#anyways. that's the end of the longass tags. thanks for reading

[noisytenant]

when you are afraid to say "no" to someone it can be helpful to ask what consequences you realistically think might occur, particularly focusing on "escalations" and defense against them.

if you are afraid to reject someone, you should ask, "what might they feel in response? how might they act on those feelings? and how might they escalate things in response to being challenged?"

this can help you identify people who legitimately respect your boundaries, relatively reasonable people with some challenging or unhealthy communication habits, and people who are overtly toxic, controlling, and abusive.

subconsciously many people with trauma backgrounds respond to conflicts with a generalized, abstract mortal terror. on an emotional level, there is a flattening where an annoyed tone or triggering phrase can feel as dangerous as a person swinging at you.

but most people, even abusive ones, have limits to what they are willing to do. disentangling your absolute worst fears from grounded predictions allows for solutions beyond automatic survival strategies.

once you estimate the lengths someone could go to assert their will over yours, you can reinforce your own stance, tactically disengage from the situation, and protect your body and personal property.

if you haven't considered potential escalations, then standing up for yourself can feel impossibly risky. but once you understand the playing field, you can mitigate a number of those risks into something manageable.

while we can never be certain of what could happen, life doesn't need to be a binary between "being a doormat" and "going for a home run with a hornet's nest".

and preventing even one instance of (re)victimization can allow you to take back some of the power from the people who have used it against you.

[sparkysparklightning]

Okay listen

Yes this is the “longass post” I mentioned in my previous Tratie HoO post hgjkfsh I decided to publish it and see what y’alls think!

Anyway, I saw this post, like...a week ago?? And all of a sudden, everything related to the HoO series that I’ve held back just came charging full-force. So I’m here to grace y’alls with my ideas and thoughts about HoO.

Honestly, if I talked abt everything that went off-kilter in that series, we’d be here all day, so I’ll just stick to the mere basic point that was also the basis of my HoO conceptual rewrite idea, and that point is...

Percabeth shouldn’t have been a part of the Seven.

Yeah yeah, half of you guys must be throwing stones at me, the other half is probably nodding in agreement. But seriously, Percabeth already had their time to shine--they had an entire five hecking books, they ( and their characterizations ) definitely do not need another five more, yeesh! I love Percy and all, but pls, five more books in which his and Annabeth’s and their relationship’s character were diminished? Yeah, no thanks. 

I love Percabeth, but in HoO, they became so...bland??? Idk how to properly explain it, but I didn’t like what happened to their character arcs at all lmaoo

But then, I got an idea: what if, instead of Percabeth, it was TRATIE who was a part of the Seven, instead? 

Now this idea was inspired both from the post mentioned above plus another post that talked abt Tratie as a part of the Seven in a bit more detail, which I cannot find no matter how many times I scoured the rr-crit tag ( smh, if anyone else knows of this post, pls lmk and link it, I’m sorry 😭 )

And yeah, I know a lot of ppl have been hopping on the ‘Nico & Reyna as part of the Seven’ train when it comes to making HoO rewrites, but see, hear me out, just think about the potential of Travis Stoll and Katie Gardner--two children of minor gods--getting their spotlight in a series of their own ( plus more indirect spotlight on the minor gods in question ) plus a slowburn ( kinda ) relationship?? Heck, I already have some ideas for this, that I’ll jot down below the cut along with some conceptual ideas about the rewrite. If any of y’alls end up reading this whole post, can you...just, idk, lmk whether it’s a solid plan and if I should actually take it forward and plan on writing it? Bc I’m being rlly indecisive rn ahaha 😅

So. Tratie instead of Percabeth. Let’s take a closer look at the potential:

Honestly, I hate to admit it, but Percabeth didn’t do much to the plot as a whole, so it wouldn’t make much of a difference if they’re taken out. Though there are some things they did to move the plot forward, although little, and that’s what I’ll touch on before I discuss Tratie in general:

( oh yeah, disclaimer: I read the HoO series about five years ago?? I’m trying ( key word: trying lmao ) to reread the series currently, but it’s just not sticking lmfao. Probably the main reason why I wanna rewrite it so badly, other than the two posts that boosted my inspo )

