#but from my understanding its ''kind of like a hyperfixation but way more long term and not as obsessive''

[queer-whatchamacallit]

Alright so I’m on season 4 of Shameless and have officially accepted its hyperfixation status

So here’s my incredibly detailed thoughts on some of these jerks, enjoy

Lip

He’s the whole reason I got into Shameless. I’m trying to go for the full Jeremy Allen White IMDb page (11/27), so I was instantly attached to him, he’s my little shithead

He wants to take care of his family so so bad. He’s insanely loyal to the little ones specifically, but he doesn’t care about the long term, he’s more terrified about the short term. That’s why he’s so against college for a while: his absence would set them back for years before it ever gave them a leg up

Yes he’s absurdly knowledgeable, but until he knows he’s in real shit, he just digs his claws into whatever he wants to do. I’ve been thinking of it as a lack of impulse control, but he can shut it off, cut the smartassery, even the anger issues he can manage to some degree, but if he thinks he can dodge consequences, he’ll be as destructive as he wants

If he’s given a responsibility, he’s going to take care of it. That’s why early on, he dodged things about college and gets annoyed by Fiona trying to put that on him to support the rest of them, but eventually, he accepts that if he wants good things for his family, that’s the way to do it. It’s also why he goes all in, dropping out and everything, when Karen’s pregnant because he thinks it’s his responsibility.

He’s so so latched on to Karen in a way that’s really interesting to me. It’s clear he wanted an actual relationship with her, but her turning around and fucking Frank really did mess Lip up as Kevin said. He went so all in with the baby and that loss fucked him up so bad that it instantly gives him commitment issues. He didn’t seem bothered by Mandy until Kevin called her his “ghetto wife” and Lip freaked out and tried to get as distant from her as he could

But now in season 4, he takes taking care of Liam and the other kids as his responsibility along with going to MIT to support everyone financially. He puts his everything into those too, but I’m wondering how much responsibility he can take before his destructive impulses ruin something for him

Debbie

All of you need to calm the fuck down, she’s my baby

She cares too hard. She hasn’t started hiding it like her older siblings have, and it hurts to watch her forgive and forgive and forgive until she’s beating the shit out of Frank with a bag of bar soaps, and then start forgiving again but never really getting over it

She wants to follow in Fiona’s footsteps so so bad, destroying herself for others when she’s still so little

She babysits the whole summer then gets outcast the whole school year. It’s a lot to have on your shoulders, and I almost get relieved when she complains about boy problems or not getting her period yet because that’s her getting to be a normal preteen girl

It’s always fascinating to me when she gets violent. We think of sensitive as being nonviolent, but people can hurt her more easily than they can others, and it’s not great, but it’s understandable to want them to hurt back

She changes a lot for season 4, but even in trying to distance herself from Fiona, she’s still following in her footsteps. After so many years of rejection, she needs to be wanted so so bad by whoever will give it to her. One of the only characters I actively hate is Matty for pulling some will they won’t they shit with her. Please just cut her off dude. But I can see her starting to fake nonchalance toward her family while reaching out for anyone to give her what they won’t, and it’s devastating what everything is starting to do to her

Ian

He’s kind of best to talk about before and after he left home

Before, he sort of got lost in whatever came up to him. Kash wanted him, so he became loyal to Kash, always trying to be more mature than he should have to be and being a pillar of support for him at 15. Then, Mickey comes along, and he gets pulled into him too, fighting to get closer and closer. Happens with Ned too I think when Mickey’s in juvie for a bit, playing mature again. To be a Gallagher is to be desperate, and Ian wants sex from whatever guy will have him

In his family, he’s much more quiet, always standing beside Lip and letting him do the talking. Even if he flips him off whenever he can, Ian doesn’t really fight back against Frank. He never tells anyone what’s going on with him because he knows everything is kind of a mess, and doesn’t want anyone to tell him to stop. He doesn’t want to go against what his family wants from him so he hides it when he does

Something I really like about his earlier seasons characterization is that he’s kinda rough and tumble manly army guy that mixes perfectly with his being gay. Watching him be with someone that’s a lot like him, that he gets to roughhouse with and share this particular brand of strength and masculinity or die type of culture, is so fascinating to watch. To quote Jeremy Allen White, “Whenever they beat the shit out of each other and then fuck, that’s like- that’s awesome.”

And then, when Mickey gets married and he only learns about the engagement from Mandy, that everything he put into Mickey gets fucked over, and the only person he’s ever felt this connected to has rejected him. He can’t deal with seeing him, so he does anything he can think of to get himself into the army and away from everything here that has hurt him

Now for season 4 Ian. He’s been so quiet, so bound to never disappointing anyone that when he starts experiencing bipolar symptoms, he leans hard into it right away. He tries to steal a helicopter, he’s done being controlled by others, he’s going to run away and be as free as he can get

He wants sex, so he’s going to have as much of it as possible. He feels in control even if he isn’t. He goes and goes and goes. He works out all morning then fucks all night, he’s high out of his mind, and he still has too much energy. He decides this is what freedom is

When his family and Mickey start trying to drag him back home, he tries to dig his heels in. He feels good and in control here, so why should he go back. When he finally does head home, he tries to keep his rush going, going for runs and making pancakes before the sun comes up, but when he sees Mickey with his son and his wife, he starts to spiral

Ian wants him to be free like he is, to feel as good as he did

Mickey coming out was a massive risk, much bigger than it ever was for Ian, and that sacrifice gets Ian to set aside his betrayal again and protect Mickey. With all his army muscle and manic energy, he goes apeshit on Terry Milkovich, not holding back in any way

But the next day, his months of going and going and going finally catch up him and throws his ass fully into a depressive episode

So yeah, I want to do tier lists with them, but no categories fully describe my feelings toward them. I worry about them. I care about them. I’m scared for the next time they’ll fuck up. The most interesting thing for a character to be is desperate, and they all need something so so bad, even if it’s just enough money to keep the lights on. I’ll probably do more characters, they’re all fascinating

[jimbo-clyde]

Biblical Scholarship

Admittedly, the whole Jesus thing isn't something I am fully committed to (don't tell my priest), but I am in a Bible study class because I love the idea of the Bible as storytelling and persuasiveness and I life figuring out why the authors wrote certain things a certain way. Right now we are starting to study the Gospel of John, which I think is a perfect example of this idea.

I would like to take a moment and say a couple things: 1) I am not a biblical scholar, I'm just a random person with ADHD and this is a hyperfixation, 2) I am infinitely grateful for the nerds (complimentary) who combed through the Bible because they wanted to know/study x in the Bible, as well as for the people who took the extent of academic study of the text and made it digestible for me to read and say "OMG this is so cool I want to think about this for like ever now."

The Gospel according to John (John) is rather significantly different in terms of style and thematic elements from the other three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the Synoptics). Mark is agreed to be the first written and is the most rushed in a "OMG this crazy thing just happened and I have to write it down like now so that it can be spread as much as possible" kind of way, but the authors of Matthew and Luke evidently used Mark as a pretty direct reference when writing their own, and as such all three offer a synopsis (thus the Synoptic Gospels) of the events of Jesus' birth, life, death, and (alleged) resurrection.

As John is pretty well established to be the last Gospel written, about 60-70 years after the death (and alleged resurrection) of Jesus, the author(s) of John had more time, and as such they could make choices within the text to achieve their rhetoric goals. One of which is the choice to include the use of exactly fourteen (14) "I am" statements from Jesus, but seven (7) of them are without a predicate (and thus call back to the way big God is referenced in the Jewish scripture), and seven (7) are with a predicate (which then tie into Jesus being grounded in humanity and daily life). Again, I am so grateful that some nerd noticed this, went through, and counted these so that we can talk about this. Another thing to note is that Jesus' "miracles" are not referred to as such in John, but are instead seven (7) "signs." These signs are used by the author(s) to, rather than prove that Jesus is divine, as in the Synoptics, but to use the signs to point to Jesus' greater connection to God, which is then itself a callback to the Jewish tradition where Moses performed "signs and wonders" to signify the power of God (Exodus 4.9, 17, 28, 30; Deuteronomy 34.11).

John opens with a rather famous prologue, wherein the author(s) tie Jesus to the story of creation, but also acts as a thesis statement where the author(s) create this idea that Jesus was God and one with God. John then goes on to support this thesis with the aforementioned seven (7) signs, Jesus' instructions for his followers as his death approaches, and then Jesus' death and (alleged) resurrection.

John differs significantly from the Synoptics in terms of Jesus' teaching style. In John, Jesus teaches often through long monologues instead of discussions and parables found in the Synoptics. When these discussions happen, they are often confrontational in nature, compelling the people Jesus encounters to make strong decisions whether or not to follow him, and use misunderstanding and double meanings to allow Jesus to go on the long monologues where Jesus explains his connection to God. The inclusion of the prologue establishing Jesus as divine allows the reader to consider an interaction and find humor in the misunderstanding and say "pfft, get a load of this guy, he doesn't understand that Jesus is of God, and so obviously Jesus means the alternate, spiritual definition of that word" (John 3.1-21).

Anyways I just really appreciate literature that is intentional in its structure, its composition, and message, and I think it is a good idea, when we see these things in ancient literature, to use it to remind ourselves that even though these people certainly didn't have the wealth of information and resources that we have today, they were still perfectly intelligent people who's ideas and arguments still have impacts today. Stylistic developments and growth, even from stories never written down, still echo to this day in the way that we communicate and write and think and live our lives.

Thank you for your time, you have my Love

[marewithfangs]

1/ Which category of alterhumanity do you belong to?

i just use the term nonhuman, but voidpunk kind of works too.

2/ What are your "types"?

i am a wolverine and a canine. i identified as a wolf-gsd hybrid and painted dog until recently though.

3/ Do you experience shifts?

i have perception shifts a lot. when i do, i need to be talked with non-compicated sentences; otherwise i may struggle to understand what you mean.

** i also might become more agitated and snap a lot because my mind recognises any humans as a threat. it gets worse if someone is in my room or somewhere i deem as my territory when i am like this. i dont think ive ever experienced cameos.**

**→ this is kind of related to the next question too.

4/ How do you experience your alterhumanity in your everyday life?

basically every time i cant see my body, i have the body of a wolverine. whether its too dark to see or i have my eyes closed. i eat pretty fast, and more often than not eat a little when everyone is present and eating together, then eat properly the leftovers when everyone is asleep. i dont like having people in my room, and may start getting agitated if they stay too long. i love play fighting with my little siblings, i tend to play a bit rough but they dont mind and also play rough in exchange. i live in a mountain, and have a territory outside my house, which i patrol from time to time. unfortunately sometimes i struggle with the instinct to mark my things with urine.

5/ What do you think of the community?

i think its fine. kind of. at least the tumblr side. i dont really want to engage with the tiktok side of the community. i know most of them are misinformed, and correcting them would be the right thing but just seeing misinformation makes me angry; so i do not engage with them. the tumblr side is very accepting of how difdrent beings experience their alterhumanity, which is why i am comfortable with sharing my own experiences here.

