#but also because i spent my whole entire 20s in this fandom

[princessconsuelapark]

as much as i appreciate the sentiment behind posts talking about people's childhoods and growing up with them and big part of formative years etc, that concept feels so alien to me.

him and his band are a big part of my life still.

they are on my blog, in my bio, my url, on my twitter header, in my spotify wrapped, I wear their merch to the gym, I sleep in it, (god help me but) i have notifs on for @ onedirection on ig, I buy tickets to their concerts, and I use my mug with their faces on it every single day for my morning coffee.

that is all in the present. and I understand that people mourn for a sense of nostalgic past and that is so valid. I just can't quite see myself within any of those remembrances.

so here's a post for us, for the fans who are still here, for the people who mourn not just for their past, but for their present, and now future. ❤️ love you all lots.

[shadyvoxtruth]

How ShadyVox Threatened Myself & Others For Years

My name is Martin Billany but I am also known as LittleKuriboh in the YouTube sphere/Yu-Gi-Oh fandom.

I am posting this here for posterity in case all of my other posts elsewhere about it are removed. Also because there has never been a single unified place to find all of this information presented in sequence.

Patrick, also known by his pseudonyms of ShadyVox or Scratch21's Matt Robinson or Blake Swift, spent the better part of 2019-2023 both threatening me and manipulating a group of real victims.

A brief history - for those who don't know, Patrick/ShadyVox and myself were heavily involved in the "abridged series" world in the late 2000s/mid 2010s. I myself started the whole abridged parody nonsense with Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, and Patrick would follow suit by doing a Yu-Gi-Oh GX Abridged. We met through content creation and formed a friendship through it. Not best friends or anything, but friendly enough.

Patrick would later leave the abridged series stuff behind and start over making music, working in original animation for popular internet channels, etc. Stuff he was genuinely very good at. It was a strong choice to move away from parody content, as it likely would have held him back at some point.

At a certain point in 2018, I received a communication from him that requested I remove certain YouTube comments on my videos that featured him. These comments were demanding to know why Patrick was following various right wing channels and were calling him alt-right, etc.

I agreed to remove the comments because I considered him a friend and automatically assumed there was some big misunderstanding. As it turned out, he was subscribed to a few channels that caused me to confront him.

I was emotional and upset, admittedly. Things politically were at a fever pitch and I had been swept up by it. I have included screencaps of our conversation.

Later I would apologize to him for my outburst and try to make amends. You're probably wondering why I would include this since it doesn't seem to involve Patrick threatening me, and it seems if anything to suggest I got upset at him.

That is because I truly believe this is the moment Patrick decided he was going to find some way to come after me. I believe that Patrick had spent a lot of time creating a mask for himself, and had worn it very well, and the moment someone saw through it for even a moment he decided I had to be dealt with somehow.

At this point - mid 2018 - Patrick and I were not close. We hadn't worked on anything together in half a decade. We really only kept in touch in a cursory fashion. So I imagine this interaction stuck in Patrick's craw something awful.

I was, however, closer with the person Patrick had worked in conjunction with on his abridged series, X. These days X is my best friend. Back then, I don't know how close we were. But definitely closer than either of us were with Patrick.

One day in 2019, entirely out of the blue, Patrick messages me privately to inform me that X once slept with a girl who was 17 when he was in his early 20s.

My own spouse was sexually assaulted before I met them, and as a result I have a no tolerance policy on anything that even could resemble assault. So I immediately ended my friendship with X.

And as I was doing so, Patrick told me repeatedly that I was overreacting.

As you can see, by Patrick/Shady's own words, this was a long time ago. Just under a decade or so, by my count.

And most importantly, Patrick had been aware of this for the whole decade or so and chose this very moment to tell me that this happened.

I want you to keep that in mind, especially the fact that when I said I was ending my friendship with X, Patrick's actual response was "it was a long time ago, he's gotten better."

It was painful to end my friendship with X, but I did. I told him that if he could provide satisfactory proof that what Patrick had said didn't represent the facts of the situation, I could be his friend again. Until then, I cut off all communication from X.

A week or so later I received specific evidence that pointed to a situation wherein Patrick was intentionally misrepresenting what happened, or the alleged victim's story. The alleged victim VERY specifically disagreed with Patrick.

You'll note that I'm not including screen caps of these conversations - that is because the alleged victim, and other involved parties, DO NOT WANT to be part of any of this and have needed actual therapy because of Patrick's behavior in the past. Not just here.

Anyway.

I returned to Patrick/Shady and told him there had been a misunderstanding. I wanted to clear the air and give him a chance to say something along the lines of "oh okay, obviously I had my facts wrong." I mean, as you yourself have just read - he said himself that this was a long time ago. Maybe he got some wires crossed.

This is how Patrick actually responded:

The screenshots were taken on different dates, hence why his twitter icon looks different suddenly.

But yes. His response to me explaining that the alleged victim disagreed with his stance, was to insist that the alleged victim must be lying and that I should be absolutely infuriated.

After he'd tried to tell me that there was no point in being upset about this information that he had sat on for the better part of a decade.

Patrick continued to scream at me via dm, repeatedly requesting that I give him my phone number so we could talk about this. I assume this is because he didn't want any kind of text evidence of what he was going to say to me, or what he was doing.

He would later, mid-conversation, tell me that he was deleting all of his dms to me. Not sure why. It doesn't remove them from my side of the conversation, so I still have access to all of them. I have not shared the entire private message thread yet, because it's sensitive and involves people beyond just myself. But if the dms ever do need to be made public entirely, I have them.

I ended up blocking Patrick during this very conversation because he had begun screaming at me, behaving extremely unhinged and in a frightening manner. I honestly think he had hoped that I would initially try to defend my friend from his accusation, in which case he was going to fly off the handle then. But because I had genuinely believed him and removed my friend from my life, only to then learn Patrick's story didn't hold water, he had no choice but to lash out now. When it didn't make any sense to suddenly be irate about a thing he had told me about, and had literally just said "it was a long time ago."

Within 24 hours, Patrick had sent me a threatening email saying he was going to expose me for everything I was doing. I have attached the highlights of the email, parts that don't involve other people's names.

Some of the references in this email - specifically about how I've associated with others and ignored people calling me out for it - are related to a podcast I was on, alongside Patrick. Until recently I had indeed tried to move on with my life after a number of the people involved had revealed themselves to be toxic. I had made efforts to separate myself from those people. It had been years since I'd really had any direct connection to any of them.

I do indeed regret not speaking out about it sooner.

Having said this, Patrick himself was equally as guilty for not speaking out - and had in fact spent a significantly larger amount of time talking to/working with the people in question.

As such, I believe a lot of this is some form of bizarre projection on his part.

I ignored the email because I was a) worried that he had suddenly snapped, and b) I didn't think any of the content warranted a response.

A day later, I received this email from Patrick where his tone has changed entirely:

As you can see, this is more in line with the reality of the situation. He is apologizing profusely and insisting I didn't actually do anything wrong, and that he was the one in the wrong.

You'll also note that he signs this particular email "Patrick." That is because it is his real name, and I believe he was possibly appealing to my humanity and the part of me that might still have seen a friendship worth salvaging. Otherwise I could not tell you why he signed his real name - he typically hates using it.

I still did not reply because at this point I was confused and scared and wanted him to leave me alone. And to that point, he had specifically stated at the end of his email that he was the problem and he would not "involve himself in my life any longer."

The police were contacted and they told him to stop. I had hoped that my part in all of this was over.

Later that very month, Patrick announced on his ShadyVox twitter account that a new GX Abridged was coming out for April Fools.

When it is posted on April 1st - less than a month after he had sent his email saying he would remove himself from my life, and not long after the police have visited him - the video contains many references to our conversations, and specifically the fact that the police got involved.

Yes, after being told by the police to stop - and after writing an email that insisted he knew he was the real problem and would be getting help - he decides to make a mockery of the situation publicly, in a manner that nobody else will understand. Except the people it is targeting.

The tweets about this video are the only thing remaining on Patrick's twitter account, as he had purged it some time ago.

(An aside - I do recall someone attempting to call Patrick out for being toxic previously on twitter, and his response was to spam them with the words "PROVE IT. PROVE IT. PROVE IT." until they gave up. I would include screenshots of this, but like I said - he purged his entire twitter except for this specific GX Abridged video he'd thrown together in a week to respond to the fact that the authorities had intervened to get him to stop)

One other important element of this video - which is where, I believe, this whole thing veers into genuinely disturbing territory - is that it is interspersed with garbled footage intended to look like some sort of creepypasta/vhs effect. At the end of the GX Abridged video, it is clear that Patrick is using this video to allude to some upcoming song tracks he is producing.

Songs that are tailored to threaten me in cryptic, indirect ways that very few people pick up on.

But I'll get to those later.

During 2019, Patrick reaches out to actual victims of the toxic individuals from the podcast I used to be on more than half a decade before any of the stuff chronologized in this post. He tells them lies, and demonizes me to the point that it convinces them that I am still both defending/supporting the toxic individuals, and actively mocking their victims in private.

I am aware of this because Patrick tweets about it - before deleting the tweets entirely. He even attempts to throw popular abridging group TeamFourStar under the bus, which I assume was merely out of spite because they had absolutely nothing to do with any of this.

I wish I had screengrabbed the tweets when they were still up, but there is still remaining evidence that they did exist.

Here is someone posting on Reddit about it - he only references one tweet, but this was around the time Patrick was posting and then immediately deleting what he'd said. I honestly can only assume - but I think he was fishing for people to latch on to what he was saying and contact him privately.

Not to mention the fact that the police had specifically told him to stop, so that was likely in the back of his mind also.

Here is someone replying to a since suspended twitter account that was discussing what Patrick was saying about TeamFourStar. Obviously I have no clear way to prove it, but please know that I have no reason to make that much up and point to a random ass tweet.

I imagine Patrick (not the suspended person in the above screencap) realized the best way to not seem directly to blame or involved at all was to remove any and all posts he'd made. Admittedly it would have worked if I didn't have the dms and these emails.

Speaking of emails, I received a third one in late 2019 - as you can see, Patrick's promise of leaving me alone forever didn't even last a year.

