#also 99% of the responses towards the content were positive

[wordborne]

someone called me teacher at the workshop for subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing i gave today :3

[moon3thereal]

bad girls get punished

pairings” wandanat x reader 

genre: no plot just smut

a/n my first smut fic lmao pls don’t judge too harshly 

summary: Natasha catching you touching yourself

warnings: smut, 18+ content, oral sex (r receiving), swearing, degradation, mommy kink 

word count: 1.3k

Out of your two girlfriends, Natasha and Wanda, Wanda was definitely the soft dom, she let you get away with misbehavior 99% of the time and couldn’t even think about punishing you no matter how much of a brat you were. however, the same cannot be said about Natasha, she’d always put you in your place no matter how small the misstep was and you always avoided breaking the rules when she was around

Which was why you were taking full advantage now that Natasha was on a mission, it was just you and Wanda and though you missed Natasha you were also grateful that she wasn’t around to see you right now, your ass would probably be seven different shades of red if she were. You were sprawled across the bed you shared with your girlfriend, one hand teasing your breasts and the other down your underwear, sliding your fingers over your folds slick with your arousal. Quiet whimpers and moans falling from your lips as you pleasured yourself

Wanda had let you get away with it every time and even helped you to your climax a few times, which is why you didn’t even bother to hide your needy whines that reverberated through the room. Natasha wasn’t scheduled to get home until a week later so you were completely safe.

Or so you thought

You were so lost in your pleasure that you didn’t hear the door open and both of your girlfriends walking in chattering animatedly. The second you realized how much of trouble you were in was one you heard Natasha’s voice calling out for you and the Russian appeared in front of your open door. Your expression of euphoria was immediately replaced with one of fear when you realized that it was the redhead instead of the brunette and hurriedly attempted to hide yourself with your sheets

Natasha’s smile disappeared and her eyes darkened, an expression of pure lust streaked across her perfect features. Wanda was behind her telling you silently that you were seriously and utterly fucked.

After a few moments of Natasha simply glaring at your hand that was still in between your thighs and your sweaty figure, she raised an eyebrow “you thought it would be funny to let mommy come home to her little girl being such a needy whore huh” she was walking towards you while taking her leather jacket off at an agonizingly slow rate. You were staring up at her while shaking your head with your eyes wide.

The sokovian was on your other side raking her fingernails over your thigh. “words kotenok (kitten)” the redhead said gripping your jaw “n-no mommy” you stuttered out. Letting go, she kept her gaze on you “you know i don’t like people touching what’s mine, strip.” She said, her voice cold and you could tell that you were in for it. You hastily stripped off your thin camisole and the pink thong that barely covered anything in the first place.

“spread” Natasha’s voice left no space for any disobedience, Wanda coaxed your thighs apart exposing your glistening folds to your girlfriends. You whined when the witch’s fingers made their way up your torso and teased your painfully stiff nipples. Natasha rested two of her fingers on your bottom lip “open up slut” you whimpered taking her fingers into your mouth and swirling your tongue over her slim digits

Wanda was nibbling on the shell of your ear when Natasha abruptly pulled her fingers out and thrusted them into your dripping cunt pulling a gasp from you at the sudden penetration, she thrust her fingers in and out of you roughly “isn’t this better than playing with yourself krasivaya (beautiful), dumb little slut always needs mommy or Wanda playing with her pussy” you couldn’t do anything else but whimper in response. you whined when Natasha pulled her fingers out and held her fingers up to Wanda’s lips.

The brunette made a display of running her tongue up Natasha’s digits collecting all your arousal, letting out a moan at the taste of you “our pretty girl tastes so good” she said and pulled the redhead into a heated kiss, allowing her to taste you on Wanda’s tongue. Frustrated at the lack of attention, “please mommy” you moved your hips against Natasha’s hand earning yourself a smack to your cunt. Natasha glared at you with a perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised “don’t push it slut”

Standing up, Natasha headed towards your shared closet no doubt to retrieve the toys that she kept in the top drawer that would’ve scared the living daylights out of vanilla couples. Wanda was now positioned directly in front of your exposed folds, she ran her tongue along them and on your clit and you let out breathy moans of pleasure “oh right there wan” you breathed out  when she thrust her tongue into your hole, clenching around her tongue, you felt the knot in your stomach tighten and just when you thought that you would reach an orgasm, Natasha’s voice rang out “now now, we cant let our whore cum just like that wans” Wanda lifted her head off your now aching pussy “of course, I was just playing with her Nattie” the Russian was wearing your favorite strap and it stole your breath away.

For a few seconds, you simply lay there staring at her, until she snapped her fingers and pointed to the floor. You dropped to your knees so quickly it was embarrassing. Eyes straying to the sokovian you saw that Wanda was watching intently with her hand already in her pants “Get mommy’s cock ready for your pussy kotenok (kitten)” almost immediately, you took the length of the toy into your mouth, when it hit the back of your throat you gagged, drooling over the silicon toy, you could hear Wanda's soft moans and Natasha's groans.

Tears pricked at your eyes as Natasha thrust it further into your mouth “look so pretty crying and drooling all over mommy’s cock” she cooed and when she was satisfied, the redhead pulled you up by your hair and bent you roughly over the side of the bed. In a second, Wanda was in front of you, your jaw in her ring clad hand and she captured your lips in a kiss, you were so captivated by the sokovian’s plush lips that you were completely caught off guard when Natasha thrust the length into you and you gasped, your cunt pulsing around the large toy

Barely giving you time to adjust to the size, Natasha was already thrusting it in and out of you harshly, both hands gripping your hips hard enough to leave bruises. “such a needy slut hm? Just needed mommy to come home and fuck you like the dumb whore you are?” you mumbled incoherently and Natasha slapped your ass leaving a red hand print, forcing you to answer “yes m-mommy fuck feels so good” you released a series of incoherent moans and profanities. Between the combinations of Wanda nibbling on your bottom lip and the toy inside you and Natasha’s finger circling your clit in firm circles, you felt so close to your climax “I’m gonna cum mommy ah-”

You felt the toy leave your aching pussy and gasped. Your cunt clenched on nothingness and you whined desperately “oh come on Tasha, that wasn’t nice, you could’ve let our pretty girl cum” Wanda pouted but Natasha only chuckled “you’ll spoil her then, cant let her get away with being a brat now can we?” the Russian turned back to you “make Wanda and mommy cum, then, I’ll consider letting you cum my little fucktoy”

You were in for a very long night

[thedeadflag]

I’m so confused! I know it’s not your responsibility to educate me but in your post bringing awareness to the negative aspects of g!p fanfic you say

“Why do these g!p characters rarely if ever involve experiences reflective of trans/intersex women? Why are they so utterly cis and perisex-washed? Why do nearly all writers have zero idea that tucking is a thing? “

Doesn’t that answer your original question? The reason they don’t reflect those groups of ppl is bc g!p isn’t trying to represent those groups of people or else it WOULD be transphobic to limit them to one specific fetish right? it just refers to a canonically female character with the addition of a penis (I don’t argue the name “g!p” should be changed bc that’s a no brainer why that could be offensive). But the fanfic in general, how could it be harmful? I’ve noticed in my time reading it as a non binary person it’s given me great gender euphoria reading a reader insert where reader has a penis while being a femme representing person just bc that’s a reflection of my personal experience. I don’t see anywhere where g!p fanfic ever references or tries to emulate the experiences of trans or intersex people so how could it be offensive?

Sorry this is way too long I’m just very confused

I'm going to try and lay this out as politely as I can. It's after 3:30 in the morning here, so this could be a bit disjointed and rambling. More under the cut:

In real life, ~99.999999% of women with penises are trans women. Which puts us in a tricky situation of (A) being the only women with penises around for media involving women with penises to reflect back on, and (B) being in the lovely position of precious few people actually having had meaningful real life exposure to trans women, meaning (C.) all those stigmas and all that misinformation are going to purely affect us and it’s going to be uncritically gobbled up by the masses, since they don’t have any meaningful information to fill in the blanks with instead.

When we peer into the depths of femslash fandoms and see all these folks who aren't trans women writing about women with penises, and using cis women’s bodies as platforms for these penises, it’s the simplest thing.

I mean, some of those folks might actually be struggling and confused about why they’re into it, what the real appeal is, why they get off on it, why they might have some feelings about wanting a penis of their own…

…but from our vantage point, it’s really easy to gauge 99.99% of the time. We can generally see valid, legitimate yearning to have a penis pretty damn easily in a piece of art/writing, and we can also see when people who create this media are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization.

And 99.9% of the time, the creators are just hung up on a boatload of baggage and fetishization, and see trans women’s bodies as a perfect vehicle to tap into that, generally due to deeply held cissexist views that link us and our bodies and genitals directly to cis men, to maleness. As if penises are rooted in maleness and masculinity (which is absolutely not true).

And I have sympathy for NB folks (certainly TME ones who have reached out to me in the past about this) who might be struggling with that, but just because they’re non-binary, it doesn’t mean they get to appropriate our bodies and reproduce transmisogyny and trans fetishization in their attempts at feeling better. Shit doesn't work like that.

Because again, the only women with penises in this world, essentially, are trans women. Meaning any woman with a penis in media is a trans woman, implicitly or explicitly. Meaning that when people who aren’t us want to write us, intent doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if it’s just the writer’s fantasy, it’s still going to attach a variety of messages directly onto us.

And more often than not, due to cissexism, those messages are linking us to maleness, to toxic masculinity, etc..

While I do want to believe they're a fairly small minority, a lot of NB folks in fandom spaces like g!p characters in part because they see penises as male and the rest of the body as female and think that duality is interesting and would be comfortable, and is a nice balance of “both worlds” or a nice position “between male and female”, but that’s a wholly cissexist, transmisogynistic view to have, and it’s one that absolutely cannot be supported without directing sexual violence against trans women and invalidating our entire existence. Certainly not all NB folks into g!p like it for that reason, but holy shit a fair bit of them do and it’s weird and wrong and fetishistic.

g!p emerged from the idea that women can't have penises, and drew on the transmisogyny and cissexism of tr*nny porn to structure that frame of desire and the core patterns and trends within these works. It's always been trans women's bodies being used as a vehicle, whether or not the writers of these fics are explicitly aware of it, because the trope itself still holds true to its original patterns and cissexism. It's not the name that's the problem, it's the content; changing the name would be a surface level change that wouldn't affect anything.

g!p objectifies women with penises (trans women). A woman with a penis is more than just a woman with a penis, but the use of the term and trope is literally to (A) remind people that women don't have penises, otherwise the g!p term wouldn't be needed if people actually accepted women with penises as women, and that (B) this is a story centered on a scenario where there's a woman with a penis, with key focus on that genitalia specifically. it's the drawing point, it's the lure, it's what everything is centered on. It is a means for folks to write lesbian sex while also writing about penis in vagina and getting off to it. It's also no surprise that the penises so clearly emulate cis men's penises in these works, that is by design.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’re only writing trans women’s bodies to showcase cis men’s penises, you’re not respecting the womanhood of trans women, and this ultimately has nothing inherent to do with penis-owning women, it has to do with (cis) men and their penises, because trans women are just being used as a vehicle to emulate them. When NB folks do the same thing, and imagining themselves as those g!p characters, they are ultimately embodying cis men, their maleness, and often toxic masculinity, in a way that feels safe and distanced enough for them, a shell that they often code as cisnormative due to their own unprocessed cissexism.

And trans women don’t deserve that.

You seem caught in the idea that if something doesn't directly perfectly reflect trans women, that it can't be linked to us., which ignores the long long history of media being used to misrepresent marginalized peoples and cast us in insulting, dehumanizing lights. You show a lack of understanding of the g!p trope and the long history of its usage across a few other names, even if the content and patterns remained the same. It shows a lack of understanding of tr*nny porn and transmisogynistic stigmas, which the trope draws heavily from.

I think we can all recognize that most 'lesbian' prn that's made does not represent actual lesbians, it's overwhelmingly catered to the male gaze. We can also recognize that this category of porn has led to a lot of harassment towards lesbians from cis men who at the very least want to believe lesbians are just like they are in the porn he watches, that lesbians just need the right man. Lesbians are being used as a vehicle for a fantasy that was created externally to them, and doesn't represent their realities.

It's the same kind of situation here. The way g!p fics play out overwhelmingly doesn't reflect trans women's realities, but they are inherently linked to us regardless, as we're the vehicles for those fantasies, as unrealistic and harmful as they may be.

g!p characters are built in our fetishized image that’s based on a deeply cissexist misunderstanding of us, of the gender binary, and of bodies in general.

I mean, when 99% of cis folks don’t understand how trans women tend to be sexually intimate… when they don’t understand what dysphoria is and how it works and how it can affect us physically and emotionally…when they don’t understand almost any of our lived experiences…then they’re not going to be able to accurately portray us even if they wanted to.

And I’ve read enough g!p fics where authors wrote those as a means of trying to add trans rep, but because they didn’t understand us at all, it wasn’t remotely representative, and it was ultimately fetishistic, even if there was an undercurrent of sympathy and a lack of following certain common g!p patterns there that differentiated it from the norm.

If g!p fics were at all about reducing dysphoria or finding euphoria, then it wouldn’t be explicitly tied up in the performance of very specific sex acts, very specific forms of misogyny and toxic masculinity, very specific forms of sexual violence and exertion of sexual power, etc.

But it is.

So the notion that creating g!p fics helps NB folks? Nope. It CAN certainly prevent/delay those folks from facing a whole boatload of shit they’ve internalized, and coddle them at the expense of trans women.

Because if it was really about bodies and dysphoria/euphoria, there would be a considerable push (allying with out own) to end our fetishization and to represent us in and out of sexual contexts with accuracy, respect, and care. Because they wouldn’t care what sex acts were performed and what smut beats were hit, they’d just want to see someone with a body like their ideal being loved, being sexual, connecting, being authentic, etc. Which very much is not the case in the overwhelming majority of g!p fics. That's what we want, and it's not what g!p writers want, it's nothing they give a shit about.

Like, a ways back I started doing random pulls of g!p fics from various fandoms and assessing them for certain elements to provide some quantitative clarity. I started on The 100 here, and did OuaT here. Never finished the 100 one since the results leveled out and stayed pretty consistent as the sample size grew, so I didn't really see the point in continuing any further after about 140 fics when the data wasn't really changing much at all.

Lastly, media influences people. I've read countless posts and comments from people who use fanfiction as a sex ed guide, in essence. Which is ridiculous, but I also know sex ed curricula often isn't very accurate or extensive in a lot of areas, so people take what they can get. Representation in media can be powerful, and when it overwhelmingly misrepresents people, that's also powerful. Just because fandom is a bit smaller than televised media, it doesn't make that impact any lesser, certainly not for those whose primary media intake is within fandom.

Virtually all trans representation in f/f fanfiction is misrepresentative of us. That has a cost in how people understand us, how people react to us, and how people treat us. Not just online, but in physical spaces, and in intimate settings.

I invite you to read that post you referenced again, or perhaps this longer one which is a response to a trans guy who seemed to feel something similar to you with this trope.

All I can do is lay it out there and try to explain this. It's up to you how you handle this. All I know is whenever there's a big surge in g!p in a fandom, trans women generally leave it en masse, because it's a very clear and consistent message that we're not valued, respected, and that people value getting off on us over finding community with us.

[akaluan]

20, 99, Ichigo/Xanxus

(20: Teacher AU, 99: Magical Accidents, Ichigo/Xanxus)

(With apologies to anyone expecting a vaguely IC Xanxus: I’ve read fic with him, but never source material, and it’s been a damn long while XD)

Ichigo’s leading his students back to their hotel when it happens.

A great orange-red blur bolts from a nearby alley, pursued by several distinctive men, all wearing identical uniforms and obviously furious; one even has wisps of bluish power trailing from his fingers, clearly intent on doing something to the creature they’re pursuing.

Ichigo doesn’t bother stepping aside. He flickers forward in a tiny burst of shunpo. Scoops up the… cat? Cat. And tucks it against his side even as he lets his reiatsu uncoil from his soul. He keeps it subtle for the moment, just a sense of pressure in the air directed at the men and shielding his students, but he’s ready to act if he needs to.

(He may be a teacher these days, but that doesn’t mean he’s lost his edge.)

(Especially against near-baseline humans.)

“Is there a problem here, gentlemen?” Ichigo asks in careful, precise Italian, even as he adjusts his grip on the cat. It’s struggling, gnawing on his wrist and ripping at his arm in an attempt to escape, but a touch of hierro means the beast’s efforts are in vain.

The men skid to a halt. Glance between him and his gaggle of students. Clearly label him not a threat even as the largest takes a menacing step towards him.

“Hand over the cat,” the man demands.

Ichigo’s students snicker and edge back a bit to give him space, elbowing one another and whispering in Japanese; the clear dismissal seems to bother the men, but Ichigo doesn’t bother to shush them.

(He… might have a reputation still.)

Ichigo hums and glances down at the cat still angrily trying to gnaw his wrist off, then back up at the men. “I don’t think it wants to go with you.”

The man grits his teeth and holds out his — scratched and bleeding — hand in demand. “Its wants are immaterial,” the man says. “Thank you for catching it, but we need to return it home.”

The cat yowls at that, all anger-fury-terror at the option, and Ichigo tucks it more carefully against his side. This close, he can feel the whisper of not-a-cat leaking from the creature; whether it’s a person trapped in a feline form somehow or someone experimenting with a skill like Yoruichi’s, they’re not quite good enough to hide their personhood from him.

All the more reason to refuse to hand the person over, honestly.

“Sorry guys, but I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about that,” Ichigo says with a shrug, and then doesn’t wait for a response. He darts forward. Trips the first bruiser and lays out the second with a sharp jab to the stomach. Ducks away from a grab by the one with blue power and elbows the man in the side of the head. Applies a careful burst of reiatsu to make sure they all stay down, and turns back to his students with the — suddenly very quiet — cat still tucked against his side.

His students clap.

“Don’t tell anyone about this and I’ll buy you all ice cream,” Ichigo bribes them without remorse. Not that he expects this little event to go entirely unreported; one of his students will talk to a friend, the friend will talk to another, and soon enough the whole story will be blown entirely out of proportion and add another tally on his record.

“Yeah!” “Alright!” “I want mango!”

Ichigo snorts and jerks his head in the direction they were headed before their interruption. “Well, come on then. Two scoops for each of you, whatever flavors you want.” The cat in his arms makes a grumpy noise, and Ichigo snorts in amusement as he strokes the cat’s head. “None for you. Ice cream isn’t good for cats, you know.”

The cat growls and tries to gnaw on his wrist again, less like it means it and more like it’s just trying to make a point.

“I’ll get you some tuna and water when we’re back in the hotel,” Ichigo promises as he hitches the feline higher and attempts to make it at least a bit comfortable. Still, he’d rather not give it a chance to escape, so he doesn’t try too hard as he starts moving down the street with his students in tow.

It’ll forgive him eventually, or maybe not.

Honestly, he doesn’t really care.

(Why can’t any of his trips ever be normal?)

(Really.)

*****

“If you alert the hotel staff and get us kicked out, I won’t call my friend who can probably get you out of that shape,” Ichigo hisses into the not-a-cat’s ears as he and his gaggle of students finally approach the hotel. And then to his students he says, “Students, remember your promise. Not a word about our newest friend to anyone here, understood?”

“Hai, Sensei!” comes the ragged chorus of voices, many muffled by ice cream or gelato.

Ichigo hums and carefully positions himself towards the center of his group, letting the bodies of his students obscure the fact that he’s carrying a cat into a hotel that probably has a ‘no pets allowed’ policy. His students are of course entirely up for this harmless bit of rule-breaking, no doubt looking forward to seeing the cat later when he’s checked it over.

(Given the not-a-cat’s rather persistent attempts at mauling his arm, he’s pretty sure he’s also going to need to rescue a perfectly average stray in order to entertain the class.)

At least Not-A-Cat seems to be cooperating. Except for continued half-hearted attempts to chew through his wrist, the little beast is entirely quiet as they pass through the lobby and proceed down the hallway to the elevators. Where they have to wait, because there are only two elevators and he has nearly twenty students — a quick head counts confirms he’s not missing anyone yet — that need to reach the fifth floor.

One eternity later — in which Not-A-Cat graduates from half-hearted chewing to a serious effort to bite through his hierro — and Ichigo has finally managed to usher all his students back to their rooms and washed his hands of active chaperoning duties for the night.

If they need him, they know where he’ll be.

He unceremoniously drops Not-A-Cat on the hotel chair and grabs a washcloth to wipe the smudges of dirt and spit from his arm. “Hope you didn’t chip a tooth on my arm,” Ichigo tells Not-A-Cat as he settles down on the bed next to the chair. “Not sure how that would transfer over to your human form when we get you out of that.”

Not-A-Cat yawns very pointedly in his direction, wide and long and obnoxious, but it’s more than enough for Ichigo to see that nothing’s wrong with Not-A-Cat’s teeth, at least.

Which is a relief, because the more chance he’s getting to look at Not-A-Cat, the more he dislikes what he’s seeing.

Not-A-Cat is hunkered into a defensive loaf, body trembling now that the danger is gone. Its red-orange fur is ratty, with odd patches of white fur scattered all over, one of the largest splashed right across its face.  It looks little better than an alley-cat, which… doesn’t bode well for the person the cat originally was.

“Got a name?” Ichigo asks as he sets the washcloth aside and eyes the room, wondering what he’s going to use for a water dish. There really aren’t that many options, but… he’ll figure something out.

Not-A-Cat very pointedly yowls at him, tail lashing and ears back, as if to say ‘I’m a cat, how do you expect me to talk?’

Ichigo huffs a laugh. “Have you even tried to talk yet?”

“Course I fuckin’ h— what the fuck?!” Not-A-Cat practically shrieks, voice softer than Yoruichi’s despite the pitch.

“There you go,” Ichigo says with a smirk, more amused than anything by the profanity after so many years of Shiro in his head. “Try to keep the chatter to a minimum around my students though, hm? They’re just regular kids.”

Not-A-Cat scowls at him, eyes narrowed and ears back, but all it does is make him look like he’s pouting. “Yeah, yeah, don’t get smug, trash. How’d you fucking know…?”

“I have a friend who can.”

“That friend get trapped in another form by a fucking Mist high on superiority?”

“No, but she has a technique that lets her turn into a cat at will,” Ichigo says as he arches an eyebrow, confused by the mention of a ‘mist high on superiority’ but content to leave it be for the moment. Now wasn’t the time to poke his nose into another society’s definition of ‘empowered human’, though given his luck…

Well. He’d deal with the fallout when it came.

If it came.

(He was getting pretty good at stopping issues before they became issues, if he did say so himself.)

“Why the fuck do you think she could help, then?”

Ichigo shrugs. “If she can’t then Hat’n’Clogs can. He’s good at unraveling mysteries.”

Not-A-Cat’s tail thumps against the chair cushion in frustration, and their voice is sullen as they say, “Fuckin’ fine. Whatever. Name’s Xanxus. If you don’t follow through on getting me out of this shape, I will find a way to fucking end you, trash.”

“Nice to meet you, Xanxus,” Ichigo says with all the weaponized pleasantness he’s learned to muster as a teacher. “I’m Ichigo Kurosaki.”

Xanxus scoffs and looks away, hunkering down further into the chair as he mutters, “Yeah whatever… didn’t you fuckin’ promise me food?”

Ichigo inclines his head and rises to his feet. “I did indeed. If you promise to stay put and not make trouble, I’ll see about getting something for you, hm?”

“Whatever, trash. Better not keep me waiting long.”

“I’ll try not to,” Ichigo says in amusement, thoroughly reminded of some of the ‘trouble’ students he’s had in the past. Whoever Xanxus is, Ichigo has no intention of letting him fall back into the hands of the people searching for him.

Even if it means calling Hat’n’Clogs up to work out a way to smuggle a feline back into Karakura.

Well, it’s not like Urahara doesn’t owe him one for the latest round of ‘fix Shinigami fuckups’.

(They’ll figure it out.)

(Just like usual.)

[jbbarnesnnoble]

Kiss Goodbye

Summary:  Bucky is a detective with the 99th Precinct. A single moment changes your life forever, and you’re faced with saying goodbye

Features/Warnings: Angst; mentions of pregnancy, Major Character Death

Pairing: Bucky Barnes/Reader

Notes: I cried writing this. That should be it’s own warning. 

Detective!Bucky AU; Brooklyn 99 Crossover

Word Count: 4657

You were napping, completely unaware of the news that was coming. An argument had broken out at the 99th Precinct over what to do, the squad torn over calling you or going to tell you in person. They were all emotional, all dealing with what had happened that afternoon in their own ways. In the end, Captain Holt headed to your home, the one that you had shared with Bucky since you’d gotten married four years prior. Holt had called in a favor from a neighboring precinct. Captain Steve Rogers was joining him on the solemn journey to the Barnes home. 

Steve and Bucky had been best friends since childhood. They went through the police academy together. Bucky had no interest in being a superior officer. He was content with his job as a detective in the 99th precinct. He had worked in Steve’s precinct until two years prior, being transferred to the 99 once Amy Santiago had become a sergeant. 

You worked as an EMT, enjoying a day off with your daughter. You woke up when your phone went off. You felt a pang of anxiety when you saw Steve’s name. He was working. He and Bucky both worked the day shift. You had been taking a nap while your daughter took hers. Your last shift had been exhausting and the three year old had gotten sick the previous evening with a stomach bug. 

“Hello?” you asked.

“Hey...I’m here, could you come let me in?” he asked. 

“Uh...sure?” you said, confused. Steve had a key. He’d always had a key. Something wasn’t right and you knew it. You checked on your daughter before heading down the stairs to the front door. When you opened it to see Captain Holt standing with Steve, you knew.

“Won’t you come in?” you asked, allowing both men entry. You weren’t surprised Holt had called in Steve. Not when it came to Bucky, when it came to you. 

“Steve?” you asked when they sat down.

“Bucky was shot. We came to get you, bring you to the hospital. They were rushing him to surgery as soon as he was brought in. Peralta told the ER doctors they had telling you covered. Peggy’s on her way to babysit and I’m driving you to the hospital. Captain Holt will stay and wait for Peggy to get here,” Steve explained. Your mind was racing. This couldn’t be real. Not Bucky. Not your Bucky. 

You felt numb as Steve rushed you to the hospital. It wasn’t long before Amy showed up with Rosa and Gina. You had never seen Rosa Diaz shaken. Steve hadn’t told you much, only that Rosa and Bucky had gone to ask a witness some questions and that Bucky had been shot. None of you spoke as you sat waiting. Steve had called Sam. You knew Sam would start passing the news along if Peggy hadn’t already. It was a system you had hoped would never need to be used. 

Four hours had passed before you were allowed to see him. Four painful hours filled with anxiety. He was in the ICU in critical condition. You sat by his bedside, holding his hand, waiting for the doctor to come in. Bucky’s father had passed the previous year, leaving his mother, his sister, and his grandparents who lived in Jersey. His mother had been on a trip to Florida with friends and was rushing to get back home. Sam had gone to get Bucky’s grandparents to bring them up to the city. Rebecca had arrived at the hospital shortly after you had, and the two of you sat by his bedside, clinging to the hope that he would be okay. Rebecca had married Sam the previous year. You remembered a time when Sam and Bucky could barely be in the same room without arguing. Years had passed since then, and Bucky had gladly stood up at their wedding as one of Sam’s groomsmen. 

You weren’t surprised when it was Bruce who walked in. Dr. Bruce Banner was someone you’d known a long time. It came with the territory of your jobs. He was also the husband of Sharon Carter, who had become a dear friend and who was a cousin of Steve’s wife, Peggy. 

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.

“You’re sorry?” you asked, confused by what he was apologizing for. As he explained, you and Rebecca clung to each other tightly. You were going to have to make some difficult decisions, decisions you didn’t want to make. 

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Saying goodbye was never easy. You laughed to yourself that maybe good was only in there to soften the blow. Goodbye held permanence to you. You never cared for the word. Goodbye was an ending. Goodbye was finality. Goodbye meant it was over, really over. There was no coming back from this goodbye. There was no happy ending, no moment where Bucky would walk through the door again yelling “I’m home”. No more sounds of little feet charging down the hallway to greet him, with you close behind. 

“I don’t know if I can do this without you, Buck. I don’t want to,” you whispered, squeezing his hand. You had made the most difficult decision of your life. You knew well enough to know holding on was only putting off the inevitable, prolonging the pain you knew would linger. It didn’t make it easier. You blinked as tears fell. You had been torn on bringing your daughter. You and Bucky had had that discussion one night, when you had been pregnant with her. 

You and Bucky laid in bed, his hand laying on your bump as the baby kicked, a soft smile on his face. The eleven o’clock news was on the television. Another officer had been killed in the line of duty. Bucky’s smile dropped. He hadn’t known her, not really. But he knew of her. Sergeant Hope Van Dyne had a husband, a step-daughter, and a two year old daughter. They had met in passing before, Scott Lang was a childhood friend of Steve and Bucky’s. Keeping in touch had been made difficult when Scott had moved out west, returning to the city when his wife landed a job with the NYPD. 

“Babe?” you asked when you noticed the sudden change in Bucky’s demeanor. 

“Scotty called me yesterday. Asked what he should do. Cassie wanted to see Hope. She’s old enough that he brought her down to the hospital, but their little one. He refused to bring her, didn’t want to traumatize the kid, seeing her mom like that at such a young age. At least Cassie’s at an age where she can communicate, you know? Addie’s not,” Bucky said. He was starting to ramble. You took his hand in yours, rubbing your thumb in a circle, a soothing gesture.

“I’m making lasagna to bring over. Though, it wouldn’t surprise me if they’ve got more than enough food,” you said. He sighed, running his free hand through his hair. 

“If I’m ever in that position, promise me you won’t bring her. Not unless she’s old enough to ask. Not unless she’s old enough to understand,” he said.

“James,” you said, a frown appearing on your face. You rarely called him by his first name. It was reserved for the bedroom, for intimate moments between the two of you, moments of exasperation, and serious conversations. 

“Please. Promise me. I don’t want our daughter’s last memory of me to be like that. It’s bad enough that yours would be. I don’t plan on getting hurt like that, but...damn it I’m scared. It was a routine stop. And now she’s dead and her...just promise me,” he said cutting himself off. You turned toward him, moving your hand to cup his cheek.

“I promise you, James Buchanan Barnes. I will always protect our daughter and any other children we have,” you said. He pulled you into a kiss, and the conversation drifted into a forgotten memory.

“Mrs. Barnes?” a nurse asked. You looked up. It was Sharon. 

“Sharon, please,” you said, your voice flat. She gave you a sad smile, her own eyes watering. 

“Sorry. I...I’m sorry. This is never easy,” she told you. You nodded. You understood. Calling you Mrs. Barnes helped her remove herself from the situation, away from the reality. 

“I came to check on you. Whenever you're ready,” she said, taking your hand in hers and giving it a gentle squeeze.

“What if I’m never ready? How can you ever be ready for something like this?” you asked her. 

“You can’t be. But you have to be. Is she coming?” Sharon asked. You shook your head.

“Bucky and I agreed if this kind of thing ever happened, the only way she’d be here is if she was old enough to understand. Maybe she’ll resent me for it one day, but...I can’t bring myself to bring her here. She’s been asking about him. Shar, how do I tell my three year old daughter that her daddy isn’t coming home?” you asked, breaking down. She pulled you into a hug, letting you cry into her shoulder as she rubbed circles on your back. 

“How do I tell her?” you asked again, your voice barely more than a whisper as you sobbed. 

“You’ll find a way. You don’t have to do this alone,” she said, her own voice cracking. You were waiting on the others. Bucky’s mother, grandparents, and sister soon arrived with Sam, Steve, and Peggy. Natasha and Clint were the last ones to arrive. You weren’t sure if Jake or Rosa were going to show up. You had asked them to come. You knew they were both close to him. Hell, you were close with them and Rosa Diaz was a difficult person to get close to. 

Peter Parker had volunteered to watch your daughter that day. He was often around the station getting volunteer hours. It had turned into the kid from Queens babysitting your daughter when you needed someone to watch her. You sent him a quick text to check in on how things were, and you weren’t surprised when you got a near immediate response. 

“It’s going to be okay,” Steve said as he pulled you into a hug. You knew it wasn’t an instant thing as they started taking him off life support. You had all been sent out of the room when they started switching off machines and removing him from the very things keeping him alive. When you were brought back in, you sat by his side, his hand in yours. You excused yourself for a moment, needing a second to breathe. 

It wasn’t much later that they called his time of death. If you had been sobbing before, it couldn’t compare to the sound of your heartbreaking as his mother held you tight. 

It was late when you got home. Peter was asleep on the couch. You sent his aunt a text, saying he could stay the night since you didn’t want to wake him. It was a Friday and you knew the kid had been overworking himself lately with his school work. 

You checked on your daughter, tip-toeing into her room and kneeling beside her bed, leaning to give her a kiss on her forehead. You wanted to cry, but found you had no tears left. The morning would bring a new difficulty. Explaining to your daughter that her father wasn’t coming home.

You stepped into your bedroom, the first time since you’d gotten the news. You had been staying with Steve and Peggy, your daughter excited to have been spending time with her aunt and uncle. Bucky’s favorite t-shirt still lay flung on the bed. It was an old Vans Warped Tour shirt from 2009. One of your long standing traditions. You both loved and hated that shirt. It was worn at this point, from over a decade of wear and tear. But you loved the memories. You pulled it over your head, taking in the scent that was distinctly Bucky, before pulling on pajama bottoms and crawling into bed, holding his pillow close. 

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You were restless through the night. You were up by seven and found yourself making pancakes. Peter was still asleep on the couch. You checked on him while the first pancakes started to cook. You were never as good as Bucky when it came to pancakes. You always insisted he was a magician. 

When the pancakes were done, along with some bacon and sausage, you went to wake your daughter. The smell of pancakes excited her. It broke your heart and you kicked yourself for choosing the food. 

“Where is daddy?” she asked, confusion laced in her voice. Your lower lip wobbled a bit as you did your best to contain your emotions.

“We’ll talk about that after breakfast. Now, mama made some pancakes. I know I’m not as good as the Pancake Wizard, but I’m sure you’ll like them,” you said as you picked her up. She giggled as you lifted her high in the air. You knew Winnie and Rebecca would be coming over after breakfast. 

Peter offered to do the dishes before he headed home, something you weren’t about to argue with him about. You sat your daughter down in the living room. You still weren’t sure how you were going to tell her. She understood her father had been hurt, that he had been in the hospital. But this was uncharted territory. She tilted her head to the side as she looked at you. 

“Why are you sad mama?” she asked. 

“Because...because daddy isn’t coming home,” you said, choosing your words carefully. 

“Where he go?” she asked you. You swallowed, trying to keep your tears at bay.

“He died, sweetheart,” you said, ripping the bandaid off. Her brows furrowed as she tried to think about what that meant.

“What’s that?” she asked. It was difficult finding the words, but eventually you did. By then, Bucky’s family had arrived, and so had your parents. Winnifred Barnes took charge of helping you explain it to your daughter. You had expected the tears and you held your daughter close as she cried. You thought your heart couldn’t break anymore than it already had until you heard that sound. 

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It was sunny the day of the funeral. It hurt a little more. Wasn’t it supposed to be raining? Wasn’t the weather supposed to reflect your heartbreak, the fact that he wasn’t going to walk back through the door? 

You had met Bucky in high school when you’d gone to Brooklyn to hang out with Natasha after her family had moved up to the city to be closer to her grandmother, who refused to leave the city. Services were set to be in the city, but he was being buried in Jersey, the same place his father was buried. His grandparents had lived not far from your small hometown. His parents had moved to the city before he was born. You remembered that day so vividly. 

You and Natasha were walking down the street when someone knocked into you and you fell. Natasha had whipped around.

“Watch it Rogers,” she snapped. 

“Sorry! I’m running late! If I’m late again Mr. Weston is gonna fire me,” he said before running off. A boy with dark brown hair helped you to your feel.

“Sorry about him. He really needs the job. I’ve never seen you around before,” the boy said.

“I’m friends with Nat,” you said. 

“Well, friend of Nat, do you have a name or am I just going to have to call you beautiful girl?” he asked. You felt your face heat up at the comment. You saw Natasha roll her eyes before you gave the boy your name. He introduced himself. James ‘Please call me Bucky’ Barnes. You swore you fell for him in that moment. 

“I’d ask if you were ready, but I don’t think you ever will be,” Natasha said from the doorway. You looked at her with watery eyes.

“I don’t want to go,” you told her, your voice soft. She entered the room, placing a hand on your shoulder, gently turning you from the window.

“But you have to. I’ll be there. Steve will be there. You’re not alone. You are never alone,” she said, pulling you into a hug. You broke in that moment. You let out a sob that bordered on a scream as she held you tight. 

You saw the line of news reporters outside. You hated it. Vultures capitalizing on your grief. You had put your foot down and told Holt you wanted no news media at the funeral. They had no right. You always hated when they would show funerals of fallen police and firefighters on the television, as if their families lost the right to grieve privately because of their loved one’s occupation. 

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through this,” you admitted when your sobbing calmed. 

“You’re not alone. We’re here every step,” she said. You nodded. Heading to where the services were being held, officers from all over lined the streets, along with other first responders. You felt numb. You were half focused until Steve stood to speak. 

“Detective James Barnes was more than an officer. He was a loving son, grandson, brother, husband, and father. Bucky is...was my best friend. I don’t know life without him. Many of us here don’t know or remember life without him. Some people would describe him as quiet, moody, and hard to talk to. But once you got to know him? You would learn that he was a quiet comedian. He loved to go fishing and had a sweet tooth that drove his wife mad because there was never anything too sweet for him. When we were in high school, she made him a cake that had more sugar in a single bite than could have been considered healthy to prove a point. Bucky ate the whole thing,” Steve said. You laughed a little at the memory. 

He told a couple of other stories, like how worried Bucky was when your daughter was born and how he once rescued your parents’ cat from a neighbor’s tree using nothing but some rope and a laundry basket. He talked about the days where Bucky would get him out of trouble when he’d get into fights. It was the first time you had smiled in days. 

Your heart felt like it was beating out of your chest as silence fell over those gathered once more. You knew what was coming. You’d heard it before. End of watch, last call, the final farewell to the fallen. A call that would never be answered. No one ever thought it would be them sitting on the hard chair, listening as their loved one’s badge number was read out with the words “end of watch”. 

You weren’t surprised Jake was speaking in place of Captain Holt. It made sense. Jake was one of Bucky’s closest friends at the 99, even if they didn’t always see eye to eye. 

“Barnes was...when he first started at the 99, we hated each other. This stupid, sexy, blue eyed and broody man comes into the precinct and sits down at Amy’s old desk. Like, who did this jerk think he was? But he soon became one of my closest friends. I’ve been struggling to find the words to say what I need to say. The precinct won’t be the same without him. He was the reigning Halloween Heist champion. I still don’t know how he pulled it off with just a shoelace and some glitter,” Jake said. You chuckled at that. Your heart ached as you listened to him speak. You hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to him or Rosa. They both seemed to be avoiding you. Sam told you to give it some time. You knew he was right, but you were still worried about them both, even in your own grief. Rosa had been there and you couldn’t shake the feeling that she felt guilty. 

The drive from the city to Jersey saw streets lined with more people, a solemn procession down the Jersey Turnpike to the shore. As you went through your hometown, two ladder trucks sat with their ladders raised facing each other. You had roots in a close knit community. You and Bucky may have lived in Brooklyn, but everyone knew the two of you. Everyone knew his grandparents, knew his parents, knew his sister. 

The graveside service was a blur, all the while lost in your thoughts and your tears, the tears you feared would never stop falling. Your daughter climbed in your lap.

“Ok mama, no cry,” the toddler babbled, placing her hand on your cheek. She was still so young, at an age where she wouldn’t remember him, wouldn’t remember Saturday morning pancakes, the daddy-daughter days where Bucky would take her to the park, to Build-a-Bear, even though you insisted she was still too young to fully appreciate it, the days he’d do her hair for her because no one could say no to those eyes and the look she’d give you. Bucky wasn’t the greatest at styling hair, but your daughter never cared much about that. She loved it because her daddy did it. 

The cemetery started clearing out, leaving you with your friends, your family. You stood to place your flower on the casket, your daughter following suit. Slowly, the others started leaving, until it was you and Rosa. Rebecca and Sam had taken your daughter with them. 

“It should have been me,” Rosa said, her voice cracking. You shook your head.

“Don’t think like that Diaz. You start thinking like that and you’ll never forgive yourself,” you said. 

“The perp was aiming for me and he jumped in front of me. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead,” she said. You pulled her into a hug. She was stiff for a moment before she wrapped her arms around you and let herself sob.

“You know that’s who he was, Rosa. He’d have done that for any of you. Don’t let this guilt eat at you. He wouldn’t want that. I don’t want that,” you told her. 

“He should still be here,” she said. You held her tighter. 

“But he’s not. And that hurts. But it’s life,” you said.