6/ What things makes you most comfortable and euphoric in your alterhumanity?

play fighting with my siblings, patroling my territory (sometimes the stray dogs 'kızıl' and 'gece' join me too, we kind of share the same territory. ive known kızıl for 7 years, and gece for at least 5 so i am comfortable with it.) swimming, maybe. eating in an animal like way. growling.

7/ Do you experience species dysphoria?

not really, no. maybe because i also identify physically too. who knows.

8/ What advice would you like to say to a young alterhuman that awakened recently?

dont panic if, in the future, you no longer feel like the species you are now. your identity is fluid, its normal to change. also, you aren't faking being that animal if youre feeling like it right now.

9/ Do you have/want gears?

i have a red dog collar and a black choker that looks like a collar. i wear chains on my collars and consider them gear. i also have a fake keychain tail that is about 10 cms long, white-grey-brown coloured. i would really like to wear a dog muzzle too.

10/ Do you know/have theories for the origin of your alterhumanity?

i had a hyperfixation on animals since i was 7. that hyperfixation turned into a wolf focused one when i was 9. that hyperfixation lasted 6 years, and throughout it i acted like a wolf (and sometimes a cat, since we adopted 4 cats around the time,) which led me to being 'othered' by my peers as a kid. that caused me to isolate myself more and the lockdown only made it worse. i never got diagnosed, since my parents dont want me to, but i suspect i might be neurodivergent; so that might also be a factor on my nonhumanity.

11/ Tag someone/a creature!

not tagging, but go ahead if you wanna!!

If you are a alterhuman, reblog and answer these questions!

(don't be afraid to write a lot, do what you want ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯)

1/ Which category of alterhumanity do you belong to?

2/ What/who is/are your type(s)? (if you have any)

3/ Do you experience shifts? If so, can you tell us your most common shifts and your strangest cameo shift (if you've ever had a cameo shift)?

4/ How do you experience your alterhumanity in everyday life?

5/ What do you think of the community?

6/ What are the things that make you most comfortable and euphoric in your alterhumanity?

7/ Are you experiencing species dysphoria?

8/ What advice would you like to say to a young alterhuman who has just awakened?

9/ Do you have/want to have gears?

10/ Do you know/have any theories about the origin of your alterhumanity? If so, tell us! (all beliefs are legitimate)

11/ Tag someone/a creature to answer these questions!ㅤᵕ̈

[facetsofthecloset]

I have been thinking a lot about vampires and my recent ADHD diagnosis and now I’m thinking about vampirism as a metaphor for ADHD (though I’m sure I’m not the first person to make this comparison)

(Warning for personal mental health rambling and suicide mentions) (also blood bc vampires)

The bulk of it is the constant…aching. The world feels like sandpaper on my brain, always and forever, unless I have something distracting me or keeping me focused.

(Or possibly if I get medication. Which I have not yet because did you know Adderall and other stimulant ADHD meds are straight up banned in Japan bc it’s potentially abusable?!?!? I had no idea the laws were THAT fucking draconic bc I’m not really a drug person personally. Like obviously I knew about pot being illegal but ADDERALL?? I’m 100% certain based on personal experience with suicide ideation caused by chronic understimulation that this is a factor in Japan’s high suicide rate!!!! I literally get suicidal when I’m hungry and I’m sure that’s due at least in part to the emotional disregulation and difficulty identifying emotions/triggers, although I need to discuss that with my psychiatrist next time!)

Lots of vampire stories/lore touch on the hunger for blood in kind of similar terms, or at least in ways that aren’t too far off.

A deep down, uncontrollable and insatiable longing, a drive that can cause you to fixate on achieving a goal that you think will satisfy you, yet every success has a hollowness at its core bc you KNOW that satiation is temporary?

A drive that can be destructive and detrimental to you and everyone around you if you’re not careful or always mindful?

A need that can be overpowering, intoxicating, pushing you to temptation and impulse, or subtle and pervasive and creeping in the background?

Familiar, right?

At least vampires know there’s one answer that will satisfy them every time, even if it’s temporary. People with ADHD have to jump from stimulus to stimulus, spending so much energy just searching for a solution, never knowing what might do the trick.

Or having something that works today be a useless dried out husk tomorrow.

Then there’s the tendency of ADHD folks to be night owls—not always of course, but I think it’s relatively common? Or at least having irregular/unaligned-to-broader-society sleep schedules. Oh, and schedules, who ever heard of a vampire with schedules? (Don’t @ me I’m sure there are plenty of examples in media 😂, but I’m talking your stereotypical pop culture Dracula [and not to actual book Dracula since that guy actually seems to have had a schedule or at least an agenda lol])

Discworld vampires who take up the Black Ribbon (a vow to not drink human blood for those who don’t know) do it by switching their fixation on drinking blood to something else—explicit textual examples being light (in practice photography)(Otto Chriek my beloved) and coffee (don’t let the beans run out). I think you can argue this as more of a special interest than hyperfixation, but they’re along similar lines.

You can also talk about the social isolation. It’s not always true but plenty of people with ADHD have a hard time in general society bc the way we think doesn’t align. Vampiric isolation tends to be more along the lines of not wanting to live near something that could and would kill you so obviously not a one to one there, but there’s also lots of media that depict sympathetic vampires who WANT to be part of society “normally” but can’t bc people don’t understand them and thus don’t want them around.

I don’t really know how to end this, it’s just something I was thinking about today. I’ve always liked vampires as a concept but never thought about the need for blood as the main appeal—but maybe subconsciously I was relating to it?

Idk I’m dizzy and tired and want the sandpaper to go away. I’m gonna go play around with my vampire OC lol

[spockandawe]

Well, this is interesting! So, in that post yesterday, there was one line that really baffled me, a thing about people brushing off a character as an asshole “because he shows literally zero growth.” I kind of set that aside because it was such a weird non-sequitur, and guessed that it was just someone’s sentences not quite keeping up with their train of thought, which has happened to me many times. Apparently I was wrong! I already spent long enough on that one post, I’m tired of talking about that, but this is new and interesting. 

Okay. I kind of wanted to see if I could talk about this purely in terms of abstracts and not characters, but I don’t think it’ll work. It would be frustrating to write and confusing to read. It’s about Jiang Cheng. Right up front: This isn’t about whether or not he’s an abuser. Frankly, I don’t think it’s relevant. This also isn’t about telling people they should like him. I don't care whether anyone else likes him or not. But I do like him, and I am always fascinated by dissecting the reasons that people disagree with me. And the process of Telling Stories is my oldest hyperfixation I remember, which will become relevant in a minute.

I thought I had a good grasp on this one, you know? Jiang Cheng makes it pretty obvious why people would dislike Jiang Cheng. But then the posts I keep stumbling over were making weird points, culminating in that “literally zero growth” line.

So! What happened is that someone wrote up a post about how Jiang Cheng’s character arc isn’t an arc, it’s stagnation. It’s a pretty interesting read, and I broadly agree with the larger point! The points where I would quibble are like... the idea that it’s absolute stagnation, as opposed to very subtle shifts that still make a material difference. But still, cool! The post was also offered up as a reason why OP was uninterested in writing any more Jiang Cheng meta, which I totally get. I’m not tired of him yet, but I definitely understand why someone who isn’t a fan of his would get tired about writing about a character with a very static arc. Okay!

Now, internet forensics are hard. I desperately wish I had more information about this evolution, because I find this stuff fascinating, but I have no good way to find things said in untagged posts, reblogs, or private/external venues. But as far as I can tell, that “literally zero growth” wasn’t just a slip of the tongue, it’s become fashionable for people to say that Jiang Cheng is an abusive asshole (that it’s fucked up to like) because he doesn’t have a character arc.

Asshole? Yes. Abusive? This post still isn’t about that. This is about it being fucked up to like this character because he did bad things and had a static character arc.

At first, that point of view was still deeply confusing to me. But I think I figured out the idea at the core of it, and now I’m only baffled. I’m not super interested in confirming this directly, because the people making the most noise about this have not inspired confidence in their ability to hold a civil conversation and I’m a socially anxious binch, but I think the idea is: ‘This character did Bad Things, and then did not improve himself.’

Which is alarmingly adjacent to that old favorite standard of ‘This piece of fiction is glorifying Bad Thing.’ I haven’t seen anyone accusing mxtx of something something jiang cheng, only the people who read/watched/heard the story and became invested in the Jiang Cheng character, but things kind of add up, you know?

Like I said, I don’t want to arbitrate anyone’s right to like/dislike Jiang Cheng. That’s such a fucking waste of time. But this is fascinating to me, because it’s like..... so obviously new and sudden, with such a clear originating point. I can’t speak to the Chinese fans, obviously, but exiledrebels started translating in... what, 2017? And only now, in 2021, do people start putting forth Jiang Cheng’s flat character arc as a “reason” that he’s bad? I’m not going to argue if he pings you in the abuse place, I’m not a dick. I’m not going to argue if you just dislike his vibes. I’m just over here on my blog and in the tag enjoying myself, feel free to detour around me. But oh my god, it’s so silly to try to tell other people that they shouldn’t like him because he has a static character arc.

I want to talk about stories. I don’t know how much I’ll be able to say, because it’s impossible to make broad, sweeping statements, because there are stories about change, there are stories about lack of change, there are all kinds of media that can be used to tell stories, and standards for how stories are told and what they emphasize vary across cultures and over time. But I think that what I can say is that telling a story requires... compromise. It requires streamlining. Trying to capture all the detail of life would slow down most stories to an unbearable degree. Consider organically telling someone ‘I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich’ versus the computer science exercise of having students describe, step by step, how to make one (spread peanut butter? but you never said you opened the lid)

Hell, I’ve got an example in mdzs itself. The largely-faceless masses of the common people. If someone asks you to think about it critically like, yes, obviously these are people, living their own lives, with their own desires, sometimes suffering and dying in the wake of the novel plot. But does the story give weight to those deaths? Or does it just gloss by? Yes, it references their suffering occasionally, but it is not the focus, and it would slow the story unbearably to give equal weight to each dead person mentioned. 

Does Wei Wuxian’s massacre get given the same slow, careful consideration as Su She’s, or Jin Guangyao’s? No, because taking the time to weigh our protagonist with ‘well, this one was a mother, and her youngest son had just started walking, but now he’s going to grow up without remembering her face. that one only became an adult a few months ago, he still hasn’t been on many night-hunts yet, but he finds it so rewarding to protect the common people. oh, and this one had just gotten engaged, but don’t worry, his fiancee won’t mourn him, because she died here as well.’ And continuing on that way to some large number under 3000? No! Unless your goal is to make the reader feel bad for cheering for a morally grey hero, that would be a bad authorial decision! The book doesn’t ignore the issue, it comes up, Wei Wuxian gets called out about all the deaths he’s responsible for, but that’s not the same as them being given equal emotional weight to one (1) secondary character, and I don’t love this new thing where people are pretending that’s equivalent.

