#i just dont answer the vast majority of my asks anyway!!!

[iraprince]

I was off my meds for a while and I think I might've sent you some weird and/or inappropriate asks 😬

I'm very sorry if I did and I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable

I hope you have a good day!

i really don't think so! that i can remember anyway. if i truly don't like an ask or it makes me uncomfortable i just delete it, which means i forget about them almost immediately, so no worries.

on the other hand if you were the anon who sent me something about being wasted and eating lasagna while reading my comics out loud to your dog, that one was good

[xxconnection]

What’s the hardest thing about living on womyn's land

ok i gotta come clean. my instinct was to lie and say the hardest thing is like, the amount of manual labor or idk, staying warm in the winter. but this an easy question. we've asked this question at other wimmins lands and their answer is usually the same as ours: getting along. ive only been on tumbler a couple of weeks and i already see that this problem is here on radblr too.

here on the land right now we're really really lucky because we residents get along. we have our disagreements and bad moments but we love each other and enjoy spending time together. that wasnt always the case here! this used to be a place wimmin didnt even want to visit because it was so unfriendly. now after much hard work, we have more visitors than ever. and the vast majority of our visitors are kind and reasonable wimmin who come here to enjoy the land and socialize with other wimmin. but nobody is perfect yall. kind and reasonable wimmin also do and say rude and unreasonable little things. these kinds of little things can turn into feuds if the wimmin involved dont have the conflict resolution skills to handle it. also, not all wimmin are kind and reasonable! some wimmin are totally unlikable! some wimmin come here with no intention of getting along at all! some wimmin come here to get drunk and throw things! some wimmin attend events just to start arguments! and all of those wimmin still deserve female only space.

so how do we deal with difficult wimmin? how do we deal with difficult moments? we do our best but sometimes there's nothing we can do. sometimes we make it worse. and sometimes we are the difficult ones. me, i have chronic pain and was raised with a "eat or be eaten" mindset. being difficult comes plenty natural to me! but puttin in the extra effort to have compassion even when u feel like being mean is worth it. and so we try and we try again.

we have a great little community here. i really believe that every womon who comes here wants the best for the land. but we all show it in different ways, and some wimmin are perhaps more passionate than others. some have more self control than others. some have more hurt than others. and some had never once been in a space where they could express themselves freely until they came here. even the most calm and collected womon can fall apart if she finds herself in a safe enough space. it's important for wimmin to have space to be ugly and difficult. it's hard to hold that space, but not as hard as not having that space at all.

anyways, thank you for your excellent question. i guess what im trying to say is that being nice can be really hard, but it's important to try. we can practice on each other!

[alexmeeksmartin]

enchanted to meet you

part 2: https://www.tumblr.com/alexmeeksmartin/716331255770333184/dont-be-afraid-to-jump-then-fall

pairing: chad meeks-martin x gn reader

synopsis: the one where anika drags her roommate, y/n, to meet her new friends from blackmore. one in particular catches y/n’s eye.

a/n: first fic, so probably is kinda bad but we’ll see how it goes ! sorry it’s so rough, still finding my footing lol !! originally wrote in the first person but changed it, might still be a mistake or two in there tho

wc: 2.0k

“so, y/n, these are the guys i wanted you to meet!” anika starts as you study the four strangers that anika had just gathered around. the first was a tall boy with short curly brown hair, who shyly looks away the moment you make eye contact with him. from what anika had said, your bets are that he’s ethan. he’s totally what you expected from anika’s stories. “this is ethan, as you know we’re in econ together.” bingo.

next to him was a shorter girl with dark hair and freckles crossing over her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. you make a mental note to find out where she gets her shoes. “and this is tara, her and her sister only live a couple blocks away from us.” tara sends you a large smile, to which you respond with a warm grin.

anika crossed the pair to walk over to the other girl in the group and wrap her arm around her shoulder. “here we have mindy.” in your head you think that those two would definitely make a cute couple, anika clearly has taken a liking to her. “i’ve heard a lot about you.” you begin before anika shoots you a look, quickly silencing you.

