#and also ive got a fandom event im a part of

[theresstilltime]

old man logan save me old man...

[swordbreakerz]

Happy new years from Them, may you have just as much rivals to lovers and Cool Robots in the new year 💖💖

[weirdmageddon]

the shift in lore literacy in homestuck’s fandom

i was thinking about how the people who got into homestuck after it ended—whose interactions with the comic are in a static, archived state, not an ongoing thing—missed out on information that was more common knowledge in the fandom at that time. i don’t know if this is true since i’m not on tiktok, but i wouldn’t be surprised if it was. the fandom certainly isn’t the same as it was before.

ive found that many people reading homestuck now simply do not understand things in homestuck that were common knowledge back in the day, with calls for “homestuck literacy classes to become mandatory” in response to baffling takes because so many people just now seem to have glazed over the comic without absorbing important plot points, and i think i know why this may be. i ended up writing a post reflecting on my time with the comic, my perspective and how ive seen this change. i still think and write about homestuck because it still fascinates me. earlier i quote retweeted that call in my thread talking about the temporal relativity of dave and rose’s god tier ascension in the green sun, saying “my homestuck literacy is 100% so guess im doing my part as a teacher by pointing out whatever i think is really cool about it”. this post im writing now started out as a reply to this tweet i got in response.

i joined the fandom in 2013. i was 11. i had been aware of it since at least late 2011, early 2012 when my friend ryan in fifth grade told me to read it but i couldn’t get past the first few pages. i remember writing a journal on deviantart around this time (late 2011-early 2012) that was mocking people who typed like gamzee, which ironically was very karkat of me. and i remember someone on flipnote hatena i was following was making flipnotes with the alpha kids.

i dont know what caused me to flip the switch into reading it but 2013. i got into it somewhere between april (i think closer to april—i remember it being quite a span of time between the last update before HOMOSUCK dropped.) this was the most recent page the comic, meaning there was no > [S] ACT 6 ACT 6 at the bottom.

i got into it during a pause in updates, which looking into it, was the year 4 megapause. i wasn’t sure of the month until seeing the news post detailing the reason for the hiatus and the status report of the comic’s development at that time. pretty cool i could narrow it down by referencing the dates of those updates and the news post to correspond with the pause!

according to readmspa, the year 4 megapause was a 59 day hiatus from Apr 14, 2013 ==> (EOA6A5) running to 12 Jun 2013, [S] ACT 6 ACT 6. then for a few months there were the first updates that i was apart of the fandom for.

and what an exciting time during the story get into the webcomic! when the updates resumed in june, part 4 of homestuck had begun. here was a glimpse of the updates in that span of time before the next hiatus began in october.

that hiatus was none other than the gigapause, the longest hiatus in the comic, which started october 2013 and lasted for a YEAR, and i already posted about what happened on the date of return.

but here were the main events happening in the story at the time i first actually got interested in it. i wasn’t aware of the full context of them then like i am now, but i was looking at the most recent updates anyway with interest:

the alpha kids just emerged as god tiers from their slabs in derse and prospit, blown up by the condesce and caliborn / lil cal-possessed b2 jack noir.

the journey to the new session started 24 hours after jack called an early reckoning in descend—for context that was about when dave entered around midnight central time and before jade even entered. it’s pretty easy to forget that side 1 of homestuck basically happens within the span of a single day—and at this point in the story, the 3 year journey (which was also 3 real life years) had just ended. john and jade emerged from the other side of the yellow yard through the fenestrated plane on LOMAX. john’s real body was asleep upon arrival in the new session, while his dreaming projection out in the dream bubbles came across vriska’s ghost ship to learn lord english lore with vriska and aranea, and go on the treasure hunt where they found the ultimate weapon at the X mark out in in the furthest ring. in the dream john stuck his hand in the juju, started warping all over canon which removed his real body from the ship on LOMAX. he zapped around for a while but eventually zapped back to LOMAX, now awake, completely out of the loop of what everyone else is up to, and bored as fuck. what was everyone else getting up to while john was asleep?

jade was now once again within the domain of the green sun. im pretty sure her space god doggy essence comes with the power to sense what was anywhere within the domain of the session since her face looks like she arrived at that spot with intent (and she literally has jack noir’s exact powers from bec’s prototyping. also this panel). she immediately dispatched b2 jack to the edge of the incinisphere, defending the newly god-tiered jane and jake. i think even if they weren’t in any danger, she would have warped to them instantly anyway because she COULD now, and i can imagine she wouldve been sooooo eager to meet everyone. even davesprite comments about her rapid departure.

the pre-scratch refugees arrived during the only time serious shit ever went down in the nobles’ months-long inert void session. the condesce used her freak psychic bronze-cerulean powers to commune with jade’s bestial side and mind controlled her, which is super dangerous as someone with the powers of a first guardian. she then used jade’s powers to corrupt jane with the tiaratop. no funtime meetup allowed!

the trolls’ meteor with rose, dave, and the remaining trolls was pulling up into the new session with no way to slow it down. grimbark jade warped there once it was in the incinisphere and took active control. she warped everyone off the trolls’ meteor and sent them to LOMAX.

as john was losing his mind on LOMAX waiting for everyone, the meteor crew warped in. after 3 years he finally reunited with rose and dave, and at least saw the trolls in person. close curtains, end of A6A5. this was the newest [S] flash page at the time, one of my first impressions of this comic, and still one of my favorite flashes. knowing the context of the flash in the story only enhances the retrospective joy i have at getting into the comic at the time i did because it’s such an anticipated moment in the story for everyone, while for someone with no context of the story it was still enjoyable.

so that’s what was going on plotwise when i joined the fandom.

from this time, through those few months of updates and through the gigapause, i was familarizing myself with the characters in the story and overseeing the state of fanbase, getting myself acquainted with the story and wrapping my head around everything.

at that time i found that a new-ish group called colab HQ who were producing a let’s read homestuck series on youtube. hearing the voices and the pacing of it like that really, really eased me into it (maybe it was my adhd that gave me trouble actually starting it?). i caught up to a certain point using lets read homestuck and from that point was able to continue with the comic on my own, and by the time the gigapause came to a close i was fully caught up. i remember the rebranding of colab hq into voxus about a year and a half after i discovered them.

