#and now. because im normal. i dont engage with it because the author wants me and people like me dead

[uselessvaldemarsimp]

"less-cannon-accurate" annnnd there it is, thanks for letting us know that the author of that "route" treats Valdemar being aroace just as an inconvenient little detail to be discarded. what a shame

DISCLAIMER: i am not aroace! this is simply my opinion, take what i say with a grain of salt

here’s what i have to say:

is valdemar good aroace representation in the first place?

i dont think so! their orientation was announced in a, correct me if im wrong, comment section of an instagram post, and no where else! the fact that they and vulgora, villains, are the only nonbinary characters that use they/them exclusively, and the fact that valdemar, again, a villain, is the only aroace character in the entire game, is simply overall bad representation! a villain being aroace isn’t inherently bad representation, but all other things considered in this specific situation, the creators seem to view aroace people as inhumane freaks! yikes!

is this an excuse to erase said gender and sexuality?

not really, no!

is the valdemar dorian route by ronelle otieno good aroace representation despite this?

i think so! it’s done very well in my opinion, being an integral part of their character, not explicitly stated but shown through their actions and storytelling, it honestly makes valdemar seem a little more human, the way that their orientation is shown. i think ronelle otieno took something that was a poorly done afterthought and made it into good representation

can aroace people partake in sex and romance?

yes! this is a pretty obvious fact that most people are aware of by now

since that’s the case, is the inclusion of sex and/or romance when engaging with an aroace character an erasure of their sexuality?

not inherently! again, aroace people Can partake in these things, despite what some people may think!

HOWEVER, is deviating from canon with an aroace character who has been explicitly stated to not have an interest in sex and romance an erasure of their sexuality?

honestly, this is where things get tricky, but i think i have a way of thinking about it:

do actions = attraction?

i dont think so! i think people can kiss whoever they want, have sex with whoever they want, give flowers to whoever they want, without it being a direct show of their orientation. therefore, while it may be deviating from canon, it isn’t an inherent erasure of the characters sexuality. an erasure of aroace sexuality would be having that character specifically show or state that they are romantically and/or sexually attracted to someone. that’s where we begin having issues! if you have a problem with deviating from canon, that’s an entirely different thing, and i suggest you never interact with fandoms ever! for your own sanity.

people swap the sexualities of characters all the time, why is it such an issue when people do it with aroace characters, or queer characters in general?

lack of representation! if all these different flavors of queer were normalized, as they should be, people wouldn’t have so much of an issue with playing around with characters sexualities, but because representation is spare, people cling onto these aspects of these characters for dear life, even if the representation isn’t good representation

so what should people be fighting for?

more representation! instead of hanging onto characters who’s orientation is already a badly done, arguably acephobic afterthought, maybe the best course of action is to make an effort to create more aro and/or ace representation in general!

at the end of the day, is this all that big of a deal?

not really! you are the the captain of your own ship. you can choose to interact with things, or dont! wasting energy arguing over something that wont change is not worth your precious time. using that energy to create and promote Good representation is probably a better use of ones energy.

i highly encourage aroace people, especially those who have read the dorian route, to share their opinions. i dont intend to speak For or Over aroace people, im just a stranger on the internet who has thought a lot about things that dont really matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things

[bastardrobocop]

not being funny, not being melodramatic i hope, but i feel like the last year has broken me in a lot of ways. 2023 i mean. i watched a long term relationship disintegrate in my hands until the ultimate betrayal of my trust and safety. i was so stressed and so fucked up all the time.

and now like, i can feel im withdrawing from my friends, im engaging in unhealthy behaviors i will not specify here, despite it all im more lonely than ive ever been, my hobbies are starting to feel like dust in my mouth, and while i'm not actively suicidal, the thought isnt far from my mind in that nasty intrusive thought sort of way.

there are nice things. i have the place to myself. the bed to myself. its quiet. but i feel like ive exhausted the amount of patience people have with me talking about what ive gone through. and as is the nature of things i dont feel as though ive built character or come through hardened. i feel mad. hurt. i want to hurt xer back somehow. take something back because something was taken from me. i feel like i have no recourse. god knows if xe'll hurt someone like xe hurt me again. but thats not even my primary motivation. i just hate feeling like theres nothing. no justice. no satisfaction. nothing that makes being raped a more tolerable experience, which is a silly thing to say. but you understand, right? like, sure i could post somewhere highly visible "In December of 2023 well known SCP Wiki author UraniumEmpire sexually assaulted me" but like what would that accomplish? it sure would put me under a microscope. its a surreal sentence too. hard to explain why. maybe its ultraminor celebrity combined with knowledge that inevitably it can just be denied and nobody will listen.

you know before now i never really noticed how much people fetishize sexual assault? "CNC" and the like. i dont care for it. i dont think they know. its frustrating as an adult online trying to navigate adult spaces. i know its an odd topic, but im fully stream of consciousness right now. i'll see something and it hits me in the gut and so i block the user or close the thing or leave the discord call. yet another addition to the list of things that make my tastes so exacting.

i feel like i should come to some overall point but the only thing coming to mind right now is just 'i hate this'. and i do. i hate this so much. i'm crying a lot more. at stupid things. weird things. memories. dreams. this post. the funny thing is that despite it all, despite the content, despite everything, i hope people read it. i like feeling like i exist. i like feeling real to other people. reminding folks that im not just a joke machine. i have an internal world. i have had a life that's lead me here and despite advantages it has not been good.

did i ever talk about how my high school graduation went? odd digression, bear with me. i feel like its emblematic of how things typically go for me. it's the day i graduate high school. i come downstairs to find my mother on skype with my kansas family. my grandfather is dying. they put him on skype. i watch him die over skype. after sitting alone for some time, i tell my parents i do not want to go through with high school graduation. i am forced to regardless. it is the most miserable day of my life. nobody listens to what i need in the moment. i go through with it, and then we are all shepherded to some kind of entertainment center. for reasons i cannot fathom, we are not allowed to leave for a couple hours. enforced fun time. they bring a stage hypnotist. i sit in silence and watch his antics. i get up and ask one of the people supervising us if i can leave now. they finally say yes. my mother takes me home. she asks if i have a nice time. i say of course i didnt. we drive home in silence.

i have have very rarely felt understood. very rarely felt like i was built to exist in the world. i feel as though i have an expiration date beyond the obvious one. i have grown older and watched people i know operate normally in the world and wondered how they do it. it never clicked for me. autism, transness, otherings. experts looked at me, told me i needed accommodations. never really got them, or they didnt help.

this is getting too long. i asked myself partway through if this was a suicide note but concluded that it wasn't. this is primarily because im scared if i die, they'll separate my cats. adopt them to different homes. they're best friends, they should not be kept apart. i love my cats, even when they're breaking shit and tearing open trash bags.

final paragraph. this whole post thing is probably going to sound embarrassing to me when i have hindsight on it. oh well. i am going to hit the post button now.

[manonamora-if]

hi manon!

i have a question about itch, cause i uploaded my demo like a week ago and its like views and plays have gone down to zero already for like two days. and i dont know if i did something wrong or if its normal.

im sure your games are like hundreds of views for weeks, but is there something i can do or is it already over for me? IM FREAKING OUT

Oh hi worried anon!

THIS IS SUPER NORMAL!

New releases bring in tons of views (and plays/downloads), but it weans down pretty quickly. It will go back up when people share your linked posts (assuming your have a demo post here/other social media) and when you update the demo (it goes right back to the top of the New pile*). *abusing the update button to get back to the top can flag itch.io

How fast it weans down does depend on a lot of things, many you can't really control (followers, engagement, algorithm, etc). But what you have included in the demo, will have an effect: a 100k words demo with a lot of branching will tend to have more returning players than a short 1k words linear prologue. Visual, Audio, Interactivity, Writing Style, Genre, Tropes... all that too...

Do check that your page is properly published on itch (and that you allows downloads and searches) and you can open your page in a Private Browser Mode to see how a random user will see your page! (if your page is quarantine you should contact itch.io support)

There are things that could help, but it is never a sure thing:

sharing your project to directories (like @interact-if)

using the tags correctly on Tumblr (like #interactive fiction)

filling the Metadata of your game on itch (so it can be found better)

engaging with your current followers

engaging with other authors

sharing your work on other platforms (like the CoG Forum if you're doing CScript or IF discords)

...

But yeah, readers will come and go. If you are happy with what you are doing, that's what matters. :)

but yeah... don't worry anon! It's totes normal!

Anyways, if you want some very unfair comparison (because I have a lot more projects on hands, and that stacks), click below for bad screenshots...

Yeah, I do get a couple hundreds of views per week, but...

that includes ALL the games I've made (which are two good dozens now, including the experiments and WIPs), the templates and the guides. I have like... 48 different pages between everything... (I know it's from April, but this month is not a "regular" month in hits)

But not all projects bring the same amount of players. Most of the time, my big WIP on hiatus and my SugarCube guide are the ones showing hits (aside from new releases).

Some graphs below:

My recently released parser, currently in a competition (so there is a bit more traction). It will die after it, because it's a parser.

Compared to Jeangille's Letters which was released in French first, then English in April. It's a wonder if I get a play now... :/

To the Binksi I made last week that resonated with some people (it's going down).

And that's my big WIP (over 100k words) which hasn't updated in a LONG TIME

And that's my Twine Guide.

Another Anon a while back said I was only popular because of my guide/template, and NGL some days, that anon is right.

[bmpmp3]

i often, with very little seriousness, say that i prefer to read shoujo, josei, and the occasional seinen manga over anything from shounen magazines because even if they take a turn in quality, at least they will End within my lifetime HFKJSDHKDSHFD and this really is a joke: mostly as a way to combat the last 15 years of shounen elitists coming at me for liking things published in different magazines while also, in a slightly self deprecating way, pointing out how a lot of series in other magazine demographics usually either end at a natural stopping point or get canned unceremoniously with no conclusion (although shounen magazines are no stranger to the latter either LOL the nature of magazine publishing........) compared to just going on for hundreds of chapters after the quality took a nosedive

but make no mistake, despite how a lot (and i mean a LOT) of shoujosei is cancelled early before it can really start to get bad (or it gets trapped in an eternal hiatus because of magazine changes, or it just ends normally LOL), there are still plenty of series that went on way too long or struggled because of their length. some are worse than others: i remember Special A being solid but with a serious plateauing problem in like the latter half where it felt stagnant and boring (albeit not egregious or anger inducing or anything). but then theres other stuff like. hkjfdajhkgrlfjd. Peach Girl my beloved and beloathed <3 HHRJKFJRFEd and dont even talk to me about Vampire Knight or Black Bird. don't even say those words to me

and of course getting cancelled early can also give a series a great opportunity to fumble the bag horrendously in 3 chapters or less: one of my favourite shoujo manga of all time, Penguin Revolution, has an absolutely hilarious last chapter in that you can feel how much the author was like "SHIT FUCK I NEED TO WRAP THINGS UP RIGHT NOW" so hard that i cant even be mad about it LOL

and with that as a preamble: last night i finished reading A Devil and Her Love Song/Akuma to Love Song and well. um.,

quick TW: because of the topics that the manga touches on, I am going to talk a little bit about sexual assault, specifically sexual assault of a minor, and suicide. i will do it somewhat frankly because i want to take it seriously and not beat around the bush and i will do my best, but feel free to let me know if im off-base

SO the first half of the series is really solid, specifically with the characters. Maria in the beginning, especially with the bullying arc, was really engaging as someone so (intentionally or otherwise) neurodivergently coded. and The Boys: Shin and Yusuke were also really strong - moreso on Yusuke's end as like, a foil to Maria's complete inability to mask, Yusuke is like the king of masking. but even Shin, despite everything that comes later (and we'll get to that. by god we will get to that) was also interesting as like a foil in a different direction: a person resigned to his loneliness compared to Maria's drive to connect despite her struggles. And despite how sidelined the girls get, in theory I really loved Ayu and Tomoyo's connection to Maria and the whole squad as well (can't help but love a mean girl redeemed and a shy but secret goth kid respectively)

the series starts to take a turn for the worse after the new school bullying storyline and into the beginning of the Anna Situation. im gonna refer to this Anna, the friend of Maria's from her old catholic school who lost her voice as Anna (friend). it seems clunky but we'll come back to that LOL

i actually didn't hate the whole situation, i found Anna pretty compelling in her anger and resentment and even cruelty, and i was invested in seeing how her relationship with Maria would pan out. unfortunately she herself was basically forgotten about after she moves away to america and instead a lot of the situation was spent focusing on Shin's turmoil which was where his character started to. test me.