--> THE ATHENA PARTHENOS: Annabeth went on a solo quest in MoA to track down the Athena Parthenos bc it was crucial to sealing the rift between Greek and Roman. BUT, any other demigod could go on that same quest instead of her. Like Piper, whose mother had told her that she was essential to sealing the rift but never ended up doing anything for it bc RR just...flopped idk; or someone like Leo who has similar abilities as Annabeth and would be able to outsmart Arachne in a similar fashion as well; or even Reyna could come earlier than she did in the series and work with the Seven or some of them to track down the statue? Idk, there are lots of options, tbh, there’s honestly not that much relevance to Annabeth being the daughter of Athena so she has to track down the Athena Parthenos. I mean, sure there was the Arachne ordeal, but other than that, nothing major rlly happens

Percy, himself, didn’t rlly...do much for the entire series, other than fight. I mean, there were some minor aspects of HoO where his powers or relations to other characters vibed well, so we’ll check those out:

--> KANSAS: In MoA, Jason and Percy fought each other bc they were forced to. That could easily happen even without Percy. Instead, of Percy, it could be Hazel and Jason fighting each other due to their connections as the Big Three children being taken advantage of. It could be sort of like a mirage of Thalia and Percy’s fight back in TTC. Plus, again, it gives way for more bonding and discussion after between two other characters that never got much interaction time together in canon

--> KYM AND POLYBOTES: okay this is the scene that takes place in BoO where Percy and Jason face off against Kym and Polybotes. But, Percy...does literally nothing here other than get poisoned lmao. It was Jason who did the heavy-lifting bc Percy got a t a d bit arrogant, thinking he was invincible underwater. So honestly, you could take out Percy and replace him with another member of the Seven (who would seem reasonable, in the context, so no Piper or Annabeth or Leo, etc bc none of them can survive even a minute under the water and doesn’t have a way like Jason to breathe). Tbvh, I can see Frank and Jason go together to face Kym and Polybotes. Frank can shapeshift into a sea-creature while Jason can use his ventus vacuum thingie, so it all works out, and nothing too drastic is changed! 

There’s probably a couple more of little scenes where Percabeth was mostly significant in some way to the series, but let’s be very honest...there weren’t a lot of them. So long story short: if you want to, you can easily take out Percy and Annabeth from the series and replace them with another pair and it wouldn’t be the end of the world, lmao.

Now onto Tratie ideas in relation to if they were a part of the Seven instead. Here are some bullet-points of some ideas that I thought of:

It could be a lovely parallel, where when Jason woke up, all he could remember was Thalia, so when Travis wakes up, all he remembers is Connor, his younger brother. I think it would be nice bc it shows that not everything has to be romantically coded like how Percy only remembered Annabeth in canon. It would emphasize Travis and Connor’s sibling bond more so, and I can just imagine Connor giving Travis reuniting noogies and trying not to burst into tears in MoA, and Travis whispers something like “you’re here” and the floodgates open, and it’s just crying and hugging and the like 😭😭

Katie is a daughter of Demeter, so she would have a somewhat connection with the Earth aka Gaea, hence there is now a plausible reason why Gaea would want to spill her blood to rise. Also, when the time comes to defeat her, instead of charm-speaking her to sleep or whatnot, Katie could be a significant crux to the primordial’s defeat bc her powers tie in with the land/earth, so she could use her powers to forcibly push Gaea back into the earth.

 Instead of them going to Tartarus, they end up going to Cupid (so some other pair will fall into Tartarus instead), and instead of a stupid forced outing, Cupid takes one look at them, senses their underlying emotional tension and goes “oh boy, yeah, you two have a lot to talk about” and actually (tries to) help guide the two into confessing the feelings they’d hidden, instead of being a little shit like in canon. Plus I just adore the idea of Travis calling Katie “flower” after they get together, and Katie calling him “key” not just bc he steals stuff but also bc he’s like the key to her heart and all that sappy bs, I literally love them sm 🥺 literally such wonderful nickname opportunities that have a deeper meaning

Travis and Jason might have a subtle rivalry, but unlike Percy and Jason’s weird ‘I’m stronger than you’ thing, it could be bc Jason felt a bit jealous of how everyone was looking for Travis, including his sister, while no one pulled much of an effort to look for him? It’d give an opportunity for them to talk things out and end up growing closer after talking

Juno/Hera saw Travis’s need, his desire, to redeem the Hermes name and as a result, used that fire to kickstart her plan by plopping him in Camp Jupiter while Jason got switched to CHB. Hence there is now a reasonable concept as to why the switch happened, because honestly, the whole Percy-Jason switch didn’t make all that sense bc Jason, yes I can sort of understand why he got switched, but Percy?? There was literally no solid reason that was explained as to why he was chosen to be switched lmao. But with Travis, Juno/Hera takes pity on him and uses this as an opportunity for him to bring glory to the Hermes name after the Titan War

I have a ton more ideas for the rewrite as a whole tbvh. Stuff relating to ways Gaea could actually be defeated, more on Octavian’s backstory and why he hates the Greeks so much, and other tiny scenes between the demigods that could bring about more characterization and details to their arcs.

