#but tl;dr I’m worried I did ONE thing wrong which would not at all affect the pieces!!

[theaologies]

The last project I did at work was working with 150 year old original editions of a still wildly popular magazine and they were SUPER COOL however it was VERY STRESSFUL. But one of them was published a day shy of exactly 120 years before I was born!!

[freckledbodty]

Stripping Away The Bloat - The Umibe No Etranger Movie Did The Manga Dirty

I finally got around to watching the movie of Umibe no Etranger - a movie I didn’t know existed based on one of my old favourite BL mangas. And oh boy, does this adaptation reflect a painful trend in manga to anime/movie adaptations overall. Allow me a moment to rant, if you will...

TL;DR: READ THE MANGA BY THE LOVE OF GOD IT’S WONDERFUL. Also the movie is super pretty, but here’s a semi-detailed look at why it still really didn’t do the manga justice. You bet I came with receipts.

A few important notes before you start: 

1. Remember this is just my opinion, and I’d love to hear other people’s point of view on the matter, whether you agree or disagree! 

2. I am not fluent enough in Japanese to read the original without a translation, so my thoughts on the manga are coming from fan translations, which 100% might have affected how I view this! The anime I’m a little more sure on as I can generally tell when the subtitles have deviated, but that does mean I may have missed something/something was lost in translation that means something I say here is incorrect. I’m very sorry for this, so remember this is my view based on the media types I’ve consumed. 

3. Also the manga cuttings I use are not the best quality because of tumblr’s sizing, so even more of a reason to go read the books yourself! 

I’m aware I’m very late to this party, but when I saw the other day that this movie had been made, I was horrified that I hadn’t known about it sooner. I read the manga years ago, and adored it - it’s genuinely a sweet and beautifully drawn romance, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone. With that, however, the movie was a huge disappointment to me and I just need to have a moment to gush in a less than positive way. 

The Pros: 

Let’s get this out of the way, I’d still probably recommend this movie to anyone who likes romance anime-style movies. It’s beautifully animated. Seriously, this movie is stunning, with wonderful expressions, bright colours, and a pretty well suited soundtrack too. The animation tries to match the original art style of the manga, and frankly, I think it captures it perfectly. 10/10. Gorgeous. Watch it just for the prettiness. 

I’m also a big fan of any BL/GL adaptations that get a little more into the mainstream. This movie is definitely a huge win in terms of representation, especially when the manga (on the whole) avoided the more negative tropes that the BL/GL genres have historically been known for. (More on that later...) So that’s a win, and I will take it. 

The Bloat Cut: 

To put it simply, this movie fell into the trap of what I call (in my head) ‘cutting out the bloat’. As a long-time anime and manga fan, who has seen countless adaptations over the years, it’s a common theme that tends to make or break an anime. 

‘Cutting out the bloat’ to me means that the adaptors cut out a lot of the ‘smaller’ moments and panels that are seen in a manga. This movie was thankfully very good at following the original plot and took us through the same beats that the manga did (many adaptations don’t bother doing that at all), but they left out a lot of the extra stuff - the aforementioned ‘bloat’. 

The bloat isn’t really bloat in that it is pointless, however: the problem is that these little moments and scenes are seen to be pointless by the adaptors. Again, understandable: they have a limited run time, and it’s hard to include every little tiny moment, especially when they are ones that are easily scanned passed. Some bloat cutting is necessary to make an adaptation viable at all, but sometimes, it can be hugely detrimental to the piece. Umibe no Etranger is a key example of this. 

Setting: 

I watched this movie without rereading the manga, and as such, I was quickly thrown off by how bad the movie was. This was one of my favourite mangas, wasn’t it? Had I really had such terrible taste? (Yes, let’s not go there, but this manga was not one of my high-school bad decisions). 

The characters felt strange. Personalities did complete 180s after the time skip and did some questionable things that I couldn’t recall finding issue with when I read the manga. The two main characters felt so hot and cold that it didn’t feel like the story I remembered. Even the pacing felt off and janky at times. 

After watching, I went back and reread the manga, and this is where I saw all the ‘bloat’, the little intricate moments and minor panels that were easy to overlook but made the story what it was. Here’s a few of the biggest examples I could find. 

Shun:

Oh, Shun. What did they do to you? 

Shun’s character was bizarre. In the first 15 minutes of the movie, he was bubbly, friendly, and even bold enough to flirt with Mio. After the time skip, he was sour, cold, and completely withdrawn from the world. I understood Mio’s confusion because after the time jump he was a completely different character. 

The manga is often focused on Shun and his inner thoughts, and he’s the one who is hurt the most by the bloat cutting. For starters, he wasn’t as over-the-top friendly at the start of the manga as he was in the anime, and we’re able to see his inner thoughts and worries that cause his reservations from the first few pages we meet him. We also get more hints earlier on as to Shun’s past that explain a lot of his behaviour as a whole, as well as getting little hints as to why he’s even more negative and exhausted after the time jump. 

Mio: 

The biggest bloat cut out in terms of Mio is the big plot point of the phone call. For context, before leaving for the time skip, Mio promises to call Shun once he’s gotten to his new home. In the movie, this is never really brought up again, focusing on the relationship in the present, but this was a huge point to leave out. I think it was cut out because it was explained in one short scene in the manga, and therefore easily mistaken for bloat. 

In the manga, it’s explained that Mio does call, but it’s Eri who answers, and there’s a very important conversation that sets up Mio’s whole character development and explains why he returns to the island set on having a relationship with Shun. Eri warns him that calling Shun, despite knowing that Shun has feelings for him, is cruel and unfair, and tells Mio he shouldn’t contact him unless he’s worked out his feelings. It’s a great scene, and a real shame to leave out when it explains firstly why Mio never called back, and secondly why he is so adamant about his feelings and love for Shun when he does finally return: because he saw Eri’s warning to mean ‘don’t come back unless you are serious’.

Relationship:

In the movie, Mio and Shun didn’t really seem to have a relationship until the drama kicked up and then it quickly seem to disappear again. Shun was extremely held back and reserved, and barely ever seemed to return Mio’s feelings (even in the scenes he was instigating) - he even totally avoided anything resembling physical contact at first. 

Compare this to the manga, where there are little hints of their relationship progressing throughout the chapters. For one, Shun is never as cold and blank as he seems in the film, and when he does seem that way, the manga quickly shows a glimpse of his thoughts to explain how he’s exhausted or distracted - without those little bloated thought bubbles, he just seems... a little cruel frankly.

A really good example of this is the beach kiss scene. In the movie, as Mio is about to kiss him, Shun suddenly announces that he’s hungry and avoids the kiss altogether, leaving Mio confused. 

In the manga, they actually do kiss - it’s their first kiss, in fact. Shun seems embarrassed and his ‘I’m hungry’ feels like more of a way to distract them both. He explains he’s exhausted (which is fair enough, this is a big thing for him to process on little sleep that his inner thoughts earlier in the chapter already set up) rather than just outright shunning him. (Ha. Shun. shun. Get it?) 

A more *noted* bloat they cut out is that Shun and Mio get physical in the manga way earlier than the movie, the touches just not quite being everything Mio wanted. Without those more tender moments, where they actually seem like a couple, it seems like Mio is chasing after Shun desperately, whilst Shun couldn’t care less about him. It detracts from the whole relationship. Below are some examples of the two of them actually seeming like a couple that were cut from the movie, including longing looks from Shun, Shun hugging Mio whilst he’s asleep, and Shun asking to kiss and touch Mio. 

The Issue: 

Bloat cutting always annoys me, but usually, if it’s not hindering the story, I don’t mind. What bothers me most of all in this movie, is that without these subtle little panels and moments, the relationship between Shun and Mio seems... forced, frankly. In the movie, Shun seems to be the instigator of the flirting, and then after the time skip he acts practically disgusted, avoiding a lot of Mio’s advances, and we don’t get to hear his inner thoughts like we do in the manga to explain why he’s feeling this way. 

In the manga, during these ‘bloat’ pieces, Shun is an actual willing participant in the relationship, and Mio isn’t just forcing his advances onto Shun. It’s natural. It’s not flipping between hot and cold, or suddenly ramping up after a big moment of drama, it’s slow and careful and a real relationship. 

This would be a bad change in any adaptation, but it’s especially so in this one. Anyone who is a fan of BL specifically is probably aware of the genre’s bad rep historically for having some... questionable consent issues. This manga didn’t have them. The movie? I’m not so sure, and that’s why it’s rubbed me the wrong way. I could spend another 1000 words talking about this issue as a whole, but I’ll leave it there, you get the idea.

Expected? Yes. Okay? Meh. 

There’s no real point to this post aside from to complain a little and point out just how much more the source material gives us. Cutting the bloat always happens, and I don’t want it to stop happening per say, that would be impossible, but I’d kill for adaptors to just take a little more time to work out what is unnecessary and cutable bloat, and what is something they should really keep in. 

The movie is still cute and beautifully made, so please go watch and see for yourself! Mostly, I’d highly recommend the manga: it’s got the same gorgeous art style, only about 5 chapters long, and the story and relationship is that little bit more firmly built. 

I’ll stop ranting now, and I hope this actually made sense? Anyway, congrats on making it all this way.

[cinnonym]

christmas magic's brought this tale (to a very happy ending)

Written for Day 10 - Game Night / Movie Night of 12 Days of Christmas @supercorpbb

Read on AO3

***

r/relationship_advice – posted by u/anonymous1000 – 13 hours ago

My (25f) crush and best friend (27f) chose a lesbian classic for movie night, how do I react?

Disclaimer ahead: I haven’t used reddit before and am thus not very fluent in etiquette and formatting, but please bear with me because I am seriously overwhelmed by the current situation and would appreciate all forms of help. I’m also typing this in a hurry, because I’m supposed to be in the bathroom, so please excuse typos or inaccuracies. I’ll try my best. But now, without further ado, here goes:

I (25f) have been crushing on my best friend (27f) pretty much since the day we met. For context, that was two years ago, and while we started out on a business relationship, it evolved into a close friendship almost right away. This is mostly due to her, I must admit. She’s the most open-minded person I know and simply couldn’t be “scared away” by my bad reputation (which I inherited). Needless to say, I’m very grateful for her. She’s not only my best, but has also been my only friend for quite a while, before she introduced me to her inner circle. I unironically owe her my happiness (and my life, several times over, but that’s unrelated to this story).

I’d fallen in love before I realised what was happening. Usually, trust and affection come slowly to me, but her I loved almost right away. That’s simply who she is, a person one cannot help loving. Also, she’s very attractive, side note. I used to flirt with her sometimes, in the beginning, before I became aware of the depth of my feelings (this is awkward to talk about, btw, thank goodness for anonymity online), and back then, it seemed like she wasn’t all unresponsive to my advances. Then again, she isn’t very good at saying no to anyone, because of who she is as a person, so maybe she was only being polite? I’m not sure.

Anyway, she had a boyfriend then, and I had to come to terms with my feelings, so I sort of drew back a little. I’d been with women before, so that was never an issue, but I’m uncertain whether she has ever considered women. Her sister is gay, and she is very supportive of her, but we’ve never talked about how she feels. As far as I know, she’s only ever been with men though. Either way, I’m not in the business of making moves on taken people, so I mostly focused on fostering our friendship.

The thing is, as long as I can be close with her, I am sort of okay with being “just friends”. I mean, isn’t close friendship like a romantic relationship, just minus the romance? And minus the physical advantages (although she is a very cuddly person, so that’s nice). And, like, of course, I’d like to mean more to her. Of course I’d like to take care of her every day when she comes home, cook her dinner, listen to her worries, massage her neck, kiss her goodnight. Of course I’d like to be The One to her, just like she is The One to me. But considering that she’s probably straight and not interested in me in that way, I’m mostly okay with just being her best friend.

Or, I was mostly okay with it. But recently she’s… been acting differently towards me. She’s giving me these long glances when she thinks I don’t notice (I do). She’s going out of her way to make sure I’m fine and don’t work too much (it’s a tendency I have, especially pre-Christmas). She’s told me she’s been working on my Christmas gift almost all month (and I can’t for the hell of it guess what it could be). She’s even invited me for Christmas with her family (since I don’t celebrate with mine).

And now today, she chose the film Carol for movie night (movie night is a weekly thing we do, I should have mentioned that earlier, maybe), which is, as you might know, about a lesbian relationship. And I don’t know what to do.

She claims to have chosen the film because it was on a list of Christmas films (and I suppose it does have christmassy vibes), and because it “sounded fitting”. Sounded fitting?? What is that even supposed to mean? She doesn’t know I’m gay, so it can’t be that, unless she somehow figured out. Is she gay and this is her way of telling me? And if so, how do I react? Is this her letting me know she’s interested in me, or am I reading too much into this? Did she even realise this was a lesbian film??

Anyway, she’s calling from the living room, so I need to go. I’ll try to take another bathroom break halfway into the movie, and I’d appreciate it A Lot if I had some reactions in by then, because I’m panicking a little here. Thank you all!

Tl;dr: my supposedly straight friend chose a lesbian film for movie night, and I don’t understand her intentions behind that.

(P.S. She and her boyfriend have broken up months ago. She’s currently single.)

***

r/relationship_advice – posted by u/anonymous1000 – 11 hours ago

UPDATE to this post

First of all, thank you all so much for your quick replies, they’re really helpful. As you might have guessed, I managed to negotiate another bathroom break mid-film (though my friend is currently sulking on the couch, she didn’t want to let me go? :) ?) and am, once again, typing as fast as my fingers will allow. Much has happened.

I’ve mentioned that my friend is a very cuddly person. Today was no difference – as soon as she’d pressed play on the film, she’d already enveloped me in one of her bone-crushing hugs (she’s very strong). Normally, I let myself sink into these embraces, because she really is a phenomenal hugger, but today my speculations were so prevalent in my mind that I could hardly breathe when our bodies touched.

(She noticed my reaction right away, and immediately asked if I’d rather not hug (to which I replied a vehement no), and this really isn’t very important to the story, but I wanted to let you know.)

As the film progressed (largely unregarded by me, I must admit), I noticed several things about her behaviour that seemed odd, though:

One, her heartbeat became considerably faster as soon as Carol and Therese had met on-screen and it became clear that their relationship would be the focus of the film.

Two, she’s been side-eyeing me a lot more frequently than usual (she tends to watch me watch films if she knows the plot already, but considering she probably hasn’t seen Carol before, this seems out of character for her).

Three, and this is… I don’t even know how to feel about this, but… how do I formulate this best…  When the sex scene was playing, I swear she looked at my cleavage and blushed.

I’m sort of ecstatic (because those are hints, right? I can’t be the only one to think that those are hints?) but also very very VERY worried that I’ve totally misinterpreted the entire situation. Then again, all of your comments sound incredibly hopeful and affirming, so I guess I’m not entirely wrong in my assumptions?

I need to go back now (I’ve been here way too long already), but I will definitely keep you updated. It’s so heart-warming to see how invested all of you are!

@everyone who told me to kiss her already: if she keeps this up, I just might :)

***

r/relationship_advice – posted by u/anonymous1000 – 1 hour ago

UPDATE! All’s well that ends well!

Hey everyone, I am so sorry for the late update. I ended up being… somewhat busy last night.

:) :) :)

So, long story short, we’re dating now. And yes, I did kiss her (or she kissed me, I can’t remember exactly. We somehow kissed each other simultaneously).

Long story slightly less short, because I see you hungering for details in the comments (and my now-girlfriend said you deserved to know), here is how it went down:

We didn’t even finish the film. We didn’t even resume the film, after I returned from the bathroom. Because when I did, giddy and ready to Do This, she wasn’t even looking at me. No, she was looking at her phone.

Now, I’ve never seen a person look at their phone with an expression quite as shocked as hers. She was, I’m not kidding, completely frozen (and if you knew her, you’d know that doesn’t happen often).

So naturally I rush over to her, worried as can be, thinking something bad happened, a catastrophe or maybe an accident in her family. And as I kneel by her side, and she still hasn’t moved, I happen to see what she’s been reading on her phone screen.

And it’s reddit.

I’m not gonna lie, for a second I thought it was all over. I mean, she’d obviously recognised us in my post (so much for anonymity everyone, the internet is treacherous), and judging by her expression, well… I assumed the worst.

But then she turns around and she fixes me with this incredibly cute stern stare she has, and she goes: “[My full name]. Have you browsed the relationship tag even once?”

And I shake my head, completely dumbfounded of course, because what does that have to do with anything. But apparently it plays a crucial role, because apparently you all know my girlfriend.

Her username is @supergirlssupercurls and she’s been posting the entire journey of our friendship/romance on this platform. Turns out she loves me too.

:)

She’s also told me to end this with: and they lived happily ever after.

(Let’s hope we do).