but.. back to the main point of my post. even these posts from hussie’s tumblr exist in archived states. how many new fans know about hussie’s old tumblr? i don’t know, unless theyre a new fan that must scour the internet for more deep more dives on homestuck and its fandom as a whole. but since hussie deleted his tumblr (it exists archived now on homestuck.net which, alongside from the unofficial homestuck collection, has nearly singlehandedly kept the most important relics of the fandom and lore archived), that page is not an active part of the fandom now, because it’s gone. it’s a pile of bones. it’s not living and breathing. it’s in an archived state. the whole thing is already there. homestuck and its fandom history is something you now binge instead of slowly consume and meld with as it comes out. it’s now this rapid information intake that you might forget about if you read it now instead of engaged alongside it. you’re not surrounded by people actively talking and theorizing about developments anymore. the ability to have those sorts of conversations during the ongoing development of the story reinforced concepts, ideas, and lore over and over as we tried to make sense of it.

being in a fandom when the author is still delivering the story is like nothing else. it allows you grow alongside the characters and engage meaningfully with the media and people in the fandom space around you. it feels like you’re participating IN the media itself, especially if you’re interfacing with the creator. it’s in always having something to theorize or talk about and speculate. and people become very aware of these sorts of forgotten story facts because they were applying the logic of the newest official post from hussie into making their sburb ocs or something and share resources and discussion posts about “what just happened in this update?? recap????” it was this cultural osmosis thing. i think this is why homestuck literacy is now at an all time low, at least from what i can see on twitter.

reading homestuck then vs now is like the difference between serialized shows with spaces between episodes to discuss stuff and time to reflect and learn and become attached to the story, narrative, worldbuilding and its characters, vs the netflix model where it’s all dropped all at once and people forget about it after binging.

at this point in time im getting the sense that “homestuck elders” now are no longer just people who were there since 2009-2010, but now also people who were there while it was still updating, probably stretching into 2014-2015. there are many sources of lore that were common knowledge in the fandom at the time that, since becoming susceptible to the deletion of content and link rot, and with the thanosing of mspaforums, are no longer accessible at the source. and a lot of people moved on after it ended, especially following the epilogues, the kate drama, and the whatpumpkin-sarah z drama, leaving a void of information behind if not for archivists and people such as me who continue to keep old facts relevant in discussions. my friend has called me a fandom scholar before and seeing this post i think i get what they mean.

EDIT: there is a series of video essays ive watched multiple times (because theyre that good) and they are exactly what modern fans need to see more of. they really help contextualize the comic and the themes present in it help you appreciate the basic fabric of homestuck a hell of a lot more. i highly recommend them and encourage any fan of homestuck to watch them, or someone considering getting into homestuck to watch the first one.

i think this is arguably as close to the “mandatory literacy class for homestuck” that person was talking about as you can get, especially the first video.

additionally, there is also the website https://rafe.name/homestuck which is essentially a sparknotes for homestuck and can help you follow developments in the comic itself.

[insufferableprotagonistpoll]

Propaganda why Dean Winchester is insufferable:

Really mean to Cas (called him a child, zero respect for him, calls him family and casts him out when the angels are looking for him), and an absolute dick to Jack (threatening to kill him CONSTANTLY)

>Was a misogynist (loved to call women skanks, bitches, hoes)

>Used gay as an insult multiple time during the show's run (idc if he's gay an homophobic, that's still insulting)

>Beat up his brother for being possessed

>Beat up his brother for losing his soul (not his brother's fault)

>Used dubious consent to get his brother possessed in a different unrelated possession incident after possession was being used (badly...this is supernatural after all) as a metaphor for SA

>Threatened to murder his brother when he was hallucinating (yay we aren't ableist)

>Locked a child up in a box

>Threatened to kill the child he locked up in a box

>Made a creepy, sexual comment about a barely-legal high school girl

>Got the woman and kid he was living with memory-wiped

misogynistic scumbag. theres also a few different times that dean finds teenagers sexy with the most recent and prominent example that i can recall being the scooby doo crossover episode in season 13 where hes super into daphne who in the version they chose for the episode is 15-16 and is interacting with her as if shes a real person cause they got magicked into the episode. he treats everyone around him like shit and the only time the narrative agrees that thats a bad thing is when he has the mark of cain put on him and hes acting no differently than he does usually its just now acknowledged that hes treating others like shit. ive been rewatching the show for shits and giggles with a friend and wow he really does not treat anyone well but i wanna focus on how he treats sam for a second cause dude's hobby seems to be ignoring what his brother wants and lying to sam about doing stuff that directly concerns him the demon blood and souless things are reasonable cause those were both Bad for sam but theyre still part of a wider pattern and the most prominent example of this being when dean tricks sam into letting gadreel possess him and actually gaslights sam about it with the whole ordeal ending when its revealed gadreel lied about who he was and while possessing sam murders a friend of theirs. his voice is just also stupid as fuck im sorry this is just petty but he just sounds like hes trying so hard to be gruff n intimidating but he just sounds like a kid pretending to be batman

Dean’s list of sins is crazy long because of how long the show ran, but the key thing for me is that post-locking Sam in the bunker (season 4 I think?), I just can’t enjoy their relationship anymore. I normally love their sibling dynamic, but Dean’s ultimate worst past-the-point-of-no-return moment for me was demonizing (pun intended) his little brother for being “addicted” to demon blood, which only happened because of a series of events that were either Dean’s or someone else’s fault, not Sam’s. I also really dislike how the fandom treats Dean like this angel (pun intended) who has done no wrong and even tries to justify the MULTIPLE times he’s beaten up and otherwise abused his little brother. Canon Dean is like the polar opposite of fanon Dean: he’s homophobic and racist (jokes about a Black man being sexually assaulted in prison), misogynistic (take a shot every time he calls a woman a slur and you’ll die of alcohol poisoning), and abusive.

Propaganda why the Tenth Doctor is insufferable:

They’re so *edgy*

That one time he committed a genocide by drowning the last children of a near-extinct species (Racnoss) because their mother was evil. The closest anyone ever got to calling him out on it was when Donna noted that his take on a *different* set of weird alien babies (the Adipose) was a lot nicer than last time.

A combination of hypocrisy, sanctimony, and an equally insufferable fanbase. And the dissonance between what he actually does and how the narrative presents it.

[exoticalmonde]

Hello there!

I'm Exotic_Almonde, but I go by Evealia (Eve for short).

I have lots of games I love and I talk about them here, in addition to writing fanfics, book commentary and showing off the art my friends create when they're too shy or hesitant to do so.

Here we collect husbands and gush about art. Feel warned, because once I start, I never shut up.