You'll note that he's speaking as though the second email never even happened. He's also just plain lying through his teeth for a significant part of it, but I think it's most important to note that this email requires you to assume the second email never got written.

He has gone from pages and pages of "of course it wasn't your fault, I'm the problem, you're good, I'm bad" to "I told you..."

Also, I think the words "You tried to damage me" should be highlighted here as it reinforces my theory that all of this was about me insulting him for all the right wing channels he'd subscribed to. Which, to me, was barely even a thought in my mind at this point.

So I choose to ignore this email also. Because y'know, why would I even humor responding to the guy at this point? I decide that I will only speak on any of this if it becomes public conversation. Until then, anything that happens would be because of Patrick's actions.

I do let my friends know about all of this - including TeamFourStar, who through this entire thing have been blameless and didn't even do anything to Patrick to begin with. And every time Patrick does something, I make sure people in my circle are aware and to be cautious.

Meanwhile Patrick alludes to all of this indirectly in the songs he posts to his YouTube channel. Yes, a situation that involves actual victims and one alleged victim that Patrick hadn't spoken to in years. He chose to make reference to all of this in videos where he raps, amongst other things.

There are a number of songs that feature references to this, it's mainly these two that I want to focus on

Birdy Boy is a song that is explicitly referencing Patrick's issues with me, without actually going into any details about what the issue is.

It is so clearly about me that people pick up on it - and rather than confront the issue or have a dialogue, Patrick decides to pin the comment about it to the top of the comments page.

Of course, if Patrick made any attempt to directly describe the issue or explain himself, it would likely result in the police becoming involved once again.

So he sticks to singing about the whole thing.

This next song is the most upsetting one.

Patrick/Shady writes a song called "Joker" about a psychotic individual murdering someone who "used to be funny." This is, specifically, the song that he teases at the end of the GX Abridged Episode 21 video he posted earlier in 2019 for april fools.

He has teased it multiple times on his twitter, and elsewhere, with the words "Coming Soon." The very same words he used to title his third threatening email.

Here is the email, placed next to some lyrics from the song Joker.

He is seemingly very specifically trying to threaten me without anyone noticing, in plain sight. I was unable to watch the video in full until after all of this stuff came out into the public. It was only through reading people's responses and the lyrics that I realized what he was doing.

Again, at this point I am doing and saying nothing publicly. Just watching this behavior and waiting.

Meanwhile in 2021, a videogame based on the web series TOME gets fully funded and Christopher Niosi - the creator of TOME - reaches out to the voice cast to see if they'll return. I myself was the voice of Nylocke, one of the main characters, and Patrick was the voice of THE main character.

As such, I told Christopher no and explained my reasons.

And here is Christopher's response.

Please pay careful attention to the fact that Christopher Niosi flat out says he already knew Patrick was doing this stuff - it isn't just me imagining it.

As a result of this interaction, I do not reprise my role as Nylocke and Christopher Niosi chooses to just recast every single character. Please note that he could have just recast Patrick, but did not. As a result, I feel responsible for all of the original cast losing out on work. It hurts to think about. But at least I feel like I did the right thing.

One member of the TOME production staff takes it upon themselves to reach out to Patrick personally. They discover that he is planning to write more songs/raps that target me. They ask him nicely to stop. He insists that he has to do this. Y'know, make vague allusions to extremely sensitive topics that he lied about in the form of song. Has to do it.

The member of production staff tells Patrick he should seek professional help.

Patrick ignores them.

Patrick continues to engage in behavior that, while not openly hostile or even specifically targeting anyone, is very clearly intended as mockery at best and a threat at worst until 2023 when all of this comes to a head.

In August of 2023, the real victims that Patrick has manipulated make a callout post aimed at myself and TeamFourStar. It specifically cites Patrick's testimony and the songs he has posted. They have been misled, but their anger is understandable.

Within a week, it becomes apparent to all sides that this is Patrick's fault. The person who posted the callout takes it down and apologizes to everyone. Not just me. They apologize to TeamFourStar, and to X.

And only then do I speak publicly about what Patrick has been doing.

I share all of the screencaps I've posted here, and give context. It's all a little muddled as at the time, my cat was dying of terminal cancer and so all of my posts are somewhat scatterbrained and aren't in chronological order. But it's still remarkably clear to everyone that Patrick has manipulated this whole thing, starting in 2019.

And that's only the stuff I feel comfortable sharing.

Since the callout post first dropped in 2023 and I began pointing people's attention toward Patrick, Patrick himself has been entirely silent. He has dropped off the internet with nary a word in defense. Not a single person directly associated with what happened has attempted to dispute my description of events.

This isn't my word versus his. It is my word versus silence.

I have it on good authority that Patrick is alive and well. I am grateful for that much. My attempts have not been to hurt him, but to defend myself. My efforts have not been to hunt him down and crucify him, but to make people aware of what transpired - and what could have easily been undone by Patrick/Shady just choosing to stop.

Instead a number of victims, and people who never did a thing, experienced a considerable amount of trauma as a result of his thoughtless and spiteful actions.

Patrick is a remarkably talented individual, and it makes me sad I have to be the one to show people who he is. I genuinely think all of this could have been avoided. It's so meaningless. It's just pain on top of pain.

And Patrick stood in the center of it all, not just pulling people's strings but practically uprooting them and then acting like he didn't do a thing.

I'm not expecting an apology, and I'm not asking for his cancelation, whatever shape that would take. But I do think it's important that people know this happened, that he chose this.

He did this for almost no reason to a person he considered a friend, who worked on videos with him.

It just seems like the responsible thing, to make sure people are somewhat aware that he could do this to them if they aren't cautious and careful and super aware.

I'm sorry to anyone disappointed and hurt by all of this information.

Believe me, I understand.

[fourteentrout]

ACOTAR Rant

When I first read acowar, I was really fascinated by Feyre's choice to destroy spring from the inside. I was kind of like okay facts you go girl, I've never seen a fmc motivated purely by revenge before, and it was really interesting to read, and I kind of liked how drama it was. But as I've read the series and immersed myself more in the fandom, rereading some of the scenes genuinely makes my blood boil.

The fact that feyre tells Lucien she wasn't ready to be touched "like that" when he asks her if she and Tamlin have had sex yet is like low-key an implication that she's been sexually abused in the night court??? Which I never picked up on in my first read like I got that she was going for this whole pretend-freed-captive vibe to get back into Tamlin's court, but it never really stuck out to me that she, whose mate spent 49 years at the sexual beck and call of someone he didn't want to be with, who likely forced herself upon him time and time again, was pretending to be a victim of sexual abuse.

And THEN she encounters LUCIEN being sexually harassed (by someone hed been essentially magically bound to fucking in the Great Rite mind you) and she's content to just...not apologize for literally feigning past rape??

And don't even get me started on the scene where she basically goads Tamlin into another magical outburst and intentionally makes sure she gets hurt by it when she had (to her knowledge) the ability to protect herself (from something that she directly and intentionally caused!!)

Like yes shes the one who got hurt but is it really abuse on his part if she knowingly pushed his buttons so that he would lose control? It's his job to have control over himself in the first place, yes, but if she's taking calculated steps to get him in a place where she knew his magic would act up, are his actions entirely abusive?

Not to mention that afterwards he was literally like praying to the mother and confessing to ianthe in hopes that some divine stroke of forgiveness would be granted while feyre was like mind sexting Rhys (and also Rhys was like rah I could rip out his throat for laying a hand on you and she was like well he didn't even touch me, his MAGIC touched me, and Rhys is like haha glad u still find humor in this babe, like my brother in Christ she KNOWINGLY CAUSED TAMLIN'S REACTION?? She got the result she wanted??? Why do you want Tamlin dead for something that is benefitting Feyre's revenge plan?)

Ugh point being there are so many things that upon reread I'm like oh this is actually like majorly wack. And it does make sense though for feyre to be acting this way because she's!! A 20 year old girl!! Who has just endured something majorly traumatic!! And was never raised in an environment that taught true maturity anyways!!! She has been in survival mode her entire life, so when someone comes along and says hey, Tamlin actually was shitty the whole time and here's why (while literally changing some of the original narrative), it's understandable that she would be like huh. Yeah. I gotta do something about that. And it's definitely understandable that her methods would be absolutely set on destroying people's lives, because she felt that in that period of time HER life was destroyed, and she was so blinded by her need to share that pain that she kind of forgot that people were people.

[stillness138]

i'm digging through the game soundtracks to find anything genuinely nonwhite in a painfully white world and wrote a whole thing about how it would benefit us all if the remaining carcass of the witcher fandom spent less time bending backwards trying to excuse domestic violence while drawing their fave abuser with brown skin and more time on genuinely examining those parts of the universe that are clearly meant to be fantasy nonwhite and criticizing both Sapek and CDPR for barely doing anything with them (and for orientalism when they do) but then i landed on the good ole "old man wrote a companion piece on Ciri's family tree only to give us Lara Dorren's measurements" and actually, in the end the point is what i've been saying for a while now. The fandom should, more than anything, quit passing this guy as some revolutionary feminist icon and look critically at him for one damned minute. Sorceresses are fierce and independent, but they also must all look like supermodels, complete with "the ugly one" (the one with an eastern name no less) getting a makeover lest the others make fun of her. Like yeah there's stuff that continues to age well given the time and place it came to be and there's stuff that's meant to be relatable because it shows imperfection but nothing exists in a vacuum and everything is made with some kind of bias. You have to include the creator in your analysis of a piece, even if you (unlike twn or even the games) actually like said piece. I am reminded of my high school art history textbooks and the pages dedicated to just laying down the cultural background for any given topic, the context is crucial. I love the game soundtracks, but whoever did the first one didn't care all that much about Azar Javed being Zerrikanian (neither did the writers tbh) and now nearly 20 years later we still have fuck all and i'm gonna go continue being in agony over his entire existence.

[asachuu]

Guys. It’s been a while but I have to come out. This was a very hard decision for me to make, so please be respectful.

Anyway.

