#i hate rhis realisation so much because its TRUE

[sgt-celestial]

Sitting bolt upright in the middle of the night with tears inexplicably on my face OH MY GOF I AM BOB DYLAN CODED AS FUCK

[rachelberryy]

Santana Lopez, Gender Performativity, and the Gaze-Death Dichotomy

For @tuiyla

This is a follow-up from this essay on Santana and Bejewelled by Taylor Swift. It also probably looks the way it does because of this post that I read recently.

(I dug out my old university notes for this, because Judith Butler is a GOAT and I felt like going big brain mode)

i.

The top line of my notes on Butler’s gender performativity theory reads, “Gender may be naturalised and taken for granted, but it is still socially constructed and created through the repetition of everyday acts”. As far as I can tell, that isn’t a direct quote, so I’m going to presume it’s a paraphrased summary on my part. It’s the ideological descendant of an idea from Simone de Beauvoir, probably the most influential feminist philosopher of the twentieth century: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (Incidentally, the idea of gender as a social construct in western feminist literature goes at least as far back as Mary Wollstonecraft. As per usual, TERFs don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.)

Okay. Let’s talk Santana.

Santana is an Afro-Latina lesbian, and a woman. All of those things are relevant in one way or another. We learn that when she was young, Santana was quite the tomboy, until she was socially conditioned into abandoning that particular persona. Given what we know of her family, I think it’s a reasonable assumption that her abuela had something to do with that. That delivers us to the version of Santana we get for the first season and a half of Glee. She’s a bitch, she’s aggressively sexual, she’s notoriously promiscuous, she’s a cheerleader - the feminine high school archetype. In other words, she’s both a stereotype of the idealised high school popular girl, and a whole bunch of things for which women are typically demonised.

Patriarchy, like all reactionary ideologies, is deeply idiosyncratic, almost by design, and creates these catch 22 situations where women cannot conform or rebel enough, it will hate you anyway, because that is its point. That is complicated by the fact that Santana is a fictional character (and one created by a team of male writers, at that), and therefore is also a construct of the male gaze without any agency of her own. This is doubly true for Santana, who starts out as a side character whose first proper story is as Puck’s ‘woman on the side’, and whose second proper story is sleeping with Finn.

The whole thing is a mess of contradictions, an ill-fitting mess of female stereotypes. Slut, bitch, queen bee (once Quinn is deposed). She’s the opposite end of the ‘fucked up ways in which patriarchy constructs female sexuality’ spectrum to Quinn. She’s also, as we later find out, completely fucking miserable. She’s acting, all the time, allowing the only emotions that slip through the cracks of her walls to express themselves as anger. It’s all, you guessed it, a performance. A version of her that didn’t exist until society forced it to. Those aspects of her - so many of them distinctly gendered - are entirely constructed, against her actual nature.

ii.

And then she quits the Cheerios, realises that she’s a lesbian, and begins to deconstruct herself. Glee is an exceptionally manic show, with so little time afforded to monologues by anyone not named Will Schuester. And yet, at the end of Sexy, Santana is given quite a lengthy one, explaining and exploring her character up to that point. (I can think of one other single moment where the pacing of Glee gives Santana specifically a second to breathe: the pause in the middle of RHI/SLY.) The promiscuity, the bitchiness, the anger at the world. The knives turned out so that they don’t cut inside. So much repressed self-loathing.

Part of the reason that sapphicism broadly and lesbianism in particular are such an affront to patriarchy is because they don’t abide by the rules of the game. In other words, it challenges the way in which patriarchy has determined that womanhood and femininity should be performed. That doesn’t mean, however, that it isn’t a performance, if only because, within Butler’s framework, performing and lying are not the same thing.

As I explained in the previous essay, Prom Queen, conceptually and functionally, is about gender roles in a lot of ways. Kurt bucks gender norms with his outfit choice, by embracing the prom queen title, and by dancing with Blaine at the end of the episode. Quinn, in her desperation to be popular, and validated, and feminine, chases the prom queen crown ruthlessly, because it’s the ultimate prize for a popular girl. Again, like the cheerleading, it’s one of the classic high school archetypes. The whole idea of prom king and queen is so aggressively gendered, obviously. It’s binary, and heteronormative, and rooted in about seventeen different forms of social hierarchy. It’s gender performance taken to the extreme.

