know how to value gifts, how to express thanks, how to praise and compliment. No caretakers in their lives should need to put any effort into instructing or modeling these things.

Good people should just know how to be good. If they were really Ontologically Good, their inherent goodness would simply intuitively guide them to correct behaviors. If they can't do that on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.

.

.

...Which all sounds very reasonable and obvious, and surely a mistake that only fundie christian families would make! Except that people in the social justice sphere also do this all the time. It's not anybody's job to educate you. You should know this already. If you were a Good Person, you wouldn't need to be taught. You would simply intuit the correct philosophies and gravitate to them according to your superior internal moral compass.

If you were a Good Person, you would already know that everything you were taught by your family and/or background was wrong. You should have rejected it already. You should have cut off your family, your heritage, everything about your childhood and upbringing that was Bad and Wrong. You should have known it was all a lie.

If you were a Good Person, you should be able to find the correct way yourself. You should be able to seek out the proper educational resources, and distinguish them from bad advice leading you astray, and make sense of them all according to your own internal moral code.

If you were a Good Person, you would have found your way by the proper, ascetic, official channels, not by reading a comic or watching anime. You shouldn't need entertainment or art to guide you. You should just know.

And if someone can't do these things on their own, in a vacuum, in the absence of cues, that's a sign of their inherent moral lack.

[jcmarchi]

How Street Fighter 6 Was Shaped By A Social Media User's Love For Ed

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/how-street-fighter-6-was-shaped-by-a-social-media-users-love-for-ed/

How Street Fighter 6 Was Shaped By A Social Media User's Love For Ed

The final character of Street Fighter 6’s Year 1 DLC plans, Akuma, finally hit the game earlier this week. I had the chance to catch up with director Takayuki Nakayama about the importance of the Great Demon. However, in February, I sat down with Nakayama and producer Shuhei Matsumoto to discuss the addition of Ed to Street Fighter 6. During that conversation, Nakayama shared an intriguing anecdote about how important Ed was to the development of Street Fighter 6.

When the team sits down to decide on the characters, they think of balancing out the roster not only in style, but through the regions and countries the characters represent. However, the story of the game –in Street Fighter 6’s case, World Tour – also plays a big role.

“From an outsider’s perspective, when you see the characters themselves, you might think, ‘What’s the significance of them? What’s their connection?'” Nakayama says. “But as you play World Tour and Arcade mode, those become more evident and clear in some way.”

When Ed was initially announced as the third of four characters arriving via DLC during Year 1, some wondered about his significance to the broader Street Fighter 6 game. After all, he was merely a background character in Street Fighter IV before making his playable debut in Street Fighter V. But, according to Nakayama, Ed was actually one of the most important characters in terms of influencing the development of Street Fighter 6.

“From my perspective, Ed is actually a very important character in the series now,” Nakayama says. “He was actually the reason why we have Modern Controls in Street Fighter 6, because in Street Fighter V, that was the character we tested out with simplified commands for specials, and that eventually evolved, and we learned from implementing him in Street Fighter V, and we took those learnings to create Modern Controls in Street Fighter 6.” 

While Ed was instrumental in developing Modern Controls, a fan on social media’s love for him sent the development team down the path of developing Street Fighter 6’s most substantial mode.

“He’s also the reason why we have World Tour,” Nakayama says. “When we were working on Street Fighter V, and Ed was released, I was looking at my feed on social media, and I took note of someone who said they’re a really big fan of Ed, and they love how he looks, they love how he plays. ‘I feel like I could actually play a fighting game! It’s my first fighting game, and it’s so much fun!'”

However, because of Street Fighter V’s limited mode offerings, even after years of post-launch development, it inspired Nakayama to create a new experience for players such as this social media user. “Street Fighter V doesn’t have a large-scope, single-player mode like World Tour,” he says. “And so they didn’t like seeing Ed get bodied by other players. And because he or she loved him so much, I felt the responsibility of creating a new mode that shines the different characters in this master spotlight and doesn’t show them really getting hurt too much by other masters and characters. That was one of the big reasons we decided to make World Tour for 6.”

Street Fighter 6 arrived on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, and PC on June 2, 2023. To learn why we consider it one of the best modern Street Fighter games, read our review here. For more on the making of Street Fighter 6, read our full cover story here. To read our history of the Street Fighter franchise in the lead-up to 6, head here.

[rinkrats]

🥺 that mike lange story. But also those tags #sid loooves christmas #he loves giving presents #looks good in red #piles on the pounds fast #post hockey career as santa 😂😂👌🏽👌🏽

he loves his mementos and presents and is COMMITTED to them. scrapbooking. matching jackets. little pills with hidden motivational messages~*~ his love language is gifts and neck smooches and stalking geno. relevant right now are some anecdotes i sent a friend earlier this year for dorky sid gifts fic fodder:

1. Crosby's constant thoughtfulness would be impressive from anyone, much less someone of his stature.

"Sid always texts me happy birthday, he's always asking me like, how's Russia?" Evgeni Malkin said. "We talk and message all summer. He asks me how my skates are. He knows, like, everything. He follows my Instagram, I think (laughs)."

In addition to having a handle on those little details, Crosby is constantly providing those around him with memories and mementos. If the team is on the road and goes, say, sightseeing or to a sporting event and takes a group photo, Crosby will later send a framed copy to everyone.

When Ron Hextall and Brian Burke watched their first Penguins game in person, Crosby is the one who approached head equipment manager Dana Heinze and asked for two used game pucks to give to the new GM and president of hockey ops. 

After the Penguins won in 2009, Crosby had jackets made for the three players on the team who had scored a Cup-clinching goal in Game 7: Talbot (Pittsburgh), Ruslan Fedotenko (Tampa Bay) and Mike Rupp (New Jersey).

"They were blue jackets with gold buttons, and each one had a patch on it that said 'GWG Game 7,'" Talbot said. "At one of our first team meals the next season, he presented us with the jackets and did a big ceremony with the music and stuff. We had a private room in the restaurant. I still have the jacket."

-The Consummate Teammate, Captain and Ambassador, Feb 2021

2. Merz: My first interaction with Sid was when we were on the bench, guys were talking about a teammate, and the first thing this 15-year-old says is, “Hey, guys. Let’s keep everything positive. Don’t talk about your teammates that way.”

Salcido: When we were getting ready for nationals, he found these little pills that you could put a hidden message inside. They unscrewed, and inside was a tiny scroll. He gave one to every teammate. … He had everyone fill one out. He didn’t tell anyone what to write, but he made it known that we all knew what the goal was: winning nationals. So we wrote on our scrolls, rolled them up and put them in the pill thing. We kept them with us everywhere we went.

-‘Is this real?’: Stories of Sidney Crosby’s year at a Minnesota prep school, May 2020

3. On “Butterfly Boy” Jonathan Pitre:

Though the Senators are his team, Sidney Crosby has always been Jonny’s favourite player. After the TSN documentary airs, Tina gets a call from the Penguins. Sid needs Jonny’s measurements. He wants to have a suit made for him by his personal tailor, Domenico Vacca.

