#as is the new good quality scope

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

People seem to lack a sense of “obsolescence.” Something old might not automatically be garbage even if something new and better has come along. The older thing that is no longer in use might have been genuinely bad, but it’s very possible that it worked and maybe even worked quite well in its time—it may still work quite well now—but the new thing is still better or more effective. This is a question of societal and personal values and it has practical consequences.

I am trying to research vintage (and replica) rifle scopes right now, and it is extremely unhelpful to read people say that such and such thing is “garbage,” because I don’t know if that means garbage for its time, subjectively bad to the person speaking, or simply inferior to a modern high quality optic.

To give an analogous example, I have a pair of WWII binoculars. They’re clearly well-made, durable, good materials, and when you look through them, you can indeed see a thing that is far away as though it were closer. But my younger brother has a good pair of modern binoculars and when you look through them not only is the image better resolution than real life, it is brighter and I’m pretty sure you see colors invisible to the naked eye. It’s insane how good they are.

The old binoculars are still perfectly functional. The new ones just do the same thing much better.

[redflagshipwriter]

Hot Ghouls in Your Area

Chapter 1

“A cult?” Jason blew out a bubble and enjoyed the disgusted face that Bruce made.

“Yes.” His voice was tight. Jason could tell that he wanted to turn back to the Batcomputer. “They’re operating in Park Row-”

“Crime Alley.”

Batman sighed and accepted the correction. “I would like to propose a joint operation.” He sounded so tired and not very optimistic.

Jason eyed up his on-again-off-again Father figure and popped his gum, thinking it over. Bruce clearly expected him to say no, fuck off, and take the information himself.

He could. There was nothing wrong with that.

“Sure, old man.” He clapped Bruce on the shoulder and finished screwing together the tool he’d brought in for maintenance. He’d had to fabricate a new part and the Red Hood didn’t exactly have the equipment for that in his two room apartment. “Thursday night alright?”

“They’ve a planned meeting on Wednesday, actually,” Bruce said, frowning slightly at him but looking soft around the eyes with confused hope. “Would that be possible? They seem to gather mid-week.”

Jason let out a sigh. “I can make it work. Ta, old man.” He made sure to toss off an especially insouciant salute as he sauntered away. Sure, he was willing to put a little effort into maintaining their relationship, but he couldn’t be too compliant. If you gave Bruce an hour of your time, he wrote you down on the schedule for an hour every day until one of you fuckin’ died in a warehouse explosion. Something like that.

He wasn’t that trusting, though. Jason took the information that Bruce emailed him and did his own legwork. He wasn’t stubborn enough to bother redoing digital work that Bruce had done or gotten from Babs. That would be a waste of his time, and he valued his time. But he scoped out the cult’s meeting place.

Of all the undignified things, it was a rented room in the community center. Jason found himself sheepishly breaking into the office to check on the reservation and poking around the room itself.

There was nothing special about it. It was a shitty room with shitty paneled walls and cheap, well-trodden grey carpet. It boasted a few too many tables, arranged in a U shape, and a whiteboard pushed up against the wall that hadn’t been cleaned off well enough to erase what he was pretty sure was a reference to their lord and savior, destroyed of worlds.

So. That was a point for Bruce’s cult thing.

He hadn’t really doubted it, if he was honest, given that this had originated in a tip from Zatanna. She had told him as a courtesy that some creep had moved their base of recruiting and operations into Gotham.

Apparently, recruitment was going pretty well. The room could seat like, twenty? Jason counted chairs and left.

He came back on Wednesday at 8pm with the Batman and an attempt at a good attitude. He probably wasn’t going to need any of the weapons on his person. They were going to check in so that this guy knew they had an eye on him and that he would be suspect number one if there was any hint of people or cats being sacrificed.

Bruce fucked off to peer in the windows, like the giant caped creep he was. Jason took the front door, nodded congenially at the old man in the office, and knocked at the room the cultists had reserved.

He could hear Bruce internally curse through the comm. It was silent, of course, but the quality of the silence changed. “Knock knock,” he called, since a literal knock hadn’t done it. He opened the door without waiting. “Just checking in, heard you’re new to town and that you tried to feed Zatanna’s shitty little cousin to the god of Death?”

The room stared at him. A whiteboard marker squeaked to a stop. He idly followed the sound to the board. A …. Huh. that looked like some kind of mystical bullshit.

“You’ve been touched by death,” said the fraud himself, a man in his fifties with a wildly pretentious robe that was wrinkled from the paper bag he’d clearly used to carry it in. He outstretched the hand that didn’t have a blue whiteboard marker in it. “You would be a perfect sacrifice to our Lord.”

“So will it be,” said about half the people there, at the same time a young woman said, “No shit?” in an impressed tone.

Jason rolled his eyes through the helmet, unintimidated by the room of weirdos standing up. The kind of people who gathered at a community center on a Wednesday night were not going to summon the God of Death. Light glinted off the window where Batman was clearly weighing the possibility of breaking glass and swinging in. Jason silently waved him off with a headshake. They weren’t to the point of property damage yet. He took a couple of steps into the room with deliberate swagger. “What a lucky guess,” he drawled. “The Red Hood has had brushes with death? No one but a legitimate prophet could possibly make such a statement.”

“I’m not a prophet,” said the man, and turned back to his white board. “I’m a devote.” He rubbed out a line with the meat of his hand and then hurriedly wrote in ‘The Red Hood’ in a tilted cursive. “The sacrifice!” he shouted, throwing his arms wide and accidentally making a big blue line through his evil little sigil or whatever it was. The elderly lady to Jason’s right opened up her bag, thrust her hand in, and came up with a fistful of -

“Salt?” Jason asked, confused and unimpressed as the silly twit threw her handful of salt at him. “Thanks, I’m better seasoned now,” he snarked. He pulled out a gun easily. “Alright, let’s get serious. I-”

The whiteboard was glowing. The blue letters were glowing green.

“What the fuck?” Jason said. The windows exploded with broken glass as Batman decided now was the time to make his entrance. He barely got to see it before something hooked unpleasantly on his body and soul and twisted it sideways.

The world was green now. Holy shit. Jason spun a circle on uneven ground and gaped. “...Egg on my face,” he said. “I’ve been sacrificed. Consider me embarrassed.” A quick check showed that his comm was useless. It was giving off a steady little eeee of static that kinda sounded like screams. Whimsical. Jason turned it off.

He wasn’t panicking yet. The void wasn’t that freaky. It was weird, sure, but there weren’t any demons or enemies. He flicked the safety off his favorite gun just in case and frowned into the darkness.

It was like he was standing under a spotlight with no light source. There was ambient lighting in all directions, but the world faded into darkness only a few dozen feet away. He took some experimental steps to determine that, yeah, the field of visibility traveled with him.

Well. Time to get moving. Jason walked. There was nothing for the first - hour, he was gonna call it an hour. He got antsy and started jogging. The green stretched on, placid and infinite in a way that was really starting to piss him off. “Hey!” Jason barked into the void. “Anyone there?”

There was an answering electronic whirr. He stopped in his tracks. Jason looked in every direction, including up, and only saw the fucking thing when it was basically on top of him.

The vehicle was probably most equivalent to a spaceship, he decided, as what was probably a 3-man craft at most parked. The top clicked. It opened from the top and someone bounded out. “Hey!” came an annoyed male voice. “What’s the deal, bud?” The stranger landed in front of Jason with crossed arms and a pissy expression. His white hair floated above his head as if he was the little fucking mermaid in the ocean.

Jason scowled, the back of his mind cataloging the other guy’s outfit as pristine and undamaged and his musculature as athletic. “What’s it to you?” he asked, defensive. He didn’t know if it was safe to give information to this guy. “I might be a little lost,” Jason conceded.

“A little lost,” the guy repeated, and then- okay, he flew in a weird little flippy circle, scowling all the while as Jason gaped. “A little lost.” He scoffed. Then he let out a sigh that made his whole body look smaller. He uncrossed his arms and ran a hand through his hair. “This is a weird question,” he said, making it sound more defensive than apologetic. “Did you uh.” He scowled, like the words were distasteful. “Look,” he tried again. “Are you delulu, or did you get caught up as the sacrificial bride? I told Frank to knock that shit off.”

Sacrificial bride. Jason felt his brain go offline for a moment. Say what now.

“Helloooo,” the… was this rando a god of death? He was impatient. He flew way up into Jason’s personal space and snapped his fingers. “Someone just smashed metal trash bins together at my grave to get my attention, basically. No, it’s more like one of those spam pop ups that says there’s hot girls in your area?” He made a gesture at Jason. “Only it’s loud. It’s ringing in my ears, and I had to come track you down. Do you think this is funny?”

“...Sacrificial bride?” Jason finally managed to croak out.

Weirdly, this made the other guy relax immediately. “Just found out, huh,” he said, sounding much more sympathetic. “Yeah, okay, we need to sort out a spiritual divorce immediately. And then you can go home and there will be no more hot girls in my area and I can get back to my ess- my work.”

Jason took a few moments of grief and confusion to accept his apparent status. “We’re married?” he said weakly.

The white haired man looked a little sheepish. “Marriage is probably not quite accurate,” he said, and Jason felt a little bit of relief before the guy continued, “It’s more like you’re my concubine?” He sounded mortified by this. “I didn’t want this!”

“No, no,” Jason said, meaning both that he believed it and that he needed this conversation to change directions immediately. “I- who are you?” He gestured at his– what the fuck was the other side of a concubine relationship? King was the associated word that came up, but that…

“I’m nobody, really,” said the white haired man weakly. “But I may technically be King of ghosts or whatever. The Infinite Realms.” He scratched at his face. “So… yeah.”

They stood in utterly mortified silence for a long moment before he seemed to remember something. “You can call me Danny,” he offered.

“...Call me Jason,” he said.

“Thanks, Jason,” Danny said genially. “So, uh, this is a mess, right?” He started floating away backwards. “I’m going to hunt down my mentor and advisor and get some uh- advice, I guess. Do you wanna come with? Or should I come back and check in once I’ve heard from him?”

Jason weighed up his situation, the conventional wisdom about getting in vehicles with strange men, and wondered how useless his gun was going to be in this situation. Danny had never reacted to it being pointed at him, so his guess was ‘utterly unhelpful’. He put it away. “I’d like a ride, thanks,” he said dryly.

They made some stilted conversation on the ride. Danny was clearly trying to hold back and give him no identifying information. That was fascinating, because it implied that there was something Jason could do from the human world to track Danny down. It was also reassuring because there was no reason to withhold information if he’d planned to keep Jason prisoner, so, ya know, that was a good sign.

Anyway, Jason got a lot of information from Danny.

Danny was a terrible liar and he misspoke like, all the time. Jason was pretty sure he was in the ghost equivalent of school, like college or something. He talked like someone in Jason’s age group would, so he’d probably died very recently. Maybe he had been a college student when he’d died and he just hadn’t given up on that degree yet, honestly. Jason managed to drag the conversation around to education. He got nowhere with asking about literature but he hit the jackpot with science. Danny was still babbling about a telescope when he landed the …ship outside of a wonky clocktower.

Jason took off his safety belt and froze in his tracks when Danny absently stopped him with a cool hand. Jason looked down at that hand.

“You had better stay here,” Danny said. He shook his head slightly. “Clocky doesn’t like everyone.”

He melted into the chair as if he had never wanted to get up. “Alright,” Jason said.

Danny was out of the spaceship by the time that Jason realized something was very wrong with that interaction.

He hadn’t decided to sit down. He hadn’t wanted to sit back down. Did- did he actually think it was reasonable to stay behind, or would he have argued and gone in normally?

