#and i would need to do LOTS of research to make it accurate and interesting etc

[seagullcharmer]

hm. working on my map of lorule. need to figure out some things......

[itaipava]

— little hints f1 boys would give that they have a crush on you.

˒ ⌕ LANDO NORRIS

he is interested in all your passions and hobbies: even if it is something he knows little about, he’ll ask you about your passions or things you like to do to have more to talk about with you and to get to know you even better. he also likes to research on the internet and send you videos that he finds about your favorite topics and, when you least expect it, he will start conversations about it, leaving you surprised but happy to know that he puts a lot of effort into connecting with your world.

˒ ⌕ GEORSE RUSSELL

he always includes you in his plans: whenever he travels, he talks as if you’re going too, without even inviting you directly. when you ask him about it, he usually says, “well, you’re going with me, aren’t you?” and when you can’t go because of work, he gets really frustrated, but he makes sure to keep you updated. he’s also always saying “we should check out that new place together… when are you free?” or “wouldn’t it be fun if you go with me for the next race?” he loves planting the idea of ​​future moments with you, and he loves it when they actually come true.

˒ ⌕ SEBASTIAN VETTEL

he loves teasing you: he always looks for a way to tease you, but always with a touch of flirting, which leaves you wondering if it's really just a joke or if he means something with it. he also hates it when someone else does this and he doesn’t hide his anger, and it’s at this moment that you also don't miss the opportunity to tease him; and the look in his eyes tells you that in fact, he doesn’t tease you just for fun.

˒ ⌕ CARLOS SAINZ

he always offers to help you with whatever you need: no matter what you need, he will do whatever it takes for you and to make your life easier. he will get you a coffee (and a sweet treat) in minutes when you say you want it. he will buy you something you said you needed but couldn't because you were too busy. he will come to your house to fix that broken drawer. he will always be there for you, even when you don't ask him directly, he will be there.

˒ ⌕ CHARLES LECLERC

he always remembers little details about you: sometimes he'll casually mention something small that you've said in the past, like your favorite snack or a specific memory. and sometimes you're delightfully surprised by how accurately he tells you these things because you could swear he'd forgotten or didn't really care, but he's always paying extra attention to you and everything you say is important to him.

˒ ⌕ LEWIS HAMILTON

he always compliments you a lot: but they’re not generic compliments that you always hear, he focuses on unique characteristics of yours that he really admires, like “you always have a way of making everything more fun and cool” or “you always seem to know the right things to say”, he’s always complimenting you, and he always means it.

˒ ⌕ OSCAR PIASTRI

he always looks for reasons to text you: he likes to send you news about your favorite singers, bands, authors or something he knows you’ll like. it’s things like “you popped into my head when i saw this, and i had to share” or “doesn’t this remind you of that joke you made?” and he always tries to keep the conversation going, no matter what.

˒ ⌕ LIAM LAWSON

he is always your biggest fan: whatever you do, he gives you all the support and help in the world. he is always the first one to show up when you need encouragement, whether it’s to wish you good luck at an event or send you a bouquet of flowers with a little note, or a brief message saying that he believes in you, and that he knows everything will turn out fine. he also loves talking about you to people like “did you see what y/n did? she’s amazing, right?” he is your biggest fan, and he doesn’t hide it from anyone.

˒ ⌕ MAX VERSTAPPEN

he looks at you a lot: when you two make eye contact, you have to look at something else first because he can’t get enough of you - and he loves it when you get embarrassed about it. he also loves to admire you when you’re distracted and don’t realize he’s looking at you; he loves looking at you and learning your mannerisms. to him, you’re the most beautiful person he’s ever seen, and even though sometimes you catch him staring at you and ask him with a smile what he’s looking at, he doesn’t stop or give you a serious answer, which creates a spark of curiosity in you.

[denaliwrites]

Road to Hell

Crowley x GN!Reader

Summary: Of all the subjects Crowley thought he might walk in on you researching in the bookshop, demonology was probably at the bottom of the list.

Requests: Open!

Warnings: Crowley is a dick (affectionate).

"What're you reading today?" Crowley asked, towering over you with a contemplative look. You lifted the book for him to see and in return he offered a shocked choking sound in the back of his throat. "Demonology, huh? What... inspired you to read that?"

He hadn't told you anything about him and Aziraphale being a demon and an angel, respectively. As far as he knew, Aziraphale hadn't broached the topic with you, either. To him, there was absolutely no reason for you to be reading about anything even remotely connected to his or Aziraphale's status as supernatural beings.

Yet here you were.

Reading a book on demonology.

You shrugged in response to his question, bringing the book back down to your lap to read comfortably. "I'd never checked out the occult section before, so I decided to read something from there and this was the most interesting looking book on the whole shelf."

"Ah, right." That did, to Crowley's immense relief, make sense. You'd read at least one book from nearly every section in the bookshop -- why wouldn't you, at some point, venture into the occult?

"Can't help but wonder how accurate it is, though," you mused aloud. "Pretty sure we've all collectively decided that demonic possessions are all just mentally ill people being misunderstood and abused by the church, right? Or I guess sometimes maybe people seeking attention? So how much of this is, like... considered true, I guess?"

"Do you... believe in demons?" Crowley asked carefully.

"Not really. I mean, I feel like if they were real, we'd have more evidence than just... the church saying so? Like, surely atheists and Satanists would've met a ton of demons by now, but I don't see any atheists or Satanists ever talking about meeting demons."

Crowley had to admit that was a fair cop. Maybe a little... small-minded, at least cosmically speaking, but you were but a human. That could be excused.

"What if they were real?" he asked, coming to sit on the arm of the chair you occupied. "What if you met a demon? Knew a demon, even?"

You made a sound at the back of your throat that sounded an awful lot like the one he made. "I'd have a lot of things I needed to reconsider, for starters."

"Oh? Like what?"

"Well," you started, closing the book and turning so that you were facing him. "If demons were real, then I think the next logical step would be that angels were real, and if angels were real then the next step from that point would be that God's real."

He rocked back slightly to better look at you, clicking his tongue curiously. "Is that so bad, really?"

You sighed dramatically. It was a sound he loved -- it usually came before something remarkably human. Something remarkably You. "Anthony Janthony Cranthony," you lamented, "I cannot ever, under any circumstances, let my parents know that I regret not going to church more."

Anthony Janthony Cranthony? Why had you called him that? Of all things, to go with Anthony Janthony Cranthony...

He supposed that wasn't really the point to what you were saying. Something about your parents and church, though, that was the point.

"Not sure why they'd have to know," he said casually with a shrug.

Your eyes widened in shocked realization. "Oh, fuck, you're right! They'd never have to know. You're brilliant," you said, to him -- you'd called him brilliant! He beamed at that. "Going to Hell anyway, if all that were real, may as well add 'disrespecting my parents' to my list of sins."

Oh.

"Why do you think you'd go to Hell, darling?"

"It's not like I've been living a pious life, y'know?" you said, blinking up at him. "I curse, I've fucked out of wedlock, I'm reading all about demons and witchcraft and shit. I don't believe in God? I'm pretty sure that's one of the big no-nos."

It was his turn to blink, but his was followed up with a laugh. "Oh, love, God does not care about any of those things. Trust me."

"Oh, God, are you a Christian? Have you been this whole time? I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to offend--"

"No, no, nothing like that. I..."

How did he tell you? Should he even tell you? He was sure Aziraphale might have something to say on the matter, but right now he couldn't be fucked, because you were here, looking up at him so innocently, so adoringly.

"What is it, Crowley?" And you sounded so concerned, so ready to take him into your arms and comfort him and apologize for a crime you hadn't even committed.

"I'm a demon."

The words tumbled forth from his lips before he could stop himself, and they hovered in the air for several silent and tense moments after, where all you did was stare at him.

And then you laughed -- and he wished he could laugh too. Hell, he wished he could hear even a trace of joy in your laugh. But it was all nerves and fear, like you weren't sure if this was some sick joke or if he was delusional.

When his expression didn't change, when he didn't yell out "sike!" or "gotcha!," your laugh died and then you just looked scared of him.

It nearly broke him, because if this was how you reacted before proof, how would you react when he showed you the truth?

But you didn't run away, so he carefully removed his glasses and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. Yours were locked onto the yellow irises, the slitted pupils that contracted and dilated at will.

He could tell you wanted to deny the reality of them -- that you wanted to write them off as contacts, but they wouldn't let you, because contacts couldn't dilate.

The only other things he could do -- well, within the confines of the bookshop, were show you his wings or turn into a snake. He wasn't huge on the latter option, at least not right now -- it definitely put him at a disadvantage, made him easier to discorporate.

So, instead, he moved to a stand. And his wings fanned out as you watched, and then, he figured, you'd run out the door screaming, never to be seen again. He hoped you lived well. He closed his eyes so that he didn't have to watch you walk away.

You got up -- he could hear the rustling of fabric, the relieved groan of the chair, the book falling onto the cushion. He expected the little bell above the door to signal your departure at any moment.