this is where Maria's backstory with her mother comes in: maria was born from the rape of her 14 year old mother, who then committed suicide with a preschooler Maria in her arms because of the turmoil and the way she and Maria were treated in the aftermath. this is. an absolutely unreal turn. really fucking dark and tough topic, but i had an inkling of hope! the series was handling its first like, 30 chapters with a surprising amount of care despite some clumsiness...

and the thing is i love a lot of stories that attempt to handle dark topics in loud, fumbling ways as long as theres a sense of compassion and honesty in it you know? and compassion and honest really is the thing, i actually prefer a messy but earnest story about dark and sad events compared to something that knows all the correct words to say while still dancing around serious topics (this is a problem i run into often in recent years. i think its a selfconciousness in storytelling that makes me feel like im being talked down to you know?)

but there is a difference between fumbling a bit an dropping the ball entirely. and MAN that ball was dropped HARD when you bring in the american soldier kidnapper and rapist of the main character's middleschool aged mother and try to turn him into some "redeemed" priest goofy crybaby dad character for the main character to forgive and reconnect with. but we'll get to that, i need to get back to shin

Shin learns from Anna (friend) about Maria's past and how Maria had forgotten it all because of the trauma, but may remember when she's held by others. not wanting to retraumatize her, and believing not remembering her past is what's best for her, he starts distancing himself from her. he also tells the other boys, the blonde bitches (Yusuke and Kurosu (we'll get to him later i prommy)) that have a crush on Maria as well about this, essentially deciding for Maria that she should never learn her past and attempting to control her relationships with other boys behind her back. THIS is intensely possessive and paternalistic WHICH in a vacuum COULD BE a really interesting, dark, but prescient and complex major character flaw to explore (especially in a story written for young women and girls like a manga serialized in Margaret would be). unfortunately the story never grapples with it, its framed like your classic possessive-but-like-in-a-sexy-fantasy-way despite being written in an incredibly embarassing and pathetic manner

like dear GOD i wanted nothing more than him to get some sense knocked into him by the blonde bitches. i LOVE a good character arc where a shojo manga love interest with possessive tendencies learns to respect his gf's autonomy its a classic!! especially with Maria's past, learning that helping someone with trauma means being there for her, not controlling her life behind her back! so much potential there

but alas. all we got was Shin hiding in the shadows from Maria for several volumes until, during an argument where Maria remembers her past and has a panic attack, he attempts to force himself on her and gets his hand hurt in the process. and. god. this is a shojo manga trope i Do Not Care For, honestly it is one of the few things that'll sour me complete on something:

the plotline where through a series of very bizarre circumstances the main love interest will sexually assault (or attempt to) the main character and then get really mopey about it (ouuhhhh im the baad guy how could i do thisssss i feel so sorrrrrrry for myself) and then the narrative will bend over backwards to say that UMMM ACTUALLY its okay the main character wasn't upset about that! it was something else! she didn't think it was rape!! she's cool with it!!! don't feel bad love interest guy!!! LITERALLY i hate it so much. the next several volumes spends so much time on Shin trying to make him feel better about his hand injury and how everything he did was okay because Maria loves him and it was PAINFUL so so frustrating

which brings me to the other guys, the blond bitches. Yusuke is mvp we know this, especially in the early volumes. but after he realized maria's in love with Shin no matter what and he has no chance, he also becomes frustrating because all his edges get sanded off, he's still a wonderful friend to Maria (although he unfortunately drinks Shin's koolaid and also hides her past from her) but he completely stops pushing Shin to be better which makes both characters worse. he was so interesting as the king of masking, such a relatable character type but MAN things went downhill

earlier in the series before Shin tries to push himself on Maria and I was still a bit sympathetic to him, i was thinking like damn. Maria should just get with Shin because she likes him but also setup a polycule where the two blonde bitches can orbit around and keep shin in check LOL

and kurosu. im going back to kurosu finally. a third anime boy has hit the love triangle. hes contentious for very valid reasons but the thing is. i kinda liked him? OKAY okay he has serious SERIOUS personal space issues which were played a little too much for laughs and we'll get to his relationship with Maria's father in a moment but i couldnt help but relate to a big dumb seemingly outgoing but still distant kid who talks too much about horny shit. Yusuke is just like me fr but. also. Kurosu is just like me (idiot highschooler edition) frrrrrrrrrrrrrr sorry i do see a bit of myself in him. hell i even see a bit of myself (dumb possessive middleschooler edition) in the earlier versions of Shin (before you know. he went off the rails), and i think thats whats so frustrating: these characters start with ideas that are ALMOST relatable and intriguing character flaws and then it just descends into madness

and back on kurosu's relationship with Maria's biological father, it is pretty fucked that he hides the fact that he knows Maria is the daughter of the child his adoptive father figure raped for so long, and its especially fucked he brought Maria to the church where maria's bio dad is now a priest taking care of orphans as like a way to "reunite" them and show that "he's changed" and such, but this is really a problem less with the characters and more with the way the story's themes are coalescing in general. The character of Kurosu himself was quite interesting as like a foil to the foils of maria and yusuke, simultaneously really good at masking while also not being good at ALL. and I loved that he got on Shin's case to stop being so possessive and weird about maria. And not to be all "he's literally neurodivergent and a minor" but i can't get all that mad at a 15 year old who (as revealed really quickly in a random chapter near the end) who had to leave his abusive father and scared abused mother under really traumatic circumstances and then suddenly was taken in by a seemingly kind priest trying so hard to defend said priest. i think theres something very compelling and emotionally resonant there: grappling with the the fact that someone you love, someone who treats you with such kindness, someone who you think saved you even, could have been so cruel to your other loved ones.

i know i have a bajillion experiences like that (much smaller scale things like finding out a person who was nice to u is bullying others, or more serious things. im sure im not the only one who's got crazy shit happening with cousins and aunties and uncles and such). like it changes things: you can't just sit idle about it, but you also don't have the authority to confront anyone, you can't go back to the way things were before and there's an irreparable distance between you, but you don't know how to move forward other than letting that distance grow. I think theres something here!!! but unfortunately, the series as a whole was largely uninterested with anything other than turning the main character's mother's rapist into a doting father type character out of nowhere, treating the aforementioned rape as if it was just a little "mistake"

when i read or watch something and i have a very strong reaction to it, good or bad, i often like to look at reviews afterwards. a lot of people seem to think theres no reason to look at reviews if you already have your own opinion, but i personally find them really helpful to get new perspectives and sometimes find catharsis with others with similar perspectives to mind. and so i was looking at some fan reviews and this review's first line killed me

THEYRE NOT WRONG the full sentence is "This story really reminds me of Usagi Drop, just for the way that the ending butchers my enjoyment fo the entire series" which is VERY true, but also its very true more specifically n the sense of WHY on gods green earth is this series trying to frame the rape of a young teenager as a romantic thing (albeit in akuma to love song's case the circumstances are less grooming and more violence, which just makes it bizarre in a different way). but this person's review is great, it just puts the problems with the series in such a succinct way: it swiftly turns from a decent little drama about teenagers learning to grapple with communication into Rape Apologia: The Manga.

all in all i think the big problem with akuma to love song is how much the story is just uninterested in the topics it brings up. its not a matter of taking on tough subject matter and handling it in a slightly clumsy way, its a matter of taking on tough subject matter and then trying to tie it all up in a neat little black and white bow. the series best part of the series, which is kind of seen in the section where all the kids go to the beach together, is when the characters try to learn to communicate and be honest with eachother despite their difficulties. but that was forgotten and thrown away for some very bizarrely cruel melodrama, brushing aside one of the biggest victims: Anna (mother), the girl who was assaulted and the abandoned by all her loved ones in the process. a teenage girl alone with just a toddler. a character the series had no interest in, not her life or thoughts or agency. really depressing

also yeah maria's teenage mother has the same name (and looks???) as one of her former best friends. and you know. thats what got me kind of thinking. with how much Anna (friend) was like completely forgotten about. i honestly wonder how the writing for this series went. this is why ive been so frustrated after all, its highs are so good but its lows are so so SO disastrous. it appears to have been in a biweekly version of Margaret, im unsure if it was published in every issue though. if it was, maybe rushing to get out something every two weeks was in part to blame for how downhill the writing got? i dont think manga should be published more than once a month at most, i think its unethical working conditions for the sake of a worse product and its bad for everyone involved.

and i know its not really considered standard in art and media criticism to focus so much on the working conditions and mindset the author was in while creating. looking at art as itself divorced from its circumstances and death of the author (as in the actual essay meaning like the author is not god and the intended interpretation is no more or less important than the audiences) and so on and so forth. but i can't help it ive always been like this LOL if something bad i wonder how the creator felt creating it....

but anyway. now. one thing i will give the series: they did not randomly pair off the remaining ensemble cast at the end. one thing about shoujo manga, especially from the 2000s is that if there are an equal number of boys and girls, they will be unceremoniously split into couples by the end regardless of how compatible they are HJKDLDHFJKD i was so scared when i realized there were three boys and maria had two gal pals. i was so scared. but we were spared from that at least orz

i do want you to know something though. despite all my criticism, the thing about this all: i love garbage. i love trash. i will read like anything even if its bad as long as i think i can get SOMETHING out of it. even if that something is just "wow that was bad". do you remember the aforementioned Black Bird? what did i get out of that? i dunno, probably just something absolutely crazy to read in a public library as a 17 year old LOL. i love garbage melodramatic soap opera bullshit so much

but i think what frustrated me so much about akuma to love song, as mentioned before, is that it was like. genuinely really good! in some parts! its the potential that is killing me i think. its one thing to read some big dumb and questionable melodrama knowing what youre getting into in the first few chapters, and its another thing to start out written with such emotional intelligence only to take a complete and utter nosedive so dramatically

is this how shounen manga readers feel all the time. dear god.

but well. i guess i still got something out of 90 chapters of this. a really strong start. some good art. and a what-not-to-do manual for the latter half

[lassieposting]

Hi i havent read the books post-resurrection so im kinda lost on why you dont like phase 2 val? She was easily one of my favourite characters ever, she was flawed (and the books took time to acknowledge them) and relatable and still really admirable (intelligent, brave, loyal) and i really liked her and really appreciated that she wasn’t perfect unlike every other young adult heroines. What went wrong😢😢😢😢

Okay I'm gonna put this under a cut because I very strongly dislike phase 2 val and I know it bugs people who don't feel the same, so. Dead dove dont eat

Okay so first off, phase 1 val and phase 2 val are completely different people. literally. phase 1 val was based on an ex-friend of lardo's who used to apparently be involved pretty heavily in like, editing the books and "she'd react like this" or "val wouldn't say that", and that val she was one of my favourite fictional characters from when book one came out to the release of resurrection. phase 2 val is based on his whiny little girlfriend who likes to start shit with 14yos on twitter, and you can absolutely tell she is no longer the same person. so the long story short of "what went wrong" is "the original irl val's friendship with dirty laundry ended for whatever reason and he decided to retcon her entire personality to suit his gf"

Phase 2 Val, in my opinion:

Weak, like won't even fight back when she gets jumped bc boo fucking hoo she's so awful, bitch get up already, nobody signed up for ur pity party

Whiny. So fucking whiny. All the time. And she's the POV character so it's inescapable.

"Pacifist" but in a really pathetic virtue-signalling kind of way like "Oh, I've done such terrible thiiiiiiiiiiings I'm so awfulllllllllllll look how good I'm trying to be nowwwwwwww pay attention to meeeeeeee" kind of way, it was both boring and a massive eye roll. It's a book about magic and asskicking. Kick some ass. We're here for escapism not "realistic" whining. Yes, irl she'd be a mess. As an author it's his job to strike a balance between the "realism" he wants to portray and making his readers so depressed and done with his heroine that they quit reading, and in my case, he absolutely failed.

Everything must be about her at all times. Skug is having personal problems? Fuck him, they're about her now. Everything is about how it affects her, and her feelings, and be damned to the person actually having the problem. Fucks phase 2 val cain gives about anyone except herself: 0

Bitter and jaded. Which yeah I get why but it's like jesus christ what do we get out of reading about this? It's not even good bitter and jaded where it makes you empathise or admire her strength in adversity or whatever, she's just become a really nasty person with no redeeming features that I could see. Which? Landy outright said she's based on his gf? If your boyfriend is gonna drag ur entire personality through the dirt like that and write "you" as just a collection of incredibly negative traits...yikes.

