#fuck you! its my blog I get to share my fucking shitty experiences.

[springysprongy]

Hi hello! Im fucking pissed at a certain situation. An artist I love is going through a lot of anon hate

And I just wanna post this here!

I was a victim of hate! Not just normal hate! But a guy who would make 20 different accounts to call me slurs, invalidate me AND tell me to off myself!

If you are doing this, get some fucking help.

This shit ain't okay. Y'all are the most VILE PIECES OF SHIT if you harass anyone in general. But especially people who are vulnerable. If you tell someone to kill themselves in a throw away account or behind an anonymous mask, you are a spineless piece of shit!

Here's some screenshots of my situation that happened a year ago and still affects me.

I had to change my name, change accounts, close off anon asks for a long while and close my fucking dms. This shit ain't FUCKING COOL. If you have to bring others down to make urself feel superior, you are nothing but a pathetic piece of shit.

[itgomyway]

former limiting beliefs i used to hold and how i let them go ♡

(disclaimer: these are based off of my own experience! share yours on your own blog 🥰)

“the 3d HAS to reflect the 4d just understand you have it in your 4d no matter what.” um there is no separation between the 3d and 4d when you are already 1 being (consciousness). theres no need to live in a separate entity known as imagination when its the same as the “3d” anyways. the concepts of “imagination” “physical world” or “3d” are just false forms of consciousness youve made up and personified it as real. they are not. only you are.

“the more you repeat your affirmations the more likely they will come” theres nothing to “do” or say that will bring me my desires since i am everything i already am my desires. the idea of “doing” anything to “get something” outside of me doesnt make sense when its all in me. affirmations can be used to “bring things to your awareness” but understand the affirmations themselves are STILL not bringing you anyway. just making you aware of things.

“dont check the 3d! you’ll be in a state of lack/showing yourself you dont have it!” PLS GIVE ME A BREAK?? why the fuck are you telling urself you are with someone but afraid to check their socials or for their notifications? either date someone u like or you dont think you have it. because lets be honest. if you really were in a relationship with your desired person the idea of “checking the 3d”- which u already claim IS your 4d- shouldnt be an issue. and if it is then something aint right but i wont judge!

“youre in a state of neutrality if you dont care ab not getting your desires and you dont have them” damn yall strict asf. you cant even be indifferent without it meaning something. you either have it or you dont. if im indifférent its bc i have it why stress? fucking decide already

“neville taught ab non dualism!” here we go. then why tf did you misinterpret his words like that and make it sound obnoxious? i believe he did, just like his teacher, teach non dualism (the power of awareness by him is great) but his teachings are a far cry from the nonsense most of you spew in his name. and dont even get me started on how neville used to refer to the law of assumption as the “law of consciousness” but i digress. if you separate yourself or any aspects of being then it isnt non dualism.*

going into my next point “you HAVE to read source to understand!!” i am so glad most of the law of assumption community is breaking free from this mindset cuz you infact do not HAVE to read anything. if you are the operant (main) power doesnt this mean you are your own source? oh i thought so…

“work on your self concept to manifest your sp if you dont have them your sc is shitty” well it wasnt shitty til you told me i had work to do 💀. once again there is NOTHING you need to do but “be”. working on your sc can help u feel better ab yourself for sure but its not required!

for supposedly limitless beings, a lot of yall are very limited. be careful who you get your advice from because personally i wouldnt take after someone whos too scared to text their sp- oops i mean significant other. (disclaimer: once again not bashing loa just the users who can’t decide that they believe and switch every other day. very common on law of assumption twitter!)

if you realize youve been limiting yourself this whole time and now youre like “what now-“ well as ive stated before, theres STILL nothing you need to do. youre not missing anything. this isnt a blog on why you dont have your desires, i cant tell you the answer im not your creator. (you also are everything so you in fact have your desires)

like non dualism, i hope to share this way of life with you as you’re not getting anything so theres no need for limitations. LIVE YOUR LIFE. if someone is advising you to fear your own power then ignore them cuz wtf! life is suppose to be fun not a rule book!

*disclaimer: i have nothing against neville goddard. i really like some of his teachings. however i would never go to one of his living students for advice, ESPECIALLY on twitter. not only do most parrot the same limiting beliefs he himself didnt hold, but most are obnoxious about the topic of the law of assumption. i don’t even “manifest” but if i were trying to and had them to go to I’d probably cry. if you really wish to read “source”, read The Power Of Awareness by Neville Goddard and Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle 💜 learn from the teachers themselves FIRST <3

© itgomyway

[blorbingqls]

"We accept the love we think we deserve" - seeing this quote in terms of love and control as subjects in Only Friends

With @tomatoland 's brilliant post on TopMew on the above quote here , i think that with 7 eps in, we have understood that love and control are very well linked with ephemerality as a subject.

As i have previously linked epheremality with control here, i would like to talk about how love also makes us lose control with the impermanence of life. This is a long overdue post for 4 eps now.

linking the ephemerality squad here so that you can also share your opinions on this @waitmyturtles @lurkingshan @slayerkitty @respectthepetty @ranchthoughts (anyone else i am missing, pls tag, i really appreciate it)

TopMew

As Tomato (@tomatoland i hope you're okay with that nickname; i really tried to find a name on your blog for you) has referred in their post, Mew left his bubble of insecurities and got his heart broken. Completely legible and correct on his point. Top really loves Mew but now Mew has no reason to believe him anymore. With the play in their power dynamics, both of them loved each other and lost control of the way they wanted the relationship. Yes, if Top and Mew has stuck to their original plans - just reaching to the point of ideality and sex, then, this relationship should have ended after they got their goals. I dont think that sex was a goal for Mew as much as it was for Top, but, we can say it was in the secondary.

But as they fell in love, they, especially Top understood how the love he received from Mew is so much more than he thought he deserves (taking into account his trauma and past experiences). So , even though Mew is projecting his hurt by doing things that literally are asshole-ish as fuck on his accord, Top is willing to let go all of that since even he knows he is in the wrong this time and he is willing to lose all control he has on his life - of fame, money and insecurities in order to have Mew back. Top is willing to be as obsessive as Mew said he would be in a relationship in order to get and accept the love he think he deserves from Mew, even if it won't be good.

But, I also feel, the concept of love as explored in the series so far, not just runs along with TopMew because of the books, but also with all the remaining couples in the show. I won't discuss P'Yo and her partner, CheumApril in this segment, because I want more angles on this from the coming episodes in order to validate my point. But, I'll discuss this point with our other views on the couples: RayMew, TopBoston, SandRay, and BostonNick.

RayMew

Now, RayMew is a pairing that is being enforced on the viewers for the past 3 episodes now and the last episode shows a pretty good view of how as characters, Mew and Ray view each other.

For Ray, his love is unconditional for Mew because it correlates with that fact that Mew was the only reason who made him stay in this world - who made him believe that he deserves the love from his friends, the love which he didn't get from his parents or any potential partners. But potential partners were never in the scene because Mew was Ray's emergency contact. Their relationship runs deep and however much you may think, even if Ray thinks Mew's love for him could be more as a friend, he also believes that because as he is so damn shitty and a fucking burden to society, he can't ask for more from Mew for the sake of their friendship and his esteem. He keeps entertaining the idea of them as partners several times, but, until ep 7, Mew has never entertained the idea that his love for Ray will be any worthy of more than a friend. Because, Mew wants to continue making the boundary and keep the control, according to me.

Now, as Mew has entertained the idea, i am interested how it pans out in the next episode (not very promising tho). just linking this out here because its so fucking interesting.

TopBoston

We will mainly take here Boston's viewpoint since Top gave up on this since the very beginning and became firm with it post ep 3. He gives no flying fucks about the possiblity of it. Top considers Boston to be a one night stand and a one night stand only.

Boston, as has mentioned so many times, considers Top to be top tier; the person who gives him something as close to love because as an Machiavellian prince (refer here) Boston considers Top to be the only worthy competitor in his reign. And he really doesn't care if he hurt others feeling. Mind you, Boston has been the most truthful to himself, maybe not to others. And as a prince, his love speaks volume through keeping them in their reign because ultimately Boston wants power and control in his arena. That's the fucking politics of it. And Top is the only worthy contender who can damage his reign. Hence, he wants the top tier power as much as possible, and only Top can give him that. Him fucking off to America, that can easily happen through Top, because he is a very well known hotel chain owner/manager. So, Boston wants his loves, because he very well thinks he deserves it and he accepts it as much as he can. But, he also knows that for him, he can't make this love into a weakness, because that will be out of his control.