“It’s the kindest, sweetest gesture,” Tina says. “Sid heard that Jonny went to a lot of games, so he wants him to look like he’s one of the guys.”

“I want him to feel like a pro,” Crosby says. “Here’s a guy who is going through something so painful, and his first thought is always, ‘How can I help others?’ When I was young, I’d watch on TV the players coming to the rink in their suits. That was a cool part of being an NHL player. I want him to feel that, to make it as real as possible for him.”

Tina tries to discreetly measure Jonny while she’s changing his dressings. But he’s way too smart for that.

“Um, Mom, why are you measuring me? Am I going for surgery again?” he asks.

“No, no!” Tina replies, trying to reassure him and come up with a good lie, all in the same breath. “The doctor needs them just to make sure they have proper dressings next time you are in.”

A few weeks later, the sharp navy blue suit shows up at their front door, along with a couple of ties, an autographed stick and a handwritten letter from Sid. 

“His eyes just light up,” Tina says. “Jonny always liked to be well-dressed, and he just loves having his own suit. It fits perfectly. He looks so good in it.”

-Beauties by James Duthie (2020)

4. Pascal Dupuis inspired his Pittsburgh Penguins teammates on their run to the Stanley Cup, and Sidney Crosby found a special way of driving that message home.

Dupuis retired in December with lingering health concerns because of blood clots. Despite his NHL playing days coming to an end, the veteran forward remained an integral part of the Penguins and was in uniform to hoist the Cup after Pittsburgh's six-game win against the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup Final.

On Sunday, Dupuis brought the Cup home one last time as a player to share a special day with his family, friends and hometown fans.

"Yes, it does feel bittersweet a little bit," Dupuis said. "You get the Cup, you want to celebrate. But at the same time I got a gift by the mail [Saturday]. Basically, it's a book of all the pictures of all the good stuff we went through. It came from Nova Scotia, so you guys can figure out who it came from (Crosby), but he couldn't give it to me during the season, he saw me skating a little bit.

"And he sent it [Saturday], before my day with the Cup, so he knew what he was doing to get me right here," Dupuis said, putting his fist over his heart.

-Pascal Dupuis shares Stanley Cup with family, friends, Aug 2016

5. In 2011, Crosby was out of the lineup with a concussion, and the Penguins made their annual visit to Children’s Hospital.

Crosby got along so well with one boy there and was so touched that he later asked Bullano to go back... just the two of them, no cameras, no attention.

When Bullano and Crosby met for the follow-up visit, Crosby appeared clutching a pair of Toys “R” Us bags, filled with a Transformer toy the two had discussed.

“He literally bought every type of this toy they make,” Bullano said. “[Crosby] had never seen it before and thought it was so cool.

“There are no pictures of this. There’s no video. He was laying in the bed with the kid. They were just playing. We were there for over two hours. I got to know the mom really well because we were just sitting there.

“The kid had no idea. Didn’t expect it. They had no idea he was coming. We got there and he said, ‘Hey buddy. hope you don’t mind that I came back.’ The kid couldn’t believe it.

“[Crosby’s] crazy cool about stuff like that.”

What’s crazy is trying to recount the many times stuff like this has happened with Crosby:

• The Little Penguins Learn to Play program has been around for nine seasons, outfitting now 1,200 kids with free head-to-toe hockey equipment. Not only does Crosby serve as the face of the program — which the NHL has now adopted — but he helps fund it, too.

“There’s an awareness of what a person in his position can bring,” Penguins vice president of communications Tom McMillan said. “I think he activates that as much as anybody I’ve seen during his playing career.”

• After a recent practice, Crosby noticed a local family in the Penguins dressing room, approached them, introduced himself, learned their story and wound up giving them a signed stick.

Nobody asked Crosby to do that, and he wanted zero credit when discussing it a couple days later.

“For people who have the opportunity to come in here, people dealing with certain things, if you can brighten their day a bit or spend some time with them, it’s something that’s special for all of us,” Crosby said.

• A few years ago, through a team charity event, Crosby befriended a 4-year-old Amish boy with cancer. Crosby remarked to Bullano how much he loved talking to the boy because of how engaging the boy was and how he wasn’t consumed with technology. Crosby even tried to visit the boy but learned he had passed away.

• He learns the first and last names of the kids who attend his hockey school in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.

“Two kids came from Japan its first year,” Bullano recalled. “He was so blown away by that. He couldn’t wait to meet them.”

• Earlier this season, the Penguins welcomed Grant Chupinka, 24-year-old cancer patient, into the dressing room. Crosby chatted up Grant and his parents, Steve and Kim.

He spent his usual time — about two or three times the requirement. Gave the tour. Then found out the Chupinkas didn’t have tickets for that night’s game and decided he would pay for them to go.

“I’m sure he could just give them an autographed puck or something, but he takes his time to go out and see them and talk to them and get to know them,” Brian Dumoulin said. “It speaks volumes for him and who he is as a person.”

Spend any length of time with Crosby during his visits with those less fortunate, and a few things become obvious.

One, Crosby is really good at these. Smooth but not in a slimy way. Sweet. You know how when you’re around someone talking and they go out of their way to make eye contact with everyone around? That’s Crosby.

He’s also humble, always introducing himself like those he’s meeting don’t already know. Holding a hand is no issue. And Crosby is the rare 20-something pro athlete without kids who acts every bit like he does.

“It is not an easy situation to talk to someone with terminal cancer,” McMillan said. “A lot of people couldn’t do that. He has an amazing ability to do that and make that person feel good.”

Crosby has welcomed several Make-a-Wish kids and tries, if at all possible, to schedule such events for practice days — to maximize the time he’s able to spend.

He’s developed a special friendship with Patrick McIlvain, a soldier who nearly died when he took a bullet to the head in Afghanistan. McIlvain actually does physical therapy with one of Crosby’s sticks.

A former club hockey player at Cal U, McIlvain comes by every year, and the Penguins don’t even bother to tell Crosby. Either he already knows or immediately stops what he’s doing to come say hello.

“He’s not doing it to leave a legacy,” said Terry Kalna, Penguins vice president of sales and broadcasting. “His numbers leave the legacy. He’s just a down-to-Earth, good guy.”

Before a visit, Crosby has Bullano email him what is essentially a scouting report on who he’s going to meet. He likes to learn about them, their situation and what they’ve been through. As much information as he can ingest. Crosby never just swoops in, shake a hand and leave.

“As much as anyone has ever seen, he accepts the responsibilities of being not just a professional athlete but a star professional athlete,” McMillan said. “He views it as part of the job. Like coming to the morning skate. That’s just what you do.”

Put another way, “he owns those moments,” says Kalna.

Said Bullano, “He’s just a good human being.”

