#dont make me choose my word

[redroomroaving]

Blorbo of the year, 2024

Thank you for the tag @lemonsrosesandlavender, this is a super fun idea! I'll do my best.

I'll put some no pressure tags for @lizziemajestic @captainsigge @librivore42 and @tickitytockityrattityrottity and anyone else who wants to do this.

So, the thing is that people who know me know how many beloved blorbos I have. I've written 20+ microblorbos over about 570k words this year, and love countless more still. But my real answer was immediate, so, time for honesty.

My blorbo of the year: Donnick

I've spoken a little before about Donnick and my fic Sufferer, I Shall, and how much it means to me. Something I absolutely would not have predicted when I started it on the basis that I wanted to explore the rivalry between Loviatar and Ilmater through a pairing I thought could be a fun and interesting contrast.

Instead, thanks to Donnick, I found myself exploring and understanding my relationship with purpose and practice, with my chronic pain, the purpose to be found in suffering and what it is that makes me get up every day. I wrote a thing that I'm genuinely proud of and explored a mind that is as fascinating and deep as a particularly well made soup. Donnick is a joy to write, and has taken up residence in my mind in a way no other blorbo or character ever really has before. It is difficult to explain quite how much this character ended up meaning to me, but if I can't gush about him here and now in this, well, when can I? Thank you, fed up, sarcastic, wonderful soup monk. I promise I'll get you the happy ending with your soulmate you deserve.

The runners up: Geraldus and Klaus

Choosing one of the Rivington 3 was excruciating, btw; my trio of besties who I slowly drew together over the course of the year across my fics to fill Geraldus' life with friends and support.

Geraldus has been my most consistent muse throughout the year, he compelled me to write an 150k longfic romance I just finished last week, and I've so much more yet to write for him. The Bravest Man in Baldurs Gate has brought me a whole community of incredible friends and creators I never would have expected to find. I cannot tell you how hard it was to put him in second place. I can't wait to write more for the best Harper in 2025.

Klaus, my narrative can-opener and muse, has been a huge surprise. I just needed a guy for a circus scene and now here we are months later and he's so much more. Klaus consistently pushes me to do more; add more colour, more movement, to go bigger and bolder. He's a wonderful character, I hope more people come to write him and find that out too.

New OCs for 2024

So most people will know I don't have a lot of these; but, I do have someone who showed up very unexpectedly in Conductor Ringmaster so let's give her a shout out.

Estrella Redtooth - Night Hag, menace

Showing up as a fortune teller when the circus hit the feywild and immediately developing an infuriating little tug of war with Klaus, Estrella was a blast to write whenever she appeared.

Let's hope we see that tricksome fey again.

Red's bonus category: last minute scene stealer: Harper Bor

Arriving in November, a full year after the game took over my life and I found Geraldus, I found Bor.

In the 2 and a bit months since, I have entirely lost my mind over Bor and his adorable relationship with the tiefling kiddo Mirkon, his massive lumberjack axe and a Harper on Harper romance with Geraldus. This is the shape of my 2025, and I look forward to seeing him up in the top categories next year.

That is if I haven't fallen even more in love with like, Ethel's Door.

Honourable shout outs to the following blorbs:

Abdirak, Jaheira, Kar'niss, Rolan, He Who Was, Lae'zel, Halsin, Ethel's Door, Viola Silvertongue, Waiter Jaymes (and his beloved Sküna!), Tecothy, Moy, Olly, Lia, Professor Limeleech, Cal, Sorn and everyone else I've written this year.

Not you, Nere and Dhourn. Not you.

[deoidesign]

I need to know if I'm delusional and projecting onto random characters or if Adam and/or Steve are neurodivergent

You can project whatever you want on them, and I don't know that it's "canon" so to speak but I write them with neurodivergent intent in mind just based on my own life experiences!

so I'm projecting on them too, but it's up for debate whether that's coming across in the text.

Adam is autistic and Steve has ADHD. To Me.

[daffodilmoreau]

light fires at night (to fill the void) by inthesea is required reading for andreillers

[neurovarious]

when will people realize androgyne is "andro" and "gyne" meaning male and female respectfully therefore shortening androgyne/androgynous as "andro" does Not Work

[cerealmonster15]

Hi Cereal! Hope

Your day is going well so far! 9 and 15 for the fic asks? :)

HI ISA THANK YOU!!! i was waiting til i got home to answer!

9: How did you get into writing fanfiction?

