#i didnt mean to write so much but i do get this kind of question a lot so i think ill just.. direct ppl to this from now on

[themyscirah]

This is technically a Diana's age poll but I framed it partially around Julia's rescue because that's the event I need to contextualize and whether or not Diana is a thing yet is p important for my purposes. I would keep the Pérez run and postcrisis continuity in mind when answering this bc that's when this is relevant but I'd keep in mind that even though Diana is very young there (like early 20s) we don't know I don't think if she ages differently as a child (esp as a themysciran AND being made from clay) and in some versions she is older than she looks and was made earlier

Edit: I accidentally logic-ed this out in the tags lol 🤦‍♀️but feel free to still vote however you want. Going to publish this anyway bc I think I made some good points later in my tags

[dollcherray]

W W W W WAITTT. I dont know If you do this but can you do a Δlice x reader but the reader is always sneaking into her room. (IF NOT I APOLOGIES A MILLION TIMES.)

୨୧ HANSEL ✮⋆˙

Alice x Reader who keeps sneaking into her room

Tw: Slight killing mentions but nothing more than that.

A/N: i was waiting for this moment, reader is gender neutral, Alice is frustrated, your frustrating, probably OOC Alice, Oliver and Alice arent dating in this, kind of short , im in a hurry rn so its prob poorly made 😭 (didnt know if you wanted hcs or oneshot so i did oneshot)

Type: Fluff, Romantic, Oneshot

୨୧ You are so frustrating, you really are, why do you keep doing this?

You kept sneaking into her room, and everytime, she would attack you for it and YOU somehow kept escaping her claws and KEPT coming back, she thought at first tha you had a death wish, then she thought you were trying to annoy her, but now, she just gave up and was here, feeling you lean against her and babble about something, probably about your classes and collegues.

—“Uh, Alice, are u even hearing?” your loving annoying voice invaded her ears and snapped her back into reality as she turned her attention to your face, who was puzzled and awaiting for her answer even though you probably knew it and Alice looking at your face for some time gave that confirmation, you only sighed in disappointment, but before you could even talk, Alice spoke up with her dark and firm tone.

—“why do you keep coming here?” The princess spoke up, simply looking at you with an angry countenance, and what made her more annoyed is how your expression just looked unbothered by her question and you taking your time to answer, cant u get a fucking hint?

—"Because, you seem to never have any visitors, so i decided to be your first one to keep you company" you said, normally and happily, you thought that your comment wouldnt really have much meaning to Alice but that struck the demon girl like lightning; someone, wanting to keep HER, company? thats new.

—“wait, did you have any visitors before me?" Alice looked at you with an unreadable look, as if she was analyzing something about you, before a silly smirk crept on her face.

—“well, i did have, but, none of them got out to see the light of day, so i guess your the only one that counts” Alice said with an smug and oddly cute smile no one ever got the chance to get off of her, so that alone was one heck of an achievement.

—“im honored to be the first visitor to the royal princess Alice” you said in a playful tone as you gestured a silly bown with ur head, getting a little breathy laugh out of the brown haired girl who tickled ur cheek with the point of her claw.

maybe you werent really that bad ♡

A/N:(im gonna go eat now and rest then come back to writing, dont wanna burn myself with writing)

[iloveroblox48]

to sweet ❣︎

❣︎ ➝ Masterlist here!

❣︎ ➝ Tags:katsuki bakugou and super sweet fem reader! fluff and angst(?)

❣︎ ➝ A/n:hey guys!! another katsuki fic because why not also (^ｗ^) i swear im going to write a fully happy fluffy fic soon i just need more angst practice （◞‸◟）so for now you guys will suffer ( ｀▽´ ) this is also kind of rushed anyways ignore any grammar/spelling mistakes requests open as always enjoy ⁽˙³˙⁾

When katsuki came to UA he hated everyone especially you.He didnt know why nor did he question it,he knew he hated you since the day you introduced yourself to the class all smiles and laughter, oh he hated it loathed it even everything about was to sweet the way your laughter filled the whole classroom,the way your bracelets clunked together in a beautiful remedy everytime you talked about something interesting,the way your perfume smelled like a mix of flowers and fruits,how you were so kind to everyone even him oh he hated that the most.

So obviously he made it his mission to ruin you,to break that sweet and kind personality of yours to find the monster underneath.He picked on you day after day calling you more insults than anyone else,pushing you in hallways,he even ripped your homework on “accident” after he stepped on it, and all you could do was flash him a sweet smile and carry on about your day.he wanted nothing more than to break your sweet demeanor.

One day while doing a training exercise you and him had gotten partnered up the goal was for you to find him and capture him,his goal as a “villian” was to defeat you and put the capture cuffs on you.He was so eager to finally be able to take out frustration on you and you to fight back.When this battle was going down of course he antagonized you yelling at you to come out from hiding,his location easily being revealed.You had sneak attacked him from the back giving you an easy win that wasnt even the worst part,the worst part was the fact that you had barely used your quirk and when he fell you offered a hand to help him up.

yeah he really hated you now.

He hated you so much because no matter what he did you still saw the good in him.He didnt realize this until one evening in the common room in the dorms.He was on the couch in a black tank top,red pajama pants losely hanging on his legs,reading glasses on his nose.You were in the kitchen in your pajamas,hair slightly frizzled from sleep,once you had grabbed you glass of water and a snack you headed to the couch toward him sitting down on the opposite side of him watching whatever show on your phone.He didnt say anything he just kept reading his book a comfortable silence falling over the room.Until he finally spoke up.

“Nerd can i ask you something”

“mhm”

“Why are you so damn nice to me” he said closing his book to look at you.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

You said it like it didnt pain you to be nice to him,like everytime you talked to him you chest wasn’t on fire,or maybe that was just him.Everytime he saw you his chest started to hurt,his stomach bubbling with something unpleasant maybe thats why he hated you because you could so easily get under his skin with your kindness having no trouble at all to show it and how much you believed in him.

So after a couple of months you broke down his tough demeanor he began to love the way your laughter drew him in like a siren,the way your bracelets so beautifully clanged together when you talked about something that interested you,the way he could recognize the smell of your perfume,he loved it so much it made his chest burn.

While his tough exterior began to soften,yours began to grow rougher.Your smile being a rare sight,your personality becoming colder,your responses shorter.He noticed this one day and of course he had to confront you after class.

“Oi whats wrong with you nerd”he said standing in front of your desk.

“What do you mean”you glared at him your once so loving eyes filled with hatred

“You haven’t been your usual annoying self”

“Well excuse me for being tired of being treated like shit”

“What the hell has gotten into you”

“I dont katsuki why dont you tell me huh? this is what you wanted right? to make me hate you well you got what you wanted..you know i tried being nice to you because i saw good in you,i knew that you accepting kindness would take time but you dont get to treat me like scum on the bottom of your damn shoe…Leave me alone bakugou.” you grabbed your things and stormed off

This isnt how he want this to go down he just didnt know how to explain himself so he watched you storm off that pain in his chest again,that weird bubbling feeling in his stomach,he wanted to call out to you to grab your wrist and explain everything.But he couldn’t not with the overwhelming growing lump in his throat.

Just then he realized that he didnt hate you,he never has,in reality he liked you

No he loved you

[rqbossman]

Hello Mr Bossman! (and possibly anyone else who reads this)

Its an honour to be here, I have a few questions. First i appologise for the long paragraph, you may dismiss it for the questions at the bottom. For context, i am here after finishing TMA and being up to date with TMAP, i then went over and listened to RQG, and have just finished listening to Epilogue 3 and might i just say, good sir I am grateful for your podcasts. I am currently just a few months away from my final exams of High School, and as someone who even just 1 year ago was very lost, struggling with school and being just overwhelmed. TMA isnt exactly comforting, but the characters and plot managed to serve as a good form of escapism while sorting myself out. I found my self engaging more in creative things that i had originally put aside in favour of maths and science (which i hated but thought i needed to do). I started drawing again, even if just fanart. and i found things going well. By finding podcasts, story telling and these communities have helped me in my own understanding of what i want in life. I got an ADHD diagnosis earlier this year, and almost directly after started RQG and as my first hyperfixation (that i was aware of as an hyperfixation) gosh dang it hit hard. (in a good way). Ive been able to do so much more creative writing and drawings, and got re-involved with a small dnd group with some friends who i played one game with almost 4 years ago now. So overall, inspirational sounds cringe, but it was. Im doing my best with the upcoming exams, but trying to get in to Medicine is not my only prority, and the fact ive been re-introduced to my first love (Literature and story telling), im planning to go do an Arts degree and i know i wouldnt have been able to confidently make this decision, or even have survived this long in the school system without the work you and your coworkers do. Now the sap is out of the way, Question time! (if you could answer even just one of these questions it would be so cool)(they go in order of RQ relevant to random stuff)(dont feel pressured to answer all/any. i know i wrote alot): 1. what would you say is the best way to draft out a long-form story. (with "Erasing the Line" as an example) Did you start at the end, with the links to the overarching plot.

2. When working with the players (in a form of TTRPG), what did you do to make sure you didnt miss relevant timing of plot points/ avoid creating spoilers while still giving enough detail?

3. What are good places to start with making a job out of storytelling/voice acting/audio etc. In the case of RQ, how is this a job and where do i sign up please! /j (what i mean is, how is best way/how did you find all the people involved and was there a common path that you were all on before getting to where you are now?) 4. Do you have recommendations for Terry Pratchett Books, i may be an literary-leaning student, but it seems i have never actually properly read any of his books. so where is best place to start?/What did you read first?

5. Similar authors or similar inspirations? Did you have a favourite podcast you listen to in your free time that you havnt had a hand in producing/directing/working on. 6. Favourite song/album/artist. And more specifically, what you like listening to in background when doing either writing or (for ttrpg) character research/game planing. 7. Since the olympics are on at the moment, what has been your favourite sport to watch, if you have been watching at all. Thank you for your time :)

Thankyou for all the kind words. Knowing our work is helping people really keeps our engines fired up. Let's see if I can't answer your questions: 1. I "sandbox" which is where I just shove everything I can think of into an unorganised bullet point list. Characters, setting, plot, all of it in one big mess. Then I decide what type of story you want to tell, copy and paste to a new document and then start to organise the thoughts (with the sandbox on standby if new stuff comes in I don't know what to do with). I think of it like scultping, you cut away bits and reshape until something comes out the other end that is story shaped. Only then do I attempt to build the sandcastle and put something coherant together like a synopsis or scratch draft etc.

2. Very tricky. I did a complete review and update of all notes after each recording session and don't forget the audio eas edited. I made lots of gaffs that you never heard as audience.

3. I contacted anyone I could convince to take part and just proved I was serious by overworking. I don't reccomend that route. Unfortunately it really is "who" you know. That doesn't mean chase established professionals as much as it means you need to get out there and associate with other up-and-comers who match your vibe. For me the route was long and windy and not a particularly good example. 4. I normally recommend people do not read his books in publication order. Don't get me wrong, its wonderful watching his craft grow from one title to the next but I would recommend new readers tip their toe into his later works to see if they like where he ended up before committing the time. I often recommend 'Monstrous Regiment' as people's first one. My favourite though is 'Thief of Time.'