The only problem is...with the way this is going in my head, I think things might end up diverging more or less from canon as the series progresses? Like there will obv be the canon scenes, but there might also be non-canon scenes that might change the series plot a little bit?? And idk how many of y’alls will appreciate that lmao ghjksfgh but I have started writing it. It’s a super long process lmfao, so idk when I’ll publish it (probably on Ao3, if I do), but I just wanted to let y’alls know bc a lot of you guys liked my first post abt this and I saw your lovely tags and it made me super happy and honestly, those tags are the reason why I even started writing this in the first place! So thank you guys so so much for the positive feedback!

[amjustagirl]

Warning! Self indulgent rant ahead, read at your risk. 

To be very honest, I’d been feeling a little disheartened about my writing (and to whoever’s reading, please don’t see this as a cry for attention I’m just using this space to vent). There are times when I feel like I’m sending my fic babies out into a black void, and the perfectionist, immature part of me gets depressed because I see my fics that I’ve poured hours of time thinking about plot and characterisation and dialogue and imagery and motifs - not do as well as I’d hoped. Of course, my writing isn’t great - far from it, so perhaps I don’t deserve shit. 

But then there are lovely, lovely people out there who’s saved this humble fic writer’s heart by reblogging and commenting and liking my fic. Just yesterday, someone on my AO3 wrote a longass comment describing how much she loved how i’d written the dynamics between the Miya twins, and I swear to god, I couldn’t stop smiling the whole day. Today, shoutout to @glassykaashi and @memekingofwwiii who commented on Chapter 2 of the Storm Chaser (and omg yes the ‘clear pools of light’ line is my absolute fav, and I literally spent half an hour mulling over how to get it just right. I literally glow whenever people reblog my fic with tags like ‘omg this hurt so much but I love it’. All this rambling to say - thank you, to all those who’ve taken a minute out of your day to write a comment, reblog or leave a like. You’re the inspiration behind my fics <3 

That being said - of course, I could pivot to write pieces that would be more popular and more time efficient. But then I thought back to what Kita said - “I am built upon the small things I do every day, and the end results are no more than a byproduct of that." That’s true isn’t it - even for writing? My writing is built on the little details I work on every day, and I do it, not because the gods are watching (or in this case, readers are reading), but because I find innate joy in creating little stories for a fandom I appreciate. So I have to keep reminding myself that at the end of the day, results (likes, reblogs, comments, while very, very, very much appreciated and loved) are no more than a byproduct of that hard work and love. 

Anyway - rant over. Back to work!  

[blue-shaded]

Hi Dolphin anon! It’s me again. Thanks for reading the whole long message, I did not realize how long it was while I was typing it out LMAO. Yeah I’ll concede a lot of your points as well, when I spoke on the reputation of the MC speedrunning community, I was more so speaking about it in terms of just the Minecraft community itself, I hadn’t really considered the perspective of those in other speedrunning categories, so fair enough! As for the moderating team, yeah, their legitimacy and fairness did get called into question but like I said in my last submission, I think this questioning was a little deserved. Geosquare was the one who was heading (or seemed to be taking the lead) on the Dream situation so most looked to him as the figurehead of the mod team, and I think by allowing his bias to affect how he handled the situation initially, I think he shot himself as well as the other moderators in the foot. So on that end, I think the bias deserved to be called out, but you’re, as always, welcome to disagree!

I also agree that he needs to say it more publicly on his twitter. He has a tendency to say it on his private account and in replies because he tends to be very reactionary. Usually if he makes a separate tweet on his alt or main twitter account, it’s after he’s already seriously replied to people or made a serious thread on his private, so he just starts making lighthearted jokes about the situation to try to get both sides to stop taking it seriously in hopes that they’ll stop sending hate and move on.

To his credit, I think he likes to more explicitly say that stuff on livestream. I don’t know how closely you saw or if you saw the Kaceytron situation at all, but when he went on her stream to discuss with her, he explicitly states “I do not condone any death threats or doxxing or any sort of hate” and I know he’s shared similar sentiments on other livestreams. But he definitely needs to have it somewhere on his main Twitter accounts where it’s easily accessible.