I fucking love Litchi Light Club. Nobody knows why, not even me. I just went to Akihabara again and the FIRST thing I did was run to a bookstore to pick up the second book AND the officially released art book, because I happened to have the main manga already, and I did that entirely on purpose, this was very much pre-planned. I also have a Jaibo cosplay and I’m thinking of investing money into the very limited amount of LLC merch out there and/or making my own. I need help, I think.

Wise words from a wise man once told me you cannot escape an interest no matter how far or fast you run, and I fear it’s true, because I have spent the past two to three years actively forgetting this fandom existed, just to re-read something from it on a random afternoon a couple months ago, and lose the remains of my mind over it. I’m genuinely hoping this whole Arthur business never wears off, because the second-in-line— albeit still incomparable, but regardless— is likely this godforsaken spawn of the devil, unless I get my ass back in gear and read the rest of TGCF, but even that’s debatable. It’s so unbelievably cursed that I found the main manga volume in a bookstore for 20¥ last year, because evidently, someone wanted to get rid of that thing immediately, and I cannot blame them.

I am deeply sorry if this significantly lowers your opinion of me. I am also mortified at this knowledge, I really am.

[strawberry-skies-xx]

13, 20, & 22 for the fic asks! fic i choose for 22, of course, that fucked up girl <3 and the mori dazai fic w the matcha tea....both fics have me by. CHOKEHOLD

*walks in 2 days late w iced coffee* that reblog spree on your blog is bc i couldn't find the og post btw and i had the (naive) hope you didn't reblog shit at the speed i did

13. Do you prefer writing multi-chapter fics or single-part fics? Do you prefer reading multi-chapter fics or single-part fics?

i prefer reading AND writing multi-chapter fics, bc its so much fun to explore stuff. however. The Horrors. i can dream about writing a multi-chapter fic all i want but it doesnt mean ill ever finish it (rest in piece my fleabag fyozai fic that's infamous on my bsd server bc i never shut up about it. also the fyozai betrayal AU fic. pensive emoji.)

20. Which fic have you put the most work into? Which fic have you put the least work into?

you make miette search through 84 published works for this...

the fic i'd say i've done the most research on is this one (mafia Dazai training Akutagawa) but the fic i've put the most work into being really good and me liking it has to be this one. its not BSD, but its a character study of a guy from another fandom and his interest in death and passive suicidality. i spent 3 days postponing every single other obligation other than food and just sat in bed writing this. 4th day i did nothing but chores and then i didnt write anything else for a week lol

least work is hard bc i have a philosophy that i can do whatever i want forever so i Will just write something in an hour and post it with no research, all pure self-indulgence. but i'll use a fic i should have done research on: this one. i really should've planned that out better. idk if anyone still follows me for httyd or has read that fic of mine but i do plan on rewriting it someday

22. Have you used any symbolism in [insert fic]? What does it represent?

OH boy.

so. fucked-up girl fic actually doesn't Have much real symbolism, only a couple remarks on my headcanons for various things.

today he had to eat an apple whole because he could not pick up a knife-

this one is easy, referencing dazai's suicidality and the fact he is trying. just a slight reference to him actively changing/being unable to do something, and also his issues with food.

He starts targeting.

Dazai is very, very still.

Atsushi backtracks so fast that he stumbles over his words, forgetting entirely Dazai’s contradictory explanations,

little things about dazai's manipulation in everything. boy can't admit shit. he's very roundabout with admitting anything close to himself (why i hc fyodor is so good for him, because they can trade those vague references back and forth and understand each other) and a trait i assign to him is saying vulnerable things in as few words as possible. he doesn't explain stuff.

Dazai’s body aches, and he turns, walks over to his desk, sits down. His clothes constrict.

gender issues but also, as mentioned in my comment on your fic, i hc dazai just hates his body. he has to shower with the lights off sometimes, can get dressed without looking at himself once. he very much dislikes perceiving the fact he has a body.

The ADA thinks that they’re dating. Him and Yosano. 

not symbolism or a hc but this was the premise of the entire fic. the agency thinking dazai and yosano were dating when really dazai just had severe gender envy

“Zai.”

little hc! yosano specifically uses this nickname for dazai when affectionate. atsushi and kunikida don't use any actual nicknames derived from his name; chuuya uses this nickname sometimes; ranpo uses this nickname somewhere between chuuya and yosano bc ranpo is putting in the least effort to get his attention lol

The conclusion is obvious. Dazai should explain that’s not what he means, but he can’t get his mouth to work to speak honestly. 

this whole conversation was the biggest indicator of dazai being unable to elaborate/saying things in as few words as possible. he's not a pathological liar, i just think sometimes it is physically painful to have to elaborate vulnerable things verbally for him. e.g. "it's because you're a woman" and yosano having to debate the fact dazai could be going after her, dazai Knowing what kind of conclusion she'd jump to immediately As a woman, and yet he just cannot explain it further because it is vulnerability. HENCE why i like him and fyodor, because fyodor can make those kinds of connections as quick as dazai can.

"Women are really pretty~”

not a hc or symbolism but. Boy why do you talk about women so much and yet date none of them. almost actively make yourself undesirable to them. Sir. My guy. i know what you are

“There’s a word for it?”

special lil hc i have. the mafia is very open and accepting because they simply have bigger priorities than who's kissing who. mori simply does not give a shit if his agents are consorting or if his lead agent goes from a girl to a guy. he won't provide monetary support and unless it's physically disabling he won't make exceptions to rules, but if he's told that someone's pronouns have changed or whatever he'll go "cool" and change the name/pronouns in all of the system, start using them, and be done with it. his only concern is performance and as far as he cares, sex and gender are irrelevant. (on that note, harrassment isn't tolerated because why are you harrassing them for being gay when you can harrass them for the multiple enemies they didn't kill last mission. cmon now.)

this also comes with the caveat that the kids raised in the mafia aren't really educated on it. they're taught normal class subjects, e.g. math, english, etc. and they're taught mafia protocol, and they're allowed to get their own reading material, but the mafia puts in as much effort to teach them about queer people as they do to teach them about heterosexual people. (they do get sex ed tho, which is basic as ever, and which dazai is a whole menace during)

and dazai, obviously, would not really be that interested in either to read about. being brought in so young, i think he was never really taught bias against queer people, so when he had the revelation that he liked chuuya he was just kinda. oh ok. and when he has the feelings about his body that he doesn't like it, he has much bigger priorities (namely the quickest way to die) than figuring out whatever the hell that is.

so it ends up that dazai just kinda is queer and has no idea what it is. he knows he hates his body and he knows he likes chuuya, probably has some surface level knowledge of gay/bi/lesbian/etc. but otherwise no, he's never sought out specifically to figure out the terms for what he's feeling. he actually really hates perceiving himself in any way lol

He still looks like himself,

this little bit: he hates perceiving himself in any way, but he still wants to be him. he doesn't want to change his name or his reputation or whatever else, he doesn't want to be a different person. he just wants to be a dazai that he likes.

It would look wrong be inconvenient for him, and take so much effort. Just… so much. So much that he can’t handle. Managing himself is hard regularly - adding on this, whatever it is, would be biting off more than he could chew. 

there's a river called de nile-

dazai is denying the fact he thinks being a woman would look wrong because of his years of being in a masculine body like he is, hence the calluses mention. but he also is right, that he wouldn't be able to upkeep it. he has to be in a better spot/it has to be something very slow and gradual for him to be able to keep it up long enough to maintain a desirable appearance. he's sorta using it as an excuse to not do it but also he just doesn't want to put in that much effort into it.

now for the matcha fic!

Very big hc and symbolism for this fic: Dazai's ability.

it is an ability nullifier, and i stand by the idea that abilities have some kind of effect on their user and are somewhat sentient. Atsushi's tiger, for one, is not only a transformation but the shape of the ability inside him, and Kyouka's Demon Snow is a whole being as the ability itself.

so for Dazai, he described it once as an "anti-ability." which. what the hell. whump beams him.

i have the hc that Dazai's ability makes him cold because most ability users can feel their ability hummign beneath their skin. most abilities are warm, alive, and it's like a constant low electric current or adrenaline rushing through them, as omnipresent as a heartbeat or breath. just a fact of being alive is that feeling. so then: when Dazai nullifies other people's ability, they can Feel the absence of it, they can feel very empty and very cold. when Dazai is the host of that nullification ability, it's just that electric warmth reversed. an icy cold, all the time, because NLH is a black hole as opposed to a sun. (all my metaphors relate NLH more to an icy lake, but that's the dichotomy)

i don't ascribe Dazai's emptiness entirely to NLH, but i do think it contributes and that he has a complex about the relationship between his own issues with emotion, empathy, and the fact NLH lives inside him.

and that cold gets much worse whenever Dazai actually does nullify an ability depending on how strong it is/how much is being used at the time, therefore the remark about him making a science on how bad it'll affect him, and that scene about him being overwhelmed by nullifying Chuuya's ability; he miscalculated, and was caught off guard by NLH activating so strongly, esp given his injuries and physical weakness already in that moment

and another little HC: Dazai's hinted to have been in an even worse place before Mori and abilities are said to be activated from trauma. so i like to hc Dazai's ability as activating from the result of being tortured with abilities, from a deep desire to stop the torture, also in some kind of lab setting. and from there, Dazai escaped, and Mori got this very damaged child.

so then, through the matcha fic, Dazai latches onto it because the warmth of the tea chases away the cold of NLH.

another thread through this fic: Mori and Dazai's relationship. i think Mori was trying to keep Dazai alive as an asset to the mafia, and that he never... regretted? bringing him in as much as wished Dazai had never shown up at his doorstep in the first place, because Mori sees the value of his skills way too much to regret using them. but Mori also knows kids aren't supposed to do what Dazai is doing. and he also sees the emptiness in Dazai and all his general issues. so it's this very messy tangle of like. Mori can't care for him like a father because, yknow, mafia boss and Mori himself also has manipulation and control issues, but also he's much fonder of him than most others, even Chuuya. no one else would have been able to get away with all the shenanigans Dazai inflicts on him (that kid bullies mori so hard. it's very comical). Mori is simultaneously training him and raising him in a life-or-death environment for them both and it's so messy.