“You should hate me, scream at me. Something. How are you so calm?” she asked. You sighed.

“Because you’re my friend. And I know my husband. Even if he knew the outcome, he would have taken that bullet every time. You hear me? Every time. You’re riding with me,” you said, nodding toward the waiting car. 

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Routines were hard to break. You found yourself reaching for him in the mornings, the remnants of a dream at the forefront of your mind. The cold side of the bed was a reminder that it was a dream, that he was gone. Some days you were on autopilot, pouring two cups of coffee, making his just how he liked it, before remembering you only needed coffee for one. His laundry sat untouched. You couldn’t bring yourself to wash it. 

Rosa had become a fixture around the house. If Jake and Amy weren’t over for dinner, she was. A quiet understanding existed between you and the 99. They would always be welcome. They would always be family. It was why two months after his death, Rosa, Gina, and Amy were sat in your bedroom with Natasha while you paced, three pregnancy tests sitting face down on the dresser. Jake was in the other room with Charles. You questioned your decision to leave your daughter in their care. 

“Well?” Gina asked, giving you an expectant look.

“I can’t look. I can’t,” you said. 

“Then I will,” Amy said, picking up the tests.

“You do realize she peed on those, right?” Rosa asked, an amused smirk on her face. Amy dropped them before apologizing. 

“Might as well read them out, Ames,” Gina said. A smile emerged on Amy’s face.

“You’re pregnant,” Amy said. For the first time in two months, you smiled. You had chalked your last missed period up to the stress of everything. Sure, you and Bucky had been trying for another child, but you didn’t think you were pregnant, you didn’t dare to hope that you were. 

Your first appointment, you couldn’t bring yourself to go alone. You asked Rosa to join you.

“No,” she said.

“Rosa, please? I can’t do this alone,” you said. The other woman glared at you.

“Fine. But only because I can’t stand the sound of crying,” she said, crossing her arms. 

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Seven more months passed by, and Bucky’s birthday arrived. You were officially on maternity leave. You brought your daughter to the cemetery, flowers in hand. She was another year older, having turned four in February. 

“Any day now, Buck. Our son will be here,” you said as you sat on the cold ground, thankful for the lack of snow. You placed the picture your daughter had drawn under a rock in a protective sleeve, before securing it with a metal stake through the holes meant for a binder. A small collection had amassed there over the previous months. You would swap them out every so often, placing them in a box you kept at home. 

You had barely gotten in the door when you felt a strong contraction. You looked toward the photo on the mantel. It was a photo of you and Bucky from the day your daughter was born.

“You...you know what Barnes, fair play, fair play,” you said to the empty room. You waited a bit before you called someone. Steve and Peggy were on their way to watch your daughter. Natasha and Rosa on the other hand were set to be your support in the room. 

Just shy of midnight, your son was born. You had told Bucky once upon a time, that you wanted your son to share his name. He had laughed and agreed, but only if his middle name was Steven. You had smiled at that. James Steven Barnes. You looked at Rosa.

“Would you like to hold your godson?” you asked her. Her eyes widened.

“My godson?” she asked. You nodded.

“Yeah, Diaz. Bucky and I talked about it a long time ago,” you told her. It was true, you had. For the two of you, it hadn’t been a religion thing. You wanted to know that your kids would be in good hands if something happened. Steve and Nat were your daughter’s godparents. Jake and Rosa would be your son’s. Between the four of them, you were confident that should something happen, your kids would be well cared for and loved. 

You were still healing. The hurt would never go away. You hated the word goodbye. But you knew. This goodbye wasn’t forever. Bucky wasn’t gone, not truly. You looked at your daughter and saw his smile. You looked at your newborn son and saw his eyes. Your weekly conversations with his mother revealed more stories you hadn’t heard before. Bucky may have been gone, but he was woven into the very core of your life. You could see him in the jokes that flowed between the 99 when you’d hang out with them, in the way Steve was teaching Peter how to defend himself, even though he swore up and down he was doing nothing of the sort. You saw him in the way you’d catch Natasha jamming out to music you knew she used to hate when you’d walk in on days she was watching your daughter. He lived on in all of you. 

You closed your eyes to rest as the last of your visitors left your hospital room. You swore you could hear his voice as you drifted off, a smile on your face. 

[zd772]

Expert Interview with Professor Piero Garofalo

The following contains edited excerpts from an hour-long interview conducted with Professor Piero Garofalo from the UNH Italian Studies department. Professor Garofalo is a professor of Italian Studies and the coordinator of the Italian Studies program. He has recently taught linguistics and film studies for the Italian department. When he came to UNH there was no Italian program so he was essentially hired to introduce Italian to UNH. He developed many of the Italian courses that UNH offers, started the department’s study abroad program, and worked with others to get the Italian minor and major developed. His research experience, which can be explored in more detail here, includes explorations of culture and cultural production within certain periods, fascism’s relation to this, and internal exile in fascism, to name a few areas of interest. For my interview, we discussed fascism, populism, and media.

Disclaimer: The content is edited for length and clarity, but the meanings behind the answers are not altered. The full transcription can be accessed here for more information. The format shares highlights of quotes or responses on specific topics which demonstrate my understandings as well as Professor Garofalo’s expertise.

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Interviewer: Zoe Dawson (ZD), senior Communication student at UNH

Interviewee: Piero Garofalo (PG), professor and program coordinator for Italian Studies Department at UNH

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On the topic of fascism in relation to our course (p. 2):

ZD: So I’ve looked into your research on the COLA website and I saw that you had some research focus on fascism (PG: Mhm) so first I thought I would share a few of the things that I’ve learned in this class so maybe we can have a conversation about that or hear about your research... So, in a reading by Federico Finchelstein from my class, we read that “Fascism was founded in Italy in 1919 but the politics it represented appeared simultaneously across the world.” (PG: *nods head*) And then, also he talked about Mussolini’s version of [fascism] being that “the creature was bigger than the creator,” which I thought was interesting. And so those two points, I thought, were significant in relation to Italy.

PG: Yeah. So, I think Federico Fincehlsltein is, I think he’s Argentinean (ZD: *nods head*). I’ve read several of his studies and he does a really good job of taking concepts like fascism, in particular, fascism and populism, and globalizing them beyond the usual suspects. So instead of just looking at fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, he’ll look at Latin America and different movements to kind of give a broader perspective.

I definitely agree about what he said about fascism in Italy in the sense of, the term itself obviously comes from Italian. Preceding Mussolini there was a movement in Sicily called The Fasci Siciliani. Fascia really is just a bundle. It’s a bundle of rods or sticks. So, that movement was really a workers’ union, almost like a unionized attempt to form a union against these large landowners and that movement was suppressed. The government intervened and they were striking and twenty-two of them, twenty-two of the strikers, were killed. And that’s a very different type of movement than what Mussolini was doing (ZD: Mhm), even though the origin of the term is the same. Yeah, so we have this movement in Italy that begins in 1919 and takes on the name of fascism, and that term kind of ends up being, you know, good PR (ZD: *laughs*) and has a lot of success internationally and becomes sort of the default term, kind of becomes overused today right? We talk about ‘fascist, anti-fascist’ without contextualizing the terms.

And yeah, I think it also, the second part that you mentioned, I think it definitely did grow much beyond what he was trying to do or thought of. And so, when we talk about fascism, even within that historical context, we need to be careful about what we mean because Italian fascism is different from Spanish fascism from the 1930s, from German Nazism, and so on and so forth, but even though they share many commonalities and a similar sort of source within each of those societies.

On the connections between fascism and populism (pp. 6-9):

ZD: … I have a few questions related to what I’m about to say, but also in our class we’ve learned about the idea of modern populism as being a post-fascist idea, and also being like a reformation of fascism in post-war contexts so what are your thoughts in relation to Italy since fascism was so prominent?

PG: Yeah I understand the definition, but I don’t know that I necessarily agree with that definition because there are many movements that I would describe as populist which I would not describe as fascist (ZD: *nods head*). If populism is also sort of this mass reaction to the elite, we hear that rhetoric a lot. We talk about Trumpism as a form of populism, you hear that rhetoric against the liberal elites and that sort of thing. You know, there was the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was the 99% against the 1%. You could even think about Black Lives Matter movement, as a grassroots movement or people reacting against the elite, the people in power, the people who’ve created a system that doesn’t allow them to flourish.

In Italy, we have two movements, in your blog you talk about them both. We have the League, the Northern Leagues which now have expanded beyond just being the Northern Leagues, that are a populist movement that I would align to some degree more closely with that idea of fascism, of neofascism. But then we have the 5 Star Movement which describes itself as a movement whose major tenets are the environment, sustainability, access to democracy- everyone’s supposed to have a vote and have access to a vote and participate in the vote, you’re not supposed to be excluded, which many of its programs we would associate more with the political left…

So, a direct line between neofascism, or fascism, and populism I don’t necessarily see. Lots of different movements which have certain characteristics that might fall into these different categories. And it’s become such a broad term that it’s begun to also lose its significance. The word itself as you know, the Latin word populus or in Italian popoli, it’s the people and having that word have a negative meaning. I don’t think it co-opted that way either, I like to think that when people are reacting to an injustice that they see that involves fundamental changes in society, that can still be a positive and not fall under the same rubric as Hilter and Mussolini.

ZD: … That made sense. In our class, I think in the same Finchelstein reading, he talks about how the word ‘fascist’ and the word ‘populist’, they’re both sometimes used interchangeably and also used to describe something as evil or bad even when that really isn’t the case with historical definitions, so what you said made sense with that.

Then also relating to fascism, what do you think the remnants of fascism look like in Italy? I know you mentioned the League, which is far-right.

PG: There is a party that’s more in tune with fascism than the League even. Its new name is Brothers of Italy, FDI- Fratelli d'Italia, and that’s like Le Pen’s party in France. So that’s sort of a far-right party that really does see itself as the heir of fascism. Its earlier iteration, Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, was a part of it. After World War II, the fascist party was nonexistent, but this party formed called MSI- Movimento Sociali Italiano, Italian Socialist Movement which was really a fascist party, although the die-hards stuck with that it was always a very tiny party.

The other big difference, of course, between Italy and the United States is that Italy has many political parties and it’s easier than here to find a party that conforms more closely with your ideas. Here you kind of have a choice between two parties, and you might agree with everything your party says, but chances are there are divisions. Some things you agree with, some things less. There the parties are much more splintered, there’s an issue that they don’t agree on, they kind of split and go on in different directions.

So this party then became Alleanza Nazionale, or AN- National Alliance, and in that iteration in the 1990s it kind of rehabilitated its image as being professional, not talking about fascism the way it was spoken about in the past but trying just to appear like a legitimate party. They didn’t use a lot of rhetoric, it wasn’t populist in that sense, it wasn’t trying to appeal to people’s emotions and whatnot. It was trying to just rehabilitate fascism in a way that made it seem innocuous and the latest iteration of that party because different moments or scandals or events have led to the elimination of Italian parties… So the latest iteration is this one, Fratelli d'Italia, Brothers of Italy, which is the real right-wing party. The League, the Northern Leagues now there are various Leagues so we just call it the Leagues, shares many commonalities with right-wing parties. In particular its very strong stance against immigration and its xenophobia toward immigrants. In other aspects, it’s anti-European but it’s anti-Italian as well. These parties go back to origins of the modern Italian state where they never see that they’re Italian, that they’re from Venice or Milan. They see their local identity which is what survived for thousands of years. They never managed to bring the puzzle of Italy together to form a unified country.

So, they’re very much rooted in the local; in the local traditions, in the local ideas, the local language, and that’s why they’re anti-immigration. They’re anti-anyone who isn’t them. They’re anti-Southern Italian. They’re anti-everything it seems. They wanna secede, they want total autonomy. That’s why they’re anti-European because European identity kind of erases or limits your national identity… And that’s what we see in Italy, in particular, is that populism frequently takes on that League form of local identity. You have a League in Sicily, it’s the same thing, ‘We wanna be independent.’ So it takes on these kinds of xenophobic and philo-fascist attitudes in many activities. It also sees the central government as the enemy because it conquered Sicily literally. So in Italy populism, with the exception of the 5 Star which is this very different kind of movement, the populist movements tend to be very focused on the local identity and reasserting a local identity that the Italian nation has tried to wash over, eliminate, white-wash for the past 150 years since unification.

ZD: Yeah, I think that’s interesting what you were talking about with the regional specificity kind of. I watched a documentary and one of the politicians was harping on ‘Italians First’ but based on what you said it sounds more like specific to their region, their people first. (PG: Yeah.)

On how populism has affected the political climate in Italy (pp. 9-10):

ZD: … how would you say populism has affected Italy’s overall political climate?

PG: Well it’s definitely created more chaos. The Italian political system was intentionally designed to be weak. After fascism, the Constitution is intentionally designed to not let political parties accomplish very much unless there’s a lot of support for what they’re doing. The moment that there’s opposition to what they’re doing they get kicked out of power. So it always seems like Italian governments don’t last very long, but that’s built into this system…

The populist parties have made that more difficult because there’s less room to compromise. They have very strong stances on big issues that used to be, despite differences, pretty much agreed on… So you’ve lost room to really coalesce, to form a coalition with other parties with enough common ground where you can really accomplish stuff. That’s always been a challenge but not really a big one because we see historically these same parties really ended up forming the next government only with a slight change and then they got the legislation that they wanted to do until they hit the next crisis. There was a lot of predictability. You weren’t worried that the country was gonna go in a completely different political or economic or social direction. Now it’s a lot harder to predict, there’s a lot less certainty and it’s not clear who the opposition is either. The center-left parties are also reforming themselves and fractured and also have less coherent identities so it makes things much more messy and tricky now.

ZD: Yeah that makes sense and I’ve definitely seen that. And it seems really relevant to right now also. I researched a little about Giuseppe Conte’s coalition and that really led to him having to resign.

PG: Yeah, and it was one of the center-left parties that withdrew. They had like 1% of the vote, but that 1% was all they needed, and all of the sudden he didn’t have a majority and he was out. And it was a gamble because they could’ve gone to elections or Salvini could’ve come into power or something and now we have this technocratic government and we’ll see if it lasts until the elections next year.

On the populist presence in the media (pp. 12-13):

ZD: … one of the people I focused a lot on was Matteo Salvini and his use of Facebook and Facebook live to kind of “expose” people like I’ve seen him shouting at immigrant families and things like that. And it’s very blunt and in your face (PG: *nods head* Right) which is effective for his followers which I think is interesting. So if you follow any Italian media and government, how would you say the populist presence is?

PG: I think it’s expressed the most through social media. In Italy, the media for many years was dominated by the RAI, sort of the BBC of Italy. So you had these sort of government-owned and so anything they talked about they’d have to present all the different parties’ sides, everyone had to have equal time on television running for office, this sort of thing. That changed in the 1980s when Silvio Berlusconi came into power, so it’s part of the Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher movement, this neoconservatism of the 1980s… In the last decade especially, social media has become the center ground for promoting your ideas, promoting your campaigns, and being media savvy is extremely important for, especially populist politicians, but modern politicians in general.

One of the things about Donald Trump was this constant use of Twitter, right? Always keeping himself in the news. Obama was considered incredibly media savvy, but he didn’t do things the way that Donald Trump does and Joe Biden is not media savvy in that same way at all. But as you pointed out with Salvini, they’ll do lots of events which they’ll stream live through Facebook. They keep issues in your face. If it’s print media or the 6 o’clock news, it dies after a day or two or three, but they don’t let it die. They keep it in your face, in your feed constantly. So they’re very active on Twitter and other platforms, though certainly, Facebook is the most dominant one. They use it to connect to people and to keep them enraged in a sense, you know? To keep you emotionally invested so that you’re out there voting, promoting that point of view, and you’re keeping them on everyone’s mind. PR is half the battle, so if it’s always out there they must be important, they must have something to say.

ZD: Yeah I was gonna ask how the forms of media play into social and cultural grievances, but that really seems like the answer (PG: Yeah). That it’s so in your face that you can’t really avoid it. I was gonna ask also what populism’s role is in inflating that, but that also seems to be kind of the answer.

PG: Yeah I think that it doesn’t matter what the issue is. Whether it’s a boat capsizing in the Mediterranean or a boat being stopped, or some sort of government scandal- I can’t think of a good one that’s happened recently, but anything is an excuse for outrage that allows them to step forward and say, ‘Look at what they’re doing, we need to stop this’ even if they’re doing the same thing…

---

Thank you again to Professor Piero Garofalo for taking the time to be interviewed and giving very insightful answers!

---

Finchelstein, F. (2017). From Fascism to Populism in History. Oakland, California: University of California Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvpb3vkk

[swobe]

big data and widening inequalities

One consequence of the global digital revolution is that growing numbers of citizens are now placing significant amounts of personal information, and trust, into the ownership of private, online multi-nationals. Although seemingly innocuous, this submission of privacy has effectively ‘morphed the public into a database of users’ (Lovink, G. 2016: 21), wherein citizens willingly update their profiles and input new data about their worries, desires and actions every single day. Political value can be extracted from this data, providing insight into the fears and motivations of an electorate. This value is now recognised internationally and has resulted in the emergence of a global market for political consultancy and strategy organisations, whose focus is on the compilation and analysis of privately-owned user data, commonly referred to as Big Data (BD) analysis.

This paper explores the utilisation of BD analysis within contemporary political strategy through the case study of influential political consultancy firm, Cambridge Analytica (CA), discussing its relationship with Facebook and contribution to populist political campaigns within the United Kingdom (UK) and United States (US) (Bartlett, 2018; Goodwin, 2018; Moore, 2018; O’Neil, 2016; Wylie, 2019), looking to highlight the inadequacies in online regulation regarding the misappropriation of private user data and spreading of misinformation. Additionally, this paper will investigate the stifling effect such analyses can have on the ‘emancipatory potential’ of digital technology and explore widening inequalities in Asia through review of Jason P. Abbott’s (2001: 99) ethnographic analysis of the online political economy in China. However, before exploring how individual instances of BD’s political application display regulatory inadequacies and serve to perpetuate inequality, it is necessary to further define BD, discuss the current regulatory climate surrounding the prominent social networks, and assess the impact such analysis is set to have on future state sovereignty.

BD is the analytic field concerning the complex, predominantly online, datasets that are commonplace in the digital age (Moore, 2018; Moore & Tambini, 2018; O’Neil, 2016). These datasets accumulate by default within the functionality of social media platforms, with private entities allowing for increasing levels of ‘out of sight’ data aggregation.  In this essay BD refers to the use of data scientists and consultancy firms by political parties and organisations to calculate the ‘how best to manage their various communication channels’ (O’Neil, 2016: 74) in real-time during the runup to a democratic vote. Again, this process seems rather inoffensive, as the digital age requires updated means of political campaigning; however, the contention surrounding BD analysis in political campaigning stems mainly from the manner in which data is acquired. Such analysis often requires private entities to misappropriate user data from social networks on behalf of state interlocutors, both undermining the democratic process and breaching numerous data privacy regulations.

In a Bourdieusian sense, these new tools of political analyses contribute to the construction of a new digital form of governance, wherein state actors are granted ‘soft power’ (Nye, 1990) over citizens in the form of access to private and personal data, internet browsing habits, and even location tracking. What makes this digital power ‘soft’ is that it relies on the influencing of the public through co-opting and persuasion, in the form of targeted advertisements, as opposed to coercing through bribery or threats of violence. Such co-opting requires access to a specific technical capital, in this case BD analysis, the possession of which, whether direct or indirect, enables state actors to reproduce forms of governance that deliberately concentrate power into select social groups (Bourdieu, 1986). This power is only maintained through the continued willing and passive submission of data and privacy from citizens, with contemporary democracies relying on this submission in order to exploit the aforementioned inadequacies of current online regulation, highlighting the precarious nature of privately-owned datasets and the threat to digital democratisation that such co-opting poses. Of the three most prominent online multinationals (that is: Facebook [subsidiaries: Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp]; Alphabet Inc. [parent company of Google and Youtube]; and Twitter), this essay will focus predominantly on Facebook, whose role in the digital public sphere has been heavily debated in recent years (Bartlett, 2018; Moore, 2018; O’Neil, 2016). Currently boasting an active userbase of over two billion (Facebook, 2019) its value as a tool for improved communication and global publishing is simply impossible to ignore, and its exponential growth has seen the site become a primary news source for many citizens (Moore & Tambini, 2018). However, as a result of the social network possessing the largest informal database of the global population, and with their mobile app sitting at the top of the most downloaded list of the 2010’s (CNET, 2019), it is only natural that the platform finds itself at the forefront of contentious online political strategy as ‘the leading space in which election campaigns (and referenda) are fought’ (Moore, 2018: 111).

Beyond the controversy surrounding Facebook’s psychosocial effects, such as the potential for addiction and negative mental health (Moore & Tambini, 2018; Morozov, 2001), the site has been accused of facilitating the spreading of fake news and the misappropriation of user data (UK HC, 2019; Wylie, 2019). In the UK, this manifested in the form of the 2017-2019 Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee’s final report on ‘Disinformation and ‘fake news’’ (2019). This select committee was called in direct response to the public and media outcry that followed the UK’s 2016 European Union (EU) membership referendum, which will be discussed in the following section, where claims of foul play were made against campaigning organisation Vote Leave as a result of their relationship with CA and Canadian political technology company, AggregateIQ (AIQ), both of whom have been found to have misappropriated user data through Facebook in order to deploy targeted adverts for the Leave campaign (UK HoC, 2019).

The resulting report was scathing of Facebook’s current lack of regulatory guidelines for data protection. It stated that CEO Mark Zuckerberg had ‘shown contempt towards both the UK Parliament and the ‘International Grand Committee’ for his failure to appear before the committee or ‘respond personally to any of their invitations’ (UK HoC, 2019: 89), suggesting that Zuckerberg believes Facebook are dealing with issues of data privacy and misinformation on their platform adequately. The report also recommends a ‘compulsory Code of Ethics’ for social media platforms overseen by an ‘independent regulator’ (UK HoC, 2019: 89). The committee advocate for a significantly more robust system of legal liability for the social networking giants in order to prevent them from shirking regulatory responsibility and ‘hiding behind the claim of being merely a ‘platform’’ (UK HoC, 2019: 89), which, in an era of fake news, misinformation and rising national populism (Goodwin, 2018),  would only serve to further facilitate the abuse of their network.

The UK’s referendum result, which left much of the world’s democracies ‘flabbergasted’ (Moore, 2018: 110), presents the direct threat that BD analysis poses to marginalised communities. The new algorithmic campaigning methods that BD enables have been proven to be the most efficient means of building, engaging and speaking directly to voters (Moore, 2018; O’Neil, 2016), and the communicative shift within political campaigning prioritises the online world and side-lines traditional, boots on the ground methods. Moore (2018) posits that the days of fretting over access to Royal Mail constituency directories are long gone, and that political campaigns are now able to reach nearly every voter in a specific constituency ‘without even having to pay for postage’ (ibid.: 127). This evolution in campaigning methods is a direct result of the rich user profiles that BD analysis creates.

Before 2014, such profiling was used primarily by marketing agencies and advertisers, as it allows for the delivery of tailored advertisements for each individual consumer, increasing the likelihood of a potential purchase and contributing to a more efficient mode of marketing. However, in 2014, in a move made in the interests of online UK advertisers, Facebook merged their UK user database with that of Arkansas-based marketing company Axciom (Moore, 2018). This new data ‘contained lots of different ways to split users geographically’ (Moore, 2018: 126) and sparked a new interest in BD analysis for political campaigners (Bartlett, 2018; O’Neil, 2016; Wylie, 2019).  Most notably in the case of AIQ and CA, who despite ongoing investigations from UK, US and Canadian governments (Gizmodo, 2018; Ljunggren, 2019; UK HC, 2019), have already managed to blindside the traditional political class, facilitating a transformative populist shift which has rocked the UK and US political landscape. This paper argues that in these cases (2016 UK referendum & US Presidential Election) BD has been weaponised by political campaigners to promote national populist rhetoric (Goodwin, 2018), and has directly contributed to the further marginalisation of minority groups and those of lower socioeconomic status (SES) in both nations.

Although both campaigns ran on uniquely divisive narratives, the mutual nature of their campaign rhetoric was fundamentally characterised by a similar nativist nostalgia. This similarity also rang true for the practical side of the respective campaigns, with both placing large emphasis on BD analysis for the distribution of their national populist messaging (Moore, 2018; UK HC, 2019; Wylie, 2019). The calculated delivery of such political messaging involves the systematic construction of a database of ‘persuadables’ consisting of the unmotivated young, the unconfident and ‘the downright apolitical’ (Moore, 2018: 127). Theoretically, this focus on untapped, or floating, voters unlocks new sections of the electorate who for one reason or another avoid mainstream news sources. This should be a positive effect; however, offset with the aforementioned nativist nostalgia, encapsulated by slogans such as ‘Take Back Control’ (Vote Leave, 2016) and ‘Make America Great Again’ (Trump, 2016), the electorate are exposed to messaging whose core hinges upon a longing for regaining control over the political and socio-cultural infrastructure of the respective nations, control which is framed as being directly under threat from the globalised structures of the EU and NATO. ‘Powellite’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1804) in its nature, this messaging promotes an insularity that has paradoxically followed the British for centuries, paradoxical in that continues to dwell on a ‘deep nostalgia for empire’ (Virdee & McGeever, 2018: 1803) whilst remaining sceptical of the aforementioned super structures of the contemporary political world.

This form of campaigning boils complex ideology down into consumable, and most importantly marketable, chunks of information, often oversimplifying to the point of meaninglessness in the case of ‘Get Brexit Done’ (Conservative Party, 2019), it then distributes these chunks at a moment of the campaigns choosing through BD targeted delivery. This is not to say that the contemporary electorate is bereft of personal or political agency, but instead that when at the behest of persistent online stimuli, voters naturally begin to normalise and internalise rhetoric, which in this instance was built on the reclamation of national and community identity and supported by staggered phases of targeted messaging. Such rhetoric plays on latent nationalist sentiment within the electorate and seeks to vocalise feelings of lost cultural identity within target demographics and remedy them with national protectionism at the expense of perpetuating anti-immigrant sentiment. For example, in the last ten days before the 2016 referendum the Vote Leave campaign homed in on the ‘powerful but questionable claim’ (Moore, 2018: 127) that if the UK remained in the EU floods of Turkish migrants would enter the country. Not only was this messaging factually inaccurate, but it actively sought to mobilise anti-immigrant sentiment through formulating a ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable migrant’ (Bulat, 2017: 1). This formulation, although indirect, is a clear example of the new digital co-opting process, wherein BD analysis not only facilitates the promotion of falsified claims regarding the EU (Ref) but claims that damage both migrant communities within the UK and perpetuate difference for new citizens outside of the country.

Similar themes of paradoxical nativism can be found in President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign, whose utilisation of CA’s BD analysis is well documented (Bartlett, 2018; Moore, 2018; Wylie; 2019). The President-to-be’s inflammatory campaign rallies promoted the kind of national isolationism explored by Goodwin (2018), and this was echoed in Trumpian campaign materials (Warner et al., 2018). The persistent mobilisation of anti-immigrant sentiment in his rallies, campaign propaganda and even tweets ensured that ‘immigration would become the topic most associated with his candidacy’ (Benkler et al., 2018: 105). Initially, this mobilisation focused on the potential migration of peoples from fellow North American nation Mexico, with Trump launching his campaign on June 17th, 2015 with the statement:

‘The U.S has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems…’ and ‘When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.’

Trump’s rhetoric gradually shifted over the course of the campaign from a focus on ‘Building the Wall’, to one whose central concern was on Muslim migration into the country and the threat of ‘Radical Islamic Extremism’ (Benkler et al., 2018: 105). This shift encapsulates the core aim of the campaign, which was to perpetuate the othering of migrant communities and play up to the idea that ‘the ordinary man or woman on the street is being sold-out by out-of-touch elites’ (Geddes, 2013: 247). It is important to note the relative unpopularity of both candidates amongst the electorate (Benkler et al., 2018: 105), which ensured the result would be one of tight margins, fought ‘over a small number of key marginal districts’ (Bartlett, 2018: 100). This made for the perfect terrain for the application of CA’s refined messaging methods and provides another indirect example of BD analysis contributing to the success of national populist campaigns, which in this instance effectively sought to other migrant communities and promote racial and cultural discrimination (Warner et al., 2018). These two examples provide an insight into the disruptive potential of BD analysis within democracies who adopt a comparatively laissez-faire approach to internet usage and regulation among their citizens.

In order to move beyond assessments of BD analysis within laisses-faire, liberal democracies and strengthen the argument that BD contributes to widening inequalities globally, this paper will now look at the work of J. P. Abbott (2001), whose comparative ethnographic analysis of the online political economy in China and Malaysia explores the degree to which active conservative regulation of the digital realm impacts on political mobilisation and perpetuates longstanding race, gender, and class inequalities in the region. In addition, this work investigates the stifling effect of globalisation, in the form of increasing commercialisation and privatisation, on the online world’s potential to alleviate inequality through increased democratisation.

Abbott first posits that the online world is akin to the ‘19th century American West’ in that it is ‘vast, unmapped, legally ambiguous’ (Abbott, 2001: 99) and without any formal warden. This analysis of the digital public sphere implies that the politically disenfranchised would be able to use the net in China as ‘an alternative medium’ through which their opposition to state intervention and regulation could be voiced (Abbott, 2001: 99). This runs in direct contrast to the common view held regarding Chinese state intervention within the online world, suggesting that despite heavy surveillance and filtering of content activists are still able to negate their government’s wariness of online dissidence. Abbott states that Chinese State has continuously acted to try and clamp down on the use of online communications by political activists, whether in the form of raiding ‘so-called ‘illegal’ internet cafes’ or introducing ambiguous regulation regarding the publishing of content which contains ‘state secrets’ (that is, anything that has not been formally verified by the government) (Abbott, 2001: 103).

Here we see the active use of the new form of digital governance play out directly, with state actors utilising BD analysis and online encryption to limit the potentially damaging effect that open access to the internet may have on perceptions of a nation. It is also important to note that this analysis was published in 2001, and that since then the Chinese Government has developed and now is implementing a system of National Social Credit. This relies on the use of both BD analysis and facial recognition within cityscapes in order to ‘rate the trustworthiness of citizens’ and is intended to promote ‘transparency and ‘sincerity’’ among the population (Bartlett, 2018: 199). This disconcerting development highlights the urgency of the battle for positive digital transformation, and clearly displays the enormous political value of this emerging technological capital within contemporary democracies. Abbott’s work further supports the argument that despite the emergence of communicative technologies that seek to remove limitations on an individual’s ability to communicate, exchange and produce capital there are both direct and indirect forms of state resistance which look to challenge new forms of collectivity.

To summarise, this paper has demonstrated an understanding of the potential impact of BD analysis on widening global inequalities. It has achieved this firstly through highlighting the developing regulatory pressures facing contemporary social networks, with particular focus on the accountability challenges Facebook poses internationally (Moore, 2018; Moore & Tambini, 2018; UK HC, 2019; Wylie, 2019). In addition, it has illustrated the new form of digital state governance that is shaping contemporary democracies globally. This was then supported by two key examples of BD analysis facilitating the widening of inequality through the perpetuation of anti-immigrant rhetoric, which has served to give voice to distinctly nativist ideology in both the UK and US. After which it has sought to comment on the ‘emancipatory potential’ (Abbott, 2001) of the digital evolution through review of ethnography on the Chinese political economy, which displayed both state suppression of free political debate online and the genuine conceivability of BD analysis being used to police citizens in real-time (Bartlett, 2018).  

In conclusion, it is apparent that the digital public sphere holds immense potential for increased democratisation and voter participation; however, in its current form BD analysis is being utilised, both directly and indirectly, as a force for reproducing state political power, breaching individual privacy and the further marginalising of minority and lower SES groups.

[fifa21pcdownload]

Fifa 21 PC Download

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[seekthemist]

“Wow, i didn’t realize you were that…flexible.” for capri

“Wow, i didn’t realize you were that…flexible.”

As this arrived without pairing, I decided it was time to unleash some non-Lamen content. We thus unleash THE BERENCEL, a bit more sensual than actual total smutty smut but still partially under the cut (Maybe, fucking Tumblr).In a stunning development, with this I basically finished the Captive Prince prompts I had!

Other Captive Prince fills: Lamen #47 ; Augandros #96(107) ; Lamen #99(110) ; Lamen #12+72(79) ; Lamen #86(97)

From this prompt list!

This was not the intended use of an exceptional charcoal damask fabric in its finest cut.

The import had been a painful negotiation process that had required some diplomatic arm-twisting and an intercession with Patras’s trade partners, and while Ancel would never concern himself with the dull practicalities of statesmanship he had applied himself extensively to smoothening the spirits and mollifying the whims of guests and merchants and nobles.

A lavish parcel of very priced textiles had been the very least Ancel had expected and he had not been disappointed when the carriage arrived.

The disappointment came later, while Ancel was dictating a detailed list of instructions for their tailors to a young member of the household–ten years younger than Ancel but with a fluid handwriting Ancel had yet to achieve.

“I’m not going to require a new jacket,” Berenger said, crossing the room distractedly to go towards his paper cutter on the desk. That was an argument Ancel had been forecasting, its absence would have shocked him more than its presence. But Berenger followed through with, “And that damask is not of my taste.”

That was blatantly unacceptable, so Ancel made sure to find the appropriate moment for a retaliation.

He ran his finger along the fabric, testing its strength and its twists.

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“I got you for myself,” Berenger countered, sounding a bit strained.

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“Why is it always the jackets!” Berenger lamented.

“Why indeed…”

Rather than replying in more details, Ancel crossed two sides of fabric and pulled.

Berenger had admittedly some very nice arms. A very nice everything, under those infuriatingly dull clothes. Ancel could almost forgive him the bland haircut for the compact curve of his biceps and the jutting tendons of his forearms.

He felt even more forgiving now, with those same arms tied with damask from above Berenger’s elbows all the way down his wrists.

When he pulled, the arms followed, tensing behind Berenger’s back.

Ancel liked the curve of muscles, so responsive to the movement, like a wave from arms to shoulders, shoulders to collarbones, collarbones to shoulderblades. He liked even more the way Berenger did not even resist it, kneeling on the floor where Ancel had put him. Nakedness really made Berenger’s body more justice than any clothing of his wardrobe.

Standing in front of him, Ancel started to secure the ties to the wrought-iron frame of the bed, and Berenger sighed a bit, as if lost in thought, or maybe sensation. He lowered his chin to his chest at that motion, and Ancel caught himself following the curve of Berenger’s neck, the jutting vertebra between his shoulders. There was a delicate-looking spot at the back of Berenger’s head, just where his short–damn brown–hair faded. Ancel ran the tip of his fingers on it, rubbing delicately, and a Berenger’s muscles tensed more markedly.

It was extremely aesthetically pleasing.

Following a capricious instinct, Ancel tightened his grip on the fabric and pulled harder.

“Mhn…”

It was a soft, breathy sound that went all the way to Ancel’s cock, and Berenger followed the increased strain. His arms got closer together, close enough that Ancel could bind them both with the same loop if he wanted to, and the centre of Berenger’s back arched to accommodate the position.

Ancel knotted the fabric into steadiness and went to raise Berenger’s chin up.

Berenger looked back at him, a tiny frown of concentration along his forehead. But he was also flushed, and his cock rested hard against his naked thighs, so Ancel could easily get what he was concentrated on.

“I didn’t realise you were this flexible,” Ancel whispered, stroking along Berenger’s face. An unassuming face, one Ancel wouldn’t have thought of as attractive, years ago. But it was, in its familiar way. “All that riding and horses are actually good for something, then.”

Berenger gave a breathy laugh, compliant and at ease with Ancel’s whim. It made fondness twist inside Ancel, in a way that still feel unfamiliar even though it was not so uncommon.

“Finally, a point in favour,” Berenger replied.

“Don’t get too used to it,” Ancel murmured back.

Berenger was distracting. Distracting enough that Ancel had to remind himself exactly what he had been doing, what was the point of this. He rubbed slowly with a thumb on Berenger’s lips, and they opened under Ancel’s touch, with a small kiss on his fingertip.

Ancel drew his hand away and moved out of Berenger’s vision, purposefully.

He picked up a toy from a cupboard and slicked it with their oil, keeping his movements steady and silent just to make Berenger strain to hear him. It was a very standard plug–boring, almost–and no one batted an eye when Ancel purchased it among others. He did wonder what the court would do, if they knew Ancel played with Berenger more often than the reverse.

When he walked back, Berenger was still calmly sitting on his heels, patient more than blindly agreeable. For someone so dead set in his ways and with such a collection of dull habits, his Lord had proved to be delightfully easy going.

“You think you can get up your knees? All tied up?” Ancel asked, without bothering to hide the toy in his hand.

Berenger eyed it carefully and the nodded, “Most likely.”

Ancel hadn’t known what he expected, but seeing Berenger press his hands against the bed frame and arch himself up was definitely an interesting experience. He wasn’t like a dancer, or a Pet. There was nothing refined in his form, his abdominal muscles and thigh were built for strength and not for grace. But he was hard, and bound, and complying to Ancel’s directions.

Ancel loved his.

He loved it enough to steady Berenger’s hips and thrust the toy in so very slowly. Enough, also, to guide Berenger to sit back on his heels. Enough to be pleased by the moan that broke through Berenger’s clenched teeth and to kiss it off his lips.

“What would the court think,” Ancel whispered, their lips brushing, “if they knew you’re more fun than any of them?”

Berenger rolled his eyes, but there was a little tilt in his lips, eyes averted–a bit shy, a bit pleased. “That’s obviously unbelievable.”

“The best type of secret, then,” Ancel winked at him, and got back to his feet.

He cradled Berenger’s head with a steady touch, swallowing silently at the sight of Berenger, all strained and wrapped in damask, rubbing his temple against Ancel’s hand like one of the horses. It was never passive, with him, but neither was a conquest. Ancel would have places he wanted to go, and Berenger would be willing to follow, just so gauge what Ancel might have seen them.

By the way Berenger was rocking on his heels, his cock twitching as the toy shifted inside him.

Ancel got a hand off him and undid his breaches, slowly. If there wasn’t enough blood in his cock already, the way Berenger opened his eyes, suddenly focused to this sound he must know very well, would have been enough to make him hard.

With his arms so pointedly bound back, Berenger was just a bit tilted forward, at the perfect height for ancel to stroke his cock on Berenger’s cheek. It was late in the evening, Berenger had a bit of unshaved stubble, and the sensation of it was intense on such sensitive skin.

Never one for games, or teasing, or stalling for no purpose, Berenger turned his head around to kiss the side of Ancel’s cock. His eyes were a bit lost in the closeness, hazy with heat. Ancel groaned under his breath even though it was not appropriate for the performance–Berenger wouldn’t mind it, though, so it was fine.

“You really should think about that jacket,” Ancel said, in a stochastic jump of argument that maybe only fit the situation in his own mind.

“I’m not thinking about the jacket,” Berenger murmured, voice hoarse and eyes heavy, kissing up towards the tip of Ancel’s cock. His neck strained in the effort, his arms tensed, Ancel could follow every wave of compact muscles. It was lovely.

He grabbed at Berenger’s nape more fully, sliding his cock along Berenger’s open mouth. The sensation was intense enough to make Ancel shiver. “You know I’m gonna fuck you after, right?”

“I really damn hope so,” Berenger groaned, shivering in an arch and rocking back more purposefully on his heels–against the toy.

“Good,” Ancel said, and thrust his cock in Berenger’s welcome, open, wet mouth.

Maybe this had been the appropriate use of the fabric, after all.

[comicteaparty]

November 9th-November 15th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from November 9th, 2019 to November 15th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

How do you deal with a lack of engagement from your audience, both emotionally and physically?

IzzyNinjaMaster

Oooo now that's a good question. If my online audience doesn't respond, I personally always show any new page updates to my family and friends and get feedback and comments from them. Really great for support. But sometimes their not available or I don't have anything new to show them. When this happens, I just look to myself for support. I know that doesn't really make sense or sounds kinda cheesy but it's what I do. I get myself pumped up and excited for what I can do next in the story and how awesome it will look all drawn out. And I go from there, I'll start drawing out ideas or writing out new chapters. So just be your own hype man, not just with your comics either but with everything. Great for self esteem.

Sorry went on kind of a rant right there

carcarchu

I prepare myself emotionally to not have any expectations. If you expect nothing and receive something you'll always be happy!

IzzyNinjaMaster

Lol true very true XD

Deo101

I'm not completely sure what this question means by physically, but I just kind of keep making art to move past it. Something that has helped me a TON is to make art that's just for me (like, that I don't post anywhere). I think that if everything is made to be shared, then we get a little too used to trying to find validation with engagement. With comics, specifically, I try to make none of my goals relate to engagement. I only have goals for myself and what i'm producing. If I'm hitting all of my goals, then I feel good about what I'm doing! No one engaging with it is just kind of like "okay!" Another smaller thing that helps me is getting my work done well before I upload it! for some reason just getting a bit of time distance between when something is done and when I post it I dont feel so bad if people don't engage.

