#character development tbqh

[neverquiteeden]

QUEST: Do one (1) thing that scares you

STATUS: Complete ✅

DETAILS: Went on a fairground ride (perhaps a slightly pathetic achievement for a 21-year-old, but we celebrate small wins here). I had previously only been on one rollercoaster before, and it had been a bit too much too quick, and I absolutely hated it for that reason; this time I was actually able to do the deep breathing and accept the lack of control, which I think demonstrates that I've been doing something OK when trying to craft my personality. I'm still a bit of a coward but I'm not as much of a coward as I could be, and if I can show myself that I can face and overcome the small fears, eventually I will be able to face the big fears.

[yukimiyum]

how did they flop castlevania nocturne so goddamn hard

[airs-headspace]

I almost made a post about how I always forget that the main characters of MHA are the Class 1-A students, but then I remember that I only forget they exist because all my stories are 18+ and even though I can EASILY and UNDERSTANDABLY make them older in my stories, I apparently feel really weird about doing that 🤣🤣🤣

(No shade to absolutely anyone who ages them up btw, you're valid and you should do what makes you comfortable, and it's something I have learned I am very uncomfortable doing.

EVEN THOUGH WITH THE LAST CHAPTER THEY ARE ALL CONFIRMED TO BE IN THEIR MID-20'S AS OF IT LITERALLY BEING 8 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE).

I'm actually using footnotes in my world building for my Dragon AUs at the moment. Damn.

[crazykuroneko]

This episode just makes me want S3 even more. I don't really care about the books, I don't really give a damn tbqh. But I know these writers are capable of elevating what they have in the books. The sheer adaptation choices they did for this episode alone are outstanding. I want to see what they'll do with these characters that they have developed in their own ways next. The tale really has seduced me 😌

[wyverningx]

people on The Internet Dot Com keep being absolute idiots about thea muldani so here is your reminder that she's a ravens success story — she grew up in an environment where she was asked to give her all and engage in incredibly unhealthy practices, but the result of such sacrifice was that she was rewarded for it with US court and a pro team. she was part of a cult and "left" in the sense of gaining physical distance, but all of her experiences reaffirmed that the toxic ravens environment was the most effective way to a successful exy career. it is fucked up that she believes others should go through the same thing in order to be "worthy" or "good enough," but i simply do not understand why so many people look at her and think that she should be crucified for being a representation of a finished, successful raven. especially not if she's unable to recognize abuse in others, which tbqh is something that is very common in cult-like settings. you don't want to look something-that-could-very-well-be-abuse-happening-to-others in the eye, because if they're being abused, then you could potentially be being abused, too, and what do you do with that? do you have any idea how hard it is to come to terms with that reality, especially when you are told day in and day out that this is the only way to get to the top? that this is how you make it in the sport? that someone who is being harmed by the coach or the team captain absolutely deserved it? that people who can't hack it are weak, but you're not weak, you're one of the best, you'll do whatever it takes?

is it extremely shitty that she blames jean for his own sexual assault? absolutely, yes. but she doesn't have the whole picture, and it's clear that jean intentionally deceives her (with the comment about him being fragile/clumsy, etc.) and lets her believe he had more agency in his sexual experiences than he truly did because it's a coping mechanism that also serves the purpose of letting her fill in blanks so he does not have to explicitly tell a lie. besides, if there is any singular raven that both kevin and jean view fondly, wouldn't they want her to believe whatever it took so that she didn't ask too many questions? wouldn't they both want her far removed from the reality of the moriyamas and human trafficking, because her uncovering the truth would put her entire life at risk?