[donnerpartyofone]

reasons my i am probably too sensitive to have anything to do with other people

including other people’s drama that has absolutely nothing to do with me

i started reading this person’s new webcomic on instagram a month or two ago, and what started out as a fun little time killer that i looked forward to every day has started making me so uncomfortable that i wish i’d never heard of it. it takes place right now, in an especially embattled US city, and it’s about the dysfunctional lives of a bunch of shallow millennials, set against the backdrop of an increasingly dangerous country in an unpredictable state of revolt. it’s solidly engaging, convincingly characterized, and rendered in a unique funny animal style; i wasn’t surprised to discover that it’s going to be published soon by the most reputable publisher of this sort of thing. at first, i was impressed by it because i thought the behavior and dialog of its insecure young people was so well observed. it felt like one of the only things of its kind that i’ve read, more or less about real people living right now, that was neither a broad ugly satire, nor a pretentious drama exaggerating the specialness of its characters. the other thing i liked about it was that while it was largely about their sex lives, it didn’t seem at all sexy to me. the artist has a kind of distorted, rough-hewn visual style that i thought put some emotional distance between the overheated state of the characters, and the real consequences of their decisions. then it all got weird.

the artist stuck a really long, graphic sex scene in the middle of story that made me think...oh, maybe i AM supposed to be getting off to this? that’s weird, this all seems really bad to me, like every character is just mindlessly, selfishly bent on destruction and not doing much to make me like them, and i’d been reading along thinking “god i’m SO GLAD i’m not in my 20s anymore and i don’t have to deal with people like this--or with the pressure to act like this, as if using sex to create drama and being ‘crazy’ is the ultimate thing a person can do with their life”--and then suddenly it felt like maybe the comic was actually some kind of celebration of this lifestyle, or at the very least it’s an intensely sentimental portrait of a time of life, and of types of people, that i cannot imagine feeling sentimental about. then something else happened that made the comic even MORE uncomfortable to read, somehow: it had been gaining traction at an amazing pace, with tons of people leaving comments to the tune of “noooo don’t do it!”, the way you would yell at someone in a horror movie not to go back for the cat, as each character made the worst possible personal choice in every daily installment. the “don’t go in there!” response seemed pretty natural to me, but then the artist stepped in and made this announcement threatening to stop doing the comic altogether if the readers wouldn’t stop criticizing the characters. pretty much everyone in the comments was like “???”. many apologized if their comments were offensive, although they had no idea what they could have said that was wrong; other people, who seemed more sure that they were the ones being accused, said that they thought you were SUPPOSED to feel critical of the characters’ obviously bad decisions. that was how i felt, and at that point i was just enormously glad that i never comment on shit online or get involved in any type of community shit, especially when the artist started explaining laboriously that all of the characters represent some facet of the artist themselves and so therefore none of them are meant to be seen in a bad light at all and they’re all meant to be loved unconditionally and if you find yourself thinking mean things about the characters then you are effectively shitting all over the artist as a person. a lot of readers fell all over themselves to be supportive, and i just thought...this isn’t something you should support, though. it sucks that the artist is feeling so sensitive, but they’re about to have a book out in the world where they won’t have any ability to threaten readers who are “reading it wrong” or having incorrect thoughts about it. i mean...life is full of uncomfortable experiences and people you can’t relate to, i really don’t think we should be promoting this hopeless sanitization of all experiences in which trigger warnings used to be something that protected traumatized people from being randomly confronted with traumatic material, and now they’re used to just make sure nobody ever has to hear anything they don’t like, ever. anyone who cares about this artist should be helping them understand that they cannot control how people read their book or how they feel about each character and story in it. or failing that, they should be encouraged to just turn off instagram comments. but because of all this drama, i found myself reading all the comments obsessively--something i did when the blowup first happened, because i couldn’t find anything in there that i thought was mean or offensive, which added to my uncomfortable fascination with the whole thing--and that’s when i spotted a comment where somebody asked the artist is this was a furry comic. i wish this didn’t blow my mind, but it kind of did. i mean, it’s a book where almost all the characters are animals, and they occasionally have a bunch of raunchy sex. i think that if you’re a furry, meaning you’re interested in that sort of thing, this book is completely available for you to enjoy however you want. but this person needed the artist to FORMALLY CATEGORIZE IT as a furry comic. what the fuck is the meaning of that? it struck me as something that people in fandoms do, where they need every single thing to be labeled to death in an intensive and intractable way like it was science, the Final Word on everything in the universe, and they like *argue with each other* about whether they’re *allowed* to ship certain characters together or imagine them doing specific things, which is something you would only worry about if you thought the topic represented a literal material reality that could be adversely affected by people’s improper thoughts. i mean imagine if you felt that way about your jerkoff fantasies about fictional characters? that your horny thoughts are up for debate by hundreds of people you don’t even know? imagine feeling like that about OTHER PEOPLE’S jerkoff fantasies, like it’s worth fighting over and trying to CONTROL? like holy fucking shit you guys, STOP IT. it would even be one thing to ask the artist if THEY were a furry, which may or may not be anybody’s business, but to ask whether interpreting the comic through a furry lens is ALLOWED is like...well, actually, maybe it’s exactly in line with the artist’s recently expressed attitude, that you’re forced to think of the book in exactly the way that they personally think about it, or else you should have your reading privileges revoked. so now i’m still reading the comic, sort of compulsively, because i’m a little addicted to the soap opera of it and i’m ALSO a little addicted to the soap opera of the artist battling the readers over finding the correct orthodoxy for reading the comic--there’s a particular guy i’ve become aware of in the comics community because he is always harassing people with this mix of really caustic sarcasm and really bitter political self-righteousness, and he was surely the main person who was being “mean” to the characters, and HE’S STILL DOING IT IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY, because i guess the artist would rather have problems with people than simply block them and eliminate them from the equation? but the whole entire thing is making me so uncomfortable i can hardly stand it. reading about like, dumb hot chicks with no self-control, and smug young shitheads who use the veil of progressiveness to hide or justify their predatory sexual behavior, and grownass adults who start drama with 20 year olds in order to feel relevant, AND being forced to know that the artist intends for me to embrace and adore all of this bad shit--like, people and things i left behind in real life, because it was all bad!--with ultimate love and compassion, or else they reserve the right to claim that they’re being personally attacked, has just become too much to take. it’s starting to make me feel sick. i really need to take the reigns on this thing. as much as the artist needs to forget about this control fantasy and stop being so precious about what they’re doing, i need to stop subjecting myself to something i find painful, embarrassing, and frankly creepy, if i ever wanna get back to a state where i have less to complain about.

tl;dr: stupid hipster is too sensitive to read a webcomic by a stupid hipster who is too sensitive for anyone to read their webcomic.

[adhd-asd]

how can one deal with not being able to afford getting evaluated/diagnosed for adhd? i've done lots of research online and meet nearly all the symptoms, and my therapist has suggested the possibility of me having it, but i can't afford to get evaluated and currently second guess everything wondering if i'm an imposter. is there a way to have certainty of whether or not i have adhd without getting professionally evaluated/diagnosed? i'm worried i'm just making things up or it's not that bad

     A lot of points to touch on here so I’m going to break up my responses into categories to make things a little easier to digest.

1. How can I be certain?

     I don’t know if you can be, and I don’t know if getting diagnosed would actually change that. Personally, I do have a professional diagnosis and I still worry that I’m just making things up sometimes; like I somehow tricked them into seeing something that isn’t really there or they got it wrong by mistake.

     If you’ve done your research and are reasonably convinced that you have ADHD, and you even have a therapist who corroborates that belief, I’d say you’re in a pretty good position, and you may be better off practicing coping with those feelings of uncertainty when they arise rather than trying to prevent them from ever happening in the first place. Hopefully the following paragraphs will be able to provide some tools and reassurances to help you do that.

2. What if I’m making it up?

     I’d highly recommend taking a look at this post which briefly explores potential sources of the self doubt that can come with ADHD and provides some reassurances and rebuttals to the idea that we might be faking it.

3. I’m worried it’s not that bad.

     You’re the only one who can decide how bad it is, because it’s dependent on your own feelings and experiences. Do you actually feel it’s not that bad? Do you feel it shouldn't be that bad? Or do other people tell you it’s not that bad? What matters is how you experience the world, not what anyone else says or expects.

     I have a friend who loves horror movies, whereas I can’t watch one without being seriously emotionally overwhelmed to the point of a meltdown. Does the fact that my friend can watch horror movies without issue mean that horror movies aren’t that bad? That I’m wrong about how they affect me? Of course not, because those are my genuine feelings and experiences, regardless of what I might expect or hope for, or what’s true for anyone else. My experiences matter and are worth acknowledging, no matter how atypical they are, and nothing anyone else says or feels is going to change that.

     It took me a while to get to this point of self-acceptance, though. I think it's pretty commmon for people growing up undiagnosed to internalise all their symptoms as personal failings and blame themselves for every perceived shortcoming. We tend to think that our problems are our own fault, and if we just tried harder, we could be like everyone else. This can make it difficult to recognise (and accept) our ADHD, because we might be tempted to write off all the symptoms as not being symptoms, but rather things that we could change and just haven't yet.

     Try taking some time to set aside your preconceptions and just be cognisant of your reality. Be honest with yourself about your own feelings and experiences and try not to downplay them or let expectations of what things “should” be like cloud your ability to recognise and acknowledge them for what they actually are.

     If it feels like your ADHD is significantly affecting you, then it almost definitely is. Even if you’re able to work really hard and overcome it, the fact that you had to put that much effort in means it was a significant obstacle in the first place. And if it really wasn’t that bad, I don’t think you would’ve sent this ask. It’d be a non-issue and you’d be able to ignore it or let it go without too much worry.

4. What if I’m wrong/an imposter?

     Well, what if you’re wrong? Would anything actually happen? You may feel a little silly, but I don’t see how such a mistake could actually hurt anyone. Even if it isn’t ADHD after all (which seems unlikely, given what you’ve said), you’re still experiencing difficulties that align with the symptoms, and finding ways to lessen the impact of those difficulties and make your life easier isn’t wrong of you.

     I constantly encourage people to make use of ADHD coping mechanisms if they’re helpful whether they have ADHD or not, and I’ve talked here and here about how I believe some coping is better than no coping, even if a mistake is being made in identifying the source. You’re doing the best you can with what you have for now, and if something changes down the line to make you reconsider your situation then that’s okay! It doesn’t retroactively mean that everything up to that point was for nothing.

     Figuring this stuff out is tough and sometimes even professionals get it wrong, so I certainly wouldn’t blame you if you did make a mistake, and I would hope that the resources and experiences you gather from your time exploring ADHD would be helpful to you regardless. Even if you come to the conclusion that your symptoms are relatively mild or infrequent after all, that doesn’t mean you can’t still have coping mechanisms at the ready for whenever they are a problem. There’s no “you must be at least this ADHD to cope” sign.

5. How do I cope?

     I have a post here that discusses coping with ADHD specifically without a formal diagnosis that may be helpful to start with. It mentions how I personally find that coping while diagnosed and coping while undiagnosed are almost identical, since a lot of our coping tends to rely on us speaking up about our needs and implementing changes in our own lives anyway.

     I’d also encourage you to make use of all the other posts and resources on my blog, seeing as this space is self-dx friendly, and I imagine a lot of other similar blogs are as well. And, of course, your therapist may be a good person to talk to about your concerns and possible coping strategies if you haven’t already.

TL;DR

Self doubt can be pretty common in ADHDers, and practicing coping with the uncertainty may be more beneficial than looking for ways to eliminate it entirely.

Trust your own understanding of your experiences over what other people tell you.

Even if a mistake is made, the symptoms that led to the self-diagnosis are still present and the coping strategies learned can still be beneficial.

A lot of ADHD coping comes down to self-implemented change, which you’re free to make use of regardless of diagnostic status.

     Thank you for your patience waiting for this response and I hope it helps! Good luck!

[successfullyadhd]

im 31, and after over a decade of trying to figure out what is wrong with me, my therapist and I are finally thinking it’s ADHD. i’ve had a gut feeling about it for a while and every ADHD post is relatable. now the problem is finding an place that does adult assessments and is affordable (no insurance). do you have any tips on going through the assessment as an adult? and if i can’t afford it, and can’t get medication. how do i ever become the productive focused person i want to be? thanks.

Sorry in advance for the long post... I put the most relevant bits in bold for a TL;DR version.

 I know getting diagnosed as an adult can seem daunting, but you shouldn’t worry too much. While ADHD was once viewed as something that only affected children, it is now widely recognized as a lifelong disorder and you shouldn’t have to fear being dismissed because you weren’t diagnosed early in life. It’s extremely helpful that you have been seeing a therapist, and they also think you have ADHD. Ask them to send over their notes when you do go to the doctor.

As for how to get diagnosed - I’ll start by saying I hate the way American healthcare is set up, as medication and healthcare in general are expensive. I have to move frequently for me and my husband’s jobs (we both work in hospitality, and as the saying goes, “You have to move out to move up!”). Because most (all?) ADHD medications are a Schedule II drug (highly regulated but still legal), I have to get rediagnosed in every new state. I always bring my past history, but most doctors want to complete testing as they are monitored for prescribing stimulants and can lose their license if found to be providing this medication without ample documentation. (All of this to say - I have been through the procedure many times as an adult.) Depending on the state, some doctors also require bloodwork and an EKG to ensure you are healthy enough to receive the medication (although some will accept past test results if done recently enough.) Also depending on the state and doctor, they may have additional requirements. In Florida, my doctor wanted a multitude of tests, and asked for a sleep study to ensure the medication wasn’t causing poor sleep. In California, as part of the Kaiser HMO system, I was required to do periodic drug tests to ensure I wasn’t also using street drugs, and to check that the Adderall was in my system (as a test that I was using it as prescribed, and not selling it). Some states are much easier – Utah, Alabama and West Virginia all were able to diagnose me in one appointment and prescribed the medication same day. Last, a General Practitioner won’t typically prescribe it and will direct you to a psychiatrist. Even if you did have insurance, most don’t cover psychiatrists or if they do, it comes with a different deductible (because obviously mental health isn’t part of regular health (heavy sarcasm)). After diagnosing, you have to meet with the doctor once a month to get the prescription refilled – due to the Schedule II status, they can’t have it on an auto-refill like other medications and they need to ensure you aren’t abusing it or having negative side effects. (although the one good thing to come out of COVID is that it normalized tele-health appointments, since an in-person meeting with a doctor once a month can be difficult to schedule). Even though I have health insurance, I typically pay out of pocket $120 a month for my visit with the doctor, and after insurance and a coupon I pay $73 for two medications (Adderall & Vyvanse). I’m fortunate now to be able to afford that expense – at the times in my life where I couldn’t, I would request a 30 day supply of the more affordable pills and only take medication on days where I couldn’t function without it (such as doing large amounts of paperwork) and try to use learned behavior techniques the rest of the time, to stretch out my resources.

As far as what goes into the actual diagnosis – doctors most commonly use a questionnaire about your daily life to assess you. Here is a link to commonly-used questionnaires: https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-assessments-and-tests/.

I know I just made it seem very daunting to get diagnosed and on a medication, but I want to be honest with you about what the process looks like, and again, depending on where you live it can be done in one session. Now that is out of the way, let me give you some information that is more helpful:

If you can, skip asking a regular GP for a referral and make an appointment directly with a psychiatrist. This will save you the extra cost of the doctor’s appointment, just to be told someone else will help. Many places have low cost mental health centers and ADHD falls into that realm, so I would check out what is available in your city. Before making an appointment, confirm the following:

-          Do they diagnose ADHD?

-          Do they prescribe medication? (Therapists don’t prescribe, only psychiatrists, and some will not prescribe ADHD medication at all so it’s important to be clear that it is your intention to receive medication if diagnosed)

-          What tests do they require for diagnosing, and prescribing medication? (Some places may have more or less requirements, and it can even vary within a city or state. This way you will know if it’s something you can afford at the time.)

Talk with the doctor about your specific situation, and what medications are affordable without insurance. Adderall, for example, is past the 10 year exclusive patent and now has a generic version available. It comes in quick release and slow release, depending on your needs. You can also talk to the doctor about a prescription to both quick and slow release, so you take the correct medicine based on your needs for that day (marathon work day? Slow release that extends over the entire day. Afternoon project – quick release that lasts for four hours). Vyvanse is great but doesn’t have a generic version and is insanely expensive without insurance (to the tune of $350+). Use the GoodRX app to find deals on medication without insurance (Adderall is about $15 for a month supply with this app). There are a ton of drug options so look up the pricing during the doctor’s visit, so you can confirm that you can afford what they prescribe. Also keep in mind that getting a prescription filled is the same cost whether you get 1 pill or 30 (a fact I learned the hard way when getting a 10 pill prescription filled once.)

 If you read all that and thought, Thanks but no thanks, here are some other options:

-          My psychiatrist in Florida recommended that I take Rhodiola Rosea supplements in addition to medication, as it has clinically proven positive effects on ADHD symptom control. I found it on Amazon. Omega-3 fatty acid supplements are also proven effective.

-          If you’re interested in this sort of thing, here is a super comprehensive study of various dietary supplements and behavior modifications that work or don’t work for ADHD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4968082/

-          Practicing meditation is a great way to relax your body (increased stress, while helpful for short-term tasks, can make ADHD symptoms worse long term) and train your mind to hold onto singular, important thoughts (people’s names, why you walked into the kitchen, etc). I use the Waking Up app and love it – there are also many free options in the App Store and on YouTube.

-          Regular exercise is another great way to manage ADHD symptoms, as it gives your body a natural serotonin and dopamine boost, two important chemicals your body has trouble producing and absorbing naturally.

-          Caffeine is a great, easily accessible stimulant that has a focusing and calming effect on ADHD individuals. My doctor actually asked my parents to give me coffee each morning before school when I was a child, before we moved onto prescriptions.

-          Often, there are other factors that go along with ADHD, such as anxiety and/or depression. Getting this under control can go a long way in managing ADHD as well. I’m not sure if you have any issues with those, but it can be helpful to treat both if you do. The medication Wellbutrin is used to treat depression and also has mild stimulants, which would be helpful for both conditions. It isn’t a Schedule II drug, so you can probably ask your doctor for a 3 or 6 month prescription.

-          There are a ton more mind hacks and learned behavioral mechanisms you can try – read some of my other posts for suggestions.

Of course, I have to give the legal disclaimer – all of this is based on my personal experience, I’m not licensed in the medical field in any way and only a doctor can give you proper advice for your body and situation, and what medications will be most helpful. 😊

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

i feel like jian yi uses emotion to influence zhan zheng xi's decision. when he talks about his sexuality he is either crying or on the verge of crying which i think softens zhan zhengxi's attitude towards him. i don't get people that are saying zhan zheng xi is demisexual and not interested in girls at all and when his only encounter with girls is xiao hui? who is his stalker. it is very natural for zhan zheng xi to dislike her. i feel like jian yi is very manipulative.

