#but i’m not screeching about people calling themselves that on gay positivity posts

[spinef0ryou]

what the hell is it with non-queers that makes them feel so entitled to queer people who call themselves queer?

“wah wah don’t call people queer if they haven’t said they’re fine being called it” funnily enough the lesson of ‘don’t call people things they don’t want to be called’ is one taught to kindergarteners!! queer people being happy about their identity has nothing to do with non-queers, so why are y’all always up in our business?

[sohin-ace]

Jojo Drabble - Jotaro (Pride Month Special)

It's the end of Pride Month, and I haven't seen a single, not a single post about Aro/Aces...

I'm not really surprised. At all.

I'm linking some interesting videos and websites to help you understand this sexual orientation.

Asexuality: The invisible Orientation by Hippie Calico

I spent a day with Asexuals by Anthony Padilla

Asexuality by David Jay

Asexuality.org (available in 16 languages)

R/aaaacccccce on Reddit

R/asexuality on Reddit

(Both subreddits are very cute and full of funny memes and good positivity 💜🖤)

In regards to the visibility of this marginal and forgotten sexuality, I'll be making a drabble about it. With the only openly Aro/Ace character of Jojo that I know of.

※ Jojo Scenario • Jotaro - Ace to Ace

You opened the heavy metallic door leading to the rooftop, the loud clank and dry screech making you cringe. Hopefully the sound wouldn't alert the teachers or the class reps. After all, nobody was allowed on the roof. Especially during class hours.

You walked around, searching for a certain someone and, surely enough, the boy in question was there, just where you expected him to be.

"Man, you sure love to ditch, don't you?"

You chuckled and the male didn't even spare you a glance, his hat effectively shielding his face from the Spring sun as he laid leisurely on the floor, his arms pillowing his head.

"I could say the same to you."

Well, he wasn't wrong, you thought to yourself, but you would never admit it out loud and possibly give this smug man reason.

You slowly and carefully sat down next to him, groaning slightly at the painful difficulty of the usually simple task.

Jotaro perked up slightly at your discomfort, making sure you were alright. Thankfully you seemed alright and he relaxed.

"Yare yare daze, you shouldn't have come. You're still recovering, why are you walking flights of stairs now?"

That's right. You were still under medication and strict medical supervision for your quite severe stomach wounds. And you still weren't used to your prosthetic leg just yet.

It was purely a miracle that you managed to survive that fight against Dio, and you never ever took a second of your life for granted after that, thinking of the friends who didn't have the same chance as you, lost forever during that battle.

You looked down at your uniform skirt. You couldn't think about that now. You had to lift up the mood for Jotaro, and for them.

"Hey, I'm fine." You dismissed with a smile, "It doesn't even hurt that much anymore, it's been a while now." You reassured and he only mumbled his catchphrase again, laying back down.

You two kept each other company in comfortable silence. Despite everything, Jotaro was still taciturn and you were much calmer after all that happened the past few months.

It was already the end of the school year and your thoughts drifted to the future that awaited you, and what it had to possibly offer.

"Say, Jotaro..." You softly grasped his attention and he only hummed in response. "What do you think will happen next? After we graduate, I mean..."

"Hmm?" He opened a curious blue eye at you." ...Go to college or get a job. Or both. What else do you want to do?"

"Ah well..." You paused and thought of your next words. "I don't want to but... Guess I'll have to get married and stuff eventually... Have kids, cook for my husband, things like that you know..."

Jotaro clicked his tongue and scoffed at the disgusting idea. "...Bullshit."

"I know..." You sighed and looked back down at the male, only to see him stare at the now more covered sky, his usual glare softer on his face. You knew what he was thinking.

"Jotaro..." You called and he looked at you. "You're the same as me... Right?"

He didn't say anything, but his eyes spoke answers for him. You may not have known him for very long, but the adventures and experiences you lived with him were worth much more than years of friendship.

He huffed and closed his eyes. "Yare yare daze... Why are you talking about depressing things, now?"

"I mean... Can you blame me for being worried? I know you feel the exact same, Jotaro." You brought your knees up to your chest and stared ahead. "You'll have to get through the same thing at one point too... That's... What we're expected to do, after all... Whether we like it or not."

He hated to admit it, but you were right. What was the place in society for two outsiders with not interests in romantic or sexual relationships?

What were Aromantics and Asexuals besides loners, straight people craving attention and finding poor excuses for their lack of charisma?

Especially when everybody well knew that the only way to succeed in life, was to share it with a significant other and keep the bloodline going forever.

...Or was it really?

All these thoughts, your obligations as members of the patriarchal modern society, the implications behind all of it, the consequences, the fate you two would be doomed in. All of these were so painful. A lifelong struggle.

He was aware that he'd have to complete his other half of his life, achieve the ultimate life goals of getting married to a beautiful little wife and have cute little children running around the house and all that jazz.

But that's not how Jotaro Kujo had ever imagined his life would be like.

He had his own dreams, his own comforts. Being alone was good. So good. But he had no choice, he'd have to satisfy society's expectations. He'd have to make his mother proud and granting her the little grandchildren she always wished to have.

Jotaro looked back at your metallic leg. After all you've been through, after all he's lost to save his mother, pleasing her and making her happy was the least he could do to honor your sacrifices and the deaths of his loved ones.

But what could he do? Force himself? A man couldnt force himself to develop feelings, he could only pretend. But what good would that do him?

He'd have to, eventually. He couldn't help but think back at you. You were all the same. And you two would be judged for life for not following suit and do like everyone else, like little sheeps.

Was it so wrong to not want to be with a special someone? To not get attached or attracted? Why was it so weird? Why was it unacceptable? Who deemed it necessary, to get stuck into marriage just for the sake of being married?

And man, his thoughts rathered to drift to sex either, that's really the last straw and if possible, he'd love to shut everybody up about it. Shut up everybody who only validated a man's worth by his primal urge to knock a woman up.

You seemed to be the only one he could actually talk about this with, since people would just tell you the usual 'You're gay!' or 'You haven't found the one yet!'.

Just like telling a depressed person to 'cheer up'. Bullshit excuses of people who couldn't accept that mindsets and sexualities differ with each human being.

What were the two of you supposed to do? You were stuck, cornered.

He was a stone that knew nothing about affection, and he already pitied the unlucky woman who'd get to him.

And you were just as bad of a stone. He felt bad for you, for having to have to lay down and take it without batting an eye just to satisfy the needs of the greedy bastard that'd snatch you away.

"... We'll figure it out, Y/N. We've dealt with much worse to worry about things like that."

"That's true but... I don't know. It's hard to imagine a family life. I like chilling on my own. And I'm still too sad about them to be lovey-dovey."

He scoffed, hitting your back playfully. "So what? Let two hopeless rocks with crippling depression be themselves. Sounds like a plan."

"Now, hear yourself talking about depressing things!" You chuckled and pointed out accusingly at him, stealing his precious hat and putting it on your own head.