The conclusion of Santana’s storyline in that episode is her reconciliation with Brittany, and Brittany telling her that part of why she lost was because people could tell she was hiding something. Exactly who and how many people knew about Santana’s sexuality and when they knew it is something the show can never quite seem to be able to make its mind up on (side eyes at Finn Hudson), but the conclusion in this moment seems to be that the performance has, to some degree, gone awry. Because what use is a performance if nobody believes it? In that moment, it’s Santana’s worst fears about being punished for her transgression come to life - she is performing femininity incorrectly, and therefore she is denied the title that represents patriarchy’s feminine ideal.

iii.

Santana comes out is outed early in season 3, and we finally meet the person who has probably shaped her character - and her performance - more than anybody else we hadn’t met to that point (so, basically, more than anyone but Brittany). Alma Lopez. Abuela.

With some of the crumbs we’re offered up to that point, I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to see Alma’s treatment of Santana to be emotionally abusive - and this is only doubled down upon by her reaction to Santana coming out to her. It’s pretty explicitly stated that Alma is one of the main reasons that Santana is as vicious as she is. In other words, she shaped the performance. She’s clearly a pretty big female role model in Santana’s life, which is why the rejection hurts as much as it does.

The Glee subreddit is home to a wide variety of deeply stupid opinions. That might seem slightly mean, but one can only read so many defences of Finn Hudson objectively bad actions before one becomes slightly cynical. One opinion I’ve seen bandied about on there that I usually don’t have much time for is that Alma herself is a deeply repressed lesbian, largely stemming from the fact that Alma’s main issue with Santana’s sexuality seems to be that she’s willing to live it openly. Its slight difference from the usual ‘hate the sin, love the sinner’ line. I do think it’d be interesting to touch on it here, though. Santana, in many ways, learnt her performance from Alma, which is why her open embrace of her sexuality here - after so much angst and drama - is such an act of defiance, and that’s only doubled with this particular reading of Alma’s reaction.

iv.

While we’re on the subject of Santana’s family background, I’d like to talk briefly on the stereotyping of women of colour in particular, and the way that intersection plays into the idea of gender performativity. Santana’s race and ethnicity are a little ambiguous in certain ways. She refers to Mexican heritage, and Alma has a Dominican flag in her home, if I remember correctly. However, since it’s never explicitly stated otherwise, I’m going to run with the idea that Santana is Afro-Latina, like Naya herself was.

Santana, particularly in her initial presentation (read: performance), very much fits into some of the stereotypes often assigned to Latina women. She’s sexually aggressive and promiscuous. She has a ‘fiery’ personality type. (I’m not overly fond of that word, especially in this context, but I think that’s really kind of the point.) As she says herself, ‘My job here is to look hot.’ Of course, that line can be read shallowly, because I really don’t think Ryan Murphy or any of the lead Glee writers thought that deeply about these things, but most of this essay relies on Death of the Author theory and my reading far more into this story than its creators conceived. It also speaks to Santana’s lack of agency, both in and meta to the narrative itself. She also is hot but w/e

A worthy point of comparison here, I think, is Mercedes, who of all the main characters is probably denied agency the most; who is so infrequently allowed to be much more than a foil to Rachel, both by the writers and, perhaps more depressingly, by much of the fandom, particularly back in Glee’s original heyday. She is also frequently desexualised, again by both the writers and sections of the fandom. There is probably an essay to be written on the variety of reasons that Quinn (thin and white) is read as a lesbian and Mercedes (fat and black) is often read as asexual or earnest in her religious reasons for her celibacy when Quinn’s canon reasons are basically the same. I don’t think all of those reasons stem from those differences, and I definitely don’t want to criticise people for sexuality headcanons that offer them representation - because an asexual, fat, black woman would be kind of revolutionary, if indeed that was what Mercedes was. I also really don’t think I - a white person with half a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a Sociology A Level taught by a person for whom I once had to define intersectionality - am the person best suited to write that essay.

Which brings us back to Santana, and the ways in which her ethnicity impact her performance of gender, especially in the first two seasons when that performance is inauthentic. Death of the Author is, again, critical here - and I’m going to talk more about that at the end - but so is Gaze theory and Santana’s multi-layered lack of agency. As with all of the people of colour on Glee, Santana’s race and ethnicity are often ignored until it’s comedically convenient. I’m not saying the jokes don’t always work - Sam’s ‘Quinn once had sex with a Latina lesbian - learned that in glee club!’ comes to mind (I think part of why that works is that it’s one of the only times that it’s explicitly shown that homophobes are often deeply racist as well) - but I think that is notable that that’s often the only time it’s ever seen as worth mentioning. Santana, though played by a woman of colour in Naya, is ultimately a construct of the white men who created her, and it is through their Gaze that she exists. She has no agency in the real world, because she’s a fictional construct, and a distinct lack of agency within the narrative as a queer woman of colour.