people can have friends that are imperfect or do not understand them completely or that fuck things up sometimes. i get that jean's experiences put people on-guard when it comes to how he interacts with other characters, but god damn. she was his mentor. she taught him everything he knows about being a backliner. she made horrible and judgmental assumptions about his experiences. all of those things can be true at the same time. does she not deserve the opportunity to change upon receiving new information? does she not deserve the ability to take a step back, as ravens are dropping like flies and all eyes are on evermore and the perfect court, to consider that maybe she was a victim in all of this, too? that plenty of people are capable of making it to the top without calling another human being the master and turning a blind eye to the king beating his own men? that maybe kevin and jean and all of them were terribly wronged? why is she the only person in this series who's not allowed to grow as a person by developing a more nuanced understanding of rape and sexual assault and learning how to be a better friend to someone who had no choice?

also someone tried to "gotcha" me by saying thea and jean aren't friends because she uhhhh (checks notes) calls him a teasing nickname and says "i'm going to break your ribs" as though threatening your friends (especially ones you play a contact, violent sport with) is the worst possible offense ever in the same book series that people regularly ACTUALLY fistfight each other and pull knives on one another. i'd argue that these are actually huge indicators that they do like each other, because she's probably one of the only people in the world who he can express himself around and even say things like "i'm not from paris" exasperatedly. you know, like you do when people you care about tease or poke fun at you. those are actually probably some of the most normal interactions jean has pre-TSC, especially as she is not needlessly cruel to him like literally everyone else in the nest is. and not only is thea one of the only people who has any sort of comraderie with him and who makes the effort to see him after his injuries because she cares, but she also makes it past wymack and kevin and renee and neil guard-dogging him. does that seriously mean nothing? do you think renee fucking walker (who was ready to brawl on-sight at evermore) would have let someone like zane waltz into abby's house if kevin said a single negative word about him?

i have seen some incredibly wonderful and nuanced takes about most characters in AFTG, but at the same time, the way thea is treated and criticized in a more severe way than literal murderers in the series for her possibly-willful ignorance is utterly crazy to me.

idk. just some food for thought

[rudjedet]

taking humanity's overall lack of reading comprehension and narrow definition of what constitutes strength into account, calling well-developed female characters "strong" was a mistake tbqh

[dangaer]

(click for full images) ... back when i started this blog and the first year ive had it, i referred to my muses temporarily as being part of a red flag system, based around how open i was to them interacting with mutuals who didn't specify a muse or wanted to be introduced to a game they may have never played.

now, three(!) years later, i've created a visual (affectionate) red flag list so you can all see how things were monitored in my head.

i forgive him - basically, every li in an oto.me game has something red flaggish about them, whether that is comments, behaviours or actions. there is something either immorally correct or rude in what they do, characters in this isle are ones i consider their good to out weigh this bad, and any interactions / dynamics they develop are going to be more fundamentally healthy on their end bc that's just the type of person they are, even if the other muse ... may not be.

i can make him worse - this is ... an interesting section. basically muses on this line could even be on the ' i can fix him ' but are primarily in the line above because technically ... any amount of 'red flag' behaviour wouldn't be something that comes up without reason, primarily the characters in this route only become very red flag-like when certain conditions are met. basically, they don't meet you and become their bad endings, its the choices and actions of a route that turns them a little stir crazy about you. im more willing to write them with people who don't request muses than the ' i can fix him ' muses because, in general to strangers they have (somewhat) good intentions and don't really have certain thoughts swirling around in their heads tbqh.

i can fix him - they're red flags but honestly, they're not the worst (in my opinion) that oto.me can bring interactions wise. the majority of them are pretty good with strangers, theyre upstanding and right, but every single blonde in that isle is infamous in their game for being the lock up / kidn.ap / trapped route of their game. in regards to obe.y me / touchstar.ved - tbh its too early to tell but i feel ai.s falls very similarly to muses like nicola who care about their own first. hes got a bird theme going on. luci.fer, solo.mon and barba.tos are more hc than anything, barb.atos usually goes through a period of hating the ppl he loves canonly, luc.ifer really would have killed you if you posed a thread to his brothers, and solo.mon ... idk something about him strikes that chord with me.

the flag is so red this is a judgement of your muses morals - this ones kinda self explanatory, if you don't know the game / fandom / character or are a new mutual, i wouldnt give this muse to you on a whim, they're insane your honour but lord do i love them <3

[good--merits-accumulated]

I am still obsessed with your fic Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route), so I was wondering if you could answer 8, 11, and 15 for it? Thank you :)

!!! Thank you for the ask. :)

8 - Did any real people or events inspire any part of it?