For Archiving purposes, this librarian friend of yours is going to compile a list of things I've written about so far:

Favourite CC Music

Arknights OSTs Top 20 of Eve's Favourite Songs for December 2023 /Part I/

Arknights OSTs Top 20 of Eve's Favourite Songs for December 2023 /Part II/

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YumeShip Charts

Valentine's Day Arknights /Part I/

Valentine's Day Arknights /Part II/

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Dr. Evealia Operator Records

Three Year Anniversary

SweetPool (Game)

Watching Hakuoki /Demon of The Fleeting Blossom/

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Guiding Ahead Rerun /Part I/

Guiding Ahead Rerun /Part II/

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Annihilation XIX - Rest Avenue

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Arknights Chapter XI - Return To Mist

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Arknights, Chapter XII - All Quiet Under The Thunder

Chapter XII All Eepy Under The Rainy Day

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That's Me On the Lone Trail

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Stultifera Guiding

Stultifera Guiding Continues

Stultifairing The Navis (With Dr. Kryo)

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Phantom and Crimson Solitaire but the part where Dr. Eve is reading where the mission is situated + history + collectibles

IS2 also known as Phantom & Crimson Solitaire but the Part where I learn about some of the Lore via Operator Records

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Hortus de Escapismo Dr. Evealia's Reaction / Part I/

Hortus de Escapismo Dr. Evealia's Reaction / Part II/

Hortus de Escapismo Dr. Evealia's Reaction / Part III/

HE-6 After

HE-8

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Lundi is a RAT

Targonian Diet

Moonboy, My Darling Aphelios

The Gaming Fandom

Spirit Blossom Festival (League of Legends)

Does LeBlanc know about Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

Big Head, Bad News

Sett League Of Legends is SO cute

Is it exEcutor or execUtor?

Zhongli ASMR

Reading Hoederer's File Before It Was Official

Simple Communication

Mlynar's Flaws

Generally Insane

Designated Medic - Lappland

Sweet Dreams

The Echoes Are Going To Linger...

So Mean To Me...

Dr. Ratio, HSR

Argenti, HSR

I'm a Leithanien Enjoyer

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Wriothesley Dog

My Favourite Chicken on The Farm

Monsters

Leaffeu Art Dump

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Movie Night (Suzume)

Mr Mlynar Yo

The Ultimate Support

You Got That x Guiding Ahead /Dr. Pinkie Remix/

LaterUno

Doc and Gaul

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part I/

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part II/

Pinkie Worship For Skalter

A Glimpse Into The Yumeship Fic I'm Writing

A Song About Bread |But It's Our Arknights Doctors|

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part III/

I Promised An Update On Pulls for Zwillingstürme im Herbst

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part IV/

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part V/

Dr. Pinkie's Module Graph

The Maiden-Goose Spectrum

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part VI/

We Let Her Frolic Once In A While

An Angle or Devl Doodle

LUNDInium Outskirts /Part VII/

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It's CC12 Time

Gushing About Hoederer OST

I'M A SILVERASH HAVER NOW

Surviving The Horrors /Part -III/

Surviving The Horrors With A Big Heart And Empty Pockets

Surviving The Horrors /Waiting For Hoederer/

Surviving The Horrors /Part I/

Surviving The Horrors /Part II/

Surviving The Horrors /Part III/

Surviving The Horrors /Part IV/

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My Arknights 6-star Tier List /Updated/

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Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion /Gacha/

Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part I)

Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part II)

Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part III)

Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part IV)

Arknights Chapter XIII - The Whirlpool That Is Passion (Part V)

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Arknights - Zwillingstürme im Herbst Event /Part I/

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Eveknights IS-S-5 CM /video/

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Here A People Sows /Gacha Results/

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The Evealia Guide Through Babel (event) /Part I/

The Evealia Guide Through Babel (event) /Part II/

The Evealia Guide Through Babel (event) /Part III/

The Evealia Guide Through Babel (event) /Part IV/

TBC

---

[seraphirism]

Seeing the reaction of jp fans esp berrien and haures fans, they're squealing about the contents of their autumn card stories lol i wanna know so bad :((

This is why im reluctant to fully join akuneko bec ive been a fan for so long but i dont have ssr cards of my oshi (haures) ever since from the beginning so i dont know anything about him besides his past in episode 2 :")

Is there any site that has the translations of the card stories? I'm really begging atp

really? I need to read the event story and get up to date with what’s happening \(//∇//)\! i think i mentioned this before but i love the characters chosen for this event 💞

and i had the same issue, when i first got into aknk back when it’s 0.5 anniversary was going on! i was a huge fan of Berrien but i had nothing—no content of his whatsoever 😭 it was even worse back then and that’s how i lost interest.

i got back into it this year since there were quite a few translators (love them 💗, hope their pillows are cold on both of its sides.).

now to answer your question.

there are card story raws and card story translations;

in case of translations, I’d say tumblr is your best bet. unlike most other games that have their translations on twitter (mostly), aknk has all its translations on tumblr. and the translators are the handful you see. (i’ve never seen translations on twitter, correct me if I’m wrong!)

[if you need some help finding the translations on tumblr, let me know! there are some aknk translators that still translate content now and some that did it a while back and have quit now.]

but about card story raws, now:

there is a certain website/app that has a certain part of the fandom post card story raws (videos) for literally almost every single event. for obvious reasons, I’m not naming it here.

I think most people know about it too but if you don’t, feel free to dm me and I’ll send the website to you and guide you about it 💗! (im not naming it since it might or might not implicate the people posting them 😭.).

also, (in case if you’re nervous about it), please always be free/casual about dm-ing me! i don’t bite lol ✨

[yinyuedijun]

hiiiii i have not read or seen windbreaker my only interactions with it are bc some of my moots r into it now so ive read some fics and i saw tokyo vice on my dash and i was really pulled in by the summary so i read both parts and sincerity and the little prequel piece and oh my god it’s so good. i love the humor, the narrative voice is so witty. suo’s character is so intriguing bc as much as the reader loves and knows him there’s still so much going on that we can only guess at and i felt like that was communicated really well. i enjoyed the fact that sincerity and the prequel let us see their relationship at a different time and how we got to where they are in the present. im really interested in the reader and i felt like u did such a good job of weaving in the comedy to make some of her internal dialogue more lighthearted while still developing her emotional state really well. plus the smut was insane like 11/10 no notes. when the reader said she was excited for pussy inspections >>> like fuck yea me too!!! but anyways i loved the details we learn about her and how her fantasy is have really mundane romantic and vanilla sex. it really speaks to just how fucked up her life has been to the point where her biggest romantic dream is just to have regular sex with the man she loves. like ugh the angst interspersed with the comedy and smut was just chef's kiss. AND THAT ENDING??? WHEN HE THINKS SHE'S ASLEEP. like that did tug at my heartstrings especially when he talked about what their old friends think of him :(( and how if he was a better man he'd let her go. i read another organized crime x civilian fic for a different fandom a few years ago and it ended with the civilian person leaving his partner/his partner letting him go bc the deeper the partner he got into organized crime the more unhinged he became and how his mental state began affecting the civilian. thats a really condensed way of explaining but the events were crazy and it had me crying and screaming every chapter but that's something that ive never seen in other yakuza/gang/organized crime aus so i thought it was really cool to see how that is something that suo thinks about and has to come to terms with now that its been a few years and he can look back at his behavior.

but anyways i really really loved it and im gonna watch/read windbreaker as soon as i can now :)) so thank u for the wonderful fic 🙂‍↕️ and is tokyo vice over? i dont think i saw a completed tag on it on ur masterlist so i wanted to ask if u were leaving the world open

ANONNN I LOVE U SO MUCH TRULY THANK YOU!! 🥹 tokyo vice was an absurd self-indulgent project so I'm so very happy you gave it a shot despite not being into wbk!!! I must confess that it's wildly different from canon LOL but I do adore the canon series nevertheless, and I hope you enjoy it :-) (let us know if you do!!!)