“and last but not least, this is chad.” anika finishes, showing you an absolute hunk of a man, with chad winking at you. you play it cool, giving him a raise of your eyebrows in response. as far as you know, he could be just another gross man. “well, I’m y/n obviously. um, so, it’s really nice to meet all of you! i’m gonna go get a drink now… but i’ll see you guys around!” you say, swiftly heading to the kitchen through the bustling crowds. you’re sure they’re all nice but anika is a bit more outgoing than you are, and they look like they could be a lot. plus, parties aren’t really your scene anyways, you think to yourself.

you head to the kitchen, seeing a bottle of vodka and pouring yourself a shot. a drink or two wouldn’t hurt, especially when it comes to getting you out of your shell. you’re just about to chuck it back, but an ecstatic tara comes barrelling into the room. “hey, i’ll do one with you!” she exclaims, pouring herself a shot too. “cool.” you respond, tara hurriedly getting herself ready, before counting the pair of you down. “1! 2! 3!” you both down it, tara’s face immediately screwing up while you seem to maintain a calm expression. little does tara know, you’re screwing up just as much on the inside. “how can you- does that seriously not burn or feel weird whatsoever?” tara questions.

“do enough shots in your time and you’ll be the same.” you state, winking at tara. the pair of you talk for a while, maybe even an hour or so before you depart to discover who else is around. you walk into the living room, seeing mindy & anika cuddled up on the couch together. anika spotting you immediately signals for you to come over. both of you having had a few drinks by now, you sink down into the couch beside the two girls.

“you enjoying yourself?” anika asks you excitedly. “yeah, your friend, tara, is a lot. in a good way, though.” you answer.

“you’ve got the best of her tonight I think,” mindy begins, “usually she’s fun-drunk for the first hour or two but then she gets messy. it’s hilarious from the sidelines, but not so funny when you’re taking her home to her sister.”

“anyways, you got your flirt on yet, y/n?” anika teases, with mindy mouthing ‘sorry about her’ over her shoulder to you while you roll your eyes at the question.

“ani, babe, do you really think that I want to get with any of these frat guys? the vast majority of the men at these parties are walking adverts for birth control.” you remark, slightly exasperated. anika had been bugging you for weeks about getting yourself out there.

“can i say, mindy? please please please?” anika pleads with the girl beside her, mindy giving an exhausted nod. “so, don’t say you heard from me-“

“anika, seriously? we’re not in high school.” you cut in, laughing.

“-but, i have on good authority that someone at this party has a crush on you.” anika finishes.

“what she is trying to say is that chad has been asking a lot about you tonight, y/n,” mindy explains, “you also may happen to be his hallway crush.”

“hallway crush?” you ask, curious.

“he’s seen you at blackmore a few times, says he finds you cute-“ mindy gets cut off as tara rushes in. “mindy! anika! shots!” tara shouts, “oh, hi, y/n!”

“hi, tara.” you giggle as the girl shoots past, with mindy & anika in tow.

you remain seated on the couch, as ethan makes his way into the room. “hey.” he says, plopping himself down beside you. “hi. having a nice night?” you ask. “i mean it’s okay, parties aren’t really my thing though.” you turn to face him, “i get it. wanna dance?”

“sure.” he says, smiling at you. seems like a lovely guy, you think as you get up to dance, ethan spinning you around.

you two dance for about 15 minutes or so before you part ways, ethan deciding to take a minute outside to himself. you stumble through the hallway before some random bumps into you, with force, knocking you to the floor.

“hey, dickhead, watch it.” you snap at him, the man turning around. “watch what?” he responds with hostility. “where you’re fucking going? you just smacked right into me.” you continue, glaring at him.

“oh yeah? I don’t give a fuck.” he says. “fucking prick.” you retort. his response? to chuck his drink on you.

“what the fuck? you asshole!” you yell at him, now absolutely drenched. seemingly out of nowhere chad appears, your knight in shining armour. “hey, what’s up? there a problem here, y/n?” he asks you, placing his hand on my shoulder. “yeah, this fucker just chucked a drink on me after basically shoving me to the floor.”

“seriously?” chad asks, and you confirm with a nod, “you think you’re a tough guy, pushing people around? throwing drinks? go take your ass home. now.” chad says.

“oh, yeah? what you gonna do about it if i don’t, man?” the man aggressively asks, stepping up to chad.

“i’ll kick your fucking ass, that’s what.” chad threatens. the man looks away before taking a swing, but chad catches his arm before he can make contact with his face.

“not gonna work.” chad says, still holding onto the guy’s arm, then hitting him with a slap taking him to the floor. the guy quickly scurries away, with you and chad making an escape to the outside as well. you burst out laughing at the guy’s failed attempt, chad practically pulling you with him.

“thank you so much for that, but i could’ve handled it, that was very sweet of you though.” you say to chad through your laughter, feeling cold air of the outdoors wash over your skin.