Boston however, as Mew so incredibly pointed out, is gullible. Ray couldn't see through him, but, MEW FUCKING DID. That is why even though Boston didn't consider Mew as his competitor, he was fucking jealous of him because Mew got Top and was chosen over eventually by Top. Mew has the power that Boston didn't think he had, till now. And tbh, Mew is now winning the game, despite his insecurities with his relationship with Top.

THE WAR HAS BEGUN, MY FRIENDS.

SandRay

God, I have so many feeling for these babies. Where to start? Okay so, you know in second episode, Sand built that boundary with Ray regarding friends with benefits? Well, it has backfired on him. COMPLETELY.

As ep 8 preview says, I love how Sand realised the fact that they were never friends to begin with, for even to have made that boundary to make sense. Sand is a pathetic little man, as so many of you have pointed out, but, why is he the way he is?

His incredible nature to be so caring of others around him has made him feel like its his responsibility to take care of everything. His mother, his business, his money and job, his style and even his fucking roommate. Now, Sand is so emotionally attached to this damsel in distress, pathetic burden to society (affectionate) Ray, that even before they became friends, he made Ray his responsibility. Sand has no right to ask for love from Ray, because they are not friends, lest friends with benefits to ask for any care towards himself. But he selfishly asks, for the first time.

Because, as a person who keeps on taking care of others endlessly, it is harder for them to ask for the care and love they expect and deserve from whom they love while keeping their self esteem intact. And for Ray to completely shut him down at that time, and him still following Ray while he was drunk, makes him so much real because you feel responsible for that person. You are their emergency staff, even if they don't consider you to be.

While Ray comes from another perspective itself. He initially wanted to know Sand more as a person, because he is a person who wanted to explore the life beyond what has been given to him. He is a spoilt brat, and when he realised that he can't buy Sand's love, he explored it with him.

But because I think Ray believes that Sand will always be for him, even when he does asshole-ish behaviour (because thats where everyone leaves) he has taken Sand for granted. The backup option. Anything goes wrong with his ideal relationship, he can always go running back to Sand, because Sand has become his addiction.

Apart from drugs and alcohol, Mew and Sand are the only people he can keep coming back to. For Mew, it is only at a cost. At some conditions, only for something personal. While maybe Ray wants explore that possibility with Sand, but he is afraid. He is afraid that Sand will go away. just as Mew did. A person who can only consider him a friend and nothing more. Even if he wants to explore that possibility with both of them, loving them at the same time, he can't make people his priority, because he doesn't know how to do that. Nor does he think he's worthy of it. So, he accepts whatever he thinks he deserves off Sand's love and care.

I am interested to see how it pans out for these idiots once his relationship with Mew falls out. I am concerned for Ray so much. Give him access to therapy and rehab soon pls. Sand and Ray's father I think are going in that direction, with this speculation by @prapaiwife.

BostonNick

Now, our final pair has been the most interesting couple in this show so far. Why do I say that?

Well, for Nick, Boston is one of the top-tier gays. As pointed out by Boston, he likes bad guys. And lets be honest, Boston, most dishonest, cunning bastard out there. So, Nick believes that he will be that gay who lands the top tier dick and fix this problem. Right?

Wrong. Nick very well knows this won't happen. Still he keeps hoping for more as Boston doesn't know how to not be a hypocrite as a prince. He keeps giving some here and there false hope through his actions, not words which makes Nick believe he's special, but he's not. He takes whatever love he thinks Boston gives him, despite him not being his number one, despite Boston cheats on him over and over again. He just wants whatever of love as actions that Boston can give to him because that proves wrong all of his low self esteem. So he accepts whatever he thinks he deserves because he can't ask for more in a bed friend relationship. With Boston's guard so up and his will to leave the country, Nick knows he can't do anything but try to make him stay. Even if that's a 99% chance of not happening. He tries because he doesn't want Boston to hate him. He only wants him to love him. Because for him, thats enough.

The sadness keeps on piling up for these outsider, hard working roommates, doesn't it?

While, for Boston, he is nothing but a rebound from the angst of not getting Top. He wants a serious relationship, and maybe, he does look for it in Nick, maybe not, but he doesn't love Nick. He doesn't love Top either. For Boston, Nick is a toy he wanted to play with.

Because he cares about his reign, his reputation. And, Nick realised that. Hence, Mew contacted him and Nick gave that information to Mew. They will bring Boston down together because Nick somewhere believes he can get him back.

But Nick babygirl, he doesn't love you bub. He doesn't. And, it hurts so much. Because Boston keeps on taking from you, whatever he deserves. And that is your care for him, for granted. He is a leech bub. He is.

Now, how does it all link to ephemerality and control?

Well, love itself is impermanent. It doesn't stay.

The world knows this and still we chase it. And at an age as our characters, we chase love and freedom like anything. In order to gain control. We take up jobs, more courses to learn, experiment with love and relationships, with people because the time is ticking and people say now is the age. We break hearts and get it broken.

As P'Jojo says "This show is Hurt People Hurt People", tell me who hasn't been hurt by love, by control and by living at its time? And also by missing out each of these experiences because you were lonely with your own life and burdens?

We accept the hate and love the life gives us, because this is what we think we deserve out of this. And tbh, these feelings, are never permanent. They keep changing with time, and that's the only thing thats permanent.

Change is the only thing that remains permanent.

[narcpocalypse]

Speaking of that post I hope it's ok for me to send this ask in!

I have some OCs myself that also have NPD(+other PDs as well, like ASPD AND BPD for example) and I was wondering how to realistically portray NPD without unintentionally stigmatizing/demonizing it?

*also some are also POC as well and are my Elder Scrolls OCs also, if this helps.*

Feel free to delete this ask, if you don't feel like answering!

AGHHH MY FIRST ASK!!!!!!!!/pos

Fair warning, this is going to be a LONGGGG ass post and it will mention ableism towards NPDers. I want to make sure I cover as much as possible. If you have NPD and want to add anything, pls do so in a reblog or the comments! I am also super delirious so if what I say makes no sense I'm so sorry 😭

I think a full, completely in depth understanding is the key to not writing something stigmatizing/demonizing. It sounds obvious, but in the case of NPD, there's so much misinformation so I am hoping this post can guide you in the writing process. You never know what little thing can cause accidental mischaracterization.

This is a super important topic for me because honestly, I'm trying to figure out the same as someone with NPD myself, even with all the info available. I feel like there's so much grey area because so much is still unknown about the disorder (fuck the psych system/narc abuse believers). A lot of us have to go from our personal experiences and figure things out on our own, which brings me to my first topic:

Self Diagnosis And The Criteria!!!!!!!!

A LOT of us are self diagnosed, including myself. Whether you're officially diagnosed or not, most of us can agree the DSM5 is booty ass. I bring up self diagnosis specifically because due to the DSM5 being shitty, it's suuuper difficult to get diagnosed or even want a diagnosis. I personally don't want one.

If that's a theme you want to bring up in your work, I would definitely follow blogs here that break down the diagnostic criteria and re-define it in a realistic way. Having this is super important because the DSM5 is MADDD confusing even if it wasn't ableist.

Your characters might resonate with that confusion and even anger. Rage is such a prominent emotion with us narcissists, so its highly encouraged you tap into that. The stigma is so impactful to most of us and personally keeps me hidden.

If you went off the official criteria, you could innocently and accidentally write an ableist trope based off the DSM5. For example, the DSM5 has a very vague and "I do this just because I can blah blah blah and there's a name for it" narrative of narcissists. There's no nuance. They state accurate symptoms but don't accurately explain why we have them. Without context, it makes our intentions ultimately one size fits awful.

Here are some resources that have been super helpful to me!

Some extra specific things I keep in mind when writing my narcissistic characters:

-���Bad behavior” is such an important phrase to emphasize when writing narcissists negative symptoms and being mindful on how you approach the impact. Make sure that phrase is clear, even if they will not redeem themselves and are a piece of garbage. They did xyz because of bad behavior due to symptoms, they hurt john doe because of bad behavior due to symptoms. They make the conscious choice not to change their bad behavior because abc or they make the conscious choice to do better because blah blah blah.

