#except reblog my own stuff when it becomes relevant again

[bethelina]

On G/t, Identity, and this post

For two days now I’ve thought about this post. 

First of all, @so-very-small​, I want to commend you for your response. I wouldn’t have been as calm and collected. I wanted to respond, but I didn’t want to lash out in anger. So, I waited and reflected. And I’m glad I did because I had an epiphany tonight.

It didn’t feel right responding in a reblog. So here it is in its own post. (Also sorry for the life story, but I felt like it was relevant.)

I have always felt small. Like always. I think I was something like 3 or 4 years old when I realized this, but as a child, I couldn’t put it into words. I would rewatch Thumbelina over and over again (hence the nickname Bethelina) and just imagine my life like that.

At the ripe old age of 7, I confided in a close friend (who was something like 8, if I remember correctly). I told them that I wished “I could be as small as Thumbelina.” I will never forget their response. They looked me dead in the eye, blinked, and said, “Why would you want to be that tiny? That’s weird.”

From that instant I understood. I could never speak of it again. There was something wrong with me, and I had to hide it from the world.

But that didn’t stop me from dreaming. Anytime anything dealing with size came up in media, I was simultaneously enthralled and embarrassed. I couldn’t let my family know I was interested in Big People and Little People™, but I desperately craved content. Books, movies, TV shows… I would find them and consume them in private.

As I got older, my thoughts became increasingly preoccupied with being tiny. The thoughts became more and more intrusive. Some days, it was all I could think about.

When I was in High School, I had recently discovered DeviantArt and decided to do a search for “shrinking”. That day changed my life. There were others who liked this stuff too, and they called it G/t. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t a freak. The deserted island I was living on suddenly became a metropolis.

Inevitably, I encountered the NSFW side, which I mostly saw referred to as macro/micro. I was disgusted and ashamed. Even more so than ever, I couldn’t let anyone know I was interested in G/t. They might assume I have a fetish. The very thought made me nauseous. I lived in constant fear of being outed.

[Side note: If you are interested in the NSFW side of G/t, you are valid! I personally cannot handle it.]

After a few years of lurking on DeviantArt, I made my own G/t account and properly joined the community. Secretly of course. None of my friends could know. Except, they ended up stumbling over it one-by-one when they recognized my art. (Whoops). After an anxiety-ridden 3-hour explanation (each time a new friend discovered it), I finally came clean. Much to my surprise, all of my close friends were understanding and supportive.

I continued to struggle with the concept of my physical body never being able to be tiny. It started to add into my depression and anxiety, which honestly didn’t need any more fuel. (But that’s another story for another day). One day, I ran across someone else describing just this. They used the term “size dysphoria” and everything clicked in my brain. I finally had a term I could cling to.

I worked really hard to become more comfortable with my tiny identity. I opened up to more and more people, slowly eroding my fear of being accused of fetishizing giants. Maybe my fear was unfounded. Maybe people are more understanding then what I gave them credit for.

And then I saw this post.

All that fear… all that self-hatred… all that doubt came rushing back. I wanted to say something snarky in return, but I knew that wouldn’t help the situation. I decided to ignore the whole thing, but then my epiphany came.

Why do I have such a visceral reaction to being accused of having a fetish? A few years ago, I realized I’m somewhere on the asexual spectrum. [I’ve never publicly said this before, and I don’t have the guts to come out to my family, so posting this is kinda scary for me.] Very recently, I’ve learned that sometimes the very idea of having sex (with people I know) is physically repulsive to me. Like I feel like I might throw up.

Being tiny is more than an interest to me. It’s who I am. Because it’s so deeply ingrained with my identity, it horrifies me that someone would automatically connect my desire to be tiny that with sex. And tonight, that finally clicked.

It was really hard for me to type all of this, and I’m sorry if I rambled on at some points. But it has felt therapeutic to get all of this out.

 TL;DR I am tiny, and not everything is about sex

… thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

[scienceoftheidiot]

So you know what it’s wednesday you’re getting an infodump on Desden’s blindness.

Beware. I’m a biologist. I’m a nerd. And I’m a teacher. You know what’s coming, right ? 

I just reblogged an extremely interesting and great post about writing blind characters that I advise you to go and read now (I haven't finished yet) because it's just full of info and contrary to usual posts like that it's not guilt tripping or anything. I love this post and OP for this. However I've noticed there's a bunch of advices I don't follow myself and I felt like I could expand and why and how I think it's not a bad thing. Here's the first one : don’t make your character blind through an accident. Because drama. 

So yeah. Desden lost his sight due to some kind of accident. Which is thoroughly described by a mysterious bystander’s flashback in chap.3. So that’s not a spoiler. But how can a brick through the head make you blind ? 

Brain. Brains are evil. You know I got a PhD in biology : I am sad to admit I couldn’t go through with my love of neurology because it was competing with my love for bacteria and parasites that can kill you and happily live everywhere. Life’s though. No neuro for me, welcome to viral ecology (viruses are obligatory parasites, sue me). But not only can’t I help being a nerd... I have an uncle in my family who lost part of his vision from a brain haematoma (not due to trauma, but the result and how it works is the same). Who’s also a nerd. (And a PhD in physics cause like that’s what nerds do, right ?) And he explained in details how he lost his vision (and gained back some of it over time) to us.

If you cut blood supply to parts of the brain for long enough, this part will die. Logic. Head trauma can do that and more. So, what happened is that Desden’s visual cortex got cut from blood supply for a relatively long amount of time (he can thank the extremely cold weather of the day it happened, which makes your body turn into “low survival mode”, when the “accident” happened for 1) being still alive and 2) not losing more than most of his sight, some balance, and a bunch of memories). But the brain is a funny little thing and some times it does stuff (not going into the haematoma part, I’m not a doc, it’s long and not very relevant, but it has to be taken into account cause it’s what can make part of the lost sight reappear). So Desden was totally blind for a while, then his brain managed to get some of his sight back. Very little. 

But what and how does he see ? 

See, the brain is constructed so that the visual cortex’s position reflects the visual field you have, except in reverse. Sorry. I’m a teacher. I’m going to add a schema. But in French because I actually work with this (well. Nope. They changed the program but I have old program lessons lying around just in case) and I’m lazy today. Just look at the pretty colours. It shows you what I just explained very badly because I’m used to use schemas, but here’s what you need to understand. 

SOOOO. Basically make most of the colour disappear except for a very small part of blue at the far right of the visual cortex. Meaning that in the end, what Desden can see is an extremely reduced part of peripheral vision. Try to fix your eyes on a point in front of you and describe what is at the far corner of your left eye. Good luck. (and let me tell you I know I have extremely good peripheral vision myself, it’s still composed by what your brain KNOWS is around. From seeing it with the other parts of your field of vision. Because your brain is constantly MAKING UP what you’re seeing from a lot of information including past ones when you didn’t even think about it but your eyes brushed that part. Your senses are fucked up. Deal with it. Your brain is playing tricks on you right now.)

This is why, btw, he’s often described tilting his head on the right. He doesn’t have much control on his eye movement so he tries to get some info on people (mostly light and colours but since his visual memory is fucked up, it’s not very useful)

His eyes move. He just doesn’t really control them. In fact they’re often if not constantly moving because head trauma is often linked to the apparition of a nystagmus, which is a rapid eye movement to the side or up and down - my brother has that, vertical, did you know it existed ? well I do. A friend of my parents has a horizontal one that is a lot more visible. Constantly. She’s not blind, her brain compensates this. Brains are both evil and awesome. Deal with it.

Oh and his eyes are perfectly normal. Even quite pretty, as he describes them himself. He still wears sunglasses because his brain doesn’t like strong light which give him migraines, because it has a hard time processing visual info. 

His eyes also work perfectly (well as perfectly as they did before his accident, which is okay but a little nearsighted) which leads to the only thing that sounds like a superpower that isn’t one : blindsight. If you research it you’ll learn about people who can do absolutely crazy things like catch stuff that’s thrown at them or avoid most obstacles on a path while being totally blind, because BRAINS, AGAIN. Your brain doesn’t only process visual cues through the visual cortex; there’s a slight part in the “primitive brain” or “lizard brain” that does, too. So basically Desden’s body can see stuff but he’s not aware of it consciously. He’s NOT using it and he’s NOT as good as the people I cited above. But for example he has insights he souldn’t have on people’s moods, because his lizard brain picks their faces up. Not always, and it’s often more when someone’s in a VERY bad mood that SHOWS. And since he’s not aware of it he takes that as hints from his other senses. It’s NOT compensating for his blindness - if anything, it’s a silly trick. BUT I AM A NERD, REMEMBER ?

Anyway. Now you know. Desden still lost his vision through an accident which, as said in the reference post i’m refering to (haha) would be bad if it was used for drama but, in fact, I try to avoid most of it because apart from the accident, which is witnessed by someone else who is important to the later plot, nothing from Desden’s life before or after it is described in details. My novel starts 9 years after the accident. He’s got time to get used to being blind. 

*I* know everything that happened in his life, or most of the important things anyway, that lead to the opening of the book, but you will only get scraps of it because it’s not what’s relevant. It’s important for the construction of the character, but what I want to show here is not Desden’s journey through being used to being blind. It’s his journey through accepting his family heritage, which has nothing to do with being blind, and sharing it with the rest of his family while it stayed hidden to them until then because the person who kept this before him was an arsehole. There are a lot of plot points that are linked to Desden’s blindness, including said arsehole arseholery (I be good with words), but it’s not the point of the book. 

Y’all know I’m a Daredevil fan. That’s where I got the idea of a blind character (not only), but now erase that from your mind. Desden doesn’t have any superpower that compensate his blindness. He’s got pretty good hearing because he’s used to use it a lot more than when he was sighted. It’s not better. He loves music, but he’s absolutely tone deaf so forget the blind piano tuner/musician cliché (this is a joke in one of my AUs, in fact)(explanation : in France, which is the country I research for because I’m French and my story takes place in France, the most prominent school for the blind used to primarily teach people to become piano tuners during the 20th century). He’s got a very good nose, but that’s just how it is, and since I’m using my own experience of rediscovering my sense of smell after years of living with smoking people (don’t smoke) (yeah, even you, Desden) I know it’s not superhuman. In fact my own nose is pretty shitty compared to my mom’s. Who is a fucking hunting hound. Anwyay I digress. 

Desden often chases any comment that restrict him to being “the blind guy” by stating stuff he does or likes to do, like “I’m also a good tarot player but no one ever mentions that” or “my brownies are the best ones and I don’t even need to add pot to it”. This is how he feels about it. He’s blind. It’s okay, it’s part of him. But it’s not his sole characteristic. 