“yeah, well, just because you can handle it doesn’t mean you should have to deal with it. besides, it’s not like he was gonna actually do shit.” chad responds, as you warmly smile back at him, laughing. maybe you judged too fast, you think, chad showing you that he has more depth than just being some mindless jock.

you spend the rest of your night getting to know chad, finding the twin to be just as funny as his sister and also very kind. and of course, very attractive. it definitely made conversation easier to know he felt the same, even if he didn’t know that you were privy to that information.

as the party starts clearing up, mindy lets you know that she’ll let anika stay at her’s tonight due to your roommate getting herself far too drunk. you’re thankful, knowing that mindy taking anika home means you don’t need to spend the next couple hours holding her hair back as she throws up, nor do you have to deal with her being terribly hungover the next morning. the two girls get themselves an uber, leaving the group of you, tara, ethan, and chad to walk home.

you all talk as a group for the majority of the journey, chad kindly offering you his shirt and wearing his letterman jacket after yours is still soaked from the drink. after hearing of you and chad’s story from the night, tara repeatedly tells the three of you about how she wishes she had seen it, and would’ve ‘kicked the guy’s ass’ herself.

once getting to tara’s place, you and ethan wait outside while chad takes tara up to her sister, knowing full well that sam wouldn’t take too kindly to two strangers knowing where she lives.

“so, chad, huh?” ethan asks, leading you to tilt your head at him in confusion.

“what about him?” you question.

“he’s a pretty cool dude, y’know? very loyal, very loving-“ ethan continues, listing off chad’s positive traits.

“is this you being a wingman, ethan?” you laugh.

“no, i’m not- i mean, yeah, i am. it’s just he’s a really great guy, and i think you should know that, y/n.” ethan says.

“well, i’ve formed my opinion of him already. but that’s nice of you, i’m sure he’d appreciate it.” you say, smiling at the now flustered and blushing boy in front of you.

“um… a good opinion i hope?” ethan shyly asks.

“let’s just say that you guys might be seeing a bit more of me.” you answer, as chad makes his way back out of the building. “tara all good?” you ask.

“yeah, she’s fine. sam isn’t too happy but there’s not really anything i can do to fix that.” he responds. “anyways, we should be getting you home.”

“i can make my way back, don’t worry.” you reassure chad, but he shakes his head.

“no, no, i insist.” chad says, sweetly grinning at you.

“if you say so.”

“um- i think i’m just gonna head back to the dorm, i’m really tired… call if you need me, chad?” ethan awkwardly puts out there, and you feel like you can see chad’s smile grow ever so slightly bigger.

“yeah, that’s fine, man. see you in a bit.“ chad replies.

“we shouldn’t be ages anyways.“ you add. “it was lovely to meet you, ethan!” you say, giving him a hug before turning around and you swear you noticed the end of chad mouthing ‘thank you’ to his buddy.

the two of you walk to your place together, laughing and smiling the whole way, finding yourselves at your door much quicker than you anticipated, and also much quicker than you’d wanted.

“well, thanks again for letting me borrow the shirt and for sticking up for me with that guy earlier, means a lot. um, i can probably get the shirt washed and back to you by tomorrow night-“

“don’t mention it, y/n. suits you better anyways.” chad smiles. you smile too in return, not sure what to say next.

“but, maybe i should get your number just so i can make sure you get back into your apartment safe and sound…” chad trails off, handing you his phone to put my number in and you oblige, slightly giggling at his attempt to be smooth. “so, you already had enough of us four or do you think you’ll maybe consider hanging out with us? or me?”

“no, i’m totally repulsed by the idea.” you reply sarcastically, getting a laugh out of him. “i mean, it’s been a pleasure getting to know you guys. could still do a little convincing on you though, bud.”

chad’s face drops slightly, and you lightly hit his arm. “i’m joking, obviously. you’ve been ever so lovely tonight, chad.”

“i’ve had a really great night, y/n.”

“me too. i’ll see you soon. thanks for walking me back, and goodnight.“ you say before kissing him on the cheek and swiftly making your way into the building, leaving him flustered at the door. you walk back up to your apartment, praying that this was the very first page and not where the storyline ends.

a/n: hope this was somewhat readable. don’t know how to use tumblr super well but will hopefully find my way, and if you read till here i hope you enjoyed!