Good evening, dear anon-san!

Before we get any further, I got your another ask that it’s okay if I won’t answer your question. I’m not sure why you felt that way but you had gone through the big trouble of writing your thoughts, so I want to try and give you mine. Also, I don’t talk about Zhanyi too often, so I don’t want to pass chances when people give me a nudge to do so. Anyway, I hope you won’t mind I decided to answer your ask.

You had a lot of things to talk about, so I thought I would give my thoughts some structure by picking up some overall themes.

A bit of a TL;DR: I imagine your interpretation of Jian Yi’s character is very much of an unpopular opinion. And I’m afraid I won’t be agreeing with it very much because I have always read him and his relationship with Zhan Zheng Xi quite differently. That being said, though, I do want to applaud your courage to share your views with us. It makes me feel privileged that you feel comfortable enough with me to be open about your opinions.

Zhan Zheng Xi and Xiao Hui

Let’s start this with perhaps the easiest topic: XH having a crush on ZZX. It’s true she didn’t really hide her feelings for ZZX. She tried to muster up enough courage to deliver her confession letter many times and also approached him directly. However, it was clear ZZX was bothered and felt uncomfortable by her affections. (ch. 51, 52, 98, 99. 102, and 156)

She was quite persistent and forward, but I don’t think she deserves to be called a stalker. Not even close. I think we’re forgetting that middle school is that awkward time in life when it’s starting to be noticeable that girls develop faster than boys. Girls of that age can actually be very open about their crushes while boys feel embarrassed, bothered, and annoyed by them. Nor are boys really interested quite yet. I think that’s very much apparent in ZZX and XH’s case.

A short storytime. When I was in middle school (about 12-13 years old) I had the most intense crush on this boy in my class. My very soul was consumed by how much in love I was with him. And I had no problem being open about it, either; I gave him birthday and Christmas cards publically, forced him to write on my friends book, and overall was quite pushy with him. He never returned my passionate feelings but was rather annoyed, embarrassed and disgusted by them. After two years, my feelings passed. Was I a stalker, though? I don’t think so.

So, yes, it was very understandable and realistic for ZZX to be bothered by XH’s advances but I wouldn’t brand her as a “stalker” and make too direct conclusions about their relationship. Rather I think that’s how it usually goes in that age.

Jian Yi and Xiao Hui’s letter

Overall, JY was in a very difficult position when he found out about XH’s feelings for ZZX. On one hand, he was very much in love with ZZX, and it had been his most precious secret that he’s both wanted to confess and hide. Worst case scenario, his romantic feelings might end their childhood friendship or put them in a position where others could easily discriminate and bash them. On the other hand, XH’s advances put pressure on JY and painfully remind him that it’s not as simple for him to confess and be open about his crush. I have always sympathized with him because being in that position can be very painful and conflicting. (100, 101)

I mean, imagine someone asked you to deliver a confession letter to the person you have been in love with for years. Can you imagine how crushing that would feel? A big part of me, at least, would certainly think my crush was doomed. And it was obvious JY struggle between doing the right thing and doing what his heart wanted to.

When JY agreed to give ZZX her letter on the condition that she won’t come near him, I think that was the most manipulative JY got in that whole story (ch. 100):

And I don’t think even that was very successful. He told her to stay away but... what was the endgame? Was JY’s plan to make her believe he had given ZZX the letter and prevent her from finding out the truth by telling her to keep her distance? But at some point, she would have grown anxious and approached ZZX again, right? The truth would certainly have come out eventually.

I think he hadn’t thought it through at all but rather that “don’t come near him” plan was a desperate attempt to buy some time. I don’t see that as JY trying to isolate ZZX in a toxic way at all but rather him trying to prolong the inevitable. His feelings for ZZX never had the same promise of a future as XH’s feelings - and straight love, in general.

Also, let’s not forget that JY did end up giving ZZX the letter despite his own difficult position (ch. 102):

What ZZX said made him realize it wouldn’t be right for JY to decide things for him. He couldn’t advance his own goals that way and feel good about it. But at the same time, giving ZZX that letter put JY’s feelings at a big risk. Basically, JY came close to watching the person he loved returning someone else’s feelings. I’m not sure I could have done the same if I had been JY, and I bet many of us would have struggled to make up our minds, too. Would that make us toxic manipulators, though?

Xiao Hui’s letter exposed

XH’s confession letter being exposed to everybody was a messy situation for all parties. It exposed so many private and vulnerable feelings for anyone to see and make fun of. And usually, the more we want to protect something inside us, the stronger we react when it’s either exposed or poked at.

Even if I don’t really see JY worrying about ZZX’s reputation as a bad thing or something problematic, I have always wondered about that part (ch. 158):

It always seemed like an odd thing to worry about in that situation to me. But I suppose he just didn’t want ZZX to become the center of gossiping. People were making fun of the letter and both its writer and who it was addressed to. Again, romance is quite a tender topic at that age, especially publically. To be involved in those kinds of things - even involuntarily - would most probably put you in the kind of awkward position that you can never quite live down. So, yeah, even if my center of worries wouldn’t probably be protecting ZZX’s reputation, I still get where JY was coming from.

I also suppose JY didn’t want XH’s crush to be public knowledge because it made his situation that more difficult and an uphill battle. The rumors and gossips would stoke and contribute to the overall rhetoric that ZZX has a girlfriend or that he’s popular among girls. But again, I don’t really see that line of thinking as manipulative. I don’t think he was pretending to be sad or trying to provoke XH to make her look bad in ZZX’s eyes. I’m sure I would have felt somewhat the same in his situation, actually.

However, I do agree that readers (if that’s what you meant by “people”) were too eager to brand XH as a problematic homophobe and hate her guts. What she said was wrong and hurtful but still not that surprising (ch. 158):

She had been publically humiliated and her feelings had been made of by everyone. She was hurt and embarrassed, and when JY blamed her she lashed out and threw the easiest and most obvious insult she could think of. I don’t think it’s fair to judge her whole character based on one moment when she was so vulnerable and humiliated.

What comes to ZZX, I don’t think it was a case of him conveniently walking in when JY had been bashed by XH and him judging the situation wrongly (JY as the victim and XH the villain). The way ZZX handled the situation tells us that he could see behind the emotional escalation and recognized the pain both JY and XH were suffering (ch. 158 and 159):

He understood XH had poked a very vulnerable spot with her “disgusting gay” remark and why JY had gotten upset. Not long ago before the letter incident, he had seen how insecure JY was about his feelings for someone of the same sex and how scared he was of being rejected because of it. It was the last thing JY wanted people to talk about out loud but also where you could hurt him the most.

But ZZX also realized the situation XH was in and why she had lashed out. He was very gentle with her and treated her feelings with respect despite turning them down. He saw his own little sister in her, not a villain or a bad person. I’m sure his reaction would have been vastly different if he had thought XH was out to deliberately hurt JY.

Jian Yi’s orientation and manipulation

I can’t say I see JY using emotions to knowingly influence and manipulate ZZX’s decisions but I do think ZZX has an obvious soft spot for his best friend. It goes all the way back to their childhood when ZZX promised to protect him, and later JY’s special place in ZZX’s eyes is represented by the rhetoric of lifelong promises between them (ch. 97, 127, 159, 161, 169, 285):

To me, that’s pretty much the essence of ZZX’s character. He’s loyal, protective, and surprisingly comfortable being so caring. We can see him treat his little sister very similarly to how he treats JY. So, when he sees his best friend crying and thinking there’s something wrong with him because he’s different from others, it’s his second nature to comfort and reassure JY.

Overall, JY has talked about his orientation or feelings for ZZX three times in the comic so far in a way that has changed the course of the story. (If you wish to read more about how I see the Zhanyi storyline go check out my other earlier answer.) The most shocking and dramatic turning point for both of them was probably when JY’s feelings came to light for the first time (ch. 143):

I really can’t see JY being emotionally manipulative at that moment. I would say his reaction is more than understandable and realistic instead. I don’t know if you have ever had to come out to anyone about your sexual orientation, dear anon-san, but it’s always a nerve-wracking experience. I’ve told about my own bisexuality to my parents and best friend and it was insanely scary both times even if I was confident they wouldn’t have a problem with it. Despite everything, there’s always that little “what if” rattling in your head.

Now, multiply that by XXX and put yourself in JY’s raincoat. He was a teenage boy who had just kissed his lifelong best friend and couldn’t play it off as a joke. The more he tried to run and hide, the more the feelings he had buried for years poured out in a mess of tears and fragmented thoughts. I mean, we had read about how deep their friendship ran for 100+ chapters by then but I’m sure many of us were still nervous and unsure about how ZZX would react.

However, ZZX isn’t unable to set his limits even when offering comfort. I think that was apparent the second time JY’s feeling were addressed when JY was drunk and looking for something ZZX wasn’t ready to give him yet (ch. 165):

JY was genuinely very emotional and in a vulnerable place but ZZX had to reject him. I actually talked about that moment in one of my earlier answers because I have always found it interesting and complicated. JY was so insecure and afraid of ZZX rejecting him that he wanted to push the limits to find out how ZZX felt about him (both being in love with him and someone of the same sex). It almost seemed like he was tired of being anxious and kind of wanted to get it over with. But ZZX wasn’t quite there yet. He had expressed his support when it came to JY liking men but wasn’t ready for what JY was really feeling. Unfortunately, that meant he had to hurt the already vulnerable JY but the bottom line is, he did reject him. He might have a lot of affection for JY but he’s also very in tune with what he wants and isn’t ready for. That’s also a part of him being honest and loyal. If he had allowed JY to have his way, ZZX wouldn’t have been true to JY or himself.

The third and last time was when JY finally, officially confessed and - according to my interpretation - ZZX returned his feelings. Again, I don’t see JY being emotionally manipulative but there is one aspect that has always caught my attention (ch. 209):

JY says he likes ZZX so much he’s about to explode and whether it’s about their past or future, it’s always been and will always be about ZZX. This time JY’s fear of rejection manifests itself a bit differently, though. He kind of rejects his feelings himself before ZZX even says a word. He already knows ZZX isn’t happy about being loved by another guy and his best friend at that, so there’s no need for ZZX turn him down. Also, by seemingly shifting the goal of his confession (you won’t feel the same way but at least I finally said it) JY is protecting himself.

Could that behavior be taken as manipulation? I guess on some level, but I think it’s also a very natural and realistic reaction. It can be used to influence someone’s decisions but it’s also a defense mechanism. One that I - and I’m sure many others - can personally relate to very much. And I don’t see JY saying those things in that situation as a way to try and make ZZX feel sorry for him and return his feelings that way. This was the first time he was completely open and honest about his love for ZZX - confessing while looking straight into his eyes - so it’s no surprise he behaved defensively like that.

Also, I believe ZZX had already made up his mind about what his answer would be before he even asked the question. He had reached his resolve and was comfortable with it. All he needed was for JY to say the words out loud.

Jian Yi, Mo Guan Shan, and He Tian’s money

Okay, the last topics! This was something you only briefly mentioned but I felt like they supported your view on JY that already differed quite a lot from mine, so I thought I would give my two cents about these, too.

I think JY is exactly the kind of friend Mo Guan Shan desperately needed when he was falsely accused of assaulting that girl. In fact, JY is the kind of friend all of us should have: someone who won’t hesitate to stand up for us. Because I don’t think “anyone would have done the same thing” for MGS. Actually, that’s why She Li picked him as the scapegoat in the first place (ch. 178, 186, and 184):

Not only did SL take advantage of knowing MGS was a social outcast at school and people were prejudiced against him so no one would even doubt the things said about him but he also knew MGS didn’t have the kind of friends who would step in. He Tian most certainly was one of them, but so was JY the way he didn’t hesitate to barge into the office and loudly demand justice for MGS (ch. 185):

Let’s remember, when the assault case was going on HT, JY and ZZX were the only ones defending MGS. Not even the teachers seemed to think “innocent until proven guilty” or even entertain the thought that MGS might not have done it.

What comes to JY talking about HT having a lot of money (or being rich or poor in general), I think it’s just a part of him being cheeky and the kind of humor 19 Days has. JY’s character has this obliviously and unapologetically immature side that can be a bit annoying at first but soon becomes one of his most lovable features. I never took this side of him as an offense but rather him just being a 15-year-old boy among other teenage boys that will fire back just the same (ch. 258, 296, 298, 301, and 310):

JY doesn’t really have a filter and he likes to brag a little when, for once, he’s in that kind of position, but there’s no true malice in his words.

A few quick notes that I won’t get into deeper than this:

I don’t know about ZZX being demisexual but overall BL does seem to have this trend of making male protagonists fall in love with each other without identifying as LGBT. BL has been criticized for this because it’s a way to avoid talking about the fact that men who are attracted to other men are, in fact, gay (or bi). In many BL stories, the protagonists are portrayed as straight and them falling for a guy is just special circumstances and they’re gay for just that one guy. And while I don’t personally have a major problem with it, I can’t deny it feels a bit of a cop-out. Does Zhanyi fall into that category? On some level, I guess, but it’s also too early to say. The boys are just figuring out who they are as individuals, so JY, for example, identifying as gay might be said out loud one day. Don’t think that will ever happen in ZZX’s case, though.

I also don’t think JY is trying to isolate ZZX from other people. Now that he’s more secure regarding ZZX’s feelings for himself and their relationship, he’s even included XH to their group.

Phew!

Was that all? I think that was at least the most of it, if not all. If you think I skipped something or would like me to elaborate on something, let me know!

As I warned you in the beginning, I ended up disagreeing with the majority of your interpretation. Hopefully, I wasn’t too harsh with my wording or ways of putting things. Even if our views were pretty much the opposite to each other, your thoughts prompted me to look at JY’s character and Zhanyi from a new perspective. And that’s always a good thing. Thank you again for that opportunity and for sharing your interpretations with us, dear anon-san!

[kinkymagnus]

I love you (no Romo though) also do you have omega Magnus ideas

flkgjdgkdjfg mood anon

hm... ok this will probably be messy but let’s get on some highlights

OK THIS GOT SUPER LONG HAHAHA

set up and worldbuilding my guys

ok so first of all i feel like i gotta talk about how this interacts with trans magnus. i promise i’ll get to the fun stuff afterwards!!

i know some people like to go more into like, the realistic dynamics of a/b/o (trans a/b/o people, as in, a trans alpha who was born an omega, or like, sexism that has to do with a/b/o and those different new stereotypes, as well as like “non traditional a/b/o dynamics” like alpha/alpha or omega/omega relationships, how this interacts with new different sexualities (being attracted to only alpha females? alphas and betas and all primary genders? etc.) and how it intersects with REAL transphobia and sexism and sexuality) and like.... i have two takes on this i guess:

one: while this is not inherently wrong i guess, it’s just. not what i get from a/b/o. for me a/b/o isn’t a complex worldbuilding set to play with necessarily, although i def am one to ask questions and overthink worldbuilding even in the stupidest of shit. but like, i come to a/b/o for fluff (nesting, fluffy heat sex, maybe scenting and/or “mates” if i’m feeling it), smut (knotting, heats/ruts, etc.), and MAYBE angst but that gets into dodgy territory sometimes. (i’m a slut for arranged marriage aus tho ngl dfgkldjfdg.) like. that specific set of tropes is combined perfectly in a/b/o, and it’d be hard to do that in a coherent au as this is already established and saying “au where alec has knots and magnus has heats” is weird. the only other au that gets close is very specifically like a werewolf au which has its own trappings, you know? it’s a specific coherent and established au and it’s hard to separate the tropes i like from the other stuff.

two: again, i don’t think it’s inherently bad. but i do think that a lot of people who do this are basically just reinventing real issues like transphobia, homophobia/queerphobia, and sexism... without actually dealing with those things or the characters they would involve. and i think that it often strays into yikes territory. so like. i don’t love it. (also it does have some yikes stuff people do like going really, really hard on the oppressed omega angle, or worse, reinforcing the gender roles of omega = submissive soft weak baby, alpha = strong dominant and scary man. or sometimes they establish other roles but either way like, all their characters fall into that. and i think sometimes it kind of works for this feeling like a guilty pleasure trash romance novel where it’s just uncomplicated fantasy of being taken care of, but like.... even then it just gets dodgy, you know? also it does tend to get INCREDIBLY rapey.)

i often used a/b/o for the things i mentioned, and before i started writing trans magnus smut, also ironically as a way to sort of write trans magnus in smut without actually doing it out of fear of backlash/lack of popularity. and while backlash hasn’t been much of a problem, my popularity has definitely gone down fics-wise. (i get much less in the stats area on ao3 now)

and cis omega magnus is in a way basically trans magnus but he has a penis and there’s knotting. like i said, in many ways, a/b/o is sort of a way to write porn with trans characters while keeping to cisnormativity. i, as a trans person, took advantage of that to get more comfortable with writing it, but a lot of cis people use it basically to just. do that. you know.

so how do i reconcile this with trans magnus?

basically i say “fuck you, he’s trans AND an omega, i want heats/ruts and knotting and nesting and shit” and then ignore it lmao

like ok he isn’t cis. he’s afab and gnc and all the shit i normally write, it’s just like. he also gets heats and his ass doesn’t get wet dlfkjgdfg (god it sounds So Unappealing when you say it like that. now that i allow myself to write smut with real trans characters i could never go back to a/b/o--although, like. some a/b/o aus actually do have male omegas have a pussy but that feels even more slimy in the sense of just. make them trans.) and like alec’s an alpha and so on you know.

i basically just ignore all the complex worldbuilding shit and trying to figure out how sexuality and gender and the various -phobias and -isms would be effected by the addition of secondary genders and their trappings, and just go “fuck you” under the guise of an a/b/o au

tl;dr, so i have a lot of complicated feelings on a/b/o and how it generally is something i do not trust people to write properly. but i also am a total slut of a lot of tropes that are sort of entrenched in a/b/o specifically. namely, heats/ruts, knotting, nesting/scenting, etc.