Funnily enough, Un Dernier Verre is actually technically crossover fic with a Real Band! So in 2007 (? Maybe 2008?) Beirut did a Take Away Show for La Blogotheque where they went all around Paris playing the songs from their album, The Flying Club Cup. For The Penalty, they play in the back of this very cramped very poky little cafe. I'd loved the show for years (seriously, the entire thing is FANTASTIC) and was listening to a good deal of Beirut while writing and only realised afterwards that most of the fic is actually set during this video, just out of shot!

(If you can imagine, Neil and Todd are tucked away somewhere on the left where the guy with glasses is sitting. The band are continuing onwards into the very back of the shot, where they're taking up all of the booths.)

Sorry! Convoluted answer. Summary: yes, and Un Dernier Verre is technically RPF, I guess?!?!?! Even though none of the characters actually interact with anyone from the band.

(Un Dernier Verre (Pour La Route) is also the name of a song off the same album!)

11 - What do you like best about this fic?

I liked my descriptions very much. This was the first fic where I really got a chance to describe how Neil and Todd look in the real world (I'd done descriptions before but iirc at that point it was in the context of either 1480s Milan or handwavey fantasy fairy alternate universe). Also where I really began to think of Neil as an all-American character! I'm fond of Un Dernier Verre because it's where a good deal of the foundation for how I think of Neil and Todd as characters now came from.

15 - What did you learn from writing this fic?

Not a whole lot, but there was some. Mainly about writing believable character interactions. At that point I still hadn't got a good handle on writing dialogue (debatable whether I have now tbqh) and so everything is a little bit too cheesy to be good, but Un Dernier Verre taught me little bits and pieces about flow and rhythm! So it was useful in that way. But at the end of the day it's a small oneshot and there wasn't time to develop anything else in it T_T, although as I've already said it planted the seeds for me to start thinking about Anderperry's characters more intricately.

[oodlyenough]

aa6-5 turnabout revolution

finished 6-5 over the last couple weeks, which means we've only got the DLC left for soj and the main series of games.

i gotta say ... i liked this finale a lot more than i expected to. i thought it was fun, and in turn that elevated SOJ overall. by far not the best ace attorney game i've played, but definitely not the worst. from the way fandom talks about this game and especially the finale i expected something awful, but i thought it had some fun ideas with mid execution, which is how i would describe ... basically every AA game after the og trilogy lol

anyway. more specifically (spoilers)

the first half of the case -- apollo vs phoenix -- is way up there on the "great idea, mid execution". i was immediately willing to assume phoenix had undisclosed reasons for doing his thing so i was immediately willing to let it slide, lol. "maya is kidnapped again!!!" is not the most compelling angle they could've done, but, whatever. also NPC nick seemed to have a brain in his head unlike player-nick, so that was nice

i also got a huge kick out of phoenix playing (essentially) the role of the prosecution and doing every dirty trick the prosecutors have done to him for 6 games: hiding evidence, leading the witness, manipulating the judge, etc. this prosecuting shit is easy!!! i imagine him making pointed eye contact with edgeworth in the gallery every time. also the idea of edgeworth and phoenix creeping around off screen for the first portion of investigation day 1 was awesome lmfao.