Really ungrateful about the awesome life she leads? Which bugs me bc I fucking hate mundanity and knowing that all there is to life is fucking working and bad mental health. I would kill to live her life. All she does is moan about it. Like? Quit then. Fuck off back to being a mortal if it's that bad and live the shitty life you wanted to get away from in the first place. That way we'd get no more books, and quite honestly, thank fuck for that. But anyway, she needs to pick one, stick with it, and stop complaining about whatever she chose.

The girl wallows in self pity. And if someone else isn't indulging her enough, she'll wallow harder and louder and more obviously. Yawn.

Her POV is now so depressing to read that Resurrection literally tanked my mental health. I'm not kidding. I fell off the self-harm wagon, the suicidal thoughts came back, reading her dissociating would make me dissociate, I just did not cope whatsoever. Being in her head was just like being in my head during my worst points, and I hate myself, so naturally, I hate her too. Like I get why some people like phase two val. I get that her depression is "realistic" and that trauma does just make some people completely dislikeable and self-pitying, and if people want to read about that, then...sure. you do you, my dudes. But I live that reality, I am that person whose trauma made her a dysfunctional, isolated bitch, and I hate, passionately, having it infest the media I consume to escape.

Essentially if I wanted to engage with a bitter, spiteful, depressed piece of shit in her 20s who pushes everyone away and sucks at everything, I'd live my gd life. Yall see me tryna engage with my real life? Hell nah I'm on tumblr dot com burying my head up the ass of whatever fandom will force my brain to produce some s e r o t o n i n and that is what I need this series for

Also? The dynamic she had with skug in phase one? "Until the end"? "You save me, I save you, that's how we work"? Forget that, it doesn't exist anymore. I stopped reading after Midnight, because she was written like he was a coworker she could barely tolerate. They went from "Lardo confirms on twitter that they talked on the phone a bunch while she was in america and he'd always ask her to come home" to "she comes home and proceeds to blank him for five months while she sits in her fuckin multimillionaire's mansion feeling sorry for herself". Their friendship completely disintegrated, they were totally separated for most of the book, she's written as not giving a single shit about him. She treated him like dirt, and their dynamic basically felt like it was becoming "Local Man With History Of Gravitating Towards Abusive Women Makes Same Terrible Choices For Fifth Time" and? that was the point of no return to me. he supports her unconditionally, no matter what he's going through at the time, he's walked on broken bones to try and get to her when she was in danger, she can tell him anything and he'd never use it against her. I did not, for one second in phase two, believe she felt the same about him. tbh it felt like she could - and wanted to - drop him at the first opportunity and not even feel bad about it, and that's not the dynamic that made me so emotionally attached to phase one. i signed up for "until the end", not whatever bullshit phase two has going on.

Apparently she's "less depressed" now and their relationship is "better" in the books published since midnight, which! might well be true. but I haven't read them and don't intend to, and she's gone from one of my favourite fictional characters ever (which! was impressive! because i almost never bond with the female lead - i normally get attached exclusively to the character i crush on, which would be skug here. val was the first female lead i actually cared about since xena! so im deeply salty about losing her!) to a character i? honestly prefer to pretend doesn't exist. i live in war era dead men/generals crackship land because that way, i don't have to acknowledge her or the fuckin character assassination phase 2 pulled on her.

so yeah, no hate towards phase one val at all. phase one val was awesome and flawed and gave me something to aspire to despite my shitty mental health and trauma, and if she'd kept her original personality she might still have been those things. but the original "real life" val is no longer involved (and doesn't talk to landy at all anymore, apparently), and the val based on landy's insufferable gf? i cannot get behind her at all ever, four for skug and none for phase two val cain bye

(tldr; you're not missing anything by quitting after spx)

[keigosbirdie]

Hi Birdie! I'm a little late, but I just wanted to tell you that you don't have to apologize because the way you see the reader doesn't suit everyone, that's totally normal. How you describe the reader is subjective to each author, and that shouldn't be a problem. As an author, we are not in the heads of our readers, we cannot know what they feel or think. People also need to understand that writing a story that is 100% objective and accessible to everyone is impossible. (1/3)

Authors put a bit of themselves into their writing, what they think, like, etc., and x readers are no exception.If some of your readers can't figure this out, then you're not the problem. I suspect you must know all this already, but I think it's important to remember it, because being too nice all the time risks falling back on you. I don't know you personally but you seem like a great person to me, I wouldn't want people to take advantage of your kindness to be basically mean. (2/3)

Don't let yourself get crushed <3 (sorry if there are any mistakes, english is not my native language ><) (3/3)

🥺 thanks for your thoughtful message! Since reader inserts are meant to engage the reader themselves, a lot of people have real specific ways they think the "reader" character should be written. I've been told over and over and over to be as vague as possible at all times, especially with any physical discriptions. I try to keep it vague, but im happy with the way i write right now, because I feel totally immersed when I reread them. That's my only goal I guess? That i have stories tailored to me that are fun to read and write. It just happened to be a big plus that they seemed to resonate with so many of you as well ;u;

I dont have to share them to enjoy them. I've been sharing hardly any at all lately, and thats actually been a lot more fun for me. Theres no pressure to appease others, or feel like i have to share things that are precious to me. and I dont have the ever mounting anxiety fandom gives me haha. I can draw or write about my bird boy whenever i want to and i do it for no reason other than its fun and makes me feel good. Thats why i made this blog, so its sad that its become such a cause of anxiety for me. Not just cause of reader stuff but fandom things in general.

Anyways! I finally found my happy medium. I appreciate everyone so much who has been kind to me and has enjoyed the things that i make. It makes me so so so happy, even when im not feeling well, that there are so many sweet people out there 🥺

[bigskydreaming]

Im asking this genuinely so pls dont yell at me; when you say that those using trigger warnings dont care about their readers’ mental health and wellbeing, what else are trigger warnings supposed to be for? To make sure people don’t enter fics that have material that would harm them. Just like tv shows that warn about nudity or violence or what have you. Its a rating system, theyre warnings. Tagging for rape or underage ARE the looking-out-for-readers thing. Past that, it is on readers to decide

I try not to yell at anyone engaging in good faith, I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but I would rather be engaged with than ignored...the latter is when my volume goes up, lol.

But in answer to your question, it comes down to the fact that trigger warnings are well established enough in fandom by now, that they exist as a kind of social contract.

In short, its EXPECTED that you provide trigger warnings, and that if you don’t have them, someone will bring that up at some point.

Problem is, this counter-productively works against what trigger warnings are actually FOR.....once we reach a point (which we’ve long since reached)....where a lot of people are only including the trigger warnings because of the social contract that expects them to have them, and not ACTUALLY because they’re prioritizing their readers’ well-being.

Something I see a LOT after trigger warnings is the phrase or sentiment “enter at your own risk”....and the phrasings are so, so key to what I’m talking about. 

Take a small sampling and just look for what I’m describing and I’m fairly certain you won’t have to go far to find an example of a fic where the tone of the author is not one of concern for readers, but preemptive concern for potential backlash from readers.

And these are two very different things.

Like, we all know how to read and interpret tone and nuance. Its genuinely not that hard to tell the difference between a sincere expression of wanting readers to be aware of potentially triggering content, and a faux-expression of that when really, the only thing you’re worried about triggering is a negative reception from people, and you want to get ahead of that by making it clear from the get go that hey, you did your job, you warned readers, and thus nobody has any grounds to say anything about your content itself.

Because also too there’s the fact that trigger warnings are inherently fallible. They rely on the author’s own AWARENESS of their content and everything it might include......but a racist author isn’t going to place a trigger warning for using their characters as mouthpieces for even blatant white supremacist ideology. 

A genuinely predatory author (and yes, they absolutely do exist, and its willful stubbornness that people rely on to pretend that like, for some bizarre reason, only genuinely predatory people don’t partake in this otherwise global hobby of reading and writing fiction, like what even is that, how do you arrive at that conclusion, that like, actual pedophiles are so busy preying on ‘real life’ teenagers in their zip code 24/7 that they just don’t have TIME to go online and cultivate predatory relationships with real life teenagers via social media? That doesn’t make any sense!)

But anyway, a genuinely predatory author, is absolutely NOT going to tag or place trigger warnings for pedophilia, etc....because they don’t WANT the things they write perceived that way.

People trying to normalize incest are not always going to tag for incest because they want to DISTANCE the cute, sweet dynamic between two ‘only sorta brothers’ as other than the kind of incest that destroys families...regardless of the reality that most cases of incest are the LATTER and its the FORMER that’s so rare it barely exists. 

And that sort of thing is how we get terms like dub-con and pseudo-incest and ‘consensual underage sex’ when its describing a relationship between a minor and adult....because this is mitigating, distancing language. Its entire reason for existing is to make unpalatable content seem more palatable.

And especially in Batfandom, we KNOW this.

Because we all, practically universally, give Devin Grayson crap for describing the rape in Nightwing #93 as ‘nonconsensual sex’ and go.....THATS NOT A THING!

And then half of fandom turns around and....acts like that and similar stuff...IS A THING.

That doesn’t work! LOL. It just...doesn’t.

Or another example, because abuse can be just as triggering as rape.....like, for me, personally, I’m a survivor of both, and yes, both CAN be triggering. But not as much as people might think....like, just reading a depiction of these things doesn’t trigger me.

Its, like you were saying at the get go, yes, a matter of surprise.....the kind of thing that CAN be warned for, and prepared for, and its the sheer unexpectedness that’s usually the trigger. 

Like.....I went off a few weeks ago about reading a story that was supposed to be about Dick’s brothers learning the truth about what led him to take the Spyral mission and what happened in Forever Evil. That’s what the summary said, that was it, that was the only thing it led me to expect about the story. So understandably, I go into the story expecting it to be sympathetic to Dick. I’m looking for catharsis from it honestly, a salve for the many fics and canon events that blamed and punished him for something I don’t consider his fault, right?

And then towards the end....I get Jason punching Dick again, before hugging him, because that’s just how he reluctantly shows love or whatever.

This genuinely triggered me, yeah. Its why I got so upset about it. Because I was blindsided, I had no way to prepare for it, because I went in expecting catharsis for a story that bothered me due to its victim blaming, and instead I got the author heaping on more of the same abuse we already saw in canon.....with zero awareness that’s what she was doing. 

So....that’s absolutely something I wrestled with should I message the author and ask them to add a trigger warning or not? Because I genuinely could have used one. It would have helped. I would have avoided that story if I had any notion that might crop up in it, because frankly, that’s not something I had any interest in reading.

But problem is, there’s only really two realistic outcomes there. If she was open to hearing a genuine request for her to be aware that her content contained triggering material for a reader....chances are, she probably would have just edited it and taken that out entirely. It was just one line. Easy enough to do. It certainly didn’t add anything.

Problem is....there’s an equal and opposite likely outcome....that she’d get defensive, call this unsolicited criticism, and double down on the idea that what she had written wasn’t abuse, because obviously she doesn’t condone abuse, so she wouldn’t have written that plain and simple. It has to be acknowledged that a lot of authors ARE innately defensive about social content in their work, and not open to hearing they’ve done something offensive or triggering....because that’s like...literally the basis of the ‘no unsolicited criticism’ movement in fandom, even though being critical of toxic ideology expressed in content is NOT the same as offering criticism of someone’s writing in general. 

So you see what I mean? A trigger warning COULD genuinely help in that situation....but our fandom environment simply flat out is not conducive for readers to be at all confident that they even CAN come forward and alert an author that they delved into an offensive, even harmful take with their content and be well received no matter HOW they phrase it....

For much the same reasons I mentioned in that other post. People are more likely to instinctively jump to the defense of the person WRITING the content that offended or did actual emotional harm....than the person simply trying to say, backed by their own lived experience of....being offended or experiencing emotional harm....hey, this is a problem for me and I would appreciate it being regarded as such....

Otherwise, what is even the POINT of this entire system of trigger warnings in the first place? If a problem for a reader isn’t regarded as worthy of attention in and of itself.....at least, not in comparison to whatever problem that READER’S problem creates for the WRITER.

You see what I’m saying? For this, and a lot of other reasons, trigger warnings are innately fallible. They rely on an honor code system, and the uncomfortable truth is none of us are actually naive enough to believe everyone in fandom is innately honorable enough to honor that....if they were, would we have as much cases of anon hate, spite fics, etc?

But fandom as a whole looked at the trigger warning system and decided well....its good enough. Because its not like I’m proposing a viable alternative, its not like I have a BETTER system in mind, offhand. All I do have is the point that well...no...its NOT good enough as is....because for a ton of reasons, there’s a ton of cases in which there’s a ton of people for which it flat out doesn’t work for or benefit at all.