-Depending on what communication style you want two or more characters to have, make sure the outcomes are accurate based off of symptoms. My examples don't explain narcissists as a whole, but they are based off of my symptoms:

Lack of Communication: Increase in superiority symptoms, increase in rage, increase in invalidation and inferiority feelings. Other parties, specifically egotypicals may have a misconception of the narcissist and believe their symptoms are how they really are and can't be redeemed due to stigma. In the situation involving a narcissist however, in my experience when this happens I'm always so confused. Nothing makes sense and nobody is explaining anything to me. I need outside perspective as to why my actions are wrong and lack of communication will sink me deeper into my delusions. Communication is so important coming from the outside perspective to snap me out of my spiral. Lack of communication on my end will cause me to bottle up my feelings, convinced I’m better alone. Not explaining my intentions (or lack there of, to be completely blunt and vulnerable.) to someone I hurt can cause them so much more pain too. I don't want to hurt anyone, and even if I don't FEEL sorry, I can acknowledge I don't want the people I care for to be hurt by my bad actions.

Proper Communication: Honestly in my case, usually the damage I caused isn’t forgiven however rebuilding that trust becomes so much easier accepting that and opening up to the person/people I hurt. The narcissist usually knows they can prevent xyz going forward, and the other party is prepared on how to handle the situation in case it happens again. In my experience, communication is super beneficial in terms of receiving supply too. ESPECIALLY when the other person involved is also a narcissist, they know that pain of not receiving praise/admiration and we can understand each other moving forward.

Other narcissists I encourage you give your experience w this too bc I have seen very diff ones!

-If you want to implement characters who are ableist towards the narcissist, some things I would do are:

Show the narcissists internal monologue after the trauma and put your main focus on their emotions, the ableist person’s actions second. The weight of their words will be shown more in the trauma response, less in the moment (although super important). Focus the context on the narc crash, anxiousness, surprise, grandiosity overcompensation, etc.

Have other characters defend the narcissist, preferably being other narcissists because we are the ones who understand each other the most and back each other up no matter what

Show the importance of proper education and lack of education

Ask yourself how this is relevant to the plot and your character/characters

-Ask yourself, why does/doesn't my character want to be redeemed? Is it a symptom or is it genuine? Do they want to do better but don't recognize it? Why don't they recognize it? What symptoms are holding them back from xyz (social connections, self care etc.).?

Examples of answers to these questions:

My character doesn't want to be redeemed because they are convinced they are justified in their actions. They genuinely believe they did the right thing and need time to get out of that mindset. What's stopping them from getting out of that mindset is the delusion they are stuck in. Working on their trauma triggers can help lessen the blow and onset of psychosis. If they recognize they are wrong, my character is the type of person to crash and have suicidal urges. There is a slow build up before the crash that spirals into madness. What may help is getting supply from their friends/partners reassuring them that recognizing their bad actions are a first step followed by praise for things outside of the situation to bring them back to a solid baseline or narc high.

My character has a hard time socializing because when having an episode of grandiosity, they feel like they are better than everyone and no one is at their level. In episodes of insecurity, they feel like they don't deserve friends because they feel worthless. This is followed by perfectionism and seeking unwanted friendships, only to self-destruct and hurt those around them. Their ego impacts everything they do.

-SHAMEEEE is one of the most important emotions (in my experience) to write about so pls make that an important part of how your character views themselves!

-I know I have been only focusing on negative aspects, but also do highlight the positive aspects. For me, NPD has motivated me to work on myself. It isn’t the healthiest way, but given my circumstance, it is the healthiest I can do right now. Even my most wild and delusional thoughts can lead to great opportunities for self improvement. Thinking I’ll become famous? Gave myself tools to work on my executive dysfunction and be consistent with a project I love. Narc highs are also absolutely incredible. Finding folks who understand me and receiving praise has kept me going. I genuinely feel listened to. Narcissists are some of the nicest people you will ever meet because they know what it feels like to hate themselves. No matter how little empathy some of us have, that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge one another (even if my symptoms make me feel so singular in my experiences/contradict the point of acknowledging others).

More info to represent different kinds of NPDers:

Some common comorbidities are:

Autism Spectrum

Bipolar Disorder

Schizophrenia Spectrum

DID/OSDD

All Cluster B Disorders

Eating Disorders and Addictions

So many of us are autistic. SO MANY. This small survey statistic doesn’t scratch the surface but it’s important to look at!

As an autistic person myself, I feel like a lot of the trauma I faced growing up highly contributed to the development of NPD. I was othered, shunned, invalidated and shamed for just existing. Still am. That made me overcompensate with erratic attempts to be wanted and loved and just acknowledged in any way possible. I want to be SEEN.

If anyone wants an in depth post sharing my experiences with bipolar disorder and NPD I will absolutely do so if asked too!

How NPD affects my gender itself, dysphoria and sexuality:

In my experience as a fat trans man, a lot of my dysphoria is rooted in narcissism, internalized fatphobia and internalized toxic masculinity. I want to be the ideal boyfriend that is praised for existing. My male privilege definitely contributes to that want and I can acknowledge and dislike that part of myself. I expect this certain level of respect for being a man without realizing it sometimes and make sure to hold myself accountable when doing so. My dysphoria makes me feel inferior to other men because I don't "pass" and I feel the need to compete against them. The insecurity is consuming me and I do my best to be aware if I cross any lines.

What I have noticed about gender and sexuality in NPDers is that a lot yall are aroace and nonbinary! Like based off of my survey alone and people I know!

I asked one of my mutuals if it wanted to share his experiences of being a POC with NPD and it agreed!! He wanted to stay anonymous (aka super duper awesomely cool and mysterious) so I’ll just be posting the ss of what he said!

I do not have much to say on the response from my mutual because I feel like what it said speaks for itself and because we've spoken in private about the topic already! If you want to write an Asian character with NPD, this is really useful information!!!! One day I will make a post elaborating on being a POC with NPD myself. But, for now, this will help you understand an experience from an Asian perspective.

I hope this post wasn't all over the place and makes sense, if you have any more questions please ask away!

[lunar-pantheon]

what in the entire whole live fuck is the muppet joker

sorry for the late answer anon i just have no idea where the fuck to start. i know so much about this guy and the rabbit (muppet) hole just keeps GOING dude. i actually started writing a full explanation but since then several archive blogs have popped up like @amuppetreference @the-muppet-joker-archive and @muppet-blackwood . also love their tma flavored additions to the brotherhood. hope this helps <3

im gonna leave what i started writing tho i think its funny, just know i never actually got to even barely scratching the surface

tl;dr an internet freak that i would put on the same level as thecybersmith/human pet guy as far as fuck ass shit hes said but with a quickly growing troll fanbase. I'm also pretty sure he himself is a troll, if not hes just a shitty person with odd kinks that is going through a very severe bout of religious delusion and psychosis. i used to think he was real bc ive met weirdos on his level at cons but some of his recent posts just scream troll and hes quoted infamous tumblr copypastas multiple times

BUT i will make a (brief) rundown with as many tidbits of his lore that i recall off the top of my head. im not gonna link anything because id cry but you can scroll through his tumblr or any of the reddit threads if youd like to dig deeper yourself

His blog

-He goes by Kermit, Joker, Croaker, KJ, etc. His given name is colter but since he doesnt like that name I will call him KJ. I will not however respect him calling it a deadname as if preferring his kin name shared with a frog puppet is the same as the trans experience

-hes been posting relatively consistently since 2023, with one period where he didnt post for 8 months. some ppl use that as evidence that hes fake but girl ive done that like 4 times

-he mainly posts about his internal sexual kin relationship with kermit the frog and the joker, and also misogyny. Also hating horses, and catholocism. I'll get into that.

-He says that he had a previous blog, but had to remake because he upset the furry fandom and they came for his ass. i would say bad excuse but i literally had mutuals who switched blogs monthly bc of kim drama in 2015 so again. idk dude.

The Reddit Post/easter dinner

-this is how i found out about him, my boyfriend showed me a tiktok reading the post and i havent been the same since

-I'm going to say this is all alleged off the bat obvi, i dont actually know if hes behind that too but if he is i deeply respect his ability to control two corroborating sequential narratives on multiple platforms in real time. that shit takes skill

Horses

Catholocism

Homestuck

[resurrection-of-soul]

Flashback | BIOHAZARD 6

Writer: Akira (日日日)

Characters: Koga, Keito

Keito: Oogami! The least you could do is respond! What are you doing on the roof of the bicycle parking lot? I don't know if you're copying Sakuma-san or what, but don't do such strange things! Koga: Hmph. Even though there's a noisy, beaten dog barkin' at me at the moment, this is usually a nice, quiet spot with a lotta sunlight, so it's a nice place to get some sleep! (Wha? My mouth just moved on its own! The hell is with this? So gross!)

NOTE: From here on out, the story sporadically dips between the real world and a dream world being shared by all the members of UNDEAD. To visually separate the two in text, I will be using italics to indicate speech from real characters inside the dream world.