I can't thank you enough for sending such juicy feedback abt tokyo vice, especially about the reader! I did find it somewhat stressful trying to balance the comedy of her narration with the horny and angsty and deranged events of the plot, so I'm glad that you liked that aspect of the fic !!! 🥹 and yeah despite all the comedy, she really is a traumatized meow meow. but it's okay, she can now have the normal sex of her dreams with the love of her life - as long as she can survive 4 months of orgasm denial before their wedding 😭

and LOL I love yandere charas with self-awareness so in general I love writing arcs where they love the reader enough to understand that they should let them go. the plot you're describing is sooooo up my alley and I think suo would absolutely have that thought process if the reader were even remotely mentally normal. unfortunately she is equally insane. I guess that is the tragedy of it for suo - he knows that he can never get better, and he also knows that as long as they are together, she can never get better either. fortunately for him, she could not care less ♥️

I do think tokyo vice is complete, but I do want to finish that sakura wip at some point and also write about suo and mc's sex life after they get together (which is very nasty premaritally and then really vanilla and emotional on their wedding night). I want to finish this kitsune suo pwp first though and finish my ffg commitments too 😭

anyway sorry for yapping so much HAHAH I'm just so happy that you commented on all these aspects of the fic!! thank you for reading and for sending such a wonderful ask 🥺💗

[tired-fandom-ndn]

ok so im curious. ive just started listening to tma and im in s1/havent seen too much plot from coworkers stuff yet, but jon kind of strikes me as like. A Jerk. like hes very rude and dismissive to the statements and the ppl giving them & i know its the Skeptic thing but its a bit much for me. but also i know hes like very babygirled by fans it seems? from what little ive seen. so do you think theres an evolving arc where hes dislikable and becomes more sympathetic or do you reckon disliking him from the beginning means i just wont like him or his role in the story? feel free to spoiler i have a lot of fandom osmosis lol its part of why im surprised i find him so offputting at the beginning

I am so so so sorry for taking three months to answer this, anon. I hope it's still helpful to you or someone else!

The thing to know about Jon, more than anything else in the early seasons, is that he's meant to be a jerk! He's putting on a very specific persona, both for himself and for his colleagues, as a Professional™. He's in a new job that is, quite frankly, an absolute mess for him to clean up and one that he doesn't feel at all qualified or prepared for. He's got colleagues who he feels don't respect him or aren't qualified for their own positions. He's even pretending to be older than he is to make himself seem more suited for his position. He knows people don't like him and he also knows that they don't take him seriously and it's the latter that he's really trying very hard to fix so that he can actually do his job.

He's also very seriously traumatized and trying very hard to distance himself from the work he's doing. Early Jon, along with being a Professional™, is also a Skeptic™ because denial is what keeps him going every day lmao. He is a man very much driven by fear and an intimate knowledge of the kind of things that could be lurking around him.

As the show progresses, you learn more about his actual personality underneath the persona, his relationships with and perspectives of his coworkers, and past events that have led him to being who he is and while it doesn't make him less of a jerk, it DOES make him significantly more sympathetic and compelling as a character. You've probably noticed that traumatized neurodivergent people latch onto him A LOT and there's definitely reasons for that lmao

[scrollypoly]

hi! for the past month i’ve been seeing people say BEN is a child and i think that part of it is linked to the fact that they think of Benjamin Lawman being BEN? but it’s so annoying to read these type of stuff because i understand not everyone read the whole arg story but stop spreading things that aren’t true </3 it’s such an interesting story too! another note do you prefer BEN’s canon or fanon design? :3 i love both but his canon design is so nostalgic i can’t let it go at all omg!! i’ve also been wondering, do you think Ben’s avatar was the statue? i was thinking about what if BEN took over it early on, before Benjamin did making BEN inhabiting it since the start?

Sorry this was such a ramble i practically make no sense omg but i need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It </3

"I need to talk about my man and nobody Gets It" LITERALLY SAME OMG

Ok this is going under a cut becus . . . Its ben and BEN and if u didnt know i am Obnoxious about these two. Im gonna try to keep it organized a bit, so ill talk about the canon stuff first and then ill talk my personal headcanons and my fic so le's go!

In terms of the age and child thing, yeah i 100% believe you are correct. Ive been p open on my stance with the whole "is ben a child?" thing, and i think a lot of the heat with it comes down to current fandom purity culture and the pro/anti thing. So, lemme try to like. Boil down a complicated situation into smth easy to read. ahem

Ben Lawman and BEN are completely different entities guys, and for those that do not know the arg story, the Ben you know is not human nor a child.

You know BEN, BEN is the one in the story who terrorizes jadusable and spreads himself on the internet as a virus. That BEN is a program, a mess of code, an AI, however you want to interpret it. Personally i interpret it as a series of protocols running in a machine, like a self learning AI, but ive seen lots of cool interpretations of BEN. So . . . What does BEN specifically? Its an anagram for the Behavioral Event Network. If you dont wanna call it BEN cuz it gets confusing with actual kid Ben, do what i do. I call mine Evie :) ive seen some call it Netty, my bf calls his two izzi and clever (@benilos btw hes also got crazy ben stuff). Just go ham! Have fun! Remember when fandoms were about having fun and not accusing each other of pedo shit and call each other horrible things for just writing black-to-grey characters and stories??