Cronaj

I'm fairly lucky that I have a small following on one of the sites I post on, so while some weeks might be slow with feedback or engagement, I'm usually not completely devoid. I also have some very supportive family members who read my comic and often comment or text me after I update. As for what I do personally when I don't have a lot of engagement? I do a lot of self-reflecting, which is probably not the healthiest of practices. I question what I'm doing, trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong and how I could improve. I also try to understand other external factors at play, such as my readers' personal lives, jobs, school, holidays, that might have delayed them from engaging with my work. For example, I know that during November, as we get closer to Thanksgiving, there is going to be a huge drop in readership, because a lot of my younger readers will be preparing for school finals and visiting with family. By knowing this, it helps me cope a lot better. And if all else fails, I vent to my fiance or my little sister. It really does help to have someone to whine at for a bit

khkddn

If I were to get completely zero engagement on something I'd do what I'd always do, message people I know irl like "validate meeeeeeee"

In general I just take a step back from what I've posted and focus on something else. That way I remember webcomics isn't everything, and by the time I check up on things again there might be some sort of audience response.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I kept my work hidden for the first few years I was working on it (wanted to iron out any wrinkles before I was comfortable sharing) so in comparison, any engagement afterward - even a tiny amount - is pretty great! And even now, some updates get more traffic than others, for a lot of different reasons. Luck, timing, quality, etc. I always keep in mind that this project is - at its heart - for me and my own enjoyment/fulfillment. And if I’m pleased with where it’s going, that’s a win.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oof, that question really hit me where it hurts. Over the years I’ve lowered my expectations, because while I used to have an active audience in the ‘00s, I’ve rarely gotten any engagement on my comics in the ‘10s. It’s definitely made me feel depressed and like a ‘failure’ to put heart and soul into my comics and art and get 0 reaction online. I honestly don’t have any way I ‘deal’ with it. I make something, hoping to get some comments > I get no comments > I get depressed about it and feel like my work is garbage. Rinse and repeat several hundred times. I keep going because I just love to create, but it’s like an actor trying to put on a performance and no one shows up to the play. It has gotten better lately and I’ve started getting some engagement for the first time in many years, but I honestly don’t have a good answer for how I handle that emotional reaction to reader silence.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Also good to keep in mind that lots of people may read without commenting, and still enjoy it! I did a poll wondering who would be interested in doing guest art, and way more people responded than I expected. It opened my eyes! Sometimes you just can’t tell until you outright ask for feedback

keii4ii

There's definitely a risk to that, though. You ask and still get nothing. Or worse, you ask and get negativity. Asking is a worthy gamble, but it takes courage! Sometimes when we don't have enough courage, we gotta find it elsewhere first, before we can try that gamble...

I lost that gamble one too many times and need more Courage Fund before I can try again, lol

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

True true! It was a gamble I had no real expectations/assumptions about, so I didn’t have much room for disappointment. Even getting one person who says “This is cool!” is enough to fuel me for days. But I know that’s not how it is for everyone. Once you’ve been disappointed once, it can take a while to get the urge to try again. I can’t imagine getting negativity, though... I think THAT would wreck me.

keii4ii

Sometimes I don't even ask and someone just randomly drops negativity off at my doorstep... I need to remember that I have also had wonderfully positive responses, that it wasn't all negative. But it can be hard to remember that on bad days.

Deo101

Yeah, negative comments always seem to be the loudest ones... They can drown out dozens of good ones if they hit you right.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I did develop a pretty thick skin for negativity in art school, which was really fortunate because my comics garnered a lot of negative attention at first. Though thinking back on it, I was making very androgynous and gender non-conforming characters (even though I never stated anywhere that they were queer) in a time when the public attitude towards such things was far less kind than it is today. At the time it was draining to get so many trolls, but unless I was already having emotional difficulties in other areas of my life, I was able to let it roll off.(edited)

keii4ii

The weirdest thing with my negativity is 99% of them come from actual readers who mean well. So I have a hard time dismissing them like 'oh they're just haters.' It's not necessarily harder than dealing with blatant trolls, but it is an entirely different beast.

Deo101

Sometimes I go and reread positive comments when I'm down about things

Yeah I'm not sure that I've had any trolls tbh... Its all readers saying what they think

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Avid readers who give backhanded compliments and ‘well-meaning’ but very subjective critique can definitely be detrimental.

keii4ii

In Korea, I dunno if they're still a thing, but 1-2 decades ago there was this type of theft called slash theft. It's a type of pickpocketing, done on the street while walking by. They bump into you, briefly and lightly, but you don't think much of it because Seoul is a crowded city and you brush against other people all the time. But during that brief bump, they manage to slash open your purse and take all the contents. It's an amazing ninja level skill for sure. I know people who had their stuff stolen that way. Back to the Courage Fund analogy, sometimes a negative comment isn't just a normal theft of your Fund. The comment slashes your purse open, and now your bag can't contain Fund even if you put more and more into it.

It can take a long time and lots of support to sew your purse back.

Deo101

Idk if other places to slash theft, im sure they do, but im pretty sure historically its been a big thing. The term "cutpurse" comes to mind

keii4ii

(:o I didn't know that was a term! The more you know)

Deo101

(some book i read (wasn't great but you know) used the term a lot and i was like "ok wtf is this")

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

That’s a very good analogy for it, and I definitely understand what you mean. I had to take a three year hiatus from one of my comics once after a IRL ‘friend’ ripped the comic apart and called me a terrible writer in less-than-kind words. I had already been going through some very bad things with my health and family and it hurt me far more than it should. It took some encouragement from some very dedicated readers to convince me to pick up the comic again.

Deo101

(so i associate it with pirates now)

That's really terrible lee... Om glad you picked it back uo though!!!

keii4ii

I can super relate to harsh comments hurting way more than they should, when you're already in a bad state. >_<

Deo101

And also it is a really good analogy keiiii

Yeah things just kinda get harder to deal with in general when you're more tired/upset in other areas

keii4ii

The most devastating feedback I've got would have done far less damage if I weren't in a fragile state at the time.

Deo101

Like you can't go be safe elsewhere if everything is a source of stress...

keii4ii

(For all we know those slashers in Korea could be pirates )

Deo101

:o

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Does Korea have pirates? If so, I’m moving to Korea.

(Sorry, we’ve probably gone way off topic for the discussion)

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I got antsy when someone made a small critique of my lettering (rightfully so, though - lettering is hard and I’m still learning) so a proper heart-stabbing, bad-faith critique might sideline me for a while. Gotta be prepared for that someday

Deo101

Its weird, it really seems to be mostly about how I'm doing elsewhere in life now that im thinking about it. Also being further along in the comic helps cause I've got years of support and "just keep chuggin" under my belt

Like the other day someone critiqued me randomly and called my characters stupid and i was like "dam ok, your comment getting deleted then" but a year or so ago a comment like "I'm sorry im a little confused..." Made me second guess everything for weeks

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Ohhh Maybe the obviously mean/troll comments are easier to deal with, than feeling you let down a reader who was genuinely trying to understand the story. I would definitely react similarly.

Deo101

Iunno, the big old critique was a normal reader who has left other comments he jusy kinda randomly did it. But yeah I think it can be easier to shrug off things that are CLEARLY antagonistic versus someone being harmlessly confused

Because confusion can mean I'm not being clear enough and need to change things and whatever. Its vague in a way that hits your anxiety

keii4ii

Yeah, when someone is obviously being a jerk, you know it's on them

omg... reader confusion has been the bane of my existence

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I dunno, man, art school just toughened me up to most negative comments. If one person out of five is confused, I don’t take it personally and just explain it to them to clear up confusion. If everyone’s confused I think ‘Hmm, maybe I should retcon in some dialogue to make it more clear’. I guess art school really teaches you to distance yourself from your work and be very objective about it. BUT as I said, I’m not immune when other bad things are going on and it becomes the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Deo101

Though THEN you kinda get like "why am I being a target???" And its very frustrating, at the very least, and it does definitely still hurt... (Wrt trolls)

keii4ii

It's hard to tell who's confused and who isn't sometimes

Deo101

Yeah Lee im in art school right now, but for me its different when I make something to be critiqued versus a passion long term project

If I am asking for critique too, im braced for it in a way I'm mentally prepared for. Im not always braced to have someone be like "its pretty good buuut..."

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Ahh, I can understand that. I guess I’m able to view my passion projects the same way I did my school projects. It took time, that’s for sure. It’s a process of desensitisation, and was something I had to build up over years.

keii4ii

I'm disproportionately sensitive about reader misinterpretations/confusion. I'm 95% sure it's because one bad experience. Someone thought my main story was garbage, but they liked parts of it, so they told me to basically make a different story using those parts. After that, every time a reader didn't recognize the main story (I got a very prominent B plot, so it's kinda understandable that some people mistake it as the A), I got vivid flashbacks of that one bad experience. Every time someone said they liked [this character that The Other Person liked], I got flashbacks. Took me good 2-3 years to get over it.

Deo101

Its also a lil different when it's like.. i wont be changing these pages so unless it's a critique for moving forward its kinda pointless and i cant really apply it

Damn keiiii that's really rough

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, that sucks.

keii4ii

Yeah, it's hard to be motivated when the underlying message is "your first 100 pages are hot garbage, but you can still improve........ even if readers will give up long before they get to the decent 101st page!"

Deo101

RIGHT...

I don't want to have to preface "check out my comic!" Wirh "i promise it gets better..."

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

COUGH That’s exactly why I’m reduxing Eryl’s hot garbage beginning right now COUGH

Also because I’m a masochist and perfectionist.....

keii4ii

I think "it gets better" is fine when it's a reader reccing it. (I remember some of my friends reccing multi-season anime series to each other, going, "it gets better after season 1") But yeah, as the author we can't be the ones saying it.

Deo101

Mhm.

And I'm still hapoy with my old pages. I know I could do them better now but they're perfectly fine and they get the job done so... Idk its just hard when someone is like "wow two years ago you made a mistake, :/"

Like. Yeah, duh... I've spent like a thousand hours on pages theres gonna be some mistakes

keii4ii

It took me a long time to realize that Flaws =/= Problems

Deo101

I'm learning and getting better youre gonna have to bare with me here

Nutty (Court of Roses)

are you kidding i still get crit on stuff i made TEN years ago

Deo101

Mhm

keii4ii

omg

Deo101

Well its not a competition

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Same, Nutty

Nutty (Court of Roses)

True sorry ;;

Deo101

Ur name just changed colors keiiii

You: flaws =/= problems Your name: im ascending

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I think...learning how to like not be bothered by negativity that much is a skill. Super freaked out one time when someone said they didn't know what's going on when reading HotV whoops

(turned out they just had to re-read a bit and it was just webcomics being webcomics)

Deo101

I had a group of readers say they were co fused and one person asked me to explain the last 2 chapters and i was like "holy shit am i being this unclear????"

Its stressful for sure

Nothjng wrong with being concerned with ut

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Keiiii has reached a new plane of existence. The blue is unrefutable proof

Deo101

Its something you're passionate about and you want to be as good as it can be

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Yeah...

Deo101

So any critique, regardless of validity will be something you WANT to consider

Which is fine and theres nothing wronf with taking things to heart like that

But also if youre Happy with it that's all that matters

You gotta be your #1 fan kinda thing

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I'm personally super uh...yeah I am having a hard time dismissing criticism

even if it's in bad faith, haha.

keii4ii

The #1 fan thing sometimes reminds me of that scene from Lilo & Stitch

The scene of Lilo's rag doll. It's been years since I watched it, so memory's a bit fuzzy, but I think all the kids were showing off their dolls, and Lilo wanted to show off hers too

but the other kids didn't like her homemade-looking doll, and it made her sad, almost not like her doll for a moment

but she picks up the doll again afterward

There are days where I relate to that. I never not-love my story and my characters, but sometimes I feel like everyone else has a low opinion of it, you know?

and I'm like lonely Lilo hugging her rag doll in the sad corner

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Yeah I totally get that and...loving what you do first and foremost is really important. I don't think in a medium like webcomics you would be able to keep going

keii4ii

I'll always love my Doll but I do wish this little corner weren't so lonely, kinda thing

Deo101

I feel that keiiii

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Hmm

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

When the ‘critique’ is detrimental it does become a problem. Like that ‘friend’ I was talking about earlier who bashed Eryl to bits. He told me to ‘read some Stephen King’ to learn how to write. I was making a high fantasy story, not a horror story. The writing of a horror author is simply not applicable to building a good fantasy adventure story. That’s when I knew he was full of shit. But the damage had been done, and I lost all motivation for the project for years.

keii4ii

uuugh, I'm so sorry that it happened to you D:

Deo101

Also this story is one that i have dropped and picked up SO many times, and its wildly changed over and over, and so i worry a lot im not making it in its final form, i suppose. I worry i started it too young, and so critique of the older parts hits that anxiety

Wow lee that's terrible...

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Gosh...

Deo101

Also you can't really compare Novel writing to comics imo. The structure can be compared but...

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I think HotV is like a project I've worked on since...2008? And it changed with me and I feel pretty confident that it's in its final stage.

keii4ii

and not every story needs to be a Stephen King story

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

But yeah, you can really not compare writing for novels to writing for comics wth

nah

tbh it's weird (I like King personally) but his stories and also his writing do have flaws too so

what

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I actually do use novels as a source to study how to construct my comics. But! Studying the right genre is important. I’ve the feeling the only books that guy read were Stephen King, so that’s the only kind of story he was familiar with.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

God when I was still developing a picture I did got featured somewhere and someone criticised the way I did knees and linked to the picture of another artist going: Hey draw knees like that

Deo101

Every story will have flaws, its impossible to make one that is perfect. Well. Its impossible to make a story thats perfect for everyone. So alk you can do is try to make a story thats perfect for you!

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Agreed, Deo

keii4ii

^ THAT REMINDS ME

Deo101

Omg

keii4ii

(going back to the original question) With no response, or negative response, one thing that helps me is hearing other people gush about their beloved unpopular stories!

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Hmmm

Deo101

!!!!!! Me too!!!!!!!!!

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I am having this problem and went to ask on twitter what ppl loved about their projects

and that's really uplifting somehow

Deo101

I LOVE reading other comics and just seeing how much passion is in them its like a light

keii4ii

I need to remember that just because someone, or even a lot of someones, thinks a story is trash, doesn't make it the universal truth

Deo101

^^^

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I WILL GUSH ALL DAY BOUT MY BELOVED UNPOPULAR STORIES and once you open that damn I am unstoppable. You will regret it, trust me.

keii4ii

And people gushing about their unpopular favorites is an excellent way of reminding myself

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

hehe

Deo101

I have been very lucky and have had a few incredibly kind people who i can remember fondly when i worry my story isnt reaching people. I Know it has touched a few lives, and if it makes even ONE person happier (even if thay person is me) then im doing my job and its worth all the time and effort.

That was kind of off topic i swear it connected in mt mind

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Absolutely

I feel it's connected

Deo101

Phew

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

bc hmm it's a way to deal with times when there is not much engagement?

Deo101

Aha! There we go yes :)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I do generally write very off-beat, unpredictable stories because I like reading / watching those kinds of things. A lot of my favourite movies bombed at the box office because they weren’t formulaic, which was what I loved about them.(edited)

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Remind yourself that there is people who enjoy what you do and who are happier bc of it C:

Deo101

Mhm ^^

Also i have my characters on a shirt so i can just wear that and be like "fuck yeah. I have a shirt. It cant be a bad comic if I've got merch babeyyyy"

Which admittedly is a very odd way of dealing with anxiety

But like.... You should get your Characters on a shirt.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

dfhwioufheuf Deo that's cool tho

I made so many like...background designs and posters for HotV and some of those I WANT ON A SHIRT

Oh I think what also helps me is to find a friend and just talk about the comic?

Deo101

The place i use lets you get up to 6 items a month as a sample order and it's severely discounted my shirt was like $15

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I should do that. I have designed some T-shirts but that wasn’t for personal stuff.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

omg

keii4ii

I'm actually in the (long) process of re-learning how to talk about my comic

Deo101

And yeah for sure having people i csn talk with/joke with about my comic helps soooo much

Like the fact that i know these 5 people will get my jokes like this

THAT helps a TON

These people actually are the reason I was confident enough to be able to start after having a bad friend drive me to almost drop the story for good

So having their support is probably one of the biggest things thst helps if no one else engages.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Okay, so on the original subject of ‘How to deal with no feedback’ I do talk about my stories a lot with my two best friends. They are my biggest fans and my sounding boards. They let me go on and on about plot threads in my comics and it’s one of the main reasons I keep going. Even when I get 0 reaction online, I still have two people who I know are reading the comic and think I should keep going.

Deo101

Or like, when my family is being homophobic about my work kinda thing. Friends are good for that...

Yessss lee having people you can talk with about it is SO good

keii4ii

ngl, I'm jelly of those of you who have go-to support friends who are genuinely into your story! That's something I hope to have some day, myself

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t know whether to give a sad react for homophobic family or a happy react for supportive friends

Deo101

Happy react ^^

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Still sorry about your homophobic family tho, but your friends sound awesome

Deo101

Yeah but :> I know I'm doing good work. Again those few people who i know my story has touched.. i know I'm doin good work.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@keii4ii Just know I’ve been an acid fan of your comics for over 10 years and honestly think they’re some of the best comics I’ve ever read

AVID

NOT ACID(edited)

keii4ii

Hey acid is important too

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

GOD MY PHONE

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

hiodcnioefwe acid

love this

I have one friend who has supported me since 2007 and I can always count on her freaking out about my comics Y_Y

so when I feel especially bad I turn to her

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

My phone is old and the keyboard lags and autocorrects like AAAAARGH(edited)

Deo101

Its okay same here lee

Typo club babeyyyy

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I have to edit almost every comment I make THANKS A LOT PHONE

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

shakes fist at ur phone to be more kind

I can't type on phone at all so...

keii4ii

Yeah, swipe-typing is high level sorcery to me

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

As someone who’s normally a grammar freak it causes me great pain that my texting is a syntactical disaster.

Deo101

I've been doing swipe a bit lately so it doesn't hurt my hands to text (I Tex too much)

keii4ii

This actually makes me wonder

What are some good, safe(ish) ways to reach out to people who may be 1000% willing to become that Support Pillar for your comic?

Deo101

I just straight up start doing it

keii4ii

For all I know they exist. But.. Schrödinger's pillar

Deo101

And gague the reaction

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

As an antisocial gremlin who hides under a rock, I have no idea.

Pakky

never hurts to ask

keii4ii

@Pakky You would be surprised

Deo101

Start sharing art, see if theyre curious, get deeper if they're good with it, kinda thinf

I've got friends who like to see my art but don't really care about my comic, and you kinda just gotta take it case by case

Pakky

mm fair enough, i always try to be supportive of content creators mostly because i would hope for the same in return. theres a lot of bluntness in my industry so if you do well you get praise but if you do poorly, you very well know it :/

keii4ii

Me: "Thank you for supporting my humble comic!" (this wasn't even asking, just thanking) Reader: "Well, your comic isn't that good." Me: "?????????"

Deo101

Wh

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’ll be honest, on the rare occasion a reader starts trying to get really close to me, my dumb brain freaks out and I put some distance in because I have Issues for days.

Pakky

thats just rude on their part

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

what

holy fuck

keii4ii

I've Been Burned

omg, that question mark react is so appropriate

Deo101

I've chatted with some readers here or there but I don't know if id wanna use them as a support pillar

I kind of have trained myself to think readers as fickle.

If they get sick of my story, theyre allowed to leave

They dont owe me their time or energy and them being here is a gift

So I'll chat and stuff and answer questions but unless someone is my friend i will not lean on them for support.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Honestly it’s happened that I’ve gad readers try to get really close or be my sounding board, and I think they were just trying to be enthusiastic and supportive but my stupid broken brain always panics and goes WARNING STALKER ALERT WARNING ABORT ABORT.

Deo101

Hey better safe than sorry

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

juppp

Deo101

I'll chat but i wont give personal information and im not gonna like, get all into spoiling everything im planning lmao.

If someone asks me a question thats a spoiler ill answer it in private

But bringing raw ideas up for help... I need very specific people for thst.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

The thing is they weren’t even being creepy or trying to get really personal. They were just very friendly and I apparently can’t handle that. ><

Deo101

The friend group i get writing helo on are all writers, and they all understand my vision. They don't write stories like mine, i dont write stories like theirs, and we all fully understand our suggestions may go unfollowed.(edited)

Also whoever put the eye emoji yeah if u have a question straight up dm me and I'll answer.

keii4ii

It's okay, your comfort is important. If you want to be more open, you can work on that. But not everyone has the same comfort level and that's okay too

Deo101

Yes! Its all about what you're comfortable with

But I've personally got a small curated group of writers/artists who all circulate our work between eachother

Which i know is very rare.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Same, Deo...helped me a lot and I also know who to turn to when I'm down about engagement

Deo101

Mhm ^^

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

(also they are all perceived better than me so I believe them if they say sth nice)

Deo101

Omg

That group of people have done SO much for me honestly. Im thinking about them. I love my friends.

Also dont worry its nit all about me they also talk about and we help their work too i wanna be sure thats clesr

keii4ii

I figured it was all mutual! but now that you've said it's not all about you I'm suddenly imagining The Cult of Deo

That is 10000000% wonderful though

Deo101

I walk in and I'm like "y'all check out this new millennium lore" and they all take their hoods off and start scouring it for plotholes

keii4ii

Whilst sitting in a circle (a magic circle to be exact)

Deo101

Of course of course

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Damn, that’s awesome! I only see my friends every few months so I dump a lot of plot on them all at once, and it’s harder for them to give really detailed critique. XD

Deo101

Oh, I do this all online

Irl I sit down with my sister and we talk for 4 hours and Lose our voices LMAO

Cronaj

Good convos literally ALWAYS happen while I'm at work

keii4ii

I'm still here

Cronaj

Good, because it made me sad when you said you didn't have a support pillar

And that readers are fickle (which can be true)

But I don't think you know how much I love your comic

keii4ii

I'm seriously honored! I still fear that maybe people are not seeing the story I'm trying to tell, and are following the comic for some other reasons (which is valid, just not what I'm trying to achieve). But hey, I'll never find out if I don't keep going, right?

kayotics

keiiii, i love your comic and i think it's beautiful in many ways, not just the art

but also, on the topic of lack of engagement... I'm pretty fortunate in that my spouse is always really supportive of my comic, so when I need a little pep talk I can always ask them

sssfrs

I’m trying to collect as much negative feedback as I can so that I’ll know my comics strengths and weaknesses and I’ll be prepared to take criticism as it comes in the future. It is pretty frustrating having no response or fanbase right now but I started my comic pretty recently and theres still time for growth

Glowbat (Aloe)

when you're collecting feedback be mindful that there's a difference between constructive criticism and people being unhelpful and simply telling you they don't like your work

the latter wont do anything but bruise your self confidence(edited)

keii4ii

Yeah, and sometimes even well-meaning critiques can miss the point too, like if it comes from someone who thinks your work should be X, when it is intended to be Y. Easy example: My previous comic was a depressing drama centering around a terminally ill young woman and her doctor, and once someone told me I "needed more fight scenes." It wasn't even an action comic! In that case, the lack of fight scenes was not a weakness. It simply meant the comic wasn't for that person.

DanitheCarutor

On the topic of lack of engagement. My answer is really boring, but I just keep working on my comic regardless of how much/little engagement it gets. I never intended or expected to have an audience to begin with since my comic has sooo many problematic elements in it, whenever I get feedback it's super nice! Always a surprise, like seeing the machine light up when winning $500 on the penny slots! (In a way, getting engagement is kinda like gambling. You post a page and you may or may not win some comments in return... Not equating real people to items to win, of course!) Admittedly, if there is a page I feel would cause reaction but I get nothing, it is a little sad. It's not the end of the world, though! I got a story to tell, and as long as I can still draw I'm content.

kayotics

i relate to that a lot, Dani. I also never intended to make the comic for anyone but me, so the fact that anyone reads it is really exciting to me.

Cronaj

@keii4ii (Potentially off-topic, but is there somewhere to read your other comic(s)? Or are they all in Korean?)

DanitheCarutor

@kayotics Every so often I look at my reader base and think "Man, there are people into this kind of stuff??" It's an almost surreal feeling.

kayotics

Yeah I get it! I wouldn’t say mines too out there but there’s so many other fantasy dnd inspired comics out there that they could read that I’m surprised they even glance at mine.

AntiBunny

How do I deal with it? Usually experience a series of emotions such as "how hard is it to leave one little comment you losers?" Then "Who am I kidding, no one is reading this, I'm creating into a void," and finally pry a few comments from people who know me personally, reassure myself that I create out of a compulsion to tell my stories even if no one's reading, and start the process all over for next week. Not exactly a healthy method I admit.

keii4ii

@kayotics There is only one Toivo out there

@Cronaj aaaa the previous one was in English. But I would not recommend it It's unfinished (though it does have more than 600 pages IIRC) and honestly really rough.

kayotics

@keii4ii true....... one weird wizard boy

Cronaj

Dang... I LOVE medical stories. I'm seriously addicted to them. @keii4ii

keii4ii

I enjoy them too and I appreciate your interest!

Cronaj

scours the internet for the lost records

keii4ii

The site layout is also broken so yeah...

I guess another thing I do is try to comment more on other people's comics, to rec them publicly, etc. Being the change I want. I don't do this as often as I want, but I think/hope even the little bit I do counts.

mathtans

Heh, I'm basically with Cap'n Lee in terms of a cycle. I think part of my issue is I won a fanfic competition in 2004, and it's kind of been downhill since. I've posted regularly to a serial site for over 4 years, accumulating 300 posts, and last month it had 100 total views... there's been 2 comments since March.

On the actual comic side though (not serial) I've relaunched it more than once, and tried to flag the more recent index as a starting point. And yeah, just hold on to the few good comments, like the guy who applauds me for continuing to post even though I only have 10 people following on Tapas.

These days, of course, I'm too darn BUSY to really think much about the lack of engagement. So one solution might be to get married and have a kid. Then you're just happy when you manage to get content out, never mind if anyone remarks on it.(edited)

Mharz

Popping here just to answer the question becos it's interesting. The lack of engagement was a bane in my existence and honestly one of the factors why I had to see a psychiatrist. My doctor told me I have self-esteem issues which leads me to seek validation from strangers. This is the first thing I work on. I have to be confident enough to not break even if nobody likes my stuffs. Which means I have to love myself first. (People prolly see me as vain at this point) Second thing I do is keep a mentality of "nobody has to care. They have things going on as well" which helps me appreciate the small percentage of people who actually took the time to engage, talk, and be friends with me. I also try to put a positive spin on it. "Nobody cares therefore I can make as much noise on my social media as I want and no one will bother criticizing becos nobody cares." If people unfollow, it's on them. It just means they're not really a fan of my work and I shouldn't waste my time. And if my mental illness is too much, then I will disconnect from the online world a bit. Treat myself. Do something fun like gaming and baking and hang out with friends IRL if possible.

Mharz

I sometimes think it's karma on my end becos I'm so vain, I rarely get interested in anything so I'm not really a fan of many stuffs so that is something I accepted as well.

AntiBunny

Perhaps being a webcomic author sort of goes hand in hand with needing validation.

MJ Massey

OH BOY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT A LACK OF ENGAGEMENT?!

over the past week, I got 24 users. Granted, I didn't update, so that's probably why

So this is a four month overview of my website traffic. I hit a high of 184 unique users in August, and after that it plummeted to just barely over 100. And I hadn't really done anything different

I have never really gained a lot of traction with my comics. I'll admit that Black Ball definitely has more appeal than my last comic, so I have slowly been building an audience with it, but it's still been very slow. Sometimes it feels like I have to adhere to some extra set of rules while others can just throw up their comic on Tapas and have instant success. Of course, that's not the case at all

the key is to remember "why am I doing this? isn't it because I love making comics?!"

and to keep on pushing, keep up that hustle, and enjoy the ride. Make great content and it will be rewarding in and of itself

carcarchu

I'm not really sure it's as simple as simply throwing something up on tapas and getting instant success. there's a lot of work that goes behind every comic even if you don't perceive it

MJ Massey

well yes of course, I'm just saying sometimes it SEEMS like that

I'm a marketing professional, so I know there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes

Glowbat (Aloe)

theres, i think, a lot of factors in certain comics gaining traction faster than others that are mostly out of a creator's control. on mirror sites like webtoons or tapas you have to factor that more attention is given to certain genres and art styles over other because of what that crowd likes. if they're into slice of life romances in anime-esque styles then someone who writes fantasy mysteries in a more western influenced style may not get as much love as they deserve

its tough out there

ive been fairly fortunate to gain a steady bit of followers on tapas but on webtoons my reader engagement and subs are significantly lower

Glowbat (Aloe)

i chalk it up to the type of crowd

MJ Massey

I've been analyzing my audience and my work and have a hypothesis that my work just works better in bulk format. I think 2020 will be a year of transitioning into bulk distro instead of the page at a time format

and see if that helps. As well as some new marketing techniques and getting back into the con circuit

Kabocha

A lack of engagement... This is definitely... a topic. I feel like, sure, one's general marketability in any given platform will definitely make it easier or harder to attract an audience, but on the other hand? It's also worth making sure you kinda figure out what you want out of webcomics. Some people have been working on their projects (or existing within a fandom) for years - decades, even at this point, which can be a big boost to initial readership on a new project! Other people just have the advantage of being able to sit down and advertise, or having someone do that for them. Personally, though. I went in not expecting to get an audience, and for a long time, actively avoided even having a comment section on my site. I just enjoy making comics and creating things - and if it happens to make someone happy, that's awesome. But comics and art aren't the only thing I do in my life that make me happy, and I've found engaging other people directly about things like comic craft and resources to be about 100x more fulfilling than posting comics themselves. (And it is fun, sometimes, to gush about my OCs and how dumb they can be.) But how do I cope with it? Eh, it's honestly not a big deal to me. It feels less stressful in some regards, because the dayjob can get hella hectic, and trying to balance "OH GOD COMICS" with "OH GOD THE SERVERS NEED PATCHED ALL NIGHT TONIGHT" can be.... interesting.

(But oh god, I will admit, having someone come up to me and say, "I read your thing or used your photoshop/csp brushes" can be incredibly motivating. But other days, I have to be my own motivation, so...)

kayotics

Sometimes it’s helpful to keep a list of really nice comments or to write down memories of when someone told you they like your work. This can take a while to gather but if someone says something nice about your work, keeping it somewhere safe for a day you’re feeling bad can help boost that morale

It also helps me sometimes to think about how there’s a TON of people who never comment on things, but they’re probably regularly reading.

MJ Massey

Totally! I was building a landing page for my email subscription, and I was able to go back and find old reviews from my last comic, and it really got me pumped

Kabocha

Yeah! When I worked in a call center, the metrics on calls in -> surveys was something like... At best, you get 10% of your callers leaving surveys. And it's usually because you left an impression (good or bad). Usually the reality was at best, you'd hear back from about 2% of your userbase unless you gave them an incentive them to say something.

Mharz

re tapas and other platforms: I have to agree that certain genres really are more appealing there. I have two comics with different genres that I regularly update and the numbers are literally like night and day. It's a sad truth.

Mharz

I also love getting notifs on tapas when a person is binging my comics and liking every update. It means I got them hooked. :'3(edited)

nice reminder that there ARE people who like my comics.

Kabocha

Well yeah - even in traditional publishing, some genres generally get larger readerships than others (and higher advances) because they're more easily marketed. There's a reason why some publishers will categorize what's basically a fantasy story with romance subplots as a "romance" overall for a relatively unknown author (it's because they're more likely to attract more readers because romance is HUGE)

MJ Massey

true that

and you have to find where you audience lives as well

Kabocha

Yeah... I have some readers who only engage when they come back to catch up, which can be every 6weeks or more. Some only read when a chapter is done being posted, which is about every six months.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Re: Tapas. Yeah, Tapas especially has very particular styles and genres it likes (anime style + romance, especially BL). I posted Children of Shadow there for six months and had 20 total subs before taking it down. A while later I tried posting it on Webtoons and got 60 subs in one week. That level of engagement slowed down considerably almost immediately though, because the prologue episode is in colour and the main series is greyscale - and I discovered the hard way that the majority of Webtoons’ users do not like greyscale (I even got rating-bombed over it). My second comic is doing much better on Webtoons since it’s in digital colour rather than pencil like Children of Shadow. Each platform has its specific interests and it can be a struggle to get noticed if you’re not making something that falls into its normal styles and genres.

Glowbat (Aloe)

both tapas and webtoons really dont push their scifi comics hardly at all. Tapas' top scifi section is littered with discontinued stories (at least theyve abandoned tapas at any rate idk if theyre for sure no longer continued) which means that because i update weekly and sorta fall into a semi-anime inspired style i get some decent traffic from the small demographic who go hunting for a scifi comic

RebelVampire

That's not that surprising, tbh. Even in the realm of novels sci-fi is more of a hunt for where the audience is sometimes.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Scifi is an under-appreciated genre, imo. Unless you’re Star Wars, Star Trek or a Marvel comic, it seems like people don’t talk much about scifi.

It might help boost views if you rework your genre labels on places like Webtoons. Like, have Adventure or Drama as your main genre tag and Scifi as your secondary genre.

Glowbat (Aloe)

actually ever since avas demon went on webtoons ive been getting about 10-15 subs a week there

for a while i had listed aloe as drama first but the results werent fantastic as i think that genre has been flooded over there

keii4ii

I think sci-fi has some very prominent associations with the genre that don't apply to every sci-fi story -- e.g. the first thing a lot of people immediately think of is spaceship explody battles. So if someone sees sci-fi and they're not into spaceship explody battles, they won't read.

Glowbat (Aloe)

i may try adventure though if scifi doesnt pan out

keii4ii

Alternatively, if someone sees sci-fi and they ARE into that... and only that... they will leave once they find out the comic is not about that

Glowbat (Aloe)

thats also a good point

keii4ii

I've had similar difficulties even though fantasy is more widely accepted these days as a more varied mega-genre

People expect X, comic contains only a sprinkling of X and is about Y instead.

Glowbat (Aloe)

in my personal case, i've alienated potential readers i feel sometimes simply by having the cast be primarily lgtbq with an agender lead. but i dont regret that and im happy to have it deter people who arent down for that

RebelVampire

That is definitely true about sci-fi. Film has really biased people as to what fits sci-fi, where in reality sci-fi is a really wide genre. So a lot of stuff never gets a chance cause it confuses people.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Yooooo i feel that, glowbat. On one hand, I want ppl to know that my comic is a safe read for LGBT, but at the same time I know that announcing it as such will deter others on principle.

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

I feel the same way. The whole cast of Wayfinders is some form of lgbt+, but we don't actually adress it much, because it's an adventure story moreso than a romance. So it's like.... how do we tell the readers it ain't straight

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Fantasy does seem to get drowned by numbers. Eryl gets about 5 new subs per update and Children of Shadow only gets 1-2, and I think they’re just getting lost in the crowd.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Two of my characters jokingly told each other their identity through bard puns, plus I keep pushing for gay ships within the story, so I'm pretty overt with my readers about it ahaha.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

@The Q - working on WAYFINDERS I’m having some difficulty with that dilemma, too. Both my comics feature large LGBTQ+ casts but romance isn’t the focus of either. It often feels like there’s no good way to bring it up naturally until the romance threads surface very far into the story, and I’m always worried about homophobes lashing out when they eventually discover the comic is G A Y

Glowbat (Aloe)

in my descriptions i describe the comic as a lgbtq+ themed scifi flat out

keii4ii

Early in HoK, one character embarks on a journey for a personal reason, and the MC tags along. I've semi-recently heard from an American friend that she didn't really get the character's reason. He wanted to take a younger family member away from a bad living situation, but to the friend, the situation didn't seem so bad. After some talking, we realized it was a cultural thing. The situation was very obviously bad to Koreans, but it didn't/doesn't seem like a far departure from the range of normal life in the US, for cultural/societal reasons. I suspect that was a big part of the reason why people kept pegging my comic as a "fun adventure romp" despite the lack of fun adventures (it has elements of adventure, but is not that as a whole). The reason for the journey seemed superficial, like the author (me) just needed an excuse to start the Fun Adventure-Filled Journey. Whereas Korean readers, back when I was publishing it in Korean, immediately understood it was an intensely personal, difficult task that the shy boy decided to accept for the sake of love.

And yeah, LGBTQ+ as a tag/ part of the description seems like a good option to me too!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But then I’m also anxious that LGBT folks will think that’s false advertising because the characters’ labels aren’t mentioned until really far into the story (and it’s no where near that point yet). Aaaagh maybe I just overthink everything.

Glowbat (Aloe)

its really interesting to hear the difference in reception HoK gets

keii4ii

Yeah and the setting itself apparently feels different, too! To Koreans, it evokes secondhand nostalgia. But some non-Koreans have told me it feels fantastical and Ripe For Adventures

Glowbat (Aloe)

I feel you Lee- almost none of my chars have mentioned or done anything to illustrate their identities yet

keii4ii

(I also feel the need to mention, there have been non-Korean readers who got what HoK was about. Those readers mean so much to me! But I don't know if they understood that particular detail about Danbi's motivation for the journey early on.)

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

(I'm gonna put so much lbgt+ love in the background of the story everytime they get to a new city ahahahaha >:) )

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

To me, @keii4ii HoK is very reminiscent of Studio Ghibli films because I get similar whimsical vibes. But Studio Ghibli has always been more about emotional journeys so after a couple chapters I was like ‘Ah, yes, I think this comic is about the characters’ emotional growth’(edited)

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

(muhahhaa, also just let Sallly flirt with all the ladies in the BG)

Glowbat (Aloe)

yesss flirt with ladies

MJ Massey

I'm worried that my comic is not "gay enough" to warrant the LGBT+ label. The character's sexualities have very little to do with the actual story, and one character is actively hiding their identity

The Q - working on WAYFINDERS

SAME

keii4ii

I'm aro/ace/agender and I don't really feel "LGBTQ+ enough" so I can't really use the LGBTQ+ label for my own comic, even though I know the label isn't exclusively for ownvoices stories.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I admit I’m not sure I ‘got’ Danbi’s motivations on a cultural level, but I felt like the tone being presented in that scene made it pretty clear she was in a bad situation?(edited)

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

but... we have calculated a total of 1 straight character in our whole comic.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

‘She’ as in the niece, not Danbi. XD(edited)

MJ Massey

that's what it seemed like to me too, or at least that by leaving their village they were going to a better situation

Glowbat (Aloe)

first of all- high fives keii because agender solidarity and second of all if you have chars who identify as either not straight or not cis or both rolled into one then its gay enough to have the lgbtq label

to heck with gate keepers

there are plenty of queer peeps who just want to read stories that casually include people like themselves

but if you dont feel its needed you dont have to either

MJ Massey

I guess there is a certain expectation when you say "I make an LGBTQ+ comic" of how that comic will be, and I don't want to disappoint people or set them up to expect something different

I just figure that all kinds of people exist in the world, so I should include as many different kinds of people as I can in my work

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I probs should just put LGBTQ+ labels in the descriptions and be like ‘this is genre fiction but almost everyone’s queer even though you can’t tell yet’. XD

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I use the term "LGBT-friendly" to indicate that they're present, but might not be the full focus

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I write genre stories because I’m not that into romance-centric stories myself. I want queer heroes in the kinds of stories I like to read without the entire focus being on their sordid love-lives. I just want to read about the hero who slayed a dragon to rescue his prince instead of his princess, lol.

Glowbat (Aloe)

lol im in a similar position where i'd rather see the hero befriend the dragon

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I have plenty of that in my comics, too!

There’s some nice dragons and some very-not-nice ones. XD

Glowbat (Aloe)

(im insufferable in d&d i was a bard who tried to be friends with everything)

eryl is on my lisssst <3

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

This is why I love bards

Glowbat (Aloe)

hehe

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I'm always happy when people mark their stuff as LGBTQ+ if characters are present tbh Y_Y

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Also agreed with everything said above

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

All right, now Imma definitely have to add the LGBTQ+ labels to my comics next time I do website maintenance.

Glowbat (Aloe)

yay!

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Aw ye aw ye

Join the brigade

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yiss

I feel a bit bad bc I rarely read sth that's not clearly marked as LGBTQ+ or where I know the authors are part of the community whoops

But it's mostly the fact that I consumed hetero-focused media my whole life and now I can...choose.....

the dream

Glowbat (Aloe)

heck yes

im way more drawn to stories that are marked lgbtq+

keii4ii

Don't feel bad, because seriously, even if you exclusively read LGBTQ+ marked stories? There ain't enough time in this life to read every good story that fits that bill.

There are too many good stories out there and we do need to choose.