[cuppajj]

so, idk if this counts as a suggestion,

but maybe, BAAU can be like... a seperate thing from the awakened ancient thing? like... I dont know how to explain it but like, its not canon to the actual crk storyline, so maybe you can take some creative liberties? /nf /genq

I’ve been considering that as my plan B! If all else related fitting in neatly with the canon CRK timeline fails, im just gonna go nahh ima do my own thing and diverge it from the canon however I want

(I would count that as a suggestion but I’m cool with it! Ig what I mean by “im not welcoming suggestions” is that I’m less comfortable with being fed ideas when I didn’t ask, like they want to write the au for me? I like it when people help me think of them on my own but not when people present scenarios and stuff like “what if you did [xyz]/you should do [xyz]” . they aren’t presented as fun hypotheticals and are more like telling me what to do . like im the one writing the canon and i get inspired by others’ ideas/questions, not like… answering directly to them? But even still that’s very rare, and in the case of the cheese saga it’s bc i sought help from my friends. Hard to explain but I hope I made sense. If not sorry OTL. I still like it when people ask me about certain things and characters I haven’t talked about, but I don’t like it if people are like. Telling me how to write my au. :’DD

You know the kinds of people who feel entitled to influencing how/what creators write stories? Thats basically what im trying to avoid. Anyway anon this doesn’t pertain to you or the vast majority of my anons rn bc my inbox looks pretty based and I know yall are just curious. Im flattered by your curiosity!)

EDIT: i should also add that consistency is a big factor in this, im fine if its like a harmless instance but if a single person proceeds to keep making the same suggestion(s) like they’re forcing it, then i have an issue. BASICALLY. hypothetical ideas and questions are still encouraged just don’t expect me to make what i say of it canon (unless our interests happen to align already) . that is a rare chance

[beesmygod]

Just wondering, do you consider it wasteful to do any fanfic/derivative work, or simply the ones that are attempting to brute force a preferable outcome to an unsatisfying story? Like, would you consider it the same waste if LR was a spin-off comic about uhhh [idk much about LO bare with me] filling in that decade time skip, rather than a beat for beat rewrite? Again, hope my tone isnt giving hostile vibes, as im genuinely curious your opinion. Thanks!

no not at all, even though i have been hostile to some people in a "come the fuck on" way, i appreciate having a back and forth with someone where we both whittle something down until we hit a nugget of understanding that helps us understand. i dont know. something more. anyway:

i dont think wasteful is the right word but i think i'm WAY more glib about it than the vast majority of people in fandom spaces or artistic spaces. im 33 and been online since i was in the 4th grade, so my experience with fanfiction has been VAST and varied but i have never cared for the medium much at all. i was, growing up, an outside hostile observer who was part of the people who would "spork" (I KNOOOWWWWW) fanfictions of especially dubious nature and tear it to shreds. however, it was understood that these extreme examples were not representative of the majority of the contributions to the form, but i do not have the same sort of baseline respect for the craft it has been trying to demand for the past decade or so. it is forever going to be tied with its origins with the worst of the worst by means of negative psychological association. many such cases

WHATEVER anyway, i think its less about the fact that it's derivative work (lots of derivative work can be incredible) but that fact that its a derivative work without a purpose. like i'm not sure what it's supposed to add to the conversation except that this one person thinks that they can make a bad comic a little bit better. which like, okay. get in line pall! most people could! what are they contributing to a grander discussion? what is this comic supposed to make me, the reader, think? literally the only answer i can think of is "i am doing better!"

even something that fills in a time skip (lol i forgot abt that) struggles under the weight of the same purposelessness. the question that should be asked is "but why?"; what is the purpose of it? what is the point? is it fun? that's fine, but audiences who are external to the creation process are probably not going to get the same fun from reading it as the artist did making it.

[hawkeyedflame]

"anyway, go ahead and post your screenshots, like i give a fuck. i never said anything in that server that i don't stand by still, and i certainly never harassed anyone. while you're doing that, maybe go outside and touch some grass. like, seriously. live your life outside in the real world like a normal person and you might realize that nobody gives a flying fuck about your internet temper tantrums."

This is just Peak ironic and hypocrisy of you and your friends given what they were doing in there but I'm sorry that you just want to sweep everything underneath the rug and act like you're forgiven or have Redemption now when you haven't done anything to become a better person lol lmfao even.