He sat up with an exhausted sigh and roughly pulled his hat down your eyes, as his own little revenge, gratified by a small 'Ow!' of response from your end.

He let out a ghost of a smile as you were blinded by his hat, thankful that you couldn't see him even though he knew you'd never tease him for being more expressive.

"Ow, that actually hurt, Jojo, you bastard!"

"Let's go." He stood up before stretching his huge hand out to you, making sure to be careful with your injuries as he pulled you up to your feet with surprising gentleness.

Before you could reach your classroom, you grabbed your friend's arm, prompting him to stop walking in the empty hallways.

"But really, Jojo... Wherever you are, and if you have been pushed into a life that unsatisfies you in the future... think about me, okay? You know that somewhere, I'll be the exact same... You're not alone."

He couldn't help but soften his gaze just slightly. You were a thoughtful person, that wasn't a secret. You already had proven yourself to be compassionate multiple times during your crusade, and you kept on.

You made him realise that he was normal and it was okay to not feel anything. You two could only rely on each other now, and it sure didn't matter to him what people say.

Oh of course he'd heard his classmates gush about how cute you two were and how uncharacteristically sweet he was towards you ever since you came back from your trip.

Because the infamous Jotaro Kujo wouldn't just have a soft spot for just anyone, right? Nobody would believe that he became so gentle just because you were injured, there must be something more, right?

No. Absolutely not. And screw society for fogging people' small brains into thinking that there's an afterthought or innuendo behind every male-female, or even same sex platonic relationships.

He knew well that it made you as uncomfortable as him, but you always brushed it off and let the people talk. Let them believe whatever they wanted.

He never wanted to think too much about it, but he couldn't help but worry as well sometimes. That was the kind of things that pissed him off.

It pissed him off so bad. If it wasn't for you he would have crushed so many skulls already. That would teach some people to shut the fuck up.

"What are you thinking about, Jotaro?"

He blinked, humming questioningly at you as you had taken him out of his transe.

"You just called Star Platinum." You said as you grabbed the Stand's big hand, shaking it around as if to greet him, to which he responded with a whispery 'Ora'.

He sighed heavily, calling his Stand back. "Nothing... Nothing at all."

You chuckled a bit. You've learned to read him quite well overtime. A skill only his mother and Kakyoin had mastered. "I'm worried too, Jojo. Hopefully it will be okay... For us."

You patted his back reassuringly and he smiled.

Wasn't that kind of love enough? Love without obligation, without commitment. Without the consequences. Without gender norms, without standards. Just people caring for each other. Wasn't friendship, camaraderie, sisterhood and brotherhood beautiful enough?

Platonic, unromantic love was much stronger than any other type of relationship. He was satisfied with this form of social contact. He didn't need anything more.

Jotaro Kujo was never a greedy man, after all.

The male was suddenly brought back to his sense when he felt a tiny hand tug insistently at his sleeve, hoping to wake him up from his rêverie.

"Papa, you fell asleep on your desk again..."

Jotaro inhaled tiredly, scratching his head and taking in his surroundings, his study back in his home in Florida. He patted his daughter's head, making her scrunch her face a little.

Was it that late already? He was so used to dozing off after working on his thesis, reflecting on his life and his choices. He had been overworking himself lately. He knew he shouldn't overthink, but he couldn't help it.

"Thank you Jolyne. Go back to sleep now, alright?"

The little girl nodded and trutted out, leaving her father alone to his thoughts.

Jotaro let out another breath, eyeing a certain picture frame, taken in the desert. Hopefully you were living a fulfilling life of your own.

And hopefully you two would get to meet again, and maybe talk again.

Ace to ace.

[justformyself2]

San Francisco (Part Two)

Click here for Part One.

Hi, guys. It has been long, but it is finally here. I’m pretty happy to be posting this one and I hope you feel happy reading it.  

There is going to be a part three, so stick around in case you like this one.

I have other stories if you want to check those out (i have to make a masterlist, but it easy to find them)

If you have a request or just want to chat send me an ask.

special tag @lullabieswrappedinlies

if you want to be tagged, let me know.

Before you jump in, be advised:

. There is some cursing words, some f-bombs.

. Consumption of alcohol.

                                                cccccccccc

"Morning guys." Dex greets enthusiastically, before bowing down to place a kiss on his bride-to-be's cheek.

You are staring too much, but you can't miss the view.

The gift of ignorance was a delicacy underappreciated, at least while it lasts. It would make you eternally grateful if Rachel could keep everything to herself till ten years later. She will be sitting at her fancy dinner table, arrived from France, laughing too much because of that one bottle of old wine, from another place in Europe, maybe from Spain, she won't remember quite well. Then after recovering from laughing, putting the last sip of wine on her glass, she will tell him the story. With a sad, mildly drunk expression, Dexter would stop laughing.

"Morning." You respond.

She smiles at him and goes back to reading the newspaper.

Rachel was good at this, controlled, on the surface, as a lawyer should be. It brings a mixture of fear and thankfulness, that hid underneath itself another problem that walked into the kitchen.

"Hey, just so you know, Claire is coming today, she just called." Her mouth moves and her eyes don't lookup.

Dex sighs and you get up with the last spoon of cereal still laying on your tongue. You take the bowl and go towards the sink, planning to stay a long time with your back turned. 

"Morning everybody." 

It was visible the tiredness in his voice, tone low and deep, while you washed the white ceramic bowl in auto mode.

"Morning." Dex and Rachel responded together, laughing afterward. 

"That's cute." 

A chair's screech filled the room before a previous subject arose again. 

"So, she is really coming?"

Dex sounded worried.

"What, who is coming?" Now Ethan was worried too.

But why would he be worried about who was coming when he will be leaving tonight?

"Claire," Rachel says neutrally as before.

You place the bowl and the spoon carefully on the dish rack and spin back, spotting Ethan for the first time in the morning since you woke up to an empty bed. 

He stares from the not very long distance, with no longevity, because you cut it right away going towards the door, a way out to the porch, out to where random people were laying in the sand. 

Harsh winds of the morning shaping up weaves. You have to pay attention to that, to anything at all other than your head. 

You sit at the wooden bench, that didn't quite match the rest of the design on the porch next to a luxurious white couch, a unique setting for a suffering old seat that didn't belong. The best guess, could it be someone's favorite? Why wouldn't they throw it away when they thought about putting a much better couch beside it? Why did it remind you of the ones in San Francisco? 

"What the fuck am I thinking?"

"Am I interrupting something?"

Dex leans over, and your heart skips a beat from his sudden appearance.

He was observing. God knows for how long.

"No, I'm just thinking out loud, like a normal person."

He laughs, while you tried to shake the uncomfortable off, and takes a seat next to you. 

The next thing was silence, what you observed to happen a lot when Dex would talk to anyone other than Rachel, something normal considering you two barely knew each other, but still. Dex was the type to slip under radar if it wasn't for his looks. He was quiet, polite, unlike the stereotypes set for someone on his position, he possessed some of the same traits Rachel had, good traits, that combined make them good people if you could only erase all the cheating behavior Ethan mentioned. 