‘...I think Danny did something.’ Suspicion swirled in his gut. Jason tried to take the safety belt off and stand up. He couldn’t. It was like his muscles wouldn’t respond to it.

Well, that was pretty fuckin’ evil. His pulse picked up in his throat. It… It was some kind of compulsion? He had to do what Danny told him to do? That was really fucked up. He was starting to feel really unsafe now. He wished he’d hung back with Bruce. He wanted someone to bring him home. And weirdly, he felt betrayed. He hardly trusted Danny, didn’t know the fucker well enough to, but he hadn’t gotten that impression off the guy–

‘It wasn’t him,’ Jason realized. ‘It was the binding ritual. Danny said it wasn’t like a marriage, it’s not equal. That’s why I did what Danny wanted me to do.’

Well. Well then. If Danny didn’t know that Jason had to follow his orders, Jason was most fucking certainly not going to spell it out for him. It was a grim calculation to make, but it seemed the safest. As it was, Danny seemed to want to get rid of him as fast as possible.

So that was it. He’d play along and get Danny to spit him back out into Gotham, a young hot divorcé free on the streets.

[laundrybiscuits]

The officer leans close, jabbing a finger into Steve’s chest. “You’re damn lucky it ain’t ten years ago or one state over,” he growls. “You could be looking at a felony charge, serving 15 to life. We didn’t stand for this kind of thing in Hawkins when I joined the force.”

Steve just folds his arms and gives the officer a bored look. “Okay,” he says. “Good talk. Can I see my boyfriend now?”

The officer sneers, but he steps aside to let Steve through. They’ve got Eddie cuffed to the hospital bed with another gun-toting guard in the corner. 

��Jesus christ,” snaps Steve. “He’s not gonna escape, he can’t even walk right now. Why don’t you clear out and give us a little privacy, huh?”

“Sorry,” says the guard, not sounding all that sorry. “It’s for his own protection.”

Fuck. He’s gonna have to hope Eddie can follow his lead. All that practice pretending to be a wizard or whatever has to be good for something, right?

He perches on the side of Eddie’s bed and takes his hand. He can do this. “Hey, gorgeous. How’re you feeling?” 

“Uh,” says Eddie, eyebrows doing something hilarious. “Steve?”

“It’s okay,” says Steve. He rubs his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. This is the most they’ve ever touched, he thinks—the most that was just skin, no layers of denim or leather in between. Not even a layer of blood and dirt. 

He swallows and keeps going, willing Eddie to develop freaky mind-reading powers all of a sudden. “I know you didn’t want to tell anyone about us, but I had to, baby. I’m sorry. I had to tell them you were, y’know, with me when…when Jason killed Chrissy.”

“You didn’t have to tell them about us,” says Eddie slowly. He’s giving Steve kind of an intense look. “Honey-pie. I’m sure there’s gotta be another way. One without as many consequences for you that you might not have thought all the way through.”

“There really isn’t,” Steve says. Thank god Eddie’s so quick on the uptake. Sure, he’s being a stubborn dick about it, but at least it doesn’t seem like he’s going to let anything slip. 

“Fucking hell,” sighs Eddie. “Don’t suppose we can put that pesky little cat back in the bag. Okay. Darling angel, light of my life, corndog of my soul, who else knows?”

Corndog of my soul, Steve mouths to himself. “Just the cops. And Robin and Nancy, obviously. And—oh, remember Hopper?”

“Do I remember Hopper, he asks. Oh, pudding-pop. The late Chief Hopper and I spent so, so much quality time together over the years; he was practically a father figure to me. And just as with my actual dear old dad, his departure was cause for great rejoicing in Casa Munson.”

“Sorry to break the bad news, then. Hop’s alive, and he—uh, he knows everything.” Steve tries to communicate the scope of everything by kind of tilting his head back and forth. “He’s been…helping.”

“Huh. No shit,” says Eddie. Steve can’t tell whether or not he’s getting it. To be fair, there’s a lot to get. “Okay, gallant knight errant of mine, any news on whether or not I’m getting sprung from this charmingly appointed dungeon?”

“We’re…Hopper’s working on it. That’s why I’m. Y’know. Here. To tell you that they know about us.” 

“Cool, right, understood.” Eddie closes his eyes, leaning back on his pillow. It’s so strange to see him in nothing but a hospital gown against white sheets. He looks like a wrung-out dishtowel. 

There’s a commotion from outside, raised voices saying something like you let him what and haven’t even interrogated the Munson kid yet and not a legal status you fuckin—

“Time’s up, sweetheart,” says Eddie, mouth quirking up into the ghost of a smile. “Anything else you wanna say before they decide to upgrade my security?”

“Uh,” says Steve. He’d mostly been focusing on getting the basics of Eddie’s alibi across in a convincing way, and he can’t remember if there were any other details Eddie should know. 

He hears the door slam open behind him, and panics. “Love you, bye,” he says, and ducks in to brush a quick kiss across Eddie’s chapped lips. The last thing he sees as he’s hauled bodily out of the room by a pissed-off detective is Eddie with his eyes gone enormous and shocked, lifting his uncuffed hand to his mouth, looking and looking at Steve like something is always going to be different from now on, forever.

(ETA: small continuation here!)

[starryalpacasstuff]

The Absence of India in Discussions on Queer Asian Media

So, yesterday @lurkingshan tagged me in an ask she got from @impala124 about the absence of India when we're talking about queer Asian media. I was intially just going to reblog it with my thought, but as it kept growing I figured it'd be best to just make my own post. Please read the ask linked above first so this makes sense.

*cracks knuckles* this is going to be the most fun I've had writing a post in ages. (For a little background, I'm a queer Indian, born and raised)

So, this is a very interesting question on a subject I've been rotating in my head for the past several months. There's a lot of different variables that contribute to the noticeable lack of discussion on Indian and South Asian queer media in general, so I'm just going to talk through the ones I've noticed a little randomly.

Talking about Asian media in general, it's well known that the mass popularity of kpop and anime has contributed massively to the increase in popularity of Asian media. If you've been in the Asian media fandom for any amount of time at all, you'll have noticed that media from Korea, Japan, and China gets by far the most attention from international audiences; all East Asian countries. There may be several reasons for this, but in particular, it's no secret that the fetishization of East Asians is a massive proponent in the popularity of media from these countries, while there's no such interest in South Asians. If we shift our focus to queer media specifically, media from these three countries is still extremely popular, with the addition of Thailand and the Philippines to some extent; both South East Asian countries. From what I've seen, there's very little international interest in media from South Asian countries (although, if we're talking about India specifically, I can't exactly say anything. Bollywood has not been good lately). If we talk about queer South Asian media, the scope of interest falls even further. If you'll notice, MyDramaList, one of the most commonly used websites for finding and tracking Asian shows only allows for East and South-East Asian shows. So, that's one reason—there's just not much international interest in Indian media in general. As Shan said in the initial post, it's partially because of a difference in priorities. Korea is notorious for using media to gain global standing, the role of the 'soft power' of Thai bls in the recent bills for equal marriage in Thailand has been widely discussed, the list goes on. Could racism also play a part in the massive gulf of interest in media from East Asian versus South Asian countries? Probably. But I'm not going to get into that too much.

Moving on, there's obviously a massive lack of queer media in India. I think this is greatly exacerbated by the fact that it's very hard to support the people making queer media beyond buying and/or streaming their work. The majority of people engaging with Indian queer media are queer Indians, and a lot of us have to do so in secret because of the society we live in. This means that creators that have to push through several obstacles to publish their work often receive little incentive to continue doing so because of the lack of engagement. Because of the lack of media, international fans are less likely to become interested in queer Indian media, and the cycle continues.

I will say though, contrary to what Shan said, I think Indian media, particularly anything that came out post 2019 might actually be on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to access. This may simply be bias, so forgive me if I'm wrong here, but from what I've seen, a lot of queer Indian shows are in fact available on streaming sites, and at most you'd need a vpn to access them. I think the two main things that actually hold back queer Indian media from becoming more popular are a lack of noise and it's relatively lower quality.

The main way we find out about new shows in this space is through either word of mouth (well actually, post) or because we follow production houses known for producing media. Because of the sparse nature of both the media and the consumers, there's very few people who learn enough about the media to want to give it a shot. For example, there's a film on netflix called Badhaai Do (hindi for Congratulate Us) that I've been meaning to watch for a while. It centers around a lavender marriage and I've heard a lot of good things about it, so I was slightly surprised to see that most of the people on tumblr I interact with who have been engaging with queer media for far longer than me had never heard of it. There's also a, Indian BL from 2017 called Romil and Jugal that I've written about before here, and I would've never learned of it's existence if not for a friend hearing about it from another friend of hers.

Because there's so little queer indian media, it's natural that the quality leaves much to be desired. The main issue is, because the queer asian media market has become so saturated lately people are becoming a lot more selective with what they watch, and for good reason. This means that queer media from india is simply unable to grow and improve over time, leaving it stagnant. Back in 2016-2018, the overall dearth of queer media from Asia meant that a lot of people were willing to watch shows that were average or even worse. Thailand particularly seems to have benefitted from this, being able to grow and evolve its queer media due to the successes of shows like SOTUS, 2gehter, TharnType and more even recently, KinnPorsche. Queer Indian media will have a much, much harder time with this because of all of the factors I've talked about and more, meaning that it is much harder for queer media to evolve. Honestly, though I haven't been able to watch/read much queer media from India, the stuff I have seen is really quite decent, it's just that it tends to fail in comparison to some of the brilliant stuff we're seeing from other countries. A while a ago, I bought four queer books by Indian authors, and of the three I've read so far, I'd genuinely recommend two, albeit one with quite a few reservations (I'll be writing about them sometime in the future, just haven't found the time yet). While talking about this with @neuroticbookworm, she brought up the excellent point of how Indian media in general has just been of fairly poor quality lately. It seems to me that a lot of it is catered to more conservative audiences, which results in people like me becoming disillusioned with Indian media and simply moving onto things from other countries. It has been a long time since I've watched anything worthwhile come out of Bollywood. So, it becomes even harder for queer Indian shows to be found at all; a majority of their target audience has already forsaken Indian media as a lost cause.

So, those are a bunch of reasons because of which there's not a lot of discussion about queer Indian media in fandom spaces like Tumblr. Something else I'd like to point out is, it's very hard for queer shows in India to gain much traction whatsoever. Live television slots are ruled by the infamous Indian serials, the majority of the audience being people in their late thirties and older, particularly women. And while homophobia is just as prevalent amongst the youth of India as it is amongst older generations, younger people are far more likely to be engaging with queer media, in India at least. This means that it would be near impossible for queer shows to air on live television the way they do in countries like Thailand and Japan. The majority of Indian youth use global streaming services to watch shows, hence the greater concentration of queer shows on service platforms. (Romil and Jugal is something of a dark horse here—I don't believe it was ever aired, but it was produced by a producer who has a few decently popular serials under her belt and is available on an Indian steaming service—another reason I'm determined to research how tf this show ever came into existence) If we talk of movies, the industry is limited by the iron fist of Bollywood, another reason it's very hard for queer movies to be produced and why they're generally found on streaming sites.