So how does all of this relate to gender performativity theory? Said theory might be pithily summarised thus: “Gender is something we do, not something we are.” (I promise I do have a degree, I’m not just copying buzzy phrases from the inside cover of a sociology textbook lmao.) This, then, might fairly easily be mapped onto other socially constructed categories of being. So, how does one do their gender, or race, or ethnicity, or sexuality, when one has no agency of one’s own, when one is entirely a construct of the Gaze of others? When the puppet strings of the performance are juggled and manipulated entirely by someone outside the self? Ironically enough, things become even more of a performance, in multiple ways a construct. Santana the character is constructed, in the same way Santana the person, the queer woman of colour, is. Which is, of course, why critical literary analysis is such an apropos way to explore these ideas, because everything is a constructed performance anyway. And, in this way, we see how Santana’s character is flattened, whether it’s in the vaguely afterthought-like quality to any consideration of her ethnicity, or the wholesale ignoring of her blackness, or the fact that Santana the character, as opposed to Santana the person, is herself a construct.

And then the author dies. More on that in a bit.

v.

Santana has parallels with a lot of characters. Quinn is the obvious one, which is very well-trodden ground analytically speaking - narrative foils, both craving popularity because they can’t just up and admit that they want to be loved, both very gay and very repressed, both in love with Rachel - and season 2 makes Santana’s parallels with Dave quite clear. There are also certain parallels present with Kurt, though - and it’s not just because they’re the two principal queer characters - the two token McKinley gays, as someone put it once.

The relevant mirror here is on expression. Kurt starts out as very experimental, as far as his dress-sense is concerned. It’s also fairly androgynous. “Fashion has no gender,” he tells us. Over the course of the series, however, his fashion becomes more conventionally masculine - not overly so, but certainly more so than at the beginning. In Santana, this shift is even more pronounced. The main windows we get into her fashion is late season 2 and then season 4 and 5 in New York, and while it’s not exactly like her season 2 choices were all that transgressive, they were certainly more experimental than her tight dresses from later on. Now, this isn’t me hating on this style - because girl looks good - nor is it me saying that lesbians can’t adopt a more conventionally feminine sense of style. I would hope that goes without saying. Regardless, I think there’s something worth discussing here where agency is concerned.

Because, of course, Santana isn’t a real person - a real woman and a real lesbian; she’s a construct of a team of male writers. I think the easy explanation here is that the producers got lazy, on a whole range of fronts where costuming was concerned. And that is, at least to an extent, a reasonable line of thinking. To gesture to a fairly straightforward example, after a point they just started having Rachel... mostly just dress like Lea. However, I think there’s a more interesting lens of analysis to be had here where Santana is concerned when we recall that scene where her mother informs us that she was a tomboy growing up. The three points we have, really, are that snapshot of Santana as a small child, season 2, and season 4-5. In season 4 in particular, Santana is portrayed as feeling generally directionless and unsure of herself; of where her path is headed now that she exists outside the rigid hierarchies of McKinley High. And, so, her performance of femininity is exaggerated. It’s a continuation of what the cheerleader role represented for her earlier on: burying herself in the typical female role to hide from internal conflict.

I think there’s also more to be said, at this stage, on the way we can see this in Quinn as well. In season 1, she’s the church girl: babydoll dresses, sundresses, and, of course, her Cheerio uniform - something that she uses as a wall of self defence in a similar way to Santana. In season 2, her wardrobe is largely a more mature version of that - she’s been through the ringer, and being homeless and having a child have forced her to grow up, but, as we see in her determination to be Head Cheerleader again, she’s still desperately clinging to the version of herself from Before. The biggest departure is obviously Skank!Quinn, where she briefly leans fully into a more androgynous punk look before adopting, again, a fractionally more androgynous version of her season 2 appearance, namely the addition of her blazers - which might be read as something as a symbol of male soft social power. Her story in season 3 obviously continues to bring the angst, but it’s also a period of self-actualisation. The most traditionally feminine we see her presenting after that is in her brief appearances in season 5, where it is pretty explicitly established that she’s behaving inauthentically. It’s all fairly on the nose, especially on that latter point. Obviously we can’t map that onto Santana directly, but I think it’s an interesting lens of analysis, given that, as I established at the beginning of this section, the two characters parallel each other pretty strongly in a whole smorgasbord of ways.

vi.