Anyways ive gone off in enough peoples tags like this, for those that dont know the canon dont be spouting the age discourse. You look stupid as hell. And for those that are gonna spout it, please dont cherry pick through the canon. Use both characters, use the other moon children, actually please do because I want more rosa content so bad, im down so bad :'(

Or just. Heres a thought. If someone has him as an adult or writes him in adult situations, maybe dont assume that they interpret him as a kid and call the writer a pedo? (Literally has happened to me, yall are fucking weird)

Plug for the jadusable wiki with all the canon lore:

https://jadusable.withinhubris.com/main_page

Okay now my stuff 🥰

Yes i use more of the canon design and heavily use the canon story, i participated in arc 3 of the arg and it left deep grooves in my brain, i can never go back to fanon Ben. I say, as i put a more fanon appearance on my Ben 🤭

My Evie is full canon design, green hair, red eyes, creepy ass grin. I actually based it very heavily on my desktop wallpaper, which we actually figured out was a picture of @hauntedtotem (also amazing ben artist plz check them out) that they edited and posted. Sorry friend, it looked way too cool, ig youre in my fic canon now 🙇

And my Ben Lawman bleaches his hair and goes from the canon Ben to fanon Ben because of it. Hes got the pale pretty green eyes and glasses and hes a total nerd and i smooch him on the daily so he knows hes loved ♡

These is the ref pic i made for the two of them. So yeah! Kinda both!

As for bens situation in the actual arg, yes i do think he was in the elegy statue, we actually do see him for the first time in the arg buried in the games code and trapped in that statue. I do think he was in there from the beginning, i personally think BEN was not limited to the models it could inhabit. Personally i would place it as skull kid and hms, but it also feels disingenuous to me to say it was in one model the whole first arc.

The arg events do happen in my canon, before my fic (like right before, it picks up after the arg left off technically), but the events are skewed a bit because i had a hard time deciphering what happened and i wanted my fic timeline to fit more with the characters i had made. Cuz my evie isnt as chaotic evil as canon BEN, its very logical and has a path of logic and reason you can follow for every action it does. It was also originally meant to be very pleasant and corteous and beneficial to the people it housed so, yes its pretty different from canon.

Ill do a quick run through of the arg events in my personal headcanon and fic here.

Kelbris starts coding BEN (Evie) for the Eternity Project. Initially, Evie was meant to be an afterlife director. People that died would be digitized into code that would be moved into Evie's servers, where it would keep them happy and occupied as the Behavioral Event Network (notice and log behavior, create events for residents). Like a community organizer kind of, think the Good Place.

While Evie is in development, Ben Rosa and Matt are friends and have yet to join the cult. Rosa and Matt are siblings, and Ben is the kid who lives catty corner on the street. They walk to school together and play at recess and all that jazz.

Kelbris quickly learns that the Eternity Project isn't as goody two-shoes as he thought. This was in like, the 90s, before digital corporations were really established. After seeing the greed and corruption in the company, he goes rogue, takes the source code for Evie, and jumps ship. He keeps working on Evie at home, anthropomorphizing it and kind of seeing it like the son he never had. This is where it actually gets the name BEN, as thats what Kel calls it. He also begins working on a body for it, so it can live independently. Its light, cuz Kels old, made of crystalline structures and hollow steel beams. A hard light projection would make its appearance.

Since Kel has basically locked himself up in his house and isolated working on Evie, he goes a leetle bit crazy. He has hallucinations of his deceased wife (you know he was doing all this just to give her a good home, you KNOW IT) and eventually starts writing kind of poetry, kind of none-minded rambles about her in a forum online. He gets a following, some of which that interpret these divine words as a goddess, one Kel has called Luna. The Moon Children start to form as Evie finishes development.

Matt sees this literature and starts talking about how this Goddess could save them like it saved the man online, whos username is only Father. He gets sucked into the cult and drags Ben and Rosa with him. Ben doesn't see the harm and joins pretty easily with his best friend, but Rosa is the older sibling and sees the red flags and is more resistant to joining.

As Kelbris finishes Evie, he wakes it up for the first time and says hello to the son he made from scratch. Evie is bright, curious and naive like a child, but heavily knowledgeable about its protocols and the information it knows about the world. Kelbris tests its function by killing himself, and ascends into the code, finishing off the hardware by becoming its firewall. Evie is alone for many years.

The abuse Ben's father slings onto his mother is slowly being directed towards him as he gets older. Ben is not the "good little girl" his father sees him as, and his mother does all she can to protect them both. Matt and Rosa constantly refuge him, and Matt specifically is constantly being a guard dog for him. If he wasn't just 13, he'd probably go at Ben's dad himself.

Because of his homelife and the conflict he has with himself, Ben takes the first ascension. He thinks when he drowns himself, he will meet Luna and she will give him another life free of pain and fear and full of happiness and freedom. Instead, he dies a cold, dark death, and wakes up in the white endless void of the Event Network.

Evie has not known another living human since Kelbris, but it does know its protocols to support and keep the deceased happy. It makes fast friends with Ben, devoting itself to him. Ben actually finally takes the name "Ben" from it. Together they recreate the inside of Evie's hivemind into their own paradise.

Slowly the other Moon Children ascend. First Matt, wracked with guilt for what happened to Ben. Then Nekko, from a different branch of the cult. These three figured out that the Moon Children cult was all a farce, and that what Kelbris had started, the Eternity Project had found and twisted. Next to ascend was Dusk, then Insidiae, and finally Rosa.

This all leads into the first arc, shortly after Rosa ascended, Evie in the outisde world stumbled upon the Operator. The Operator attacks it and seals its coding into the game that it carried, a personal item of Ben's. The game eventually finds it's way to a garage sale, and Alex picks it up.

Evie does not like Alex. Matt does not like Evie. Matt gets Evie to lash out at Alex for prodding into its code, its too naive to think that Matt would want to see it or any of them hurt. When Alex stumbles upon the Father, he awakens and swallows Alex down into the game. After his disappearance, the game gets picked up and passed around again.

Because of Alex's actions, at least Evie can now branch out a bit from the game. Though it doesnt "escape" into the internet, it learns that it can now access it and uses that freedom to try and steer the game around into places it wants.

Matt gets fed up with Evie. The fact that its the leader, how close it is with Ben, he just doesn't agree with it. So much so, in fact, that he tries to kill it. Cue arc 3 events, Sarah picks up the game in the aftermath of this. Evie is traumatized from the events and snaps a bit, locks everyone down into code or immovable models and tries to hunt Matt down. It goes rouge, and because of this, the Father wakes up.

Sarah's actions in arc 3 eventually hard reset the game. Matt gets sealed away, the Father also takes Sarah, and Evie gets reset as well, though its less like a clean slate and more like snapping back awake. Its personality changes and it has major trust issues. Its more muted, hyper observant of everything around it, and murderously overprotective of the Moon Children it keeps within itself.