Glowbat (Aloe)

its just nicer because then i can enjoy the story without having to worry that in the middle of it im going to get a rude wake up call from an off colour joke or somethin at my expense

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah that's true

keii4ii

Sometimes we miss out on stuff that we may have fallen in love with, but that's the name of the game, the game of not having enough time

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Webcomics feel a lot safer than other media in that regard atm

Jupp especially if you're also working on your own stories

Glowbat (Aloe)

it sucks thinking theres a bunch of stories out there that im sure id love if only i had the time or mental fortitude to sift through a bunch of others.

keii4ii

(OTL that reminds me... there is one instance of trope use in an early chapter of HoK that falls into that 'off color joke' category. I don't have any excuses for it, just 'I just thoughtlessly parroted a trope that I saw elsewhere.' I regret it and hope to figure out an elegant way to rewrite that one scene.)

Glowbat (Aloe)

i dont have the energy to be burned so often by stories that seem good and then hit me with random transphobic bs or using slurs as jokes

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, as someone who grew up in a time when no one positively portrayed queer folks in mainstream stories (and there was no internet and living out in the boonies made it impossible to discover underground cultures) I love that now I can seek out tonnes of LGBTQ stories and drown myself in the gay every day.

Glowbat (Aloe)

yesss

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

jupp ;;

Glowbat (Aloe)

man if i could give ten year old me printed copy of paranatural and turn to the pages with rj's identity being explained? that kid would have grown up way happier

living in small towns aint great for queer peeps

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Nope it’s not. I was badly repressed until honestly only 3 years ago when I suddenly asked myself why I loved reading about and writing so many gay characters. And then suddenly my whole life made sense.

Glowbat (Aloe)

im so happy for you<3

Glowbat (Aloe)

its a heck of a thing thinking back on things and realizing why you do certain things

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Honestly there were giant clues from when I was still a little kid and I can’t believe it took me so long. XD But I’m digressing from the comic talk, lol.

Glowbat (Aloe)

haha i understand what you mean

i think its why its so important for comics to be inclusive

spare some poor kids the heart ache and confusion

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yes! The internet has created such a boom for indie comics and that huge variety of voices has been so so important.

Glowbat (Aloe)

as much as comics are an art, they're extremely powerful as a vehicle for teaching and generally conveying ideas

FeatherNotes

Can i just say how happy i am that y'all are making LGBTQ+ comics that aren't just romance tho? I'm pretty indifferent and on the ace spectrum for sure, so its so refreshing that we can have a queer cast just being cool and not hurt by identities. I wish i had that as a kid

Also no shade on romance but there's def a lot and lgbtq+ isn't just for that genre

So yes yall are 'gay enough' lol

Glowbat (Aloe)

i agree! queer peeps shouldn't be squared off in romance, which unfortunately i think is a result of people's gross misconceptions

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Admittedly, I use my comics as a vehicle to work through my own issues, so there are scenes planned where the characters have to deal with transphobia or homophobia. But I will always counterbalance that with other scenes that validate the characters’ identities.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Hmhm my story also deals with transphobia and dysphoria bc I'm working through own issues. I don't think that's a bad thing though

generally I think it's pretty ok if the story is not a constant misery train

(even those can be written well, but they are usually not my cup of tea)

Glowbat (Aloe)

i think its perfectly acceptable to use comics as a vehicle for that lee

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeahh tbh

MJ Massey

there's no wrong reason to make comics/create a thing

Glowbat (Aloe)

youre a queer creator and you're working with what you know so why not

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I know focusing on queer suffering has been criticised a lot but I feel there's more nuance to it. Especially if it's a LGBTQ+ person writing about it

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah. I’m a miserable emo and I write miserable emo stories, but I try to inject some hope into it, because I think that the majority of humans are good and/or want to be good.

Glowbat (Aloe)

theres this comic called dropout that does a wonderful job exploring the grittier truths of being queer

its a fairly short read but its super good

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Hmmm, I may look that up

Glowbat (Aloe)

i can dm you the link! no pressure to read it tho

twothirty

gosh, i just want to chime in because i really relate to earlier comments around labelling comics. I'm bi, but i don't wear it on my sleeve, and my own comic has like...1 straight character. I feel like there is an expectation for comics labelled as lgbtq+ and i don't want to disappoint people who are really looking for that content to be directly addressed.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Tbh I feel many people are just happy, if there's queer characters doing cool stuff (at least that's how it's for me).

Glowbat (Aloe)

i label my own comic as lgbtq+ and the plot hardly hinges on that being the central theme

just a bunch a gay scientists and robots in space

...i swear its way more interesting that that lol

man i wish i could get more of my comic out faster so i didnt have to worry about spoiling basic things geeze

twothirty

haha im into it! Ahh, well probably a big part of it is my own insecurities, but what are webcomics for if not... for figuring out your own crap (edited)

keii4ii

I feel that X'D

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

juppp...I get the anxiety tho

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Mess of anxiety solidarity.

Glowbat (Aloe)

oof yeah

also hey while we're at it with the queer biz in here:

aro/ace/bi peeps are all gay enough full stop

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

YES

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

jupp

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

As a demi-bi dude I fully endorse that all labels are valid.

And that gatekeeping sucks and helps no one

Glowbat (Aloe)

yeah anyone who makes you feel like you dont belong under the lgbtq+ umbrella isnt doin right by you

and your comics should be allowed to be considered as queer as you want them to be

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Also all gender identities are valid and don’t hinge on having a physical transition. You’re valid as trans whether you change your body or not.

Glowbat (Aloe)

^^^

YES

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

YESS

Glowbat (Aloe)

all our experiences are valid and the comics we make because of those experience are beautiful

Deo101

Oh man I missed a huge convo, but I love y'all and it's wonderful seeing so many kinds of comics out there and seeing people make their own content

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Yo, nothing "gross" about romance, and the reason people flock to it is because romance with same-gender couples and/or trans people has been treated as "deviant disorder that needs to be cured and cleaned up, or at least kept far away from polite society" for so long (and still is, in many places)

All queer stories are valid, queer characters don't need to be in a romantic storyline to count, but please let's discuss that without echoing homophobic rhetoric about queer romance being "gross", yeah?(edited)

MJ Massey

I don't think it was meant gross as in queer romance itself being gross, but more in the finding a general distaste for romance tropes and romance as a genre

but I agree, that we should be careful about implying those sorts of things with our work

keii4ii

Romance as a genre is valid too; the consensus was just that there's a lot of it, and other genres are valid too. That every genre is valid

MJ Massey

true, but people might just feel strong distaste for certain genres from a personal point of preference

it's part of what makes the fabric of human existence so fascinating, we all have different opinions, likes, dislikes, viewpoints...

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

tbh I love romance stories but the thing that disheartens me is that the queer stories people take most serious are romances

keii4ii

The pigeonholing

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Can you elaborate on that Keiiii?

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Those are the stories that get repressed and erased the most, is the thing, so it takes more effort to get them produced and shared, and that makes people extra-happy

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t think anyone said romance stories were gross?

Just that it’s not necessarily our jam.

keii4ii

Oh, I meant that's what people are doing when people start exclusively associating a very diverse experience/ group of people with ONE thing, to a point where the people in that group are not allowed to be anything other than That One Thing

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I was reacting to "queer peeps shouldn't be squared off in romance, which unfortunately i think is a result of people's gross misconceptions"

keii4ii

and it's a really unfair, inaccurate restriction

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Ahhhh

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

OH okay, thank you for elaborating, Keiiii. I couldn't really associate anything with the term at first!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Misconceptions are the reason queer people have been excluded from most romance for so long

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I think in that case it was more about people's misconception of queer identities being inherintly sexual and/or romantic though?

and not about queer romance being gross

DanitheCarutor

Huh, I thought 'gross' in that context was more akin to 'outlandish' or 'exaggerated', but I could be misunderstanding.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I think it means more that a lot of people fetishise queer relationships when there’s only representation in romance.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Associating "queer people being sexual and/or romantic" with "gross" is still hella dicey

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

the misconception is what's gross, not the queer people or their romance?

Glowbat (Aloe)

re: gross misconceptions :Oh! i think i said that Erin- i don't think i did a great job of explaining my thoughts on that. on sites like tapas and webtoons its fairly common for gay couples to be exploited for an audience thats less interested in representation than fetishization(edited)

MJ Massey

yes I think there was some lamenting that it could be difficult to show queer characters without an element of romance to make their identities apparent?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t think they meant gross as in disgusting but gross as in ‘far off the mark’

MJ Massey

because some people wanted to have queer characters but not focus on a romantic plot

@Glowbat (Aloe) I know what you are talking about I think

Deo101

Yeah, though I'd like to add on as someone who is writing LGBT romance, I get lumped in with fetishization content a lot and that is very frustrating for me, too

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

And it does take a lot of digging to find respectful representation in romance instead of stories made by and for straight people that use bad stereotypes to fetishise queer relationships.

Not that all romance by and for straight people does this.

But it’s a problem in the genre

Deo101

I work very hard to portray healthy loving relationships and people lump me in to their hatred of romance in general or categorize my work as bl or discount it for having that. It gets fetishized or dismissed an awful lot and that's very frustrating for me to see happening

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

If you want to talk specifically about something you feel is stereotypical or fetishizing, I wouldn't object to that, it's the broad swipes at all romance that become a problem

Glowbat (Aloe)

agreed

queer romance is very important to represent

i dont think anyone here would imply otherwise

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

And, hey, sometimes queer writers/readers also enjoy a romance that's unrealistic or trashy or silly or melodramatic, I don't want to dismiss "all romance that wouldn't represent a healthy and respectful relationship IRL" either

Glowbat (Aloe)

very true

Deo101

Yeah, not what I was trying to say.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Idk if anyone was saying that tbh

Glowbat (Aloe)

i think our initial conversation though boiled down to that we were happy to see stories with queer people being allowed to just be people doing things that didnt focus on romance

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I'm personally very glad that we are getting a wider variety of queer romance now

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

What we were discussing earlier is more that it’s important to portray queer protagonists in all kinds of genres, instead of only romance. Which doesn’t mean romance isn’t also a valid genre.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Sure, and part of my discomfort is that queer characters have already been "allowed" to do non-romantic things in mainstream media for a long time -- it's being "allowed" to have an explicit romance that's new and different

keii4ii

^ I don't know about that. It probably depends on where you are, both IRL and part of the internet?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I never saw a queer character that wasn’t either tragic, a deviant, or the butt of a joke in media until the late ‘O0s(edited)

MJ Massey

both views are valid--it's good to both want explicit queer romance and to also just want to see queer people doing a wide range of things

DanitheCarutor

@Glowbat (Aloe) Yeah, to parrot what you said. I just chalked the convo up to seeing queer characters expand into different genres, and being happy that queer fiction is starting to be known for more than just romance.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

There was no positive representation in any genre in the media I had access to for most of my life(edited)

Deo101

It helps with the normalization of stories like that, but I also think it makes homophobes be "more comfortable" with gay stories sometimes in a way that bothers me

I have had someone say that my story is the only bl they can stand so I'm sensitive about this subject though

Cause there's a lot to unpack there

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

The "if there has to be a queer romance, at least make it awful and tragic" trope was absolutely true in my area too

yikes, I can see being sensitive about that

Deo101

Like me writing something that primarily isn't romance and just has a romance b plot is making homophobes and fetishizing people read my work and that's frustrating for me in a way I can't articulate. I'm very happy within the LGBT+ community to have these works be made but among the straight people I know it's uncomfortable when they start saying things like "oh yay finally some gay stuff that isn't romance" kind of thing

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah that makes sense

Deo101

From other gay people I get it, it makes sense and I'm the same way! Especially with the oversaturation of bl

DanitheCarutor

@Deo101 Gah I got a comment like that before, it was a weird situation because not only was it unnecessary but... TGtaHR isn't even a romance...

Thinking about it, that's actually kinda worrying.

Deo101

But it's important to remember that the LGBT+ community is a bubble and though it's safe to explore all sorts of stories here, it's not safe outside of our bubble

Or, not necessarily safe

Like a homophobe reading a gay story with an unhealthy dynamic could just bolster their bad opinions about gay people even if it's exploring it in a healthy way

I have a hard time explaining what I'm thinking and I really hope this all makes sense

keii4ii

I get you

Glowbat (Aloe)

(i get what youre saying deo <3 )

Deo101

And its not something we can really change but I think it's important to remember with regards to society at large and how our stories are percieved outside the community

Phew lol

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I get what you're saying, although in that case, the homophobe was probably going to think that no matter what, and if it wasn't the story they'd find some other "evidence"

Deo101

Yeah absolutely

And I think it's important to remember that when talking about exploring stories that have unhealthy Dynamics and things other than romance and whatnot. I don't want those things to become safe for cishets to exploit basically

Like "oh great now I don't need to write them kissing so I can access BOTH the LGBT and everyone else!"

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Ah, you mean like "the author says they're gay, so that counts as representation and LGBT people should buy this, even though there's never anything explicitly gay in the story"

right?

Deo101

Yeah

Deo101

Which again within the community I get and it's important to explore things like that for sure

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I think the important difference is, writers within the community are going to do something to indicate the queer identity, even when it's not "having an on-screen romance"

And that's something that, say, your average JKR doesn't bother doing

Deo101

Again I have a hard time explaining myself and I might be tripping over my words a bit here

Yeah that's true as well

I trust LGBT people to be navigating stories with an inherent nuance

For the most part

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

That, or (I think people were talking about this upthread) we don't advertise a story as "look at all this representation!" while the characters' identities haven't come up in the comic yet

Deo101

Yeah I know I didn't say my story was LGBT til I had the married couple kiss cause I was worried people would think I was gaybaiting

I know I'm not but it feels wrong to me like I'm trying to rally up readers kinda thing...

But also if you know you're planning to do it I feel like you can say it'll be there

I just have anxiety LOL

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

No, I get you. Even if it's definitely going to happen in the future of the comic, it'll disappoint readers if you rally them up for something that isn't there yet

That would happen with anything, not just queer identities

Deo101

Yeah I also don't tag my pages or whatever for disability if a character isn't disabled on the page

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Like if it was "read my comic for cool space battles!" when you had only posted the 5 pages of setup with characters having a chill talk in a field

sssfrs

I think what bothers me about lbgtq focused romance stories is that they’re often centered on how ~scandalous~ the relationship is and how the characters have to overcome personal biases or homophobia/transphobia as the central struggle

Deo101

I don't want the wrong audience. I mean I also could probably slap bl on my cover and I feel like I'd get a lot more readers but they're not the readers I want

sssfrs

Or at least I dont enjoy reading stories like that

Deo101

Yeah that frustrates me too, personally

But some people like seeing that overcoming idk

sssfrs

My comic has at least 2 visible prominent gay relationships but its not about romance at all

I guess thats personal preference(edited)

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I think a lot of the time you also know what intentions the person behind telling a story like that has? I have a straight aquaintaince writing BL and it's totally clear that she thinks the whole ordeal is kinda cute and endearing when it's pretty...harsh for actual queer people

Deo101

Mines got 5 and it is about romance cause I absolutely love romance and I love love, but I am overly frustrated with romance as a genre. Which is why I write my own

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I think that goes back to the "talk about a specific trope that bothers you, don't treat it like the whole genre" thing I was saying

Deo101

Yeah I think there's a lot of nuance to it that cishet people largely don't have

sssfrs

I feel like it makes the romance into a statement about how society is bad and its not interesting or groundbreaking to represent that bigotry in your media without adding something new

Deo101

I'm frustrated with the often unhealthy Dynamics and the frequency with which homophobia and transphobia are shown.

I live in a homophobic household I don't want it in my romance cause it hurts to see

But, I don't think it's bad to tackle those issues it's just hard for me personally

sssfrs

I like pairing up side characters but only 2 pairs are going to have an Arc. so far....

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I...feel for many cishet authors it's also a good excuse to not have the characters get together right away without actually thinking about why they would not for other reasons (like personality based). So there's a lot of "I'm not gay!!!" type of thing

Also totally understandable Deo :C

Deo101

Yeah absolutely.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It’s also valid, as a queer author, though, to show characters that do have to overcome their ‘gay panic’ when they first realise they’re gay. It’s something a lot of us have gone through, but it’s important to show the comfort you finally feel in yourself when you come out the other end if it.

sssfrs

Why should fiction include all the shitty parts of real life

Deo101

I think straight people see LGBT authors tackle these issues and go "oh so I can too!!!"

And yeah this is why I'm largely drawn to sci-fi and fantasy, I get to entirely remove all the things that hurt me about reality. Dude can just use a cane and everyone is like dope

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Because sometimes fiction helps us process all the shitty parts of real life. Both happy stories that take away shit and gritty stories that acknowledge shit are valid and important

Deo101

Ppl can just be trans and it's fine

I agree they're all important

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

(I think I'm just super bitter bc here I've seen cis and straight women get awards for their queer romance stories which just hmm)

Deo101

^

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I agree it's a super nuanced topic

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

...I feel like you've also gotta make some allowance for bad writing. Like, maybe someone's not getting a lot of nuance in their story because their skills aren't sharp enough to handle it yet.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Agreed, Erin!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

And one of the ways they'll get good enough to write better stories is by working out issues through writing the worse stories.

sssfrs

My main character is a butch lesbian gnc completely androgynous person and no one is ever going to say anything nasty to her about it

Deo101

I feel you sssfrs lol(edited)

Deo101

I thirst for gentle, nice LGBT stories. I just crave them

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I feel that. As I build Prismal and decided to include lgbt folks in it, my first thought about it was "would there be any reason for them to be hated in this society? No? Then why would I include that theme?"

Deo101

And yes it's important to delve into the harsher realities and I think it's good to use fiction to explore and work through those themes, definitely, but personally no thx

sssfrs

I like where ppl are just all expected to be pan or bisexual by default

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

heh, I literally have 2 comics and one of them is "real world where characters struggle with realistic prejudices" while the other is "fantasy world with 0% homophobia/transphobia."

Something for everyone!

sssfrs

Nice

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’m too goddamn miserable to write such nice stories, lol. But writing gritty stories where my characters go through hell helps me process the stuff I go through in my life. But I love reading those nice stories where we can forget racism and queerphobia exist.(edited)

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

hehe...I've decided to go into some queerphobia in my next comic only bc I want to...explore historical queer spaces and the kind of space does not make sense in a world that's 100% accepting

Deo101

Yeah it's just all about that nuance babeyy

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeahhh

Deo101

I think that's also why we see so much more LGBT content of all kinds in indie media

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Absolutely

Less gatekeeping, less opportunity for homophobes to shut it down

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

No big boss complaining it’s not ‘marketable’ to be inclusive

Deo101

And I worry that mainstream stuff will be like "ohoho, so that means I can do it too" *stumbles and sets gay people back 10 years in the eyes of the general public *

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

YEEEEEEAH there’s that

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I think the mainstream is going slow enough that that's far from my biggest worry

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But change never happens smoothly

Sometimes it goes up and down before society evolves into a better mindset

Deo101

Well yeah ofc, but even on a smaller scale of bad people reading good works it is kinda happening I feel like

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

So there’s gonna be periods of shit before being queer is faithfully represented in the mainstream

Deo101

Yeah for sure

It helps normalize things but it also can do it in an unhealthy way and it's frustrating

As in people going "yes let's include gay romance *it's just bl tropes *"

And things like that

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I think the best way to counter that is by producing & supporting more stories of all kinds -- the more complex and multifaceted a view people get, the better

Deo101

Yeah

From people who are handling those stories well, too ^^^

Which is subjective of course I know that

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Also, something nobody's mentioned that I think should come up...a lot of times you don't know who's straight/cis and who's not. Like, if it's Famous Mainstream Author JKR, you can be pretty sure, but with small-scale indie creators, how much can you tell the difference between "straight/cis artist who thinks BL tropes are how all real gay relationships work" versus "gay/bi/trans/etc artist who understands IRL fine, but it's fun and self-indulgent for them to write those tropes"?

Especially since the artist could be actively in the closet. Or could still be on their own journey of self-discovery and not know they aren't straight and/or cis yet. All the more so since indie creators are more likely to be younger than well-established mainstream standards.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don’t know about you guys, but it’s always BLATANTLY obvious to me by how they’re writing.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

How did you confirm it? Did you ask them?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Call it intuition

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I don't think it's always confirmable tho :C

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Granted, sometimes a person writes with enough nuance that I can tell they're queer, but how do you tell a straight writer from an awkward/inexperienced/clunky queer writer?

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I know a lot of authors thinking they were cishet and later on realizing they were not

and some of them wrote a lot of "yikes"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

There’s writing patterns and use of tropes that signal whether the person is actually respectful if the queer community or not

Deo101

Also just cause you're working through things doesn't mean it's a healthy exploration that is good for the community at large

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Even if they’re queer and self-indulging, there’s a lot of tells both in the comics and in their commentary

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

tbh I think some tropes are fair to criticise no matter if the author is queer or not but there are also queer authors writing disrespectful tropes

it's not sth that I see a lot, but I've seen it

Deo101

^ yeah this

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

All questions of their writing aside, there are definitely queer people who don't respect the community IRL, either...

Deo101

Like it's not good to write glorifying rape fic of pedophilia no matter who you are or how it's helping you work through things. I mean you can write it but then to share it is something else entirely

Not saying those are common things but they're pretty very much "bad" things

And actually glorifying rape is something I do see much more than I would have expected

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

And that’s problematic, too. When you’re part of a community but not respectful of it, that’s just as bad as a straight person being homophobic. Sometimes the worst homophobia cones from within the community, but that doesn’t make it okay or healthy.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

If you share a dark story behind accurate warnings and labels, then it can reach other people who are working through something by reading it, and be avoided by people who don't.

Deo101

Yeah there's a lot of lateral agression within the community

Okay but glorification of it isn't a healthy way to work through those things it's not a dark story

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I'm not saying homophobia from within the community is okay or healthy, I'm just saying it doesn't have to indicate that the person is straight/cis.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I have a lot of dark themes in my comics. There is rape, but it is never shown on panel and never never glorified. I think it’s a subject that’s important to talk about, but I find it extremely disturbing how much it’s romanticised in fiction.

Deo101

^^^

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah...

DanitheCarutor

Huh, this convo reminds me of an article a friend sent me from someone's Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/posts/25994657 It talks about creation policing, and problematic fiction. You all proooobably won't agree with it given the direction of discussion (which all points of view are totally valid), but this whole subject is super interesting.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

All right, true, you can’t always know if an author is queer or not. I should have been more specific in whether an author has a healthy view of the LGBTQ community or not.

Deo101

So you might not be able to tell if someone is gay by their writing, but there are certain trends that gay people do not generally fall into that MOSTLY indicate someone is straight, though there's no way to know for sure.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

THAT is always obvious to me.

Deo101

And like def there are bi women who fetishize gay men, and there is transphobia and biohobia and everything within the community

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

If they’re being homophobic or just don’t ‘understand’ the queer community, I mean

Deo101

Etc etc, so even if you can't tell whether a harmful representation is written by someone who is LGBT it's a harmful representation regardless

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

^^^^This

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Yeah. I'm always very hesistant on how to address things like this

Deo101

Me too esp since I have such a hard time saying what I mean

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I'm not saying it's impossible to write harmful representation, but "this is harmful!" gets used as a cudgel against any representation, so often that I'm wary of talking about it as a vaguely-defined blanket category.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It’s hard to articulate things clearly when in fast-paced chats like this

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah, haha

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

At least it's good for leveling people up, huh?

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

eifhiuef pfft

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Lol. ‘You levelled up talking about homophobia!’

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

(I feel we're all respectful and try to explain ourselves and give others the chance to do so too)

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

At least it's good for something??

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

(so that's good haha)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yes. Talks like this are super important to help see each others views on tricky subjects

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Yeah, I feel like we're making good-faith attempts to understand each other, which...is not something you always get in internet discussions

To put it very very mildly

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

We all have our own stories and unique perspectives, and that’s important to share both in the fiction we write and in discussions with each other

DanitheCarutor

@Phin (Heirs of the Veil) The subject is pretty sticky. On one hand artists should be allowed to create whatever they like, on the other if that work can perpetuate harm for a certain community should it be allowed? There is a lot of this going around right now where people want sanitization in media, and what works of art are and are not allowed to exist. Not saying it's bad, but it is fascinating. I'm not fully getting into the convo because I'm honestly super neutral.

kayotics

I’m definitely watching the convo play out, it’s interesting to see a chat like this develop

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

yeah I'm taking notes this is not my area of expertise, and it's all good stuff to keep in mind

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I'm okay discussing & criticizing specific examples (which is probably why I keep bringing up Dumbledore...), but I don't like being critical of broad categories, because they can be so ambiguous & easily misused.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

@DanitheCarutor I think it is very hard to differentiate between people who want difficult subjects to be explored (which is valid) and people who don't want to be called out for certain kinks for example and a lot of the times stuff like "purity policing" gets used to shut legit criticism up. On the other hand there are a lot of examples of callout culture gone wild and honestly ??? Idk anymore.

Deo101

Its very frustrating

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

But I'm also at a point where I'm getting super tired of constant discourse so

Deo101

Yeah I've literally had to block words like "ace" cause it's just so often discourse from either side and I'm just so tired of it

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Plus there’s always going to be stories that help one person work through things but that are very toxic and upsetting to someone else. Just like there’s people who are toxic to one person and important to someone else.(edited)

Deo101

I've also blocked LGBT and "feminism" kinda things

I JUST see cats and memes now thank you

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Lee: absolutely, which is why accurate labels are important

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Eyyyy, it's my turn!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yes

kayotics

I think it’s important to curate your online experience, and sometimes NOT curating your experience leads to purity policing

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

HMM

kayotics

But yes tagging is really important!!!

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I think there is the creation of a lot of anxiety in what and what you can't tell in stories

Deo101

Tags are super important but also when someone doesn't think or realize they're doing something harmful they might not tag it

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Warning labels all around are always a good idea

Deo101

Like if someone is being a homophobe just cause etheyre homophobic they're not gonna tag that

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

True

Deo101

Why tag it's glorifying abuse if they think it's hot or reality and don't realize that's bad

Etc etc

kayotics

There’s definitely a lot of creator anxiety lately, I’ve had a lot of friends come to me with anxieties about not wanting to start a project they love because they’re afraid of who might attack them online

Deo101

^^^ I've been scared about this

kayotics

Me too, honestly

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Same honestly

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

There’s always the issue if ‘should harmful ideas be given a platform’ vs ‘stifling voices you just don’t want to hear’ it’s a fine line.

Deo101

I once got all in a tizzy cause I was like "oh my god my planet of women is asking a man for help"

Yeah cause some free speech silences other's

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

Same

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

And sometimes you get people thinking "if I label this with a warning that it contains Bad Content, the internet police will come after me," so they don't use warnings for that reason, and then it's just bad times all around

Deo101

Yeah.

And also there are things no one thinks to warn about, like some very specific triggers

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah...

Deo101

Its just all around a very difficult to navigate space

DanitheCarutor

@Phin (Heirs of the Veil) Right? People do that with anything, if it's not the "purity police" excuse it's "my style", or "I'm friends with -insert minority here-!" I don't bother with the arguments anymore since I've been pushed into them enough, I'm more into seeing opinion on general art policing, or what is and isn't allowed to exist in art. Sorry, I'm being slow at typing again.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Heck, if we're talking about actual psychological triggers, most of them are going to be super-specific

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I have a trigger for fungal growth on bodies now bc I have 3 people who either have probs with plants growiing on bodies OR funghi lol

Deo101

Ya I have a "someone watching someone else sleep" trigger which people use a surprising amount

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

...wait, Phin, now you have a trigger, or now you use a warning for it?

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

@DanitheCarutor srsly don't worry about it, haha. It's a nuanced topic and I think generalizing is pretty bad when it comes to what you can and can't portray

I use a warning for it, sorry Erin, wasn't clear

I had multiple people approach me so I warn in update posts and should probs also do it on the website

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

no worries, just wanted to be sure

kayotics

I do have an extreme phobia of needles and you’d be surprised how many news sites use active needle shots for vaccination stories

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

GOD I KNOW

I am not afraid of them but like once they are near skin

I don't wanna see...these shots

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I have a deathly phobia of vomiting and there are NEVER warning labels for it.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah I think most people don't regard it and sometimes it's hard to get everything...

a friend of mine, Eli, creates a very gory comic and they put all their warnings on their update post images

and I kinda wanna try to be similarly mindful?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

(I’m okay if it’s in a comic and off-panel or the gross part is not shown but the sound and sight are crippling for me and shows and movies just SHOW it all the time)

kayotics

That’s true. Not a vomit fan.

DanitheCarutor

Ah I've thought about using page by page TWs, and I tried it out with one page, but with the amount of triggering thing in my comic I decided on a general warning. (since almost every page would get a warning) A few of my readers also said they preferred not to see them due to possible spoilers.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Hmm...I have a list of possible triggers in my about section

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I probably should start doing that bc my comics get very bloody

kayotics

I know I’ll have a scene eventually that I’ll want to have a warning on, but I’m not sure how to warn for it without spoiling?

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I installed a spoilertext plugin on one of my comics for that! Now I can put specific warnings at the front of a storyline, and readers who don't have triggers & don't want spoilers can leave them hidden.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

OHH that's a cool idea

DanitheCarutor

Yeah, mine is like a general pop-up that you have to click on to proceed to the comic.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’m going to have to look at that plugin. Potential spoilers are the only reason I don’t have really detailed warnings on my comics

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Here's the one I use: https://wordpress.org/plugins/inline-spoilers/

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Yeah I'll look into it too. It seems super useful.

Heck thanks Erin!

DanitheCarutor

I don't know how you could make a warning without spoilers, @kayotics! I mean, you might have to if you want to do a page specific one.(edited)

Sorry, my cat sent the message for me.

kayotics

I was thinking a page specific one for the upcoming scene.

So I’m glad that doesn’t seem weird

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I'd say super-general warnings are mostly not spoilers. A movie will say "contains graphic violence", and that doesn't tell you who's being violent, or why, or how it's resolved.

DanitheCarutor

^^^

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah, I think that's not a spoiler, especially if the comic was already violent

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah. I have warnings for things like ‘graphic violence, blood and gore, nudity, etc. But some chapters or pages probably warrant more detailed TWs.

Deo101

Yeah I'm gonna put in my a/n for a few updates before like "hey there are some spooky scenes comin' up!'

kayotics

I wouldn’t say my comic is already violent, so it’s more applicable for this one scene

Deo101

And yeah things like "watching someone sleep" is gonna be at least somewhat of a spoiler...

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

hmhm

DanitheCarutor

@kayotics I think it really just depends on the person too. Some readers like page by page TWs, and don't see them as spoilers, others are the opposite. Your readers might appreciate a warning more than mine since your comic isn't overall super graphic.(edited)

Gah I can not type today!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I put "this will get bloody" before some of the vampire storylines, not spoiler-cut -- because it's not a given, but shouldn't exactly be a surprise, either.

Deo101

I also do not mind spoilers whatsoever and I WILL spoil to anyone who asks as I've said many times, but I know not everyone is like me and spoilers are a big deal to many people

"i don't mind spoilers" i love them and they make me enjoy things more for many reasons

DanitheCarutor

Ah same! I'd love to just spill everything!

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

(Deo high five bc same)

Deo101

My people

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

tbh spoilers got me interested in many comics and I actively spoil myself

like getting into new comics and reading the updates before jumping to the beginning haha

kayotics

I’m very much the opposite

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I don't want to spoil anything, I want to keep people guessing! But sometimes you gotta.

Deo101

Yes. I get incredibly stressed about whether or not things will work out and spoilers relieve that. Even if it doesn't work out like at least I know

I get so so sooo stressed about it

kayotics

Whenever people tell me spoilers I actively like content less

DanitheCarutor

I don't mind them myself. My mom absolutely hates them, and used to make me spoil every movie if I saw it before her, so I'm pretty alright with it.

Deo101

Yeah ik many people are that way

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah I also think that's fair

DanitheCarutor

Also spoilers don't affect me either since it's not the content that means anything, but how it's used. Imo

kayotics

Usually for me it’s like. “Ok you spoiled a major character death/reveal, that’s not fun for me anymore”

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

OH yeah Kay! Tbh

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

If there's a big twist, I want to be unspoiled the first time I watch/read/etc the thing. If it's handled well, I can always rewatch it again with the knowledge.

kayotics

Because then I don’t get to experience that anymore

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

that's sth that can also ruin a story for me

kinda didn't get into the current season of CritRoll bc of such a spoiler

with comics it's kinda like...I see them on twitter, read along a few updates and then jump to the beginning so there I don't mind spoilers at all

it's more scoping out if the story's for me

Deo101

Oh man I sometimes only get into things because of spoilers LOL I know I'm weird with this but genuinely I love spoilers so much they make me comfortable with what I'm watching. I love rewatching things cause I know how it goes down and I'm not stressed by it

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I sometimes have troubles to deal with...raw emotions towards media so spoilers help me with that too

like preparing myself for it to hurt

(not always tho)

Deo101

Right yeah for sure

Even if I know it won't work out I KNOW and I don't put energy into getting my hopes up

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I hate spoilers, personally. I love going into stories completely blind or with just the bare-bones ‘genre, overall theme’ because I LOVE being shocked and surprised and have plot-twists thrown at me, so that’s what I do with my own comics(edited)

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah that's also fair. Right now my brain's not in the mood for that so I gotta play it save hehe

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I still don't like saying "here's what the Beings are" in ads or sales pitches for BICP, even though the page where it was revealed is several years old by now

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

But everyone likes different things so there’s nothing wrong with giving spoilers for your own stories if people want them(edited)

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah it depends honestly and that's pretty okay.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Everyone’s different and everyone’s valid

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I don't spoil my own story, except with artworks and mostly it's without context or cryptic enough that it's not...a real spoiler

yeah!

in that regard, it's just a huge matter of taste

twothirty

i also jump into webcomics, read them backgrounds for a bit then realized im actually into it and read it properly haha

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

hahaha yes

If I get invested without context I know it's good lol

Deo101

I don't spoil on public platforms cause I know people don't wanna necessarily see that (unless it's in an ama but I try to avoid spoilers still) but in private? I'll spill whatever tf u want like

I have and I will again!!!! Lmao

I know no one is gonna write it like me and also it's p linear so the only spoilers people really ask are Character things not plot things, anyways

So I'm not worried about theft im not doing anything super wild or original lol

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

all my favorite panels I've done are all the most spoilery ones, so... whether I share them or not, I lose

Deo101

Aw man

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

SAME

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

nooo

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

but it makes sense! I put all my effort into those moments where the story twists and turns

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Some of my fave panels or pages are when big reveals or plot twists happened

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

and it shows

so meh, I'll live

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

So I can’t share them to people who haven’t read my comic yet XD

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

luckily they don't make a ton of sense out of context, but... as soon as people start reading they might be like OHHH I know what's coming now

but it got them reading so shrug

I guess all mileage varies

Deo101

I feel like even the way I talk about my comic spoils it LMAO whoops

I'm made out of spoilers I can t hold them all in very clumsy

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

haha

I feel the same a lot

(But I also just wanna scream 24/7 about my stories whoopsie)

Deo101

I once had readers asking me to sum up a chapter caus ethey were confused and I just waited til someone else did it cause I was worried I'd spoil Something in trying to sun it up

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Linear stories are good too, though! Just reading a satisfying, well-written story is great; there doesn’t really NEED to be twist and turns for it to be food.

Deo101

Who doesn't wanna scream all the time and their stories hahahahha

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

GOOD

NOT FOOD

GAH

Deo101

Millennium is yummy yummy yum

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

...for the in-universe version of spoilers, I just had a moment of "hang on, this scene could've been way more dramatic if this one character hadn't already been given a certain reveal last chapter"

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

good food, agreed

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Normally I get away with not having a long buffer prepped ahead of time, but for once I wish I could still change this

Nutty (Court of Roses)

i spoil a lot about my characters more than i do the plot lol

i mean except their backstories sometimes

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Oh :C sometimes it's like this, Erin. Reasons buffers are good, but when do you have the time....

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I've tried putting this one on hiatus to prep a buffer, but it turns out I need the deadlines and the regular feedback to push me through making the pages...

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

oh I see. Understandable though...the only time I create real buffer is when I finish a book for print and have a deadline there.

(I wanna try to actually...get better though, since I wanna start a second comic project)

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I mean, sometimes if there's a process that works for you, you gotta just go with it and not waste energy fighting it. Even if it's not the Best or Most Professional way.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

yeah that's true. It's just frustrating when you compare the work you get done in these phases vs. every other time.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Clearly the solution is to split it up into smaller books, so you have more print deadlines!

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

haha, that might be!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I need buffers or I get super stressed. Unfortunately I also find them difficult to keep up.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Buffers are very hard to keep up. I'm running out of mine next week, whoops

But I've already started working on new pages

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I have...a half-finished, past-deadline page open in another window right now, lol

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I haven’t been able to draw for about a month, so one comic’s buffer is getting low and the other’s going to either miss this week or be late.

And I’m stressing about it. -_-

sssfrs

I’m so excited for my story to progress. I’m tempted to talk about it but when I am I think that nothing I say casually will be as impactful as just letting the story actually play out

Desnik

I deal with lack of engagement by throwing my ideas (or myself) at people. I learned that keeping secret twists as spoilers was inhibiting my growth as a writer, so instead I talk through my plots with my writing group and I often walk away with much better ideas to write

We're a kidlit/MG/YA group and I'm writing in a similar fashion, so we usually don't have to warn each other about anything we're writing, which is its own kind of freedom

if I can get the content to be good enough, and land in front of someone who'll help me take it further, then the engagement will follow

keii4ii

(This the right place?)

Deo101

Speaking of a lack of engagement, i feel like my engagement rates are incredibly low. I get a good bit, i get comments on every page and im very happy with that, but it's odd that i dont get more given my amount of readers and I wonder if some comics just aren't the kind of story people feel a need to say anything about, or what?

I think so?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

My engagement rates are... almost nonexistent.

keii4ii

I TOTALLY GET THAT DOUBT

When my anxiety is bad, it gets... really bad. "Maybe my story isn't worth commenting/ there is nothing to talk about it." I know that's just anxiety, so I try my best to not listen to that voice.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Although I think my audience is just not there? My page-views are pretty low, too, so maybe I just don’t have enough readers to comment (outside of you awesome SF perps)

PEEPS NOT PERPS

MY GOD THIS PHONE

keii4ii

Yeah, my views are fairly low too, considering the sub count I have on platforms

Come on, phone. We're not criminals. (Probably. )

Deo101

Yeah, its just weird when i have like. 1000 readers on tapas and get 0 comments i guess? I do kinda feel like my comic is very.... Its very linear its character driven and people can onky say "aw cute ^^" so much so idk what they would say

Like its legit .1%

keii4ii

hides the bloody knife

Deo101

ITS IN THE FLOWER POT!!!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I was getting about 1k daily views right after I joined SF but now it’s back down to about 100 a day, so shrugs

keii4ii

Views though, it's natural they spike like that even if you retain 100% of the people who checked out your comic!

because typically, people only go through the old pages once

so they give you more views upon first visit

Deo101

^^^

keii4ii

But I 100% understand the worry of "why do people check out my comic and decide not to read it... is there something wrong with my work"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

On webtoons I think I have relatively good engagement for Eryl considering my low sub number. I have about 350-some subs and get an average of 1-2 unique comments per page, though that number goes up when a character dies. (edited)

That’s true! They do get kinda ‘falsely’ inflated when people binge-read archives

Deo101

Most comments i ever got is when I said "tell me your pet names"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Lmao, I should try that

Deo101

And then outside of that when luzio and sage do something cute is the most I get like, organically just frim my content

Amas are second most comments which are again, me starting the discussion

Maybe alk my authors comments should be like "tell me about your fave color" that'll inflate my stats

keii4ii

One person told me they don't comment because everything seems so obvious, and they don't wanna be captain obvious. Which I can respect. But I don't think everything is that obvious if the most common comment I get is "I'm lost"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Hmmmm

Deo101

Hahahahhahahahah

Like "NO PLEASE SHARE THESE THINGS"

keii4ii

IKR

Deo101

Help everyone else out!!!

keii4ii

There is a term in Korean comment section culture

"Konan" (from Detective Konan)

It's a term for commenters who explain obtuse stuff for other readers

Sometimes you'll even see comments like "Hurry up, Konans! I'm too tired to think! Spoonfeed me what happened in this update!"

Deo101

Me reading every comic ever

keii4ii

I NEED A KONAN IN MY COMMENT SECTION

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Honestly I wish western readers did that, but they either get attacked for being ‘Captain Obvious’ or people scream SPOILER!!!! at them

Deo101

I really wish people woukd expkain for me too because then i know some people get it, but ALSO i dont want to explain things i didn't show, accidentally.

snuffysam

one thing i've found that helps with engagement is making sure to include something on the page for people to talk about, no matter how relevant it is. like a while back i had a (in my opinion) fairly boring scene where it's basically "where do we gotta go" "i'm not telling" "please" "ok you gotta go here" so to give readers something to talk about i had one of the characters take a hotdog out of a pokeball and eat it.

keii4ii

There was also this incredibly, incredibly obtuse comic. It had a fascinating hook but then became almost impossible to follow. You'd see comments like "so this is the Forbidden Realm that even Konans cannot enter."