I’ve been dancing around the whole ‘death of the author’ bit for a while now, so let’s get into it. The post that I linked at the top of this essay describes DOTA as 'once a work is complete, what the author believes it to mean is irrelevant to critical analysis of what's in the text’, and I think that’s a reasonable definition to work with here. In other words, the fact that this essay takes Santana as a person with agency of her own, outside of her creators’ intentions, is not necessarily incompatible with my argument that we might use the fact that she’s a fictional character to explore the idea of social constructs, because the former exists outside of the latter. Santana is a construct of fiction, and the author is dead. The two lenses of analysis go hand in hand, inverted as they may seem.

I don’t think it’s too controversial a statement to say that Glee isn’t a particularly tightly written piece of fiction. (Maybe it is controversial on the subreddit. Shit’s wild over there.) Santana is no exception to that. Her character is messy and inconsistent, and the writing varies in its willingness to explore her depth. It would be trite to say that within that uncharted depth lies the DNA of a brilliant character. I also don’t think that that’s entirely accurate, because Santana Lopez is brilliant. The brilliance, which I think I’ve explored quite widely in this essay, is in the margins, in the unsaid, the unexplored. It’s in the performance. Reading between the lines, we see the carefully constructed image that Santana herself created. That is the foundation upon which the character is built. And from that, we can analyse her in myriad ways - along with the myriad ways in which she is, herself, a constructed performance, both within and outside of the narrative, constantly deconstructing and reconstructing itself.

The author is dead. Long live Lopez.

[seijorhi]

asks :)

once again, i’m terrible at answering things :)

First off, your newest Kuroo story WRECKED ME. OMMMMMG LIKE IT'S SOOO FUCKING GOOD. You are one of the most incredible writers ever, like professional style writing. These should be books and you should get paid for it, honestly. Your skill is totally unmatched, my friend. I just adore everything you write. I had two questions thou about the story, just because I am totally obsessed by it- so has Kuroo been obsessed with her since he saw her, I'm like curious how his obsession started 

like is it because she's young and he's interested? Cuz I totally got the vibes at the party that he was showing her off like she was his girlfriend and he seems like he has been wanting her for awhile. I was just curious about how it started cuz god I'm a simp for yandere kuroo- boss man Kuroo would make me weakkkkk. My second question is so is he like obsessively in love with her or is it like just a this hot piece of ass is mine to fuck kinda thing? Like does he want a relationship?

anyways, I love you and I love your writing. Everything you write is legit perfection! Thank you for all your beautiful stories you share with us! - Kai

first of all, whomst gave you the right to be so damn sweet???!?! dsgsjkl thank you, bby!

so, like with all my fics i kind of have a ‘read into it how you want’ thing going for it. whether or not kuroo actually has ‘romantic’ (i use that word loosely) feelings for the reader or whether he just enjoys fucking her because he’s in a position of power and she’s easily manipulated is left a little up to your interpretation and how you’d prefer to imagine it. however, having said that there are little hints throughout the fic that imply that there’s a little more depth to kuroo’s feelings. you’re not wrong with the whole ‘showing her off’ vibe at the party, and there’s mentions of confessions that kuroo gives while he’s fucking the reader - also the title of the fic, invidia, means envy in latin. so take that how you will 🤷‍♀️

and as far as how it all began, i like to think that it was kind of a slow build. again it’s implied that kuroo has met the reader (however briefly) a few times before - at games as nekoma’s manager, when she initially was introduced as his girlfriend and she has stayed over at their place in the past. it wasn’t so much a singular moment, but kuroo’s definitely been paying more attention to her than she realises. 

WHAT WHAT WHAT???? RHI UHMMM WAS KUROO IN LOVE WITH THE READER???? 👀👀👀👀 HOLY SHIT. I'm honestly mind blown rn like I have a lot of questions like did Shin know? Was he also into it? Omg the idea of Father and Son sharing reader...

(also I def did not hope that Bokuto was also there cuz that would have be fun....oppsss)🙊

hehehe

no, shin didn’t know but oh can you imagine the betrayal if he did? if he willingly set up the reader to be fucked by his dad 👀god damn

adsfgdhjfkfl there was a moment i genuinely considered having something more happen at the christmas party where bo would stumble across and one thing would lead to another.... but i decided not to go that route. this one needed to be solo kuroo haha

Rhi, what can I say, amazing as always!

ahhh thank you sm, bby!