[ For the best viewing experience, please read directly on my blog! ♪ ]

Time: Later that night.

Location: Inside UNDEAD's shared dreamscape.

Koga: (…...) (…Nn? Huh?) (No way, mornin' already?) (The sun's so damn bright... Guess the pills they made us take for the experiment made me fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.) (I just closed my eyes n' the whooole night's already gone just like that, huh? Feels like I barely got any sleep.) (Wait, hold on? Even if it's mornin', ain't the sun way too bri— Huh!?)

Koga: (The hell!?) (Where the fuck is this? Didn't I fall asleep in that ryokan-like room...?) (Why the hell am I suddenly outside? This makes no sense!) (And, wait, huh? I can't move a muscle!?) (Is this sleep paralysis or somethin'? I don't understand a fuckin' thing!)

Keito: ...Oogami!

Koga: (Ah, this voice is…!?)

Keito: You there? Get down here, we need to talk!

Koga: (It's Hasumi-senpai— I mean, that shitty four-eyes, ain't it? Damn, you're still wastin' that nice, clear voice of yours on spoutin' bullshit like always, huh!?)

Keito: Oogami! The least you could do is respond! What are you doing on the roof of the bicycle parking lot? I don't know if you're copying Sakuma-san or what, but don't do such strange things!

Koga: Hmph. Even though there's a noisy, beaten dog barkin' at me at the moment, this is usually a nice, quiet spot with a lotta sunlight, so it's a nice place to get some sleep! (Wha? My mouth just moved on its own! The hell is with this? So gross!)

Keito: Who are you calling a beaten dog? Bastard, learn how to speak to your upperclassmen properly. Though, I suppose it's better than being weirdly hung up on formalities. And…hup.

Koga: Woah, you just casually got up on the roof like it's normal. Even though you're a monk who's always actin' like an honor student, you're surprisin'ly rowdy, huh?

Keito: Heh. I might seem straitlaced now, but I used to be a problem child who would climb up into the rafters in the main hall and kick the Buddha statue without permission, and every time, my father or older brother had to give me a smack before I'd stop.

Koga: That ain't the kinda thing ya oughta be actin' proud of, y'know.

Keito: Exactly so. …Imitating Sakuma-san's wild behavior will not benefit you in any way, as you'll simply be shunned and blamed by those around you.

Koga: Wh-who's imitatin' that guy?! This just so happens to be the perfect place to catch some sleep!

Keito: Is it difficult for you to sleep at home? Do you have a bad relationship with your family?

Koga: I-it ain't like that! It's just that they're always scoldin' me for hangin' out at underground live houses.

Keito: Those kinds of places are hotspots for delinquents. I can understand how your parents feel. They aren't scolding you, they're just worried.

Koga: G-geez, I ain't some lil' kid who needs my parents fussin' over me.

Keito: No matter how much time passes, in a parent's eyes, their children will always be children.

Keito: That aside, I see… The view from up here is surprisingly good. Look, Oogami. What's that, moving on the horizon? A ship?

Koga: Shut uuup, hell if I know. I mean, seriously, what's the matter with you… Hasumi-senpai, did'ja actually need me¹ for somethin'?

Keito: "ore-sama"?

Koga: Wh-what, you got a problem with the way I talk?

Keito: Not at all, I just hope you don't feel embarrassed of yourself when you look back on this behavior in the future.

Koga: Says the guy who goes around usin' "kisama,²" seriously.

Keito: Details. … Anyway, I did have actual business with you. For reasons unknown, Sakuma-san has called for us, the members of DEADMANZ, to gather as soon as possible. He wants us to go to the underground live house after school.

Koga: Hah? DEADMANZ? Wasn't that a "temporary unit" meant to be used just for that performance³ the other day?

Keito: I believed so as well. However, due to the circumstances it was necessary to establish it as an official unit, and we have yet to go through the proper procedures to dissolve it. To summarize, you and I are both still members of DEADMANZ. However, the others who helped us during that abominable "Dead Man's Live," such as Kiryu, were treated as guests and are not officially counted as unit members.

Koga: Oh yeah, that kinda scary lookin' guy… Hold on, does this mean I'll get to stand on stage with Sakuma-senpai again?

Koga: Woohoo! Ya shoulda said that right away, you guy with the stupid-lookin' glasses!

Keito: Don't speak ill of glasses. I'll get angry, since it reminds me of the way Sakuma-san and Eichi teased me relentlessly when I first started wearing glasses as a child. Anyway, to be perfectly honest, I don't really want to do this... Now's the time to switch up my thoughts and strategies in order to embark on the reform of Yumenosaki. There's a lot to take into consideration, and a mountain of things that need doing. I'm very busy. Getting called out by Sakuma-san at a time like this is definitely not going to lead to anything good... If I could, I would just pretend I didn't hear him and head on home, but... That's not an option. I'm the one who came up with the rule saying that the members of a unit should do their best to follow their leader's instructions, after all.

[ ☆ ]

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ore-sama, of course. A combination of the informal, masculine first-person pronoun ore and the honorific -sama, which is typically used to show great respect (ie, you'd use this honorific when addressing, say, the emperor). Ore-sama is therefore one of the most obnoxiously self-important ways a man can address himself. Please note this is the first time Koga actually uses a first-person pronoun in the JP script during this convo. That's relevant because Keito is about to comment on it.

Japanese pronouns are a whole thing. The short explanation is that, first off, it's already considered a little rude to directly address someone as "you" rather than using their name/title/whatever. Then, there's a whole hierarchy of pronouns you're meant to use depending on gender and a person's familiarity with/social status relative to yours. The immediately relevant bit here is the fact that Keito's preferred second-person pronoun, kisama, is rude as all hell. It used to be formal and respectful (hence the -sama honorific), but gradually came to come across as sarcastic in an insulting sort of way. People do not use this in real life unless a fistfight is imminent. (Well. People don't use it in real life regardless because it's fairly archaic and pretty much only shows up these days in works of fiction as a character quirk, but. You get the point.) Keito's tone is difficult to properly convey into English in general, because he uses a lot of big, fancy words and quotes a lot of proverbs, but he also conjugates sentences in a really direct and informal way, which makes him sound like a delinquent. Imagine someone who talks like a posh scholarly type, only to casually drop "fuck" into half his sentences.

A reference to Crossroad. I won't be marking every reference to Crossroad made in this story, as there are many. If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend doing so before returning to Flashback as, in many ways, Flashback can be considered a sequel to Crossroad.

[kygerbearr]

the downside of making so many connections at a young age and growing up with all of them is having to bear the weight of knowing everything that happened to several groups of people, what could have gone differently, what you could have changed and what you shouldn't have changed

i grew up on a forum for video games and knew almost everyone there and had to see the paths all of them had taken, and since everyone who was on that video game forum was fucked up i had to bear witness to their trauma as well. we all grew up majorly fucked up from our experiences on that website

for some reason i was also the guy (who was just a kid himself) who everyone shared their secrets with. i knew everything about everyone while being everyone's friend, and i don't have to explain how that would end up being hell. obviously I'm not going to go into details about anything that happened on that website because a lot of it is a mix of other peoples trauma and my own and I won't be caught trauma dumping on this blog but i will illustrate the fact that it is not normal for anyone to know all of that let alone a kid. like it was down to people's sexual preferences and stuff, i knew all of it. just straight up all of it

anyways. knowing where everyone from that website is now is so much to process. i'm sure people who went to school went through something similar but i feel like it's on such a larger scale for me because i've been in direct contact with like 10+ people for 10 years, and that's not counting all the people who ended up so shitty that I parted ways with them (but still hear about where they are now) and i'm just soooo tired of thinking and perceiving.

and like. the consequences of all that is that any time anyone new tries to be friends with me i'm just so exhausted and tired of existing that i can't carry a conversation with them for longer than a few minutes every like month. my ability to process individuals interacting with me has been on its last leg for a while now and i need to figure out how to get that fixed. it goes beyond a social battery too like i cant just recharge it needs a replacement that battery is non-rechargeable at this point.

getting back to the point where i can interact 1 on 1 with individuals without shutting down mentally after 20 minutes is the goal for 2024. i will probably not succeed but the effort will be made

[phoenix-flamed]

Munday Survey !

Name/Alias: Vonny!

Age group: 30+, at 33 years young.

Pronouns: She/her or they/them.

Favorite color: If I had to pick, I'd say dark red, like burgundy or something.

Favorite food: Chicken alfredo.

