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compromised-emotionally · 2 months ago

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Racebending Interview with the Vampire: Power, Companionship and the Search for Freedom

I wrote a paper for a queer studies class that I'm kinda proud of. It's not particularly mindblowing as it was just a 200 level course, and it's kind of dry cause I was trying to stay formal. It's mostly just referencing other writings on race and queer studies and relating them to the show. It's about how the choice to racebend Louis deepens and transforms the thematic explorations of queerness in the original text. I wanted to share it below because I worked hard on it, even if no one reads this lol:

Racebending Interview with the Vampire: Power, Companionship and the Search for Freedom

Interview with the Vampire was originally a novel by Anne Rice, published in 1976. The novel told the story of a Louisiana plantation owner turned vampire named Louis de Pont du Lac, the French vampire named Lestat who was Louis’ maker, and the life they shared together. A film adaption was released in 1994 starring Brad Pitt as Louis and Tom Cruise as Lestat, that, like the book, displayed their relationship as deep but never explicitly sexual. It was not until the 2022 AMC television series that Louis and Lestat’s story was allowed to be explicitly romantic and sexual. The series was made further transformatively progressive with the casting of Black-British actor Jacob Anderson as Louis. In Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Munoz stated “A soft multicultural inclusion of race and ethnicity does not, on its own, lead to a progressive identity discourse” (pg10). Rather than just using “color-blind” casting for empty representation, Louis’ character was changed from slave owner to a black Creole man in the early 20th century. The addition of racial elements deepened thematic explorations of the nonnormative. By racebending Louis, AMC’s Interview with a Vampire expands on the original works’ examination of the vampire as a societal “other” and metaphor for homosexuality as well as Louis’ struggle to assimilate to vampire life. It relates the power dynamics between Lestat and Louis as creator/created to racial dynamics and interlocking systems of oppression.

Episode 3 “Is My Very Nature That of the Devil” opens with Lestat and Louis sitting in a park, as Lestat pontificates about the history of that park and reads a column about its design in the newspaper. Louis replies asking if the story mentioned how they used to put the severed heads of runaway slaves on the gates, then ponders if there’s a “greater purpose” for vampires on Earth. Lestat does not take Louis seriously, telling Louis that only that he (Lestat) is his creator and he put him on this Earth for pleasure. This interaction is emblematic of their relationship throughout the show. Lestat repeatedly minimizes the importance and legitimacy of Louis’ struggles, both the external oppressions he faces and his internal struggle to adjust to vampiric life. Vampirism acts as a direct parallel to living a queer life in the original text, though that symmetry is more complicated in the series since there is also explicit queerness in the show. If humanity is the dominant, normative group in this universe, then Lestat’s approach to vampirism can be read as counteridentificatory. Lestat considers himself and Louis to be completely separate from human society, and has none of Louis’ impulses to assimilate with the human community or hold on to any ties to it. Louis, conversely, still values the things that were important to him before turning: his club, “appearances”, his relationship with his family. He decides in this episode that he no longer wants to kill people, that he will feed off of animals alone. Lestat interprets this as a Louis denying his “true” identity as both a vampire and a queer man, an attempt to assimilate and identify with humans while rejecting Lestat and their shared identity. In some ways this is understandable, as the drinking of blood within this text is explicitly linked to their sex drive. But Lestat is also continuously upset throughout this episode when Louis refers to the black community of New Orleans as “his people”. Despite the fact that Louis’ resilience and strength as a black man succeeding in a white world was one of the things that first attracted Lestat to Louis, he cannot comprehend why he still feels such kinship with the race he has always been a part of.

Lestat treated turning Louis into a vampire as if that would supersede or eliminate the other aspects of his identity. The only difference that mattered to Lestat was vampire vs human, paralleling Cohen’s critique of white queer activism that envisions the world in a hetero/queer divide (Cohen, pg 447). When Lestat turned Louis at the end of the first episode, part of his pitch and promise to him was that as a vampire, racial oppressions would no longer hold him back. Lestat’s proposal was that becoming a vampire would give him (Louis) the power to counteridentify from the racist system, as well as freedom from loneliness and companionship in the form of a life with Lestat. Throughout this episode, Louis is grappling with the lie of that promise. Though he has a physical strength and power of a vampire, he must still move through world as black man in the early 20th century and deal with all the indignities that come along with that. He is also lonelier than anticipated, with a partner who will not acknowledge their differences. Audra Lorde said this of difference “…community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist” (pg 112). E. Patrick Johnson expounds further on this in his article on quare studies, explaining that such communities and theories are not progressive ones, and that LGBTQ of color cannot afford to adopt such theories for themselves.

Louis begins working to integrate the different aspects of himself and his new immortal life into a theory of self that feels true to his experience and acceptable, feeling “the tug and pull of having to choose between which parts […] to claim and wear and which parts have served to cloak us from the knowledge of ourselves” (Moraga and Anzaldua, pg 23). Louis reunites with an old lover, a black soldier passing through on his way to deployment. They have sex out in the Bayou and Louis feels some true companionship, but this is followed by a series of emotionally fraught failures that isolate and disempower him further. He is rejected by and frightens his family. He gets news that his nightclub/brothel is being shut down due to segregationist laws. Lestat throughout this is throwing a temper tantrum over Louis’ dalliance with the solder, despite being the one to open the relationship and begin an affair with the singer at Louis’ club (a white woman). Lestat’s reaction here, paired with the way he shows his disdain for Louis’ choices throughout this episode, display how unsettled Lestat is when he is not in control of Louis, when Louis acts as an independent equal rather than adoring student. Louis pushes aside Lestat’s attention grabbing antics in favor of meeting with a group of white businessmen and politicians in an attempt to save his club. He had interacted with this group before regularly, in a manner that could be viewed as dis-identificatory. He had regular poker games with them, laughing at their jokes, sometimes letting them win, while simultaneously influencing their opinions and nudging them towards social policies that would help him “working on, with, and against a cultural form” (Munoz, pg 12). Johnson’s piece on Quare theory points out that disidentification has always been “the process through which people of color could survive a white supremacist society” (pg12). He gave them a performance of “Mr. Du Lac”, a version of himself that made them comfortable enough to for him to influence their opinions and actions toward him and his businesses. But his previous tactics are no longer working; he can hear the thoughts of the white men insulting and demeaning him while they outwardly suggest that Lestat acts as “the face” of his business. It is also an interesting visual note that Lestat is framed throughout this scene alongside the other white men in the room, despite theoretically coming to support Louis. The degrading tone of their thoughts as they offer outward sympathies suggests that Louis’ tactics with them were always more assimilating and conforming than he wished them to be. If his persona and his performance with them never actually gained him any respect, than perhaps this was little more than a minstrel show.

The beginning of the Munoz essay states:

[…] disidentification is not always an adequate strategy of resistance or survival for all minority subjects. At times, resistance needs to be pronounced and direct; on other occasions queers of color and minority subjects need to follow a conformist path if they hope to survive a hostile public sphere. pg 5.

Louis’ initial response to this realization was a type of malicious compliance: hanging a “coloreds only” sign on his establishment, thereby technically following segregationist wishes. This of course only brings further retaliation from the establishment. Louis’ final response to this situation is his first and most direct counter action He declares himself a vampire for the first time aloud, scaring the alderman and letting him feel powerless for the first time. He kills the man, and hangs his body on a fence with a whites only sign (likely the same fence where the heads of runaway slaves were once posted). But Louis does not get to revel in this at all, as it brings immediate retaliation via the burning of the black neighborhood and businesses of New Orleans. Lestat instead is the ecstatic one; he believes this act of violence is a sign that Louis has finally embraced only vampirism, still misunderstanding the reasons and meaning behind Louis’ rage that drove him to murder the alderman. It pushes Louis away from Lestat again, roaming the burning streets of the place he once belonged, lost and unsure of what the correct approach is to finding community, home, and freedom. Louis wavers, unclear and undecided on how to find this meaning (the writing asks the same; his attempts to play friendly brought only mockery and his show of rebellion brought destruction). It is not until he suddenly hears the voice of Claudia, a 14-year-old Creole girl crying out in his mind for help, that he seems to find an answer. He finds her dying in a burning boarding house and brings her to Lestat to be turned into a vampire. The become a family – “Daddy Lou” “Uncle Les” and Claudia.

There’s so much to examine in this series even when just considering Louis’ relationship with Lestat and the world around him. But it would be an oversight to not spend some time on Claudia, who would become the guiding motivation and emotional core for Louis. Because Lestat is the one who turned both Louis and Claudia, he is unable to read either of their minds. This further eats at Lestat, this companionship which he cannot share, this difference that he cannot stamp out. After accidentally killing a boy she loved, Claudia grows resentful of the immortal life they’ve subjected her to (Episode 104). Her mind grows but she stays perpetually trapped in the mind of a teenager, and she begrudges being made permanently infantilized. She leaves them to travel on her own and try to learn more about vampires than the little information that Lestat offered. But when she finally meets another vampire and is excited to find kinship, he rapes her. After this, she decides to return home, but only to retrieve Louis, who has been depressed without her. She recognizes the truth that Audra Lorde stated in Sister Outsider:

Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. Pg112

She is unwilling to trust Lestat, who has continuously demonstrated an unwillingness to grow, to empathize, to “recognize those differences and deal effectively with the distortions…” (Lorde, pg 122). Lestat reacts to the threat of abandonment with a great act of domestic violence, beating Louis and dropping him from the sky, which almost kills him (Episode 105). Louis eventually forgives Lestat for this in the next episode, but Claudia does not. Though all three characters share the nonnormative vampire identity, Lestat chooses to wield his status as their maker as an oppressive tool against them. All three become more feared and hated as the series goes on. Their home is vandalized on multiple occasions, and it’s made clear by the end of the series that they will need to leave town. But despite this shared struggle, Lestat cannot or will not stand in solidarity with Louis and Claudia. “…our future survival is predicated on our ability to relate within equality” (Lorde 122). Louis’ condition for forgiving Lestat was that he was honest and treated both Louis and Claudia as equals. But Lestat values his control over their lives over having them as true companions, even after promising change; he lies and manipulates them both and threatens Claudia with sexual violence (via letting her know he can invite the vampire who raped her to their home).