Hi i absolutely love the kuroo fic at first no one would actually notice he was into and then story actually rises nicely however i would like to ask like what happens later im sorry im a little burnt out from my mountains of assignments that i cant think of a possible aftermath since the story had an open ending but yeah what happens later after the whole scene does y/n stay there for the 7 days and get r*ped again or she goes home early and like what happens to kuroo and shinsuke im sorry for annoying you with questions its fully up to you whether u would like to answer or not :-)

aw, thank you! I hope your assignments and stuff are all done? And pls bby, you’re not annoying me at all 💕💕💕

Honestly again, it’s kind of left up to what you like to think would happen, but personally I think that the reader stays, because there’s no easy way to get out of that situation without raising suspicion - which means that she then has to spend the next week trying unwittingly playing cat and mouse with Kuroo who’s gonna use every damn opportunity he has to push your boundaries 👀

Duuuuude invidia fucked me up! Like fuck, lol! The build up was so spectacular! It makes me wonder two things: how did kuroo’s obsession start, and what would shin have done if he caught them (and why do I feel like he’d join in... I guess it runs in the family lol).

I loved it sooooo much and im also so creeped out lol. Can’t trust other people’s dads. Everything about it was perfect!

glad you liked it, bby!!

shin’s a good boy and he genuinely loves the reader, but i think if he did stumble across the two of them he’d just shut down and walk away. it’d be the biggest betrayal in his eyes - it wouldn’t matter if you were drunk or he was, who came onto who - the two most important people in his life going behind his back would just break him :( and i think he probably wouldn’t give either of them a chance to explain

but if we’re talking degenerate shin... 👀👉👈

imagine if invidia! reader gets pregnant and Shin thinks it’s his, but its actually his dad’s 🤭

oooh kuroo would be such a smug little shit - he’d get extra touchy feely with the reader, drop ‘casual’ hints, basically doing everything outside of straight up admitting it to him, just to see how far he can push until shin starts to doubt whether he’s actually the father - when it’s just the two of you though... i think he’d be a little softer - but equally as possessive - you’re his, and so’s the kid growing inside of you

Kuroo: son do you know what a cuck is? Shinnosuke: no? Kuroo: wOULD YOU LIKE TO FIND OUT - @south-korea-cakes

dagshjskl i snorted when i read this but you’re not wrong lmao

hi rhi! i have a question about Lion’s Den! did oikawa purposely set the reader up to witness his true nature? or was it chance that she saw him kill?

no - i think he’d rather have kept you in the dark a little longer and tried to let things develop ‘organically’ but he’s not upset that you did find out the truth - gives him an excuse to move things along and take what he wants 👀

hey rhi:) soo my boyfriend of two years just broke up with me and so far a major comfort has just been rereading your stories. something about feeling desired, ya know? anyway, thanks for making me feel a little better <3 - @theofficialhufflepuff

aw i’m sorry to hear that :( i’m glad my fics can help make you feel a lil better - sending love bby! 💕

omg i adore everything in the soulmate series hello !! would any of the soulmate pairings ever end up feeling lowkey competitive w/ the other?? like all of them seem to mutually respect the other but would there ever come a point where smth pushes them into trying to outdo ur other soulmate when it comes to ur affection?

also have i mentioned how much i love ur writing bc i love ur writing

hmmm, not so much with oikawa & iwa or ushijima and tendou because i think they have pretty rock solid relationships with each other prior to the reader coming along - if they did it would only be minor stuff

the twins on the other hand - good fucking luck with them because they’ll turn everything into a competition. the moment one twin thinks you’re favouring the other too much expect to get dragged across the room and forced to spend ‘quality time’ with the other. it’s all very petty and exhausting and there is no possible chance for you to win. but thank you sweetheart!!

tonight im thinking about The Final Girl! boys forcing you to share a bed with them for the first time. With Kuroo’s face buried in the crook of your neck, one big hand palming your breast for good measure, Bo holding onto your waist, and Kaashi’s legs tangled with yours. its suffocating, really😪😓

asdgdhjdkdl suffocating? yes. now where do i sign up?? 🥺

you are so talented in writing it's crazy!! just the way you articulate things is ugh *chef's kiss*. i hope you are doing well and not receiving hate 🥺 ily pls

ahhh thank you so much, messages like these always make me so happy! ily bby! 💕

more karasuno first years soon? 👀

who’s to say?? i don’t have any full fics planned but maybe some concepts and thirsts??

if you make a yandere msby fic i’ll literally lose it i love your writing

👀i am considering it

[bettysnooze]

9, 13, 16, 8, 10 !

