#aside of our own

[bloggingboutburgers]

It feels like you're being kind of self infantilizing when you draw yourself all small and cute and then talk about how you don't kiss your partner with tongue. I don't know. It just feels weird and almosy creepy. We're not children. Why do we have to act like such children when it comes to intimacy and how we represent ourselves?

Well, that definitely isn't the goal. I always draw all of my characters on the small side, and it's kinda accidental but I ended up drawing myself short because my partner is on the short side, and it just turned out to be a body type that I associate with nice things, so it just... Happened when I was looking for a character to draw myself as. Didn't even hit me it was out of me liking how my partner looks and that I basically "stole" their looks til like... Months later somehow. I'm lucky it doesn't upset them 🙈

Also uh... Sorry I don't wanna stick my tongue in someone's mouth and that it took me a while to be comfortable with kissing on the mouth at all? ...Nah, wait, actually I'm not sorry, that's just who I am and that's my experience, just like other aces are down to tongue-kiss. Everyone has different experiences and everyone's deserves to be seen and heard for what it is, not what it should represent. And each of them are valid, needless to say.

Lastly, I'm pretty freaking open when it comes to me being over 30. I have "very old" in my bio because it feels like that's how that age range is perceived online, and I've drawn several comics about how I don't like to be infantilized, and how it's important that I'm open about my age because it shows orientation isn't a "phase". So... Yeah. Obviously. We're not children. But I of all people don't need to be told that, thanks.

[spywhitney]

How I sleep knowing I'll never trust anyone that hates Sydney but worships Richie:

[thebirdandhersong]

Does Canada really count as non American though

Grace, how could you (wailing noises)

[potionpeddlerpatchy]

I'm curious to know, what would you and your f/o's houses be/look like??

[gloriousmonsters]

tbh the more setting details i notice the more i realize how the other Vees are signaled as complicit/participant in Angel's abuse.

It's not just Velvette's 'love potion' being used in an attempt to roofie him out in the world - it's a huge poster of her advertising the 'love potion' put up in Val's studio, notably paired with a Voxtech 'Trust Us' poster on another wall. When Vox is walking past posters in his first appearance, Angel Dust posters are noticeable, along with a Love Potion advertisement that features both Val and Velvette and a poster that just seems to be for the Vees in general. When Angel backs away from Val in his dressing room, a scene where he's been taken out of sight of Charlie and is alone with Val - up pops a Love Potion on his dressing table to one side of him, and a Voxtech camera trained on him on his other side. The other Vees are present, in spirit. When Vox and Val fuck off at the end of Poison (and there's YET MORE to be said about that moment) and Angel finally has his moment of genuine breakdown, there's a Voxtech camera in the foreground pointed at him. Even when he's 'off-camera' he's not safe from observation, and even when he and Val are 'alone', the other Vees are there.

also Velvette is wearing the same outfit she's wearing in the Love Potion poster as she is in the finale, I don't think that necessarily means anything but well. i noticed it

[campbyler]

everything you write is a gift! thank you and please take as long as you want to. the way that you bring life to these characters and escalate the tension is fantastic! thank you again and have a good day! <3

thank you thank you!! this is super nice to see rn especially because we have definitely both taken a little bit of an unofficial break recently to work on a couple other projects/ideas for a bit :’) we did essentially table all other long term projects to take on acswy which was one thing when three people were working on it and it was projected to be done by january but as of late it’s been really easy for both of us to burn out by only ever working on acswy and not touching the ideas we’ve had and wanted to write for a year or more at this point, so we’ve been letting ourselves prioritize some of our side projects and fics more as well which has been both really fun and also a really good way to refresh and prevent burnout. thank you so much for the kind words, we are super excited to get back into the swing of things and be more consistently active on here and twt soon :-))

[milfbrainrot]

I probably will have many complaints abt the season's execution once I am emotionally whole again but I also feel like for the difficulties of weaving the season together w little time the scenes we did get fucked severely

[widowshill]

If you're still doing character bingo and haven't gotten her yet: Laura Murdoch Collins <3

a few people requested her and i think it's because everyone knows that i'm batshit (ha) insane about this woman. what if bertha mason was a blonde femme fatale in the middle of collinsport's most toxic manslaughter polycule. i'm in love with her. laura collins wants to grill me to a crisp? medium or medium well my beautiful beloved terrible wife?

[kaelma]

Ahab glimpsing salvation and choosing to continue his path to certain damnation/destruction has me feeling all sorts of ways.