Change means growth, and growth can be painful. But we sharpen self-definition by exposing the self in work and struggle together with those whom we define as different from ourselves, although sharing the same goal. Lorde, pg. 123

Claudia changes and grows the most over the course of the series, beginning as a child but gaining maturity and intelligence as she experiences the pain and joy the world has to offer. She desires freedom for the first time in her human or immortal life, and feels that both her and Louis can achieve it if they work to free themselves at last from Lestat as a master. By the end of Episode 106, she has finally convinced Louis of the same.

Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire was already an intriguing piece of queer media that was progressive for its time and how it used vampirism as a vehicle to explore homosexuality, struggle, and longing. In the behind-the-scenes interview piece, producer Adam O’Byrne expressed the production’s desire to reckon with the media in a new way, as they were a new generation interpreting this art. Johnson stated: “quare studies offers a more utilitarian theory of identity politics, focusing not just on performers and effects, but also on contexts and historical situatedness” (pg13). With this new reckoning and interpretation of this media, the artistic team took a piece of queer media and transformed it into “Quare”. With all the inherent complexities of racial relations examined in this interpretation, the audience is able to explore the dynamics of power, freedom, longing and companionship in a deeper and more complicated way than was offered in the original text.

Bibliography

Ep 103 “Is My Very Nature That of a Devil” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Rolin Jones & Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Keith Powell, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 104 “…the ruthless pursuit of blood with all a child’s demanding” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Eleanor Burgess, directed by Keith Powell, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 105 “A vile hunger for your hammering heart” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Colin Albert, directed by Levan Akin, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 106 “Like Angels Put in Hell by God” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, teleplay by Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Levan Akin, AMC Studios, 2022.

Ep 8.1 “Interview with the Vampire: Behind the Scenes” Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, AMC Studios, 2022.

Lorde, Audra. Sister Outsider, The Crossing Press, Year, pgs. 110-123.

Munoz, Jose Esteban. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

E. Patrick Johnson (2001) "Quare" studies, or (almost) everything I know about

queer studies I learned from my grandmother, Text and Performance Quarterly, 21:1, 1-25, DOI: 10.1080/10462930128119

Cathy J. Cohen; Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?. GLQ 1 May 1997; 3 (4): 437–465. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-3-4-437

Moraga and Anzaldua, Entering the Lives of Others Theory in the Flesh, 23

#amc iwtv #louis de pointe du lac #iwtv s1 #academic writing #queer studies #race and ethnicity #claudia iwtv #warning this isn't exactly lestat friendly #i love him but hes the villain of s1 #also this was written before seeing s2 #which kind of some of these themes or at least they are less in focus #probably because the s2 villain is brown (again love armand but hes the villain at this point)#interview with the vampire

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homestuckreplay · 4 months ago

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EOA1 ==> Media, Agency and the Suburbs in Act 1 of Homestuck

It is April 13, 1959. Mr. Egbert, Sr. has recently made the move out of the city into a newly built house in the suburbs, because clowning isn't paying so well after the recession. His son John hasn't seen his friend Rose since they moved. Staring out the window at 4:13pm and glimpsing nothing but the neighbor's wall, John goes downstairs to catch the second half of a black and white episode of Truth or Consequences, losing himself for fifteen minutes in their world of pranks, hilarity and emotional family reunions. Hopefully for his birthday, his dad will get him that cool new board game and its all-important hours of distraction.

We pick up the daily newspaper, and flip to the funnies to see John's new antics.

(Essay below the cut - about 5k words.)

==> I: John’s Suburb in Historical Context, or: Johntext

During the 1940s and 1950s, mass expansion of the American suburbs was accompanied by a ‘best of both worlds’ promise. Families who moved there could enjoy easy travel to the city via car for work and leisure, but wouldn’t have to deal with the ‘undesirable’ parts of city life, such as noise, pollution, or people from marginalized groups. Suburbs were characterized by detached, single family houses that guaranteed each family their own bubble of space away from neighbors, but also promised a community of likeminded people with whom to form neighborhood associations and PTA committees. Residents could enjoy independence from city governance and increased control over their own living spaces, but anybody who might push back against current social norms would be quietly excluded. Utopian promises and attractive prices encouraged many Americans to make the move, and many of them have never left.

Here in 2009, it’s not uncommon for people to have lived their entire lives in the suburbs - often in a single house. Promises of progress and innovation within households have remained strictly cosmetic, while the values guarding suburban families and communities have changed very little. Although people of color comprise an increasing percentage of suburban residents, white people are still overrepresented. The same is true of married couples’ overrepresentation compared to other family structures. Suburban architecture remains centralized around the car as the primary means of transportation, and the separation of residential from commercial areas. Opportunities and reasons to leave the house are both minimized.

With the growth of the suburbs came increased criticism of their designs and ideals. Their dream of a spacious home for each family has led to feelings of isolation, while the promised communities have primarily formed around churches and strict Christian ideals. Residents lack trust in their neighbors, and as such, children are no longer left to their own devices outside of the house. The suburban goal of easy car accessibility to cities has ended in highway congestion, air pollution and lack of public transport or pedestrian access. And while the percentage of Americans living in the suburbs continues to increase, not everyone has the luxury of choosing where they live - particularly children and teenagers.

Homestuck’s main character John Egbert doesn't directly express a hatred of the suburbs - he seems more conflicted, showing fondness for the tire swing in a kid's yard (p.27), the fireplace (p.50) and the father smoking a pipe (p.74), while also expressing that he feels stuck in his home (p.30, 253), that he avoids his father's company (p.30), and that he feels something missing from his life (p.82). He doesn't seem aware of the source of his emptiness, just that he's always felt it, and we can only guess the source through incredibly subtle context clues, such as the work's title and the way John longingly gazes towards the outside.

It's certainly possible for someone with an otherwise privileged life to feel alienation in the suburbs, but those who differ from the white nuclear family ideal tend to have these feelings heightened, and may be ostracized by the community or threatened into conformity. Similarly, the gulf between John and his dad, and their separate perceptions of that relationship, could be simply generational, or could suggest bigger, unseen differences between them.

One interpretation I and others have discussed is that John is a transgender woman who has yet to actively realize her identity, but knows on some level that she can’t achieve the strict gender expectations of a suburban community. This loss of self-understanding would contribute to John's feelings of absence and lack of control, and strain her relationship with a father who expects her to fit a male gender role.

This might be my favorite possible explanation, but there are lots of others, any or all of which could be true. John being queer in any sense would mean he might not fit into the nuclear family structure of the suburbs as an adult. John being a person of color in an otherwise white neighborhood would visually distinguish him from his neighbors and cause them to judge him based on stereotypes, and if John is mixed race and Dad is white, this distinction could highlight differences between them too, the absence in John's life marked by a disconnection from a culture he's a part of. John being neurodivergent could impact his ability to interact with other people in the neighborhood, or to replicate the rules and performativity of daily life. Single parent family structures are more accepted in 2009 than they were in 1959, but it's still possible that some past scandal involving Dad and John's family life is hanging over them, fresh in the minds of their neighborhood - perhaps one that just like Nanna's death, Dad 'never wants to talk about'. Any of these factors could lead to John being ostracized by his community and mean that even at a young age he didn't 'buy in' to the idea of the happy suburban family.

I believe it is intentional that Homestuck hasn’t defined John’s location more specifically than ‘west of Kansas’. Although research has shown that different suburbs have their own individual characters, critics tend to emphasize their similarities. We’re supposed to think that John would have broadly the same experiences if he lives in Arizona or Colorado, Texas or Georgia, maybe even England or Belgium. The externalities of John’s life are the same as countless other kids in the Western world, not because of John’s choices or even his dad’s choices, but due to the larger structures that organize families into houses, houses into suburbs, and suburbs into sources of constraint.

==> II: If You Love Your House So Much, Why Don’t You Never Leave It?

The suburbs walk hand in hand with advances in technology. The 1950s saw a boom in the sale of household appliances, with devices for cooking and cleaning promising to lighten the housework load for women, and television providing entertainment for the whole family from the comfort of the living room. Various corporations created model homes to display the futuristic properties of their fantastical appliances, promising consumers that in the future, all homes would look just like this. This was a marketing tactic primarily benefiting the corporations - but in some cases, they were successful. General Electric’s ‘New American’ home in Denver featured a dishwasher as early as 1935, and these increased in affordability and domestic popularity across the 1950s and 60s. Disneyland’s Monsanto ‘House of the Future’ boasted a microwave oven. The house opened in real world 1957 but was ‘set in 1986’, and by 1986, one in four American homes owned a microwave. The Westinghouse ‘Home of Tomorrow’ contained the first ever portable radios - six of them, with radio outlets in every room to grant every family member a constant supply of media.