the fey lore was ???????????????? but i guess we can assume paul was lying about most of it lmfao so ... i guess. i WAS very annoyed by the kurain storyline mostly being about dudes and i did spend the whole case certain we were building to a reveal that the crystal of ami fey=the founder's orb bc ami=the founder. but uh. no i guess not. whatever

dhurke is a character i knew to be relatively popular in fandom but i can see why, he really cracked me up. actually his whole return out of the blue and apollo's extremely prickly reception are one of the relatively rare moments of interesting and competent character writing in these later games imo. i thought their relationship was handled pretty well and quite interesting. i mean, i suppose i find it a bit unreasonable that apollo got over 14 years of abandonment in like two days but lots of things in AA happen in hyperspeed

over in khurain i still found that case pretty good and even the trial days kept me pretty engaged, something SOJ had struggled to do to that point.

nahyuta is a bit of a weird one in that i find him overall underwritten and a little dull but i absolutely cannot fathom why fandom hates him so so so much while loving others lol, esp blackquill whose motivation is the same but more inexplicable. is he my favourite prosecutor? not by a long shot, but his circumstances were insane and his motivations were clear by the end and i ultimately just felt kind of bad for him. i liked him much more than blackquill or godot lmao sorry fandom.

but i still cheered when he was not the prosecutor for the last case LMAO bc i LOVED garan and her crazy anime transformation lmao, finally khurain delivers the True Fey ancestor experience: insane sisters who hate each other. chefs kiss. rayfa + garan + the dhurke/amara drama was very interesting imo. i knew that chick couldn't channell!! maya for queen tbqh

rayfa's a good character and i enjoyed her a lot. i was frustrated in the end that they tried to make it seem like her big development/inspiration/etc was apollo ... like ... it should definitely be phoenix, who spent more time with her and investigated with her and started trying to show her other ways of thinking etc. plus she just lost her parents and is clearly searching for guidance and it makes way more sense for her to find that in phoenix than apollo who showed up 2 days ago. i guess they're trying to 1. use the player character 2. push the dhurke connection, but it was stupid when shes obviously more attached to phoenix and/or nahyuta lol

jove "jangly" justice is the funniest name i've read maybe ever and i assume apollo's middle name is jangly. it's so funny how they build to doing his divination seance only to spend almost no time on him fhgkghhklg

anyway in conclusion i liked 6-5 a lot more than i expected. i thought it was pretty fun. i don't really get why fandom is so negative to this game, like even way moreso than DD, when this game is better by any possible margin from gameplay to animation to story coherency imo.

stray other thoughts:

-apollo's backstories are such a meme but i thought his backstory in this game made sense enough with aa4 (where he had no motive/little backstory at all and wasn't much of a player in his own story), and the characters implicated were real characters we got to spend time with and interact with. unlike clay.png

-edgeworth is there for No Reason At All (fanservice) and i find that deeply hilarious. he's nick's +1 and he had to sleep on the floor with a bunch of strangers and crawl through the sewer. hysterical.

-for maya fey's big return game i sure thought maya was going to get to do stuff besides what she always does in a finale, be absent for plot reasons. sigh. oh well at least i got a laugh imagining her and edgeworth spending the rest of the trial arguing about the plumed punisher while nick and apollo are held at gunpoint

-athena cykes sweetie i'm so sorry your role in this game was a fucking embarrassment. so insulting that they turned it all into impressing simon and shit, fuck off man!!! my earlier criticism of this game being sexist even by AA standards remains. even phoenix is like well i can't have you risking your life you're too young (reasonable) and then "simon would kill me" which she acquiesces to???? hfjhgkjg

-nahyuta bamboozling apollo's perceive power by being like "thats the secret... i'm always anxious" was so goddamn funny

[maishairbuns]

I really want to watch Legend of Korra for Asami because from what little I know and seen of her she seems like a character I'd really like. If it is possible to develop a big lesbian crush on a fictional character that I've never actually watched the show of, then that's what I have for Asami tbqh

But also I hear that the show kind of butchers some things like Katara, so I'm really on the fence. Also when I tried to watch the first episode my fanfic-brain stumbled over "Oh right Kata.ang is canon" and I felt such visceral rejection of those scenes that I just stopped watching skfhkk