let’s get into the fun stuff.

magnus and heats :)

ok so heats are super like. vulnerable, you know? i’d think magnus would take heat suppressants (ah another plot convenience in this au) because he doesn’t want to spend his heat with someone he doesn’t trust. that’s not to say he’s never had a heat with someone, or even that it’s been all bad experiences, but it never clicked super well i think and like, it’s something that’s very hard for him. because there’s a lot of vulnerability and trust involved, and he loses control and could so easily get hurt

also possibility: while he can take suppressants to lessen how many times he gets a heat, taking them consistently for literally centuries sounds like it could fuck someone up. so. perhaps. magnus occasionally spends his heat with a trusted friend like meliorn (not someone who feels like Family and therefore would it feel incesty, but def someone who is a close friend) and while he still doesn’t love the feeling of being that vulnerable, and it can be uncomfortable--it’s not like he’s looking forward to it--but like... he definitely does trust meliorn (and possibly other non canon characters?) and it’s not like it’s disgusting and miserable. it’s not like, The Same, but it satisfies the biological side of it and sometimes it’s even like. fun, you know? it’s nice.

ngl i actually kind of like the idea of meliorn helping him with these heats and being like a trusted alpha he knows would never hurt him like that. that does mess with any angst you want to go with him not trusting alphas or not like, having good experiences with heats/ruts (like in “stuck in a rut”), but like, different aus different stories, and anyway you could probably work something in there about meliorn specifically being different and someone he trusts

this is on and off, he sometimes does have heats with whatever romantic partner he’s with, although it... doesn’t always end well. so he has a lot of bad experiences, but at least with meliorn he has a good experience to look to, as well.

also camille was a TERRIBLE alpha. i can 100 percent see her using his heat against him to hurt him (and being like oh baby dont you trust me? you cant go to this seelie for your heats, you cant cheat on me, and why are you taking suppressants, dont you trust me--?) as well as potentially her ruts (actually a) im not sure i want to go into the logistics of a female alpha--would she... have a penis? because i’m not making camille a trans woman nor am i touching those transmisgyonistic vibes with a ten foot pole. b) actually, maybe she’s a beta. she could use that against him, as well--being like she doesn’t understand why it’s such a big deal, you know? also i refuse to believe only an alpha can satiate a heat even tho it would work the best because like--fuck i’m overthinking the worldbuilding again this is EXACTLY what i wanted to avoid. fuck, never mind.)

but like...........when he gets it (namely with alec, because yes, i am a slut) with like someone he honestly is a viable “mate” or someone he trusts and like, has actual romantic feelings for, too...............it’s literally mindblowing. magnus had no fucking idea heats could feel this good. obviously he had fun with meliorn and felt safe even if he felt kind of awkward/uncomfortable (not bc of anything meliorn did but his own issues with being vulnerable) but like............... alec just fucking makes him melt???

like he felt safe before, he did know meliorn would never ever hurt him or take advantage of his heat, but now he feels so like... free and safe and open? it’s not just the normal vulnerability that comes with but the complete lack of discomfort, just feeling absolutely safe and like. not worried at all? again i want to emphasize it’s not that he felt unsafe before or that meliorn necessarily did something wrong, but bc of his own like. readiness to be vulnerable + while he does trust meliorn, it’s like. it hits different with a romantic partner (in this specific context!! this is not a romantic > platonic thing), if that makes sense.

an y wa  y THE POINT IS. magnus is like. Mind Blown. having sex with alec during his heat is like. amazing. alec is so intent on taking care of him and just worshiping his body (alec!! ravishing him!! pressing warm kisses all over his tits!!! big hands all over his body!! caressing him everywhere and giving him physical affection all over and just making him squirm and moan!!!!!!) and like. not only is he absolutely intent on taking care of magnus and making him feel good and making sure he’s comfortable, but like also it’s just??? really fun?? and alec gives him so much affection and so many kisses???

magnus is not the best conversation partner during heat because he is a little. busy. but it doesn’t stop alec from talking to him and helping him stay grounded and just like... treating him like a person? he hadn’t realized one of the reasons he was so comfortable with meliorn and now alec wasn’t just bc he knew them well and trusted them with this kind of thing, but because like. they treated him like he was present despite him being mostly non-verbal and incoherent beyond vague pleading. like, they always made sure he was comfortable and talked to him and didn’t just do what they wanted with him. it didn’t feel like he was a doll--getting satisfied and fucked hard, yes, but like. also sort of just being used. and not in the fun sexy pre-planned way, but like, in a way that just made him feel more distant and disconnected.

but alec very much doesn’t do that. he keeps talking (and there is a lot of praise! so much praise and gentle affection and teliing him how beautiful he is and how good he’s doing--and of course dirty talk wink wink) and even narrating what he’s doing/his intentions, you know, and not only his voice generally soothing but it’s just nice you know

and like again i would just like to go back to alec ravishing magnus’s tiddies with kisses and holding them in his Big Hands and massaging them and like kissing his nipples and just making him feel so good??? iconic. we stan.

and alec like. is the perfect mix of gentle and rough, you know? he knows when to pin magnus down and fuck him nice and hard and rough and get him squealing and begging, but he also knows when to be gentle--particularly at the beginning and when he’s coming down. not to mention even when he is fucking magnus hard there’s a lot of gentle touch accompanying it

also not to just be a slut but

Also It Feels Good Because Alec Has a Huge Cock

that’s not to say meliorn doesn’t or even that you need a big dick to pleasure someone well but like.

alec has a big cock.

and it feels. hhhhh. good

magnus when alec first slides into him in heat: [straight up just immediately goes incoherent and whining with pleasure and kinda just mewling and clawing weakly at his back or the sheets on either side of him]

and alec fucks him so well :) like they’re honestly both feeling so fucking good like just AAAAAAAAA im such a slut for alec taking care of magnus in heat

also. uhh. K N O T T I N G

alec sliding into him nice and slow to make sure hes ok and like hes loving it, alec fucks him, and when he’s about to knot him magnus is somewhere in the back of his mind expecting that usual queasy sort of anticipation like he does Want It but usually he does kind of feel a little discomfort and again just... apprehension. this is The Moment, and he’s really giving up control you know

but it. doesnt come (but magnus is about to AHAHA)

and he just wants.

like he honestly just really really wants this and it’s kind of a revelation how much he genuinely wants this

alec knots him and magnus is Losing His Mind it feels so fucking good he comes almost right away and he’s just right there again

hes so Full and everything about it feels amazing

and like after alec has like. made him come a dozen times squirting and came inside magnus’s cunt and kept him knotted full there’s just this moment where magnus is exhausted in the best way, lying on his back, legs spread, alec still knotted inside him, his cunt is full of cum and he’s panting and moaning a little and alec is just on top of him and it’s warm and amazing and he’s coming down from the high and he just feels.... incredibly relaxed actually

like he’s like wow have i ever been this melty and relaxed and floaty, like, ever?

the answer is no, not really.

alec is just gently stroking his hair, pressing soft close-mouthed kisses to his skin, and they just sort of cuddle for a bit while waiting for magnus to come down completely from his heat and for alec’s knot to go down and honestly just lying there entwined is really, really nice.

magnus is full and relaxed and he genuinely loves this feeling in a way he’s never experienced before

even when alec pulls out and magnus is pretty much back to himself completely again magnus is so exhausted he just sort of lies back and lets himself breathe and alec is like Pamper Mode Activate(TM) and magnus tries to be like its ok to relax i do like cuddling with you and i can clean up myself its ok and alecs like But I Want To Take Care Of You and like helps clean him up (just... magnus lets himself relax as alec gently uses a damp cloth to wipe away cum and slick you know? idk there’s just something intimate and sweet about the dom helping clean their sub up in the aftercare) and gets him water and a snack and then once they’re both tidied up pulls him into his arms and he strokes his hair and they just cuddle and it’s great :)

i wonder if magnus talks to meliorn about this either. hm

and from then on, alec is the one he goes to for heats. and alec, of course, becomes immortal, which means he can take care of magnus for the rest of their lives :’))

whether magnus would stay on suppressants is another matter because on one hand heats can be inconvenient and like he might still want to minimize them, but on the other hand Hnnnnnnggg Alec Feel Good. so i could see them going either way here.

also i mean................that’s not to say that meliorn would Never help magnus either..... two possibilities here: 1. for whatever reason magnus’s heat is coming and alec can’t be there. meliorn is happy to help. it’s good to have back up i guess lkjfgh fuck idk. but the real fun one....

2. as magnus has more heats, they may or may not have a little Fun with it. perhaps roleplay (whether this be like “oh..... oh no..... im a poor little maid and i’ve gone into heat.....Looks Like My Boss Will Have To Fuck Me” or like even pretending the heat isn’t part of it and he’s Just That Slutty and we love to see it, etc. obviously they alec is sure not to push it too far, he teases magnus but probably a lot less than he normally would bc he’s so sensitive and needy and eager-to-please, but like.... they sure do have some fucking fun with this.

and also. i mean.

threesomes. y’all knew i was going here.

look idk how i got so far on the magnus/meliorn (as close friends and fuckbuddies not romantically) train but HERE WE ARE.

magnus getting absolutely wrecked by two alphas and LOVING it is not something he ever thought would happen, particularly while he was in heat, but it’s happening and he absolutely loves it.

also there are other fun possible scenarios like in “goldenrod” where alec doesn’t know that magnus is an omega and Shenanigans Ensue or whatever like just....both fluffy and angsty possibilities.

i’m a total slut for friends to lovers “oh no magnus is in heat :( but alec can help him through it, gently and lovingly, just completely as a friend :)” which can get into dubcon territory but if you fuck with it it’s doable. and i’m just a slut for pining pre-relationship heat sex.

even like in an au, alec playing the role meliorn did in the previous bullet points but blended with how i discussed their first heat together so like... helping his best friend through his heats, showing him a really good time, making sure he’s comfortable and magnus is just like wow i’ve never felt this good and safe during a heat before :) guess it’s because we’re friends and definitely no other reasons :)

i’m not sure how to word this right but i feel like there’s a potential angst here of like a mundane au of some sort wherein magnus has only had a few relationships with alphas and none of them great so when alec is helping him through his heat he assumes it’s different (as in, alec is so gentle and caring and treating him like this, and he feels safe) because they’re friends and it’s a different dynamic, and that being treated Badly is just like, the normal way alphas treat their mates. or something. look. let me have my whump ok

but the point is alec sets him straight obviously

but like anyway i just like.........i adore friends to lovers malec and heat sex it’s got so much fluffy potential with magnus just feeling Utterly Safe (and pining angst) and alec is both a) incredibly turned on/helplessly in love with him so he’s loving every second (even tho Pining Angst) and b) just in awe that magnus trusts him that much??? (also sad he’s SURPRISED at being treated gently flgkhfjghgh)

malec and ruts

ok as i explored in “stuck in a rut” i think it makes sense that magnus would not feel incredibly secure during ruts. it’s not something he would have sought out with say, meliorn, although he would have been willing to do that meliorn has other partners more than willing to help him with that and actually love it while magnus is. very wary of it.

like a heat, it leaves him feeling very out of control and it seems kind of scary--but it’s almost worst, because rather than feeling needy and helpless (which is a good thing when with a trusted partner but not so much when he’s less sure, or when they take advantage of that) it’s like. he’s cornered totally sober with a similarly out of control alpha, except with more Dominance(TM) and potential aggression you know?

so maybe he’s had some very bad experiences before. and i doubt it’s been literally all terrible, but i think he would likely avoid relationships with alphas, so he wouldn’t have a lot of experiences to draw from overall anyway

but like okay let’s get to the fun stuff

i’ve been over the angst of magnus not being sure how this is gonna go but wanting to Tough It Out with “stuck in a rut” although it’s probably a bit exaggerated for fun angst purposes but idk aaaaa

but anyway the point is here. alec gets his first rut with magnus and like, he probably hasn’t been with anyone during a rut (suppressants?) so this is wild for both of them

but even Feral(TM) alec’s entire goal is just taking care of magnus

i mean obviously there’s an element of like wanting to get his own satisfaction and all but it’s just like..... mutual pleasure you know??? like he wants to fuck magnus nice and hard and make him feel good and magnus is just a mewling mess in his arms letting alec take control and ravish him and they are both having a great time actually

but like ok let’s just. move away for a moment from angst

just................... alec fucking magnus nice and hard and rough, pinning him down and “”making“” him take it, and there isn’t really much teasing because he’s too busy wanting to fuck magnus and fill him up :) 

but like it’s also fluffy bc even all needy and desperate alec still takes the time to make sure he’s ready and prepared and wet and into this before fucking him, makes sure he’s comfortable and checks in on him and if magnus safeworded or told him to stop you know he absolutely would, without hesitation, even if it literally hurt to do. which is basic decency obviously but the like.... the just trust and care there? the fact that even in a literal fucking rut when he’s supposed to be out of control he’d force himself to stop if magnus needed or wanted him to is just.... comforting and good and i love it 

and magnus is like hm i have never felt this safe when with an alpha in rut before! time to examine this trauma later.

nesting (ft. scenting)

AAAAAAAAAAAA

i love the concept of nesting so much it’s so fluffy and sweet and dkgjfklgjg 

you build a pillow/blanket/clothing nest that smells like the people u love and u feel safe in 

and then you get ravished in it sometimes

iconic.

like magnus just piling a fuck ton of soft things (ranging from blankets/pillows to just like spare sheets and shit like that) and stealing alec’s clothes to put in there and curling up in the middle of it feeling safe and in heaven tbh 

especially once they key component of the nest arrives: alec

*magnus yoinking alec into the nest and immediately curling up against him like a particularly insistent cat* 

alec is just like This Is Precious and wraps his arms around him and strokes his hair and magnus is purring (purring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we Will discuss this later) 

and it’s just nice and somft??

fluffy cuddles?

i feel like nesting would be a particular urge either during or near heats so im just imagining pre heat magnus being like *suddenly stands up* I Must Gather Soft Things (Meaning Pillows, Blankets, And Alec) 

and he just makes a nest, all aesthetically pleasing and arranged nicely, maybe a candle nearby with a nice scent that kind of helps, and just..... curling up in alecs arms all content

and alec ADORES this like the first several times magnus was scared of coming off as clingy so he suppressed nesting instincts let alone cuddly needy clingy instincts but alec was sort of like hey baby it’s ok if you just don’t want to but do u need to nest? 

and also he just made a point of being more touchy/affectionate when his heat was coming up/dying down and he watched carefully to make sure it didn’t magnus uncomfortable but he melted into it even more than usual

so like just....alec cuddling the fuck out of magnus in his nest and it’s warm and safe and smells like home????

scenting i feel is kind of weird and i feel weird being like “mm he smells good” or whatever but like also it can be so cute when done right you know lkgjdgfg like omg just...... Alec Smells Like Home

their scents kinda mix and both of them have the others’ lingering on them and people can tell they’re super close 

and just.....................again..........alec like scenting him, marking him as his in a sort of gentle soft way? and like, burying his nose in his neck and nuzzling him and he smells so nice and good??? 

especially if you’re going with true mates think their mates’ scent is just the best thing ever flgjlkjlfkgjfgh

but anyway ok

back to nesting

and specifically, because i am a whore, to S E X

magnus feeling absolutely safe there and it smells like home and alec’s holding him and it’s so--

hey so i know i said i was going to do sex,

but hold on a sec

ANGST

magnus has nested before. but generally not with romantic partners. 

not sure if familal nesting is a thing--i feel like it’s possible, but given a general association with heat (i mean one could either feel the urge to or simply enjoy nesting outside of Heat Time(TM) but like) it feels a little weird

so let’s go with it’s more romantic except for maybe like really young kids or something idk 

but anyway moving on from that

magnus has nested before

but almost always alone

and an empty nest is just not the same?? it’s still warm/safe but like... it feels empty and sad too. especially if he DOES have a romantic partner they just don’t want to nest with him--saying he’s clingy, or it’s time consuming/boring to just sit there, or whatever else. 

camille was particularly guilty of this, he had to basically hide his nest and cram it in a closet or something (the enclosed space was actually kind of nice but it was too cramped for his liking and it felt even more empty and sad than usual)

and then he would just be there alone in his small empty nest and it was still reassuring but it was just......not the same 

also he didn’t have anything to ground him so he got all fidgety (adhd magnus? adhd magnus.) and like it was a lot less comforting than normal you know 

but with alec OH BOY

not only does he feel all warm and grounded in alec’s arms like he can relax and doze off and feel good and alec is stroking his hair and it’s just. nice

but like also 

BACK TO SEX

alec making sweet love to magnus in their nest and it’s just like wow this is the most safe place possible

it’s not even heat sex they’re just having fun and magnus is like this is my dream come true

and then obviously there is also heat sex

it is the most mindblowing thing either of them have ever experienced

also i feel like while it’s not an instinct thing to build nests for ruts, they still do it because they’re soft and it helps them relax anyway

PURRING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PURRING

ok i absolutely love the a/b/o headcanon i’ve seen before where like, omegas purr only when feeling completely safe? particularly around alphas?

so like. 

magnus doesn’t purr that often.

or he didn’t but then he fell in love with alec “his arms feel like home and safety and love” lightwood

it is not uncommon to see him cuddled in alec’s arms purring contently

or like in his nest leaning into alec’s side or head resting on his chest, PURRING

also i have this fic somewhere but au wherein alec doesn’t know magnus is an omega yet and then finds out because magnus dozed off on his chest and BEGAN. PURRING. BECAUSE HE FEELS SO FUCKING SAFE AND TRUSTS ALEC SO MUCH. 

even if he hadn’t told alec about being an omega yet for whatever reason

anyway just alec stroking magnus’s hair while he purrs away and its adorable and also soothing for both of them so they fall asleep like that 

magnus’s purring is like a soothing thing for alec big time its good sensory time and also just generally nice so its easy for him to conk out with magnus warm in his arms and purring loudly 

it’s very nice 

and also he loves that magnus feels that safe with him

MATES

this one will be short but like 

basically the whole mates for life thing is cute

and it can just kinda be like soulmate aus

which are all vaguely problematic but just really cute/fun to have and not think about too hard 

so them being mates is just cute idk man i like it 

ok that’s it for now (i’m gonna add more in a separate reblog for reasons but that’s only on one topic, you’ll see--i think i’ll do that tomorrow bc im very tired rn) that’s the omega magnus manifesto (some parts not included) 

[vexie-chan]

On today’s episode of “Is This Canon or Am I Projecting” we’re going to talk about Demisexual/demiromantic Caleb and his Super Demi Love Languages!