When Wei Wuxian brutally kills every person at the Wen supervisory office, are you like ‘holy shit... so many grieving families D:’ or are you somewhere between vindicated satisfaction and an ‘ooh, yikes’ wince? Odds are good you’re somewhere in the satisfaction/wince camp, because that’s what the story sets you up to feel, because the story has to emphasize its priorities (priorities vary, but ‘plot’ and ‘protagonist’ are common ones, especially for a casual novel read like this)

Now, characters. If you want to write a story with a sweeping, epic scale, or if you want to tightly constrain the number of people your story is about, I guess it’s possible to give everyone involved a meaningful character arc. Now.... is it always necessary? Is it always possible? Does it always make sense? No, of course not. If you want to do that, you have to devote real estate to it, and depending on the story you want to tell, it could very possibly be a distraction from your main point, like the idea of mxtx tenderly eulogizing every single character who dies even incidentally. Lan Qiren doesn’t get a loving examination of his feelings re: his nephews and wei wuxian and political turnover in the cultivation world because it’s not relevant, and also, because his position is pretty static until right near the end of the story. Lan Xichen is arguably one of the most static characters within the book, he seems like the same nice young between Gusu and the present, right up until... just before the end of the story.

You may see where I’m heading with this.

Like, just imagine trying to demand that every important character needs to go through a major life change before the end of your book or else it didn’t count. This just in, Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg go through multiple novels without experiencing radical shifts in who they are, stop liking them immediately. I do get that the idea is that Jiang Cheng was a ~bad person~ who didn’t change, but asdgfsd I thought we were over the handwringing over people being allowed to like ““bad”” fictional characters. The man isn’t even a canonical serial killer, he’s not my most problematic fave even within this novel.

And here is where it’s a little more relevant that I would quibble with that original post about Jiang Cheng’s arc. He’s consistently a mean girl, but he goes from stressed, sharp-edged teenager, to grief-stricken, almost-destroyed teen, to grim, cold young adult (and then detours into grim, cold, and grief-stricken until grief dulls with time). He does become an attentive uncle tho. He..... doesn’t experience a radical change in his sense of self, which... it’s...... not all that strange for an adult. And bam, then he DOES experience a radical change, but the needs of the plot dictate that it’s right near the end. And he’s not the focus of the story, baby, wangxian is. He has the last few lines of the story, which nicely communicate his changes to me, but also asdfafas we’re out of story. He was never the main character, it’s not surprising we don’t linger! The extras aren’t beholden to the needs of plot, but they’re also about whatever mxtx wanted to write, and I guess she didn’t feel like writing about Jiang Cheng ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But also. Taking a step backward. Stable characters can fill a perfectly logical place in a story. Like, look at Leia Organa. I’m not saying she has no arc, but I am saying that she’s a solid point of reference as Luke is becoming a jedi and Han is adjusting his perspective. I wouldn’t call her stagnant, the vibes are wrong, but she also isn’t miserable in her sadness swamp, the way Jiang Cheng is.

Or, hell, look at tgcf. The stagnant, frozen nature of the big bad is a central feature of the story. The bwx of now is the bwx of 800 years ago is the bwx of 1500+ years ago. This is not the place for a meta on how that was bad for those around him and for him himself, but I have Thoughts about how being defeated at the end is both a thing that hurts him and relieves him. Mei Nianqing is a sympathetic character who’s also pretty darn static. Does Ling Wen have a character arc, or do we just learn more about who she already is and what her priorities always were? I’m going to cut myself off here, but a character’s delta between the beginning of a story and the end of a story is a reasonable way to judge how interesting writing character meta is, and is a very silly metric to judge their worth, and even if I guessed at what the basic logic is, for this character, I am still baffled that it’s being put forth as a real talking point.

(also, has it jumped ship to any other characters yet? have people started applying it in other fandoms as well? please let me know if this is the case, I am wildly curious)

(no, but really, if anyone is arguing that bwx is gross specifically because he had centuries to self-reflect and didn’t fix himself, i am desperate to know)

And finally. The thing I thought was most self-evident. Did I post about this sometime recently? If a non-central character experiences a life-altering paradigm shift right near the end of the story (without it being lingered over, because non-central character), oh my god. As a fic writer? IT’S FREE REAL ESTATE. This is the most fertile possible ground. If I want to write post-canon canon-compliant material, adsgasfasd that’s where I’m going to be looking. Okay, yeah, the main couple is happy, that’s good. Who isn’t happy, and what can I do about that? Happy families are all alike, while every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, etc.

It’s not everyone’s favorite playground, but come on, these are not uncommon feelings. And frankly, it’s starting to feel a little disingenuous when people act like fan authors pick out the most blameless angel from the cast and lavish good things upon them. I’m not the only one who goes looking for a good dumpster fire and says I Live Here Now. If I write post-canon tgcf fic, it’s very likely to focus on beef and/or leaf. I have written more than one au focusing on tianlang-jun.

And, hilariously. If the problem with Jiang Cheng. Is that he is a toxic man fictional character who failed to grow on his own, and is either unsafe or unhealthy to be around. If the problem is that he did not experience a character arc. If these people would be totally fine with other people liking him, if he improved himself as a person. And then, if authors want to put in the (free! time-consuming!) work of writing that character development themselves. You would think that they would be lauded for putting the character through healthier sorts of personal growth than he experienced in canon. Instead, I am still here writing this because first, I was bothered by these authors being named as “freaks” who are obsessed with their ‘uwu precious tsundere baby’ with a “love language of violence,” and then I was graciously informed that people hate Jiang Cheng because he experiences no character growth.

[logically-asexual]

im just so intrigued by the fact that i wasn’t able to understand a single movie or book i watched or read as a kid. i could never keep track of the story or the characters.

ramble got long putting it under a read more

i always felt like when you tap on the first episode of a show on netflix but for some reason it starts playing the first episode of their latest season and you’re super confused about everything because there’s three seasons of lore you’re missing.

i don’t remember the story of a single book we read in school. i remember short scenes here and there that surprised me or made me feel emotional for some reason but that’s it. i never knew the context. i never understood the whole story. i don’t know how i ever passed spanish or english class.

for a while we used to go to the library and they would read to us a chapter of a book each week and i could never pay attention. i just remember zoning out staring at my nails or the table or anything. we read the hobbit that way i think and i always felt like i had missed a class and very important info with it but no. i hadn’t.

silent reading time was also torture. i couldn’t read i also just stared at nothing for twenty minutes and it was excruciating.

and i also cant remember any movies i watched at the cinema. i remember when we got together to watch the hunger games (and i had allegedly read the book) and everyone was talking about what the movie adaptation did or didn’t include and i was so absolutely lost. no idea what anyone was talking about.

the only thing about my childhood i remember understanding and processing alright was tv shows. i perfectly remember nick sitcoms and cartoons. i think it has to do with the fact that i could watch those over and over again before a new season aired, so i got enough time and repetition to seal stuff in my memory.

i don’t know. i think that wasn’t normal probably. then one day some time after eight grade maybe i was just randomly granted the gift Understanding Media. well. mostly movies, i still struggled with reading in high school. i remember i never read things fall apart, but a children version of the book i had for some reason, and i passed somehow. i still don’t know what the book was about.

i remember my piano teacher saying when i was fourteen that i was at an age when i should read so much because teens are so emotional (in a good way) and full of wonder so romantic (as in romanticism, not romance) stories were great for letting all that bloom or whatever. but that only made me feel bad because i felt how time was slipping away from me and i was missing my chance at enjoying a big chunk of literature.

i don’t think i have adhd or some kind of disorder that could cause that level of inattentiveness but who knows. if i did then why can i suddenly understand movies and stuff? did my brain just develop too late in that aspect?

i usually attribute apparent adhd symptoms from my childhood to anxiety and burnout. because it’s way more likely since i’ve always been anxious and the executive dysfunction and lack of memory can easily be explained by anxiety too. but this thing about the movies and books remains unexplained and i don’t know if i will ever truly know what happened there. and also adhd seems to come with this “hyperfixations and obsessive consumption of media” thing that is exactly the opposite of my entire life experience. that’s the main reason i steer away from the term.

i am trying to actually read now. i know it’s an insane thing for a 22 year old to say but i don’t know when the last time i read something that wasn’t a textbook was before dracula daily. now that it’s over i’ve proved that my brain can keep track of a written story, at least when it is serialized and i have time to process its parts like with the kids tv shows.

i want to read more to get out of this hole. but i also want to know why the hell i am in this hole in the first place. i have almost nothing to look back on nostalgically like people who loved star wars as kids and made their own halloween costumes and had a toy collection and more. i just watched sitcoms and cartoons to laugh and escape from the world, not to understand any themes or messages. i feel like something was stolen from me and i’ll never get it back.

[vvitchering]

Did anyone ask me to write a whole essay about how Din’s creed and armor read as a metaphor for asexuality to me? No. Am I going to write an essay about that exact thing right now because I do this literally every time I find a new character I really like? Absolutely. 

(Disclaimer: I’m writing this based on my own feelings and experiences with being ace. Asexuality exists on a spectrum and not everyone experiences it the same way. I’ve chosen to interpret the character through the lens of my own asexuality. I in no way speak for all ace people, I’m just one nerd with a dusty English degree, a keyboard, and a hyperfixation)

So I started out just wanting to word vomit some character study stuff about Din because I want to eventually write fanfiction and I never feel comfortable just jumping in until I’ve thought long and hard about how I feel about and understand the characters involved. And then I got to thinking about how relationships are explored in The Mandalorian and something stuck out to me. The show never forces or even bothers to introduce romantic bonds as necessary to their main character’s development. Rather it chooses to focus on Din’s familial relationship with Grogu as the bond that saves Din from his loneliness and aimlessness. 

But I want to dig into that lack of romance a little bit and I want to do it through looking closer at Din as a character. What strikes me as interesting is he isn’t presented to us as the typical “lonely hero” archetype you’d see in Star Wars (or anything else, actually) He doesn’t seem to have much personal investment in his profession. He’s a bounty hunter because its a way to hunt beskar and a means of income for himself and his covert. That’s it. He doesn’t have any particular passion or interest in hunting and fighting, it just happens to be that, as a Mandalorian, he’s a trained warrior. Not a TON else you can do with that as your only skillset. 

We also establish early on that he’s a lot more sensitive and emotionally vulnerable than he lets on. He bonds with Grogu almost immediately. He doesn’t even hesitate to shoot IG-11 through the head when it threatens to kill the baby. This man saw an unattended infant in danger and said “it’s free real estate” and became a dad. 

