#i assume it's because i'm not writing in my native language but still... why is it hard. learning curve my beloathed ;u;

[just-hyde]

AI is theft.

Character.Ai still uses **stolen** data. Support real artists and writers. RP with real people.

IAMREALpleasegimmeahotchocotugmeinandgimmeasinglegoodreasontoliiiveeeeaaaaAAAAAAA

*Breakdown joins the chat*

An anon? How courageous of you. /lh

Actually right now you did what many chatbot users do— hide behind Persona just in case people don't accept your writing/rp style. But it's easier to play safe, I give you that. Your mental health should be your first priority no matter what people say

I do my art, write snippets of text, develop OCs and RP with people, but still make chatbots on different platforms

Why?

For shits and giggles

But no, friends, seriously

We already live with that and apparently are gonna continue to, unless the authorities decide to step in

For me cai was a tool to improve my vocabulary since 1) not so many native speakers were willing/had time to help, 2) even if they did, we had jobs and damn timezones which made our coordination harder, 3) I found out that ppl were simply too shy to play

Recently I've learned the term "Cringe culture" which is cringe itself and hella annoying at that— some writers are fucking scared to post, to be met with toxicity instead of actually useful critique

Anywho, the topic is controversial af.

On one hand, it did writers dirty. Well, fuck. On the other hand, your T9 was also trained on something and I deem LLM no much smarter than a huge T9 [a predictive text technology which almost every keyboard for phones and tablets has]

The problem I see is that the ai developers didn't ask for any data

How much easier everything would go if they had manners and/or paid for some materials? I usually don't mind lending a pen if someone asks, but can bite one's hand off if they grab it

As you might've noticed, I wanna use this ask to bring up some other interesting topics

My man, I've heard enough of "Why trying if ai renders better than me/uses better words"

Anxiety.

That's what makes me sad

If we ever manage to change that, to make people realise that human-made art is a freaking precious treasure with hours of effort spent on it, maybe earth heals and unicorns return

You buy funny one-nickel-worth stuff from Aliexpress, no? That's AI. As well as a half-gnawled pencil one finds in their old school backpack to write down an anecdote they've just heard

It's easy to focus on the bad side

If fish is ill in a dirty tank, are you gonna add more sand? Pfftt. I assume you gonna change filters, scrub that bastard clean and add more lil fishies to make others feel less lonely, instead of rumbling that you shouldn't have gotten any new weeds for the the bowl in the first place, because, who would've guessed, fish eat that. And poop. —a process natural as breathing

My suggestion is that we try to create a safe space which would encourage writing outside of roleplay, make young artists feel safe regardless of their level of skill

Or maybe I'm too far from the Internet in general and don't understand why writing example messages for a silly toy is suddenly a bad thing when it encourages kids to try themselves in text RPGs without any risk of being judged for that

An interesting topic you gave me, really, I've spent some time contemplating about it

Feel free to suggest things that we, as a community, can do right here and right now, because, gods know, I'm personally unable to atta-ta a corporation for "using language we all speak", especially when chatbots have some features which would be a damn shame not to use in language learning since it's so engaging and teaches kids new words in a forgiving game-like way

Though I hope there will be some law regulating ai and the use of ai-made products soon. Let's give it some time

[lale-txt]

hate the fact that in order to get better at a thing, you actually have to DO the thing. outrageous. you're telling me i can't just wake up one day and magically be perfect at The Thing, i gotta put in the work first? awful

[olderthannetfic]

No, ppl, VPNs aren't even possible for many MANY ppl in the third world. You can't buy a VPN in a brick and mortar store, and many of us (adults who are parents of kids in schools and everything) don't even own credit cards. Many who do still cannot afford VPN because what is easily affordable to a Westerner could pay my bills for a whole month. It depends on how poorly my currency is performing against the US dollar.

Even Paypal is sth mythical. I mean, I've had pieces accepted in US magazines for what the editors said was a token payment, about 50 dollars. Man, those 50 dollars would've paid off so much! That would be a FORTUNE. But I had to waive the payment EVERY time because Paypal doesn't work in my country. Grrr.

That doesn't mean third world countries listed on the Paypal site can use it either. My country is on it but every time I filled surveys etc and they transferred the money, I couldn't get my bank to let me have it. I know a third worlder in another country who has had that happen to them too.

My heart goes out to fellow readers and writers in Malaysia. Some of the most mindblowingly beautiful fics I've ever read (they were gushed abt by Americans and Brits and Aussies so I assumed the writers were native English speakers) turned out to have been written by fellow third worlders, one of those in my own country! The idea of waking up to find my country decided to ban ao3 is just... unbearable.

I hope the Malaysians find a way around it. And I hope whoever made that horrible decision gets the worst RPF written abt them AND hears about it from their political rival.

--

Yeah, I'm always meeting fans online from certain countries: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines. Some places just seem to produce a lot of nerds. Or maybe more people learn English? IDK. Both a lack of (popular-with-fans) local media and a lack of economic opportunity can incentivize foreign language learning, so I'm sure that's part of it along with a certain amount of randomness.

In any case, part of why AO3 is run on donations instead of having paid accounts with better features is that a lot of core fans who write the fic and make the recslists and make fandom happen turn out to be in situations where they literally cannot pay even if they have the money.

Someone who's popular might be able to get foreign friends to pay for their VPN, but even then, can they actually get access to it? Questionable.

As for the last, it will be with their political rival, and you know it! They'll have to hear from some aide. ;D

[im-the-j-in-anthony-j-crowley]

Okay, here me out, i can't stop thinking about demons and the fact that many of them can't spell

Crowley says that spelling is not their strong point, and we see this exemplified especially in Shax and Furfur, but now recently it occurred to me to look up how to pronounce food in Italian. Remember Hastur? If you look it up, you'll notice it's cibo, and if you listen to the pronunciation, you'll notice it's VERY similar to the pronunciation of ciao (what Crowley says in that scene, remember?).

Learning this is what gives me a start for what I had been thinking for quite some time, because at the beginning I thought that the spelling thing was something for only the lower level demons, after all, Shax and Furfur have leveled up, but initially they were at the bottom. But not Hastur, Hastur is a duke of hell.

And the confusion between cibo and ciao proves that he must likewise have some kind of problem with language comprehension.

Also, I want to add, I'm not entirely sure if this is a good point, because I may be influenced by the fact that I'm not a native speaker, but Dagon's motivational speech doesn't directly reflect poor language use, but I get a sense that it doesn't reflect great command of it either

And then we go to Crowley, I assume we all think at first glance that Crowley has no problem with language, right? But let me remind you of something: Crowley hates books.

Yes, he has books. But the one book we see, has pictures, lots of pictures. An illustrated astronomy book. In addition to this, Crowley demonstrates a strong dislike of books. Contempt. Hatred. Yes, we've seen him write things. Yes, they are well written. But it doesn't seem to be something he enjoys

With all of this information, I'm going to reach the conclusion that ALL demons have a problem with language, especially written language. Even despite the fact that they are able to speak every existing language.

And I feel that this is a curious detail, because taking into account the powers they have, one would think that they could compensate those difficulties by miracles, right?

They don't. They still have those errors, and you could say it's because none of them have thought of it but... Really? None of them have thought of it? In 6000 years? I don't believe it.

So it must be something intrinsic, there's something they can't change that makes it difficult for them to write/spell.