[infamousmonkey-cat]

okay so this is my ranked list of the slow horses as of end of season 2, least fav to fav. i don't know why anyone would care about this but it's my blog so i can do what i want 😡

roddy ho. excellent characterisation of a guy i would not want to touch with a ten foot pole

marcus. i'm sure he'll be developed but AT THE MOMENT his only character traits are "very competent" and "has a gambling problem". i don't dislike him at all there's just nothing about him

jackson lamb. putting him above marcus because i do enjoy gary oldman a lot but this is an archetype i have had my fill of at this point. like back in the bad old house md days, the "abrasive middle aged man" thing still felt kind of fresh (at least TO ME), but now it just reads as boomer power fantasy tbqh. like i started watching 'bad monkey' and i was immediately like, ah yeah, i get it. boring. i feel like the ultimate execution of this character type was hawkeye pierce, and the thing about hawkeye was that he wasn't emotionally untouchable. he had a vulnerability that balanced out his jokester qualities, whereas with lamb it's like "oh yeah he does actually care if you work really really hard to see it and don't listen to anything he says" which is like. well. why is it my job to do that? why doesn't he just communicate properly? dads need to learn this

river cartwright. solid protag, made more sympathetic bc he's a bit of a fuck-up, but ultimately not the most interesting guy lbr

shirley dander. when she was first introduced i was like "what is she, like sid 2.0?" but then i quickly realised she wasn't that and is very cool actually (eta not that sid wasn't cool obvs. just saying shirley is cool in her own right)

catherine standish. underdog/dark horse queen. every time she gets one over on someone i'm like YESSSSS

louisa guy. i love rosalind eleazar and i always liked louisa but even more so since she went insane. maybe catherine and louisa are on a par idk

[couchie]

Fucked up ship bingo harrykim and jh discoelysium

-@mansplainmanipulatemalewife

MY BELOVED MUTUAL WHO IS WITH ME THROUGH MY FLOPS <333

ok so kimharry

i am going to expand on everything i marked and you dont get a say in it

-> undeniably t4t

i dont care much for t!kim tbqh, it's become too mainstream for me. my approach for it is "eh, why not?"

now harry on the other hand...

oh i am FERAL for t!harry you have NO IDEA. TRANS MAN HARRY? AUGHHHHH. TRANSFEM HARRY? OUGHHHHHHH. NB HARRY? WAUGHHHHH. IM HERE FOR IT. it's so fuckin good n i eat it up every single time. his canon issues with his masculinity gives perfect content to toy with his gender in every which way and it is divine

and so yeah that is to say. t4t kimharry is a fuck yeah

-> terrible for each other (affectionate)

they clash. thats it thats the post. opposites attract typa stuff. thats why i marked the "(affectionate)" one

-> playing with them like dolls (taking them on dates and making them be all cute)

DOMESTIC KIMHARRY FUCKS. FIGHT ME ABOUT IT. we see them under a time crunch interacting with the mystery of a hanged man looming over their head and their districts in a pissing contest and with harry freshly amnesiac. i want to see the fall out. i want to see the progress. i want to see them when they're not focused on other plot things and we can get to the character development part. i want to see how they deal with themselves and each other on a normal day

-> thinking about them Always and Forever

yeag

-> LET THEM HAVE A HAPPY ENDING‼️‼️

BRO THE BAD ENDINGS FOR DE... MY HEART CANT TAKE THAT SHIT. let them be nontoxic partners. let them have good stuff in life. let them have each other. PLEASE.

-> the DEVOTION oh my GOD

there was a whole post analyzing how theyre devoted to each other and why theyve latched onto each other dont make me rewrite it

harryjean

WE GOT A BINGOOOO WOOOOO🎉🎉

ok here we go

-> i want them 2 make out with blood in their mouths like vampire bats

i dont think i need to explain, it is quite concise. do i think this will solve anything between them? no. should they do it regardless? absolutely yes

-> divorced <3

in my humble opinion they are more divorced than harry and dora are. yall r underestimating the power of toxic masculine work friendship in which they hang onto each other to not kill themselves and then one of them just forgets about it. maybe the divorce is one sided but they are. they rly are.