Instead, he felt your hands on his face, pulling him nearer to you. His eyes opened, stared into yours. The fear had gone, replaced by unabashed curiosity and deep, untamed love.

He expected many things to come out of that lovely mouth of yours. So God is real? Am I going to Hell? I don't want to go to Hell! What did I do to deserve going to Hell???

(You weren't going to Hell -- but after the initial question, people tended to panic and vomit the others out uncontrollably.)

He expected those questions. A handful of a select few others. He did not anticipate what you actually asked --

"Do you have a cool demon name?"

"A... Sorry, a what?"

"You know... Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Lucifer, Belial. What's your demon name?"

"O-oh... No... no 'cool' demon name, I'm afraid. Just... Just Crowley..."

He hadn't expected to be embarrassed and doubly hadn't expected to see a beaming smile on your face.

"I think Crowley's the coolest demon name, personally."

He could see in your eyes that you meant it -- and that made him smile.

"Isn't it just?" he asked with a relieved laugh.

"Now I gotta know what all you've done as a demon. I mean -- how old are you?"

"Old as the universe, darling."

He could see the moment your brain started trying to process that unfathomable information, and he could also see the moment it gave up. You moved on as if nothing happened, but Crowley took a moment to appreciate he wouldn't have to miracle your memories away before your brain went into nuclear meltdown.

"Why aren't you in Hell?"

"It's dreadfully boring."

"Why are you here?"

"I just think humans are neat... and your lot is very good at making booze."

"Have you done anything cool as a demon?"

"I met Shakespeare, I stopped some Nazi spies, I tempted Eve, I stopped Armageddon..."

"You what!?"

"Oh, yeah..." He made that sound in his throat. You copied it, seemingly from instinct. He wasn't even sure you noticed that you did it. "Long story, but Aziraphale and I convinced the Antichrist to just... not do the whole ending the world thing."

"Who's Aziraphale?"

"Oh. Right. Mr. Fell."

"... Mr. Fell? This Mr. Fell?" You motioned to the bookshop at large and Crowley nodded. "Is he a demon too?"

Crowley laughed -- an uproarious, barking laugh, that lasted much longer than was strictly necessary.

"Oh, you better not let him hear that," he said once he'd calmed down.

"... So he's not a demon?" you mumbled, and Crowley realized he'd accidentally made you feel bad.

He took one of your hands in his and guided it away from his face so that he could kiss the palm. "No, darling, he's not." He kissed your palm again. "He's an angel."

"I'm sorry -- he's a what?"

"An angel, of course. Really, like he could be anything else."

Nothing against him, of course, but he very much was what he was.

"So why are an ageless angel and demon wasting their time with me, a human who'll wither and die? Why go through that for me?"

"Well, it's not exactly our fault you weaseled your way into our lives," he said with an indignant hgk. "But now that you're here, we can't really imagine the place without you."

"I think that's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me, and I can't believe it came from a demon."

"Don't let the angel know I let you get away with calling me sweet. He'd never let me live it down."

[loverofstufflof]

Black Myth: Wukong rant because I’m just… so tired of you people.

I hate the community this game has cultivated. I hate looking through the tags and seeing people tearing each other apart over a game based on a story I love.

There’s two stances:

Those who say that merely interacting with the game is in support of all the terrible things the developers have (allegedly) done. Who parade accusations that many have stated were mistranslated and that the situation is far more complicated than it appears.

Those who mock the former by making a straw man of their concerns while simultaneously displaying their misogyny, racism, homophobia, and general traits that make it clear they’ve never touched a woman in their life.

One is slightly more tolerable than the other. Neither make me feel welcome in enjoying this project I’ve been looking forward to for years.

I will be talking more about purple, because I don’t speak Chinese, and feel that I have no authority speaking too much on orange.

Purple people are beyond insufferable.

I think that most of this came from a Screen Rant review that listed one of the game’s flaws as “a lack of diversity.” This is an accurate analysis, and has been warped beyond belief.

I can understand the outrage… a bit. When playing a game surrounding Chinese culture, in which you play as an inhuman character fighting equally inhuman enemies, it doesn’t make too much sense to request racial representation. And when there isn’t any romance, representation for sexual orientations also wouldn’t work. Including anything in those merit would feel forced and out of place, I agree.

But you wanna know what the reviewer wrote?

She was concerned about the lack of women.

She felt unwelcome when playing a game made by rumoured misogynists because there were no women at all.

And she explicitly said that the game was still enjoyable despite this.

She gave it such a “low score” (3/5) because of the performance issues and repetitiveness. By her own rating, the game was listed as “Worth a shot despite its flaws.”

Everything got so bad they had to take down her name for her safety.

People in the purple category took this review to mean that the “woke left” was “pushing an agenda” and “trying to cancel this game for not having pansexual nonbinary black people.” Which, as I’m sure you can now understand, was not the case. The boycott surrounding this game is purely based on accusations targeted towards the developers, not the game’s content.

Of course, I don’t expect many of the aforementioned people in this category to care too much. I’ve seen the Steam reviews where they praise the lack of women. I’ve read the Reddit threads where they feel grateful that there’s “finally a company who understands the male authority.” I’ve scrolled through post after post on Tumblr that “no one would want to play a game where females jiggle their tits around while doing nothing.”

That last one gets me. It’s really telling what you can learn about a person when they say things like that.

The point is, these people make me feel very unwelcome in a community that previously made me most comfortable.

So let’s recap:

The people who I would find community with are portraying the mere interest in this game as a sin that’s worthy of being blocked and shamed over, and the people who are actually in this community remind me why I’m terrified to walk alone.

I have a lot more that I want to say on this, but I don’t really have the words quite yet, and still need to do a fair amount of research (which I probably won’t be doing because holy shit I’m so done with this). Maybe I’ll come back and add some more, but for now I just might block the tag entirely.

I just feel shitty ‘s’all ʅ（◞‿◟）ʃ

[fonksfvcks]

what d u think idia's aftercare is like? (to an afab)

-idia simp anon (i love your insights sm)

if he does research and knows what aftercare is like then i'm sure he'd do anything to help you come down, but if not, then i imagine it's a little minimal?

he knows to clean up the mess.

he knows to try and hug you (as much as he doesn't like physical touch, he tries his absolute best to make you feel whole with his hugs)

he knows he should praise you, but i think he's very nervous when it comes to that, and you'll end up having to console him later about it because he'll feel guilty for not caring for you to the best of his ability and will probably apologize or cry a couple days later because all he does is think about it.

he'll ask if you need a morning after pill and probably orders one online or has someone pick it up for him so that he doesn't have to face anyone. he knows he did the deed with you and he's embarrassed enough, he doesn't want people looking at him like that.

people say that idia has snacks on hand and probably knows good ones, but that's not lore accurate. idia actually hates eating to a certain degree, and usually eats very easily prepared food (cup noodles, instant stuff), or things out of cans/prepackaged. he thinks it is a waste of time and doesn't enjoy it, so i think he wouldn't really know to give you food and water, as (this is just a headcanon) i imagine he probably drinks a lot of his nutrients via. vitamin water, infused teas, etc. people also say that idia probably drinks energy drinks but as someone with severe anxiety i think he lays off them because they make him think more. his anxiety and love for games and tech keeps him up enough, i don't think he actually needs an energy drink to do the work for his already overactive mind.

back to aftercare, he would let you hold one of his plushies if it helps. mans probably has a bunch of plushies of his favorite bands or characters. if you need a distraction or something, he'll put on a movie and tell you all the lore he knows, or show you music he likes. he'd probably be the type to curate an after-sex playlist so you can be calm but also listen to things he likes and therefore, he can share an interest with you.

to summarize, idia doesn't know a lot about it, but the things he does know, he tries his very best to do. you'll have to guide him and be patient with him, but he'll probably also take initiative and do research if you make it clear you're interested in him and would do it again with him sometime.

[worstjourney]

The Millennials' Polar Expedition

A year ago today (23 Nov 2022), I launched Worst Journey Vol.1 at the Scott Polar Research Institute. This is the text of the speech I gave to the lovely people who turned up to celebrate.

As many of you know, my interest in the Terra Nova Expedition was sparked by Radio 4’s dramatisation of The Worst Journey in the World, now 14 years ago.  The story is an incredible story, and it got its claws into me, but what kept me coming back again and again were the people.  I couldn’t believe anyone so wonderful had ever really existed.  So when I finally succumbed to obsession and started reading all the books, it was the expedition members’ own words which I most cherished.  These were not always easy to come by, though, so plenty of popular histories were consumed as well.  Reading both in tandem, it soon became clear that, while there were some good books out there, there was a lot of sloppy research in the polar echo chamber as well.

I also discovered that no adaptation had attempted to get across the full scope of the expedition.  There has never been a full and fair dramatic retelling, all having been limited by time, budget, or ideology from telling the whole story truthfully.  I was determined that my adaptation would be both complete and accurate, and be as accountable as possible to those precious primary documents and the people who wrote them.