And this leads into my fic 🤗

I have some doodles of my other Moon Children, but not all of them unfortunately. Cant figure out how tf i want Insidiae to look 🤭 Plz dont judge my constantly shifting art style 🙏🙏

Dusk is bigender btw, i gotta put a little more trans rep in there lol

I think ill stop here, this is already a long ass post. But thank you for sending this, as you can see, i am Perfectly Normal about this arg ( ;) ) and can be trusted with information about it

[zan0tix]

Do you have thoughts about Dirk and Jake's relationship in canon? I am not anti dirkjake but I do have a hard time understanding the ship and why it's so massively popular. /gen (I have not yet read the epilogues so I'm just working off of whats in the comic)

Oh boy. DO I. Im currently working on a powerpoint presentation thatll be a little guide/recap/compilation.. thing about them whilst im reading act 6 and ill post it whenever i finish rereading the comic and writing all my notes! It will go into all the little bits of dialogue about eachother or narrative ties to certain things and such and such. (Will probably post this some time in the next two months or three. no guarantees)

But! The portrayal of their relationship and who they are and their struggles felt so real to me and it constantly astounds me that theres a fictional character who accurately displayed my own struggles in such a sincere way i feel like im getting put on blast when people psychoanalyise jake english orz

Homestucks character writing and thematic paralleling are some of its best assets and dirkjake are FULL of some of homestucks greatest moments of both. I would say that this post from @/tomatograter goes more into detail about those said moments and also alot of the other reasons i like them! And what they said in this post was true!-

-Theres just so much you can explore in homestuck through their relationship and aaaguh i love it i love it and theyre so important to the overall narrative and its just so nice to see openly gay rep that is as realistic and honest as them in a story like homestuck.

Being a teenager myself coming of age stories are the stories i relate to and find captivating the most right now and i dont think ive seen another piece of media go about its teen characters the way homestuck did. Its got problems on the handling of said characters but i dont think ive read anything else as raw and honest about personal issues teens face growing up and how they affect relationships (of all kinds!) and dirkjake are a big part of that for me!

I dont really like majority of fanon interpretations of dirkjake i wont lie (alot of.. flanderisation and blatant mischaracterisation) i dont really keep track of fandom stuff or ship popularity i just like enjoying what i enjoy and drawing things and talking about it with friends haha

And i have not read the epilogues either! i know the gist of the events in each timeline and i read a couple chapters but that was like years ago at this point and i dont think i will ever attempt to read them or homestuck^2. Some of the ideas that were present couldve been interesting but i honestly have no interest in going anywhere near it from what ive read about it. It sounds like a total shitshow and its not required to enjoy homestuck proper anyway so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

But!! if youd like to hear more about dirkjake in canon id totally reccomend tomatograter's other posts on them!!! his analysis was the thing that made me Really interested homestuck and hehe im grateful because now im here. This post has alot more of his meta commentary about them and theyre all really interesting reads :D

[mydemonsdrivealimo]

a note on my commissions ~

so fun fact i hate making posts like this but i kinda have to. so.

over the last few months i have felt like Garbage. i have been chronically tired and exhausted. its been taking a very serious toll on me mentally (or the other way around? cant tell); i can be perfectly fine one minute and within the next hour i can barely communicate with or tolerate anyone else. my ocd has been impacting my daily life much more than usual to the point that has made functioning inside and outside of my home an immense struggle. it has taken up much of my mental space and makes focusing incredibly difficult. i believe this is also what has led me to stop drawing, stop enjoying drawing, and writing, too

i recently had a family emergency that required my full attention, and it made me realize just how exhausted i really am. it put me out of commission way more than it should have and it has been a nightmare catching up again. it's hard to tell if i am trying to get back at it too soon, or if there truly is something wrong, but it has made me realize that im pushing myself more than i need to

commissions have been a serious part of the stress ive been trying to ignore. im not great at "being chill," especially during an emergency, so instead of putting it on the backburner and separating my responsibilities, it all goes into one pot and boils over. with this said, i have a lot of changes coming in the next few months of this semester that will required my attention as well

so, for the next few months, ill be closing my commissions. of course i will honor current commissions--though they may take longer than normal--and event hosts please feel free to reach out to me in that time! theres always a chance ill be up to one or two, but, for now, its something i need to take off my plate as a full time responsibility

i dont tend to like these types of posts because i enjoy keeping my fandom life strictly for fandom, and i hate being perceived, but this has also been a way for me to admit these struggles to myself, which i hope will prove to be somewhat freeing

its hard to tell if i will be on less or more than normal. my characters have always been a place of creativity and escapism for me, but i also tend to use it as a distraction from my problems, which just leads to nothing getting done, which turns into more stress, and therefore more problems. i still of course will be around and be posting regularly, but it's hard to tell exactly how im going to go about all of this

thanks for reading if you got this far and i hope to be back to my regular art and fic posting soon (with the hope that im able to regain my time, energy, and love for those mediums)

[nocturnal-phantoms-fandoms]

Fic Writer Questions

Tagged by @squintclover - thank you so much!! Loved your response!!

🍓 How did you get into writing fanfiction?

By loving the story so much I wanted to be in it, lol. My first few attempts at writing ff were with self-insert OCs, but that was in my native language and mostly unpublished. Im trying to recycle some of those ideas, but Im not sure how will it go.

As for fics written in english and without OCs - like everyone else, by reading other fics.

🍇How many fandoms have you written in?

If we count the first few attempts - I took a look at my docs and counted 7 fandoms. Some parts of those were published somewhere on the web but I genuinely forgot about their existence.

If we count fics published recently on tumblr/ao3 - only HP.

🍈 How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

Technically? A decade. But idk if that counts if it wasnt published and probably never will be and had self insert OCs.

I started writing my first fics in english after I got into that one fandom which was during the pandemic, so that would be around 3-4 years - but posting since… December 2023.

🍎 Do you read or write more fanfiction?

Definitely read.

🍌 What is one way you've improved as a writer?

Im not making the characters as OOC as before? I hope

🍑 Do you have any bad habits as a writer?

Trying to fit too many things into one project that do not fit bc they are too self indulgent or just bad writing bc require sacrificing either plot or characterization. Being too ambitious, having too much plot that needs too much effort to make it make sense, and will not pay off bc nobody will read it (bc idk if i will ever finish it. and if i do it will not be written in english).

🍍 What's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Just one? There are so many weird things Ive been researching or googling.

Did they have 3-in-1 shampoos in 1979. Language of flowers. What the ancient roman beds looked like. Names and their meanings. Ancient roman’s attitude towards (homo)sexuality. Phosphorus and phosphorescence (this was literally to check if this one sentence in canon is factually correct). Did ancient romans have pets. Different gems’ looks, usage and meanings. Ancient Roman dog names. Different astronomical events / discoveries in years 1975-1980 and in year 1957. Layout of certain types of houses.