It's super duper funny to watching you try to take the high road here 😂 but just know people know the real you twerp

2) Rules for the not we must be very strong motto with you too 😂 But again it's so crazy how you just lied and then immediately resended that lie and tried to wiggle your way out, you want to talk about being racist or sexist or homophobic but wait till the screenshots come out and I'll tag everything appropriately there for you and see how your friend still feel about you but deep down you haven't changed and wont change just like your creepy pals that were in there with you haven't stopped or changed as well but I'm going to guess that you just conveniently avoided all that somehow huh 3) You were so upset over hominis and his wife both racist sexist garbage people 🤡 enjoy your side show clowns ya freakshow 😂 Karma will see to you, don't worry ugly. 4) Awe you're upset of cisnowflake too another horrible sexist racist loser? For all your projecting and positioning you try to do on your page you're still just the same person you have been 2 years ago and even further back because no matter where you go or what you do you are still you Paige and your true colors will bleed back through and you can't change the hate in your heart anymore than you can change how retarded, ironic and hypocritical you are 😂 Cuz again I don't see you renouncing your friends Behavior or what they did or your part in it you're just mad because I'm here calling you out about it while you're trying to save face. I mean again if you truly moved on and are turning this new page relief you could have just apologized or said you know what that situation was horrible but no you double down back to like you always do and will again. Garbage person, simple ass 🤷‍♂️ 5)Again it's just funny you go from you weren't in any kind of Discord doing harassment or talking shit about people you dont even know and then you admit that you were in there and you stand by everything that you said but then say you've changed and its others problems what you did and caused. Yup that's the way to have integrity and maturity and to get to the next level of being a better person for sure just sleeping everything underneath the rug and flipping everybody off in the process. I hope your life is as "pleasant" as you have been.

I go to bed and then go to work and come back to this word vomit... You might actually be more deranged than the chick from the FMA fandom who was tweaking out about me supposedly being a transphobe. I'm legitimately impressed by your dedication. Honest.

So anyway, this is really funny, I guess since you're on anon like a spineless worm, you're giving me the liberty of having the last word, because I certainly won't be answering any more asks from your crazy ass after this lol

I am friends with very few people in that server. The people who are/were in there at the time that I was also using the server were acquaintances at most, with the vast majority being strangers I'd never met. I never once participated in harassing or being hateful towards anyone while I was using that server. As I said, post your screenshots if it will make you feel big and cool. I do not give a fuck. It's not like I'm going to waste my time looking at whatever "evidence" you think you have on me.

I didn't lie. I said I don't use servers, which is true. I did not say that I've never used servers. 2+ years of not participating in any servers constitutes saying that I do not use servers. You're grasping at straws, it's pretty sad.

When was I ever upset about Hom and his wife? They can take care of themselves. This doesn't even make any sense.

This is actually just really funny. You're here on anon trying to tell me you know me well enough to know whether I've changed as a person. I have, believe me. Just not in my political opinions. I don't need to renounce anything or apologize for anything, because I am not any of the things you are accusing me of being, nor are any of the people you have brought up by name in this weird little mental breakdown you're having in my inbox.

Again, didn't lie. Didn't talk shit about anyone I don't know except for a couple of creepy-ass tumblr losers that were outright stalking a couple of my acquaintances. Perhaps you're assmad because you're one of those stalkers? Much to think about. My life is extraordinarily pleasant, yes, and getting better every single day. Thank you for the well wishes. Happy new year :)

[vveakfish]

re: tags on lrb

thinking abt the journey and a half my DC hyperfixation has been.

I was a DCAU only girlie for so long. (BTAS, Batman Beyond, Teen Titans, YJtv, GLtv). I enjoyed the DCEU too, but i was WAY too wrapped up in MCU brain-rot to dive too deeply into those. But that was it. Zero interest in comics themselves as a lil squirt.

Eventually I stopped caring abt the DCEU entirely. (around WW’84, tho it had nothing to do with that movie, i just never saw it — and didnt see any of the movies that came after). And got WAY into Marvel™. And i kinda just rode that wave.

When Marvel started branching out into shows i was HYPED — esp since they started that shit off with WandVision. I’d always loved Wanda, and the fact that they brought Billy and Tommy in was all i needed to push me into reading comics

i tore through the young avengers (UGH i miss them <;/3), and other titles associated with them, and was having a blast. At some point around the season finale of Loki (good show, this was just also how the cookie crumbled) I just fell off Marvel in general. A lot of this probably had to do with school ramping up around this time — but i stopped reading comics & watching their shows and movies almost entirely.

Around this time tho, bc i Missed reading comics — i started reading webcomics. And as much as i enjoyed reading Marvel comics for that short period of time, webcomics were what made me fall in love with Comics™ as a medium.