There's just not a lot of people who have the balls it would take to make a queer Indian show/movie and push it to the Indian public beyond a streaming service. I mean, we're all seeing what's happening with the Love in The Big City drama right now, and believe me, public backlash in India would be the same, if not much worse. And if no one in India is watching these shows, why would anyone in any other part of the world? There's barely any public figures that would be willing to participate in such a project, so queer media stays underground. Currently, Karan Johar is the most popular—and one of the only—out celebrities in Bollywood, and, well, he's treated as something of a laughing stock by the public. He has one or two queer adjacent shows under his belt as a producer, but once again, they're barely known and available only on Netflix. There was a movie called Dostana in which he played a straight guy pretending to be gay but, well, that speaks for itself. And well, I can't exactly blame him for it, knowing how the Indian entertainment industry is.

To talk a little more about the specific comparison between India and Korea, I think you're fairly accurate in saying that the two countries seem to be roughly on par in terms of homophobia, although that's an extremely vague statement that's rather hard to either prove or disprove. While the difference in international attention towards Korean and Indian media is certainly a major component of the difference in discussion about the queer media from these countries, there's obviously other things that go into it as well. There's this video I watched some time ago on the progression of queer representation in K-dramas that's quite well researched. It's an hour and a half long, so in case you don't have the time to watch it (though I do recommend it), it basically talks about some of the dramas with queer rep that have aired on Korean television and their impact. While it's hard to gauge the level of impact of these shows on the availability of bls and gls in Korea, they certainly had an effect, if only telling the queer population of Korea that they are seen and heard. To my knowledge (although I may be mistaken), no such queer rep has ever aired on Indian television, meaning that there's nothing to push creators to put queer media out there. There have been old movies and shows that depict queerness, but none of them ever reached the sort of the scale where they may have some sort of impact on the industry. As I mentioned earlier, the widespread popularity of K-dramas (and k-pop) does make it easier for creators to make queer media since there's a much higher chance of the shows being successful thanks to the international audience. Bringing back Love In The Big City, the success of the book abroad and the high probability of the show being well received internationally is probably one of the reasons it was able to be produced amongst domestic backlash.

Now, I've been talking a lot about how it's difficult for queer Indian media to gain any sort of international recognition with domestic attention. However, it's not necessarily the case. Here's where I start rambling (I say, as if this post isn't verging on 2k words). It's been proven that the presence of the international market allows for greater creative freedom in spaces beyond television. The best example comes from Korea's very own 'soft power'; K-pop. There's a K-pop group called Dreamcatcher that debuted in 2017 with a rock sound and horror concept that was extremely rare in kpop at the time. They succeeded mainly by focusing most of their promotions to the foreign market, knowing that their concept would not be well liked in Korea. And they succeeded. Today, Dreamcatcher has a sizeable fandom and has even been growing in popularity in Korea, with the Korean public warming up to their genre and having influenced other girl groups to try out similar sounds. We've already talked about the lack of international attention for Indian media, but there's also the issue that the producers of queer Indian media aren't marketing to foreign audiences, which remain ignorant.

That's all I have, this is so long good lord. All in all, there's a bunch of factors that feed into each other creating a cycle which means that, unless there's a break somewhere, queer Indian media will remain unrecognized. I'm excited to see what other people have to say, because this is a topic close to my heart and I'd definitely enjoy seeing more discussions around it.

[oceaneyesinla]

Fabric and Feelings

I've been thinking about Sanemi and how he ended up confronting Madea. This is my idea on how it might have come about

Content warning: brief mentions of harassment

Divider by @/cafekitsune

Sanemi couldn’t say he particularly liked being paired up with the new recruits, but sometimes there just wasn’t another choice. He grudgingly accepted that they were useful for gathering information, especially if they were still bright eyed and eager, friendly and approachable in a way Sanemi himself hadn’t been since childhood. So, despite the fact the quality of their members was dropping with every passing year, they still had some small uses.

The demon he was tracking at the moment was proving elusive, a fact that had already put him in a foul mood even before he had to call in support from one of the new Mizunoto, barely a month out of Final Selection. He figured you would be just another poor excuse for a Slayer, still shaking in your boots at the thought of a demon.

He met you just outside the village, and the first thing he noticed was your uniform. It was hard to miss; with a skirt that barely covered the tops of your thighs and a shirt that hardly deserved to be regarded as such. A slit down the middle revealed the swell of your breasts, and he imagined it was only the single small button at the top of your white undershirt which kept everything even slightly covered. It wouldn’t do a thing to defend you against sharp claws and bared teeth, which was the whole point of the fabric it was made from. It was supposed to give new Slayers like you a vague chance of surviving past the first week without being maimed by the low level demons you were sent after.

Was this really what Demon Slayers were being given these days? Well, he couldn’t really judge, taking a look down at his own uniform, jacket and shirt unbuttoned to reveal muscle built and scars gained from years of fighting for survival.

His eyes landed on yours as you stopped in front of him, and you were quick to look away with a slight flush in your cheeks and a hand fiddling with the hem of your skirt. Great - one of those. The Slayers with stars in their eyes and fantasies of having lives and families and the ones who treated the Hashira like they hung the moon and stars. Stupid idiots never realised that the Hashira were just as painfully human as the rest of them - what separated them was the will to destroy; the bone deep desire to see every demon eradicated, no matter the personal cost. Sanemi had learned over the years that their own death wasn’t the worst thing a human could experience.

“Shinazugawa-san. My crow told me to meet you here. What’s our mission?” Your cheeks were still red, but your voice was steady as you addressed him, eyes already scoping out the area around you both. Maybe this wouldn’t be a complete waste of time after all.

“Come on.” He didn’t wait to see if you were following, taking off in the opposite direction. It wasn’t his responsibility to babysit you.

***********

Your mission was proving successful, and Sanemi almost felt bad about his initial assessment of you. As expected, people looked at him with guarded concern, but as soon as you opened your mouth, they were at ease, chattering as if you had lived in this village all your life. It reminded him of Masachika, and Kanae, and he pointedly ignored the way his heart clenched at the thought. That attitude could never last, not in the Corps. Masachika’s blood, a permanent invisible brand on his skin, and the memory of the dead look in the younger Kocho’s eyes at Kanae’s funeral were stark reminders of that.

You just had a way with people, and he had to admire that. He knew he was hard on the new recruits (and for good reason) but he wasn't too proud to acknowledge when someone proved themselves useful to the Corps.

That natural charisma was starting to work on him too, though he would rather eat glass than admit it. A few days after your reconnaissance began, he found himself watching as you regaled a couple of old ladies with an animated tale, your hands moving as you told your story. They were enchanted, as everyone else had been thus far, and as they walked away, Sanemi heard them comment on how you were ‘such a nice young girl’.

You seemed more relaxed than you had been when he first met up with you, and by the time you split off from him to chase leads on opposite ends of the village, his opinion of you had improved drastically. He still hadn’t seen you fight, which was the make or break factor of any Demon Slayer, but he was impressed with your perception, and the way you kept up with him - seamlessly following his lead even when he didn’t bother to tell you what he was planning.

He also liked the way you called him out afterwards. It was almost amusing to watch you grumble and bitch about his impulsive actions before you suddenly realised you were badmouthing a Hashira and your jaw snapped shut, a pretty red flush covering the apple of your cheeks. Usually, he would have the guts of any lower rank Slayer who mouthed off to him for garters but something held him back in this case. It had been a long time since someone actually gave him a hard time - usually too busy being terrified of his reputation or his attitude to even consider it. 

His solo questioning went well, and he finally felt like he was cornering the demon prowling this area. Hopefully, your exploration had been just as fruitful. As he walked towards the centre of the village to meet back up with you, he barely paid any mind to the sound of raised voices - not an uncommon occurrence, and never usually worth getting involved in.

That was until he got closer and realised he recognised one of those voices. His lips pulled into a frown as he rounded the corner and found you facing off with a civilian, eyes flashing with anger as you argued with the man. Great. The Corps struggled enough with its reputation as it was - the last thing they needed was random recruits having it out with civilians in the street. He didn’t bother to focus on what you were so pissy about as he stalked over, more concerned with ending this little spat and drawing attention away from you both, “Oi, Y/L/N! What the hell are you doing?!”

You whirled around to face him, mouth opening but he just held up a hand to cut you off, “I’m sorry about her, sir. She needs to keep her temper in check. I’ll handle it.” More than a little hypocritical, coming from him, but soothing the guy’s ego was probably the quickest way to end this little drama. Sanemi was familiar with men like this; they didn’t like women to stand up to them, or to fight back, and the last thing he needed was this guy feeling belittled and raising a hand to you.

Thankfully, the man accepted his apology and walked away, casting one nasty glare back at you before he did so. Sanemi took a breath to centre himself before wrapping a hand around your upper arm and dragging you away from the scene, careful not to grip too tightly; he would never want to hurt a woman, no matter how pissed off he might be.

He shoved you onto a deserted side street, turning you to face him, “What are you doing, picking fights with the locals? I leave you alone for a couple of hours and you start causing trouble.”

You scanned his face, studying his expression and he couldn’t say he liked the guarded look that grew in your eyes as you did so. Jerking your arm out of his hold, you stiffly briefed him on what you had learned in your time apart, succinct and to the point. He wanted to assume you were angry with him, but something about the way you held yourself just didn’t fit that. Your shoulders were hunched in, as if you were trying to hide away, to make yourself smaller, and you wouldn’t meet his eye even as the pair of you planned to meet up just after sunset, near the border of the village. Your intel matched, and Sanemi was certain this was the night the demon would fall to his blade.

As soon as the plan was set, you turned on your heel and stormed away. Sanemi just shook his head - whatever was going on, hopefully you would get over it before tonight. You both had a job to do.

*************************

The wait for the demons to appear was awkward, to say the least. You hadn’t said a word to him since you met up at sunset, and you were pointedly avoiding looking at him, feigning interest in a nearby tree. Part of him wanted to say something - now he had cooled off, he felt a little bad about not hearing you out. He made an assumption based on past experience with hot-headed Slayers, but that didn’t quite fit with what he had seen of you so far, nor with how you had closed yourself off after he confronted you.

Before he could broach the subject, rustling from beyond the bushes caught both of your attentions, and for the first time that night, you met his eyes, silently agreeing a plan. Sanemi unsheathed his sword and watched as you did the same before gesturing towards the clearing ahead of you - time to end this.

*********************

His sword slashed through the demon’s neck, and a thud signalled the end of his fight. Immediately, Sanemi scanned the area, finding you standing across the clearing, a demon of your own at your feet, its head rolling towards the treeline. He straightened up and flicked the blood of his sword, hissing as the movement pulled the new gash in his arm. Self-inflicted, of course, but still hurting like a bitch.

He was impressed - you held your own. Before this, he was convinced he would have to step in and save your ass like he usually did with new Mizunoto. However, you took on the weaker of the two demons like you had been a Slayer for years. However, you hadn’t escaped unscathed, which wasn’t surprising given the amount of exposed skin on display. After all, the uniform was supposed to protect against low level demons like this. A particularly nasty set of claw marks was dripping blood down your leg, and he could see the pain lining your face no matter how hard you were trying to hide it as you limped over to him.

He called out to his crow, “Get a couple of Kakushi here. She needs to get to the Butterfly Mansion.”

“No. I’ll get there myself.” Your face was pale with blood loss, and you already looked a little unsteady on your feet even as you argued. The throbbing of the wound on his arm made him a little quicker to anger, and he couldn’t help the rush of frustration flowing through him as he was reminded of just how little protection you had from the uniform you wore. Yes, his uniform was exposing, but he wasn’t fresh out of Final Selection and prone to catching a demon’s claws during fights.

There was no way you could get to the Mansion in your condition, and he told you as much, watching as your face scrunched up in frustration, “That thing you’re calling a uniform didn’t do shit to protect you. Shut up and wait for the Kakushi.”