“I’ll make us all some hot tea!” Atsushi raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “Are you sure you won’t… burn the Agency down, Dazai?”

little note here: i think dazai curates an image of incompetency specifically because of his competency in the mafia. obviously everyone there knows he's actually competent, but he hides just how competent he is. partially to get up to his own shenanigans hiding his mafia connections and whatever else, but also partially because he doesn't want to be known as something like the demon prodigy again.

when it's serious, they know he can hold his own (prison arc) but otherwise. he is faking so much incompetency.

“I’ll make a deal - if you manage to make matcha tea as well as I do, I can get you your own expensive set for the holidays~”

ok listen. listen. the slap that dazai gave atsushi lives rent free in my mind because of the moment of hesitation just before it. everyone villainizes dazai for slapping atsushi while entirely ignoring the brief hesitation just before it.

dazai was both trained (as an agent) and raised (as a teenager) by mori. and oda was not a very good dad either. he doesn't have the best role model, for one. but he's also very self-aware when he's older and i think he can separate "father" mori and "mafia boss" mori in his actions. he knows when mori was trying to raise him and he knows when mori was trying to train him.

now. now guess what dazai is to atsushi. a trainer. and dazai is still taking the place of someone older and more experienced teaching atsushi not only combat skills but also life skills/growing-up skills. and we all saw how dazai got with akutagawa; that was an environment conducive to that kind of treatment, where that was being encouraged.

now the agency doesn't condone physical violence and dazai knows that. and he is very clearly trying to be a good person like oda asked him to. so, with that moment of hesitation, he clearly did not want to slap atsushi. but someone else's post words this better: he got complacent at the agency, forgot mori's ruthlessness, and with the threat against atsushi and release of Q he remembered he couldn't be so complacent and began to slip back into the old mafia thinking as a way to survive.

and with atsushi breaking down and not listening to him, the agency threatened by mori and Q, a threat that made even dazai flinch, i hc he got overwhelmed, knew there was one method that got guaranteed results, knew the agency didn't condone it, but was overwhelmed enough that he just. lashed out in a way he knew guaranteed would work, and would get atsushi to listen to him.

so . very long rant just to say that i think dazai is fighting, a bit, to balance his experience of being trained-and-raised, with him training-and-raising atsushi, but he knows the difference clearly between the two and so he'll cherrypick actions like the deal mori made with the matcha tea.

deep breath. it's been like an hour and a half. jfc. anyway there's your answers hsfdbhsdf i have many many thoughts on dazai

ty for asking!

[bleep-bloop-boo]

OMG PLEASE TELL LIBRARY STORIES

i would love to work at a library one day

iugfbnwqkwsdjf AWW THANK YOU FOR THE ASKK IM GOING TO RAMBLE NOW <33 AND SAMEE i hope you do get to work at the library :)) i need to wait 9 more months before I can applyy

First off all, background In my 7th grade i did Semester 1 online school and Semester 2 in person. I didnt get a choice in elective cuz i switched over so i became an office aide tho i would be sent to the library most of the time to help the librarian. another thing, the librarian started the same time as me. the old librarian quit and the new librarian was just out of college (and also lowkey traumatized but we dont acknowledge that heree) so she was like in her early 20s I LOVE HER SM OMG!! BEFORE BEING A LIBRARIAN SHE PLAYED COMPETITIVE VIDEO GAMES AND SHE HAS AN ANIMATION CHANNEL AND NOW SHES ILLUSTRATING CHILDRENS BOOK AND SHE WAS IN FANDOMS TOO!! SHES AMAZING AT ART, LIKE WHEN YOU ASKED HER TO SIGN YOUR YEARBOOK SHE'D DRAW YOU (i can find the picture of me she drew if youd likee) IN 2 MINUTES!! AND SHE TOLD ME ONCE SHED DRAW A FANART OF NICO GETTING MCDONALDS WITH WILL FOR ME CUZ I TOLD HER I LIKED PERCY JACKSON AND SOLANGELO (i never told her bout the mcdonalds thing, she knew) and it was so much fun cuz id be sorting books and reading books and scanning books and helping kids and fixing books and organizing and just talking with peoplee i loved it smm and speaking of her, she did so much cool stuff!! she had no idea how the library worked or how to do stuff and she did end up crying the first month because of how lost she was but she got a hang of it and i so proud of her for that <33

She made a cozy corner where there are tons of blankets and pillows for people and with cozy curtains and lights

she bought (using her own money) nearly 40 boardgames and made a shelf for people to play with fidgets, cards and games

she brought her switch in so kids could see and watch her play

she made a suggestion box and read every single one

she started a thing where she made slides for the elementary schoolers and read to them every week

she let students come in during lunch and play games and talk and chill (which is amzing cuz our school was HELLA strict, like middle schoolers could only sit at the tables or on the grass. you cant walk anywhere else.)

and we all loved her sm, she was the best <33 i miss her cuz now im in high school and the kid i tutored told on me thursday she moved and she doesnt work there anymore and now i miss her even moree but ill see if i can find her insta time for the actual stories of me and the one other office aide 😭😭😭 - we built a throne out of old textbooks and made a whole photosoot using paper decorations - we spent an entire hour just reading and laughing at this book about toilets - we spent 15 minutes learning how to use a key cuz we locked ourselves outside of the school (we had keys with acsess to the whole school and all the gates, were just stupid) - had so many debates with elementary schoolers who snuck in about the best pjo character and other books - kicked said elementary schoolers out because the school didnt allow them to be there after their school ended (then snuck them back in) - we spent an entire period just playing random songs and videos on the TVs and kept trying to change it to Never Going To Give You Up - kirby. so much kirby. EVERYWHERE - SCHOLASTIC BOOK FAIR omg, the books come in the shelves pre-pepared but the shelves are like tall, metal blocks on wheels you need to open up yourself and move around. we ended up creating a labryinth and getting trapped then i stacked a rolly stool on a chair and that didnt work cuz the stool was bigger than the chair and even tho i would have surived, they said it was too dangerous so i had to climb on a booksehlf to jump over these 6 foot tall bookselves we opened wrong and escape the maze - selling at said scholastic fair which was so fun <33 (i want a retail job so badd) - the amount of times i just sat and read while sorting books- - theres prolly more im forgetting lol, this is getting long tho so ill just end itt TYSM FOR THE ASK, THIS WAS LITERALLY MY FAVORITE CLASS IN ALL OF MIDDLE SCHOOL (barely beat geometry) AND I LOVELOVELOVE TALKING ABOUT ITT

[enbyleighlines]

Ugh I am so uncomfortable right now

I have a sinus infection and I haven’t been sleeping well the past couple of nights, so I’m tired, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to fall asleep

But I’m also too tired to do anything else, so I’m just stuck in this state of absolute boredom

So I just binged a bunch of anime today

Finished Dungeon Meshi and loved it. Absolute banger of a show. And so many attractive character designs. Laios? Kabru?? Daya??? The other female dwarf???? That evil elf twink????? The female orc??????

All it needs is a super femme, super bitchy queen bee type character, and it will have satisfied ALL of my types

Also Falin and Marcille are so yuri coded, love that friends to lovers schoolgirl energy

I also watched the first episode of that omegaverse anime. It was p good. I was confused why they decided to make alpha/omega relationships the taboo one, since typically that is the most common one. Because they wanted the characters to face adversity without directly including homophobia, I suppose?

Then why not make them an alpha/alpha or omega/omega pair?? That’s something I haven’t seen before, and it would better align with the whole metaphorical homophobia thing!

I mean, I know why they didn’t, but idk. It would have been more interesting in my opinion.

Additionally, I had a hard time focusing on the anime due to the way they portrayed the child, Hikari. They said he was 1 going on 2, so as someone who works with that age group, I couldn’t help but notice every time Hikari wasn’t acting his age.

I won’t bore anyone with details, but basically, his gross motor movement is pretty behind for a boy who is almost 2. Meanwhile, his cognitive and emotional development is quite advanced for that age group. His ability to speak in nearly full sentences is not entirely out of the realm of possibility (I’ve taught 1 year olds with advanced vocabularies before) but his ability to still access his vocabulary during moments of emotional distress is less convincing.

I wish it was that easy to communicate with toddlers in the midst of an emotional meltdown. It would make teaching so much easier.

However, I did think it was a cute touch that after being compared to a star, Hikari spent the rest of the day pointing out every star he saw and calling it his own name. And I appreciate that they didn’t bother showing us the 20 more times he did the same exact thing the following two weeks.

Toddlers will 100% become obsessed with a tiny detail they overhear, and talk about it almost exclusively for weeks afterwards.

So be careful about what you say around toddlers. You never know what they will internalize and repeat like a broken record for the next 14 days straight.

Anyway, that’s basically my day in a nutshell.

I’m tired of watching anime, so if anyone wants to ramble about something to me to keep me entertained while I ride out this sinus infection, please do so.

You could tell me about one of your ocs, or the last anime you watched, or gush to me about your otp, whatever suits your fancy.

Also, please do contact me if you have thoughts on which cuties from Dungeon Meshi should kiss. So far the only ones I’m shipping are Marcille and Falin, so I am open to learning more about the popular ships of the fandom.

[zahri-melitor]

20 Questions for Fic Writers Tag Game

Thank you @androxys for the tag!

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

I have 46 works on AO3 at the moment. There's a handful more spread over various other places, but at this point I've uploaded all of my back catalogue that I want to have archived there.

2. what's your total AO3 word count?

113,119 words. Which is pretty respectable given I tend not to write long pieces.

3. what fandoms do you write for?

Whatever is currently causing my brain to itch! At the moment that's most DC Comics, but I do have a few Yuri!!! on Ice drafts sitting around that I may or may not finish, at least one Girl Genius piece I could tidy up, a bunch of ATLA snippets, and I can frequently be provoked into writing Vorkosigan Saga if people pose the right scenarios.

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

College Daze: a Yuri!!! on Ice SkyGem Retirement Challenge piece, where I don't bother with the reveal. It's three separate scenarios where people meet Yuuri as a college student in the US and don't know who he is. I'm entirely unsurprised it remains my most popular - it was a very popular challenge in the fandom and it's a lot more accessible and pandering to fandom tastes than some other stuff I write.