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Hahaha

Deo101

I try to make every page have something, i usually have 3 goals i want a page to accomplish but it's not very... Fun i guess? Its just kibda like "yes this happened"

keii4ii

It's also kinda sad when you DO put something important to you, and nobody says anything (or worse, says "so when is it gonna get interesting???")

Deo101

Yeah...

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

So once I spun this theory on a comic by picking it up from context clues. And I was like ‘Hey guys, what if X character is the dragon???’ and everyone was like ‘WELL DUH IT’S IN THE HOVER TEXT.’ I read comics on mobile where hover text doesn’t always work, and after getting sneered at for something ‘everyone knew already’ I was put off of ever being a Konan type again.

Deo101

:(

I never read the hover text unless its by accident I just dont think t

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah. And it wasn’t obvious from reading without the hover text so I was really proud of myself for figuring it out. But it just goes to show how rude commenters can scare away well-intentioned ones.(edited)

keii4ii

aaaugh D:

snuffysam

tbh i'm not sure why an author would put something important in the hover text where mobile readers can't see it. or tbh in blogs, side stories, etc. if it's important to understanding the main story, it should be in the comic.

Deo101

Yeah that's what im thinking... Hover text should be for puns

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It was revealed later that chapter in the main comic, but apparently it wasn’t a ‘secret’ like I thought it was.

keii4ii

Bleeeh, sorry that happened to you. >_< This is why we can't have nice things

Where is the nearest Konans R Us, I want to order one for each of our comics.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah... I’m very socially anxious / awkward so I’ve been scared away from quite a few comment sections. I still read the comics and buy them if they go to print, but a negative commenting experience usually discourages me from ever participating in the discussion.

keii4ii

100% understandable

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Which is why I feel it’s super important for the creators to moderate their comments (or hire a good moderator if they don’t have the time). A lot of comment sections get toxic if the author is lax about fostering a positive discussion environment.

Deo101

That makes me feel much better about the times ive asked people to cut Something out or deleted comments.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I appreciate that effort very much.

Deo101

I worry that its "disengenuous" or something and if someone has a negative opinion I don't want to be like "nope you're ONLY allowed to be nice to me!!!" But it's not good, i don't think, to let people feel safe being mean In my comments.

keii4ii

Yeah, there is being critical, and there is being mean

Deo101

So I rarely do it but I have and I don't feel any guilt over the times i have

Right

keii4ii

Sometimes a comment can tread the fine line between the two and it's really annoying that it's not Obviously, Blatantly Mean

Deo101

Yeah hahahahahhaha

keii4ii

But I try to remember that I too have walked that line unintentionally and obliviously, back when I was younger

Deo101

Right. I have too

I was like "oh man I am so smart and im about ti IMPART MY KNOWLEDGE ON YOU!!!" *Is a jerk *

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

That one comic I was talking about earlier: the author had a hard time keeping up with moderating and eventually took comments off the main site. It was 100% not her fault and she was herself getting emotionally distressed from the amount of negativity in the comments. Especially since the comic itself is really thoughtful and has a lot of messages of acceptance.

Deo101

:(

keii4ii

>_<

Deo101

Uhh but yeah! Does .1% feel like about what y'all get as far as comments:readers goes?

.1-.2

I feel like i have no actual gague for this lol

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It varies from comic to comic (for no quantifiable reason, usually) but that is about right. 99% of readers are lurkers.

Deo101

Dope, I was worried I had like super low numbers when talking with some people and it got me worried about my content

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Plus subs don’t necessarily translate to active readers. A lot of people just never clean out their library after they stop reading something / subbed it to read later and never got around to it or left the site entirely.

Deo101

But I've also just got a lot of anxiety about what im producing and how it's percieved in general

Yeah ik

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I can see people binging my archives from my stats but maybe 1 in 100 or less leaves any comments.

snuffysam

on average, each subscriber to my comic has posted about 45 comments total (which is like 0.07 comments per subscriber per page) if someone clicks on a page (subscriber or not), there is a 0.5% chance of that person leaving a comment.

Deo101

See for me its like. 1 in 1000 leaves a comment...

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

(It’s okay I get anxiety over it, too)

Deo101

Yeah i was gonna say uhhh whats it called

Shoot i lost mt train of thought.

Right. I feel like the longer a comic goes on tbe less frequently people engage

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Yeah, I’ve noticed that in my comics, too.

Deo101

Like less readers will have made it to the end, more will be inactive, etc

snuffysam

i've found that my active commenters take a jump in early march (i.e. right after the comic's anniversary), and any time a book ends (since, i guess people like seeing how all the stuff that's happened in the book culminates)

Deo101

Oh that's an interesting note

snuffysam

i suppose that's some other advice on increasing engagement - give a reason for even caught-up readers to leave comments. one thing i've been doing is redrawing old pages and releasing the redraws on anniversaries, which gives reason for people to re-read.

and for end of book stuff, i suppose people are more willing to predict how something is going to end when it's close to ending

Deo101

Hmmmm

I'm taking notes

twothirty

seeking validation through comments is my downfall, because i just dont seem to write a comic that has the type of readership who is into that. What helped was just looking at google analytics and being like "oh right, of course people read this, its clearly here in this data" haha.

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

twothirty, same. It's kinda hard to get out of that mindset.

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Raises hand I need constant reader validation and get depressed easily when there isn’t. It’s not healthy, but it’s really hard to break out of that mindset.

Deo101

Im not seeking validation through comments, but when i have thousands of readers and get only like 5 it does make me look twice and start wondering if there's something I'm doing wrong.

And yeah it's hard to break out of the mindset

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Me constantly atm haha

Deo101

Especially if you've bee. Hurt in the past and you feel like people secretly hate your work because... In the oast they have

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

I wonder if it's actually...a change in how people interact with media nowadays?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh yeah, definitely, Deo. I got so much negative feedback when I first started posting webcomics and it still sticks with me today.

Deo101

Yeah I've been lucky where people have been mostly nice to me or otherwise just indifferent which makes it so I don't have a super negative experience that my anxieties latch onto

And its STILL hard

Because words of affirmation is my love language lol

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Partly I think it was because I was creating a lot of gender-nonconforming characters in an era when that wasn’t well-accepted in Western comics (reminder that I was surrounded by a veeeery conservative environment at the time), and partly because my skills were just not what they are now. There were a lot of nasty comments from both strangers and people I knew, and it was really tough to work through. I think if I hadn’t had the Tomgeeks forum to hang out in, I probably would have given up.

(For you young’uns, Tomgeeks was a webcomic list site and we had a really tight group in the forums. A lot of that old crowd are now in Spider Forest).

Kabocha

(Sorry, saw the tomgeeks mention! I remember aspiring to be in that group one day, but I was a lil' too much of a noob back in the day.) A lot of media is kind of... Sometimes you need to put a call to action to be like, "HEY LEAVE A COMMENT!" or something - else, they forget in a lot of cases, but ofc that's no guarantee.

keii4ii

Re: people being less willing to engage the longer a comic has been going on, that is definitely a thing

I think it's called archive burn or something

and I feel it too sometimes, as a reader. I feel like I'm not "allowed" to start reading a comic unless I can find a big enough chunk of free time to finish the archive in one session

It's 100% irrational but... it is a thing

I've found that I don't experience it IRL, with physical books. The end of each volume is a really good stopping place

snuffysam

then i suppose a problem is that webcomics don't really have stopping points you can physically see like physical books like when you're reading a book series, you know where one book ends, but when you read a comic you don't really unless you check how many pages each chapter has

and even then it's hard to keep that in mind when it isn't physical

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I definitely understand that feel. It's kept me from doing a lot of the book club comics because I'm like "I got ten pages in, but that's not enough to comment" T_T

snuffysam

maybe someone could program a widget for comic sites that works similarly to the page indicators in ebooks. like "you're 40% of the way through the chapter, and at your current reading speed you have 10 minutes left"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Comic Rocket!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Does Archive Binge also have a feature like that?

I feel like they might... I don't use those kind of readers so I'm not super familiar with them.

snuffysam

archive binge lists what page you're on and how many pages the comic has, but there's no reading speed thing no

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I don't know. I'm technically on Archive binge, but didn't get any subs there so I didn't look into it past creating my listing. I don't use those services myself because I like a nice long archive to work through, but I know that comic Rocket shows you how much of an archive you've read.

snuffysam

also, the thing i'm talking about would be for chapters as well as the whole comic. because if there is a big archive, people like to know how long they have before a good stopping point

mariah (rainy day dreams)

I'm on Archive Binge. I don't think I have any subs either but definitely get traffic regularly as if I did. How even does internet work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

snuffysam

i guess recently updated?

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I usually check out the archive page of a comic to get a good idea of chapter length, myself. So I know if I'm in for 10 pages chapters or 100 page chapters. Plus, idk, I have no problem stopping anywhere and picking it up again later, but I may be a pretty atypical reader.

Lmao, I have no idea how the internet works. I was one of the first people to list on Archive Binge and I have never gotten a single click from it. I get a steady number from Comic Rocket, though.

keii4ii

I wonder if it'd be worth experimenting with chapter numbers? Like, re-number existing chapters like "Season 2, chapter 2 of 15" instead of "chapter 20" ?

Deo101

^ thats a good idea

seeing "chapter 20" makes me as a reader go like, oh god, theres so many,,

snuffysam

^ that's one of the major reasons i label things "book X chapter Y" instead of just counting up chapters forever though adding "out of" is an interesting addition...

keii4ii

I'm nearing the end of season/ book/ whatever 2. I should give this a try

Cronaj

Lol, my books are going to be 3 chapters long each, so I don't think it would make much sense for me XD

keii4ii

Yeah, my chapters are short but numerous, so this might have a different effect than comics with longer but fewer chapters

Deo101

I'd be afraid of saying "out of" cause... well, i dont know how many heheh...

it all gets wacky when it comes time to actually make the thing

snuffysam

i mean, could add 'em retroactively as each "season" finishes

Deo101

oh thats true!

keii4ii

I would probably do "Chapter x out of [REDACTED]" (not that but something similar) when I start posting book 3

Cronaj

Yeah, my chapters are around 35-50 pages, so they're pretty long'

snuffysam

listing how many chapters are in book 3 would kinda spoil a twist lol, so i'll probably only do it retroactively

same lol

and some are 80 pages

book 3's going to have one 120 page chapter which is wild

Cronaj

I was thinking about printing 4-5 chapter books, make it more like a manga-length

keii4ii

You know, some comics (Korean comics do this a lot) do like... Chapter 10: Happy Day, followed by Chapter 11: Happy Day (2), followed by Chapter 12: Happy Day (3)

Cronaj

but full color printing is expensive

keii4ii

Dividing what might have been a single chapter into digestible chunks

snuffysam

i've split "arcs" into multiple chapters before, but unfortunately there aren't really any solid split areas in the chapter in question

Cronaj

and I doubt anybody wants to shell out $25+ on a 200 page comic

This is of course, a consideration for the future, as I don't even have the first chapter finished yet, but ya know

Come next year, I'll have some big decisions to make

@keii4ii Is that a webtoon thing? I've noticed that webtoons have shortish chapters

snuffysam

webtoons an entire chapter is posted at once

keii4ii

It's a Korean thing, which means Webtoons gets some of it

Cronaj

I mean, technically I post my comic in scrolling format, so I consider it a webtoon, but it's definitely drawn for print

@snuffysam, I mean the length of the chapters. The chapters (or episodes) are usually somewhere between 50-100 panels long, which is anywhere between 10-20 pages of a traditional comic

keii4ii

(Tangent, but as a Korean speaker I'm very weirded out by the word "webtoon" in English contexts. Over there every webcomic regardless of format is called a webtoon; I guess it's like anime/manga in Japanese? That in Japan, every animated show is anime, and every cartoon thingie is manga?)

Cronaj

Yeah, that makes sense

In the english speaking world, originally there were comics and webcomics, with little difference between except that one was posted online

but when Korean webtoons entered the English-speaking market, the naming conventions changed

The major difference being the prevalence of scrolling-format webtoons, which made people think that the difference between webtoons and webcomics is the format

but really, it's just a naming thing

You can call a comic a manga, and people expect a black and white comic in a specific style, but really, it's just a comic in Japanese

keii4ii

Yeah

Deo101

I usually just say "scroll style comic" or "page format comic" because im putting pages up on webtoons so it feels... weird to me

keii4ii

That too

IT'S A PICTURE STORY THINGIE WITH SPEECH BALLOONS

Deo101

hahahaha

Cronaj

In the end we are all just children XD

kayotics

this is really late, but i've been getting a lot more comments on my main site lately and I have no idea what I did to encourage that.

Deo101

people caught on

kayotics

That's probably all it is, but it's really surprising that my main site is the one getting more comments, since I wouldn't say it's necessarily a well built comment system? It's the native CMS comment system, and I require the first comment to be moderated

keii4ii

Does this mean I can claim I started reading Ingress before it got famous 8)

kayotics

yes

BUT, I'd say that the estimation of 1% of readers (or whatever the number was) is still accurate.

Deo101

.1% ish

kayotics

I have the most eyes on my comic over on Tapas, and while I do get a handful of comments there, it still equates to less than 1% of the total people subscribed. I'm sure there's a lot of reasons for that (like subscribers who aren't regular readers, people who quit the app, etc), but even the ratio of views to comments is pretty low.

Deo101

yeah I've been noticing that too

I have the most eyes on webtoons but I still have like. a good chunk on tapas and I think those are just more... casual sites

kayotics

yeah absolutely

Deo101

like on comicFury I have way higher engagement rates and i think that's pretty typical cause most of that audience there is also creators

kayotics

I'm sure there's some people who are pretty dedicated on Tapas, but I'd guess that there's more dedicated readers on my self-hosted site, just because they have to specifically seek out the content.

Deo101

^that makes a lot of sense to me

I know a lot of people who follow me on tapas are following 100+ other comics

and i know for SURE I wouldnt be able to take the time/effort to comment on like 10+ comics a day, assuming theyre even keeping up with all thsoe

wow yeah I just checked my list this person has over 6,000 comics theyre subscribed to, and a few have over 500

just on the first page of my readers(edited)

sooooo yeah it makes sense why engagement would be low if people are regularly reading that mant...

keii4ii

I actually rambled about this on twitter recently!

Deo101

and also makes me feel a little bit less bad when people are confused hahahahaha

keii4ii

How I thought I'd get a very small readership who are into what I'm making, but I ended up getting that very small readership PLUS a huge number of people who are just casually reading it

That first expectation was mostly based on my experience with my previous webcomic, but things were different back then. Big platforms weren't a thing, so casual readers were less common.

Deo101

yeah that's really neat

since I've only been making millennium for like... a little over 2 years and it's my first comic, I kinda just started with like 5 mirrors and was like "alright well, lets see how this goes I guess"

I had only ever read one webcomic before i literally have no idea how or why i got so convinced into making a comic

but since I was like 12 years old I was like "hm... I am going to make a comic i think." I just never did any research or tried til recently

or read any. I dont know how this happened

keii4ii

Casual readers vastly outnumbering the dedicated ones used to make me feel like I was doing something wrong, but I think that's just how the times are.

Deo101

Yeah :/ it's hard NOT to notice and feel like you're doing something wrong though.

when its like "okay i have 7,000 subs and got 5 comments" it's like ??? what am i doing WRONG

even though... its nothing wrong

it just be that way

hard to match those two ideas up though

almost went to continue this thought in an entirely different channel.

I think there is also something to be said for people not wanting to repeat a comment

like "oh someone already said what I thought so I'll just give it a thumbs up"

keii4ii

That's what upvoting is for!!!

Deo101

yup!

keii4ii

though, tfw highest voted comments are like "I have no idea wtf is going on lol"

Deo101

YEAH.

also do you ever comment on your own pages?

like not replying to people

keii4ii

I think I did once or twice, back when I actualy had relevant info and didn't have enough room in author's notes or something

Deo101

I've done it a few times, but it's usually kind of to ask questions where I can get replies

keii4ii

I have also seen a pro Korean creator post "first" on their own comic because they were tired of seeing so many of those

Deo101

I did that once LMAO

it's funny when people comment on my comic "FIRST!!!" cause i'm like. dude i get like 10 comments it's not that special to be first

but i'm happy theyre there and theyre excited its kinda cute i guess

keii4ii

Yeah, it's harmless

Deo101

and it's also nice to have people think that they have to race to be first

even though they don't

so it's kind of a nice comment to get even if it's not commenting on my work at all

keii4ii

It's kinda like hitting the like/heart button, just with more HURRY POINTS

Deo101

yeah hehe

oh i do 100% like all my own pages though

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I actually get the most commenters on Webtoons but I’m (fairly?) sure I have more readers on my website.

Deo101

on webtoons, I don't do it on tapas cause you can see i did it LOL

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I think I only ever got one First! comment and that was the only comment on that page.

keii4ii

Hey no shame in being your own #1 fan

Deo101

the one time I said "first!" was cause it had no comments on it for like a year and a hal

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Oh no, I don’t like my own pages. For some weird reason I feel like it’s cheating.

Deo101

and hell YEAH! I'm my number one fan so much that i'm making a dang comic for how much I like these characters ;D

keii4ii

I don't feel bad about liking my own pages, but I rarely do it because I wait a bit before even looking at the post

Deo101

inflate your own stats its cool. all the cool kids are doing it

keii4ii

And by the time I look at it, I forget about liking

Deo101

I only do it on webtoons cause I have to manually post there anyways

so i post and its like "heres the page!" and im like :) good job me :)

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I might start doing it. XD I get an average of 5-10 likes per page so why not.(edited)

Deo101

I also rate myself 10* or whatever the max is wherever I can

keii4ii

Yeah, and TBH one like isn't gonna give you an unfair advantage anyway

Deo101

^

keii4ii

If you're making a dozen alt accounts to give yourself more likes, now that's a bit questionable

Deo101

yeah that would be not so good

but you're a real account who likes your work so why not!

keii4ii

Yeah!

Deo101

I also honestly kinda like to sub to my own stuff and like my pages partially to make sure it's all working right

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I should probably rate myself 10* bc both my comics got ratings-bombed at one point for really dumb reasons.

Deo101

like to see when the page goes up and everything

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

The ratings have slowly crawled back up a ways, but it’s always disheartening when people attack my comics for stupid things.

keii4ii

Oh, to go back to an earlier point about asking questions to readers to encourage commenting, I might straight up ask next week if my comic is making any sense.

Deo101

ohhhhh man i dont like swingin at that hive lol

keii4ii

I'll have to word it well because I do not want it to be a pity party

Deo101

but i mean it might encourage the people who do get it to go "yup!"

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I do straight up ask every now and then. Sometimes I’ll get a pity comment when I do and sometimes it’s still crickets.

Deo101

also I feel really lucky that I havent had anyone be like, mean to my about my work.

I feel like trolls have really gone down in popularity

keii4ii

like even right now I feel like nobody's getting it (except maybe <10 people) so..... I don't think the answers could make me feel worse

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I meant I straight up ask for comments, ugh, I misread Keiiii’s post.

I GET IT, KEIIII

I LOVE UR BABIES

Deo101

oh man, I could never just ask for comments. if I'm feeling really down I usually send it to my friends like "can i have smth nice please" I just get really anxious asking people for things

not that asking is necessarily bad I just, as a person could never do that

also keiiii I havent read it yet but it's on my list cause the way you talk about your work and what I do know of it... seems like it would really jive right with me

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I usually do it along the lines of: ‘If you enjoy this comic, don’t forget to leave a comment! Getting feedback motivates me to keep drawing!’

Deo101

oh okay thats not so bad

oh my god how are the eyes moving

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

I’m shameless, you can say it

Deo101

I have too much shame probably

keii4ii

It is my anxiety moving the eyeballs

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

Give me sone of your shame, it’ll even us out

Deo101

please take it

keii4ii

(anxiety with Nitro powers)

Deo101

NOOO dont be anxious im gonna love it

god that eyes shaking emoji is so great

keii4ii

ikr!

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

So fun fact- my real face eyes do that

keii4ii

I think Tatsumaki wants to see you do it

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

It’s called nystagmus and it’s super trippy if you’ve never seen it before!

keii4ii

OH, I knew someone with that condition!

I never noticed anything about their eyes (only heard about them having the condition from talking), because I never met them while wearing my glasses X'D;;

Cap’n Lee (Flowerlark Studios)

My eyes just RANDOMLY do it a lot and it really freaks people out XD

Desnik

I've found that comments don't matter too much, but getting a boost from someone with a big following does

and the only comments I take seriously are from people I trust, although I get it: chasing the internet numbers is fun

snuffysam

what do you mean by "comments don't matter" you mean, like, in terms of garnering popularity?

Desnik

yeah, and as validation they can be a bit fluffy too

my perspective changed when I started printing out my work as zines and got people to buy them irl, it was very eye-opening

very few people commented on them online but in person I've found out they're not bad? And one of them got me a lettering job

keii4ii

Eh, I think it's okay to have different goals. To some people, good comments mean the world, and that's totally valid to want that.

Desnik

I know, just stating my pov

keii4ii

I mean that to some people, a good comment is not just an "internet number."

Desnik

fair enough

I believe I allowed for 'good comments' as being from someone I trust

keii4ii

Me, I treasure insightful comments from anyone who's invested in my story. To each their own

FeatherNotes

I have a book that I write them down to give me a lil boost to morale when I need it! i def appreciate the time it took for someone to write something thoughtful

keii4ii

Yeah!

Capitania do Azar

Oh comments are like.. What I like the most! (not all comments are the same tho). The reason I put my story out there is so I can share it and discuss it with people and the fact that a few take some time off their day to actively tell me what they think it's what keeps me moving

eli [a winged tale]

I really enjoy comments too. I always respond to my Instagram ones but not the comic ones mostly because of platform difficulties

Glowbat (Aloe)

I love reading through all the comments- they really motivate me when I'm having a low point and need a pick me up to get goin on pages. I just wish I was better at knowing how to respond instead of just liking the comment and hoping they recieve my telepathic brainwaves of gratitude

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Replying to comments is very hard and I always have the anxiety of "ruining" it haha ;; whatever it is (the person's enjoyment of my work?? who knows)

Glowbat (Aloe)

I feel that- part of me is always nervous I'm gonna say somethin to off put them or smthn.

Though I do try my best to curate comment sections if things are looking like they're gonna get rowdy

keii4ii

YEAH, and/or sometimes you're like "this comment is Awesome and deserves an Equally Awesome reply... HOW DO I DO THAT" and get stuck in a loop

Glowbat (Aloe)

yesss exactly that

I'm not that clever and I require lots of time to come up with anything I'm confident in lol

and by the time I have something cool to say back its been like a week

keii4ii

I made a Discord icon to express my internal response in a visual form to such Awesome comments, but I can only use those on Discord

This one:

Glowbat (Aloe)

Hehe

cuteee

and also a mood

keii4ii

Sparkling tears of happiness

Capitania do Azar

I believe them

Cronaj

Man... I will admit, I barely respond to comments

And that probably sounds terrible

But I honestly don't have time to respond to every comment

As well as the anxiety of not know what to say

It does depend on platform tho

keii4ii

I mean, as a reader I don't expect a reply if my comment is like "ooo nice!"

Cronaj

Generally, I respond more readily to comments on Tapas than on Webtoons, because I only have like 2 commenters at most on Tapas

And usually it's readers who ALWAYS comment, so I almost feel like they deserve a response, even if it's just a smiley face or a "thank you"

keii4ii

But if I've written a long ass essay comment, it would be nice to have some kind of engagement with that. Don't get me wrong, the creator doesn't owe me a reply but it's like... should I ever do this again with this comic. Or is my reply-writing time better spent on another comic

Cronaj

True

keii4ii

I def respect that not every creator has time to read all of the comments, regardless of how many comments they typically get

Cronaj

On Webtoons, I have way more engagement, but most of it is thirst for my characters or talking about the art style

keii4ii

and that not every creator may even aim to get comments

Cronaj

So I don't usually know how to respond to stuff like that

keii4ii

But if that is the case........ I would rather know before committing myself to multiple essay-length comments

Yeah, that is understandable!

Cronaj

I read every comment, but I don't want to respond to all of them

keii4ii

I'm 100% cool with "thicc" comments on my MC's butt or on my tiger dude's legs, but I can't necessarily think of productive replies to those

Cronaj

The only comments I respond to on Webtoons are either a) incredibly funny, b) meaningful and noticing more than the art, or c) a genuine question

Like if someone asks about my update schedule

Or if someone wants to know which programs I use

I had one comment about how good my grammar in the dialogue/thoughts is, and I felt so honored that someone else noticed

Usually I get comments about the art (which is also nice), but I prefer comments about the story or subtleties

keii4ii

It's the best thing when people notice the things that you put a lot of thought and love into

Cronaj

For several years in high school, I played around with the idea of getting a writing degree, so grammar and literary language have a special place in my heart

sssfrs

I respond to every single comment... I get one comment a month pretty much though

When friends or readers say nice things about my comic on any platform I save a screenshot and read them if I start to feel like nobody likes what I’m making

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

I do the exact same

FeatherNotes

Its a good practice when things are kind of slow! Or just for that lip morale boost too

[starfleetdoesntfirefirst]

May I propose to you: Mirror!Philippa x Reno. the disaster pan/disaster lesbian ship we deserve.

Thank you so much for this excellent #disaster concept!

(After being informed in response to my pestering that tin-can would prefer to be surprised as to content, I used a random number generator to pick one question and one prompt! I did throw out the first question it actually gave me (“who kisses harder” boring), so it wasn’t totally random, but I also rolled with the not-super-fitting-at-first-glance first prompt I got, which was a lot of fun. :D)

(otp question meme)

8. Nicknames? & if so, how did they originate?

I’m pretty sure these two call each other very little other than nicknames, all of them sardonic. Philippa gets spy-related nicknames, in Jett’s most sarcastic tone. “All right, Mr. Bond.” “Sure, Intergalactic Woman of Mystery.” “Great plan, Mrs. Peel.” “Whatever you say, Maxwell-Smart-in-hot-pants.”

Philippa, meanwhile, generally goes with “hey you” or “you.” When she does use proper nicknames, they’re said with a sneer, but come with an underlying implication of respect, because the nicknames she uses for Jett tend to be the nicknames Jett gives herself. Given that they’re derogatory terms in the first place that she takes on to mess with the likes of Stamets, a la “gearhead” and “grease monkey,” there are a few layers at play here, but Philippa usually uses said nicknames when she’s asking for Jett’s expertise or opinion at something. So, the backhanded admission of respect for Jett, her competence, and her chosen vocation comes through loud and clear.

(fluffy kiss prompts)

6. A press of lips to knuckles, a hand clasped in the other, a courtly gesture of respect and admiration, perhaps segueing into a dance, staring into each others eyes, drinking in the emotion

ETA: now on ao3!

Strains of music from the gala downstairs float upwards, drifting through the arched ceiling of the ballroom and up through the parquet floor into the quiet, echoing dimness of the room with the bomb. Jett lets the music become part of her rhythm as she twists wires and detaches components, using her modified soldering iron to fry connections one by one in the universe’s most careful game of find-the-right-order-of-operations until finally, finally, the red countdown on the detonator flickers and goes out.

She performs a few more checks, then dashes drops of sweat from her forehead and allows herself a brief moment to take a breath before spending a few more minutes disabling the detonator itself, then taking apart the bomb’s explosive components so that, even if the bomb and its detonator are carefully reattached, each will remind inert.

“Are you done yet?” whines a voice a hair’s breath from her right ear.

“I’ll be done when I say I’m done,” Jett says, refusing to so much as flick her gaze in her companion’s direction. Behind her, Philippa gives a theatrical huff, her high-heeled boots clicking their way across the parquet flooring towards the door and back again.

As she finishes her work, Jett sighs, then sets her tweezers on the floor with a click. She is half-expecting Philippa to come up behind her again. But when Jett  turns and stands, wincing and rubbing her sore knees as she does so, the other woman is standing in the middle of the floor, arms sulkily folded.

“That took forever.”

“For me to do your job? Yeah.” Jett shoots her a look. “I didn’t see you helping, Agent 99. Spies really don’t learn how to defuse a bomb with seconds to spare these days, huh?”

Philippa pointedly holsters the phaser in her hand. “I was making sure you didn’t get shot in the head while you worked. You’re welcome.”

Jett nods at the door. “Evidently our colleagues rounded up the baddies before they could even make it up here–”

“Except for that one I disarmed and very ethically did not murder while he was was guarding the bomb–

“–so once he was tied up and I was working, there was no one to protect me from. You,” she finishes, “were slacking, Georgiou.”

“Hmm.” Philippa smiles sweetly. “Don’t accuse me of slacking, gearhead. I could have defused that little device in half the time it took you if you’d let me have a  go at it.”

“Given that the ‘go’ you wanted to have consisted of shooting the detonator and hoping it fried this ‘little device’ before it took out us and all seven hundred people downstairs, I think you could’ve stood to suck it up, be my assistant, and hand me the tweezers.”

“Well, you seem to have done just fine without me as your assistant, Reno.” Philippa pouts for a minute, staring gloomily at the doorway as though hoping an enemy combatant might still run through it. “Now we’re both stuck here, slacking, until we get our beamout.” There are a few seconds of silence, broken only by the faint sounds of the gala below. A slow smile spreads across Philippa’s face. “Unless…”

Stepping forward, she reaches for Jett’s hand, slowly raising it and brushing her lips against Jett’s knuckles, the grace of the gesture contrasting with the hungry gleam in her eyes.

“May I have this dance?” she asks, voice low and husky.

Jett gives her a look, but allows herself to be pulled gently into the waltz position. Philippa’s hand is smoothly calloused where her fingers entwine with Jett’s, and with the hand on Philippa’s back, Jett can feel the warm of Philippa’s torso through her leather jacket, her hand rising and falling with the other woman’s breath. “You weren’t kidding about slacking, were you?”

“This is a ball.” Music is still floating up to them, the notes of a slow walz, liquid and languid. “Isn’t that what people do at a ball? Dance?”

Jett smiles sardonically as they begin to move across the room together, the soft steps of her Starfleet-issue boots and the hard click of Philippa’s heels echoing against the floor. “Is that what spies do at a ball? I wouldn’t know. I’m just the grease monkey, remember?”

“You make an excellent spy, Reno,” Philippa says. Her voice is low and her breath is soft against Jett’s face, and there is a glimmer deep in her eyes that Jett thinks might be genuine admiration.

“But a better engineer,” says Jett, just as quietly, after a moment.

The half-question in Philippa’s eyes fades, leaving a trace of disappointment before she tilts her head to the side, smiling roguishly.

“Then I suppose,” she says, in a more exaggerated, throatier voice, “I’d better make the most of tonight.” Gently, she tugs Jett more closely towards her, and Jett smiles, allowing herself, just for the night, to be pulled in.

[thekidultlife]

The Coldest Human; The Warmest Robot | Jihoon! Android AU

Words: 13362 (yep. a lot. I know)

Genre: Fluff?, Slight Angst?

(A/N: So this fic was definitely based on the book “Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick (if you watched Psycho-Pass, you’ll know that Shogo Makishima makes the best dystopian novel recommendations) and the anime “Beatless”. Both gave such profound food for thought about androids and AI and I’ll tackle what I think about them in the following android series I’ll do since I enjoyed building this world, needless to say lmao. This first one is about androids and their lack of ‘emotion’ (dades named it as empathy, while beatless called it ‘soul’) and the possibilities of a relationship between androids and humans. I know others would feel reserved about this (I am too. It’s just fckiing weird) so I kept it open, a thought to explore. So here you go! I hope you guys like it!)

P.S. If you’re interested to discuss these things with me, the askbox and message box (?) are open! :) I’m more than happy for a thought exercise.  

“Ok. Good.”

He wouldn’t have imagined that those were the words he would hear after an immeasurable number of years.

“He’s working.”

He blinked; the machineries whirring in his chest and the cogwheels sphinning in his head. How many years was he out?

“Could you do a system evaluation?” he heard you ask and he answered without hesitation, the words spilling from his cherry pink lips.

“Memory, intact. System processing, stable. Vitals, stable. Body coordination, malfunction on the right arm joint…”

“Good. Just a bit of tweaking and repair,” you told him in such a mechanical voice that he wondered if you were one too. “Anyway, do you have a name?”

He blinked again; now aware that he was in a sitting position on a worn sofa and that he was in a small laboratory with you who was in a lab coat. His white blond hair fell on his forehead as he leaned in forward.

“I’m Jihoon.”

You nodded and gave a miniscule smile; a bit too cold for a human.

“I’m Y/N.”

3 hours earlier

“Ow! What the fuck?”

It wasn’t weird that you had almost tumbled forwards when your knees had hit a large box which was perfectly hidden by the dim lights of the hallway. It had been almost two years since you took a step into your mother’s old lab yet the throb of pain in your chest remained the same since day one.

You flicked the switch on, hoping that the other lights in the lab were still working, or else you might as well find yourself repairing every single one of them in the next few days. Luckily, you didn’t have to as the stark fluorescent lights flickered on without much difficulty.

With the lights now fully on, you glanced down on your feet to see what you had hit a little bit earlier. To your surprise, it was a large wooden crate that had your mother’s name and the address of her lab imprinted on it.

A slight look of confusion marred your face.

“Who on earth would have sent this?”

You asked even though you knew no one was going to reply. Trying to look for a return address, you only sighed when you found none and it kind of freaked you out. Nevertheless, the nagging feeling in your chest was tempting you to take the crowbar from the workshop.

“Well, doesn’t seem like it’s dangerous.”

You shrugged nonchalantly, holding the crowbar on your grasps and with a few strong tugs, you popped the lid open. What you found had you scrambling far, far away.

“—shit…!”

At the first sign of hair and limbs had your heart almost jumping out of your chest. There was no denying that a body of a dead person might have been sent to you and the image of the body sitting in fetal position was hammered into your head which you swore you will never forget in your entire life. Your hand immediately flew to the device you had on your wrist; looking for the emergency button which rang up the authorities automatically.

But taking a closer look, you noticed the unnatural white blond hair which almost looked like silicon and the pale asbestos white skin that was too perfect and too flawless to be human. Then, you finally saw the clothes which he was wearing—a black button-up and trousers which had a familiar emblem stitched into it.

“Wait…is that…oh.”

You took a few steps forward and hesitantly peered into the contents of the box with less panic and more objectivity. Finally seeing the signs which proved your thoughts, you gave a long sigh of relief as you sank to the floor on your knees; prying the other sides of the wooden crate open so that you wouldn’t have to carry something as heavy as an android.

Under normal circumstances, people couldn’t detect the difference between a human and an android and 99% of the time, there really was no difference—with the new Nexus 9 processing system, even fake emotions could be simulated. The only thing in the way is how androids cannot fully duplicate the humanness in humans.

Yet you have lived among these androids since you were born in a small colony orbiting Mars and your Mom was one of the best android engineers there ever was. Every miniscule twitch, or lack thereof, could alert you that the one you’re talking to is made of metal and codes after years of spending time with them.

“So, Jihoon?” you asked once more, trying to be sure if he was really fully functioning as you placed your tools back neatly inside a box.

He nodded, then scanned the whole lab as you observed his every action. Androids tend to do that—they’re logical to a fault. He could have already planned his way out within those few seconds, you thought.  

“Do you have any idea why you’re here?” you continued your inquiry, now sitting beside him.

“Yes, actually,” he replied without hesitation as he gazed right at you with unblinking eyes. “I wish to see Dr. L/N. She created me.”

Upon hearing his request, you sighed and slumped back on the worn sofa, thankful that dust was essentially non-existent in the filtered colonies. He was still looking at you and waited for any visible reaction but your gaze was as empty as his.

“She’s gone now. Dead,” you informed him nonchalantly as if you were just talking about the weather; trying to be as detached as you could be. “Gone ever since the mass riot in Hangar 15.”

Jihoon nodded since he was there in Hangar 15 when his fellow androids organized an uprising to escape the organization. Yet he chose not to participate in the event since he didn’t trust the plan that was laid, though he also chose not to help anyone, even the humans who perished.

“So, there it is,” you continued when he uttered no reply, standing up so you could stare at him.

You were not an idiot not to know that he was one of the recently escaped Nexus 9 androids from the organization and he was now on the hitlist of greedy bounty hunters disguised as police officers by the bureaucracy. What’s good about that was that you weren’t obliged to turn him in.  

“Are you her daughter?” he asked so suddenly that you raised your eyebrow in curiosity.

“I am. Why did you want to meet her anyway?”

He shrugged. “I needed to ask her something important regarding my functions.”

“Functions? You mean how you work?” you asked, inclining your head as if you were mulling the thought over. “Well, if that’s how it is, then maybe we could look into the computer over there.”

You pointed your head towards the direction of a series of computer screens on a workspace just to your left as Jihoon followed with his eyes. Walking over there, you turned on the main switch and rebooted the in-air holographic interface which allowed you to control several functions without really touching a solid object (ala Tony Stark style). Jihoon trailed behind you as he looked around and then back to you who was already providing the password.

“So, what did you want to look at?” you finally asked with a glitter in your eyes which Jihoon had noticed was only present in humans.

When you posed the question, the blond android immediately fell silent as he tried to rake his brain on what he actually wanted to know. However, within his usual processing time of five nanoseconds, he could not find any answer. In the meantime, you feared that he could be malfunctioning, so you walked closer and reached for his forehead, trying to see if his processor had heated up (which was so appropriately akin to a fever in humans). As soon as he felt your touch, Jihoon twitched and backed away, earning a surprised expression from you.

“I’m sorry. I feel disoriented right now,” he told you, avoiding your gaze.

“It’s ok. You might need some time to recalibrate yourself. Just rest on the sofa for the night…” you replied, a little bit confused and intrigued at the situation. “I’ll be leaving now.”

He nodded gingerly and returned to the couch as you moved to the exit and before you left, you glanced at him with an expression mix of worry and curiosity.

“An android’s main function is to protect itself, or, if it is programmed to work, then his responsibilities and obligations. It cannot work outside its program.”

Your instructor’s voice rang across the almost empty auditorium with its titanium walls and polyester seats burning your eyes with boredom. Being in class always felt too cumbersome, listening to a pre-recorded teacher who refer to androids as ‘it’, which you had some sort of strange distaste even though you knew they were right. Androids are nothing but a lump of metal, plastic and other materials with an artificial heart and brain—it shouldn’t be placed at the same level as humans.

“Everything they do are only mere pre-programmed responses. Even the Nexus 8 processor still has a few insufficiencies which could still possibly be detected by android detection tests such as the Voigt-Kampff scale and the Bonelli Reflex-Arc. However, Nexus 9 which was recently developed to perfection has undermined these insufficiencies, moving closer to simulate human beings. ”

That was how the whole system worked. The organization will produce these androids with a new Nexus processor and in a few and, often orchestrated escapes, these androids will be hunted down by bounty hunters. How, why and what killed these androids will then be used in order to improve the next line of androids.

Welcome to the organization.

“Y/N, I can’t seem to understand how to program involuntary movement.”

“Wow!  Didn’t you get the highest score in the last practicals?”

“Ms. L/N, please detail to us how the Voigt-Kampff tests work.”

“My goat back at home had kids. Sorry, I’m not allowed to give them.”

“Did you already get the programming assignment? It’s due tomorrow.”

“When I was an engineering student just like you, I knew how to work out an android with my eyes closed.”

“Hey, Y/N! Pay your electric bill. I don’t want you getting our electricity cut.”

“My parents got me an ostrich. They’re very rare these days.”

“Those are just androids. They’re not like animals or humans.”

 “You look tired.”

You blinked.

The gaze Jihoon was giving you seemed curious yet you only shook your head and slumped back on the worn sofa. These days, the only place which could give you solace was your mother’s old lab and Jihoon’s quiet presence. You were left on your own thoughts, which was a far contrast from the loud environment you were immersed in every single day.

“Class is shit as always,” you replied, pinching the bridge of your nose as you willed your nausea away. “My roommate is shit as always. My life is shit as always.”

“Why don’t you leave then?” Jihoon asked as he fiddled with an old laptop he found in the stockroom, trying to revive it, his voice as deadpan and mechanical as ever.

“It’s not as easy as you think,” you replied while you threw a severe look at him, which he only shrugged and continued soldering the wires into the motherboard.

“Humans are complicated. I cannot comprehend most of what they do and why they are doing it,” Jihoon remarked without even giving you a remarkable glance.

You looked at the distance with a blank look. “Most humans don’t understand what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. They just do it because that’s what they feel.”

Noticing his long stare, you averted your gaze back at Jihoon who had stopped fixing the gadget and just looked at you with a troubled expression.

“What does it feel like to feel?” he finally asked which had you returning his own stare, unable to think of an appropriate answer.

You sighed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to know.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Jihoon replied as he shot his brow, blond fringes falling softly on his forehead. “I’ve watched humans interact over the years and I’ve tried to understand their actions, yet until now, I couldn’t. Even at this time and age when emotions could easily be manipulated, I cannot comprehend why you still haven’t dialed up your Penfield for a happier mood to remove your unhappiness.”

