#changeling writing

[changeling-ash]

Chapters: 5/? Fandom: QSMP | Quackity SMP Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Ángel Missael Castañeda Vega | MissaSinfonia/Phil Watson | Philza, Iván Buhajeruk | Spreen/FitMC Characters: Phil Watson | Philza, Ángel Missael Castañeda Vega | MissaSinfonia, Chayanne (QSMP), Tallulah (QSMP), Cucurucho (QSMP), Iván Buhajeruk | Spreen, FitMC (Video Blogging RPF), Roier (Video Blogging RPF) Additional Tags: OKAY SO EVERYONE but the two that shall not be named is gonna be here, Canon Rewrite, spreen suffering is my drug, A lover letter to Qsmp as whole!, Retelling, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, gonna start funny and enter angst-land, especially since the Angst Queen will be surveying, Pining, Mutual Pining, Winged Phil Watson | Philza, Reaper Ángel Missael Castañeda Vega | MissaSinfonia, Grim Reaper Darryl Noveschosch | BadBoyHalo, Slime Charlie Dalgleish | Slimecicle, Romance, Death Family, There will be other relationships but I don't want to clutter the tags with background ships, Other characters too but in the background, Slow Burn, slowish burn, Adding ships as they become majorly present, Mild Blood, Imprisonment, (but thats just the qsmp for you), Animal Death, Child Death, Character Death, people die, if you see us add some tags ahead of time no you didn't, Kissing, First Kiss, a little suggestive?, Blood and Injury, Violence, A little gore, Eldritch, Body Horror, Slightly - Freeform Summary:

What if we could turn back the clock? See the story again? What if it went differently? What if it didn't have to end?

A retelling of the whole QSMP story, originally made up of 68 pages and 256 paragraph length bullet points, now made into a full fic. It centers mostly around the death family with delightful encounters with many other favorite characters (Ash demands as much Fred as possible...).

Removing the restrictions of streamer schedules to accentuate many friendships and dynamics, expanding on abandoned storylines or plot points that didn't work out.

So. Let's tell this story one more time.

MY BABY HAS BEEN POSTED!!

Look at my baby.

[corkinavoid]

DPxDC Shit Fae!Danny Has Said While Living With Waynes

Danny, making a 'got your nose' gesture: Hey Jason, look, I've got your name!

Red Hood, who suddenly can't remember his own name: What the fuck

Bruce, in a tired dad voice: Danny, please, we talked about this, return your brother's name back

Danny: Oh, come on, it's not like he even uses it

Jason, thankfully remembering his name: And I repeat, what the f u c k

Steph, at dinner: I was wondering, what do faeries even eat normally? Like, flowers and stuff?

Danny, his eyes two black voids inside his eyesockets: The souls of the innocent

Steph: So that's a 'no' on the flowers?

Danny, back to normal and shoving a bagel in his mouth: I mean, I can, but would you want to stay on the crumbs-only diet when you are in a 5-star Michelin restaurant?

Tim: It's actually 3-star. Michelin rating system only has three stars, not five.

Dick: Are you saying that people are basically food joints for Fae?

Damian, at Constantine: It would do you well to choose your wording better when speaking to fair folk-

Danny, very much a fair folk, appearing out of thin air in the Cave: Yolo, s'up bitches, guess who's back in town!

Damian: -even when they do not necessarily do so themselves.

Constantine, looking between them: Are you sure you're the human and he is the changeling?

Tim, 46 hours of no sleep: Hey, if you can take a name from someone, does it mean you can take, like, other things that have no real shape or form?

Danny: Names do have shape and form, they even have taste. Yours is like a ping-pong ball made out of really dense cotton candy with banana-caramel flavor.

Tim, losing his touch with reality: Dense banana cotton candy...

Danny: By the way, I know you wanted to ask me if I could take your need to sleep from you, and theoretically, the answer is yes.

Tim, his whisper full of hope: ...will you?..

Danny: No. Either go to sleep or keep suffering. I'm not here to make your life easier.

Danny, after a half-an-hour rant on the Fae customs and traditions: -and Fae never tell the truth, but also never lie. It's a work of art, you know, say what you want but never in a way that makes sense.

Jason: So Fae just like to fuck with people.

Danny, looking him in the eyes, smiling and winking: Sure, humans are very fuckable.

Bruce, trying very hard not to pay attention to this: Can you make an example?

Danny: Sure. I lied.

Bruce: Where?

Danny: :)

Bruce, feeling like he is about to lose his mind: W h e r e ?

Alfred, right after he heard Dick's muffled screaming in the hallway: Young Master Danny, would you mind returning Master Dick his ability to talk in coherent sentences?

Danny, obediently standing up and walking out of the library: ...okay.

Bruce: How come he always listens to you?

Alfred: He knows what I will do if he doesn't.

Danny, returning to the library: He will change all the silverware to iron-ware. As well as the doorknobs and hairbrushes and lightswitches and everything else.

Alfred: Did you fix Master Dick's shoes?

Danny: I did. But I still think that making all of his shoes left ones was funny.

Alfred: Indeed, it was.

| <-prev | next-> |

There's also a fic now.

[cubbihue]

What do you mean that Changeling Timmy has ‘static for thoughts?’

Simply that! Static! They do not process the way we would. If humans were mind readers by nature, we wouldn't be able to read the minds of Changelings. They do not Think, therefore they are Not.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[lee-scribbles-and-doodles]

I know they're called YOUNG Justice but if they're finally letting Gar Logan actually be an adult again for the first time since before New 52 era of the Titans comics, and they're letting both Jon and Damian actually age, then maybe the YJ kids could also age??? Just a little? Have them be on the cusp of adulthood, maybe? Let them go to college per chance? Something?????

[songoftrillium]

Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition and the Anti-Indigeneity in the Gaming Industry

reosted with permission from J.F. Sambrano

Dagot’ee!