Seriously, though, I started this campaign as team Ace Caleb, but the longer things go on, the more I’m seeing signs of Demi.

Caleb takes a long time to come to trust and with trust, comes a very deep adoration. He flinched away from all touches except for Nott’s for the first bit of the campaign. He never actively seeks companionship in any form--not from strangers like Molly did and Beau does, and not from friends for a long time.

For a long time, it was just Nott that he would talk to, touch, or be otherwise affectionate with.

But now he has all these little moments with people that are just so filled with love and affection. And not just people, but his people. And his interactions are so specific, which is, I think, what makes him so shippable for a lot of people. I was thinking about this because while I’m team Widojest myself, I was feeling the Shadowgast and the...what are we calling it? Widobrave? in 91 and I’m like “Wow. Okay. What’s this about?”

And that’s where I started thinking about how I “fall” for people as a very demi individual. I’m demi in every way you can be demi. I’m pretty standoffish and introverted and then as I get to know people, we open up toward each other, and as that happens, I become more and more fond of them and that’s how I go from suddenly being “I am an island unto myself” to “Holy crap I’m in love with everyone I see????” And my love language is specificity. When people open up to me, I listen, and then to show them I love them, I try to do things that show I paid attention to the things they told me or showed me. This could be as simple as “oh, my best friend loves cute dog videos, I should forward her any I see” to “oh, my sister loves math and chemistry, I’ll send her chemistry jokes even though I don’t get them!” to things as complex as “my husband has talked about how much it gets to him when people take and take and never give back. I’ll make sure to always appreciate all the small things he does and not take advantage of his giving heart.”

And I see that in Caleb.

Caleb has come to love Beau as a sister. She’s rough and tumble so he punches her in the shoulder back, and he’s always happy to accept an invitation to go study at the library with her. He recognizes her growing love for research and is happy to help where he can. He also meets her on her level of humor and sibling conspiracy.

Caleb has a complicated relationship with Fjord, but meets him on his level, too. He’s here for harmless jokes and pranks at Fjord’s expense like the robe situation, but he also recognizes when it’s time for the jokes to stop. He was the first to seriously reassure Fjord that he was still useful and still an important part of the team. He’s supportive and loyal when Fjord’s in charge, which is something Fjord really needs.

Caleb adores Nott. Before Nott even asked, he recognized what she needed and started working on her spell. The moment it came out that Nott used to be a Halfling until she was unwillingly changed, Caleb’s spells started to include transformation spells. He always comes to meet her on her level, though it’s definitely not from a place of “you need this” (re: her drinking) but asking “What do you need?” He’s willing to wait if she asks him to wait, and willing to go with her anywhere she asks.

Caleb has a fairly clear crush on Jester. He takes time to confront her about her feelings and can spot her insecurities when it seems no one else can. Like with Nott, he keeps an eye on the things that worry him (his research into the Traveler, his protectiveness re: her mother), but doesn’t tell her what she needs. He supports her at her own level. He also takes the time to learn things that will make her happy, like how he got her milk at the Gentleman’s place and his Major image spell. He pays attention to the things she likes and that’s what he gives her to make her happy.

Caleb also has a bit of a crush on Essek. He’s thoughtful with how he speaks to Essek and how he interacts with him. Their relationship started as master/student, Caleb talks to Essek like an equal.When Essek asked Caleb to impress him, he chooses a spell he modified himself, but presented it with a sense of humor. I think Essek may be used to a bit more fanfare than a giant, wiggly-toed cat-paw. Which, I think right away endeared him to Essek. He recognized, prodigy to prodigy, what the right and wrong way to interact with Essek is, and is careful to treat him right.

Again, I could be projecting, but to me, it seems like Caleb has really come far from “Dirty Wizard Only Needs Goblin Companion” to “Awkward Wizard Adores Everyone In Friend Group”. And I adore it. I love his specificity with his love languages. It’s such a cool side effect of his keen mind feat...if you’re going to remember every detail about the ones you love, you can use that to show them you’re listening and remembering.

Tl;Dr, Caleb is demi and everyone has reached a pretty high Demi Tier with him and it’s adorable.

[planeis]

Athletic Truth Group / Knees Over Toes Guy program Review: Week 1

A week by week, hopefully, review of this mobility program and updates on how its affecting me. Hopefully for the better.

TL/DR: Basically I was clued into who Ben Patrick (Knees Over Toes Guy) by the above video that was in my TikTok feed last week. Did a little digging and decided to take the plunge and pay for a membership to his online training program and coaching at Athletic Truth Group. Week 1 went fine. App works fine. Can’t really say I feel any difference so far, but its only the start.

 https://www.atgonlinecoaching.com/  

Knees Over Toes: A week by week review of Athletic Truth Group rehab training

My history of knee pain or discomfort has been going on for a long time. The first time I can remember really experiencing something that I knew was out of the ordinary was early in high school. I was not a very athletic kid, in the sense that I wasn’t one of these kids that was on a bunch of school teams or community teams, or whatever. But, I did engage in sports. I played sports in gym and would play games before and after school when available. 

I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but to the best of my recollection when I was in 8th or 9th grade there was a period when several of us were playing basketball before school started because our homeroom was in the gym for some reason, and we were playing quite a bit of basketball during gym class, and I was playing a little after school. I was not good, but most people weren’t. But at some point, my knees started hurting. Like, it hurt to run, hurt to jump, I believe mostly centered in my left knee.

I remember it feeling pretty severe, like I felt like my left knee was just going to give out, a feeling I’ve since felt numerous times. But at the time, this pain was brand new to me and confusing. It was bad enough that I asked my mother to take me to a doctor, something I never did and still don’t like to do. I remember getting some X Rays and being examined and the doctor basically saying there was nothing wrong with me and recommended I use a knee brace. This was my first introduction to not only knee pain, but also knee braces.

This thing was monstrous. This was not a simple sleeve or even a thicker brace. This thing went from my mid thigh all the way down to my calf, had to giant straps and metal hinges. It looked like something someone would wear if broke their leg. I needed to wear this? I was a kid playing sports maybe a few hours a week, I wasn’t doing anything extreme, not in my opinion. Why did my knee hurt this way and why on earth did I need this ridiculous knee brace?

But, I started wearing it. It was weird to be asked why I needed this monstrosity, but it went find. It did help. I was able to keep playing, but once it was off I didn’t really feel better. My knee still hurt. And then my right knee started hurting. No doctors visit this time, but we did purchase another brace, this time one that was more like a stiff sleeve. No straps, no metal parts. So then I was wearing two at school, which caused a few more questions. Like, what is wrong with you? Nothing wrong with needed braces, if you need them, but why did I, as a seemingly healthy teenager need them? I don’t know. But I wore them for a while and eventually, I felt better and just stopped. Not sure if that’s because whatever the issue was went away, or because my overall activity level dropped some, or something in between. But I stopped wearing them and I felt fine. For a while….

Its been long enough that I can’t remember how I felt on a day to day or even a month to month basis. But I definitely started to feel like my knees were not as healthy or as good as most peoples. I felt slow, slightly immobile, couldn’t jump. 

The next severe incident that I can remember was the summer before my junior or senior year, I think. I think it was before senior year. I met some friends and a teacher for a run. At the time, I felt fine. But, it was the summer. I was probably playing some, working some, but I was not playing any kind of organized sport or anything like that. Definitely was not running distances at all. So, it wasn’t smart in general to just get off the couch and go for a run. But I was 17, I wasn’t worried. What’s there to worry about a little run at 17?

So I met this small group and we went for a run. Nothing too fast. I’m slow and I had no trouble keeping up. No one was keeping track of the miles, but being familiar with the route, I know it was about 3 miles. It was strenuous, but didn’t really think much about it after it was over. Until the next day. I felt like a total wreck, which I know now was probably due mostly to running a pretty good distance and not having really been running at all. My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt. I felt awful, it hurt to walk. And then it didn’t go away. Weeks later this same group asked me to go for another run and I had to decline. My knees still hurt. Hurt right under my kneecap. It hurt to walk upstairs, and I wasn’t even doing anything. Finally, after what had to be two months later I started to feel somewhat normal. This was my first major lesson in being careful. From then on I knew if I ever wanted to run a long distance, I needed to spend sometime, weeks in fact, to get my ankles, knees, and joints of all sorts to get accustomed to it. 

For years after this, there would be periods where I would start a routine of running, getting up to being comfortable with several miles comfortably, but if I ever had a break I knew I needed to spend some time, walking, jogging, running short distances to give myself time to get comfortable. Even then, I experienced numerous instances where my knees hurt and I would be forced to try various forms of knee sleeves, braces, wraps, straps, shoe insoles. I tried so many things to try and feel more comfortable running. I always wondered why this was necessary for me. I knew I wasn’t doing anything extreme. The most I would ever get up to was slowly, over periods of weeks and months, building up to running 10 miles at a time. Not that 10 miles is insignificant, but I always felt like considering how careful I was being, the knee pain I was experiencing sometimes was a little ridiculous. 

And then there were times when I wasn’t really running at all. Months or years long stretches where I was just lifting weights or maybe spending some time on ellipticals or bikes, not really putting any kind of pounding on my knees at all, and I would still feel like there was something not right. Felt like I couldn’t bend my knees easily, just casually kneeling to look at something or to work on something.  Occasionally I would see a doctor when it got severe and X-Rays or an MRI would always be negative. Sometimes they’d barely acknowledge that my knee was even swollen, which it often felt like it was. 

Anyway, I struggled with this on and off. Knee pain, feeling like my knee was wing, occasionaly feeling like it would just give out, and always feeling like my knees are not nearly as mobile as others. Even when I would be feeling good there were times where, when it came to athletic things like jumping, playing basketball, doing a box jumps, where I would think to myself, “I’m healthy, these people are healthy, why are my knees clearly so much weaker than theirs?”

But, fast forward to my most recent issue and what has got me somewhat desperate for relief and hoping, praying, that the ATG program and the ideas recommended by Ben Patrick “the knees over toes guy” will work for me.  In February 2020 I was doing normal stuff for me. Squatting, deadlifting, running a little (a mile every now and then). I was feeling healthy. Maybe I pushed it a little hard in the gym one day, I don’t know. But I woke up feeling like my knees hurt. Hurt to run, hurt to walk on stairs, hurt to sit down. Mostly my left knee. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I’ve felt this many many many times before. But then a week or two later not only was it not gone, but it was in both knees and had gotten worse. 

I toned it down some. It still kept lingering. I started wearing knee braces again, which felt better when I was working out but didn’t really fix anything. Went to the doctor, got X Rays which were negative, which I expected, and got some anti-imflammatories and a recommendation to go to PT. I could have gone, but I just didn’t have any faith that would work. Then the Pandemic shut everything down and I really didn’t feel comfortable going to a PT office if I could even find one that was open. 

I’m not completely insensible, so I started toning down what I was doing. Didn’t work. The COVID pandemic shut gyms down, so I toned down my exercise even more. I was still working, but I wasn’t running, wasn’t lifting heavy, nothing really close or so I thought. This knee pain kept lingering and lingering and lingering.

Finally, over the summer after having significantly toned down to almost nothing what I was asking of my knee other than just living my life, I started to feel better.  So I tested them a little bit. That was three months ago, and ever since my little tests, they’ve been bothering me every day. It hurts to walk around, hurts to sit down, hurts to go on the stairs. People I work with keep asking me what a doctor thinks. Now, truth be told I haven’t gone since the late winter. I could go, but I don’t have any confidence they’ll be able to say anything. My knees generally feel exactly like they’ve felt before when I’ve had this issue. It’s just lingering far longer than ever before. Nothing has ever showed up on an X Ray or an MRI and I don’t feel like it would now. I never felt anything that felt like a tear and my range of motion is not limited physically, except by pain or discomfort. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like if I tore something there would be other signs than just pain. Like I wouldn’t be able to run or squat with weight or something, all of which I can do, its just painful. Like I said, maybe I’m crazy, but I have felt like this off an on for decades. Just never quite to this extent.  Plus, I don’t want surgery, so I’m not sure what I’d do even if a doctor found something.

Enter ATG and Ben Patrick “Knees Over Toes Guy.” Throughout this whole time, every now and then I will Google  things about how my knee is feeling, trying to find any kind of answer. Which is, again, something I’ve done many many times in the past and sometimes I have found answers. Like, foam rolling, or a new kind of knee sleeve, etc. And sometimes that did work and I was able to find some relief. But so far, for this, nothing had really worked. I was starting to feel broken, like this is just how I’m going to have to live from now on. And maybe it is

Then Friday of last week, December 11, I was browsing Tik Tok and a post by Ben Patrick “@kneesovertoesguy” found its way to my feed. Why? I don’t know. I had never heard of him before, never searched for him before. Must be because his page is “fitness” related and I’ve liked some fitness things before on there, who knows how their algorithm works. But in this short video at the very top it say “How I Saved My Knees” and shows Ben doing some things with his knees, that appear to be EXTREME, like things that I would never even consider doing or have ever considering doing. Seemingly effortlessly putting his knees into positions that I know I’ve never ever been able to do, while at the same time talking about how he struggled with pain for years and had multiple surgeries. 

Something about this post, spoke to me. It wasn’t that long, but it clicked with me. I started googling him, looking him up on youtube, trying to find out if he was legit or what.  What I found were some genuine people on YouTube who seemed to be trying his program for similar issues as me, long term knee pain that wasn’t responding to usual methods, and were having some success. Not miracle success, afterall they hadn’t been doing it that long, but success enough that they felt much much better to than before. One video the guy spoke of having several days where he didn’t even THINK about his knees and I thought, “Man, if I could get to even that point I’d be so much happier.”

OK, so it definitely didn’t seem like bullshit, so I kept looking. Inevitable I found ATG’s and Ben’s YouTube channel where they show some of their thinking and some of the exercises they recommend and why and show more of his story and more of their customers’ success. These spoke to me even more. I almost felt like they were speaking directly to me. And these weren’t some kind of super slick marketing campaign. The stories from real people seemed genuinely self filmed and their real story told their way. Now granted, that could itself be produced, but it didn’t seem that way. One guy spoke of being athletic for years and then having to get knee surgery and the doctor basically telling him, “Oh, you’re never gonna feel good playing basketball again.” And he was still a relatively young man, and he spoke about starting with the beginner program “Knee Ability Zero” and how it completely changed his knee, after a long time and a lot of work, and that he feels basically completely normal and that he’s thriving now. That really spoke to me. 

Alright, so it seemed legit. I watched more of this videos, checked out the site and found out its $50 a month for online coaching with the program. Whew! $50 a month. Not for a gym membership. Not for physical therapy.  Just for access to his programs and online coaching.

This was kind of a big decision. A lot of the exercises he talks about doing, he talks about publicly and demonstrates on his YouTube channel, his Instagram, ATG’s channels, all of that. Not all of it, but especially the beginner stuff, which is what I’ll be doing, can be found for free. But, from everything I saw, ATG is promising answers to all questions online, video review of your form everyday, advice and critiquing on a daily basis.  In addition to that, they have a promotion for $30 for the first month. But still, $500 basically for one year for online physical therapy basically.

But, I figured a couple things. Number one, because of COVID, I’ve had to suspend a gym membership and also a jiu jitsu membership. So my overall fees for physical training are still going to be much lower now and in the next few months than they were at this time last year, even including paying ATG $50 a month. In addition to that, I kept watching videos and saw a few people who say they basically completed recovered their mobility, if not surpassed anything they did before. And these people apparently have had much worse knee issues than me, including multiple surgeries. I figured, if it doesn’t work, yea I’ll have wasted some dough. But if it does, and I feel even moderately better, it will have been completely worth it. 

So, I signed up, paid the first bill and started using their app. Did the first days of exercises. Now, I’m not going to reveal what they tell you to do for now. But, basically the beginnger program for people with knee pain, has 10 things to do Monday Wednesday and Friday. BUT, several of them you’re only supposed to progress to when you can only do the others pain free. So starting, I’m only doing three little exercises and some stretches. But these three little exercises are surprisingly strenuous and they’re designed, I think, to build up the muscles directly around your knee. We shall see I suppose.

So the first day I did it, the application was easy to use where you can log your work outs and post videos they request so they can check your form. Both were very good. I asked a few clarifying questions and got a response very quickly, either that night or the next morning.  Saturday and Sunday are rest days, but they do have some stretches they suggest on off days which I did on Satruday. Monday was more of the same three exercises with some stretches. I received some feedback from the trainers on Monday and Wednesday and was told to go ahead and try an additional exercise (I think you can describe this as a reverse step up).

So far, so good. I can’t really say I feel any better or different, but its only been a week. Other reviews from normal folks like me talk about feeling better after a few months or longer and Ben Patrick himself talks about a multi-year journey he’s been on, but I’m  not sure at what point he would say he started feeling healthy but I have gotten the impression from listening to a couple podcasts with him that it took him years to figure out what he wanted to do and then another year or so before he started feeling healthy. Not sure about that though. 