I can't really remember EXACTLY, but back when i was a child in the early 2000s days of internet and on neoseeker forums, i liked seeing stories people would write in the forums dedicated to more creative things, be it fanfic or original stories. i read fics on ffnet, and my cousin even wrote some harvest moon fics that my other cousin and i would read and talk about lol. honestly it always comes back to harvest moon; i liked reading and posting in the threads/forums for harvest moon fics/roleplays [they were BAD bc i was like. 10 years old more or less lol, but i had fun and no concept of what good writing meant]

i don't really remember what got me into writing fics again more """seriously"""" when i got a little older. i never made a ffnet account despite reading and commenting anonymously for a good few years, and i dont remember how or why i made an ao3.

i was under the impression that rvb was what started it, but i remembered recently that like. i KNOW i wrote some homestuck oneshots back in the day. i very specifically can recall a silly croxy oneshot i wrote, but it's nowhere to be found on my ao3.... and there's even evidence of me having done a homestuck secret santa fic swap bc i have one in my gifts from someone and im p sure thats what it was from. so like, i THINK i mustve made ao3 during my homestuck era [bc that came before rvb; i got into homestuck in high school and i didnt know rvb until i started college] but i guess at some point i got embarrassed about my old homestuck fics and deleted them? which i dont really remember doing, so i have no idea when that happened lol. that or i only ever posted them on tumblr.... if i even posted them here? idr!

anyway. tldr: it always comes back to harvest moon / video game forum neoseeker / in general i just get possessed by The Madness and have to write it down. thats what drives me more recently lol.

15: Does anyone you know in real life know you write fanfiction?

jdkfhsklg. there's a small handful of people from irl that follow me here and i do cross post my fics to tumblr so i'd imagine yes, but none of them are into twst which is currently the only thing ive really been writing fics for these days. i also get too embarrassed if i think about it too long so i like to pretend no one knows LOL please dont perceive my antics....

but also when i got BACK into writing fics after like a year or two of not writing anything, when i started writing twst fics, i was just writing them in word docs and sending them to my friend over discord based on our inside jokes and au brainstorming we used to do in the dms bc we got into twst together and there wasnt really much of an eng fanbase back in the early days. and i still send her the google doc links when i write them even tho we dont really talk twst aus like we used to lol. ill just be like "i had an idea / ive been writing this a few weeks here" and then i go put it on ao3 lol jsdklhgksjd shes an irl buddy, so not on tumblr or ao3.

and then my partner. he knows. and he also knows everything i do in life makes me feel irrationally embarrassed so we often joke that my doodles and fanfiction are like, the biggest sin in the entire world. he'll jumpscare me in my room and i slam my laptop shut and hes like 🧍 what are you doing. you better not have been in the google docs. what da hell were you writing 🧍 but he also doesnt know twst outside of what ive told him / random stuff he makes up to try and get a rise out of me lmao so he's never read them. but he knows i write them.

aside from that. NO. and i would like to keep it that way fjksldjfklsjg only people that i think will be cool about it can maybe know and even then im. shy. fjsdklfjskldhlksdjkfl like it's hard enough posting my fics HERE!!!!! the second i hit post i get anxiety jitters and need to go walk around to distract myself from the everything.

i love talking for 900 years to answer 2 questions LOL

[question post🧡]

[elysiuminfra]

i do this frequently and i feel like more people should engage with this. most of the time when i see an insightful or enraging post, i try to picture the human being behind it as they're typing that message. if it's particularly enraging, it's a good source of amusement to imagine someone drafting it for several minutes, and kind of lessens the blow and knee-jerk urge to respond. sometimes, though, it makes the post all the more baffling, imagining how someone else could put these words together. but i also think it would save a lot of people from wasting their time on useless arguments if they just pictured the human behind the keyboard. people forget, all the time, that they're speaking poorly to another human being with an internal life completely divorced from theirs. you could never get away with saying this to someone's face. the internet allows for facelessness, and very few consequences for being a massive asshole. some people speak to others in such a manner that - if offline, you'd get your shit bashed in.

sometimes i observe arguments, and think about just how much time is taken out of someone's day to dedicate to it. how much time is wasted arguing pointlessly because someone completely misinterpreted what someone said. most arguments i observe just do not need to happen, and occur because of poor reading comprehension, or someone's personal need to put other people down and "win" an argument. most of the time though when people are reading important posts in bad faith it is because of personal bigotry and their need to dehumanize the person on the other side. which is why i fully dedicate myself to blocking people that i don't want to argue with, because i really don't want to sink time into something i just don't care about, when i could be doing anything else.