This idea of constant, individualized media consumption may have been the greatest called shot of these houses. In 1959, John would be limited to a handful of TV channels on a fixed schedule, fighting over the tuning dials with his dad, but in 2009 he almost certainly knows the delights of Megavideo on top of having a video game collection, DVD collection and TV on demand service.

Televisions were marketed to families in the 1950s claiming that they would keep families closer, as parents and children alike would want to stay home and watch together instead of going out to separate places, and many parents at first expressed relief at always knowing where their teenage children were, and consequently, being able to keep an eye on them. Television altered the boundaries between public and private space, allowing people to experience a public activity such as a trip to the movies, a performance from a live musician, even witnessing the moon landing, without leaving the home or interacting with strangers.

Increasingly, media is marketed with the promise of interactivity and agency. Television provided a world to passively escape into, but video games allow the player to actually embody a character in that world. They present fantasies of control, of being able to explore a virtual map according to the player’s whims, and offering in-character choices that allow the player to control the narrative itself. Players are compelled by the possibility of media they can customize to their own specific tastes, and media they can master and bend to their will instead of simply observe. In this way, the Nintendo Wii isn’t so different from the fridge-freezer that promised greater mastery over the family’s diet, or the modern microwave oven and its dozens of settings and options for preparing food.

As our society moves from home televisions to home computers and video game systems into an age of portable, all in one smartphones, we and the media become more dependent on each other, and we expect to have access to it more of the time. John Egbert has found connection with a close friend who lives multiple timezones east and stays in regular and real time contact with her. That friendship enriches his life, and wouldn't have been possible without today’s high speed internet and instant messaging services. John’s computer opens up an incredible social world, but - as we’ve seen with Rose losing power - if he lost that technology, he’d also lose that community.

So, advertisers ask, what possible reason is there to leave? Why would you go somewhere mundane, like a park or a youth club, when you could go up on a plane surrounded by dangerous criminals and outsmart them all in time to save your friend? When you can bike down the highways from Missouri to Virginia to save the girl you like from natural disasters? You can be a hard boiled detective, a monster's best friend, a scientist making contact with aliens, an oil magnate turned savior of the world, a FBI agent surgically given the face of a terrorist, and a world leading expert on ghost slime - and you’ll never get dirty, you’ll never get hurt, and your dad will be right in the next room with a constant supply of fresh baked cakes and fatherly affection. What possible reason do kids have to complain, or to feel like anything is missing from their lives, when they can master reality from couches and computer chairs?

John Egbert embodies constant media consumption. Two of his five stated interests are consuming media - specifically movies and video games - and even when he’s not actively watching or playing something, he’s surrounded by media. His room is filled with movie posters, the television in the living room is switched on even when nobody’s watching, and the first thing he does after loading his computer is check for webcomic updates. Even his thoughts are consumed. He’s constantly replaying his favorite scenes in his head, which seems to bring him genuine joy, fixating on the next game he wants to play, and filling his social interactions with references to his favorite franchises. Even before actually entering Sburb’s virtual reality, John already wasn’t present in his material space. He’s digitally transitioned from what Lynn Spigel describes as ‘the home address to “home page”... computer generations rather than genders’.

==> III: Kids These Days Just Don’t Respect The Cultural Idea Of Childhood We Created For Them

The suburban home loves technology, but the reverse may not be true. A significant amount of mass media depicts the suburbs as the place where creativity and individuality go to die, reflecting the cultural criticisms instead of the promises. Some of the earliest sitcoms, such as I Love Lucy and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, predated widespread criticisms of the suburbs and presented an idealized suburban life. These soon gave way to the ‘fantastic sitcoms’ of the 1960s, including Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. These shows have implausible premises, featuring supernatural creatures, aliens or futuristic settings while still depicting mundane suburban realities. This juxtaposition opened up new questions about the real world, asking why we exclude certain people from communities and playing with the strict roles within the nuclear family.

Media aimed at young people often presents a world where kids are in control and regular power structures are inverted. 1950s and 60s comic strips aimed at kids, such as Peanuts and Dennis the Menace, were also set in the suburbs - but an idealized version of the suburbs where kids could roam freely, not confined to the home and able to disobey the instructions of adults without consequences. Some parents restrict these from children, not wanting them to ‘get the wrong idea’ and copy the bad behavior they see in comics or on TV. Popular music is a site of rebellion amongst teenagers - The Kinks in the 1960s, Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, Green Day and Blink-182 in the 1990s and 2000s, and uncountable other acts have put criticisms of suburbia to music and created a cultural dream of escape by getting on the road, joining a rock band and never putting down roots again.

In a time of rapid technological change, parents fear the impact technology and new media will have on their children, partly because they didn’t grow up with those technologies themselves. Television was feared because it gave children access to knowledge, different worldviews, and the realities of the adult world that parents wanted to keep from them, lessening parents’ control over their kids. It was also feared for its all-consuming nature, for making children want to watch constantly at the expense of homework, chores and family meals. More recently, video games have been feared for these same addictive properties, and for the belief that they negatively impact social interaction and cause increased aggression and violence.

But John isn’t like other teenagers. His taste is striking for being exclusively movies that reinforce ideals of the nuclear family - usually suburban, with the exception of New York City-based Ghostbusters II - which suggests he doesn’t only want to escape his current life, he wants to legitimate it to himself. John’s movies end with family reconciliation, not with the kids getting one over on the parents. If John feels like he doesn’t fit into suburban ideals, he can try to connect with them by seeing them through the eyes of a character he likes. In a world where John’s primary source of agency is the media he chooses to consume, he could easily choose to reject his unsatisfying life altogether and live vicariously through outlaws and exiles, getting really into Westerns or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but he doesn’t. He chooses characters who are fundamentally conventional, despite their rough edges, suggesting he’d really like to just fit in and be content with what he has.

Sburb, however, is the game that actualizes parents’ worst fears, inverting the power structures of the house, giving Rose and John dominion over the space while Dad - formerly both the breadwinner and the homemaker - has been relegated to an unseen location. John has access to a physically dangerous inventory system and a strife specibus that encourages him to solve problems by hitting them with a hammer.

Media promises us an escape, and it undoubtedly has the power to teach us and open our eyes to new perspectives, but in many cases provides nothing more than a filter over our lives. Encouraging people to live in a state of distraction, a TV show or video game gives us an easy way to hide from reality. People look for a new technology to solve their problems instead of a social solution, placing parental controls over their children’s television and internet usage instead of having honest conversations among families about media consumption, and designing security systems to keep ‘undesirable’ people from trespassing in middle class neighborhoods without questioning why those people are excluded from suburban society in the first place.

==> IV: There’s A Fine Line Between Fantasy And Reality And My House Is Built There

In the 1935 movie Murder by Television, a money-hungry scientist manipulates the interference between telephone lines and television broadcast signals to create the ‘death ray,’ and murder somebody on the other side of a television screen. Released less than a decade after the world’s first television broadcast, this movie demonstrates our cultural obsession with the boundaries between electrical and real space, and our dream of making those boundaries permeable. The 1950s presented TV families (such as the Nelsons from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) as normal families whose lives just happened to be televised, but who behaved the same way on and off screen to the point of forgetting the cameras were rolling. To this day, reality television such as Big Brother and The Bachelor promise to show us contestants’ authentic private lives, and even when we as viewers know the show is staged, we choose to buy into the fantasy.

More recently, 1998’s The Truman Show literalizes our dependence on the media, its ubiquity in our lives, and the impact this has on our personal relationships by showing a man whose whole life has been orchestrated by a TV production company that broadcasts him 24/7. Through a lucky accident with a time portal I obtained a copy of 2023’s Barbie, in which a plastic doll lives the dream life promised by her marketing, but starts thinking about mortality and the ‘real world’ when her owner’s mother starts drawing pictures of her with typical adult problems.

In both of these movies, the characters are happy until they are forced to confront the constructed nature of their worlds. By understanding the production and design processes controlling their lives, they become disillusioned with the simulation of perfection and begin searching for something more authentic. Even though Truman and Barbie both escape synthesized worlds and achieve full human agency, their endings are bittersweet. Their ‘escape’ lands them in present day Los Angeles, with all the social constraints, local mass produced suburbs, and constant diet of blockbuster media that this implies.

Blurring these boundaries is an effective advertising strategy as well as a narrative one. Adverts invite players to ‘become’ the main character of a video game, such as a Kid Chameleon promotion inviting players to ‘change personalities faster than they’ll change helmets’ and ‘transform’ themselves into a variety of mavericks. A Mortal Kombat arcade machine advert showed real men bursting out of the machine to attack the player. Promotions for The Sims 2 featured real photographs of people with the Sims interface added digitally, presenting the controllable Sims within the game as more than just pixels.

Following in this grand tradition, Sburb takes the permeable boundary between electrical and real space and smashes a meteor through it. Sburb answers the question of ‘can technology transform our society?’ with a 'yes' loud enough to shake the neighborhood houses from their foundations. Sburb represents the greatest and most utopian promises of technology, as well as the worst of our cultural fears around it.

The appeal of Sburb as a game is that it promises teenagers control over their lives in a world where they’re otherwise powerless. It’s a way to speedrun growing up - alchemy mechanics offer the chance to manipulate space and create all the material goods the player wants, but the game also bestows responsibility for tackling a crisis, for maintaining the home, perhaps even saving the world. And the players who are going to want this badly enough to fight through the impossible challenges Sburb presents are the kids who really can’t wait, the ones who aren’t doing well, and who feel trapped enough in their everyday lives that they would risk it all on an experimental technology to escape.