I think I’m done here. I haven’t touched on other people’s reaction to him that much, and if you’re interested you can ask questions. Basically remember he’s a 1,98m guy, with broad shoulders, and that’s the first thing you see from him. Also there’s his guide dog Kalinka. 

Lot more things to talk about, not that much time. So if you’re interested in knowing more, poke me, and I might write more about my character. 

Lastly and more importantly : if you see things that you can correct in this post, please do so. As I said, I’m a nerd, but I’m not a neurologist. I’m going the vulgarized version. And I like to be taught things. So if you see mistakes, tell me. 

Peace ! 

[uwua3]

hi! first off, congrats on the new blog!! i read that misumi piece and i really enjoyed it hehe,, if it's alright, may i request some domestic fluff with kazunari? mayb looking over old photo albums of each other from when they were kids and laughing and telling stories about what happened in the photos? thank you very much and i hope u have a nice day :D

hi!!! this made me so happy 🥺 thank you so much, i hope to keep this blog running for a long time! also, i saw your reblog of my jealousy hcs and i wanted to say thank you for your sweet comments!!! i go back to it whenever i need motivation, you inspire me to keep writing ♡ thank you! i hope to continue making you proud as a writer :D <3

summary: kazunari had to stop living in the past and make new memories outside of his yearbooks with you

author’s note: this is definitely a much happier piece than my others! this was refreshing to write and i treasure it dearly, it’s definitely much more on the humorous side! no angst today, folks!!! (ok just a little, but it’s barely noticeable!)

this is just a little look into a hoarder named kazunari and his sentimental, nostalgic personality ♡ i, myself, am a marie kondo supporter so i love decluttering! if you are a hoarder like kazunari, honestly go you! you keep those knick knacks that remind you of memories! do whatever makes you the happiest :D

word count: 2,151

music: make you mine – public, tongue tied – grouplove (this song is so Kazunari !!!)

nostalgia.

🌻🎨 miyoshi kazunari

it was that time of year again

kazunari hated spring cleaning with a passion. so what if his art supplies were all over the dorms? he knew where everything was! uh, mostly...

(if you ignore his daily panicked house searches which kept everyone up way too late if he couldn’t locate a very specific paint shade for a big project he definitely procrastinated)

so, it took, so much bribery to get kazunari to even consider cleaning out his entire dorm room

(muku was a very Good Boy and already had his side of the room perfectly dusted and organized)

yes, you had to promise to pose as a model for one of his paintings one day (hopefully, not the type of class you were thinking) (kazunari’s suggestive wink didn’t help)

the thing about kazunari was he was somewhat of a, putting it politely, hoarder

as an extremely sentimental person, it would take the whole mankai company to even force him to throw something away

(“no! it has a special meaning to me! i remember what happened when i got this~” kazunari would whine, holding the useless item between his hands with no intentions to ever look at it again)

so the boys employed you to be kazunari’s rational judgement when cleaning that day

(“please actually make him do something.” sakyo looked like he was on the border of begging; kazunari’s abundance of random knick knacks and shopaholic addiction problem was becoming an issue that affected everyone)

rule #1 of cleaning kazunari’s storage room: don’t open anything because kazunari will become very sentimental and nothing will get gone

so therefore, as a team, you two tackled the rather spotless room. the interior was minimal and modern, just like kazunari liked it with pops of color here and there

(he had one blank white wall and you realized it was the backdrop he used to film all his social media posts [dancing tik toks, fashion #ootds on instagram, daily vlogs on his growing youtube channel])

at first, you were confused where all his stuff went until you opened a closet against his terrible and unconvincing distractions

without time to react, you found yourself buried in tens of books you couldn’t even fathom how it all fit

(“i’ve played way too much tetris.” kazunari would admit later on when asked about his immaculate stacking)

“you’ve got to be kidding me!” you groaned, pushing your head above the surface of book covers that have either never been opened or were way too old to even be functionable

“i’m sorry~ please, forgive me!” kazunari pleaded, immediately pulling you out of his own mess and using all his cuteness to make you roll your eyes fondly at your best friend

you almost started ranting at him about the dangers of taking up too much closet space with useless items before you realized:

wait! stop! he’s trying to get you to forget about throwing these books out! you thought suddenly, crossing your arms as you stared at the pile, trying to figure out how to approach the situation

“you cannot distract me. we are going through this mound and you will be getting rid of something today.” you ordered, seeing his shoulders drop in defeat as he nodded solemnly, but accepting his fate without any arguments. thank god for that

you two bent down and organized all the books into categories. popular photography instruction guides, creative advice columns, and all his past art textbooks kazunari couldn’t sell were put into a seperate group because luckily, they were relevant to his art school

things like old newspapers with funny comics were recycled (you refused to let kazunari read them in fear of invoking some form of nostalgia) (also because he had the whackiest sense of humor ever and would die laughing)

it was going well, until you reached the thickest photo books of them all (you had almost forgotten what you and kazunari’s school mascot was)

but unsurprisingly, kazunari had every single yearbook from each year of his education all the way until his last year in high school piled high to his chest

even he looked somewhat shocked from his mass accumulation from his teen years

“ah! i’m so old now~ look at all this! what else can i do except die?!” kazunari dramatically flopped onto his bed, tired of lifting so much weight. hey! his arms weren’t meant for exercise, he was a painter!

lifting his head to see you were distracted from alphabetically sorting the first section lovingly dubbed, “art shit”, kazunari mischeviously grinned as he leaned down to snatch a random yearbook

flipping to a random page, kazunari smiled as he realized it was the first time he ever met you back in elementary

kazunari sang your name as he sat upwards, having a shit–eating look on his face as he started swinging his legs back and forth

oh no, he was up to something no good, you knew it but humored him anyways

“yes, kazu?” you turned your line of sight to the most horrible picture possible: you with the ugliest haircut in the entire world with kazunari’s black hair taking up the entire photo as you two sheepishly smiled for the camera. it was not a proud moment

okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad, you just couldn’t help but shriek at the sight of your hair

“oh my god! you can’t just jumpscare me like that!” you laughed despite yourself. you knew you had to be serious and focused on decluttering, but one look at your past made you remember all the good times before so–called “adulthood”

“look at your hair!” you cackled, reaching up to playfully yank at his mullet as he yelped and lightly smacked your hand away. rubbing the back of his neck, kazunari huffed childishly and pouted like he was back in his youth

“come on! this was the pinnacle moment i realized, i should not be a hair dresser.” kazunari commented, making you remember how you just let a random 8–year–old boy waddle up to you with safety scissors and advertise his salon business like a professional

(yes, you bought into it right away. your teacher had a heart attack when she saw you with a majority of your hair on the floor and kazunari keeping small talk like an actual hair stylist)

thinking back after the haircut incident, you weren’t allowed to chat with the funny class clown anymore as you were forced to wear a hat every day

(it was either that or go completely bald to fix the job kazunari did to your head)

it wasn’t until you received a very creative and colorful apology letter with tons of sad faces drawn with waxy crayons that you snuck out to play with him on the swings in recess

“i can’t believe we became friends because i wanted free hair cuts for the rest of my life.” you added, staring at the picture with a sense of nostalgia. you kinda got where kazunari was coming from, memories were fun to look at every once and a while

at least, eleven years worth of memories after being inseperable from that moment forward

(maybe, you should’ve held onto it, you thought, not knowing that would be the first of many art pieces you would be gifted by him)

kazunari knew he won. excited, he dropped down to lay on his stomach as you leaned against the bed, watching as he thumbed through the pages with ease, leaning his head on yours comfortably

it was rare to find kazunari quiet, he must’ve been like this all the time when going through his stuff, you thought, at peace for once

lazily smiling, kazunari put his finger against your yearbook pictures as he reminisced on the past. something about everyone ever in your grade, how kazunari knew everyone and had a special memory with each person, no matter how big or small

“—and here, the teacher somehow caught a pic of us swinging wayyy too high for kids our age!” kazunari laughed, breaking your train of thought as you snickered at the absolute joy radiating from both your faces as you two competed to see who could reach the clouds

(kazu won. you fell off right after and had to get picked up from your parents after badly scraping your knee. it took another sorry letter and art of you two holding hands with a heart for your parents to forgive kazunari)

“let’s go back.” you interrupted him, making him sit up confused as you swung your keys out from your back pocket. it didn’t take any convincing for kazunari to nod right away and took the elementary yearbook into his arm

you two only had to exchange a secret look before formulating a plan to sneak out, leaving music on from kazunari’s speakers to act like kazunari was still cleaning

you two giggled amongst yourselves before clambering into your car, speeding off and laughing loudly from your successful getaway. the manager was none the wiser!

during the short car ride, you and kazunari played your favorite mixtape of all time

(“you kept this?!” kazunari yelled, giddily bouncing up and down from excitement when he discovered the mixtape stash)

he slipped the disc in as you two yelled along to childhood favorites with the windows rolled down, letting the entire neighborhood know the best duo were back in town

(seriously, there were so many you stashed away in your glove department. all labeled in sharpie with compelling titles connected to the inside jokes only you two found funny)

arriving at the destination, you two exited the vehicle to see the play pen was abandoned as the teaching staff went home for the day

the sun was setting and it felt like the playground was in another rift of time as you approached it, hearing the weak movement of the swings going back and forth on their own. you sat down, holding onto the chains. you hadn’t been back ever since you graduated. it hadn’t changed at all

kazunari opened the elementary yearbook back to the original page, pulling out his tripod and phone he always had on hand in his backpack as he set it up right across the swing set

“what are you doing?” you inquired, tilting your head as he fumbled around pressing different buttons and filters too complex for you to remember

looking up, kazunari grinned as he set a timer for 10 seconds before sprinting back to the swing next to you

“swing contest right now! i bet i could swing higher than you ever could!” kazunari challenged childishly, quickly kicking his legs for the momentum. you narrowed your eyes, refusing to lose as you two laughed over the sound of his phone taking a burst of photos

you realized what he was doing. he was re–creating your memories together

but you turned to look at him and your heart skipped a beat. you never remembered him looking this, different, in the purple lighting. for a flashing moment, you swore you saw the silhoutte of his black–haired, child self sit next to you before you blinked and saw him. kazunari was the same, just older now

you slowed down your swing by dragging your sneakers against the wood chipped ground. you grabbed both the swings’ chains to hold them together

you didn’t want to live in the past anymore. you wanted to grow up with him, too

“what—” kazunari started, matching your pace before being cut off by your lips against his, the phone going off for one last time

you pulled yourself in close enough just to smile. he smelled the exact same as he did when he discovered cologne for the first time. he never changed

you pulled away first even if he tried leaning forward for more, like he was waiting all these years just for that one moment. like he saw you in the same light, too

“i wanted to do that for years.” you confessed, watching as he took your hand carefully, like he was afraid you were going to leave. for once, he didn’t know what to do, which face to show

“me too...” kazunari agreed, seemingly speechless before straightening his back, like he was about to run away. the hair on your neck stood up, what was he about to do?