[red-dyed-sarumane]

in general im okay with a lot of things regarding my ocs as long as u remain aware they are My characters & i have the end say on what's canon with them. but yeah if u wanna draw them or write something about them or have them hang out with ur ocs or whatever im not stopping u

[ladysqueakinpip]

not me lying wide awake at 5:30am on a sunday on my day off bc after almost a full year I finally FINALLY realized the implication of the end of remember them from the cyclops saga

[crow-quet]

TO REITERATE: I will NOT be taking any requests that are incestuous or anything that contains an adult x a child. I am NOT a proshipper nor do I support proshippers. I have tried to be polite but firm because I am a public figure here technically and I don't want to abuse any position I have or be mean.

However, that being said, I have been clear in multiple posts that I do not condone that sort of behavior or even tolerate it anywhere near me. I am no longer going to be polite.

Enough.

[savage-rhi]

Late night magenta.

[autisticlee]

the whole "you shouldn't identify as X, don't form an identity when you can't/don't know yet, you're too young, what if/you might change your mind!" etc etc. it's so silly when you think about it. what's wrong with changing your mind anyway? why did we all decide that gender/sexuality identity has to be static and can never change? why did we decide that it's a bad thing to change? because the old generation tells us change is bad? because they (mostly conservatives) want to conserve "the good old days/the way things are supposed to be" in their minds???

WHO CARES if someone says they're gay then realizes 5 years later they're bi. WHO CARES if someone says they're a girl and realizes after trying it out they're not. let people explore who they are until they figure it out even if they go through every lable available to them! maybe none fit and they make up their own! who cares! who cares if they change it every year for the rest of their lives! humans change. that's the only constant about us! why is it a bad thing, even taboo, to accept change and exploration within sexuality and gender specifically?

there's always so much shame that comes with someone realizing they were wrong, changing as a person, or discovering something new about themselves. i've seen people afraid to explore themselves more or afraid to talk about a change in identity, for fear of the queer community pushing back on them the same way they're afraid to come out to the cishets in their life who are trans/homophobic. that's just not fair that their own community can become hostile towards them, too. being in a closet within a bigger closet essentially. everyone is always told to figure it all out first before claiming an identity, because then you're locked in it for life, apparently. you can't change your mind after that. why though? what's the point of that really? why can't we embrace fluidity a bit more? why can't we accept that humans do change all the time? why is making and trying to prove that these identities are static/unchanging/innate the only way to validate them? why can't they just, I don't know, BE VALID. without reason. why must we jump through hoops to be valid when we should just automatically be valid because we are human. stop letting the cishets gatekeep everything, leading to us gatekeeping each other!

I am sometimes very hesitant to talk about my own identity. I identified as a gay/biromantic trans guy for like idk 8-10 years? transitioned and everything. then like a year or two ago, I realized/decided that doesn't fit right anymore. now i'm a nonbinary, but also kinda fluid, aroace person. sometimes I don't like to talk about that because of the stigma behind changing your gender/sexuality identities. but you know what. i'll talk about it anyway and people have to learn to accept it.

what were the consequences and bad parts about changing my mind/identity like that? none. absolutely none. (outside of people being weird about it for no reason) but the benefits are feeling more comfortable with myself, and that's no one else's business.

[fisheito]

friend fish!!! do you have any super specific headcanons for nucarni you'd want to post about? like from the serious to the silly. im talking from like how did little yakumo deal w humans and snakes hating him and then his grandparents loving him to who are the left handed mfs and who are the right handed mfs. how did kuya handle huey disappearing vs can garukaru wink. i like your brain and i like the very specific little things that come from everyone's brains and just wanted to see if you wanted to post any sillies or seriousies :3

why, friend anon, it seems like You are the one bursting with ideas... if u wish to share with the class i shan't object ohoho

MMM>....UUHHHHH boy ain't it just appropriate that once u hand me the microphone, my mind blanks hmmm........ ............(leaves ask and comes back in several hours)

OH I got one!! yakumo and chickens

s o one day, i wished to draw yakumo holding a chicken. just snekboi holding an absolute buff orpington orb of chicken, because it would be, how u say,... grotesquely adorable, yes??

but before i could, i wondered.. is that possible? do chickens like yakumo? or would they sense his snakeyness and hate him? was it ever discussed in the story?

my immediate thought was of those chickens who get hypnotised into a catatonic state when u draw a straight line in front of them. u know all those gifs of the chickens that just go [plop] with HARD FOCUS on the line? and as soon as line was erased, chicken blinked back into existence/Killer Peck mode?

i remember ppl hypothesising that it was bc the lines reminded them of snakes and the chickens were like shhhhh play ded the snakes will want nothing to do with us.