In truth, many scholars challenge the concepts of interactivity and agency in video games, arguing that these are players’ perceptions and not their realities. Games invite players to participate in the creation of art, but the relationship is never equal, with the creators always having the final say on exactly how much free will the player is allowed. Even a game that aims to be open world and allow for as much free play as possible is bound by the limitations of processing power and how many options a human can reasonably write and code for.

Sburb also puts restrictions on its players. Most likely, there are limits on what objects can be created via alchemy, and Sburb would likely restrict any item that could be used to work against the game. Players being controlled by commands which are interpreted by a computer also ensure that only commands coded for in the game are transmitted to the player. When a command is incorrect, the narrator steps in to help the player (p.253). And so far, the game has dramatic ways of keeping John on a very linear path - first starting a clock so he had no choice but to focus on stopping the meteor, then cutting him off from the world so that he has to stay in his current location. It’s impossible to have agency while living within a game that can and will end your life with four minutes and thirteen seconds of notice.

The ‘homes of tomorrow’ discussed at the start of part II were designed as sentient spaces, responsive to their inhabitants and able to almost anticipate their needs. John Brehm said about MOMA’s 1999 Un-Private House exhibition, ‘one can prepare a meal with the help of a virtual chef from a favorite restaurant and have dinner with a virtual guest or friend through the liquid wall’ and suggested that the house was ‘an extension of the body or a transparency of the mind… that both protects and transcends the limitations of the body’. In 2000, the Microsoft Home in New York City showed a future where people could control the lights, thermostats, security systems and stereos directly from their phones, even from another location. The home of tomorrow promises it can be anything its owner wants it to be, without questioning the idea that the privately owned, individualized home should exist and be desired.

Of course, the houses of tomorrow are always singular, prototype homes built with no thought of neighbors and community, but perhaps sacrificing a whole neighborhood to build the perfect home is a tradeoff some people have to make. Far from the static, impersonal houses of the suburbs, Sburb allows players to create their dream houses, offering bigger bedrooms, additional floors, and an endless void to throw your father’s harlequin statues into. It’s another technology that offers transformative potential for the family home, but is ultimately still driven by it, forming an individualist utopian bubble within a larger, far more conservative and restrictive structure.

==> V: If I Die, I Wanna Die In The Suburbs

The remote control, the video game joystick, and the Sburb alchemiter all tell us we can master reality by mastering technology. If that’s the case, then John still has to master technology. A shattered window from stack modus failures and a desktop littered with enraged programming files show us just how far John is from mastering either of these things.

John’s lack of agency goes far deeper than being trapped in the suburbs. His simple choice to pick something up and put it down is controlled by external agents. Though he can choose to escape his father in the kitchen by going to his room, a variety of screens will follow him and keep him in his own personalized panopticon. Rose’s mastery over the cursor means that John can’t guarantee the objects in his room will be where he left them, and even John’s thoughts are surveilled, interpreted and transmitted outwards by the narrator.

The USA PATRIOT act of 2001 expanded the US government’s legal rights to monitor electronic communication, and the early 2000s saw increased covert network surveillance by governments and private corporations alike. John’s technological illiteracy means he probably doesn’t know how to use a VPN and might not have known as a kid that his internet activities weren’t private, but in Act 2, inside Sburb, he begins to realize. Just as parents fretted at PTA meetings, John’s media has allowed him to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and put an end to his carefully constructed childhood, all on the cultural milestone of his thirteenth birthday.

Sburb has compounded the problem of John being surveilled and puppeted, but didn't invent it. The first 136 pages of Homestuck establish the meta-narrative restrictions on his life, from his inventory system to his being guided by commands, before he installs the game. There are layers of control over John’s life that he’ll need to break through one at a time. The first will be acquiring the Sburb server disc, which will give John greater power within Sburb, and the ability to use the full extent of its abilities. The second will be escaping the game of Sburb, which could be accomplished by simply winning the game (like in 1995’s Jumanji), or by using some kind of cheat or glitch to break out of it (2003’s Spy Kids 3: Game Over), but either way John will need to master the game mechanics.

The final layer is Homestuck itself, and unfortunately for us, John escaping the player and narrator’s influence over his life would almost certainly mean the end of the comic. But in Homestuck the Earth is already being destroyed, and being a webcomic that doesn’t have the constraints of a two hour Hollywood movie, the story doesn’t have to stop at the level of escaping the simulation. It has the chance to go a layer further, and imagine a world where John and his friends are able to enact real and meaningful change.

John has clearly had an emotional dependency on media for a long time, and now, he has a physical dependency too. Sburb is the thing keeping him alive, and his only hope to save the rest of the world, but he’s not alone in seeing popular media as a sacred text necessary for his existence. Smethurst and Craps point out that the player reacts to the game as much as the game does to the player - if anywhere, agency can be found in players’ interpretations of a game. Increasingly we rely on fiction to shape our politics and our worldviews, while also reading texts at a surface level. While media itself is insufficient to give us agency, media literacy is a big step towards asking questions about what restricts our agency, how, and why. The way John discusses movies now isn’t too in depth, with reviews like ‘the applejuice scene was so funny’ and ‘cage is sweet. so sweet.’ But in a story about becoming part of a video game, media literacy could be a very powerful tool for John, and he could come out of this as a genuine movie critic.

==> Conclusion

While Homestuck is a distinctly modern multimedia experience, it exists in a much larger tradition of media that criticizes the suburbs, and depicts the fantasy of escape for young people. Like other metafictional works before it, it handles these themes self-reflexively, showing its main character combat the horrors of the suburbs directly, instead of depicting a fantasy where problems do not exist.

Based on its first act, Homestuck is a story about John Egbert’s quest for agency in a world that constantly tries to restrict it. John’s life so far has been defined by the suburbs, by a single but unremarkable point in space that he’s been trapped in for the first thirteen years of his life. John is both physically confined to his suburban neighborhood, and socially confined into being the ideal of the middle class all American boy that has been presented as his only option. John’s taste in media reinforces the ideals of his society, meaning he has yet to question the status quo of his existence or examine the source of his depression. John is also controlled directly by his server player, the Homestuck players, and the narrator.

John’s experiences playing Sburb show us that while the escape media provides for us is real and can change us in meaningful ways, it can only solve the first step of the problem - and isn’t without its own risks and drawbacks. In order to truly develop agency, John will need to question the existence of the suburbs themselves, and not only his placein them. He’ll also need to - at some point - quit the game, return to reality, and use the skills he’s learned in the game to develop mastery over both the physical world and the story itself.

==> Sources

I wrote this essay after reading Lynn Spigel’s excellent essay collection ‘Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs’ (2001), which I would highly recommend.

Full bibliography

Filmography

#homestuck #john egbert #eoa1 #milestone #analysis #whoo BOY did this take longer than i hoped!#but this is discussing some themes that im hoping to return to lots if they keep coming up throughout homestuck!#chrono

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dailycharacteroption · 4 months ago

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Magaambya Attendant (Pathfinder Second Edition Archetype)

(art by LorenzoTonetto on DeviantArt)

(Oh goodness, I must have been supremely tired last night, as I forgot to post this. Never fear, Tuesday’s entry will be coming later today as well)

Of all the magical academies I’ve seen in fiction, Magaambya is probably one of my favorites. Founded on the teachings of the man who singlehandedly saved the traditions of arcane magic during the Age of Darkness and shored up by his philosophy of magic for all and used for the betterment of all, it truly has become Oldmage Jatembe’s shining legacy, where students are taught not just to master magic, but how to use it to better others… and most learn these lessons well. Most of them.

In any case, today we’re looking at the Magaambya Attendant, an archetype associated with the school. While not every graduate has this archetype, those that do represent those that have taken the lessons, both philosophical and magical, to heart. This isn’t to say that others slack on their lessons, rather that the Attendants draw power directly from their lessons rather than just philosophically.

Additionally, these attendants often also specialize in the lessons of one of the five branches of scholarship at the Magaambya: the Cascade Bearers who value creativity and imagination in magic; the Emerald Bough, who favor camaraderie and goodwill; Rain-Scribes, who adapt and learn from their mistakes; Tempest-Sun Mages who value valor and the courage to let their own views be challenged and changed; and finally Uzunjati, storyteller masters that seek wisdom in the lore and knowledge of old.

No matter how they specialize, however, they are still students of the same philosophy, so let’s take a look at how they apply what they have learned!

The base dedication of this archetype grants training in either the primal or arcane arts, as well as a basic cantrip in either of those traditions. Additionally, one must pick affiliation with one of the aforementioned branches, and finally, since they are associated with the same school, one can also take the halcyon speaker archetype alongside this one without the restriction one normally sees with archetypes.

Traditionally, Magammbya mages wear masks, often enchanted, when performing their duties, but some find, whether by accident or design, that their mask takes on a life of it’s own, becoming their familiar. While not all can talk, they can all detach from the wearer’s face and move about with a body composed of multicolored light, and can of course pretend to be an ordinary mask when the need strikes.

Naturally, some attendants master magic to further bolster their mask familiars, granting them new abilities.

Cascade Bearers demonstrate surprising flexibility, able to alter their spells on the fly with metamagical techniques they haven’t properly mastered yet, though only once a day.