But when this comes up to any degree, in any capacity whatsoever....and the only thing people fall back on is well, I tagged it, or I used trigger warnings what more do you want, or its good enough for me so that’s what matters, or just....

“I did what I was supposed to per the social contract about trigger warnings, so if anything goes wrong in your reading experience at this point, that’s entirely on you.”

Like, does that make sense?

Basically, there’s a world of difference between:

This is a problem that still needs solving because the solution provided now is not all-encompassing or inclusive....

And....

This is a problem that’s already been solved as far as I’m concerned, and I’m utilizing that solution so any further problems are just in the mind of the reader and have nothing to do with reality, let alone me and my work.

Again, as I said above....its the difference between genuinely engaging with other members of your fandom community with actual concern for THEIR fandom experience.....or faking engagement with other members of your fandom community when your only real concern is YOUR fandom experience, and at most, the experiences of anyone who already is of like minds to you on a subject.

Hopefully that answers your question or clarifies my stance there, anon. And thank you for actually engaging on this. It feels a bit like shouting into the void a lot of the time, lol.

[wildernessuntothemselves]

I just realized I am really a slut for this blog or maybe that is the wrong word? Im committed to this space....does this make me married or engaged to this blog ? slut seems so non-committal because I am very invested in everything. This isnt a YAMQN question but after just posting my long comment I went to another blog to check on an impeccable fic update. Instead of asking the random thought and question I wanted to ask there I immediately thought let me go ask mort and my other fellow mort lovers ( we should have fandom name for this blog/mort/yamqn). Anyways sorry for the looong intro to a very basic and random brain fart of a question. here it comes,

Do you imagine a voice in your head when you read the posts of the blog owners? Like for me when i read the answers/questions or anything written by mort I have a very specific made-up voice in my head, that i for one have never heard before but my brain just registers it as this are morts words and so they are read out in morts voice (that is made up). I just realized this because I went to the other blog that I've been following got years and the author-nims made up voice I made for them startled me because I've mostly only been on your blog for the past few weeks. So, it was strange hearing the different made up voice in my head. And I only have made up voices for my 4 favorite bloggers (you included) other blogs just have a generic computer/or rather brain automated voice they all sound the same/have no character. Like I dont consciously choose to do that it just happens.

Sorry for the random question I'm just trying to see if I'm crazy or if this is normal. So to reiterate my mad rambling does anyone else have a made up but specific voice for mort or any other blogger when they read their posts? (like you've never heard their voice before but in your head when you read their words there is a different voice used to read their words? And also for you mort do you read your anon/or non anon followers that you are familiar with in a certain voice in your head?

I'm sorry this is dumb but I want to know even though it feels idiotic to ask.

"Im committed to this space....does this make me married or engaged to this blog ?" married seems about right 😂 we're all in a committed polycule

"we should have fandom name for this blog/mort/yamqn" morticians? 💀😂

now onto the brain fart: no i actually don't have a voice at all. it's just... nothing? no sound really. not even my own voice. i only hear a voice when i'm imaging someone speaking that i have heard their voice before like if i'm recalling my friend saying something or imagining them saying something but if i read their text for instance i don't hear a voice at all. i'd love to know what my voice sounds like to you though

what about you guys? anyone else has voices?

[teashadephoenix]

11 Questions

I got tagged by @pomegranate-belle <3 I'm sorry this took for fucking ever?!!??

I’ll tag @lioness--hart @fox-in-the-library and @whitegodiva if you guys want to do it? And anybody else, obvi <3

1. How long have you been writing?

Actually sitting down to type stories out? Eight years old. I've been making shit up since I could talk. I have it on good authority I am entertaining to listen to.

2. What are the major themes of your current wip(s)? LONG ANSWER

omg I really dont know. I spent several hours over several days banging on this question in my head both in front of the computer and away from it only to come to the horrified realisation that I Don't Know. *gay panic*

I know the things I like to write about. I like to write about free exchange of culture, of mutual respect and fraternity with your fellow humans (which leads to themes of unity, unconditional love not only of people but of the world, and the gray area of what it means to protect those things without giving in to hate, indifference and intolerance. THE GRAY AREA IS WHERE I THRIVE.)

I like to write about intergenerational relationships (which leads to themes of obsolescence, changing of the guard, and how people, in general, not individuals, never really change. Like, there's For a Good Time graffiti on the walls at Pompeii. That is HILARIOUS.)

I write a lot about family, both born and found. (Everybody has a place and everybody is loved.) I write about mental illness and being queer (which all by itself leads to themes of not knowing your place in the world even if you have one. Frequently comes up against the previously mentioned theme)

So yeah. I don't know. My big WIP, the Aalee Rise series, is about a young woman on the cusp of adulthood going out into the world for the first time. It's her idealism vs reality. The other main characters in that cast are all foils re: various facets of societal structure and ideologies. One challenges her idea of government, another her idea of religion. She falls in love, her loyalties to her brother and parents are tested, she makes mistakes, she fights monsters and saves the world. A lot.

tldr; It's my sandbox and I just wanted to build castles in it. I don't really know if the castles will mean anything when I'm done. I hope they do.

3. What do you want people to take away from your story once they’ve read it?

My greatest ambition is that I could ever write a hero as beloved as the heroes I read about growing up, figures that reminds not to give up hope, to get back up when we're down, that the dark times ahead of us will come to pass.

At best, if I've done that, I'll be ecstatic and satisfied.

At worst, as long as you had a good time, if you didn't throw the book across the room in disgust, I'll take it.

4. Would you be excited if people write fanfiction about your wip(s)?

YAAAAS. I would literally never read it because Im terrified of accidentally absorbing someone's ideas and making them my own bc Christ alive that's a legal nightmare, but yes that would make my life.

And you can have my firstborn if you send me fanart.

5. What’s your go-to writing beverage?

Tea. Really strong and sweet. I make a fresh quart each morning and usually go through it by the end of day.

6. Who is your favorite oc? Tell me about them!

OMG ALL OF MY CHILDREN ARE PRECIOUS. (it's Aalee.)

Aalee Dering is the eighteen-year-old protagonist of my Aalee Rise series.  When we meet her in volume one (Worldwalk) she and her twin brother are setting off on their coming-of-age journey around the country. Her people, the Noruahai, have defended humanity for generations from unearthly creatures called asmic, and if she wants to become a licensed Marshal like her famous mother (and wow, she really, really does) she'll have to prove herself on her Worldwalk.

Aalee thinks with her heart first and always. She loves beautiful things, and all things are beautiful to her. She's quick to cry and struggles with anger, as well as distraction; she has trouble keeping focus. Good for getting into trouble. Not so good when it comes to being a responsible adult.

It would probably be easier if she wasn't of two minds on every single decision she has to make. She empathises with everyone, which can be paralysing-- how can she fight someone whose point of view she gets?

7. Do you feel that mistakes are important learning tools in the writing journey?

Mistakes are learning tools of life, darling. In writing they generally aren't the types that will destroy friendships, health, financial status, etc, which means they're generally easier to bounce back from. Unless you commit career suicide in some way...

8. Rank your ocs by their capability in a footchase (either running after or from smth, your choice)

1. Fall from the Aalee Rise series. He's a complicated human. Without getting into the context of the world he's from, he's hard to explain; but the short version is he's half-ghost so he can basically turn himself into the wind.

2. Rosie Frey from Color of the Stars but only when she's a lion. In her human form she's pretty normal.

3. Lynn Blythe (or any of the other vampires) from Echoes of Eden, because they're cheating cheaterfaces who use mystical vampy powers to be stronger and faster than humans

4. Sendmarshal Henley from the Aalee Rise series. Probably the fastest regular human. Imagine the most beautiful, tall, leggy black woman you can, all lean muscle and elegant grace, and now imagine her scooping you up and zipping out of danger with an easy smile on her face... *fans self* I stan.

5. When running headlong into danger to save someone? Aalee Dering. When running away? Frustratingly, satirically slow. She's one of those idiot heroes who stops to make sure everyone got away okay so Fall's always running back to grab her ("MOVE, IDIOT" "But that little old lady--" "FIRE-BREATHING MONSTERS. MOVE.")

9. Does your wip have romance? tell me about it!! if not tell me about a friendship/important relationship in your wip!! MORE LENGTHY BLAH

Relationships are the driving force of my writing. How one loves or is loved by other people, how they relate and engage with others, is how one grows, in real life and in fiction. There are a number of relationships in all my series that I'm fond of for various reasons. (For instance, even though she cannot STAND him, I'm eager af to write Eden and Lynn's relationship in Echoes of Eden because of how complicated it is.)

And as a rule all of my characters are queer or questioning unless otherwise stated, and I ship everybody with basically everybody else, and almost everybody has a love story in their history. (at least, their parents certainly do because I am a gross vile romantic and these fuckers came from somewhere.)

That having been said, for the sake of brevity I'll stick with Aalee Rise and limit myself to the Big Three: Aalee and her brother Elles, Aalee and her best friend Norah, and Aalee and Fall.

FAMILY: Aalee and Elles are twins. Born together and never separated, which stands out in a world where families are broken up by chaotic circumstances and random death on a regular basis. Aalee is easily distracted and has difficulty communicating her thoughts, so she tends to act on impulse; Elles is forever the cool head and the hand grabbing her by the back of the shirt to stop her from walking into danger. And after eighteen years of this... he's tired of it. He loves his sister, but he longs to see the world on his own terms, walk his own path. And Aalee doesn't share that sentiment. Not only doesn't share it, but is blown away when it comes into play. Her partner in crime wants to break away, and she does not take it very well. The first volume (Worldwalk) explores how their relationship suffers, grows, and changes due to this break.

FRIEND: Aalee's best friend of ten years is Norah. They met as little girls in a monster-ravaged town; Norah was entertaining the youngest orphans with a story and Aalee joined in. The pair of them spent a long night keeping civilians from panicking while Marshals battled asmic beyond the walls of the bunker. They exchanged addresses and became penpals over the next few years, since both of their parents travelled and they were rarely in the same place at the same time. That changed suddenly when Norah lost her father. Since then, Norah's family and Aalee's have lived in the same town. Norah is her warm hand in the dark, her shoulder to cry on, the first person she tells any good news. for Norah, Aalee is the only person (at the beginning of the story, anyway) with whom she can be her real whole self. They love each other no matter what.

ROMANCE: And then there's Fall. Aalee meets Fall when she rescues him from being murdered in a back alley-- except, oops, turns out it was a sting operation to catch the killer because he's not actually the helpless filthy vagabond she assumed he was; he's actually a powerful Marshal who was on assignment. Stuck together for various reasons, he becomes a mentor to her on her worldwalk, while she blatantly digs into the mystery of who he is, which turns out to complicate their lives, the lives of their friends and families, randos they happens across, their enemies, and also God's. To say they fall in love with each other is an understatement of cosmic proportions. They choose each other.

10. Do you believe in the advice kill your darlings?

Yeah but I take the advice as intended; which is not, as most assume, kill your fave characters, but to get rid of that which does not work, even if you love it. That pearlescent line of dialogue, or that golden bit of allegory? Doesn't matter how much you love it and how proud of it you are, if it does. not. work. it HAS. TO. GO. (save it in a new file to reread when you feel down and scrap that shit from the main file.)

that said re: killing characters, in my youth I was very much of the George RedRum Martin camp of "KILL THEM ALL" but as Ive gotten older my main focal point has been "What purpose does their death serve?" Death is not the only sacrifice worth writing. So while I am not afraid to kill my characters, I do take the nature of their deaths in the writing very seriously. There has to be a point.

11. Do you prefer plotting or worldbuilding? Why?

WORLDBUILDING MANYEXCLAMATIONPOINTSGOHERE! Plotting is like the maths of writing. It's measurement, it's brickwork, it's demolition when the wall you put up last week is three feet too long and now you have to scrap it and start over. Vital. But not my favorite part.

Worldbuilding is the art. It's the music your OCs hum and the stories that they treasure and the faith that holds them up when the crap you throw at them might tear them down. It's the story behind the jacket they wear and it's the reason they nod to the altar when they enter a place of worship and it's the meaning of their names. It's the magic. How the world works, the little details that make it real to the reader because it's real for your characters, is my favorite part of writing.

[gemsofthegalaxy]

At 26 do i count as fandom old yet lmao ? Maybe not. but i saw a post (as usual) and a lot of people were like "as a fandom old, fandom used to mean more than Just Shipping and making wild aus that have nothing to do with the source material. We used to analyze and engage with the themes of the work"

And im here like? Um? Well. I can't relate on the shipping part of things, from my perspective shipping has always been a huge part of things. (Also, shipping does Not prevent you from also analyzing stuff. Um.)