Find Out What It Means To Me: an immediate sequel to Yuri!!! on Ice, set around Japanese Nationals. Yuuri doubts himself but succeeds and finds how much love and support he has from the whole Japanese skating community. I love this piece because it's very much a balance of things I enjoy (fiddly technical details) and characterisation.

the picture frames have changed and so has your name: DC Comics. What if Dick no longer loved Tim? What if Dick got Morrison Disease? Ahahaha I think you all know this one. It's my big DC piece so far, so I'm not surprised it's up here. It also contains female characters that casual DC fans have never heard of in major roles, so I'm also not surprised it doesn't get the attention fanon-based material does in this fandom.

Little Chick in a Nest: Yuri!!! on Ice. Victor introduces Yuuri to Lilia, without realising that Minako was also a famous prima ballerina. The YOI fandom loves Minako's Benois, but it's a tiny set dressing detail; Victor probably overlooked it and nobody ever talks about Minako as a famous dancer. I had a lot of fun setting up Victor to put his foot in it.

there's an endless road to rediscover: DC Comics. Dick and Tim playfight in the Cave and Damian misreads the situation. I think this one is popular just because of the interplay between the characters, and it was my first attempt at trying to get my head around Damian as a character.

5. do you respond to comments?

Pretty much always. It's the time I spent on LJ coming through, because comments are for talking, and if you talk to me I'll talk back. If you're waiting on a response it's usually because I'm formulating some massive post. Also I tend to meet people where they pitch their comment - the longer and more detailed it is the more detail and discussion you'll get back.

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I'll hold your memory in my hands tonight. It's pretty hard to beat this one for angst in terms of the subject matter. (I still giggle to myself over the pun in this title because it's dreadful) Anyway CTE is something I have a lot of feelings about and they recently diagnosed two women as having suffered CTE due to domestic violence, which is horrific and really shows the long term problems and dangers from family violence.

Then there's A Duty to Your Family and Soft, Small, Silent, Still, one of which contains attempted infanticide and the other which contains canonical accidental toddler death, so you know. When I give heads up warnings I tend to mean them.

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

...Happiest? hmmmm. I have a bunch of fluff, but probably Find Out What It Means To Me for YOI, Herds of Little Vorkosigans for Vorkosigan Saga, and These Small Hours for DC Comics?

Yes okay that's two baby fics and the one where everyone tells Yuuri he's the best.

8. do you get hate on fics?

Almost none that I'm aware of; there's occasionally a bit of pedantry on the Vorkosigan Saga fics but that's from known notorious figures in the fandom and I largely ignore them. If anyone's busy having a hate on for my fics they're kind enough to do it the correct way, which is privately where I can't see it.

9. do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Nope. The closest I get is playing around with innuendo at times in my writing. I'd really rather insinuate and then fade to black, it's heaps less awkward to write.

10. do you write crossovers?

I was going to play good old 'what do you mean by crossover' as far as DC Comics goes, but the answer is a frank yes, because I've got a West Wing & Grease crossover drabble I'm Not Pregnant which is leveraging Stockard Channing appearing in both.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I've ever noticed, and I honestly suspect it's unlikely to happen. I would need to write things that get more attention than I currently get, designed to hit fandom popular tropes.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No. None of my Vorkosigan Saga stuff is popular enough to get a Russian translation and it doesn't fit the preferred tropes of that end of fandom anyway.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nothing I've ever specifically published as fic. I do have some commentfic over the years where there's been back and forth between me and someone else, but alas commentfic is a dying breed in fandom these days.

(and it's a LOT more informal than proper cowriting)

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

All time favourite? Oh gosh. Probably Wally/Norah from Billabong, which hits just so many of my favourite notes for a relationship. Nothing for me will ever beat Wally throwing himself at Norah's mercy to confess that he would rather have died than Jim as he's 'nobody's dog', and Norah claiming him as her own.

I've loved those two since I was a little kid, and you know how it is with ships you acquire in that formative period.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

I remain hopeful about a lot of my stash but I just can't see myself finishing a piece I have about Steph's baby and Helena Kyle. It's a fun scenario, but I cannot work out the villain who came after them both, and so it remains a setting without a plot.

16. What are your writing strengths?

From what people have said to me: I'm pretty good at paring down language and telling a lot of story in small scenes and understatement. There's a bunch of compliments I've had over the structure of TES 34/64 that I treasure, and everyone lost their minds over "the shoes had eventually come in handy. For the funerals." in a gap where a parent should be.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Oh, this is something I have strong feelings about. I don't like loan words being translated and multilingual fandoms often have a working level of loan words that is higher than background use: think for example the amount of French commonly used when discussing ballet. So I tend to think you should use languages at the level of comfort that the fandom has for them.

It often comes down to the fluency of the characters in the scene - I think dialogue in another language can be quite powerful if some of the characters understand it and others don't, because you can leverage that variation in understanding in your audience. However personally I'm more likely to note what languages are being used in dialogue tags than arrange for a translation.

I do try to localise for word choice to the setting of a fic but at this point I've been in fandom too long and and I'm too stubborn to localise spelling for my writing.

Which means if I were to write Wellington Paranormal fic I would probably be using my extremely scanty Māori mixed through the dialogue; I wouldn't bother translating kia ora or whānau for instance. But on the other hand I'm not going to write in another language unless it makes sense for the story to do so.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

That I published? Harry Potter. Which I'm not ashamed of or upset over, really. It was a good fandom to learn how fandom worked in, and it certainly inoculated me against a lot of nonsense behaviour later on. I still have friends I made back then, I learned a lot about how Internet communities function and behave, and it's sort of weird to have things I was on the fringe of and have contemporary memories of occurring having become Fandom Lore.

20. Favourite fic you've written?

Oh damn. Hmmm. Look, probably the picture frames have changed and so has your name, because I'm super proud of myself for finishing it, but in terms of underrated pieces I have to to point to the Mother's Day series, particularly Tea for Two, because DC mothers deserve so much more love.

I don't have anyone specific to tag so let's make it an open offer.

[blazingstaro]

FREEBIE QUESTION, BUT IT'S FOR ALL OF YOUR FANDOM CHARACTERS AND ORIGINAL CHARACTERS

SPILL THE TEA TO ME, SIS!!!

HFJSI GIRRRLLLL YOU'RE OPENING PANDORA'S BOX

In terms of main Kirby OCs (fandom/franchise characters):

Eave, Twyla, Fintan, Slinx, Squire, King Orpheus, Jesse, Ducky and the Dusters, Princess Alatariel, Nimue & Gilroy, and Malacai

I love all my goobers to pieces! And Orpheus, oh Orpheus has taken over my life. I no longer have control over my story because of him. It's his story now, and I'm the lowly servant who's constantly subjected to his demands for me to rewrite things 😭 I've rewritten his intro episode at least 5 times, and now he's injected himself into DotS:MMM. Orpheus PLEASE I NEED A BREAK— I WAS JUST FINISHING PART 6 IN SCRIPT FORMAT YOU JERK

Thia man's made me rewrite his ENTIRE BACKSTORY THREE TIMES! And now I have to rewrite his WHOLE NOVEL SERIES. YES THE WHOLE NOVEL DEDICATED TO JUST HIM. I have to rewrite it from THE GROUND UP. JUST AS I FINISHED CHAPTER 2.

CHAPTER 2 HAS BEEN COMPLETELY SLAMMED OUT OF CANON. I spent 4 months writing it and he just went "mmmm nah, not canon". 20+ pages. TWENTY. PLUS. PAGES. Right in the trash. Gone. Reduced to atoms. I love Orpheus. But he likes to make me work. I'm not allowed to relax 😭 and what's worse is that's also in character for him 😭😭😭😭 I can't control this man, he controls MEEEE *SOB*

Woes aside– Main official characters that I manage in DotS are the following:

Meta Knight, Galacta Knight, Sir/King Arthur, Magolor, Kirby (shared), and Bandana Waddle Dee (shared)

My sis and co-writer @starlightfyre handles other officials in our AU! She's got King Dedede, Taranza, all of Arthur's knights (Falspar, Dragato, etc.), and more!

They're all pretty neat! :D

Original character and original content rambling below the cut here, if anyone is interested in my OG projects:

In terms of active proper OCs, my main cast has been demoted to just being doodle buddies and officially retired from being a series. All my OCs are sorta on standby until I have some story ideas for them! My mains under World Jumpers are these goobers:

Oswald, Tempest, Blaize, Asoné, Raymond, and Xylea! Ozzy and Tempest are the protagonists with the rest being secondary!

I've wrestled with their story for so long that I decided to throw in the towel and admit defeat early this year. It's been 14 long years with these guys collectively, and no actual plot or meaning to their story? Yeah no time to shelve it for good. I have a very fleshed out world for them, but it's really detailed to the point where it's kinda convoluted, but it's been set in stone for so long that I can't undo it without shattering everything

So I figured it'd just be better to start fresh with something else later. I love WJ, but after the history I've had with WJ, it's better that I leave it to rest. The world and story was too big for just me, and I tried for years to find a partner as passionate about the world as I was, but none were. I lost my passion after getting burned out due to stress writing and drawing everything. I love WJ, love my characters and world, but it's a story that never wanted to be told

Since then I've sort of been at a loss on what to do next in terms of original projects. I've got loads of WIP ideas and concepts from over the years, but none have really jumped up at me like DotS has for years 😭

I have a lot of OCs, like A LOT. I had a list and there's like easily 100+ named characters in WJ's universe alone

The others are much smaller! These are all my WIP OG stories:

Project: "Listen" | Animated anthro film inspired by "Cats Don't Dance", focuses on Kaeden who is a mute genet whose dream is to be an actor, despite having a job as a director easily lined up for him. Faces a bit of adversity in a market that hankers for a voice; he becomes friends with a frustrated actress who's been locked into the same kind of roles for years, and wishes to do more, who becomes a voice for Kaeden when he needs it most (I aspire to have an actual deaf/mute person be Kaeden's voice through sign language, since animators will nees references for his dialogue; they'll be put in the credits as his voice because they are! LOVE!)