So we KNOW he has an incredible capacity for compassion and affection almost from the get-go. And that’s reinforced time and time again throughout the show by his willingness to help literally anyone who needs it, regardless of the benefit to himself. So why don’t we ever see a romance?

It’s because he’s Mandalorian. More specifically, it’s because he’s the type of Mandalorian who vowed to live by a creed that prevents him from showing his face to any living being. On the surface, this could potentially cause issues with finding love and intimacy because it physically prevents him from being open with someone else. A relationship with him would mean accepting that you will never See the person behind the armor, and I can see that being uncomfortable for a lot of beings. 

If you dig some more into that, it comes down to there probably not being a ton of people out there willing to make the compromises Din would need to comfortable and happy. I believe he’s been burned by this exact situation in the past, judging from his interactions with Xi’an in The Prisoner. Presumably they had some sort of entanglement when they worked together in the past that ended in some bad blood. She belittles him for his dedication to his beliefs, embarrasses him, and plays into Mayfeld’s childish and invasive questions. 

We’re only ever given this as an example of a past attempt at some kind of relationship, and it ended, and ended badly, because he was unwilling to ignore his beliefs and boundaries for a partner who mocked him for both. 

So it’s really no wonder we get that amazing scene with Omera in Sanctuary. He’s clearly thought about staying with her, someone who has been kind to him and Grogu, and who could maybe come to truly love him. But even she still expects him to simply “pack away” his beliefs in favor of her companionship. The way his voice cracks and shakes, the way he so resignedly (but still so gently) grips her wrists to pull her away from taking his helmet off, that’s a man who had maybe dared to hope for a second that he’d found someone who would respect his choice to keep his face covered. It’s other things, too. It’s his dedication to his quest to both protect and reunite Grogu with his people, first and foremost, but there’s definitely some personal turmoil in that scene as well.

Conclusion: Din is someone who canonically struggles to form romantic/intimate relationships with others because of the creed he’s sworn and the armor he wears. He’s made attempts that have blown up in his face (Xi’an) and while he still allows himself to fall just a little bit for others when they’re kind to him, it’s always with the knowledge that it won’t work out because they see his boundaries as surmountable or conditional (Omera).

If that doesn’t read as an asexual experience, I don’t know what does. 

(I also want to talk about ship stuff now so if you’re not interested in me talking about Dincobb you can peace out! Otherwise, you made it this far, might as well keep listening to me ramble lmao)

This entire examination is also to work out why Din/Cobb works so well for me as a ship and it 100% has to do with how the fandom has interpreted and written Cobb in their fanfic. Overwhelmingly I have seen people write Cobb as incredibly understanding and accepting of Din’s choice to cover his face. He totally lacks the expectation that someday his affection will be enough for Din to forsake his creed, which is novel for Din. 

Here’s this person who not only takes the time to get to know him as a person, fight by his side, and trusts him implicitly, but he also doesn’t come with the usual stipulation that his love is conditional based on Din’s willingness to compromise his boundaries for him. I LOVE that one of the most popular tropes for this ship is Cobb willingly blindfolding himself so that Din is able to remove his helmet and relax around him without violating his beliefs. I LOVE that there are so many fics where Cobb cooks him dinner, understands that Din can’t eat next to him, and sits down on the other side of a closed door so they can still eat together. Cobb respects Din, respects his boundaries, and Din is able to pursue a more intimate connection with him because of that allowance and acceptance, and on his own terms.

As someone who has always struggled to find a relationship free from the expectation that I must somehow trade my identity and comfort for love, this ship just hits different, okay. 

[heloflor]

Me : “I don’t think I should write characters that are explicitly neurodivergent because I don’t know that much about neurodiversity and I never take the time to know more. If I were to make a character who happens to have neurodivergent traits and call them neurodivergent, I might get it wrong and I don’t want to give a fic with bad or stereotypical representation in it, it’s unfair for those who can and wish to identify with the character. So if I write about a character that the fandom sees as neurodivergent, I will simply try to write them close to their canon personality; and if they happen to have traits that people can identify, I’ll just let other people do their own headacanons around it without touching on the topic myself.”

Also me :  “So :

- Vinnie Dakota absolutely adores animals. In the future, all animals are extinct, so in order to see animals, you either get a robot pet or you pay to have some time in a “place simulation” room and order it to simulate a field with holographic animals. Dakota learned about animals through books and often went to the simulation place or bough some stickers and other stuff from the rare places that still sold animal merch. He never got a robotic pet or never kept it for long because it’s too dull compared to a real animal, or should I say his thoughts of real animals.

- During his first mission, Dakota was ecstatic to see animals for the first time and, after the mission, spent a few hours looking at and petting the ones he could. In his house in the future, he has a room in which he displays animal-related stuff he got from his missions through time, like art or figurines or ornaments or even plushies etc. He might also sometimes take pictures of animals and put them with the souvenir he got from the same mission. He takes extra care of the stuff he has in this room and organizes it a certain way. He has the money to have a place with several rooms : as we see in “Picture Day”, once they got fired, Cavendish and Dakota had the money to go to Hawaii for an entire week and without knowing when and how they will get a new job, since Bob Block met them as they were about to leave for their vacation. Also Cavendish mentioned studying for 20 cycles, so this job doesn’t seem like a given. So being a time traveler seems to pay well.

- When he and Cavendish started dating (I headcanon them as starting to date 2 years after meeting a marrying 3 years later, so 5 years after meeting), everytime they went through a century they never or barely visited, Dakota would get a random souvenir, not always animal-related, along with a picture of either him, Cavendish or both of them. He puts these souvenirs and pictures in a different part of the room. The picture we see in their car in “Fungus Among Us” is from a mission in a place they visited before, but Dakota found the situation too funny to not take a picture.

- Every celebration (holidays, birthdays, dates important to them), Cavendish and Dakota would give each other gifts. Dakota always tries to find something related to Professor Time while Cavendish forces himself to break a few rules and go back in time without being ordered to so he can find something animal-related to Dakota. Dakota is always genuinely happy about these gifts, though he learned not to tease Cavendish about the whole “breaking the rules” situation. Those gifts are either stuff like fossils or skulls/bones or they’re stuff related to the culture of the time-period like watching tournaments in ancient Rome.

- When the two get married and buy a place together, Dakota makes sure it has a room large enough to put his growing collection. As time went by, it started to be less about animals and more about what they find during their missions, though the animal part is still very much there. Dakota refers to the room as “The memory room” while Cavendish calls it “Vinnie’s room”. Cavendish doesn’t spend that much time in it, though he absolutely loves the feeling of reminiscence the collection gives him. If he has guests at home, he tries to keep them away from the room. He knows how important it is for Dakota and doesn’t want it to be disrupted. Cavendish tried to get into Dakota’s passion but, while he found some stuff to be interesting, he’s not really into it compared to Dakota.

- After the events of the episode “We’re Going to the Zoo”, Dakota brought back tickets for his collection, along with a picture of him holding squirrels in his arms while another one has its head coming out of Dakota’s pants, near his feet. Dakota went back to the zoo several times and ended up learning what every animal was and in which section of the zoo they were.

- When the two are fired and banned, they only get like an hour to pack all their stuff. So Dakota uses some future deus ex machina technology, making their house surrounded by a barrier that only the two of them can open. That way, nobody can touch the house and, if they were to be able to go back to the future, which seems to be the case if season 2 was already thought of when “A Christmas Peril” was made, Dakota could find his collection intact, along with the rest of the house.

- Once stuck in the past, Dakota kind of gave up on doing a collection. They don’t have enough space and the realization that Cavendish could now die anytime put a lot on stress on him and most of his thoughts were on Cavendish. This stress started to dim out after the events of the second half of the season, when Dakota realized that maybe the world was done trying to get rid of Cavendish, given how the man was able to survive alone for about a month. During the first celebration they had since getting banned, Cavendish bought something animal-related as usual and it led Dakota to wish to start a collection again. Given the space and their current situation, this collection would mostly be pictures that he can keep in an album in a drawer. Cavendish would probably be the one to buy the album after realizing that Dakota started taking random pictures again.

- At some point, Cavendish learns that there’s a petting zoo in Danville and decides to use it as a birthday gift/surprise. Dakota has never been more in love with him than during the moment when he stepped out of the car and saw the place’s sign (with the exception of their wedding and honeymoon).

 …aaaannnd I just made Dakota have an hyperfixation, didn’t I ?

Though, to be honest, I really do want to write characters that are diverse, not only in terms of sexuality like I already do but also in upbringing and neurodiversity. Thing is, to write a neurodivergent character, I need to have the answer to these questions : How often do they stim ? What are the most common stims and what is and isn’t considered as such, aka what does the character does in the show that seems to be a stim ? How does the character acts/should act with others ? Which social cues do they understand ? Which ones do they not understand ? How to write a character that you can tell is neurodivergent without having to make them scream ‘I’m not neurotypical’; with instead having the only ‘confirmation’ of it being in the tags ? How to make them very excited about something without falling into the ‘autistic people are children’ stereotype ?

As long as I can’t answer these questions, I refuse to be an idiot and try to write about something I know I will mess up. And while I do have the curiosity and will to learn more, if not simply because I’m curious about neurodiversity, don’t expect me to write about it anytime soon. Right now my priority is to ‘digitalize’ all the dozen fics I wrote on paper (two of them had been in my writing pile for two years, and several for a year) while making the eventual post that comes to mind like this one.”

Edit : So a few weeks after making that post, I started to learn more about neurodiversity because being autistic makes you curious to know what kinds of behaviors are due to you not being neurotypical. And, as it had been pointed out, I’m not using the correct term here. I didn’t give Dakota a hyperfixation but a special interest. From what I understand, the difference is that hyperfixations stick to you constantly for a while (a few weeks or months), leading you to easily hyperfocus on the topic, before you suddenly start to get less invested in that interest. On the other hand, special interests can stick for months or sometimes years. And even if you’re not constantly thinking about your interest, it’s still there in a corner of your mind and you never get tired of it and keep the knowledge you accumulated to talk about it anytime.

So yeah, I gave Dakota a special interest. The reason why I thought it was a hyperfixation is because I see this term be very often associated with ADHD and a lot of people see Dakota as having ADHD. But still, my bad for mixing up the two. And the reason I didn’t edit the post sooner is because it kind of slipped out of my mind until I made a new post today that mentions this one. Sorry for that too.

[silvysartfulness]

I got tagged by @ameliarating and @veliseraptor to do this writer meme thing!

How many works do you have on AO3?

Six. I only started posting fic on AO3 last year. Before that, many long years ago, I used my own websites and LiveJounal.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

177481. The absolute majority of which is of course Heaven Has A Road.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

On AO3, only The Untamed.

But before that, I've written for Disney Afternoon's Aladdin, Slayers, Kingdom Hearts, Assassin's Creed, and one-shot fics for my own original verses as well as my friends'.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Heaven Has A Road But No One Walks It at 1194, unsurprisingly. It's my magnum opus on AO3.