-> they will die together in a heart shaped pool of blood

(⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠)

-> terrible for each other (derogatory)

oh ueah absolutely. they constantly fought and argued and anything and everything. they made the other's anger levels skyrocket, on purpose, just to get a rise out of em. but they still needed each other. it's not like either could afford a therapist, much less working in a place that was actually not-actively-killing-them-slash-making-them-suicidal. they were all they had

-> "you should see the other guy" *points at a dead body*

that finna b jean fr

-> playing with them like dolls (Psychological Torture)

they are The guys for angst <333

-> thinking about them Always and Forever

yeagh

-> sicko 2 sicko communication

absolutely

-> they should kill each other

self explanatory <3

tiny little disclaimer i didnt play enough to meet jean and this is based off of what i gathered about him from other peoples' jeanposting so if it's ooc. oops. it's basically the version of him i crafted in my head

[hastings727]

So I managed to find a copy of the first Fowl Twins book on the internet archive and finished it within two days. I'm not sure if it was an earlier manuscript or something but that was easily the most flaunting Eoins done in his writing. Halfway through it I was like God damn, he's *really* flexing here. But again, I dunno if that was a "beta version" or something. But it was enjoyable, to be sure.

It reaches a level of absurdity of character traits that bordered on anime levels of wtf, which I appreciate greatly.

Seriously, a 150 year old fancy pants British noble, a fucking nun, and an extremely small troll?

And then the twins, my God the twins. Two different kinds of autistic, and yet they work so well together.

Much like the book, tbqh. My only gripe is that Lazuli felt a bit under developed in terms of her backstory. We learn alot about her being a hybrid, but not alot about her life and personality. But I'm sure we'll get more in a later book.

Also the opportunity to see Holly made me so happy.

[julietsbb]

Oki so hi 👉👈 here to send you love about your vampire phuwin fic. I still hadn’t found the chance to comment (i certainly will!) but i really have to scream real quick about!!! The unique factors of his vampire side!! And the softness!! And I can’t wait to see how it develops further 🥺��

Also I have a teeny tiny question. Your second chapter inspired me wholly and I wonder if you would accept a gift: small phumpeem one-shot with vampire peem? Or if you accept it as a work inspired by your lovely fic?

hi 😭 you have no idea how much i needed this today THANK YOU❤

i've really enjoyed letting the way vampire and modern day and the character of phuwin all merge come to me tbqh and it really is a quite soft fic overall - until it starts becoming soft-and-kinky/horny, but you have another approx 20k words before you get to that part 😅

omfgggg 😭😭😭 you are so sweet wtf and yes i would be overjoyed to accept that 🙏🙏 wishing you the loveliest of sundays!

[decepti-thots]

💀 or 📖 pls

Did the death one!

If you had to remove one book from the series, which would you choose?

Oh this is hard for a serialised medium. The cheap answer would be erasing Costa's run, because mostly it is Nothing written by a guy unhappy to be writing those comics at all who constantly spins his wheels- but I mean, Barber does a shocking amount of work I like which does in fact refer back to that mess, and I'm not sure totally erasing it would therefore overall work. Same with stuff like the Autocracy/etc series, it's not good and mostly ignored, but it influenced MTMTE Rodimus just enough that getting rid of it seems... mmm. The problem with 'removing' this or that bad volume of comics is that very often in IDW, a later better concept requires they be there.