10. which muse is the most fun to write for?

already answered here !!

16. which muse is most willing to fight another muse?

depends on what they do tbh but like if this is ‘fighting for no reason’ than definitely makaria, and if it’s bc they’re an isle kid or like half-animal then it’s otto

and ofc makaria and otto would just 100% fight each other

~*~*~*~*~*~ okay so somehow i got all the long ones kjhbfevkhe so READMORE for otps/notps and How I Met My Muse (also since this got so long i’ll answer 13 on another ask!!

8. what is each of your muses otps? notps?

so this is gonna be like ‘i once shipped them’ and ‘so many crushes’ (I’LL USE THE SLASH)and it could have been for like five minutes or five weeks so pls welcome to my mind

betty otps: betty/ranon, betty/happiness, betty/feeling-protected, betty/melissabetty notps: like romantically every other guardian kid bc she is literally their mother/sister

veronika otps: VERONIKA/NOELLE, also veronika/a-good-loving-familyveronika notps: veronika/not-good-loving-families

makaria otps: MAK/BAIN, mak/talon JHBCVKDJHFEBJ A MESSmak notps: mak/stress

hershey otps: hershey/ophelia, hershey/self-care, hershey/self-confidence omfghershey notps: hershey/self-destructive tendencies

cestrum otps: cestrum/misty, cestrum/relaxationcestrum notps: cestrum/lola (i stg this was a crackship idea once and lord almighty)

aiwei otps: aiwei/juniper, aiwei/happiness, aiwei/finding-out-more-about-his-family, aiwei/BECOMING-A-REAL-BOY-BC-HE-WAS-ONLY-A-BABY-WHEN-HE-DIEDaiwei notps: aiwei/confrontation :(

otto otps: otto/common-sense, otto/open-mindednessotto notps: otto/any-of-his-dreams-coming-true, otto/winning

illyria otps: ROLLY POLLY OLLY (illyria/ronan), illyria/the-sea, illyria/comfortillyria notp: illyria/not-being-near-the-sea (this is happening rn jfc), illyria/discomfort

kirsa otps: uM KIRSA/SHEN (SHIRSA???? SHIH TZU???), kirsa/talking-about-her-emotions-instead-of-passive-aggresively-making-them-into-playskirsa notps: kirsa/not-being-honest its an issue

dignan otps: dignan/being-himself, dignan/darcy CAN I LET THE POOR BOY LIVE ? NO ?, dignan/FUTURE BOYFRIEND WHERE ART THOU, dignan/baseball the real otp thodignan notps: dignan/closeted

helen otps: helen/swords, helen/coranza, helen/angel, helen/shae, I GOT SO MANY, helen/being-herself, helen/no-responsibilitieshelen notps: helen/keeping-things-to-herself :(

penelope otps: penelope/money, penelope/being-soft, penelope/coming-to-terms-with-her-horrible-upbringingpenelope notps: penelope/being-selfish jcvnfklrfjvbwr

9. why were you drawn to each one of your characters?

( BETTY ): i knew tasha and rhi from a previous rp we were all in, and they’d played guardian characters too and i aLWAYS wanted to play a guardian character but i didn’t have any ideas back then, but then they were like “hey you should join us” and i was like “BOY OH BOY”. sandy was always my favourite guardian, and i had just finished rping a daughter-of-morpheus character so dream powers were like my thing and boom, betty mansnoozie was born aka the sweetest, most good character i’ve ever written. ALSO i’ve always had sibling-ish relationships with rhi so like the betty/jake relationship goes back a LOOONG way

( VERONIKA ): after betty i knew i wanted a darker character, and i was like “okay so who is like completely unforgivable” and i immediately thought of rasputin. there was also another rasputin child around at the time, and they had gotten rasputin’s powers so i was like!! what if i made a kid that wanted those powers, who wanted to be a villain and to be like their parent?? veronika’s gone a long way since then and really like i’m so proud of her and i love her so much, she’s just gone through a lot i lOVE HER