Shii J.F. Sambrano gonsēē. My nations are Chiricahua Apache (Ndeh) through my maternal grandmother and Cora Indian (Náayarite) through my maternal grandfather.  I am a mixed race Indigenous person, and through my father my heritage is English and Scottish. I am currently residing and doing work in my community on the lands of Lummi Nation. I use both gender non-binary and masculine pronouns, but prefer the former. I have several published works in the TTRPG industry, and am probably most known for my contributions to Mage: the Ascension 20th Edition, Werewolf: the Apocalypse 20th Edition, and the Transformers Roleplaying Game, as well as being part of the Essence 20 development team. Further, I also work in higher education at an Indian college, both advising and teaching Indigenous students across the United States. My passion is education, and I believe that we all learn through play, and that TTRPGs are a valuable source of learning, especially on personal, cultural, and social levels. This has always been what has drawn me to TTRPGs since I started playing M.E.R.P. with my brother in 1996 (and before that HeroQuest), through to my “graduation” into more story-driven games such as those presented in the Storyteller System, until now, where I author and produce my own roleplaying games.

I was also part of the First Team (in-joke intentional) hired by White Wolf Studios/Paradox Interactive via Hunters Entertainment to develop and author Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition. After several months of work, Paradox Interactive chose to go in another direction in early 2021 (I believe it was either March or April) and in fall of that year, it was announced that Werewolf would instead be taken in house, with Justin Achilli as the Brand Creative Lead and primary author of the book. Going forward I will be describing my experience while I worked with Paradox Interactive, primarily through Karim Muammar, White Wolf’s Brand Editor, as well as the developmental editor for Werewolf. Although I worked in a team, both with hired authors and in-house representatives at Hunters Entertainment, I will not be speaking for the experience of others, except when specifically noting unanimous consensuses, and specific interactions (which will go unnamed) that are particularly relevant. My hope is that by highlighting some of the anti-Indigenous attitudes that are central to the foundational members and leaders of the White Wolf brand, that I can provide opportunities for growth and healing within the World of Darkness TTRPG community, but also in the broader gaming community, where these behaviors and attitudes are rampant. I also want the community to have a better understanding of what this experience is like internally, and the challenges that Indigenous creators, as well as other marginalized creators, are met with when they try to make positive change within nerd and geek communities clinging to inherited white supremacist values, even if they don’t realize they are doing so.

What I do not want to be doing in this article is creating fuel for edition wars.  I believe that both legacy and Werewolf 5th are rife with anti-Indigenous attitudes, and appalling amounts of appropriation. Both versions deserve criticism, I am not defending one over the other, I am only sharing what my experience was like working on the 5th edition of the book. Further, please understand that I was originally going to wait until I had read the final copy of the book, because I wanted to know how much of my work was used (based on previews I already know some was, just not the extent) and whether or not they decided to credit me for that work, and how I was going to be credited.  My belief is that I likely will not be, but I am genuinely uncertain.  Knowing how they handled that would have reframed how I addressed this. But more importantly, I want it to be very clear that even before Paradox ultimately pulled the plug on the Hunters team, I was preparing to exit working on the project based on the experience I will describe below. Not only did I find it frustrating, and personally disparaging, but I ultimately decided I was uncomfortable with my name being attached to the product based on the direction they wanted to go. So while I wanted to know whether or not I would be credited, because it would teach me something about their internal practices, I do not want or need the credit.

Finally, the reason that I decided to speak about this now instead of after having a chance to inspect the final product, was because my personal experience dealing with anti-Indigeneity coming from Paradox was just that: personal.  But since then I have witnessed a throughline of hateful and xenophobic attitudes wielded against Indigenous people across the globe, and we do not deserve this treatment.  I was outraged over the events that led to the segregation of the Latin American fanbase, which culminated from bottom-up criticism about how poorly their people and countries were being defined through World of Darkness products, and ended up with the firing of their Latin American Brand Ambassador, Alessa Torres, because she chose to stand with her community in those criticisms.  I was further appalled when the likeness of Tāme Wairere Iti was shoehorned into the Werewolf book, a blatant example of cultural theft: not only in stealing the literal physical identity of an Indigenous person, but also his sacred tā moko.  When Paradox Interactive issued an apology for this, it felt incredibly hollow to me in the wake of these events, the hateful attitudes I had personally witnessed coming from the top.

Whether from North America, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, or Peru, or across the globe in New Zealand, not only do Indigenous people deserve better treatment from such a major company, but their Indigenous and Latino fanbases, who have twisted and worked themselves through difficult representation for decades at this point, deserve better.  Apologies are not enough, especially when they come with next to no real change.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse in Context

At the time that White Wolf Publishing began to produce its World of Darkness line, the TTRPG industry was dominated by white men, both as producers, developers, and authors, as well as the main characters in their settings. White Wolf's World of Darkness made an impact at the time, by defying these Eurocentric, patriarchal presentations, first by defaulting to feminine pronouns throughout Vampire: the Masquerade, and then by focusing on Indigenous representation and values in Werewolf: the Apocalypse, and as a young Indigenous nerd, it had a positive impact on me, as I know it has on some other Indigenous people who became fans of the World of Darkness at the time. This was because before opening the pages of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, I had never seen heroes that I could play who looked like me and my culture. It was off, and often offensive, but it was my first experience in which I could directly play a hero who shared my heritage--and I also had more than one option through two different Tribes to do so. This might sound a little like I was cheering for table scraps, but again, at the time, table scraps was more than I had ever seen before.