And we could even go further, because one of the things I find curious, is the fact that Shax has problems with sarcasm. A demon, problems with sarcasm. No one in 6000 years spoke sarcastically to Shax?

I don't have enough arguments to add this as a collective demon problem, since Shax is (I think) the only one we've seen with that problem, but it's something close enough to mention.

Mixing all this up, I should mention the big elephant in the room: Demons have written records of who enters hell

We've already established that the difficulties with language go as far as the dukes, and I feel it's not jumping too far if we say that Beelzebub and Satan possibly shouldn't be spared.

So, who are these reports for? It's not like they're going to read them, I know that's hell, but why would they force themselves to go through that torture?

The only thing that makes sense is that those reports are for someone external, and there are only two options: heaven, or directly God.

And both options seem pretty cruel to me, because we know one thing: angels can read.

Aziraphale can, Muriel can, Gabriel can, we don't have any example of an angel who can't read. Crowley had a book before he fell. So we can assume that demons could read.

They could, and the fact that now they can't makes me see only one possible explanation: Falling caused them those problems.

And I feel that if we mix my two conclusions, the ending is something very ugly. Demons have problems with language, especially written language. Those problems started when they were expelled from heaven. They make written records that are possibly presented to those who turned them into demons.

Basically it is a very strong level of cruelty.

Please recognize the demon's rights. They still deserve to have rights

[solitude-of-stars]

Yesterday I got accused of using AI for my writing

At first, it simply baffled me. Then I thought about it for a while until I didn't really know what to think or feel anymore. Anger? Amusement? Resignation?

A bit of context:

This December I posted an Advent Calendar for the fandom I'm most active in. One fic a day for 24 days. Various ships and other relationships, various plots and AUs, and all that jazz. I'm assuming this is what the person is referring to by mentioning "mass production".

Now, I know there are people out there that actually write a fic a day. I might have even tried something like that had I been younger, but these days I'm working full time, I'm married, and I need to do annoying things like chores, so I definitely didn't have the time or mental capacity to do that. Instead, I started planning and writing the fics in mid October and it took me almost two months to finish all of them. I don't know exactly what mass production in the context of AI fic means, but I have a hunch that writing roughly 27k words in the span of two months is not that.

I am also not a native speaker. I've been writing fic on and off for over 15 years, but I've only really started writing in English less than two years ago. I take great pride in it, and I've always gotten very positive feedback. Not a lot (because my fandom is mostly dead by now), but whenever people comment, they are very kind and supportive.

Nevertheless, deep down I still expect criticism of my writing. Bad grammar, wrong use of idioms, awkward wordflow ... you name it, I've probably worried about it. There's this feeling that probably a lot of non-native speakers experience: that you have to be better than most native authors to even be considered good enough. Every little mistake, typo, every awkwardly written sentence is proof that you're 'faking it', and that people will see you for the fraud you actually are and tell you to just go back writing in the language you're used to. No one has ever actually told me that, fortunately, but it's a feeling that has been persistently nagging at me since I changed to writing in English.

So yeah, I expected criticism. I just didn't expect this particular brand of it.

I understand the concern about AI fanfics. Really, I do. I read about fandoms getting flooded by authors churning out fic after fic after fic. Personally, I am very lucky that the fandom I write for is so small that AI is basically non-existent (as far as I know). There's only been one author who openly wrote a fic by using generative AI, but the fandom collectively chose to ignore it. No hits, no comments, no interaction all together, until the author deleted the fic.

Now, the only use of AI one could maybe accuse me of is that of an online translator, in the rare case I'm searching for a word/sentence and it's not this abstract feeling but something I can actually pinpoint in my native tongue. But that's it. I've never even considered using AI for one of my fics, because writing has always been enjoyable to me. Why would I leave something that gives me joy to a machine to do it for me?

But, in all honesty, I don't think the bad part about the comment I got was that the person thought I might have been using AI. Because I know I didn't, and most of my readers know it as well.

No, the devastating part to me is that the person feels the quality of my fic can be compared to whatever it is AI would spit out. That's what's getting to me.

I don't actually mind constructive criticism. Maybe it's a generational thing, but I grew up on fanfiction sites where you were actively encouraged to tell the author how they could do better. There were how-to-write-comments that gave you pointers what to focus on, and what could be considered helpful constructive criticism.

Or maybe this is actually a cultural thing. Coming from a country of people that are generally considered very -and sometimes uncomfortably - honest, I don't mind people telling me if there's something specific I could improve on. Will it sting? Yeah. But keep it nice and civil, and I won't be angry at you for it - I'll appreciate it.

Comparing my writing to, or even accusing it of being written by AI, feels like something entirely different. It's a very simple way of saying that what I write is something even below mediocrity. That it reads like it was written by an algorithm that can't understand and will never experience human feelings. Can't comprehend emotions, something that can't be captured by lots of 1s and 0s. Equates me to a thing that takes the stories and feelings other people created, before bunching it all up into one big pile of words, lifeless and replaceable.

And that's what's getting to me. I always thought my fics were good. Not great, but good enough that I personally enjoy rereading them. Writing helped me through some hard times, helped me find joy in creating again, something I remember from when I was younger but hadn't felt all throughout college. Writing was fun, a wonderful way to pass the time, and a way to connect with other people who enjoy the same nerdy stuff as me.

Now I don't feel like writing anymore.

Some people will probably say I'm exaggerating. That it's just one comment among many positive ones. And they'll be right. It's only one comment, but just like one bad day can make you feel like all the good ones you accumulated before don't matter, one bad comment can negate all the positive ones.

Fortunately, I had many people come to my defense already. Geat people that keep telling me I have worth. That congratulated me for writing 24 fics in time, that tell me I improve with every fic I write, and that never get tired of being simply awesome human beings. I'm lucky to have them.

My anxiety keeps telling me they're all wrong. That the one person is right, and that I should just stop trying. That I'm not good enough, that I will never be good enough, and that it's a miracle I've managed to fool them this long anyway.

Now, I will get over it. I know I will. I'll meet my friends and celebrate New Year's, I'll read a good book, listen to some music, play some Skyrim, and, before I know it, I'll be back in the mood for more writing. I can handle it. Because my enjoyment will be more important, in the end.

But you know who wouldn't have gotten over it this easily?

16 year old me. She would have been completely gutted over getting a comment like this. And I know there are many teens like her out there who are probably getting similar comments on their fics. And they don't deserve this.

So I guess what I want to say with my elaborate rambling is this:

Please stay kind. I know, AI is terribe, and seeing people using it to do something that you enjoy, and take over all those safe spaces we have built for ourselves, flooding carefully curated and beloved tags, is incredibly frustrating. And I'm afraid that I don't have a solution for that.

But please think twice before throwing around accusations like the one I've gotten. Maybe you actually find somebody who secretly used AI. They probably won't care enough to stop. But more likely you'll find someone who's just taking their first steps, deciding to write and post something they care about. That takes incredible courage, especially for people that write in a language that isn't their native one. They simply want to reach people, want to interact with them in a way that wouldn't be possible in their own language.

Don't ruin it for them.

[chaos-in-deepspace]

Hi, I'm really sorry if i am troubling you with this, but you’re the only person who had made detailed posts about ai writing and plagiarism and i've had so many thoughts ever since I read them.