So the years of research began.  I moved to Cambridge to be able to drop in at SPRI and make the most of the archives.  Getting to Antarctica seemed impossible, but I went to New Zealand to get at least that much right, and on the way back stayed with relatives in Alberta, the most Antarctic place I could realistically visit.  I gathered reference for objects wherever I could.  Because Vol.1 takes place mainly on the Terra Nova, which is now a patch of sludge on the seabed off Greenland, I cobbled together a Franken-Nova in my mind, between the Discovery up in Dundee and the Star of India in San Diego.  I spent a week on a Jubilee Sailing Trust ship in order to depict tall-ship sailing correctly.  I’m sure I’ve still got loads of things wrong, but I did all I could, to get as much as I could, right.

But still, everyone I met who had been to Antarctica said, “you can’t understand Antarctica until you’ve been there, and you can’t tell the story without understanding Antarctica; you have to go.”  So I applied to the USAP’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, with faint hope, as they do “Ahrt” and I draw cartoons.  But I must have blagged a good grant proposal, because a year after applying, I was stepping out of a C-17 onto the Ross Ice Shelf.  The whole trip would have been worth it just to stand there, turn in a circle, and see how all the familiar photographs fit together.  But the USAP’s generosity didn’t stop there, and in the next month I saw Hut Point, Arrival Heights, the Beardmore Glacier (including the moraine on which the Polar Party stopped to “geologise”), and Cape Crozier, and made three visits to the Cape Evans hut.  Three!  On top of the visual reference I got priceless qualitative data.  The hardness of the sound.  The surprising warmth of the sun. The sugary texture of the snow.  The keen edge on a slight breeze.  The way your fingertips and toes can start to go when the rest of you is perfectly warm.  The SHEER INSANITY of Cape Crozier.  The veterans were right – I couldn’t have drawn it without having been there, but now I have, and can, and I am more grateful than I can ever adequately express.  With all these resources laid so copiously at my feet, all I had to do was sit down and draw the darn thing.  Luckily I have some very sound training to back me up on that.

Now, this is all very well for the how of making the book, and, I hope, interesting enough. But why?  Why am I putting so much effort into telling this story, and why now?

Well, it means a lot to me personally.  To begin to understand why, you need to know that I grew up in the 80s and 90s, at the height of individualist, goal-oriented, success-driven, dog-eat-dog, devil-take-the-hindmost neoliberalism.  It was just assumed that humans, when you get right down to it, were basically self-interested jerks, and I saw plenty of them around so I had no reason to question this assumption.  The idea was that if you did everything right, and worked really hard, you could retire at 45 to a yacht in the Bahamas, and if you didn’t retire to a yacht, well, you just hadn’t tried hard enough.  Character, in the sense of rigorous personal virtue, was for schmucks.  What mattered was success.  Even as my politics evolved, I still took it as a given that this was how the world worked, and that was how people generally were – after all, there was no lack of corroborating evidence.  So: I worked really hard.  I single-mindedly pursued my self-interest.  I made sacrifices, and put in the time, and fought my way into my dream job and all the success I could have asked for.

And then I met the Terra Nova guys.

What struck me most about them was that even when everything was going wrong, when their expectations were shattered and they had to face the cruellest reality, they were still kind.  Not backbiting, recriminating, blame-throwing, defensive, or mean, as one would expect – they were lovely to each other, patient, supportive, self-sacrificing; in fact the worse things got, the better they were.  They still treated each other as friends even when it wasn’t in their self-interest, was even contrary to their self-interest.  I didn’t know people could be like that.  But there they were, in plain writing, being thoroughly, bafflingly, decent.  Not just the Polar Party – everyone had to face their own brutal realities at some point, and they all did so with a grace I never thought possible.

It presented a very important question:

When everything goes belly-up, and you’re facing the worst, what sort of person will you be?

Or perhaps more acutely: What sort of person would you rather be with?

It was so contrary to the world I lived in, to the reality I knew – it was a peek into an alternate dimension, populated entirely with lovely, lovely people, who really, genuinely believed that “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” and behaved accordingly.  It couldn’t be real.  There had to be a deeper, unpleasant truth: that was how the world worked, after all.  I kept digging, expecting to hit bottom at some point, but I only found more gold, all the way down.  How could I not spend my life on this?

Mythology exists to pass on a culture’s values, moral code, and survival information – how to face challenges and prevail.  Scott’s story entered the British mythology, and had staying power, because it exemplified those things so profoundly for the culture that created and received it.  But the culture changed, and there were new values; Scott’s legacy was first inverted and then cast aside.  The new culture needed a new epic hero.  You’d think it would be Amundsen, the epitome of ruthless success, but “Make Plan – Execute Plan – Go Home” has no mythic value, so he didn’t stick.  The hero needed challenges, he needed setbacks, and he needed to win, on our terms.

Shackleton!  Shackleton was a winner!  Shackleton told us what we knew to be true and wanted to hear at epic volume: that if you want something badly enough, and try really hard, you will succeed!  (Especially if you can control the narrative.)  Scott, on the other hand, tells us that if you want something badly enough, and try really hard . . . you may nevertheless die horribly in the snow.  Nobody wants to hear that!  What a downer!  I think it’s no coincidence that Shackleton exploded into popular culture in the late 90s and has dominated it ever since: he is the mythic hero of the zeitgeist. I am always being asked if I’ll be doing Shackleton next.  He has six graphic novels already!  That is plenty!  But people still want to tell and be told his story, because it’s a heroic myth that validates our worldview.

That’s why I am so determined to tell the Scott story, because Scott is who we don’t realise we need right now – and Wilson, and Bowers, and Cherry, and Atch, and all the rest.  The Terra Nova Expedition is the Millennials’ polar expedition.  We’ve worked really hard, we’ve done everything we were supposed to, we made what appeared to be the right decisions at the time, and we’re still losing.  Nothing in the mythology we’ve been fed has prepared us for this.  No amount of positive attitude is going to change it.  We have all the aphorisms in the world, but what we need is an example of how to behave when the chips are down, when the Boss is not sailing into the tempest to rescue us, when the Yelcho is not on the horizon.  When circumstances are beyond your power to change, how do you make the best of your bad situation?  What does that look like? Even if you can’t fix anything, how do you make it better for the people around you – or at the very least, not worse?  Scott tells us: you can be patient, supportive, and humble; see who needs help and offer it; be realistic but don’t give in to despair; and if you’re up against a wall with no hope of rescue, go out in a blaze of kindness.  We learn by imitation: it’s easy to say these things, but to see them in action, in much harder circumstances than we will ever face, is a far greater help.  And to see them exemplified by real, flawed, complicated people like us is better still; they are not fairy-tale ideals, they are achievable. Real people achieved them.

My upbringing in the 80s milieu of selfishness, which set me up to receive the Scott story so gratefully, is hardly unique.  There are millions of us who are hungry for a counter-narrative.  My generation is desperate for demonstrations of caring, whether it’s activism or social justice or government policies that don’t abandon the vulnerable.  We’ve seen selfishness poison the world, and we want an alternative.  The time for competition is past; we must cooperate or perish, but we don’t know how to do it because our mythology is founded on competition.  The Scott story, if told properly, explodes the Just World Fallacy, and liberates us from the lie that has ruled our lives: that you make your own luck.  What happens, happens: what matters is how you respond to it.  My obsession with accuracy is in part to honour the men, and in part because Cherry was the ultimate stickler and he’d give me a hard time if I didn’t, but also because, if I’m telling the story to a new generation, I’m damn well going to make sure we get that much RIGHT.  It’s been really interesting to see, online, how my generation and the next have glommed onto polar exploration narratives, not as thrilling feats of derring-do, but as emotional explorations of found family and cooperative resilience.  We love them because they love each other, and loving each other helps get them through, and we want – we need – to see how that’s done.  It’s time to give them the Terra Nova story, and to tell it fully, fairly, and honestly, in all its complexity, because that is how their example is most useful to us.  Not as gods, and not as fools, but as real human beings who were excellent to each other in the face of disaster.  I only hope that I, a latecomer to their ways, can do them justice.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Anonymous asked: I have a few questions as an aspiring writer and a current fanfic writer who publishes.

Okay! But if you write fan-fiction, you're already a writer! I'm guessing you mean an aspiring author? ♥

How would you help with distractions and writer's block? I try to dedicate myself to writing, but then I wander off to other stuff and my motivation wanes.

This is not uncommon and there can be a lot of different reasons for why it happens. Understanding the reason behind why it's happening is important for knowing how to fix it. I have a couple posts that will help with this:

5 Reasons You Lost Interest in Your WIP, Plus Fixes! Feeling Unmotivated with WIP Writer’s Block

How do you advise me outlining a huge original story plot with world-building in an organized way that isn't just scattered?

Outlining is really just any method that helps you get all the important pieces of the story out, in order, so that you can use it as a reference while writing. Some people use one big beginning to end summary. Some people like scene lists or timelines. Other people like scene cards or mind maps... Different things work for different people, so part of the work you need to do as a writer is figure out which method/methods work best for you.