Now I'm not fully sure but.. maybe it does seem like more stuff nowadays gets farther removed from canon, quicker? Or at least, Zany Aus used to be a little fewer/farther in between or at least take longer for the fandom to develop.

I have totally ancedotal theories about this

1. Fandom has become more normalized/mainstream and thus has more people in it. The more people, the more already popular things get even more popular. Shipping has always been comparatively more popular than other aspects of fandom, so its getting even more popular.

2. Not to mention, the platforms themselves (twitter tumblr tiktok) DO emphasize quick, easy-to-judge posts and materials, for fast sharing. that doest lend as well to long analysis posts and people dont usually expect to read long posts on social media. That does kinda suck! I actually quite like analysis! but, analysis isnt dead or anything (and if you, dear person reading this, want there to be more analysis.. nothing is stopping you from posting analysis, or sending asks to blogs that post about topics you like! Be the analyst you want to see in fandom!). It would be nice to have fandom space that looked a little different, but, alas.

3. As well, weird and Zany aus with totally different personalities or swaps or odd things have also always been a thing. If we are seeing more of these in new fandoms (idk tbh im not in any new fandoms? So i dont kno?) I think it miiiiiight have something to do with how shows are being released? Maybe?

In my experience, Weird Aus were often a thing that happened during hiatuses, after a show (or whatever) had completed at least one whole season of content over a few months, and needed to take a pause. The fandom didnt want to let hype die down, thus, things got Weird. But now we get everything all at once and we also go into a Hiatus right away, so maaaaaybe people are just skipping straight to it? They get thru the content so fast that there is less stopping to think? Idk.

But, yeah, the fandom i see the most Random Unrelated AUs with totally OOC characters is actually stucky (no hate! I also see a ton of really good quality fics with intriguing and bang on characterization) and that might be because its one of 2 fandom tags i actually follow, but aside from that it sense to me, because it's a very old fandom, has tons of content so of course some of it is gonna be, yknow, only okay, AND its got 2 very hot men that people yeah might just want to project onto (even if they change their entire personalities to do so.)

For the record ... even complete personality swap type aus CAN be well done, and draw on the source material heavily. They can also be shallow as fuck. But it's fully possible the author took time and dedicated much care into creating the circumstances that changed the characters so much while also keeping the themes of the source material. Maybe you still dont want to give the fic a chance and maybe it is actually shit, but....... you really dont know what the fic contains just from tags, and some fic writers are genuinely amazing at bringing together things that one would think wont work. Just saying!!

[ask-svt-hearteu]

Hogwarts! Wonwoo

Anon requested: “Hii ♡ I loved Joshua’s hogwarts au and I was wondering if you could pretty please do wonwoo’s too? 🙏🏻”

Genre: fluff

Word Count: 1848

not a lot of people really know his name

he’s just known around as the handsome ravenclaw bookworm

pureblood and heir to his family

but really chill about it 

people will seeing him sitting alone at the library and they’re like 

“who’s that”

“i dont know but i’ve seem him hanging around with junhui”

“well he’s cute”

wears these circle farmed glasses and people aren’t really sure if they’re real or not

at lunch, you’ll see him with his head in a book and pretending to listen to seokmin or someone

and slowly spooning food into his mouth without looking away from his book

and occasionally he’ll engage in conversation and joke around with seokmin or ask chan about his day

not really an athletic guy, just stands in the crowd cheering them on when something exciting happens

helps with the Quidditch strategies sometimes though

the only times he’ll ever get points docked is if he stayed past curfew in the library

people tell he all the time he’ll be chosen as perfect next year and he’s like no

“i dont want to guard the hall, i’d rather be reading”

best subjects are herbology and charms 

and has the best herbology grades in his year

in class he’ll be really quiet and looks like he’s just spacing out

but really, he really is paying attention or already knows the lesson

cause he’s the type to read the entire book within the first month, unless it's boring as hell

does his friend’s homework like once in a blue moon

and that’s after being bribed and convinced 

after coming back for forth year, all the girls pretty much noticed how puberty did him justice

half the school was pinning for a date

though this only lasted about a month after wonwoo gave them odd looks and turned them down

in reality he just didn’t know what to say because it was pretty obvious those girls only wanted him as an object or title 

and he happened to have a crush already

you were a fourth year, same as wonwoo

and had transfiguration and herbology with him as a slytherin

you didn’t really know who wonwoo was but as jihoon’s friend and class partner 

you knew they were friends from interactions 

but you and wonwoo just said hi occasionally and acknowledged each other in the hall ways

this changed when you and jihoon were failing miserably at collecting some liquid substance from a plant

“no stop stop that’s not it!” you whisper yell to jihoon 

“well then you do it then” he retorts, equally as stressed out as you

“i never said i could” 

“hmp, i’ll get wonwoo over here” he turns his head and subtlety motions to wonwoo to come over 

wonwoo just laughs quietly at you and jihoon’s work and patiently shows you how to do it

“ahh i see thanks a bunch wonwoo” 

“you welcome oh-” he gets dragged off to the side by jihoon

but that this point you were too focused on not failing the class and didn’t notice anything wrong

“i saw you over there” jihoon states 

“what? i didn’t do a thing!” wonwoo denies a little too quickly

“mhmm you looked back at y/n like 10 times while you were showing us. you even crinkled your nose at her” he says with raises eyebrows, daring him to deny again

“fine okay so what?” wonwoo replies, slightly embarrassed 

“so ask her out.”

“i don’t even know if she likes me, do you?” 

“well-” 

he stops short from the sound of your voice

“jihoon get over here im not doing all of this by myself”

jihoon simply shrugs his shoulder at wonwoo and leaves

shaking his head and adjusting his glasses, he goes back to reading his book

he finished his assignment within the first 5 minutes of class after all

after class you nod your head goodbye to jihoon and start walking with your friend

“i saw you there with wonwoo~” she sings happily

“what kinda of nonsense are you saying so loud” you roll you eyes

she quiets down, unaffected by you, “meaning i saw you and wonwoo! you two were totally flirting with each other” 

“i thought ravenclaws were supposed to be smart” 

but you couldn’t hind the redness on your cheeks at her remark

“mhmm. anyways let’s go to lunch and eat! do you know you need 46g of protein per day” 

“yes yes i know this is the 2nd time you’ve told me this month” 

“well i wouldnt have to if you eat properly. come sit with me! im gonna make sure you eat!” 

shaking your head fondly, you agree

eating at other house’s tables is technically not allowed but everyone does it anyways so it doesn’t matter

you find your self greeting wonwoo who your friend sits across from

purposely of course

“oh hey y/n” 

“hey wonwoo” you smile 

and ignore your friends foot nudging yours

“so what are you sitting here for?” he asks, the cute smile still on his face

your friend buts in, “im making sure she eats properally cause-” 

she whips her head and glares painfully at you who stepped on her foot sharply

you smile innocently

wonwoo seems kind of surprises at her abrupt stop but nods

“well i’ll leave you then, make sure you eat well” 

your heart warms involuntarily

the corners of your mouth twitches upwards, “i will, make sure you eat well too”

exchanging smiles, you both leave each other be 

your friend squeals quietly and whispers

“you where practically beaming” she teases 

“hmm” you sound simply and take a spoonful of your food

as the you both get done eating, you stand up, bidding goodbye to your friend who stays and chats 

as you leave the dining hall you almost run into wonwoo with his read ducked inside a book walking slowly

“oh!" you yelp staring up at him with wide eyes 

"ah I'm sorry" he apologizes and closes the book, holding it at his side  

you become curious at the different cover from magical books 

"what are you reading?" your heart is slowly speeding up at your initiative to further the conversation 

"ah it's a muggle book, I don't want to bore you" 

you notice the way he rubs the back of his neck nervously 

so freakin cute 

you slightly smirk, "try me, my best friend is a muggleborn ravenclaw, i've had my fair share" 

laughing, he hands you the book, "it's called 'Macbeth.' it's a muggle classic apparently" 

you nod and answer how you've actually read the classic 'romeo and juliet' 

which leads the both of you into deep 

conversation about books and such 

the two of you just end up casually taking a walk around the castle 

"i hope it's not rude to ask but, are you halfblood or?" you ask cautiously 

honestly you just wanted to know more about him 

"actually I'm a pureblood" he replies almost sheepishly 

your eyes noticeably show surprise, "it's cool you're interested in muggle stuff. i'm a halfblood myself" 

this must mean he's not one of those super traditional purebloods right?

so.. that means he'll 

'stop don't think about that' you scream in your head 

only so much time can be spent walking so the two of you slow down 

but don't leave, wanting to stay in each other's presence

you can feel his gaze fall on you, so you tilt your head up to look at him 

"so do you want to go to the library? we can show each other the books we were talking about" 

you look closely at his eyes, searching for something 

a sign of some sort you guess 

and you catch that glimmer of hope and nervousness written all over his face 

different from his usual 

gaining a tiny bit of confidence, "will this count as a date?" 

you voice becomes smaller at the end, showing your obvious emotions 

he twists his head to you in surprise 

the two of you stare at each other before forming smiles 

you distinctly notice the way his eyes change 

and he notices the way your dimples form 

"yes it will" 

now, you guys walk happily to the library 

and somewhere along the way your hands brush against each others

it's debatable who initiated it, but your hands intertwined 

at the shelves, you decide to search for your recommendation first 

"i swear it was somewhere in this aisle" you turn your head around to look 

or maybe you were distracted by your hands still joined 

"what's the author's name?" 

you tell him and continue to search for the book 

seconds later, you feel your hand being slightly tugged up 

watching, as Wonwoo reaches up and picks out a book 

"this?" 

you smile and nod, kind of embarrassed for no reason 

which he thinks is adorable 

so after the two of you found your books, you guys settle at Wonwoo's spot 

near the front of the library but hidden behind the shelves 

so when Junhui comes by to come bother Wonwoo like he normally does 

he sees you with your head rested on your book comfortably, eyes closed

and Wonwoo flipping through his book with one hand and the other under the table 

which Junhui could clearly see grabbing your hand 

and his first reaction is to scream and expose Wonwoo 

but he doesn't

and instead gathers all the other boys to ogle also 

so Woozi is left with the honors of alerting the two of you of their giggly presence 

how could the two of you not hear them though, even if it's a library, it's 12 boys 

you open one eye confusedly from your quiet resting at the sound of taps hitting the table 

you fulling raising your body upright when you see Woozi s face instead of Wonwoo's 

and Wonwoo's face turned away annoyed at the body language commotion from his friends 

"you two are disgusting" Woozi sneers hiding a smile 

you shrug and blow the hair out your face 

"ha just wait till you get a girlfriend, i'll be ready to bother you" 

not even five minutes later, the 12 boys get kicked out because of noise pollution 

you and Wonwoo are alone again and face each other 

a half smile and half smirk forms on his face, "so are you my girlfriend then?" 

you want to say a just-as-smart remark but your heart doesn't let you 

and neither does your face as it turns a shade of red 

"I-" 

"Will you be my girlfriend?" he asks, cutting you off 

you squeeze his hand slightly and grin 

"only if you'll be my boyfriend" 

thus the bookworm couple was born 

and though you didn't read nearly as much as him 

that table belonged to you guys

if anyone walked past it 

a common slight was Wonwoo deep into a book and you working on school work 

or you resting your eyes as Wonwoo does his work 

and if anyone comes by late enough 

one will most likely be asleep with the other grasping their hand warmly

The Seventeen Hogwarts AU Series:

| S.coups | Jeonghan | Joshua | Jun | Hoshi | Wonwoo | Woozi | DK | Mingyu | Minghao | Seungkwan | Vernon | Dino |

MASTERLIST

[homestuckcanonconfirmer]

Will best keyboard for beginners

Correction Appended

On an album of bittersweet childrens music that she wrote more than ten years in the past, the girl who arrived to generally be recognized only given that the piano Instructor supplied what, in hindsight, seems like an eerie glimpse of her very own future.

Im shifting away currently to a location so far away, wherever no person is aware of my name, she wrote during the lyrics of the song known as Shifting.

When she wrote that music, she was young and vivacious, a piano Instructor and freelance new music author who liked Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river Seems, extensive walks and every thing about The big apple.