5. I don't get much time to listen to podcasts in the last couple of years. I used to listen to a lot of non fiction. 'Stuff you Should Know' and that ilk. I also read a fair amount of classic YA fiction to unwind (Windinsger trilogy, Bartimeous, stuff like that.) 6. Paul Simon's Graceland but when working I assemble a playlist for each seperate project that is tonally appropriate. If I really need to focus I listen to Classical Minimalism. Or the Old School Runescape soundtrack. I'm allowed to be ecclectic. 7. I am actually in an incredibly busy work crunch at the moment so haven't seen any of it!

[cupidjyu]

a little crush

(ot11) when he has a crush on someone (specifically, you)(request hehe thank you!!)

notes: headcanons yet i write a whole FIC for each of them LMAO sorry!! and for the anon who requested like a whole month ago IM so sorry i am working on it, i didnt see it until yesterday :( word count: 2k

sangyeon

the tough guy

believe me when i say that this dude will put on the dumbest tough persona on

like as soon as he realizes that he has a crush, he cannot handle any of his feelings

so whenever he’s around he just… sort of puffs his chest out and does that stupid deep voice thing

“oh yeah i definitely enjoy that movie.” his throat is STRAININGGG “we should you know… *coughs* see it together some time.”

“is your voice okay?”

like bro already has a deeper voice and he makes it lower?? to seem cooler? like man you sound like kermit the frog but okay

but other than that, since his love language is acts of service, he utilizes that so much

almost too much

like if you’re thirsty, he suddenly shows up with smoothies of every single flavor

and if you ever question why, he says some dumb thing like

“im rich”

like ???????? okay????? good for you????

anyway, just know that he tries to put this tough guy thing on but if you ever so give him any affection, he will melt into putty

jacob

the overthinker

he’s just so sweet i don’t even know how to describe it

like when he realizes, it doesn’t really change anything for him. he just thinks oh!!! that’s why i was sweating around them haha

but i feel that he starts to overthink everything

because he likes a person of course he wants to treat them 10x better

but hes scared

he wants to hold your hand! and so he does. very. slowly.

like he’s um that sloth from zootopia. and you notice and you stare at him weirdly like

“do you want to hold my hand or something?”

“what!!! no!! definitely not!!” and then he will blush and pout ADORABLY. “maybe i do,” he would whisper under his breath

and it’s so hard to resist him so you just grab it for him. and he kind of just explodes

and as you’re walking together he will STILL overthink

like he’d bombard you with questions. “is my hand too sweaty? too hot? do you want to let go?”

maybe shush him up with a kiss (WHAT)

anyway, he just panics a lot, i think. so best to soothe him or he might just combust

younghoon

the softy

initially, when he thought of you just as a friend, he liked to tease you a lot. like a bunch of jokes and insults

but after he comes to the realization that he might have a crush on you, he starts treating you with utmost care

and it kind of scares you at first

“aren’t you supposed to be bullying me?”

“me? no never! who said?”

“said the same younghoon like a week ago.”

but it doesn’t mean that the caring side of him isn’t the cutest thing ever. like it’s so cute that you might just question how much sweeter he would be as a… boyfriend

what!! snap out of it!

he’s just naturally a very observant person and knows exactly what you would need

if your eyes are drooping from exhaustion, he would shyly lend you his shoulder to sleep on

a really great pillow. falling asleep on him is now your guys’ new thing. and he loves it

sometimes he’ll take a selfie of you asleep on his shoulder and he’ll stare at it for hours

hyunjae

the jokester

when i tell you that hyunjae is the opposite of younghoon

at first, he’s a bit more serious. of course he has his jokes, but he’d rather treat you with politeness

but once he figures out that he might have a crush!!! he kind of loses his mind

he knows that he’s not good at hiding his feelings, his blushing, his sweatiness, his everything

so how does he cover it up? jokes. very obnoxious jokes.

like bro will not leave you alone. of course, he never does anything downright mean, but he does enjoy teasing you

but always after the teasing, he’s completely genuine again

like if you dress up one day he’ll say “look who’s dressed up? trying to impress someone?”

and when you get bothered or flustered, he will give you a sweet smile and he’s quick to reassure you

“you look very nice today. im sorry” he will blush and laugh sheepishly

sometimes though, he gets a bit too much

like if he’s getting really really loud, all you have to do is lean closer to him

his eyes would widen and he will be quiet REAL fast (gotchu!!!!)

he will stutter and pull away and he will not talk for the next 30 minutes with how dazed he is

he gets dazed very often. if you laugh he’s in a trance. you smile and he’s smiling back with GOOGLY EYES (like how he does to chanhee LMAO)

juyeon

the clumsy one

he’s such a fool

like that’s just it

when it comes to him that he likes you, oh he doesn’t know how to act

and since he’s already clumsy, when around you he’s like 100x time clumsier

like if you guys are walking together and you laugh or smile, he’s so busy staring at you that he trips on the sidewalk

and then he has a bloody nose

and then he’s overthinking so much he’s like oh my god oh my god my crush hates me now

but once you reassure him that you still like him he will relax again. in fact he’s just too cute to resist

he definitely tries his best. sometimes he wants to get you something good to eat. he will spend so much money for you

and when he gives it to you, you’re allergic. nothing works out for him and he’s spiraling again

“i’m so sorry” he would whine. “i didn’t know”

“shh it’s okay” you would laugh. bonus points if you press a quick kiss to his hand and he will be stuttering forever

kevin

the natural lover

he is the most natural out of everyone. when he figures out why he’s been so nervous around you, he doesn’t actually change much

he’s still nervous but he isn’t going to fall down stairs for you or anything

but he is going to start giving gifts a lot more. like anything that reminds him of you he will be buying

especially his art!!!! (yk how much i love artist kevin)

like you know how artists don’t tend to draw other people when asked? if you ask him oh he will gladly oblige

he will have you posing so ridiculously and he will be drawing to the best of his ability

“you’re so focused that you’re tongue is poking out.”

he would laugh nervously “oh really? i just… want this to turn out good.”

and when he gives it to you it’s just so beautiful. like it’s so beautiful and colorful and it makes you wonder is this how he sees you??

okay so now he’s blushing. it’s his art what would one expect?!

but compliment his skills and he will definitely be giggling himself to sleep.

his sketchbook is full of you from every angle btw

chanhee

the moment capturer

chanhee seems to be a lot more somber about it

he’s genuinely not so sure if he would ever have a chance with you

so yk what he does?? he takes pictures

he loves to take pictures of other people with his camera

so when he realizes he has a crush, he will bring his camera with him whenever he’s with you

“smile.”

“you took like fifty pictures already!”

“never enough” he would stick his tongue out

he loves capturing you doing anything. eating, smiling, anything

and once at home, he will look through the pictures and laugh to himself about how nice you look

sometimes he’ll send some to you and you’ll tell him to delete them

he keeps them anyway

and at some point if you ever so leave him, at least he’ll have the memory

bro someone needs to tell him he has a chance

he’s so hopeless TT

like it isn’t the end of the world, he just needs to confess LMAO he's just scared

changmin

the runaway

when he realizes that he has a crush he will flee from you immediately

he’s afraid and doesn’t want to take it face on

so whenever you try to be near him, he will flinch away

he doesn’t want his feelings to interfere with you, he doesn’t want to bother you

but don’t worry!! as soon as you talk to him about it, he will be ALL OVER YOU in a second

though of course, he’s still a little bit more cautious then before, he puts more feeling behind his touch

he used to only hug you as a joke or to bother you

but now, he hugs you when his feelings are too strong

“wh-what are you doing?” you ask when he suddenly pulls you into a tight hug

HES SO ADORABLE he’ll just bury his face into like your shoulder and BLUSHHHH

“im just… happy with you.”

AWWWWWWW he becomes so genuine

same thing with holding hands. he used to grab it to pull you closer from a passing car. but now he does it because he believes your hands are cold without his

it’s summer time.

but don’t remind him

haknyeon

the treater

haknyeon’s love language is showing you all the places he enjoys

he already does this with you but that would be like a weekly thing

after realizing, oh boy it becomes a daily thing…

like everyday, he shows up at your place and is like

“let’s go i know a good ice cream place”

“it’s like 6 am”

“but there’s usually a long line there!”

he just loves treating you to things. when he treats you to food, he will watch with an adorable smile when you try out his recommendation

or when he takes you shopping, he will always give you compliments when you try on clothes

and after, he will buy it for you !!!!

no matter if it’s super expensive or not, he just wants to see you smile

when you catch onto the change in his behavior, he will not deny it

he will definitely be shy about it but eventually he will tell you the truth with a shy smile

sunwoo

the shy boy

ik that a lot of peoples impression is that when he likes someone, he will be a big flirter

but really he’s only flirty when he thinks of you as a friend OR when hes already dating you

in between, where he has a crush on you oh my god hes the shyest cutie youll ever see

like say he’s handsome and he cant breath for the next hour

or if you ever so smile he will be sitting next to you trying to hold in his giggle

“*covering his face with his hands* you’re so…. AGH” and you stare at him like he’s insane

you may be confused but it slowly becomes more and more obvious

like just test it out! grab his hand and he’s biting his lip so hard to hold in his smile

like once he was smiling so hard he fell backwards in his chair

he was MORTIFIED

eric

your best friend

this dude is genuinely the most confusing guy you’ll ever meet when it comes to feelings

like he has a crush on you but hes also a huge coward

so yk what he does

he friendzones himself

like BRO??

like if he does anything remotely romantic he will literally be like “oh this is what friends do!!”

like one time he literally kissed the top of your head

you ask why

“its because we’re best friends” HUH??

like no two bffs do that cmon bro fess up

but if you confront him he will never lie

hes not capable of lying hes like an honest puppy

so he will slowly begin to stop friendzoning himself

like when he intertwines fingers with you

now he says, “i enjoy being with you.” with the sweetest smile

[dduane]

I'm sad today because of how I know my favorite character's story must end; a tragedy I didnt recognize I was writing. Do you ever find yourself grieving any of your characters when you realize their story's end?

I don't know for sure that it comes up to the level of grief, for me. It definitely sometimes does get up to deep regret—when I'm either simply sad to be saying goodbye to a given set of characters, or regretting the end of the project that contains them: or both.

The point where the regret locks in particularly hard for me is when I find I've got no choice but to acknowledge that a story's near-completion means soon I won’t get to work/play with these characters any more. That understanding—that your active relationship as creator with the created is ending: the sound of a door in your soul closing, and the key turned, inescapably, in the lock—that can be really painful. Nor do I have any evidence that it gets any easier over time. This is just one of those "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it" kinds of thing.