I often find, though, that the struggle people have with outlining is less about what method to use and more about how to actually fill out the details, which brings me around to plot and story structure. All stories have structure. Fan-fiction is often short, character-driven fiction, which gives it a different structure from the average novel. That said, even if you're a prolific fan-fiction writer, you may still need to take some time to learn about plot and story structure. I'll link a few posts that will help, but once you understand story structure (all the specific plot points a story should go through), it becomes much easier to know how to outline it.

Guide: How to Outline a Plot Guide: Starting a New (Long Fiction) Story Basic Story Structure Beginning a New Story How to Move a Story Forward Plot Driven vs Character Driven Stories Understanding Goals and Conflict

What advice would you give for writing fictional religions and mythology?

First and foremost, it's important to understand the role religion and mythology play in your story... how do they feed into your characters' beliefs? How do they influence your characters' actions and behavior? How do they guide the forces of power in your story's world? How do they impact the story's conflict/s and plot? Ultimately, you don't want to put a lot of time into creating and fleshing out a religion or mythology that's ultimately unimportant to the story. It helps to focus most on the aspects that truly matter.

Also, you might consider using real world mythology and religions as inspiration... just be careful about cultural appropriation. It's best not to use anything that belongs to an active culture or religion unless it's yours, or unless you do intense research and consult with sensitivity readers to make sure you don't do anything harmful.

And lastly, what sources do you recommend to accurately describe buildings (especially castles and manors) battlefields, geographical locations especially when it comes to mountains and rivers, etc), dresses and clothing especially if it isn't modern, and fighting techniques that are believable (for example, how a smaller woman would fight a larger man without being unrealistic)?

1 - Find Inspiration Sources - No matter when and where your story is set, it's important to find inspiration sources for the places in your story, whether that's buildings, towns, regions, whatever. Not only will this help you imagine and describe what you're envisioning, it will help you immensely with research on specific details.

2 - Time and Place Are Important - Many descriptive details are specific to time and place, so make sure you know that about your inspiration sources and/or the elements in your story. You can do a Google search for layout, architecture, and design (along with relevant location and era information) to find the details you need. For example, "medieval European castle layout" or "Victorian era manor house architectural details." Likewise, you can look for "Tudor era menswear" or "Victorian era dress details."

3 - Fighting Techniques - This again will tie into the time and place when your story is set. However, some fighting techniques will be somewhat timeless. I would strongly suggest heading over to @howtofightwrite for the best information and resources about portraying fighting techniques in writing.

Happy writing!

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I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

♦ Questions that violate my ask policies will be deleted! ♦ Please see my master list of top posts before asking ♦ Learn more about WQA here

[joydoesathing]

IT NEEDS TO BE SAID!!!

Joy… Lets just… appreciate your brain.

Like, in OG tnmn if a guys is wearing a tie, you manage to put in in the gender bend’s design (Agnes’ necklace, W’s necklace, Izabelle’s scarf, Francis’ dress she wears under the milklady coat, arlenes scarf etc etc)

You stick to their OG colour pallete! Like how Martins tie has the polka dots (ref to Margerettes dress) and Raffael’s Hawaiian t-shirt!

Hair. THE WAY YOU DESIGNED EACH CHARACTERS HAIR. I LOVE IT!

THE WAY YOU DRAW SHOES. I COULD NEVER!

You actually stick to like, 50s fashion. Like, accurate 50s fashion.

Your artstyle itself is just gorgeous

They just LOOK like their genderbend’s genderbend. You can easily tell who’s who without confusion

Character design isn’t even the SURFACE of your creativity.

YOU MAKE EXTREMELY GOOD LORE FOR YOUR CHARACTERS!!!

Im being fr, you’re a really good storyteller.

You see the characters as real life people with actual stories and views.

YOU DO RESEARCH!!!!!! THIS IS ONE OF THE THINGS I APPRECIATE THE MOST! You actually research and understand facts about the 50s and its customs and what they considered normal!

Something else I like about the characters is that they’re realistic, yes I’m extremely delusional and want Frances x Nacho to be together but they aren’t exactly made for eachother, which is why they aren’t together. WHICH MAKES SENSE!

YOU WOULD WILLINGLY CHANGE A CHARACTER’S LORE IF SOMETHING NEW IS DISCOVERED IN THE GAME! I’m mainly talking about Dr. w and Michael, you changed their age (27 to 36) when the th project document got solved, and you said youd change some things up abt Wil’s lore again in campaign mode

Okay, so this might be controversial but… I really appreciate how You didn’t draw NSFW of Nacho x Frances. Yes, they’re your characters and you have to power to draw whatever you want with them (chelsea in the corn outfit lmao) But you chose not to draw NSFW of the 2. FRANCES WAS SEVENTEEN! Imho, you made a good decision.

YOU ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND ALL THE BIASES! Martin was judged because of his eye, Wilma was judged because she was a WOMAN, and Anatolii is judged because of not having a mother and glenn and arlene are judged for their race.

THE CHARACTERS ARE REALISTIC! NONE OF THEM HAVE A ‘PERFECT’ LIFE. THEY ALL HAVE FLAWS AND PROBLEMS THAT THEY’VE FACED. I WOULD LIST THEM ALL BUT THAT WOULD TAKE FOREVER!

Okay thats chap 1 of me talking abt how much i appreciate ur au.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

My heart cannot- thank you for appreciating the effort that i invest too much into the characters 💗

when I made this AU, I initially did it for making genderbent designs for them but afterwards i thought that it would be more fun for the neighbors to have they're own individual traits and detailed stories!

i value putting in all my effort I can give to make sure everyone is their own character at the end of the day.

not to be judgemental but i kind of find it very unsatisfying when there's only certain neighbors that are given so much emphasis and detail and the rest are treated like "props" or their personality, dialogue, actions and drive are solely built around the certain character/s with a lot of detail to make them look better or have story development while the "prop" characters themselves remain stagnant with no interesting traits to them or only one-dimensional traits

and honestly for me, i feel like the characters would be more interesting and fun if they were kind of realistic ,aka have some kind of character development and have faced struggles and biases on the way, so that from there, the neighbors, while coming from very different backgrounds and lives, can still connect, empathize and make bonds with each other via similar struggles in their lives :))

so in conclusion: my enthusiasm for making genderbent designs for them + wanting all of them to be actual characters with character gave birth to what is known as my genderbend au. it became my little isolated platform in the tnmn fandom where i can go crazy with these expectations and wants for the neighbors without necessarily conflicting with the hcs that people have for the OG neighbors

(also I don't mind if you make a whole ass list)

[autumnmobile12]

My Hero Academia: Healthcare?

I don't know if any fanfic writers will find this useful or not, but I think the information is interesting and worth speculation in the My Hero setting. This also applies to any fanfic writers in the anime fandoms who want to have more immersive and in-depth writing. Obviously, writing fics that are 'accurate' is not a requirement since the point is to have fun, but here's some knowledge to use (or not use) if anyone is interested.

Obviously, Deku's been in the hospital a lot. A lot of the characters are injured and in the hospital a lot. But for all the hospital visits, nobody in the series is going to be bankrupted by astronomical healthcare costs. (Yes, that's a jab at America's system.) And it's not because the Pros, especially the popular ones, have money.

Here's why:

Quick rundown of how healthcare in Japan works: Everybody receives healthcare, everybody has health insurance. In Japan, your employer is legally required to provide you with health insurance. If you are unemployed, you will be on a community healthcare plan. There is also a plan for citizens over the age of 75. This also applies to foreigners who have established permanent residence of three months or longer.

Article 25 of Japan's Constitution is paraphrased as follows:

“all people shall have the right to maintain a certain standard of healthy and cultured life” and that “the state shall try to promote and improve the conditions of social welfare, social security, and public health” for this purpose.

I'm not going to reiterate the system in its entirety, but if you would like to learn more, this site here (the Article 25 quote I used is also found on that page) has a brief and comprehensive explanation of how healthcare is handled. However, one thing I am going to mention that is relevant for Deku and other Pros is the threshold out-of-pocket expense.

In Japan, citizens enrolled in healthcare do not spend more than ¥90,000 per month out of pocket, protecting them from financial disaster.

(To Americans, this may sound like a sweet deal, but hold your horses because Japan also funds this system through heavy taxation. Medical procedures are expensive and people will be paying for them one way or another.)

The question that needs asking now is how does this system apply to the hero society? Well, first off, since My Hero does take place in a slightly futuristic setting, we could take into consideration the system has been revised.

Assuming not much as changed, are heroes that operate their own agency technically considered business owners and are required to insure their employees and sidekicks?

Or...

Because they are all government employees, is the Safety Commission responsible for insuring all heroes and sidekicks no matter what they rank in their popularity?

Personally, I think it would be the latter since, in the coldest sense of the word, the heroes are essential to the Commission in upholding their system. So that makes them an asset. The Commission would want to protect its assets because as shady as they are, their own system could work against them. They certainly don't want heroes going on strike for lack of benefits or complaining the government doesn't take care of their people. So I assume it's the Commission who is covering insane healthcare costs on behalf of heroes.