-When it comes to giving, Sidney Crosby does as much as he can, Feb 2017

6. When Crosby received a generous signing bonus on his Reebok deal, he wanted to share it with everyone.

“He gave everyone on the bus gifts,”  says Oceanic radio commentator Michel Germain. “Him sharing his bonus with all the people he’d been travelling with for two years, that impresses me greatly. I think the most important thing about Sidney Crosby is his personality and the kind of human being he is. What he exuded. The inner richness he’d already developed.” 

-Superstitious and generous, Dec 2006

7. also this simply because it makes me ;w;

Even in defeat — no, especially in defeat — Sidney Crosby proved why he wears the "C" for the Penguins.

After the game, with his heart sinking and his season over, the Penguins’ captain bent over, sank to the ice to pick up the puck, took it to linesman Tony Sericolo and then skated to his team’s handshake line.

I immediately thought of a View from Ice Level I’d written on Crosby making sure a retiring official was sent away from PPG Paints Arena properly. I knew picking up the puck wasn’t for the same reason that was, but I also knew, in some way, it was connected to Crosby’s awareness and respect of the game.

“It was for the Islanders,” Crosby told me after the game, his eyes swollen from a first round exit – by way of a sweep to make it worse. He told me how the winning team always wanted the puck, and it was his way of providing it for the Islanders.

Crosby looked me right in the eye as he told me this, just as he did with every other member of the media to come to him after the loss.

I could tell from those swollen eyes and the way he sat at his stall, by himself with his hands folded as he stared blankly, that Sidney Crosby is much more used to being on the receiving end of a puck when a series ends than he is at retrieving it for the winning team.

That scene. His swollen eyes. Staying in the locker room until most had left – talking to anyone who needed him. Most of all, though, picking up the puck that prompted my question in the first place and making sure the right people got their piece of their own history.

It all adds up to one thing: In victory and in defeat, Crosby respects the game above all else – just as he’s always done.

-Even in defeat, Crosby shines, April 2019

[fancy-rock-dove]

This! This right here! This is what I love so, so dearly about being right here, right now.

I was telling some friends, just yesterday, about the excitement and delight I was carrying with me all day after seeing what you'd made here. And they Did Not Go Here re. this fandom and ship. And in trying to describe the depth of what your creation and this story means to me, and why and how I fell so quickly and so headlong into this fandom, in general, I really just found myself continuously circling back to the conversations that are happening right here, right now. The precious facets of community, and historical nerdiness, and the incorporation of other stories and themes I love, and discussions about the nature of story and expression, and objective vs. personal realities, of what it means to communicate something true between individuals who create their own realities out of their own experience in the form of stories. All of these aspects of the moment that's crystallized out of this unique confluence of source media, and this moment in time in the release of the adaptation, and the state of the world, and of technology, and of all the individuals involved. And so to hear you talk about wanting to preserve the sense of the community and the discussions and the context that gave rise to the work, I must absolutely throw the "YES YOU GET IT!!" right back at you!!!

I was just thinking some thoughts about this in tags on a post about remastering movies originally shot on film earlier today, but creative choices are always Made In A Context and to view them outside that context is also part of the experience of passing on and sharing art, and part of the shape of the creation itself, but it's a subjective process much akin to any other kind of translation, and so I love so much your thoughts about this as modern folklore, and the binding as a preservation of a *moment*. And maybe in its own ways the written word can be as fallible as human memory, because identical words preserve the form but not the context, but a human storyteller may preserve the context and intent when the words shift around them (clearly I am going to be digesting your anecdote about this for a while to come). I was recently in a talk on the application of materials science in archaeology and restorations, and one of the most interesting discussions I got to have with the speaker, for me, was on how museum curators choose, for example, which version of a piece to showcase in a museum. When a 19th century attempt at restoration attached a new head to a greek or roman marble sculpture that has much more to do with the tastes of that time than what we now deem its likely original appearance, do you remove the addition in favor of its oldest self, or keep it as another moment in human history captured now in that piece? One of my very first teachers in visual literacy centered the very first lesson around the fact that any human creation at all, even as simple as scratching out a word on a page, contained some sort of message, intended or not, and, all this rambling to say, the choice to Preserve The Conversation And Thoughts In Our Own Words, On Purpose -- because even as the fandom continues, as new seasons come out and new takes arise, this is a moment in it that will stand on its own -- is something that has honestly rewired my brain a little where fanbinding is concerned and it WILL haunt me.

Please I will always, always enjoy listening to and engaging in rambles about the uniquely and universally human experience of attempting, in whatever small way we can, to share/communicate, across time and space, the rich inner worlds we each hold, the characters we love, and the connections we perceive in them, and the ways they speak to us about our own personal human experience, and what in that may be universal. Goodness you've got me sitting down in my very own armchair over here. I truly do love the image of us all sitting down around a virtual campfire though, and I absolutely love getting to share thoughts around it. It's such a privilege to get to come sit down and be shown so many cool things to talk about and then hear the "Yes AND" afterwards. It's one of my favorite things in the whole world and, serious large-scale thoughts aside, it's the kind of fun that has me kicking my feet and grinning to myself on a regular basis.

ANYWAY I'm so honored to get the chance to pass thoughts back and forth like this, though I will stop adding length, now, to this MONSTER post reblog chain.

Thank you for the response and best of evenings to you!

Last Binderary book is DONE!!!! This is the incredible Maybe sprout wings, by @moorishflower.

This post is going to be a doozy, so gonna just skip straight to the cut!

INTERIOR

INTRODUCTION

I really wanted to model this bind after my own copy of the Odyssey, (which is all highlighted and bookmarked and annotated to hell from my Great Text courses in undergrad ehe, so this bind was such a fun trip down memory lane!). But beyond just the cover/general aesthetic, I also wanted to give the book a similar feel to these kinds of editions of classics--there's usually an introduction, translation notes, and other supplementary materials, right? Like, a physical manifestation of the work of many, many people, all having conversations with one another across time and space.

So that's what I did! I wrote a short introduction (I will also probably post it to my AO3/my blog as well, in the name of preservation etc. etc.) and began reaching out to folks in the fandom who I knew had created art and meta for the fic. The result? 18k words of analysis, comments, and meta, and nearly twenty pages of art!

And this is what I love most about this bind, I think! This book is the work of several people--truly a collaborative work by the fandom--all of whom I will now be shamelessly calling out below :D

CHAPTER HEADER ART

First and foremost, this book would not be what it is without the gorgeous header art by @fancy-rock-dove! Thank you so much Dove for letting include your work, and for being so supportive and kind these past few weeks about this bind <3 You in particular have contributed so much to this book (which I will be getting more into in the next section ehe), and I'm so psyched I get to hold your art and words, too!