Now you see why his ex-fiancé wouldn't suspect them at all. 

Yet, it was none of your business, and the only thing that kept you involved in this world was the one that wasn't sitting on this bench with you.

"It is a good view right?"

Dex asks, and it is clear that making small talk wasn't his thing, and you were on the same level right now. Smiles appear to compensate.

"Yes, it is amazing."

You breathe in, deep. It could be some type of nervous vibe easy to detect, hovering, or you were projecting. 

"So, you and Ethan... You guys look good together."

"Oh, you think so?" 

Your mouth open's in surprise, genuine surprise. 

Before advancing to a judgment that could compromise, you try to relax and answer as naturally as possible.

"Yeah, I thought he was... Nevermind-." Dex interrupts the took, shaking his head and looking down at his feet.

"Gay?" You completed with confidence, spotting a mix of surprise and discomfort in the way he smiled back.

"Yeah. To be fair, Ethan gives the vibe sometimes." You continued, knowing that Dex was probably confused, reminiscing Ethan's lie about being gay so Claire would leave him alone, and the fool never cleared it out before moving to London.

Something bumps into the door, somewhat aggressively, and the first thing you recognized was the hand.

"What are you guys gossiping about out here?"

Ethan comes out to the porch, exchanging looks towards you and Dex, taking the space left between the two of you. 

"I was just saying to (y/n) that I think you two make a great couple." 

"Oh, you think so?"

Ethan responds, reclining his back against the bench and puts an arm around your neck. It is all that it takes to remind you why you escaped to the porch in the first place.

"And we were also talking about your gay vibes, babe."

"What?" He looks at you, confused.

"Yeah, like when you said you were gay to drive Claire away, like the mastermind player that you are. That is like, his thing Dex. He loves doing stuff like that-."

You incline forward to look at Dex, but Ethan blocks the view. His arm traps your body next to his chest, and you were obliged to stand up with him.

"Okay, babe. Do you want to take a walk on the beach? Hun? Dex, catch you later, bud." You don't resist since that at some point it all had to be addressed.

Ethan loosens the grip while you both were walking down the four steps. His hand travels down your arm slowly, and before you could cross them, he beats you by the timing and takes your hand. 

You wait for a fair distance before taking your hand back.

"What was all that?" 

Ethan asks. The audacity of the annoyed tone he used makes you start to walk faster in front of him.

"Does it matter? we are leaving tonight, right?"

"No, we're not leaving."

You stopped and turned around. Ethan faces you with both hands on his hips. You waited for some confirmation that he was messing with you.

"Ethan."

"Look, I talked to Rachel this morning, I apologized, and she decided to forget all it. It is going to be weird if I suddenly left. I'm her best friend."

"Oh, so that's why you left me this morning? To go talk to Rachel."

"I'm only trying to fix this, find an answer to make this right."

You complete the steps that separated both of you, being centimeters away from his face and the way he observed you.

"Look. Do what you want to do, every crazy pathetic thing you want, to get a woman that doesn't want you but don't use me and leave me like I'm nothing because I'm not your rebound anymore, Ethan."

You breathe in, feeling your chest rise and the beats of your heart multiply by the second. Suddenly there wasn't control over thoughts or words. Everything wanted to break loose.

"Are you even listening to yourself right now? 'I'm her best friend.' You mocked. " Stop using this bullshit to excuse what you are thinking. The answer is Dex, Rachel is not choosing you. She never did, not then and not now. You should do yourself a favor and get the fucking hint already Ethan."

You wanted to explode, wanted to scream. It wasn't the first time this same conversation took place between both of you, and yet, you were waiting for a different outcome that never happened before. It was useless. You saw it in his eyes. You saw it in the way he walked right past you and didn't look back.

                                             (Ethan POV.)

There is something worse about positive emotions. Something buried underneath, and It's ugly, blinds you, makes you live in denial for a very long time, till it turns the question 'What the fuck am I doing?', into a daily mantra from a bad religion.

I asked this more times than it is possible to count. I asked a thousand times while I was doing my bags, and another thousand while I was on the plane watching (y/n) asleep. I asked it again for a couple more thousand times when I saw Rachel, and since then it has been a background sound for my thoughts, the usual ones she belonged. 

Her face. Her laugh, ever-living memories, that insisted themselves on my central vision like jumping ghosts, obliging me to keep feeding my brain with any distraction. Sinking myself with work till numbness almost did the thing, but the closest I came to the remedy was (y/n).

That one night, I went out to the bar on my block, not feeling like me anymore after diagnosing myself with derealization through a quick search on google. The impression of furniture moving convinced me to run away from the claustrophobic place that became that apartment.   

It all happened at some time past one in the morning, at the right time and place to meet someone like her, someone very different from me. I guess, just what I need it. 

The crisp vision of things gives you a perspective, but she never centered around only one thing. (Y/N) was always in movement while I was still ruminating about Rachel and what I couldn't let go. 

When the post-coital conversation started flowing, after weeks of our same scheme passed by, I realized that not everything was cold with (y/n), only the way she perceived love. The way she rolled her eyes when I talked about it, but not the way she makes it, which can make one confused at first and be careful at least.

I  had reasons to strongly believed in my immunity because I knew I was still in love with Rachel. That was what my brain reminded me on the daily, being in love with an unavailable person was becoming a personality trait instead of a problem to be dealt with it, and it was that I accepted. Only at San Francisco, when I made no attempts to contact Rachel, I realized too late that I had mixed the medicine with alcohol, and now they had the same effect.

All of the past mess, mixing with the habit of sweeping things under the rug, made me start thinking about ending everything. Still, a burden compounded with a miracle came when we got back from San Francisco, and we discovered to be new working partners. The universe seemed to have done everything for me, except providing the answer I was still looking for when Rachel's wedding invitation arrived. I was about to mix the medicine with alcohol all over again. 

When they hugged at the airport, my stomach ran laps. 'What the fuck am I doing?'. The mantra comes back again. 

"Can I take your order, sir?"

A redhead girl, holding a notepad, appeared next to the table I occupied. Her Blythe doll eyes blinking at me.

How long was she there while I rewind all the past regrets only God knows.

"Sorry. I'm... I'm waiting for someone before ordering."

I simulate my way out of the situation with a smile. My wallet was at home, and it was a good thing because it was too early to drink something distilled.

"Oh, okay. I'll just leave the menu here." 

She left two menus over the white cloth before leaving with a condescending smile.

I decided to spare some time. I faked looking at my clock and looking around at random times as if I waited for someone very tardy before I left the table. The Blythe doll eyes must be cursing me, and I deserve it. 

 The sun outside, hitting my eyes was already alarming hot, or London made me a stranger to the feeling of warmth. I look behind me, but there is only the bridge, and random people passing by.

It felt familiar to the place where Rachel and I spend time together, but like everything else after a while became a blur under what happened that night. 