Emerald Boughs are expected to travel beyond the school and potentially recruit new students. As such, they have a knack for adapting quickly to any culture they find themselves in.

Meanwhile, Rain-Scribes learn how to sustain their bodies entirely with ambient magic, eliminating the need for food, though they can also overclock it to stay awake while resting normally at the cost of needing food later.

The Tempest-Suns are perhaps the most likely to engage in combat, so they’d developed techniques to redirect the flow of their attacking spells, minimizing damage to their allies while also redirecting some of the energy to ward them for a few moments as well.

The Storytellers of the Uzunjati know dozens of tales, and they can leverage that knowledge to recall important tales and impress others with their knowledge of the old wisdom.

Later on, Cascade Bearers learn to be more flexible with the sources of their magic, able to add occult and divine magics to their halcyon spell arsenal.

Travelling so far from home, many Emerald Boughs find it useful to store away certain items for later use, and learn to create a small pocket dimension to store items that lasts as long as they remain conscious. Perfect for hiding an item that cannot be allowed to be stolen, or emergency tools for a situation.

Rain-Scribes are themed around adaptability, so some master learn to turn aside that which would hinder them. By shrouding themselves in magic, they can stride easily through difficult terrain, destroying or casting aside the inhibiting elements of which as they do so, with not even magically manipulated terrain being safe.

The combat expertise of Tempest-Suns continues as they learn how to expend unused spell energy to blunt and block incoming attacks, robbing them of the force to wound.

Masters among the Uzunjati can recall information and create a story about it on the fly, entertaining and gaining useful information in one act.

True masters among the Uzunjati might also learn to improve their stories further, providing useful advice and maybe a little guiding magic to bolster their allies when fighting a foe that inspired the recalled story in the first place.

As you can see, this archetype is primarily all about branching into one of the many schools of thought and roles associated with the academy, granting abilities that are thematic to what each branch of the school favors and represents, though obviously some are more flashy than others. This also means that an individual can only take a maximum of three feats (four for Uzunjati) from this archetype, making it relatively unobtrusive if you want to blend it with its sister archetype, the Halcyon Speaker, or take it by itself for some practical abilities that speak to the character’s role and vocation.

Like I said before, neither this archetype nor the Halcyon Speaker are required to represent a graduate of the Magaambya, but they both help represent someone who has learned to incorporate the unique teachings of the academy into their magical arsenal, and it’s nice to have such an option. Additionally, I like that in addition to breaking down the barriers between arcane and primal magic, the branches of the school are not broken down by schools of magic, but by philosophy in how magic is learned and applied. This goes a long way towards justifying how the Thassilonian schools are not universal, and why the schools of magic in the remastered version are more broad in their theming. (though I’ll still be using them for those that want them.

The dry desert consumes the weak, that is what Torva, a beastkin orc woman, grew up understanding, but when her latent talent for the druidic arts manifested, she was sent off to the Oasis, an impossible green city in the middle of the sands, to harness her magic at their academy. There, she encountered the kind and unjudging school environment and began to question what it meant to be weak or strong.

Instructor Kanzarato has a reputation at the school, and not just because he’s a dragon! The brine dragon wyrm tries very hard, but has trouble thinking of his classroom as anything other than his territory. However, once he has warmed up to new students, he is the first and fiercest to protect them.

Charming and quick with a joke, the storyteller Uban has many a tale they could spin, including those of the days when the magic academy of the White Valley still stood, teaching a blending of every source of magic. In the late night, when most have gone to bed, he confides that though they are outlawed and hunted, the mages of that school do still remain, bringing kindness and wisdom to those that need it. He meets any suggestion that he is one such mage with a soft chuckled and a wink.

#pathfinder second edition #archetype #magaambyan attendant #orc #dragon #brine dragon #Character Guide #Legends

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eternally-tired-muffin · 1 year ago

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au: life was kinder to them (sabito, tsutako and kanae don't die)

rambling under the cut!

Both Shinobu's and Tomioka's personalities changed a lot after their loved ones' deaths, so if that never happened, I think they would act quite different (on top of having different haori). They would also both still become as strong as hashiras but don't achieve the rank due to already having nine hashira.

Sabito would become the water hashira instead as he improves faster than Tomioka so reaches the level first. I can't imagine Tomioka with a different breath style as he was so well suited to water breathing that he managed to create an eleventh form. For Tomioka to achieve the promotion to hashira, they would need to have multiple water pillars, unless Sabito uses a different breath style (I've seen people use ice for him which I think fits really well). This doesn't solve the numbers issue, though.

Tomioka would instead simply not get promoted but be informally known to be as capable as a hashira by those who go on missions with him. I think this could work well as it would lead to his canon self esteem issues as he thinks of himself as lesser than the others because he is literally not of their rank (rather than thinking lesser of himself because of how final selection went). I figure he and Sabito argue about this but make minimal progress. Tsutako doesn't know he feels this way because she and Tomioka don't talk about demon slaying things at all. She disaproves of his choice to join in the first place and wishes he picked up a "normal life" like her (who is happily married to her fiance) but doesn't stop him.

Meanwhile, Shinobu would become Kanae's tsuguko when Kanae is promoted. As Shinbou isn't a hashira, she would be on fewer missions and have more time at the butterfly manshion so she could focus more on poison production. I think she would develop a larger variety of weapons. For example, inspired after meeting Genya, she could make poison filled bullets or other projectiles that give her long range attacks. Maybe she would create long term attacks too but I'm not sure how yet. She would also train Kanao and other demon slayers in poisons. This means that there can be many poison users in the corps which enables lower ranked slayers to defeat stronger demons. This makes her really valuable despite not being a hashira.

With no reason to hide her emotions behind a smile, Shinobu is loud about thinking the "nine hashira only" rule is stupid. It's gotten her on the bad side of a couple of the existing hashiras (Uzui, Sanemi, Iguro), who consider this an insult to Ubuyahsiki. On the other hand, this makes Sabito respect her a lot. He also hates the rule and wants Tomioka to be promoted.

Shinobu and Tomioka would probably first meet in the butterfly mansion when Tomioka gets injured. They also interact quite a lot through mutual friends, such as waiting for a hashira meeting to finish. This sort-of-but-not-really-hashira thing would be something they have in common. There's rumours in the corps about both of them. Tomioka has no idea. Shinobu knows this and thinks it's hilarious.

Tomioka is still very introverted but doesn't avoid others like in canon. I think he would respond to Shinobu's teasing, even if only to complain, so they would become good friends over time (but won't admit it).

Masterpost

Updated Shinobu design

First comic

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saenora · 1 year ago

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YOUR FAVOURITES AS YOUR SIMPS

note: if we flip tables and what if youre the mangaka character and your fav simps on you… these are some adequate subpar headcanons… 🫠 (i dont write so lmao bear w me 🤭) thankies to Ai <3 @gojoest-main for indulging always mum ily and SOBS GOJO IS BASED ON WHAT AI SAID🤭)

the husband

YN IS HIS LOML. he is huge on selfship community! HIM AND EVERYONE CALLS HIM YOUR TRUE HUBBY! he has a whole lot of selfship arts with you. he might go broke with all the merch but he cant help it every time he sees your fanarts or a new chapter drops, he goes feral. PINTEREST MOODBOARDS, PLAYLISTS YOU NAME IT. HE HAS IT. he is defending you on every website, writing little self indulging drabbles about you. he knows you well, his little head canons are cannoned by all of your fans. your his f/o and nobody can change it. he either talks about you infront of his friends and he has gained a reputation because of it or leads teh secret life… there is no inbetween. has the sweetest selfship headcanons but occasionally tweets regular horny one liners about how bad he wants to be fucked by you, or about how much he wants to cum inside you and get you pregnant.

gojo?, reo, kise chuuya, isagi, yuuji, taiga, ran + anyone who fits the criteria

the loyal hoe

he has too many blorbos, he knows it. BUT YOURE HIS MAIN BLORBO, HIS BIGGEST SELFSHIP/ THE ONE HE KEEPS CRAWLING BACK TO. it can be put as you made him standout. IS 25/8 YN BRAINROT AND TWEETS HORNIEST STUFF. HE ONLY SURVIVES ON SMUT AND BREATHES TO THE THOUGHTS OF YOUR AROUSAL. writes the best sex stuff. he keeps hopping from one to another but everyone knows he is your biggest whore. UNHINGED. crazy lot of nsfw fanarts of you, has patreon subscription to see all those fanarts. it doenst matter where he is, work/home/cafe. HE IS THIRSTING ABOUT YOU. writes about the shapes of your labia/cock and can write poetry on your body.