Project: "Dragon Rider" | Sort of a chosen-one story with a twist, focuses on the struggle between duty and desire. Female protagonist is the prophesized reincarnation of a figure that's meant to bring her tribe into a new golden age, but when she bonds with an unexpected and common kind of dragon (and not the big gaudy one they expected), she faces a dilemma: follow the wishes of her people or her own heart?

Project: "Willemina" | Sci-fi detective story that was originally a spinoff of WJ, so it's set in the same universe. Main protag is non-binary hoomin (human-like species of mine), Willemina, a former space ranger gone private detective investigating the mysterious murder of a local guardian. Will befriends the late guardian's companion, a sweet little Weapon Spirit, and sets out to solve the mystery together (and discovering said weapon spirit's very useful defensive abilities)

Most everyone from each respective story has concept art or complete designs!

[corvidcall]

Fascinated by your sarah z hate- would love to hear more about this if you’d like to share. My experience of her is just that mediocre Homestuck vid or something she made.

lmao yeah sure i guess i can expound on it

i should preface this by saying that i dont think shes like. a bad person. and i dont have some secret knowledge of problematique things shes done that we should all Cancel her for.

tl;dr i just think her videos are really bad. she keeps making videos about stuff that i was there for and then being wrong about them, and it drives me crazy. on top of that, it just rubs me the wrong way to make your whole brand "the lady who talks about tumblr"

like, i think her homestuck video sucks (and i think its very funny that she admitted that she only spent a week making it, but ALSO got really defensive when people said she was wrong about stuff. like, i think the way whatpumpkin and andrew hussie responded to her video was Bad but also that doesnt retroactively defend the original video from being poorly researched and, in my opinion, in bad taste. it was weird to make a video where you talk about all the controversy about hs^2 not that long after the whole project got cancelled because too many of the trans women working on it were receiving daily death threats)

and i think the mcelroys video sucks (that was the last one i watched before i gave up entirely. its really long and very boring, and basically is just her listing a bunch of stuff they did that people had problems with, which essentially puts "travis was annoying on twitch" on the same level of seriousness as "taz: graduation used a lot of harmful native american stereotypes". i genuinely am not sure what the point of this video was supposed to be, because it feels like its her reading a tumblr callout post. also she was wrong about taz: amnesty. the ending WAS foreshadowed, it did NOT come out of nowhere, she just wasnt paying attention.)

but the onceler fandom video is honestly the absolute pits. i am still friends with a lot of the people that i was in the onceler fandom with, and i genuinely havent met a single former onceslut who thought her video was good, or the least bit accurate. her thesis basically boils down to that the onceler fandom was just a bunch of young teen girls projecting fantasies onto a nonthreating decently attractive fictional guy, which isnt that weird and people are only making a big thing about it because they hate teenage girls. and her conclusions arent WRONG, per say, since people DO hate teen girls and this is a thing theyre known to do... its just. thats literally not what the onceler fandom was at all?? first off, when i got into it i was 17 and i was the youngest person i knew by far. almost everyone i saw in the fandom were in their 20s, and a lot of them were not girls at all. and as far as any of US remember, the thing sustained the fandom wasnt 13 year old girls exploring their nascent sexualities, it was people using the barest pretense to make OCs, and then craft stories with and about their friends OCs. it was a really cool unique experience because it was a fandom for the things the fandom built. a lot of the people i knew had never watched the movie The Lorax at all, or didnt really care about it one way or another, but DID get really invested in the dynamic between Swag and One, or got really invested in the two big AUs the fandom had. By the time i got there, most people had kinda moved away from the canon onceler anyway, and were focused almost exclusively on the AUs (there was a high school AU and a zombie apocalypse AU, and then during the summer the high school AU blogs would do a child summer camp AU. i liked the zombie one best because i love melodrama, but the high school one was most popular). i know she was IN the onceler fandom (allegedly...) but as far as i can tell, she was just there at the very start, because it changed WILDLY even just a few months after its inception. and there's no way anyone who saw the fandom that I was actually in would make the sweeping statements about it that she did.

broadly, her videos are too unfocused and not really well-written. her one on Oppa Homeless Style was a genuinely good video!! I know she CAN do good videos!! But so many of her more fandom-focused videos dont really seem to have a thesis beyond "this happened" or maybe even "this was kinda weird right?". like what is the viewer supposed to take away from the video about the mcleroys? that they made a podcast that was really popular and then got less popular? why did that take you TWO HOURS to say? and even when she does have a strong thesis, its always muddied by the fact that she feels compelled to add in really long, boring digressions. I think the video about All or Nothing was good, and made an interesting point about how pan and ace people are really starved for meaningful rep, but i dont understand why she felt compelled to recount the entire plot of the webseries someone made? what did that contribute to the thesis? its like shes reading a wikipedia page, and not like. an actual ESSAY. that someone structured to convey a POINT.

but overall i just take umbrage with her whole "tumblr historian" shtick. i think its kind of gross to put really niche (generally woman-dominated) subcultures on display so people can come gawk at the freaks. ive heard the defense that "she IS a fandom person!! these videos are FOR fandom people!!" but 1. if its supposedly supposed to be for me and NOT an audience of people unfamiliar with the thing shes talking about, then there would be no need to spend so long explaining what everything is, and 2. i can at least say, in my own subjective experience, that i said basically all this to my sister, who told me that thats why she likes sarah z at all, because the videos let her come gawk at all the fandom freaks on tumblr. so its cool that sarah z is giving the person who bullied me my whole life (specifically because the way i engaged with media was too cringe) more reasons to bully me for being cringe. big preesh sarah. glad youre making money off of the free content all of us put out, and even more glad that youre profiting by taking all that free content and presenting it to a largely hostile and judgemental audience who already thinks im a fucking idiot. why dont you make a video about my popular hamlet post next, since you seem to make videos exclusively about things i did.

anyway if i want to watch video essays about fandom, i'll watch princess weekes, whose videos are substantive and not... idk very juvenile. not that i think there cant be more than one youtuber talking about fandom!!! its just that sarah z's videos are mid at best and actively bad at worst, so im not gonna bother.

(all that being said, i occasionally look at her blog and reblog stuff. while shes working down in the tumblr mines looking for content to steal, she does frequently find some decent posts to reblog)

[littleoldpessimistme]

20230408

So, it’s been a hot minute.

Today I wanna rant a bit about sexuality, because that’s what’s been on my mind in the last couple days. (Warning: long post)

(Also, there’s a bit about a bad relationship I had, nothing graphic, and I wouldn’t call it abusive, just some misunderstandings and hurt feelings, but let me know if I should put a tw.)

Let me just start this whole thing by saying that growing up I believed myself to be straight (I feel like it’s also worth mentioning that I come from a historically very homophobic country, I was like 13 when I first realized that queer people actually exist). I don’t remember having any crushes in my early childhood like how people say that they had crushes on cartoon characters, but by the age of 12 I discovered fandoms and I started becoming obsessed with certain actors and singers.

I don’t know if this is embarrassing or not, but I can’t say that I grew out of my celebrity obsession phase until around my late teen years. As time went on my classmates and my friends kept getting into relationships and for the life of me I could not understand why you’d wanna date our classmate Gary when he’s not Andrew Garfield. I kind of felt like an alien sometimes and not in a fun way. Looking back I do think I was a bit overdramatic (as teenagers usually are), but I did feel very isolated and I kept thinking that something was fundamentally wrong with me cause I did not like the things my peers did. 

(I did occassionally have some fleeting crushes on boys from my school, mostly on friends but those usually passed in like a week)

I remember one time (around the age of 17) I was talking to a girl from my school and the topic somehow came up and I told her that I’ve never been in love with a real person, only fictional characters or actors 20 years older than me and she kind of jokingly called me childish. Although now I realize that she most likely wasn’t trying to be mean I remember feeling really embarrassed and hurt.

Ironically a few months after this conversation one of my (at the time) best friends confessed to me and I felt like I kinda had some feelings for him as well, so we started dating. The first few months of the relationship were really nice we spent a lot of time together and I was genuinely sad when we were apart. I did feel like I was in love with him.

A few things however became apparent early on in the relationship. One of which was the simple fact that I did not want to have sex with him. We were both virgins and when I told him I’m not sure I’m ready, he said that he totally understands and he won’t force me to do anything I don’t want to do. After like 6 months we started having more and more problems. I remember one time we were having a conversation about sex, mainly that he really wanted it. I know now that it’s partly my fault for not communicating my own feelings clearly but in my defense I didn’t really understand them myself. I just knew that the thought of sex made me very uneasy and I couldn’t really imagine myself in that situation. 

One thing I could articulate was the fear of getting pregnant (which was a genuine fear of mine, but deep down I knew it was only one aspect of the whole thing) and that’s what I told him. This turned out to be a mistake because he started coming up with reasons as to why my fear was irrational and listing contraceptive methods (as if I didn’t know that condoms existed). I started crying because I couldn’t handle the amount of pressure I suddenly found myself under which made him upset and he started saying things like he thought that we could talk about stuff like this and this made me feel even worse, like I was letting him down.

Obviously I don’t want to blame him and he had his own mental health struggles. I remember he used to tell me that I was the only person in the entire world who loved him and the only happiness he ever felt was when he was with me, when we were apart he was so depressed that he couldn’t function at all. I guess he thought that this would sound romantic but it just deeply scared me.

After a year of dating I eventually broke up with him, mostly because I felt inadequate at helping him overcome his depression and ptsd and spending time with him started feeling like a chore rather than a thing that I actually enjoyed doing. While we were in the process of breaking up he told me that he regrets never sleeping with me because the hormones released during sex help build a connection and I remember feeling really weirded out about that. The whole thing was especially hard on my part because I felt like falling out of love was my fault and obviously he was upset to the point where he literally quoted Green Day’s song “Nice guys finish last” on me which to this day makes me cringe. 

I hate to admit this but I still feel kind of guilty about breaking up with him when I think about it, but I felt that it would be cruel to keep him in the dark and pretend that everything was alright when in reality I didn’t love him anymore. 