(And since the system is probably funded by taxpayers' money, that also feeds into the prevalent societal discontent that's ongoing throughout the series.)

Now what about Deku and his classmates since they have not graduated and are not officially licensed yet? Honestly, I think it's probably UA itself that insures the students. That probably has to do with accreditation and so on, which is another matter entirely, but again, the backing is likely coming out of the Commission (and taxpayers') pockets.

And there you have it. Happy writing, happy research.

[tsartistry]

I've been doing a lot of DoorDash delivery driving on the side after work too keep myself afloat. I wouldn't call it lucrative but it's certainly kept me from drowning as badly as I was before.

Unfortunately that hasn't left me a lot of time to draw or write. That said, it has left me with a lot of idle time with just me, my thoughts, and my music, so my ideas have had a lot of time to percolate, and a lot of that has been spent on that Niobe fic.

There's a dog now! Things shift and change constantly as I plot, but I am going to make a pointed effort to keep the dog in as long as it's feasible.

It's interesting how the needs of the narrative cause seemingly unrelated details to manifest. For plot & magical reasons it was a good idea to have a Friendly Creature of some kind constantly by Lester's side. The most reasonable option was a service dog. Which means, of course, that there needs to be a reason for Lester to have one. After mulling it over, I'm thinking the dog is a seizure alert dog.

I've mentioned before that Niobe's going at Lester's memories from multiple angles. She's already combining magic and psychology, she's not above messing with his brain directly. I'm thinking maybe something gets damaged in the process, and now Lester's got epilepsy caused by a TBI. It actually fits really nicely into the story, because Niobe's cover story for any of Lester's fuzzy and inconsistent memories is that he recently survived a brain tumor. That's been part of the plan for a while. Including an ACTUAL brain injury would just sell her lie more.

There's no guarantee that ANY of these details are making it into the final story; It's a lot of extra stuff to add on top of what is already a very complicated mish-mash of ideas. But I'm already researching to see if it's something I can portray accurately and in an inoffensive (or even empowering) way.

Anyway, i should figure out what to name the dog.

[sleepyconfusedpotato]

Hii I need some help on making CoD ocs 😭 do people usually do research of military uniforms and tactical equipment of what country the oc originated from or just default clothing added with tactical equipment, does it have to be accurate?

Hello! (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

Yes, me and my mutual friends, and usually people who makes CoD OC's would do some research! Search about what? About the military system of the country, your OC originates from!

If they're American, then the military is called the United States Armed Forces (USAF) and is usually divided into six service branches: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard. If they're from the UK, then the military is called the British Armed Forces, divided into three branches: Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Air Force. Lots of the British regiment names have "Royal" in front of it since it's, you know, British.

or if your OC comes from other countries, you can check the name of the military, the division, and then the 'group' they belong in. Usually, CoD characters commonly belong to the special forces/anti-terrorism group of the country. Like, USA has SEAL, Delta Force, MARSOC, etc., UK has SAS, SRR, SBS, etc., Mexico has FES, and all of those groups around the world!

From that, you can learn about the tactical pieces of equipment! I would encourage you to learn about it as well so that you can make your OC actually look/seem like they belong in the same world as the actual characters. You can take references from Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, or you can ask someone who takes an interest in the military culture to be your teacher. For me, it's my precious friend @shadeops21!

For more details, you can also look up their uniforms, the camo they wear, the ranks in the military, how someone can enlist or become an officer, and so much more!

I know it's overwhelming. I felt that way too 🥹 as a girl who just wants to draw, it's a lot of info to take in, but learn slowly, watch some videos, and look at some images!

Of course, no one would expect us OC creators to make a 100% accurate depiction of the real-world military. Some of us are just CoD game and story enjoyers who want to pour our love into the characters and it's totally okay. However ☝️ an attempt of making our OC to be as convincing and as accurate as we can make it is always worth it.

Lastly, don't forget to read the Call of Duty lore itself! It's the original source, and we gotta respect it too so we can insert our own OC in it.

All in all, don't forget to have fun! (❁´◡`❁)

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m writing a story about a lady with Down Syndrome. I was wondering if you knew where I can find any resources about Down Syndrome made by people who actually have it, or any organisations that would be good to follow. Any resources made by people with intellectual disability would be really helpful as well.

I read your post about this and it was really helpful so thank you, I’m going to use it as a starting point for my research.

If you’d like some context about the story she’s literally a lady in the 1920s who’s trying to get control of her family’s estate from her brother. Shes underestimated for her disabilities and for being a women but I’m trying to not focus so much on the discrimination and work more on giving her an interesting mystery to solve with the detective she hired. I’d like it to be a bit lighthearted. Anyway, as she’s a main character I really wanted to make sure I wrote her well. Thanks!

Hi!

There aren't many resources out there unfortunately, but there is a page on the UK Down Syndrome's Association's website where members with DS share their opinions on representation in TV and film! You can read it here. For info on intellectual disability in general the best I can do is link some of my previous posts on it - there's close to nothing that's actually made by us unfortunately, everything that I was able to find is always made by someone who knows a person with ID at best. To be clear, not all of it is bad - I thought this interview (TW for abuse that happens in the movie's plot) about a movie starring actors with DS was pretty good - but it's still a sign that we aren't getting enough #OwnVoices representation. It's slowly changing though!

To learn more about DS I would probably recommend NDSS, it's one of the very few orgs that have people with Down Syndrome as board and team members (should be the bare minimum, but it unfortunately isn't). There's also information on things like preferred language and myths that often show up around Down Syndrome!

I'm not great with history, but in the 1920s she would be a subject to a lot more than just discrimination. Eugenics and institutionalization would definitely be present. Not sure what route you'll take there, but basically all the words around that time that she would be described with are currently considered slurs or pejoratives. The racist term for a person with Down Syndrome was officially used into the 60s, and the ableist one is still used legally in 2024. But if you want to skip past that, I think that's more than fine. You don't always have to aim for 100% historical accuracy, just be aware of the real history.

A detective story sounds very exciting! If you decide to publish it on Tumblr or other online site feel free to send me an ask with a link, I'd love to read it :-) !!

Thank you for the ask!

mod Sasza

I’m just popping in as a history fan for a couple bits of history notes — but again, like Sasza said, you don’t have to be 100% historically accurate if you don’t want to and if you don’t feel it’s necessary.

So, especially in the first half of the 1900s, a large part of disabled children, including children with Down Syndrome, were institutionalized very early in their life. Around this time the push that immorality caused disability was strong, and people were often convinced by doctors and professionals that the children’s needs would always be too much for them. Eugenicism was sort of reaching a peak around this time, as well—I would say it was at its most intense in the period of 1900-1940s.

Not all parents institutionalized their children, though. There was pressure to do so, but that doesn’t mean everyone fell victim to it. There wasn’t really any official support for parents who did this, and there weren’t official organizations for Down Syndrome. From my research, the current large DS organizations seem to have popped up in the 60s.

The term ‘Down Syndrome’ wasn’t in popular use until the 70s, and it wasn’t known that it’s caused by an extra chromosome until 1959.

Life expectancy in 1900-1920 for people born with Down Syndrome was 9 years old. Some of this could absolutely have been due to conditions in institutions, but likely even more relevant is that about 50% of people with DS are born with heart defects (also known as congenital heart disease) that can be fatal if not treated with surgery. Heart surgery wasn’t really feasible until the late 30s and early 40s. Another risk factor is a higher risk for infection, which isn’t easy to manage in a world that doesn’t yet have antibiotics.

I actually wanted to find pictures of adults with Down Syndrome pre-1940ish, though, to see real tangible evidence of adults being part of a community. First I found just one picture of a baby in 1925 on this Minnesota government website. But then I found a collection someone made of photos of both children and young adults, but they are not specifically dated. The first baby picture is from the 30s according to the poster!

Judging by the clothes I see people wearing in these photos, photo #4 (man with Down Syndrome in a suit next to a woman) seems to be from the 20s and photo #13 (young woman with Down Syndrome and very long hair) seems to be from about the 1910s. #18 (large family with a lot of sons, including one boy with Down Syndrome) could be from the 30s. Those three are the oldest people with DS in the photos, and they seem like young adults. A lot of these pictures show a community and aren’t just isolated kids, which I find nice.

It’s hard to find specific historical record of people with Down Syndrome from that period of time, but I wanted to show photos of real people in their communities to show, hey look! They were there, too!

Either way, I love detective stories and historical fiction and I’m glad you’re writing a story and that you care about your character’s portrayal but I totally know the feeling of that tricky balance between historical accuracy and modern acknowledgement that we should have been doing better.

— Mod Sparrow

[directdogman]

Hey dogman, idk if you answered this

Who, out of both DSAF and Dialtown, was your favourite to write and/or create?

It's very hard for me to pick favourites with my characters because I don't tend to give characters a lot of screen-time unless I find a character interesting or fun to write. You've caught me in a talkative mood, so warning, there's an onslaught of text coming!