Werewolf: the Apocalypse 1st Edition was originally published in 1992 via then White Wolf Publishing (not to be confused with Paradox Interactive's White Wolf). From its inception, the premise was interwoven with what its then-authors believed to be Indigenous praxis and representation.  Like many pop-culture presentations of Indigeneity from this time period (see Fern Gully, Dances With Wolves, Disney’s Pocahontas, or in TTRPGs, the NAN from Shadowrun) it was rife with problematic and even offensive stereotyping. The most obvious examples thereof are within the two "Pure Tribes" Uktena, and W****** who I will henceforth refer to as Older and Younger Brother. However, Indigenous inspiration was at the core of the game's spiritual premise as well, where animism and "Totems" are central to the setting and gameplay. The way these concepts are presented is trivializing and dehumanizing, but it is important to acknowledge that the appropriation present in Werewolf: the Apocalypse goes a lot deeper than the two Brother Tribes (even the term "Tribe" was meant to invoke a vision of Indigeneity compared to the previous setting in the line's use of "Clan"). Additionally, there is art throughout every generation of these gaming books that represents humans, wolves, and human-wolf hybrid forms wearing Indigenous regalia, including sacred items such as headdresses, or engaged in sacred rituals such as the Sun Dance. The list of problematic representations goes deep, and my examples only scratch the surface, but it is also important for me to note the positive impact that this had, particularly in the 90's.

Even though the primary contributors to these narratives were non-Indigenous authors, or in one case, a Pretendian, and another, a culturally disconnected author, by the time the Revised (or Third Edition) era of the books came around, White Wolf Publishing was actively engaged in cultural consultation.  While I do not believe cultural consultation makes a big difference on its own, it matters that the attempt was made, to a degree: while these efforts fall short of what needs to be seen in cultural representation, this was still ahead of most other gaming companies at this time.

Hired by Hunters Entertainment

In February of 2020 I was approached by one of the co-owners of Hunters Entertainment to be one of the primary authors for Werewolf: 5th Edition due to my work on other World of Darkness projects, and let's be honest, because I was capable of bringing a much needed Indigenous perspective to a gameline that was rooted in Indigeneity and rotting with appropriation and racist stereotypes. I was overall receptive to the invitation, largely because I was very passionate about the World of Darkness setting overall, and Werewolf in particular, due to the impact that 90's representation had on me when I was a younger gamer. I also felt hopeful that with a really hard rewrite of Indigenous aspects of the game that I could shift a lot of really painful aspects of the game into something that was a net positive for Indigenous representation. I will tell you now, more than anything, I was excited to rewrite the Younger Brother Tribe, because when separated from racist authors, their message is very empowering and real to my lived experience.

That said, I did not agree to join the project without first asking for reassurances. I said that I was not willing to write negative Native stereotypes. I would not use appropriative language, or generally engage in appropriative writing (which meant at minimum that the names of the Pure Tribes would need to change), and most importantly, that I would not not engage in writing that contributed to erasure. While the person who recruited me to work on the project was eager to work with me, he acknowledged that he was not sure he could get everything I wanted to see approved, but also promised to fight for everything I suggested as hard as he could. Additionally, he shared with me that the original setting pitch for W5 involved all of Younger Brother being slaughtered en masse in a massacre. I made it clear that this was exactly the kind of thing that I would not write.  I cannot remember if this was something he suggested to be changed before or after I was invited onto the project, but with some pushback it was changed.  However, I point this out because I want you, the reader, to understand how eager Paradox Interactive was to start with mass genocide and erasure as a foundation to the setting.  All that said, I cannot stress enough that I have had nothing but positive experiences with Hunters Entertainment, and none of the following concerns fall upon them.

The Sword of Heimdall

The first encounter the Hunters Entertainment team as a whole had with problematic guidelines for the W5 draft was the direction that Paradox Interactive wanted to go with the Sword of Heimdall. At the time, the suggestions from Paradox and Karim Muammar were that the Sword of Heimdall was going to represent the new major villain of the Werewolf setting, and that they were to also represent the far-right, fascist direction that Werewolf society so often turned toward. They were meant to be representative of how far the new concept of Hauglosk could take entire communities. However, the Sword of Heimdall was discussed interchangeably with the Get of Fenris as a whole, and more than once Muammar seemed to suggest that every member of this Tribe was guilty of the same attitudes espoused in previous editions from the Sword of Heimdall. Now let's not beat around the bush: the Sword of Heimdall are literal Nazis. They believe directly in white supremacy and don't shy from it. They wanted to cleanse impure elements from the Get of Fenris, including BIPOC people, other non-white ethnicities, women, neurodivergent Garou, and other disabled Garou.

The writing team found this approach problematic for several reasons. The first, and most obvious, was that the direction seemed to want to turn one of the most popular Tribes into a horrific stereotype of its most abhorrent faction. Whether or not Muammar’s goal was to turn them into villains, we could not imagine a world where fans of previous editions would get their hands on this book, and not look for a way to play one of their previous favorite groups, thus creating the issue of making a guide to playing Nazi. Even beyond that, it’s not as if historically there were not players who used the tools of the setting to play Black Spiral Dancers, why wouldn’t this draw people who actually wanted to role-play through these toxic, harmful politics? Further, and while this is less important, it left a bad taste in my mouth, the justification for this major shift in Werewolf lore seemed to change over each pass. At first, Muammar suggested that all Fenrir were Nazis/SoH.  Then, when he was provided with evidence that it was a small faction that was eliminated in the early 2000’s, he started to shift toward the idea that we should not follow the lore. Finally, when every single member of the writer’s team flatly refused to provide what would essentially be “a player’s guide to being a Nazi werewolf” the writing was on the wall about the end of our involvement with this product. More than once, he suggested that we were cowardly social justice warriors for being unwilling to work with this concept, even though there were several attempts to write a heroic version of the Fenrir that were focused on undoing these ills of the past.

Indigenous Erasure in Werewolf: 5th Edition

While the entire Hunters Entertainment writing team was handling the major, glaring issue of Paradox’s fervor to include a major Nazi element in Werewolf, I was personally dealing with the problematic approach to the Indigenous issues in the setting. The largest problem, for me, was in addressing Younger Brother’s issues, the history of non-Indigenous writers creating horrifically racist stereotypes, and what was valuable in the Tribal identity that should be saved and recentered. However, my attempts to do so were thwarted with every approach. I rewrote this Tribe four times, and offered three different versions of it to try to earn approval for a final write-up, but each time there was a lot of negativity directed towards my attempts and all them boiled down to this: Muammar felt that having two Tribes (both Younger and Older Brother) representing the “Indigenous population” was too many, and wanted them to only be focused on Older Brother, and that Younger Brother’s connection to a central, Indigenous identity, was undesirable because “other sources wrote them as having Siberian and European connections” and that future writing on this Tribe would require a lot of sensitivity…suggesting that one, Muammar wasn’t interested in doing the work to handle that level of sensitivity, and further, that he wasn’t interested in including me in future work, since I was involved with doing that at the time.