Another interesting thing is that I had my first kiss with him and to this day he’s the only person I ever kissed. I am aware that this kind of makes my judgement questionable, because I don’t have anything to compare it to, so he could just be a bad kisser but I kind of hated kissing him. I rarely initiated making out because whenever we did I felt weird. Sometimes I could tolerate it, but mostly it just felt kind of gross and it didn’t really do anything for me. I know that he noticed this, along with the fact that I never let him kiss me in public, or in front of our friends and he told me once that it bothered him that I “never acted like his girlfriend” in public. I kind of knew that this was unusal but I really couldn’t help it, I felt like I’d rather die than engage in any form of PDA because the thought just made me incredibly uncomfortable, but I knew that this wasn’t because of him, just the general idea of others seeing me like that bothered me.

And this is how we get to the sexuality part. It’s been almost 2 years since we broke up and in the last year I’ve been kind of connecting some dots and I read a lot about different identities and other people’s experiences. I still kind of say that I’m questioning, but I find that I resonate a lot with ace folks’ stories and came to the conclusion that I might be somewhere on the asexual spectrum. 

So I just started kind of accepting the fact that I may not have all the gears in the big scheme of attraction, but in the last few days I’ve been sent into a romantic attraction crisis as well. I’ve been saying to myself that it’s okay if I’m asexual, because I can still feel romantic attraction and will eventually fall in love with someone who will accept me for who I am. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic, I’ve read hoards of fanfics about my fave characters over the last like 7 years, it’s one of my favorite hobbies. But I started to realize that I don’t care much for romantic relationships in my own life.

When I think about it, I realize that I’ve always been this way. I remember my mother (oh boi I could talk about her for hours as well) telling me as a young teenager that I was too closed off, “like an ice queen” and I needed to be more approachable if I wanted boys to like me. But I don’t think I actually wanted them to like me. I only wanted to be liked by boys because I felt left out, and embarrassed that I was the only one of my friends who didn’t get a Valentine’s from a secret admirer.

One of my closest friends got engaged last summer and she’s been telling me about the wedding preparations and how she wants everything to be, and that also made me realize that I’ve never thought about what kind of wedding I’d want, not even as a child. I have two other friends who are also in committed relationships and they too talk a lot about marriage and having kids in the near future and I feel so disconnected from them.

I still meet with my old friends from high school sometimes and some of them always ask me if I have anyone I’m talking to at the moment and I always just say no, and they always look at me with pity and I don’t know how to explain to them that I’m perfectly fine this way. I’ve noticed that people seem to accept the concept of a single person longing to be in a relationship and actively putting in effort to find someone, but they simply can’t wrap their heads around the fact that someone might not want to be in a relationship at all?

Whenever I tried to explain this to people before I was always hit with “you’re too young/haven’t found the right person yet/you’ll change your mind” and these always make me question myself and feel bad about myself.

But to close this on a hopeful note I do believe that it doesn’t really matter. Right now I feel like the asexual-aromantic spectrum resonates with me and if I do turn out to be “too young to know” and I eventually “find the right one” then I’ll do that. And it’s not gonna be a big deal at all. 

So yeah, that’s about it for today. If you stumbled upon this nonsense and had the brainpower to read it congrats and thank you! And if you’re aspec and want to share your experience with me, go ahead I’d love to read it!  💜 🖤 🤍 💚

Stay rad!

[yarns-and-d20s]

Just finished watching a YouTube video about JKR and her whole "I'm never going to forgive those young people who disagree with me!" nonsense. The YouTuber made a bit of a throwaway comment about the adults who can't let go of HP because of what it meant to them in their youth, and I had too many thoughts for a YouTube comment, so, here I am.

My HP credentials: the first book came out when I was 15. I borrowed it from a younger person in my life, and ended up DNF'ing at the time because those opening chapters were so brutally mean-spirited and bleak I couldn't handle it. What can I say, I was a pretty fragile little thing. I ended up going back to the franchise in 2001 when my best friend wanted me to see the first movie with her. She'd already seen it, and just desperately wanted to share it with me, but would say no more. She bought my ticket and my popcorn, and, well, I ended up spending several years in the HP fandom, and was with it all through the release of the final film, and then slowly, it just sort of dwindled in my interest, though I did re-listen to the Fry-narrated audiobooks or watch the movies again from time to time, and had my various bits of merch hanging around my room.

But I gotta admit, I feel the same way that YouTuber does about the HP adults. The ones who won't let it go despite JKR, rather than, y'know, holding on because of her. The ones who wail, "But you don't understand what Harry Potter meant to me!"

Because the thing of it is: I do. My Harry Potter was David & Leigh Eddings' Belgariad and Mallorean, which was 10 entire books, that grew up alongside its main character, a very special orphan chosen one boy with magic powers and even a special mark on his body (Garion's was on his hand). Hell, he was also raised by his aunt, though I think Aunt Pol would kick Aunt Petunia's ass, and ends up marrying a redhead.

I started reading Pawn of Prophecy when I was 10 (I was a very precocious reader!). I re-read both series a lot up until 2010; I re-read them so much that all 10 books needed to be replaced because they were falling apart. Yeah, they got bought twice in my house. My best friend--the same one who took me to see Philosopher's Stone--also loved the Belgariad & Mallorean and we bonded over those books, talked about them constantly, the whole nine yards. Not only that, but my only other friend in the entire world as a teen also loved those books. They meant the world to me.

But as I progressed through my 20s, I started noticing the bioessentialism and the thing where people from the north and west were good but the people from the south and east were scary and evil or just plain old strange. The fact that very nearly all the female characters could be described as "beautiful and sassy" and were rewarded with marriage and babies if they were good women but if they were bad women who were too masculine in their appetites or behaviours, they got punished for it. On top of all that, news resurfaced several years ago about how the Eddings had been tried and found guilty of abusing their adopted children. They never adopted again after they served out their punishments, and the Belgariad was envisioned by the couple as, like, a love letter/apology letter to children or something like that.

So, yeah, I actually get it. A lot. And the Eddings are dead now, and can't hurt anybody, but I haven't touched those books in 14 years. They were so important to me, and I can still "hear" the influence of the Eddings' style in my own fiction writing. They'll always be special to me, but, you know, there's... there's other books.

I spent years rolling my eyes at people who would pull the "read other books" line. It was kind of ridiculous; I never knew anybody who was into HP and never read anything else. It was just that HP always inspired a particular fandom and devotion because so many people had it in common. I understand how important the community itself was; remember, I was in it.

But by the same token, because nuance is a thing, I don't fully understand not being able to let it go. Yes, I'm sure it was easier for me to let go of because I was an adult (19, closer to 20 than to 18) when I actually got into the franchise. And there was never really a huge, thriving Belgariad/Mallorean fandom. But if your HP fandom friends are only your friends because of HP, then... they're not really your friends, are they?

The Eddings are dead. They can't use their money to hurt anybody. There are living authors right now who are not raging sacks of shit who are struggling to put food on their plates. There are also lots of shows and games that you can love, and maybe there's a movie occasionally, sometimes (note to self: edit and post mini-essay about how the advent of the DVD was a huge stepping stone that led us to the current state of cinema).

I both do and don't know how hard it is to let go of something that meant so much to you as a kid. I know in so much as I've done it; but my autistic brain is struggling to not understand why if I can do it, other people can't. If it's about friends--guys, gals, non-binary pals, they ain't your friends if they don't want anything to do with you if you can't talk about Harry goddamn Potter. If they will talk to you without it, find that thing to talk about.

I know it'll hurt. I still ache sometimes to go back to [insert setting of Belgariad/Mallorean here], and see all my book friends, but, hey, I've sure read a lot of books since I stopped re-reading the same 10 books every 12-18 months for 13 years.

Sometimes, we outgrow things. That's okay. It's allowed. I gave myself permission to make 2010 the last time I read those 10 books. I give myself permission to miss them. I give myself permission to think fondly of what they meant to me. But it became time to move on, because my soul is bigger than racism, sexism, and two people who beat their children, and needed to be fed with new things.

[rivalsforlife]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

I saw this going around a little while ago and wanted to do it myself mostly because it doesn't involve me having to answer about anything I did this year.

1. How many works do you have on A03?

20

2. What's your total A03 word count?

262,994, apparently

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Ace Attorney! I have to admit I've been writing persona 5 fanfic for most of this year but am still undecided on if I actually want to publish that. if I ever finish it.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

A Rose By Any Name (by a margin of like 1000 kudos), Deep Dark Secrets, Childswap, The Catch-Up Game, Love Languages.

I am eternally going to feel a bit bitter that the first one is that high.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used to respond to them all the time because I love the interactions, but then I started getting burnt out by school and now have such a massive backlog..... so I pretty much never do these days. I'm very sorry and I still read and really appreciate all the comments I get!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't write a lot of angst... and I definitely don't have a tendency to leave things on an angsty note. Maybe Need Not to Need which was in early disbarment era, or Left Behind, Looking Ahead because it's a missing scene in the middle of aai2, and Franziska ends it on the conclusion that she should prepare to not have Edgeworth in her life anymore.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Since I don't write a lot of angsty endings most of them are happy lol. Maybe The Opposing Council's Proposal because it ends on a proposal, which is a pretty happy event.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope! Everyone's been really nice.

9. Do you write smut?

Definitely not. It takes me like five minutes to work myself up to writing a kiss. I'm too squeamish about that kind of thing.