I can replay it quickly while continuing to walk with no destination.

It happened when Rachel smiled and ordered a Heineken. I was explaining the order to myself, controlling my eyes and planing my words, usually with gastric reflux would be burning the walls of my stomach, but now the house was quiet. 

I was alone with her, after years, after long years and miserable scenarios played inside my head, and now there was total silence, the silence of death.

"What?"

Rachel asked, still smiling, brightly, I loved that fucking smile, I loved.

I loved.

"We need to talk."

[serafxn-a]

(( Hey guys. Mun here. I know, I know, I’ve been relatively quiet lately. For... a while now. I should probably give a life update. A bit more of a comprehensive one.

After a simultaneously wild and dull 10 years of my life beginning with university, which included a lot of online and a little offline drama, the end of a 7 year relationship that I’m still kind of reeling over several months onward, and a whole lot of paranoia and health problems both mental and physical... My life situation IRL took a drastic turn and almost brought my online presence to a screeching halt. Around May-June of this year, I moved back in with my parents, got a job at a major UK toy store chain, and have no longer been able to sustain my wild-ass 10am-5am living due to changes in schedule and having major responsibility for the first time in my life. One such responsibility being not keeping my parents awake til fuck knows in the morning, ahaha. And, y’know, actually getting decent sleep before work... (something I’m failing a little at right now,,,)

I’ve got mixed feelings about it, but overall... it’s actually been a pretty positive experience. Being definitively useful, wanted and moreover needed does a lot for one’s self-esteem. Knowing I’m good enough at doing something that people will take my advice, and that I will get called into work for more hours instead of having my hours cut, is kind of a good buzz, even if it’s taken a lot of getting used to and been stressful for my RP life. Not having any friends IRL sucks hard when I can’t talk to my online ones as much but... I’m trying to deal as best I can.

But right now, let’s forget all that. It’s time for me to be sappy, because it’s late at night, I’m sick, and it’s almost Thanksgiving. ))

(( Now, I know I’m not American, so when it comes to Thanksgiving, I don’t go there. I might have humoured a “turkey” dinner of my own for a couple of years just so I wouldn’t be left out. Which I guess might be kinda sad but I prefer to think of it as an act of sentimentality.

And, what can I say? I’m a very sentimental person.

That sentimentality is what leads me to make this post. There’s so many important people I’ve met that I’m grateful for. I’d like to talk about some of them, because I don’t think I should be particularly shy about this. I might not get all of them, because I’m kinda scatterbrained (and at least as of making alterations to this part of the post mid-way through typing it it’s 11:30 and I have to get up at 8).

First off: if you’re in the Sunny Day Café server? You fucking rock! Even if you don’t talk too much in there, your continued support of my first real attempt to run a relatively public RP server is really appreciated. In particular on this front I’d like to thank Rose (blogs: @kxndncss​ @grxxnheart​ @hopxlcss​), Shad (blog: @flapsinhands​) and Ozi (blog: @magicbyhalves​) for helping me with moderating the place. I’ll be the first to admit that my moderation skills are a bit... well, 👋. I’m often not a good judge of situations, and find it difficult to trust my own judgements. It’s something I’m having to learn. So the help is really important to me.

Of course, these three (who I will dedicate more time to in this post later for sure) have also been really helpful with plot stuff. There’s a particular group of people who’ve been helpful with plot stuff, actually, aside from these three, and I’d like to mention them too.

Let’s start with Ziz! (blogs: @unseenbutnotgone​ @seenbutgone​ @unheardanduncaring​ @distastefulblossom​ @setebcs​)

My memory is trash, but I think Ziz and I started talking over Wings wanting to get to know Fin back when he was Sleazy? Because he was getting involved with his son, and of course a good dad would want to make sure his son is in good company. He wasn’t, but Fin grew from that, and I’m thankful for that too, but also I’m thankful for what happened when Fin ended up applying this relearned kindness when Wings’ son was forcibly fused with a corrupt fragment of his.

And then it all went really gay from there, and now they’re married and have spread the gay even further. It’s not even over yet, there’s so much potential for Reset and Fin still and I’m eager to explore it and fit them into this intricate new world that I’ve never really touched on in RP before. And to write with someone as caring, empathetic, funny and smart as Ziz? I’m really honoured. They’re really inspiring to me and I adore RPing with them. They put so much work into their muses, visually and historically and meaningfully and I just... 💋👌 Mwah. Ziz as a writer, and an artist, and as a person too - I look up to them so damn much.

And I definitely cannot mention inspiring people without coming to talk about Rose. She and Ziz were ultimately the reason I started to invest so much in my Gasters, they’ve provided constant encouragement with my writing, I’ve been able to bounce ideas off of them not just for my stories but for theirs too. They’ve been emotionally supportive and emotionally constructive too, which is honestly fantastic. I know I’m someone who has a lot of growing to do. I appreciate that there’s people who’ll stick by me while I’m doing it and help me along.

Rose is such a pleasure to write with. Her prose is utterly gorgeous to read, it feels like seeing the individual threads coming together in a tapestry. Her talent for finding mood music is fantastic and something I honestly aspire to, because mood music for writing or setting a scene is so so important. Her characters are always really well researched and have so much depth to them, and it’s really great seeing her influences because damn she has good taste too. And what’s more, I honestly do look up to Rose, because while her life experiences may not be perfect she’s accomplished a lot of things I would love to accomplish myself. She’s really inspiring to me.

While these are the two folks I talk to most, particularly about RP stuff, there’s a whole gang of bastards I’m thankful for... I’ll have to bullet point these guys because there’s a good few blogs associated with them and I want to try and include all the active/main ones?

Rav - @imbreaking-sans​ @imdespondent-sans​ @mraudio-the-audacious​

Bets - @fellythealphaskeleton​ @xa-eviterx​

Situ - @shadowbirdsitu​ @sourtrout​

Del - @skellie-bean​ @pocketpunk666

Collectively these are people I know I can come to when I need help with things, RP or otherwise, people I can vent to, people I can share experiences with, and people I can laugh with and listen to and just generally hang around and be myself with. Which is kind of really important, especially when I don’t entirely feel like I can be myself IRL still.

Rav honestly has such a good way with words, both when it comes to people and when it comes to prose, and seems wise way beyond her years at times. Her level-headedness has sometimes been a little intimidating to me, but possibly because it’d been a rare quality in people I’d known prior, and something I’m often lacking in myself. I look up to pretty much everyone for different reasons, or sometimes similar ones. Rav is one of these people I look up to, in part because of this level-headedness. (And also because holy shit she’s dealt with so much and still come out on top!!) She’s a lot of fun to write with and a very trustworthy person I’m honoured to call a friend.