“i promise i won’t cut your hair anymore, unless?” kazunari winked dramatically, mimicking the shape of scissors with his fingers as he tried snipping at your hair

he laughed as you shoved him with all your might, hopping off the swing to chase him throughout the school parking lot

now this was a memory kazunari would never throw away, no matter what

(no one thought the two of you escaped until kazunari posted the pics on his instagram, both of you getting a scolding from sakyo this time)

(busted!)

[theharellan]

❅ : Advice to non-role play blogs that want to get started?

i wrote advice literally years ago that i can’t be bothered to find now, so i guess now is as good a time as ever to re-write it.

i’ll put the first bullet above the cut b/c i feel like some stuff is important for everyone to know, and some stuff is just relevant to rp blogs.

brush up on the lingo! the tumblr rp community has developed a language of its own. you’ll learn a lot through context or just asking questions (and if you don’t know what something means, don’t be afraid to ask!). i honestly think this language divide is a reason some ppl have problems with personal blogs reblogging their posts. i’m not sure everyone outside the rpc realises what personal blogs are. here are a couple of important terms:- personal blog: a non-rp blog, it doesn’t matter if you use your blog for posts about your personal life or it’s a fandom blog for graphics, it’s still a personal blog by most ppl’s standards.- muse / mun: i tend to prefer the word “mod” / “writer” to “mun” excepting the munday pun, but mun just means the person who runs the blog. muse is the character (or characters) written on a blog.- mutuals / non-mutuals: if you follow someone and they follow you back, you’re mutuals with them. otherwise, you’re a non-mutual.- private / selective / semi-selective: people who are picky about who they rp with, whether that means mutuals only, or only muses from a certain rp. these terms can be somewhat flexible, i consider myself semi-selective b/c i will rp with non-mutuals, but will turn down rps if i’m overwhelmed with replies or feel we’re incompatible as rpers.- meme: a term used to describe prompts that can take many forms, from symbols like this meme to memes where you have to add some input of your own, like a “five times __’d” meme you’d have to add whatever word you like in the blank.- banter / para / multipara / novella: again, these terms can kinda vary person to person. banter is typically about 100 words, para can be anywhere from 100 words to maybe 200. multipara i put at about 300-400. novella is just… go wild. i’ve written 2000 word replies on occasion.- tw/cw: trigger warning and content warning. these are used by tumblr a lot in general, but given rp (for an adult game series like dragon age especially) will inevitably deal with triggering or sensitive topics, i think it’s important to define.these are just a few examples, and if you’re ever confused, please ask someone. it’s better than not and annoying someone by sending an ask for a meme listed mutuals only.

make sure you get a rules / about / verses page before you start. if you’re established in a community people may rp with you without one, but if you’re new it’s important to establish yourself. here are some things i think are important to have in particular. it’s a little dragon age-rp/bioware-rp specific, but this is a dragon age blog. other things that i didn’t mention b/c it wasn’t necessarily relevant to interacting: have a name/nickname, age, and pronouns on your rules AND your character’s about page. even if it’s just “18+” or “minor” if you’re not comfortable giving your exact age.some people will refuse to write with minors for their own comfort, and having this information will limit miscommunication and misgendering.

lots of people use icons, and they’re a lot of fun to use! but you also don’t have to use them. some people may not rp with you for it, but that’s their loss. i will say it’s becoming more accepted since when i first made solas. it wasn’t so much of a thing when i first started tumblr rp, then it became a thing, then it backed off again. i personally use them when i can b/c i find they add a little extra something, but don’t have icons for every verse.

make sure your page is legible. aesthetic is nice, but people here have vision problems and super tiny font or dark font on dark backgrounds can strain people’s eyes. remember rping is mostly about writing, so if you have a page that doesn’t show off your writing, you’re doing yourself a disservice!

i’d recommend making a separate blog rather than making a sideblog, or if you do make a sideblog, then having a hub blog/main rp blog you follow from. often i don’t look at personal blogs that follow me at all (i have a hard time keep track of new followers in general), so if ppl have a personal they follow from and an rp sideblog i may miss this entirely.

make sure you turn on your asks and anonymous questions if you’re comfortable with them. i forget this sometimes still lmao.

know that it’s ok to make mistakes! i’ve had ppl tell me they’d love to get into darp but don’t know dragon age lore all that well. there’s nothing wrong with that. i have learned so much about the lore since making solas, and there’s still stuff i don’t know! if you feel unsure still, i’d suggest figuring out what your character would/wouldn’t know about and familiarising yourself with that via the dragon age wiki for example if you’re making a dwarven oc (please, i need so many more in my life) who is from orzammar but is now a surface dwarf, i’d recommend reading the pages about orzammar and surface dwarves, and from there you can find related pages. your character will never know everything about the universe, so it’s ok if you don’t, either. i play one of the more knowledgeable characters in the series, and even he doesn’t know everything.

don’t godmod / metagame / forceship etc. this probably could’ve been up with the definitions, but i felt was important enough to warrant its own section.- godmodding is when you force the other writer’s character to do something. like, in a fight, you say one character kicked another character in the face. you’re not the one who decides that, they are, all you can say is your character tried to kick them in the fact. conversely, making your character dodge every move would also be a jerk move. i’d recommend fight scenes be discussed ooc tbh. mild godmodding is sometimes accepted. say our characters are drinking and yours hands mine a drink, most people will accept you writing that my character takes the drink. there would be a line, however. like if you then stated my character loves the drink and has never had anything like it, that’d be godmodding. mild godmodding often helps move threads along, though if you’re unsure about something, feel free to ask! most people will appreciate it.- metagaming is when your character has knowledge they couldn’t or shouldn’t. i have in my rules that you can’t know solas’s true identity w/o asking me first and establishing it ooc before you do so ic. in canon solas is careful with what he reveals about himself, and the only person who really suspects him for any length of time is vivienne.- forceshipping is when you force a relationship onto another character. typically this refers to romantic shipping, but i think it can apply to any relationship. for example, if an inquisitor lavellan were to call my solas “vhenan” it would be forceshipping, as i am singleship. but also, if someone were to project a friendly or even negative relationship onto my a character, it’s also a form of forceshipping imo. remember you can only control how your character feels about someone, and not the other way around. in your head blackwall may be the dad your character has never had, and your character can treat him so, but don’t expect a blackwall rper to fill that role if they don’t want to!

there’s a lot more, but in the interest of doing other things with my day i’ll end it here. if people have questions i’m happy to answer them, either through Tumblr IM or asks.

[janiedean]

(part 1) ur gonna roast me for this but im legit curious why mafia AUs are so bad? im asking in a non confrontational way, i get it romanticizing mafia is wrong, but i also believe that 1)most mafia AUs are a really toned down type of mafia;2)they do make for some interesting kinds of dynamics with fanart and with fics; 3)in a fic specifically u can create your own world and call something mafia and still make it so they don't kill innocent people but only idk members of other gangs or sth

(part 2) plus theyre a way to put ur charas in a completely diff context and see what theyll do. i mean i dont believe that writing ships in a certain context (like mafia) equals romanticizing that context. mafia AUs arent even my fav things to read (in fact i almost never do), im sure many ppl romanticize it and i obvs dont agree with that but im just trying to udnerstand bc i believe fandoms are a way to explore things that we normally wouldnt.

I’m not gonna roast you don’t worry xD okay wait let me check if I replied to this already if yes I’m gonna c/p because it’s half past midnight otherwise I’ll just go at it again wait *checks tags* fff obviously I don’t have a general post but anyway pls read this after you’ve done with my post and then this which is also choke-full of links. plus for a (not nice) laugh: here. AH WAIT I FOUND THE POST.

okay, so, let’s have it out of the way: I have nothing against mob aus or crime aus. I have a problem against calling them mafia AUs because in the US mafia = organized crime at large, in Italy mafia = ACTUAL EXISTING ORGANIZATIONS THAT ARE ACTIVELY HARMFUL. now that I introduced the topic I’ll c/p you the reply I gave to another anon who while discussing the issue pointed out that most writers don’t even know Italian mafia is a thing, which is pretty much on the same discourse so...

*The thing is - in the US it might not be enough of a deal anymore and I honestly do get why people make the mafia = regular mobsters, since the mafia was the first foreign organized crime being exported to the US via italian immigrants (sorry if this sounds horrible in English but I just woke up and I still didn’t have coffee) so I understand that mafia became the umbrella term.But the thing is that - as you said, these people don’t even know that there’s a mafia in Italy anymore or where the word comes from.

 I’m going to link to italiansreclaimingitaly’s tag about the mafia and its perception outside Italy because they posted about this extensively and it’s an excellent resource, but meanwhile I’m gonna do a very short bullet point list and about the topic:

Mafia might not be a big deal in the US, but it still is here. We have the beauty of four different mafias (Cosa Nostra - the Sicilian one, camorra which is the one in Campania but has tendrils spread everywhere, the 'ndrangheta which is in Calabria and the Sacra Corona Unita in Puglia) which are all active [especially camorra and 'ndrangheta] and whose actions have direct impact (negative) on our economy and on our society. Actually mafias are one of the main reasons we’re currently economically fucked up, and if I start talking about how mafia culture keeps some areas literally backwards I could talk about it for three months.

There are still people who are killed for standing up against them. These days the most prominent personality is Roberto Saviano who is a writer who dared to put together a book documenting minutely the way camorra works and he’s been living under protection for years by this point. Like, they want him dead because he wrote a book. And I’m sorta sure that he was talking about leaving Italy and going to the US after years of sticking with it here because he can’t take it anymore but I don’t know if it was a taken decision or if it’s still debating it.

It wasn’t even thirty years ago that we had the stragi di mafia - in english it’d be something like the mafia slaughters, basically around the beginning of the nineties there were a number of bombs planted by the mafia targeting people who were trying to oppose it including judges Falcone and Borsellino, actually the anniversary of Falcone’s death is like... tomorrow. And they’ve killed people for way longer than that. Here is a list of only Cosa Nostra victims including the ones from the eighties/nineties. And people are still dying because of it. The slaughters I’m referring to are just the ones in the nineties which are enough of a number.