i can;t remember if they ever actually found the answer to that behaviour. i wish i knew. but i don't. so instead i imagined eiden placing a 🧍‍♂️yakumo horizontally in front of a chicken to see if the trance could be replicated

the whole thing made me think about yakumo's relation to animals, especially farm animals, bc idk if his grandparents ever farmed animals or if it was JUST produce. the story so far seems to say vegebls only but *I* want *FARM ANIMALS* and *YAKUMO* ***toGETHER*(*(***** so we continue the train of thought

yakumo has pulled Princess-Snow-White-shenanigans in the past (Idol Fest). those forest animals didn't have a problem rolling up to yakumo just to listen to him sing. i don't remember if exact animals were mentioned in the story, but i'mma assume it was lil guys like rabbits, birds, rodents, deer. i mean... snakes have been known to share habitats with these guys... so it would make sense for some of them to be scared if yakumo's energy is more snake>human.

but then KUYA??? he's a fox. yet he's got parades of adoring forest worshippers everywhere he goes, regardless of predator/prey status. so maybe the vibe of Yokai overrides whatever trophic chain dynamics are supposed to exist in this world. So instead of EEK! A SNAKE/FOX! the animals be like Yokai=cool nature powerbeing let's hang out ?

but then i wonder if the Yokai Vibe is moderated by Yokai expertise. bc kuya of course has way more experience as yokai... he's more likely to embrace his foxy traits than yakumo with his snakey traits (what is this.... a competition of self acceptance now??).. so maybe the animals all trail after kuya bc of his confidence,,, but would they do the same for yakumo who hasn't yet transcended to that Power Strut Aura?

which relates to childhood yakumo. to surrounding animals, what was his vibe? snakey? human? yokai? did it matter? he mentioned that the other snakes used to bully him .. and that people also used to chase him away... so his vibe was. what? like the king cobra who eats other snakes, and can bite people? at this point, it's not like yakumo has the self-control or self-acceptance to consciously manipulate his outward appearance. his vibe is his vibe.

so, in this unsure, untrained, scared snake-self stage of his life, he still appeared as a Threat to other snakes (and probably other animals that typically fear snakes). i imagine that if i were to introduce yakumo to farm animals at this point, they would react like they saw a potentially dangerous snake. chickens angy. cows might stomp u. goats might eat u

and yet Grandma and Grandpa , like many humans, promptly threw convention out the window and went [lol what threat?? he scared. let's give him some soup]] -> for further proof of ppl being like that, look at. any dangerous creature. cute as heck. i'll fawn over apex predators. angry bear incapable of empathy? deserves my respect. sure i'll share my room with a snake if it looks like it's crying . self-preservation? why would i care about that if i have the chance to make the snake less sad??

i mean, farm animals are domesticated so they're supposed to be pretty chill. i like to think that once yakumo spent more time on the farm with a loving family, his energy became more stable and more human. and surely with daily exposure, those farm animals would acclimate to yakumo's presence. maybe even grow to like him if he takes care of them.

THAT IS TO SAY even if the animals initially shun him or treat him like Danger... they eventually associate his energy with the good times. and yakumo would learn how to act around each specific animal so as not to upset them (just like any good zookeeper!!). As both parties build upon their experiences, the likelihood of positive interaction between yakumo and another animal goes up up 🆙☝!!!

IN THE END, ALL THIS MEANS is that, simply bc i like animals, i'm gonna pretend that yakumo's grandparents also farmed creatures (dang, an undertaking for 2 elderly ppl. i know. but this is gay fantasy isekai). ok, maybe more believably, a neighbour farmed animals and yakumo was the only young'n around to help. and because of all that, yakumo has experience dealing with animals.

according to my made-up timeline (😄) if i drew him at human age ~7, it would make sense if it was a pic of a cow chewing on his hair (being bullied by ungulates. he's crying), or chickens pecking him en masse

and if i drew him getting ALONG with those same animals, it would more likely be a yakumo at human age -- well- older than that. he's got some working experience at that point.

(slams fist on table) SO I CAN JUSTIFIABLY Draw A FLUFFY CHICKEN RESTING HAPPILY IN YAKUMO'S ARMS AND IT COULD BE IN-CHARACTER.

i crave interspecies friendships. humans do nonsensical things to befriend other critters. why can't the chickens override their snake fear for this one special boi. it is what i want to see and i will twistturn canon until i see it.

[plasticsandwich]

like theres a lot of you nnow

[heartbrake-hotel]

Ugh. You won't believe this. I'm sorry to bug you, but I just needed to vent.

I saw some idiot on twitter saying that when E met Priscilla he had an eleven year old girl living with him in Germany. They mentioned Scotty Moore said that in his book so I looked it up. What he said was at the time E met Cilla, he had an "even younger German girl" (his words) living in the house with his father and grandmother. Except...well, I can't find any proof of this; there’s no evidence nor mention of this girl (or how old she was) anywhere else in the book nor in any other books written about him. No proof he had anyone else like that living with him in Germany.