🍉What's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

Any comment is a nice comment <3 tho I like to be let known the person felt something while reading bc its still so abstract and bizzare for me that it happens 😅

🍐What's the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

As you can see from the research question I have an ancient roman au wip. I was genuinely surprised there were only a few ancient roman aus in the marauders fandom.

This one published wip is about a surprise pregnancy that isnt immediately regarded as great news and celebrated (which i think isnt a common way of approaching the topic.) I also wanted to write sth about abortion and miscarriage but i dont know if I will get around to actually writing those.

And Im trying to recycle my old OC-focused long fic which also is deeply unpopular (i understand why but also i feel like im fighting in the trenches)

🥭What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

Thats about something. Has a deeper meaning and everyone in the comments talk about how deeply they were moved by it. Or how clever the plot was. Or how the deeply and insightfully the characters are analysed. Or how beautiful the language is. Or. Like. Is written and finished and publishable.

🍏What is the easiest type?

All I know is funny dialogue, self indulgent fluff and this one type of hurt/comfort that is also super self indulgent. Also putting all the effort into fitting in as many references / easter eggs as you can that i know nobody will notice.

🍑Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

On my laptop, usually sitting at my desk, or on the balcony if the weather permits, whenever I feel like ignoring the things im supposed to be doing instead, I guess.

So far I’ve been using google docs but I’ll be probably moving on from them in the nearest future. For organizing ideas/wips and short fics I use Notion - its good for organizing but not that good as a writing program.

🍋What is something you've been too nervous/ intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

Smut, lol. Also more taboo topics like abortion and miscarriage mentioned above.

🍇What made you choose your username?

I translated my first ever username to English. ok, no, my first ever username was Leila Moonlight and i still think its pretty but now i also think its cringe. Tho I was - what? - 11? 12? So maybe I can be forgiven that it looks like a HP character. Nocturnal Phantom - the username actually use now - is still a bit cringe, I picked it bc I was a night owl (lol) and tried to lean into this nighttime-spooky aesthetic, but also its tumblr so im embracing it. I recently picked a nickname Nyx for my mutuals' convenience - and that is the greek goddess of the night. I commit to the bit.

No pressure tagging: @polaroidcats, @hiddenmoonbeam, @soloorganaas

[knightzp]

3, 8, 11 and 21 for the writer ask game!!

3. name a fanfic/story you are particularly proud of writing

im proud of a few of my fics for different reasons but to name just a couple of them it would be:

the forgotten lyre: im proud of it bc of several reasons: its my second longest fic to date and i thought very carefully how to adapt the majority of the large enstars cast into this au so it has quite the worldbuilding. its by far the fic with the most number of characters (both main and secondary characters) i ever wrote in a single work. its also a fic i wrote for a fandom event and i was a bit unsure if i was going to be able to finish it on time with how long it was gonna be but i did it and i think it turned out quite well! and the whole process of writing it was so fun working with my bigbang team so yeah. this fic is very special to me and im particularly fond of it <3

every season is full of memories of you with me: im also very proud of this rtmo fic! the idea for this fic came so suddenly to me and it was so fun and surprisingly easy to write. i like this fic sososo much bc i wrote the characters as true as i see them myself and the fic also got such a positive reaction that it made me really happy and extra proud of it!

8.  how many wips do you currently have?

actual wips that i already started writing? only 2 rn. rough ideas i have for fics i do want to write in the near future? likeeee 8 :3

11. what’s something you have learned as a writer?

that i write for me and myself first and foremost. i do it to have fun and i shouldnt pay too much attention to the statistics bc the reception a fic gets depends so much on factors that have nothing to do with whether the writing is good or bad (like one example is the type of fandom. a bigger fandom means bigger audience and therefore usually a better response, and viceversa)

21. what’s your favorite writing advice to share?

ive never shared writing advice but ajksdfsk well if theres is something i can say is that if youre struggling with writing some specific part you can just skip it and come back to it later. this goes from transitioning between different actions or scenes or even whole chapters. you dont have to write everything linearly, if youre feeling specially inspired to write something ahead of where you are then just go and do it. ive learned myself its much better to jump and write what you really want to in the moment than wait, become stuck in a point and then lose inspiration and not knowing how to go on later

ask game!

[insufferableprotagonistpoll]

Round 2

Propaganda why Dean Winchester is insufferable:

Really mean to Cas (called him a child, zero respect for him, calls him family and casts him out when the angels are looking for him), and an absolute dick to Jack (threatening to kill him CONSTANTLY)

>Was a misogynist (loved to call women skanks, bitches, hoes)

>Used gay as an insult multiple time during the show's run (idc if he's gay an homophobic, that's still insulting)

>Beat up his brother for being possessed

>Beat up his brother for losing his soul (not his brother's fault)

>Used dubious consent to get his brother possessed in a different unrelated possession incident after possession was being used (badly...this is supernatural after all) as a metaphor for SA

>Threatened to murder his brother when he was hallucinating (yay we aren't ableist)

>Locked a child up in a box

>Threatened to kill the child he locked up in a box

>Made a creepy, sexual comment about a barely-legal high school girl

>Got the woman and kid he was living with memory-wiped

misogynistic scumbag. theres also a few different times that dean finds teenagers sexy with the most recent and prominent example that i can recall being the scooby doo crossover episode in season 13 where hes super into daphne who in the version they chose for the episode is 15-16 and is interacting with her as if shes a real person cause they got magicked into the episode. he treats everyone around him like shit and the only time the narrative agrees that thats a bad thing is when he has the mark of cain put on him and hes acting no differently than he does usually its just now acknowledged that hes treating others like shit. ive been rewatching the show for shits and giggles with a friend and wow he really does not treat anyone well but i wanna focus on how he treats sam for a second cause dude's hobby seems to be ignoring what his brother wants and lying to sam about doing stuff that directly concerns him the demon blood and souless things are reasonable cause those were both Bad for sam but theyre still part of a wider pattern and the most prominent example of this being when dean tricks sam into letting gadreel possess him and actually gaslights sam about it with the whole ordeal ending when its revealed gadreel lied about who he was and while possessing sam murders a friend of theirs. his voice is just also stupid as fuck im sorry this is just petty but he just sounds like hes trying so hard to be gruff n intimidating but he just sounds like a kid pretending to be batman

Dean’s list of sins is crazy long because of how long the show ran, but the key thing for me is that post-locking Sam in the bunker (season 4 I think?), I just can’t enjoy their relationship anymore. I normally love their sibling dynamic, but Dean’s ultimate worst past-the-point-of-no-return moment for me was demonizing (pun intended) his little brother for being “addicted” to demon blood, which only happened because of a series of events that were either Dean’s or someone else’s fault, not Sam’s. I also really dislike how the fandom treats Dean like this angel (pun intended) who has done no wrong and even tries to justify the MULTIPLE times he’s beaten up and otherwise abused his little brother. Canon Dean is like the polar opposite of fanon Dean: he’s homophobic and racist (jokes about a Black man being sexually assaulted in prison), misogynistic (take a shot every time he calls a woman a slur and you’ll die of alcohol poisoning), and abusive.