DSaF: Dave was the most fun to write for, as I remember it. I mean, the guy is the walking personification of chaos and even when he's being constructive (eg, rigging robots to do insane stuff), it's usually in a destructive capacity. Dave will do LITERALLY ANYTHING but contribute to society in meaningful/valuable ways.

In terms of what character-writing I was most 'proud' of, I was also pretty happy with Dr Henry Miller, as a villain. Namely the research he embarked on, described in his logs in DSaF 3 (which the fandom evidently agreed with, as I got really strong feedback on those logs.)

One issue a lot of people (including myself) have with canon William Afton is that he's this kind of mad scientist character but his research doesn't really seem to be... idk, going anywhere? Other than using remnant (soul nectar?) to make kids possess robots, it's kind of a mystery how he got to this point he did from running a bad fast food restaurant. William gets fleshed out motivations in TSE and even then, it mainly revolves around his relationship with Henry Emily, iirc. It's actually pretty accurate to how real serial killers think, imo, but there's a pretty wide berth between this kind of serial killer and becoming a sci-fi fast-food mad scientist... So, I decided to try to bridge that gap.

DSaF Henry's logs actually mention where the idea for his research came from, namely the fact that he existed in a world with normal scientific rules just like ours and seemingly discovered something supernatural, and he approaches it like an amoral scientist would - trying to figure out how to figure out more about the fabric of reality using the newly discovered phenomenon of possession. The 'joy of creation' phrase people pulled from Golden Freddy's phone call in FNaF 1 is given context - Henry is trying to find out what's on the other side (and eventually, how existence itself formed.)

There's other aspects to his character that make him more interesting too, like the implication that his research is partially an excuse for him to act on an underlying sadism (with scenes implying that he inflicts damage on others than can't be justified as assisting with his research.) His background as a dissident/quack laughing-stock scientist (thanks to pushing his soul theory in a best-selling book, which is considered pseudoscience) BEFORE he embarked on his journey to become a fast food tycoon also makes it less farfetch'd that he'd be capable of y'know, harvesting human souls intentionally to continue his research?

I had more for the character on paper that people haven't seen but some of it wasn't revealed due to it feeling a bit too disturbing to publish. None of the contents would've been all that controversial, more just too tonally disturbing when written about in detail (like a omitted part from his backstory/lore post where he managed to pick up a hazy audio of his wife + son's crying from the radio of the car his wife/son drowned in and reacted with genuine elation upon realizing he'd discovered a new scientific phenomenon (as this was the first time Henry witnessed soul-possession.)) Yeah.

I don't feel much of a need to revisit Henry as a character because as a series villain, he was pretty thoroughly-written and he did his job effectively... And his fate was well earned! (He even got an epilogue short-story a few years back, further cementing his fate!)

Dialtown: From the characters/writing that the fandom has seen? Tough to say. I genuinely really like every DT character. Gingi and Mayor Mingus are two of my favourite characters to write for because they're both really insistent and react to adversity in a really comically indignant way. Mingus is more like Gingi than she cares to admit in very specific ways, which is the core hypocrisy of her character - she's one of the most abnormal things IN Dialtown, and spends the game on a quest opposing abnormality that she, herself, can't stand.

Many absolute rulers have debilitating physical and/or mental cruxes and despite that, usually have the final say on what is/isn't okay, often guided by arbitrary preferences. It's funny to remember all of the ancient kings and emperors who dictated how others should act, talk and even think, when very many of them themselves were anything except a good reflection of their own subjects! It's an irony I quite enjoy and leads to a fun character to write for!

My favourite DT writing is probably some of my Callum Crown speech drafts. I have a definite bias here since Crown's character is based on many figures I've encountered in my own reading (and his story relates to topics I enjoy reading about.) A lot of that is real nerd shit that wouldn't be interesting to 99.9% of DT fans (like a long conversation where Crown + Milt discuss a campaign speech Milt wrote for Crown and they bicker about if the wording/arguments used are truly honest.) Again, not super relevant to Dialtown-proper, but it explains a lot about why the world of DT ended up the way it did.

Realistically, the story of Dialtown itself is basically a weird little epilogue to a story that ended decades upon decades ago, centered around a bunch of small-town nobodies circling around the carcass of the last surviving main character of the old story.

I'm also very happy with Gingi's character partially because I know more about Gingi's past/future than you guys do. Gingi has such rotten memory that Gingi's backstory before DT's story begins is basically a complete mystery. Thanks to Gingi never getting close enough to any humans before laying its eggs, there's nobody in Gingi's life that can fill in the gaps. Companionship means so much to Gingi because prior to meeting The Gang, Gingi is aware of a massive and unknown block of time that's a complete mystery precisely because Gingi had nobody in its life. To Gingi, this time was basically akin to being non-sentient or dead, and Gingi would never go back.

While I was making DSaF, I drafted a ton of other stories on paper. I considered making most of them, but decided not to for various reasons, despite getting some solid feedback from collaborators. Bits of almost all of those project ideas made it into DT, with Gingi having traits from several other main characters I prototyped years and years ago. This includes where Gingi came from and what exactly Gingi is. I don't want to mislead people into thinking Gingi is more important than it is, like Gingi is the key to unlocking DT lore (I promise there's a LOT of aimless scuttling/devouring in Gingi's past and relatively little else!) BUT: Of everything from those old scrapped projects, Gingi is what I decided deserved to survive the most. And that has to count for something.

One day I'd love to make sequels to DT and perhaps explore some of the stuff I've described above, like why the hell the world of DT is the way it is or maybe where the hell Gingi spawned from. Thanks

[yellowocaballero]

Omg hi Ms. Yellow Caballero big fan of your work <3 For real though, I'm really excited that your sharing the Weekenders, it was a joy to read and I'm bongocat-ing now that others also get the privilege to read it as well.

Referencing your tags, would you please elaborate of ableism in fandom and, like you said, how fandom treats characters with unpalatable disabilities?

Hi Ms. Bud Lite I'm a big fan of you <3

TL;DR A fear of writing characters of highly marginalized identities shields you from criticism and discomfort, but it's actively stigmatizing to people of these identities and as a writer you really need to get over yourself and write The Icky People.

I guess I'll come out swinging on this one and say that fandom doesn't like severe mental illness. (As a note, when I say severe mental illness (SMI) I mean illnesses such as psychotic disorders, bipolar disorder, substance use disorders, personality disorders, etc)

Obviously, nobody likes people w/SMI. It's just insanely egregious in fandom to me, since fanfic writers absolutely love writing characters or HC characters with depression, anxiety, or a specific variety of PTSD That Isn't Scary. People actively reject any character HCs for a SMI. When people write a character with SMI, they nicely downplay it, ignore it, substitute it for a disorder they like better, or rewrite it. It's completely untolerated, in both headcanons and in fanfiction, and every time I bring it up I always get the most interesting reasons why somebody couldn't possibly acknowledge a character's SMI in their writing. I've heard all of these:

"I don't know enough about the disorder to write it accurately." Do research.

"I'm not X, so I can't really depict it." You probably aren't a cis white man, but you depict those guys just fine.

"It feels insulting to the character." There is no shame in having a SMI.

"I can't understand what it's like, so it's better to be cautious and avoid giving characters stigmatized identities." There are LOTS of experiences that you'll never understand because you've never had them - you just don't want to write anything you're uncomfortable with. People with SMI make you uncomfortable, and you don't want to write anything that makes you feel uncomfortable, or think of a comfort character in an uncomfortable way. SMIs are marginalized differently than solely depression/anxiety/The Nice PTSD, and by refusing to write them you're actively contributing to the stigma.

I think (?) I've spoken in the past about how I believe that the rigorous external and internal policing of writing people of marginalized identities is actively harmful towards efforts to increase diversity of experience and background in fiction. A lot of fanfiction writers are just terrified to write people who they can't directly relate with, because they're worried 'they'll get it wrong' and be Big Cancelled. I think this is negative enough when it prevents people from going outside of their comfort zone, but on a macro level I think this results in people refusing to write characters of marginalized identities as all. It's an insidious thought process, and it's reflected in people's unwillingness to diversity their writing or acknowledge canon diversity.

'Well, I don't understand what it's like to be Black, so I don't want to write Black people'. 'I want to project on this character, so I only want to write them with mental illnesses and identities I have'. 'If I write a marginalized character incorrectly people will yell at me, so I won't write a marginalized character who's marginalized differently than me at all'. Can you imagine writing a lesbian character with a boyfriend because 'you feel uncomfortable writing lesbian experiences'? It's blatantly homophobic. But people do that with disability and race/ethnicity ALL THE TIME.

People with SMI notice that you feel uncomfortable with them. It's obvious. They notice when a character has a SMI + anxiety, and you only write their anxiety. They notice when a character displays symptoms of a SMI in canon, but you write it out. And POC notice when the characters of color are written out. I know we all like to project on the blorbos and relate to them, and in the joys of your own head do whatever, but as a writer if you only stick to identities you're comfortable with you are actively being a worse writer. Which to me is the REAL sin lmfao.