He saw the flicker of hurt in your eyes, but before he could apologise, it morphed into anger as you squared up to him, “I know it doesn’t protect me, okay?! I know it’s revealing - I see the way people look at me. Men treat me like a doll to stare at and play with. I spoke to Madea when I got my uniform, and I begged for a new one, but I was told it wasn’t allowed. So I make do with what I’ve got. Your judgement isn’t needed or appreciated. I thought you were different, but I guess I was wrong.”

Rage burned in your eyes, but he could see tears welling up on your lash line, face flushing a blotchy red with emotion. Your voice stayed steady despite all that, just as it had the first time you met. Was this how you felt then, too, when his gaze found your clothing before anything else?

“Goodbye, Shinazugawa-san. I trust you can report to the Master alone.” Somehow, you managed to make the honorific tacked onto the end of his name sound anything but respectful as you stalked off, gait remarkably even despite your injuries. You didn’t even give him time to respond to your outburst, which he honestly couldn’t blame you for. Guilt began to curl in his gut, and anger wasn’t far behind. You had mentioned one Kakushi in particular - Madea - who was responsible for the design of your uniform. Once Sanemi had reported his - your - success, he would pay the man a visit. The piece of shit was abusing his position to objectify the Slayers his uniforms were supposed to be protecting, and Sanemi wasn't about to let that go unpunished.

*************************

A few days after your mission, you were still feeling more than a little bitter about the Wind Hashira. You really thought you were getting on well - after that initial eyeing of your uniform when you first met, he had been nothing but respectful. His eyes never wandered below your face and he never once commented on the too short skirt or the uncomfortably revealing shirt. For that, you were grateful - you were all too aware of just how scandalous the uniform was, and you couldn’t shake the discomfort you felt every time you had to put it on. It made you feel vulnerable and exposed - a horrible combination when your job was to fight man eating demons.

You thought the Wind Hashira was different, and even had plans to ask him to spar once your mission was over; maybe even become his friend, over time. His reputation preceded him, and you had spent the whole journey to the mission site fretting over how best to make a good impression, and not earn his ire before you had even begun. Over the course of your mission together, though, your opinion had changed. More than once, you had caught him watching you, eyes studying you with curious concentration, and you felt your cheeks heat up at the memory. The last month had made you hesitant to find yourself under the gaze of others, but something about the way he looked at you made butterflies flutter in your tummy. 

Then he walked in on a man harassing you in the street and still decided you were the one causing trouble. At first, you thought it an act - playing along to get the man away from you. As he chewed you out in that alley, you came to the realisation that there was no act at all.

His comment after your fight with the demons just solidified your opinion. He was just like the others; judgemental, making assumptions about you just because of the clothes you were forced to wear. You had managed to hold your tongue after the incident with the civilian - you knew it would do you no good to get into a fight with a Hashira. However, the pain in your thigh and the humiliation burning through you made something snap, and you lashed out, hurt that he would judge you so easily, without even a chance to explain why you continued to wear such a degrading uniform.

Despite your lack of regrets around telling him off and storming away, you were still a little worried about potential repercussions - he was a Hashira, and you were just a Mizunoto. That worry is what made you jump at the sound of a knock on the door of the private room you were staying in at the Butterfly Mansion.

“Come in!” You were hoping it was one of Shinobu's little girls - they were so sweet, and always willing to keep you company as you recovered. The smile you wore for them quickly fell into a frown as instead, Shinazugawa stepped into the room, “What do you want?” Your cold attitude probably wasn't the best way to avoid punishment for disrespecting a Hashira, but you couldn't help it. You still felt a flood of humiliation every time you thought back on that night.

He didn't speak, walking forward silently to deposit the stack of cloth he was holding on the end of your bed and folding his thick arms over his chest. You looked up at him curiously, but he refused to meet your eye, choosing instead to feign interest in the bed frame.

You reached out for the bundle, lifting up the item on top. As you unfolded it, your eyes widened; it was a uniform jacket, and as you held it up by the shoulders, you noted silver buttons neatly fastened all the way down. It … would cover everything. No more scandalous slit revealing the swell of your breasts, and no more wandering eyes lingering on exposed skin. Your hands were shaking a little as you looked through the rest of Shinazugawa's gift - skirts, still the same style but now long enough to protect your modesty, and shirts, designed to fasten properly and leave nothing on display.

Tears pricked at your eyes as you picked up the final item - socks. You had assumed he wasn't listening to you, when you complained to him one night in the Wisteria House, about how the boots you preferred to wear would rub at your leg. Looking at these now, you just knew they would rise to just above where your boots sat.

You blinked up at him, trying to clear away the building tears, “Why?”

He looked up then, locking eyes with you and you could tell he didn't know what to do with the tears pooling in your eyes. He cleared his throat, a brush of red colouring his cheeks as he rubbed at the back of his neck.

“I … was an ass.” A surprisingly honest confession, and one you weren’t expecting. You stayed quiet, giving him space to speak his mind. This was a side of the Wind Hashira you hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing during your mission, and you found that you liked it, “You didn’t deserve me giving you shit, especially for something you were forced into. You’re … alright. For a newbie.” He folded his arms back across his chest, muscles flexing with the movement, “I went and spoke to Madea. He should think twice before he tries this with anyone else.”

The growing smirk on his face made you think it was a hell of a lot more than a polite conversation, and you were grateful, but the double standard kind of pissed you off, “So you’re allowed to confront him, but when I call someone out for groping me in the street, I’m ‘causing trouble’?”

“That guy did fuckin’ what?” To his credit, Sanemi seemed genuinely outraged on your behalf, “Why did you not …” His rant stopped abruptly, and the anger faded as quickly as it came on, replaced with shame instead, “Shit. I never gave you a chance to say anything, did I?”

You could have held it over him; stayed angry, or thrown hurtful words his way. You didn’t really want to though. Remorse was obvious in the way he was staring at you, and he had more than proven that he was a good man. Even your Cultivator hadn’t confronted Madea about your uniform, and Shinazugawa had done it without hesitation. Holding grudges was never your strong suit anyway, and you always were a sucker for a pretty face. You felt a smile tugging at your lips, “No, you didn’t, Shinazugawa-san. I could consider forgiving you … if you promise me a sparring match once I’ve healed up.”

The wicked grin you got in response lit up his face, and you just knew this would be the beginning of something great.

[aangelinakii]

Dick Grayson/Reader - You’re not a criminal/villain per se but he knows that Bruce wouldn’t approve

BAD INFLUENCE.

— it's a bad idea, right?

summary : what's a little more chaos to the discordant streets of gotham? as for one, you don't mind going out of your way to mess around — it's not like you're hurting anyone. dick grayson can't help but like the thrill you give him, even if it would mean the disappointment of his father.

note : i got a little blocked halfway through so sorry if it started losing quality !!

dick grayson knew that he shouldn't be here, be here with you. but that was a technical shouldn't; one that came around by the rules of the bat.

"i know you've been spending your patrols with that new perp," bruce had said one day when he and dick were the last two remaining at breakfast. his eyes were unwavering on the newspaper he scanned, lifting his third steaming cup of tea to his lips. dick felt his skin burn at his words. "i'd advise you stop doing that."

but here he was; round the back of a warehouse you'd told him was owned by the penguin, watching as you attached a small bomb against one of the brick walls.

as he stared on at the wiring you were fiddling with, the pit of his stomach shared two squirms: the soft tickle of thrill, the one he always felt as he stood beside you in the moonlight, enjoying the way you seemed to realign his patrol movements for the night as soon as you crept up behind him on his rooftop; but also the tug of guilt, knowing he shouldn't be here, knowing that he could actually turn you in to commissioner gordon.

there were already articles written about you in the gazette, your works, and how they were turning an already deprived city into a brick desertland.

"so, what's this gonna do exactly?" dick dared to ask, gulping down his nerves, watching as that devilish grin appeared upon your lips.

dick grayson knew he shouldn't be here, not just by the word of his father, but also by his own uncertainty; the uncertainty that lit his body on fire each time the gap was closed between you two.

"you're smart," you quipped as you stuck your nose back into the wiring, nimble fingers working to prepare your handmade bomb. "i think you can figure it out, huh, nightwing?"

oh, he knew, he just wanted you to say it, just wanted you to say aloud how wrong is was to be here with you, and for him to realise how his centre of gravity would not let him leave.

still, he watched you with a starstruck glint of his eyes, the soft, impressed smile upon his lips.

it wasn't like you were nobody — not with the papers talking about your "pranks" — but it wasn't like you were somebody, either, and yet you were daring to stick your nose in business it oughtn't be messing in; like the penguin's business. all just for the heck of it.

something beeped, and dick looked back at the bomb, duct-taped to the brick of the warehouse. behind, water sloshed against the side of the jetty further down the way. the bomb was ready, a screen blinking awake and displaying a slowly counting down timer.

2:56.

you turned to dick, mysteriously glinting in the full moonlight overhead, and dick tried to ignore the shiver that wracked through his body.

"let's get to a better view," you grinned, already stepping away from the bomb, leaving nightwing in the dust. "i wanna see this when it gets good."

he liked that you were quick on your feet, limber and tactical, able to jump like you were a bat; one of him, one of jason, one of tim. if it weren't for.. everything else, then he was certain you would fit right in at home.

by the time the two of you had made you way up to the top of a couple stacked-up shipping containers, laying on your stomachs to get a good scope of the gritty harbour, there was under a minute left.

no longer could you hear the squeaky beeps of the countdown. instead, a comfortable silence over came the two of you, until you piped up, glancing over at him.

"so, nightwing." the masked vigilante peered over at you. you were always curious about the way he didn't seem as confident around you than he did when landing a suckerpunch to the face of a joker goon. "why do you stick around?"

it was a broad question, and one nightwing wasn't ready to answer — not to you, but more so himself.

his lips parted, mind racing to conjure up an answer, but you stopped him, landing a finger upon the softness of his bottom lip.

"nevermind," you waved it off. "the show is about to begin."

[piratefishmama]

Fake it Till you Make it | Part 16

Watching Eddie scope out his surroundings was… a sight to behold. He didn’t just walk from room to room like any normal person would, no, much like an adventurer, cautiously taking in their surroundings in a new place, in a new dungeon, stretching his neck to look around corners before stepping fully around them, gently touching walls to balance himself as he stretched.

Walking with his heel off the floor, quiet as a church mouse, going from room to room, appraising each one with varying sounds of approval while Steve watched in fond amusement.

It didn’t escape him, how lucky he was. How lucky he’d gotten, how rare it was for people like him, for people like Eddie, to feel comfortable enough to just be in a place that his parents also occupied. That running into his father on the second floor, midway through twirling Eddie from the master bedroom on one side of the hallway to the other where another door awaited his eager exploration, wouldn’t result in some kind of fight, that neither he, nor Eddie, had to hide who they were and what they were doing.

It didn’t escape him that he was lucky. Not just in the freedom he had either, but that he got to see Eddie comfortable. Got to see him light up like Christmas had come early, got to witness the exact moment downstairs when he’d relaxed in Steve’s space.

When he’d taken in all that stood before him and found comfort in it. Steve knew he was lucky that he got to see that. So he wasn’t about to take it for granted.

He wasn’t going to squander the opportunity to make the most of it. Of Eddie’s childish glee. Even if it was all based on a ruse. It was a mutual ruse. A ruse they were both aware of. There was no unfortunate reveal waiting at the end of the tunnel, no high school drama where some asshole pulled the wool from someone’s eyes to reveal none of it was real!!