But experience has taught me that there's no successfully eluding the acknowledgement of the difficulty of the upcoming ending (or its execution on the page): not if you're smart. Story is old—far, far older than any of us; and powerful. And yeah, sure, it's a privilege to be able to serve it; to be in service to it! But it's not necessarily a particularly kind taskmaster. It has its own priorities. And the (admittedly sometimes tempting) urge to try to cheat Story for one's own comfort tends not to end well. Indulging that urge means also doing a disservice to those to whom you're telling the story—which is immoral, since they came to you expecting you to get the job done right. But also, if you try bending the rules for your own sake, Story has its ways of avenging itself on you. It's best to just suffer the inevitable, sometimes-painful consequences of closure, and avoid going down that road.

Yet sometimes Story will unexpectedly reward you, too, when you've kept faith with it and resisted the temptations. I have a piece of work in hand where one of the paired protagonists is going to have to go through a long painful sequence of (literally) legendarily awful things. As a result I've been—maybe understandably—resisting writing those things, while also knowing perfectly well they're inescapable if the story's to be done justice, and if the character going through all this pain's to be correctly perfected. Which I owe to them.

Yet you can only resist for so long. A story's not worth much of anything until it's told. So I went digging through my notes to get re-grounded in the universe in question and start dealing with this situation. At which point absolutely without warning I found myself staring at a single piece of data that had been lying there among my notes since day one, right under my damn nose... and which contained the happy ending I'd been resigned to never finding for this story and these characters: along with the iron-clad rationale for it.

Impossible not to hear the immaterial Boss Of Me murmuring You're welcome... as it wandered off to let me get on with the actual hard work. Screams of Could I not have thought of this earlier?! seemed like ingratitude at that point. So I got on with it. (Admittedly with some grinning that probably left @petermorwood confused for a couple of days.)

Meanwhile, I absolutely hear your grief and pain. All I can say is, "Hang in there with it and see it through." And when it's passed over you, know that things will eventually look and feel better on the other side. :)

[theygotbitchesinmedia]

okay so here is her review: https://arkadymartine.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/the-traitor-baru-cormorant-a-reviewresponse/

admittedly its from 2015- i haven't poked around to see how she may have changed how she feels about it, and i know she did blurb seth's recent scifi novel (Exordia), so there's no bad blood there or anything. it's also a positive review, in general- she ends with this sentence: "I highly, highly recommend this book; I have not thought so much about something I read in a long time."

i am also coming into this as someone who has read all of seth dickinson's work for the game destiny, where he was near-singlehandedly responsible for a good oh… 80% of the interesting women (& overall interesting concepts lol!) in the game, and his writing of one of those characters in particular as a complex and flawed character got him bullied viciously off of all social media. if you've tried to find his social media presence and havent found anything, that's why. so i mayhaps have a little more emotion in the game.

THAT SAID. here are some specific parts from her review i find really fucking annoying! and color the way i feel about Memory & Desolation, despite them being so incredibly targeted at me as a classics person AND someone who fucking loves the specific sub-genre of scifi her novels are.

"[Traitor] asks a question which I find compelling as a student of an empire and as a queer woman. That question is: what do we gain by complicity? What do we – we barbaroi, we women, we queer people, we imperialized – what do we get when we say yes? When we say yes I will hide my true nature? When we say yes I will subsume myself into the beautiful machine? When we say can we speak English? Or the literature I love just happens to be written by straight white men – and mean it, too, mean it with the kind of depthless love that a person can have for a text that speaks to them, which holds up a mirror to them?"

i dont think the use of the greek word for barbarian does anything here (she also keeps coming back to the greek term orthos in her review, which also pisses me off lol), i dont think empire is a "beautiful machine," and i don't think the invocation of identity politics is useful. like. i know she's a byzantine scholar but if your first association with empire is purely a finite Historical Empire instead of, like, modern US imperialism, or British colonialism, you are going into this discussion with a certain set of values and opinions! a set of values and opinions that let you call an empire a "beautiful machine" in all earnestness. this claim probably seems unsubstantiated and nitpicky now just from this excerpt but ill come back to it with more i promise. on the idpol front, she also says immediately after this that she does believe that straight people can and should write queer people, but that they should listen to queer people when they point out those errors. she then continues:

"But then, critique: there are two points on which I think Dickinson’s portrayal of a queer protagonist has faltered, and I think both of these errors arise from the fact that he isn’t part of – as far as I know at the time of writing this review – a queer community. Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires… …For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person… Secondly, I wonder where queer people in Falcrest are…"

theres more to these excerpts, but. i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core? moreover i think the way seth does it with svir is very very well done, and illustrates the hypocrisy of empire in a way that does NOT seem like what martine is asking for here!!!

"Why am I invested? I myself am a student of empire. I’m a Byzantinist. My academic work is about empire and its seductions; it is the animating principle of my professional life. And: I am myself someone who loves order over disorder. Who looks for systems in all things. Who is comforted by structures; who is concerned deeply with propriety. But here’s my real criticism of this book: I don’t buy the seduction of the Masquerade. And I think if this book fails, it’s there: in that its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil." … "The Masquerade isn’t civilized. It’s civilization, but I don’t recognize it as civilized, and this is a problem with a constructed empire. An empire relies on itself as the definition of civilization – I would footnote here Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch as a SFnal example of an empire which is built on this principle, and which, for this reader at least, achieves the facsimile. (But then my ancestors were not enslaved, we were exterminated; not annexed, but exiled. Perhaps I like the Radch better than the Masquerade because I can find a place for myself in it, and cannot imagine a place within the Masquerade someone like me would ever be safe –)"

and THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE IS MY BIGGEST PROBLEM. critiquing the masquerade as not "seductive" enough, calling it too evil to have people join it- how does someone miss the point THIS badly??? like. are you FUCKING serious??? how do you read a book about the immense violence of colonialism and your problem is that it is boohoo too violent for people to join willingly. google literally fucking anything the US has done ever!!! and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

and i think this particular approach bleeds into her books. i read them at Least 2 years ago, so this is mostly vibes-based, and i will avoid spoilers.

there is such a focus on the allure of the imperial core, on the "beautiful machine" of the empire as she calls it. there is violence done, but it is abstracted away from the wealth of the imperial core. there are no economics there. the empire sees her independent station as a backwater, and there is some cultural tensions there, but there is no realistic violence and exploitation! it is not clear at all what maintains the empire, besides some abstract idea of trade. i also don't know what her Point is with the naming & language conventions, which are very clearly inspired in part by ancient Mayan- e.g. the empire and core planet are called Teixcalaan. and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

and on the ~representation~ front, i also don't think she does a better job than seth tbqh!!! i felt like the characters getting together came out of nowhere and felt anticlimactic- there is also not the tension i think there should be with the main character being an ambassador-ish and the love interest being… idr. junior intelligence officer iirc? idk! and for all her critique of baru's desire for women not feeling "real" or present enough, i do not remember the main character in Memory having any real focus on it!

i enjoyed Memory just fine, but i don't think it says anything interesting or novel or even critical about empire, and i found her review of Traitor extremely shallow and useless, if very revealing about her own outlook on empire lol!!!

this has been at best Minorly proofread and edited but im not like, writing an academic essay on the matter and so i apologize for any inconsistencies.

oh man thanks for this this is really interesting. i went and read the whole thing and i agree a ton with your critique. i'm going to stick my thoughts below the cut because i went on for a bit here, in typical fashion.

i personally didnt find the depiction of baru's desire to be unrealistic, and also this was a review of Traitor, specifically, so where on earth would baru have heard about queer people in falcrest? and more importantly, why should we care so much about queer people in the imperial core?

NO BUT EXACTLY... for starters this is explicitly a novel about colonized people taking place in a colony where none of the major characters are from the empire. where, when, and how would we take the time to explore what queerness looks like for them and more importantly, like you've asked, why the hell should that be a priority for the narrative in this case.

in terms of 'i found this to be an unrealistic depiction of queer desire' 9/10 times i feel like what that means is 'i found this to be an unrelatable depiction' which is an entirely different critique. i know i'm working with two additional books worth of context that martine isn't working with here. but even taking into account just the characterization we have for baru in traitor i think this is suuuuch an unfair complaint. i'm gonna pull the entire quote she says about baru's sexuality here because i have additional specific gripes with it.

Firstly, I disbelieve Baru’s awareness of her own desires. In the first portion of the book, I do not ever feel the weight of Baru’s own awareness of her sexuality; there is an absence of carnality, a kind of intellectual version of lesbian desire which is, to me, inconsistent with the sort of desire I expect. Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. Further, considering how very much the Empire of Masks and Increastic philosophy criminalizes the sin of queer desire, I wish Baru had struggled more with the nature of her desire. For the first portion of the book, her queerness felt more like a character trait assigned to her for reason of plot than a naturally built part of her as a person. This markedly improved in the second half, where Baru notices women in a way she does not notice men.

For starters, it is insanely hypocritical to me to complain that her desire both isn't carnal enough and she processes it too intellectually, but that she isn't struggling enough with it. Baru intellectually processes things! That's her entire character from the getgo! She also has a difficult time conceptualizing other people as fully realized beings with their own agency. These character traits paired together don't make for a particularly passionate and carnal relationship to her sexuality. She is also, at her absolute oldest in this book, 21! (Or 22? I can't remember. I know she spends 3 years in aurdwynn) and has spent her entire youth being groomed to be a scholar. Of course detached intellectualism is her primary way of navigating all things. Why wouldn't it be?

Baru primary motivation is to save taranoke, she wants to save the taranoki way of life, and part of that way of life includes an acceptance of nonhetero nonmonogamous relationships. Sure, a different character arc may have involved baru actually internalizing and then having to break free of the trappings of race, gender, and sexuality that the empire tries to impose upon its citizens. but that's not baru and acting like this is a writing flaw rather than a character choice is insane to me.

There's absolutely no reason for Baru to lie awake at night pontificating about how wrong and dirty of her it is to want to have sex with women because we are never lead to believe even for a minute that Baru puts any emotional weight in incrasticism. She doesn't conceptualize it as sinful she conceptualizes it as illegal!

And "Not until the introduction of Baru’s eventual lover Tain Hu do I get a sense of Baru as a woman who loves women. " is killing me in particular because like. Yeah. Tain Hu is baru's first love. thats the point. But beyond that this is just not being able to see anything other than what she's looking for because i think the chapters covering baru's childhood make it pretty clear that her feelings for aminata and cousin lao (im not double checking the name but im pretty sure it was this) are deep and strong. the fact that they're not as explicitly and straightforwardly romantic and sexual as her relationship with tain hu doesn't change that, and in fact, points to baru's struggle with/development of her sexuality that she claims was somehow missing in this book.

like i just simply can't see anything here but someone who is seeing an emotional landscape they can't relate to and assuming that means it's flawed writing. skill issue frankly.