[blessedarethebinarybreakers]

Hey, this is going to be long and wordy but I’m kinda desperate. Lately I’ve been having doubts about whether Jesus actually said what’s recorded in the gospels and whether those accounts are true, and the uncertainty there scares me, especially since I know the gospel writers almost certainly had their own agendas and that’s why accounts of the same event can sound different, why the birth narrative was skipped over or not, etc. On top of that I’ve seen posts from Jewish users outlining why Judaism typically doesn’t accept Jesus as Messiah/why you can’t be Jewish if you believe that, and their arguments seem pretty sound. So it all boils down to this big scary question of “What if this whole Jesus-as-Messiah thing was just the result of projection onto some random guy who seemed to be the real deal because the writers were so desperate to be rescued from the Roman occupation?” It sucks cuz I’ve been enjoying my renewed interest in church (for the most part) and while I’ve tried my best to learn not to take the Bible literally all the time (yay for growing up in an inerrantist doctrinal tradition 🙄), I still want to take it seriously and I still want to believe in Jesus as savior/Lord/etc. I don’t want to just be like, “Yeah I don’t buy the whole Messiah thing but I can still follow his example!” I want there to be meat behind why I follow, if that makes sense. So inasmuch as this could be my OCD being bored and trying to take hold of whatever it thinks would bug me the most (wouldn’t be the first time!), I would really appreciate any advice you have. I know there may not be any certainty or reassurance to be found here, but I still want to hear from someone who’s been there before so I can chart a path forward, and I think this is an important question to wrestle with. Plus I remember from one of your posts you said you have seminary notes on this exact topic so I’m curious lol.

"Gospel Truth": how do we know what Jesus really said and did?

Hey again! Sorry for the long delay on this one but I wanted to do some research before responding! You're right that these are important questions, and you're absolutely not the only one to feel doubt and anxiety over them. You're also right that I can't offer you certainty, but I do hope you'll find encouragement here, and places to go as you continue your journey.

This got super long (as always lol), so let's start with aTL;DR:

In this post, you'll find that there's a lot that we can surmise is very probable about Jesus' life story, but that ultimately we can't know much for certain — and that's okay. In Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions), Rachel Held Evans gets to the heart of the matter:

"I don’t know which Bible stories ought to be treated as historically accurate, scientifically provable accounts of facts and which stories are meant to be metaphorical. I don’t know if it really matters so long as those stories transform my life."

This is a time where scholarship & faith go hand-in-hand: using the minds God gifted us, we study and learn what we can; and we cultivate faith in the things we can't — a faith that doesn't deny doubt, but makes room for it, and calls us into community so that we can wrestle out meaning together.

A couple other notes before we kick off:

Please know that you don't Have To Study All The Things if you decide it's healthier for you not to go chasing those rabbit holes. You don't need to be an expert in Biblical studies to be a "good Christian" or to take scripture seriously or to get to know God deeply.

I trust you know yourself and how your OCD works better than I could. So I'm going to share the information I have, and leave it to you to determine for yourself how much information you need in order to feel reassured, without giving your mind new problems to ruminate over.

So here's a link to a Google doc that has A Lot of information — like, too much lol. But save it for after you read this post; I'm putting the most relevant & important info here! If you finish this post and feel satisfied, you never even have to look in the doc.

However deep you go, if you find yourself getting overwhelmed, know that whatever you are feeling is valid and probably pretty common, and take a break! Do a calming meditation or an activity you enjoy to help regulate your mind and body. If possible, have someone you can unpack this stuff with — or have a notebook ready to journal in. <3

Okay, all that outta the way, let's dig in!

Who wrote the Gospels?

Tradition goes that the authors of the four canonical Gospels are three of Jesus' closest disciples — Matthew, Mark, and John — plus a disciple of Paul — Luke. But academics have determine that this tradition is very improbable; it's much more likely that none of the four authors knew Jesus personally, and that the earliest of them (Mark) wasn't recorded till the 60s — decades after Jesus lived and died!

When people learn this, it often leads to something of a crisis of faith. If these writers didn't even know Jesus firsthand, where the heck did they get their information?? And come to think of it, why do their accounts differ? Is some of it made up? Is all of it made up??

The anxiety and fear that wells up is normal, and it's healthy to acknowledge that you're feeling it. But once that first shock abates, it's possible to discover a sort of freedom in the knowledge that the Gospel writers (and all the authors of the biblical texts) were human, with human biases and specific goals fitting their unique context; and that they didn't have all the answers!

This realization can free us to approach scripture without certain expectations (that it's all inerrant and prescriptive, etc.), and allows us to bring our doubts to the table with us. If something in the text seems questionable — particularly if it seems to promote bigotry and injustice rather than God's love — we can consider whether something in its author's cultural context might be responsible for that part of scripture.

So taking some time to learn the unique contexts of each writer can be quite enriching to how we engage the Gospels. For a chart that sums up the Gospel writers' unique contexts, audiences, and priorities, see this post.

For even more, you'll want a book that digs into that stuff — I recommend Raymond Brown's An Introduction to the New Testament (the abridged version!!). As you learn about the Gospel writers, I hope several things become evident:

First, that they weren't just making things up whole cloth, or relying on a game of "he said she said" telephone for their information! Each one drew from different primary or secondary sources, eyewitness testimonies or written texts (many of which no longer exist, but scholars have pieced together evidence of, like the famous "Q source" that both Matthew and Luke drew from).

Yes, each author does have an agenda in writing about Jesus, and in how they tell his story. But that's not a nefarious thing; it's true of any text, whether biography, poetry, novel, song — you don't take the time to write something without a purpose in mind! With variation between their specific goals, overall each Gospel writer's agenda was to persuade their audience that Jesus is worth following, and/or to offer encouragement to those who already believed.

Another thing that modern readers sometimes interpret as intentionally deceptive is that, yeah, the Gospels contain things that aren't strictly factual, and that the writers knew weren't strictly factual. This is because ancient ideas about history & biography are very different from our own. When we read a biography, we expect it to be all facts, with citations proving those facts. But the ancients were much less concerned with making sure every detail was accurate; instead, they were focused on making their specific point about whatever thing or person they were writing/reading about. So yes, they might embellish one detail or leave out another in order to fortify their desired message. They cared more about the Truth as they interpreted it than a purely factual account.

On a similar note, each Gospel writer understands Jesus and the meaning behind his story a little differently — hence why they all tell things in slightly different orders, and characterize Jesus differently, etc. This is also understandable — we all interpret stories differently; we all come to different conclusions even when we have the same or similar information. See the section in the google doc titled "each Gospel's essence" to learn more about the different ways each writer characterizes Jesus, and why they may have interpreted him the way they did.

On that topic, let's get to your question about...

Jesus — Messiah, or no?

If you read the Gospel of Matthew and take it as pure fact, you'll determine that Jesus is the Messiah his people were waiting for — that he did indeed fulfill various scriptures. But if you read Mark, you won't find that argument at all! To the author of Mark, Jesus clearly did not match the stipulations of the awaited-for Messiah — and for Mark, that's kinda the point: that Jesus is something new and surprising, unlike anything human beings expected, upturning our ideas of power and salvation.

...So how did they come to these vastly different views??

Well, Matthew was a Jew writing to persuade his fellow Jews that the Jesus movement was worth joining; to do so, he felt he had to "prove" that it fit into Jewish tradition. So he prioritizes showing how Jesus is a righteous Jew who abides by Torah, and that he is indeed the Messiah they've been waiting for.

(It's also worth noting that when Matthew writes, over and over, about Jesus "fulfilling" various bits of Hebrew scripture, that verb "fulfilling" doesn't mean what it might sound like to us — that a given text was always and only about Jesus, with the prophet having Jesus in mind when they wrote it. Rather, to Matthew "fulfilling" the text meant "filling it up" with more meaning — adding to its meaning, not replacing the old meaning. More on that, with citations, in the Google doc.)

Meanwhile, Mark's author was a Jew writing mostly to gentile members of the early Jesus movement. He knew they wouldn't care whether or not Jesus fit the Jewish expectations for a Messiah! (In fact, giving Jesus a bit more of a "Greek" flair would appeal to them more.) So Mark doesn't perform the mental and rhetorical gymnastics that Matthew does to try to make Jesus fit the Messiah requirements.

So which Gospel got it right?

For many matters of scripture, I say "it's open to interpretation!" or "Maybe both are right in different ways, conveying different truths!" But for this particular case, it is very important as Christians to accept that Jesus absolutely does not fit the Jewish requirements for their Messiah. To argue otherwise is antisemitic — it's supersessionist, meaning it claims that Christianity supersedes or replaces Judaism.

We might understand, as the author of Mark did, Jesus to be a messiah — which just means "anointed one" in Hebrew (the Greek counterpart is "Christ") — without making antisemitic claims that Jews "failed to recognize their own Messiah." (In fact, there are multiple messiahs in scripture, e.g. in Isaiah 45, the foreign king Cyrus is referred to as God's messiah; though later scriptures like Daniel do start talking about a specific Messiah who will usher in redemption & a new age for the Jewish people.)