He was going to make it as real as physically possible, and hopefully… just… continue. After the holiday. Maybe a conversation could happen to clear up any possible misunderstandings but… Steve wanted. He wanted the ultimate nerd currently scoping out the bedroom closest to the home theatre.

“We don’t want this one” Steve advised, leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed over his chest as Eddie poked the mattress with a single finger, as if that would accurately test the quality of the mattress, as he’d been doing for each room. “The home theatre doesn’t have proper sound proofing, if someone wants to watch a film later, we’ll be able to hear it through the walls.” It’d been a solid DIY job on his grandfathers part.

No professional involved, just ‘yeah I can do that, stand back Mags, let a man work’ and that was that. He'd even put it on the second floor, absolute madman.

Steve always pictured his grandmother just standing there, in the same pose he was currently standing in, watching with fond exasperation as her husband went to work on a project he was deeply inexperienced in, and completely unqualified to tackle.

The fact that it looked good in there was a miracle.

“Okay so, not this room, not the bunk bed room, and not the hot tub room, that leeeaves—”

“Master bedroom, or either of the two on the right side of the house.” The options were actually limited when other people were staying, if it were just him and Eddie they could have any room they wanted, but with his parents there it cut down the options.

“Tch, why’d you have me explore all of em then! We should probably just take the master bedroom, right? Since it’s apparently your house, oh great and powerful Master” Steve raised a brow as Eddie dipped into a low bow, theatrical as ever, his tone teasing, his hair bouncing around his face as he righted himself again. Cute.

“Hmm, you looked like you were having fun, you’re cute when you’re having fun.” And his cheeks coloured so nicely whenever he was complimented, hid behind his hair in a way that made Steve’s heart do a funny little flip flop, he’d file that information away for later, continuing on as if he hadn’t just dropped a flirty bomb on the other man “but you’re right, we should probably just take that one, it does have its own private deck…” oh the things they could do on that private deck. If it were all real. “Usually I let my parents have it buuut…” he had company this time. He’d have more than enough of an excuse to get the private deck, even if he wasn’t going to use it for anything other than relaxing. He had a reason to want a little privacy. “I’m sure they’ll understand us wanting it more.”

Eddie rolled with it, quickly recovering with the out Steve had created for himself, or maybe the guy was just so smooth he didn’t even realise he was flirting. That was definitely it. “Or they’ll think they understand us wanting it more” Eddie winked all conspiratorially, which only served to make Steve laugh leaving Eddie looking upon what he’d done in pride. He made Steve laugh. He did that. He’d done that a few times and honestly the high kept staying pretty fucking high.

How had he been so wrong about Steve for so goddamn long? How long had Steve been this glorious thing, like sunshine in human form?

“Exactly” Steve chuckled before pushing himself away from the doorframe “let’s go get our bags then, our shit wont unpack itself.”

“Actually could you get them? I… I should probably call Wayne, let him know I’m safe. It’s not too late there so he should still be home, is that okay? I don’t wanna leave it too late and have to go through reception at the plant, it’s… not great.” Nine times out of ten he wound up speaking to one of the three other Wayne’s working there.

“Yeah, there’s a private line in the room, you go ahead, I’ll grab the bags.”

“My Herculean hero” it wasn’t even remotely fair how badly Steve wanted to kiss him for how little he did to earn it.

“Yer very quiet, Ed, considerin you called me.” He’d gotten through to Wayne after three rings, reassuring him about his safety had been the first thing on the agenda as he got comfortable on the frankly unnecessarily large king sized bed, but then Steve returned to the room with their bags.

All of their bags. In one go, and Eddie’s brain kind of short circuited. “Huh?”

“Yer quiet, somethin the matter?”

“Steve is carrying everything all at once.” It earned a scoff from the man on the phone, and an amused smile from Steve. “It’s awfully distracting, I dunno what to tell you, Wayne I am very distracted.” Steve’s smile only widened

“Uh huh, well, I’ll let you get on then, gotta head out soon anyway, money ain’t gonna make itself. You sure everythin’s alright though? No red flags?”

“Nah… all green flags here, they’re… they’re nice, y’know?” He hadn’t expected it, so many stories of rich people being awful, but… they were just two extremely hard working people who’d had their hard work pay off. Even on holiday they were still working, it was both exhausting to watch, and deeply admirable. Eddie could never. “I’ll call you again tomorrow to check in.”

“I’ll be waitin. Be safe, son.”

“Say hi to Garfield for me” there was a short laugh on the other end, before the line cut off, leaving Eddie smiling as he put the phone down

“Who’s Garfield?” Steve asked, “other than the fat cat.”

“He’s the fat cat shaped mug I can no longer drink from after the great mug smashing of ’86. That stupid earthquake killed him, but we had superglue, so it was fine, just can’t drink out of him anymore cause he’s fragile.” No amount of superglue could fix the tiny areas they hadn’t been able to fill in with pieces, slivers of pot lost to the dark underside of the cabinets. “Need any help?”

“Nah, you just sit there an look pretty for me.” It had the desired effect, Eddie’s eyes widening, a pretty blush blossoming on his cheeks and the final kicker, he hid behind his hair. Adorable. Perfect. Beautiful. Had they actually been dating he’d have pressed pause on the unpacking, instead, he snipped that last thread holding Eddie’s composure in place with a smoothly delivered “just like that, yeah, God, you’re such a good boy.”

The consequences were immediate.

Part 18

[foldingfittedsheets]

Hi! Do have any mattress and bed-related advices for someone (my partner) fat (about 600lbs) with sleep apnea?

We don't have much money, what we have is either donated by family and/or DIY. Our first (metal) bed broke and our old mattress had a sunken spot where my partner sleep. Thankfully our family gave us an old wooden bed that has been reinforced with a DIY structure of wood bars. Not really aesthetically pleasing, but if guess it does the job for now if we're careful of the random nails (I cut myself a couple times). The "new" mattress was my partner's brother old one when he still lived with his mom. It's good quality, but it's getting old now. My partner also has a mountain of blankets and pillows to keep his upper body elevated.

This solution won't last forever and I think we'll have to find at least a new mattress and maybe a new bed soon. Do you have thoughts/ideas/tips about this situation?

:(((( First off: I’m so sorry. It sucks that beds are so expensive when everyone needs them, especially when they wear out under weight so fast.

Long term, the beds that hold up best to weight tend to be firmer. I personally had a lot of positive anecdotal of the very high density foam beds but they’re more expensive. However I did see someone mention how much they liked their Big Fig which is made for bigger folks. The specs check out but I’m slightly wary of coils for weights over 500lb.

I’d recommend scoping Craigslist and Facebook for Tempur or Serta all foam mattress. You could probably find a steal if you’re checking consistently.

For sleep apnea pillows and blankets are really gonna struggle to help. If you can’t find an adjustable look for a wedge pillow, it’ll be better than nothin.

[the-curse-of-neoclones]

Moderneopets Artist Mistreatment

Edit as of 11/16/23 10:40 AM NST:

Removed names where I failed to do so before. I'm very sorry to the affected parties, this snowballed so far out of my intended scope.

Edit as of 11/16/23 5:30 PM NST

Please see this post for a small update.

As of 11/16/23 10:10 PM NST, Hazer the site owner has formally and publicly apologized to myself and Velu, the other affected artist. As far as I'm concerned he has officially handled the situation as best as he could, and I hold no further qualms with Moderneopets. I hope to hear of its management continuing in this direction.

The following post is left up for archival purposes only.

*****

Hello, I’m wren. I'm an artist responsible for some of the pet assets on the neoclone, Moderneopets. I'm just going to get into it.

Hazer was extremely lucky to somehow cultivate a dense group of largely professional artists to work together to make assets for his site. When it comes to his own management as a site runner, he’s largely hands-off of the art department, which is a good thing! If he can’t be active in the art panel enough to know what goes on in there, he shouldn’t be running it— we have many strong, capable artists on the team who are passionate about recreating the neopets style, who work together on every pet that has been released ever since critique became a requirement. 

It makes sense that, with a project this large, Hazer should have to designate moderators to enforce rules when he is absent. Choosing to bring on moderators was also a good decision. Unfortunately, he chose poorly. 

Art panel issues should have separate Art panel moderators to take care of them. People who are not overburdened with generic moderation duties from the many other channels of the server, for example. In the same vein, artists should not be moderators. When an artist has an issue with another artist, who happens to be a moderator (which has happened many times, with many people— If the mods actually open threads for all complaints they receive, they should have evidence of this & if they don’t they are not being truthful), the artist would likely not feel comfortable approaching that same artist-slash-moderator to complain about what happened. It breeds an aura of fear and discomfort any time there is an issue with an artist/mod, and that is why the two moderators on the team should have to choose one or the other if hazer wants to cultivate a healthy atmosphere in his panel. 

I’ve created many pets for this website. Neopets has been a passion of mine since the third grade. I’m also one of those professional artists I mentioned— my work is also art, industry or otherwise. I care about breaking neopets down into their core, recognizable shapes. I care about keeping them on-model and in the spirit of the original TNT art team, with improvements made where I and the other panelists think they make sense. I have redlined for other artists to an even greater degree, just as other artists have redlined for me and helped me finalize each pet into something simply good: something that made sense to get put on a little passion project website for other people with a similar passion to enjoy. I found the panel to be a community of likeminded artists with which to discuss our favorite childhood petsite while we made art for a clone, as if we could pretend we were making art for neopets-dot-com. It was nice. 

It wasn’t perfect, though. In fact, shortly after I joined in 2021 I took a hiatus because the art panel was fairly dead. I came back a little while later to see we had several new species, as well as an art director, and lots of activity! That was very exciting. Over the next year I would reach out to the panel or, if nobody was sure of how to proceed, I would reach out to the art director to propose ideas for how to make the panel a little more functional; quality of life updates, if you will. I don’t take credit for all of these alone, there were other artists with similar ideas all communicating to the director in private, but some examples: 

A designated “collab” zone where artists could seek out other artists to complete pets with. 

“The Purge,” in which the team was whittled down to ~25 current, active artists to refresh the team and allow for new artists to join. 

“The Approval System,” which I first sat down with in my workshop (public to all artists) to hammer out the details with as many other artists as wanted to give their input— a method for pitching new ideas to eventually break through the “new species/color freeze” that had been plaguing us.

Speaking on the approval system: like most things that required Hazer’s direct input in the art team, it was left without response for a very long time. Artists with ideas for custom species or colors would occasionally murmur about their excitement for the system to get a look-over by hazer, to see if our approval system pitch would be approved. But hazer is busy, as we all know, and the pitch sat for a while. We had new & returning artists on the team to keep everyone busy. 

What I would expect from a years-old panel of artists, when new additions arrive, would be some manner of tutorial. New artists would need to know the pipeline (here’s your workshop, you can post WIPs and anything else in there; here’s how you ping for critique, here are the spaces in which to ask for it; make sure you always ping before your work is submitted on-site), and there would likely be some acclimating on both sides. What I did not expect (but should have), was pushback from new artists on things that hadn’t had pushback in a long time. Why can’t [x] color be a posechange? Well, we’ve created many already and none of them were posechanges. Why can’t I use colored lineart? Well, that isn’t in line with the style standards set by this color; see, nobody else is coloring their lineart. 

Suddenly there was a divide between veteran artists, the director, and the new blood. The divide felt greater when Hazer came to his new artist’s aid to say, approximately: “Eh, if someone wants to go above and beyond and make better art, they shouldn’t have to adhere to the guidelines.” Then he threw the art director under the bus for not somehow knowing that his intentions were always to keep the panel loose and unstructured. But don’t worry, that isn’t the first bus and won’t be the last.