I want to take a moment to remind you that the work that was put into recovering Younger Brother started with “Let’s Kill Them Off” and at this point, through a combination of convincing and pleading, had been walked back to “They can live, but now they’re not connected to being Indigenous anymore” which is just representative genocide of a different variety. “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” It was also explicitly something I said I would not write about going into this project. Ultimately, my efforts did not get much further than this, with some specific exceptions I will cite below.

Karim Muammar’s Anti-Indigenous Positions

Muammar consistently and repeatedly communicated to the team in ways that were condescending and dismissive of our collective accomplishments and capabilities, but from my perspective, no one suffered as much significant derision as I did while discussing the changes I wanted to make to Younger and Older Brother in order to make their representation empowering and exciting.

In the pulled quote from the previous paragraph, I want to point out to you that Muammar, who had the title of Lead Editor on this project, refused to capitalize Native American. Further, he would often redline my work with edits to decapitalize my own uses of Native American, as well as the word Indigenous when referring to Indigenous peoples. While there are plenty of people who might want to argue about this, I will point out that both the AP style guide as well as the Chicago style guide (the one which I am most familiar with in my academic historical work) both call for Indigenous to be capitalized when referring to a people. Further, I challenge anyone to defend the consistent decapitalization of Native American. More importantly, the reason that these are standards in respected style guides, is because the English language has been used historically to oppress and erase ethnic identities, including Indigenous identities. By transforming adjectives into proper nouns, we are declaring that Indigenous and Native aren’t descriptors that can be applied to animals, plants, and soil, but real lived identities and culture groups.

When I was explaining to the Paradox team (which was mostly just Muammar) why it was important to change the names of these two Tribes from the appropriative (and offensive) ones used in the past, Muammar pushed back by defending the previously used Younger Brother name, even after reading my extensive research and explanation about how this would harm Indigenous communities and fans.

While doing so, he also decided that it was appropriate to refer to this entirely Native American tribe by the word “savages” a slur that has been specifically used to dehumanize Native Americans, and then mocked my rewrite that focused on presenting them as stewards of the land using Indigenous methodologies and praxes, instead of the “savage” racist stereotypes they were presented as in previous editions. Further, as in the above quote, even after it was communicated that the use of this term was problematic, he kept doubling-down to use it to refer to the Tribe.

Even though I worked hard to redefine Younger Brother through Indigenous theory, such as place-based theory, relational theory, and communal theory, Muammar either refused to recognize this work, dismissing it as simple, or else simply could not understand the importance of these changes. Either way, the choice is that he didn’t want them to change, or couldn’t comprehend why the change was important because of how entrenched in white supremacist thinking he is. Further, after the massive effort that I put forward to attempt to educate him and the rest of the Paradox team on these issues, the insistence on using offensive terms and belittling my work felt intentional. So let’s talk about the work I did that was above and beyond my job description: free cultural consulting work.

“Sensitivity” and Consultation

I have seen several misunderstandings of my role working on this project going around, so I want to make something very clear. I was hired to work on this project as an author, and nothing else. I was not ever hired to be a cultural consultant. I do not do cultural consulting work. While I feel that there are many creators and companies who hire cultural consultants with the best intentions in mind, their responses often fall short of what is needed, as no one is ever obligated to actually follow the advice of cultural consultants. Further, I think there are also many companies who choose to hire cultural consultants only to say “we did this minimal step, and that is enough” in order to ward off naysayers.

However, anyone who hires me gets some level of cultural consulting for free, because it comes out in my writing–in both what I won’t write and what I choose to center my writing around. In the case of Werewolf 5th Edition, however, it was far more involved than this. I came with a plethora of “I will not write X” because I knew the setting was so problematic.  A short list of my demands besides not being willing to write Indigenous erasure, was that we needed to change the names of the Pure Tribes (and the term Pure Tribe itself), we needed to change the word Totem to Patron, and also the Patrons of the Pure Tribes. We needed to move away from the term Metis for obvious reasons, and we needed to move away from the term Skin Dancers. I also specifically noted that there was a lot of cultural theft happening from the beginning of Werewolf until now that I wanted to address. The only way these issues were going to be addressed was to convince Paradox they were actual issues on the level of PR concerns, because nothing else was likely going to be considered. So in order to achieve this, I put in weeks worth of research, writing, and meetings with top level administrators with Hunters Entertainment so that they could bring this information to Paradox.  I never documented my hours, but I would guess that I did approximately 80-100 hours of what I could only describe as cultural consultation work for free that was outside the contract work I was hired for. Let’s be clear: I did this willingly because I was passionate about the positive changes I wanted to see in this product, because I believed that Werewolf’s historic ills could be turned toward non-toxic representation.

Besides my actual words, such as naming the Ghost Council, and arguably the name Gale Stalkers came from a combination of names I pitched to Paradox after Winter’s Teeth was denied, and several sentences and paragraphs that I have seen so far that appear so close to what I originally wrote that you could imagine they were just edited versions, my largest contribution toward the final version of Werewolf: 5th Edition was this work. The only reason the offensive, appropriated names were changed were because of hours of my work to convince them it needed to happen. The reason that the Gale Stalkers aren’t just dead and gone: again, I pushed against this. The reason that Skin Dancers, Totem, and Metis will not appear as canonical titles? I pushed against their unwillingness to alter these things (see Karim’s defense of Wen**** Tribe name above).