6th semester ended, i was elbows deep in world building for my own webcomic project, and started watching anime while working on it. Again, anime was always one of those things i enjoyed (Digimon, Sailor Moon, and Pokémon were some of the most influential pieces of media in my entire childhood), but my love for it as an art form was really solidified during this time

[side note: can you Tell i was dealing with art school shit during all of this? couldn’t turn the critique brain off literally Ever, so anything i enjoyed got put under the art student lens]

But my interest in anime stayed entirely on the animated side of things for a Long Ass Time. It wasn’t until Jujutsu Kaisen that i got shoved headlong into manga. God that stupid fucking anime changed my life, ANYWAY.

I finished the anime (umm maybe like. 5 times), and then HAD to know what happened next. So i devoured the manga. Every spare moment i had was spent reading it, until i was Done. then i was like orz. what do u do now ??

The answer was do the exact same thing with Demon Slayer. which was ALSO a life changing experience. read 鬼滅の刃 pls pls pls

Now. When i finished KNY, i was also like *head in hands* how do i even keep on living?? But this was also while working on my thesis project, and still doing a lot of work on the side as far as my own comic was concerned. (like… 60k words worth of world building & drafting scripts + designing characters), so its not like i had all that much free time.

anyway — i finished up my 8th semester, and barely gave myself a chance to breathe before i threw myself into working on my comic practically full time.

I was working on a one shot to submit to a contest for Webtoon, and they were asking for a pretty substantial amount of content (60+ panel Action comic one shot. and I, as always, love to make things harder on myself, so i think in one of the later drafts it ended up having over 100 panels).

needless to say, i Did Not finish the oneshot in time (its still not done to this day T~T i’ll come back for you forge, dont worry). But, toward the end of that… 3 month span of feverishly working on this project, i found myself falling in love with DC all over again.

I mentioned YJtv before, but that show was Also something that changed my life as a 10 year old.

(its really funny to think about that show now & how it’s release date lines up with the beginning of the N52 continuity, and how both the show & that particular reboot are so strongly disliked by a vast majority of DC’s fanbase — but thats a post for another day)

I’ve rewatched the show at least once a year since my roommate let me start using their HBOMax login. I know seasons 1 and 2 like the back of my hand bc of how much i watched them growing up, and i like season three well enough. But the thing was that on this unsuspecting summer night, i was about to discover that there were New Episodes.

Dude i was hyped, i was losing my shit. I had resigned myself to the knowledge that this show was never coming back. I was okay with it too. But here it was, alive and kicking after what felt like forever.

Heres the thing tho. They killed off Kon.

okay not really, but at the Time boy boy was Dead, and i was devastated. Thats My Boy. He had been my favorite character from the jump, and i did not know how to process him being gone. So i took a break from the show, and turned to ao3 instead.

At this point i was Not an avid fic reader. I wasn’t an avid reader period – outside of manga – but i had read a few really good fics recommended to my by some of my JJK pals. So i looked at the Kon-El | Conner Kent character tag on ao3 and just scrolled until i found something interesting.

In this case: a Timkon fic (this one in particular).

I knew who Tim was before this (He shows up in YJtv. He's there in BTAS), but I had never thought about him and Kon as... anything really. In the versions of them i was familiar with, they don't interact all that much. They're from different generations of heroes, but i was like, hey, what the hell this sounds cute. And man oh man, it was all down hill from there.

I read more TimKon fic, and just fell in love with them. But i was also... confused. Like... why do these two guys have such a robust fanbase... wheres the link.

THAT is what pushed me to start reading Detective Comics Comics for the first time. I wanted to get to know these guys For Real, and the only way to do that was by digging into the source material.

This post is So long oh shit. I have thoughts about How I got to know the kiddos & how the comics i read (as well as the order i read them in) have influenced my understandings of these little guys. But i think thats a post for another day. I have other things to do than write out a post about my media consumption habits

o7 signing off.