They also perpetuate a culture where if you testify against your mafia-employed relatives you’ll be shunned forever. There are women who testified against their families and couldn’t see their children anymore never mind that they weren’t automatically considered a relative anymore the moment they sided against the mafia. Some people have committed suicide after becoming witnesses also because our police force/justice system can be terribly non-supportive in this kind of situation so they got left on their own. Never mind that back in the day - it was the beginning of the nineties? - I recall at least a particular story of - I think, correct me if I remember wrong but I can’t remember the names for the life of me - where this guy testified against the local mafia when he either used to work for them or was forced to pay them the pizzo and in retaliation his six-year old (or five? Anyway he had a son younger than ten for sure) got kidnapped, killed and thrown into acid to dispose of the body. That happened in what, 1993? 1994? It’s pretty much yesterday. And now the camorra is doing the same - there’s a list here of camorra victims among which accidental passerbys that got killed because they were in the way which I can tell just by glancing is not complete. And I’m not even going into the 'ndrangheta. That is to say, here mafia still kills people and cripples our country.

Now, I get that it’s a word, but the point was: let’s say that instead of the Italians the Japanese came to the US first and the umbrella word for organized crime was yakuza rather than mafia and let’s say yakuza was still what it was originally in Japan while in the US it stopped being a big deal and people write yakuza!AU instead of mafia AU. Let’s say someone Japanese gets angry at that and goes like 'listen the yakuza is a real deal it does this this this and that and it’s a plague in our country so can you please at least look it up before writing your fanfic’, which is what had happened way back then when this whole mafia and fanfic thing blew up. A bunch of people told us to get over it because it’s just a word and if it’s a problem in Italy it’s not in the US so why should they care? Now, if we had been Japanese (or Chinese or Russian or Mexican) would they have said the same thing? Considering the general tumblr attitude I’m pretty sure they would have received either an apology or 'this is an important deal let’s keep that in mind’ with signal boost reblogs and stuff. 

It’s the fact that we should get over people not knowing that it’s still a real problem for us and that they can’t take five seconds to google it that is the problem imo. Especially when instead of mafia au you can just say mobsters au or tag it as organized crime and everyone is a lot happier, mostly because as the tag above explains romanticising the mafia is a good thing for them because it means they can act outside Italy with less stigma because everyone thinks that the mafia is dead or not relevant anymore, if I’m explaining myself. (And it’s active outside Italy - like, there was a mafia kill in Germany in 2007 where six people died (sorry the link is in Italian but there isn’t an English wiki page, if you look the city up you’ll find something probably) and it was because of the 'ndrangheta.

I’d really like to not get worked over it because it meant it was a thing of the past y'know, but the problem is that it isn’t and I’d rather spread some awareness in hope some of these writers look it up (because it’s a good thing that people know what mafia is since as stated they have tendrils everywhere - if you read Saviano’s book the entire first chapter is about how camorra regularly deals with Chinese import/export in Italy for one) than shrug and figure that since they’ll think everything is good for fanfic then it’s not even worth my time.*

Now, ^^^ that was the c/p-ed reply that should answer most of your doubts. What I didn’t address was:

im sure many ppl romanticize it and i obvs dont agree with that but im just trying to udnerstand bc i believe fandoms are a way to explore things that we normally wouldnt.

aaaand as we say here in Italy, this is where the donkey falls (sorry we have weird sayings), because in theory there’s nothing wrong with that... except that in 99% of the mafia aus I’ve seen around the thing is that they’re supposed to be cute.

like, I see a lot of shit with TINY MAFIA BOSS STEVE ROGERS with RUSSIAN ENFORCER BUCKY (????? bucky isn’t even russian???) and the yoi thing I saw before had the japanese character being the leader of a russian mafia gang which is... like... guys it doesn’t happen it really doesn’t, and a lot of them re-use wrongly terminology taken from the godfather without context or knowing what the hell it means, and it’s always from the criminals’ pov and they’re somehow seen as criminals doing justice where the police can’t (???) and like... no. mafia bosses/enforcers/employees are bad people period, and at least here if you try to leave or repent they kill your family in retribution. like, not even ten years ago there’s been a woman who used to belong to a mafia family (or one colluded with the mafia) who testified and her entire town/family shunned her and she couldn’t take it anymore and... killed herself drinking acid if I don’t recall wrong. it’s not even special cases. this shit is not funny, it’s not cute, it’s not adorable and it’s not good fodder for your imagine your otp scenario (srsly I saw one like.. let me find it,

LIKE. just look at this shit. in a regular context, the enforcer goes to the show owner to force them to pay a monthly sum to their boss lest they destroy their shop and their lives and their family’s life never mind that mafia culture is deeply homophobic so the mafia enforcer flirting with the shopkeeper is like completely fucking out of the question. I mean, people here like to shit on the sopranos but that show was actually excellent representation of Horrid Criminals Who Were Never Supposed To Be Good People and the small arc that happened when one of tony’s friends turned out to be gay (closeted) was REALLY well done. btw, it ended that when they found out he was gay most of the crowd rejected him and thought badly of him until I think they killed him also for other reasons, but that spiraled from finding out he liked dick. and that’s american mafia that they actually based on well-done research of the culture in Italy it came from, I assure you that here it doesn’t work that differently. like. the shit above is so inaccurate and frankly offensive, it’s like... I get people romanticizing problematic stuff but the thing is that when you tell them that it’s actually offensive you get brushed off as ‘ah well you’re being too sensitive it’s just a word u__u’. now, I’m all for exploring shit we wouldn’t be into, but not like THAT, because that’s like mafia romantic comedy and that’s not how it works. now, you wanna do a fic where the mafia characters are deeply flawed and bad people and the police tries to catch them? fine, great, go ahead. you wanna do a fic where the enforcer above deals with dunno an entire life of internalized homophobia when he finds the shopkeeper attractive and feels conflicted over having to con money out of him and doing horrible shit for a living and maybe understanding that crime isn’t worth it and then he actually collaborates with the police and gets shit from about everyone he knows and loves for that? okay, awesome, go ahead. nothing bad in that.

but the shit above is not exploring things we wouldn’t/writing darkfic, it’s THINKING THAT A CRIMINAL ORGANIZATION WHICH IS STILL A THING IN OUR PART OF THE WORLD IS CUTE AND ADORABLE. and that only plays in their favor because it takes the bad aura out of the word and we really should not let that happen. like. that is what is bad about mafia aus and mafia discourse, that people don’t realize the mafia is alive and well and thriving and not a thing that doesn’t exist or a generic word for organized crime.

you wanna write the shit above? okay, CALL IT CRIME AU or mob au, not mafia au.

btw, add-on: idk if I mentioned it in the above post or not, but in case I didn’t, I said that people would balk at the idea of a mexican cartel au. sadly since then I’ve found out a fandom where not only there is one but it’s also extra cutesy and people apparently love it and it has a bunch of kudos/comments and idek I’m not even touching that with a ten foot pole but like... I’ve avoided it and everything that author wrote because to me it’s just... nope. like, nope. if you do mafia aus don’t make them fucking cute. (also: in the same fandom I had to mute a v. famous fanartist whose art I actually liked but did cutesy mafia aus and.. like... haahahhaahahahahaha nah sorry. can’t go there. nope.)

[tumblunni]

Random Long Post About Charon!

This is random, but I feel like fans often don’t take into consideration what Professor Rowan says during the Rotom event. I think his words actually make it very clear that Charon was the kid who wrote the diary and shines some light on Charon’s motivation for acting like a jerk to Rotom. I’ll explain why I believe this:  “Ah, imagine finding you here! You must be eager to fill your Pokédex to be searching even here. What am I doing? I visit a professor I know in Eterna every so often. He tells me intriguing rumors of rare Pokémon sightings and such.” This part isn’t particularly relevant (though I do sort of wonder if the Professor Rowan visits is actually Charon himself), but this next part definitely is: “A Pokémon that slips into electric appliances, you say… Hmm… That is somewhat off from what I’ve heard about it. Hmm… This is what I’ve heard. Long ago, there was a Pokémon that merged with a toy robot. Should that Pokémon be recognized as a new species or not… Debates over the issue were about to start when they were rendered moot. The very topic of discussion–the Pokémon-infused robot–disappeared…” Okay, so the first thing that is really important to note here is that Rowan doesn’t have the exact same information as the player. This means Charon has done research that he was keeping to himself, and fits in with Charon writing that he wants his Rotom research to be a “secret.” But we also learn here that other scientists were at least introduced to Rotom somehow despite this.  Now, as for the “topic of discussion… disappeared” part–because Charon’s lab is secret, these words don’t refer to Rotom leaving the lab. Instead, they must refer to Charon putting it in that lab to keep it a secret. This might seem odd at first–why would Rotom have been introduced to scientists in the first place at all then…? But I actually think this all makes sense. Here’s a stripped-down version of the backstory based on all these details: –Charon obtains information about Rotom “by pure chance,” as he writes in the journal we know for a fact is his. –Other researchers somehow knew about it and were going to start debates about it. –Rotom is locked away in the lab by Charon so that he would get all the credit for describing it.  –Rotom eventually leaves the lab.  This still haves a lot to be desired. Is Charon the same person who found Rotom as a child? It seems that way, since the speech patterns and diction are the same. But then how and why did other researchers learn about Rotom in the first place? Why did Charon want all the credit only after this happened? Here is where analyzing Charon’s character makes everything clear.  Obviously, Charon is a greedy person. Specifically, he seems to be someone who is pragmatic to the point of being a cynical jerk. He desires money for himself and his team, but we know from his dialogue that it’s because he thinks people can’t achieve anything without it. We can also see that Charon has a high opinion of himself (he says so), but it also seems like he may have a low opinion of himself at the same time. The fact that he keeps trying to assert his self-worth, brag, and explain that he has a place in Team Galactic every time he speaks in-game hints at this. Also, Charon’s own co-workers hate him. Considering his plan at the end of the game, we know that if Charon were presented with a way to make himself known to all, he would do everything he could to make that happen. He also at one point says “I like seeing children try their best,” which sounds a bit weird out-of-context, but makes perfect sense if the Rotom kid’s childhood was his.  Putting together all of the information I’ve discussed, here is my interpretation, applying Occam’s Razor the whole way through, of the story behind the Rotom event:  –Charon came across information about Rotom “by pure chance.” How? When it came out of a lawnmower in his childhood. –At some point, Charon was excited to tell everyone about Rotom. They were probably still close friends at this point.  –Other researchers were going to start debates on Rotom after Charon gave them some information about it. –Because of Charon’s greed, desire to belong, and selfishness, he became possessive and wanted to get “all the credit.” He freaked out and locked Rotom away in his secret lab. –Everyone was confused because it had disappeared, and debates couldn’t continue.  –Rotom was upset and tired of being stuck in the lab and left. I’m almost certain this is the story the writers intended.