I’m hopeful. Which is more than I can say about how I’ve been feeling since February.

[coolguycy]

hey i found an essay from may that i had to write for my english class. we were supposed to do a “stream of consciousness” essay about quarantine. 

idk i just thought it’d be fun to show yall my inner monologue

fair warning: this was written at one am and features huge amounts of oversharing

           Ah, quarantine. Everyone’s favorite time. Not. I don't really know what I was expecting. I thought it would be a few weeks at home, I’d get to relax, catch up on some shows I’ve been meaning to watch and a month later everything would go back to normal. Boy was I wrong! Time seems to move differently in quarantine. March felt three years long and I’m not entirely convinced April happened. I wish there was more to do. I hate being bored so much. At this point I’d take more school work over boredom. That's big, coming from me. 

 “But Cy,” I hear you say, “quarantine has given you so much time to do all those things you want to do! How can you possibly be bored?” The funny thing is, after about two weeks there isn't much left to do. My problem is that I binge watch shows and finish them too fast. I watched Gravity Falls the two days. That’s 20 episodes a day. At that rate, I could watch everything on netflix by the time quarantine is over. But, I’ve already watched all the good shows, I’ve played all the games, read all the books. I’ve baked so many cookies I might die if I eat one more. I have nothing to do but go on walks and refresh my social media over and over to see if anyone else has posted anything. That gets dull fast.

But I suppose it’s not all bad. Without quarantine, I never would have gotten discord and made all my new friends. Back in March, (wow, has it really been that long?) a group of freshmen made a discord server so we could all keep in touch or get help with homework while our classes are online. Then through a friend I was invited to another server for LGBTQ+ people trying to make friends. Through that server I got invited to another and through that one another. Now I’m on 13 servers and have a ton of friends! It’s weird to think that this horrible pandemic can have such positive side effects. 

This isn’t caused by the virus, but it’s affecting my quarantine so I guess it counts. My older sister is coming home for good. She’s been living in Utah for a little over a year now and this will be my first time seeing her since February. It’s not that I didn’t miss her, I did. It’s just Sarah is super homophobic/transphobic. I mean, my whole family is to an extent, but at least my dad and yonder siblings try to understand the LGBTQ+ community. It occurs to me, as I’m writing this, that I don't know how out of the closet I am. For context, I’m asexual and panromantic. I came out as pan to my younger sisters in September, my older sister in November and the rest of my family in December. ⅔ sisters took it really well. Sarah did not. She almost outed me to my mom before I was ready, which was majorly not cool. Everytime she comes home we end up arguing politics and it's just a generally not fun time for all involved. She gets home on Saturday and I’m supposed to be nice to her. I really don't want to see her, much less be quarantined with her. Being around her is like having a second, shorter mom who doubles as a try hard therapist. In other words, bossy and annoying. Maybe I’m being a little harsh, she’s not really all that bad, but i’d rather not have her around 24/7. She can be a lot to handle. 

On the other hand, my mom told me earlier that she's trying to get me an appointment to get me an official diagnosis for anxiety. A diagnosis means a prescription, which should help me stay calm while I'm stuck indoors so that's cool. 

I feel like I'm really oversharing. But I mean you did ask for an inner monologue and these are my thoughts. I could take out all the bad parts, but I’m almost at two pages and I want to go to bed. I’m writing this at one am, because that's when my words flow best. Any other time, I worry about what I’m saying, whether or not it’s “right”. But at one in the morning, my brain stops caring and that lets me just think whatever thoughts I want and write them down. But of course, saying that has ruined it and I’m now worried about doing it right. You said “stream of consciousness style” about quarantine, but my stream of consciousness doesn't stay on one topic for very long. I think I did it right. It all relates to quarantine in one way or another so it’s probably fine. 

So, yeah, there it is. My thoughts on quarantine. I feel like this needs a concussion, but that doesn't seem very “stream of consciousness” to me. If i was to give this a TL;DR, I’d say: Quarantine is boring, but I made friends. Also I’m tired and I overshare things. Thats kind of like a conclusion, right? It’s good enough for me.

[portable-wing-wang]

Gender, Sexuality & Me

Right, here goes.

I've never properly talked about my gender or sexuality on here and feel as if I need to clear things up for friends, family and even myself.

Of course I'm very gender positive, I think everyone should explore themselves thoroughly in order to better understand their place in this world. What I experience will be different from other people and I may even disagree with others who share my experience as everyone is different. Just good to clear the air before we continue.

My name is Will(iam) Kirton. I was born at 1:04 AM on the 10th of April 2000. I was born with male attributes and was such designated a "boy". I have little problem with this. A baby knows itself very little and cannot comprehend itself properly and so adults assign labels which, for the most part, do help with development as a child is introduced to social spaces (schools etc.).

When young, gender means little and so I thought little of it. I never felt apart or different from my schoolmates. I did however feel uncomfortable and didn't know why. Constantly feeling as if I wasn't explaining myself properly and getting confused easily. I was bullied for this by many of the other boys and when trying to defend myself, I was made an outcast. This led to me to very female dominated spaces.

I tried my hardest to join the other boys (as I thought I was supposed to) but time and time again, I'd be pushed away. I did, however, make good friends with a few boys a couple of which I'm still friends with today. But my fondest memories come from my friendships with the girls and how they shaped me as a person.

I didn't know it then but through them I began to question myself, sub-conciously at first but very soon after it started to dominate my thinking. By the age of 14 I knew something was off for sure, but I didn't know what, so I started researching to find an answer.

First, I started to look at trans-folk and see how they saw it."Trans," Such an illusive word. To me it seemed so simple to begin with. Someone wanted to be something else because they felt uncomfortable. I felt uncomfortable. "Maybe there's something in this?" I thought, so I kept digging here and there with little motivation until I was about 15 when GCSEs took over and I didn't have time to think about it much until the summer of 2016. The thoughts came back in a big way. Why? I started going to parties.

Now it may seem a little silly but getting drunk and forgetting to hide myself allowed me to express myself in ways I'd never had the chance to before. Mannerisms began to appear that I wasn't controlling intentionally. I started speaking differently, stopped feeling like I had to explain myself and started having fun. This was the next big step of my self-discovery.

I then started playing DnD. Now, laugh if you wish but I had a human bard character names Steve who I categorized as a projection of myself if a little exaggerated. While playing as Steve, those mannerisms I gained started to take over even when sober. This was the last proof I needed to know I was queer but I didn't know what labels to use. I settled with saying I just had "queer tendencies" and left it at that but I still felt uncomfortable when I wasn't playing Steve.

So, I'm definitely queer, that's for sure but what kind?

I'm researching properly now. And not just gender, but sexuality as well. Bi, pan, gay, ace, etc.. I looked up everything and kept finding new labels. To help ease my brain, I focused on sexuality first. I knew I liked girls but I also liked boys however both in different ways. I timidly said I was bi for a couple years and then came out properly soon after my 18th birthday. I felt comfortable. For now . . .

I was still, however, confused. I couldn't work out whether I was a boy or a girl and it kept making everything else seem so confusing. At this point (16 or so) most of my good friends were male, I was decent at sports and I had a big ol' bass voice. BOY, right?

But there was something still bugging me.

I couldn't figure it out. Not until the summer before Uni, something slipped into place. I had completed my A Levels, I was out as bi, my shitty friends had left me, all was good. Wrong. I was more tense than ever. All I could think about was gender. Gender this, gender that. Constantly thinking, even with the distraction of the Edinburgh Fringe. I was also listening to a lot of Steam Powered Giraffe who, of course, have a trans woman playing the "Rabbit" character. I was obsessed. I wanted to find out everything about her and luckily, she posted a whole set of videos cataloguing her transition and thoughts all the way through. Finally, someone was essentially saying to me clearly what "trans" actually meant. Things began to make sense. I knew then that I was probably not cis but i didn't really feel comfortable saying I was "fully" trans, if you get my meaning.

But then I went to Uni. I finally had a chance to express myself freely and boy oh boy, did I do just that. I became so much more feminine than I ever had been in my life. It was so freeing. But I still didn't feel trans.

Then, someone introduced me to the concept of being "non-binary". A new term. I hadn't heard of it before. Is it like being trans? Or something completely different. I dived in head-first and came out the other end with even more answers but so many more questions.

Finally, I took the plunge (I'm sorry for so many swimming metaphors).

One evening in February 2019 after Uni I was in the loo before a musicals rehearsal. I hadn't felt well all day and was wearing something particularly feminine and caught myself in the mirror. I studied myself for a good few minutes. Each detail, each curve, how my body felt and looked in the clothes I was wearing. I stood there staring. Luckily no one walked in on me.

And something just clicked. After so many years of worrying and tensing, I finally understood. I was genderqueer.

Now, I should explain (here I go again), I didn't just decide then and there. I few months prior, my new uni friend "tom" (she goes by a different name now) had introduced me to a youtuber called Contrapoints. Before anyone says anything, I know she's caused a lot of discourse but I don't feel as if this is the right time to make any cases. Anyway, she didn't used to be openly trans and used to go by the label genderqueer. At the time, she made a very comprehensive video explaining what is and what it meant for her.

It intrigued me so, naturally, I did some more research and found that it fit my situation quite adequately but I didn't feel comfortable falling myself "genderqueer" yet either.

For those who don't know, genderqueer is an umbrella term for a wide range of traits which are either predominantly female, male or androgynous. It doesn't necessarily have a perfect definition and can be different for anybody who identify themselves as such.

My own genderqueerness could be described as a complete rejection of the male binary and so I carry more female and androgynous traits. This affects the way I speak, move my body, dress and my perspective on greater society. I also experience gender dysphoria. Now, to some, this would mean I was most likely just trans and using this a stopping-point before going further. This I feel is not the case. Whilst I am made uncomfortable by my flat chest, copious hair and broad shoulders, I do not feel the same about my genitalia or Adam's apple.

There are also more political connotations with the term genderqueer over non-binary. Genderqueer is a lot more aggressive but it gets the point across more clearly but I wouldn't say I wasn't non-binary. In fact, I think they're one and the same in practice but I do use my identity as a statement and so the genderqueer label feels more appropriate.

So yeah, I came out as genderqueer that February evening. First to my partner, then my friends and only now, almost a year later, am I attempting with my family.

I am so much happier for it too. I kept myself hidden for so long and have only now started to just accept myself and give in to the voice in my head telling me to let go. I'm much more relaxed too. Since coming out and using more neutral and even feminine pronouns, my dysphoria has become less of an issue. I still get it and I have bad days of course but for the first time in a long time, things are looking up.

I can't change the world, but I've been able to find myself in it more clearly and that helps a bunch.

TL;DR: I'm genderqueer. I'm bisexual. I've been out for a considerable time now and feeling better because of it.

Anyway, if you did read the whole thing, thank you. I'm not saying this'll be the same forever but this is me now and I'm still breathing so come get me world!

Feel free to reblog this, I hope it helps others realise themselves too.

[whoslaurapalmer]

for the directors cut thingy what are you doing the rest of your life? this is one of if not my most favorite warm fuzzy lemonberryice fic so any part of it you want to talk about, but especially the bit starting with “‘I wouldn’t run,’ I said. ‘And I will thank you not to point out my previous track record of doing just that’”

thank you!!!!!!! also, true to form, this is, so long, cause i just did the whole thing. what else would i do. the tl;dr of it all is that when i write fic, i am always thinking about writing structure and individual characterization and what the point of any given story is above all else, and that consumes a lot of brain power. and that you could give me any line in a fic and i will have an incredibly specific anecdote for it. 

the first lemonberry ice i wrote!! what a time. i specifically tagged it as ‘very little angst and no one dies!!!’ because i’d just posted beatrice like. three months before??? and i said to myself ‘hmm. i don’t want people to think all i can write is angst......’ so i wanted the fic to be like, look! nothing bad happens here this time!! it’s all good!!!!!!!!! and i had wanted to write something happy!! i like fluff a lot!! 

like bertrand, i was also searching for the right sinatra song for this fic. if it isn’t obvious, by now, three years later, i love sinatra a lot. on my previous laptop, the file for this fic was still titled after the first song the fic was supposed to be about, but when i backed up everything in googledrive i titled it properly, so the file name is the proper one now, but i’m, 99% sure the original song was i get a kick out of you (specifically this super jazzy one, not the one with the opener, it’s slower and doesn’t sound the same). but LIKE WITH EVERY CHOICE I MAKE IN A FIC i wasn’t sure it really captured what the fic was about. especially the “you obviously don’t adore me” line, because the fic was certainly more upbeat than that. so i dug around on youtube for one i thought fit better and found what are you doing the rest of your life. for three people, living such turbulent and unpredictable lives, to hear this song about always wanting to be there, for everything, no matter what it is, and for the rest of their lives, to admit that’s possible............ i couldn’t find a recording of young!sinatra singing it, though, which bummed me out a little. nothing wrong with old!sinatra, but you can start to hear more of the.....age his voice, you know? 

since this was 2017, only the first netflix season was out, and we all still had such high hopes for it, and i sure did, and tito puente was mentioned in miserable mill and because s1 was so good i didn’t mind making a couple references to it because EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL, and i just wound up sticking him in beatrice and what are you doing the rest of your life because his music was great and it was a fun callback! simpler times indeed........

my main goal with the fic was, i think, to try and figure out how i thought the three of them worked in a relationship, since it was my first time writing them. which is why there’s really specific lines like, “A year had gone by and I still wasn’t used to how free Bertrand was with his affection.” and “I grinned, because after all this time I knew when she was kidding. Beatrice’s razor-sharp wit, and the touches of playfulness behind it, was one of my favorite things about her.” they’re lines that i still think are absolutely in character for lemony, and i probably wouldn’t change them if i wrote it now, but i do feel they’re a little too, on point. or not on point, just.....obvious. like, not only did the lines have to make sense in the style, but they had to make sense, for me, as i was writing, as i was trying to figure out their characters and what would show lemony’s nerves alongside bea and bertrand’s habits and their relationship as a whole, and that’s a lot to try and do

“‘Sonnets,’ I said. ‘Beatrice will write sonnets.’” truly. i am truly haunted by this line now. it will keep me up at night. 

oh boy, that section is. a lot. i gotta go through the whole thing. i do. 

“I wouldn’t run,” I said. “And I will thank you not to point out my previous track record of doing just that, because they were all for relatively legitimate reasons.” I liked to think that I wouldn’t do it again, if the sort of situation arose where it was something I had to consider. (i think every writer in this fandom will admit that one of the hardest things to do, when writing a happy fic, is trying to find the line between, ‘i cannot avoid the legit canon events that have happened to these characters and turned them into the people they are, and i need to address that, no matter what i’m doing’ and ‘i want them to be happy and they deserve it’ and i think that’s a lot of what this section is. referencing how in canon lemony runs to not necessarily avoid his problems, but also, mainly, i think, because he believes 1) that’s the only way to protect the people he cares about and 2) that they’re better off without him, and how there’s definitely a gap between him leaving stain’d-by-the-sea and returning to the city, where anything happened, that counts as ‘leaving,’ and it was also supposed to reference one of the giant fics i was working on at the time, where the climax was, of course, and like any good slow burn fic, a misunderstanding that involved lemony leaving before reconciling with bea and bertrand. this fic would’ve taken place after it.) I liked to think that marriage wasn’t one of those things, because it was something I genuinely wanted. (2017!me had no idea what 2019!me would do......) But the uncertainties of the world sometimes made even that lovely thing seem so far out of my grasp that, if I was honest with myself, I had considered slipping away into the night so that I wouldn’t ruin anything else. It was an upsetting thing to think, but I had thought of it as much as I had thought about those musical numbers. (i still think about that, sometimes. lemony and bertrand, proposing like true theater nerds.) 

Bertrand looked out over the water. “Do you think I’m not scared too, Lemony? About the things we do, the positions we put ourselves in, whether this assignment or the next one will be the one that takes one of you away from us?” (my mental checklist of things i write include ‘lulu, is there a moment in the fic where like, The Point Of The Fic Is Made,’ like the moment where it all comes together and, this is what the fic was For an What It’s Supposed To Say, and that’s what this scene was for, and it’s definitely in what bertrand’s saying here.) (but because it’s 2017, like some of the earlier lines, i feel as if The Point is Too On Point. but it’s something i still struggle with, even now.) (it’s still important for bertrand to say it, though.....) 

“No,” I said. “I’m not that much of a fool to think that my fears aren’t universal.”

“Sometimes you act like you do,” Bertrand said quietly. “And I am under no delusion that our feelings for each other will fix any or all of our problems. But they can be a little easier to deal with that way, when you know you aren’t alone. You know that, don’t you?” (i had a lot of characterization notes around this fic (and the giant fic i was writing) since i was, again, just writing them and trying to figure out how they all worked, so i had a little list of like, what each of them do for the other, and parts of it were “bertrand prevents beatrice and lemony from being too dramatic, bertrand prevents lemony from being too self-deprecating, lemony allows bertrand to feel less self-conscious (and probably less worried because bertrand knows someone else shares his terrible anxieties)” and there are things i write differently now, because i’ve been at it for a while, but it was important for me to figure out how they connected with each other and....not what they offered each other, and certainly not how they fixed each other, but how each of them lessened certain canon elements that would make their relationship go differently. because again all my lemonberry ice fics (with the exception of the letter) are written from a standpoint where they would rewrite canon, especially this one. anyway, that’s.....that’s what that dialogue was supposed to do. when all three of them are together, they’re capable of being that support for each other and evening each other out.) 