Further, and this is the biggest reason I decided to write this article before seeing the final version of the book, I want to mention that I was also included in discussions with Hunters Entertainment to potentially be part of the art direction team, especially to oversee depictions of Indigenous characters, regalia, and art, to ensure that it would be represented either respectfully or not at all. I decided I needed to speak as soon as possible after the artistic portrayal of Tāme Iti appeared in the Glass Walkers preview without his permission. There are many arguments surrounding this issue and I am not going to address everything, but ultimately, I can tell you that had I remained as part of the art direction team, and saw that, I would have questioned it immediately. Even if I didn’t recognize Tāme Iti immediately, I would have asked what the source was on the depiction of moko in that piece, because I am aware that this is a sacred form of art–and I had already discussed wanting to make sure things like Crinos in headdresses didn’t appear in the book (as had often happened in previous editions, particularly on a certain white-skinned character whose name rhymes with Steals-the-Past).

As time working on this project went on, and I went through rounds and rounds of trying to convince Muammar and Paradox that it was important to not steal Indigenous identities, art, and stories, and that a greater effort needed to be put in powerful and empowering Indigenous representation, and I constantly ran into refusals and criticisms that were clearly hateful toward Indigenous identities and peoples, not to mention the push to represent Nazism as a major part of the game setting, I grew increasingly frustrated and restless with feeling like I was trying to work on a challenging project while also defending my right to exist as the person I am at every turn. Eventually I turned to another Indigenous TTRPG and game creator to ask for advice, and after a long and difficult discussion, I came to the conclusion that I was going to talk to the Hunters administration team and tell them that if Muammar kept using slurs and other anti-Indigenous language and attitudes, I was going to need to step off of this project, because it was harmful to me on a personal level. In furtherance of this point, I have been avoiding doing any contract work at all where I can tell that I am wanted for my specific cultural perspective ever since, because this situation was so harrowing for me.

Unfortunately, before I could have this conversation, after one final draft of Younger Brother and Bone Gnawers (which had its own issues, but that is not the point of this discussion), before we received any other specific feedback, the Hunters Entertainment administrators announced to the writing team that Paradox had decided to take the book in-house, and would no longer need our services.

The main point I would like to leave you with, besides these few specific quotes (out of dozens and dozens) that Muammar made that were anti-Indigenous, is that there is often a big call to have more BIPOC voices in various entertainment industries, so that both our stories, perspectives, and unique views on how the universe and life works, can be included; so that an industry that is historically, harmfully Eurocentric, might turn toward new, healthier, and inclusive directions. And I agree with this call for change, but I implore you to consider the conditions that BIPOC creators often have to work under: doing cultural/identity work and consultation for free as part of being present, being subject to vicious refusals of our experiences and perspectives, and straight-up having slurs lodged against our work. I want to see these changes in the industries we love, including the gaming industry, but currently the people who are in charge, who have the most power, are severely hostile to our work and our perspectives. This is why, for example, works like Coyote & Crow were done with an almost entirely Indigenous group of creators, and led by Indigenous creators, because trying to work for and with this ugly, hateful, and xenophobic group of people is so often exhausting, both mentally and spiritually, and because no good changes end up being made.

I am glad the harmful, appropriative terms were removed from the setting. I am glad I was part of the fight to make that real. I am not so glad that I was treated with hostility and racism by Muammar for the effort and love I put into this work, and I am not so glad that I will certainly be reviled by one of the two communities I did this work for–the gaming community, and certainly the people in power in this industry–and I am also not so glad that I didn’t have the opportunity to properly acknowledge how much of Werewolf’s base themes and setting are twisted and tied-up in Indigenous appropriation without giving the proper acknowledgments.

More than anything, I hope that this story will help you, the fans, realize that there is a lot of darkness in these communities, and they won’t change unless you hold their feet to the fire.

Ánaagodzįįhł

J.F. Sambrano

[lackadaisycal-art]

The ability to illustrate your stories in the time you could be writing them is a blessing and a curse

[stellar-solar-flare]

Trying to build up the courage to write my first explicitly Autistic Reader* in the MCU.

She'd probably be paired with Steve; I don't want to write a fic that's about autism per se but something where the autism is just a part of Reader. Obviously it will affect her and her interactions with others but I want to write a fic about her having adventures with the Avengers and she just happens to be autistic.

Any thoughts on this, anyone interested in reading?

(*I am a clinically diagnosed autistic person myself. While I have some could-be-read-as-a-neurodivergent-person Readers and some explicitly autistic/AuDHD OCs, I haven't written explicitly autistic one before.)

[hypertechnica]

i’m not saying that what Odo did in s6 while the dominion occupied the station WASNT fucked up beyond imagination, but am i the only one who thinks it completely makes sense why it happened (and why Kira forgave him?)

to be clear, i absolutely think the show forgave him too fast - it should have been a full arc on screen, not in a single off screen discussion in a closet. that was a massive writing failure. but! i don’t think that the arc is usalvageable at all.

(CW for discussions of grooming)

from what i knew of the dominion collaborator arc before i watched it, i assumed Odo had taken an active role in betraying the federation basically because he was lonely and horny and prioritized his own feelings over his values. i didn’t see that at all.

Odo’s betrayal lied within his inaction - his refusal to help kira and the resistance when she needed him most, ruining their plans and in the end costing thousands of lives. Kira (and everyone else) had every right to never speak to him again - so why did she?