So I don’t think that claim is true. Where do people come up with this stuff anyway? How do you not get into an argument with these idiots? Because it's super annoying.

ugh, believe it or not, baby, im not surprised at all. but you could never bug me !!! 💖 sorry it took me so long to answer this, but rest assured i haven't calmed down about this any since you first sent it 😅

a couple notes‐ honestly, i'm inclined to believe scotty. NOT TWITTER to clarify lol.. eleven seems young for him even if you are looking to view e through the most unflattering light possible 😬 but it seems likely to me that he had another teenage girl maybe not uh. officially on the lease or anything but staying over most nights ! more than ONE even sounds plausible.. we all know that someone didn't like his bed cold.!

people who claim to hate elvis sure spend an awful lot of time reviling him on the internet, especially by regurgitating half-remembered anecdotal evidence without citing their sources. 🙄 on the other hand, it's also easy to fall into the trap of too-faithful elvis historian; by that i mean that the fact that so much of his life is documented sometimes makes us complacent in our belief that if it can't be verified by multiple primary sources that it must not have happened. but we can't always say, and getting too involved as if the historical accuracy of one particular proposed event is the end-all be-all of elvis fandom can get exhausting.!

i wouldn't be surprised to find out either way, that this was or wasn't true. but you're free to make up your own mind, and if it distresses you, then fwiw i think you Totally have a leg to stand on affirming it never happened, like you said !! ultimately, it doesn't have much bearing on right now- if you like elvis, this vague and nebulous criticism probably isn't the thing that'll make you stop liking elvis, and if you hate elvis, you're probably determined to keep doing that regardless.

regarding the twitdiots- while looking into this claim i found a lady on there who legitimately believed that agent elvis tells the true story of how e was experimented on and mind controlled into drug abuse by the government.. like she said That with her whooole chest. so i don't put much stock in public opinion over there 😂😂💀

i want to fight those people extremely often (they're not just on twitter, either- it seems to have died down a little praise GOD but especially in early days after the movie there was a wave of ppl on here who would put their elvis hate in the main tags. WHICH DROVE ME BATTY), but i come from the "don't feed the trolls" era of fandom. as much as id like to rip 'em a new one when they rehash the same two issues over and over and OVER again ad nauseum, i content myself with the fact that they're living a pathetic existence in which they actively choose to fill their life with something they dislike for... no discernable reason.?

no one who spends their time bringing up a dead celebrity at all opportunities just to bash them is actually open to a discussion. and i do think there is a discussion to be had- his life was certainly very troubled, and i think there are a lot of nuanced issues that benefit from being spoken about openly !!!

but i like to debate bc i like to WIN- so jackasses tend to be a waste of my time 😘

[sprinedankle]

as a non-native english speaker who grew up watching shows/movies or videos in american english and was taught british english at school, not knowing the fucking difference between favorite and favourite, soccer and football, CRISPS AND CHIPS AND FRIES??? will always haunt me

[subconsciousmysteries]

what I like about 7s is you can tell when they are fuckboys unless you have a room temperature IQ. maybe it is a natural talent that only I have (I really doubt this but I dont wanna insult ppl who've been victimized by 7 fuckboys). however it is just so obvious to me when a 7 dude is a fuckboy trying to taste all his options vs. when he is ripe and ready for commitment. the way that 7s show you bluntly when they are bored with you by ignoring you or only responding with one liners is actually a good thing. I find 7s to be very transparent, very obvious about what they want from you even if they don't directly communicate it with words. they are not capable of leading me on because they never give me the impression that they think I'm special in the first place. they never immerse themselves in my world and make me feel special because they're too preoccupied with their own.

meanwhile other types of men cough cough withdrawns are confusing as hell to the point it feels like manipulation and deception. they can larp like they are all innocent when they are the world's biggest fuckboys. they become deeply connected to you as a friend, they show you that they have a crush on you that they are too scared to act on, and they act like they're ready for exclusivity to get you into bed when often they are not. with words and with showing a genuine interest in your world, they make you think you are extremely special to them, yet many of their actions (or lack thereof) imply that you are not.

no one talks about how 7s with the 1 line can grow up and develop an intense dutifulness towards relationships. the meme is that 7s struggle with commitment but in my experience it really depends on the 7 in question. relational commitment issues are a lot more complicated than "lol 7". any type can have them and its usually rooted in trauma or plain old spiritual weakness.

see my tags for more