I'm sorry for using anon. actually i wasn't sure who i should talk to this about, but i hope you can understand me.

i don't know/not sure if what i did is wrong, but i think there might have been some wrong turns I took while writing. but I'm not sure, so that's why I'm asking for your opinion.

i really love reading and i really really want to get into writing, and I'm hoping one day i can write my own book when i am good at it and confident in my skill. But for now, my grammar and language skills are very limited, so I'm trying to write fanfics, not just because it's fun but because it helps me with learning.

I've only ever posted one story, and I will admit that i used chat gpt when writing it. but not in the way you think, but I'm sure it is still wrong. I don't know lot of words, and sometimes I don't know how to write some phrases. While I have all these ideas and plots about a wonderful story, it's still hard for me to convert them into beautiful sentences. so I often use google translate, translating the sentences from my language and then use chat gpt to correct the grammar and rewrite if it's wrong.

I didn't realise it was wrong then. But now I do. And I'm sorry.

I know plagiarism is bad, and I have never supported it and I will never ever steal from another creator's work, but until I read your post about ai, I didn't know I have been doing that myself. And I'm really sorry for that. because I never thought of it that way, and thought 'I'm just translating, it's still my ideas and all' but it's still wrong

I have deleted the story now. and I am trying to write every story without a translator as much as possible, and absolutely no ai. I'm trying to improve (even though my now story drafts look like gibberish lol) but yeah.

I just also wanted to say, you're doing a great job, thank you for speaking up for authors and their hard work. I know some people disagree with you, but you've been an eye opener for me. thank you for spending your time reading this, i hope I didn't take much of your time. Have a nice day ♡

Alright so here's my two cents on this situation: What you did wasn't wrong at all. In fact, if someone is going to use AI for writing, this is how it should be used.

I have never believed that AI is the most terrible thing in the world. It can be rather helpful in certain aspects, and if someone wants to use it in order to help them, then so be it. I'm adding a cut here because this post is rather long, so feel free to continue reading if you want to hear my explanation about why using tools like this isn't inherently bad.

I assume English isn't your first language from what you've told me. You're trying to write an entire story in a language that can be rather difficult with finessing the right words and phrases to get your thoughts across. Using something like google translate to write in your language and then converting it into English isn't bad. People use google translate all the time on websites in order to read the things.

Putting it into ChatGPT to help with the phrasing also isn't an inherently bad thing. You were the one who wrote those words in your language, had to translate it, then realized perhaps you needed a little extra help and had ChatGPT clarify it, because google translate is very rough when it comes to getting words across and it often is broken English in a sense.

You were using tools accessible for you in order to get your ideas across in a language that takes even Native English speakers years to write and understand perfectly. I'm still learning new things about grammar all the time and I've been writing since I was 13. I've been writing for 13 years and I still make mistakes with my grammar and have to learn new things.

If you were using ChatGPT to write the fic itself, then that's bad. That's not a good thing to do. You were writing it yourself and just needed some help making it right. It's the same as using a tool like grammarly to check your work for typos or grammatical errors. It's not writing for you, it's assisting in areas a lot of people lack in. People have been using editors for centuries to go over their writing, and now and days we just happen to have software for it.

My issue and what I'm fighting against is the use of Generative AI. To make it simple, I'm just showing how my brain works with different AI uses for writing. I'm sure there's proper technical names for them, but this is simple for me to understand it:

Grammatical AI: Things like Grammarly who's sole purpose is to go through a document and correct grammar, and even suggesting better ways to write a sentence. This is a great tool, and while it can't compare to having a human editor, it definitely can help make things clearer. Translation AI: These are things like Google Translate or other translator APPs. It takes things from one language and converts it to another. Most of the time when this is used it does things word-for-word without much mind to how grammatically something would be set up. We all know every language has it's own ways of speaking and writing in a grammatical sense, and often times translator apps don't take into account of these nuances. The entire purpose is to simply translate, and yes, sometimes it doesn't get things across correctly. Idea AI: Things like ChatGPT can actually be used to help get ideas. If you have writer's block you can ask ChatGPT to perhaps give you some prompts to help you write. This is one of the ways I agree AI can be used for creativity. While a lot of them are very generic, it's up to you to actually make it into a reality and add your own spin to it. Generative AI: This is the form of AI I have issues with. All AI programs have to take learning from somewhere, that's just how AI works. Grammarly, Google Translate, and ChatGPT all take information from the internet in order to generate things. Something like Chatbots, however, really takes the cake. I say Chatbots are more like toys. They're fun to playa round with when bored, but that should be the end of it. It can generative entire stories and conversations, dialogues, etc by ripping things from say: Tumblr, AO3, alongside other platforms where people post their writing.

When I say using Generative AI is bad, I mean it. Those words are not your own, you're allowing AI to completely write everything. It's not "helping" you, it's doing the work for you. It does this by stealing from other people who did put in the effort to write things.

While using ChatGPT to reword sentences is a form of Generative AI, it's a lesser version. You're feeding it information that you wrote and asking it for help. Again, you still wrote it. If you ran your entire fic through google translate and then asked ChatGPT to help clarify things and fix grammatical errors, it's still your writing in a sense. While it's definitely not good to do this, it's not nearly as bad as having a Chatbot write everything for you. Again, you had put in the work and needed assistance.

If you'd like a good example of Generative AI that does all the work, and what many people are doing (although they might be RPing with it, so about a quarter of the writing is done by a human), then check out this post. My friend Atty did a phenomenal job in showing in real time how a fanfic can be made simply by using a Chatbot. It's giving a bot the most simple instructions and writing entire paragraphs that, if he wasn't an honest guy, could've copy/pasted and then posted to tumblr while claiming he wrote it.

That's the AI I don't like. The ones where people don't put in any effort to get their fic "written" and then have the audacity to claim it as their own. What you did wasn't bad, but if I can make a suggestion for moving forward:

Make friends who are willing to help you. There's so many writer communities out there who are more than willing to help others. Not only can they read your fics before you post them and let you know how amazing they are, they can also:

Help you reword things that don't sound correct.

Explain why they would do something in order to help you grow as a writer.

I know I've helped a friend out who learned English on her own. I went through her entire fic and wrote notes as to why I would change something, why I do things grammatically, amongst other things. You'll learn a lot more and improve as a writer if you have help from others. People are willing to help, trust me.

I hope you're not kicking yourself over what you did, though. I'd say go and repost the fic, and all you have to do is add a little disclaimer of:

"Hey, English is a second language and I'm still learning. I had to use Google Translate and ChatGPT in some sentences to help me structure it better. All writing was done by me, and the idea is my own."

Or something along those lines. Honesty is always the best policy. I hope you have an absolutely wonderful day, and I wish you the best of luck on your writing journey!

-------

Apologies for typos. I am absolutely exhausted today and did not go back to reread anything to make corrections.

[littlexscarletxwitch]

i’m not sure if this is where i request. but i’ve been thinking about this for a while. it would be cool if it was a super overprotective girlfriend reader protecting florence from paparazzi. or maybe even reader as her bodyguard or something? totally okay if not. <3 love your writing 😘

── ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎ 𝗺𝘆 𝗸��𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗼𝘂𝗿

paring: florence pugh x fem!reader

tag(s): fluff, established relationship, r literally being protective over flo, short blurb, sfw but slightly suggestive

warning(s): grammatical errors, unedited, not proofread, language, overprotective behavior (but not possessive, more like cute), mention of consuming alcohol

word count: 1.2k

note: This was so fun to write. Thank you for requesting it, anon. I mainly took inspiration from the movie "First Daughter", hope you like it, anon. I'm not a native english speaker, so please let me know about any sort of mistake. Hope you enjoy! <3

requests are open! + check my rules here <3

It was 4AM, you felt your eyes starting to close, but you had to remain awake. 