I think, if my memory serves me right, when I was really starting to talk to this group as a group - not as it is now, but as it had been, with a few different people there or not there - it was Bets I’d first encountered. And, well, I didn’t make the best first impression, I don’t think... but I like to think it got way better afterwards. Bets is honestly a really fun and wild character whilst simultaneously having that level-headedness I really admire in people? And like, she has wack plotlines (I’m looking at all the Felly stuff especially with fuckin BIRDSCAPE), but it’s so much fun to see them unfold and be a part of them! I consider her one of the comic masters of the group alongside Ziz, and though their styles are fairly different I have a high respect for both of them. And what’s more, I’ve always found Bets super easy to approach, which is invaluable to me as someone who is very shy and unsure of themselves.

While I say Bets was one of the first people in this group that I encountered, but as the group stands now it was actually Situ. Prickly and Fin had this thing going between them that grew into joke-flirting that became actual flirting, because when you do something like that it’s almost certainly going to stop being a joke if you keep doing it. If there’s one thing I’m a sucker for it’s slow burn and these two delivered so wonderfully. Situ has always been super friendly, super eager and super full of enthusiasm! And while I regretfully haven’t always been able to match that, I have always had fun RPing with her. I love her art, her muse designs, and - honestly this might seem out of left field one day could you gimme a hand with my hair? Yours always looks so good!! ... Er, that aside, you’re another really approachable person who I appreciate a lot. (I also admire your muse dedication like holy shit how many blogs do I have now)

I absolutely have to open with the Del paragraph by stating she is fucking hilarious. There’s a reason she’s using the Jevil icon on Discord at the moment; she’s definitely our Joker. I’m legally obligated to state she’s full of beans (it’s funny because the beans are her muses), and I respect her so much for sticking with child muses and RPing them so well when it must be really damn difficult at times. There’s a lot of challenges that come with child muses for sure. Del is also a great listener, an enthusiastic plotter, and an incredibly sweet person. Fun fact: she sent me a plush jackalope a while back and he’s sat by my bedside ever since, receiving cuddles when I needed them most! Another fun fact: she’s usually the person who initiates the “hewwo??” in voice calls. Chaotic alignment as hell.

I’ve talked a lot about a particular group of friends but they aren’t really the only people I interact with... and while the people I interact with regularly has dwindled a little, there’s two people not in this specific group who are still super important to me, who I mentioned earlier, actually.

I’ll mention Shad first - blog linked further up - as someone who I’m really glad I grew closer to? We’d shared a few friend groups but it took a bit for us to really start interacting, and I’m so glad we did. She has a fucking killer sense of humour and it bleeds into her RPing in the best way. Being involved in her plots in any way is freaking awesome, and she’s been super great about getting involved in mine in a way that’s really fleshed them out and given them direction and form. Not to mention she was one of the reasons I got back into Guild Wars 2 and we have such a good time playing together and talking.

I think at least for now the last person and absofuckinlutely not least I’ll talk about is Ozi... whose friendship with me long pre-dates my current blogs, as we started RPing together in the League of Legends community. She’s a really positive influence in my life, and I’m honestly really grateful that she’s stuck by me through our changes in fandom. Seeing her grow and improve as an artist has been an absolute pleasure, and her writing has always delighted me. The development turns she takes are fantastic and really well thought out, and that she can work with so little and make so much is inspiring as all hell. (I’m mostly talking about the amount of work she managed to put into fleshing out Thresh back when we were in the LoL fandom but damn she’s doing such a good job with Shantae in this regard too?? Thresh was just a lot more... bare-bones. Ba dum tsch.)

It’s about now that I’ve run out of steam and it’s past my bed time but I would like to say that this list is by no means exhaustive. There’s a lot of people who have put me on the path I’m on today, some who I may not talk to as much, some I talk to more, some who I don’t talk to anymore at all. Maybe they left my life on a good note, maybe on a bad. But each and every person we meet leaves some kind of mark, however big, however small.

I’m grateful for all the people who’ve not only left kind marks on me, but stayed, too. ))

[sweater--child]

The Voltron Thing

I don't often talk about Voltron. I think I only have the one post on it, and really the post more addresses the archetypal look for the moody character in basically everything (I'm talking about Nico di Angelo and Keith looking incredibly similar). I do watch Voltron, and for the most part enjoy it. I don't post about it because, to be completely honest, the majority of the fandom is very toxic and just kind of terrifying. If you want to disagree, I want to remind you that I was once told to kill myself for saying Keith was my favorite character (I've got a thing for broken boys with daddy issues, bite me) and have been repeatedly verbally abused for saying that I thought Pidge's gender was up for interpretation. I also once had a girl rant and scream at me (about how klance was superior after I mentioned that for the most part I'm a multishipper) until I literally had an anxiety attack. And of course, these are just some of the things I have personally experienced. That's not including the many shipping wars (which I've seen have included accusations of pedophilia, death threats, homophobic/transphobic remarks and accusations, etc.), the verbal abuse of actors and writers, the verbal abuse of other fans, death threats towards fandom creators and towards the original creators, and blackmail. Fucking blackmail. My point is I don't normally touch the Voltron fandom or go any where near it. BUT after watching the newest season and after repeated messages with /demands/ (not asking or requesting- but demanding) and several threats (like seriously? What the actual fuck guys, calm down its a cartoon), I will talk about some of the issues I have with the newest season.

Also- this thing is weird and rambly because I'm not gonna put more effort into this. I made this purely because it was demanded and to address some issues, not with the show but with everything going on around the show.

Spoilers, you've been warned.

We're gonna start with the thing that has broken flipping tumblr, Adam. To be honest, I stay away from most of the side content and promotional material and prefer to let the show speak for itself. However, the adashi/shadam ship blew up everywhere (seriously, I couldn't go on Instagram for weeks without seeing it) and I finally tracked down the information because I was major league confused on where nerdy boy appeared from. Adam's death wasn't what I was expecting, but it happened? Would I have loved to see him alive and have a happy Shiro for once? Yes. Am I going to attack the creators and accuse them of homophobia? No. To be honest: I'm holding my judgment on Adam and Shiro until after Season 8 (and yes, I do plan to watch season 8) BECAUSE we don't know what they have planned. Knowing the creators and the style of Voltron, I do think we will be getting more of Shiro and Adam's backstory and more of their relationship pre-Kerberos. I think the major thing I was disappointed by was the lack of confirmation from the show itself on the nature of Shiro and Adam's relationship, but again, I'm waiting for season 8 to make my conclusion on the adashi situation.

The thing that bothered me: the randomly thrown in hetero ships. Has there been teasing for klance? Yes, but to be honest, I never actually expected them to confirm it. I don't expect klance to become canon. And I'm okay with that, I'm a mature adult and I can enjoy my ships without them being canon. No need to blackmail people or harass them. No need to send pointed tweets or nasty emails. (Am I salty? Yes.) (And honestly, I'm more interested in Keith and Lance's individual chracter developments than their love lives.) Hell, I don't even care if they date other people. What bothered me was the thrown in ships. This is a thing a lot of shows do that I have complained about time and again. They kinda go 'oh shit, need love interest. Hey this persons single! They'll be perfect!' And then throw then together in the most awkward way. Acxa got the redemption she fucking deserved! And then they threw her and Keith together. Allura has been ignoring Lances flirty nature all this time, but oh no the show is ending soon and Lotors gone. I'm not gonna flip out though (it's a cartoon, not the end of the world). However, I will summarize my thoughts in this: If a show decides to disregard a hinted at queer couple in favor of 2 hetero couples, at least let them make sense and have actual tension. BUT I say this knowing that there is 1 more season and this relationships have not been fully confirmed. Do I think klance will be canon? Probably not. But I hope for a more open ended solution, without confirmed relationship in which the viewer what they believed happened.