SHIDOU, karasu, dazai, GOJO, sukuna, toji, BACHIRA, aomine(ik.. but if he could write), ranpo, EREN, kaiser, jean + anyone who fits the criteria

the sweetheart

he isnt extremely active. somewhere in between the worlds. he calls himself your cheerleader, your number one supporter. he has tons of art saved of you might/might not be on budget. has one commissioned selfship with you. he loves you and probably has the most pure of the selfship with horniness served as dessert. (NO ONE CAN ESCAPE IT) occasionally indulges in you. is mostly very sfw!! but his head is full of all the sexi stuff. loves to talk about you… if anyone strikes a conversation about you he can write verbal books. CERTIFIED SIMP. his selfship is uwu. doesnt go big on it but is a soft fan.

kenyu, hiori, isagi, yuuta, megumi?, chifuyu, rindou, kakucho, connie, atsushi + anyone who fits the criteria

the silent one

he has been your fan since the start, the first time he laid his eyes of your 2d character design, your story, your everything captured him. he loves you from afar.. isnt really active but has a small pinterest board or a playlist of you that he silently indulges in. has no idea what selfships are but you’re a coping mechanism for him (sometimes). if you were real, he’d treat you so much better than the shitty charcter you’re stuck with. doesn’t pick fights online but wouldn’t hesitate if someone crossed a line. he doesnt realize but thinks of you more than a fictional character. probably is the healthiest out of the five. none of his irls know about his fixation of you and it would never see the light of the day. IF LOYALTY WAS A PERSON IT WOULD BE HIM. period.

nanami, rin, ness, levi, erwin, akutagawa + anyone who fits the criteria

the idgaf

he simps only for you. he has posters of you and is not ashamed. people know about you being his favourite character but he is scary so nobody can ask it about. has minimal/no online presence. but keeps signed copies of the mangakas. JERKS OFF TO YOUR POSTERS UNABASHED. he follows one fan account and prolly goes anon sometimes. heavily reads your smut or hasn’t scratched the surface you cant tell. YOURE NOT A CHARACTER, YOURE HIS FAVOURITE. ANOTHER ONE WHO DOENST KNOW WHAT SEFSHIPS ARE, BUT HEAVILY CREAMS THINKING OF YOU and has wild fantasies about you.

sae, aomine, shoichi, oliver, izana, kaiser(idk), baji, naoya, mikey, wc kunigami, ranpo + anyone who fits the criteria

zen speaks: i’ll do a yn as diff as character tropes drabbles too 🤭 so wtevrhr <3

dividers: @/cafekitsune

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anilyan · 5 months ago

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It's not even his birthday in my timezone yet, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY, beloved! I have not finished anything specific for today, but I have many WIPs (2D, 3D and a longfic):

Writings

First, here is my long fic, Nameless. I will actually turn this into a trilogy, and while the first volume is a canon-compliant Old Mondstdt fic (almost finished, 1 more month give or take), the second volume will be from Venti's POV as he rewinds time multiple times to try to prevent the bard's death. As for volume 3, well, you'll see :>

I sadly couldn't participate in Venti's week here on tumblr, but well, I'm already juggling bigger projects xD

2D arts

Posted on tumblr and twt, my Venti in a cage art. I made a colored version (not as polished as I wanted but still), and a lineart version too:

I also have this Xiaoven wip (I'm a multishipper). It's really far from done yet. I'm kinda happy with the lighting and expressions so far.

This art uses Hamelin's Xiao design, that I created in 3D for a mod (model and textures by me, and the weights were by mimo4e)

I found this AI art and really wanted to fix it. I expected it to be a quick paintover, but kept finding more things I wanted to change, and trying to match the rendering style to the original, so I spent at least 7 hours on my version.

3D models

I stopped making my models public (although old ones can still be downloaded from my gamebanana page, or from mimo4e page since we used to collaborate a lot), BUT, if you are a civilized person who credits mods that you showcase, feel free to request access in my SFW Mods discord server. The xiao mod above and these Venti mods, save the Nameless Bard, are only shared in my server.

Here is everything you need to know about mods in 2024. PC only, free, and no one has ever been banned for using fanskins since mods are not cheats, but that post explains a lot more and teaches you how to use them (it's simple).

Archon skins (5 of them!)

» Update on Murren's Archon mod: On this mod specifically. I contributed to the original version still on GB, but I wanted to give it more shadows, a more magical hair with special highlights, and updated skirt and wings. The wings are made of the feather he uses in his canon outfit, since many fans headcanon he had wanted to give that feather taken from his wings to the bard.

My current WIP is on the left, current gb version on the right

» Moon butterfly: Inspired by that AI paintover I did and shard above, some elements are kitbashed from both honkai games.

» Corrupted Venti: I will make my own design, you can see the sketch there. It's inspired by all of the other arts, sources are: 1 2 3 4

» Boss design: I will adapt this design by gierosajie_art

» The statue design. This one doesn't need explanations.

Regional skins

» Fontaine Venti: It's a kitbash, with parts from Project Sekai and parts from Herta from HSR

» Liyue Venti: Sculpted and textured by me, adapting an old 2D design I also made, with some changes due to modding complications. It's the least developed WIP for now

Others

» Wisp-inspired Venti over Paimon: It's inspired by this lovely art, and the artist loved the model ^^

» Nameless Bard: Public here, and I updated it recently (might even update again in the future).

In my server (with restricted access), I have also created Amos and the Red-haired warrior (both kitbashes with minimal modeling from scratch on my part), and I will create Gunnhildr and Decarabian next. Full credits for everything, like the sources of parts and helpers, are/will be in the post of each of the models. You can see my Amos and Bard render here (there are 2 versions).

Okay, I think I didn't forget anything xD Hope you liked my contributions to our lovely bard and angel ^^

#genshin impact #genshin #venti #venti birthday #genshin venti #old mondstadt #genshin fanfic #genshin fic #3d models #genshin designs #venti designs #genshin models

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emby-m · 4 months ago

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Ronald of Nice & Harper’s Muse

Fourth in the “Putting Alice into Nort’s Skin Lines” project

– But what stands out to this reporter is the role of the young scriptwriter. He is a character we all know, intimately or not, and one Mister Ronald of Nice plays often. Yet, Mister Ronald seems to wear such a duplicitous mask unevenly. This is not to say his performance – a thorough cad, playing with the ingenue’s heart simply to satiate his own ego – was not well-done. Ripples of dissent and displeasure rumbled through the crowd at his actions, and a hearty cheer came at his comeuppance – the sort of reaction only a professional might elicit. But no – it is to this reporter’s eye that Mister Ronald is too honest himself, too earnest and sweet-tempered. With the fresh awkwardness of a boy in his first social season, Mister Ronald is a treat to watch off-stage as well as on.

-Harper’s Muse

Theatrical Critic

Design and backstory under the cut:

Setting/text notes:

Surprisingly hard to find period theatrical criticism, but tried to go for a William Winter writing about Edwin Booth vibe. It’s got a particular kind of flow.

An actor has to have news published about him, right…?

Harper's Muse would come from Harper's Bazaar (the women's magazine), then this idea that Alice would become Ronald's greatest muse...

Norton’s design:

I didn't have to change much, but i narrowed the tails on the beetle-back coat because that's a look

Continues to be interesting to me that Ronald still has a scar and yet the mask covers… the unscarred portion

Have you noticed that i love Norton who very prominently has a hat but I hate drawing hats on heads? Yeah i have too dw

Alice’s design:

A pretty blouse and skirt, for the working woman at the theatre…

From Dressing for the Occasion (1900s German etiquette guide for dress): For attending the theater while sitting in the gallery - a silk blouse and fair skirt; “modern” or contemporary hairdo with ornaments; light-colored suede gloves; patent leather shoes and openwork stockings; minimal jewelry

'Plain' and yet beautiful -- all the more eye catching for an actor beloved and yet struggling...

#nortalice #idv prospector #idv journalist #norton campbell #alice deross #idv fanart #identity v #idv #em art

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natsuslover · 4 months ago

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jjk characters in an american high school ⋆.ೃ࿔*:･

notes— american high school stereotyping is fun to do. i did one of them for blue lock and it was enjoyable to write so i’m doing one for jjk as a coping mechanism :)

ft. yuji itadori, megumi fushiguro, nobara kugisaki, maki zenin, yuta okkotsu, toge inumaki

content: headcanons yay!

yuji itadori

definitely that one kid that speaks exclusively in brainrot humor

he’s barely passing all his classes (Cs get degrees mindset)

has a backpack for formalities sake bc the only thing that’s in there is his lunch and maybe a few paper handouts

skips class ALL THE TIME only to hang out with megumi or nobara in their class instead lmao

i feel like he would either be on the baseball or soccer team and he would be extremely good at them too

dodgeball goat, definitely gets internally pissed off if he loses a game

his teachers have a love/hate relationship with him (they hate him bc he doesn’t gaf about their class but they love him bc its yuji cmon)

the coaches tho they LOVE him

not in any ap classes so he makes fun of all his friends as they’re struggling during exam season

that one kid that somehow knows everyone and daps up his friends in the halls during passing period

just at school for the vibes basically

megumi fushiguro

ap god, bros literally in every ap class he could possibly be in

his studying routine is so fine-tuned he can study as minimally as possible and still max all his classes

100% attendance, u can never catch this dude lacking even if he’s sick or smth

he definitely has extra pencils in his bag for borrowing purposes bc he knows yuji never has any

he’s not super organized like color coded folders or anything, but he knows where everything is in his backpack and is always prepared in case the teacher asks for a paper from 2 months ago

he’s studious but like minimally if that makes sense

like he’s def top 6% but gets just as annoyed as the next person when some idiot tells the teacher they haven’t checked the homework yet

his favorite subject would be history idk why and he participates in the history fair fs

usually sits in the back of class and hates group projects

has his black sony wh 1000xm4 headphones on at all times

nobara kugisaki

her school fits go HARD every single day bc she literally thinks of the halls as her runway

has a bunch of cute stationary bc she likes how they look (not that she ever uses them bc what is note taking?)

she’s always on her phone during class, and if she’s not she’s yapping to her friends