Blanket Statement at 302. The first fic I wrote for the Untamed, and the first thing I posted on AO3 (Thank you, Lise, for holding my hand and walking me through it!)

And To Many More at 169

High Noon In Deserted City at 96, which is sort of funny, since it's just a picture and about 1000 words. But the premise is fun! Still hoping for some hungry writer to adopt it and write something for it. :)

Self-Inflicted at 75.

Which checks out, I guess – the longest fic with the most readers comes first, then the fluff, then the funny and finally the angsty and fucked up. XD

I still suspect The Plotbunny of Doom / The Renegades for Kingdom Hearts would score as my all time highest, though, if LJ likes and comments translated to the AO3 format. That fic took me and two friends three whole years to write together, was 104 chapters long and over 300k.

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I really try! Comments mean everything to me, and I want to reply to them all! But when I'm low on spoons (which is unfortunately often) I fall hopelessly behind, and then the catching up becomes an impossible-looking chore in and of itself.

I should really set some time aside every day to catch up on the last few chapters' worth of comments... I do love the interaction and discussion a good comment can spawn!

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Hm... I write a ton of angst, but only a few actually have sad endings. I'd say Eaten counts, as does Self-Inflicted, I guess. TPBoD had a very open ending that was still definitely on the somewhat hopeless side.

Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Mm, it's not usually my favourite genre (though I mean, the whole Kingdom Hearts verse is a crossover in and of itself) but it depends a lot on the source material. I guess TPBoD might soft-count, since we tossed in a bunch of non-canon references with all the world-jumping.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not as such? Oh yeah, I do recall getting a very upset comment on a non-con fic I wrote back in the KH days, by someone who couldn't conceive how you could claim to love a character and then write such horrible things happening to them. But you get those occasionally. Look, crushing my favourite characters is therapy. Doesn't mean I don't love them.

The Russian fandom are loudly aggressive in their comments on some chapters of Heaven Has A Road, but that's more focused on the characters, not me personally.

On the whole, I've been pretty spared. But then, there's little point in sending hate; I just block.

Do you write smut? if so what kind?

Oh, absolutely. Haven't really gotten to that point in the posted chapters of Heaven Has A Road yet, but we're about to unleash it aplenty in the upcoming ones.

What kind? Most kinds, I guess? Soft and fluffy, aggressive and snarly, consensual, dubcon, non-con. Mostly mlm but I've written het, too. Can't remember if I've written wlw, but I've certainly headcanoned/drawn it. A bit of kink is nice.

I prefer focusing on the chemistry and sensations when I write porn, rather than detailed physical smacking and squelching and body fluids, but that's just my personal preference and writing style.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of? Not that I can remember? I have my art stolen regularly, and I've had my online identity stolen, but I don't think anyone's stolen anything I've written...

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Heaven Has A Road is being translated into Russian, and I'm insanely honoured and flattered!

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes – TPBoD aka The Plot Bunny of Doom, aka The Renegades, for Kingdom Hearts. I wrote it over ten years ago together with a friend and my now wife. It was a monster of a fic, I think about 320k, and the fact that we were three people helping and pushing and encouraging each other really helped keep it going!

I don't know if I would have the focus for something like it now, but it was an amazing experience I'll always treasure.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Oh man, that changes with each hyperfixation... I may have to say Marluxia/Vexen for Kingdom Hearts, simply because it's a ship that's been around in my life for so long. I still occasionally go back to read favourite bits of the fics I wrote for them, including TPBoD.

Currently it's SongXueXiao from The Untamed, of course, and a very strong contender overall! I've dabbled a bit in poly ships before, but this is the first time I have one as my main, and I'm love them.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Uh. I don’t really have any? Because of my burnout-brain, I can only really focus on one major project at a time, and that's currently heaven has A Road. And I'm really, really hoping I will be able to finish it!

It's all plotted out, I just need to write the stupid thing. Working on it.

What are your writing strengths?

Hm, I'd say that I've developed a voice/prose over the years that I'm actually quite happy with! And I'm good at conveying/invoking emotion, if going solely by how many people comment that I've made them cry. :D

I enjoy writing dialogue, and I love working with layers of symbolism.

What are your writing weaknesses?

The actual writing process. 🙄 I'm extremely uneven and unstructured in getting the actual words down. Also convoluted and inflated text at times - sometimes I write a lot of words without actually saying anything. And English is my second language, so just nailing the correct phrasing and grammar can be a headache at times.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If it impacts the plot – like the POV character not understanding it, then maybe. And using terms that can't be translated, absolutely! Other than that, there's little point in making a text harder for the reader to grasp by tossing in whole sections in another language for clout. Is my personal view, at least, of course other writers may disagree.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

My first online fandom that I wrote fic for was Disney Afternoon's Aladdin show. Before that, I wrote original fic. And before that, before the internet was A Thing, I'd write and draw for stories that captivated me, just for my own entertainment. If you count that, I'd probably say Phantom of the Opera was my first – I had a whole ”everyone is a horse because that's what I know how to draw” AU when I was about 10 or so, that I'd draw lots of pictures for. When I was even younger, I used to make up stories for my younger brothers, based on movies and series we had watched together. I've always been a storyteller, one way or another, if only in my own head. I wouldn't know how not to.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I would have to say Heaven Has A Road, even though it's still unfinished. It's the first work of that sheer scope I have ever attempted by myself, and I'm honestly insanely proud of myself for what I have accomplished already!

Second would be TPBoD – The Renegades. Even though that was a shared effort, it's a very long fic that we managed to bring all the way to its intended conclusion, and I'm very proud of that, too!

Plus there are bits of both these fics I really like, and that I will go back and read for my own enjoyment occasionally.

tagging: @orodrethsgeek, @ebonykain, @fromaliminalspace, @chigrima, @soawen

[reaperlight]

Venom - Ryuk / Eddie - Light?

I guess its the same as the previous ask, huh? *facepalm*

Well I wrote for it a few months ago but never got around to posting it but always meant to go back and edit but, ahhhh I'm sorry!

Here is the mostly unedited brain vomit from November 2020:

I'm sorry, I guess I don't understand the ask.

Were you asking me to compare the characters, compare the ships or shipping them all together?

I guess I'll just ramble for a bit about my two main hyperfixations...

I've long seen parallels between Light Yagami and Eddie Brock, especially comics!Eddie in terms of the flavor of their characters, their moral codes and character flaws (arrogance, conniving, opportunistic), power from monster partner, and (for comics!eddie) their relations to their narrative foils.

Also I see parallels between comics Eddie and Mello but I feel that's more terms of aesthetic/superficial. Blonde, catholic, like leather, motorcycles, chocolate and revenge. But I digress...

Comics Eddie and Venom initially during the original villain run I believe was meant to be a kind of narrative foil for Peter Parker, a kind of what if Peter went evil, Spiderman with murder.

And Light's character also reminds me a lot of Peter Parker, especially in the beginning of the series--both in character design and the lying, sneaking, hacking, and ha-ha I'm so clever... but instead of like leaping off buildings his secret is murder.

Light and comics!Eddie are both obsessed with their narrative foils/nemesis/equal and-opposite but for different reasons and with different outcomes.

L-Embarrassed Light and threatened to have him caught and killed him.

Develop a "friendship" to try and murder each other. Kills L and later regrets it, or at the very least seems sad he's no longer around.

Spiderman-embarrassed Eddie while he was already having the worst day of his life, getting him fired AND he hurt Venom. Tries to kill Spiderman but doesn't succeed but they think they did for a while and are happy about it. There's no angst because from their perspective they had rid the world of an evil, the man that hurt them both.

When they think they succeed at killing Spiderman, the man who hurt them, that everyone lauds as a hero is dead.. Eddie and Venom are  just happily living on an island together, deciding to stay together even though the revenge that brought them together was over and just living, free of burden of hating Spiderman knowing he got his revenge... then spidey shows up alive and that's the end if that.

Later after Spiderman saves Anne, Eddie realizes he wasn't the evil he thought he was. So they move away, and tries to let it go of their obsession, even though Spiderman hurt them (and continues to do so), focusing on themselves instead and protecting a homeless community.

Of course its easier to try to seek redemption when you're bulletproof.

Venom's character has changed and grown since the initial villain days, (well depending on the writer) and the Venom symbiote has become a character with autonomy and not just a costume/plot device/metaphor for drug addiction--again Venom stories can be very different depending on the writer. Being a long-time fan my perceptions of Venom are shaped by comic canon but for the most part we'll focus here on Eddie and Venom as a loving couple.

In a way Movie!Venom feels like a fanfic version, a soft boy!Eddie, but in a good way--it's fun. Eddie gets to learn and grow from his mistakes and the movie ends with Eddie and Venom as a hero...

A hero who eats people--a situation that cannot be sustained. Much like wanting to solve all the world's problems with a murder notebook--barring some comic book miracle this can only end badly.

First impulse upon encountering a problem is kill it.

But this manifests in different ways.

If you've pissed off...

Light- he will find your name and your death will be carefully planned down to the minute.

Venom-Your death will be immediate, swift, and messy.

---

Even though I use the venom movie as a basis for headcanons here. I feel we can pick and choose from the often contradictory comic canon (the way these characters are written varies wildly depending on the author) which canon parts we like.

Comic!Eddie is more like Light than movie!Eddie in their character flaws.

Conniving, opportunistic...

They have a similar moral code.

Black and white morality

In the comics they have another thing in common-a nemesis to obsess over.

In philosophy...

Kill the guilty, save the innocent.

Comic!Eddie develops a God/messiah complex at one point though it's a temporary thing.

Movie!eddie is just he starting on his venom journey but has notably less compunction than comic!eddie about eating people.

---

Eddie and Light

I'm not shipping them romantically in my current found family au Stray. But I could see the potential there to ship--Venom has scores of different canons to pick and choose from, not just the movie. So you could have an au with College!Eddie meeting college!Light so they are closer in age.

How Light and Eddie would interact depends entirely on how they meet. For instance in the comics Venom is ride or die with friends who are also "protectors of the innocent" like Morbius the living vampire. But has animosity with the Punisher who also has a very similar outlook on life. It all depends on how they meet whether they are allies or they might try to destroy each other.

Kira

In canon Kira sees himself as a God beyond reproach and anyone else doing what he does as a murderer deserving of death. He might be allies for a time with other killers like Misa and Mikami but ultimately sees them as scum and will kill them the moment they are no longer useful.

Of course this is fanfiction and canon has no power here.

Canon was dark enough, so if I want Light to grow as a person, make friends and be happy, he will--canon be damned, lol.

Eddie = writing nerd

Peter = science nerd

Light and L = total nerds

Ryuk likes soap operas, sitcoms

Venom likes medical dramas

Ryuk and Venom = soft goth monsterboys or NBs who love snacks, tv, and one (1) justice-driven human.