It wasn’t just about her, protecting her, making sure she was alright because you cared about her. But it was also your job after all. It was like that stupid movie, “First Daughter”, where the bodyguard fell for his client. You internally laughed at the memory of Florence showing you that movie. 

You had been working for her only for a month at that time. She would always tease you, flirt with you and be touchy around you. You figured it was just her personality, but once she insisted that the two of you watched that movie, everything became crystal clear. It was her way of telling you: “Hey, you idiot, I really like you.”

At first you tried to resist her, but there was no way of resisting that woman. She knew exactly what to do and say to make you a flustering blushed mess, and then you fell for her. You didn’t realise at the beginning, but you started to behave differently in her presence. You would constantly be looking out for her, more than you already did before, making sure she was always on your sight. You would get this sick feeling on your stomach when she would get all touchy and flirty with other people. You tried to hold your feelings, you weren’t supposed to fall for her, your boss of all people. But you did and she was there to catch.

And now, you were waiting for her to end partying. You smiled at the sight of her, she was having the time of her life, swaying her hips back and forth, a drink in her hands. She noticed you stare at her and smirked. She motioned for you to come, to which you just shook your head. Not only were you working but you didn’t want to interfere with her and her friends. All you wanted to do was home and cuddle her. Still, she insisted. And once you made no attempt to go to her she made her way towards you. 

“Hey,” she said once in front of you. She rested her arms around your neck, caressing your nape. 

“Hey.”

“Why don’t you join us?”

“I’m working,” she chuckled. 

“Yeah, I know. My knight in shining armour,” she mumbled, biting her bottom lips. “But I want to dance with you, have fun with you.”

“And we can do that, just not now, okay? Now, go and have fun, I’ll be right here,” you pecked her lips and gently pushed her forwards. 

She huffed at your words but still decided you were right. So she partied until she couldn’t feel her feet anymore, until her mind was clouded with alcohol and her ears couldn’t take the loud music anymore. 

She, then, once she had enough, clumsily made her way to where you still were waiting for her. You hadn’t moved not even one inch. A glass of what she assumed was water on your hands. As she got closer to you, she noticed you were holding back your smile. 

“What are you laughing at?” she gently smacked your arm. 

“Nothing,” you replied, but she wasn’t buying it. 

“I look like a raccoon, don’t I?” realisation hitting her.

“A really cute raccoon,” you tried to say with your most serious expression, but it faltered once you took another look at her smudged make-up. 

She rolled her eyes at you. “Take me home,” she dramatically said, her arms reaching out for you. 

Through your earpiece you communicated with Florence’s chauffeur, they replied they will be there in three minutes. While waiting for them, you ordered another glass of water so she could sober up a little. Once she was done drinking it, you heard from your ear piece that the chauffeur was right outside. 

Even though it was now 8AM, there was always a chance that paparazzi were waiting outside. You called your partner, who was waiting outside, and waited for him to give you the signal that it was okay for Florence to come out. Once he did that, you nodded to her and the both of you made your way to the exit door. Her arm wrapped around yours, holding you close to her, looking for both comfort and stability. 

As you predicted, paparazzi were waiting outside, but James, your partner, was keeping them at bay. Florence was three steps away from the car when one of them got free of James’ grasp. 

From the corner of your eye you saw the man getting closer to Florence, holding his camera close to his chest, afraid something would happen to it. Your instincts kicked in, you weren’t going to hurt him or something, but you were not going to let him get away with a picture of her. Your team work really hard tonight to keep everything away from the public eye and that shithead wasn’t going to fucked that up. 

You gently pushed Florence inside the car, so she could get inside faster, and quickly made your way towards the man. He was already snapping photographs of her and you didn’t like it one bit. You snatched the camera away from his hands and threw it to the ground. The man’s eyes grew wide as he saw the device breaking into pieces. You quickly grabbed the memory card so he wouldn't have any pictures at all. 

“Sorry for that, mate. Here, for the damages caused,” you handed him 100 bucks. 

“This isn’t enough, that was a $2000 camera.”

“Not my problem, mate. Have a good one,” you said before heading to the car where Florecen was waiting for you. 

“You are unbelievable,” you heard James say before getting in the car, you could hear the smile in his tone.

Florence was feeling sleepy but that didn’t stop her from watching what you did, —what you did for her. She knew that you were just doing your job, but she also knew that you loved taking care of her, in any way you possibly could. 

Once you were inside the car, next to her, she rested her head on your shoulder. 

“My knight in shining armour,” she repeated once again. “I have to admit, that was hot.”

“Yeah, right,” you laughed.

“I’m serious. No one has ever looked out for me the way you do.”

“It’s my job, Flo.”

“And there you ruined the moment.”

You grabbed her chin forcing her to look at you. 

“It is my job as your girlfriend to take care of you,” you clarified. Her eyes lit up at your words, a grin forming on her lips. 

You then leaned in connecting your lips to hers, tasting the alcohol in her lips. Moaning once you felt her tongue inside your mouth, your hands tugging at her short hair. But the moment was cut off when you heard someone cough. 

“We are home,” the chauffeur said. You noticed that they were embarrassed having to witness you and Florence. 

“Let's get inside and finish this,” Florence said, getting out of the car and pulling you from your tie. 

“See you tomorrow, Alex,” you quickly said to the driver, before following quickly after Florence. 

Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated! <3

-M

[traincarsandstars]

Some Thoughts about Amphoreus

So I have a lot of thoughts about Amphoreus; however, they are still in a state of "word salad", so today I'm going to share some recent thoughts I have about Amphoreus and post the old ones on a later date.

To sum up everything I have so far, Amphoreus is stuck in a memory loop thanks to Aglaea. Starting from when Aglaea started gathering the Heirs (flame chasers) to their possible defeat by the titans. However, no one realizes that they are in a repeating memory except for the Elysia exp because it's always the Elysia exp.

However, I realized that I missed a few things that suggest that there might be another reason for Amphoreus repeating.

So, when initially read this statement, I thought it was insinuating that that Aglaea had been repeatedly summoning the heirs giving me the idea that things are looping.

Especially with this part.

And knowing what happened to the Flame Chasers in Honkai Impact, I assumed that they failed which is what caused Aglaea to repeat everything. But after rewatching the trailer, and rereading her drip marketing I've come up with a another possible outcome.

What if, instead of failing the Heirs succeeded in taking down the Titans? I say this because of this part here:

At first I though that the speaker was insulting that this was the unreachable end goal that they had. That was what they originally set out to do. However, the more that I read it, the more it sounds like they were able to reach their goal. What they use when talking about the Heirs end goal (smiting the gods, returning the divine fire, etc) is an Em dash. A Em dash (—) is used in writing to elaborate or add additional information.

Examples:

"Sir Henry Wallace sat at his ease in his favorite chair—carved wood with a stright, rigid back and a worn rose-colored cushioned seat—in front of the fireplace in his bedroom."

Here, it's giving us more information about Henry's favorite chair.

"Multiple languages are spoken in Canada—English, French, and Native languages."

Here it's telling us what languages are spoken in Canada.