Now this is where people are going to call me out and retaliate saying that I don't care about media representation- in which you would be wrong. I'm not going to sit and defend myself about this, because you probably don't know me and I owe you nothing. I would love for more queer representation- I would love for more queer couples. Yes, Adam died, but I don't think it was meant to be anything more than a tool for Shiro's growth and it falls in line with Shiro's story line. I do not believe it was meant to in any way be a message about lgbt couples or individuals. Adam was just meant to be a casualty of war to make the show more impactful.

Do I think there has been queer baiting? Yes and no. Klance has been hinted at and talked about and there was a lot of hype about Adam. Being fair- a lot of these came from the fandom? Shiro's given a boyfriend we know nothing about and the fandom blows up and dies. Every time Keith are seen together on screen or in promotional material people screech about Klance. Shiro is shown in promotional material with Adam because leaving Adam behind only to return and find him fucking dead is huge to his development- it's promotional material meant to draw you in so you wnat to know more. Keith and Lance are shown a lot. Well: 1. Most recognizable characters, 2. Have had major character development and have at times been the main driving plot of the show, 3. To someone who has some how been unaware of the Voltron disaster over the last couple years, showing them the shows 2 pretty boys is gonna draw them in. I don't think it has been purposeful 'queer baiting'.

And, if we're going to talk about the representation issues, let's talk about how the fandom represents themselves. Cause you know if I wasn't part of the queer community and didn't know a whole lot about the community and only saw queer kids harassing adults on social media, blackmailing companies, and sending threatening emails over a gay couple, I wouldn't be thinking too highly of the queer community. And then that puts creators in a bad position because if they give in? Theyre just catering to these people. If they don't? They're homophobic and enforcing heteronormativity. Like wtf did you expect? I constantly wonder what this show could have been if the creators weren't having to deal with such a toxic fandom. When you do these things you are representing yourself, your age group, the fandom, and the queer community. You are a representation worse than this show could ever be.

Which leads me to my biggest complaint: the fandom. Obviously, ive already touched on this (a lot), but my god, is it bad. I go on Twitter and see tweets to Lauren, and thw actors. I see people with pictures of long, threatening emails. I see kids, and yes I'm saying kids because everytime I look its someone between the ages of 13 and 16, making scathing remarks and accusing people of being homophobic. Not even talking about the crap that's happened in previous years and seasons, this fandom disgusts me. I woke up this morning to fucking messages with demands that I talk about this. I know and follow so many creators who refuse to create for the Voltron fandom because it's so endlessly toxic. I don't know if you think you're cool or powerful or whatever for accusing and threatening but you're not. You just look stupid for throwing a fit over a cartoon originally aimed at kids. Also like saying youre not gonna watch the last season because you didnt get the ending you wanted? Really?

I had more to say but I'm done. This whole post has put me in a bad mood but I'm going to leave with this: if you really cared about lgbt representation or lgbt rights, you wouldn't be complaining about a cartoon to a bunch of people just doing their jobs. You're just upset the show didn't go how you wanted, get over it. I'm sick of seeing people attacked for nothing. Y'all are toxic and need to learn some manners.

[alittledropofheaven]

On the internet, where people become data and popularity is conveniently quantified, it’s easy to learn what a community values most. Twitter embraces celebrities and #brands. Reddit stans for Barack Obama and elaborate pop-culture GIFs. Quora is an asylum of techies questioning their morality and their stock options; its second-most-upvoted answer is a “soul-satisfying” account of a sales bro helping a homeless man.

On the Bodybuilding.com forums, the two most popular threads of all time are not about deadlifts, intermittent fasting, or maintaining motivation. They’re about women. Specifically, women Bodybuilding.com members would “love to pound.” While one thread features pictures of “petite/slim girls” and the other of “athletic girls,” both are an endless stream of lightly Photoshopped near-nudity and predictably lecherous comments. Both have been viewed almost 3 million times. And both are on the lone section of the Bodybuilding.com forums that’s explicitly unrelated to fitness: the Misc.

“Participate at your own risk, some content NSFW,” reads the description of the Misc. on the forums’ homepage. “U Aware?”

The number of people who are Aware, it turns out, is over 16 million. As of January 2018, these members of Bodybuilding.com have made more than 137 million posts on the forums, including 90 million on the Misc. The forums first became active in 2000, a time before Wikipedia and when “Skype” was neither app nor verb. Myspace—Myspace!—didn’t exist until three years later. The Misc., as the predominant section of an internet community with such immense popularity and longevity, has cemented its place near the top of Google’s search results for any query imaginable. To appropriate Rule 34, if it exists, there’s a Misc. thread for it. Online, at least, the Misc. is inescapable.

A cursory scroll through the Misc. reveals what it has in common with the still-popular internet communities it predates, Reddit and 4chan. There are the memes, comics, copypastas, acronyms, and slang recycled endlessly in a digital echo chamber largely devoid of moderation. There are the forum members—Miscers, they call themselves—who post, and post in, intentionally incendiary threads about whether tongue rings scream “cum dumpster” and how “Crossfit is gay,” then fan the flames for entertainment’s sake by doubling down on their inanity. There are moments ofuproarious, absurd, gut-busting idiocy. There are ideology-clarifying usernames (RICHSTRONG, MinisterOfLust, weightsb4dates, WishIWasJawBrah, MericaThatsWhy) and statement-making profile pictures (deliberately titillating yet invariably off-putting abdominal shots, monochromatic selfies, strategically underlit bicep closeups). There are trolls surely seething and/or laughing maniacally, their keystrokes like machine-gun fire, as they launch poorly punctuated ad-hominem attacks and, at their most destructive, encourage people to commit suicide. There are sexists, racists, xenophobes, and homophobes. There is the sense of being in a parochial, patriarchal madhouse where decorum has gone to die.

What emerges, when you spend enough time on the Misc., is a ghoulish portrait of a place that embodies the white, male id currently at the helm of S.S. America. The Misc. is a stone-faced Uncle Sam with Popeye’s forearms and a cocked pistol in each hand. It’s a screeching bald eagle with a foreign Bad Thing in its talons. It’s everything that defines America’s bro culture, magnified and weaponized. But it’s deeper than that.