...at the risk of attracting the sort of person whose hatred of said series is uhhhh, extreme and uncomfortable and ungenerous: I do not think much would be lost without TAAO. while I like a lot of Scott's other work in IDW- I think she did some genuinely great stuff with Windblade in minis, I love the Combiner Hunters oneshot and wish she'd written more Arcee actually, and I find the sheer hatred she attracts for TAAO very odd and unearned... tbqh. TAAO is mostly spinning its wheels when it's not just giving us a much less interesting version of what Barber did with Starscream, tbh; not a sin or anything, but ultimately I find it largely unnecessary in how it fit into that era of late IDW1. I would remove that brief ongoing run with the caveat I would like to replace it with, say, another self-contained Windblade limited run comic she wrote or something. I think Scott did much better when working with a smaller scope and characters she was more directly involved in introducing and developing, and the very short run that TAAO had ultimately had didn't help her out at all in taking her concepts to interesting places. If I can say I would still have her writing a third Windblade mini or something, I'd probably nix TAAO and have her working to her strengths on self-contained miniseries.

[rivetgoth]

I honestly think as someone who goes out clubbing (or to an adjacent nightlife social event) like 1-3x a week on average, and especially as like, a kinda faggy short guy tbqh, I would say genuinely one of thee biggest like, skills to learn is how to both be appropriately discerning and able to read people's vibes quickly to stay safe but also not close your heart completely to new people and give the appropriate benefit of the doubt as well?

I think I'm a particularly picky person when it comes to meeting new people tbh, I will pretty quickly decide someone is not trustworthy over what may appear to be minor missteps but it is because it's not a risk I'm willing to take. especially after the aforementioned years in the nightlife mentioned above. But I also really try to leave room for understanding that we're all awkward and weird and many of us in the scene are autistic and/or otherwise neurodivergent or struggling with social skills and we're in a community literally made by and for weirdos where drugs and alcohol are often involved; nobody is perfect, so it's learning to have an open heart and not have preconceived biases or make assumptions about people but also like, being willing to shut down shit that turns you off fast.

Like not to pat myself on the back but I'm gonna be honest, I have had soooooo many cases where I met someone, got a Weird Vibe, which sounds shallow but I don't mean "ooh they act kinda funny" I mean "huh that person showed subtle signs of not respecting boundaries like touching strangers without consent even if in a trivial/harmless way" or "that person made some off-color jokes or comments that while not in and of themselves entirely unforgivable could way too easily speak to a deeper more insidious world view," decided to politely distance myself and not pursue forging a relationship with them beyond casual acquaintance at best, and then was given confirmation later on that they were a genuinely physically dangerous person with a history of abuse or violence.

Like, the reality is there are a lot of predators in the nightlife. As much as it's this wonderful fantastic weird alternate reality where you can be your authentic self and explore these facets to your character you would not be able to in the daylight, play with fantasy and identity and have the freedom to play and express yourself in these wild ways, it's also a cover for genuinely dangerous people who are detached from all social dogma and feel that they can justify their behavior in these more lawless environments where stuff like kink and more "edgy" behavior is seen as more socially acceptable. For all of the absolutely amazing people I've met, literally pretty much all of my closest friends and relationships have formed from the underground / alternative nightlife scene, there are also pretty frequent allegations and scandals. It's the unfortunate reality, and while the very best events and promoters cultivate safe spaces to the best of their abilities, you can't keep 100% of them out.

I feel lucky in a weird way that I've developed what I think are pretty decent self preservation skills via being a weird fucking kid my entire life who has cultivated the vast vast vast majority of my relationships with other weird people (affectionate). I have so much love in my heart for genuine eccentrics and I think it is SO IMPORTANT to work actively to unlearn biases about what a Trustworthy or Untrustworthy person might look like or act like when they are not fucking hurting anyone, but I also don't give the time of day to people who make me uncomfortable. Basically I think learning what your own boundaries are, learning to communicate them, and learning to shut down those who invade them is just like, a genuinely necessary skill for being out in the nightlife. You need to know what you want and what you are and are not okay with. You need to learn pattern recognition—did this person stumble over their words once and say something that came out wrong, or does this person have a habit of making inappropriate remarks? Is this person exhibiting behavior that other people who have been dangerous or predatory have exhibited in the past? Can you make a reasonable link between that behavior, and the more predatory, overtly dangerous behavior?