So if we look at the Drip Marketing again...

We now see that the endless journey included smiting the gods, returning the divine fire, and granting rebirth to Amphoreus. Which poses the question: If the Heirs completed their goals, then why did Aglaea put them on repeat?

The answer to that question I believe is found in their trailer.

In the trailer, we see a red hand placing a crowned chess piece on the underside of a board.

On the top side, we see figures with bases possible representing that they are game pieces as well. There is also a blue banner directly below where the chess piece is on the underside of the board. I believe that this part of the trailer is insinuating that there was political maneuvering during the whole titan ordeal. And based of the speakers words here might have infiltrated or used the heroes. I would also like to point out the color scheme here, which is mostly red and black, we do not see the colors anywhere else in the trailer except in the beginning of their trailer when the speaker is describing the destruction of Amphoreus.

Based on all of this, I would like to speculate that the reason why Aglaea put Amphoreus into a memory loop is because of the political strife that came after the Titan's defeat.

But still, I'm just guessing. If nothing else, I hope this helps draw attention to some of the trailers visual story telling because there is a lot.

(@reversescale) Tagging you because you already listened to my original mega word soup on discord OwO

[amethystina]

Hey <3

There's a personal question that I want to ask you, but I completely understand if you don't want to answer it!

What county are you from? I saw in one of your posts that English is not your first language, so I got curious.

(I'm brazilian, and until now I haven't met people that like The Devil Judge that are not from the US or Korea)

Hi! I'm from Sweden :D

Which was something I didn't tell people at the start of my fanfic career because I was afraid that they would judge my writing more harshly if they knew. Which, sadly, turned out to be true. As soon as people found out about it, I got messages telling me that "oh, that explains why your grammar is so bad. I wondered why a native speaker would write that poorly" or "oh, so that's why you misspell things so often?"

The latter was honestly the most annoying because, more often than not, it was typos, not me misunderstanding the language xD

Funnily enough, I'm now on the opposite end of the spectrum. People seem genuinely surprised when I tell them that English isn't my first language. But I think it still shows in some of my grammatical choices and my lack of understanding of some slang (I've never even visited a country where English is the majority language x'D )

Anyway! Trust me when I say that there are a lot of people who love The Devil Judge from other countries! Or at least I assume that based on the comments I get, which are sometimes in other languages (Google Translate is my friend xD)

Which I LOVE, by the way. I honestly don't care what language the comments I get are in, I'm just happy that my writing moved people enough that they want to comment. I consider that a huge compliment, especially the times I've been told that the person is just so excited they can't translate their thoughts into English. That's such a wonderful thing to hear 💜

So to all of you out there who have another first language than English: don't ever feel guilty for writing comments in your native language and never feel the need to apologise for your "bad" English. It's not bad. You're doing great 💜

[bubblegumflavor]

Something I keep thinking about the past days and just want to get off my chest. That people should remind themselves once in a while to not treat non native speakers as if they were native speakers. I got confronted with something someone took out of context from a conversation I had with someone else where I tried to describe an emotion like.. the heavyness of the emotion and I used a word for it and the person took it as I was saying something else from the conversation was that word. And I wasn't feeling very well that day, I was literally in bed with a fever and they confronted me with my absolute trigger topic I am not willing to talk about anymore (and they know that) and I said to them 'I don't discuss this, please don't talk to me about that' and then tried to write an explanation on where they got me wrong and that I wasn't talking about the thing itself but just an emotion of mine (and they knew I don't like the thing itself so I don't even know why they felt the need to confront me about it) but they came into my dm with a complete opinion they already created about me which was all kinds of wrong but I couldn't even start to try to explain because I was immediately blocked. It's not a big loss for me tbh because recently I already got into a sitiuation with them where they demonstrated pretty clearly what person they seem to believe I am and I have no interest in being friends with people who assume I'm an asshole over just trying to be kind and supportive so whatever, but this just got me thinking of how often people get me wrong and I don't understand why or how because I am not a native speaker. I don't know double meaning of stuff, I'm glad if I know the right or a in my head fitting vocabulary. I always try to be as clear as possible so I don't get misunderstood. Same way the other way around, I talked to a super nice person recently where I thought they made a hate comment but it was just some slang I didn't understand and the translator gave me "they think I'm annoying and disagree". But it was the opposite. But I only found out because I talked to them instead of instant blocking them. This is how misunderstandings happen and I just write this because I think a lot of drama could be avoided if people would give other people the benefit of the doubt especially if they're native speakers vs non native speakers. English is a language I'm learning. I don't have people in my real life who talk to me in english or have slang and double meaning I naturally learn along while it develops. Like it took me forever to figure out the skull emoji means laughing, I interpreted it as 'dead serious' because that made sense to me but it changed the vibe of everything the person using that emoji was saying. (just an example)

So yeah.. just wanted to get that off my chest because though it might look easy and my english is well enough, I still don't think like a native speaker and never will unless I live several years in a country with people who are native speakers.

[exonerin]

How many and what languages do you speak? Is English your first language or why are you writing in English?

English is not my first language, no. I speak three languages. English, my native language, and German (but I'm definitely not fluent in German).

So, why do I write in English?

When I went to middle school, I discovered the English curriculum assumed that elementary school had already given English lessons. Possibly, they also assumed you would have come into contact with the language online or through other media. I'm not sure.

However, this wasn't the case for me. I knew perhaps three words because we had four Winnie the Pooh mugs with English words on them at home, and my mother refused to translate them after the third mug.

This meant I had already missed the boat for English. Predictably, my predicament worsened. In High School, things were... worse. Because we started reading English literature while I had always picked books for very young kids for my book discussions in middle school. I couldn't read the books. I literally couldn't.

And 16-year-old-me shrugged and figured whatever. Not my problem (despite it being very much my problem).

But 17-year-old-me realized it may be a little problem. And so I switched my internal dialogue to English to practice. And my vocabulary was tiny, so this was a bit of a problem initially. But it worked. Nevertheless, I quickly realized this wouldn't get me very far. because my internal dialogue didn't need that many words and wasn't complex enough to compete with my enemy: the English literature and the horrible spelling and grammar tests. So, I started writing in English, too.

I still have my first English fic. I'm opening it right now. Google Drive is having some trouble (I would also have trouble opening something with so many crinkly lines). It's a 158k long behemoth of terrible grammar and bad writing. But that's how we learn.

I actually have a lot more than I expected from these first few years of English fic writing. I even have one Star Wars fic from this period (never finished, but that's beside the point)!

Anyway, I stuck with English because English is a beautiful language to tell stories with. It works way better for storytelling than my native tongue.

[ray935sworld]

Hello, hello) it's me? yes, finally 👻. I’ve got my nails done, so now I could use 💅 just for fun (I feel better if you're interested, but anyway)

I hope you've been doing well lately. I'm sorry that the last ask may have seemed passive-aggressive to you, I HONESTLY AND SINCERELY wrote it only with love and respect. (and probably with a bunch of mistakes…) English is not my native language and the semantic structure of sentences and grammar suffer from this, once again I am very sorry about it.

And FINALLY, I finally finished that wonderful chapter of my favorite divorce. Luka is my dearest stronghold of the mind, and I love him for that. I sincerely believe him, he seems so loving and caring to David, I'm glad that Marc gave him another chance.