Tattoos/piercings?: Only pierced ears right now, but I'm planning to get a tattoo in the semi-near future-ish -- an Amaurotine mask with the Azem crystal leaning against it, and the quote, "Darkness and Light. Despair and Hope. As goeth one, so goeth the other", as a reminder to myself that these contrasting elements go hand-in-hand; you can't have one without the other, and that's okay. It's the balance of life. Something something struggled with depression and stuff for most of my life, something something about Endwalker being a truly profound experience for me when dealing with this, my trauma, and my grief.

Current song stuck in your head?: I have been listening to Aviators' "Blood and Snow" nonstop these past like three days while writing replies and shit lol.

Pets?: Six cats, one pupper!

Favorite book?: The Count of Monte Cristo, hands down, always and forever.

Do you have a 'prized possession'?: I have many, but. On my birthday following our mom's passing, my sister got me this teddy bear with a little necklace around its neck, and it has my mom's fingerprint on one side, while the other side says "A mom's hug lasts long after she lets go". I still can't read the saying without tearing up(as I am sniffling right now over it), but it's definitely my prized possession.

Dream job: I used to want so much to be a character designer for Squaresoft/Square Enix, back when I used to draw 24/7. But now? I think I'd love to be a museum tour guide or something like that. Something involving sharing my love of history.

Tea or coffee?: Coffee. Never been much of a tea person.

Hobbies: Drawing, writing(including roleplaying, of course), singing, gaming, uh. That's about it, I think.

How long have you been role-playing?: I started on this really shitty chat site when I was 12, then it was all downhill from there lol. So like 21 years.

Who is your most active muse: Definitely Elwin. I've been neglecting my poor Quintus muse. :( But it's okay, because I'm having an absolute blast.

Significance behind your url?: OKAY, HEAR ME OUT ON THIS -- I actually went with this one specifically because of this blog being centered around the AU idea of Elwin being resurrected by Phoenix's flames. Very impressive, I know.

Tagged by: @heartsurpluss

Tagging: @rosxrian because he's a fucking nerd(affectionate), and anyone else who hasn't been tagged yet but wants to do this!

[scaredgirlsilly]

ok I know you asked for asks on the other blog but. if you could make everyone in the world listen to one song what would it be

oh jesus thats. a really good question HDKSHDJSJ

so at first my mind jumped to just songs i liked. yk maybe basketball shoes by black country, new road yk that song is prob one of the best songs like. ever jflsjdksj or maybe a jeffrey lewis song?? idk im Fucking Obsessed with ine of his albums its a comfort album for me

but then i thought and my choice is Do You Know What Im Saying by applied communications (really id recommend the album but you just said song and thats my fav song on the album hfksjdjs)

so ok. this song (and the whole album but again just the one song for this) is not like. good on a technical level. the guy made the album when he was 16 after his mom died. but to me it is like. the epitome of amateur art.

the instrumental is poorly constructed with random drums and a droning base that just feels *slightly* off, the lyrics are weird and pretentious and sung (not even sung more like said) in a very odd way, randomly layering over each other in a weird cacophony of teenage angst. but that all i think adds to it. listening to it, at least for me, i can *feel* the emotions behind this song so palpably, and thats really all art is for right?? making you feel something. the artist has some feeling they want to share, and so they make art so that you the audience feel that same or similar emotion. everything else is extra.

i know i and many others get caught up sometimes in worrying about doing art "well" but i think this song and the album in general is like. my go to example of amazing art that is, on a technical level, not the best. and im not even saying bad cause like straight up its a banger i fuckin love it hfkshdksj but its v obviously not made for everyone. its not what some would think is well made music. but i think if i wanted to show everyone a single song, it would be this so i could just show them that art can be shittily made and still be amazing, and a world with mountains of shitty art is infinitely better than a world with only art from people who are """good""".

any time a friend has shown me art they have made, whether its drawings or paintings or music or writing or literally anything, it has been almost a transcendent experience. this person i love has taken the time to pour their heart and soul into something that is so unique that i couldnt find anything like this anywhere else. you can find songs like black country new road or jeffrey lewis around, but you cant find songs like you would make when you have no or little skill. and obv getting better at any given artform is always great we love that obv but like. idk shitty art is amazing too and i just want everyone to not be scared to make shitty art cause sometimes shitty art is the best and most heartfelt art there is

[memes-saved-me]

I seriously don't understand why people constantly have to be shitty about what characters we like. Like granted at first I had a rather childish view on Billy but because I was an abused kid with a support group, so I was more mad that oh you went through that and choose to repeat it? Literally took me years to fully understand Billy's complexity and now he's my favorite. Also I Eddie is my second favorite character, but I fucking hate finding Eddie blogs because they all decide to just be fucking dicks to the Billy fans, or insist you have to like one or the other. Like why the fuck do y'all care so much? Let people like their fictional characters and stay in your lane if you don't share the same opinion!

Yes exactly! I personally latched onto Billy because no one knew of my abuse so I was alone and scared to tell anyone. Through this fandom I managed to realise what had happened to be properly and gave me the confidence to finally tell my mother which led to her making sure I never had to see my father again. Without Billy I think I'd still be that angry version of myself who didn't know how to deal with my experiences and trauma.

I totally get not understanding Billy because he probably doesn't understand himself but like you said once you got it you understood him. But people who bash Billy and say they're glad he was dead really don't understand that they're also talking about every abuse victim/survivor who relates to him. The lack of empathy is honestly concerning.

I love Eddie. He's a great character but the people who have latched onto him are really something else. I see them bullying actual alt people on tiktok and shit with their Eddie pfp and think wtf?? I'm hoping they move onto the next white boy of the month soon because its getting tiring having teenagers tell me to get help because I relate to Billy and ship him with Steve.

I miss the early 2010s when everyone was obsessed with villains and shit. They're fictional and really not as important as antis make out. If someone uses a character to process their abuse how is that hurting you? Oh it isn't. Don't even get me started on the st*ddie fics being posted in the Billy/Steve tag on ao3 with Billy as an abuser....🙄

My biggest advice is to block and move on. These idiots don't deserve your time or energy and they certainly aren't entitled to your attention. Block and go so they can scream into the void with their bullshit

[ari-the-rockstar]

"notice how not having a sense of awareness isnt on this list? yes, i experience all three of those traits. no im not a fucking shitty person to random strangers thats just weird. theres this thing called SELF CONTROL that i actually have, ever heard of it? lacking empathy is not a bad thing. "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another", according to the definition. i lack the ability to understand the feelings of other people and i lack the ability to share feelings with someone cause im not a damn spiritual empath. thats not saying im an abusive monster. excessive admiration ooh boy. man wtf do u think im gonna do with that lmao yeah i really need excessive admiration to not want to fucking kill myself but that doesnt mean im gonna go GGRGGGGGG ABRK AKR VBAKRKKK BARKJ and act like a rabid dog if i dont have it. YES i have a sense of entitlement but again wtf am i gonna do with that BARK AT SOMEONE if they dont agree lmao??"

"cause i'm not a damn spiritual empath" nobody is??? low empathy is fine but it's the combination of self-absorbedness which makes it abusive. if you need excessive admiration to not want to kys then...that is a you problem, i'm so sorry<3 it makes sense! someone saying that people with your disorder are abusive is not excessively admiring you. however just because it hurts your feelings doesn't mean it isn't true.

"a, i never said ur abuse is illegitimate lmao what r u on. and yes it SHOULD be rebranded. you wanna know why? if you look up "npd recovery" you fucking get "hOw To ReCoVeR FrOm NaRc AbUsE!!!" and a bunch of shit about porn and how we're demons whos eyes turn black. you say youve done alot of work to overcome them but youre forgetting npd can BARELY recover themselves because of ppl shouting NARC ABUSE!!! everywhere. if you have bpd i realllllyyyyyy dont think u shld be commenting on npd babes im juuussttt saying!! ur not a doctor and npd and bpd dont share the same symptoms!! and literally who tf is using "i was abused too" as an excuse baby bc its not me. u dont see me doing it."

yes you DO say that it is illegitimate. saying narc abuse is not real is LITERALLY saying that my abuse is not real. because it was VERY stereotypical narc abuse. go to r/raisedbynarcissists <3 they will tell you alll about it.

okay but you do realize that narc abuse is a VERY serious problem and maybe you should not be always angry that there are support groups for victims instead of groups to support the people who perpetuate it??? like if you want to recover that's good, but there are a LOT of people who are hurting and if something is not for you just scroll. if you aren't abusive then it shouldn't make you feel bad?

bpd and npd are two cluster b disorders hunny, pwNPD seem to usually just whine about how the world is sooo mean to them rather than ACTUALLY try and recover. i see more about "npd is so sexy and hot" than "how to get better from npd." and fyi LOTS of people use the "i was abused too excuse," i said it earlier so u couldn't pull it on me.