“Bro-merican” culture is largely defined by the stratification of power and status, both real and imagined. So, too, is Bodybuilding.com, where a power imbalance is embedded in the structure and design of the site’s forums. Unlike on 4chan, where all posts are anonymous and ephemeral, or on Reddit, where the grand sum of a user’s upvotes has little value, Bodybuilding.com members’ reputation points, or “reps,” mediate and deeply influence community interactions. While reps are similar to Facebook likes—weighted such that getting either “repped” or “negged” by a user with hundreds of thousands of reps will drastically affect your own rep count—they function as the Misc.’s de facto currency. Your rep count is displayed next to your every post. It’s like your bank account balance flashing on your forehead whenever you speak.

Bullying by those with power (high-rep Miscers) and obsequiousness by those without it (low-rep Miscers) is rampant. Getting negged by a high-rep Miscer means potentially becoming a “red,” a user with negative reputation points, displayed beneath your username as a gradated red bar as jarring as a stop sign. If you’re a red, you’re a second-class citizen. Your posts might as well come with a disclosure: “I’m a worthless idiot. Please listen to absolutely nothing I say.”

The opinions and caprices of high-rep “green” Miscers, then, dictate the forum’s personality. Any Miscer brave enough to post contrarian ideas—including, and especially, those that are liberal and feminist—is often negged into oblivion. Bad joke misses the mark? Negged. Sincere comment comes off as sarcastic? Negged. The Misc. is an echo chamber in which “greens” are given a megaphone and a gun.

But in contrast with Reddit and 4chan, the Misc. has been filtered through and molded by bodybuilding subculture, a set of beliefs and customs rooted in the many manifestations of stereotypical masculinity: egotism, aggression, hypersexuality, über-competitiveness, entitlement. Insecurity, intolerance, misogyny. Bodybuilding, after all, is not about functional strength but about vanity and surface appearances, how masculinity is projected to the world. It fosters narcissism by trading in cosmetic superlatives: the highest bicep peaks, the most vascular calves, the most extreme V-shaped back.

The Misc. applies this dog-eat-dog frame of mind to every topic. Everything is a masculinity- or dick-measuring contest. Including, of course, the actual dick-measuring contests, because Miscers are nothing if not cripplingly aware of their own inadequate manhood. Swears and slurs are censored but their creatively misspelled phonetic workarounds are not, which makes for a forum full of “kunts” talking “chit” and menacingly telling each other to “pepper your angus” (prepare your anus). The most recurrent insults all concern perceived masculinity, or lack thereof. “U mad bro?,” a popular retort, juxtaposes one-of-the-guys slang with the notion that showing emotion means demonstrating debilitating weakness. A real bro doesn’t get mad, he only gets testosterone-fueled revenge.

Near the bottom of the masculinity totem pole are “low-T beta manlets”—that is, short, shy, effeminate guys. Lower down are “phaggots,” a word that gets tossed around the Misc. like salt at a Sichuan restaurant. Lest any Miscer think you’re a “phucking phaggot,” all posts about personal care, fashion, home decoration, or how to look like a certain actor/model/bodybuilder are appended with “no homo.” Yet shaky Misc. logic dictates that even if you’re a gay man, there’s still someone you genetically out-alpha and who is, therefore, below you: a woman.

While the entire internet is teeming with horny men whose dark loneliness and insecurity wears the cloak of misogyny, they seem to be especially vocal, and in especially high numbers, on the Misc. Every other thread is a depressing question (“Think she’s faithful to him?”) or a charged statement (“Drunk Sex > Sober Sex”) about women—their bodies, hitting on them, their innate tendency to cheat—and sex—where to find it, how to go “no contact” after having it, why she is fucking him.

The Misc.’s ties to PUA (pickup artist) forums and Reddit’s /r/TheRedPill, a perniciously misogynist, anti-feminist Reddit community dedicated to “discussing sexual strategy in a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men,” are as well documented as they are unsurprising. One of PUA’s most frequent suggestions is to acquire “inner game,” or self-confidence through self-improvement. Miscers, being on what is ultimately a bodybuilding forum, have inverted that mantra—they’re going from the outside in. Look good, feel good.

Other elements of the manosphere, from cries of societal misandry to sexual techniques like kino escalation and shit-testing, permeate the Misc. All women are “thirsty sloots” to be conquered, their emotions and physical well-being to be toyed with for internet strangers’ entertainment. When, to the forum’s delight, a Miscer posts about a sexual conquest in lurid detail—a surefire way to rack up the reps—the verbs employed are barbaric: “took down,” “smashed,” “hit.” To have “oneitis,” or an obsessive and unrequited crush on one woman, is to be afflicted with a masculinity-destroying emotional disease, one that can be cured, naturally, by sexually subjugating another woman. Regardless of whether a Miscer is successful or is rejected in the pursuit of sex, the response is the same: “Sloots gonna sloot.”

Despite the Misc.’s obsession with women, it has the latent homoeroticism you’d expect of a website devoted to a male-dominated sport in which bronzed, muscled competitors get smeared with oil and put on thongs before preening onstage in front of other men. This is no more obvious than when discussing a “Chad.” While there is a 5,000-post thread asking what, exactly, defines a Chad, the consensus is that he’s shorthand for a tall, built, strong-jawed, big-dicked, thick-haired, financially successful, athletic, confident, funny, sociable man who, because of these eminently desirable qualities, has his pick of the XX-chromosome litter. You look at a Chad and say, “This guy fucks.” (The prototypical Miscer might be a “Sheldon,” minus any TV-driven connotations of high-level intelligence.) Rob “Gronk” Gronkowski is a stone-cold Chad. Chad Johnson of The Bachelor is a Chad, and not just in name. It’s no accident that “Chad” is one of the most generically white and straight names imaginable, nor that archetypal Chads are nearly always white and straight. The etymological origin of the name Chad is the Welsh word cad, meaning “battle,” a fact that would surely delight Miscers to no end.

The Misc.’s resident Chad is an Australian bodybuilder known by his Bodybuilding.com handle, Zyzz. In early 2010, Zyzz began regularly detailing his “aesthetic” lifestyle on the Misc. As the so-called and self-proclaimed “king of aesthetics,” and with the zingy catchphrases “U mirin’ brah?” and “U jelly?,” Zyzz became the preeminent demigod of the Misc., where he and his “Aesthetics Crew,” acolytes similarly lacking in shirts, body fat, and social grace, were #bodygoals and #squadgoals come to life. Pictures and videosof Zyzz fist-pumping shirtless in public, wrapping his tanned arms low around the waists of nipple-pastied ravers at festivals, adopting a Herculean pose while standing in a shopping cart—these were the icons of the Misc. religion. When Zyzz died of a heart attack in 2011 at the age of twenty-two, his death became the sixth-most-searched death-related topic in Australia that year. His Facebook page, still regularly updated, has over 400,000 likes.