BUT with all this fuss, I almost forgot that Marc doesn't even know what caused Mr. "I'm delusional " to behave like this and only now hears the reason. Is it horrible, did he not know the reason all this time??! What a nightmare. What a crazy hell he lives in. Oh, my dear Marc, you're wonderful, you absolutely don't deserve it.

AND yes, the scene with David is terrible, really scary and painful, and even if I understand Vale’s position (which is crazy and delusional as fuck, because it is Marc there is no way, absolutely no way, he can do that) - he believes that he was betrayed, his actions make sense, but damn it, even if you believe he is not yours, is just disgusting. Disgusting behavior. You solemnly assured me that he would answer for it, well... I'm waiting, I really have to grind my teeth, well, it's not that easy, but I'm trying.

As a wonderful @calia23 already said «MY BABY MY POOR BABY! VALENTINO DID IT ON PURPOSE! I JUST KNOW! That he crawls on his knees isn't enough, I need him to suffer!!!», Thank you so much for this.

Thank you for reading my essay,

A thousand kisses to you and your writing 💖

P.S., jokes aside, ghost-anon is absolutely love, please don't change it. Another thousand kisses 💕)

OMG HEEEY MY DEAR 👻 ANON. It's so good to hear from you again!!!

Well, what else can I say except ✨💅SLAY 💅✨

And oh I'm so sorry if it seemed like that passive aggressive was meant in a rude way. I definitely understood it like fun passive aggressive like that "you made me cry with Santi WHY?" I just read it in my head that way and thought it was funny. And please ABSOLUTLY NO WORRIES about english grammar or spelling and stuff like that. I'm not a native speaker either and I love learning languages so I totally understand the struggles. Feel free to describe if there's a word you use in your native langue that you see fitting in a situation but there no equal translation, if you want to. I really don't mind.

So about the divorce AU - OH LUCA MY LOVE 💕 when thinking about his place, making him the loving uncle even post divorce wasn't even up for debate.

And about the question if/ what Marc knew for the reason, so Marc definitely knew that Vale assumed that David isn't his son. I mean in this AU Vale even tells the press. And they had a few fights about this (and the dangerous racing still exists but is only a minor part) At a later point, I'll definitely take the fights they had during the last weeks/ months of their relationship into account and describe them. So Marc knew about the reason (that Vale believed that David isn't his biological son) but I really wanted to kind of highlight Vale's view (which will come back later too! There's a lot of figuring out to do) to show why he reacts so strongly.

I mean Vale's accusation and behavior is very extrem especially cause it is towards two people he considered the people he loves the most in the world. So I feel like the explanation that he sees David as the physical prove of the betrayal is important to understand Vale's view (even if it's wrong and he is delusional but he doesn't believes he is delusional and yes I will milk this part so much you won't believe it! Trust me, my goal is it to make you feel sorry for Vale)

And I love writing disgusting action that have somehow an understable reason so this is also just me being mean in writing ☺️😈

OH AND THAT MAN WILL SUFFER. Mentally (and physical) definitely. But be aware that this AU will kind of take very long. I hope to write soon a little more and then get to the part where I can make the chapters longer but the real suffering Vale part will only be after a little more poor David moments

OH YES @calia23 really brought it to the point. Absolutely lovely. She's amazing. Totally stunning. She is also the one helping me with all this and helps developing many rough ideas and concept. Literally I sent her essay messages after essay messages and not only does she actually reads them but she comments and ask about it!!! MUCH LOVE AND KISSES TO HER! 💕💕💕

And oooh, thank you so much, thousand kisses to you too! I'm so thankfuk for your sweet message :)

[firendgold]

Ok so bc anything i do in this fandon is specifically to piss that woman off, i gotta ask:

Do you have any ideas for fic scenarios for trans!albus and/or trans!Harry? (time travel harrydore or not, you pick)

so funny story anon, my instinctual answer for this question was "no, I've never thought about it, sorry"—but as I was writing that reply a while back, I actually started getting ideas. It was wild. (That's also why this took so long to get out, sorry!)

trans!Albus is easier for me to imagine for some reason. I had this idea where his entire early life could be rewritten just to do a deep dive into the Dumbledore family dynamics when the firstborn prodigy half-blood son is AFAB instead. How that might change Percival's actions on Ariana's behalf (or not), if he doesn't have any thoughts in the back of his mind about leaving his family in his "eldest son's" hands. How that could change the rivalry between Albus and Aberforth, who might not be super tolerant of an uppity older sister who's also queer. We still don't know much about Kendra somehow, after 1 billion years of Pottermore, but whether or not she's accepting of Albus' gender identity and sexuality could be their own spin-off fanfics, they're that fascinating. Her own Native history could then be touched on as well.

All these things together could be a point of personal conflict for Albus, who's already a living embodiment of a taboo Native/European union and might have to wrestle with what's accepted from him as a Good and Proper Woman of English society re: marriage and carrying on some (other) pureblood's line, along with protecting Ariana's secret and "making up" for his father's crimes.

I don't know if Albus' sexuality changes. If it doesn't, I can see him being briefly confused about What Elphias Is To Him when he gets older, and Elphias is getting his own messages from home about How Much Time He's Spending With That Dumbledore Girl. I imagine there would be a lot of conversations between Albus and Kendra, and Albus and other peers, about who he was going to marry and what his "prospects" were since his father's a known criminal. And Albus, beyond not identifying as a girl at all, would find all this discussion about such trivial sexist matters frustrating as hell.

Unfortunately, I see everyone at Hogwarts misgendering Albus while he's a student, or pretty much everyone. Like, he eventually tells Elphias who accepts right away (and is confused about What That Means for Him in private), and maybe a few other students, but none of his professors are Getting It. His stellar academic record probably keeps him from being bullied as much, but doesn't entirely protect him from rampant transmisogyny and slurs when he outperforms people.

But regardless, assuming the "major beats" of history play out the same way, I can see Albus being a lot more proactive re: marginalized rights than he already was in canon, and perhaps moving the overall British Society Needle way further to the left, because it's one thing to talk shit about the powerful, progressive, weird old man that no one really knows is gay but can kick your arse without breathing hard, but another thing entirely to talk shit about your trans, out and proud, progressive Supreme Mugwump who has already freed all the elves, speaks all the magical creature/Being languages, is raising your kids at school better than you are at home, AND is still gay and can still kick your arse without breathing hard.

This is all, of course, imagining that Albus is AFAB and identifies as male. If it's the other way around and Albus is AMAB and identifies as female... I can't even imagine. I'm not cool enough ig

As for Harry, it's weird but I don't have any trans headcanons for him during his Hogwarts years. It's kind of similar to how I don't read many genderbent!Harry fics unless I adore the author, because even though I'm a girl I can't imagine Harry IDing as one for some reason. (I'm very limited, I know.) BUT. For some reason this changes when you bring in time travel harrydore.

With the ship as the parameter, I can imagine an AFAB Harry who's spent his whole life chafing at the clothes Aunt Petunia gets him—because 'unfortunately' (for her), even pre-puberty, she can't just give Harry Dudley's cast-offs unless she wants The Neighbors to start lifting eyebrows and asking questions—because they're girl clothes and along with just not fitting in to the Pristine Pretentious Family with her messy hair and tight clothes and taped-up glasses, Harry has never felt like a girl. He insisted on having people call him 'Harry' as soon as he could talk and get away with it, and only has to hear his deadname from his teachers and with the Dursleys.