I wanted very much to believe that, but every time Beatrice or Bertrand said it, it never seemed to sink in the way it should. It is one thing to love someone, or multiple someones, to love them so much you often can’t think of anything else, but another thing to trust them and the things they say and yourself, especially when you live the kind of lives that we lived. (i hate to keep bringing up years i know it’s like. weird but it’s how i sort where my brain was, and 2017 was a great year for analysis in this fandom and i don’t remember who exactly had brought up, that lemony sees a difference between love and trust, especially after ellington (he loved her but he didn’t trust her), and that’s something that’s so true that i’ve never forgotten and that gets brought up in other fics too (bea in the letter loving lemony but not trusting him.....). there are certain headcanons, of my own and of others, that i tend to just get, attached to, so they just. keep. happening.) Perhaps I did forget about it sometimes, the terrible recklessness with which Beatrice occasionally acted, how Bertrand tended to be much too quiet at times, the things all of us did when we forgot we weren’t alone. (yet another ‘line that has to work in the narrative and Say The Point’ because that really is a big thing in how i structure stories. i feel like it’s so necessary for there to BE a point to each thing i write, ESPECIALLY in shorter pieces, otherwise, why???????? and you know what, i need to be less strict about that, really.) The three of us were not perfect people, not by any means, but three imperfect people doing what they can for each other in a turbulent world is sometimes better than three perfect people going through life without a care about anything else. (i rewrote this line a few times, but it’s one of my favorites. this fic really has aged well, especially with lemony’s narration, this line in particular.) 

I squeezed Bertrand’s hand and didn’t say anything more.

speaking of lemony’s whole love vs. trust thing and my rewriting, i tend to keep most of what i cut out of a fic, especially while i’m trying to figure out a certain line (although sometimes i’ll just rewrite over it and then it’s lost to time), and the file has my original attempts for this scene, which still had some good lines -- 

I think it is a universally accepted truth that if you love someone, you trust them, in one way or another, but I have never felt that way. there have been quite a few people whom I loved a great deal but didn’t trust them, or people that I knew I could trust to act a certain way but certainly didn’t love at all. I believe it comes with the sort of upbringing that involves a great deal of suspicion for even the people around you.

the circumstances around you meeting them. but sometimes also because of the things they do. or you can not love someone at all and trust them, because you know them to be a horrible person and trust that they will continue to act in horrible ways, and that at the bottom of every root beer float you drink in their presence there will be a small collection of thumbtacks.

bertrand looked out over the water. “we love you very much, lemony,” he said, “and I don’t expect that to fix any or all of our problems. but do you trust that we feel that way?”

I did. or I wanted to. the thing about trust is that it is a very difficult thing, and as much as I wanted to spend the rest of my life between the two of them, the amount of uncertainty I felt about myself and our lives and even about that uncertainty was a heavy thing.

“what if it’s not enough?”

“maybe it’s not,” bertrand admitted. “but it’s good enough.”

“‘Hey, hey!’ Beatrice said, snatching the plate from him. ‘Don’t be like that with the good plates.’” still one of my favorite actions. still makes me laugh, even though now i think bea would be the one to be reckless with dishware. 

and beatrice talking about their apartment being too small for children is a top favorite fic ending. i love her. so much. 

[corviddays]

What does Environmentalism mean?

A few weeks ago I watched Princess Mononoke for the first time and I’m so glad I did. It was beautiful, exciting, engaging and the best environmental movie I’ve ever seen.

Outside of documentaries, most environmental films I’ve seen have pretty one dimensional messages.

Unlike Princess Mononoke, there is always a clear villain. The amorphous pollution monster. The evil human corporation. The guy who likes dumping radioactive sludge in rivers for fun. Ferngully, Avatar, Happy Feet, Bambi, The Bee Movie, The Lorax, The Happening. Entertainment with underlying messages of environmentalism tends to fall flat. When movies do it right it can resonate with you. Yet, so many get it wrong. It’s destructive at its worst and whimsical at its best. While each of these films aims to educate, they do little to help environmentalism as a whole.

So, if these movies don’t represent environmentalism well, what does? A good representation of environmentalism encapsulates what environmentalism is. Of course, but, what is environmentalism?

According to Encyclopedia Britannica Environmentalism is a “[…] political and ethical movement that seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment through changes to environmentally harmful human activities; through the adoption of forms of political, economic, and social organization that are thought to be necessary for, or at least conducive to, the benign treatment of the environment by humans; and through a reassessment of humanity’s relationship with nature. In various ways, environmentalism claims that living things other than humans, and the natural environment as a whole, are deserving of consideration in reasoning about the morality of political, economic, and social policies.”

TL: DR. Environmentalism is a movement that takes into consideration the natural world in societal actions, to prevent and stop harm towards the environment.

While this definition is my favorite “formal” definition of Environmentalism, there’s something missing. The same thing that makes most environmental messages fall flat. Environmental destruction is interconnected with all human issues. From racism to sexism to classism, environmental issues often overlap with civil rights. Simple solutions for complex problems often erase the issues minority populations face. Both in the natural and human world.

It’s well known that bees have been having a rough time, but what does that mean for the environment? Often when people think of bees they think of honey bees or on occasion bumble bees. Honey bees create honey sure, but they also pollinate. They’re important and according to Albert Einstein, “If the Bee disappears from the surface of the earth man would have no more than 4 years to live.” But, how much of it is true?

According to Greenpeace USA, honey bees perform 80% of all pollination worldwide [1]. They also represent a statistic that has been shared across the internet. That ⅓ of all the food you eat is in direct relation to the honey bee. However, there is a lot of detail they leave out. Honey Bees do pollinate 80 percent of all cultivated crops. [2] But to say all pollination worldwide is disingenuous. For the plants that honey bees carry lots of pollen and visit often. It is no doubt that honey bees do increase yields.[3] Yet, many plants are not visited by honey bees. It’s easy to forget that honey bees are an introduced species in various places around the world, for the sake of cultivation. This includes the Americas. There are also many places honey bees cannot live. Still, many plants do well without them. The reason why is because the honey bee is not the only pollinator. It seems like basic knowledge, but something that’s forgotten in the common mindscape. While the world panicked about Colony Collapse Disorder, pollinators worldwide continued to decline. [4] This tunnel vision left the general public unaware of a very dangerous problem. Important pollinators are disappearing right under our noses. [5]

Then there are people. Lately, environmental racism has gained popularity alongside social movements such as BLM. While not fully recognized until the ’70s and ’80s, its effects are felt around the world. [6] It shows itself in the violence that founded national parks and the correlation between landfill placement and low-income communities. [7] It is important to acknowledge people in their vulnerability and any proposed solutions. Environmental vulnerability affects the poorest people in the world the most. From pollution causing increased health crises to poor countries being the most affected by the heat of climate change. From lung issues, heart disease, and cancers. [8] Not to mention the heightened levels of obesity which can be attributed to Food Deserts. [9]

Our definition of the Environment and Environmentalism needs to change to incorporate all of its nuances. We need to change ideas of separation from the natural world, singular praise of a species, and protecting nature at the expense of others. If we want to make a lasting difference everything needs to be taken into consideration. Environmentalism is more than a movement. It is a guideline to move towards a future that is better for the planet and the humans that reside within it. Ecology as a whole is complex, so to treat the solutions to ecological problems as simple is dangerous.

“Environmentalism is really about seeing our place in the world in a way that humans have always known up until very recently — that we are part of nature — utterly dependent on the natural world for our well being and survival.” — David Suzuki

Sources

[1] https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/sustainable-agriculture/save-the-bees/

[2] https://www.vafb.com/membershipwork/news-resources/honeybees

[3]https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2017.2140#d3e893

[4] https://www.scientia.global/pollinator-decline-implications-for-food-security-environment/

[5]https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/while-we-worry-about-honeybees-other-pollinators-are-disappearing

[6] https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/fighting-environmental-racism-in-north-carolina

[7] https://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=plrlr

[8] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/28/climate-change-enviromental-racism-america

[9] https://moveforhunger.org/harsh-reality-food-deserts-america#:~:text=In%20rural%20America%2C%20a%20food,%2C%20living%20in%20food%20deserts.%E2%80%9D

More Sources:

https://www.uaex.edu/farm-ranch/special-programs/beekeeping/pollinators.aspx

https://www.nass.usda.gov/AgCensus/

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ocean-plastic-fishing-waste_n_5bc47dc9e4b0bd9ed55c1f60#:~:text=Each%20year%2C%20millions%20of%20tons,in%20the%20oceans%20and%20seas.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/12/how-the-environmental-movement-can-recover-its-soul/509831/

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, GREY! You’ve been accepted for the role of EDMUND with a faceclaim change to Daniel Sharman. Admin Rosey: “You are born unwanted, unloved and you have never worked out, not once, why you were kept; why your mother carried you, grew you, bore you just to immediately hand you off to a father for whom you were little more than a curse.“ Never before have I witnessed something so potently Edmund from the first. You bring a vitality and earnestness to him that makes him so incredibly endearing, even though there’s always that hint of the monster that lies beneath. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

WELCOME TO THE MOB.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Grey

Age | 32

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Activity Level | Currently I’m off work on extended medical leave (unknown end date), so mostly don’t have any major claims on my time and should be able to be around most days. With that said, medical issues and meds will crop up from time to time however I believe things have settled down enough to allow me to return to the rp.

Timezone | Sydney AEST (GMT+10)

How did you find the rp?  | Blame Rogue. Always.

Current/Past RP Accounts | I briefly played Benvolio here last year until health issues got in the way!

IN CHARACTER

Character | Edmund/Easton Craven.

Easton - You have to wonder, don’t you, what they thought when they picked your name. Easton. Town in the East. A name basically devoid of meaning, of hope for what you’d grow into. They didn’t wish you valor or prosperity or happiness or any of a hundred actual meanings, oh no - that all goes to your brother the brave boar. Of course it does – you were never wanted, so why should they want anything for you?

Craven - Oh, you know it’s origins in the Gaelic Ó Crabháin (Son of Crabháin) , or perhaps the far less noble Welsh Craf (garlic) but you can’t but help take a certain vicious, raw and ironic pleasure in the fact that it’s co-incidentally also a synonym of coward. In your mind you hiss it, hurl it at the portrait of your father – but all that escapes your tight throat is a quiet whisper, with a tinge of longing for the way the name sits so tidily on Gabriel and Everett’s shoulders ( but then, it was never made for you ).

Edmund - This name fits far easier on your brow than the two before – but then, this one was chosen with you in mind. This one you have earned with blood and pain, whatever cost they asked was met to carve out this space, this place where you belong. Rich Protection is what you are now, guarding the Capulets with whispers, with secrets, with blood and bullets.

(I’d like to request a face claim change to Daniel Sharman if I could!)

What drew you to this character? |

You are born unwanted, unloved and you have never worked out, not once, why you were kept; why your mother carried you, grew you, bore you just to immediately hand you off to a father for whom you were little more than a curse. He keeps you out of the same twisted sense of honour that your very existence besmirches –  does that “honour” do anything except ruin lives?

So much pain caused for one man’s already shredded virtue. In taking you in, Gabriel put his own selfishness above his family a second time – his play at penance means more to him than the hurt it costs his wife, the happy life you might have led if he had simply allowed you to be adopted by another family who actually wanted you. But then, how could he pat himself on the back about having done the right thing? In birth, you have learned a lesson you will not understand until you are grown – honour is simply a pretentious word for hubris.

( You are never wanted, never fitting; a jigsaw piece mixed into the wrong puzzle. )

You grow up chasing scraps of approval and warmth the way a donkey chases a carrot on a stick – in your mind, always close enough to grasp in another step and in reality always out of reach. Time and time again you take your pictures, your books, the homework your tutor praised to him and are met each time with the closed door of his study. Sometimes, if you wait long enough ( back aching from the perfect posture your father demands of you ) he will glance at one briefly, and you feel the warmth of the sun on your face, but it is quickly chased away by the cloud of criticisms that invariably follow. Each time you swear to yourself that next time your father will smile and tell you you have done well, and each time you return as empty handed as the last.

Your step-mother is never cruel, only distant and cold, but you are too young to understand the difference, to see that she walls herself off from you only to protect herself from what you represent ( and later, you will see it, the way they all protected themselves without worrying about protecting you and you will learn it well and hard that people look out only for themselves ). You are four when you call her ‘Mama’ for the first time, crying over your grazed knee, and her sweeping exit from the room is perhaps the clearest of your young memories, the words ‘Non sono tua madre’ falling dead and flat over her shoulder as she goes.

( You have been cold for so long that you start to think that even the slightest warmth might burn you to ash. )

Want curdles into bitter envy in your stomach as you realise what bastardo truly means: that the light that shines so brightly upon your brother will never fall upon you. That nothing you ever do will be enough to remove the bloody stain of your birth from the spotless white carpet of the Craven family. The acidic green bile burns through you, a sharp chemical taste in your mouth for years as it hollows you out, echoing caverns of craving in its wake until you think if you don’t have something then your very foundations will crumble into nothing.

Just when you think the last of your supports is washing away with the caustic tide you find something new to fill you to the brim. Liquid molten rage cascades into those raw-cut caverns, tumbling flames through your veins that leave scorch marks on your heart and fill your lungs with choking smoke. At first it’s all-consuming, over-whelming, an inferno that threatens to devour you in its intensity and you lash it out at everything around you; venting the hurt and pain of it at anything within reach. In time you manage to leash it, harnessing the Pyrrhic power of it to your own ends, channelling it in your own directions until you forget what it’s like to not be scalded and scorched from within, until you forget that fire is never meant to be played with.

( You set yourself alight to stop anyone else from striking the match and laugh as your victory pyre consumes you. )

Tl;dr: Fucked up, messed up boys are my brand yo.

( I feel I can pretty much perfectly encapsulate what cleaved my attention so firmly to Easton with that one time where my character inspo boards led pinterest support to send me a concerned email asking if I was okay.)

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

Obviously these are all contingent on the plot, other writers agreement etc etc, and are just ideas.

i. you were destined for the glory / the honor and the fame. / i was destined for the bullet / to be the gun with no name.

Everett has everything Easton has ever wanted, from parents who care to wealth to power to a circle of friends he can fall back on. He has everything that should of been Easton’s, if only Easton had had the sheer luck to have been born to the right woman. Easton never had a chance to shine as he should, buried since birth in his older brother’s darkest shadow, and now he’s clambering for the sun.

It’s the oldest tale in the world, this Cain and Abel fable, and yet Easton seems to be the only one who knows which page they’re on. Everett extends his hand and as much as the elemental fury inside wants to slap it away ( as much as some buried corner of his soul cries out to grasp it in earnest ), Easton rests his palm reluctantly in his brothers for now – after all, how much easier to put a knife in the back of someone who has invited you inside their guard?

ii. the moral of the story is / i will gut you if i need to. / i will carve my way out / with only my teeth.

It’s not that Easton isn’t loyal – in his own way he’s unswervingly loyal to the Capulets. Would he kill for them? Without blinking an eye. Would he die for them, on the other hand? And yet in many ways he defines himself more as Capulet than he does Craven; this allegiance, this new family that he has chosen for himself. When it comes to alternate allegiances, there are none he would so much as waver from the Capulets for; he has chosen the best player in the game and for now he’s content to ride their rise.

The problem is that, at the end of the day, Easton craves power and he craves control and the freedom that he believes comes with being at the top of the pyramid. He doesn’t see the chains that come with it, that bind Rafaella, Tiberius and Juliana with duty; only the way people jump to their words, scrape bows in their direction. And the Capulets may be a metaphorical extended family but at the same time they’re also, at their core, a very specific blood family and he can see the ceiling above him that his half-blooded Craven name will never let him rise past. Even the most loyal dog can bite and one day the Capulets may find that the dog they thought trained is actually a wolf - and that when you unleash a dog on your enemies it’s not always willing to be re-collared.

iii. when you are not fed love / on a silver spoon / you learn to / lick it off knives.

Affection is a difficult concept for someone who’s experienced so little of it in his life. On the one hand, he hungers for it; a deep insatiable need for the way his father’s hand rests proudly on Everett’s shoulder, the way Margherita had looked at her son, for soft hands to stroke his brow when he’s sick or a shoulder at the end of the day. But those are things for people who are worthwhile, who matter, and if Easton’s life has taught him anything it’s that he is deserving of nothing ( as much as he tries to yell into that void that he is deserving of everything ).

On the other, he approaches affection with the same wary fear as a dog that’s been kicked a time too many; to feel affection for something is to expose a vulnerable point to his enemies, a weakness for them to exploit – to say nothing of the self-destruct code he would hand to object of said affection, that he may as well be baring his throat to their blade when they inevitably realise how unworthy he is.

And so he tries to lock it away, snaps and bites at anyone who gets too close to keep a clear arms length around himself, and allows the loneliness to eat at him unabated.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Absolutely! I live and breathe for angst so as long as it comes at a time that makes me and everyone else bawl about it, go for it!

IN DEPTH

January 2012 (19 years old) Munich

Easton wonders what he’d expected, all those times he’d typed her name into google, deleted it and re-typed it a few days later. Whatever dream had prompted him to finally follow through, whatever holes he might have hoped to fill, he’d known it was a mistake the moment he’d stepped out of the airport.

Now, seated in this bright, cheerful kitchen, he’s sure of it.

“ So you’re him then. The child. ” Her hand closes for a moment around the golden cross that hangs around her neck, knuckles whitening for a moment as though gripping it tighter might ward off his presence here, in her life.  How many rosaries had she said to absolve herself of his birth, to absolve herself of him? ( And he knows that they both know it will never be enough. )

Her throat bobs for a moment as she swallows. “ You have his eyes. ”

His jaw clenches a little at the reminder, at the way she’s already dissociating herself from him, abstaining any responsibility. Not my, but the. As if she’d had nothing to do with it. With him.

“ Yeah. ” The silence thickens for a moment, suffocating the room until he can almost feel it straining his lungs. “ You’re her then. you’re… ” What? My mother? Gabriel’s ex-whore? The one who abandoned me?

He’d always assumed he must look like his mother; the only comments he ever got about Gabriel were his eyes. But at this moment, the most familiar thing about her face is the same closed, guarded expression that Margherita and his father had always worn when they looked at him.