[4th-make-quail]

May I ask a clarifying question on your boundaries? I don’t consider myself “proship” or “anti” as I think those terms are reductive, and two people who may both fit under one label could have incredibly different opinions. However, I believe that the way I interact with media could be something that someone would call “anti”, in that I find it more interesting to look at fiction through the lens of reality rather than “fiction doesn’t effect reality”, by which I mean when reading Lolita I like to go “okay so what is this saying about how the psych profession saw csa at the time?” “How was this influenced by Nabokov’s own experiences?”, I see Marius and Armand as a reflection of child sexual abuse and enjoy analysing it under a more realistic lens, and would find wincest more interesting as a look at enmeshment between siblings under an abusive parent, rather than a ship (although what people mean by the term “ship” is also really vague and can differ wildly).

Based on that, and what you say in your pinned post, would you prefer I don’t interact? I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable!

Okay so to preface this, I don't go into much detail in my pinned because I hate the whole thing, and I hate spaces which are super dedicated to the pro/anti discourse. I try to keep my online spaces free of discourse and drama because its simply not fun! I don't want to spend my days steeping in negativity.

This got very long, so I'm gonna put it under a cut!

So. The thing is anon, the proship label originally came about as a response to antis, to describe people who don't actually care what other people ship ("ship and let ship", "your kink is not my kink and that's okay" and all that), but it's been massively conflated these days and now people take it to describe what they call problematic ships or art. You're right about them being reductive terms - and in fact, I have a lot of freak friends who are super into things I personally dislike or am outright squicked by (and vice versa), because we're not a monolith.

My stance entirely is this: I don't care what other people ship. I don't care how they ship it, or how they want to analyse and engage with that source material. I think what people ship and what art people enjoy has no say at all in what their morals might be.

What you describe as how you engage with those pairings is a completely valid interpretation! Preferring to look at a relationship through those lenses is perfectly fine, and in fact lots of people do this under the umbrella of meta.

What I personally mean by "ship" is the usual description - I want those two characters to have a romantic and sexual relationship. However, I also have no issues with people who don't have that viewpoint because it quite literally doesn't affect me unless they go about harassing others.

Liking a "problematic" ship dynamic doesn't mean you also condone that thing in real life. There's a reason one of the top sexual fantasies is noncon (see: any women's magazine list of these), and it's not because the person secretly really wants to be raped in real life. It's because human beings enjoy exploring taboo subjects in a safe and fictional environment.

Where my opinion stands on this is simple. If you think it's okay to harass people for the ships they like, if you think it's acceptable to write call out posts and smear people's names because of the ships they like, then I don't want to know you. If you think liking Marius/Armand makes that person a paedophile, or that liking underage ships leads to the person eventually moving on to real life kids, or that being an incest shipper means you're gonna go fuck your own sibling, again, I don't want to know you.

The same goes for both sides of this frankly stupid issue - far too many people who call themselves proship proudly love to dunk publicly on antis or people who don't share their viewpoints, which imo makes them just as bad! If someone's out there being awful to people who don't ship their problematic ships, then it's just as bad!

This is also why I don't do any DNIs or anything like that. If I see someone start to follow me and they have big obvious "PROSHIP DNI" in their info, then I will go ahead and block them, but otherwise I'm not interested in policing who can interact with me in that way. It's not for me to decide whether someone else wants to interact with me, it's on you to decide if you want to.

I'm not gonna be going out and ripping on people who dislike a ship I like, or who engage with art in a different way to me. However, if I come across posts in my tracked tags or on my dash expressing anti sentiments, or going on a negative rant about something I love, then I will also probably unfortunately be blocking that person. I don't like seeing negativity about shit I love on my dash or in the tags (really, does anybody? lol) so I'm proactive about that because a) it depresses me, and b) I spent a long time in the ffxiv fandom, where people think liking Garleans makes you a nazi apologist, and where they love to go on ranting screeds about how my favourite characters should die painfully, and I'm honestly not about that in my fandom life.

Anyway, all this to say: if you're comfortable interacting with me, a Marius/Armand bitch who does indeed enjoy their fucked up relationship because of how fucked up it is (and finds it incredibly sexy, actually), then I'm fine with you interacting with me. I'm not gonna be sharing or posting about that specific ship anyway, and I'm certainly not gonna be awful about people who find it distasteful or triggering or even just plain don't like it for whatever reason. It won't make me uncomfortable in any way to interact with you because you engage with those things in a different way to me, as long as you don't also engage in the other activities I discussed further up.