NOTES ON THE TEXT

This section was divided into four parts: Asks and Answers, Meta, Selected Comments, and Chapter Heading Art: Process

For Asks and Answers, I trawled Heather's blog for meta she had written in response to questions and other meta about the fic. Asks came from @fancy-rock-dove, @quillingwords, @kulapti, and myself! (I THINK I got all of them--tumblr's search function is finnicky even on its best days, so so sorry if I missed something T_T) I first got hooked into reading this fic because of one of these asks, so I'm very fond of this section in particular :D

For Meta, I included two wonderful essays written by @pastrypuppy (also known as @kulapti) about Hob as an author figure and the Disrupted Fisher King narrative in MSW. Her analyses were so fascinating and I just had to include them in the book! (And thank you as well for your permission, friend!) (also hello fellow Renegade comrade 🫡)

For Selected Comments, I owe everything to (once again :3) @fancy-rock-dove, whose insights are the epitome of transformative fandom at work. I'd look for their comments after I read every chapter to see what their takes were on this or that element of the story, and every single time I would go "!!!!! I didn't even realize!!!" or "OOOOOOOH I hadn't thought of that!!" It was like being in a lecture hall and always whipping your head around when one of your classmates raised their hand, because you knew they were going to say something fascinating that you hadn't considered before.

Aside from one of my own comments, Dove's comments make up the entirety of this section (for which I owe you my life--your long-form responses to fics are a gift to this world) but GOSH was it also so much fun going through the comments section while typesetting and seeing all the keyboard smashing, yelling, and crying from the other commenters. Communal nature of storytelling and ongoing meaning-making of fanfiction, babey!

And finally for Chapter Heading Art: Process: once again Dove coming in clutch with some wonderful insights into the design of each of the chapter heading art pieces! This kind of stuff is honestly my favorite: meta about art for a fic which is, in turn, a transformation of an existing story (not even to mention that The Sandman is its own kind of fanfiction of existing mythologies and histories)--I just!! Think it's all really, really neat :'D (for more coherent/polished thoughts on this pls see my introduction asjdfkls)

ART

The art gallery!!! A million thanks to @fishfingersandscarves, @honeyseller, @jazzpsych, @doctor-rainbowfoxey, and (HI AGAIN DOVE) @fancy-rock-dove for granting me permission to include all of your beautiful pieces!

As usual for artworks in my binds, I printed each piece out on specialty photo paper to really make the colors pop, then sewed each page separately to the text block! Behold, everyone's beautiful beautiful pieces!

The art gallery also satisfies the certain "oooh shiny" part of my brain that always activates when I see pictures in a book, so am also very fond of this section :3

CONSTRUCTION

And now on to the nitty gritty stuff! I used the German Bradel binding technique again, my second time using it. Even though it's more complicated than the case bind, I really love how it gives you the full board space for the cover designs (~it's free real estate~). Keep it a secret but I kiiiiiiind of made a small goof in the last few steps (I did the turn-ins a step too early and so had to paste an extra sheet of cardstock to secure the spine to the boards, whoopsie), but it's a pretty small difference, aesthetically speaking, so it wasn't the end of the world XD

Edges are once again fake gilded, but this time I tried something new with the colors! I did two layers of acrylic paint--one watered down shade of red for the base, then one metallic gold on top of that. I really like the red/gold effect! I'll have to keep experimenting with this kind of layering:

ALSO. Y'ALL! I think I'm finally getting the hang of endbands!!! Many thanks to the folks at Renegade who hosted all the endband workshops last month--I'm still working through them, but even the few sessions I've seen have been TREMENDOUSLY helpful. I learned that tension is Very Important, as well as thread thickness, so I tried doubling my thread and keeping a Very Close Eye on how I was holding the threads while doing the beads. And behold! I still have a ways to go (and one day I would LOVE to do the fancier designs), but I'm v happy with the progress I've made so far!

And finally the covers!! ARCHIVAL MOD PODGE MY BELOVED. I printed on the same matte presentation paper that I used for the art, then did several coats of archival matte mod podge + a pass of gloss mod podge over the title strip to make it ~shiny~. Then once those had dried and I'd adhered them to the boards, I sprayed two layers of matte clear acrylic sealer (also mod podge!) to finish it off. I had some issues with the paper tearing when I handled it before it was fully dry, but luckily the blemishes were small enough that it was easy to do spot corrections with my black acrylic paint. And now I know to be more patient next time LOL

(some non-photoshoot shots that show the shine a little better!)

FINAL THOUGHTS

I had a lot of thoughts while I was binding this book--about Sandman fandom, about Dreamling fandom, about the Odyssey, about storytelling, about fanbinding, about Binderary, about Renegade, about my friends--but really what came to mind the most was gratitude!

Simply put, I'm so grateful to everyone I've met both in this fandom and throughout the years I've been active online--this is SO fun, y'all. It's so much fun to love stories together--to talk about them, to write them, and of course to bind them! I hope I've adequately conveyed that gratitude.

But of course, this book would not exist without the wonderful words of @moorishflower. Heather, thank you so, SO much for sharing your stories, thoughts, and time with us--it is always a happier, better day when I get an email notif from you and when I see you on my dash. I love your work so much, and I'm so happy I finally get to put it on my shelf! So thank you so much again, for everything <3

and OKAY THAT'S IT FROM ME FOLKS!!!!! Binderary 2023 is officially a wrap! I had SUCH a blast--will probably write up a reflection post on it uhhhh after I take a very long nap ajslkdfjslk _(:3」∠)_

all my love! <3

[moonbeamsung]

You’re Just a Boy in a Blueberry Field

No fruit is sweeter than a summer love.

member: haechan

au: blueberry farmer!haechan x gn!reader

word count: 5.0k

genre: fluff, very light angst

warnings: mentions of food

author’s note: It’s here! I actually wrote most of this last summer, but only recently did I find the time to edit and get it ready to be posted. I added some parts and changed a few things, and now I like it quite a lot, so I hope you do as well! Thank you @astroboy-lele​ for beta-reading :) As always I would love to hear any feedback on this, and I hope that you enjoy the fic!

taglist: @astroboy-lele @kyuwoyo @rvse-hvvck @nakamotocore @kisshim @leejunini @chicksung @mrkcore @radiorenjun @moon-jun @jisungiest @stayctday @byutafy @jujubean23 @treasurehobi​ @bluejaem​ @lyshoonn​ @vera-liscious​ @allegxdly​ @cupfullofjeno​ @thats-a-jen-no-no​ @yo-ddream​

network tags: @kpopscape @neo-constellations @culture-cafe @dreamlab-nct @k-dinernet 

Thank you lovely Ana @rvse-hvvck for this additional header!

Donghyuck knows everything there is to know about those blueberries.

Without even pausing for the briefest of moments to think, to instinctively recall the information instilled in him throughout his childhood spent on the farm, he can answer any question that’s thrown at him. He can point out just the right color of berry to pick so that they’ll be ripe when you eat them later. Likewise, he can also tell you which ones are best to eat now, as you pick them, pretending not to notice when you pop one or two into your mouth and grinning when your eyes light up from the sweetness.