+++

Bunni’s comments! (is it a tad awkward that you keep sending these as submissions? have you thought about posting your thoughts on your own blog and then I could reblog them? sorry to make you go to all this trouble!)

REALLY LONG THOUGHTS BELOW THE CUT:

This is a really well reasoned theory!! I dunno if we’ll ever really be able to know what story the writers intended until we actually get this plotline expanded in a remake HINT HINT NINTENDO But it does definately seem to me that Charon = kid who had that cute backstory in that journal literally in Charon’s lab written like Charon talks and nobody else does. That seems very much like the simplest option to me, and it makes this character so much more well-developed, yet its kinda not a popuar theory.. alas... I don’t completely follow this exact sequence of events in my headcanons but I do think it fits perfectly with everything we know so far. You’re so good at analysis!!

Personally I think maybe people forget about Rowan’s few sentences at the start of the event... just cos the event is really hard to find. Practically nobody actually played this thing, I certainly never got a chance to do it until a decade later when i was able to emulate + use gamesharks. So before that I got my information secondhand through script-dumps and lets play videos, and a lot of people seem to leave out the rowan bit. A lot of people actually leave out the diary too! It seems even people who actually played the event didnt realise it was there, just grabbed their new rotom form and left. Alas poor Charon, ignored even in a meta sense! Also on Bulbapedia the script-dumps are organized weird. The actual page for the event and the Rotom Room as an area don’t contain it, its just got the diary part and the rowan part cut off separate and put on charon and rowan’s pages respectively.

Anyway, my personal thoughts + alternate interpretation to add to this!

To me it didnt sound like someone else discovered a rotom and tried to start these debates, then Charon freaked out at the competition and became paranoid. To me it sounded like Rowan was talking about someone (Charon) who started a debate and then suddenly vanished on the day it was going to take place. i dunno, just the way it was phrased seemed to come off like this was some relative unknown who popped up with this information about rotom, and then everyone assembled to hear him out. Cos specifically the ONLY information Rowan knows is that its ‘a pokemon that can possess a toy robot’, you’d think if multiple scientists were debating the existence of rotom for a long time then they’d have more info than that, info that isnt super specific to Charon’s situation. Or, at least, you’d think that if they were still researching rotom AFTER this one failed conference, they would have gained more info by now? I dunno, its hard to explain what I mean.

So, the basis for all my deductions is this interpretation that Charon (at least for that moment) had decided his rotom research was finished and wanted to reveal it. For me, the big question is... why didnt he?

WHY would Charon not want to boast about his discovery in this ‘debate about rotom’? We know at least one famous pokemon professor was gonna be there! Charon’s whole thing is (supposedly) wanting to become famous cos of rotom, absolutely no attatchment to it except as a revenue source, yep totally, no lies here. So you’d think that joining in a big debate with a bunch of high ranking scientists and making his great reveal would be.. like.. exactly what he wanted?? Why did it not happen?? 

My interpretation of this is kind of a mushy one linked to my general irrational decision that this man is potentially redeemable and totally has a soul. Alas, why can I never leave the grampademption train! I think that maybe this was some sort of major moment where the good and bad sides of his character clashed. REALLY CLASHED. He’s spent so many years trying to lock off himself into two mutually conflicting boxes, the innocent kid who sees this pokemon as a friend and the bitter cynical old bastard who wants to become famous off it. And now he has to choose, and it led to a complete mental breakdown! He initially chose money over rotom, he was gonna go ahead with the presentation. But then his better side won out and he cancelled it at the last second. He got cold feet, being scared of losing his best friend. Maybe he was actually going so far as to do some sort of morally repugnant deal, he was gonna sell rotom off to the highest bidder and never see it again? Or it’d have to be dissected as the first specemin of a new species, or locked up forever and experimented upon? Or maybe its just simply.. when you only have one friend in the world you kinda wonder if they’d want to keep you around if they found another friend. Maybe he thought rotom only needed him because of his research, maybe he thought it would become just as greedy as him if it got the chance? Maybe he thought that it would leave him if he let anyone else know it existed, which is what led to his growing paranoia and decision that his research was perpetually ‘not done yet’. (Cos seriously, what you see of his lab and stuff seems pretty finished???)

So that’s my interpretation of why he and rotom ‘vanished’ at that point, but then there’s the question of how they ended up separated. this is now going into complete fanfic territory, I dont really have evidence for any of it. In my image of how this whole scene would go down, mid-freakout Charon would have snapped at rotom and it led to an argument that ultimately resulted in like... triple decker bonus back of Regrettable Decisions. Charon’s been shown to kinda dig himself further into his own grave whenever his plans go wrong. So here we go, scene is set with Charon suddenly grabbing everything and running the fuck out the fire exit, five seconds before the meeting is about to start. From rotom’s perspective, it has NO IDEA what is going on, it just listens when he says to get in the pokeball. And now we have Charon in the position of having NO CLUE how to explain this all when he opens that pokeball again, he’d never just be honest about his feelings. Hell, he’s such an emotionally stunted guy wrapped up in his own neuroses, i don’t know if he’d even be honest about his feelings to HIMSELF! He just sitting here having a panic attack like ‘why did i do that?? I was about to become rich??’ Giant neon sign flies overhead saying ‘YOU HAVE EMOTIONS’, he ignores it. I figure he’d also exaggerate it in his head and destroy his entire scientific career just because he thinks he’s embarassed himself too much to go back. And he’s decided that this somehow proves that being a good person will only ruin all your dreams, and you have to be as bitter as possible to succeed. this is where he went from a dubious guy who occasionally breaks the law to ‘well I’d better jump off the slippery slope forever and join a space based evil team, literally just because of One Social Anxiety Moment’. (Relateable, amirite?) And ironically everyone he met that day is literally just thinking ‘oh god what happened to that guy, is he okay?’ and would have totally understood if he just explained his damn self... So all his panic comes to a head and he decides to blame rotom rather than actually do some in-depth analysis of his own life choices. I feel bad because I don’t want to hurt my friend?? I personally value friends higher than money? No, nonsense, you’ve somehow CORRUPTED ME! How could you do this, don’t you know how important that meeting was? WAS THIS YOUR PLAN ALL ALONG??? It was my ONE CHANCE! (apparantly, according to me)

So even though he just ran away because he didn’t want to lose rotom.... he throws away rotom. (just imagine the internal screaming this man must have experienced for the next twenty years)

It was a stupid, STUPID decision based on misdirected anger that he should have been aiming at himself. Nope, can’t believe that the great charon might have made a mistake, that friendship might indeed be a thing that exists in your dried up old heart. Instead it has just proven that friendship = weakness! And now because of this you’ve turned a salvageable situation into the worst disaster possible, yet again. (Man, I feel like Charon can barely survive without rotom. Its not just his conscience but a large chunk of his common sense...)

And rotom of course has NO IDEA why its suddenly been abandoned, so it probably was a really depressing time sitting alone in its trainer’s old house, hoping he’ll eventually come back so you can apologise for something that you don’t even know what it is... And at the same time we have Charon freaking the fuck out for decades, too caught up in his own neuroses to make the very simple decision of just turning around and walking back to where he left that pokeball. And even if he got there, what would he even say? Would he actually have the balls to admit he was wrong, or would he make excuses? ‘Oh, I was just too busy to visit, so much work to do, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill’ In his darkest moments he even considers that maybe he’s wrong to regret this decision at all. ‘But I did the right thing, I don’t need rotom, I don’t need anyone, I have to sacrifice everything to be famous...’ He’s probably even managed to get all the way to the door of the old chateau before running away yet again, leaving rotom thinking it just imagined seeing him outside the window :( Its like in his past when he startled rotom and it thought it had hurt him, but this is if he didn’t chase after it and just left time frozen on that moment. Well, he wishes it was, that he could just choose any second to take back his decision and everything would go back to normal. Never that easy, though...

I APOLOGISE FOR OVERLY LONG POORLY EXPLAINED FANFIC THOUGHTS WHILE I AM SLEEP DEPRIVED ok i need to go cry over dumb grandpas and then probably get some damn rest

oh wait one last random headcanon! i think that charon’s secret lab in team galactic eterna building is actually something he only built after the big moment of abandoning his pokemon Why does Charon have a rotom lab here if he doesnt have a rotom anymore? sure it could just mean he lost his rotom relatively recently, but since my fanfic idea places it earlier in the timeline I like to think that maybe he’s made this room in case he ever gets rotom back. He made a bunch of form-machines even better than the old ones, and decorated the place all fancy, and hopes that maybe it could be at least a small apology for all the suffering he’s put his friend through. Though he doesnt understand that rotom isnt as superficial as he is, so he cant just buy back its love... He just sits in there are rereads his journal whenever he gets nostalgic, he hasnt actually done any science in there for years. Also, it would maybe explain the duplicate rotom lab in silph co in HGSS? that’s the original, and he’s tried to make his new galactic lab as similar as possible because of how guilty he feels, and how he wants to just escape that guilt by turning back time instead of actually saying sorry.

A big thing I always struggle with in writing redemptiony fics is whether I’m lessening a character’s evil and forgiving them too easily and all. I think this series of events would definately still qualify as A Total Dick Move, even if its one that actually has a reason to it other than just ‘i’m evil’, and hurt himself as much as he hurt rotom. And man its so frustrating, seriously I’m here like ‘DUDE STOP IGNORING YOUR EPIPHANIES, JUST GO APOLOGIZE’ yet I also know that if I make him do it immediately and have everything resolved without conflict it’ll be so much less of a believeable redemption arc :P so yeah believe me i still wanna slap charon just as much as everyone who hates charon does, just for different reasons XD Also he needs a hug too. But he needs to do a lot of development before he could actually earn it!