She's also fucking insane for acting like the masquerade is too cartoonishly evil to be appealing. once again im going to post her full quote here because i think its important to see

its empire is too easily read as undesirable. As profane, unethical, fundamentally wrong. It is really overtly evil. It punishes sexual “deviants” with mutilation and death. It murders children callously. It inflicts plague and withholds vaccines. It lobotomizes its own emperors for the sake of convincing its populace that the emperor is just. Most of all, the Masquerade is a eugenicist empire: it is explicitly founded on not purity of bloodline but on purification of bloodline, on making people useful to it. It makes people: it breeds them carefully, it indoctrinates them through schools, it uses drugs and operant conditioning to transform their minds and make them into automata tools. It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent. This is a problem. It is a problem because we are asked, as readers, to believe that there are reasons besides blackmail that a person would willingly become an agent of the Masquerade. We are asked to imagine that the Masquerade is a beautiful machine.

for starters. "It commits every atrocity that a modern Western reader recognizes as abhorrent." MODERN WESTERN EMPIRES DID, AND OCCASIONALLY STILL DO, MOST OF THESE THINGS!!! THIS IS US! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!!! I FEEL INSANE!!!!

I think the book makes it more than explicitly clear why the empire is appealing??? it has all of the capital???? its building schools and sewage systems and importing food and goods and teaching reading and writing??? baru's own internal narrative often shows her own strife at the fact that the empire has made genuinely incredible scientific advancements that offer significant improvements in quality of life to many, many people. martine actually acknowledges this in the next paragraph of her review, and then brushes it away as not being good enough. why? what about that doesn't convince you?

she is seeming to hugely ignore the fact that in the case of aurdwynn specifically, the bureaucracy of the empire is coming in to unseat feudal aristocracy! what the masquerade offers may not be particularly tempting to most of that ruling class, but its economic opportunities are more then believably appealing to the common people. i think this is made pretty clear when baru's ploy to use the fiat bank to make loans to the aurdwynni people and basically lessen the massive tax burdens from the duchies wins her huge favor with the public.

and frankly even for the ruling class the potential economic benefits are massive too if you're willing to participate in the empire properly. yes the empire doesn't have Moral appeal. it doesn't fucking have to. it owns pretty much every economy outside of the oriati mbo. the fact that that's not enough for her is as you've pointed out really really showing her biases and blind spots. 'no reason besides blackmail' MONEY!!!! MONEY! IT'S MONEY! THIS IS A BOOK ABOUT ACCOUNTING! HOW DID YOU MISS THAT!!!

and the invocation of the concept of "civilized" as an objective quality, despite the recognition that the empire constructs what counts as "civilization" is so fucking unserious/simplistic/juvenile! why do you need to imagine yourself a place in the empire? in the imperial core specifically!

And this is really it for me too, yeah. It's gross. It's absolutely gross. "An empire isn't believably appealing unless I, personally, find it appealing" there are people alive who are eugenicists, who love community policing, who believe in race science. the masquerade is an empire for them. the thing about empires is that they are only actually empowering for an incredibly small subset of people, and the fact that You, Specifically, Arkady Martine can't imagine being one of those people in this instance doesn't make it not believable. This is a shatteringly individualist way of engaging with a work.

As for your points about the way she handles empire in her own book obviously i can't have anything to say there because i haven't read it yet, but i do absolutely agree with you on this bit:

and idk this may be reductive of me but i think if you are going to pull features from civilizations that have been colonized and use them to inspire fictional colonizing forces, you ARE saying something there! idk! and like, the ancient Mayan

1000% i don't think this is reductive of you. whether or not you're consciously saying anything is one question but it's a choice that absolutely doesn't exist in a vacuum. out of curiosity i googled her to see if she was of mayan descent or anything and maybe she chose that due to some personal ties to the subject matter but she doesn't seem to be. which of course i don't think means she can't or shouldn't draw any inspiration from there but i do think all of these sorts of choices are meaningful

i don't really have much to say here to round off a conclusion but. wow. deeply deeply telling review that does not particularly make me want to read anything she has written beyond this.

[atthebell-moved]

hi, i completely agree that the fandom has a problem with misogyny and often fails at self-introspection. my question is, do you have any resources/tips/thoughts on how to be better about it? even, how to recognize it in yourself the first place? "ok i'll stop being a misogynist now" is a lot easier said than done, especially for people who might not be that educated on the subject, and majority of the people in this fandom are quite young as well.

this is long as fuck and possibly somewhat incoherent bc it took so long to write but i did my best

my biggest tip for people who don't know much about misogyny is to look at your own behavior and learn how to clock what you're doing as sexist.

are you criticizing a female creator? think about why you're doing it, what the actual beef you have with them is. if it seems to be just a sense of discomfort or thinking they're annoying or overly loud or pushy, think about male ccs who act the same way and why you dont consider them annoying. are you annoyed with them for being on a male cc's stream? why? does it feel like theyre taking up too much attention? do you get annoyed with them for talking too much or flirting with guys? for gaming especially-- do you get annoyed with them for not knowing something or being "bad" at a game? think about why that is and why its just funny when a male cc is bad at games or doesnt know something.

a HUGE problem i see in this fandom is the Madonna-whore complex, repackaged as the little sister-racist dichotomy (kudos to @yourlittlemenace for that phrasing).

if a female cc is deemed to be "playing nice" (doesnt talk too much, is "nice", streams with male ccs but doesnt flirt with them, isn't "overtly sexual"), she's the little sister of the group. all the male ccs "protect" her, she literally folds their laundry, she doesnt call out how people treat her, and the fandom pretends that this is a normal and cool way to treat women who are public figures. this also goes for mom/big sister/etc. if you think you haven't done this, think about all the aus where you've forced puffy into some kind of maternal or sisterly role when it made no sense. then think about how pissed people got when she decided not to be the server therapist and was "mean" to Tommy (in lore, with permission. that she didnt even need to get. see that clip i rbed earlier from her podcast.)

if the fandom decides she doesnt play nice, if she flirts with male ccs too much or stands up for herself or points out how unfair it is that she's being treated this way, she gets demeaned, harassed, and shunned by the fandom. consider, again, puffy. consider how niki flirted with wilbur and talked about misogyny and got called a racist for *checks notes* "speaking to schlatt and fundy" and "not being a native english speaker". she got called a slut and a queerbaiter for kissing another woman despite being bisexual.

consider how hard people went down on hannah for having said the r slur several years back versus how hard they went on dream for the same thing. and how people dug it up as a direct response to her being on stream with dream. consider how every time hannah talks about how unfair it is that the mcc subreddit treats her like trash, she has to delete all her tweets bc they harass her to hell and back and act like she's an asshole for pointing out their hypocrisy.

the fandom doesnt do this across the board; i shouldnt have to say this, but its not an everyone versus no one issue. some people do this outright and loud, some dont seem to realize theyre doing it, and a few people dont do it at all (incredibly rare, i can count on one hand the number of people who genuinely seem to try to avoid these issues, which is why im complaining).

in terms of lore, have you ever once done analysis on a female character? why do you think you haven't? the bechdel-wallace test is an (imperfect) way of gauging how a piece of media ignores women and prioritizes men. think about the fact that there are FOUR female ccs on the DSMP and they are continually ignored in favor of male characters. consider that puffy and aimsey both talked about trying to do genuine lore and getting shafted, either because no one was online and wouldn't put in the effort to stream with them or because they received insane amounts of criticism for breaking anything on the server, despite the clear lack of "no griefing" rules and the precedent that you can blow other people's shit up (tommy leveling one of puffy's builds, amongst many other examples).

a quick thing about ships: have you ever wondered why m/m ships are so popular? the general consensus amongst people who care about feminism and are into fandom studies is that for a long period of time, m/m was hugely popular because women are so rarely written as full and complete characters in any media. so people took to engaging with m/m ships and writing about them because they were the most fulfilling relationships, and because misogyny led them to be predisposed to be uninterested in female characters.

say an m/m ship is incredibly popular, something like, i dunno, john watson and sherlock holmes from bbc sherlock. lets also say the canonical media presents one or both of the characters with a female love interest. how do you think a fandom that prioritizes m/m ships and is primed to be disinterested in women as characters (either because of our society's role in teaching people that women do not matter or because of fandom's history in assuming female characters are not fleshed out) is going to react? if you said theyre going to send undue amounts of criticism her way and act like its an act of homophobia to give a canonically straight character a female love interest, congrats, you've figured out a huge component in fandom misogyny. take this, amplify it over several decades, and add the psychic damage that supernatural gave society. queerbaiting is bad but mistreating female characters in service of nonexistent queer relationships is also bad.

this is relevant in general but i also believe its relevant for the dsmp because of the complete lack of m/f ships. aside from phil and kristin, who are literally married irl and kristin isn't even on the server, there are no m/f ships that involve female creators. this is not, despite what you may think, due to the inherently yaoi nature of minecraft roleplay. this is because the creators, including the male ones, are afraid of the blowback of m/f flirting and how fucking awful people are to female ccs anytime it happens. once again look at niki. as another example, consider how notfounders harassed the living daylights out of mxmtoon for flirting with gnf on twitter. if i was a cc i would avoid it like the plague too considering how happy people are to dig shit up about them or accuse them of being a slut or an attention whore/"pick me girl" for speaking to a man.

one last thing, this is more about fanart than anything else but stop drawing women to look like teenage boys. the amount of fanart i see where i literally cannot tell if someone has drawn niki or tommy is fucking insane. niki has curves. draw her with them. if you cannot draw women or people outside a very specific body type you cannot draw. fatphobia and misogyny have a clear overlap.

i cant think of anything else and ive already spent forever on this. look into feminist media analysis. think twice about how you react to female ccs & female characters. consider not just what characters have interesting stories but who is allowed to have interesting stories. you might be neglecting someone who has a lot going on because you're dismissing a female character as inherently less likely to be interesting. you might not even know someone has an interesting story because the fandom neglects it so completely.

as a final little note: like i said earlier, if you're not familiar with gender & sexuality studies, you may not know this, but homophobia and transphobia are rooted in misogyny. the idea that gender is immutable and rigid is because of the patriarchy. this is why gendered slurs are used against queer people and why queer men in particular get accused of and demeaned for being feminine. your understanding of queerphobia is incomplete without considering how sexism plays a role.

also go read everything rayne fisher-quann has ever written but especially this piece on getting woman'd and listen to you're wrong about

[bingusbongu]

Dr Flug x Fem reader who is the head of the department of black arts and witchcraft? Like him having a crush on her, it would be kind of ironic him being the head of the department of science and technology

A/N: oooo another Flug request! I love writing for this silly little nerd guy!!! One of my favorite comfort characters<33 fyi: had a hard time writing this, especially with his crushing stage so i just did alittle for it, i hope this works!!! ty sm for requesting!!!! I hope you enjoy~! {May edit later, im tired rn}

Dr. Flug × Fem. Witch Reader!

•i feel like this man would be a huge skeptic towards magic. I mean, sure his boss is a demon and all, but he believes more in scientific reasoning then he actually does Magic. He thinks that there is a reasoning behind everything. being the head of the scientific technology department, he tried his best to study magic, but found ut a huge waste of his time, and ended up going back to his on projects

• when he first met you, it was on one his missions with the gang, and it was not going well for them. The hero they were after easily out maneuvered their plans, and had them dangerouslh close to defeat

• Flug was a mess, panicked and unsure what to do. If he got caught by a hero, Blackhat would sure as hell just leave him there and not care to come and retreave him. Let alone, he didnt want to get punished anymore then he hast to endure

• Flug thought they were goners, before, lo and behold, before the hero could take them into custody, you appeared. Quickly catching the hero off gaurd with a blast of magic to his side

• of course, the hero ended up taunting you, and launched himself at you, only for you to easily knock him out of thd sky and to the concrete with the wave of your hand

• as you and the hero quarled, Flug couldnt help but watch. He would had been planning to get out, but he was observing the battle. How you easily threw the hero around liks a toy. The hero didnt even manage to hit you a single time and you already had him to the ground.