A day comes where he, filled with mischief as usual, places a not-so-ripe blueberry into your hand, and you, being so wrapped up in the peacefulness of the morning that surrounds you, fail to notice its red color and don’t think twice about lifting it to your lips, biting into it with your teeth. When the tart taste meets your tongue, your face contorts into an expression that elicits a raucous fit of laughter from him. You’re the first one in the fields that day. When the sun had risen on the horizon, the fleeting touch of color in the sky that dawn left behind still lingering above, he had been there, sitting on the front porch as always to greet customers.

Donghyuck knows every bug that loves to rest on the branches of the blueberry bushes. After spending so much time next to you as you scan them for the pops of vivid blues and purples that are hidden behind jade green leaves, he begins to learn that you are not fond of any bug, no matter how harmless. It’s cute, he thinks, how you inspect every berry that you drop into your basket, fearing that some small creature is lurking on it. If you do find something, he hears a small noise of both surprise and disgust before you fling the perfectly good berry away from you. It also hurts a little, knowing that it’s one less for you to take home.

When more people arrive at the farm after you, he’s forced to leave your side and get them started on their own search for the delicious fruit that’s nestled among the branches of nearly every bush. And if they ask where the best ones are, he specifically points them in the direction of the fields where you aren’t. It isn’t a lie, really, because they’ve had a good harvest everywhere this year.

...Okay, so maybe it’s a little selfish on his part, but who can blame him for wanting you to have some of the most plentiful bushes all to yourself?

Wednesdays are his favorite because it’s always the least crowded of all the mornings they’re open for business, and he can spend more time following you as you make your way down the rows, admiring the focus on your face and the way that you sometimes pause mid-reach, closing your eyes and standing still as the sun peeks through the clouds and casts its warm glow down onto the farm. A gentle sigh tumbles from your lips, darkened by the violet nectar that remains from the countless blueberries that have crossed their usually pink-tinted threshold. You resume your search after a few seconds, catching his eye and returning a smile he didn’t even know was there.

He makes the berries taste a little sweeter when he’s next to you. The purple juice that stains your fingers is a little darker. The sun feels brighter and warmer than ever, its heat shining down onto your skin.

One particular morning, after you finish picking all the blueberries you can carry, you decide to accompany Donghyuck on the porch, sitting beside each other in matching rocking chairs that first belonged to his great-grandparents, the farm’s founders. The familiar sounds of birds chirping and the low mumbling amongst customers meet your ears. You both gaze fondly at the horizon while immersed in casual chatter, all the while tending to several families as they come and go.

Whenever a car turns off of the two-lane, paved road and onto the noisy gravel path leading into a small grassy area that functions as a parking lot, Donghyuck excuses himself from the lively conversation both of you always find yourselves sharing. He stands, brushing his hands off on his faded denim overalls that are only slightly too large for his frame. His hand lifts up the baseball cap he always wears while the other runs through his hair, and your gaze falls on the back of his neck where it rests in longer strands. You always wonder why he keeps it like that since he complains about how hot it makes him feel. The humid summer air is stifling enough as it is, after all. The thought vanishes only moments after it arrives, though, and he flashes a brilliant grin at you over his shoulder as he descends the wooden stairs leading down to the patio.

Today, a happy looking family gets out of a shiny silver minivan. The mother and father with two kids, a boy and a girl, make their way toward the covered patio and Donghyuck bounds down the steps like always, grabbing 4 stacked pails in his calloused hands. You lean forward a little in the creaky old rocking chair, your weight in your toes, ears just barely picking up his conversation with them. He greets the parents warmly, shaking their hands and then he kneels down to be eye-level with the small children. The little boy seems shy as he clasps his fingers in front of him, thumbs twiddling back and forth, while his sister is clearly the opposite. She skips over to the much taller boy, saying hello.

“Do you two like blueberries?” He asks them, one arm resting on his knee and the other extending a pail out in front of him. The young girl nods enthusiastically before she takes the container from his hand and turns around, passing it to her brother as he nods, making eye contact with Donghyuck for the first time. A small smile grows on his face when he’s met with the wider one of the unfamiliar but still welcoming stranger. His sister speaks up again, “Every Friday we get to help Mom make her famous blueberry pie!”

“Is that right?”

“Yep! In the morning we always go to the supermarket and get fresh blueberries,” she explains. Her mother leans down, softly telling her that this week they’re here to pick blueberries instead, fresh from the farm they were grown on.

“Really? So that means we’re not buying them at the store anymore?”

“Well, honey, today we can pick enough blueberries to last us for a whole month’s worth of blueberry pies.”

“And besides,” Donghyuck starts, still kneeling on the ground next to her, his boot leaving an imprint in the dirt underneath it, “it’ll taste even better since you picked them yourselves, don’t you think?” The boy punctuates his question with a wink.

The young boy steps up for the first time, grin stretching even wider as he finds the courage to happily agree with the wise words. Exclaiming eagerly and in a way that only a child can, he takes his sister by the hand that’s not holding his small bucket before scurrying off, their parents close behind after grabbing pails for each other as well as a third that their daughter had forgotten in the midst of the excitement.

As Donghyuck joins you on the porch once again, you can’t help but smile as you remember how he interacts with each and every customer that passes through the weathered fence surrounding the property. When he talks to kids in particular, his eyes seem to light up, and you see just how much of a kid he still is deep down. His playfulness never fails to make an appearance whenever you spend time with him.

You’re thankful for the moo of a cow in the distance that interrupts his question of why you’re smiling like an idiot and hopefully drowns out the steady sound of your pounding heart.

The next week he tells you that the rest of his family is out of town, and he’s been left with the responsibility of running the farm all on his own. He usually does most of the work himself these days anyway since he’s getting older and more mature, although some of his jokes say otherwise. You miss the way his mom would poke her head out of the upstairs window of the main house, calling out a greeting to you both from across the property, overjoyed at the sight of her son spending time with the particular customer he’s mentioned so many times before. Whether he would share an amusing anecdote of yours with his siblings at the dinner table or point out something that reminded him of you, it was far too easy for her to figure out how he feels about you.

In an effort to spend more time with him, keep him company and just help out in general, you offer to stay at the house with him for a little while. Or at least until his family gets back from their trip, and to your delight, he agrees. You arrive in the late evening, on a day when the fields are closed, just in time to catch the setting sun as it disappears behind the trees and power lines that seem to stretch for miles in the distance. Tugging an overnight bag of belongings with you, you knock twice on the wood of his front door.

It opens swiftly and Donghyuck welcomes you inside, wearing an apron that he must have outgrown 10 years ago, at least. You snicker at the snug choice of attire and he shoves your shoulder, though not with enough force to make you stumble. He whines a little in that saccharine-sweet voice of his that makes your heart clench, but you don’t give in. Not this time.