Immediately, you narrowed your gaze at him for questioning your actions, yet you felt totally embarrassed that he had noticed the last shred of stubbornness remaining in you. After your mother’s funeral, you bought a Penfield mood organ so you wouldn’t sink into your eminent depression yet until now, you didn’t have the courage to use it; remaining in your wrist untouched.

“What do you want me to do then?” you finally asked, exhausted from the variety of emotions pushing you around.

Jihoon shrugged again, now returning to his work on the old laptop. “Nothing. You humans are so sentimental.”

You ignored him and inclined your head upwards, watching the bright fluorescent lights with a pensive mood.

Jihoon counted how many days since he had stayed with you since he basically had nothing to do but fix the entire lab to how it used to be and mull over his situation. He knew you knew that he was a rogue android yet he wondered why you haven’t reported him yet. He hypothesized that you couldn’t really be bothered to report him or you secretly enjoyed his presence.

Over the past few weeks, Jihoon had found himself thinking about you the most. He defended to himself that you were his mere case study yet why did he even bother to defend himself from his own? It was not like he had some sort of conscience, so then why? He didn’t want to tell you but he had long gotten suspicious about how his processing was a bit different than his fellow androids and maybe that was the reason why he had sought your mother. So whenever you weren’t around, he tried to snoop around your mother’s main computer to see if there were any notes left about how he was made or how his Nexus 9 processor was programmed, however, he had not found any significant data yet.

“What are you doing?” he asked, curious as he peered over your shoulder while you worked on the main computer.

“A project. We’re tasked to program specific responses in the event that someone tries to flirt with an android,” you replied without removing your concentration from the string of codes and numbers on the screen.

“I see. I guess that applies to prostitute androids,” he noted as he pulled out a chair to sit beside you, also monitoring the screen.

“You know that’s illegal.”

“Doesn’t stop anyone from doing it. Besides, the organization sells them anyway,” Jihoon shrugged as you arched an eyebrow at him, considering that he had a point.

“Androids are common commodity nowadays, huh? Sometimes you wonder what else they are made for.”

At that juncture, you had long been distracted from your work and was only staring at Jihoon, gauging if you could ask the question long floating in your head. Jihoon knew what you wanted to know by the path the conversation was going, so he had already beaten you down the chase.

“I’m designed for military use. Tactical adviser and technical expert,” he simply replied. “Our SVT line is equipped with quantum computers—the first of its own kind.”

You scoffed, a little bit amused. “You planned your whole escape, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he had no longer seen any reason why he had to hide that fact from you. “All five of us escaped. I don’t know where they are now and I don’t really care.”

Smiling, you finally asked the central irony of it all. “You escaped from the organization yet here you back in their labs. Why?”

Your grin morphed into a giggle when Jihoon turned his head away from you as if he wanted you to ignore that single aspect, sulking when you hadn’t.

“I have my reasons,” he replied with a pout.

“Which I’ll assume to be completely logical and a hundred percent android,” you retorted back with a playful grin and teasing eyes.

“Of course they are,” he defended with a glare and you only laughed at him. “I’m not joking, you know.”

“I know,” you smiled warmly and stood up, pinching his cheek to lift the frown on his lips, though much to his chagrin.

“Don’t do that,” he warned you, yet you only did it again on his other cheek. “Stop it already!”

You had already removed your hand before he could swat it away, as you laughed so hard that you almost fell to the ground. Jihoon was definitely not amused yet he had noticed some sort of malfunction in his system that made him all seem too light hearted. He’ll do a system check later.

“Haven’t I told you before?” your voice had finally caught his attention and dragged him away from his thoughts. “You seem so human. It’s so weird.”

I wish I wasn’t human.

These days though, you actually wished you weren’t.

It’s as if the colony was hell unloosened and you are right at the middle of it to feel everything. Though you were still a fool nonetheless, just like how Jihoon had said—not using the mood organ you bought when it was the most convenient. You didn’t need to feel hell, just a number to dial up and then you’re fine.

“481 for hopefulness; 888 for the incredible want to watch television and 3 for the desire to dial your Penfield mood organ! Come and feel complete!” You sang the commercial for the mood organ with every note dripping with sarcasm as you sat in fetal position on the worn sofa of the lab; fiddling with the buttons of the device. “If I used it, would I feel complete?”

“Data has shown that humans usually do not,” Jihoon’s mechanical voice interrupted your thoughts, together with the rattling of the toolbox filled with discarded devices he gathered from the stockroom.

You grinned cynically. “What if androids use it? Will you then feel empathy?”

The blond android paused for a while to look at you from where he sat on the workbench and then continued his search in the toolbox after a minute.

“You already know that we do not have a brain to attach the mood organ to. We have a processor yet it wouldn’t respond to the device,” he replied in an annoyed voice which would’ve meant that he need not to remind you what you had already learned in class.

“I’m just teasing you,” you replied with a small smile which immediately disappeared after a second.

Jihoon sighed. “Dial 999. It won’t make you feel anything.”

The android had caught your glare and held on to it. Using the mood organ was the most logical thing to do in your situation. He knew you were simply trying to hold on to a few loose strings and the best way not to let them go is to sacrifice something. He could not understand why you still refuse to do so.

“I can’t do it,” you confessed; hiding your face from his scrutinizing stare.

“Why?”

“I feel…I feel like if I did, I’ll lose myself.”

Jihoon stared. “I don’t understand.”

You smiled at him weakly.

Your head pounded, eyes burning, cheeks stained.

Where were you?

Bloodshot eyes blinking at the blinding white lights overhead, you soon realized that you cried yourself to sleep in the lab. It was awfully noisy unlike most days—incomprehensible noise which eventually turned into sweet, sweet music which almost lulled you back to sleep, except that you had noticed that it was Jihoon who was singing beside you on the sofa with a makeshift electric piano on his lap.

“Good morning. You look like you had a nightmare,” he remarked as soon as he saw you gazing towards his direction without a word.

You scoffed. “My whole life is a nightmare.”

“All humans say that,” Jihoon replied harshly, though you didn’t care. “Want some water?”

You nodded, feeling your throat as rough as sandpaper, and Jihoon immediately complied, moving the electric piano away with its bare wirings, and towards the newly-installed water dispenser.

“They still have that on sale?” you asked as you sat on the sofa beside Jihoon, pointing at the piano after he had brought you water.

“I found a shop online which sells old stuff, I saw a complete set of piano keys and put it together with an old stereo I found here,” Jihoon replied, looking proudly at his work.

You raised your brows in astonishment. “You’re incredibly resourceful.”

Jihoon gave a small smile (you knew this one was pre-programmed), and then replied, “Shall I play a song for you?”

“I wonder why ‘piano playing and singing’ was added to a tactical adviser’s program,” you teased, earning a genuine glare from Jihoon before he ignored your remark and moved on with playing.

Watching his fingers move across the keyboard, you couldn’t tell if he was an android or not. He moved fluidly, the notes he was making was enough to touch you—it was a song designed to make you feel relaxed since you had just cried. It was a song just for you.

You loved how the song dipped and rose; how Jihoon’s voice was husky yet soft against the notes; how he seemed like he was honestly trying to reach out to you, to comfort you. How is he capable of such skill which only humans could harness? It had filled your mind in more than one night, yet this night, you ignored the question and relished the beauty which Jihoon made with his music.

The song ended without you even noticing it. You continued to stare into the tiled floor as Jihoon studied you closely for any reaction.

“You know, I feel so tired.”

You began, holding the plastic cup which you drank water with as you continued to look blankly into the dark hallways of the lab.

“I feel so tired of feeling—feeling empty, then feeling overwhelmed; feeling like I could do everything, then life drops me down on the cold, cold asphalt,” you chuckled, every laugh dripping with cynicism. “Is there a way not to feel?”

“Be an android then,” Jihoon replied back with a frown; knowing you wouldn’t use the mood organ.

You sneered. “If only I could. Probably download my consciousness on a mechanical body—they’re developing it now, you know.”

“You’ll miss how to feel. You don’t want to be like me,” he told you as he himself gazed downward, his words reflecting a deep hidden yearning.

“I don’t think so,” you replied defiantly, with a sour tone on your voice. “I will be useless if I can’t do what I’m supposed to do, and my emotions are only in the way.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t understand why you want to remove your feelings. Humans cannot do away in this world without meaning, as what I am told of.”

“It’s ok. I don’t expect you to understand. What do you even know? You only copy humans to manipulate us into thinking that you are one of us. You only mimic feelings and emotions but do not understand the meaning behind them.” your voice was getting louder, harsher, colder; but it’s not like Jihoon could react to your anger. “Emotions brought nothing good to me. They impede with my work, they make me cry at night, they fill me with stress! Without it, I would have gotten on with my life much, much better when Mom died!”

Jihoon didn’t expect the rush of adrenaline surge into his system; a sudden temper induced by you who had emotions he might have wished for, yet you wanted to throw away.

He held on both your arms to stop you from shouting at him—forcing you to look at him straight in the eyes. His platinum hair looked like it was frazzled by static rage as his bangs covered one of his eyes.

“Listen to me. If you hadn’t had any emotions then how would you know if your mother cared for you?  How would you know if she loved you? You cried because you cared for her; because you love her and I, like you said, will never understand that. I will never understand what a meaningful life means, But you will.”

Rendered speechless, you could only stare at him with tears streaming down your cheeks.

“Even if your mother had died, she had loved you when she was alive. She raised you to be a normal human being even though she was alone. And here you are, abandoning everything she gave for you; wanting to forget the love she taught you.”

“I’m—”

“You think being an android is heaven?” he jeered. “Wait till you become one. Wait till you just move because that’s what the program says so; wait till you don’t have things like free will. Wait till you realized that you are nothing but what you are—a clump of metal and plastic stripped around mechanical organs. You don’t feel anything because you’re existence is meaningless and replaceable.”

Jihoon released you from his grasps yet reached out for your hand where the mood organ sat snuggly on your wrist.

“Use it. Dial 999.”

He ordered and you froze with mouth agape; filled with astonishment.

“Dial 999. You don’t have to feel anything you don’t want to.”

You simply stared at him.

“Use it Y/N! Use the fucking mood organ—”

“I can’t, okay?” you shouted…and then sobbed, holding on to his arm which was still on your wrist. “…I can’t…I fucking…can’t…”

The tears which flowed out from you seemed endless as you cried out two years’ worth of grief and hopelessness. Everything that you poured your heart into turned to nothing, the time you spent was all meaningless. You thought things will get better someday but life gradually destroys you day by day; as your situation and the people around you torture you endlessly.

“I don’t know what to do anymore…” you said in between whimpers as you fell between Jihoon’s arms. “If I used the mood organ…what would be left of me then…? Am I only made human because of this, this thing? My emotions will no longer be mine…”

Silently, Jihoon cradled you as he listened to you pour out to him, or to anyone about what you feel for the first time.

“But I’m so tired…tired of keeping up this illusion that I’m strong. I’m…the one always taking care of others…but who takes care of me when I can no longer put up this façade? They…they don’t know I’m so sick of studying…of being perfect. I want to rest already…” you resigned, burying your face on Jihoon’s shoulder and relishing his warmth despite how artificial it technically is. “I know it’s necessary to suffer to succeed, but how would one know if he’s on the path to success? What if all of this suffering turns into nothing? I wish life just has a skip button where I can skip to the point in my life where I’m rich and successful. Fuck this Jihoon, I’m so scared of the future.”

“Sometimes, we just overthink and things don’t really happen, you know?” Jihoon tried to assure you but he knew it wasn’t as effective as he hoped to be.

“I don’t want to get my hopes up and disappoint myself again in the end. The future is full of possibilities, one false move and my life comes crashing down. I wish I could be as easy-going as other people. I feel…so, so jealous of people enjoying their lives…while I’m stuck here trying to be perfect. This isn’t the life I want.”

“You don’t always have to be perfect…” Jihoon whispered in a solemn voice.

“No one will accept me if I wasn’t.” You sniffed, clinging to his black button up for support you dearly needed. “Everyone I know use me for their own purposes because I can get them through school, through life. They will leave me if I’m no longer useful.”

“I’ll accept you,” he replied immediately. “I don’t need you to be anything but yourself. It doesn’t matter to me. I will always be here for you if you need me.”

You chuckled amidst the sobs. “If you talk like that, then I would absolutely believe you. Please say this isn’t an analog hack,”

“I’m not lying. If I am that would just be ironic.”

You leaned back to gaze into his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“If I’m allowed to, I’ll tell you I can understand. Being useless, being abandoned…it’s an android’s greatest fear, if we indeed feel fear. I need to be special for people to use me, so that I can stay by their side and provide myself a sense of purpose.”

Gazing at him with wide eyes, you remarked, “I never knew androids find meaning in their work.”

“I can’t say about the other androids, but that’s what I think.”

For the first time that night, you smiled at him sincerely, as you strung your fingers between his locks, brushing them away from covering his eyes.

“Thank you for being here. There’s just days when I can’t hold it anymore, and need someone to cry on to. Please stay with me like this.”

“I’ll stay. Don’t worry,” he quietly replied, as he coaxed you back between his arms, and allowing you to stay like that as long as you’d like.

Buried on his chest, you hummed in satisfaction. “You’re the warmest android I’ve ever met.”

Your words had him thinking for days.

It wasn’t like a big surprise; he had already known that there was something different with him. Jihoon knew he was curious to a fault and had such a deep yearning to understand the things around him, though he didn’t know if it was because he was programmed to work that way.

Do all androids introspect?

For the first time in several months, Jihoon went outside the lab for a walk. Honestly, he disliked taking walks, or going outdoors, for that matter. Yet today, he suddenly had the urge to do it. He didn’t know why he had urges. He knew androids don’t usually have them. Is this some new feature of the Nexus 9?

It was nice that the colony had a special forest beside the laboratories and everything in it were all the remaining species of trees and plants on earth. After the third world war, radioactive dust from detonated nuclear bombs had ravaged the home planet and gradually killed the flora and fauna. There are people left on earth, mostly those who refused to migrate and specials who aren’t qualified to migrate, and they live in means Jihoon does not find suitable for people. Though even in the colonies, life isn’t as great as they advertised it to be.

He had been wrecking his processor for thinking day and night until his system had warned him that he was heating up. So the next possible solution is to cool it down with the artificial summer breeze blowing through his white blond hair, or so, he tried to reason himself. Why is he even trying to reason to himself? Why is he even trying to explain his reasons?

“Well, isn’t this new?”

Your voice rang suddenly behind him that he immediately turned around and caught you by the shoulder. You didn’t bat an eye at his actions, but instead, chuckled at him for mistaking you as an enemy.

“Relax. I’m not even authorized to carry a laser gun,” you replied with a smirk, as Jihoon released you with a sigh.

“Don’t do that again, please. I might have killed you,” he replied with a severe glare which had you raising both your eyebrows.

“Why not? Even if you had killed me, androids don’t feel any guilt,” you remarked as you slowly narrowed your gaze at him. “Yep. You’re truly weird.”

Jihoon refused to reply and simply glanced at you with a deepening frown. He was beginning to develop a distaste at how you were making him question his own self. He didn’t like how he was so confused; that he had so many questions.

“I still haven’t thanked you yet for the other day, have I? Come on,” you suddenly called his attention and grabbed his wrist, coaxing him to follow you down the forest path.

Jihoon had almost complained at how the grass was pricking his skin and convince you to return home, when you stopped at a clearing, showing you a glittering lake illuminated by the artificial moonlight. It looked truly beautiful as he stepped beside you, eyes wide and lips parted.

“Are you trying to deceive me again?” Your sing-song voice rang to his side as he gazed at you, who had already slid down the lakeside with a grin on your pretty lips. “You look pretty convincing.”

Again tonight, he had refused to reply and simply followed you down your path. In a dry spot covered by dewy grass, the both of you sat and simply observed the glistening lake as you savored the tranquility of the night. Fireflies dotted the evening air as they buzzed around the forest clearing, creating an atmosphere straight out of a fairytale.

“Sad that these fireflies are electronic,” you remarked, catching one with your hand to study the glass wings it had and the luminescent light it emitted from a nano-sized bulb built inside the small insect. “Real ones have long died out.”

“It’s to set the mood of this clearing. You are aware that this forest is a huge AI in of itself, aren’t you?” Jihoon replied, with his natural condescending tone whenever you say something stupid.

You pursed your lips to sulk. “I know, smart-ass. I just wanted to see real insects.”

“Why want a real one? There isn’t really much of a difference between the nanobugs and the real insects.”

“There is a great difference!” you defended. “Real ones don’t exist nowadays! It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see one!”

Jihoon scoffed, unable to consider the meaning again. “You humans put context to everything.”

“What’s wrong with that? Maybe that’s why we’re are able to live meaningful lives.”

Your rather pleasant conversation had once again turned into a full-blown debate about humans and androids. Jihoon, in your opinion, had interesting views regarding the current society, and how humans have long been outpaced by their own creations.

“You seem to enjoy talking to me,” Jihoon observed as he watched the artificial breeze sweep pass your locks while you tried to keep your hair in place.

“Because I dislike being lonely,” you replied without sparing him a glance. “But I need to be lonely to get things done. I need to be alone so that I can focus. There are things needed to be sacrificed.”

He raised his brows at you. “What does it feel like to be lonely?”

You inclined your head to your left to think. “The closest I could compare it to android terms is the lack of having an owner to serve. You are unable to do anything; unable to decide something outside of your understanding. An android cannot survive without being used as a tool.”

“Is that why humans seek partners in levels separate from the biological?”

A small huff. “Romance isn’t always about sex and offspring, you know.”

“Then what else is it about?”

Jihoon was now gazing at you intensely, intent of hearing out an answer from you, while you were proud to provide him information. He leaned in closer to hear you, incredibly curious.

“Listen. Liking, and then loving someone is a complex human behavior. Most androids don’t get it at all. But in simpler terms, people show their love in a million various ways and it comes in so many forms but it comes down to a simple factor—empathy, the ability to understand one another.”

“How are humans able to understand one another? I cannot find a straightforward process in the cloud, so I assume this process is based on emotional connections.”

You grinned at him as you inclined closer to his ear as if you were sharing some cool secret. “Correct, Mr. Android. But the problem is, even humans fail to understand one another, and wanna know what happens if humans fail to empathize?”

Jihoon gave an evocative gaze, waiting for an answer.

“War. Conflict. Murder. Death,” you replied, pausing a significant amount of time after every word. “Just like how the Earth is right now—just waiting to wither away underneath all that radioactive dust from nuclear warheads.”

You shook your head at the irony. “But here I am telling you all about this when I myself cannot always understand other people. You couldn’t imagine how difficult it is to understand someone bitching at you day and night; and then adjusting yourself for them.”

“I’m sorry,” Jihoon shook his head. “You’ve lost me there.”

You smile meekly. “Was that too much?”

“No, I just cannot see why you must adjust to someone who is clearly in the wrong. It’s not your fault, you didn’t commit a damn mistake, so why must you change?”

“You see, there are a lot of reasons people act the way they do, and who knows, you might be one of those reasons. If you adjust yourself, then you have removed one of the possibilities, lowering the chances the other person will do the action again. You simply cannot tell a person to change his ways. You can only change yourself.”

Jihoon considered for a while, and gradually nodded as if he had understood the logic.

“Things have become a bit more clearer for me. Thank you,” he replied with a small smile on his lips. Was he trying to deceive you again? How real is that smile?

“You’re always welcome to ask. Besides, it’s not like androids ask me about human behavior every day. In fact, you’re the only I know who had asked.”

Jihoon frowned and hid the fact that he did not like the honor of being the first android who had asked.

“Also, I still haven’t thanked you for staying with me the other night. You made me see things in a better light, and I’m trying to pick myself up from now on. I’ve read a lot of helpful books—”

Honestly, Jihoon had already lost your voice in the background noise as he had once again been swallowed up by his thoughts—thoughts regarding you and empathy. It would’ve been better if he had learned how to empathize so that you wouldn’t have to explain everything to him, and he would be able to simply understand you and your actions. But oh, you forgot to explain the physical aspects…the cloud had suggested a short cut to empathy and it seemed quite feasible.

“—so right now, I’m trying to coordinate my schedule and it seemed to be working. I’m not sure how long weekly planning will work for me, but I’m—”

Without anything—warning shots, preemptive touches, small pauses of time—nothing had prepared you to feel a pair of soft lips pressing against yours as you felt your body go numb in milliseconds. The next thing you felt was the hand cupping your chin, wondering how you had never noticed it before, as he pressed on further, moving his lips on yours and brushing so slightly, so sensually. You would’ve enjoyed the moment if not for the sudden realization that the one kissing you was Jihoon and you had to scramble away, breaking the kiss and Jihoon’s concentration.

Upon noticing your panic, he seized your hand to calm you down and to prevent you from running away. Slowly, Jihoon opened his eyes and met yours inquisitively.

“So tell me, have I established a connection between us now?”

Jihoon had sensed that he must have done something wrong. It had been days since he had last saw you and he had concluded that you were definitely avoiding him after what happened by the lake. However, he doesn’t get it.

“Was the kiss a mistake?” he whispered to himself, touching his lips with the tips of his fingers.

That time, he definitely sensed some circuit burst inside his stomach, however, when he checked his mechanisms later that night, his circuits seemed to be working fine. But, what was that then? He only did what he thought would induce empathy from both of you, yet it seemed to have backfired—prompting you to avoid him, while it caused only confusion for him.

“Did I only widened the gap between us?”

 beep. boop. beep. boop.

Jihoon snapped from his thoughts as he averted his attention towards the incoming call directed to his processor, which was a function he was thankful to have. He didn’t want anyone snooping around who he contacts.

“What?” he snapped, unappreciative of the interruption.

“Yo, Woozi! ‘Sup?” a cheerful, energetic voice echoed in his mind, almost tempting him to mute the caller.

“Stop calling me that. I’m Jihoon now,” he scowled at the invisible caller.

“Then, I ain’t Hoshi anymore. Call me Soonyoung!”

Jihoon rolled his eyes and leaned back against the sofa he had long been sitting on.

“So?”

“So, what?”

“You know, you could easily blend in as a brainless special if you stay on Earth.”

“Ah, you’re harsh as ever.”

“And so? You don’t have a heart to get hurt anyway.”

Soonyoung laughed as Jihoon automatically muted the caller as soon as he passed a certain level of noise. When he had stopped laughing, Jihoon turned on the audio again with a jaded look.

“Alright, fine. I’ll give you what you want,” Soonyoung surrendered as Jihoon sighed, relieved that he didn’t have to go through anymore bullshit. “They’re moving now. They already got to Vernon.”

Jihoon frowned. “So he’s gone?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is that they’ve found him.”

“What about you?”

Jihoon could imagine the other’s grin even if he couldn’t see him and clicked his tongue in annoyance.

“Oh, are you worried about me, Jihoonie?”

Jihoon growled audibly. “We both know you owe me one, and you’re not allowed to retire without paying me back.”

Soonyoung sighed dramatically over the line. “I get it, okay? Calm the shit down.”

“Good. I don’t want to repeat myself.”

“Sure. Anyway, how about you? It’s been months and they haven’t found you yet in their own labs.”

“Found someone not too bothered to report me.” Jihoon stared at his nails, checking any lodged dirt.

“And…does this person know what you are?”

“Immediately after she set her eyes on me. She’s a pseudo-human behavior engineer.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh.” Soonyoung’s tone turned for a playful dip again, which definitely made Jihoon sigh for the nth time tonight. “So this person’s a ‘she’! I can’t believe you’re cruel enough to deceive her!”

Jihoon was definitely disliking the way he’s painting him into a villain. “I’m not deceiving her. Haven’t you heard me? She’s an android engineer and she knows if I use analog hack on her, and I don’t use it.”

If he could see Soonyoung, Jihoon swore the other android will definitely raise his brows at him.

“There’s a possibility that you aren’t even aware you’re already deceiving her.”

Jihoon scoffed. “I don’t have a subconscious to do that.”

“But we’re androids designed to copy humans, it’s not that too difficult to go back to default processes.”

He was having none of it. “I’m not deceiving her. Anyway, I’ll contact you when I need something. Now leave me in peace.”

Without even waiting for a reply, Jihoon turned off his communication signature to rid himself of his exhausting companion. As soon as his attention was back to the empty and desolate space of the laboratory, he had noticed something odd.

“It’s already late. She should be here by now.”

While he was voicing out his observations, Jihoon was already searching for you—hacking into various electronic devices, CCTVs, your school gate’s log and so—yet in all the places you could be, he had not found your whereabouts.

“This isn’t good,” Jihoon muttered to himself, with a tight furrow on his brow. He tried looking at camera footages from the last few hours and in just half a minute, Jihoon found out what happened to you.

Somewhere while walking to the lab a few hours ago, a white van had pulled over where men donned in black came up behind you. Jihoon saw someone cover your nose with a handkerchief which he guessed was doused with chloroform and when you no longer had the consciousness to fight back, the men had carried you into the van and drove away.

While watching, Jihoon was already hacking into a self-driving car which was already waiting for him when he had emerged from the laboratory. As soon as he entered the vehicle, Jihoon began hacking his way into the colony’s security system so that he could track where the men had taken you. The car began moving when he had finally tracked you down—not so difficult for a military-grade android.

“The fuck do I know.”

You spat out vehemently, despite being tied into a chair and wired to a lie detector machine, and another which sends controlled volts to your system upon a tap on a tablet.

It should have been a normal day for you, yet when you were abducted just as you were going to the lab, this man has been interrogating you for almost half an hour already about an android your mother had supposedly made.

“Alright little girl. We’re not playing games here,” the man, masked and voice altered, warned you for the fifth time. “We know you have it! The SVT-class android Type 07 Woozi. Where is it?!”

With gritted teeth, you threw daggers at the man. “I already told you. I don’t know any Woozi!”

Well technically, you don’t. But it’s not like you—!!

A surge of electricity ran up your spine and left as soon as it entered. However, it had left you jerking horribly.

“I’ll ask again. Where is it?”

You glared, drool slipping down your lips. “I don’t…know.”

Volts shot straight up through your skin, this time longer. You writhe in agony.

“Two years ago, your mother Dr. Y/LN was the chief engineer of the Nexus 9 project. She had developed all of the SVT-class andys, but if that’s everything there is to it, she shouldn’t be dead right now?”

You froze at the revelation and wondered if you could trust what this person was talking about. As far as you know, your mom had died because she was shot by an android during the riot in Hangar 15. She was just unlucky to be at the wrong time and place.

“What do you mean? She was killed by an andy in the riot…she’s just unlucky.”

You could hear the man sneer behind his mask.

“There’s no such thing as luck.”

He operated a terminal and showed you several holographic images of a strange device and a screenshot of programming codes. You studied them carefully and you immediately knew what the device was, and you couldn’t believe what was just laid in front of you.

“That’s a lie!” You cried out but the masked man only laughed. “It’s impossible to create an empathy organ, and nobody has ever succeeded—”

“That’s why you’re mother’s dead, little girl.”

Instantly, you were reduced to silence; eyes darting back and forth to the man and the images he had shown you.

“Without permission from the organization, your mother had installed empathy organs inside the SVT-class androids. When the organization realized what she did, they had her killed. The riot was only a cover.”

You couldn’t believe what you’re hearing. “No, no. That’s not true!”

“Now, these androids have escaped and we want them. So, where is it?”

You shook from your restraints as you chewed on your lip—deciding what to do even though you still haven’t digested yet what big of an information the man has given you.

“I…I…the android…”

 —!!

A huge explosion stopped you before you could utter something coherent. Instinctively, you moved your face away from the debris suddenly hurling on the air in speeds you couldn’t calculate. Within seconds, you sensed yourself being freed from your restraints, and your heart leapt when you were then lifted from the ground and carried bridal style, your arms flying to cling to his shoulders for support.

“Sorry I was late.”

When you heard Jihoon’s voice, you immediately relaxed and felt relieved that you were finally safe. As the dust and debris fell away, you could see his eyes were on you, though you couldn’t read what he was thinking. As if finally deciding what to do, Jihoon moved you outside of the building, which was actually a warehouse, and placed you inside a self-driving car waiting nearby.

“We’ll go home after I take care of this one,” he silently told you and casually walked back inside.

When you had heard his words, you felt that there was something off with him. You couldn’t put it but you knew something was definitely going to happen and you were not going to like it. Despite the fact that you wanted to see what Jihoon was about to do, your body refused to allow you—the surges of electricity finally affecting your muscles, rendering them immovable or languid.

“Fuck this.”

Meanwhile, Jihoon kicked away the offending wood and twisted metal as if they were as heavy as pillows. His eyes were strained to only accomplish one mission—to look for the shitheads who kidnapped and tortured you. Though in a few seconds, it wasn’t his eyes which found them.

Dodging, a laser beam had missed him within a few centimeters as he retaliated back with a wave of electricity, visible as lightning and hurts just as much. Unlucky for Jihoon, the men had armor which protected them from his attack, and only left their laser guns unusable. Well, at least they’re unarmed.

Jihoon rushed towards his first victim within a blink of an eye, as he knocked the air out of him with a punch in the gut as strong as being hit by a freight train. He didn’t need to turn around to incapacitate the man who came running towards his back with a metal pipe, as Jihoon simply magnetized a sheet of metal to slice through the man’s neck.

Inside the car, you could hear the commotion going on and you willed your legs to move with desperation. You guessed that he was going to kill those men and you were absolutely right. He is a tool used for warfare and would not hesitate to rid himself of his enemies. That was what you had sensed in his words.

“Move, damn it!”

You cried out, slamming your fists repeatedly on your thigh. Maybe through sheer will, you regained a bit of control, albeit with little strength. Nonetheless, you crawled your way out of the car, and towards the destruction Jihoon was about to commit.

With only the leader who Jihoon purposely left out, the blond android casually approached the panicked man as he tried desperately to run away; except that Jihoon had his armor glued to the ground through electromagnetism as soon as he figured out that the armor was absorbing electric currents yet are not immune to magnetism.

Jihoon gazed at the man with impassiveness. “Heard you were looking for me. So here I am.”

The man couldn’t utter a single coherent word; his head all too riddled with anxiety to think of anything other than his eminent death.

“Also heard you electrocuted Y/N,” Jihoon inclined his head towards the side to wait for a reply, and when he heard none, the android picked up the man by the neck; his feet dangling on the air. “I’m curious what it feels like to electrocute someone.”

“S-so it’s true…y-you androids have, h-have an empathy organ…!” the man remarked as he sensed the anger in Jihoon’s voice, though he began wheezing when he felt his airpipes being gradually crushed.

“I apologize. I cannot comprehend,” Jihoon’s voice was void of any emotion. “Anyway, this ends here.”

“Jihoon, no—!”

Surprised to hear your voice, Jihoon averted his gaze towards you, who was heavily leaning against the concrete wall, all exhausted from reaching him. You took in your surroundings as you realized that he was already in for the last kill, and knew that you were too late, but still…

“Don’t kill him please. I’ll…I’ll just call the cops…”

Jihoon arched his brow, tightening his grip on the man who began to struggle to get out.

“Why? He tortured you. Don’t you feel angry?” the android asked, with a face still stoic.

“Just…just don’t kill him, please…” you pleaded, holding on to your still immovable arm.

You weren’t really sure what will happen as Jihoon simply stared at you, maybe studying the expression you had on your face, or maybe trying to comprehend the logic behind your request. But when Jihoon let go of the man (though, keeping him place as he stepped on the man’s leg, and a look that meant his limb will get ripped off if he doesn’t stop writhing), you sighed in relief.

“Alright, I won’t kill him. But I’ll call the cops and report the incident,” Jihoon’s voice and eyes were ice cold, which frightened you for a bit. “I won’t risk getting found.”

You nodded with a tiny smile on your face when he did what you wanted. “Let’s go home.”

“Wait for a bit, and oh, please look away,” Jihoon asked but you couldn’t understand what he had meant, but when he had picked up a metal pipe and pinned it through the man’s thigh without any sort of expression or effort, you wished you had followed him sooner.

The blond seemed to have understood the look of concern on your face and immediately took the measures to explain. “Don’t worry. I already called the police and he won’t die from bleeding if the pipe is stuck to his thigh.”

Jihoon removed his foot from the man’s leg and walked towards you, who looked as if you had seen something you shouldn’t. As soon as he got to you, Jihoon pulled you towards his arms and embraced you tightly, slowly patting your head.

“I told you to look away,” he reprimanded albeit softly.

His words seemed to have snapped the dam in you as you began sobbing on his chest, unable to control your emotions swelling up from inside you. Jihoon knew that the event left a huge trauma in you and could only comfort you, which was not one of his many talents.

“Let’s get you home, ok?”

Later that night as Jihoon finally had you sleeping against his chest, all sprawled out on the sofa, he received a call from Soonyoung.

“Mission accomplished, sir!”

“What did he say?”

“Just as you predicted. The guy’s from a competing android producer and they wanted to have the empathy organ.”

Jihoon hummed, finding this type of communication advantageous since he doesn’t have to speak as his processor directly receives the encryption and translates it into thoughts. This way, you don’t have to hear the conversation.

“Did you find any information about it?”

“Only pictures. I’ll send them to you right now. But I still haven’t found where it came from. I think that’s your specialty though.”

“Alright, just give them to me and I’ll trace it.”

“Got it. Anyway, you just tricked the goddamn girl. You told her you called the police, when it was me you actually called.”

“And the point is?” Jihoon looked at the ceiling and followed the lines formed by the lined titanium sheets, as he draped an arm over your shoulder and caressed your hair.

“You told me you wouldn’t a few hours ago?”

“I’m just protecting her. They’ll be back, so I’m simply nipping it in the bud.”

“But you also asked me to torture the guy?”

“An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. Besides, we got information.”

Jihoon could hear Soonyoung hum playfully on the other end. “An andy through and through. Anything for the owner, huh?”

He checked his nails once again. “She’s not my owner.”

Soonyoung paused for quite a long time that Jihoon thought the other had finally left the line, but when he had begun shouting, Jihoon had to turn off the audio in annoyance.

“What? What? What? She’s not your fucking owner?!”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” The blond arched his brow.

“Everything is wrong with that! Why are you letting her use you when she’s not your owner?! Why are you devoting yourself to her like she owns you?! Why haven’t you asked her to be your owner?!”

“Alright, Soonyoung. Shut up before I hang up.”

“Sorry, it’s just that…I just can’t believe you…is this really you I’m talking to?”

Jihoon rolled his eyes. “As if there’s anyone who could steal my communication signature.”

“Wow…I just…wow…if we’re human, I would’ve said she got you whipped.”

The other frowned at the remark. “I’m hanging up. I’ll contact you again soon.”

“Huh? Wait, Jihoon—”

Again, Jihoon disregarded all the bullshit Soonyoung says and turned off his intercom. As silence filled his head once again, he glanced down on you who was peacefully sleeping on his chest on top of him, free of any worries of the real world. He already had his hand gently stroking your head, as he continued to take in all of you.

If he really had an empathy organ inside him, then it must have been real. He had done a lot of unexplainable shit that most androids will not understand or even do, as expressed by Soonyoung. (But that shithead will understand sooner or later, Jihoon smirked since all of the SVT line was said to be equipped by an empathy organ.)

So what if he indeed has one?  Was he still an android? Will his actions become more unexplainable in the future?  Today, Jihoon seemed to have gained more questions than answers. But he knew he wanted to understand you.

Days following the incident, you did your own investigative search about the empathy organ. Of course, you don’t want to believe your mother had created something so revolutionary nor do you want to believe Jihoon had one. He had acted so impassive and merciless all that time when he had saved you, which still send shivers through your spine, and that was a valid indication that he is an android.

On the other hand, Jihoon seemed to be as normal as he could be. He didn’t try to kiss you again, which was a relief because any more than that was seriously dangerous. You knew a lot of androids leisurely using a human being’s capability to be compassionate as a means to manipulate and you could vouch how powerful this could be, since you were one of the people who developed androids to reach this level of mimicry of the human behavior. As a human being, you weren’t immune despite how much you want to be indifferent. You still have emotions, which you refuse to let go of, and these emotions could easily be used against you by an android as high of a class as Jihoon. In the end, you still trust that everything he does was not to manipulate you.

“Y/N?”

His voice jolted you awake from your half asleep state on the sofa, papers about the SVT line all sprawled on your chest since you were studying them before you fell slightly asleep.

Sitting up, you replied as you rubbed your eyes. “Yeah? What is it?”

“Well, I want to ask something about how human emotions operate,” Jihoon began as he sat beside you, a terminal on his hands, which had something paused on its holographic screen.

“Ask away.”

Yawning and folding your legs to your chest in a fetal position, you listened to Jihoon’s question with interest.

“I’ve watched videos, movies and read articles and books about romance and how it involves human love. I’ve seen that it has physical and mental aspects, and just like you said, it isn’t always about biologically expanding the human species. I’ve analyzed that coupling brings about better understanding of one another by building emotional connections. A good way to exercise empathy. So, what if an android like me wants to do just that?”

If you weren’t shocked by his question, then you don’t know what you were feeling. His question was a good one. Most androids think but don’t understand neither do they give meaning to the things around them or what they do. They simply copy what humans do because it is what their program says, and it is the most effective and logical way to accomplish what they are programmed to do—a mere means to the ends. However, as Jihoon poses this very question, you knew the world was at its turning point, whether or not it had realized it.

“It’s impossible. You don’t have emotions to connect…to, to empathize,” you replied cautiously.

“Let’s say the engineers have invented something which enables me to do so. What then? Will humans respond in kind?” Jihoon persisted, much to your fears. You knew it was possible with the empathy organ, which might be embedded in Jihoon.

“Humans tend to empathize with everything that looks human. From animals with their big round eyes which induces motherly instincts because they look like babies who needed to be protected, to…to androids who look absolutely human,” you replied, looking at him with knowing eyes. “Of course, like anything revolutionary, there will an opposition.”

Jihoon considered your thoughts for a while and then continued. “What about you?”

You froze on your spot, afraid and unsure with your lips parted and eyes wide as both of you stared into each other’s eyes.

“You know,” you began with a small voice. “There’s a study that says if you stare into another person’s eyes, for several minutes as you share with each other your deepest emotions, fears and dreams, you will fall in love.”

The android was quiet, wondering what you were trying to imply—his calculations unable to predict your line of thought as it broke into a million pathways.

“If you have a soul, then it is possible for an android to…fall in love,” you were reluctant to complete your sentence but when you did, you felt the reality of it all reflecting on his dark cocoa eyes.

“Is it possible for me to have a soul then?” Jihoon asked, voice as soft as yours.

“An empathy organ is your ticket way there.”

“What if I do have one? Are you willing to try it with me?”

You knew Jihoon was sincerely asking you to try and love him, or everything to his wide eyes, parted lips and pleading expression was a lie, a well-crafted mimicry.

Closing your eyes, you turned your head away and sucked in a breath. He was getting into your system. Fuck, that study seemed true.

“I’m sorry…I’m not sure yet,” you replied, now avoiding his gaze.

“Why? Is it because it is unacceptable to have a relationship with an android?” Jihoon asked.

“No, I don’t really care about that…it’s just that I…I…”

You couldn’t say it. You don’t want to hurt him.

“Then what?”

“I…just…it’s just that—”

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

Frozen on your spot, you stopped your incessant movements and reprimanded yourself for hinting that he had hit you right at the jackpot.

“No, I…! I’m just scared, okay?”

Jihoon narrowed his eyes at you, frowning and cynic. “You’re scared I’ll use analog hack on you. You’re not sure if everything I say is true.”

You pursed your lips as you looked down, eyes beginning to wet. “I’m…I’m sorry.”

Jihoon sighed, his shoulder deflating as he looked at your crumpled figure. “I’ll leave you in peace.”

Standing up, Jihoon walked away with hands on his pockets towards the exit. You knew he was disappointed, or appeared to be, but you just couldn’t help but also look out for yourself. There was no certainty that he wouldn’t leave you for dead just like he did with your kidnappers and the thought of his soon-to-be betrayal left your heart wringing.

“Y/N, we got company.”

You immediately scrambled by the time you heard Jihoon, who was supposed to be outside, suddenly whisper to you in a low voice. Glancing behind him, you saw a man in a trench coat with a large briefcase on hand entering the lab.

“Bounty hunter?” you asked with sheer suspicion.

“Bingo.”

The both of you stood side by side as the man approached the two of you with a courteous smile.

“Good day, sir, ma’am. Let me introduce myself, I’m Detective Choi Seungcheol,” he reached out his hand which both of you shook cordially.

“Is there anything we could help you, detective? I hope we haven’t done something wrong,” you began, a smile on your face trained for situations such as this.

“Oh, don’t worry. You are, Ms. Y/N L/N, I presume? And he is um…Mr. Lee Jihoon?” Detective Choi replied as he checked his papers.

“Yeah, my um…my boyfriend,” you improvised, unable to think of the most appropriate relationship with him. You had concluded that before he came him, Choi had already checked you and Jihoon’s background, which you assumed was already fabricated by the android long before you met him.

“Yeah, well…I just moved a few months ago from the west colony,” Jihoon added, his ears red, giving the illusion of him embarrassed. You were amazed how much they could do.