Sorry this got so long, anon! Hopefully it all makes sense. As an aside, I'm not interested in having any debates about these issues with anyone and will not be engaging with arguments about it. Sensible discussion, yes. Arguments, discourse and wank? No. Thank you for understanding! 💚

[gideonisms]

I think there is probably something interesting to be said about how john tries to start the world over and create a new religion but just winds up reproducing the same tropes in the universe he built. Idk I'm not quite sure where she's going with that. I will need to read atn. Definitely something about cycles of trauma playing themselves out at the societal level & interpersonal level, something about the biblical flood probably, religion as a way that people replay certain traumas & themes in their lives

[hiding-in-the-vault]

I love this dtblr commune idea, as long as we all accept that the dreblr faction will be the only survivors in the end

[ahollowgrave]

Hiiii do you have any more writings or musings about None? I was in your writing tag the other night and they came up a couple times but I'm not sure if I should be picturing a miqo'te or some sort of service animal/familiar lol

Hello! That's so fair, my Odette writings do not offer a lot of description for them! They do have their own tag [HERE] although not much is in it, currently. Some of the screenshots I'm including here and the writings which you've already seen! I'm very sorry for how rambling this is but None is where a lot of alts and relationships spawn from! None is neither a miqo'te nor a service animal (though I think they'd give a huff at the title)! None is the saddest creature in the whole world, a widower, Odette's favorite lil guy, Gerry's estranged step-parent, and a Lalafell:

A Lalafell ranger who makes their living guiding people through the Shroud. These days they are 'mostly' retired. They're well past their middle age and when they were younger they made a deal with sylphs. To be fleet-footed and quick and the best hunter. It came with some side effects:

They wear a hat to cover the ears. It's a bit silly to have two sets and, frankly, None doesn't wanna talk about it. They are stoic, pragmatic, and a bit of a hermit when they can afford it. None is a widower, their late wife was an duskwight woman named Aloutte, who was a widow herself with a young child; Geraldine. None and Gerry were never close and in the wake of Aloutte's passing that distant only grew. None and Odette met at the Menphina temple she was raised at. The Sisters there offer grief counseling and when Aloutte first fell sick she made them go to make the transition easier. A child at the time, Odette was obsessed from the moment they met. A pale shadow trailing after them. Where None failed with Gerry, they bonded with Odette. After Aloutte's passing None returned to the temple to live long term, some grievers need more support than others, they and Odette spent a lot of time together. They very much fill a uncle/aunt role for Odette; a trusted advisor who isn't the adults who raised her. When Odette took her vows and started to travel it was None who traveled with her, taught her basic outdoors skills, bought her Beauty and taught her how to care for chocobos. When Odette has to leave her flock of karakul to travel it is None she calls to care for them. Also, while Aloutte's loss and the grief that follows is very important to None as a character I feel it is important to note they were the saddest creature in the whole world before they knew the warmth of Aloutte's embrace! Sometimes you're just born with a heavy heart, you know? Because of how important they are to Odette. Odile... fucking hates their guts. Oooh, she hates their guts so much!!! The feeling is mutual and Odile and None have come to blows a few times. Something they both keep from Odette; None because they don't want to make her worry, Odile because she'll use the information to drive a wedge at some point. None also features in Odette's WoL AU, they're an honorary scion and spend most of their time with the other off-screen members. They spend time with Krile and Tatatru discussing lalafell things and I like to imagine that F'lhaminn and None have a lot to talk about. This is... pretty long so I will stop here! But I hope this satisfies some curiosity about None and thank you SO MUCH for asking about them!

[theangel-aziraphale]

Does he know the rules of the road???? Are we sure he knows how to drive or is it all the Bentley??? How has he never been pulled over ever??

He's... a demon? More accurately, he can miracle it so that you humans never have the chance to pull him over or notice the speed he drives at.

I find it rather amusing that you think he respects the rules of anything. Sometimes, he chooses to sleep on the ceiling just to be spiteful towards the law of physics.

[meteortrails]

oh you know what else I will say to the complaint that the finale of neverafter was a cop out from the horror angle? I think it is made very clear over the last couple episodes that one of the big messages and points of horror for the season overall is the fact that it is genuinely more terrifying to be the one making the choices than to let someone make them for you. but you have to make them anyway or you’ll never find any sort of real peace or satisfaction! it is terrifying to choose life, but you still need to choose it, every single day!! that moment where I think it’s the fairy with turquoise hair looks at Pinocchio and goes but what if we choose wrong is such a perfect moment of the very real visceral fear that comes with the power to make your own choices. and idk that I would have liked the story this much if that question didn’t get answered the way it did. bc you know what happens when you make the wrong choices? you keep on living. you get a divorce, or you grow up, and the world keeps turning and you find happiness once again. so like it feels weird to say that this conclusion, which looks all of these characters fears and insecurities in the face and answers them honestly, is a cop out.

[aro-culture-is]

i love this blog so much bc its like

everything

aro culture is everything

all of us are so diverse in background and taste and interest but there exists a place for all of us to commiserate and express our joy and show to each other our interests

and all of this can be done without any judgement or derision because, different as we may be, we understand each other better than so many others can

this blog embodies the value of community; it demonstrates its many rewards

i love it

keep it up,,

<3

💚