Zyzz’s masculinity showed itself in vain but harmless demonstrations of grandiosity, but other headline-making Miscers have expressed theirs through violence and morally indefensible acts. Gable Tostee first became a Misc. star by posting screenshots of his Tinder and text conversations with women he “rooted,” or had sex with; he entered Misc. lore after creating an ill-advised thread titled “Regarding the balcony tragedy” in the wake of news that one of his Tinder dates had been found dead from a fall from his apartment balcony. (Tostee was later acquitted of murder and manslaughter.) A Miscer known as YaBoyDave secretly filmed himself having sex with women—“whale-smashing,” in Misc. parlance—and posted the videos on the Misc.; he served 10 months in jail and is now a registered sex offender.

Still worse was Luka Magnotta, a wannabe model whose desperately misguided attempts at fame led him to asphyxiate kittens on camera and, later, live stream the brutal murder and dismemberment of a Chinese student while music from American Psycho played in the background; he was arrested at an internet café in Berlin, alternately surfing for pornography and reading news stories about himself, and it was later revealed that he’d posted on the Misc. Most infamously, Elliot Rodger, the Santa Barbara shooter, was active on the Misc., starting threads like “Why do girls hate me so much?” and “I’m tired of seeing losers with hot chicks.” In the latter thread, he recalled being “disturbed and offended” by seeing a “short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda Civic” with a “hot blonde girl in his passenger seat.” It’s the bro’s classic sense of entitlement: Why should someone less masculine than me have what I know I deserve?

Miscers reaching toxic masculinity’s most violent nadir are mercifully few and far between. Yet the obvious connection between these people is one shared by the vast majority of the Misc. They’re young, white men whose social and sex lives are marked by absence or humiliating rejection, and their worldviews have likely been shaped by those failures. Rodger, for one, admitted in his autobiographical manifesto to having “never even kissed a girl.” He was an “incel,” or involuntarily celibate. “Not getting any sex,” he wrote, “is what will shape the very foundation of my miserable youth.”

A pervasive negative sense of self, of disappointment about one’s past and simultaneous anxiety and hopelessness for one’s future, is to the Misc. what the iceberg was to the Titanic: visible if you know to look for it, destructive if you don’t, and lurking below the surface all the same

The running joke about Miscers is that they’re all sad, awkward, forever-alone virgins who don’t lift and are on the only non-fitness-oriented section of a bodybuilding website because they can’t get their shit together. It’s revealing that one of the Misc.’s celebrities—there’s a 24,000-word condensed version of his “saga” on a fan-made website dedicated to him—is a weird, often clueless Everyman. He’s neither egregiously out of shape nor conventionally “aesthetic,” and his videos show a distinct lack of social awareness, a trait cultivated, presumably, by a life spent behind a computer screen and under a barbell.

Users of other Bodybuilding.com sections and other internet communities entirely propagate this idea of the Misc. as a cesspool of beta males with hopelessly futile aspirations of being alpha. “They have to be some of the most insecure dudes out there,” a Hypebeast forum user said of Miscers. On another forum, a user wrote that the Misc. is “filled with people [who] make fun of autism, while at the same time they themselves complain about their jobs, women, etc.”

More often, however, the call is coming from inside the house. Miscers reveal their vulnerabilities and problems in earnest with critically self-aware, self-deprecating posts. There are countless threads about “beta” topics like being a virgin (a Google search of site:bodybuilding.com “virgin” yields nearly 70,000 results), undergoing hair loss, not knowing how to normally interact with women, and giving up entirely. The Misc.’sRelationships and Relationships Help sub-forum would be more aptly titled “Sex: Help.” The “Depression Discussion and Support Thread Part III” thread is “stickied” by moderators at the top of the Misc., indicating that it resonates with the community; “Part II,” before it got so long that a new thread had to be created, had 10,000 posts and 1.6 million views. After the two aforementioned pornographic threads of “petite/slim girls” and “athletic girls,” the most-viewed Misc. threads are one about “Beta/cringe” moments of social awkwardness and another that documents the 350-pound weight-loss journey of a Miscer named Wetbreasts. For many Miscers, undoubtedly, browsing those threads is either motivational or like looking in a mirror. Or both.

It might appear counterintuitive that unconfident, sex-deprived, socially awkward young men would congregate—by the millions—on a bodybuilding website. But that paradox is precisely what’s responsible for the Misc.’s enduring allure.

It goes like this: A young guy thinks that improving his body will improve himself, that lifting weights will make him more confident, which will make girls like him more, which will make him happier, which will get him laid. And so on. In search of guidance, he finds Bodybuilding.com, where, after analyzing fat-to-ripped or skinny-to-jacked transformation stories, he ends up on the most popular part of the website: the Misc. But in the Misc. he finds a different kind of self-help: a vibrant, active community of like-minded guys. Guys who’ve felt inadequate and lonely and somehow less than manly, who’ve struggled with women and friends and money and body image, who’ve laughed at internet jokes and self-referential image macros that no one found funny, much less comprehensible, in real life. With a newfound sense of solidarity, this young guy wades deeper into the Misc., a community that gets him, his worldview increasingly shaped by this bodybuilding subculture, his mind warped by the community’s devil-may-care, “LOL, nothing matters” ethos.

It’s this last quality of the Misc. that Miscers themselves most readily use to characterize the forum. They see the stupidity of getting worked up over little green internet squares. They don’t take themselves seriously—it’s a motley crew of dudes on a bodybuilding site, bro—so nor should anyone else. Their attitude, one adopted from the bro culture with which they’re intertwined, is predicated on actions not having consequences. Break shit and someone else will pay for it. Get blind drunk, scream offensive things in public, and your boys will carry you home. Sexually harass or assault a woman, more than one woman, dozens of women, and you’ll still be revered, promoted, elected. You’re just “bro-ing out,” man, be easy, be chill, have a beer, have a protein shake.

“bro that forum is a fucking laugh man, just need a sense of humour,” a Hypebeast forum user wrote, in a thread titled, “The misc section of the bodybuilding forums is full of clowns.” If you’re young, white, and male, with a sense of humor shaped by the internet and a sense of privilege shaped by, well, everything else, the Misc.’s “clowns” can certainly be hilarious. But the further you are from that in-group, the more those clowns start to look like a horde of disturbing, misogynistic Pennywises.

Zyzz was once your standard insecure teenager with bad hair and spaghetti-thin arms. “I remember feeling like a little bitch when I was out with girls, walking next to them and feeling the same size as them,” he said in an interview. Becoming “aesthetic” hid a profound insecurity. His no-fucks-given attitude hid a fierce desire to be wanted.

Miscers see only the mirage. To them, Zyzz was living, walking, flexing proof that an average guy could eventually open the door to the HBB-filled alpha-male kingdom by gaining confidence and an aesthetically pleasing body. But the king is no more. And not every guy in search of personal fulfillment finds the key to that door by picking up a barbell. Not every young, white male who’d otherwise troll Reddit or 4chan becomes, through bodybuilding, the type of bro who doesn’t spend time on internet forums because he’s too busy crushing it, whatever “it��� is, in real life. The Misc.—an online fraternity of the average and awkward, a safe space of the resentful and lustful and doubtful—is for the bros still searching.