“ They told me you were dead. ”

Ingrid nods, as though she’d expected as much. and her eyes flick to the clock on the wall behind him. Past her, on the door of the fridge, he can see the bright primary colours of a child’s painting, photos of her with a man and three small children, and for a minute it’s a kick in the gut that he struggles to draw breath past. In Verona he’s nothing but the one who destroyed a family and here he’s just the ticking time bomb waiting to do it again.

He stands abruptly, the chair clattering back loudly against the tiles. “ This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. ” His fists clench at his sides, nails digging into his palms to counteract the ringing rush of hurt and anger. “ Sorry. ”

“ Easton. ” It’s the first time she’s called him by name, and he stutters in place, nails digging harder into his palms. “ I assume you want answers and I suppose - ” She won’t meet his eyes. “ - I suppose I owe you that much. ”  

EXTRAS

Headcanons:

- Easton secretly likes to paint, and its one of the few things he has that provides him a sense of peace. Still, it feels like a vulnerability, a crack in his armour, and he guards the knowledge of it fiercely and warily, trusting it to no one. He scrubs his skin almost raw after each session, getting off every trace of oils that he can, because it’s far far easier and safer to explain blood in his knuckles or under his nails than paint. It’s so ingrained that the scouring ritual is almost a vital part of the process, a cleansing of more than just the paint. The vast majority of his paintings end up destroyed upon creation, because for all the peace he manages to find in creating them, when they’re finished he sees nothing but the flaws picked out in Gabriel’s voice.

- Pinterest Board

[luminisvii]

okay im gonna go black out and write some bullshit about my Thoughts on Literary Analysis and Character Writing bc i love writing and i love trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. i am an unfortunate fan of fire emblem, so the real joke is on me, but let’s do this anyway. using a lot of bold as always! it makes me feel special.

Why is Leonie such a divisive character? 

as per usual, here is my disclaimer that it’s okay to like Leonie. it’s also okay to dislike her, as long as you’re not being a massive dick about it. lord knows people are rude to me about lorenz and i didn’t ask for their opinions. if you like leonie, i am not out to get you, i’m not going to tell you that you shouldn’t, i’m not even mad at you. Neat! you like a character i don’t! and that’s just fine. i honestly don’t care! go have fun! 

so let’s talk. theres a TL;DR at the end so be ready.

i’ll make no bones about it: i’m in the camp that dislikes her. i don’t have the energy to hate her as i do for faye, but leonie is pretty obnoxious as a character and it’s an uphill battle to like her. i’ve played VW like three times since i’m a self professed GD stan so i’ve dealt with her a lot, read most of her supports, and seen her as a character in actual cutscenes and stuff.

the short answer: making a character obsessed with another one and having that be most of their personality is really annoying. 

the long answer: let’s start on that now! these are my personal thoughts and analysis, so you’re free to disagree with me if you think i’m falling short.

one statement i will make right away is that i’m not offended by leonie being mean to the player. a lot of people who stan leonie like to argue that people dislike her because she’s one of the few characters who doesn’t kiss byleth’s ass immediately. that’s fine. that doesn’t bother me. after all, seteth and hapi are mean to byleth at first too, and those two are far more beloved… in fact, it’s funny that they’re mean to byleth. i would also argue that my favorite lord claude is not buddy buddy with byleth at first either, but if these popular opinion threads have proven anything to me, people love taking claude’s lying ass at face value. that’s besides the point—it’s okay that leonie isn’t immediately friendly to byleth. that is not an objective character flaw. characters need something to conflict over in the narrative, and not being instantly friendly to a player insert is not a problem in the slightest.

the major flaw in leonie’s character, imo, is that the writers decided it was a brilliant idea to make her obsessed with a man who barely seems to acknowledge her. this is an extremely unfortunate reoccurring character trope in fire emblem. notable other victims that more modern fe fans may recognize are faye and cordelia, faye being the worst offender. luckily, leonie isn’t as bad as faye. but it really is irritating that leonie, along with these other women, seem entirely driven by men who cannot acknowledge them. within three houses, you have similar traits in male characters as well: cyril is another notable offender, and to a lesser extent, dedue’s fixation on dimitri. now, we do see jeralt talking to leonie at the very least, and he does speak about her at least once in my memory, and positively at that. so it’s not as pathetic as the likes of faye. 

outside of that, leonie cannot stop fucking reminding everyone she comes across: she loves captain jeralt. she’s his only apprentice. and you, dear player, who is his child, are not good enough, because you don’t love him as much as she does. practically all her convos with byleth are about how they don’t love jeralt enough, save for a slight turn around in the A support where she talks about her promise to protect byleth in jeralt’s place. to be honest, i usually ditch her in any run i’m forced to take her (hello sylvain, the superior idiot redhead cavalier) so this promise is just cute.

the arrogance in this attitude is insensitive at best, and as seen in her B support with byleth, potentially malicious and self centered at worst. 

let’s not beat around the bush. the main point of contention for leonie is her B support with byleth, which is locked to jeralt’s death. you cannot get this support until jeralt has kicked it. and if you’re on GD, chances are you have gotten enough support points with leonie to get it immediately upon his death. the man’s grave is still fresh. what does she have the gall to say to her beloved mentor’s child?

“I've spent my whole life working to become a great mercenary like your father. There were so many times when I wanted to ask his advice, but I couldn't. I just had to make do. That's how I've made it this far. Just hard work, all on my own. But then you come along... And it's like you don't appreciate Captain Jeralt at all, or how lucky you were to have him around your whole life! Ugh! It still really bothers me! You might be his kid, but I'm still his best apprentice! Got it?!”

YIKES.

no matter how you dice it, saying that to someone whos father just died? NOT GOOD. it doesn’t matter what her reasoning is. a lot of people argue that this is realistic, that she’s acting out of grief. maybe so. however, if the game wants me to like her, they’re failing, no matter how realistic her reaction is. if this was supposed to be seen as a moment of weakness, that would be one thing, but it’s clear leonie never learns anything from this. she never gets better. she spends the rest of her life constantly centered on jeralt, and sees byleth as a competitor and obstacle to his affections, even after he’s dead. 

i don’t want to entirely make this about byleth, because let’s be real, byleth is only one of her many supports. but it is the most easily noticeable, and the least charitable to her character. 

also fun fact i did a basic search for jeralt in her supports and thats 37 times hes mentioned lmao this isn’t even accounting for her non support dialogue! which is still a lot! 

so a decent chunk of her supports still involve her talking about how great jeralt is as if the man is jesus. her better supports don’t involve him at all. i don’t have easy access to a lot of her dialogue by chapter, but quite a bit of her regular dialogue references jeralt too, be it by name or title, and a good chunk of her endings, especially her solo one, have her just taking up his title and job and drinking habits. it’s supposed to be seen as cute.

this woman is in her 20s at the beginning of the game. she’s my age. this kind of behavior is worrying. 

so you’re thinking “tell, you’ve spent a LOT of time talking about how leonie won’t shut the fuck up about jeralt. what about the rest of her character? unlike faye, she actually has one!” right you are! i will concede that. leonie does have things going on for her outside of her constant screeching about jeralt! what are they?

we see that her personality has her as a hard worker and frugal person because she’s grown up in a life that has less than many of her peers. she’s rational and rather keen, capable of assessing her opponents correctly and outsmarting them. she likes to help others. her supports with claude are fairly interesting as they talk about their own perspectives on the world to each other in a friendly manner. she talks to bernadetta and praises her skill in craft and manages to befriend her. in fact, all her supports where she doesn’t mention jeralt at all are pretty good. she can be headstrong and sometimes quick to jump to conclusions, but leonie isn’t one to be too beholden to preset ideas and shows a capability to learn and change.

wait, this sounds like a pretty well rounded and likeable character i’m describing! what happened here? this kind of portrayal is almost contradictory to the side of her that only thinks of jeralt. 

a lot of people who like leonie like her for these aspects. at first, i had thought her to be interesting, since she’s the poorest student in the entire school, here on money raised by her entire village, which must have been extremely difficult for them to do. she doesn’t understand how nobles can be so frivolous, and butts heads with the likes of hilda, who has been raised in luxury her whole life and she clashes even harder with lorenz, who is obsessed with nobility. in a way, leonie is the slap from reality that many of the rich students from garreg mach need. and she also serves an important function in the dynamic of the deer—she’s a bit of a hapless straight man to all their bullshit. they always need one of those! in the lions, that role falls to ingrid, while edelgard plays that to her own house. 

so yes, there is merit in leonie’s character. there’s a lot to like about her here. however, in my opinion, it’s not enough to make up for the incredibly abrasive aspects of her fixation on jeralt. it really just comes back to that—that someone decided that it would be a fantastic character trait to have her never stop thinking about a man, and flaunt this to the man’s child. constantly. almost all her dialogue directed at byleth is about jeralt. post skip, a lot more of her lines become about jeralt and making him proud. it’s like she thinks that he’s her dad. she’s a grown ass woman! leonie is one of the older students! she is an adult by the time the game starts! an adult with some actual worldly experience, unlike her peers! what went wrong? why is she like this? why did they make her so fucking annoying when it comes to jeralt?

so yes, that’s what i think is the major flaw of her character. a flaw that is not easily overcome. cyril is a largely derided character for similar reasons. another simple control+f tells me that rhea is mentioned in cyril’s supports 59 times so uh, woo! he has leonie beat there.

worst of all this is a flaw that narratively, she does not overcome. she never grows and gets better from it. she never changes her single minded determination to impress jeralt, even long after he’s dead. a good chunk of her endings have her taking up his business and acting just like him, taking his title too. somehow lorenz is the more likeable character, and lorenz starts off as a much worse person than her! he starts as a stinky incel classist and somehow, especially over the course of verdant wind, manages to learn and grow and change into a much better person, while leonie remains stagnant in who she is. her own peers outdo her in almost every aspect, in that they appear to be capable of growing up while leonie, already an adult, never seems to show any signs of maturing over the course of the game. we see ignatz turn from a meek nerd to someone who’s willing to do what it takes to protect what he cares about. marianne grows from suicidal and depressed to finding the will to live because it means she’ll be able to spend more time with things she enjoys and people she loves. lorenz goes from snobbish and distant over his complex about nobility to being one of the kindest members of the deer, willing to go against his father for the greater good. even hilda matures! hilda starts the game lazy and unambitious, trying to avoid work, saying she’d never risk her life for her friends, to fighting against some of the strongest forces in the continent and ESPECIALLY on CF we see her refusing to abandon claude in his time of need, no matter how bad it gets, even if it costs her life. what does leonie do? leonie seems to forever be stuck in the mindset that she has to impress jeralt, no matter how far she goes.

this is incredibly nitpicky, i’ll admit, this isn’t really part of the character analysis, but i find she under performs as a unit too. she may have ungodly speed and no weaknesses in her skills, but damage output wise she’s easily outdone in house by the other canon paladin of lorenz and his wonky statline, and out of house sylvain has basically the same ability as her, the same color hair, and a crest + relic that make him way more effective. the man has bulk, too. so, that’s a small ding to leonie as well. i had the same problem with sully in awakening. for all the talk about how these women are just as good as the men, they appear to under perform quite a bit.

and i’m gonna talk real quick in a basic list format of arguments i’ve seen for people defending leonie, since i’m running out of like, a coherent way to talk about some of this stuff.

-She’s realistic.

maybe so, but the game intends for me to find her as likeable and sympathetic, as it is for all recruitable characters. her reactions to byleth and sometimes others may be realistic, but don’t paint a charitable image of her. again, the moment in her B support with byleth is so bad, it makes her seem like she’s acting towards them with cruel intent. while i don’t care about byleth’s feelings since byleth isn’t a real person, what it does is it paints leonie as malicious, no matter what her intent was or how realistic it is. yes, she’s in grief, she’s lost someone important to her, but in what context is telling someone who just lost their dad that they didn’t love him enough supposed to garner anything but hatred? even if she apologizes for it in their A support, that means she basically took years to do so and still seems to think of byleth as an obstacle to her being like jeralt.

although as i have said before, the rest of her personality is fine. i find her non jeralt stuff is much more well written. she’s a down to earth person amidst a sea of lunatics. that’s not a problem.

-People don’t like her because she’s mean to Byleth. 

this is probably true in some regards although i can’t say for certain. because byleth is a player insert and some might take it personally, but otherwise i find this isn’t much of a good universal claim since there’s more to the disdain to that. personally, i think it’s hilarious when video game characters are mean to me, but that’s just My Opinion, so no, i’m really not offended by leonie being mean to me. other characters are also mean to byleth, and that leads into the next point...

-Other characters act similarly towards Byleth and they’re popular.

one, look at those stupid unpopular opinions threads on twitter. they’re not as loved as you think. two, a lot of the characters who are listed for these things are often the likes of seteth and felix, and let’s talk about the context of their actions there. seteth is indeed mean to byleth at first, but his intent is wildly different from leonie’s—he’s suspicious, and rightfully so, of this mercenary who came out of nowhere and rhea is suddenly showing a lot of interest in and is giving a position of power to. seteth is not acting out of malintent or jealousy, he’s acting out of concern for the students and his daughter as well as rhea. because his core intent is “protect everyone around me” it comes off as far more palatable and dare i say, endearing. this is vastly different than “i’m jealous towards byleth because i love their dad and hate that they’re getting attention i can’t.” with a character like felix, this is outright incorrect—felix is not necessarily more rude to byleth more than he would be anyone else. felix is angry with the faerghus four in particular, but everyone else gets the same level of vague disrespect from him otherwise, so his behavior is not centralized to byleth. again, i don’t care about byleth’s feelings. there is also cyril, who is similarly obsessed with rhea, and is just as irritating as leonie for it, if not worse because he gets an extra layer of being a poc character obsessed with a white one who saved him. 

tl;dr: context and intent matters. a lot. i know this is a ton to ask of the fe fandom to consider taking things beyond face value, but please consider the context of characters actions and their intent behind them.

-People who don’t like Leonie are misogynistic.

i won’t discount that there are bad actors who are likely extra critical of leonie because she’s a female character. it could be and has been argued that the reasons that characters like edelgard and ingrid are so controversial is because they are female. but not everyone who raises criticisms is strictly doing so in bad faith. most people i’ve seen criticizing leonie do it for the same reasons i am, which is that she’s an abrasive character. these traits would not be any better on a male character and in some regards could be worse. so for this one, it’s better to take it as a case by case situation, and pay attention to how people are talking. those doing so for less savory reasons often let it slip eventually, somehow. i’ve been avoiding using the word “bitch” in this entire thing for this exact reason.

-Her non-Byleth supports are good.

this is highly subjective imo and comes down to what you personally like in a character. i do like some of her non byleth supports, but she still has an unfortunate habit of bringing up jeralt in non byleth supports, so the only ones that are truly good are the ones where she doesn’t talk about him at all. even then, some like her one with marianne can do the same accidental portrayal of her seeming like a pretty unpleasant person. this isn’t saying that leonie can’t be flawed or short tempered, after all i adore felix and he’s got Some Fuckin Issues, but her portrayal as a kind and bright person clashes with how she’s portrayed surrounding byleth and jeralt. far too much. i like her supports with claude, i like her line with bernadetta, and her seteth one is good too, but i’d also argue that as a personality she doesn’t bring much to the table. she’s a perfectly serviceable character when she’s not dealing with byleth, but i personally fail to see more appeal to her. she isn’t particularly enrapturing like some of the others, and unlike someone like ingrid who has a similar role in BL, doesn’t have the shared history and integration with the deer that grants ingrid a unique perspective on her peers. although again, this is highly subjective, so it’s tough to argue about this. i’ll grant that yes, the writing that doesn’t surround jeralt is WAY better and almost makes leonie a redeemable character.

-Other characters are worse.

very true! i’ll cite faye again as the bottom line for “this is how abysmal this character could be” and in feth itself there is, as stated many times before, cyril. however it doesn’t mean that leonie is better by association. and i also often see people citing seteth as an example over the rudeness to the player too, but once again that’s about context and intent. hapi is a lesser example, due to a similar mistrusting nature, and there’s quite a bit of the cast who are cold and rude because that’s just who they are. now, thank fucking god that leonie actually talks about things that aren’t jeralt. like, seriously, i’d die. she still talks about him too much, but i really should go through all of faye’s dialogue to do a proper count. 

so now you’re probably thinking—if you even got this far—“gee tell, you sure do like running your fuckin mouth, eh? so what’s the point of all this?” let’s wrap it up. 

the TL;DR:

what this all boils down to is that leonie’s got a serious problem in her writing where her entire life revolves around a man, and the way it’s dealt with isn’t particularly great. she doesn’t have a dynamic character arc like some others that redeem them from their problems, and the personality she has outside of her relationship to jeralt and byleth often clashes with the one she has with them, particularly centering on byleth. when dealing with byleth, the image it paints of her is extremely negative, and not one easily shaken—again, the B support moment is just THAT BAD. that is the most cited moment for why people hate her. it just seems like for all the flaws she has, they are not compensated for or grown out of like other characters in the game do for theirs.

theres also that tweet about how we put more thought into these characters than intsys does, so. yeah. definitely doing that right now. thanks, intsys, you did it again.

i will also point to the argument that we should hold the writers accountable, not the fictional characters who aren’t real and don’t have feelings. i don’t think leonie needs to be held accountable for her bullshit. i just wish the writers could have treated her better.

this is personally why i find leonie so difficult, and hopefully if you didn’t understand why people don’t like leonie, this can help enlighten you. i’m willing to hear people out if they have something to say, and as always, if you are a leonie stan, please go enjoy yourself, have fun, and don’t let me ruin your parade. i just enjoy trying to figure things out and talking a lot along the way! so that’s all, here’s hoping that in the future they do better, and remember that GD is the best house okay bye take this picture of me typing up this whole ass thing