And yes I agree that things get trended way too easily, but I think people are too focused on the wrong thing (not you, just people with this argument in general). There have been multiple instances where POC fans try to get people to shut up or to stop livetweeting or to go private (so that their tweets don’t add to trending phrases) whenever important things are happening and while there are many people who listen, it’s unfortunately just not possible to stop it from trending. Because of how fans recieve the content (typically live, all reactions are immediate, whether it be in response to a content creator’s tweet or talking about a stream), there’s a tendency for a word or name or phrase to get repeated amongst several tweets. The Twitter trending algorithm tends to favor sudden influx of tweets over longevity. This is why you’ll sometimes see something MCYT-related at the top of the trending page despite the fact that it says it only has around 1,000-2,000 tweets, whereas other phrases and trends will have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of tweets and still sit lower on the trending tab because those tweets slowly came in over throughout the course of the whole day rather than all at once.

If we’re focusing specifically on Dream and not MCYTs as a whole, he himself can average around a good 130K watchers, if not more, while streaming. Say that an important real world issue is being talked about on Twitter, and most people who are watching, aren’t tweeting about the livestream (either because they don’t use Twitter or they’re someone who knows of the situation and is being conscious and respectful to the community being affected by that situation) and that only 1% of the people watching that stream are still tweeting (whether bc they’re ignorant or bigoted or just don’t know of the situation. regardless, definitely a low-balled percentage). That’s still a sudden influx of 1.3K tweets and is still enough to put it near the top and if not the very top of the trending page. And it sucks and it’s dumb and people have tried to find ways around it. Many people in the community censor names if they’re livetweeting while something else is going on, the last time this happened, people censored karl as “k4rl” and k4rl got tweeted so much that it ended up trending anyways. So 100% get what you’re saying and I get the criticisms of the fanbase surrounding that, but I think it’s just a thing of Twitter needing to fix its algorithm because it should not favor sudden influxes over longevity like that.

If you want an upcoming example of this problem, I’d suggest for you to keep an eye on the trending tab on the 19th! Many black people within the community have been speaking up about Juneteenth and it’s importance to them as a community and that fans should try not to trend anything that day. Specifically they’ve asked Karl Jacob’s community (known as honktwt) to not post for honktwtselfieday, which happens every month on the 19th. These tweets have gained a lot of traction and have been seen by Karl Jacobs himself and he replied and said that he wouldn’t be posting for his selfie day and that he discouraged all of his fans from posting for this month’s selfie day either. Despite this, I’m almost entirely sure that a few people are going to be posting for the selfie day anyway (whether it be bc they’re ignorant n don’t care or they somehow don’t know), though it’s going to be much much less than the amount of people who would usually be postijgnfornthebselfiebday, but I’m sure you’ll see honktwtselfieday trending at some point on the 19th regardless.

Also! as for the shooters4dream tag, yeah, as an Asian, that was disgusting to see. I will say that it wasn’t the antis, though antis did boost it further by posting on it later on and saying to not use the tag (very. counterintuitive, but I digress). That tag came from inside the community as a joke (an incredibly poorly timed one). It’s a borrowed joke from the kpop community to say that you’re a shooter for ___, as in a defender of them, and some people were just being senseless when making the joke and it was really disheartening to see that people weren’t really thinking before using it. I think it’s since been widely addressed that shooters4___ probably isn’t a good joke to make at any time, so I think a lot of people have taken to saying shields for ___ instead.

I also don’t get the hate around the merch. I personally haven’t gotten any, but I don’t think it should come as a surprise to anyone that it’s just a smiley face when that’s his whole brand— the dream smile blob. People are obviously allowed to have their own tastes in clothes but the hate on that front seemed excessive. I think there are plenty of valid criticisms towards Dream, but I don’t think the topic of merch design is one of them.

As for your friend! Yeah I get that, and it’s sucks that she’s not practicing what she preaches. I think it’s very easy to get caught up on the toxicity of social media and it’s sounds like that’s what’s happened to her. Hope you do what’s best for you and your mental health! Like last time, this isn’t any hate towards you (in case any of it seemed like it was) and thank you to Blue for putting up with the longass submissions and for being a conduit for the conversation 💀

sdlkfjslkd don't worry about the long posts Passing on to dolphin anon.