On one of those beloved walks, by Central Park in the bright Sunlight of a June working day in 1996, a homeless drifter beat her and made an effort to rape her, leaving her clinging to existence. Following the attack, the words and phrases to her music came real. She moved away, out of New York City, outside of her outdated daily life, and all but her closest good friends did not know her title. To the rest of the entire world, she was -- like the far more well-known jogger attacked in Central Park seven several years previously -- an nameless symbol of the urban nightmare. She was the piano Trainer.

Now, about the 10th anniversary from the assault, she's celebrating what is apparently her comprehensive recovery from brain trauma. She is 42, married, with a small baby. She's Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and she or he really wants to tell her Tale, her way.

Her medical doctor advised her it would just take a decade to Recuperate, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I sense my everyday living has long been redefined by Central Park, she reported various times in the past, her voice soft and hopeful. Prior to park; soon after park. Will there ever certainly be a time After i dont Assume, Oh, Here is the 10th anniversary, the eleventh anniversary?

She spoke in her modest ranch dwelling within a wooded subdivision in a very Ny suburb. She sat within a eating space strewn with toys, surrounded by pictures of her cherubic, darkish-haired two-year-old daughter. A Steinway grand filled 50 percent the place, and at a single level she sat down and played. Her participating in was forceful, but she appeared embarrassed to Engage in quite a lot of bars, and shrugged, rather then answering, when asked the title of the piece. She asked that her daughter and her town not be named.

She phone calls that day, June four, 1996, the day After i was hurt.

Hers was the very first inside of a string of attacks by exactly the same man on 4 Females more than 8 days. The last victim, Evelyn Alvarez, 65, was crushed to Loss of life as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleaning store, and ultimately, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to existence in prison.

But the attack over the piano teacher is definitely the just one people today appear to keep in mind by far the most. Portion of the fascination has got to do with echoes in the 1989 attack within the Central Park jogger. But Furthermore, it frightened folks in a method the assault around the jogger didn't simply because its situations ended up so mundane.

It did not happen inside of a distant Component of the park late during the night, but in close proximity to a preferred playground at three inside the afternoon. It might have happened to anyone. The strain was heightened from the thriller with the piano teachers identification.

For three times, as police and Health professionals tried out to find out who she was, she lay in a very coma in her healthcare facility mattress, anonymous. Her mothers and fathers ended up on vacation and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Last but not least, certainly one of her college students identified a law enforcement sketch and was in a position to discover her inside the hospital by her fingers, for the reason that her confront was swollen further than recognition. The law enforcement did not launch her identify.

The very last thing she remembers about June 4, 1996, is offering a lesson in her studio condominium on West 57th Avenue, then putting her extensive hair inside of a ponytail and heading out to get a wander. She does not keep in mind the attack, Even though she has heard the accounts with the law enforcement and prosecutors.

To me its just like a point I realized and memorized, she claimed. Like I have been a college student in school studying record.

She won't give thought to The person who did it. I might need been angry to get a instant, although not a lot longer than that, she reported. How could I be indignant at John Royster? He was declared not crazy, but I guess by our specifications he was.

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her health care provider at The big apple Clinic-Cornell Health-related Center, as it absolutely was acknowledged in 1996, told reporters that she had a 10 per cent potential for survival. Physicians experienced to eliminate her forehead bone, which was later replaced, to generate home for her swelling Mind. When her mother designed a public attract pray for my daughter, hundreds did.

After eight days, she arrived outside of a coma, initial in a vegetative condition, then in a childlike point out. As she recovered, she slept minimal and talked constantly, sometimes in gibberish. I had been obtaining mad at individuals whenever they didnt reply to these words and phrases, she said.

Like an Alzheimers individual, she had little short-expression memory and would forget about people when they left the room.

Over a number of months, she had to relearn the way to walk, costume, study and publish. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, visited every day to Enjoy guitar for her. He encouraged her to play the piano, against the recommendation of her Actual physical therapists, who thought she might be disappointed by her incapacity to Engage in the way she after experienced. Mr. Scherr played Beatles duets along with her, playing the still left-hand section whilst she performed the correct.

That was my most effective therapy, she claimed.

In August, she moved back again property to New Jersey, together with her father, an engineer, and mom, a schoolteacher. She visited aged haunts and called close friends, striving to restore her shattered memory. I used to be very obsessive about remembering, she said. Any memory decline was to me an indication of abnormality or deficit.

Her therapists assumed her development was great, but her two sisters protested that she wasn't the deep thinker she had been.

What bothered her most was that she experienced dropped the ability to cry, as if a faucet inside of her Mind were turned off. A person evening, nine months just after she was hurt, she stayed up late to look at the John Grisham Film A Time for you to Eliminate. Just just after her father had long gone to mattress, she watched a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on trial for killing two Gentlemen who had raped his youthful daughter.

The faucet opened, and also the tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought about my mothers and fathers, my father, and whatever they went by way of, she explained. Minor by small, my experience returned, my depth of intellect returned.

Urged by her sisters, she went back to high school and acquired a masters diploma in new music schooling.

Not almost everything went well. She and Mr. Scherr split up five years once the assault, however they remain mates. She dated other men, but she often instructed them about the assault instantly -- she couldn't help it, she mentioned -- plus they never ever referred to as to get a next day.

We've to search out you an individual, her Good friend David Phelps, a guitar player, stated four yrs back, before introducing her to Liam McCann, a pc technician and newbie drummer. For after, she didn't say just about anything in regards to the assault right until she bought to learn Mr. McCann, and after that when she did, he admired her toughness.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had often visited her at her bedside whilst she was within the hospital, married them in his Times Square office. She wore a blue gown and pearls. While she was pregnant, in a burst of creativity, she and her mates recorded When Were Youthful, an album of childrens tracks that she experienced published ahead of the attack, such as the music Shifting. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, made the CD. On it, her spouse performs drums and she or he plays electrical piano.

Is her daily life as it had been? Not specifically, however she's reluctant to attribute the differences to her injuries. Her last two piano pupils still left her, without calling to elucidate why, she stated. She has resumed enjoying classical tunes, but uncomplicated items, for the reason that her daughter doesn't give her time for you to follow. As for jazz, I dont even try, she stated.

She would like to generate extra, emotion stranded while in the suburbs, but she is easily rattled. She tries to be articles with being property and caring for her daughter.

Dr. Ghajar, a scientific professor of neurological operation at precisely what is now known as NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare facility/Weill Cornell Professional medical Middle, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann once the assault, stated past week that her level of Restoration was scarce. Shes mainly normal, he mentioned.

Other professionals, who are not personally informed about Ms. Kevorkian McCanns situation, are more cautious.

Regaining a chance to play the piano might entail an Practically mechanical procedure, a semiautomatic recall of exactly what the fingers have to do, mentioned Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of scientific rehabilitation medicine at Ny College School of Drugs. The moment Mind-wounded, you're generally brain-wounded, For the remainder of your daily life, Dr. Ben-Yishay said. There is not any cure, There may be only intensive payment.

The more telling Portion of a Restoration, in his perspective, is psychological, and on that rating he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns marriage and youngster as a substantial victory.

For her part, the piano Instructor appreciates she has adjusted, but she has manufactured her peace with it. I was form of a hyper ---- I dont know if I used to be a kind A, but I used to be formidable, she states. Why was I so formidable? I used to be a piano teacher. I dont really know what the ambition was about. I really did come back to the individual Im designed to be.

Correction: June thirteen, 2006, Tuesday An post on Thursday about Kyle Kevorkian McCann, a piano teacher who was overwhelmed and sexually assaulted a decade in the past in Central Park, misstated the title of her album of childrens songs. It can be Even though Were being Young, not When Have been Young.

[37thknight]

okay, so i’m borderline cross with this whole ordeal so here’s my take on it

Y’ALL LIKE JUICY ANALYSIS, RIGHT? 

this “jeonlous mouth thing” have been around for sometime now and i dont honestly get the negative feedback people are starting to impose on its name these days ????? 

shipping in general, as much as it leaves so much of a bad taste in our mouths and as much as i hate to admit it myself, is run by the delusional (read: responsible for delusion) cogs in our minds, lubricated by the teeny-tiniest details of the pairing’s words, actions, quirks and personalities to fulfill our wild desires to prove “TRUST ME, THEY’RE BANGING EACH OTHER ” and to act as supporting evidences to back-up this “constructed reality” of what we want them to be.

the thing with jikook // koomin otp, as most other kpop pairings are, is that they’re members of the same group or band or whatever you want to classify BTS as. one way or another, they’re bound to have a relationship, may it be purely for their careers (a business relationship, as described by SHINee’s Jonghyun in one of their Happy Together guestings) or an established platonic one, heightened by the difficulties they’ve dealt with and the feats they’ve achieved as a group. 

from this, we can branch out to a ton of “stuff” for a lack of better word, and i can only discuss (read: rant) so much

EXHIBIT A

bts members are friends more than co-workers and we are very much aware of that, as opposed to those groups with their contracts sufficing as the adhesive to weave each other together (c’mon, this is not a shade). i dont know about you but in a squad (a group of friends rather, if you don’t like seeing that word), it’s most probably mapped out that as humans, we’ll be drawn particularly to one of them; hence, the best friend phenomenon. 

so...are they best friends? well, there’s still taehyung in the equation and there’s no way we can dismiss him like that. (side remark here: the three of them can just be each other’s best friends, you know? im aware that this is an actual, real life thing that happens to other people...but i’ve been in that circumstance and it’ll be hard juggling your attention and love equally that it's more deteriorating than beneficial to all ends) now, taking into consideration how much emphasis the whole korean culture put into respect and age, the maknae line just transcends through all that , BUT

1. jimin and taehyung are close (even regarding each other as soulmates in one of their recent fanmeetings) esp because of the fact that they’re of the same age, meaning, the level of comfort with each other is as much as korean society expects them to have. they’re not just “comfortable” brothers more than chingus though, they’re that comfortable with each other it’s beyond classifications (like there are classifications, but you get the point).

2. maknaes are very much endeared in the whole korean “age-and-respect-and-authority-and-hierarchy” landscape (can it even be called that?). jimin has shown how much he cherishes jungkook even tracing back to their predebut days up until now, successfully fulfilling the role of hyungs in korean standard whose role among many others is to take care of those younger than they are. other members also treat jungkook fairly similar or sometimes even topping jimin’s treatment to the maknae aka taehyung, whose life source is probably skinship + aegyo with other members (we’ll get to that) and the whole reason im confused who’s whose when it comes to this best friend thing 

3. still in the korean view of age, you address those older than you with respect by how? c’mon, we’re all nuts about kpop how must we not know? there’s oppa, unnie, hyung and noona (this addressing thing is more of an asian thing than mere korean, really). now, here’s the catch: jungkook calls jimin hyung borderline merely (read: close to the bare minimum). a mere slip-up? a moment of the perfect mask idols need to sport, carelessly put aside? more than anything, it just fuels the fire in this situation. jungkook addresses his other hyungs with the names they need to be called, even taehyung he’s very close with. and this just show that jungkook considers jimin a chingu, one he can comfortably act towards, (just like jimin and taehyung’s relationship, being the actual chingus here) despite the apparent age difference.

i dont know if i’ve gotten to anything at this point, but i’m lenient to the concept of jimin and jungkook being the best friends which explains most of the things they do together which leads us to:

EXHIBIT B 

skinship between friends, more specifically friends belonging to the same sex (gender’s a bit more complicated concept, you guys), is the most normal thing in korea. they probably are most expressive with each other to the point that it baffles foreign onlookers, a good example of which are the int’l fans.

remember what i said about taehyung? all males in korea are practically like him, even stemming from young age, being touchy-feely here and there with friends.now, ever wondered why apparently jikook is not a huge, blown out of proportion ship in korea as opposed to its stance in the international fanbase? yup, that’s because for koreans, seeing jimin and jungkook’s interaction with each other is like seeing the average same sex chingus walking downtown or their buddies at school as they do everyday. holding hands, feeling each other up, sitting on laps, pecks on the cheek (less observed), and even touching thighs, crossing the boundaries of what foreigners would deem appropriate, is common and normal (have i made my point about this issue yet? i’ve become a broken record,my goodness).basically, there is no such thing as personal space in korean culture of friends; thus, skinship is prevalent.

a very much related issue to that is korea’s view on homosexuality. no matter how peppered with the stereotypical gay (not meant to be taken offensively, guys im also a queer folk hi) interactions and copious displays of affection korea is, homophobia is still present. it’s too ridiculous that it’s become funny. you can tell me how korea has become liberated and all that shit but the thing is, they’re not. korea is just downright a conservative country (is this an offense too? oh god). korea is still anchored to the concept that people are only and only and only limited to a man-loving woman and woman-loving man. topmost reason why idols cannot come out and identify as different from the two because to deviate from the norm is supposedly throwing away tradition and rude and can spite everyone around them that they’ll lose their job.

i dont know where im going but i still am in check of what im talking about. bottomline of this exhibit is holding onto the contradicting persona of korea, jikook is all but nothing more (this is proper grammar, you guys) than a thing of delusion.