My personal investment in the panel waned around that time. I think a structured “work” environment with easily accessible rules and deadlines is necessary to any project of this size. If we didn’t want to enforce color standards, nor prioritize certain colors for release, and anyone could just submit whatever Nice Art they wanted, why not open it up so any user could submit pet art? Why have a panel at all? Isn’t Hazer taking any opportunity to dunk on Leopets because he wants his site to be better? How is this different? 

But I stuck around. This was a hobby I really enjoyed, after all, and I really believed it could get better. It had a good core, and despite my grievances with individual artists, none of them were bad people. 

But I noticed some trends. New artists would receive feedback that they didn’t agree with and retaliate by bringing in their emotions or personal preferences. Any disagreement where multiple veteran artists stepped in to say their piece would escalate to the point of very long messages on both sides, and would need to be left to hazer to give a final input. Often he didn’t come around to it, because he’s busy, as we know. I didn’t step in to every argument; they became cyclical after a while, and I didn’t have the time or energy to spend simply tapping the proverbial sign (or style sheet). I would try to give positive suggestions when I could, for example: I don’t think this color needs another alt for just one single design, but we did talk about eventually making this color that your design would fit into really well. 

I’ve done my time having arguments on the internet. I really just want an art environment where the rules are set and people actually enjoy following them, because I do— I see art rules as helpful guidelines at best and obstacles to cleverly navigate at worst, which is still fun. But of course not everyone is going to feel the same way, that’s normal; that’s life. 

On 11/9 I was given this message by Hazer: 

It reads:

Hello wren,

I am reaching out to you today to inform you that effective immediately you are being dismissed from the Artist and Consultant Panels. This decision has been reached through discussions and based on repeated offences in the form of user harassment and subjecting the panels to a toxic atmosphere, after multiple reports and concerns brought up to us by other users.

While we understand concerns regarding panel management, there is a distinct difference between criticising and condeming the way the panel does things and criticising and condeming users that are on the panel, and we believe this line has been crossed one too many times, further supported by concerns brought to us.

We appreciate the passion and drive of our team—all of them—and we understand you have been very passionate about the panel. Given some of the messages we see, we have also concluded that due to things in the panel not working out as you have wished, it has caused you much stress and upset as well, which we do not want. All in all, we've decided that the atmosphere of the panel and your own enjoyment of the website are hampered by your presence on it. Because of this, we have decided it is best to have you part ways with the staff sections of the website.

Effective immediately after this message, we will be permanently removing you from the panels. While normally we do a temporary removal, in this case we've seen that your compatability with our management and handling of the panel will not improve, and it will just bring stress to both sides.

We understand you have put a lot of passion into the projects you have been working on for release in Moderneopets, and in lieu of that, we offer you the option of having the project(s) still be released even after dismissal. Rewards will still be granted for releases per usual, and credit will still be given. If you decide, due to dismissal, you do not want your unreleased work to be released on Moderneopets, simply state it as such, and we will discard all progress on projects you have been working on to respect those wishes.

This decision is final and will not be revoked.

Best wishes to you,

The Moderneopets Team

[end caption]

My response:

It reads: 

No warnings huh?

[end caption]

Hazer didn’t have an answer for me. I was already removed from the panel. 

This came as a shock. I’d been there for over two years, I felt I had a good rapport with the other artists, I felt I’d been a helpful and active addition to the team. Like I said, I’ve done my time having arguments on the internet… what toxic behavior? Discussions over style guides? Giving redlines to people with permission? Working with the whole team to bolster several new color releases? I had an entire species that Hazer wanted ready to go since March— I just pushed through the Swamp Gas release, I just created the Mystical alt? 

No warnings?

Let me reiterate: I have never been spoken to by any staff about my behavior. Hazer, his then-four moderators— none of them have ever been in my DMs to issue a warning. I have spoken TO the mods about others’ behaviors, and nothing ever came of it. The one time (and I mention this for full transparency only) the art director came to talk to me about something I said, it was stated clearly that it was not a warning, and even so I adjusted my behavior around said issue accordingly. And that was well before the purge. 

But, don’t take my word for it. Here it is from hazer himself, speaking over his mods who were busy telling the rest of the panel that they always issue warnings: 

It reads:

No in this case I do agree that this has been an abrupt situation and I understand the blind-sided-ness of it. No official warnings were given out regarding the actions that resulted in the removal of artists today and that’s on fault of myself and deebs not working things out properly despite the moderation team bringing issues to a us a few times – also due to our lack of availability recently.  [end caption]

So… What happened? Well… here it is from Hazer, in longform: 

For those who use screen readers, above are several enormous discord screenshots; I've placed it in a paste bin here: https://pastebin.com/dHLiBRTF

Two other artists immediately stepped down. Hazer admits here in his message that he and the mods had multiple tickets opened about my behavior, that they had known they wanted to remove me. They never gave a warning, never talked to me until the moment of my dismissal, but they had known it was coming for months? 

Why did Hazer and his gang of mods let me continue working on art for their panel? Why did they let me work so hard to pull Swamp Gas together for an official release? Why did they let me put together a whole custom Alt and workshop it for so long? I’ve been active this whole time. Why did you let me keep working if you knew you wanted me gone? 

I am a professional artist. My work is art. Hazer made the knowing decision to exploit my time and effort for his website. He’s not paying me, he’s not paying any of us. It’s volunteer work. But I did not volunteer to be mistreated like this. To not even be given a chance to defend myself. To him, artists are disposable. To him, if someone has worked on your team for years but speaks up when your friend tries to overturn the system, even civil discussion is cause for disposal. Civil discussion negates years of effort, passion, time and care. 

I didn’t have to make art for you, Hazer. And you don’t deserve the team you have. How many artists have voiced their discomfort with your actions? How many artists are taking a break from the panel because of how you handled this? Ah, wait, you wouldn’t know… you’re busy. 

Hazer and his mod team are just another corrupt group of individuals unfortunately heading what could have been a fun and promising petsite. Everyone who speaks praise of modneo does it by and large because of the new and unique art. Hazer was extremely lucky to cultivate a dense group of largely professional artists to work together to make assets for his site. 

If Hazer wants to show any sign of his potential to be a better person, I believe he needs to formally apologize to his site for the misuse of his power and the mistreatment and exploitation of artists on his team. He needs to apologize to you, the players of his game, the subscribers to his patreon, for allowing this to happen under his watch and under his word. You know you fucked up, hazer. You shouldn’t have sided with your friend without any actual evidence of misconduct. You shouldn’t have spoken about me like I was a toxic, subhuman hindrance to your art team. You shouldn’t have treated me like that. I didn’t deserve it. None of us did. You can apologize to me and the other lost artists publicly.

[whencyclopedia]

Carthaginian Art

The art of the Carthaginians was an eclectic mix of influences and styles, which included Egyptian motifs, Greek fashion, Phoenician gods, and Etruscan patterns. Precious metals, ivory, glass, terracotta, and stone were transformed into highly decorative objects ranging from everyday utensils to purely ornamental pieces. Just as the Carthaginians imported and exported all manner of trade goods, so too their art reflected their vast network of contacts across the ancient Mediterranean but they would eventually produce their own distinctive art which uniquely blended elements from other cultures. The distinctive qualities of Punic art can be best seen in their stelae, jewellery, sculpture, and masks.

Surviving examples of Carthaginian art are sadly few in comparison to contemporary cultures, and they are further limited in scope by the fact that the majority of artefacts come from a burial context and so are predominantly small in scale and of a religious nature. Secular art and objects produced exclusively for their aesthetic value are rare indeed. Nevertheless, enough examples survive of jewellery, figurines, ceramics, and stonework to hint that the Carthaginians were not as artistically impoverished as earlier historians saw fit to claim.

Influences

Carthage was founded in the 9th century BCE by colonists from the Phoenician city of Tyre. This fact and the city's continued close ties with the mother country meant that art was heavily influenced by that of Phoenicia, at least in its formative years. Just as Phoenicia was itself a melting pot of diverse cultures, its wealth based as it was on maritime trade, so too Carthage would become a cosmopolitan city with visitors, residents, and artists from across the ancient Mediterranean. Egyptian art was particularly influential and many motifs are seen in Carthaginian art such as the goat with head looking backwards beneath a sacred tree or rigid standing female figures. Near Eastern art was another strong influence, seen especially in figurines of the god Melqart/Baal. The influence of Etruscan artists is seen especially in Carthaginian pottery decoration from the 4th century BCE.

Above all, though, Carthage's art took inspiration from the Greek world from the 5th century BCE onwards. Not only were the Carthaginians appreciative collectors of Greek art, taking fine art as booty from their campaigns in Sicily, but they also produced imitative art. There was a large Greek community at Carthage, and many of these must have worked as skilled craftsmen in the workshops of the city. In turn, they would have taught local artists or the next generation. We know of at least one artist whose father was a Greek immigrant but who signed his work as 'Boethus the Carthaginian' and who became so appreciated that his work was dedicated at Olympia.

There is a general problem of identifying the exact origin of many art pieces which is exacerbated by the Punic habit of copying foreign motifs and styles. Traditionally, historians had favoured the view that, at least in general, finer pieces were imported and more rustic art was locally made. This unflattering view is steadily being revised following the discovery of large workshop areas in the city suggesting a healthy export trade and by new archaeological discoveries so that the position that all of the fine art was imported is becoming increasingly untenable.

Continue reading...

[downtroddendeity]

@turnkeyassurance saw your tags and figured I'd take the opportunity to pause my descent into madness to give my more sober opinions on the Ni no Kuni franchise, lol. (Warning: I am a humongous JRPG nerd)

The NNK games are really odd ducks, quality-wise. You can call either one a good game or a bad game and call either one better than the other, and any combination of those opinions can be something I think is entirely justified. Both of them have things they do remarkably well and also serious, profound, deal-breaking flaws, and the really weird thing is that there's almost no overlap between those two lists for the two games. What clicks and doesn't about both of them is going to be deeply individual.

What Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch does, with resounding success, is Vibes. It sets out at every single step with the goal of being a playable Ghibli movie, and it sticks to that principle. It's all about beautiful, cel-shaded whimsy. It's a game for people who want to feel like they're wandering through the meadows in the movie version of Howl's Moving Castle. There are lots of puns, and you can befriend all the random encounter monsters and feed them ice cream.

But that's also its Achilles' heel: because it's dedicated entirely to imitation, it has trouble bringing things to the table that are really its own. It has the visual and narrative aesthetics of Hayao Miyazaki's films, but it doesn't have the raw emotion at the heart of them. And as a game, its mechanics combine the clunkiest features of menu-based combat and action RPGs, and while everything about the Pokemon-esque mechanics seems designed to encourage players to collect and experiment with them, the balancing turns attempting to do that into a miserable grindy nightmare.

The other problem is that it... isn't actually the first Ni no Kuni game. Wrath of the White Witch is, in fact, a remake of the Nintendo DS game Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn, which was never released outside Japan. The reason for this is pretty easy to explain, because DDD had another gimmick besides its aesthetics: it came with a real-life physical copy of the wizard spellbook, and the player had to look things up in it and draw sigils on the DS touchscreen to cast spells. So, we've got a high-effort remake that had to completely cut the central mechanic... and which also expanded the plot so that the original main villain was no longer the primary antagonist. This results in a game with what is very clearly a final dungeon and very clearly a final boss and very clearly a resolution to the story, which suddenly has a completely different plot dropped on it like a fucking anvil that it expects you to be just as invested in even though it hasn't had anything like the same level of buildup.