When the farm is closed for the day, the family has a chance to pick from some of the bushes that are planted in a more secluded area, all to ensure that they also have a big enough supply of the fruit to last them for the season. So Donghyuck had woken up at the crack of dawn, although you aren’t sure why. He had made his way downstairs and out into the dewy air of the morning, gathering just enough blueberries to bake a cobbler that night when you came over, since he’d learned it was your favorite treat after hours of conversation about anything and everything. The recipe comes straight from his great-grandfather, he informs you, and it’s written on a yellowing piece of paper in handwriting that you couldn’t read even if you tried. He, however, can somehow decode the seemingly nonsensical swirls and lines on the page. You suppose it’s part of the magic of the family recipe that gets passed down with it.

Donning an apron yourself, you join him at the sink as you begin washing the berries, gently grabbing a handful at a time as you let the tap water clean them. When you both reach into the large container at the same time, your hands brush and you almost scoff at the swell of your heart that you feel inside your chest.

As you’re working together to make the batter that you will soon pour into his mother’s finest glass baking pan, Donghyuck briskly swipes his fingertip on the side of the bowl where the mixer had splattered the combined ingredients, extending it in your direction. You raise an eyebrow at the boy and said fingertip before turning your head away.

“If you really think that I would lick that off your finger, then you’re terribly mistaken.”

Coyly, the mischief-maker in question retorts back as you glance at his impishly delighted expression. “Are you sure?” 

“Positive,” you state rather firmly, but matching the mirth in his eyes with a glimmer of amusement in your own. “I’ll settle for the spatula, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Donghyuck rolls his eyes, your answer completely expected. At least he tried. 

You won’t deny that you enjoy sampling a bit of the batter of a dessert as much as anyone. But not that much.

Left with no choice, he takes himself up on his own offer and sticks his finger into his mouth with an audible ‘pop,’ exaggerating the action just to get a rise out of you, feeling the upward curl of his lips when you react ever so slightly with a silent chuckle.

You’re adding the last bit of flour to the mixture when you accidentally get some of the powdery substance on your hand in the process. Turning the automatic mixer off, you momentarily forget about your stained skin and you make the mistake of wiping your face with the back of your wrist, smearing the white stuff on your cheek. Donghyuck notices, of course, and an innocent attempt to help clean up the mess only ends with the two of you blushing like crazy.

“Let me help you,” he speaks up.

“Don’t be ridiculous, the pan’s not that heavy, and even if it was, I’m strong enough anyway—”

You’re about to pick up the glassware but his sudden strides over to you from across the large kitchen cause everything you were saying, doing, and thinking to come to a complete stop. You’ve never really had a problem with personal space before, but right now he’s leaning down and his face is so close that you’re afraid to even breathe for fear that the action might just throw you off balance and towards him. For fear that you might not push his chest away with your hands if that happens.

He’s bending his knees to match your eye level and his hand lifts from its place at his side, hovering in midair not far from where the flour still lingers on your skin. His eyes had been so focused on the stain but the shrinking proximity between you and him pulls his gaze from your cheek to your eyes, blown wide and confused because you still have no idea that there’s something on your face.

The undoubtedly palpable tension in the room almost reaches down his throat and pulls the words from his vocal chords in an effort to dispel the heavy air circulating around the both of you.

“There’s… uh… you have flour…”

Donghyuck still hasn’t broken the less than comfortable eye contact, but he’s unable to look away for reasons unknown to him. After an agonizing amount of seconds your brain switches on again, albeit slowly, and you’re able to properly process the position you’re currently in. Your own hand starts to lift and though the movement is slight, it’s enough to draw his eyes down to it and he finds the strength to complete his goal at last.

His thumb swipes across your cheek and without even thinking he pops it into his mouth once again, forgetting about the unpleasant taste of flour. The way that the boy’s face scrunches up when the bitter powder meets his tongue doesn’t eliminate the awkwardness completely, but it’s a start. You hastily make an effort to avert your gaze as you frantically wonder if he caught your face that’s surely as warm as a blazing fireplace, all because he did the unthinkable with that stupid finger of his.

You won’t let yourself dwell on how his hand is just the right size to cradle the side of your head, or how much nicer his lips look up close, or how they must taste like the blueberries that he snuck into his mouth as you made the cobbler, or how you wished he had used his lips on your cheek instead of his thumb.

How you wish he had closed the almost nonexistent distance between your flushed faces.

These thoughts do nothing to ease the steadily growing heat that’s currently taking over your skin. Your eyes land on the glass pan and you take the opportunity to grab it, acting as a sort of distraction for your mind and also as something to snap you both out of your embarrassed hazes.

You get the finished dessert into the oven with no trouble after that, and now you have a little over half an hour of time to kill before it’s ready, so Donghyuck leads you into the nicely furnished family room and plops down onto the plush couch. When you don’t immediately follow he glances up at you, sensing that you’re still hesitant after the awkward moment. He smiles softly and almost apologetically, as if he’s sending a silent signal that you’ll both move past it soon enough, an invitation to put the incident behind the two of you. And you accept it.

You take a deep breath before you sit down next to him, sinking into the cushions underneath and behind you. The material dips slightly under the weight of both your bodies and gravity itself seems to be in control as it pushes you together, shoulders bumping and the sides of your legs being pressed up against each other. Thankfully, the television roars to life with the laughter of a live audience on one of your favorite shows, and you exhale a puff of air you didn’t even know you were holding in. With every scene that lights up the large display, you curl up further and further into his side, his arm migrating across the back of the sofa and winding around your shoulder only a few centimeters at a time.

This feels like home. Donghyuck feels like home.

The buzzer of the oven interrupts when you’re halfway through another episode, prompting you to jump to your feet just as abruptly as the alarm-like noise had started blaring. Consequently his arm flops down by his side as he mentally curses the loud intrusion into what had become a comfortable atmosphere, an atmosphere that was finally surrounding you again after what felt like an eternity but had really only been an hour.

In no time, you’re returning from the kitchen, the warm blueberry contents of the cobbler oozing out onto the flowery pair of plates you had grabbed from the cupboard. Handing one to him and setting the other aside for yourself, you quickly go back around the corner to grab two tall cups of cold milk. Your second time joining him on the couch comes more easily, almost all of the earlier tension having dispersed into the room, wafting out the windows along with the delicious scent of the fruit baked into the sweet, flaky crust. In fact, you’re fairly sure that it’s strong enough for even his neighbors down the road to smell. Which reminds you: you need to package some up to deliver to them tomorrow, per Donghyuck’s suggestion.

You’re most definitely sure that he smells the aroma, of course, because it’s hard to ignore the eagerness with which he takes a large bite of the dessert. “We make better bakers that I thought we would,” the boy comments, taking a sip of milk. The white mustache that it creates above his top lip when he lifts the glass to his mouth is enough to make you giggle, and you’re unaware that this predictable reaction was his objective all along. He grins, rather satisfied.