EXHIBIT C

kpop idols love to treat their fans and bts is not a loser in the game. they give back quite warmly to the fans. they deem armys highly because, nonverbatim, bts is nothing without their fans. fans are the reason among others (to dismiss their hardwork is plain rude) why they’ve made it this big. so they’ve got fanservice in store for us, the majestic element of them all, leaving us in a baffled rut whether or not our otp’s interaction are candid or sheer fanservice. THEY ALL KNOW THAT THEY’RE PAIRED WITH EACH OTHER. a gift for the fans? publicity stunts to gain the favor of their audience? whatever meaning fanservices hold in the hearts of our dear bts members, it just ups the notch of the level of our delusion when it comes to our ships 

(it’s heartbreaking, i know. i didn’t even want to write this part out. if you can just sense my unwillingness to write on the matter ㅠㅠ)

EXHIBIT D

let’s go back to what actually irked me and cross me so much that it driven me nuts to the point that i actually spend my time writing this long ass rant. 

“jeonlous” = a jealous jeon jungkook

now, this has gathered a negative connotation primarily but is not limited to two things:

a. “this jeonlous thing manifests a relationship with an abusive undertone” (okay, so i constructed that sentence to make their claims much more rational than it fucking is)

b. it does not make sense for jungkook (and even jimin) to get jealous of other members/fans/other people not them in general

firstly, what does it mean to be JEALOUS (can you see my eyes rolling?)

in the evolutionary, biological scale, is the exhibited response to the threats to the relationship they are in because monogamy that’s why (a reality that’s manifested almost throughout all the animal kingdom) 

in psychology, is the complex emotion that’s not just about anger, abandonment, fear or sadness; it’s the simmer that’s aroused when a valued relationship is somehow not in its standard state and there is raw desire to regain the affection and/or attention. it’s even described as “a necessary emotion because it preserves social bonds. it motivates people to engage in behaviors that maintain an important relationship.” a clinical psychologist characterizes jealousy as something we don’t have much control over, and that it is a natural, instinctive emotion that everyone experiences at one point in their lives. 

it just follows that when jealousy is at hand, people tend to do things that has become seemingly second nature tics to them. now, this is a good reason to back up the jeonlous mouth/tongue thing, how much of a mere coincidence it may be. jealousy is not bound to romantic tones; it can encompass siblings fighting for their parents’ attention or even in friendships. so that’s a yes, yup, jungkook can get jealous of other members because he has that valued relationship (refer to exhibit a) with jimin and there will be a lingering longing in him for jimin to get back at being jimin again (read: showing him affection and attention; emphasis on him) 

don’t get me started at this abusive, emotionally manipulative relationship issue here because it’s just absurd and this rant will be longer than my lifespan i dont even know anymore (ok but the insecurity that is woven in the ambiguity of jealousy may also be responsible in driving someone to emotionally manipulate his partner to the point of abuse BUT JK JUST WANTS JIMIN’S ATTENTION BACK SO WHAT’S ABUSIVE HERE calling this whole ordeal abusive is too much of a stretch like really? really? y’all are actually taking this into consideration? really?)

(okay this rant had high hopes in presenting evidences to support my claims but i havent slept a wink yet and im also half angry ????)

the thing is, as much as we’re delusional in shipping jikook, y’all are just delusional claiming that the fucking quirk jungkook exhibits is abusive WHAT DO WE EVEN KNOW ABOUT WHAT THEIR ACTUAL STATUS IS IN THE FIRST PLACE goodbye y’all im just im--ugh this is so dumb

you wanna know the catch about this jeonlous thing that gets me every single time? IT’S THAT IT’S FUCKING CUTE. AND I’M SHIPPING THEM TO MY PLEASURE THAT IT GIVES ME JOY TO SEE THESE MOMENTS WHICH GIVES ME LITTLE SPARKS OF HOPE THAT MAYBE THEY’RE MORE THAN FRIENDS YEAH I KNOW IM DELUSIONAL BUT MOSTLY BECAUSE IT’S CUTE and that’s good enough reason for me to fawn over their “supposed” romance 

y’all are hypocrites enjoying the jeonlous thing one second then next second, condemning it after reading a post and riding the mainstream. Y’ALL NEED TO SIT THE FUCK DOWN (also reevaluate the hypocrisy but oh well)

[pan-princess-levy]

What are your thoughts on non-con and dub-con?

40 Questions — Meme for Fic Writers

oh dear. this is a loaded question.

since this is a controversial topic and i have a rather controversial opinion, here’s your excuse to block me if you want 

(this got kinda long so up putting it under read more)

first off, i dont know if i’ve stated it before (i think i have?) but i adore dark fiction. i like stories with drama, intrigue, manipulations and whatnot, especially when we’re talking about fantasy. i love it when the history of this world has a darker, more sinister side, i love it when the deeper you dig, the sicker it gets.

when reading (and writing) about things that are considered controversial, i tend to distance myself from the thing in question, because while fiction sometimes does affect the real world, its important to remember that fiction is fiction and that those people who write these things are perfectly normal people. (now, some of the readers who read that kinda stuff might be not, but a reader is not responsible for their readers beyond giving the proper warnings.) 

when i write dark things, its usually venting. i write-vent a lot. i like channeling all those dark emotions i feel into words and i feel like, hella satisfied with myself. and when im not venting - im usually writing it because i love experimenting with the relationships between characters, because i love taking my favorite character, picking up their traits apart and using the things i love about them to make them monsters.

im not a huge fan of non-con. when it comes to smut fics (which stories including non-con usually are) i tend to enjoy stories with lots of emotion, lots of drama and preferably engaging plot. non-con stories tend to be pwp and that kind of stories i find utterly boring. non-con is, as a whole, a boring trope for me, because it lacks the level of character engagement i enjoy when reading and writing.

however, i do enjoy reading dub-con. there’s something utterly wrecking in that, watching a character forcing themself to do something they would never do under normal circumstances. especially if the character in question forms an attachment to their abuser. it’s just so fascinating, the way the human psyche warps its own perception of reality in a desperate attempt to spare itself more pain. 

my main concern with dub-con (and non-con, for that matter) is whether it’s portrayed as such. those are vile and utterly evil things. they should be addressed as such. the author should know that the thing they’re writing is dark, the readers should know it, the characters should feel it. im here for the internal turmoil, for the suffering, for the gut-wrenching realization, for the trauma that is left behind. i have read many a fic when the relationship is portrayed as healthy, but everyone with eyes and some experience in romance can see red flags in the scenes leading up to the sex. 

if you want to write romance and sex - and especially more hardcore things - educate yourself. learn the subtle difference in consent and lack of consent. and if you decide to go the dark road, be careful. if you want to write a toxic, unhealthy relationship, write it as such. don’t sugarcoat the sharp edges. 

have i written dub-con? yes. in short snippets, mostly, because i was emotional and venting, and none of it is published. (there is one short shot i like and i might get around to posting, someday.) have i written non-con? only once, and half-finished by that because i lost interest. can’t say im particularly interested in continuing it, because that kind of relationships tend to strip away any engaging conversations between the characters involved in it. 

will i write dub-con in the future? yes. yes, one hundred percent, because there is this story called ‘rotten petals’ that i cannot wait to write one day (and you can ask me about it if you’re interested, its a gajevy deity/priestess au and i have short snippet of it written) and i will hopefully post one day. 

will i write non-con in the future? probably not! as i said, i dont find it particularly interesting to write. 

im sorry how long and rant-y this got! thank you for the question!

[shirlleycoyle]

This Meme Explains Why TikTok Isn’t Like Any Other Social Media

People think that TikTok is a black hole where teens jump in and memes pop out. To be sure, TikTok has both teens and memes. But the reality is much more structured than it seems.

TikTok is dominated by videos with a very rigid, formulaic structure: a song, a dance. “You Need to Calm Down” by Taylor Swift plays, and the person sets up a social scenario that ends with them lip-synching “You need to calm down, you’re being too loud.”

Most of TikTok is like Mad Libs: the specifics of the joke differ, but the punchline is always the same. At any given moment, there’s maybe five to ten sound bites—which could be songs, or original audio recorded by users—that are accumulating the majority of the views, sometimes hundreds of thousands in just hours.

Enter TikTok’s latest genre: point-of-view videos, or POVs. They create scenarios that range from horror, to historical fiction, to teenage fantasies, to the completely absurd. These videos often have little in common aside from the significant role that they assign to the viewer.

The traditional TikTok POV is shot from a first-person perspective, making the viewers the main character of the video. TikToker @porrinate, who identified himself as Adam, told Motherboard, “I think it makes it very personal to the viewer, because the video is through their eyes.”

Adam made a POV captioned “#pov you dont have a lunch at school and i offer you my entire lunch because i want you to be okay.” In this video, the viewer is a student that doesn’t have lunch. Adam speaks directly to them.

“I took it from my own experience, which was like, I didn’t get to eat that much in high school—and if I did, it was from somebody else,” Adam said. “So I would always feel like, people need to be more generous, especially towards those who are really struggling.”

The structure of an app helps decide what kind of posts are more likely to succeed. On Twitter, a blank slate of 280 characters, it’s attention-grabbing, ratio-inviting shit posts. On YouTube, where ad revenue can be low or unreliable, it’s lengthy, vlogger-style videos that are cheap to produce.

Meanwhile, TikTok encourages recycling sound bites which are used by sometimes thousands of videos. This has spawned a culture where people use familiar joke formats, and gently add a little bit of themselves.

By making viewers a part of the video, POVs uniquely allow creators to engage with viewers, and by extension, connect with their peers. POVs leverage TikTok to appeal to shared human experiences of joy, despair, embarrassment, and laughter. For now, at least, it’s something that sets TikTok apart from other social media apps.

Why POVs Could Only Happen on TikTok

People can post videos on Twitter or Facebook, but since users only see content from users they follow, those videos have a limited ability to spread. People who aren’t following you, most often, will simply miss the video you share. TikTok is different because of the app’s For You page, which pushes users to view videos from wide-reaching pool of users (even ones that you don’t follow).

The For You page surfaces posts from across the platform. It’s an algorithmically-generated recommendation feed, catered to each user. Unlike Twitter’s Moments tab or Instagram’s Discover page, which also surface posts from users you don’t follow, the For You opens automatically when a user launches the app. But we don’t know the specifics of how the For You page works. According to TikTok’s listing in the iOS App Store, some opaque mix of app engagementlikes, shares, and comments—dictates what users see.

Most TikToks only have 15 seconds to engage a viewer and maximize their reach on people’s For You pages. That’s a large part of why POVs are successful: they grab the viewer’s attention by pulling them into the plot of the video. The impact is immediate.

“Across different platforms, you think of the different types of cultures that have emerged,” Becca Lewis, an internet culture researcher with Data and Society, said in a phone call. “A lot of that is due to these artificial constraints platforms place on the type of content that gets created.”

The opacity of the For You algorithm has a huge impact on TikTok. If you’re trying to make a popular video, it makes sense to stick to one of the Mad Libs formulas that dominate the For You page on a given day. It’s the act of reaching for the biggest-common-content-denominator in a vast pool of videos whose logic you can’t see.

Here are some memes that are popular at the time of writing:

“Wasabi” by Little Mix plays and people lip sync the lyrics while using TikTok’s “face-tracking” filter, which identifies and zooms in on your face.

“One Jump Ahead” from Aladdin plays and people lip sync the line “Let’s not be too hasty,” and the reply “Still I think he’s rather tasty,” usually while the user pretends to be two different characters.

“No Reason” by YunggTez plays and people act out a situation in which they convey confidence, attitude, and a lack of regard for others.

Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, said in a phone call that users won’t make a habit out of an app unless there’s a “variable reward”—or, a variety of entertaining content. Without that variety, users get bored.

“The problem I think that TikTok is struggling with is that they depend on the meme model,” Eyal said. “Because if everybody does the meme the same way, what happens to the variability? It becomes predictable. The predictability makes it boring. Nobody wants to see the meme because they already saw it.”

But POVs are anything but predictable. Instead of appealing to a common meme formula, POVs appeal to a common humanity. They put the viewer into the messy center of an emotional situation.