“Oh, I see. Recently, there’s news about escaped Nexus 9 androids and there were reports that one could be here. So just to make sure, are you willing to take a Voigt-Kampff test?” Choi asked, both you and Jihoon glancing at one another.

“Sure, who’s going to take it first?” you asked, an eager to help smile on your lips.

“You. And only you,” Choi threw in a sly grin masked as a reassuring smile as he sat on the provided seat.

“Sure, no problem. How does this go?” you replied, as you gazed back to Jihoon, who simply held your hand for comfort.

The detective installed his device on top of a metal table you provided as you sat in front of it with an unsure look on your face, wondering why you were being tested but also relieved that Jihoon wasn’t being suspected as one.

“So, these patches on your cheeks will detect slight movements on your face as I read to you scenarios that will determine whether or not you’re an android. Let’s begin?”

You nodded quietly as Choi seated himself in front of you, holding a few cards as he chose the first scenario.

“A cat was ran down by a car, its organs spilling on the asphalt.”

You felt your stomach drop as the image popped into your head. Your breath hitched as you simply frowned.

“I’m sorry…” you replied, as you studied what Choi was doing, glancing at the meter before him and taking in some notes on his small leather notebook.

“Second one. A dog has been clubbed to death because it had bitten a someone,” Choi continued, looking at you expectantly, yet you were silent.

“That’s just…cruel,” you remarked, gritting your teeth.

“I swear you’re the most quiet I’ve ever tested,” the detective confessed. “Third. You saw your mother tortured. They would hit her head when she refused to confess to a crime, and they would leave her in a freezer naked until she gives up, but that doesn’t end there. An android who looks like you is then sent to slowly cut her fingers—”

“STOP! Stop! Stop it!” you suddenly shouted, pushing yourself away from the table, as you covered your ears. Tears were already running down your cheeks as Jihoon hurriedly came to your side, crouching to your level with an arm over your scrunched figure.

“That does it. She’s an android.”

Right after he said those words, the detective grabbed a laser gun from his briefcase and pointed it at you.

Everything was swirling inside your head and you couldn’t believe your fears had materialized faster than you had expected. It would be a no-brainer if Jihoon had already planned this months before, framing you as the android instead of him, so that he could forever be free from the bounty hunters. You didn’t want to hear it right from Jihoon’s mouth that you were duped and utterly fooled since day one.

“What the fuck are you on about?! I’m the goddamn android here, not her!”

His voice rang in front of you, his words a direct confession and a death flag. The impulsiveness of Jihoon’s action had you glance up to him, who was in front of you, shielding you from the laser gun the bounty hunter was holding. You couldn’t believe what he just did.

“If you’re an android, you wouldn’t say that,” Choi retorted back with a grin. “Stop protecting your girlfriend. She’s just analog hacking you!”

“Fuck you,” Jihoon simply replied and grabbed your hand, tossing the metal table up on the air as a distraction when both of you ran towards the exit.

“Hey!” The detective shouted, running after the two of you and shooting laser beams towards your direction.

Easily, Jihoon redirected the laser beams with his electricity and it went up, hitting the concrete beam connecting the two upper labs. You knew you were toast when Jihoon carried you on his back to dodge the large blocks of rock falling. Luckily, it was also blocking the way and the two of you sped up, losing Choi on the chase.

Heading towards the nearby docking bay, the two of you hid behind towers of cargo containers and rested for a while.

“Jihoon, what was—”

“Could you shut up for a while? I’m trying to keep us two alive here.”

“Hey! I just got fucking accused as an android when I’m clearly not—”

This time, Jihoon muffled your mouth with his lips pressed against yours. It was quite effective in keeping you frozen in place.

“Be quiet or that shithead will find us. I’m not done charging yet.”

You nodded quietly, still digesting what had happened.

“Alright. Stay here and don’t come out. I’d rather not see you dead,” Jihoon bid you farewell as he climbed the tower of containers, getting high as much as possible.

“Fuck this, Jihoon!” you cursed him as he had left you alone and without anything to protect yourself.

With the highest view, Jihoon could clearly see where Choi was.

Everything had gone out of his predictions as humans again proved to be quite unpredictable. He didn’t expect the bounty hunter would accuse you as an android as it was definitely clear as day that you were human through and through. Now, he had to protect you and fend for himself, but he didn’t really feel constrained by extra work. In fact, he was more than motivated to keep the fucker’s hands away from you.

Jihoon picked up a large device sitting on top of the container. It was a large but sleek device shaped like a slim black rectangle, yet when Jihoon had pulled the handle on its center and turned it clockwise, the device had morphed into a complex weapon, large arms extended from the center as it formed into something akin to a large gun. Holding it in one hand, Jihoon pressed firmly on the trigger, and pointed it towards the unsuspecting human as electric energy poured into the device and when the blond android let the trigger go, a laser blast hurled towards Choi.

Unfortunately, Choi was too jumpy for it to hit directly and Jihoon missed within half a meter, the android clicking his tongue in irritation as it only hit the nearby container. Jihoon again turned the trigger around as the weapon transformed once more; now breaking into several floating stakes, as it spread out into the area.

Now that Choi knew where he was, Jihoon swiftly moved to the next towers to conceal his location. On the other hand, you were scrambling to cover yourself when you heard the explosion, unable to do anything but to hide. However, when you saw that the explosion had caused a domino effect among the following tower of containers, you ignored Jihoon’s warning and ran before you get squashed to death.

Jihoon knew he had to move in for the kill before Choi finds you, so in a fast attack which involved kicking the detective with a dash of electric surge as dessert, he did just that but Choi was more veteran than expected and blocked his kick with his arms lined with anti-static material. Moving away, Choi had time to shoot a few beams but were unsuccessful when Jihoon simply bent them with electric currents, hitting the containers behind them; much thanks to classical physics.

Wasting no time, Jihoon drove a punch right in Choi’s gut which had him flying towards the end of the aisle. Walking towards the bounty hunter, Jihoon was however alerted that you had moved from your place, and when he got back to Choi, the guy had already disappeared.

Y/N, why are you so talented in screwing my head over and over again?!

You ran towards wherever you found was the most peaceful and quiet. You wondered if Jihoon was fine, yet you knew that he could take on an army and return unscathed, so you weren’t that worried. Turning by the nearby alley, you found a laser gun pointed at you.

“Gotcha.”

 By the time Jihoon found you, he had already found Choi pointing a gun on your head as he held you by the neck.

“I swear I can explain,” you began but Jihoon simply looked at you with an unimpressed look on his face.

“I told you to stay in one place, Y/N,” he replied back, rolling his eyes at you. “I can’t always come and save you every single time!”

“But if I don’t move, the containers will crush me! I don’t exactly want to die, Jihoon!” You retorted, your voice getting louder.

“Then what am I supposed to do? He’s got you at gun point! Now I have to think of a way to get you out of there!”

You scoffed, hands on your hips as Choi looked at the two of you awkwardly. “If you don’t want to save me, then why am I even your girlfriend? Break up with me and save your sorry ass yourself! I can take care of myself!”

Jihoon laughed mockingly, now clearly irked. “You aren’t even licensed to have a laser gun, so, how, I pray, are you supposed to fucking beat a bounty hunter?”

“Don’t underestimate me, Jihoon! I have my ways!”

“Like what? The other night you were whining about how you’re supposed to pass your subjects!”

You audibly huffed. “Ok, you’ve gone too far, you little shit. I’ll prove to you that I can do this. Let me go, detective!”

“Alright, alright! I don’t want to interrupt but we’re kinda in the middle of something here!?” Choi shouted quite annoyed, as he held on your neck tighter. “Don’t move or else I’ll blow a hole through your head.”

Jihoon rolled his eyes at you again, uncrossing his arms. “Just pull the trigger Choi. She’s just gonna be a pain all night anyway.”

“What! How dare you!” you shouted angrily, struggling around Choi’s arm holding you.

“So what do you want? Haven’t I already shown you that I’m the android here?” Jihoon ignored you completely, much to your chagrin.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll release her…if I got to shoot you,” the bounty hunter grinned, as the android simply removed his hands from his pockets.

“Alright. I’m all yours,” Jihoon immediately said, his arms up on the air as you stared at him in disbelief.

“No, wait! Fuck! I’m the android, ok? It’s not him! Kill me instead,” you cried out, writhing and panicking as soon as you saw the hunter’s gun pointed at Jihoon. “No, no! Shit.”

Without any explanation, Choi had let go of you and of course, you came running towards Jihoon’s side.

“Bye-bye.”

In a split second, Jihoon knew what was about to happen and it didn’t take him long to find a solution.

He pulled you towards him as soon as he had reached you and when Choi pulled the trigger of his laser gun, Jihoon was already behind you, covering your back from the oncoming laser beam. He didn’t know he actually felt something about death—he didn’t want to. Yet, for your sake, he’ll catch the bullet.

You were thrown to the ground in a painful blow, unable to process what had just happened. You sensed Jihoon covering your back, holding you tightly, as black smoke from what the beam had hit rose to the air.

“You two passed the test.”

Choi’s words echoed across the desolate cargo bay as he dropped his laser gun, walking away from you two. The meaning of the bounty hunter’s words finally got to you, and finally checked if Jihoon was alright. As it turned out, he was already gazing at you with a puzzled look on his face.

“Why? Why did you kill me?” Jihoon asked, his voice ringing.

Choi stopped walking. “An android will never sacrifice his life for someone else. Especially when she’s not his owner.”

“T-thank you!” You yelled back, your hand shaking as Jihoon held on it tightly.

“No worries, ma’am. These days, being a bounty hunter warrants more effort than I’m getting paid for. I’m exhausted. I’ll see you somewhere these days.”

He didn’t look back.

“We’re seriously looking into that empathy organ,” you remarked, settling in between Jihoon’s arms as you watched the colony rotate the solar panels outside the glass dome of the cargo bay.

Jihoon felt a circuit jump, or maybe it was a binary code—he didn’t care that much, but nonetheless, in human terms, he felt happy. Tightening his arms around you, Jihoon pulled you closer to his body.

“Does that mean you want to try the experiment?” he asked with a restrained grin, looking down on your face as his platinum blond bangs brushed against your cheek.

“We humans call it dating. But since you’re an android, everything’s an experiment,” you replied with a playful smirk, which then disappeared when you sighed. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before.”

Jihoon shook his head. “It’s okay. That’s understandable. I’m aware we androids have a penchant for analog hack, and I was warned I might be doing it unconsciously. I don’t want that to happen.”

“I’ll trust you despite that. It’s going to be hard but let’s see if that empathy organ is the real deal,” you grinned, poking his side.

“Are you sure?” Jihoon asked. “It’s going to be like infecting yourself with the disease and checking if the cure is effective.”

You chuckled. “Great analogy. But I know what I’m doing. Who knows we might have stumbled upon the future already.”

“If it’s enough for me to act mushy and cringey like this, I guess it’s stronger than we have estimated,” Jihoon joked around as both of you laughed together.

“We’ll see.”

Jihoon nodded and placed a chaste kiss on your forehead. “We’ll see.”

-Hyeri

[smolfangirl]

A little fresa wedding I

Kudos and Thanks are in line, because this fic isn’t only mine :D It belongs just as much to the wonderful @miris-xo WHO CELEBRATES HER BIRTHDAY TODAY YAAAAAY and who is like 99% of the reason this wedding fic exists and keeps motivating me with her moodboards and ideas and comments ♥ Also please please develop this love for my actual WIP it feels very abandoned

This will be a little series because, well, I am incapable apparently of writing short scenes and no one needs a +10k post. I truly hope you’ll enjoy it!

And as always: @ac-ars and @sky-girls used the name Rory first. I used my own brain to end up with this name (also because of my roommate who is obsessed with Gilmore Girls and keeps trying to talk me into watching it), which is why I didn’t give them any credit.

Word count: 3k

Pt. I – Getting there

The realization that she will marry Matteo hits Luna quite late.

It doesn’t come when they’re at home, packing their bags and double-checking every list until they both fall into bed exhausted. It’s not during their flight, where little Aurora cries and cries before she finally calms down after an hour of screaming. It’s not even when she hands her daughter over to her parents for the night and steps into her hotel room, where Nina already unpacks their suitcases.

No, the moment her wedding begins to feel real to Luna is when they arrive at the venue to see how the preparations are coming along.

Next to her, Nina gasps at the sight, not to Luna’s surprise. She remembers making the same surprised noise when she first saw the mansion about a year ago. Rosecliff is, without a single doubt, stunning. Its white bricks paint a bright contrast to the surrounding trees, and the air carries the perfume of the flower gardens, mixed with the scent of the ocean. Just one glance at the building, and Luna feels like a young princess about to experience her first ball night.

Only that this won’t be a ball night, but her wedding.

(If she keeps repeating it, will it stop feeling like a daydream?)

“How did you hear about this place again?” Gastón asks Matteo, and while her fiancé answers, Luna’s thoughts wander back to the stress of picking a venue. No matter where they searched, not a single place in Argentina fit their criteria. Ideas were traded back and forth, as quickly dismissed as they came, heads were shaken, tears were shed. More than once, when the task of planning their big day overwhelmed her, Luna considered to just grab Matteo’s hand and marry him on the spot, in jeans and t-shirt, without friends and family.

In the end, it was his cousin who made sure they’d get a gorgeous venue instead, far away from the eyes of the paparazzi and big enough to include all their loved ones.

Flor had mentioned Newport when she stopped by for a couple of days, admiring the ocean and the old, yet carefully restored buildings all around the island. She went on and on about the romantic potential and lamented that not a single picture managed to capture its true beauty.

That’s when Luna first caught the glimmer in Matteo’s eyes.

Still, they hesitated to fly over, despite Flor’s excitement and the promising results of a quick internet research. With less than three months left till her due date, Matteo and her wondered if such a long flight carried too many risks (yet alone the possibility of being spotted by the media or an over-sharing fan), but travelling here after she gave birth meant postponing the wedding for easily another year.

And they felt they had waited long enough. So, when the doctor gave them the green light, they booked the flights.

Luna knew it was the right decision the moment they entered the path towards the mansion. The rose gardens, the romantic fountain at the backside, the view on the ocean. Every little spot offered a lovely invitation for photographs, every detail the tour guide mentioned seemed more perfect for a wedding.

It wasn’t the gardens or the luxurious furniture or the huge ballroom that took Luna’s breath away ultimately, though.

No, Luna fell for this venue when she laid eyes on the breathtaking, heart-shaped staircase.

Made from white marble, it contrasts the black railing and burgundy carpet perfectly. Her eyes must’ve lit up, and that was when Matteo let them fall behind the group of tourists and asked her if she wanted to marry him here.

Her answer came fired like a shotgun.

///

Today, less than 24 hours before the ceremony, the air buzzes of excitement. Nina and Miranda – their wedding planner and fairy godmother, probably – hurry off like little bees, crossing lists and answering phone calls, while Gastón keeps an eye on the workers.

But with the explicit order to relax and be happy, Luna and Matteo decide to leave them be and stroll to the back of the house. Sunlight kisses her skin as she looks around, while Matteo by her side hums contently.

“It’s so beautiful,” Luna sighs, meaning it from the bottom of her heart. Little Aurora on her hips giggles, before she stretches her arm towards the ocean, waving it up and down rapidly. “Dada!”

Matteo caresses the cheek of his daughter, then presses soft kisses on Luna’s neck and lets his mouth wander up to her ear. “I think she wants to see the ocean,” he whispers.

“Well, she’s not the only one.”

Although the railing along the cliff isn’t far away, 70 meters at most, getting there takes forever. Matteo insists on showering her in kisses, occasionally giving Rory one or two if she manages to hold still long enough. It doesn’t help that each smile and soft giggle out of Luna’s mouth encourages him more, until he eventually starts to whirl her, around and around, faster with every turn. His little fresa laughs and laughs and laughs – and begins to cry.

“Oh no, Rory, sweetie, everything’s okay,” Luna mumbles to her daughter as she presses her against her chest.

“Sorry, little princess, I’m sorry, really, daddy didn’t want to spin you so much. He just got a little too excited over marrying your mommy.”  

“Shh, we’re here, darling.” Her hand wanders up and down her small back, a gesture their little girl usually loves, yet another minute of cooing and cuddling her passes before her cries turn into occasional hiccups.

Turning to her soon-to-be-husband, Luna raises an eyebrow. “No more spinning with her in my arms, okay?”

“Of course not.”

And with one last kiss on her temple, everything is good again.

///

When Aurora gawks at the waves crashing against the beach and Matteo’s arms wrap around Luna’s waist from behind, it sinks in that only one night separates her from her wedding day. One more sleep, and she will be Luna Balsano Valente.

One more sleep, and her eternity with Matteo starts officially and for everyone to be seen.

One more sleep, and she will walk on this grass in her wedding dress.

She will give her body and soul to Matteo, will promise to love him now and for the rest of time in front of their families and friends.

She will be his, and he will be hers.

Stealing a glance at him, Luna discovers this wide grin on his face that makes him look so young and carefree. Just the thought of being married to him by this time tomorrow fills her with an intoxicating cocktail of excitement and happiness.

Luna can’t wait.

///

Pt. II – The night before

The heavy curtains of the suite block every little ray of moonlight from sneaking into the room. Quietness surrounds the hotel, offer her peace and tranquility. The bed is so comfortable she considers taking it home with her. Overall, perfect conditions to get the rest she needs for tomorrow.

And yet, Luna can’t sleep.

Her eyes won’t stay closed, her mind won’t calm down. She’s awake, awake, awake and with every minute she thinks more about the wedding. Her wedding.

Maybe she could find sleep if Matteo was here. Over the years, he perfectioned the art of relaxing her. He’d listen to her worries, and her expectations for this day they’ve both been waiting for so long. He’d hold her in his arms, his fingers brushing over her skin while he comforts her. He’d guard her as she slowly drifts into unconsciousness.

He’d be here, but he’s not, because everyone insisted on following this old, stupid tradition.

It’s not even the first time she lays in her bed without him, and it certainly won’t be the last one. And it’s just one night anyway, this shouldn’t be such a big deal.

Still, Luna misses him. Him and little Aurora who’s with her parents, probably sleeping like an angel.

Next to her, Nina tosses and turns, shifts on the mattress until she settles into a new position. Then, her breathing returns to the same calm rhythm that fills the air for half an hour now. In, and out, in, and out...

Luna gives up.

///

Matteo’s room which he shares with his best man lays on the opposite side of the floor. Only Pedro’s and Delfi’s room separates her from her fiancé. Light slips through to the hallway from their room, though, accompanied by familiar laughter - Gastón seems to catch up with the Rollerband and their latest tour rather than to fulfill his responsibility of watching the groom.

Which definitely plays into Luna’s cards.

With featherlight steps, she hushes to Matteo’s door, knocks carefully. Seconds later, footsteps come closer and he opens, hair messy and mouth half open from a yawn. Upon seeing her, his eyes widen but he recovers quickly enough to pull her into the room and lock the door behind him.

“Luna, hi, is everything okay?” A little wrinkle appears on his forehead, while his gaze glides over hers, inspecting her.

She hugs him and inhales the scent of his skin. “I can’t sleep,” she mumbles.

“Me neither,” he admits.

///

They end up hushing outside.

The lawn under her naked feet feels soft as they sneak out on the spacious estate. Hand in hand, they stroll closer to the cliff, following the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. When they’re out of view from their friends’ rooms, they let themselves fall into the grass, giggling like rebellious teenagers on a school night.

Not a single person noticed them on their way out, and it gives Luna this exciting kick of adrenaline, knowing they’re not supposed to be together tonight. The same thoughts seem to pass Matteo’s mind – his heart beats fast in his ribcage when she rests her head on his chest.

“Hopefully they won’t notice we’re gone,” she says, sighing in content at the kiss he presses on her hair.

“I doubt it. And if Gastón catches me, he’ll just make a pun and we’re good.”

“Hm… let me try. Matteo, launched a rocket to the moon again? Soon they’ll build you a statue at NASA,” Luna snickers in her best (or worst) Gastón-impression.

Matteo laughs and shakes his head. “Jeez, that was terrible.”

Still smirking, Luna snuggles closer to him, letting her eyes wander over the clear night sky above her. The stars twinkle brighter than she ever saw them in Buenos Aires, and she feels calmer and better than during a single second in that fancy hotel room.

For a while, they stay there in silent harmony, enjoying the view and the peace of this moment.

“Do you think everything will go as planned tomorrow?” she whispers into the darkness. It feels like a little eternity passed, perhaps an hour, perhaps only a few minutes.

“Well, we’re paying Miranda a shit ton of money, so everything better work out,” Matteo snickers before his tone turns more serious. “But you know what, little moon?”

She tilts her head, so their eyes meet in the night, only for him to bop her nose gently. “It’ll be perfect either way, because you’re with me.”

The night keeps her rosy cheeks a secret. “You know you can be so corny, chico fresa.”

“Maybe. But it’s true.”

“I love you, you sappy fresa.” A kiss on his cheeks. One more at his palm stroking her face. “I love you too.”

///

Letting her go in the hallway is harder than it should be. Matteo feels like a stubborn kid refusing to let go of his favorite teddy bear for more than a second, which is stupid. She’ll be by his side for the whole day tomorrow, and after that for the rest of their lives.

But this is the last time he sees her before the ceremony. Before he will marry her, and she will be his wife.

His gaze glides over her, takes her in, so he can remember this moment for all of eternity. Her brown curls fall open over her shoulder, messy from his hands – the same hands he has to keep to himself now, so they don’t open the loose tie of her robe. Admittedly, the white fabric hugs her body, flattering her curves, but it also hides her beautiful, beautiful night gown.

And her smile. By the stars, her smile.

Looking at the curve of her mouth, he feels like a shooting star in the night sky, bright and hot and burning only for her. When he’s a shooting star though, Luna is the sun in his universe, and not even the tired yawn slipping out manages to diminish the light she radiates.

“I love you,” Matteo whispers. Simple and soft, while it means so much more. It’s a goodnight, a promise for tomorrow, and for every breath he will take on this earth after that.

“I love you too,” she echoes. Her arms wrap around his waist when he pulls her in for a hug, pressing a light peck on her forehead. He loves her, he loves her so, so much. If every clock on the world froze, he’d be completely fine with staying in this moment.

However, Luna pulls away soon. “I should go to sleep.”

“Yeah.” And so Matteo watches her sneaking into the suite, where Nina’s relaxed breaths fill the air.

///

He finds his own hotel room as dark as the night. Darker even, because the curtains block any faded light the moon or the stars have to offer. After walking through the lit hallway, the contrast of the furniture seems to barely exist, and his vision needs a while to adapt to the shadows once again.

Matteo blinks. Once, twice.

He recognizes Gastón lying on the bed. He’s not moving, his breathing steady and calm. Since he’s not the kind of person to fall asleep within seconds, he must’ve gone to bed a while ago – which in turn leaves Matteo wondering why his best man decided not to search for him in the hour or two he easily was gone.

Unless they didn’t walk far enough and Gastón spotted them.

His heartbeat picks up its pace at the idea, and it takes him a few seconds to relax. Gastón isn’t subtle when it comes to Luna and him, never was, probably never will be. If he indeed saw them, he’d be up and down in the room, throwing puns around like confetti till the morning light, incapable of letting such an opportunity to roast his best friend go.

So, he didn’t possibly discover them, he’s safe asleep, and Matteo worried over a ghost in his mind.

Still, he tip-toes to his side of the bed. Every move he makes is followed by a glance in Gastón’s direction. When Matteo slips under the covers, he has no idea how hard his best friend desperately tries to repress a giggle.

///

“God, you two are so cute it’s seriously disgusting.”

Matteo isn’t even fully awake yet when Gastón’s voice rips the last pictures of his dreams apart. A groan hanging on his lips, he slowly opens his eyes.

Gastón stands by the door, staring at his left hand and shaking his head. The clock on the bedside table tells Matteo he could still nap for half an hour; unfortunately, however, his best friend has another plan.

“Here, Sleeping Beauty, this is for you.”

A card hits him on the chest before any words reach the tip of his tongue. It’s just big enough to fit completely into his palm, and he opens it with a frown on his face.

Good morning, chico fresa ♥

Before I will see you at the ceremony, I just wanted to say that I hope you slept well (or got at least a few hours of sleep…) and remind you that I love you the most in the world! I can’t wait for the rest of our lives to begin.

Always and forever, your chica delivery

PS: Please give Rory kisses from me, okay?

For a moment, he stares at this little note, not sure how he gets to deserve someone like Luna, or how he’ll get through those hours until she’s back by his side. “Where’d you find this?” he then turns to his best friend.

“It laid on the ground, she must’ve slipped it under the door. And, just so we’re clear, Nina and I weren’t half as bad as this on our wedding day. Your chica delivery will bring me some serious diabetes this weekend if she keeps that up.”

“You’re only jealous,” Matteo shoots back, pretending to miss the huge grin tugging on his best friend’s mouth.

Chuckling, he gets out of bed to throw a glance outside. A soft breeze swirls through the room when he opens the window, and the clear sky announces a perfect day to get married.  

His wedding day.

Maybe this is the moment he should turn into a nervous mess, but weirdly enough, Matteo feels at peace. Years passed since he decided she was the person he intended to wait down the aisle for, and almost two years passed since she said she wanted to be his wife. What should make him impatient or insecure, fills him with strength. Their love passed every test time threw at them, they worked through every obstacle, every fight, and he knows they will continue to grow, to forgive and learn.

And that today will be perfect no matter what happens, because they’ll be together.

“So, how did your last night as a free man feel?”

Confused, Matteo breaks away from the view on the ocean. Gastón leans against the door as he barely contains a grin, raising his eyebrow in a dare.

Much to his dismay, he can imagine where this is going.

“Well,” he hesitantly begins, “I couldn’t fall asleep, so I took a walk around the property. To help with that, you know? It… it was nice. Looked at the moon a little bit.”

“I see,” Gastón nods. “As long as you didn’t set foot on it.” A classic Gastón pun, and Matteo wouldn’t pay it no second thought if his best friend didn’t wiggle his eyebrows so passionately they’re almost dancing on his forehead. But he does, while grinning like a fool, so he figures Gastón wasn’t half as asleep last night as he pretended to be.

And he’s not even sorry about it.

[nonbinarypastels]

About & FAQ Page

This page was last updated on July 31, 2018

About nonbinarypastels

This blog was created to combat REG (reactionary, exclusionist, gatekeeping) politics in the LGBTQIA+ community as well as other forms of harmful conservative rhetoric that’s become so common on tumblr through the spreading of positivity and information based posts. My goal for this blog is not only to validate and support LGBTQIA+ people (and people of all marginalized identities) but also to encourage people to be more accepting of others, more able to think critically about all issues, and more passionate about making a positive difference not only in their own lives but the lives of those around them.

What I post about

Positivity — Not only nonbinary positivity but positivity for all  LGBTQIA+ identities and other people as well.

Social Justice/Politics

Mental Health/Mental Illness

Critical Thinking Skills

Fandom/Media

Miscellaneous Other Topics

If you’re only here for positivity

Please blacklist the #not positivity and #discourse tw tags.

Things you should know before you follow this blog

This blog is inclusionist. I believe that all aromantics and asexuals belong in the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m also firmly against other exclusionary rhetoric that seeks to exclude any non-cishet (by which I mean non cisgender, heteromantic, AND heterosexual) group from the community.

This blog supports creative freedom and a safe fandom environment. I don’t care what kind of fiction people write/read or what they ship as long as all of their content is tagged properly and kept in appropriate spaces. While I think media criticism and having civil discussions about what we’re writing and reading and why is a good thing, I think the ‘anti’ community on tumblr totally crosses the line with their behavior which goes beyond legitimate media criticism and straight into cyberbullying and harassment.

This blog does not support radical feminism. Radical feminism is a harmful conservative movement that harms and attempts to control the lives of marginalized people. I do not support any form of radfem rhetoric.

This blog does not support trasnmedicalsim or truscum. These are groups that actively harm trans and nonbinary people by pushing reductionist, transphobic rhetoric and policing the identities of trans and nonbinary people.

This blog is queer positive. I will not censor the word queer or exclude queer people from this blog or the community.

Please do not send me messages

About any medical or life-threatening emergencies you might be having. I am not a doctor and cannot give medical advice and there’s also no guarantee I’ll be online when you send your message. If you’re in a life-threatening situation please contact the relevant local authorities (either 911 or your country’s equivalent) or get to a hospital immediately.

Calling out people I reblog from or who are reblogging from me about anything having to do with ships or fanfiction. As stated above, I don’t care what people ship or write/read as long as it’s properly tagged and not posted in inappropriate spaces. Any messages I get about “so-and-so ships ___” will be deleted.

About anything having to do with MAP discourse. I am a CSA survivor and am generally not comfortable discussing or reading about MAPs.

Telling me that a-specs “aren’t actually lgbt” or anything similar. You will automatically be blocked for being an aphobe.

Saying there are only two genders. You will automatically be blocked for being boring.

Asking me questions that have already been answered on this page. I made this FAQ for a reason. Any asks I get containing questions that I’ve already answered (or asking for definitions of terms that are listed in the glossary) will be deleted.

———————————————————————————— General Questions Do you have a question about what a certain term means?

Please check the glossary page to see if I have a definition already listed. If the term you’re looking for is not in the glossary, please feel free to send me an ask about it.

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/172930687066/glossary-page

Are you feeling down and need to be cheered up?

Please check the self care tag for posts you might find helpful.

http://www.nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/tagged/self+care

Why do you put image descriptions on your posts?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/165370079304/can-i-ask-why-you-provide-image-descriptions-i

Who is that in your icon?

Deadpool from Marvel comics

Icon by http://www.wadewicons.tumblr.com/

Do you take requests?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/172930396816/requests-page

Who are you/what is your main blog?

Considering how nasty I’ve seen discourse about the identities I’m trying to provide positivity for get and the things I’ve seen other blogs similar to this one having to deal with, I’m not comfortable disclosing the link to my main blog. I value my privacy and my safety and I hope my followers can respect that.

What are your pronouns?

Any pronouns other than it/itself are okay. I have no other preferences.

Are you a minor?

No.

Can people who aren’t nonbinary interact with this blog? Can cis people?

Anyone, nonbinary or not, is allowed to follow nonbinarypastels and reblog from us. Not only am I okay with cis people following this blog and reblogging from it, I 100% encourage them to do so. I think it’s important that not only do LGBTQIA+ people support ourselves and those who ID the same as us but that we support people of different identities and just as much I also think it’s vital for cis people to show that they support us. I think cis people reblogging positivity posts for people who aren’t cis is an excellent way to show that.

Can I interact with this blog if my blog is about ___?

I don’t care if your tumblr is 99% cute crayon drawings of pretty flowers or drawings of kinky furry porn, if you like the posts here or need them or want to spread the positivity with your followers I have no problem with you following + reblogging from this blog.

Can I share your posts on other sites?

Feel 100% free to share my posts on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media. Credit + a link back is appreciated but it’s not required. However, please do NOT upload my posts to sites such as redbubble, storeenvy, or other sites where you’ll be selling them to others.

Can I use your posts in moodboards/aesthetics posts?

Yes!

Where do you get the pictures for your image posts?

https://www.pexels.com/

http://www.unsplash.com

Why the pineapples?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/168615228296/hello-ive-noticed-your-recent-posts-about

——————————————————————————- Call Me Out Would you like to tell me that the term ‘a-spec’ was stolen from autistics and that it’s problematic to use it to refer to ace/aro people?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/162255685756/hey-idk-if-you-were-aware-of-this-but-you-have-a

Would you like to tell me to stop including the ‘I’ in the LGBTQIA+ acronym?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/161388049611/you-do-realize-that-like-a-lot-of-intersex-people

Would you like to tell me that butch and femme are lesbian-specific words and no one else has the right to use them?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169789232996/nonbinarypastels-since-i-keep-getting-anons-wrt

Would you like to tell me not to use queer as an umbrella term?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/165557176711/hey-uh-sorry-if-this-is-too-much-to-ask-but-dont

Why are you intolerant towards conservatives?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169509757921/being-an-intolerant-jerk-about-conservatives-and

—————————————————————————– Questioning Do you have tips for figuring out your gender identity?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160444273391/any-tips-to-give-to-help-someone-to-figure-out

Is it okay to use they/them pronouns if I’m still questioning my gender and might be cis?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/162316760041/i-feel-comfy-using-theythem-but-i-dont-know-if-im

I want to question my gender but I’m afraid I’m faking it all?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169375568051/hi-i-always-thought-i-was-a-cis-guy-but-ive

———————————————————————————– About Being Trans + Nonbinary Are nonbinary people trans?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160443055731/do-you-consider-nb-to-be-a-part-of-the-trans

Am I still agender if I have feminine interests/hobbies?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/159863843416/i-identify-as-agender-but-i-also-like-girl

Can you be lunarian and agender?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/159119628926/can-i-be-a-lunarian-agender-or-does-that-like

How do you deal with nbphobia?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/161289280081/tw-transphobia-tw-ableist-slur-tw-r-word-do

What do I do if my friends are nbphobic?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/161290197211/one-of-my-best-friends-is-a-radical-feminist-i

What’s the difference between being nonbinary and being a tomboy?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170485614676/im-having-a-mild-identity-crisis-whats-the

Can you be nonbinary and prefer she/her or he/him pronouns?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170449570882/hi-im-someone-who-identifies-as-non-binary-ive

Are nonbinary people to blame for trans people not being taken seriously?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/161287284091/how-do-you-respond-to-people-who-say-nbs-are-the

How do I deal with people saying nonbinary people are responsible for trans people being made fun of?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/167977849726/hey-i-got-some-really-messed-up-enbyphobic-anon

Is trans day of visibility for nonbinary people too?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/159055092686/sorry-if-this-is-stupid-is-trans-day-of

Is there any proof there are more than two genders?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170985650804/sgaprivilege-sonoanthony-hatingongodot

Do you think it’s fetishizing for people to say they’re attracted to nonbinary people?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170815582801/whats-your-take-on-the-claim-that-mlnbwlnb-are

Am I still trans/nonbinary if I didn’t always know from a young age?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169845692030/hi-okay-so-im-trans-nonbinary-and-i-noticed-that

Am I still nonbinary if I never want to come out?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169159856571/can-i-still-be-nb-if-i-dont-plan-on-coming-out-to

How do I overcome internalized nbphobia?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169128988716/do-you-have-any-tips-on-overcoming-internalized

What can I call the nonbinary person I’m dating other than boyfriend/girlfriend?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/164729025088/hi-i-dont-know-if-you-guys-answer-questions-but

What’s your opinion on “there are only two genders” jokes?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169533948384/hey-i-was-wondering-if-you-might-be-able-to-give

Who is allowed to ID as nblm/nblw/nblnb? Do I have to have a certain alignment to ID with these terms?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/175370970607/hi-im-a-asexual-biromantic-agender-person-and

———————————————————————————- About Presentation + Dysphoria

Do you have any tips for dealing with dysphoria?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171870400516/urgent-im-a-non-passing-pre-everything-trans

What’s the difference between social dysphoria and body dysphoria?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171770067231/whats-the-difference-between-social-dysphoria-and

How can I write about trans/nonbinary characters who have dysphoria?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/163261302706/hello-there-nonbinary-questioning-black-anon

How can I bind safely if I can’t afford to buy a binder?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160277656876/hello-i-came-here-because-i-wanted-to-ask-if-you

Do you have any advice about buying your first binder?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171412780521/advice-for-somebody-who-is-getting-their-first

How can I look more androgynous?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160850193236/do-you-have-any-advice-for-nonbinary-teens-who

Is it normal to want top surgery but not want to take T?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/168600610588/is-it-normal-for-a-nonbinary-person-to-want-top

What can I do if I hate my voice?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169110950161/hey-i-am-non-binary-and-14-years-old-i-was

I want to change my hair but I’m afraid people will hate it?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/166569911301/hey-i-recently-came-out-as-non-binary-i-really

—————————————————————————— About Sexuality How can you be sex-repulsed without being asexual?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/159348049986/how-can-you-be-sex-repulsed-but-not-asexual

Can you be in a queerplatonic relationship if you’re not ace/aro?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171758800972/can-you-have-a-qpr-if-youre-not-acearo

What’s the difference between demisexuality and regular attraction?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160198336046/whats-the-differrence-between-demisexual-and-just

Is pansexuality transphobic/biphobic?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160201643591/hi-i-just-want-to-tell-that-i-heard-someone-say

Do bisexuals have straight-passing privilege?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/163139939492/hey-there-i-was-wondering-if-you-can-help-me

Can you be asexual and still like masturbation?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171408739131/so-i-was-wondering-could-you-be-asexual-and

Can you be wlw and mlm at the same time?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171269548272/hi-im-confused-this-is-a-genuine-question-pls

Can you be nblw, nblm, and nblnb at the same time?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171158368762/i-identify-as-a-nblw-nblnb-and-nblm-is-that

How can lesbians use he/him pronouns?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170496057755/this-is-an-ignorant-question-so-i-apologize

What is the split attraction model?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169931000321/hello-i-was-reading-that-post-about-asexual-stuff

———————————————————————— About Coming Out

Are you looking for coming out tips and encouragement? Please check my coming out tag!

http://www.nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/tagged/coming+out

Is it okay to come out to my friends before my family?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160086167706/i-am-trans-and-came-out-to-one-of-my-friends-who

How do I explain being nonbinary to my parents when they just don’t get it?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/168598203993/ive-accepted-im-nonbinary-and-my-parents-know

Do you have any advice for coming out as nonbinary?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171342286106/hey-any-advice-on-how-to-come-out-to-my-dad-as

How do I come out to my parents?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170782185301/hi-i-identify-is-non-binary-and-i-know-for-sure

How do I get my parents to use my name/pronouns and accept me?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/168598203993/ive-accepted-im-nonbinary-and-my-parents-know

——————————————————————————

Fandom & Fandom Discourse Related

What is an anti?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171868269706/what-is-an-anti-i-had-always-heard-that-anti

What have antis ever done wrong?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171966569929/shipping-isnt-morality-block-report-program

How can I deal with antis who are harassing me?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171974140371/hi-sorry-to-bother-you-i-was-looking-through

Do you support pedophilic ships?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170196527876/wait-you-support-pedophilic-ships-thats-gross

What’s your opinion about MAP discourse?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171209629491/so-what-do-you-think-of-maps-then-the-ones-who

If you’re not a bad person, why do you like bad things in fiction?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/164750728921/about-your-post-on-how-liking-certain-fiction

What is purity culture?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169710243376/do-you-know-whenhowwhy-purity-culture-started

What is your opinion on RPF?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/175123194126/i-wasnt-able-to-find-anything-on-your-blog-about

What is fujoshi discourse?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/174877862940/i-just-saw-someone-reference-fake-fujoshi-blogs

——————————————————————— Misc. How do you handle ignorance?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/160627538536/how-do-you-handle-ignorance-im-too-scared-to

What’s an invisible disability?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/163099887223/hey-i-have-a-quick-question-whats-an-invisible

What is TERF/radfem rhetoric?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/169015697831/on-radfemreg-rhetoric

How do I know if I have an eating disorder?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171664946546/ed-tw-i-guess-mmmm-since-i-was-young-ive

What’s the difference between being squicked and being triggered?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/171341992144/um-so-ive-been-wondering-if-feeling-physically

How do you deal with bigots?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170516017459/exposure-to-identities-really-is-the-best-way-to

Why can’t someone be both anti-SWERF and anti-kink?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/170011993907/hey-quick-q-feel-free-to-ignore-but-i-had-a-post

When was gay used as a slur?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/166431435436/hello-i-just-saw-your-post-that-i-think-was-from

How do you find out about the free samples you post?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/163522947367/hey-this-isnt-about-anything-nonbinary-but-i-was

What is your opinion on self-diagnosis?

http://nonbinarypastels.tumblr.com/post/175045406707/what-are-your-thoughts-on-self-diagnosis-ive-been

[paleorecipecookbook]

RHR Podcast: Harnessing the Power of Positive Psychology in Health Coaching – with Robert Biswas-Diener

In this episode, we discuss:  

Robert Biswas-Diener’s journey from psychologist to coach

What is positive psychology?

Combining positive psychology and coaching

The fundamentals of health coaching

How health coaching differs from an expert or authority approach

How asking powerful questions shifts the dialogue

Framework for coaches just getting started

What an aspiring health coach should look for in a training program

Show Notes:

ADAPT Health Coach Training Program

Upside of Your Dark Side - book by Robert Biswas-Diener

Robert Biswas-Diener website

[smart_track_player url="https://ift.tt/2IjoeEj" title="RHR Podcast: Harnessing the Power of Positive Psychology in Health Coaching - with Robert Biswas-Diener" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

Chris Kresser:  Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. Today I am very excited to welcome Robert Biswas-Diener as a guest. Robert is the foremost authority on positive psychology coaching and has consulted with a wide range of international organizations on performance management and talent development. He conducts trainings on coaching, strengths, positivity, courage, and appreciative inquiry with organizations and businesses around the world and through his own coaching school, Positive Acorn.