Odo, to me, seemed completely dissociated the entire time his betrayal took place. where just before he had been talking of wanting to rip out his strong feelings for Kira, he then takes on an eerie apathy towards everything, stating things “used to” matter and that he felt nothing. he doesn’t even know how much time is passing. the crux of this, of course, is the link - Odo stresses that it’s an experience that can’t be compared to anything solids can do. Kira just “doesn’t understand.” that she can’t understand. what is so life changing about linking that makes him do a full 180 on everything he’s ever stood for? it’s basically just goo sex, right? right?

the Voice of the Link (the female changeling but i refuse to call her that because it’s a stupid fucking name) is manipulating him with his desire to link and to experience his culture. but linking is more than a metaphor for sex, it’s quite literally the emotional fusion between beings. the show compares it to sex, yes, but the emotional intimacy of the act transcends humanoid notions of sexuality in a way Odo had never experienced at this level before. the Voice already had power over him. she’d been building his trust and teasing him with hints at their culture for seasons at this point, it wasn’t a huge step to fully let her enter his mind. the Voice wanted Odo to join the Great Link - but she also wanted that minefield to be destroyed. Odo says she didn’t find out about their plans, but was he correct? what are the Voice’s true motives? she says she doesn’t care about the details of the war, that she just wants to be with Odo for companionship - i don’t buy it. she has to know about the resistance. she’s too smart to not have figured it out. it’s two birds with one stone - fully sway Odo to the side of the dominion, and ensure that the minefield is destroyed.

they’d linked before, but never in totality or for that length. she knew he’d be vulnerable to it. that he would lose himself to the overwhelming emotional intensity and melding of their minds. Odo was an extremely young changeling with little to no experience linking, and was thrust into an out of body extremely emotional and sexual experience literally transcending the boundaries of self with a thousand+ year old founder who knows exactly what buttons to press. of course he would lose his sense of self and detach from reality! she’s literally both attacking and assuaging every vulnerability Odo has in an extremely precise manner!

Odo wanted nothing more than to be able to link with another changeling but the power imbalance was too great. he was putty in her hands. it was really uncomfortable to watch and i dare say it was an act of predation rather than “Odo was horny and folded immediately” or “Odo was lonely and prioritized that over his friends.” yes, he was both of those things, but in the context of his relationship with the Voice… good lord. i wouldn’t even be surprised if Odo genuinely didn’t know the extent of the damage he caused until after things were over - he was completely and utterly gone.

it makes no sense for Odo to suddenly abandon his entire moral and value system just because The Link Is Cool and Awesome and i’m Learning About my Culture and then change his mind once more once shit starts hitting the fan. he’s not that gullible. he can’t rip out his feelings! but he can be coaxed into a state of derealized semi consciousness by continuous linking and isolation from others.

by linking with the Voice he lost track of where he ended and she began. his ego had been destroyed. he was nothing, and nothing mattered but the link. the totality of it. his loneliness was amplified by a thousand degrees every time they separated, she knew how to make him feel just right, she knew how to make him lose his independence completely.

but the spark within him, his love that he’d tried to get rid of, the kind that didn’t require becoming nothing but a drop in an ocean, saved him from her. Kira helped him remember himself and what he believed in right before it was too late.

Odo is far from a defendable character in many cases. he’s a very very flawed person. but i would argue this isn’t his worst moment. his extremely authoritarian tendencies and the amoral decisions he’s made while in complete sound mind are honestly more culpable to me than what happened to him in s6. the scale of the disastrous consequences resulting from his betrayal make it way worse obviously, but he was literally getting groomed and NOT in his right mind. he seemed almost drugged to me at points.

so he SHOULD have gotten another arc afterwards explaining all of that in detail instead of “well, he talked it out offscreen with Kira. he’s forgiven now!” BRO HE INDIRECTLY KILLED SO MANY PEOPLE dissociated or not he SHOULD face consequences for that!! make him grapple with it!! make him realize the extent of what happened not only the consequences but the the way he was taken advantage of! its literally existentially terrifying in every way! and of COURSE in that context Kira would forgive him. trust would have to be rebuilt, of course, but it’s one thing to actively put the entire alpha quadrant at risk for some strange, it’s another thing to have your vulnerability taken advantage of and be put into a dissociative state.

tldr: the Voice is a great villain and Odo has never done anything wrong ever in his life

[charyou-tree]

I'm thinking about changeling myths

What if the fae were brood-parasites of humans?

What if, like cuckoo birds, they left their own young to be unwittingly cared for by another species? Perhaps fae children have become excellent human-mimics out of sheer necessity, with humans trying to recognize the intruder and evict them in an evolutionary arms-race. Maybe they must leave their forcibly-adopted homes before adulthood, lest their fully grown fae forms arouse suspicion, and that most dangerous human threat-response: an angry mob. Perhaps that's why humans have the "uncanny-valley" response of instinctive distrust and aversion to nearly-humans.

What if most fae didn't steal human children outright, but placed their young into the homes of human families that had recently lost a child? Perhaps they took advantage of the tragically high ~50% child mortality rate of preindustrial societies, filling the gaps in families with their own children. Maybe they knew on some instinctive level that they would be cared for by the grieving parents who were thankful for the seeming miracle. Maybe they also knew not to leave a fae child in a healthy human home, for humans would certainly notice if there was suddenly an extra child after all.

What if, sometimes though, they were maybe a little too quick? Perhaps switching out the still-warm body of the human infant who had died in the night with their fae young before the human mother even realized that her child had perished. Maybe from her perspective, it would seem like her child was stolen and replaced, even if it wasn't the fae's fault that they had died.

What if desperate fae mothers would occasionally resort to killing a human child, lacking any other suitable home to place them into? Perhaps It was risky, trying something so overt, but biological imperatives being what they are she would find herself compelled to go through with it before her own child starved. Maybe she made it look like an accident, or a sudden illness. Maybe sometimes they really did switch out the human's offspring for their own, not to steal the human child, but tragically to leave them alone to die of neglect, a sad but necessary price to ensure that their own child might prosper. Maybe it wasn't such an emotional thing for the fae. Maybe they saw it as no different to how the humans culled bulls and rams to ensure that their herds and flocks were amenable to domesticity.

What if particularly nasty fae outright threatened human families that were starting to become suspicious of their strange wild child? Perhaps openly demanding that they continue to raise them, or face the horror of having their remaining human children killed if they were to kill the fae's child, the way that brown headed cowbirds do to the species that they burden with their eggs. Maybe the rest of the local humans lived in fear of looking too long at the wide-eyed children, or even just whispering the word "changeling", knowing that another child might "mysteriously" fall ill, and then suddenly appear to "recover", but would never be quite the same.