[almaasi]

you have witch powers? i've always been fascinated with "paranormal" stuff, including magic, so i was wondering if u could tell me stuff about it. is magic real? what kind of stuff did ur grandma do? are ghosts and spirits real too? what kinds of spells can witches cast? is it like supernatural? sorry if i'm asking a lot of questions i'm just so fascinated and curious. i didn't even know witches were like, legit until i read ur tags, i just thought that people back then said that so they had 1/2

2/2 a reason to burn a woman they didn’t like. ok now i’m rambling but in short, what can u tell me about witch stuff? i’m just asking cause i’m really curious :)

(about my tags on this)

#whenever phil gets out the tarot cards and pulls something scarily accurate i’m just like…. yes…. good…show us your witch powers…… #(my own experience with tarot? so reassuring. and calming. it’s like asking for a friend’s advice but that friend is your own brain.) #also my great grandmother was a witch by profession and i definitely got some of her magic #i have not yet learned to recognise a feeling when i feel it.. but when stuff happens later i’m like OH THAT WAS MY MYSTERIOUS FEELING #one of our sheep died a week or so ago.. and for two days straight i was outside in the middle of the night staring at the moon #and wondering why i felt death in the air #and the rain made me cry and it felt like release but i didn’t know why #and i immediately started worrying about our sheep but didn’t follow up to see if they were okay #then two days later my mother comes in and tells me one of our sheep died and two days ago had given my mother “the death look” #if you’ve never seen someone or something die… there’s this look they have that’s like a disgraced peacefulness and self-awareness #but basically i knew the sheep was gonna die without any reason for me to think that #and i need to learn to follow up on my instincts because they’re ever-present and i never know when it’s a psychic thing or random anxiety #disclaimer: IS IT ALL BULLSHIT who knows? but science doesn’t know a whole lot about a lot of things and this stuff is natural to me #so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

okay!! i was expecting someone to ask, so here goes. (in case anyone’s wondering, this is a personal post, and no, i’m not making this stuff up.) (feel free to reblog if you want. but it’s so goddamn long aaah)

first off, an opinion: whether or not you believe magic is real in this world is entirely related to whether or not it is real. at least in my books. magic/paramormal stuff can always be observed, but if you don’t believe it’s anything beyond coincidence or skilled trickery, it’s not gonna impact you.

i do believe in ghosts (or djinns, or something else human-like), but in my experience they don’t really do anything except exist in some other realm and occasionally become visible when i’m at my most lucid, at that point between waking and sleeping. most people (myself included) would say it’s just a hallucination. but like…. who’s to say it isn’t real, just in a way we as humans don’t yet understand? y’know?

the most interesting ghost sighting i’ve experienced was when i was fully awake, not hallucinating. i was in a car with my sister, my sister’s friend, and her mother - and we drove over a bridge, and i saw a fritzing semi-translucent black figure walking along the peak. i looked back and it was gone. it wasn’t scary, it was just really cool. i saw that with my own two eyes, i have zero doubt i saw it, and for that moment, it was there.

other times i’ve seen things pass through walls, or felt presences in the room that vanish when i look. i get deja vu maybe once a week. the ability comes and goes in phases, switched on and off whenever i tell someone about it. it’s like that part of my brain gets really shy and goes into hiding when it’s mentioned.

sometimes it can be pretty powerful. there’ve been moments when a deja vu begins, i remember it from a dream, fast-forward through the memory to remember what happens, and i get ahead of present time, so i predict what’s in front of me by about one to three seconds. usually it’s snippets of conversation, or my hands moving to complete an action, or words i’m typing. (let me tell you, it’s so freaking bizarre when you’re consciously typing, thinking about what you’re typing, and simultaneously remembering typing it before, and knowing what you’re about to type despite not yet knowing. and then seeing it happen. i think a lot of people reading this would be like “what?” but i know there’s someone out there who knows exactly what i mean)

for a long time in my teenage years i told people i’d see coloured figures, like auras without physical people, just hanging around out there in the world, but due to health issues a lot of my teenage memories are gone, and the only memory i have of that stuff is the recollection of me telling people about it, and remembering it while telling people. it’s really weird. i sometimes think maybe i made that up?? but i don’t understand why i’d do that when i do actually see other things sometimes.

once, my family visited this old historic building, and i remember seeing a woman in a maid’s outfit duck through a doorway. but she wasn’t actually there. so. idk.

my great-grandmother (or great-great grandmother?) on my mother’s side used to sell love spells to the people in her Indian village. my mother told me about it when i was little. my [great] great grandmother would write a spell on parchment, and the client had to go home and burn it in their fire. and she would curse people, in exchange for payment. that’s all i know about that. but my grandmother (also on my mother’s side) used to have some kind of power, i never got to ask about it while she was still alive. (she was an awesome woman. one of the first women in her country and generation to go to university.)

personally, having been raised as a muslim, i always felt really disconnected from the culture and practices of the religion, even though i believe in the supernatural aspects of it right down to my core. that’s despite my ultimate acknowledgement of facts being deeply rooted in hard science. recently (like, in the past few months) i’ve started to rediscover my faith - directly following on from a quiet interest in the pinterest & instagram aesthetics of paganism and new age magic, which as a concept i was never really sure about. i just really liked how it looked. basically, it clicked in my brain that islamic prayers could, in essence, just be spells. you gotta take everything with a grain of salt. they might not work. but that’s the beauty of it.

a few weeks ago i stumbled across a prayer on tumblr, and read its intended purpose: “Allah will grant whoever recites this seven times in the morning or evening whatever he desires from this world or the next”.

and… i started to think, maybe the purpose is not to actually do that. nothing ought to be a get-out-of-jail-free/do-this-and-your-life-is-made type thing. maybe the purpose is to make you believe nothing can go wrong. and that every bad thing that happens–? it happens so that you can learn from it. and eventually, after many things change, you realise what you desire was not the thing you thought you desired. (idk how to explain that. an example from my life: i really wanted to be a veterinarian growing up. then i got sick, dropped out of school. and now i’m a writer. i want to be a writer more than i ever wanted to be a vet. i had to get sick and my life had to fall apart before i could discover that. writing was never something i’d have considered before.)

my point is, if you believe everything that happens to you will ultimately be a good thing, bad things don’t hurt so much.

and if you take something as a sign, it’s a sign. it’s just your own brain taking hints from the world around you and using them to conjure up a decision. if you wanna believe it’s magic, it is.

personally i like protection prayers/spells and just…generally positive ones. i say prayers for sick friends, people who i see on my tumblr dash who are having a bad time, and if i see or hear about disasters or worldwide events. i’m not expecting it to have a visible impact, but like.. what’s the harm? at the very least it makes me feel like i did something if i don’t have money to give, or i can’t be there with a friend, or the world is falling apart and i’m helpless. praying or saying a spell is just hoping, really, really hard. if some greater being is out there, listening? cool. (but what if god doesn’t wanna do anything? maybe it’s like my cupcake theory. god puts the ingredients in a baking tray, shoves it in the oven, forgets about it. the universe rises as a cupcake. god made it. but the universe is doing its own damn thing.)

regarding tarot cards: again, it’s self-reflection. you can believe answers come from outside influences, but it’s easily just as much about interpreting generic advice and making it mean something to you. but personally i’ve drawn random cards, and known that no other card in the deck would’ve been as relevant at that moment. i’ve used tarot cards to determine the endings for my stories, and coincidentally pulled cards that directly represent my title characters.

one time i was thinking about my fic “The Moonlighter and the Magician” and the card i pulled first was The Magician. and i was like gee thanks tarot cards that’s helpful. (but actually? it meant those cards were on the same wavelength as me. think about it. 78 cards, there’s a one in 78 chance i pull that one on my first try.)

apart from my wonky first-ever tarot readings with the Rider-Waite travel-size tarot deck (which belonged to my mother), i’ve never pulled anything that didn’t eventually make sense. i use The Wild Unknown cards now, i relate to them so much more. plus they’re mine, not borrowed or abandoned for years, which probably helps. (buying those cards was the most money i ever spent on anything. i don’t regret it.)

is any of this like the show ‘supernatural’? not really. the closest i can say my experiences have come to the show would be the episode “faith”. just, the whole episode. it doesn’t matter if it’s the real deal, so long as it works. and boy, does it work for me. and a lot of other people.

like i said, all the spirit-like entities i’ve encountered have been perfectly benign. no monsters, except things i’m pretty sure are nightmares.

but on that note, i take a lot of things to help me sleep. if i didn’t, i’d be waking up screaming night and day (i hit whistle register while screaming, once). i see faces in the dark and creatures in my bedroom, even when my eyes are closed and i’m awake. i sleep with a light on, and i prefer to sleep in the day. i cannot even deal with the presences in my room.

for that matter, my room is definitely the most presence-heavy room in the house. now, although it’s obviously just in a drafty area, i feel the cold spots. all. the. time. i’m feeling one right now as i type this. the door and window are both closed. the heater is always on. the draft comes from the same corner of the ceiling my cat stares at when she’s “staring into space”. there’s definitely something there, but it legit doesn’t bother me. it watches me get dressed sometimes, but it’s not weird about it. like i said, benign.

i feel energy everywhere i go. i can’t stay in my family’s open plan living room comfortably for more than a few minutes, because that room is filled with people and pets coming and going all freaking day, and even when it’s empty, it’s so LOUD. there’s vibrations and voices coming out of the walls, because the house absorbs it all. as a generally tired person, that room exhausts me. i can only stay there if i have social energy. (yes, even an empty room.)

i am so, so sensitive to people’s moods and the energy they let out (to the point where i burst out screaming if i see a negative microexpression during a personal conversation). i find phone calls very difficult, not just because of social anxiety, but because i can’t sense energy as easily as i want to, and is natural for me. skype calls aren’t the same as being there in person. a lot of this could also be autism-related, but nearly everything about me is autism-related, because i’m autistic. go figure.

one time, the day i had my first period, i passed out in a maths exam. all the other times in my life, i’ve seen black or maybe red when i passed out, but this time it was a striking cobalt blue. and i heard SO MANY VOICES, i thought the whole classroom was full of people shouting. my P.E. teacher was observing that exam, she carried me out of the room and lay me on the floor outside. i told her about the voices, she looked at me in confusion and said “there were no voices?? the whole room was silent for the exam.” obviously that was a weird day, but given the amount of times i’ve lost conciousness in my life, before and after that day, i know the warm muggy feeling of slipping away, and i guarantee that one was just a little bit not-normal.

my cat Wilson follows me everywhere. if you’ve ever seen a picture of a witch and her familiar, that’s me and Wilson. she leaves the house if i leave, and she’ll walk down the road beside me to make sure i stay safe. she only lets me leave completely if i go in a car, but even then, she tries to come too. i know what she says when she talks. she speaks in words for me. it translates naturally in my head without a thinking process.

there was this one time when i was about 15 my parents took me to an after-hours medical centre because apparently i was ~speaking in tongues~ or whatever. i don’t remember it, i remember ‘waking up’ with a doctor’s flashlight in my eyes, crying, then holding my sister’s hand as we looked at the fish in the fishtank afterwards. i can’t say how legit that is because i just.. don’t remember it.