And ironically, this is almost the exact opposite of the biggest problem with Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom, a.k.a. the one with my new blorbo, the President of the United Union of Eagleland. 2 is an effort to try to cement an identity for the series that can be its own, rather than requiring them to depend indefinitely on borrowed Miyazaki nostalgia. It just has the teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy problem that at some point in development it had a budget shortfall so bad that you can finish the game without ever realizing that there is a continent-sized crashed interdimensional spaceship on the world map.

This game has had a machete taken to it. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely respect the work they did to make what they could with what they had, but you can see the signs of massive scope cuts to literally every aspect of the game. The back half of the game has almost exclusively recycled enemy and environment assets; voice acting has been trimmed down to canned voice clips; the catboy protagonist's ears and tail are barely animated; one minigame was so inadequately playtested that a level 16 mission is massively harder than level 50 ones; and while whatever restructuring they had to do to the main plot still left the final version with a more solid and coherent central arc than WWW in my opinion, it also left a lot of truly gaping plot holes, like oh, I don't know, why the President of the United States got turned into a 19-year-old.

Literally, they just. Entirely forgot to explain that. Half the DLC is just the writers scrambling to fix stuff like that and add a bunch of character development that should have been in the base game.

However, despite all this, I personally enjoyed NNK2 more than NNK1 unironically, not just for Rolandposting reasons. Compared to the first one, it plays much more smoothly as a straight action RPG, and while it can't provide the same knock-your-socks-off aesthetic cohesion, to me it seemed a lot more heartfelt- that is, like a game that was made because people had a story they wanted to tell.

But, well, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the non-unironic reasons, because the story they really, genuinely wanted to tell was about a magical catboy growing up and learning to become a leader, and somehow, miraculously, they really thought that was the story I was here for too when they opened the game with the President of the United States being isekaied by Nuke-kun.

Sorry, guys, I have a crippling addiction to dramatic irony and my day job is tech work in local politics, you could not have more laser-targeted this at making me specifically laugh my ass off if you tried.

[middlingmay]

I'm really curious about the runaway Gale AU! I would love to know more. How does he meet Bucky?

Hello! Thanks for the ask @avonne-writes. It always makes my absolute day whenever I see that other people like my AUs. I just like rambling, but it's nice that other people like to hear it.

And I figured what better way to answer your questions than post part 1 of my HCs for this AU. Enjoy! And rest assured, there will never be an AU I write where the Buckies don't meet ;)

Runaway!Gale AU

He wasn’t sure he could be classed as a runaway at eighteen. In a lot of places, eighteen-year-olds were fully responsible, independent adults in the eyes of the law. But Gale didn’t have that luck. Wouldn’t for another three years.

And one night that seemed like three years too long to live under the yoke of his parents.

To be home, an obedient, the rest of his life? Gale couldn't bear it.

He’d tried, like most teenagers, to carve out some identity as he grew. Heck, he’d tried to grow; tried to find his boundaries and tried to make new friends, but quickly found himself grounded. Tried to get a job, but they wouldn’t drive him there or give him bus fare. Wouldn’t let him get lessons to learn to drive.

Every, "No, Gale", "You have responsibilities here, Gale", "Why would you break your mother's heart like that, Gale", made his skin feel tighter, his blood hotter, his jaw and neck tenser, until he felt like he was going to combust and transform under the pressure to be who they wanted him to be, and it wasn't himself.

One day, he walked passed a recruiting office and by the time he blinked he was inside, talking to a uniformed officer and leaving with an application form tucked under his arm. He hid that application form for the US Air Force, to a career, an education and a purpose - all the things his parents had denied him - under his mattress.

Only, his dad had found it.

Gale came home from tending to the horses, the one chore he actually enjoyed, and headed to his room to wash up for dinner. When he opened the door, he saw the confetti of his last hope strewn over his bedroom floor, torn to shreds.

No one said anything at dinner and neither did he.

That night after his parents fell asleep, Gale packed his backpack full of clothes and, despite the guilt making his hands shale, grabbed a fistful of notes from his father’s secret stash and was on the first bus out of town.

It took him to Denver, Colorado.

It was a late bus, and he gets into Denver after the sun came up. He spends that first day wandering the streets. He spends as little as he can on a bite to eat, knowing he has to be sparing with his cash. He scopes to see what kind of 'help wanted' signs are in windows, but mostly, he just…walks. He goes wherever he wants to, on his own clock. He savours his first taste of freedom, of independence, slow. Like quality chocolate.

When evening comes he thinks about finding as cheap a room as possible. He stops a guy on the street and asks for directions to a motel. The guy looks him up and down but smiles friendly enough and directs him to Colfax Avenue.

Gale follows the directions as best he can, but he feels off the further he goes. He’s almost relieved when a complete stranger runs across the street, booming at him:

“BUCK!”

Gale doesn’t know what he looks like, but it can’t be good because by the time the man realise he’s got the wrong guy, he holds his palms up, placating, and asks Gale if he’s okay without even introducing himself.

And without introducing himself, Gale asks wide-eyed, for the first time in his entire life, “Please help me.”

John’s concern collapses into a smile - until he hears where Gale is heading.

“Well someone’s trying to get to robbed, stabbed or worse. Don’t you be going anywhere near there, buck.”

John helps Gale find a motel in a modest part of town and gives Gale his number in case he gets lost again. As Gale watches him walk away, he finally remembers -

“Gale!”

John whirls around. “Uh, no. John. Or Bucky.”

Gale blushes but grins small. “I’m Gale, dummy.”

[vasito-de-leche]

Hello..... may I ask for more Horropedia romantic headcanons about his love languages in recieving and giving? 👉👈 I really like your Pavia headcanons about it. If it's too much, then may I ask for just Horropedia's love language in receiving? This man has been haunting me in my mind for a long time and I starve for more stuff about him. Thank you very much! 💖💖

;R1999 HORROPEDIA - Love Languages (receiving)

Headcanons and analysis on Horropedia's love languages and the way he likes to receive attention.

I miss doing love language stuff, so ty for the request! it's only receiving stuff for this post since it might've gotten too long if I did both, but feel free to drop by again!

This one is a little tricky for me! I know I have a lot to say about the way Horropedia shows affection, but when it comes to the way he likes to receive affection, I don't think I have a super solid grasp?

When it comes to love as a general feeling, I know that Horropedia isn't used to it. It's not due to a lack of receiving it, that's for sure. Horropedia knows how love is supposed to feel thanks to the loving grandfather that raised him - but genuine affection, whether platonic or romantic, and acts of kindness are extremely hard to come by in an environment as sterile and harsh as the Foundation. At worst, they come with an invisible compromise.

This, mixed with the fact that people tend to avoid him, has certainly led Horropedia not to expect anything when it comes to love as a concept. "It's not his genre", he says.

In the context of giving, it's easy for him to adapt to it because he just has to figure out the rules - the things he's comfortable with doing that feel good for you, the deal breakers, the clichés and so on and so forth, but when it comes to receiving? Horropedia is a little lost, almost like he's used to experiencing things as an outsider and a observer, rather than an active participant. It's especially difficult if the things that he wants are considered non-conventional, outside of the traditional scope of romance. Or if his partner misunderstands his eagerness to learn and the ways he engages with these new feelings as disinterest or aloofness.

Like I said in that previous post about Horropedia's relationship headcanons, it's easy to misinterpret him and his actions if they're only read at a surface level, and through the lenses of conventional displays of love. Him putting the effort into understanding the rules of romance, to figure out everything there is to know about love and the nuance of this relationship he's in... That's exactly how he shows his affections.

But once again, what happens when it comes to Horropedia receiving love and affection? He likes when you're with him, but is that enough? Is there something deeper? Something he's missing?

I think it would be very cute if he tried to figure out which love languages he likes to receive, only to find out the answers were pretty obvious the whole time, much like the formula for every romcom out there.

Receiving: Quality Time, Words of Affirmation

[Quality Time]

Out of everyone I've written about so far in this blog, Horropedia would love quality time in it's purest form the most - getting to spend time with you all alone, focusing only on each other to catch up and bond sounds heavenly to him. The activity is the least of his concerns, he'd rather much focus on the fact that someone is going out of their way to make time for him, that they genuinely want him around and care about what he has to say.

Okay, bear with me for a moment. I like to think Horropedia is particular about his space and belongings, I definitely mentioned this a few times already throughout my posts, partially because of how cautious he had to be to keep the Foundation from taking away everything that made him feel safe and happy while growing up. And also because he's just wired like that, no other deep reasoning behind it. But once he grows comfortable, this sort of "stingy" and perhaps avoidant behaviour disappears almost entirely, because that's when he becomes eager to share his life in its entirety with those he cherishes.

The process of indulging in quality time with Horropedia, whether he's the one initiating or receiving, is actually just a very slow process of being welcomed into his life.

It starts very systematic and organized, I'd say - he would prefer to set up certain dates and times to hang out. For example, Sundays are special because they're the day you come around to hang out with him, so he can't have any other plans on Sundays and he'll certainly spend part of the week just anticipating this special day. But as he grows more comfortable, he would insist that you simply show up to his work station or room whenever you feel like it. That counts as quality time, right? You two are spending time together. Easy.

And this goes on and on, to the point where you're glued by the hip and that initial barrier is gone entirely - similar to Pavia, Horropedia would insist that you have permission to just wak into the places he considers a "safe space" from the world that keeps giving him weird looks or continues to chastise him for not adhering to the model of a Foundation member. He loves whenever you invite yourself to his movie marathons, when you just tag along to keep him company, or when you invite him to fun getaways, etc etc.

I know I said that Horropedia would enjoy quality time in the purest of its forms at the beginning of this entire section, but now I'm talking about how Horropedia considers quality time to every single second he spends with you. I have nothing to defend myself, so I'll just attribute that to his themes of redirection <3

[Words of Affirmation]

Horropedia likes when people are clear about their intentions and feelings the same way he is. Words of affirmation, to him, is intrinsically linked with understanding and transparent communication. Those are the things Horropedia seeks.

I think that questions are the easiest way to show this sort of love language to him. Yes, Horropedia would prefer to hear why you dislike a movie that he likes rather than hear you mindlessly praise it just to avoid upsetting him, he would rather be told that he's done a good job in his research, and all - but directly asking him for his thoughts and opinions, asking him to clarify or explain something in more detail... It makes Horropedia feel seen, finally heard, he's given the chance to unleash all of his intellect while knowing that someone is truly paying attention to him. You went out of our way to ask him, when you could've asked anyone else.

Not to say that compliments, declarations of love and sweet nothings are useless or unwanted! I do think that Horropedia is the type of guy who would love to be hyped up by his friends and loved ones, to have others tell him he's done a good job even if he already knows that, to have his partner tell him that they love him, even if he focuses more on actions rather than words. But it has to come hand in hand with that direct honesty, lest it come across as insincere or some back-handed comment.

I'm gonna go on another tangent here!

We've all talked about neurodivergency and Horropedia at some point or another, the idea of Horropedia masking is not strange or new at all. Him being aware of these invisible rules of conduct that others expect him to live up to exist out there, while also being unable to follow them or notice them right away at times - it's just the contradictory lifestyle us neurodivergent people have to lead.

I like to think that Horropedia has grown to be wary and cautious of acts of kindness around the Foundation staff because it's not something that he associates with a group like them. So being complimented out of the blue can give him pause. Something as small as telling him that his hair looks nice today, or that someone likes his clips and hair ties. Horropedia knows he must be on the look out for these double-edged words and back-handed compliments. Just look at the way other kids treated Vertin when they were all so young.