( MAKARIA ): SO OKAY LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT ME AND HADES BECAUSE HONESTLY, THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR YEARS. i first played a character based on panic (hades’ sidekick) like aaaaages ago, and then i played actual disney hades in another rp. needless to say i really fucking love hades as a character. and betty was too nice, and veronika was too cynical and kept to herself, and i really wanted another mean-spirited CHATTERBOX (because i myself am such a chatterbox i mean look at this). i lowkey had a child of hades in a closed rp sort of situation, his name was macario (because i’d wanted a son) but the original is makaria, and i love my girls sO makaria was born. i also love zendaya, and previously hades had always been white but so much art on tumblr depicts persephone as this beautiful black woman so !! BOOM. i also wanted to try a different villain-kid-parent dynamic, because veronika ends up hating her dad but mak like 100% defends hades still like even to this day

( HERSHEY ): I WANTED A BOY LMAO and i was really into bts at the time so i’m like okay hmm where would yoongi fit in?? i re-watched wreck-it-ralph randomly and i remembered that i always wanted to try a sugar rush child so i was like heeeeeeeeeyyyy :)))). and it kinda just all fell into place because i’d also been interested in making a character that loved cars and racing (fast and the furious got me so bad). and i liked the idea of having another character with some sort of ability, and it was so interesting figuring out how hershey was going to fit into the auradon world bc he was originally virtual sO YEAH. and also the name came like in a second. FUN FACT, hershey von schweetz’s fc (in a different time before BTS took over my life) was going to be hailee steinfeld and now look at wHO USES HAILEE STEINFELD

( CESTRUM ): so after the craziness and Extra-ness of makaria and hershey i know i wanted someone more chill. i had always loved alice in wonderland i knew i wanted a son of the caterpillar because 1) alan rickman’s voice is God and 2) i always wanted to rp the caterpillar in like so many disney rps but i never got the chance lmao. so the idea for cestrum actually came even before i found the perfect fc (kibum), and it took me ages to find the perfect fc. i knew he was going to be weird and quiet but also talkative but also nOT? and just a different moral compass and way of thinking from everyone else. i was so sure about applying for cestrum and it was only after that i was like “ok but am i going to be smart enough to play this like 5000 IQ person wtf did i get into” and yEAH. also i always like making new characters with types that (during that time of the rp) aren’t so common yet, so having this stoic character was like yEAAAAAHHHH

( AIWEI ): so hershey and cestrum are my first boys and this is basically the start of my “one boy after another” streak and then i got AIWEI. the real babe. everyone’s been pretty mature so far, or like dealing with a lot of responsibility etc. and now i wanted someone who would be like a real teenager (more or less) and just have that childlike wonder and be rly innocent tbh. so aiwei is all of this, and he’s young and inexperienced but the twist was that he’s actually this boy who died in a fire when he was a baby and his father, in the underworld, resurrected him and performed some magic frankenstein stuff to make him grow older. and he’s the oldest out of all the kids but he’s been a baby 60% of this life until elder gutknecht finally got all the tools necessary to make him old and i jUST !! also i really loved that tin-man song from the wizard of oz. my actual baby, aiwei gutknecht i love him and will die for him

( OTTO ): AND AFTER ALL THE NICE, SEMI-NICE PEOPLE i was like “so what’s happening with the isle thing right now do ppl not like them like is there active resentment or what” and then i was like “what if i had a character that did the active resentment!!” and otto white was born. i knew he was going to be a jackass. i knew he was going to be anti-isle. and i knew he had to be a prince and a kid of one of the ‘original’ disney princesses. and i ended up choosing snow white because she’s technically the ‘oldest’ and there was evie and vera and i was like aayyyyy conflict. but yeah so otto was going to be the personification of fear and bias against isle kids, and i thought it’d be fun to play with that politics and society thing that i’ve never really done before. otto’s my first character that is actually irredeemably an asshole. i wanted to see how far i could go and where i could go with a character that was actively trying to not change. i was super nervous about applying for him tho bc like i knew he was going to insult a lot of people and i didn’t want to be like hated rip bUT it turned out well so YEH

( ILLYRIA ): i’ll be honest i watched pirates of the carribean and like calypso/davy jones is still the otp of otps for me. and i once had my fortune-telling phase and i saw valentine was there anD ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY TO USE A FILIPINO FC !! HECK YEAH !! and at this point i wanted to like branch out from my usual characters and try something different, to add new things about characters so i thought about illyria’s aversion to touch. and i knew she was going to be stoic and weird like cestrum, but she was also going to be charming and i wanted to see how that would go and it’s hard getting into illyria’s head sometimes but she’s like a Fave