We can understand why some of the biblical authors, like Matthew, interpreted Jesus as this specific Messiah as a result of their own specific context, without agreeing with their view. See this post about “Anti-Jewish Content in the New Testament: Why it’s there and what we should do about it” for more on this important topic.  (You can also find even further resources on supersessionism in this post.)

...Okay, so we've looked at the authors of the Gospels a good bit. We've learned that their idea of a "biography" is very different from ours — that they didn't consider it bad to rearrange, leave out, or embellish accounts — but what does that leave us with when it comes to knowing who Jesus "really" was?

What can we know for sure about Jesus?

Let's look at the facts. The first one is: we don't have any. Not any 100% certain ones, anyway. The guy lived before audio recorders and cameras; we're relying on written and oral accounts, which can be fabricated.

However, there are points about the Jesus story that are regarded as almost certainly historical by the vast majority of historians today, so let's look at those first:

Jesus almost 100% certainly existed. There is enough historical evidence (both inside and outside the Bible) to confirm this — even non-Christian historians almost unanimously agree that there was a historical Jesus. (Phew, am I right?)

Almost all historians also agree that several parts of Jesus' story almost definitely happened: that he was baptized in the Jordan; that he traveled around teaching and offering miracles (whether or not they agree he actually had the power to perform real miracles, of course); and that he was arrested and crucified by the occupying Roman Empire.

Some of these almost-irrefutable claims lend plausibility to others: if he traveled around teaching, what was he teaching? Why not the sermons, the parables recorded in the Gospels? And if he was crucified — the death of a criminal, an insurrectionist — what did he do to get himself crucified? He must have done something to cause Rome to see him as a threat to their Empire — why not some of the sayings and actions that are recorded in the Gospels, like his claim to be "Son of God" (a title used for Caesar); his protest march into Jerusalem satirizing Caesar; and his disruption at the Temple?

The attempt to determine which parts of scripture are "authentic," i.e. things that really happened / things Jesus really said," is often called "The Quest for the Historical Jesus."

Over the decades, scholars interested in this pursuit have developed various "criteria of authenticity," which they use to try to determine how probable any given bit of the Gospels is. In the google doc, I summarize the history of this "quest" and describe some of the most popular criteria. But what's important to understand is that these criteria have major limitations — they're often applied somewhat arbitrarily, for one thing, and ultimately they can't "prove" for sure whether something in the text is definitely historical or definitely not. So honestly, this is not a field of study that I recommend everyone go immerse themselves in! When I do, I have fun for a while, then kinda end up more overwhelmed by how much we can't know.

Still, sometimes these criteria of authenticity do yield some interesting points. For instance, the "Criteria of Embarrassment" (yes, that's what it's called lol) asserts that anything in the text that would have been embarrassing to its author is more likely to be historical fact — because why would the author have made something up that puts them in an unflattering light, or might be used to argue against their message?

For example, a lot of Gospel stories depict Jesus' disciples being kinda clueless, or saying petty things, or failing miserably (e.g. the denial of Peter). Why would the Gospel authors have wanted to make these earliest believers, who are meant to be role models for their audience, look so bad? This criterion says that wouldn't — that they must include those stories because they really happened, rather than being things the author made up to make their point.

Or take the Criterion of Multiple Attestation, which determines how many sources include a certain saying or event. The more sources contain a specific story, the more plausibly "authentic" that story is, since it means that different unconnected communities knew that story. Logical enough.

So yes, there are ways to consider the historicity of the Gospels — but not definitively. So the question becomes: is the historical knowledge we do have enough for me to feel some level of, I don't know, peace? stability in my faith?

And, at the end of the day, how important to me is it that every single thing the Gospels say is completely factual?

Back to what matters: the Good News

Facts are great — God gifted us our minds, and various scripture stories show God encourages us to wrestle with the text! — but we are called to faith as well.

Furthermore, taking the Bible seriously means accepting it for what it is — a collection of ancient texts compiled by humans, even if guided by Divinity — rather than insisting it be what it is not. For the Gospels, that means accepting that they are not biography, but story, and prioritize Truth over fact.

My pastor friend Roger puts it like this:

“For me, it isn’t about deciding which things Jesus really said or didn’t say. That’s a road that goes nowhere. As a pastoral response, I take scripture at face value and work to empathize with the people in and behind the text. Through that empathy, I can find some meaning that connects with what we’re facing here and now.”

When we acknowledge that the Bible includes human interpretations of the Divine, and that we bring our own human interpretations to our reading of it, where does that leave us?

It leaves us in need of conversation, of an expansion of our perspectives by talking through scripture in community. We do that conversing with friends, or attending Bible studies at church, or reading a variety of theological texts — getting as many unique understandings of Jesus as we can, joining our ideas together to get an ever broader glimpse of the Divine.

There's a reason Jesus taught in parables: he didn't want there to be one definitive answer to matters of life and faith! He wanted to ignite conversation, to draw us into community — because it's in community that we are the image of God, the Body of Christ.

So keep on wrestling, wondering, talking it through (taking time to rest when needed — there's no rush!). We discover scripture's meaning for us in our own place and time through the wrestling, together.

[buffporcupine]

death note headcanons

because i know my death note mutuals aren’t getting what they wanted from me

light

-can crack his elbows the way one would crack their knuckles

-probably had to do a musical elective in his first year of middle school and chose guitar cause he thought it would be easy but it wasn’t.

-the type of song he really enjoys is very specific. going to hell yet i tried so so hard to please god song. i missed my only chance song. why wasn’t i like the other kids song. thrones playlist. i could elaborate but i won’t

-as for sexuality, i see him as not wanting to put a label on whatever he is in theory but in practice being some type of bispec (probably berriromantic) for romantic attraction and then somewhere on the asexual spectrum for sexual attraction.

-as for gender i see him as agender whose not really in labeling himself as anything when it comes to sexuality and gender.

-agender but probably 100% fine with being super male presenting. he just wants to keep out of gender as a convo and that’s great. good for him

-no!!!!! i refuse to say this mf is aromantic (because it’s not accurate and it’d be an insult to aromantic people to say he’s aro)!!!!!

-just because he manipulated misa and kiyomi into doing his bidding and didn’t love them doesn’t immediately make him aro. i’m sure he could have found someone if he wanted to, and he could have loved them if he was with them to love them, but he wasn’t with them to love them he was with them to use them.

misa

-half belgian half japanese. her parents met in belgium while her father was on vacation.

-also im torn bcos i wanna write an au where misa is mexican and that’s it everything else is the same as canon but i’m pretty sure that’s just me wanting her to be even more Like Me (tm)

-speaks a little bit of english, way more french, and obvi japanese. finds linguistics interesting but doesn’t have enough time to research it that thoroughly

-likes being short and “small” small girl aesthetic i guess but sometimes wishes she had longer legs so she could wear skirts w/o looking silly and short

-panromantic does not see gender at all when becoming attracted to someone. i see her as def on the ace spectrum, maybe something like demisexual or aegosexual. could be me projecting dunno.

-she’s probably dated both girls and boys before

-would NOT break up with someone in a rude way or just dump them. she’d put a lot of effort into an apology and explanation into why.

-if she met miu iruma they’d be best friends. sorry i bring danganronpa into everything guys

-can we please just appeciate mexican misa for a second. she’s cooking sopa de fideo for the task and being the bilingual hot girl we all needed

-mexican misa

-as for her music taste she probably listens to upbeat english language music and sappy love songs. “there is a light that never goes out” and “melt with you” sound like go-tos for her sorry. i could also see her being a bimbo pop ayesha + britney manson girlie though

-tbh whatever your race/ethnicity is you could project it onto misa and it’d work. i love it. anyway d d d d d d d did i say m m m mexican misa

-i think she’d love love love getting her hair done!!! sensitive scalp mf but she’d still love getting her hair done

-mexican misa visiting mexico and getting braids and cute clothes and her fave candy

-was not a theatre kid. sorry guys but her middle and high school didn’t offer theatre 😔😔

lawliet

-chronically dehydrated just because he forgets to drink water. he tries to drink water and always gets afraid of developing kidney / liver problems but he just keeps forgetting. what the fuck L

-soup stan i think he’d love some good soup. soup stan x soup cooker (lawmane)

-i think you could have a really deep convo about anything with L. if you’re passionate about anything he’ll just listen and he’ll talk to you about what he’s passionate about to. he loves to think and would def entertain you with a convo about whether a hot dog is a sandwich or something dumb like that you know.

-he’s a thinker he just loves discussions

-has a british accent when speaking english bcos watari and lived in england you know. he thinks british accents in english sound good tho and LOVES making fun of how silly new york accents are (me too bro. me too)

-if he went to middle school or the japanese/british equivalent of it, he’d def be the type to choose some weird ass elective fucking creative writing instead of the “normal” guitar, choir, band, orchestra and shit