And yet, he feels so very happy and giddy when someone he trusts, who has proven that they're honest, gives him any sort of positive affirmations. Because he knows that these people mean what they say and say what they mean, as opposed to everyone else. This is when simple compliments can go a long way with him!

[loveemagicpeace]

☕️☀️Virgo Season🛁🫧

Negative- earth- mutable sign

♍️The symbol for Virgo is the Virgin. In the ancient world, she is the temple virgin, dedicated to the deity. We can translate this as an instinct for self-sufficiency and devotion to practical service.

For Virgos, mind and body are linked; regular exercise and healthy eating help you to maintain effective mind-body balance. Virgo's role is to establish and work according to a system. With planets in this sign, you dislike chaos.

Virgos can often get lost in the detail, unable to see the bigger picture. Sweating the small stuff can turn into an obsessive need for order and control.

🪻Herbs associated with Virgo: lavender (it is a plant that calms and is good against anxiety).

💎Crystals: peridot (a semi-precious stone of compassion, health and abundance).

The symbol would represent the intestine, to which Virgo Government. The Virgin is represented by the image of a girl with a scope wheat in hands, which is obviously based on Greek the goddess Demeter and the Roman Ceres. A virgin girl is a symbol of endurance and chastity. Virgo is an independent sign. They have virgins a strong sense of self-confidence that ensures that their expectation of intrinsic value is not based on opinion of others. Although Virgos are ruled by Mercury in the same way as Geminis, they are completely different - Virgos don't like too talkative people and prefer to be alone than in too big a group. They are analytical and think things through.

🫧Because Virgo is a caring earth sign for the body, takes nutrition seriously and wants to ensure that her body works as efficiently as the rest areas of her Life. That's why it's a healthy choice Vegetables, such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables, eats a vegetarian diet or adheres to such a diet or different diets.

☁️People born under this sign care a lot about hygiene and are known for being in the zodiac most often they wash their hands.

☕️In virgo season you may be inspired to bring more ritual to cleansing your body and home, to bring order to what feels messy, and to bring surrender where you can’t make change. You are asked to take what feels big and break it down into small steps and little wins, and to concentrate on those steps, on how they compound, on how we evolve through and with them. To clear away all the noise, the extra, the outside, all that is not yours, and to explore who emerges from underneath it all.

🛁Virgo Rising-you will be more inspired about things that concern your appearance, style and personality. You will feel more confident in your own skin and the things you will do. You will find the light within yourself and feel more inspirational energy. Find faith in yourself and what you want to be. Be proud of who you are.

💗Libra rising-you will find a lot of inspiration through spirituality, subconscious energy, creativity. You will be more creative and maybe you will discover talents that you have not yet discovered. Everything you dream can come true, you just have to believe.

🫧Scorpio rising- you will emphasize friends more - maybe meet new people. You will find a lot of inspiration through dreams and interests. You might be more critical of who will be by your side as you turn your dreams into a reality. Follow your dreams.

🧜🏼‍♀️Sagittarius rising- you will find inspiration through the things you do, your career - maybe your parents or an authority figure. You may find yourself changing your mind constantly, especially if you have several goals or a few different professional tracks. Maybe your mind will be more serious and focused.

⭐️Capricorn rising- you will find inspiration through things that you dig deeply into and that are important to you. You will also feel a lot of inspiration through quality conversations. You will have an inner journey about the things you deeply believe into. And in the end you will notice how much you have grown and how intelligent a person you are. And how your life has progressed. Watching podcasts, reading books that inspire you will help you. Have faith!

🌿Aquarius rising-Prepare to be exceptionally introspective. You may have to reflect on whether you are in a healthy situation or entrapped in an entanglement. You will find the most inspiration through insight into yourself. Insight into deeper things will make you think.

🧁Pisces rising-you will find inspiration through good relationships and people. Whether you’re interested in someone new or thinking about rekindling with a former flame, Mercury retrograde will caution you to look before you leap. Go with the flow. Think about who is really there for you and who is not. Chill.

🍒Aries rising- improving your routine health and lifestyle it's the key here. You will be more productive and do more for yourself and your body. Maybe you start new sport. If you have struggled with financial worries, then you may feel more hopeful now. Everything you do is part of the process and eventually you will be where you want to be.

🥨Taurus rising- you will discover more of your hobbies. You will have more fun and do things related to your joy. Perhaps someone with whom you had an affair may appear. You can attract a lot of people during this time. Doing something you really enjoy will be the key now. The Sun is at home in the 5th house, which means that this will bring you even more joy and happiness.

🌴Gemini rising-Virgo sun will warm your fourth house of home and family. Also Mercury retrograde will influence what could be revealed, you may find out some family secrets that could shape your perception of your childhood as well as the home that you are creating at this time. Maybe you will be more inspired through the decoration of the room or home. Look for things that will make you feel warm and at home.

🪷Cancer rising- More and more inspired to talk, think and things related to it all. You may feel like now is the time to speak your truth. You can also travel somewhere or go on a short trip. Don't think too much, be present here and now. Don't worry about things, just be. Sometimes silence is better than words.

🎸Leo rising- finding your value, things in which you see potential and relationships that you think are really good is in the spotlight. The potential for growth and genuine connection lies in embracing reality and collaboratively shaping your journey. U may find yourself debating on saving or spending money more than usual.

✨Ig-bekylibra✨

-Rebekah🌸⭐️⛵️

[max1461]

Ok, I don't want to continue discoursing on the post in question, because OP has expressed to me that there's more context to the scenario that I'm missing and they are frustrated with people discoursing on the post for that reason.

So I'm going to make a new post, where there isn't any more context because the scenario is made up by me as a pure hypothetical, and continue my branch of the discussion that way.

Here's the scenario: straight guy sends text message to straight girl he has just hooked up with, asking if they can be "exclusive friends with benefits". This means (in this context) that they don't have sex with other people, but they pursue no romantic or emotional connection with each other, and there is no serious commitment. I.e., the offer is to become exclusive sex partners and nothing more.

The relevant question is: is the straight guy in the wrong for making this offer?

I contend that the answer is "no". It's not an arrangement that would appeal to me, and it may well not be an arrangement that would appeal to our straight girl. But it's good to have a culture in which people feel comfortable laying their cards on the table straightforwardly regarding what they want in a relationship. For all we know, maybe this straight girl would be into it, and if so, that's great for both of them. It's good to be able to talk like adults and say "here's what I'm looking for; what are you looking for?". And of course, if the girl is not into it, she is equally justified in saying "no, I'm not interested in that". Having this kind of communication be the norm is good and useful for everyone.

Ok, in response to this, @the-grey-tribe says:

Ugh. I can see both sides to this, but... [...] They hooked up. He's offering her a relationship where they are exclusive, but not official, where they hang out and have sex, but without any commitment, not even a time commitment. You can argue he's getting the sex and she's not getting the status or emotional support or shared quality time. It's an extremely one-sided offer. From his side though, he's at least putting the cards on the table. He's going through some stuff, or he's overworked, he likes her but he doesn't want a full relationship. This can be an extremely soul-sucking situation, especially if it's unclear where the relationship is going, but both sides think there is a consensus about the future of the relationship, and the scope of the commitment. At least he's honest. [...]

And I mean, I guess in a sense we agree. But my main point of disagreement would be: why are we assuming that what guys want out of a relationship is sex, with emotional connection being a cost instead of a benefit, and what girls want out of relationships is emotional connection, with sex being a cost and instead of a benefit, so that a set-up like this represents the guy "winning" and the girl "losing"? Why is this a one-sided offer, if not for stereotypes about what men and women want?

I mean, if it's an offer that the individual straight girl in this scenario doesn't like, that's fine and she should feel comfortable rejecting it. Obviously there are all kinds of reasons she might not feel comfortable rejecting it, but those are things we should be seeking to remedy in-and-of-themselves. Anytime someone has the power to pressure or coerce another person into a relationship they don't want, that's awful on its own, regardless of the details of the relationship type they are being pressured into. If coercion is what's happening, the details of the relationship being "offered" are scarcely our greatest concern. But assuming that there is no coercion, and that these two people do not already know each other's preferences, why is this a priori an unfair offer?

[wwraithsart]

Finally finished the updated reference sheet for Gale's team (that I started back in... january). Click for better quality!

More about each team member below:

Monty:

Main gear: Tentaclinger Earring (not pictured), Urchins Jersey, Blue Slip-Ons

Favors mid-ranged slayer type weapons (sloshing machine, slosher, most blasters but especially range blaster) but is generally pretty flexible

There's a somewhat small independently published magazine in Splatsville about what's currently popular (fashion, weapons, splatfest speculation, etc). He writes articles for it, mostly noting what is currently popular, what that means for the direction of the meta, that kind of thing.

He's one of the founding members of Gale's current team. He likes to analyze how teams play and experiment with different team compositions and strategies. He tries his best to stay on top of what's new.

Outside of competitive stuff, he likes card games. He likes to collect stuff and is kind of a completionist.

Jessica:

Main gear: Retro BluFocals (not pictured), Patchwork Bomber, Mako Bucket Hi-Tops

Really enjoys backline, anchor type weapons. On her own she plays the Hydra, though she's skilled with most other splatlings. She also likes long range chargers (scoped E liter, splatterscope, snipewriter), and if you give her enough time to de-rust she's good with the jet squelcher.

She plays X rank in her free time, her peak power being in the 2600s, though she still has plenty to learn. A goal she sets for herself is to have more self discipline, since she occasionally feels herself get impatient and "one more set" or "one more match" when she probably shouldn't.

She and Monty are the founding members of Gale's current team. She'd known him from seeing him a lot in X rank, since they had similar powers at the time. They both share a similar philosophy regarding competitive play; not doing it for the glory of winning, but for self improvement and enjoyment.

Outside of competitive stuff, she likes to play video games. She's really into open world games. She also sometimes offers individual, one on one coaching for younger players.

Leela

Main gear: Cephalo Pods, Lime Ski Jacket, Gray Sea-Slug Hi-Tops

Likes weapons that skirmish a lot, and was a tetra dualies one-trick for a while. She doesn't mind playing support roles either, so she'll play the n-zap or splash o matic if the situation calls for it. She also likes the trislosher, but that's more for when she's playing soloqueue rather than on the team.

She's pretty new to competitive play. She met Jessica through X rank lobbies, where Jessica saw a lot of potential in her. Leela occasionally struggles with coordination-- she's very used to soloqueue, so she'll miss callouts and get caught off guard. As such, it's her main focus of improvement.

Outside of competitive stuff, she loves music. She almost always has earbuds in and is trying to discover new bands. She also plays the saxophone. She's optimistic, talkative, and can be stubborn to a fault.

Gale

Main gear: Knitted Hat (+ heart pin), Chili Octo Aloha, Violet Trainers

She's fairly flexible in what she can play, but she's strongest with shooters (her favorites being 52 gal and splattershot, sometimes splash o matic). If she can be aggressive with it, she'll play it.

She's the newest member on her team. She met Leela after regularly seeing her in anarchy lobbies, and Leela introduced her to the rest of the team. At first, Gale would fill in during scrims when one of the team members wasn't available, but when that team member had to leave, Gale took their place.

Gale hadn't played on a competitive team in a while, so they were a bit rusty. Monty recognized them from their previous team years ago, though he never mentioned it. He knew they had potential, though. They take their role on the team very seriously out of a desire to do better than last time.

Outside of competitive stuff, they like to cook. They're very social and dedicated to their work, but tends to hold themself to impossibly high standards.