[ocdhuacheng]

i get that people genderbend male character to be female in mxtx stories (esp if those ppl are wlw) because the majority of characters are male and it is focused on mlm content. so i support wlw simping over cool necromancer lesbians you go girlies, but in general i tend to stay away from genderbend stuff because sooooo much of it is made by cis ppl and it can be a bit transphobic? it also a lot of the times falls into the cishet gender stereotype shit of "women big boobie slim waist small big lips big eyes, men big buff strong macho 8 pack square" which is! oh no cringe!

yeah EXACTLY like my thoughts too. bc the vast majority of genderbending made by cis ppl really is just. like you said. biological gender stereotype shit. i feel like most trans people i see are made pretty uncomfortable by this, and i can totally see why, so i am too. but at the same time i DO understand wlw who want more content with girls/wlw characters esp when there are so few to begin with. so like im kinda willing to give wlw the benefit of the doubt in this case even though i dont rly like to interact with it myself. but also, my beloved sisters in christ... baihe exists

the only genderbending ill really interact with is works with sqx, he xuan*, and hua cheng like since theyre the ones that are shown to or mentioned to change gender in canon. (ling wen too, tho tbh i dont rly care about male!ling wen lmfao, just for the sole reason that, well. i am a lesbian. tho i do have to say the lore behind her male form is actually rather compelling and i think if mxtx were more skilled and open to writing analysis about gender, it could lead to a very thoughtful and nuanced discussion of how ling wen views herself, rather than just if she looks like a cis woman shes a woman if she looks like a cis man shes a man. because iirc she only shapeshifted to get the extra power she had in her male form? that doesnt mean that she is now a man, but in those scenes the book automatically refers to her as such. would love an extra about ling wen's self image and gender. but no, we had to get the statue sex and weird underage amnesia stuff 🙄)

BUT ANYWAY like idk if it really counts as genderbending in tgcf's case? but either way i know mxtx made that ~gods and ghosts can change gender at will~ thing just as a haha comedic relief thing like i think them having the power to do that is totally cool but i do not think it was done respectfully at all, especially with sqx, since mxtx kind of either intentionally or not sends the message (at least to me) that you can only be trans if you pass as cis. ive said it a million times before and ill say it again but the way sqx is never referred to as a woman (by the characters, the narrative, and even THEMSELF) after they lose the ability to LOOK like a cis woman is so so infuriating to me. like theyre not going to just STOP being genderfluid/trans just bc they cant change their appearance. and also not to mention throughout the book they were just kinda treated as being silly and immature for wanting to change their gender in the first place, so, another win for transphobia i guess. though i can appreciate having a canon trans/genderfluid character, they definitely could have been written better in that regard

*while i love fem!he xuan... it did leave a kinda dirty taste in my mouth when mxtx had to make sure we knew that he xuan only did it to appease sqx, and actually hated being a woman. and the way it was talked about too like 'oh he was forced to be in a womans body so OF COURSE he was super pissed the entire time' like i cant explain it but it was just kind of upsetting. kinda transphobic and misogynist. one might even say,..... transmisogynist 🤔

this answer kinda ended up going on a tangent but yea lol thanks for the ask ^^

[a-dragons-journal]

i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)

[catboynecromancy]

this is a serious question, not meant to be disrespectful or anything, just wanted to say that first. but.... is it so bad if "fans" or readers of your fics ask you to consider writing this or that? i dont mean the ones who say "WRITE THIS OR DIE" lol or idk... the ones who demand something, you know? but if someone asks nicely.... i think i would rather feel happy and honoured about it, and MAYBE write it, or incorporate it.... but of course it is totally fine if you say you hate that and wouldnt write it on purpose. i hope this message makes sense. i am just saying again that obviously NO ONE has to write anything for anyone!!!!!!!!!!! it is not what i mean. please know that!!!!

I mean, no. It isn't bad if someone sends in something like, "hey would you ever consider writing this (insert thing)?" It really, really, really isn't. I appreciate people talking to me, and I have a fair amount of asks saved in my inbox of things I've looked at and want to keep incase I end up having the time, or drive, to write them! (If you have sent me an ask or a prompt, and I never answered, this may be the case)

However, when someone gets the same sort of requests, over and over again, for things they have written, it does get frustrating. Or, when someone says they are writing something out of their norm and they get an anonymous ask going, "Omg! I hope you keep writing (this thing you've already written about a lot)!" It can be demoralizing, or even just downright annoying.

I know you're not telling me I have to write anything I don't want to, and I appreciate you sending this ask so I can clarify.

Yes, I do like if people who enjoy my fics send me ideas, or nicely ask if there are things I would consider writing. But, no, I don't really love it when I have the same thing time after time, after time, after time, and it seems to be the vast majority of what I get asked.