“NOBARA STFU” is said by her teachers at least 5 times per class

whenever yuji comes to her class (everyday lol) she tells him all the new tea and gives him updates on the old

skips class sometimes to take mirror selfies in the bathroom

refuses to eat the school lunch bc that shit is disgusting

is fueled purely by celsius/redbull during exam season

is in a few ap classes and doesn’t really study but still manages to do fine on everything

gets to first period late almost everyday bc she takes too long getting ready in the morning

has beef with her english teacher and argues for higher essay grades like it’s her goddamn life’s mission

maki zenin

she’s the girl who defends everyone against bullies even if she doesn’t know them

like if there’s a fight in the hallway u just know she either started it or she’s ending it

teachers love her tho bc she’s incredibly smart and always does well on exams and assignments and everything in general

even tho she’s pretty studious she’s definitely gotten detention a few times for getting into fights

she’s a small top big pants girl for life and sometimes gets dress coded but doesn’t care enough to change

i feel like she also skips class sometimes just to sit in the library and listen to music when she doesn’t feel like doing shit

she’s the designated driver when her, nobara, and the rest of the gang go off campus during lunch

she’s an ap calc bc prodigy fs (got a 5 on the exam and it was light work)

president of like unicef and nhs and all those other clubs that don’t actually do anything but look super good on college apps

has answers to the tests and quizzes but never uses them

definitely on the track team or smth and the coach loves her bc she’s super athletic

yuta okkotsu

a teacher’s pet but not one of the annoying ones bc he doesn’t TRY to be a teacher’s pet ykwim

a lot of girls have crushes on him bc he’s cute and has a cute personality and somewhat mysterious-ish

he hangs out in the library with maki during his free/release periods bc he knows she often skips in there

has one wired earbud in his ear at all times and prob listens to dayglow or smth

bro is an ap lit WARRIOR like he’s so good at writing essays and genuinely enjoys reading the books too

his favorite required read was frankenstein bc the monster reminded him of rika

he’s not a big fan of group work but he enjoys doing partner work bc he finds it easier to talk to and get along with oner person at a time

overall he’s pretty organized when it comes to school work but his note-taking/speed handwriting is just scribbles

he doesn’t think he has a lot of friends but irl all the kids in his classes love him

uses 0.3 lead mechanical pencils instead of the usual 0.5 idk why it just seems fitting

the type of person who would snack on goldfish in the middle of class

toge inumaki

he wore a mask for a year after everyone stopped wearing them until he realized he looked stupid and stopped

doesn’t take any ap classes besides ap bio and he only takes that bc biology is his favorite subject

idk why but he gives president of the environmental club vibes

sits in the back and plays games on his phone all the time during class

but the teachers don’t care enough to say anything bc he always does fine on tests and stuff

doesn’t talk much during class discussions but when he does it’s always meaningful

his biggest nightmare is a socratic seminar bro hates those things more than anything

also has his airpods in 24/7 bc he doesn’t like listening to ppl talk and if someone asks if he heard he can use “music” as an excuse

thinks the school lunch is fine especially on fish sticks day but goes with maki bc she takes them all out anyway

has calc with yuta and both of them struggle together and end up asking maki for help

an AVID tiktok user like ong he’s always mindlessly scrolling through the app

part 2 coming with gojo, geto, shoko, utahime, nanami, and toji soon bc these are so fun to write omg! also u guys should request stuff bc im running low on ideas 💀

#jujutsu kaisen #jjk anime #jjk headcanons #jjk #yuji itadori headcanons #yuji itadori #megumi fushiguro #nobara kugisaki #maki zenin #yuta okkotsu #inumaki toge #jjk au #anime #manga

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crippy-tangerine · 2 months ago

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This post is going to talk in depth about dental/oral hygiene and ways to (hopefully) make it easier. There will be a summary at the end- look for the bold orange text. This post is aimed at other disabled people, but abled folk are welcome too (just don’t derail or be ableist, please!).

If this is not a post you wish to see, or you just don’t want any advice/ideas for this, that’s ok!! We don’t want to give unsolicited advice, so now is the time to scroll! Okay love you 🫰.

If you want to read though, hi! On we go now, under the cut:

Hey! So, we were thinking recently about how tiring/challenging disability can make keeping your teeth clean. And we manage to keep pretty good dental health (/not bragging, just stating because it is relevant to this!) so we wanted to share what has helped us in the past and currently to look after our teeth best we can?

This is not going to be a guilt-trippy post (we hope anyways, if anything comes off like that please tell us and we shall change that shit!), we are all about just doing what you can. Okay, so:

1. If you struggle to brush your teeth because of the taste/strength of the taste of your toothpaste/mouthwash- you can change the brand & flavour. This is the one we’ve seen suggested a lot elsewhere so this may be already well known- but we did want to add a specific recommendation; if the mint flavouring in dental products being too strong is why you struggle to brush your teeth, there are brands that will do other flavours like strawberry or apple. When we were littler we got braces and got given this special orthodontic toothpaste with matching flavour mouthwash. It was an apple flavoured one- but not in an overly sweet way, just this fairly neutral, mild & minimally minty way.? It still contains mint afawk, but it is not the dominant flavour in our memories. We didn’t remember it having mint at all actually- we only saw it when we went to look it up for this. Anyways, the brand is “VITIS”- the one we had is marketed mainly towards people with dental appliances like braces, but from what we can tell that’s mainly because it has some ingredients that are meant to help any small little cuts or abrasions caused by the braces rubbing against your mouth, and not because nobody else can use it? Linked both the toothpaste & mouthwash below so it’s easier to find. (This isn’t sponsored or something by the way- this is just the ones we have personally tried & know!)

2. If the alcohol content in mouthwash is a risk factor for you/the alcohol is a sensory issue/the alcohol dries out your mouth & causes issues- there are brands that don’t put any alcohol in their mouthwashes. At all. Some brands also do alcohol-free versions of their main-line mouthwash aimed at kids. Which also means they may do it in fun flavours that, again, don’t have mint as the main flavour.

3. If the texture/size of the toothbrush itself causes sensory issues- there’s a lot of ways the design and bristle-strength of the toothbrush can be changed. If you find the bristles too hard/strong/coarse and it hurts your mouth- look for kids-range toothbrushes! They tend to have softer bristles that don’t give as much resistance when you brush your teeth. The toothbrush heads will also be smaller too. Some will also have more bendy stems (? The long bit that you hold) if that is something you need to think about too. For adult toothbrushes you can also get toothbrushes that have harder, stronger, thicker bristles than standard, if you need more sensory input. There are also some that will come with rubbery textures around some of the bristles. You can also get toothbrushes where there are textured rubbery parts on the stem (handle?) as well, which we like because of the added sensory input and because it makes the toothbrush softer and easier to hold for us. The rubber might also help if you also end up chewing your toothbrush at all, as it makes it less hard?

4. If the energy/motion/executive functioning it takes to physically move the toothbrush around your mouth is too much to deal with- it could be worth looking into electric toothbrushes? They seem to be (a lot) more expensive than manual toothbrushes, but if you feel it would help you to not have as much energy spent on dental routines, it might be worth looking into! The ones we have seen let you switch out the type of head you put on the toothbrush stem (which you can charge when the battery runs out)- so there should still be ways to customise things like texture & resistance. It removes the element of brushing back-and-forth over the same tooth, as you basically just hold the brush over each tooth and the toothbrush does the work. We do want to mention though that they can vibrate a fair bit (it feels like a buzzing in your hand when you hold it and on your teeth if that makes sense?). Which is maybe welcome sensory input for you! If you’re like us though that’s a big no-no, so that’s maybe something to bear in mind if you look into it.

5. If you just can’t handle the act of brushing your teeth at all right now- first of all, that’s okay. It’s not some moral or personal failing like we’ve seen some people imply. You just keep on getting by, however that looks for you at the moment. If you can’t keep to a routine (for example “brush twice a day, once in the morning & once at night”), you can change it. Or you can have no routine at all, and just do the things you can manage at whatever point in the day/night you feel up to it. If you need to go with brushing your teeth once a day? That’s so fair! If you don’t have the energy to hold a toothbrush to your mouth, it is an option to skip the brushing and go for only mouthwash. If you are too fatigued and/or bedbound and can’t brush your teeth with toothpaste/mouthwash? That’s ok! You could always try out things like taking a mouthful of water and swooshing it around your mouth (to try get any little bits of food or anything out from between your teeth). If you have some energy, but not the ability to get to a sink/basin/whatever to brush your teeth? There are chewing gums that are made to help with oral hygiene that you could try out. We know that personally the taste in our mouth can cause sensory issues, so this might help if you really want to brush your teeth but can’t in the moment. If you have limited energy for personal hygiene and don’t have the energy to physically carry out lots of tasks in a day? We’ve been there. It’s hard, and sometimes you just can’t get to everything, and that’s okay. If you like, you can try to merge hygiene tasks together- for example, brushing your teeth in the shower. Like, take your toothbrush into the shower with you. You could sit on the floor if it’s easier (we do!) and do your brushing routine whilst you shower.