With your stomach now full, a head-plaguing drowsiness begins to set in. It slowly fills your senses enough for you to drift off, fork nearly falling out of your hand and onto the floor before he catches it, along with your weight when you slump down against his shoulder. Donghyuck is barely able to reach one of the end tables, and he sets the dishes and silverware down next to the now empty cups. Your body unconsciously clings to his like a koala to a branch, with both hands clutching one of his arms and a leg hooked over his thighs.

He takes one look at you and wishes he could pause time, to stay here forever. It’s not every day that he meets someone who can easily match the amount of snark he possesses. Simultaneously, you also balance out the friendship you share with your compassion and sense of wonder about the world, always evident in your morning routine when you come to the fields. Donghyuck has noticed that you bring out those same qualities in him, perhaps more than anyone else ever has. And just like you’re holding him right now, he vows to hold on to you.

As much as he doesn’t want to get up and for the evening to progress, he knows he should, that it has to. So he manages to detach from the hold of your limbs, gently pushing himself up and off of the couch so he doesn’t disturb you.

Glancing at the large antique clock above the doorway that leads out into the hall, Donghyuck realizes it’s much later than he thought. He decides to turn in for the night, but on a regular day he usually finds himself still awake well past midnight, despite the need to wake up early the next morning and run the farm from the crack of dawn.

Since you’re tired and he doesn’t want to risk you waking up alone in an unfamiliar bed and place, he comes to the conclusion that he’ll join you. Only leaving your side for a moment, he puts the cobbler into the refrigerator and turns off the kitchen lights behind him as he goes. Softly padding halfway up the stairwell, Donghyuck makes sure there’s enough light for him to see where he’s going before making his way back into the living room one last time. He tucks one arm underneath both of your bent knees as tenderly as he can, and places the other behind the middle of your back, hand gently curling against your waist. He carries you with probably the most delicacy he’s shown in his entire life.

Going upstairs is generally an easy task, but doing so while carrying another person is a different story. He would never forgive himself if he were to hurt you in any way. If even your foot happened to bump the wall next to you, a burst of frustration at himself and his own carelessness would surface regardless of the impact’s intensity

Your position in his arms gives him yet another opportunity to gaze upon your peaceful expression, and he begins to think more deeply about what you are to him. Looking forward to your visits makes his work so much more enjoyable and worth it. You’re someone who truly appreciates what he and his family do for a living and you faithfully support them with your business as a customer whenever you can, which is a rare thing to find in most people that come. Most are just bored and in need of something to occupy themselves or their kids. Sometimes they don’t even pick that many berries. But you always make sure to bring your own basket, which holds just as many as if not more than the ones the farm provides, and fill it to the brim. In his eyes, you’re special.

Amidst the mostly-asleep state that you’re in, your eyes just barely open far enough to see a blurry picture of Donghyuck’s face as he carries you through the house and up into the bedroom he had suggested you share. He sets you down onto the soft mattress before pulling the covers up to your stomach, retreating into the attached bathroom to quickly change into a thin t-shirt and his favorite pair of plaid pajama pants.

The memory of that conversation floods back to you. Initially, you refused the offer, saying that he would rest better if he had more space to move around. But being the clingy person he is, he had pouted desperately as you struggled to stand your ground in the discussion. “Fine,” you had huffed, only half-frustrated with those doe eyes he always uses to get his way, and your lips had great difficulty holding back a smile.

The hum of electricity that can be heard emanating from the next room snaps you out of these thoughts, and is enough to wake you up a bit more. Your gaze scans the surroundings for a minute or two before he opens the door again, his eyes now looking as heavy as your own.

Donghyuck joins you under the blanket and shifts to lay on his side, facing you. It’s funny that you’re both able to adjust to a situation so intimate and new almost instantly. Still on your back, your head turns and you’re conscious enough to raise an eyebrow at the boy. There’s that pout again.

“Please?” He mumbles, his bottom lip jutting out in an action he’s perfected. You know exactly what he’s after: cuddles.

You don’t even try to hide the playful roll of your eyes as you scoot a little closer, but it’s not close enough for him. He gets impatient, meeting you halfway, and this time it’s him that flings a leg over yours. An endearing, small noise of contentment from him fills your ears as you take notice of his arms, now interlocked behind your neck and around your shoulders. You melt into the snug position, a hand landing on his forearm that’s laying across your chest. Turning ever so slightly to the side, your other hand winds around his middle and eventually rests just above his hip, pulling him into you even more. Donghyuck nuzzles his face into the side of your neck, a few strands of your hair tickling his skin as he sighs in complete and utter bliss.

Determined to savor the moment until the irresistible inevitability of slumber starts to overtake you once more, you fight to stay awake with all of your might. But in what you thought was only the blink of an eye, the glittering stars visible through the bay window’s sheer drapes morph into the pale golden rays of first light. There’s a soft murmur of your name along with an unintentional, almost imperceptible peck to the place where his lips meet your skin, and you’re wide awake. Not to mention a little shocked.

He’s utterly unfazed, though, slowly waking up now that the sun has gotten brighter, its beams filtering into the room and hitting his already glowing face that becomes a gorgeous honey-colored hue.

Donghyuck reluctantly withdraws his arms from your form after one last embrace, effortlessly rising from the wrinkled bed sheets and offering his hand to you when you start to do the same. A sleepy smile makes a home on his features and he reminds you of your task to deliver a portion of the dessert you made to his next-door neighbors.

That’s exactly what you do, first making yourselves presentable in the bathroom by smoothing down wild bed hair and freshening up your faces with cool water. Being around to see each other’s natural morning states is a major act of trust, and he doesn’t miss an opportunity to poke fun at you for it.

“How long does it normally take for you to do your hair every day before you come here?” His tone is dripping with feigned innocence, but the sly grin on his lips says otherwise.

“Shut up, Hyuck.”

Tupperware container in hand, your shoes step in rhythm with his as you amble along the grassy shoulder of the street together. Somehow you end up hand-in-hand by the time you reach his neighbors’ front patio.

“Donghyuck!” The elderly woman at the door greets him with a twinkling voice, her husband coming into view soon after. “Look who it is, honey,” she motions fondly to the boy who they both once knew to be much shorter and younger, but now is all grown up before their eyes. “You’re getting so tall. It seems like only yesterday you were scurrying through the blueberry fields and waving to us through the gaps in the fence.”

“Yes ma’am, it does,” he responds politely. The couple has been living there for as far back as he can remember, and quite honestly they feel as if they’ve become part of his family, too.

Her warm brown eyes light up. “Is this the customer your mother was telling me about last week? She mentioned how close you’ve become, and now I’m finally seeing it for myself. You make a lovely pair.”

“Oh—” Donghyuck startles. Not much can get him flustered, but he hadn’t exactly been anticipating for his mom to recount all the things he’s said about you to the sweetest and most innocent of elderly couples. Of course they would assume that there’s something going on.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, with you. He wouldn’t mind at all, really. He’ll just need to have a word about a little thing called privacy with his mother later.