• you had freed the trio before they could be taken from authorities. Easily clipping the lock off. The two of you locked eyes for a moment, but before Flug could say thank you, you were gone.

• Flug was quite appalled, his curiosity peaked, as he abd his team fled from the scene. Though, he wasnt able to get you out of his head. He had never seen or heard anything about a villain who easily threw around Heros without even touching them, and Flug knew everthing about every Villain in the town.

• When he got back to his lab, he automatically started to look up things about you, desprately searching up something to ease his curiosity and get you out of his head

• there wasnt to much about you that he could find. He had figured out you were a 'in and out' villain, hardly giving people enough time to look at you before you disappeared into a puff of smoke.

• reading into some reports about you, of people writing nonsense about a powerful villain that wasn't Blackhat, and ranting in painful grammar about a 'witch villain'

• this made Flug laugh, obviously not believing it one bit. Rolling his eyes he got off his computer and went back to work.

• though, he still couldnt get you out of his head. Thinking back to the way how easily you handled that hero, and didnt even lay a finger on him. Now that Flug thought about it, he didnt even see you get close to him at all. Which made the doctor ponder about you even more

• it started driving him insane

• Flug, for the next few times had a hard time focusing on his projects, caught in his mind about what you were. It ended up getting him into trouble, why couldnt you just leave him alone? He had so many questions, but no you to answer them

• finally came his once a month trip of errands he ran for the crew. Heading out to collect food, or certain parts he could use to work on his projects. He never liked these days, but he endured it never the less

• just as he was walking by, looking for supplies, he bumped into you on accident. He frantically apologized, but once he noticed it was you, he froze in his tracks. Looking up at you, as you looked down at him and reasured him that it was okay

• all of a sudden, all his questions flooded his mind. He sure didnt expect to find you here of all places! What were you doing here? Were you here on some sort of mission? What did you even need here?

• His thoughts got interrupted as you finally voiced that you recognized him, sending Flug into a blushing frenzy as he tried to play it off, muttering a thank you to you as he cleared his throat

• though, when you commented that you knew who he was, it caught him off guard. You knew who he was? No one really ever recognized him other than the bag wearing villain. Being a scientist didnt really give him many looks of pride.

• he was geniunly suprised when you told him his name, and that yoi recognized him from tv adds and some of his work. He didnt know how to feel, but when you complemented him, he nearly collapsed into jelly. No one really ever complemented him, let alone someone as pretty as you! It made his face flush under his bag as he attempted to calm himself

• Though, when you introduced yourself, he must had made a face when you mentioned magic to him. Cause you quickly responded to demonstrate your magic to him.

• turning your gaze to the nearest tin can, without even touching it you beckoned it over, making it levitate over to you.

• Flug watched curiously, eyeing the tin can as if trying to find the strong attached to it to find an explanation. As it levitated for a moment, you flicked your hand, only for the can to fly past Flugs head and hit the worker nearby in the back of his head at full force

• Flug was now a little less of a skeptic

• after that, you and Flug chatted for awhile, happily demonstrating some more of your magic for him, who he would watch closely and eagerly, trying to study it every time. You found it quite funny the way his eyes widened in curiosity

• you two ended up spending the rest of the day together, you helping him with finding his supplies, which he was greatful for. Usually it took him until nightfall to get everything done, but with your help he was able to get back to the manor by noon

• not only that, but he learned alot about you, and how you were also the head of your specialties. That stunned Flug, that you were a head of magic, and he happened to be the head of sciece and technology! No wonder the two of you ended up getting along quite well

• Flug expected his thoughts of you to decrease now that he had answers, but they ended up worsening. Now finding himself wanting to spend more time with you, and for you to show him more of your magic

• Now, the two of you ended up meeting eachother every month on Flugs outing days, so you guys could chat together and spend time with one another. You helping him and showing him your magic, and him happily showing you some of his project ideas.

• Over time, he found himself wanting to spend more and more time with you, getting excited when the day would come to meet up with you! But he still craved more contact with you

• He ended up giving you the adress to the mansion, so you could come over and visit, which you happily took the opportunity

• your visits became more frequent, which Flug was always delighted to see you!

• you would chat with him as he worked on his machines, or let Flug study some more of your magic. And boy, Flug certainly enjoyed the company. More say your company, he goy so happy when you visited him. Even if it was for a few minutes, he always was glad you decided to drop in, no matter how busy you were

• He loved your visits, it made him all giddy and happy, which he hadnt felt in a long time until you came into the picture. He didnt like the way you made his body warm at first, ungil he spent more time with you, he ended up waiting every day in hopes that you would come visit him

• one day, when you made his favorite flowers appear for him out of thin air, he nearly passed out

• he definitely found a way to preserve those flowers forever

• you started to make him feel weird, especially when you came in abd smiled at him, saying your common hello just made his heart lurch out for you. Getting all flustered when you complimented his work, or stood close to him, or even feeling the slightest bit of touch from you would send him to the ground

• he loved watching the way you preform your magic for him. Sometimes, he ended up watching you instead of the trick you were showing him. And when you commented about it he got all shy and babbled an apology, while you giggled which sent him deeper into his flusterdness, you absolutely found this adorable

• you, the wonderful witch you are, ended up enchanting his heart

[24kmar]

Hiii! My bad i sometimes write like people can see inside my head to know what i mean 💀

The fight where tashi got injured and they grew apart from patrick yk?

Thank you and sorry!

Lmao dont worry love 🩷

𝐖𝐈𝐒𝐇 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐋 (A. Donaldson, T. Duncan)

𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭: Can i ask you for some challengers angst? Where reader used to be with the group but the fight happend and they run into eachother in a coffee shop or something and they talk normaly.Then they ask for her number so they van talk more and the reader denies because she is much happier without them?Kind of when you let go of a toxic person.Thank uu

𝑶𝒐𝒉, 𝒏𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒓 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝑰 𝒘𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅 𝒃𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖

𝑰 𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒐𝒗𝒆, 𝑰 𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒘𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝑰 𝒘𝒊𝒔𝒉 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒓𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒄𝒂𝒏 𝒔𝒕𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒔𝒎𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎.

"Y/n/n!" You hear someone shout. A name only a certain group of people would call you.

Turning around, thats where you saw art and tashi. You never thought you'd be without them. But after what they did to patrick, you couldnt be friends with them. To much toxicity to handle.

"Art, tashi, hi." You breath out, not expecting to see them. Here, out of all places. Today out of all days.

"Its been so long." Tashi sighs hugging you.

"Yeah we havent seen you since..." art pauses awkwardly, bringing up the elephant in the room.

𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊!

"Why are you doing this!" You yell at tashi, walking up to her and art while they're practicing.

"Doing what?" She spits out turning around to face you.

"Shutting patrick out!" You yell out frustrated.

"Y/n/n-" art starts, but not finishing as you cut him off.

"No, art." You turn to look at him briefly, then looking back at tashi "You're being so unreasonable, what the fuck did he do?"

Met with no answer, you got even angrier

"Answer me!" You yell out frustratedly

"Y/n/n-" art starts, getting cut off by you again

"What? Art. Literally what?!" You spit out, turning to him.

With a guilty look in his eyes he speaks, "were not trying to shut out patrick" he says softly, trying to reach out to grab your arm. To which you pulled away, "Really!? Cause to me it seems like you're ignoring him! When he did absolutely nothing! Whos next? Me?"

A question that was met with silence.

"Whatever" you scoff, walking away. Never seeing them again, ignoring every attempt they made to contact you.

𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐎𝐅 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊

"How have you been?" Art asks

"Ive been" you pause letting out a breath you didnt know you were holding "good, what about you?"

"We've been good" tashi smiles softly.

"I know, ive seen you guys win" you chuckle "im proud".

You had missed this, missed them. But you knew you couldnt go back to them. The dynamic extremely toxic. And still being friends with patrick, it wouldnt be fair. To either of you.

"We miss you" art sighs

"We should really reconnect" tashi speaks with a sad tone. They both missed you. They realized they fucked up. Like royaly fucked up.

"Guys i-" you start

"We used to be such great friends, and now we need that more than ever" art tries to reason

"I cant." You out, harsher than you intended.

"why?" Tashis brows furrow in confusion

"What we had was nice, yes. But, it was toxic." you chuckle breathly "Me and patrick are still close, i cant do that to him."

With a sullen look on their face they nod.

"I wish you guys well." You smile softly walking out of the cafe. This was it, the closure you needed. The end of your friendship.

[gemapples]

see you in 2024 💗💗

very personal ramble about my year and experiences, etc. under the cut. kind of neg just a warning but if anyone would be willing to read it the whole way through i'd appreciate it so so much

2023 was certainly... a year for me. had many highs but a Ton of lows, went forward one step but took two steps back. i'd be lying if i said i didnt struggle and know what to do for a lot of it

i did get to meet and even become friends with people i look up to, got to learn new things i didn't know before. and one of the problems i noticed throughout this year is i spent way more time than i needed to focusing on my usefulness for others and what i can do for people rather than prioritizing myself and my mental health. i think a lot of problems i experienced in 2023 was due to me getting too caught up in how i'm perceived by others (especially on social media like tumblr). for 2024 i want to work on this and be sure to put myself first in every situation and be the best person i see myself as -- not overdo it for the sake of others. i'm going to try being more straightforward with myself and how i choose to approach people. i want to be more involved in this fandom and get to know more people who love kirby better rather than just hiding away and watching from the side like i have for many years, waiting for them to approach me first at some point. i made a lot of progress on this a lot in 2023 but i could always be better :')

regardless though, i wouldn't have been nearly as ready to get back on track if it weren't for the support you all have given me throughout this year. august and september were two of the worst months i've ever experienced; i won't get into it (if you know you know), but goddd was it harder than i can even describe. i've never had to go through something that resulted in me questioning my Entire artistic ability, my whole worth, and whether everything i've grown and learned from is just completely fake. i couldn't look at my work and all of my social medias without being completely disgusted and disappointed with myself. i'm in art student too, so you can imagine how fucking hard it was to balance and muscle through that as well lol. it was nothing but hell. if i didn't get the support i did from everyone, i can say with full confidence i wouldn't have been able to pick up my pencil phone and get back to drawing Nearly as quickly as i did. in fact, i probably would still be deeply effected by it and not have the motivation to continue posting for at least a long while. so i seriously can't thank you enough for that. all the words i was told still stick with me to this day and gave me a reason to keep pushing and learn to better understand myself

im tearing up as i write this so i'll have to cut it short LOL but i want to express how deeply it means to me that through all the conflict i've experienced throughout this year, you guys were there for me and were so generous to offer your time to support me and help me out. knowing i make at least one person smile and enjoy what i post is enough for me. hopefully 2024 will be easier on the emotional rollercoasters, i think all of us could use a long break from chaos really lol

thanks for everything and i love you

-mac

[kumezyzo]

p2 of the enemies to lovers pls!!

very fun pt.2 to thissss.... i rambled about their minecraft world cause its kinda cute and builds on their relationship a bit.

i know someone else asked for pt.2 but i could only find this one. so, im sorry it took soooo long to write.

i really hope you enjoy! or dont... :)    m.list

having to share a minecraft house with sapnap made you realize what kind of person he actually was. he was just a six year old in a 22 year old body.