Robert has trained professionals in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, South America, and the Middle East. He has a doctorate in social psychology and a master’s degree in clinical psychology and is an ICF Professional Certified Coach. He’s the author of Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching, The Courage Quotient, and The Upside of Your Dark Side, among other books. Robert is also on the faculty of the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, which is launching in June, where he has created and is going to be delivering the content on developing core coaching skills.

So I’m really excited to talk to Robert about positive psychology and especially its application in a health coaching context—why it’s so important, what the most important skills and competencies somebody needs to be successful as a health coach are, and how effective health coaching can help stem the rising tide of chronic disease. So let’s dive in. Robert, thank you so much for joining us. I’ve been really looking forward to this conversation.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.

Robert Biswas-Diener’s journey from psychologist to coach

Chris Kresser:  So let's start by talking a little bit about your background, like, how you came to this work, how you came to positive psychology, and then how you ended up working primarily as a coach. Because you have a background in psychology and you chose, at least from my understanding, not to work as a clinical psychologist. So I'm just curious to hear more about your journey.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Certainly. Yeah, it’s a good question. I think, like most people, I come from a family entirely populated by psychologists. Both my parents are psychologists, my older sisters, who are twins, are psychologists, so I was the fifth person in my family to get a degree in psychology. Our parents were very liberal and understanding and open-minded. They said, “You can go into any subfield of psychology you want.”

Health coaching isn’t just providing information or advice, it’s about becoming a “change agent”—helping your clients to discover their own motivation and strategies for change. Positive psychology is a powerful tool in this process. 

Chris Kresser:  It's amazing that you're so normal, Robert, with all those psychologists around.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Well I don’t make any claims about my normalcy. But I can definitely tell you that psychology was the air we breathed growing up. My father had all these sort of psychometric and psychological measurement devices around. We had a little sort of stuffed bunny that we pet, but it had a meter attached to it to measure how aggressively you were petting it. That’s the kind of thing you were exposed to as his kids. I know this makes my father sound a bit like a sadist, but he would have my sisters and I clean his office as quickly as possible. And whichever of us did the best job could have the thumb of our non-dominant hand shocked in a shock machine.

Chris Kresser:  Totally normal, totally normal childhood.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Absolutely. See, we just grew up thinking that people and the study of people is totally fascinating. And more interesting still, my father is one of the people who pioneered happiness studies. So it wasn't just looking at depression or the darker elements of human nature, but we grew up thinking happiness is something worth studying, something you can define and measure. And that's really what attracted me to psychology in general. I, as you mentioned, pursued a doctorate in clinical psychology.

But I knew by the time I got my master’s that I didn't want to be a full-time therapist. I think therapy is great, noble work, but I just knew it wasn't for me, sitting across from one individual helping one person at a time. And I made the tough choice to leave and go study, do research with my father, and I spent about five years traveling the world and studying happiness, which was a pretty blissful five years of my life. And I had the opportunities to visit some pretty extraordinary places, work with extraordinary people. But I did, while doing research, missed that one-on-one connection, that sense that I was doing more than creating knowledge. I wanted to help people make a difference in individual lives. That's when I discovered coaching. This was sort of right around 2002. And I was able to leverage my expertise in positive psychology and my training and coaching into a decent career that allowed me both to continue researching and satisfy my quest for knowledge, while also helping people, to satisfy that aspect of my mission.

Chris Kresser:  So what was it about coaching that you decided that you didn't want to work as a clinical psychologist in that one-on-one capacity? But what was it about coaching that drew you to it where the practice of clinical psychology did not?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  There a few things. And again, I certainly like clinical psychology, but my sister, my mother, they’re both clinical psychologists and good people. But there’s something weighty about it. The sense of responsibility you have when you sit across from someone who's in psychological distress, that you have to keep your heart pretty open to them, you have to be empathic, compassionate to them, and you're often dealing with trauma, with suicidality, with pretty high-stakes concerns. I'm glad that there are people doing that, but the risk for burnout is high in that function.

Chris Kresser:  Right

Robert Biswas-Diener:  And coaching, by contrast, just really to me seemed somehow more playful, a little bit more goal focused, that we could be light about it, take it less seriously. People were coming to me because they'd always wanted to write a novel and they'd put it on the back burner their whole life, and they just hit midlife, had their crisis, and they finally wanted to get going with it or they wanted just to establish better work/life balance. Or they wanted to improve their health or they wanted to be a better manager. They had just gotten promoted and they felt like an imposter. And these are not clinical concerns, and it just felt like, wow, this is a bit … the stakes are high here, but they're not life-or-death stakes. And we can kind of have fun, the people who came in felt healthy and resourceful. It didn't drag me down at the end of the day, I guess.

What is positive psychology?

Chris Kresser:  Right, and perhaps more compatible with your interests in happiness and positive psychology, which I want to talk to you a little bit more about. Because some of our listeners are probably not that familiar with positive psychology, and it was really, at least from my perspective looking in from the outside, fairly radical. Psychology historically was more focused on the past and what's wrong, perhaps. And here comes a new way of approaching it that is really more focused on what's right and the present. So I'm just curious to hear more about, you know, how you got involved in positive psychology. It sounds like through your family, but tell us a little bit more about the evolution of this approach. Because I think that's an interesting story in itself.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah, absolutely. So sort of the nutshell version of the history of psychology is a long time ago psychologists were either philosophers or medical doctors. And they were just trying to puzzle out, why are people doing the things they're doing? And the medical doctors were doing things like, how does the nervous system work? How does the brain work? And the philosophers were asking questions like, what is morality? What is our duty? What's our best potential? And for a long time, even up until sort of the year 1900, psychology did have a lot of emphasis on positive topics like morality, companionship, friendship, support, and athletic performance, even. Winning. And it was really only after World War II and at least in the United States with the creation of the Veterans Administration, that there was a pivot towards a clinical focus. Because clinical issues are pressing, and folks coming back from war time were experiencing what then was called shell shock, we now know as PTSD. And rates of depression and later on anxiety were growing at epidemic rates.

So about half of the psychologists in the United States now are clinicians, and that's a pretty overwhelming amount. But around the turn of the century, that is 1980 or 1998, 99, 2000, there was sort of this reinvigoration that, yeah, it's okay to focus on these pressing psychological ills, but that really it’s only half, or one portion, of human nature. What about people who are generous? What about people who are funny? What about people who are great learners or great teachers? Shouldn't we also be looking at those types of topics? Optimism, savoring, and happiness. And so a group of researchers and practitioners got together and sort of established this new approach. It was an old way of thinking, but it came under a new umbrella called positive psychology.

Chris Kresser:  And when positive psychology first was introduced, was it well received amongst conventional psychologists? Was it controversial? What happened?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah, it's a really great question and I think that anyone who has probably opened a blog in the last five years has probably come across at least some study suggesting that X makes you happy, whether that's a glass of wine or a little workout or a piece of chocolate or spending more time with friends, whatever it is. So it is part of the zeitgeist, I guess, that just sort of this idea that happiness research is out there, I think, is widely accepted now. But really, there are a lot of stereotypes about positive psychology. There are many skeptics, many critics of it.

Many of the most common sort of complaints, if you will, are folks who think that positive psychology is pollyanna, it's just this naïve science where we only focus on the positive and we would never talk about anxiety or depression or divorce or child abuse or any of these social ills. And say, “Ah but we should all be happy all the time anyway.” And that's not true, actually. There are no researchers that actually believe that. We're just trying to say, “Hey, let's study all of human experience, not just the darker half. And then some folks also criticize it a little bit as sort of a middle-class movement. They say, “Hey, there's folks living in poverty, there’s real injustice going on, and you’ve got these middle-class people attending happiness seminars.” There might be a seed of truth to that, but I don't know that that's necessarily wrong for middle-class people to want to be happier. And nor do I think it's exclusive to the middle class. I think that upper-class and lower-class people, I think across the economic spectrum, folks are interested in happiness.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, so I mean that pollyanna critique is one that I've heard, and I've seen people conflate positive psychology with things like affirmations. Just repeating the outcome that you want to see or the beliefs or thoughts about yourself, over and over again. But there's really actually quite a bit of research supporting positive psychology, isn’t there?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah, at the heart, really, it is a robust science. It’s largely happening in universities you've heard of. Places like Stanford and Harvard, as well as others. Very solid researchers using sophisticated statistics, sophisticated measurements and methods, and it's a lot less New Age-y, I guess, than many people might assume. It’s not, let's just reframe every bad thing like, “Oh, I'm so happy I got cancer because this is going to be an extraordinary lesson for me.”

Chris Kresser:  Look at the bright side.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah, that’s really not what this is about. Really, we’re interested in saying things like, like, just take a concept like savoring that is taking a positive or pleasant moment and extending it mentally. So it’s sort of like, who does this? Are women, are men more likely to do it? Young people or old people? When do they do it? Are they more likely to do it when they are together or when they're alone? Do we do it in different ways? For example, when you get together with your buddies and you tell these kinda good times that happened to you collectively long ago—that's a form of savoring. You’re taking that pleasant moment from the past and dragging it into the present. When you talk about a meal as you sit across from someone and say, “Oh you should try this. It’s really good,” that’s a form of savoring. And so we’re really just kind of interested in kind of describing like, what's going on with these fascinating phenomena.

Chris Kresser:  So there's the application of positive psychology in a psychotherapeutic context, like in a clinical context where a client is coming to see a psychologist for anxiety or depression, or any number of other complaints. But then there’s how positive psychology is applied in a coaching context where the focus is more on behavior change. And that might include things like focusing on strengths and leveraging those strengths instead of trying to fix things that are broken or not working as well. So tell us a little bit more about that, how you've combined positive psychology and coaching practice.

Combining positive psychology and coaching

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Okay, so, so it's interesting. Some people who have just a passing familiarity with positive psychology will recognize some of these sort of artificial interventions that are often trumpeted as happiness-producing. There are things like, you should write down three things for which you’re grateful each day, and if you do that, that will yield good happiness dividends for you. In positive psychology coaching, we don't really do that because coaching isn't prescriptive. I'm, as a coach, not going to say here's what you should do. I'm not giving a lot of advice. A lot of the positive psychology and positive psychology coaching is invisible to the client. And just to give you a couple examples of this.

One, you already mentioned, is strengths, that we’re interested in clients identifying their strengths, seeing those strengths as actually being strengths, not just dismissing them as ordinary, and using them optimally. So that might be “use your strengths more,” but it might also be “use your strengths less,” or “use them more judiciously” with a certain type of person for whom the strength doesn't make sense. So imagine someone who's great at humor, they might want to use humor with some people but not others. And the coaching process would be reflecting on when this strength, when does this strength of humor go well? How should you best employ it? And through that process, you would be more effective at using your strength.

And another thing we would do in positive psychology coaching would be just to invite people to focus on solutions rather than problems. And I think this is kind of an artful way of thinking because it's a little bit tough. Because people want to complain, and you can't invalidate them by saying no, no, no, let's not talk about your complaints, right? So you let them talk about their complaints, you just don't invite them to do so more than they normally would. Instead, you invite them to focus on solutions. The simple question is, “Wow, that complaint sounds awful. What would you prefer instead?” And it's so, so much of the positive psychology in the coaching is very subtle and it just comes out in the form of very natural questions.

Chris Kresser:  So let's talk a little bit more about coaching because this, as I've, we’ve been preparing to launch our ADAPT Health Coach Training Program, have been talking to a lot of people about coaching, both people who identify as coaches and people who are wanting to learn to become coaches, people who are experts in the coaching world. And it turns out there are a lot of different definitions of coaching and a lot of different conceptions of what a coach should do. I mean, certainly for some who might not be very familiar with health coaching or life coaching or executive coaching, they might think about, like, a sport coach, you know, like someone with a whistle around their neck, blowing it and yelling at them. And that’s what they think of as coaching. But what is coaching from your perspective? What defines coaching?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Sure, it's a great question and I think you're right, there are a lot of stereotypes around it, right? Sort of this New Age life coaching kinda stereotype, just like, “Hey, if we could look at your past lives, which of those would you want to use?” And I think that there is some of that in coaching, and there's folks that do coaching that have no training in it, and I think that's a little bit dangerous. This is a profession. It's not just something that you can kinda shoot from the hip. So I believe that coaching fundamentally is a professional relationship where the coach acts as a facilitator. And in the capacity as a facilitator, they work with their client to help the client achieve personally important goals, and they do so primarily through some broad mechanisms.

One, they support the client and they act as a yes-man or yes-woman, kind of saying like, “Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, what would it take for you to try that?” They also provide accountability. “So you want to make this big behavioral change. Great. I'm going to hold you to that. You're gonna let me know exactly the progress you're making and I'm going to hold your feet to the fire if you fall short of that.” They also do a lot of exploration. That makes up the, sort of the lion’s share of a coaching session. And that just comes in the form of questions where you probe the client's life. You have them take stock of his or her identity and resources, challenges, hopes, help them articulate goals. And then the last thing, I think, is just a little bit of challenge too. You mentioned the sports coach with a whistle, and while I wouldn't whistle or yell at my clients, I don't mind occasionally needling them or prodding them, or doing a little bit of that just to improve motivation as well.

The fundamentals of health coaching

Chris Kresser:  Right. We’ll come back to that, because I think it’s important to emphasize that there are different styles of coaching and not necessarily a right or wrong way to do it. And I know you're a big believer in authenticity in coaching. So I do want to cover that. But before we dive in there, let’s shift our focus a little bit toward health coaching because that’s something that I’m interested in. And something that I’ve noticed as I’ve gone around having these conversations is that some people have the impression that a health coach is someone who requires a lot of expertise and information about things like nutrition and lifestyle, like sleep and exercise. And then their primary role is to deliver that information and expertise to the clients that come to them. What is the problem with that understanding?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  The problem with that understanding is that it’s not what health coaching is fundamentally. That is like being an educator, that's a health educator or health consultant, perhaps. That’s saying, “Look, I've got the solution for you. I know it's gonna work. And if only you follow my plan, magically, things are going to go right for you.” But again, going back to that kind of sports analogy, the sports coach doesn't run out on the field and grab the ball away from the players and try and score with it. That is, they’re not playing the game. They recognize the players play the game and they're just there to motivate, encourage, help them see the big picture, help them improve their strategy, help them train. And that's really a better model for a health coach.

So the health coach can go in with a client that wants to make some type of health change, anything from “I want to quit smoking,” to “I need to get into the gym.” And they help the client tease out his or her own solutions that make sense in the context of his or her own life. Because I think we all understand X amount of exercise is pretty good for people and that you can look at exercise in terms of mobility and strength building and flexibility and all these sort of subcomponents of it. But what about the client in front of you? What about this single mom who's stressed out, has a preteen, and a teen kid, is trying to balance work and home life, doesn't have a huge amount of time or money for a gym membership? What's the solution for that person?

And that person gets to be the expert in their own life and a health coach's job is to help them explore what makes sense for them given their circumstances. And certainly a little bit of expertise in diet, nutrition, and so forth might help the coach to ask better questions. But ultimately it's asking and not advising.

How health coaching differs from an expert or authority approach

Chris Kresser:  Right. Such an important distinction. And now I've talked about this in other contexts, but there are statistics like the CDC has estimated that only about 6 percent of Americans engaged in the top five health behaviors, like maintaining a healthy weight, and getting enough sleep, and not drinking too much, not smoking, etc. And as you suggested, it's when people are not maintaining these behaviors, it’s not because they don't understand that they’re beneficial, right? It's that there's some obstacle to change or some ambivalence.

And let's talk a little bit more about how a coaching approach is different than the maybe what we could call the “expert” or the “authority” approach in resolving that ambivalence or making progress in terms of behavior change. Because from my perspective, just doing more of the same thing, which is recruiting more experts, more people who can tell patients or just individuals what to do. Which is kind of the approach that we’re still taking both in conventional medicine and I would even say in conventional health coach training programs. Why will that fail?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Well, it potentially could fail for many reasons. I think it's interesting you go in to a conventional doctor, and of course they’re varied, and there's wonderful doctors and there's lazy doctors and there's all kinds of doctors. But let's say you're overweight and the doctor cares about that and they bring it up to you, and they say, “Oh, it would be a good idea for you to lose a little weight and maybe here’s a pamphlet about weight or about diet.” I think we can probably agree that much of the information contained there is probably outdated in its approach.

It would be things maybe like caloric restriction or things that really are not widely accepted anymore, but the real problem there is that they haven't looked at the client's motivation, they haven't looked at the client's readiness for change, they haven't explored who supports or potentially sabotages the client’s diet. They don't understand anything about the client’s pattern of eating, their shopping or cooking behaviors, are they emotional eaters, do they have a sweet tooth, is alcohol a crutch for them in terms of managing stress. How are their sleep habits factoring into their weight? And really that necessitates an in-depth and exclusive sort of coaching-like interview with the client to help tease out really a strategy or a plan that’s going to be effective given all those factors for that specific individual in front of you.

Chris Kresser:  I know you’re a big believer in asking powerful questions, and it seems to me that one of the main differences in the approaches we’re talking about now, this expert or authority approach and a coaching approach, is just that. Asking questions rather than providing answers. We know that the average amount of time a patient gets to speak before they are interrupted by their doctor is just 12 seconds.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  I've never heard that before. That’s great.

How asking powerful questions shifts the dialogue

Chris Kresser:  It’s true. That’s a statistic peer-reviewed study that found where they went around and observed these interactions. And even with observation, that was true. So yeah like, why is asking powerful questions so powerful? I mean how does that shift the dialogue and the outcomes?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Certainly. So let me just preface my answer by giving just a quick example of what a powerful question is. We all understand what a question is, but if I ask you what's your birthday, that's not a particularly powerful question. It's very easy for you to answer that. It takes almost no thought whatsoever for you to provide an answer.

Chris Kresser:  Right.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  But if I say, “These days, what's most important to you in life,” that requires a little bit of reflection, a little bit of thought. It forces you to make choices and to articulate something that feels weighty. And that's an example of a powerful question. So if you have someone coming in, I'm just going to go back to the idea of optimal weight as an issue. If you ask questions like how important is it to you to change your weight. What do you believe is standing in the way of weight change? When in the past have you had success in this particular issue? Who supports you in this? When you lose a little bit of weight, how does make you feel?

Those are the types of questions that get the client to take stock of her resources, she can take stock of how important this is, what she's willing to sacrifice to make this change, the potential path to getting there. You can set up lots of little experiments. You can say, “Let’s just try this and see. We don’t know if it will succeed.” And certainly that's really important and something like behavioral change around health habits because people often backslide. And when they backslide they end up feeling very badly about themselves. They feel like failures.

But if you just set it up, set client expectations from the get-go, as in, “Hey, behavioral change is hard, sometimes you're on vacation, sometimes it's the holidays. Circumstances are always changing. So we’re always going to be modifying our plan. We don't expect it to be perfect. We’re really just doing these experiments and getting feedback,” that can make the change process a lot more empowering to the client.

Chris Kresser:  And I think more effective, certainly. I mean, one of the things that I’m often hearing … I was just at a conference last weekend and a very common topic of conversation amongst nutritionists and also health coaches who I think have not actually been trained in these core coaching skills that we’re talking about is something along the lines of this. Like I was actually asked this, not this year, but last year I was approached by a coach who said, “Where can I find more motivated clients? I'm having a hard time getting people to follow my program.” And she asked me because her perception was that I had the most motivated patients, which is probably true. My patients are generally much more motivated than others because of all the hoops they have to jump through just to get to see me. And she was wondering where she could, how she could hook up with some more motivated people who would follow her programs. And I don’t say this to be critical of her at all and or anyone who has the same question. Because it can be really frustrating when you feel like you have a lot of knowledge and expertise that could help your clients, or your friends and family members, but they're not acting on it.

So where do these core coaching skills come in, in dealing with this? And maybe you could talk a little bit about ambivalence and what it is, and how coaching can help coaches, practitioners, and clients, patients that find themselves in the stuck place.

Robert Biswas-Diener: Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the great elements of coaching is just this fundamental attitude that you have about your clients. That whether your client walks in overweight, or with diabetes or with any number of things that society might judge them for, it's important for coaches to just kind of keep, I guess, an open heart or an attitude of acceptance towards their clients. And so you don't start seeing your clients as resistant or unmotivated. Instead you're curious and you try and figure out what’s standing in the way of your motivation. What would boost your motivation? What's one small change we could make that might sort of shift you a half step up in motivation?

I’ll give you just a very quick example of this. I was speaking with a health coach yesterday and we were talking about a single mother. This is the example I gave before, who gives sugary cereal to her children. And it was sort of driving the health coach crazy because everyone in the world knows that you shouldn't load up a bunch of milk on sugar cereal, give it to kids, and expect them to learn for the day. And really what the single mother was saying is, “Yeah, you know that and I know that. Everyone knows that. But I have a million battles that I have to fight throughout the day. I have a million things on my plate. I’m trying to balance my own health, fitness, and well-being with a heavy workload at my job, with raising these children with no support from my ex-husband, and sugar cereal is not the battle I choose to fight. And I just need help prioritizing which are the battles that are perhaps the ones that are better to invest in.”

And I think that's where this kind of open-hearted attitude ... You don't say, “Oh, this client doesn't get it. They're resistant to my anti-sugar cereal protocol and they’re not following my guidelines.” But instead they’re reaching out and they're smart and resourceful, and willing to make change. They just want your help figuring out how best to do that and it’s probably not during breakfast. It might be something else. They might prioritize dinner or grocery shopping, or figuring out ways to have the kids contribute to the meal prep, or any number of solutions. But we don't know what that solution is. Only the client ultimately understands what's in their context.

Chris Kresser:  And when the client discovers their own solution with maybe the support of the coach, what do we know about how likely that is to be successful over the long term versus a solution that comes from the coach or somebody else?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Here's what I think about it. I would guess that you want me to say, “Well, when the client comes up with her own solution, she's going to be more successful at it.”

Chris Kresser:  No, I’m just asking you a powerful question, Robert.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah okay, good, good. Because that is not my answer. I think that when clients come up with their own solutions and they're willing to commit to them and try them, I think their motivation is up. I think they're more likely to follow through on the behavior change. Ultimately, we don't know if that's going to lead to more success. Because maybe the idea wasn't a good one. Or maybe the kids don't accept the change, to use this recent example. Or maybe just bad luck and it just fails.

Like, we don’t guarantee success, but what we do know is that the client feels better about it. They feel empowered, they feel motivated, they're more likely to follow through. They’re probably more likely to persevere, even if it doesn't go well the first time. And those things might be related to more success overall downstream, but I think even those things like motivation and perseverance are major wins in and of themselves.

Chris Kresser:  Absolutely. So we have a number of people who are in our audience who are health coaches, or seeking to become a health coach. And I know another thing that I've heard, especially for new health coaches or people who are just learning about this, is it's a lot. They’re studying positive psychology and character strengths and things like motivational interviewing and the transtheoretical model and stages of change and building trust and rapport and empathic forms of communication, etc. I mean, it can be a little bit overwhelming. So I know from our previous conversations that you have a, what I think is a really great framework for coaches that are getting started, like what they should focus on first as they begin to get experience with clients.

Framework for coaches just getting started

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah, absolutely. And I think you're right. There is sort of an overwhelming amount of skill and knowledge to be learned. And everyone thinks all of it’s equally important and it all needs to be frontloaded. It's just, it can be a real burden for a new student of coaching. I believe that if you could just sort of, like, really strip down coaching to its barest bones, kind of like if you had a car that just had wheels, an engine, and the steering wheel, like just its basic bits, it didn't even need lights or seats or anything to still work, that for coaching that would be what I would consider the bookends of coaching—that is, how do you start and stop a coaching session?

And you start by setting a really sophisticated agenda. Just kind of shoot from the hip and say, “Hey, what do you want to talk about today?” Because that's a little bit like taking off in an airplane but having no destination in mind. It might be an enjoyable flight, but how do you know when it's over? Is it just when you run out of gas? So I really think that setting an agenda, it's quite masterful. People often say, “Oh, it seemed so easy, and then I started trying it, and it was really difficult to master.” So making sure that the agenda is really specific, really pointed, that it's something that can be accomplished, something that the clients bought into.

And then the other bookend is setting up accountability, extracting some type of behavioral promise related to a goal from the client and creating a plan by which they are accountable to that. And then basically the stuff in the middle, the third skill, is just asking those powerful exploratory questions. There are loads of other skills that you can season a coaching session with, but I think those are sort of the core elements.

Chris Kresser:  So I want to talk a little bit about what an aspiring health coach should look for in a training program. You train coaches, we’re setting up to train coaches, and you and I have talked a lot about what should be present in a training program. You've been in education for a long time yourself, and I know you have a lot of thoughts about that. So I’d love to hear what would be the most, what are the most important things from your perspective?

What an aspiring health coach should look for in a training program

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah, that's a great question, and I think you could find a difference of opinion on this. But I have some pretty strong opinions. First, I think that an emphasis on effective pedagogy, that is, how is the program delivered, is really crucial, and I actually think that it's a fairly overlooked element of most coaching programs. Most coaching programs operate like, “Hey, why don’t you fly into our city for the weekend? We’ll just load you up in the quickest time possible with tons of practice, we’ll write you a certificate at the end,” and that's highly appealing to people because they can get a lot of information in a very short amount of time. Unfortunately, it's not really good for learning. You can't cram information like that, and it's a terrible way to learn skill, because to learn skill effectively, you need to space out, practice over time, and to get feedback on it.  

So I think really high-quality coaching programs occur over periods of time, not over periods of weekends. They really think about effective communication. So they're balancing a little bit of lecture with lots of demonstration, practice opportunities, feedback, discussion groups, so that you're really getting the information from multiple channels. And to some extent, I think that that's almost more important than what the content is itself. So I would definitely look for that. I think that the programs that have some type of official affiliation, that is, they could provide you with some kind of institutional affiliation and say, “And look, there's an ethics code that goes with this. And even we have oversight in what we, there's oversight on our program. Someone is checking in to make sure that our program is high quality.” I think that's a great thing because I think there's a lot of sort of coaching programs popping up, just, you know, “Acme Gold Standard Coaching Program” that’s just some guy in his basement that decided to offer something online.

And I also, like, I'll just say this as one last consideration. I really like what I think of as a generalist model. I'm deeply skeptical when a coaching program has their own sort of proprietary model. “Come to our Interchange Academy where you can learn the interchange method that includes six levels of listening and seven levels of leadership and eight levels of change.” And you only get taught our model and exactly our formulaic steps, and they’re taught as if they’re the laws of nature. And that doesn't describe every coaching program. Some coaching programs are like, “Hey, whether you're doing executive coaching or life coaching or health coaching, really kind of just here are some general skills that work. Here are some ethics that you should build on as a foundation. Here are some practice opportunities and some feedback.” So I really like the generalist approach rather than trying to get you to buy into, like, a particular orientation or philosophy.

Chris Kresser:  Yeah, that's, I mean, that’s really helpful, and I know you and I have talked about the learning theory and pedagogy in the past. And I really scratched my head over that one because I talked, I've written and talked a lot over the years about the disconnect between the most recent nutrition research and medical research and what the standard of care is in the conventional model. How disparate, how much of a gap there is between what the research shows now and what's actually being done in conventional settings. But I think that gap is even bigger when it comes to learning theory.

There's so much research on how humans learn most effectively. And it's really, at least from my perspective, doesn't seem to be very controversial at this point. And yet the way that the vast majority of not just health coach training programs, but any educational programs are structured, even medical training programs, is completely at odds with this modern learning theory.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Absolutely, yeah.

Chris Kresser:  It seems to shoot these programs in the foot from the beginning. I hear from so many people. Actually, I just got an email yesterday from someone who's, I’m not going to name the program specifically, but a highly regarded integrative medicine training program, he actually sent me a video of what is inside of the training portal, and seriously, it looks like it was designed in 1978. It’s just all text, no case studies. It’s just like a textbook kind of barfed out online, right?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Right.

Chris Kresser:  And he said it’s just all 100 percent passive learning. They’re just meant to read the slides, all the slides just have text on them, and he’s miserable. And he paid a lot of money for this program.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Absolutely. Well one of the things that’s happened sort of broadly in the training space is a lot of it is market driven, and that is, customers are asking for more passive learning opportunities for chunked learning. Give it to me just in a weekend. But it turns out that these same consumers, that's convenient for them, but they have never studied effective pedagogy. And oftentimes they don't even realize how much that by demanding this type of product, they are shortchanging their own ability to truly absorb information and master skill.

As a quick example, I was just in Manila in the Philippines last week and I was training psychologists and executive coaches. And I was just training them in one particular skill in a day. And I said, “I won't be using PowerPoint today.” And exactly, that was the collective gasp. They said, “No one has ever tried to stand in front of a group in a hotel ballroom of more than 100 people for a day without PowerPoint.” They were like, how could that be possible? And people came up to me afterwards and they were surprised. They said, “Wow, you held our interest despite not having PowerPoint.” And I think it's just interesting.

Chris Kresser:  I would say almost because of not having PowerPoint you were able to hold their interest.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Well, exactly. Like, yeah, let me guess, you weren’t looking at the screen and you are now focusing on the presenter.

Chris Kresser:  Exactly, yeah.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  But it is that they’re not bad people for being used to PowerPoint; they just have never studied this or had opportunities to engage with high-quality training modalities.

Chris Kresser:  So we’ve covered a lot of ground today. It’s been really fascinating conversation and I would love to just hear … We talked about some of the things that you would look for in a training program for coaching. What are some of the pitfalls or things to watch out for, for someone who's thinking about becoming a coach, or what’s your kind of top-of-mind best advice that you would give someone, if someone came to you like a family member perhaps, and said, “Robert, I'm thinking about becoming a coach”? What would you say to that person?

Robert Biswas-Diener:  The first thing I would say is listen to your instinct. If you have a conversation with someone at a coaching program or you're looking at a coaching program, and there's just some kind of yellow flag, treat it like a red flag. If there's something about the way they’re self-promoting or talking about their success that just sort of rubs you the wrong way, I say absolutely listen to that because that's not just the pitch, that is who they are.

So really look for a fit with something that just feels good for you. I know some of the people that come to me, they say, “Oh, you don't mind challenging us. You don't demand that we agree with you, but you're also going to say things that other people aren’t saying. And that’s going to sound fresh and challenging, and we’re going to have to wrestle with it.” And for people who have that orientation, that’s going to be a great fit for them. The other thing that I worry about, and I did kind of allude to this before, sometimes when someone has just too glossy a package, when they say, “This is our perfectly copyrighted material and it’s the seven steps or the three ways, and you’re going to do it in this very formulaic way,” it doesn't feel very natural to me. It’s sort of a one-size-fits-all solution. And I am generally skeptical of that.

And then the last thing I would say, just be on the lookout for people who may not themselves have obvious research expertise, but who are touting the research. And they’re saying things like “this study proves that,” and so first of all, studies don’t prove things. They just offer a bit of evidence for things. And a single study is just a single study. You get 10 or 20 studies together, and it starts pointing towards a reliable conclusion. And people with true expertise speak in those more measured terms. They say, “We have mounting evidence for.” And when you start hearing these sort of grand research claims, I would also treat that a bit like a yellow flag.

Chris Kresser:  Right. Cool. So where can people learn more about your work, Robert? You’ve written several books, a couple which I’ve read for coaches. Practicing Positive Psychology Coaching is a fantastic book. You've also written The Courage Quotient, The Upside of Your Dark Side, and then a book on happiness. I think that was with your dad, right? That one. So yeah, tell us a little bit more about this and where people can learn more about your work.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Yeah. I think The Upside of Your Dark Side is my most recent book. That’s the one I would recommend to people. It basically looks at, hey, good stuff is good, the happiness is pleasant, it’s associated with all sorts of benefits. But it’s also okay to occasionally be angry or guilty or sad. Let yourself off the hook for that. Mindfulness is terrific; occasional mindlessness has some benefit as well.

So it’s just looking more holistically, if you don’t mind the word, in trying to sew back a little bit of that shadow onto the Peter Pan positivity. And people can also find me at RobertDiener.com. It's my website. It has some of my published academic articles on it. Or you could just really just find me out there on Google. I write blogs and there's all sorts of stuff out there. I'm not hidden.

Chris Kresser:  That is D-i-e-n-e-r, RobertDiener.com. You can also find Robert in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program because he is, I'm very excited to say, that he has created the core coaching skills content for the program. And not only did he create that content, he’ll also, true to our focus on pedagogy and continuous learning and the importance of experiential and practical learning, he will be also providing support, demonstrations, and feedback in a live seminar format with that content as coaches move through the course.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Of all the programs that I've worked on and all the projects I’ve worked on in the last year, I’ve got to tell you that it's this that I'm most excited about, to be honest. I'm thrilled to be doing it.

Chris Kresser:  Oh, I'm so … I'm flattered and happy to hear that. I'm excited about it too, and I think we have an incredible team. We’re going to be talking with Ken Kraybill from t3 about motivational interviewing in the next podcast, which is another, essentially, a way of asking powerful questions. A specific kind of approach to that, and I can't wait to get going with this because I think the, with the rising rates of chronic disease and what we talked about, doctors are not, and more experts are not what we need. We need people who can actually facilitate behavior change. And that's what this is all about.

Robert Biswas-Diener:  Absolutely.

Chris Kresser:  Thank you so much, Robert, for being with us today. And again, RobertDiener.com. Check it out. Upside of Your Dark Side his most recent book. And for those of you who are joining us in the ADAPT Health Coach Training Program in June, you will be seeing and hearing more from Robert in that program. So thanks for listening, everybody. Keep sending your questions into ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion, and we’ll see you next time. All right.

The post RHR Podcast: Harnessing the Power of Positive Psychology in Health Coaching – with Robert Biswas-Diener appeared first on Chris Kresser.

Source: http://chriskresser.com May 15, 2018 at 01:16AM

[fraddit]

My recent experience with depression, anxiety, and ADHD

I figured I would make a post about this, because I know that at least a few of my mutuals are dealing with some or all of these things themselves and might find this helpful.  Who knows?  Very long, very personal, but mostly positive post under the cut.  Like, really, more information than you probably ever wanted to know about me and my problems.  Proceed, if you feel so inclined.

First, a brief history, for context.  Throughout elementary and high school, I consistently scored in the 99th percentile on standardized tests.  Then, I almost flunked out of high school, barely got my diploma, took a year off, and started art school college for an animation English degree.  I was going to write novels.  After a year or two of that, I decided I could write without a degree, so I dropped out.  What followed was a decade of several strangely varied and unrelated jobs and no novel writing. Working a stable corporate gig while not accomplishing (or even pursuing) any of my personal creative goals was DESTROYING MY SOUL.  So, I quit my job to become a full-time student and finish my degree, because at least that was kind of in the same universe as actually being creative.  And now, a year or two later, here I am, 32 and a few semesters away from finally finishing that English degree.  Clearly brains won’t get you everywhere kids.

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 7 and was on some form of medication until sometime in high school, when I decided I didn’t want to take it anymore, for reasons I won’t bother getting into.  It never occurred to me to even consider medication again until this semester, when everything fell apart.

ADHD can impact a person in a multitude of ways.  For me, the biggest impact is probably executive function issues.  I can wander through the garden of my ideas all day long.  I cannot make myself sit down and do work, no matter how much I may want to.  For personal goals, that means a literal solid decade of zero accomplishment.  For school, that means procrastinating papers until the night before or morning of or sometimes even two weeks late, on the night before the professor has to turn in their grades.  And the level of personal effort it took to make myself write that two-week-late paper was herculean in measure, when it really should not have been.

I’ve since learned that many professionals suspect this very common procrastination habit of ADHD folks is actually a kind of self-medicating by way of adrenaline via stress response.  Which sounds entirely plausible to me, because every semester since I’ve been back at school, I’ve found myself pushing the risky boundaries of procrastination further and further, like a drug addict needing a higher dose to get a fix.  A very unsustainable and unhappy process all around.

Which brings me to this semester, when the wheels finally fell off the car, and one of the campus psychologists found me crying on a bench outside the counseling center because they were closed for lunch and meetings, and I didn’t know where else to go.  I couldn’t do any of my homework, was crying every day, and having panic attacks.  To put it simply, I was a fucking mess.

I made more appointments at the counseling center, I spoke with my professors about what I was going through (hello more panic attacks), and for the first time in over a decade, I remembered that there are medications I should maybe try, and I made an appointment to see the psychiatrist at the campus medical clinic.  (Also, guys, if any of you are students, look into your campus resources.  There’s support for everything at my school.  There’s even an office that’s only there to help guide students to all the other support options.  Seriously, mental health, child care, food, housing, you name it.  Get the help you need.)

When I explained everything I had been going through, the very nice psychiatrist at the clinic told me, with an unsettling degree of alarm in her voice, that I was “deeply depressed”. Which, I knew, but she really sounded shockingly concerned.  And it’s like, jeeze, I maybe didn’t realize just how bad things had gotten, because I was just living with this shit every day, so it was kind of ‘normal’ for me.

Anyway, she agreed to start me on meds for my ADHD.  The one I’ve been taking is called Vyvanse.  I started on the lowest dose and have been gradually increasing.  A month in, I’m at a dose where I can clearly tell a difference, and it’s having a noticeable impact.  I wrote a meta yesterday.  I was thinking the thoughts, and just sat down and wrote it.  This morning, I got up and wrote some more, just notes for future things to do, but I did it.  Fuck, I’m writing this fucking thing right now.

I thought that maybe I should write this shit out, and it took a little while sitting and getting my momentum going, but now I’ve written 800 1300 1650 words.  And I’m sitting here actually crying as I type this paragraph, because this small little thing is like the biggest fucking thing in my life.

I don’t have any way to accurately explain what a big deal it is for me to have actively decided to write something and then to have actually actively produced content of my own volition and design, that wasn’t assigned to me and didn’t have a due date or a grade attached.  And, that I’ve done it repeatedly now…

OVER TEN YEARS.  Over ten years I went, writing almost nothing. Might as well have been zero words. Guys, I’ve been walking around with a trilogy of speculative fiction novels in my head for over ten years, I’ve been planning another unrelated novel for the last two.  I’ve been planning something like 30 fanfics, across two fandoms, and another 20 metas for the past year.  Part of me probably assumed feared that none of that would ever see the light of day. But now, it suddenly feels like maybe I’ll actually manage to write some of it.  And I’m hoping like fuck that it’s not just a fluke.

Now, the ADHD meds aren’t the only thing I’ve been doing to contribute to this ‘good place’ I’m in currently.  I’ve been going to counseling.  Apparently, I have a lot of negative feelings about myself and my inability to accomplish jack shit for a whole decade.  Who would’ve guessed?  I also have weekly sessions with the disabilities accessibility team at my university to work on external methods for dealing with my executive function issues. (Again, if you’re a student, utilize your university resources.  You’re already paying for them with tuition.)  And, this is obviously not an option for everyone, but even before I started the ADHD meds, I took advantage of the fact that I live in a state where certain botanical products are easily and legally available and found a brand of gummies that really help with my anxiety and panic attacks.  (They’re high cbd, low thc, so calming and don’t make you high.)

So far, the meds aren’t 100% sunshine and rainbows.  With the dose I’m at right now, where I’ve been Getting Things Done, I can actively feel the drug, which is… not the greatest.  I feel jittery, vaguely anxious, like I’ve drank way too much coffee but worse.  And, the decreased appetite is something I really have to be vigilant about, because I don’t have any room to lose weight.  These were both known possible side effects of stimulant meds, so I wasn’t surprised, and perhaps the doctor and I will be able to fine tune the dosing or try another med or something.  But right now, I think I’m really leaning toward, I’ll put up with the side effects, because holy shit, I can finally actually do what I want to do.  Also, I think (and Nice Doctor Lady thinks) the new higher dose is having a positive, stabilizing impact on my mood.

I guess my reason for writing all of this, other than pure catharsis, is to say, if you’re dealing with shit like this, try to be willing to consider all your options.  For whatever reason, I didn’t think about trying medication for my condition.  It wasn’t even like I was anti-meds or something.  I just didn’t even think about it.  Not until a few months back, when I sent a random ask to an ADHD blog on here, asking how they managed to make themselves write, and they responded with I had to get medication.  Suddenly, it was like… why have I not been considering this option?  So, this story is for anyone else out there that maybe also hadn’t thought to consider this option.

And really, not just the medication.  I’m a hide behind walls, overly independent, do things on my own, never ask for help sort of person.  But, I guess I finally reached a level of desperation where I was like, Clearly, doing this by myself, my way, has not gotten me the results I want.  So, fuck it, I’m going to ask for help from every professional available to me.  Which, I’m very lucky, and currently have ready access to multiple resources in a way not everyone does, but being open to getting this much assistance is very new territory for me.

I’m not really sure how best to wrap this up.  If anyone actually read all of this, I’m astonished and… Hi, I guess?  You really know quite a bit about me now.  Hopefully, I haven’t scared anyone off.  And, if anybody has further questions about any of this or you want to talk about your own issues, I’m sincerely available for that. I think the world we live in today makes it too easy to feel completely alone, even when you’re surrounded by people, and I’m here for chats, if you need it.