You see the glint of panic in his eyes and speak up. It’s not often he makes such an easy target for teasing. “Thank you,” you state graciously, the smugness in the statement only noticeable to him. “We’re very happy together.” He feels you lean into him, fingers unwrapping from his and gripping the other side of his waist. You know exactly what you’re doing, and so does he.

Almost forgetting to hand over the slices of cobbler you’d cut earlier, Donghyuck nudges you to do so, and the four of you exchange thanks and farewells before you’re on your way back to the farm.

“Happy together, huh?”

“Shut up, Hyuck.” You mumble something else afterwards that he doesn’t quite catch.

“What’s that? Didn’t hear you,” he sings, stopping in his tracks. You do the same. “Shut up and what?”

“...And kiss me.”

After many days and many nights spent wondering, you can confirm that his lips do, indeed, taste as sweet as the blueberries in those fields.

[polyamoryfacts]

Polyamory writing tropes

Because I forgot that tumblr dot hell’s solution to spam bots is straight up hiding replies with too many links, here is a manual repost of my certainly incomplete list of polyamory tropes.

(I had originally posted it as a reply to an ask that was posted to @writingquestionsanswered - you should check them out!)

I will assume that A is into B, B is into A and C, and C is into B. B and A are not into each other. Furthermore, I will assume that everyone has agreed to being part of the arrangement as described. If B is dating A behind C’s back, that’s not polyamory, that’s cheating.

This constellation is commonly called a V or vee, because if you draw it, it kinda looks like a V. The partner “in the middle” B is called the hinge.

A and C are metamours to each other (meta + amour). They share a partner.

The most common trope with polyamory is the topic of jealousy. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find a story which does not focus on it, to the point that I would say it has been done to death, plus you can find plenty of guides how to write it, so I am not going to focus on that.

Instead, there are other interesting tropes specific to polyamory you can use:

Compersion is a word for a warm feeling of fuzziness you get when your metamour makes your partner happy. Imagine that, like, I am A, and B is really into underwater basket weaving. I, on the other hand, do not care for underwater basket weaving at all, and while I can empathize with B’s enthusiasm for it, ultimately I am not a good person to discuss underwater basket weaving with. But then, one day, B meets C! And C is also into underwater basket weaving! Now B can discuss water currents and sprig flexibility with C and is elated! And B being happy with C makes me happy! (In fact, it may be that I was getting a bit tired of the topic, so it benefits me as well. Cue crisis about whether I am a good person or if “dropping” B on C is selfish! So much delightful angst potential!)

One side effect might be that when B is out on a date with C, I finally have time for myself and my favorite hobby of chocolate teapot sculpting, which B somehow never seems interested in :/

Of course, depending on the person, this feeling might extend to more intimate topics and activities. It does not have to be limited to things A does not enjoy – A might just be happy that B has an additional person to do these things with.

However, it can also lead to establishing new couple activities. The common cliché is of the polyamorous person who is fine with their partner having sex with someone else – but don’t you dare watching “our” Netflix series with someone else.

The flip side of this is B being happy when A and C get along. As far as I know, we don’t have a specific word for that (we really should, though).

When metamours get along, they might delight in scheming to do something nice for their hinge together. For example, they might plan a surprise birthday party for B together (cue all shenanigans associated with surprise party and birthday party). They might also become great friends and share vulnerabilities with each other that they don’t even share with their mutual partner.

A might have actively pushed B to get with C. In this case, feel free to pull all the ShipperOnDeck tropes.

A and C might have felt apprehension towards meeting each other. B might have felt apprehension towards them meeting each other. What if they don’t get along!? You can borrow from the “meeting the parents” tropes here.

A and C might also get together over time. This might cause unexpected jealousy in B because of the change in relationship dynamics. It can be all the anxiety you get when your partner has a new partner… but multiplied by the fact you get it from both sides.

Incidentally, polyamorous people get to observe this “my loved one is freshly in love” theme often enough we have our own name for that “I have butterflies in the stomach and the world is made of gingerbread rainbows” feeling B gets – NRE or New Relationship Energy.

Ideally, A, B and C have all discussed what their relationship dynamics are to be. For example, whether it is okay to take on other partners or if there is the expectancy that A and C will remain exclusive to B. Also, if B is allowed to start further relationships with D, E and so on. (If it is to stay at the A/B/C constellation, it is called a closed relationship or possibly a closed triad.) And they hopefully have discussed how much everyone wants to know about the details of the other relationship and how much they get to know. They also have hopefully discussed how out they are to their social circles. (If people have conflicting needs on that, there may be some tension.)

In practice, I believe the most common setup is not a closed relationship (I have only personal anecdotes, though). It is more commonly like this (listed are everyone’s partners):

A: B

B: C, D

C: B, E

D: B, F

E: C

F: D

The set of all people in this network is called a polycule (a portmanteau of poly and molecule). In the above scenario, F might not even know about E. F is with D, D is with B, B is with C, C is with E. If this was a familial relationship, they would be something akin to distant cousins, with comparable dynamics – they might find it an amusing bit of trivia, but ultimately it doesn’t affect their lives much. They might, however, be in the same circle of friends, or even roommates. Which leads to amusing shenanigans like

B: C, I know you are visiting E [your partner] and F tonight?

C: Yeah?

B: D asked me to pass along this thing F forgot at D’s place [because D and F are partners]. Could you give it to F [because you are visiting F’s roommate]?

C: I think F is not at home tonight, but I will give the thing to E!

This can be somewhat confusing to the reader, because it gets you a large cast. If you ever find out how to solve this, let me know.

Also, Long Distance Relationships. So many Long Distance Relationships.

Of course, there are some people who will go to great lengths to chart their polycule, with the same diligence someone might employ while researching their ancestry.

Because marrying multiple people is not possible in most places, people may employ a similar ritual for a particular partner. Their are hand-fastening ceremonies, for example. Or other rituals - I know a person who texts all of their partners goodnight before going to bed.

There are some clichés about the polyamorous community. Polyamory is said to enable you to always have a group ready for board game night, for example. Or Dungeons and Dragons night – I reference this in my most shared post which apparently people can relate to.

Also, we are really good at scheduling. Shared calendars are frequently employed.

And we really talk a lot about our feelings. Which is… somewhat inconvenient for writing drama.

And we love large beds. Some of us don’t. (I feel too hot with even one other person in the bed. How some people deal with three is an utter mystery to me).

If you have made it this far, congrats! Thanks for researching our community! Seconding the recommendation for @polyamorouscultureis for more.

If you wish to check out my blog, you will find a list of helpful resources, and will get a mix of

me assuring people they are valid like this

polyamory memes like this

polyamory shitposts disguised as facts (which are not to be taken seriously for the purposes of research) like this

and general polyamorous tomfoolery.