"I want my bed over hereeeeee," he whined, picking it up and moving it to the other side of the room.

it just so happened that one of the next requests from your viewers was to have your beds next to eachother. you two debated pretending like you never saw it, but the next day, it was the top comment on both of your perspectives.

or (when you first started your world)

"what colour do you want your boots?" he asked you as he died his own leather boots orange. you furrowed your eyebrows in confusion for a second, looking at your camera strangley.

"what do you mean?" you asked, crafting another pickaxe.

"your leather boots?" he asked, pausing to wait for your answer. "fuck it, youre getting the plain brown."

"okay?"

but you also started to realise how much differently he truly was from when you met him.

"yn, i have a suprise for you," he announced, smiling as he grabbed the item out of his chest. "where are you?"

"chest room," you replied, completely expecting to get thrown dirt or some garbage he didnt want in his inventory.

"close your eyes," he instructed.

"no,"

"okay whatever," he sighed and threw you a notch apple. you silently let your character pick it up before you opened your inventory in disbelief.

"where did you get this?" you asked him, reading the item title over and over.

"in the desert temple," he told you simply, waiting for a 'thank you'.

you were silent for a moment, "youre telling me.... you've had this... for 15 EPISODES???"

and you two started having normal conversations. texting stopped being you two asking for face cam perspectives or gameplay. you actually started forming inside jokes, laughing with eachother instead of at the expense of eachother.

your viewers started to notice as well. you two weren't in a visibly bad mood around eachother anymore. it was refreshing. in the later videos of your series together, you're smiling through half of it, laughing together, and talking kindly to eachother.

people even started making edits of your relationship. it would be of your first interaction, swearing at each other, then fading into your side by side face cams laughing and celebrating over beating the wither.

the friends in your circle started teasing you about how your life was becoming a little fanfiction. every time you would be streaming irl, you would happen to get a text from someone that made you smile at your phone.

"oooh, yn, who are you texting?" your friend teased, seeing you type on your phone excitedly. you look up at the camera and ignore your friend, finishing the text you were sending.

"does it start with s and rhyme with snap map?" your other friend teases.

"shut the fuck up," you roll your eyes, trying to hide your smile.

when dream and george saw the clip, they were hanging out with sapnap. and a similar situation occurred with them

"was this you?" george asked, giggling. the man in question looked up from his phone and watched the clip silently. the smile on your face was contagious. and he hoped it really was him that made you react like that.

"wait, let me see," dream said, pulling georges wrist toward him to see the phone. "looks like she might be dating someone."

"yeah... definitely not me..."

then you both realized you had feelings for each other. it was a harsh realization. but it was one that made you like imagining you two together. for sap, he knew it was coming. he just knew you would never be able to leave his mind. if a childlike crush didn't manifest from it, he would have known something was wrong with him.

sap started getting the feeling that you liked him too. he can't see all those clips and edits and think you didn't like him too. but he was afraid to shoot his shot, just in case you didn't feel that strongly yet.

"hey, what do you think about coming down to florida?" he asked you when you two were on a discord call and fixing up some building in your minecraft world.

"like... to visit you?" you asked, feeling excited by the invitation.

"well- i mean- if you want," he tried to sound nonchalant, but his stammering gave it away.

"if you really want me to... im sure the viewers would really like that, too..."

when he goes to pick you up from the airport, dream comes with him. and the entire drive there, he's considering hugging you or just shaking your hand.

"do i hug her?"

"yeah, if you think you're that close now."

"i dont know if she thinks so."

"I'll hug her first, and then you hug her?"

"what if i just shake her hand?"

the silence that fell over them was sickening. dream turned to sap slowly and laughed.

"dont fucking do that, dude."

and he hugged you after dream did. it was warm, and it gave you both such intense butterflies. it was a hug that you also never really thought would happen. you thought back to the first time you met im person when you refused to even look at him, let alone stand next to him.

dream thought it was adorable, seeing you guys laugh on the way back to their house. he happily sat in the backseat and let you two interact.

he took a picture of your backlit figures in the front seat, neither of your features visible. he thinks about not posting it for half a second before he puts it up on snapchat with "👀👀" as the caption.

everyone slowly lost their minds trying to figure out who they were looking at. most people assumed it was you with sap. he's not hard to miss. but it was even more shocking that you'd be there. so others assumed it was his secret girlfriend.

you two honestly didn't mind that dream posted the picture. it was fun when you two posted a dumb video announcing that you were in florida. it started with small subtle hints.

the first video started with you laying on their couch and patches laying on your chest.

"she's purring!" you coo softly, feeling your heart meltm

then it was of you talking about absolutely nothing while you walked around the parts of the house people had seen before.

"british people are so weird, you know? like, i was talking to one today. and he was just shitting on americans. but he lives here. so i obviously had to fist fight him. i won, obviously. and stole his sock to give to a house elf."

the last video was of sapnap finding you in his office, using his pc to play snake.

"i think george is in my office again," he said from behind the camera. he opened the door and stopped in his tracks when he saw you with a concentrated look on your face. "HEY!" the video cut with you looking up in pure fear.

all of those videos were posted to your account hours apart from each other, and your views felt like it was a slow coordinated attack to make them slowly go insane. with the first video, people were sure if it was patches. the second video made them believe it more so and they started going crazy. then the last video was the icing on the cake. it was filmed on your phone and posted to your accounts.

then, you had to stream together. and that was the definition of chaos.

"yn, move over."

"no?"

"youre sleeping outside then."

"what the fuck-"

'what's one thing you guys like about each other?' a donation read out.

you two sat there for a second, thinking. "hes..." you grimaced, trying to think of something

"she... is funny?" he said painfully.

"wait, i am funny," you said defensively.

"its pure crickets when you speak."

"okay-"

"wait, im you now," you said, laughing as you put on his headphones.

"you look nothing like me," he said, deadpanned.

"oh wait," you took them off again and ran out of the room. sap sat there completely confused before you came back in wearing his beige killua hoodie. then you put the headphones back on.

"you still dont-"

"what the fuck is this music?" you ask in complete horror from the sound coming from his headphones.

"is there something playing?" he asked, clicking his mouse around to find his spotify window.

"oh my god, is this cbat?"

"no, shut the fuck up, sage"

'i thought your name was actually sage?'

you both sat there in silence before laughing loudly.

"no he was just an ass."

"and you were just a bitch."

all you have to know is that a lot of edits and ship content came from that stream. and the future streams you did with the other two. and people loved that you were hanging out with the dream team now.

the longer you spent time together in person, the more you just wanted to be around each other he remembered being afraid to hug you, but now you were sitting next to each other on the couch watching movies alone.

it was a strange dynamic neither of you chose to acknowledge purely out of fear. but then it was hard not want to cuddle during movies or occasionally hold hands if you're walking together. so sap works up the courage to finally do something about it.

you're both once again, sitting in his room, on his bed, watching some random movie you found on hulu. you're resting your head on his shoulder, only really paying attention to how he's so close to you.

you look over when he sighs heavily. he looks down at you and, without thinking, leans down to kiss you. you sigh softly, feeling your heart soar. your reaction is almost immediate, and it gives sap the incentive to keep going.

when you pull away, you're looking at eachother with droopy eyes. your heavy breath hitting eachothers faces.

"i really like you, yn" he whispers quietly between breaths, looking down at your lips briefly.

you smirk, trying to catch your breath as well. "really?" you say before you lean back in, placing your lips on his.

i feel like there wasn't enough building onto them liking each other, but whatever. -nony

[starbunii]

Sorry if this is against the rules, but can I get HCs of Kokichi, Sonia, Tenko, Hiyoko, and Mikan with a fem!S/O who has Huntington's Disease? It's totally cool if not!! Totally understand this is a squick kind of topic!! If not all those characters, then Just Kokichi and Sonia is fine, but again, no pressure!! <3

ooo i would love to write this one!! ty for requesting it, i've never gotten sm characters in 1 req before! i'll organize them alphabetically :3c

danganronpa characters x fem!reader with huntington's disease !!

im sorry if i didnt portray it properly! i researched to the best of my ability!

-- ♡ --

hiyoko saionji

when you first meet, she kind of just makes fun of you, not quite understanding that you can't control the twitching and moving

hiyoko, being hiyoko, will make fun of you at first (bc of course she would)

however, once you explain everything, she'll make an effort to understand!

if you forget something, she'll politely remind you (if she remembers)

might tease you if you forget something important, but nothing too mean

rlly tries being patient, which is hard. but she loves you so much that she tries anyway

kokichi ouma

he rlly doesn't question it too much when you first meet

he's met a lot of different types of characters, being the leader of D.I.C.E and all, so someone with Huntington's? not a big deal

might tease you from time to time, but nothing too mean

he knows you can't always control the way you move, so he tries not to dwell on it too much

keeps an eye on you while you're eating, given that having trouble swallowing can be a symptom

if anyone looks at you weird, he'll fight them! or at least try to

mikan tsumiki

like kokichi, she doesn't seem to mind or be too bothered by it

she's a nurse; she's seen a lot of things and is well aware of what Huntington's is

the occasional jerk or twitch might startle her if she's not expecting it; but overall, she doesn't mind too much

very wary if your hands are twitching, just because of her past traumas

however, if it's your face that twitches more, she doesn't care too much

if it's getting frustrating or too uncomfortable, she'll gladly comfort you!!

doesn't mind if you forget things; bc she does too

if you have a wheelchair, she'll push you around wherever you want to go, even if she's not that strong

startled at first; but after asking a few (million) questions, she'll understand

since she's been sheltered most of her life, she doesn't understand a lot of outside experiences, but she is more than willing to learn

will ask you how you cope with it all, and will assist the best she can!!

she'll happily drive you to physical therapy in her expensive sportscar, making sure you're happy and comfortable the whole way there

you are spoiled like a little princess <33

tenko chabashira

immediately sees you as someone she needs to take great care of

a girl? with an incurable disease that causes her to twitch and forget things? yeah, she's all over you, helping out the best she can

writes things down for you, even if it's something you know you can probably remember yourself

sometimes she just needs a strong "no, im ok" or a "no, i can do this myself" to remember that you've got everything

will 100% carry you if you get tired, or just don't want to walk!!

tries to do her best to support you physically

knows insomnia is a symptom, and will take naps with you just to make sure you go to sleep

she's ready to wake up when you do <3

starbunii 2024 — all rights reserved. do not redistribute or translate to any other platforms

[suffarustuffaru]

Scrolling through your blog is such a fun experience, you bring an absolutely great vibe to this fandom and I love it SO MUCH. Could even say you restored my hope in it, since there has been some aspects that made me force myself to leave it, and I hope me bringing one of them up here won't upset anyone.