"oh noooo 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 person wi-with bpd is joking about their traits !!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 person w-w-w-w-w-w-with npd is making coping jokes!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 o-o-o-oh no scary npd borderline monster isnt having panic attacks 🥺🥺 on their blog 🥺🥺🥺 every 30 seconds 🥺🥺🥺🥺 and is actually using humor to cope!!! wahahahahhahahwaahahhhh i cant handle people who cope differently than me 🥺🥺🥺🥺 you joking about your disorder means y-you cant have it!!!!!! 🥺🥺🥺🥺"

girl what. this is just embarrassing. there's a difference between coping and romanticizing. your WHOLE blog is romanticizing. at some point you gotta do some dirty work and get better.

yeah, you will feel like a shit a little bit. yeah, you will realize that you probably did or said some awful things. if you so badly want to see those "recovery" things then actually put in the work!! you just want to whine and whine forever.

"bb i dont know what ur on but ur objectively wrong and i wanted u to see lmfao. if u say something online it is public. it is PUBLIC. its not private its PUBLIC, i have the right to ss it and i hope u know that<3"

bestie idk where you're coming from but the ENTIRE idea of "npd is good and hot actually" is a very new take. like, 2-5 years old new. the idea of narcissism being ABUSIVE has been around since longer than u or i was alive. if you say something online it is public too <333 i never said anything about it? lmao i just found it funny you singled me out among everyone because you care soo much. cope harder <3

there is no fucking way 💀💀💀

okay lets just !!! ignore ALLLL of my other symptoms because im not abusive i dont have npd sorry guys npd diagnosis cancelled i dont have it anymore sorry guys because this one person on the internet said so

[bugsbucky]

Special Birthday Girl

Bucky Barnes x Reader

Prompt: DDs: it’s your birthday and unfortunately, you and Sebastian/Bucky had a fight a few days ago and still aren’t talking. There’s a delivery of a large bouquet of flowers from your partner but the note attached makes you anxious he’s hinting for a breakup. How do you make up when you learn the note was just worded incorrectly?

Warnings: Angst, lots of tension, fluff, happy ending!

Word Count: 1,466 (Yikes!)

Authors Notes: This is for @the-ss-horniest-book-club​​ Extended Drunk Drabbles! A really really big thank you to my tumblrmama @hawksmagnolia​​​ for your help with this prompt! Couldn’t have finished it without you!! 

Happy birthday sweetheart!!! Hope you have a great day!

Many kisses Y/N! Have a fantastic day!

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy birthday, you beautiful human!

The birthday messages kept pouring in from your friends and family. Everyone close to you had wished you a happy birthday, everyone except Bucky.

The atmosphere in your tiny single bedroom apartment was uncomfortably thick. Even his Avenger friends picked up on the tension as soon as they had walked into the space.

The two of you had had a pretty heated fight a week ago about his continued grumpiness. Bucky was tired, you understood that since he’s been working so much, but his short patience with you was making you crazy. It seemed he bit your head off every time you opened your mouth. You were officially done with his surly mood so you chose to put him in his place, warning him that if he didn’t stop talking to you like that then he shouldn’t bother talking to you at all.

Since that day, he has chosen the latter and hasn’t spoken to you since. Whenever you and Bucky have fought in the past, one of you would usually break the silence after an hour. You kept expecting him to try and fix things, like apologise for his hostile remarks but nothing. You feared this was the end of your relationship, that this was his way of breaking up without saying it.

It was like two strangers under the same roof. You still shared the same bed, but at different times. You cooked and ate your own meals separately and spent most of the day in a different room away from each other.

 But today was your birthday and while you were really happy to receive such beautiful messages from those who loved you, the memory of your angry outburst and his silence sat heavily on top of your shoulders. Just knowing that you and Bucky weren’t okay was making it difficult to enjoy your day.

A sudden knock echoes throughout the apartment startles you and your head jerks to the door in the hopes to hear Bucky striding to answer it. When you hear nothing after a couple of heartbeats another loud knock comes. You huff in frustration and stomp towards the door. You hadn’t heard Bucky leave the apartment and knew he was here somewhere. He had come in very early this morning and you assumed he’d crashed on the couch. You’d been hiding in the bedroom, hoping the door would muffle any tears. 

Would it really be such an inconvenience for him to answer the damn door?

You yank the door open with more force than you intended to use and your eyebrows shot up into your hairline. A delivery man in brown uniform stood in front of you holding a beautifully wrapped large bouquet of flowers in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

“Good afternoon ma’am! Are you Miss Y/L/N?”

You nodded. “Um yes, that’s me.”

“Great. I’ve got a delivery for you from Mr. James Buchanan Barnes.” Hearing his full name caused butterflies to erupt in your stomach.

“Oh.” You blew out a surprised breath. He’d bought you flowers for your birthday? Your excitement died a bit and you swallowed a knot in your throat realizing he could have ordered them well before your fight.

The man clears his throat and you blink at him. It’s then you realize that he’s holding the flowers out for you to take them. You take them gracefully as possible, quickly scribbling your name down on the piece of paper and nudging the door closed with your foot.

 Setting the flowers down on the side in the kitchen, you go on a hunt for a big enough vase to fit the bunch. As you’re about to turn away, you see a note wedged between the petals from your peripheral vision.

Plucking the note between your fingers, your eyes scanning over the words printed on the back of it.

My love, I’m wishing you the happiest of birthdays. May the light guide your loneliness in your future adventures.

Yours, Bucky

What the absolute fuck did that mean? Your eyebrows furrow as you re-read it over and over and it still does not make any sense in your mind. Was he seriously hinting of a breakup with you? On your birthday of all days?!

Tossing the card on the kitchen counter, you take a step back and rub your temples. Tears were pooling in your eyes with the fear of what it meant.

“Y/N? What’s wrong?” Bucky asked from behind you. The first three words he has spoken since your fight and his voice sounds almost foreign to you now. “Did you not like my flowers?” His voice was deep and raspy, as though he just woken up from his nap. You sensed some guilt there too.

“They are nice.” You breathed, keeping your eyes closed as your heart raced. This was truly the shittiest of birthdays you’ve ever had.

“Y/N.” You could feel his body heat in front of you, his footsteps were silent thanks to his experience as an assassin. His large hands wrapped around your wrists and pulled them away from your face. Tears slid down your cheeks and you averted your gaze everywhere but on him.

“Are you breaking up with me?” The words rolled off your tongue before you could swallow them down. Might as well give the shitty day a high five and get it over with.

For a moment, Bucky looks stunned. It’s quickly replaced with confusion as his brows knit together. “Of course not! We’re adults here, I know we can and will fix it. It was just a stupid little fig-”

“Then why word the note the way you did? What the fuck does it even mean? You make it sound like I’m going into my future alone without you. And today of all days, Bucky! It’s my fucking birthday and I can’t believe you’d do this!” 

The crease between his eyebrows deepens and now he’s more confused by what you meant. ��What note are you talking about, doll?”

You refrain from rolling your eyes, the leftover anger from your fight and frustration of the week of silent treatment coming to the surface. You stepped around his large frame and almost punched the card into his chest.

He read over the note and you took mental notes of his expressions. Confusion that was replaced by anger. His nostrils flared as he ripped the card up and threw the pieces on the floor.

“I didn’t write that. That’s not even close to what I told the girl to write.” He scoffed and ran his fingers through his hair.

“What do you mean?”

“The girl at the flower shop has this weird crush on me. I told her what I wanted the writing to say and that was not it and clearly she fucked it up deliberately.”

You looked at each other and soon it became a staring contest. A small smile fighting its way to your lips and you shift under his intense gaze.

“Y/N.” He whispered, stepping closer. “I promise baby, I’m not breaking up with you. I wouldn’t even dream of it. I know we haven’t talked this past week and believe me, it killed me. I had to keep fighting the urge to curl into you at night and wrap you in my arms. I’m so sorry for my moods and I promise I’ll get my shit together. And believe me, that girl who sabotaged that note will not get away with it.”

This time a smile did find its way to your lips. Instinctively, you wrapped your arms around his neck and buried your face into his chest. He planted a kiss on top of your head and held you close, as though he was afraid you’d turn to dust.