one time as a kid, i am absolutely sure i was possessed for about 30 seconds. i was walking down the street on a balmy English afternoon, pine needles scattered underfoot, with my elderly grandmother (paternal), my grandfather, and my sister. i must’ve been 6 or 7? and a streak of evil just bolted through me. and i stuck out my foot and my grandmother fell flat on her face. my grandfather tried to help her up, a car driving by pulled up and asked if they needed help, grandfather said no, and got her back to her feet. i can’t remember if i felt remorse. i think i just knew instinctively that it wasn’t me who did it. but like.. i wasn’t just A Nice Kid, okay, i was The Nicest Kid. i just don’t do things like that. ever. especially not to a kind and generous grandmother who i love so very dearly. i never had before, and i never have since. that’s the single most evil thing i’ve ever done in my life and it came out of nowhere. being more aware now, i think it was a djinn (aka a demon in christian beliefs, i think). they’re known for being mischievous. (my grandmother was fine, by the way. this is the first time i’ve told anyone about this.) now i think about it, i remember cobalt blue behind my eyes then, too.

whoops, this is a really long post now. but uh… basically, i’ve just always been open to feeling these things, and believing in what i sense for myself, without subscribing to whether or not the science has been done yet. in fact, i think i’m open to it because i experienced the same stuff when i was young. the energy i feel is very much real to me, completely tangible. i’ve never been able to see auras, but i feel them on some people. i think just being open to feeling something makes it more likely to come to you. i try not to ignore my instincts (because they’re always right. always.) but i find it’s super hard to distinguish between anxiety (which i feel often) and magical ability (which is far less commonly felt). also sometimes the instinct is so faint it doesn’t even become a passing thought, just a blur of something i half-considered. but in hindsight i realise what it ought to have been, had i paid proper attention.

i can comfortably manage to go outside in bare feet, shut my eyes and let the moonlight do its thing. it has an immensely powerful energy, i always feel cleaner inside when i go back in. (my cat Wilson sometimes asks me to go outside with her when there’s a full moon. almost every night, especially on warm nights, but even freezing ones, we can just stand out there for an hour together. watching the moon set is transcendent. far more so than a sunset.)

right now, due to years of bad health, i have to force some natural abilities away (like the nightmares) because they’re too much for me to handle. i think as i recover, over time it’ll be easier for me to accept that stuff back into my life.

oh, one more thing, regarding my health - i have celiac disease, which has kept me essentially bedridden for the last 7+ years - WHICH BY THE WAY, my family spent literally 9 years trying to diagnose. my doctor kept doing an anaemia test, telling me there was nothing wrong with me and sending me back to school. i saw various specialists, herbalists, a naturopath, physiotherapists, cardiologists, had an MRI scan, saw family counsellors, school counsellors, a hypnotist, etc etc - basically consulted every medical professional under the sun when a simple blood test would’ve done it. stupid misogynistic doctor who thinks all teenage girls fake it to get out of school.

but one thing we did do was visit a psychic, who told me i had something called a candida. my dad, a sceptic and nonbeliever, googled it and said it was “some kind of magical thing in the gut”, and was therefore bullshit, so we continued the search for a diagnosis. years later - years - after a change of doctor (who i chose because i got a good vibe from her picture) we find out it’s celiac disease, a disease of the gut. of the hundreds of people we saw, the only ones to even pinpoint the right body part were the psychics. i googled candida just now and guess what? literally celiac disease. this woman diagnosed me with celiac disease by kneeling at my feet, holding my hand, and shutting her eyes for 30 seconds.

for the record, slightly off topic, i know very few men in real life, and this is what the men in my life have been. my doctor, dismissing me as a liar because i was a teenage girl. and my father, dismissing my declining health as “not trying hard enough”, even now, more than a year after i was diagnosed by a doctor. i think this is why i take refuge with male fictional characters. they’re better. i want them to be soft and understanding like the men i’ve never known.

anyway, this is the part of my life’s story i never really pieced together until right now. it’s a lot, more than i expected. i happily call myself a witch. most of my magic goes into my stories, and i think a lot of people who read them feel it, even if they translate it as passion or love or good vibes or something. the amazing comments i get would speak to that. i love the energy i get from comments, because it does come through in typed words, even if it’s much fainter than seeing people face-to-face. some comments just hit me with waves of goodness, even if the words themselves aren’t so powerful. so i really appreciate that stuff. it’s good stuff.

yep. that’s all. i hope this satisfies your curiosity, anon!!!

[semirahrose]

The Winchester Brothers and “Starvation Eating”

And why the theory that Dean has been starved (inevitably followed by the assumption that Sam has obviously been well-fed his entire life) is not adequately supported by canon or by published studies of the short or long-term effects of starvation—but that was too long to put in the title.

So someone reblogged my post on Sam’s eating habits to add a link to their own analysis, which made some wonderful points but also some that I strongly disagree with and needed to talk about. In short, their analysis implied that Dean showed evidence of having been starved as a child and Sam didn’t and that Sam’s eating issues and need to control what goes into his body are somehow evidence of class issues, which I don’t think is the primary cause.

I won’t be addressing the second bit, since I sorta made my case here (and foolscapper wrote some amazing analysis here), but I freaking need to talk about the way-too-common and unfounded assumption that Dean starved (usually “for Sam”). Not only is that a selective and way too narrow interpretation of canon, but the “evidence” people use to support the starved!Dean theory often contradicts canon and/or published studies on the effects of starvation.

BUT before I begin, anyone who has also heard “evidence” that the discrepancies in the brothers’ heights implies that Dean starved should read this awesome blogger’s great rebuttal.

Okay, back to eating.

All the pieces of analysis I’ve seen that claim Dean starved for Sam use one or all of these things to justify their conclusions: 

The fact that Dean likes to eat, talks about food, and tends to eat quite a bit, which people assume is related to past starvation.

That scene in “Something Wicked” where Dean gives Sam the last of the Lucky Charms.

That time in 4.04 when Travis the hunter asked Dean if he’s ever been really hungry, “like, haven’t-eaten-in-days hungry?” and Dean sorta smiles and says, “Yeah!” 

But let’s take a look at those one at a time.

Yes, it’s true that people who have experienced starvation display increased thoughts about food. They tend to eat a lot more, and often hoard food. A closely monitored experiment tried to test the short-term effects of starvation on a group of 36 men, and while the men started out active and healthy, their moods, mental health, and behaviors quickly deteriorated. Behaviors like the ones mentioned above did persist in the weeks after the “semistarvation” (as in, they decreased calorie intake by around half). But the “majority of participants” reported that those behaviors associated with starvation were drastically reduced after 5 months, and after 8 months, most of the participants, with a few exceptions, had completely returned to normal eating habits. In fact, another published study looked ahead far longer than 8 months. Over 50 male and female Holocaust survivors participated in a study and survey of how their eating habits had been affected long-term by severe starvation. Their results, personally reported and independently verified by the participants’ families, were not significantly different from the data gathered from the control group. While Dean does eat a lot and think about food, those are some of the only things he has in common with survivors of starvation. So it is absolutely correct to say that Dean has some things in common with people who have been starved, but it is not at all accurate to assert that he “eats like someone who’s been starved,” especially since the behaviors the meta writers cite would likely not persist that long and could easily be influenced by other factors. I’m not saying both Sam and Dean don’t show symptoms/haven’t shown symptoms of children who suffer from food insecurity, but I am saying that these published studies don’t bear out these people’s assertions, and canon doesn’t have near enough evidence to definitively state that either brother “starved.” Absolutely, it’s likely that they’ve been hungry, but that’s as far as we can go.

As @queen-of-carven-stone pointed out, Dean threw away perfectly good and relatively nutritious/filling SpaghettiOs. That is not the behavior of someone who has starved. Even after the starvation experiments I linked to above, some participants hoarded food and ate several times their daily allowance for calories. When people use this to imply that Dean starved for Sam, it just doesn’t hold water. Hiding the last of the Lucky Charms is not hoarding. It’s being human and wanting to stash things so your siblings can’t get to them. If Dean took the SpaghettiOs and ravenously consumed them when Sam rejected them, people might have some basis for a case for starved!Dean, but that’s not what happened. Considering how lightly both Sam and Dean handled the subject of food in that scene, it doesn’t seem like either of them were starving. Also, some people point to Bad Boys, where Dean stole things for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and got caught... but they forget that Dean only stole because he gambled their food money away at the card tables. Dean was obviously trying to do what he thought was best, and he clearly did what he could to care for Sam when he was younger, but he was far from the self-sacrificing, semi-starved white knight some fans try to paint him as.

That quote from 4.04 gets bandied around quite a bit, but please watch the clip rather than reading the transcripts. For anyone who wants to check it out, the relevant conversation starts around 19:30 and goes until 20:00 in the episode.  It’s nothing like people make it out to be. The way Dean answers the question is not solemn or dramatic, haunted-eyed as he recalls starvation. He responds enthusiastically, nearly smiling. Jensen is a fantastic actor. If he’d wanted us to see pain there, we would have. I’m not saying that Dean hasn’t experienced hunger--obviously he has been hungry, but that could range from actually having not eaten for days because there was no food, to not eating anything but canned beans and peanut butter for a few days while hunting a werewolf, to working up an intense appetite on a hunt, to having a wild sex marathon and becoming dehydrated, to being constantly hungry and having a bottomless pit for a stomach when he was going through puberty (I’ve watched two brothers do it), to straight-up hyperbole. Some seem more likely than others to me, and “Dean has actually and repeatedly been starved (for Sam’s sake)” simply isn’t one of them.

Some additional bits that didn’t fit above:

But don’t people who experience starvation make weird food combinations. What about all the weird things Dean added to Mac’n’Cheese? Sure, that’s true. But as one of five siblings raised by a single parent in a crappy trailer without heating or air conditioning (or running water or electricity, though we made do without) on $12,000 a year... we also made weird food combinations, but it wasn’t because we were starving. (We also were responsible for making most of our own food from when we were pretty young, but there was usually a 5 gallon pot of something in the fridge--chicken noodles or spaghetti or something...but that stuff gets old fast, lemme tell ya.) We had food, but there wasn’t always great variety and it wasn’t always things we liked to eat, so we added cheese and tons of other things to ramen noodles to make them new and exciting. So I might consider the possibility that the varieties of Mac could be evidence of food insecurity or even inadequate knowledge of nutrition or a typical kid’s desire to make the same-old fare new, but there’s just not enough there to say that anyone “starved.” Also, while people are using Dean’s culinary weirdness to justify him starving, they forget that Sam often had to make his own meals (5.06) and--of all things in the world--craved marshmallow nachos as a kid (11.08). If people want to say that Dean’s varieties of Mac’n’Cheese are evidence of starvation, it’s funny that they ignore “evidence” of the same for Sam.