Now I completely understand if you wish to not answer my ask, but I figured it's worth a shot. So, one of said aspects was a controversy regarding one of the rezero characters that made me feel like you can't mention them without being called names (mostly on tiktok, but other social media also, tho not as much).

Yeah I'm talking about Felix. I'm not transphobic by any means, and I'm fine with people headcannoning whatever they want, but seeing thousands of people calling others transphobic for calling Felix a 'he' made me so unsafe I forced myself to look for other interest. Which is funny since most of the people saying this weren't even part of the fandom. I was wondering if anyone else here had similar situations and just.. how do you deal with it? It seems silly, I know, but feeling like I can't speak about a rather important character from a media I love made me so upset.

No matter how much I tried explaining it, they either dismiss it or say Tappei made him a trans girl without knowing.

Now, if you do decide to answer this and say that Felix indeed may have been 'trans coded' a little bit (Did I used that term correcly? Idk) I'll understand (hell, I would probably agree, you character analysis are great), I'm just upset at the absolute lack of respect for any other way of referring to Felix other then she/her.

(Also in case people don't know, their proof of Felix being a trans girl is the scene from EX1, with the whole calling himself a girl in front of a mirror thing)

Sorry for this is being long and probably messy I just had to get this off my chest.. also I hope I didn't came of as offensive in any way, if I did I'm really sorry.

hi there anon! first of all - aw thank you for your compliments about me and my blog. im super passionate about rezero (though thats probably super clear to anyone whos seen any content i make for a while aljsdlkf) and well. ive been lurking about in this fandom since summer 2020 so i definitely understand having to leave/distance yourself from this fandom because outside of tumblr, the rezero fandom is kind of . well. to put it simply, theres a lot of metaphorical landmines unfortunately!! T^T and admittedly i wouldve left this fandom a lot sooner if i didnt stick to my own corner and curate spaces with other people who were super chill (like lots of people lurking about here on tumblr + rz tumblr in general!!). so i totally understand how you feel anon (and youre not silly for being upset, i promise!), though admittedly im not super super familiar with some rezero spaces (such as rz twitter) bc i 1. dont speak japanese and 2. i try very hard to avoid the negativity whenever possible!! T^T

and also i apologize for taking a while to answer your ask!! you're one of my older asks that kinda got lost in my drafts hah but i also just wanted to like. take extra care with your ask bc its a super important topic. like not just to me (though its definitely important to me) but its important in general. and i really like felix so. <3

a quick disclaimer is that i myself am not transfem. i am however afab and most likely genderqueer!! (im winging it as i go hah.) felix is also not a character id say im as well-versed in yet, but i do like felix a lot and ex1 changed my entire brain chemistry. and ill also be defaulting to he/him pronouns in this post because thats what he uses in canon.

felix is - at the end of the day - a fictional character, and tappei is a cis man who doesnt Entirely write characters like felix through a queer lens. arguably tappei is Self-Aware when he writes characters who are into other characters of the same sex (though the Representation is arguably a little bit questionable at times depending on how you look at it), but when it comes to characters like felix or subaru who have some Gender Stuff going on, it's more nebulous there. i dont know if tappei 100% realizes he's made characters that could be read as Trans/Genderqueer (emphasis on "read as", because i support different interpretations of these characters), but tappei Definitely Is Very Aware that gender and gender presentation and gender roles are super important when it comes to characters like felix, subaru, and crusch.

i think tappeis own perceptions of gender and gender roles do bleed a bit into the text as much as tappei is pretty purposeful with themes surrounding gender in rezero, but rezero itself still has all sorts of identity issues to explore with a lot of its characters and gender is a big part of that!!

so first and foremost im gonna be examining felix the best i can Purely Off Of The Canon Text, though i do like viewing rezero from a queer lens myself (and it is arguably very queer). im gonna talk first about felix and then ill move onto talking about my personal feelings on rezero fandom stuff :o !!

so felix's relationship with his gender is complicated and he Absolutely does not fit into traditional gender roles or gender presentation right now. these are undeniable. and if people headcanon felix as transfem thats totally understandable and valid!! but to say a headcanon is 100% canon and that other interpretations of a character as complex as felix are invalid isnt exactly it. for sure. i mean i myself interpret him as nonbinary haah. but felix's relationship with gender is so so so So complicated that i dont think you could just say hes transfem and then Not Elaborate More.

but regardless of how Exactly you label felix, i think you could possibly say that hes trans coded. tappei, even if he probably doesnt entirely know hes made pretty genderqueer characters, is Aware and Purposeful of how gender affects felix and his perception of himself and his identity and other peoples perception of him and this is brought up Over and Over Again in canon—felix’s gender identity, at the moment, aligns more with femininity in his presentation in every way, though he still perceives himself as masculine. felix’s case is complicated, and while im not entirely sure on this i think you could argue that hes trans coded—“coding” suggests a level of intent when making these characters, and i think that intent is present in some way with tappei. because tappei Knows just how important gender is with felix’s character and you can tell with how often and how Integral it is to felix’s entire character.

(more under the cut) (i do have a habit of being rambley/wordy sometimes if. if you couldnt tell already. but i hope this response is up to your standards!!)

these three analysis posts on felix's relationship with gender have all discussed this topic in-depth before i have, and i 1. really like the rezero content i see from all three of these people and 2. they All have slightly different takes based on the canon we have but also some similar points. because felix is complicated!! of course our takes are probably gonna be a bit different - he's a multifaceted character with such a complex relationship with his gender that it's hard to tell what every single one of his personal feelings on it is (especially when at the moment he hasnt appeared in the main story since arc 5 and he still has a Lot of character development to do). and of course fiction is fiction, we can all take away any sort of meaning from a story like this.

but you know. this is my post so im gonna try to analyze felix right now and say my two cents on what i think of his relationship with gender.

so im gonna try not to retread too much on what liquidstar, sufferu, and gourmet of gluttony have already said about felix (and i think theyre all very smart people with interesting analysis posts and theyve all explained their thoughts pretty well) and instead add on with my own thoughts - theres this felix excerpt from arc 4 wn that i think about sometimes. im gonna put it down here!!

and also important to note—like other people have mentioned, crusch and felix made a “deal” of sorts in the past where crusch takes on felix’s masculinity and felix takes on crusch’s femininity. and also like other people have said—and i myself have said in the past—i do have some mixed feelings on this wkdndn and as i said before also i do wish tappeis feelings on gender bled a little less when theyre Not Integral To The Story. bc i dont think tappei 100% knows hes made trans coded characters, but. anyway yeah so thats the whole deal with crusch felix. and in its own right i think it has So Many Interesting Implications!!

i think when it comes down to it, gender presentation IS a bit of a performance, isn't it? like i love to wear dressses and skirts and i love to keep my hair short and wear suits, but you know - these sorts of things tend to be gendered. our gender is often perceived through how we present ourselves, but in recent years gender roles being attached to clothing has gotten a bit less Rigid. but these rigid roles associated with presentation are even more dialed up to Eleven in a medieval world like the rezero fantasy world. and i dont use the word "performance" in a negative way -

what i mean is that when it comes to felix's character, does felix think he's a boy because that's what he's been told? does he think he's a boy because he TRULY sees himself that way, or does he THINK he has to see himself as one? does felix try to present and perform femininity, ie as or like a traditionally feminine girl, purely ONLY for crusch's sake, or is it because felix ALSO WANTS to? what does felix think of gender outside of crusch? who is felix outside of crusch? who is felix outside of tying his entire personality to other people? does felix’s femininity show the “radiance of ferris’ soul” bc of the deal he made with crusch or bc this truly is felix’s soul? these are like the big questions behind his entire character and character arc that would determine in the end how felix identifies in both his gender and In General.

so what is felix's identity at the moment? bc right now, felix is stuck between his feminine self, tied to crusch, a symbol of crusch, tied to his own reliance on crusch and worship of her—and his masculine self, someone broken off from crusch. felix is tied to crusch right now to worrying extents with his obsessive devotion to the point of changing himself to mold into her image, and beyond that, hes still tied to guilt surrounding fourier’s death. gourmet of gluttony puts all of this way way more intelligently than i ever could, but at the end of the day, i think the best narrative decision here would be for felix to accept himself in ALL of his entirety.

healing in rezero is noted to be a kind power, specifically by fourier and fourier saying this right to felix when hes the most talented healer in lugunica, and healing itself is often stereotypically feminine activity. knighthood is stereotypically masculine, and on top of all this, we see in ex1 that biehn argyle twists the power of healing into something grotesque—trying to bring back the dead and revive what cant be revived, which is once again another reoccurring theme in rezero.

how far can “from zero” go? what HAS to stay dead and what can be revived? who is allowed to live? HOW do you live freely? felix is someone born from a horribly abusive and neglectful family who twisted healing magic’s kindness into cruelty, felix is someone who was taken into a family that showed him kindness and now hes desperate to pay them back with everything he has and everything he is, felix is a healer who lashes out when hes cornered and a healer who treasures life and a knight who cant physically fight like the others, felix is someone stuck with the horrible knowledge that he cant save everyone—that some things just Couldnt end better no matter how much he wished for it to.

felix is stuck between all kinds of worlds, and in terms of gender, hes quite literally still stuck between boyhood and manhood in the biological sense—hes purposefully made it so that he hasnt hit puberty yet so he can better pass as feminine. he hasnt Physically Grown past puberty—which is the mark of becoming an adult. and he hates himself in a number of ways, but he also hates himself for failing to be traditionally masculine. his abusive family stole ten years of his life and the torture left him physically weaker, so he cant be strong physically, which is something associated with traditional masculinity. felix is the best healer, a traditionally feminine job and skill, but he cant save everyone. felix becomes more feminine as part of his deal with crusch, but while crusch accepts her femininity and masculinity readily, and while crusch’s memory is erased by gluttony—felix is left behind, alone, still holding onto femininity while not entirely being able to hold onto it while he also cant entirely hold onto the traditional masculinity he expects out of himself. and with arc 3 on, felix feels hes failed both fourier and crusch. the two most important male and female figures in his life.

felix is basically stuck in this liminal space where hes not Enough for himself in literally every direction, and the only way out is to accept every part of himself and move forward by trying to define who he is without other people—his birth family and his found family dont define him. they can shape him, sure, but he has to stop shaping himself to meet them and figure out how to let himself just. Be. and take up a space thats firmly his. from a queer lens, this kind of thing is pretty queer—because to stop being in between worlds, you have to accept everything instead of splitting yourself into halves over and over again. killing or maiming yourself or parts of yourself is no way to live, and felix is Life itself.

and i think regardless of the Exact Labels you could give felix, i think his arc—which is perfectly in line with all of rezeros themes—is inherently about self acceptance and the bridging of the gap and combination of femininity and masculinity. felix is both and identifies, in one way or another, with both, similar to how he loves someone who identifies with both (crusch) and just as hes loved her and fourier. imo it wouldnt be right for felix to choose one or the other in terms of feminine vs masculine—he needs to be the one learning and navigating his honest feelings on both sides bc i think he Yearns to be both. hes a boy who dresses like a girl and its up to him to know if he wants to be a man and/or a woman due to his own internal desire or if parts of that is Only due to external pressures.