What if it was hardly the fae's fault, but simply their nature? Perhaps a mother fae felt stark terror even after placing her young into the seemingly perfect home, knowing that even if the humans were merely to evict her offspring they were still as good as dead, for they knew no other way of caring for them. Maybe there were elaborate methods and rituals that were meant to give their young the best disguise and protection from human wrath that they could, in lieu of a more direct parental role that their species had long since shed like a vestigial limb.

What if more sympathetic fae sought a consensual childcare arrangement? Perhaps they would approach a grieving family openly, but cautiously, with an offer of a child they could raise in the place of the one that they had lost. Maybe they had learned that some humans would willingly raise nonhumans, after all they kept animals of all kinds, why not a child specifically evolved to be appealing to them?

What if there were whole villages that were relative safe-havens, mutualistic societies with mixed human-fae families an open-secret? Perhaps they disguised it from outside humans that wouldn't understand the arrangement, to protect all of their children, even the adopted ones. Maybe it was worth having a few extra mouths to to feed to also have an inexplicably good harvest every year, and a few pairs of unnaturally keen eyes that can see the things that go bump in the night more clearly than any diurnal ape ever could?

What if humans from such special places might even undergo the opposite exchange? Perhaps they sought out the fae's help during times of dire need in their adulthood, and received it, because they had helped raise their children after all. Maybe the fae they were pleading to for aid was even raised alongside them in their youth, and knew the human coming for their help as a beloved sibling, so of course they would do what they could; it would be repaid manifold by generations of safe fae children, free from the fear of death by discovery by angry vengeful humans.

What if changelings weren't a myth, or a monster, but an adaptation?

[changeling-ash]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: QSMP | Quackity SMP Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Ángel Missael Castañeda Vega | MissaSinfonia/Phil Watson | Philza Characters: Ángel Missael Castañeda Vega | MissaSinfonia, Phil Watson | Philza, Tallulah (QSMP), Chayanne (QSMP) Additional Tags: Literal Sleeping Together, Yearning, Winged Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Reaper Ángel Missael Castañeda Vega | MissaSinfonia, Mutual Pining, Crushes, Clipped Wings Philza, This is the one I dumped some wing knowledge into lol, They're married but still so stupid that they don't do anything about it, Missa has a low body temp and Phil has a high body temp, Yearning again lol, Phil is very emotionally constipated, He hides so many emotions lol, Protective Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Protective Parent Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), ignoring the current canon for this lol, pissa nation, pissa, Coming back after todays stream to say I'm REALLY avoiding canon now omg, Not Actually Unrequited Love Series: Part 2 of It's the middle of the night and I can't look away Summary:

But he was so doomed from the start, and Phil knew it. Phil knew as soon as he found he couldn't look away, couldn't move from his place in the doorway. His walls were dropped, it was late and he was tired, and Missa was so fucking beautiful in the torchlight. ...Shit. Phil has put away many of his thoughts for his husband Missa, locking them away in favor of focusing on protecting his family without risking everything he has done to keep them safe. But it is late, he has to wake up again in just a few hours, and his deeply repressed thoughts don't want to stay in tonight. ~~~ Based on the beautiful companion artwork that was made by @thunderbottle on Tumblr.

Love you pissa nation. Well rested for this one, mostly.

[corkinavoid]

Does anyone remember the Fantasy AU post where I was rambling about Danny being the Prince of Winter? This one?

Well, lo and behold, I have written a fic out of it! Yes, more Fantasy Dead Tired romance. Yes, more fae. Yes, more arranged marriage! I'm fucking obsessed, okay, I couldn't just leave it at one fic, so I wrote more.

So here we are, 'Married to Winter' by corkinavoid.

I just want to say that I love this fic. Like, I know I wrote it myself, but I just kept rereading it, and it gives me so much serotonin. I like it. I'm proud of it. I worked hard, and it came out good.

Also, I have to thank @sendryl for introducing me to Dick/Dan ship because I love their dynamic and its gonna be in the fic and I'm gonna give you a sneak peak of a piece of chapter 8:

[bunnieswithknives]

OK LAST CHIMMY POST IM NORMAL NOW IM NORMALIMNORMAL @cubbihue

[ashleyfableblack]

"Okay… what about this one?" Queen Twilight tapped a hoof on the page. With a soft glow of her horn she drew out the complex symbol in the air as she sounded it out. "Vah… Lahk. Varahk? Varrac!"

Chrysalis smiled. "Perhaps…" She sleepily craned her neck to study her most recent clutch of eggs. A sticky green resin held the precious charges in place, dangling from a nearby rocky overhang. As the wind funneled through the natural arch, they gently swung, rocked as a baby in a crib.

With a puff of her cheeks she blew a gust of glittering pinkish light in their direction. The love energy swirled around the eggs like an octopus ink, clouding the air in a warm soupy fog before it was absorbed into the tiny grey orbs. The as-yet-unborn gobbling up the nourishment from their mother. Chrysalis gave a sleepy yawn and began to slowly drift to laying on her side,. She wondered if they, too would have violet eyes like their little lavender pony other-mother.

"Chryssi?" Twilight gave her wife a gentle prodding with her wingtip. "Honeybug?"

"MRZussaffm…" Chrysalis's eyes struggled open.

Twilight gave an pleading grin at the pitifully adorable sight of the little larvae nuzzled around her bughorse bride as they tucked into the translucent tresses of her cobweb-mane. "Chryssi…?"

Chrysalis chittered to one of the larvae and gave her an affectionate nip, removing a flake of molting chitin. "I'm sorry, beloved. I'm just-" she yawned again . "You know your pony naming conventions are so unnecessary to our changelings. They're hatched knowing their designations through the hive-mind."