( KIRSA ): so i watched this movie called “the darjeeling limited” and it’s basically about this dysfunctional set of siblings – one of them feels super responsible for the other two but is a big mess, the other sort is more put together but has problems he actively avoids, and then the last is this playwright who’s been in love with the same girl for like 10 years and falls in love easily. and i was like “who does that remind me of???” SO TBH the idea for kirsa first started out as a brother for the stahlbaums but then i realised there were no more spaces and i was like “tHE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY!!” and the rest is history. so kirsa is the dramatic playwright who falls in love too easily but also doesn’t know how to love properly, and she drinks and smokes and has all these vices and she’s still 17 so like what a hot mess. she’s as talkative as mak and as flirty as hershey but kirsa is less put-together and although she thinks she knows herself, she really doesn’t. she needs guidance pls

( DIGNAN ): so this really just began as a “i wanna get in on this waters family drama” business LMAO. and i love sarah’s misty so i wanted to see how it would go if she had a little brother. it also made a bit of a change because most of my characters are like the ‘older’ siblings or friends and i wanted more young people so i thought of dignan!! i also wanted a character that would be more pro-authority than other characters i’ve had before (dig’s always going to think highly of the auradon royalty bc he understands them and knows they don’t rly have much choice sometimes and that they try their best). and i chose joe keery (aka steve harrington, love of my life) as an fc bc i JUST FINISHED WATCHING STRANGER THINGS and charlie heaton was darcy, and natalia dyer was being used too and i was like hEYYY FC CONNECTIONS. 

               FUN FACT: dignan’s two defining things right now (baseball and being gay) weren’t even in the cards at the start, he was literally supposed to be more john watson, i’m-gonna-be-a-serious-doctor and like be fun but a guy who loved to study. but now he’s sporty and he’s figuring out this new part of himself and he’s literally my actual favourite character right now i love dig so much. also i needed a character that would 100% share my love for the 80s (hershey loves 80s music but only sings to annoy ppl so its not the sAME). and now dig has the hair and the fashion sense and he loves 80s music too man.

( HELEN ): the idea for helen really began with like this ‘bodyguard’ idea. i wanted a character that was like 100% protective. they were going to be this warrior, trained-as-a-child kind of person, and they were gonna be connected to royalty. i first tried this with kirsa but that didn’t work out, and then i tried it with dignan but he was too soft and easily persuaded tbh he can never be mad at his royals. and then i thought of tangled (and the mess the hoods and the greenes were in at the time LMAO). 

helen was first gonna be max’s child (for the full guard effect) but then i saw a space opening for rapunzel and eugene’s child and !! and then she became princess warrior, who wanted to protect her people rather than rule them and LIKE WHO DOES THAT REMIND ME OF??? PRINCESS LEIA ORGANA THAT’S WHO so seriously fun fact, a lot of the inspriation for helen is leia. and i chose the name ‘helen’ because of helen of sparta, a beautiful woman who started the longest war, and together with the fact that helen is very much a fighter of wars rather than the starter (and she has low self-esteem rip) its so fun i love helen, my sword princess child

( PENELOPE ): so i have an asshole auradonian, and mak is like simmering down, i knew i wanted an asshole isle person. and mak/blythe have such an awesome friendship and i loved blythe’s character and all the people in the cinderella family and world and i knew i wanted to get some of that action ;)))) so i rewatched the 2015 movie (I LOVE CATE BLANCHETT SO MUCH) and then i rewatched ‘ever after’ which is this 90s cinderella movie with drew barrymore. after watching ever after, i knew exactly how i wanted this daughter of drizella to be like. she’s going to be the worst parts of mak and kirsa (they’re bitches but like nice ones) and just be this snooty sugar baby gold-digger. she knows exactly what she wants, she knows she’s going to get it. she’s part daisy buchanan, jordan baker, very much this hedonistic character who understands life as being good if you have money and status. such an old idea but it’s what she learned from her fAMILY. 

a lot of penelope’s character came from me wanting to explore what i’d found with otto, the unapologetic asshole, but now she had reasons to be. otto’s rich and gets ltierally everything he wants so he sucks even more because he’s still mean-spirited – but now we have penny, who grew up with nothing but wanted everything, and her grandmother and mother put all their hopes and dreams on her, told her not to associate with her nicer aunt and cousin and even her little sister – and she’s an asshole. literally guys penelope is going to change and become better i just dunno how yet but shE WILL

13. what’s a weird headcanon you have for each of your muses?

THIS ASK GOT WAY TOO LONG ALREADY, BUT I GOT THIS NUMBER IN ANOTHER QUESTION SO I’LL ANSWER IT THEEEEERE