6. If you struggle with brushing teeth because it feels like a demand/isn’t rewarding/is just generally difficult or unpleasant- this is a gentle reminder that you do not actually have to follow set rules about routines if they don’t help you. If demands like “you need to brush your teeth at this set time!” make you feel stressed out or upset, you can ignore them if you fancy it. Who’s to say you can’t do it an hour later? Or earlier? Five minutes later than expected because fuck being told what to do? Endless options really. If you struggle with the routine because it feels too boring, bland or just not worth the effort it takes? You can make that shit more interesting if you want. Put on some music with a fun rhythm and try to match your teeth-brushing with it. Get yourself a toothbrush with your favourite character or animal on it. Decorate the space where you brush your teeth- and if you need a checklist of actions around the routine, write it up and put it there for you to look at & remind yourself. Give yourself little & consistent rewards in whatever capacity you find most helpful every time you brush your teeth if it helps. If you feel up to it, make a chart where you can put fun stickers every time you brush your teeth. You brushed your teeth yesterday? Boom, gold star shiny sticker for you on the chart. You tried out using mouthwash today? Boom, another shiny sticker. And if you just find the task of brushing your teeth unpleasant- we want you to know that’s understandable. Personal hygiene can just be a lot to do and maintain!! If you want to try out doing more oral hygeine stuff/try to maintain a schedule but are just dreading it- we recommend distractions. In whatever form works for you. Brush your teeth with your favourite songs blaring through your headphones. Put on your favourite cartoon or show and watch it whilst you try out using mouthwash. If you’re extra good at multitasking, brush your teeth with one hand and use a fidget toy in the other,,, so many options really, if you can think of anything that’d be helpful to you personally, try it. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t work. And you know what- that’s ok too. It’s ok if none of this stuff helps you. Sometimes things are just really fucking hard, and that’s not your fault.

7. If you have memory issues/lose time/struggle to organise and remember what you need to do for oral hygiene- we cannot recommend phone reminders enough. Not alarms (loud and stressful for us!), reminders. On Apple phones there’s an app that’s just called “Reminders”. It’s basically an app where you can set up lists of tasks/appointments/important dates and give them time and date stamps. When that time/day comes, it just gives you a little pop-up notification the same as any other notifications you have from other apps. It’s quiet, and for us at least it means we’re more inclined to go do it because it feels less stressful. We’re actually very fond of this app now so if a separate post talking about how we use it would be helpful we can try to make one ☺️. But more broadly speaking; if you will find it useful, get your hands on an app that will send you a visible reminder of what you want to do with your dental hygiene. Be as specific as you want, set as many as you want. We put an example of how we do this below in smaller text (so it’s easier to skip if you don’t want it!). Skip the small text if you just want to continue the main post.

• Small and optional example here! When we have to do something and know we won’t like it/will struggle with the steps to do it, we will set a series of reminders. They may look like this: Alarm 1, “X thing needs doing in 40 minutes!”. Alarm 2 (30 minutes later), “time to get up and start preparing to do X thing now!”. Alarm 3 (5 minutes later), “Good job, it’s time to start doing X thing now! Remember that you need to do [insert steps for the task here]!”. Alarm 4 (5 minutes later again), “Great job, you did X thing! Time for [insert reward]”. You can set separate alarms for each individual step if you want to as well. We’ve also found that encouraging language in the reminders makes us way more receptive to doing the task (and not being angry about it while doing it). You could also set a fun ringtone to the alarms if that would help. Okay, back to the main post now!

Hello again! Continuing on for point 7. If phone reminders aren’t for you, or you don’t check your phone enough for them to be useful- physical calendar-type charts may be helpful! If you put a physical chart somewhere you will see it, and make it big enough that you’ll catch sight of the written reminders on it, that could help if you’re struggling to keep up with dental stuff because you just don’t remember. You could put it somewhere like beside your bed, next to your medication (if you take any), on the wall outside your bathroom, or on your desk/fridge/front door if those are places you see/go to regularly. And decorate it if you like!! Spend time making the chart if you like, design it however you want- make it a fun thing to look at and engage with. A physical calendar may also help if you lose time and can’t remember when you last did certain dental things. If you check off what you do/don’t do each day, then hopefully when you next lose time you’ll have at least some idea of what has/hasn’t been done recently. If written reminders don’t work for you though, and you’d rather have a physical and verbal reminder, consider enlisting the help of others if they’re available and up for it! If you live with others that would be okay with doing this (for example your partner/partners, a parent/guardian, a roommate, a carer, a sibling), you could always request that they help you out by verbally reminding you to brush your teeth/use floss or gum/use mouthwash. If they want to/are able to and it’s something you’d find helpful- you could also consider some hand-over-hand physical guidance to help you complete dental hygiene tasks. For example, if you have a carer, you could request that one of the things they help out with is reminding and physically helping you to brush your teeth. You could also request that they give verbal instructions and/or encouragement throughout the task, so that you don’t get stuck or confused part way through what you’re doing.

8. Miscellaneous things we didn’t manage to fit in earlier- there are likely a lot of disability aids out there to help with things like physically holding the toothbrush to your mouth. We don’t have enough information on them- so we don’t feel able to give proper advice on this, especially as we haven’t tried any out ourselves. But they’re out there!! There are other things like keeping hydrated that will help you out a lot, from what we have seen! Dehydration means you produce less saliva, which can have an impact on your dental health. So if you can, keep water close by you (for example by your bed, by your desk, somewhere visible in your kitchen, in your work/school bag). If nothing else, we find that drinking enough water means our mouth doesn’t feel uncomfortably dry and start tasting “funny”, as we call it. Water bottles are your friend if you’re prone to spilling/knocking cups of water over, and if you need to get non-reusable plastic straws to help you drink more? Do it. If you spend a lot/all of your time in bed, you can keep a lot of water beside it- along with any chewing gum, mouthwash or floss you may want- and somewhere to spit out the gum/mouthwash (could literally just be an empty cup or bowl, there are no rules!). If you have braces (or just generally struggle to get into all the hard-to-clean areas in your mouth, like between your teeth) there are these little things called “Interdental Brushes” that are specifically designed to make it easier for you to get into any hard-to-access places in/around/between your teeth. They have a small plastic handle, and then a single, pointy bit of bendy wire that is covered in little bristles. It is basically a tiny, pointy toothbrush for spots you’re struggling to clean. The bristles come in lots of different sizes (for different-sized spaces in your teeth!). There are also versions with much longer (and slimmer) handles- similar to an actual toothbrush. We’ve found them helpful because unlike a toothbrush, the heads can be bent at different angles so you can get behind your teeth easier. We’ll link the ones we use below (again not sponsored, just don’t feel comfy recommending brands we haven’t tried!). You also, by the way, do not have to use any energy over the bare minimum to do dental hygiene stuff. You want to sit on the bathroom floor to brush your teeth? Go for it, it’s what we do too! You wanna lie propped up in bed to use dental floss? Awesome! Just please, please make sure you don’t lie on your back to use dental health stuff that could be accidentally swallowed or choked on. On that note- if using certain dental health items/substances will be physically dangerous to you in any way, please be careful, either don’t use them or make sure you have assistance/support using them. Safety is the priority. And good luck if you try any of this, we really hope at least some of it can be useful!

With that, we will probably end our long-form rambling there. We have undoubtedly missed things (feel free to add on!) but we hope this helps 💖. Below will be a TLDR (we realise this is so much text, so it will summarise key points!). We will also put the links we promised at the bottom.

TLDR for the post:

- You can change the size, shape, texture and resistance of your toothbrush. Kid’s toothbrushes are also an option!

- You can change the flavour and strength of your toothpaste and mouthwash. There are types that aren’t so minty, or minty at all! We’ve seen strawberry and apple flavours.

- You can get mouthwash with zero alcohol content. Look for types aimed at younger children.

- You can get electric toothbrushes. They’re more expensive, but worth the investment if they’ll help you save energy/prevent symptom flares. Do be aware they vibrate when you hold them and they vibrate when they touch your teeth.

- You don’t actually have to follow set timetables/routines for dental hygiene if they don’t help you/make things harder. Mess around with the routines if you like. Do what you can, when you can.

- Reminders are a thing! Phone reminders/alarms, physical copies of timetables/charts/reminders you can put up around your space, verbal reminders from people you live with… We personally use phone reminders.

- Chewing gum that helps with dental health exists. If you can’t brush your teeth/use mouthwash/floss but you have enough energy to chew for a bit, this might help!

- You can give yourself little rewards every time you manage a dental hygiene task. Because go you! Sticker charts are what come to mind, but do whatever you find helps you best 💖.

- Staying hydrated is important! For lots of reasons, but also for dental health!

- Interdental brushes are a thing, and they’re made to get between your teeth or behind any braces you may have.

- Use as little energy as you can. Sit on the floor to brush your teeth. Brush your teeth in the shower. Floss while you sit up in bed. Literally just do what you can, where you can, when you can. No rules to this stuff except “do what’s possible” & “stay as safe as you can manage”.

- If you have people around who can help, and would be willing to help? Ask!! Anything from verbal reminders to hand-over-hand guidance is an option if you want it and can get it.

- Make it fun and/or give yourself distractions! Loud music, your favourite show, YouTube video essays, stimming at the same time… All options!! And you can decorate your dental hygiene products and buy a toothbrush with your favourite animal/character on too if you want! Do what you want/can to make it all bearable/doable.

//End of post summary. End of main post.

Below are the links we promised. Number 1 is the VITIS orthodontic apple toothpaste.

Number 2 is the VITIS orthodontic apple mouthwash.

Number 3 is the TePe interdental brushes (we use the pink ones personally). For some reason it won’t show an image on the link sorry, it’s a link to the official TePe site, specifically the page that shows their interdental brushing products 💖.

//End of list of links. Below are the actual links.

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