Twilight pouted with a pleading smile as she leafed through the pages of the incredibly ancient book. "I know it's a point of cultural confusion between our races, beetlebum. That's why I'm trying to incorporate more of your culture and try some names more familiar to your people and your people's history- while at the same time educating myself on the Ancient Equish language and history." She held the book aloft in her magic with a prideful flourish, still carefully keeping her place in its pages. "THUS, we are using one of your old journals from the pre-Sucrosian Period!"

Chrysalis sighed and gave a playful roll of her eyes in surrender. She had to chuckle. When Twilight was like this, she truly couldn't deny her little wife anything. She watched with interest as Twilight opened her old journal. Two of their larvae quickly skittered from the navy waves of her wife's mane to climb on the millenia-old manuscript. Excited to help their ponymother, they chittered happily, holding the page in place with their forelimbs.

"So…. Varrac?" Twilight asked with a bright, curious smile.

"Well, she was good with snakes."

Twilight looked from the ancient book to one of the tiny changeling larvae cuddled into her crest of alicorn chest-fluff. "Are you a 'Varrac'? Are you going to be good with snakes?"

The tiny face lit up like a Hearthswarming bonfire at her ponymother's excited smile. She hissed out her tiny forked tongue and wiggled her little caterpillar-like rump of a tail segment. Twilight fawned with motherly pride and nosed at the tiny changeling babe. "I'll bet you will be. Of course you will. You look just like a Varrac."

Chrysalis adored moments like these, lazy afternoons together with her wife, watching her excitement and pride as she learned new things. Pouring over old volumes of any sort, Twilight came to life in a whole other way. Knowledge was her passion.

"Let's see here… What about… This one, V….Vaaa….Varghan?"

Chrysalis peered over the tome. "Vabam. As I recall she …was good with secrets…. good at telling them anyways."

Twilight crinkled her nose at that thought. Looking to one of the larvae she shook her head. "That doesn't sound like you, does it?" The tiny changeling babe tilted her head. returning her ponymother's smile and shake of the head. "No. You're not a Vabam. That's an honest little face if I've ever seen one. Hmmmm…."

She continued pouring over the swirling, magical symbols. With Chrysalis tutelage she was learning the art of reading them but still, the practice was FAR more complicated than any language she'd ever encountered. Deciphering the symbols was as much mental wrestling as it was arcane finesse, even compared to the darkest and most ancient of pony magics. "Okay, what about… Sssssurgat? No. I remember you said something once about that one. She liked to pick locks or…. Oo! Suluth! What about that one, Chryssi?"

After a few moments of silence Twilight looked up from the page. "Chrysalis?"

She chuckled. Chrysalis had dozed off. Their tiny charges, nestled secure in the tucked chitinous hooves of their armored queen-mother, mirrored her gentle snoring.

"Oh well." Twilight sighed. With a curling of the enchanted waves of her mane she drew the larvae gathered around her into her crest of chest floof. "I guess that can be enough for today."

The alicorn queen softly shut the tome. With a mother's love, she gently carried her little buggy babes with her as she sidled over to the slumbering bughorse. After a few moments of ooching she eventually found her way into the creche of her wife's limbs and In the enchanted air of sweet summer breeze the royal family drifted off together.

[autism-purgatory]

“Your vampires suck bc they arent accurate to vampires/doesn’t fit my extremely strict (usually Eurocentric) ideas of vampires” wrong. Skill issue. Vampires or changelings or whatever aren’t real and people can do whatever the fuck they want with them, hope this helps.

[whereserpentswalk]

You know someone. Mabye something is a better description. He's an entity that just sort of joined your freind group, and there's something terrifying about him. Something uncanny about all the things that he does.

He's a supernatural creature of some sort, but not one of any kind that you've seen before. Faeries and all things of the gods stay clear from him, even vampires and werewolves seem to not want to be near him, and demons and ghosts all have at best a begrudging respect. He's something different.

He looks human, perfectly human. Blond hair, clear skin, bright smile, like the type of person who you'd see in a well lit ad. He's always well lit. Always photogenic. Of all the people you know who could secretly be a cryptid he seems the least likely. He's always dressed in the latest fashion, always knows the latest trends.

But there's something deeply wrong with him. At first he just seems a bit boring. He never curses. Likes the most popular movies and shows. Knows no counterculture, nothing unknown, nothing older, nothing not mainstream. It's so consistent. You think you saw him alone once and he was just standing still, not doing anything, not bothering to look like a person. It was the first time you realized he wasn't human at all.

He's very non controversial. He seems to have no religion, no political positions, perhaps no bigotry but no hatred for bigotry either. Mortal fence sitters could never hope to be what he is. It seems fine at first, but one time you were talking about politics with some people who agreed with you, but he seemed to disagree with you talking about it at all, and acusse you of starting fights.

And not to mention you remember a girl who was opening up to you and your freinds about the death of her father, and he told her to stop, told her she was making everything sad. He seems to hate everything sad. Hates sad movies. Hates sad music. Hates sad stories. It's like he sucks up all the sadness out of the room, and all the anger, and all the fear, and sometimes those things belong in some rooms.

You had a freind who said he was there when someone tried to assault them. They had been lead into someone's room at a party, and told to take of their clothing, and realized they were not permitted to leave. And he, the entity, was there, not inside the room but right outside. He didn't even know he was guarding the door, but he was. And he made it all so normal for everyone, told the person inside not to scream, that they were upsetting people, made it so nobody passing through that hallway might be upset at the assault going on outside. Perhaps an entity like him didn't truly know what he was guarding, either way he didn't care.

Eventually your freind got out of that room thanks to a poket knife. They drew the blood of the assaulters easily, such creatures are mere mortals. But the entity outside, the false human you thought was your freind, he was mad, mad at the victim for "bringing violence into a peaceful place". They stabbed him too to get out, but there was no blood inside of him, just void, like shadow given flesh, and the absence of all life incarnate.

You don't know what he is. He's not your friend anymore. There are many entities that have disguised themselves as humans. But you don't understand why one would disguise itself as someone so inhuman.

[comfymoth]

have you already planned/shared what the mall horrors are?

everyone, say hello to the mall horrors! :D