10. Do you write crossovers?

No, and I feel like that's not something I'd be very good at doing. There's so much work involved and I haven't had any situations where I feel like characters from different franchises have to meet in order to express some aspect of characterization that they couldn't do otherwise, which would be my main motivation for writing one.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I'm aware.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!! Plenty of my fics have been translated into Chinese. I had one person write an entire rec list for my works in Chinese before and was so happy about it.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope, I feel like I wouldn't be good at this either, I've always been the kind of person who isn't good at playing with others and would want to take control of the whole thing lol.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Narumitsu without question. It takes a lot to get me to actively care about romance, much less write it.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I have a PLvsAA canon divergence fic where everyone stays brainwashed for a much longer time (and Edgeworth also gets brainwashed) that I wish I could finish, but I feel like it's a lost cause at this point. I have an earlier version of that fic which went in a completely different direction and is less than one chapter away from being complete. There's also One Good Narumitsu Story left in me that I've had in my head since 2018, never been able to bring myself to write it, and am not sure if I ever will. I hope I do someday, though.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think one of my favorite comments I've ever gotten talked about putting effort into developing relationships and characters outside of the main focuses of the fic - Catch-Up Game being an example, even though narumitsu is the focus, I spent some time paying attention to Phoenix's relationships with Trucy, Maya, Iris, and generally tried to make it seem like the characters had their own lives outside of what Phoenix and Edgeworth had going on. That's something I still feel pretty proud of and try to keep up when I can.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

DESCRIPTIONS. I can't describe people very well at all, probably at least partially because my facial recognition skills are atrocious. I can't describe locations or settings, either. I sometimes feel like it becomes far too obvious that I rarely leave the house.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I think it's fine on a one-off but not extensively. Like with Klavier as an example, the occasional Achtung or pet name or whatever is fine, but when it starts to be longer sentences or full conversations I draw the line.

Overall I think the best way to handle it (in a hypothetical conversation between Franziska and Edgeworth, depending on if the POV character is Edgeworth or Phoenix):

a) If the POV character speaks the language (like Edgeworth), doing something like "Franziska switched to German, so Phoenix couldn't overhear. "I am speaking in German, but you are reading it in English.""

b) If the POV character does not speak the language (like Phoenix), saying "Franziska switched to German and started yelling at Edgeworth" makes more sense - when I hear a foreign language, at least, I wouldn't be able to repeat it afterwards, because my brain does not process the words like it would English words, so I don't think it should stay in writing either.

There are practical purposes too: I wouldn't trust google translate to capture any nuance, and don't speak any other languages, so I'd want to find someone who knows the language to translate for me, which can be annoying and inconvenient for them. Also, readability. I don't think a reader should have to open up a new tab to understand your fic, is the point.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Warrior cats!! Way back in 2012 or so.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

The Catch-Up Game is still my favorite, at least partially because I got so much engagement while posting it that it was a lot of fun to go through comments on it. The narumitsu server talked about it a lot, and I'll forever be bitter that a rogue mod wiped those channels, because it's a really good feeling when something you write can inspire discussion like that. Also, I'm still satisfied with most aspects of that fic on its own - I reread a couple of chapters just the other day and was enjoying myself, which is always a win.

[dream-critical]

Mercury you are Incredibly fucking correct about the way older people in the fandom act my GOD. I've been in a couple adults only fan spaces and holy SHIT you'd think adults who were here for like allllll of the other youtubers doing horrid stuff, who condemned CMC for doing The Same Thing As Dream. Would find this shit weird but they Don't! Moving from DSMP centric circles to Life Series/Hermit/Empires centric ones was like an ENORMOUS shock bc while there are still bad eggs in those spaces there are FAR fewer adults making every aspect of how they engage with these block guys about how bad they wanna fuck them or see them fuck each other. DSMP spaces I was in went "Nah it's Normal that Dream's giving out a phone number for fans to text him and get a real reply because broadcast celebs did that" and ignore that most celeb replies are automated entirely and also don't typically humor messages calling them sexy gay dogboys or daddy or any of that shit.

Back when that was happening there were Not grooming allegations about Dream yet but it was like a month at most after the CMC situation and anyone who like Thought about it for more than a moment could noodle out that like. Even if there would never be accusations against Dream, he sets the foundation for what a LOT of people will consider normal content creator behavior until the next big thing unseats him in like ten or so years. The idea that private snapchats or a text line that only you and the other person see unless one party publishes the messages are Normal Things to hand out to your primarily tweenage audience is like. Bad. Like even if he DIDN'T groom anyone he still sets the standard that privately talking to a grown man just shy of twice your age with 20 million followers is a normal and good interaction! The other adults in those spaces should have been seeing SO many more fucking red flags in the moment! It should not have been me and three other people who weren't OBSESSED with the man who were the only ones concerned with that!

And by GOD the RPF discussion. I spent months being told that I was just being an anti or a hater for agreeing that Dream repopularized super public RPF and RPF being sent to creators and blockign over RPF being abnormal. Like. My credentials here are I've been in Youtuber fandoms before and since falling in and out with the DSMP. I grew up on DeviantArt in the heyday of Septiplier and Phan getting sent to the content creators. I saw the culture change enough to have a significant pushback against shipping those guys from Buzzfeed Unsolved by 2019. I've BEEN online and I know that Dream and George encouraging ship content being sent to them and made hyper public like Drastically changed how often I found RPF on my timeline. YES shit was bad during SMPLive. It was SO much worse ten years ago and it's getting back to those levels as more kids migrate out of the DSMP/DTeam fandoms and act like content creators need to see their fanfic or fanart of them being used as Sex Objects. And being told I was just making shit up or hatemongering against Dream for noticing the Real pattern in how the public treats RPF? It made me feel unhinged then and it still makes me feel unhinged now.

anyways long rant over it takes me 0 whole dollars to think critically abt how I engage with people's Minecraft DND characters and how I engage with the actual creators and adults who act like that expectation is Censorship Of Queer People are dumb of ass.

I literally couldn't have agreed more with you anon. I wasn't in the fandom back when SMP live was a thing, but i do have experiences with fandoms where RPF is completely normalized outside of the dsmp. I'm kind of gonna go on a rant of my own as well here. But like

It's frustrating to see how these people, Idols, content creators, celebrities etc are dehumanized and often just seen as an object to project all of their emotions, whether it's frustrating, lust etc on to.

Like they genuinely stop seeing them as people, even if they don't want to admit it.

It honestly isn't even just about sexual content, stuff like writing rpf fics and assuming certain people's roles within the lives of the ccs they like is also weird

Like how you can find rpf fics where the ccs parents are abusive. How you can find fics where the significant other of the cc is cheating which is why they leave them for their friend and discover they were in gay love all along. or Fics where its revealed that "actually this specific moment that happened irl on stream was a sign of abuse and the people who claim to be the friend of X cc are actually toxic and don't deserve them" And its just like??????

People are reading into things so hard. And I'll admit when I'm hyperfixating hard it's sometimes difficult to differentiate what I feel and what the cc I watch feels or expresses, but I'm aware that that's parasocial behaviour and I ignore it. It's my brain tricking me into thinking I know that person and that they feel and see everything the same as I do. It's not healthy to indulge in that even if it can feel comforting.

And the problem with the dteam specifically is that they encourage this type of behaviour like a lot, and the only reason they do is profit.

Back to nsfw content though, it absolutely is going to become a lot worse and I'm not looking forward to that

[knickynoo]

20 Questions for Fic Writers!

(Thanks to @mythical-bookworm for tagging me!)

How many works do you have on AO3? 11

2. What's your total AO3 word count? 184,491

3. What fandoms do you write for? Back to the Future and Family Ties

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Harborage

Despite the Distance

In Case of Emergency

Reflections of a (Not So Mad) Scientist

Under the Mat

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do my best to respond to every comment I get because it really means a lot to me to get them! Sometimes, I do genuinely forget, though.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably "Because of the Barriers". I mean, the ending isn't particularly angsty, but the whole point of that fic is angst, haha. That's my "troubled version of Marty who grew up in a timeline without Doc" fic, and it leads into the events of "Despite the Distance."

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I think that award would go to the final chapter, "Sunset," I did for Doctober. I really wanted to end that project on a happy note.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, I never have, though I have gotten one or two comments from people telling me things like, "This would have been better if ______" and "Good fic, but the ending felt like it was missing something," which aren't hate comments, of course, but they are kind of weird ones for someone to leave. Just seems unnecessary, lol.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

BIG NO

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I did a Family Ties and BTTF crossover chapter for Doctober!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I hope not!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I did have someone contact me once because they wanted to translate one of my fics into German, but I don't know if they ever did it.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Maybe?? My friend and I like to toss around fic ideas and write snippets of scenes on Discord, and a good deal of those ideas have made it into recently posted fics, so... I guess that counts?

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

I'm not a big ship person and usually don't focus too much on them, but I guess Marty and Jennifer? Alex and Ellen, too.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Hmmm...a while back I wrote a chapter or two of a post-trilogy BTTF fic where something goes wrong in the continuum since Doc is vacationing and running all through time. Since he's "spent too long" away from the year he's supposed to be living in, the continuum kind of starts to "erase" him from people's memories? Except for Marty's, since he's protected by the time bubble and all that. Anyway! Marty starts mentioning Doc, and everyone thinks he's losing his mind. Consequently, he starts to think he's losing his mind because nobody around him can remember a Doc Brown.

Also, Marty starts to legitimately hallucinate Doc (he pops up and talks to Marty and gives him advice), not because there's anything actually wrong with Marty's mental state, but because the timeline is going haywire trying to reconcile a guy who existed, but who's being erased, but who is still remembered by Marty.

It's an odd one. Not sure what was going on there, but I had fun writing it!

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think I do well with dialogue. When the characters are really engaged in a conversation, it flows easily for me.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Setting the scene. I have a very hard time describing surroundings and making it feel "alive." Also! When I just have one character alone and have to focus entirely on their own thoughts, that leads to a lot of writer's block.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

That'd be fun, but I only speak English, and I don't trust Google Translate to translate things accurately.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Ok, um... Big Time Rush, lol. I never posted any of it, but that was the first fandom I was in when I was younger that made me truly aware of fanfiction. I remember sitting there and realizing, "Hey, I could do this, too! I could put these guys in situations!" I wrote stuff based off of the show just for fun, but I credit it for starting my love of writing and helping me to develop a lot of my skills.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Oh, this is so hard. I think I'm gonna have to go with "Despite the Distance". That one was challenging, emotional, and fun to work on. But I also have a very special place in my heart for "So, Your Brother's Befriended a Mad Scientist." I love writing about Dave McFly being a wonderful big brother and also looking at those early weeks of Marty and Doc's friendship.

Tagging @fourth-dimensional-thinker, @rose-of-pollux, @daryfromthefuture and anyone else who wants to do this!