---

Tropes VenomxEddie Symbrock/veddie and Ryght/Terraito/Deathgods have in common

Beauty and the beast-- "but I would never call you beast." You've got you're ruthless human and cinnamon roll monster that just wants snacks and cuddles

Living in close proximity

Secret boyfriend/partner

Vigilante justice

Deep voice

Sharp teeth

Long tongue

Alien biology

Optional body alteration

Optional--tension with rival/Narrative foil

Angst tropes-- the threat of being imprisoned, institutionalized, or subjected to unethical experiments

Daddy issues

Praise kink

[spookymultimedia]

ITS MY BLOG AND I GET TO INFODUMP ABOUT MY CHARACTERS >:D

Disability and gender experience

CW for ptsd, panic attacks, su*c*de [I will talk about at the end if you still want to read this and will add another warning] , gender dysphoria, mild transpobia and abelism both internal and external

Disability

Lyla has osteoarthritis that is due to Burns' pretty fucky genes. She found this out when one evening they literally couldn't get out of bed for anything due to intense pain in the knees. Waylon had to come and get them and when he got there Lyla was pretty much on the brink of tears. Lyla then got a diagnosis. At first she was frustrated because it changed everything about his daily life. He was prescribed pain medication that dulls the pain to a manageable degree and was recommended to use a cane to get around during mild flare ups. It initially upset her. He thought she was too young to be going through something like that and hated having to limit how much they work. They later realized that stigma was ableist and bullshit and eventually sucked it up and decided to just embrace his new way of life and let her Grandfather help him learn how to cope due to experience with chronic pain [which means its lifelong] . On some days they get around just fine with pain meds but on bad flare up days they have to use a cane or chair to get around. She eventually mastered working with the aids and can even pop a sick wheelie on his chair. The pain still gets to them and it really sucks but he does swallow his pride and allow themselves to rest and be supported by others.

Sometimes with her partner Ashley he'll get snuggled and taken care of by her. Lyla is pretty dang light like his grandfather and Ashley has no problem carrying him around. Lyla secretly loves being carried. He's pretty fucking privileged to have Mr.Burns allow her disability support. Lyla is very privileged. Sometimes they like to make his cane/chair look cool with spray paint and whatnot. Very cripplepunk. Lyla probably found a disabled community of people his age to help her feel less alone.

Abbey has undiagnosed innatentive type adhd and ptsd that she gets full on panic attacks from. Neurodiversity was something taboo and not talked about in her childhood and didn't even realize she was struggling more than she should be. As a child she struggled paying attention to long boring sermons/lectures and was shamed alot for it. She didn't understand how she occasionally made people uncomfortable with very weird and unconventional topics she talks about. Loud sudden stimuli and intense buzzing overwhelms her and can make her cry. She didn't do very well in school and barely graduated high school. She prefered watching her favorite movies and playing dolls with her sister over studying. She's extremely sensitive to fabric and only has certain types of blankets and clothes that she can stand. She absolutely hates the feeling of fabric draping against her legs too much so sometimes she either wears tight-ish pants and avoids skirts/dresses. She hates sitting and walking in dresses. She never wanted to wear them lol they feel bad to her. She refuses to sit up straight and will cross her legs. Abbey hyperfixates on animation, cinema, and dollhouses. She likes binging movies and making doll projects. She tends to bond with people through movies and model making. She struggled to make friends outside of her circle and just stayed friends with people she grew up with at her church. They all escaped that mormon hell. Abbey struggles with her emotions and usually gets overwhelmed too much which can often leave her drained and tired. She has an intense oral fixation and uses stim necklaces to chew on, before she would chew on her sleeves, pen caps, pens, her hair, her shirt, her sleeves, bottle caps, ect. She was a very curious kid and tried to eat playdough, dirt and grass lol. None of them where good. She is decent at working at the video store and feels happy with her job being related to her interests. Because hrt therapy is so expensive she doesn't feel she can afford any kind of therapy or medication and it's very overwhelming for her to have to prioritize one aspect of her health over another. But with financial support from close friends and her boyfriend Tim she gets by ok.

Gender

Lyla assumed that it was completely normal to have a fuzzy fluid gender due to believing gender is a lose concept for most people. He didn't realize most people have static genders that don't change at all. It wasn't something they never questioned. Later in Lyla's 20s they started to learn more on gender and realized she wasn't as cis as he thought they where. The term genderfluid fit his experiences perfectly. They never felt still in their gender. Even if they felt more towards one gender over another it wasn't a firm feeling. It felt fluid and lose. As a teen they dressed in goth fashion and was a self proclaimed tomboy. But they realized tomboys or most gnc women didn't dress up very feminine on somedays or even wear dresses. She loves wearing dresses and she loves wearing lose jeans and a lose men's tee.

Lyla's gender tends to shift weekly but it may present or change depending on who they're with or what media/environment they're exposed too. For example he might feel more feminine with certain friends and more masculine with strangers. Sometimes they feel more comfortable being agender or a nonbinary genders with certain people such as their partner. Sometimes they only use certain pronouns with certain people. He/she/they at work, she/he with parents, she/he/they/it with siblings, she/he with some friends, and she/he/moths/rots, rats, its with their partner. Lyla will either tell people upfront on pronouns for the week or use a pin.

Most of the time clothes don't dictate their gender that week but there are some key differences. Lyla will not wear dresses on more masculine days and may draw on facial hair with a mascara brush. On more feminine days they dress more like a nature witch and loves floral stuff. They are more likely to have fun with makeup on those days.

Lyla doesn't want to undergo any kind of surgery or hormone therapy. Lyla may bind a bit with a sports bra but doesn't really feel uncomfortable with his chest and mostly doesn't mind having visibile tits on masc days.

Abbey always felt different from her birth sex and felt very frustrated learning she wouldn't just naturally grow into the chest and genitals she wants growing up. It was an extremely taboo and forbidden subject but despite that something inside her soul knew she was a girl. Her parents pushed very strict gender roles on her growing up and causes her to struggle with her femininity as an infertile woman who could not stand dresses. It made her feel a bit lost but she later felt better knowing other women cis and trans who don't conform to gender roles.

Abbey gets intense physical dysphoria from her crotch and for a long time she had to just deal with it until surgery was an option. Some days she could tolerate it but some days [especially when she got on estrogen and felt very hormonal] it was unbearable and a wet dream or boner would trigger a depressive episode that consists of cacooning a cover, watching her favorite movies and long naps. It was a toll on her mental health that was already pretty bad. But emotional support, understanding and patience from her friends and boyfriend helped her carry on though it. She eventually does get bottom surgery and it's a HUGE weight off her chest.

Abbey usually dresses in sweatshirts, graphic tees and cute jeans. Whatever's comfortable on the skin. She wore tank tops more when her tits grew in. And they grew in pretty dang fast and big and ah it hurt. She's a c cup which she loves but God they where tender for awhile. Double puberty isn't fun. Her transition was a bit rough and long being low middle class but she pulled through.

TW for su*cide. Leave the post now if this triggers you.

Abbey is a suicide attempt survivor. She suffers ptsd from her own husband taking his life leaving her a widow. She felt trapped and tired in her unbalanced emotions and uncertainty of ever feeling okay or getting the medical attention she needed and attempted to OD. Fortunately she was with Timothy who immediately called an ambulance. She was very tired and at first a bit disappointed she was still alive but also a bit relieved. She then had to cope with feeling suicidal.

[babysizedfics]

what is the difference between a hyperfixation and a special interest? idk ngjxhchshfh youve mentioned it in hcs and im curious -🌙

i will do my best to explain but if u want to know more i suggest researching online! im not using sciencey terms this is kind of how i make sense of it so its quite simplified, i do suggest you research further if youre really interested! also im not a trained expert or anything this is just what ive learned over the years from my own experiences and research

i also include examples from my life to try to help u visualise/contextualise it

special interest is a term exclusive to autistic people! it is not to be used by anyone not autistic even if they are neurodivergent in another way!

it's a passionate and intense interest that leaks into all areas of an autistic person's life and usually last for several years (though it is possible to have short term ones) - because vee is the only autistic person in this series he is the only one who has special interests.

For example ever since i was a child i have loved winnie the pooh and it has never changed, anytime i hear about it or see anything that reminds me of it i get super excited and my brain focuses on that for as long as its allowed to. the interest inserts itself into my everyday life, i make references to it in speech and recognise it in things that are unrelated etc etc

hyperfixation is a noun and hyperfocus is a state - they are for both autistic people and people with adhd to use! a hyperfixation is an activity or interest that takes a neurodivergent person's entire focus for defined bouts of time (hyoerfocus). It is mainly more short term than special interests (ranging from hours to months, but usually not more than that) but it does not leak into every aspect of their life. It is confined mostly to periods of hyperfocus.

Hyperfocus is a state wherein a neurodivergent person is so fixated on a task or interest to the point of neglecting other important things such as eating, going to the bathroom, and responsibilities. The fact that it causes neglect of other important tasks is an intrinsic part of hyperfocus, otherwise it would simply just be really concentrated. Hyoerfocus is not exclusive to interests, it can be a state entered into for menial tasks and other things. The main point is that it takes every ounce of the person's concentration, so they will often forget to eat, hydrate, go to the bathroom, go to sleep, go to appointments, etc. because they are so deep into the hyperfocus that that is all that exists to them (commonly hyperfocus lasts several hours but can be slightly shorter)

for example one night my friend wanted to know about another au i was working on and i decided to type the whole idea up. I was typing for five hours straight and barely stopped for breath, i didnt even notice time going by until i had 10k words, a major headache, and aching stomach and bladder and just generally feeling absolutely terrible because i didnt look after my body because i didn't even remember i HAD a body while i was so focussed

i hope this helped a bit, like i said im not trained in this its all from my research and experiences, i have no authority over it and may not have explained it incredibly well. still i hope this at least helps you understand what i mean when i use these terms in relation to this au!! also i use 'mainly' and 'commonly' and words like that a lot because everyone is different and there are anomalies! everyone is valid!

[missholson]

SHIP HISTORY MEME

Embrace your past and get to know your friends’ fandom origins!

Rules: Post gifs of your fandoms / ships starting with your most current hyperfixation and work backwards. (Bonus points if you share any stories about how or when you got into that ship! But not necessary!!) Then tag anyone whose fandom history you’d like to learn about!