This all of course changes once McGonagall is reading names on the Sorting List in 1991 and just barely doesn't stumble over Harry's preferred name being on the list instead. (She is surprised only because Harry is famous. By the time Harry goes to school, there have been many other out trans students in this headcanon. But probably very few under her eye have been quite this famous.)

I've always personally headcanoned Harry as bisexual, but I don't know if that would be the case in this particular headcanon. I can still see him going after Cho, and perhaps even Ginny. I can see him having the same confusion about What Are Ron and I To Each Other that a trans!Albus had about Elphias a century ago, without ever living his Hogwarts life as a girl to anyone but his enemies (and having a lot of friction with canon!Hermione and/or Lavender as a result). I can see Draco hating Harry even more, because he always kept "her" in the back of his mind as a Dark Lady he could serve under in all ways, only to have this... boy being his rival and Quidditch better and wanting absolutely nothing to do with the Malfoys or purebloods or knowing her place.

A thought that sticks in the back of my mind is that JKR (otherwise known by me as That Woman (derogatory)) specifically wrote Harry as a boy for a lot of reasons, and the main one being that she always planned for him to live and pass on his line in the "traditional" way, and having her titular character be a girlboss would've derailed that status quo. In a universe where Harry is AFAB, I can imagine a lot of related conversations with and around Harry about this. How "she" is "the last Potter" that there will ever be, because naturally she'll marry into one of the families and the name will be lost forever. I can see this being a real bone of contention with Harry and radicalizing him, along with Voldemort and the discrimination against werewolves and house-elves and centaurs and veela (which I doubt even one dedicated Dumbledore would be able to get rid of), making him take his place as the next generation leftist magical powerhouse.

And so how does all that change his relationship with Dumbledore? I... don't really see it changing much. If both characters are trans, that's another point of connection for them that bonds them through all the mess the government and society puts them through. It makes Albus a figure for Harry to admire as a young boy ("look, the most powerful wizard in the world is just like me!") and to still anguish about as a young man ("all the choices he made that I don't agree with, all the secrets he kept from me, how do I know I won't make the same mistakes or make no better progress than he did?"). Their relationship could be all the more painful or distant if one of them is out and one is in the closet, like an Albus who never came out or transitioned and is seeing in Harry the upright boy he could have been, or if Harry is resentful of Albus living his truth because he, a knobbly-kneed adolescent girl, doesn't have the power, freedom, or influence to be who he truly wants to be.

But focus! I'm focusing! Time travel Harrydore. The specific scenario I was imagining was one where AFAB Harry never comes out to the general public. His loved ones who are his peers know, but all the adults in his life (yes, including Remus and Sirius) never get to meet him properly. They die thinking of him as "James' daughter". And after defeating Voldemort, Harry just can't take the idea of spending any more time not being the person he wants to be. He's done being the Girl-Who-Lived so he writes goodbye letters to Ron and Hermione and does some ancient ritual without anyone knowing, and instead of changing him at the molecular level it flings him back to the past.

And so unlike a lot of time travel fics (including mine lol) where Harry is grieving his true time and desperate to get back home, this Harry misses his friends terribly, but it doesn't take long for him to see being an unknown in a different time as a golden opportunity. Sure, it would have been better if he'd been flung into the future instead and maybe had more tolerant people instead of less, but no one knows who he's "supposed" to be here. So he can grow into the man he truly is!

And so while Harry is setting up his new life for himself (maybe as some personal tutor, or a backup Quidditch player, or something that keeps him out of the limelight for once?), he runs into trans!Albus who doesn't have many friends and not much else going on for him (depending on who or where Grindelwald is right then), and Harry's nervous but they hit it off and become close friends, and one thing leads to another, and...

*cackles*

Also also, and sorry for sticking this all the way at the end lol, but MUCH RESPECT for hanging around in HPF just to stick in the craw of That Woman. I think I'm adopting your philosophy for the future. ^^

[america-is-my-muse]

America's Family Explained [Countryhumans]

Fitting that I start off what I hope will be a little series with headcanons about my favorite countryhuman. As biased as I may be, I also just know the most about US history, so it seemed like the place to start. I've tried to combine actual history with sensical storytelling, because the most by-the-book interpretation doesn't always line up with what makes sense for a character backstory and I've taken some liberties in those cases. I will also be explaining the reason behind my headcanons in case people want to know how I got from A to B, not just dropping them and running

Also, disclaimer that this is MY PERSONAL headcanon/AU. You are free to agree with it or not, but don't leave hate telling me why I'm wrong, just move on because there's no established cannon in this fandom and we can all do whatever we want provided it's not wildly offensive.

Part I: Birthday

Establishing America's birthday seems like a silly thing to do, both because most people are going to immediately assume it's July 4th, 1776 and because it seems such a trivial thing to headcanon unless you're specifically setting out to write a fic celebrating his birthday.

Establishing his birthday, however, is actually really important to everything else I'm going to talk about. First of all, 1776 can't be America's birth year because that would mean that a) he just popped into existence fully formed b) he would miss all of the influential American Revolution events that took place before that and c) it doesn't make sense with the allegory of teenage America rebelling against his overbearing father Britain that I like so much. Instead, I picked the year 1607, because it is the year Jamestown, the first permanent British colony in the Americas, was established. Technically, his birthday should be May 13th, but I like having it on July 4th better, so his birthday is July 4th, 1607.

Part II: Parents

America's parents are Kingdom of France and Britain (The modern UK). This is a debated topic within the fandom from what I've seen, because the common idea that America's parents are France and Britain just doesn't really make historical sense, and frankly I agree.

As for France, modern France is technically the fifth Republic, which didn't come into existence until 1981, but even if you wanted to group all the iterations of French democracy together into a single personification (I don't, but theoretically), that still puts her 18th birthday in 1791 (countries turn 18 when they become independent), meaning it's really unlikely she would have been around and of any reasonable age to bear children in 1607 without any good reason to, therefor I have made Kingdom of France (her grandmother) the mother of America and his full siblings.

The reason this doesn't apply to Britain is because I'm considering the 1535 union of England and Whales as the beginning of British rule rather than the 1707 union of England and Scotland, which is when the name Great Britain formally began to be used. This means he is around to father America in 1607.

Obviously, France and Britain were at odds during this period, but they had entered into an arranged marriage when they were younger and were obligated to have children out of it, thus America and his sibs exist without breaking the universe and having this version of France and Britain actually like each other.

Obviously, there are a couple other candidates for America's parents that I could have used. Technically, Spain makes a lot of sense, but the Spanish Empire is male and married to Kingdom of Portugal in my AU, and Britain as the father is non-negotiable to me, so this isn't an option. I know some people headcanon Native America as his mother, but I feel like combining the entire scope of native culture/language/etc. into a single personification doesn't really make much sense and Kingdom of France works better story/wise (though for what it's worth the different Native American tribes/nations/confederations do have personifications).

Part III: Family

America has a lot of half-siblings between all the British and French colonies, so I'll only be focusing on his full siblings. Canada and Australia are the other two full sovereign nations in this group, Canada for obvious reasons, and Australia because Dutch Empire (the other European candidate for his parent) is also male in my AU, so they needed a mom and Kingdom of France makes the most sense due to being Britain's wife, even though there's no real French colonial history there. I don't have an aboriginal tribe as their mom for the same reason I don't have Native America as America's mom. New Zealand was also raised alongside the four of them, though her mom is actually Maori.