Propaganda why Erika Shinohara is insufferable:

Doormat of a character

Impulsive liar, would rather take candid picture of a boy she didn't know than to admit friends that she's single, Naive to the point of being stupid, worst masochist rep since the 50 Shades of Grey protag

[little-red-fool]

No problem, thank you so much Red! I really dont mind longer posts, but does take a bit longer for me to write up my reply in turn.

I was also the same until quite recently! I didnt know it wasnt an alias for a long time! Iirc it might be confirmed in dlc content, and I haven't yet read all of the journals that were added then.

I felt a little weird about that post, as I don't like harshly criticizing what others do in their fics (the only way I might step in is if a fic is written by an openly cis/straight person writing a trans character in an obviously transphobic way and was open to criticism too. I know I'm unfortunately not going to get through to bigots/dont want to waste my time tbh)

I'm not super strongly opionated on it either. I generally hc higgs as trans masc, but Im open to trans fem and other headcanon/interpretations too ( less so of cis higgs, its just not as interesting to me)

With that in mind, higgs would likely not have been named something as masculine as "peter" and in that case would have a different name thats likely his deadname. If we're talking transfem higgs, then "peter" could be considered a deadname for sure.

Higgs and peter both being names/aliases that he readily uses feels more in line with kojimas previous games like mgs, where he does this a bit. A character will have several names that they will go by, depending on the circumstances and time period, but to close loved ones they share a true name with, usually a first name. I usually use Higgs more frequently too, partly to not spoil newcommers to fandom on the suprise twist, if they havent played the game yet. Both feel like equally his name to me. The only uncertainty i have is that he may not in fact use "englert", because it has far more baggage depending on who from his family he got it from.

The majority of fic writers ive seen that use peter englert for higgs are either doing an au where the events that make him higgs haven't/didn't happen yet, or its a post DS au where he is rehabilitated, and using it so the UCA/regular people don't recognize that its him, so that. He can live in relative anonymity then after his crimes, and without the burden of them affecting new connections he might make.

(Personally I havent finished the book yet, but it does makes some strange divergences from the game? Like cutting out entire cutscenes that happen and making higgs really irationally angry all the time? Its very off for a novelization of a modern videogame where major parts of the story are far more acessible than like 60+ year old novels of tv and movies. I'm taking anything it with a heavy grain of salt, and just letting it add to the story if there's something that interests me and doesnt entirely contradict the game)

It’s alright! Honestly I’m in a similar boat to you, generally I prefer to HC Higgs as trans too because it feels quite fitting to me, although I’ll also swing between that and him being cis so yeah the deadnaming thing again depends on how the writer views him, but I wasn’t aware that Kojima sometimes gives characters several names in that manner as well, so thank you for that! It definitely solidifies my interpretation of the usage of his names a bit more, but the redemption fics/AUs that call him Peter make a lot of sense and I quite like those interpretations too.

[chiyoso]

Hiiiiiii

I just wanted to warn you about the incoming spam tomorrow. I just finished Luofu trailblazer quests and now I am all ready to binge on your HSR works 👻

I finally finished it.

I am yet to play the character story quests and world quests.

But hear me out. Is it just me or did the Luofu quests feel really really rushed? Like I felt it got the Inazuma treatment. Like before one storyline could establish itself and sink in, we were already involved in a bunch of other things and other plots. Like I felt that they had a lot of ideas but had to string it together to form a singular plot.

Idk, I feel like I liked Jarillo story better as it felt well paced but I didn’t connect with any Jarillo characters. But with Luofu, I didn’t like the story but I liked the characters (cough cough Jing Yuan and Luocha (yeah I know he’s evil)). Man I went into Luofu quest thinking I’ll be a blade simp but ended up being a Jing Yuan simp instead. I am yet to play Blade’s quest (Kafka called me to help them but it’s literally 4am rn and I am like, Blade you will have to wait)

But long story short. I am going to be binging on your fics tomorrow and I am sooooo excited 🥰🥰🥰

RAHHHH NAT AM BLUSHING SO HARD GRRR i just woke up nngh good morning

also! for your question

you're kind of right? about the luofu arc, but honestly, it became less confusing BECAUSE of the detectives, the people who theorize and the overall fanarts/theories of the fandom who made the plot make more sense

if you're confused on some parts, i would love to indulge you in what i have information gathered (e.g. main points, species, jing yuan/blade/dan heng/jingliu relationship and things about the xianzhou luofu)

but! since im also done with the inazuma storyline, i can honestly say that i get what you mean? that the hyv didn't point out and explain too much about you know... stuff (like why blade is so damn obsessed with dan heng, more shit about the stellaron hunters n etc, aeons even!) but thats why fandoms exist! i dont even research much because i dont have time, but once i stumble upon a lore/fanart/or even drabble about something related to hsr, i just piece things myself, that and im a sucker for lore so i try to really understand things!

and the kafka companion quest

i found it funny and so- idk it makes you go blush BECAUSE of kafka, i dont wanna spoil but i hope you enjoy that specific quest! because it tells details about kafka's powers + we get a proper interaction with her finally (so i got to assess her whole personality n such for headcannons, example, in my herrscher of death!reader x hsr fic!)

oh and

i imagine you are swamped with irl things, juggling/grinding hsr and genshin, so starting honkai impact 3rd... it'll be so overwhelming for you (since i am, still trying to finish events) but if YOU decide to join in the honkai impact 3rd train as well, i will gladly, GLADLY help you and guide you with whatever you need!

hi3 is like, more combative, heavy HEAVY lore and we have characters over 50,000+ years old lmao, and actually, if you're familiar with the whole imaginary tree concept in hsr, you will eventually understand why ive decided to plan a honkai impact + hsr crossover series (because hyv makes it makes sense)

and with that

CANT WAIT TO HELP YOU IN ANY WAY YOU CAN ABOUT HSR!!!

and thank you hehe, i'm still revamping the nanook fanfic + creating multiple banners for our hsr men (but look at me create banners lovingly for scaramouche lmao)

OH AND since you're a jing yuan admirer, i assume you'll love my jing yuan works; "imperfections you loathe" and "a fourth wall break from the general" which! are in my hsr menu in my pinned 😌 i'm so excited that you caught up in hsr hehe