Take this TikTok by Olivia Giordano, for example. The caption is, “there’s not enough seats at the lunch table today, so you have nowhere to sit.” In this video, the viewer is the person who can’t get a seat at the lunch table. It’s like exposure therapy, violently bringing viewers face-to-face with the shame, humiliation, and sadness of living through this particular situation. But the viewer experiences these feelings in a safe setting: TikTok.

A similar video is captioned, “ur teacher lets u pick partners but u have 2 friends in ur class who partnered up.” In this video, you’re watching yourself try to team up with a friend for a group project, but quickly realize that your friends both chose one another before you.

By acknowledging that these uncomfortable experiences exist, these POV videos lend significance to experiences that young people often have to dismiss in order to get by.

A lot of POVs focus on acting out a true-to-reality situation. For instance, TikTok user @yazdemand made a POV captioned, “#pov your my mirror after My family say that ‘you will always be a boy.’” Viewers watch the private, vulnerable moments of this teenager getting ready. There’s a tension, and you can feel her confidence and apprehension playing out simultaneously. People going through a similar situation can find community.

A Yeet into the Spectrum of POVs

Not all POVs are exposure therapy for the cruelty of being a teenager, or heartfelt experience confessionals. A pillar of the POV genre is the massive selection of videos that rely on humor and sometimes absurdity.

A great example of this is a TikTok captioned, “i’m ur dumb jock crush. you tell me you’re feeling depressed. i try to make it better.” In it, user @idrinkvapejuice acts out the crush’s reply to her admission of depression.

Other videos, like “POV: what my birth control sees when i remember i have to take it” and “POV: im checking ur head for lice (and u have it)” are pretty self explanatory. There’s also videos like “Pov. our eyes meet at the Area 51 raid” (which is a poking fun at a POV formula that starts with “our eyes meet”).

But the POV genre, and TikTok in general, isn’t immune to harassment and hate speech problems that plague social media. Jess Fisher, TikTok user @jess.fisher5 has a recurring TikTok series where she pretends to be the personification of each astrological sign. In her POV video, captioned “#wholesome TAURUS POV,” Fisher acts like the personification of Tauruses, who are generally defined as compassionate, loyal, and sometimes parental.

Fisher said that this POV got an unexpected response: a flood of duets—or new videos that are displayed directly alongside an original video—and comments from old men.

“Not all of them, but a lot of [the comments] were like, ‘I’m gonna rip that shirt off of you,’ and things like that,” Fisher said.

The duets for Fisher’s video exist in a grey area: most of them don’t violate TikTok’s terms of use. It’s not against the rules to duet a video with a suggestive smile and comment. But the response was somewhat violating, she said. (A TikTok spokesperson encouraged users to visit its Safety Center for information about responding to misuse.)

“[The video] did make me think that maybe POV just strikes a chord in people,” Fisher said. “It hits them in a different way than normal videos do.”

POVs Make TikTok Feel Human

Fisher said that POVs make sense in the larger history of TikTok. TikTok, in its original form, was called musical.ly, and musical.ly was dedicated almost entirely to lip-sync videos. Fisher said that the foundation of these lip-sync videos probably lent itself to the creation of the POV genre.

“They could just be lip synching a song with intention, but it’s also like making the viewer feel like they’re being looked at, or being seen,” Fisher said. “The only difference between that type of thing and the POV genre is putting their own dialogue to it and writing it themselves. Like content creation rather than just lip synch.”

Platforms like Facebook often talk about how they want to “bring the world closer together.” But this isn’t easy for any social media platform to accomplish. Often, it seems, meaningful online experiences are built on finding communities with shared experiences.

This is what’s happened with POVs on TikTok. There’s countless different iterations of POVs: there’s humor, fiction, cosplay, fantasy, historical skits, and realistic ones, and there’s innumerable niches that have grown out of these subgroups.

This phenomenon seems to defy the odds: the TikTok For You page, in its seeming randomness, connects people with obscure mutual experiences. The result is something that feels fundamentally human.

This Meme Explains Why TikTok Isn’t Like Any Other Social Media syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[homestuckcanonconfirmer]

9 Things Your Parents Taught You About best keyboard for learning piano

Correction Appended

On an album of bittersweet childrens music that she wrote much more than ten years in the past, the woman who arrived for being regarded only given that the piano teacher supplied what, in hindsight, seems like an eerie glimpse of her possess upcoming.

Im going absent now to a location so far-off, exactly where no person is familiar with my title, she wrote while in the lyrics of the track identified as Relocating.

When she wrote that tune, she was young and vivacious, a piano Instructor and freelance tunes author who loved Beethoven and jazz, sunsets and river sounds, prolonged walks and every little thing about New York.

On a kind of beloved walks, by Central Park in the brilliant Sunshine of the June working day in 1996, a homeless drifter defeat her and attempted to rape her, leaving her clinging to life. Following the assault, the text to her music arrived genuine. She moved absent, out of New York City, from her previous life, and all but her closest pals did not know her identify. To the rest of the earth, she was -- much like the far more well-known jogger attacked in Central Park seven yrs previously -- an anonymous image of the city nightmare. She was the piano teacher.

Now, around the tenth anniversary on the attack, she's celebrating what appears to be her complete Restoration from Mind trauma. She is forty two, married, with a small child. She is Kyle Kevorkian McCann, the piano teacher, and she wants to tell her Tale, her way.

Her health practitioner told her it might consider ten years to Get better, and Sunday was that talismanic anniversary. I really feel my daily life has become redefined by Central Park, she mentioned numerous days ago, her voice smooth and hopeful. In advance of park; immediately after park. Will there ever certainly be a time when I dont think, Oh, Here is the tenth anniversary, the 11th anniversary?

She spoke in her modest ranch household within a wooded subdivision inside of a The big apple suburb. She sat inside a dining place strewn with toys, surrounded by pictures of her cherubic, dark-haired two-yr-previous daughter. A Steinway grand filled 50 % the area, and at 1 point she sat down and performed. Her participating in was forceful, but she appeared embarrassed to play more than a few bars, and shrugged, as an alternative to answering, when asked the title from the piece. She questioned that her daughter and her town not be named.

She phone calls that day, June four, 1996, the working day After i was harm.

Hers was the main within a string of attacks by the same guy on 4 women over eight times. The final target, Evelyn Alvarez, sixty five, was overwhelmed to Demise as she opened her Park Avenue dry-cleaning shop, and ultimately, the assailant, John J. Royster, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in jail.

Still the attack within the piano Instructor is definitely the 1 people today seem to keep in mind one of the most. Component of the fascination needs to do with echoes from the 1989 attack to the Central Park jogger. But What's more, it frightened people today in a means the assault to the jogger did not because its instances ended up so mundane.

It didn't occur within a distant Section of the park late in the evening, but around a preferred playground at three in the afternoon. It might have took place to anyone. The strain was heightened from the mystery of your piano academics identification.

For 3 times, as police and Physicians tried out to find out who she was, she lay inside of a coma in her clinic mattress, nameless. Her mother and father ended up on getaway and her boyfriend, also a musician, was in Europe, on tour. Finally, one among her pupils regarded a law enforcement sketch and was able to discover her during the hospital by her fingers, simply because her experience was swollen beyond recognition. The police didn't launch her identify.

The last thing she remembers about June four, 1996, is supplying a lesson in her studio apartment on West 57th Road, then putting her very long hair in the ponytail and heading out for your wander. She isn't going to bear in mind the assault, Whilst she has listened to the accounts in the police and prosecutors.

To me its just like a truth I discovered and memorized, she stated. As if I were being a college student in class finding out heritage.

She isn't going to consider the man who did it. I might have been indignant to get a minute, although not for much longer than that, she mentioned. How could I be angry at John Royster? He was declared not crazy, but I assume by our standards he was.

Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, her medical doctor at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Heart, as it had been identified in 1996, informed reporters that she experienced a 10 % chance of survival. Health professionals had to get rid of her forehead bone, which was afterwards changed, for making place for her swelling brain. When her mother created a community attract pray for my daughter, thousands did.

After eight times, she arrived out of a coma, first in a very vegetative point out, then in a childlike point out. As she recovered, she slept little and talked regularly, at times in gibberish. I was getting mad at individuals once they didnt reply to these words, she claimed.

Like an Alzheimers patient, she experienced tiny limited-expression memory and would fail to remember site visitors the moment they still left the room.

Over many months, she had to relearn ways to stroll, gown, read through and publish. Her boyfriend, Tony Scherr, frequented every day to Enjoy guitar for her. He encouraged her to Enjoy the piano, towards the advice of her physical therapists, who imagined she might be discouraged by her incapacity to Participate in how she when had. Mr. Scherr played Beatles duets together with her, actively playing the left-hand part even though she performed the correct.

That was my most effective therapy, she claimed.

In August, she moved back again residence to New Jersey, together with her father, an engineer, and mom, a schoolteacher. She frequented outdated haunts and identified as friends, seeking to restore her shattered memory. I had been incredibly obsessed with remembering, she stated. Any memory decline was to me a sign of abnormality or deficit.

Her therapists considered her development was wonderful, but her two sisters protested that she was not the deep thinker she had been.

What bothered her most was that she had misplaced a chance to cry, as if a faucet inside of her brain had been turned off. A person evening, nine months right after she was damage, she stayed up late to observe the John Grisham Motion picture A Time and energy to Get rid of. Just after her father experienced gone to bed, she viewed a courtroom scene of Samuel Jacksons character on trial for killing two men who had raped his youthful daughter.

The faucet opened, along with the tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought of my mother and father, my father, and the things they went through, she claimed. Tiny by minor, my sensation returned, my depth of brain returned.

Urged by her sisters, she went back to highschool and acquired a masters degree in audio training.

Not everything went properly. She and Mr. Scherr break up up five years once the assault, however they remain friends. She dated other Gentlemen, but she always informed them concerning the assault instantly -- she could not support it, she stated -- and they by no means called for any second day.

Now we have to locate you someone, her Pal David Phelps, a guitar player, stated 4 several years back, right before introducing her to Liam McCann, a pc technician and newbie drummer. For once, she didn't say nearly anything with regard to the attack till she acquired to find out Mr. McCann, then when she did, he admired her strength.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had normally frequented her at her bedside though she was in the hospital, married them in his Situations Square Workplace. She wore a blue costume and pearls. Whilst she was pregnant, within a burst of creative imagination, she and her close friends recorded When Had been Youthful, an album of childrens music that she experienced prepared prior to the attack, such as the music Moving. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr. Scherr, generated the CD. On it, her spouse plays drums and she or he performs electric powered piano.

Is her lifetime as it absolutely was? Not accurately, while she is hesitant to attribute the variations to her injuries. Her final two piano pupils still left her, with no contacting to clarify why, she reported. She has resumed enjoying classical music, but straightforward pieces, since her daughter isn't going to give her time and energy to practice. As for jazz, I dont even consider, she said.

She would like to drive extra, sensation stranded from the suburbs, but she is well rattled. She tries to be content material with keeping property and caring for her daughter.

Dr. Ghajar, a medical professor of neurological medical procedures at what is now referred to as NewYork-Presbyterian Medical center/Weill Cornell Health care Heart, who operated on Ms. Kevorkian McCann following the assault, reported very last 7 days that her degree of recovery was uncommon. Shes generally usual, he explained.

Other professionals, who're not personally informed about Ms. Kevorkian McCanns situation, tend to be more careful.

Regaining the opportunity to Engage in the piano may well require an Just about mechanical procedure, a semiautomatic recall of what the fingers really need to do, explained Dr. Yehuda Ben-Yishay, a professor of scientific rehabilitation medicine at Big apple College Faculty of Drugs. Once brain-hurt, you might be usually Mind-hurt, for the rest of your life, Dr. Ben-Yishay said. There is not any overcome, There's only intense compensation.

The more telling Portion of a Restoration, in his view, is psychological, and on that score he counts Ms. Kevorkian McCanns relationship and boy or girl as a substantial victory.

For her aspect, the piano Instructor is aware she has altered, but she has designed her peace with it. I was kind of a hyper ---- I dont know if I had been a sort A, but I used to be formidable, she suggests. Why was I so bold? I had been a piano teacher. I dont determine what the ambition was about. I actually did return to the person Im designed to be.

Correction: June thirteen, 2006, Tuesday An post on Thursday about Kyle Kevorkian McCann, a piano Instructor who was beaten and sexually assaulted ten years ago in Central Park, misstated the title of her album of childrens tracks. It truly is Whilst Have been Youthful, not When Were being Young.