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and alright now that ive said all my thoughts on felix atm im gonna address the other questions you had in your ask!! note that this is just my opinions and thoughts regarding my own experience in the english fandom, you dont have to agree or anything 👍

but i AM very sorry about your negative experiences in this fandom. T^T people calling other transphobic for using he/him for felix (and also people being transphobic about characters like felix or subaru/natsumi in general) is something ive seen as well. the rezero fandom is sadly very often toxic and Bigoted in a lot of ways (with the exception of rezero tumblr and certain segments of rezero ao3, from what ive seen), which is Ironic for a story thats so clearly about love and self-acceptance, which is also ironic because arguably tappei and otsuka and the rezero marketing team (i Love the female characters in rezero but theres just so much sexualized or vaguely sexist merch/moments that dont add to the story, you know? kind of just. misses the point of their characters sometimes.) sort of contribute to it a little bit as much as tappei does do some really great things with his writing.

rezero is the first fandom ive been active in but its definitely not the first ive ever been in, and ive been in some insane fandoms before. like i said earlier though, i think i just cope by curating my experience to what i like, yknow? liking posts i enjoy, looking at stuff i enjoy, etc :O !! fandom is a hobby so i try not to look at negative stuff when i can help it wkdnd. which im sure youre aware about already but i always have to keep reminding myself of this bc places like rezero reddit or twitter get pretty rough!! but its really helped me just following artists and creators i like, enjoying their content, chatting with cool people i vibe with, rezero tumblr being the chillest rezero space in the whole fandom, and its also helped me a lot making rezero content of my own—like this whole blog!! its really shocked me how much people seem to value my thoughts enough to ask me things frequently but i appreciate it pfft. and i hope you guys like reading my posts!!

but yeah like. curate, curate, curate. it helps a LOT and it gets me excited to experience rezero not only by myself you know? not that i didnt have fun by myself but its its own level of fun finally finding spaces to have fun with others!! and i LOVE finding beautiful fanart!! chef’s kiss. and trying to be the change i want to see is satisfying on its own :,) i want to post random shit about rezero, so i post it. i want to make fanart for fun and share it. i want to brute force people into loving otto more so i ottopost (dont worry, i still hate him bc true otto fans also hate him at the same time <3 /lh). i want more queer rezero content so i try to make some more!! brings more personal power i think and its very fun!! and it helps with lessening the quiet despair of fandom toxicity ;-;; (which is something ive done many times and will continue to do sometimes so i feel your pain 🫂) and i promise theres cool people in the fandom 👍 i may reply late to asks or dms but im ALWAYS down to talk about rezero things its so fun 👍👍

and its really really hard sometimes to deal with fandom toxicity especially if its forcefully knocking at your door—definitely dont force yourself to stay or look at things if you cant, bc thats totally understandable!! and i myself have been harassed a little in the past. but definitely having some sort of coping—the block button, backing out of things you dont agree with or like, lots and lots of curating, etc—helps me a lot. and i think mental health wise i feel much better trying to look on the bright side of things!! its MY hobby goddammit!! ill fight people subaru-style if they try to poison it!! and however long anyone reading this decides to spend with rezero and rezero tumblr—you are welcome here 👍

but yes my very Long rambling aside - i hope this post somewhat helped you!! felix is a very important character that i like very much and need to learn more about and i have Many Feelings on the english side of this fandom, but im very grateful to all the cool people ive met over the years here for sure!! :o

also ill probably post the finished version soon but if youve read this far here is a sneak peak of felix art i did recently (just as a reward for once again reading all of my Endless Yapping)👍👍

[xhanelia]

Okay so this was the ask but when i deleted the post, it got deleted too. I tried to write the post again as much as i remember. All of my luck aside, i have my first official anon now i am so happy!! Thank you for the request, green anon! Hope you like it 💚

How would Sova react to a mute reader

I think he would ask Sage or Brim about what kind of a person you are before trying to talk to you, but lets just think that you were introduced in the middle of a mission. (absolutely not to make the fic longer and maybe interesting)

In the missions, Brim always wants an "understood" after his commands on the field. To confirim that his voice went to the person and make sure they did not get hurt. When Brim gave you information about the building and told you what you should do, you did not reply. Sova got scared that the new agent might have got caught or hurt but seeing the steril face of Brim, like this is what was supposed to be, he got a bit confused and went to his part of the mission. Trying not to think about it.

Later on, when you return with the information you have on your hands (witch is nothing but a little flash drive) he sighed in relief that you didnt got hurt. With the smile on your face, covered mostly by the mask you wore, you handled the flash drive to Chyper. He thanked you in his own language to show intimacy to the new agent. Well, to you.

Also Cypher was never leaving your side after your first mission. Being a new agent means that he will follow you everywhere like a tail stuck to your back. (This is cannon btw.)

He glared you two a bit. One side hoping you wouldnt turn out to be his friend or such, the other wants to get to know you. Either way, it was the first time the moral of HQ, Sova, didnt talked to the new agent by his choice. He was intimidated by your similarities with Chyper.

At this point, Sage needed to ask Sova if he was okay. She understood that he did not liked secretive persons but you were far off from Chyper. She convinced him to at least say hello to you while passing by. But he would still avoid any conversations with you.

You nod everytime he greeted you. Sage told you that Sova (a tall blonde man that has a prostetic eye, she said. Pretty much noticable.) would cheer you up if you feel down or lonely. But it was like the other way around. At least near you. When you look at him with other agents, he was like how Sage described him but when he notices you, his smile drops down a bit.

At some point, you decided to ask him about why he was like this to you. Gathering your courage, getting yourself a pen and a little notebook, you began to search for him.

He was in the tech room. Making adjusments to his bow and arrows. He looked up to you from where he was sitting. You waved to him as a hello, he nodded to you back. Thinking maybe you dont want to talk to him at all.

You got out your pen and notebook, wrote something to it and slowly pushed it to him. He looked at the notebook and to you, then again to the notebook. Reading what was written on it.

"I am so sorry if i did something wrong to you."

He stood still after reading the paper for a good 10 seconds then looked up to you. Such simple words but it hit Sova so hard. Now getting that you cannot talk, it feels like the guilt was building up in his chest.

"You were mute?" It sound like he was scared to even ask this question. You slowly nod with a broke smile. It was visible in your eyes.

He stood up. "No... i am sorry. I should have tried to get to know you at first but i was stuck to the thought of you did not wanted to talk to me. I... shouldnt have judged you beforehand."

Even though he kept the Chyper intimacy you have to himself, you understood his reasons and wrote again to the paper.

"Its okay. I hope we can be friends!"

He smiled at the paper. "Ofcourse." He said with relief. After everything, he is still blaming himself about his prejudices about you, but seeing you getting happy with his words is enough to convince him that it does not matter anymore.

He tries to learn sign language. Its like a form of a apologize to you. Afterall, you cannot talk to him through paper forever, can you? He will make up to you. He promises himself.

[mess-with-legs]

Cupid loves you - Part1 ♡

HEYYYYYYY yes it seems like im not gonna throw away this project the second I started it hell yeahh!! Anywayyyys I hope you enjoy it! Pleassse let me know your thoughts or if you have any questions i would just love to answer them! And I hope you enjoy! Again I am not a profesional writer or anything like that so if it's kind of shitty I deeply apologise

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"Could I borrow your pencil?"

Literature class wasn't one of your favorite subjects, luckly, we were studying some poetry at the moment, and you just so happen to enjoy reading poetry every now and then.

I noticed my classmate sitting next to me, writting something that caught my attention. The teacher wasn't speaking, and I knew for a fact that it couldn't be any project or anything as such. If you who is reading this can make sense of what I managed to catch with a mere glimpse, perhaps you're smarter than myself. It read:

In my tail said the sun On my throat said the moon In the branches of the laurel tree I saw two naked doves One was the other and both were none

Cupid called for me again. "Sorry! yes of course, here you go" I handed over my pencil. I saw how hers was small, it looked as if she sharpenned it one more time it would cease from existence. We were still in the first week of class, how could a pencil be so worn? Perhaps she writes as a hobby...Or maybe she draws!

"What are you writing?" She closed her notebook, in a quick but clean movement. Turning her eyes to me.

"Nothing important. I just like to write."

"Is it a hobby?"

"Yes, writting words in paper has always been easier for me than speaking them outloud." It seems like you were getting closer, maybe she wasn't the mean girl you originally thought she was, maybe she was just shy and didn't know how to interact with others. At least that's what you thought until the class ended...

"Hey Barbie, think I could get your number?" Roman looked like the most stereotypical, one-dimensional, stupid boy you could ever imagine. He was the kind to smoke in the bathrooms, get in fights, sleep during class, disrespect the teachers... It never really bothered you since you had never spoken to him before, and he didn't seem to have any interest in starting a conversation with you either.

"Unluckly for you I still have standards. Why don't you go feed on some other dead meat? I have better things to do than to be seen around with..." She looked at him up and down. "You."

He was furious, yelling, ready to start a fight. She then grabbed my hand and began walking outside the classroom. It took me some minutes to notice it, but people across the hallways were staring at us, some with fear, other's with admiration. I had no idea why she had picked me as her friend, someone like Roman, despite being an asshole, was much more popular than me, surely he was the better option if this was a matter of reputation.

The light of the windows made her hair shine, everything about her seemed too perfect to be human. She was a sculpture, sculpted with precision, patience and adoration.

When I finally came to my senses, we were back at our dorm.

"Y/N?"

"S-Sorry! I had my head in the clouds haha..."

She got close to me, both of us standing in the middle of the room. She placed her hand on my forehead to check the temperature, but she took longer than expected. She stared at me, in silence, her gaze upon me was soft and warm. She moved the hand that was on my forehead to the side of my head, caressing my hair carefully. I didnt dare speak in that situation, something was keeping me from opening my mouth. Then, I saw her smile.

"Your hair is..." She then took a step back. "Sorry. I must get going now"

You were confused, you had questions, you needed answers! Why did she do that? Yet, you were still. Unable to move.

"I must go now. The cheerleader auditions will begin soon." She walked over to her closet and took out some comfortable sport clothes.

"...You are very welcome to come see me if you'd like. I would very much enjoy your presence."

With those words, she left the dorm, leaving me speechless. At least I was able to move now... Moving on, I tried to forget about the strange behaviour of my friend and instead focuss on something else, something like...Ugh, homework.

I took out my book, notebook and pencilcase. I had an assignment that I had to do by hand because certain teacher didn't like computers and simply couldn't stand a project made in a digital format! I decided to first write a draft in pencil, and once I'm satisfied with it, I will write it on a clean paper with pen.

"Wait, where's my pencil?"

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