Tagged by the sweet @unwillingadventurer​, thank you girls! <3

Hoffmann & Tennstedt (Das Boot) The baby face & the stone face. :) The biggest reason for this series is my sister, who tried to lure me into the fandom already last summer by showing the first episode. Sadly it was a far too distressing experience. The story is about a WW2 German warfare, so it isn’t very light entertainment for Saturday night. The show seemed like a worth watching production, though, but I doubted if I could ever watch it completely. After visiting Berlin now in February 2020 there was no hesitation anymore. The story focuses on the Nazi German submarine, U-612, and the occupied city of La Rochelle in France. However, not everything is as black and white as one might expect. One of the biggest messages of the show is that war is always brutal, no matter which side you fight. The innocent are always suffering. It also shows how the ideal thoughts of warfare crumble, if it comes at the cost of greed, deception, health or life. There is disagreement among the leaders on boat, too. The new commander, kaleun Klaus Hoffmann, is young and inexperienced but kind-hearted and wise. Next on the scale, IWO Karl Tennstedt, is an experienced sailor and an glory-seeking soldier, who envies Hoffamann's position. He regards Hoffmann as incompetent and a disgrace to Germany. So, there is plenty of tension between these two!

Louis & Philippe (Versailles) I started watching the show sometime in 2015, but found it quite distasteful. It was more brutal than expected, and I was overwhelmed by people's greed and dirty behavior, so I stopped watching after a few episodes. Every now and then I saw pics/gifs on Tumblr, especially of Monsieur and Chevalier, that I finally wanted to give another chance in January 2020.  This time the experience was the opposite, and I got a better grip on the story. I was surprised how little I liked the popular Monchevy pair and, instead, so much the quarreling brothers. I was very moved when they joked with each other and showed brotherly love. In the scenes of conflict, I missed their compassion. I haven't watched the rest of seasons 2-3 yet, so I don't know if they get better. I hope so because together they would be a powerful duo.

Matt & Cherry (Red River) I had recorded Red River (1948) on my set-top box, and the closing date was expiring in December 2018. It was Montgomery Clift’s breakthrough movie, so it was a must see. The movie was a refreshingly different western, where the hero is not a macho cowboy and John Wayne a bad guy for a change. But most of all, I was amazed how Cherry Valance's behavior towards Matt Garth was so heavily double entendre. At first they are presented as challengers and opponents of each other. Slowly Cherry starts to show admiration for Matt, and increasingly talks about his gun. In return, Matt needs Cherry's shooting skills to herd cattle. Eventually they become each other's trusted ones. I always find it fascinating, if tension begins to develop between the opposing characters. If the story has a couple that doesn't change, develope or lacks dynamics, it probably won't arouse interest.

Fritz & Dr. Frankenstein (Frankenstein) I had seen a Tumblr gif of Renfield crawling in Dracula (1931) in August 2018. It was Dwight Frye’s breakthrough role. The movie inspired me to watch other Universal monster movies, of which Frankenstein (1931) became my favorite. The work pair of the story, these two outcasts of society, melted my heart. For unexplained reason they have joined their forces and seem to be working well together. They have a mutual partnership, where they can act naturally without fear. Their work is unique, e.g. digging the graves or snatching hanged bodies, but they treat it like any other dayily job. Somehow, I like this way of approach. Actually I have written about Fritz already earlier, where I take a closer look at their relationship. The text can be read here.

Adrian & Antony (Sebastiane) Well, this couple is a specialty of its own. They are another ones found through Tumblr. I saw a picture of them in June 2018 which led me to watch the film. In terms of story or acting, it's not a very special movie but technically professional level. First of all, it was shot under the blazing Sicilian sun on 35 mm film. The light is a vital factor when using a film camera, so the pictures look very rich. The scenes, where these two are having fun together in slow motion, are breathtaking. I had never seen anything like it before and, in my opinion, stole all the attention of the story since they were just characters in supporting roles. It was like a gay paradise on earth.  Here I realize the importance in the way how the characters are presented. The technical presentation can play a surprisingly huge role when we try to read and understand the characters. It can influence us either to share their thoughts or to move even further away from them. Bonus points I give for Latin, which the entire cast is speaking in the film. I would also like to clarify that this is not a p**n movie or a family movie either. It’s a gay erotic story with some full frontal nudity.

Reinhold & Conrad I’m not sure if this is a ship or fandom, but I feel extreme warmth and joy for this pair (the Berlin trip may have something to do with this). They are also the only people from real life instead of characters. I’d like to share my story about them, unfortunately it's very long (I've never been a fluent writer) but explains my interest in more detail. I got to know Conrad Veidt already in high school at the turn of the millennium, the time before DVDs. Near the school there was a buy-sell-exchange movie shop, where my sister and I visited regularly. Somehow we ended up with the idea that we wanted to see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), so we went to the store again. There was no copy, as expected, but the seller said he would keep in mind if one came up. Months passed and after a long break we visited our regular place again. This time, the man had news for us: he had received a copy and kept it in safe for us. We couldn’t believe our eyes and ears. First of all, the kindness of the man made us speechless, and secondly, we never thought we would get our own copy of such popular rarity. At that time movies were not re-released as often as they are today. It was a VHS cassette, bw, not tinted like the original version, and its quality was far from the 4K richness and sharpness. My sister still has the tape and is one of the treasures she will never give away. For years the film was the only Conrad movie we saw, along with Casablanca - until the digital age and the social media arrived. Again I have to thank Tumblr, where I found the actor Anton Walbrook. One of his most famous films, Viktor und Viktoria (1933), is directed by Reinhold Schünzel, whom I knew from Conrad's film Different from the Others (1919). I began to study Reinhold's background more closely in December 2017, and it turned out that he is a forgotten multi-talent in the film industry: He was a versatile performer in comedies and dramas, a prolific director and an idea-rich screenwriter. He had an eye for creating stories that were told in the minds of people in addition to acting and lines. He questioned gender roles and built juicy plot twists around them. He loved theater and was a popular celebrity in 1920’s Germany. He was also a colleague and friend of Conrad. They began their film careers at the same time in Richard Oswald's films, shared the ups and downs, even their wardrobe, and reached fame. Eventually they both had to emigrate from the national socialist Germany, so their paths parted. The following reunions were always a joy, “like the meeting of comrades who fought in many wars together”. Reinhold was supposed to direct Conrad’s first film at MGM in Hollywood, but the plans were changed. They never got to work together since the German years, when Conrad died suddenly. “Part of my life is gone forever”, as Reinhold wrote in his tribute to Connie's death in 1943. He returned to Germany in the end of 1940s and died in Munich in 1954. This is why they are so precious to me and why I find it important to share the memory of these two lifelong friends. The picture is from Eerie Tales (1919), one of their earliest movies together with the director: Reinhold, Richard and Conrad. Reinhold’s full tribute can be read here.

I’m tagging: @wohlbruecks, @perfides-subjekt, @kennyboybarrett, @chapinfan69​, @electricnormanbates​, @ars-historia-est​, @suchamiracle-does-exist​ and anyone who likes to do it. Would you like to share your stories behind your otps? :)

[tzalmavet]

Hello there! I absolutely love your characters, and I'm really interested in them and their story! Character creation reallt seems to be a strong suit of yours. If you're willing to divulge, I have been wondering how their resentment (particularly the Snork's) against their mother shows as they get older? Do they want to start straying away from her? Thank you so much for sharing your characters with us!

Thank you so much!!  I’ve always loved developing worlds and characters to populate them, and I’ve had a lot of practice coming up with characters my whole life; during high school I kept track of well over 100 named OCs for one universe alone! (guess I owe that at least partially to Autistic Hyperfixation Powers)

And I’d be more than happy to answer your question about my moomins OCs!

(putting it under a cut since I have a lot to say)

As adults, they don’t live with their Mama anymore.  They decided that they wanted to explore the world outside the places that she decided to wander through, and so they continue nomadic life without her.  Grokemama herself didn’t object to this– she rarely objects to anything, and sometimes visits them on their travels; no matter where they go, she can always find them if she wants to.

Their resentment of her was cultivated in how she’d sometimes just… walk off to do her own thing, which could last hours or even days (sometimes she’d be getting food or supplies for them, sometimes she’d just be lost in her thoughts), leaving them to fend for themselves.  Sometimes passing travelers would even assume they’d been abandoned and carry them around for a little while, which is how they first learned more about speech and socializing than their mother could teach them.But when their resentment grew was when they’d wander close to civilization and begin to take notice of how alien everything was compared to their own life.  How different other children and parents were, to say nothing of society at large.  Grokemama, having always been shunned by other people, rarely felt compelled to bring them into civilized areas, and so her childrens’ exposure to other people remained sporadic and brief.

The Mumbler’s snork brother is definitely the one who resents her more out of the two siblings.  Where the Mumbler was usually content to stay near Grokemama, the snork had a more adventurous streak and liked to see and hear what was going on in the mysterious towns they passed.  As a result, he’s the most “normal” one in his family… but he’s still by no means a well-adjusted adult.

The snork can tell enough about society to know that he does not fit well into it.  He and the Mumbler are both quite feral, having grown up mostly outdoors and in abandoned buildings, surviving on the outskirts of society.  They have that classic grokely look on their faces from being around Grokemama since infancy, and they tend not to respond properly in social situations (making too much eye contact, not knowing how close to stand to people or how loud to speak to them), not even mentioning how they tend to hiss and growl when they feel threatened.

What really got to the snork was realizing how, even as a child, he’d surpassed Grokemama on basically every mental level.  Eager to communicate with her, he tried to teach her some of the words he learned on the road, and eventually realized he’d taught her a pretty hefty percentage of her current vocabulary.  He can’t help feeling neglected compared to all the other people who can see their parents as equals and sources of wisdom.He hates being an illiterate, feral little man to whom laws and morality feel like something foreign.  He’s more aggressive than the Mumbler, and has some issues with his anger.  He sometimes wonders if everything in society would come naturally to him if he’d been raised by someone else, or if he’d always been destined to turn out strange.  Even when he learns of how he’s supposed to behave, he feels uncomfortable changing his ways; and he knows that he’s like this, and it only makes him feel weirder.

The Mumbler often consoles its brother when he’s getting particularly upset.  The Mumbler is a lot less malcontent with its life, but can definitely relate.  To Mumbler, a lot of the world outside Grokemama’s influence feels different to the point of being some kind of fantasy realm.  Everything is so big and unrealistic, with so many sights and concepts that don’t quite make sense, that walking through a city feels more like having a lucid dream.It always clung to Grokemama more than the snork did, and tries to enjoy life with how it turned out as best it can, but admittedly can’t help but wonder how things could be if it could relate to other people and understand their strange, noisy, rule-filled world.  It occasionally sinks into a melancholy over things, but generally copes a lot better than its brother does.

They’ve never had a big argument with Grokemama over how they feel (they’d have a hard time putting it all in terms she’d understand, to be honest), it’s mostly a lot of mixed feelings.  They can tell that, even if she can’t articulate it properly, that she’d led a hard, lonely life that made her the way she is, and that without her help they would have certainly died.  It’s difficult knowing that she gave them their lives and their problems.They can’t help but still feel attached to her, despite everything.  They have their share of fond memories together, and within their little family is always where their senses of empathy and understanding reach most easily.