“I love you. So fucking much.” He sighed. His breath fanning against your hair as he spoke.

“I love you too.” You craned your neck upwards and smiled. He kissed the tip of your nose and darted his tongue out to lick his dry lips.

“I’ve missed you.” You whispered. Your chin resting against this broad chest. A goofy grin appears on his face and you already know the next words that will leave his lips.

“Not as much as I’ve missed you. I have a lot of making up to do. But since I didn’t give you your special birthday gift this morning, how about I give it to you now?” 

“You better make sure it’s extra special.”

“Extra special for my special girl, coming right up.” He scooped you up into his arms and carried you straight into the bedroom.

Taglist: @jobean12-blog​ @marvelgirl7​ @godofplumsandthunder​ @hawksmagnolia​ @deanthedemon​ @eurynome827​ @emilylyoness​ @buckybarnesplumwhore​ @sarge-barnes-sir​ @crushedbyhyperbole​ @this-kitten-is-smitten​ @kitkatd7​​ @jamesbarnesappreciationclub​ @littleredstarfish​​ @buckys-henley​​ @tuiccim​​ @mystoragehatesme​​ @starspangledseb​​ @bambamwolf87​​ @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog

[zeta-in-de-walls]

Back in my Zeta appreciation hours lol. You'll probably be one of the only dsmp (analysis) blogs I'll follow because of how positive you try to be, and I have so much respect for you. I sometimes have the urge to post negative or discourse rambles, but I stop when I realize how shitty it just makes me feel afterwards. So props to you for remaining so positive even when the fandom is on fire hah.

Anyways, I love when Tommy turns off his persona (though don't get me wrong I love streamer mode too) and just talks. For all the screeching he does, he has a nice and calming voice. Podcast type beat shit. I was surprised when he was open about his anxiety and getting therapy. He's generally not a too open or "honest" person about this kind of stuff, at least as far as I can tell (somewhat also why I'm not his real name is Tom or Thomas but I digress).

Also, in general, I think it's nice thing to see content creators being open about their mental struggles and how they deal with that. I think so far, Wilbur, Techno to an extent, Dream, and now Tommy have been open about their mental health (I'm not aware of the rest but if they have, props to them too). I couldn't imagine openly telling hundreds of thousands of people on live that I have some mental issues that I'm dealing with, so I love when they're open about it, especially as a person with really bad anxiety and ADHD and depression and probably some other stuff. (Though it sucks when the fandom also latches on to this and either babies them or uses it as hate fuel. This fandom has a weird track record with mental health and 'holy shit what the fuck' takes to certain plots, cough cough exile arc why is there so much victim blaming and abuse apologism??)

So in the midst of all this, weirdly enough maybe, just coming on and sending asks to you is somewhat calming for me. I could just post this but I think this "one-sided" conversation is fun. This past week has been a shit storm for this fandom and yet we're still here. Gotta find the light in the dark I guess. (Side-note: you're never obligated to post these, as is the general consensus with asks, I just like rambling and speaking positively of you lmao.) Hope you stay well!

Hey, feel free to chat in my askbox anytime. I enjoy the interactions as well! Thanks!

Discourse can seem fun at the time. When drama's happening, people become intensely curious and want to know what's going on even if it doesn't involve them. Then once they've caught up on it, they want to give their own input and perspective on things. It's natural!

But it's ultimately draining. Each individual comment on the situation is small, reasonable. The intentions are good. But sheer quantity is overwhelming. There are misunderstandings and miscommunications and genuine negativity mixed in even if they're not the vast majority at all.

You're handing a glass of water to a man who's beginning to drown. You're reaching out a hand to give but only push them further down.

(Sorry that's based on a song lyric xD, and I couldn't not share it.)

Anyway, the fandom is fun and I do love it! I've read so many great posts, seen so much cool art, read some fun fanfiction, shared some thoughts and received nice interactions. The people trending negativity one day are the same people who trend positivity another day. It's all the same community and we should appreciate that, flaws and all. We're not perfect. We're not better and its pride to think otherwise. And its always been this way - people talk about last year Mcyt like it was better but honestly the drama was always there, it was just smaller, but we only remember the good bits.

Heh all that aside yeah, Tommy's a really cool person. I admire him trying to be open and genuine. He wouldn't talk about it and feel so stressed out if he didn't care. He seems to care a lot about being a responsible person and nurturing a good community while feeling like he's not ready to be a good role model as he's still learning and making mistakes and he's struggling to deal with that pressure. It's very cool that he shared all those concerns. I really enjoyed that stream!

Plus the fact that he's got an awareness of his own limits. He admitted that he's had therapy almost casually, recommending it as a good, useful thing to do which is honestly great. Therapy is rather stigmatised and it's not necessarily something you'd expect from someone who seems so confident. I remember there was some worry about if they'd show Tommy's character going to therapy in the Dream SMP whether he'd actually depict it well and do it justice. But now we know he's had firsthand experience and recommends it. (Obviously that doesn't mean they'd definitely portray it well but is so encouraging to know that Tommy at least takes it very seriously.)

Aah this turned into quite the ramble. xD Cheers again for the ask!

[firelxdykatara]

not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

[queenlua]

You're a druid and an ex-evangelical, right? What does being a druid mean to you? How did you get from evangelicalism to where you are now? And of course feel free to ignore this if it's nosy. (sincerely, a Christian who wants to leave but who doesn't know what to do)

this is going to make me sound ignorant as hell, lol, but i'm happy to share

under a cut because this got very long, sorry, lol.

my personal progression was: "vaguely christian -> VERY christian -> christian agnostic -> agnostic/atheist -> agnostic/druid -> some sorta druid-neopagan-animist thing."  i guess i'll just go through what made me switch between each of those, and close out with some high-level thoughts that may be helpful for you?

okay, so when i was

VAGUELY CHRISTIAN,

i went to Sunday school every week because That's What You Do, and because my whole hometown was very southern Baptist, i never questioned the veracity of its teachings much... until they ran a whole weekly series on "why [x] is wrong," where [x] is some other group

e.g., we had a week on why Mormons are wrong, and i didn't bat an eye because i hadn't even known Mormons existed until that moment

then we had a week on why Muslims are wrong, and that... bothered me, because i had a friend who was Muslim, and she was just objectively a better person than me, and i was like "any universe where she goes to hell and i don't seems really fucked up"

then we had a week on why EVOLUTION was wrong, and that just absolutely threw me, because while i hadn't thought about evolution much (i think i was in fourth grade or so), it seemed common-sense? scientists thought highly of it? "adaptation over time" just seems logical?

so i went to the public library every day after school for like a week, read some Darwin and some science books, and came back to my Sunday school teacher with, like, an itemized list of objections to the whole "evolution is wrong" thing.  and he came up with some standard Answers In Genesis rebuttals, and i did more research and came back the next week with more science, and we repeated this a few times until he was like "lua, you just gotta take some things on faith"

which.  lmao.  full existential crisis time, because no matter how hard i thought, i couldn't *not* believe in the science, but i also didn't want to go to hell, so i was like "maybe if i believe SUPER HARD i will SOMEDAY be able to unbelieve the condemn-me-to-hell bits"

so i decided to become

VERY CHRISTIAN

and my frantic googling for shit like "proof of god" and "god and evolution" *eventually* broke me out of the Answers In Genesis circles of the internet, and into some decent Christian apologia, like, think First Things and various Catholic bloggers.  and there, i found some way to square my gut sense that evolution was right, with a spiritual worldview.

like, i remember finding some blogger who said:

"young earth creationists get tripped up when they try to explain stars that are millions of light-years away, and end up basically arguing that God's tricking us somehow, and—no!  my God lets you believe in the evidence of your eyes, my God does not demand that you make yourself ignorant or stupid, my God expects you to use your brain"

and i just started crying at my computer, because no one had ever said "using your brain is Good and part of God's will," i was like *finally* here's someone who won't tell me i'm going to hell for just *thinking* about things

(st. augustine does a much better riff on a similar theme, fwiw, but i only found him later)

still, it was an uneasy fit, because, the more i learned and read about world history, the more it seemed... weird... that the One And Singular Path To Salvation was... the successor to some niche desert cult... which didn't even occur at the *beginning* of written history, like, it was all predated by that whole Mithraism thing, etc... and like, sure, i could trot out all the standard theological talking points for why Actually This Makes Perfect Sense, but gut-level-wise, the aesthetics just seemed kinda dumb!  and no level of talking myself out of it made that feeling go away!