But Dean’s still more likely to have not had food than Sam! Not necessarily true? In fact, while Dean and John were out hunting, Sam was left alone in motel rooms for multiple days and expected to travel alone across multiple states to meet them (11.08). He was 9 at the time, but the episode made it clear that he may have been left (alone) since Sam was 5. Sam also mentioned in 11.19 that, during those times when he was alone, he was terrified that John and Dean were dead and tried to figure out what he’d do if they were gone and wasn’t in the state of mind to do so. This is totally speculation, but I think it’s reasonable: it strikes me as unlikely that he’d be making himself balanced, nutritious meals while he was entertaining those thoughts. In fact, season 1 makes it clear that Sam, grieving Jess’s death and worrying about his own nature, barely eats or sleeps. Again, I’m speculating, but it doesn’t take a huge leap to wonder if those habits were formed in childhood. 

So, sure. Sam and Dean may not have had a terribly secure food situation, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t have enough food. As an exception to that prevalent assumption, I felt the need to speak out. Growing up without much money didn’t mean that my family lacked for food. It just meant that the variety available to us was limited. Not saying that’s how things went for the Winchesters, but assuming they starved is just as presumptuous as assuming otherwise (and I feel like the flashbacks reveal that they usually had something to eat... and maybe sometimes they didn’t, but if someone wants to call that fact, they need a lot more than what they have.

I will buy malnourished!Winchesters every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I still have cracks in my teeth from obsessively eating ice as a kid. (Yay, iron deficiency!!) But assuming Dean starved and did so for Sam, who ate at the cost of Dean’s health... is at best an indulgent fanon theory and at worst a gross misinterpretation of canon and information widely available about starvation.

Okay haha rant over. I’m not a professional in this area, so take this with a few grains of salt. It’s just that stuff like that bothers me. People are welcome to cradle their headcanons all they want, but they’re still headcanons.

more meta

[valuecifer]

So my erstwhile friend of too-long-to-count Mr. Feel (aka @thefeelofavideogame ) doesn’t want to be known as a “RWBY Guy”, this makes sense, RWBY is a very frustrating goddamn show, in so many damn ways. I'm doing him a favor of listing a bunch of problems with RWBY that he can just reblog for his followers since he doesn't wanna deal with that shit.

Now, SOME CONTEXT: I've watched all of RWBY Seasons Volumes 1-3, I've seen maybe like, two episodes of RWBY Season 4. I know it had been improving but recently took yet -another- nosedive, and have written massive, massive amounts of words on the subject of RWBY's incompetence, so I'm probably going to regurgitate a lot of points here that I've already ranted about to my friends in private to keep the word count from being too apocalyptically long.

I'm also going to be directly comparing RWBY to what it -wants- to be: a shonen-style anime romp, instead of any sort of high literature, just in case people think I'm some pretentious ass and not, y'know, a total nerd myself.

This list is not comprehensive, but is probably a good list of major production/storytelling faults. I'd need to do a whole series on this to talk about all the things wrong with RWBY, but a few major points of discontent, in no particular order:

1. Terrible, Terrible Pacing

Pacing makes or breaks a show for a ton of people, and RWBY's pacing, for a show, is ridiculously awful. I'm gonna be rolling a lot of my issues into this large point, because RWBY has a problem with both set-up AND follow-through on points it tries to present. It does a lot of things wrong with this, in that it tries to blow past a lot of setup just to get to 'the good part', which is the kind of mistake you say fanfiction writers and NaNoWriMo novels make. You have to establish things if you want people to get emotionally invested! You can't just force these four people together into a team, say 'okay, they're a team now', and then not elaborate on how they actually feel about each other at any point! Does anyone know what Team RWBY thinks about each other? Not really, because you get a laundry list of traits, get them referenced once, and then they assume for you to fill in the blanks. It's sloppy and lazy.

Sloppy and lazy describe a lot of the other plot points RWBY puts forward. The show continually tries to introduce a cool new thing without even beginning to resolve the thing they'd already attempted to put forward. This gets really frustrating in the way they put forward the climaxes of the various seasons, because do you want to know how many times the members of the MAIN TEAM are relevant in a given finale?

0. 0 times. Twice they get pre-empted by a Cool New Thing, and the third time is supposed to be the Time They Lose And Everything Goes Wrong, Oh No, except you don't CARE because they've accomplished NOTHING! They're a vehicle for action scenes, nothing more. It's not even a problem of runtime, because the Volume 4 episodes are now the length of your usual anime episode! They just don't know how to effectively use their time.

Part of the problem with this, is...

2. Massive, massive cast bloat

Mr. Feel didn't get far enough in for this to matter, but RWBY has a -huge- issue with introducing new characters for the sake of having new characters. To wit You have basically two teams full of main characters, which is four characters apiece. The cast does eventually slim down, only to add about three more characters for each one they trim off the list. And, as of this writing the cast is all over the fictional world, splitting the focus indefinitely to a point where the narrative is impossible to follow. A bunch of characters are superfluous, such as Neptune, -possibly- Sun, and basically Everyone They Introduce during the Tournament Arc. It gets to the point where they introduce new characters and can't develop the ones they already have, with some... notable exceptions. Nearly all the main characters are about as flat as cardboard when it comes to personality, with viewers expected to fill in the blanks, only to never get any reward for inferring these character traits, because, again, RoosterTeeth is terrible at follow-through on their series.

But I've been talking like the foundations aren't rotten, when they are, due to the fact that-

3. They ignore the basic ideas around what makes shonen fighting good

Okay, so, an unrelated friend once made this metaphor about how Shonen Fights should work, and I've been using it ever since, it's how I tackle so many fights, and why I tend to dislike a lot of the fighting around RWBY.

The best Shonen fights are like puzzles. What I mean by that is that, at any given point, you know what your heroes have access to, and how each part works, and the excitement comes from not only learning what tools the heroes' opponents have at their disposal, but also figuring out how exactly the heroes' tools will come into play. Now, you may be thinking "Shonen break the rules with sudden power-ups all the time", and I posit that, no, they really don't. So long as something is alluded to being in the Hero's toolbox, they can use it, even if this means it's, in narrative context, a 'new' power. The most iconic example I can think of, of that rule playing out, is Goku going Super Saiyan on Namek. It's alluded to a bunch of times that the only thing Freiza is scared shitless of is a Super Saiyan. Vegeta tells Goku he doesn't stand a chance unless he's a Super Saiyan. From that point on, the idea of 'becoming a Super Saiyan' is a tool that's added to Goku's 'toolbox', that he eventually uses against Freiza.

RWBY doesn't play by these rules. Everyone has a boatload of powers at their disposal - Aura, Dust, Semblances, and trick weapons - but none of them feel really well explained or well-distinguished. Dust can be combined in a bunch of different ways! Okay, how? Why do crystals and powdered dust both exist? What causes Semblances to exist or not? How -exactly- does Aura even -work-? Not only that, but then they introduce new powers, like Ruby's 'Silver Eyes', and then refuse to elaborate on them, treating them as exercises for the viewer.

Not only that, but the fights just. Don't feel 'dynamic', there doesn't ever feel like there's a change or a moment where things shake up. To make a videogame-based example, a lot of bosses tend to have 'Phases' in it. These phases are well-defined, because they involve changing the way the players and the boss have to move. RWBY doesn't do that. All the interesting different stuff is just different 'strings' of combos, like in fighting games, which feel downright uninspired when you have to many different ways you can approach fights. Nope, just a varied combo string.

But all that could probably be forgiven if they just...

4. STOP PANDERING FOR GOD'S SAKE

Look, I get it. Everyone hates pandering unless they're the one being pandered to. That's how it's always been, that's how it's likely always going to be. But there's a level of -advanced- pandering that goes on in RWBY that is absolutely cringe-worthy on every level.

There's throwaway characters based off of company in-jokes, the 'combat' technique names are named after fandom's ship names, the inclusion of a character just so a prominent member of their staff could voice a character whose existence is downright superfluous. Making a character more important than they seemed because fan reaction was popular. It goes as far as like.

Okay. I would be perhaps be the last person to talk about queerbaiting, as a straight white dude, and given certain fandoms' overuse of the term, it's been relatively diluted recently, but RWBY's actions of pandering can be straight up queerbaiting, because, as it turns out, people wanted a narrative focused on girl heroes, and what they got was every plot beat being soaked up by dudes as each of the main team is effectively damselled in their own way. And yet they still try to spin it as the 'girls' story'. It's honestly kind of disgusting, and a topic for another post, but the real thing that probably makes me the most mad is...

5. Nobody at Rooster Teeth knows what they're doing with the show, and never have

Don't get me wrong. Monty Oum is an inspiration to me as someone who primarily works in creative space, trying to make creative things. Monty Oum was a creative force that will be sorely missed in this world. But Monty made one singular, huge fuckup which has kneecapped RWBY even worse than the show could ever do to itself.

There's no story bible.

For those of you who don't understand what that is, it's exactly what it says it is. If you don't know what something does, you refer to the story bible. If you don't understand what the plot's beats are supposed to be, you refer to the story bible. Over, and over, and over. Having a singular document to refer to is vital in a whole bunch of different areas. Game Design Docs, Story Bibles, Production Diaries/Bibles, they're all more or less the same concept over different areas.

From what we know of the behind the scenes, there was a lot of stuff Monty had in mind that he just. Didn't tell -anyone- else working on the show. He couldn't have known he would have died so young, but that's exactly why bibles exist. They're there as contingencies, you make them so that, in case you aren't there to work on something that's so completely -you-, people can follow what you had in mind. So many things got dropped, shifted, moved around with Monty's death that the show spent all of Volume 3 trying to recuperate, while gradually trying to salvage the show, but it's clear they didn't know what to do with a lot of pieces, and are just hoping that people are forgetting about them.

This is, quite honestly, inexcusable even for a 'semi-professional' work. You can't keep ideas to yourself. You have to share them, workshop them, write them -down-. That's the only way anyone's ever going to know what you're going with, and a lack of a story bible is as much at fault for why RWBY is so frustrating.

I wanted to like the show, I really, truly, honestly did, but it's made me so mad at every turn that I can't even enjoy when it -tries- to improve, because I know it'll continue to disappoint.

Don't watch RWBY.