The two siblings aren’t always together, but usually don’t stray too far from one another.  They love each other very much, and would never want to have to stay apart forever.  They’re fine with Grokemama’s visits; they both find it kind of nice that, as spaced-out as she is, she still thinks enough about them to want to see them every so often.

HOO this got pretty long but I have a lot of thoughts on these guys!  They’re pretty messed up in a lot of ways but they make do.  I think I’ll end this post here lol but I can say more in other asks if you want!

[wickymicky]

tumblr is really fucking up for me right now, it’s not letting me answer this. i’ll just answer it like this, then.

(for reference, these were the screenshots i posted)

this first one was the first week of march 2019, in a post where i talked about a couple different groups that i had tried:

and then this one was around a week later:

i mean i understand why i thought that way, lol. i was really, really new to kpop at that point, like i think i had only found two groups that i was a fan of (loona and red velvet). i was trying to listen to dreamcatcher like they were strictly rock/metal and i was disappointed cause that made it seem like just a gimmick (which is why im not really that into babymetal lol), but then as i got more familiar with kpop, i started listening to dreamcatcher like they were pop songs that use rock and metal as a concept the same way that a group like red velvet might use a genre as a concept, and suddenly everything clicked and i saw the genius of dreamcatcher’s music for what it is, lol.

i still appreciate them more as pop songs than as metal songs cause they arent really metal... actually Scream is probably their most metal song even though it moves a bit further from their rock concept than they had previously haha. its intensity and that aggressive pounding beat of the chorus drop is very metal lol.

in that second screenshot, you can see that i was starting to appreciate piri for its catchiness, but it was like a guilty pleasure, and that was only like a couple weeks into me allowing myself to even admit to liking kpop, so kpop in general was still kind of a guilty pleasure for me haha. i had a long way to go. it didnt actually take that long for dreamcatcher to become my second favorite group though, only another couple weeks. listening to some of the bsides in their special clips, especially sleep-walking, really turned things around, so did ‘what’ cause that song kicks ass lol... and also just appreciating the members and the choreo and stuff... yeah.

another thing was like... at first i dont think i wanted to like kpop. so i regarded everything that wasnt loona (the group that got me into this mess) with suspicion lol. i just thought of everything like “lol this isnt for me, i just like my one thing which is superior to all this junk”... but i kept finding more and more stuff that i liked haha. by the end of march, i had made this sideblog, and by the end of april dreamcatcher was my second favorite group and i found more and more new groups to like all the time. dreamcatcher became equal to loona in terms of ults (they were both tied for first) when deja vu came out, and then now with scream i’ve finally come to terms with the fact that they’re my number 1 and loona’s my number 2 lol. like, this has been an interesting journey, and it’s only taken a little under a full year... that’s pretty fast lol. i went from “i dont like any kpop” at the very beginning of last year, to “i like so much kpop that honestly i dont think this hyperfixation will every truly end” at the beginning of this year. and from late-february to late-february i went from “dreamcatcher’s not for me” to “dreamcatcher was made specifically for me, they appeal to every sensibility i have, i cannot imagine what my life would be like if i wasnt a fan of them, i just wanna let them know how much they mean to me, and i literally started to tear up in real life as im writing this part of this post right now lmao im not even kidding i really did hahaha thats hilarious”

anyway i hate how smug i was lmao, shut up and stan dreamcatcher already, me-from-the-past

[kyidyl]

Can we talk about art for a second?

I’m pretty sure none of you are following me for art content because that’s just not what I do normally, but I’ve been working on some stuff and I just wanted to share. Here’s my current WIP:

I’m using sketchbook on my iPad Pro, and...can we just talk about process for a second? I’m gonna put this behind a cut just in case it gets long and because this isn’t my normal content. 

So I’ve been drawing almost my entire life, but I didn’t really start teaching myself anything good until around 9th grade (which is like...14 years old.). I started by copying Disney characters and then I was introduced to comic books and I copied those. I was in college when digital art start making its way into the art world. People would color their pencil drawings (this was shortly before tablets, so...with a mouse.). I grew into an artist around the time people like Aimee Major and Stephanie Lostimolo were really starting to stand out. And I don’t know about other fandoms, but I was in the gargoyles fandom and from what I can tell...a LOT of modern digital art has its genesis in that fandom. Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is that I started using photoshop with version 3.0 and I’ve had a Wacom tablet almost since the day they came out (gen one graphire tablet represent!).

I’ve never, in all that time, gotten the hang of digital painting. I have a hard time with tablets because you can’t tilt them like you can tilt a paper and it takes a weird sort of hand-eye-screen coordination that I just never mastered. But digital art is so beautiful that I’ve always WANTED to be able to do it. I can make graphics and edit photos but I have a hard time with painting. I have seen the million myriad ways of doing it, and most of them start with the same idea: lay down flats and then lighten or darken as necessary. And this never worked for me because a, the airbrush tool isn’t painterly enough for me and b, it takes for goddamned EVER. For. Ever. And I’m a fast artist! I can spit out a whole line drawing in like a half hour-45 mins with traditional media. But I have adhd, and so finishing long term large scale detailed projects is often not in the cards for me. So dumping like 48 hours of work time into a painting isn’t going to work for me.

But recently I’ve gotten back into art again and I’ve been watching the sky artist of the year and I decided I was curious about oil painting and, well, one hyperfixation later, here we are. I don’t have the money or space for actual oil painting, so I went to sketchbook to see if there was an alternative, and there is! So because I wanted to learn how to oil paint I finally figured out how to digitally paint and I’m gonna share that with you in case you, like me, struggle with the time input and focus required to do digital art.

First, I started practicing poses by drawing an outline over any image that caught my fancy. I have a good understanding of human anatomy because of my science background, but my poses aren’t creative and I especially struggle with perspective and multiple figures in an image. So I started to do line drawings over an image. Here’s the stock image I used for the WIP:

Look at all that fabric! Look at the movement! I love it. So I traced it:

Yes, TRACED, because tracing is a tool like anything else.

Then I choose colors. I pick 5: a midtone (the color you want the thing to be perceived as. In my case, you can see it in the WIP at the top.), a slight dark, a slight light, a blackened tone for deep shadow, and a very light tone for highlights. I always default to white light when choosing these colors, and I’ll get to my reasoning further down. The palette for the robe looks like this:

(Ignore the tan and blue, they’re for another project)

Then you start to lay down flats. Now, I do this with the synthetic oil brush in sketchbook because I like the texture (this image though I’d laid down the flats with the airbrush months ago and didn’t want to redo it, hence the lack of texture and the 100% opacity.), and as with oils, my approach to digital now is to layer rather than cover. Staying in the lines isn’t important. In fact, you should go outside of the lines because it will help you get shadows and highlights along the edges later. What IS important is putting everything on different layers. When in doubt, new layer. I work from back to front, which means that the base layer is the background. In front of that is the skin, in front of that is the robe, in front of that is the teal inside of the robe, in front of that is accessories. Hair varies depending on what’s going on with the image. Here I’ll probably put it between the skin and robe. Ask yourself: what is this covered by? And the use that to decide layer placement. Special effects are a whole other thing, as are highlights. I’ll get to that in a second tho.

The next step is to create an oversketch. This serves much the same function as an undersketch in oil painting, only in reverse because your reference photo is under - and covered - by your work. I started doing it because as I was painting I was flicking the layer on and off, making it transparent, whatever just to see where the shadows are on the reference image. It was a real pain in the rear. So I started making the blobs and borders of the highlights and shadows with an oversketch. You don’t need a method for telling which boundaries are for shadows and which are highlights because for that you can just turn the layer on and off. Just mark where the General shapes are. Here’s the oversketch for this drawing:

See? Blobs of General Area. When you’re painting, use them to lay down color and then turn them off when you’re blending because they’re not part of the final image and you don’t want to end up with gaps that were covered by the over sketch. To do this, I use the 9b pencil tool and black, but tbh just se whatever you like. That’s just my preference.

Now, for the shading. I started by trying a bunch of different natural media brushes but I eventually ended up sticking on a kind of weird choice: the fan brush. I keep the flow around 20%, which gives me these nice textured marks to lay down color, but then if I don’t lift the pencil up it stops laying down color and instead starts to blend. This means a, I can make it as smooth or painterly as I like with one tool and b, I can paint and blend with the same tool. No more muddying up my drawings by over-blending with the smudge. No losing the texture while blending because it blends with the texture. And the shape of the fan brush allows me to be smudgy with I like, but also will do hard edges. Plus the blending thins out the colors so I can get neat effects by laying down colors on top of each other because it stays a little transparent. You end up needing to lay down a lot of “paint” to get opacity but that’s ok because it allows you to make more complex colors. That’s good, because things like skin aren’t a color. They’re chemical: they’re melanin in cells over blood vessels and muscle and skin is transparent. Even very dark skinned people have undertones. So when you build up paint this way you can capture undertones without ruining your painting. Which, I’m pretty sure, is how it works in oils. But it translates well to digital.

So at this point, painting your image is basically a calming adult coloring book. You lay down color, blend, check your reference, repeat. But a few things to keep in mind:

- Take note of the darkest and lightest areas of the image. Nothing should be lighter or darker than these areas. Nothing in the drawing above will be darker than her back because that’s the darkest area of the painting.

- See the trees and the forest. Sometimes a detail doesn’t make any sense until you’ve seen it in context. Trust your guide and your photo reference. But also make sure that you don’t get so stuck in the details that you can’t relate one area to another. A fold that goes through two areas should be consistent across those two areas, even if you painted them separately. An area might seem dark in comparison to what’s next to it, but it isn’t as dark as the darkest area of the image so don’t go whole hog. Keep it in context.

- Folds in clothing aren’t nonsensical. They are a result of the movement and weight of the fabric. Ergo, the shadows and highlights that create them should also make sense.

- If you’re having a hard time figuring out where the highlights and shadows are, make a copy of the reference image layer and desaturate in, then turn off the colored reference layer.

Lastly, I’m finding it helpful to keep the highlights from colored light on its own layer. I didn’t used to do this, I used to use the colored light as one of my highlight colors. But the truth is that most objects are shaded by more than one light source, and so I’ve decided to do all the shading as white light and then the green (which will eventually be from some kind of green magic.) is on a different layer. My reasoning for this is that it helps keep the integrity of the shading and it prevents the colors from bending too much and getting muddy. So if I add a green highlight and I don’t like it then it’s easy to remove. I don’t have a highlight and shading that’s now ruined by green because I’ve been using light flow brushes. So colored light on its own layer. How much of a highlight you give it entirely depends on how strong your light sources is and whatnot. So far I’m satisfied with just hitting the high points, but I may change that later on.

When you’re done painting the area, go ahead and erase all of the excess paint around the edges of it and clean it up. I like to leave the black outline as part of the image, but if you don’t want to do that you should turn it on and off as necessary while painting so you can make sure to fill in gaps and get clean lines between the areas of color.

So if you made it all the way down here, thanks for reading my ramble. :)