so at this point i started referring to myself as a

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTIC

i mean, not aloud.  i still lived in southernbaptistopia and i didn't want, like, my hair stylist to tell me i was a horrible person.  but in my *head* i called myself Christian agnostic and it felt right.

and i started church-hopping, which honestly was really fun, would recommend to anyone at any point.  i visited the fire-and-brimstone baptist church, the methodist church, the episcopalians, the universal unitarians, etc.

unfortunately, while this gave me *some* new perspectives, each of the places either had the same shitty theology as my old megachurch (i remember the *acute* sense of despair i felt when i was starting to jive with a methodist church... only for the dumbass youth minister to start going on about evolution), or, they just lacked any sense of the *sacred*.  like, the Church of Christ churches, with their a capella services, *definitely* had it; i felt more God there in one service than i did in a lifetime of shitty Christian rock at the megachurch.  but their beliefs were even *more* batshit, so.  big L on that one.

having failed to find a satisfactory church, i was basically

AGNOSTIC/ATHEIST

by the time i went to college, but honestly pretty unhappy about it; while it was harder than ever for me to actually *connect* with the divine, i didn't like thinking that my previous experiences of the divine were total lies.  because my shitty evangelical church, for all its faults, could not *completely* sabotage the sense of God's presence.  there were real moments in that church where i do believe i experienced something divine.  mostly mediated by one particular youth minister, who in hindsight was the only spiritual teacher in that church who didn't seem a bit rotten inside, but!  it was something!

so when i happened upon a bunch of writings on the now-defunct shii.org (that's the bit that makes me look WILDLY ignorant, lol), i was utterly captivated.

said author was a previous archdruid of the Reformed Druids of North America, an organization that was formed in the 1960s to troll the administration of Carleton College (there was a religious-service-attendance requirement; they made their own religion; their religion had whiskey and #chilltimes for its services).  however, this shii.org dude seemed to take it pretty seriously.  he was studying history of religion and blogged a lot about his studies, both academic and otherwise.  while RDNA had started out as a troll, that didn't mean they hadn't *discovered* something real in the process, he said.

this, already, was going to be innately appealing to me; i've got a soft spot for wow-we-were-doing-this-ironically-but-now-it's-kinda-real? stuff in general.

in particular, shii.org’s discussions on the separation of ritual from belief was really interesting to me: most religions/spiritualities have *both*, but like, you can do a ritual without having the Exact Right Beliefs (if there even is such a thing!), and it can still be useful to you, it can have real power.  (he had a really lovely essay, speculating on the origins of religion as just a form of art, but that essay is now lost to the sands of time, alas.)

(note that i wouldn't really recommend seeking out *recent* writing by the shii.org guy; he kinda went full tedious neoreactionary-blowhard-who-reads-a-lot-of-Spengler at some point?  sigh.)

the shii.org guy led me to checking out a bunch of books on the history of neopaganism & also books by scholars of religion in general, and the more i read, the more excited i became.  and i started doing little ritual/meditation stuff here and there.

then i was fortunate enough to attend some events with Earthspirit (this was when i lived in Boston), which cemented my hippie dalliances into something more real.  the folks there, being from Boston, were all ridiculously overeducated (a sensibility that appeals to me), but also, being the kind of folks who drive out to a mountain in the middle of nowhere for a spiritual retreat, they tolerated a full range of oddities (everyone from aging-70s-feminist-wiccans to living-on-a-farm-with-your-bros-Astaru to dude-who-started-having-weird-visions-and-is-just-trying-to-figure-out-the-deal to Nordic-spiritualist-with-two-phds-from-Scandanavian-universities-on-the-subject, etc), which gave me a lot of room to explore different types of rituals, ceremonies, "magic", etc.

(polytheism in general lends itself well to this sort of easy plurality!  i can believe other people are experiencing something real with their gods, and i can be talking to a totally different set of gods, and that’s just all very compatible, etc)

anyway, i started calling myself

AGNOSTIC/DRUID

around then, because i knew i'd found *something*, something that felt like all the realest moments i'd ever had in nature, and all the realest moments i'd ever had in that shitty megachurch, but i wasn't quite ready to put a theology to it.

but, idk, you do the thing for a while, and you start encountering some things that you may as well call gods, and you realize you're in pretty deep, and you ditch the "agnostic" bit and just throw hands and start describing yourself as

SOME SORTA DRUID-NEOPAGAN-ANIMIST THING

because that's the most precise thing you can muster.  in particular, the druid bit resonates because nature's still very much at the center of my practice; the neopagan bit resonates because i'm not especially interested in reconstructing older traditions or being faithful to any actual pre-Christian traditions, and animist resonates because what i sometimes call gods seem to be tied pretty tightly to the land itself.  it's all very experiential; all this mostly means i'm some weird chick who sometimes grabs a car and drives out someplace very lonely and hikes for a while and does some hippie shit to try and talk with the land or the god or whatever is there.  and sometimes i come back from it changed, or refocused, or what-have-you, and hopefully i'm better for it.  i'm aware this makes me look a little ridiculous, and is an unsatisfying answer, sorry!

WRT YOUR SITUATION

i don't know you or your situation, obviously, but if i wanted to give former-me some advice to save her some angst, i'd say

-> Christendom itself is far wilder and more diverse than many churches lead you to believe.  if you still want to be Christian on some level, and it's just a shitty church that's convinced you the whole project is fucked, i'd honestly explore, i dunno, your nearest Quaker meeting.  they're invoking the Holy Spirit with regularity but they're not raging douchenozzles about it.

-> if you're specifically interested in druidism, i found John Michael Greer's "A World Full of Gods" really nice.  (caveat: Greer has *also* gone full right-wing nutjob these days, sigh, so like.  would not recommend a great swath of his writing.  but that one's good)

-> deciding that a just God wouldn't give me a brain and then ask me not to use it was hugely comforting to me.  like, that was the start of the whole process, that was what made me feel ok searching for other churches and trying to find something that fit.  obviously you should take this with 800 grains of salt, because obviously i'm no longer Christian, and thus maybe i'm just some poor misguided fallen soul, but... i still kinda believe that!  maybe if you can make yourself believe that, it'll seem less scary?

idk, happy to answer more questions, sorry for the long ramble, hope it helped~

[nothorses]

okay wait okay this isn't like, me being rude about your last post im just thinking about it now!! but like, im super not fond of the whole "egg" thing??? not when people use it on themselves (like, their past selves) but when people prescribe it to other people. specifically i keep seeing people trying to tell feminine/gnc men that they're "~actually~ eggs" and god it is fucking irritating to see. its mainly cis people but i DO see it from the trans+nb community (on all sides!!!) 1/2

and ig its just a trend i don't like!!!!!! that's not something you decide FOR someone. you don't get to tell a gnc man he's """actually""" an egg. like?? bad. let people be gnc!!! let men present fluid or feminine, let women present fluid or masculine!!!!!!! trans people AND cis people!!!!!!!!! anyways im just Thinking Thoughts and wanted to share with my favorite trans blog this is NOT critism on your or even the term at all 2/2

"My favorite trans blog” 🥺💙

I agree, tbh! I think it’s a really useful term to use for your own self, and to use retro-actively for people who already know they’re trans. With fictional characters, I think it’s fun & harmless, too. They’re not going to see it or be influenced by it.

But labeling actual, real-life people “eggs” without their consent is genuinely shitty, and really invasive.

It’s not for anyone to decide whether someone else is trans or not, and it falls in the same vein as like, contemplating someone’s “real” orientation... but arguably worse, because gender is a whole lot more of a person’s identity and reality than who they’re attracted to.

You could potentially out a trans person who is intentionally trying to stay in the closet by pointing our and picking apart all the things you believe “mean they’re trans”; and even if you don’t, you’ll almost definitely make them uncomfortable. Misgendering is still an uncomfortable experience for cis people, and what if the person in question is trans in a different way than you assume? Nonbinary folks exist. Intersex folks exist. Stealth trans folks exist. You could easily be misgendering any of them, too.

And... y’know, it’s just weird and invasive. I don’t want anyone picking at my presentation, identity, and gender trying to “figure out what I am”. I absolutely hate it when people try to assert themselves as authorities on my own internal workings, or claim they know more about me than I do. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.

Ever had people try to make guesses about who you might have a crush on? Imagine that weird, uncomfortable, panicky feeling- and then multiply it by Your Whole Life And Identity.

It’s gross for cis people to do, but it’s just as gross for trans people. Come up with “theories” about fictional characters if it’s something you really wanna do; leave actual people, with actual genders and actual feelings, out of it. You don’t know who you might be hurting, or how.