Besides that, America also has two twins--Confederate and Virginia (who was born Jamestown Colony)-- and the other 12 original colonies + the states they would eventually split into are his younger siblings.

The states are obviously America's children, but they're a mix of biological and adopted, and a couple more are at least partial siblings (Louisiana and Washington, for example) by blood, but they all view him as a father figure so I'm going to avoid the minutia in this post.

Ending thoughts

I think I'm going to work my way through the British/French family next for this little headcanon series, but I'll probably keep going until I stop having fun or don't have anything else to say. I'll eventually probably talk about character arcs & histories, but I'm trying to ease into this and not promise too much because I have a bad track record for putting a lot of pressure on myself over a fandom project and then quitting it entirely.

With that being said, feel free to drop and ask if you want to know my HCs about a specific country or some more elaboration on something I mentioned here. I have a pretty developed AU in my head/in google docs so there's a good chance I'll have something to say. No promises if you ask about something I don't really know anything about. I'm absolutely in favor of talking about niche subjects and less popular countries within this fandom, but that does mean I would have to do the research, and I can't promise to have the time or energy for that.

[night-market-if]

I've read an article before that Interactive fiction (specially text-based ones) are getting popular because "it has something to do with a desire to reclaim a meaningful sense of agency in our lives" and I think a lot of people who plays IF games, all have that mindset when playing and that's why a lot of published games in this type of media are mostly "player-centered". And since the main protagonist in book one still doesn't have that much control in the game's story like most text adventure games, I think most people assumed it was a character-relationships based one and when they still didn't get that much choice in that matter, they got "upset" because they couldn't understand the kind of approach the author's going for, are they telling a story on a 'traditional' print text (where the reader is expectedly passive) or not? There's a lot of IF games that doesn't focused on romance/companionship, which a few successfully deeply branched out the game enough to lose the reader/player's focus on the "romance" part and instead gives more attention to the story more. And I thought too, that with the way that you're creating the Night Market is way different from the norm. It's new to them. So I think it can create some kind of misunderstanding between the author and the readers and it requires a lot of patience from both side to fully understand each other. We're still in Book One after all ^^.

Sorry english isn't my native language hope I explained well 😅. I do love the game! It's just... I've noticed a lot of people can get too attached to characters in IFs because they got to be a part of the story through the MC after all and got to experience being with certain characters, it's expected of them to feel sad when they couldn't continue the relationship because they have different "preferences". For them, It's like trying to salvage a relationship in real life but couldn't and it's heartbreaking 😅. Though IMO that just means the author did a great job in creating well depth characters. Also keep in mind, I think a lot of readers don't fully understand what poly relationships yet, nor a mono-poly relationship. So as I said before we're still in the first book. Book one for me feels more like an introduction to the rest of the series, and I'm looking forward to learn more about the Night Market world because it's just so interesting and unique 😊.

I understand the place people are coming from when they send in their asks. I don't really mind, exactly. Some I delete just because they don't go anywhere or the answer has already been answered a billion times. But, I do get it. I knew what I was getting into when I set these dynamics up. But, I have always come from a place or 'you do not have to read this'. There are a bunch of stories out there that cater to the MC and I think that's great. Those are the stories the author wants to tell. Maybe it's because of my age in life or maybe it's because I read a variety of different types of literature, but I just don't have the same mindset. And that's fine too. It just simply means I will not be changing my mindset in how I write around to someone elses.

It is what it is. Misunderstandings and hurt feelings can happen. I just hope people understand that for as many people who do not like what I am putting out there, there are plenty of others that do. This is not a singular experience and no author should be expected to change what they are writing, due to an individual not being happy with the choices laid out in front of them. I am not a giant company that is getting paid millions to make a game. I am a mom of four, writing on my husband's days off, in an effort to just make the kind of story I would have liked to read.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Thank you to @trillscienceofficer for tagging me, this was fun! 1. The provisions shop was small, dark and clearly constructed centuries ago. (From: Can you Hear the Bumblebees Swarm?) Fic about Stonn loving T’Pring and T’Pring loving Spock and Spock thinking he might love Christine and Christine mostly just wanting to have sex. There’s also stuff about what happens to Vulcans who lose their logic because I love worldbuilding apparently! 2. “I’m going.” Noss said after dropping off the bag of spoils for Tom and the not-there doctor to shell and cook. (From: A Good Meal Away from Home) A fic from Noss' POV for this fic! I liked giving her some semblance of a backstory and might write more for her - I love yearning and requited unrequited love. 3. The home Stonn had bought for them was two stories with a small garden by the water, a gate blocking it from the road. (From: The Wanting comes in Waves) This is a T'Pring/Stonn fic in the TOS universe. I had a great time describing their house (as usual) and it was fun getting into Stonn's POV since he's such a literal side character - pretty much makes him a blank slate beyond his devotion to T’Pring! 4.Tuvok had never understood the phenomena of Vulcans becoming attracted to humans. (From: When you Speak you Speak to my Soul) Chakotay punches a guy for Tuvok and Tuvok forgets how to act. Here I was thinking about 'Learning Curve' and Vulcan challenges/ritual violence as a display of romantic interest. 5. “Tuvok, are you able to come home?” T’Pel asked. (From: To Eat Until Full) I really liked this one even though it's so niche! It's Tuvok taking care of making dinner for his family on a starbase pre-Voyager and trying to deal with being away from home. Should he speak his native language more at home? Why do his kids keep asking for pizza? Is he doing the right thing, raising them off-world? Will his father-in-law give him a break and let him cook Aikum-Shur with store-brought ingredients instead of hand-picked produce? What does it mean to be Vulcan? 6. The nape of T’Vok’s neck was a new sight and the only bit of skin on her that was unblemished by bruises from a fight Suder had heard but hadn’t seen, tucked safely away in her quarters, writing poetry poorly and growing flowers. (From: Like Scissors to the Neck) What if we went to an alien bathhouse and I noticed you cut your hair and I wrote you poetry I'll never let you read and I kind of want to kill you and I kind of want to stay with you forever and we were both women? 7. Tuvok was aware that his fellow crewmen speculated about how he would reunite with his wife. (From: Burned into Memory - Glowing Beneath the Surface) Tuvok worries about the fact that he has issues and baggage related to the delta quadrant and he isn't the same person he was before - will T'Pel still want to be with him? 8. They were in a small room sectioned off from the rest of the temple with a heavy weaving rug. (From: The Gardener Moves Forward Through Weeds) A T'Pel-centric fic set while everyone still assumes Voyager is lost forever and its crew are dead. Thinking about Vulcan love and its dangers. Thinking about Vulcan care, how alien methods of care and emotional maintenance may differ from humans. It was fun to write love as a foreign invader. 9. Amanda’s bathroom was small to give space to the other rooms in her apartment and Sarek’s things stood starkly apart from her own, even when they were mixed together. (From: Strange Thoughts) Literally just Sarek and Amanda, young, pre-kids, fucking around. 10. “Doctor?” Kes asked, stepping into sickbay. (From: Away - to or at a Distance) Wanted to write a Kes-centric fic and for some reason decided to ALSO try out a more action focused fic? I don't know how this turned out, I'm more of a 'slice of life' or 'angst' writer but hey, it's fun to try new things! I tag anyone who wants to do it, honestly. I don't know who follows this blog and also writes so it'd be fun to see!