I hope this makes sense? Anyway, that post was rbed in response to a particular thing, as and NOT about anyone who comes into my inbox with thoughts, ideas, or pleasant asks 💕

[toxicsamruby]

hello! i have to ask: what do you think about supernatural au's where monsters don't exist/monster hunting is not a thing? do you think the characters could even exist out of that realm? i honestly have conflicting views on this because on one hand i do enjoy the character dynamics but i also feel it would be wrong to just take away something that is fundamental to this show, idk though

i LOVE this question. thank you. im going to write a very long post now

obviously there are infinite ways to interpret a story, right? but sam and dean (and castiel too of course) as characters are completely inextricable from their backstories, and their backstories are inextricable from themes of transience, poverty, loneliness, violence, familial duty, masculinity, otherness, american protestantism, horror, humanity, and monstrosity. i dont think that it’s Wrong to take away the monster hunting as an element in the story, but i DO think it would be bad storytelling to do so bc the fact is that these characters w these personalities wouldnt EXIST without a few VERY crucial plot points/themes. and thats a GOOD thing!! say what u will abt the writers (and i do. i do) but the early seasons do an EXCELLENT job of building characters who are inseparable from their stories, characters whose every action is reflective of the Story itself in a bigger sense, characters who are interesting because of the way that they’re used to tell that bigger Story. there’s a sense of cohesiveness between character and theme and narrative, and removing one of these aspects would lessen the other two. that is the mark of good storytelling (that, in my opinion, distinguishes seasons 1 and MAYBE 2 from all the rest; although funnily enough i think castiel’s arc in s4 is the best example of what im talking about outside of s1-2. but anyways).

without these crucial themes and narratives, who ARE sam and dean? why do they even matter? what’s the value of them as characters? aus that strip away all those VERY important themes and plot points strip away the actual artistic value of the characters, and reduces them to objects of the audience’s emotional whims. the only reason u have any affection for these characters in aus is because you know and understand the source material, and you remember why those characters STARTED to matter to u in the first place. this is something that happens in a lot of fanfiction i think: the most essential themes of the original work are ignored for the sake of emotionally expedient scenarios where both writer and reader can clock out of having to do a bigger analysis of the story and just focus on, for example, a certain ship getting together and/or having sex, or a certain character getting a happy ending. and like i wont deny that theyre fun to read! they are essentially transplanting already-developed characters from their already-developed stories into a new fun scenario without the themes and narratives that actually made the characters compelling. and sure, sometimes a truly good author offers us a compelling new set of themes and narratives, ones that are interesting and make us think, but i’d argue that the characters in those rare good fics are 1. not...really the same characters from the show, since the story they’re in has been so completely transformed 2. basically shortcuts for the author to cut their teeth on writing original fiction. in any case, a vast majority of fics that remove the themes and narratives of the original story DONT offer a truly satisfying replacement, so the point is almost moot.

my answer, in short, is that aus without monster hunting destroy the character-theme-narrative cohesion that all good stories require, and by extension doesn’t require either author or reader to think critically about the story as a whole. you know that joke that goes around about supernatural just being a crate full of toys that we’re all sitting around and playing barbie dolls with? that is what the fics ur talking about basically are. it isn’t seriously engaging with a story as a piece of art, it’s grabbing a few barbies from a box and putting them in different clothes. and i think the fact that supernatural does fall apart both thematically and narratively so early in its incredibly long runtime is what allows people to treat it as a box of dolls, because most of the time it seems like the writers themselves treat the show as a box of dolls instead of a story that deserves respect and care and thought. so i actually do understand the urge to play with the barbies, so to speak, and to a certain extent i dont even think it’s a bad thing. but i DO think that sometimes, especially online, ESPECIALLY with a show like this where the lines between genuine engagement with the text and playing barbie dolls gets so blurred, people actually start to lose track of which is which, and THATS what irritates me. people start to view the ENTIRE STORY as just a way to see their personal favorite character do what they want that character to do. the character (and their emotional attachment to said character) becomes the whole reason for the story, instead of the story being the reason for the characters. playing barbie dolls is fine! but it DOES need to be balanced out with actual engagement, with literary analysis, with criticism if the story needs it (and my GOD does supernatural need criticism!), and there needs to be an understanding of the difference between genuine analysis and personal loyalty to a character. 

like, not to be a snob or anything, but it is important to engage truthfully and fairly with a text. things arent good just because you want them to be good, and stories can only offer you genuine satisfaction and critical/artistic growth if you truly engage with them. engaging with supernatural means thinking/writing about monsters and the Other, and to remove monstrosity as a theme and narrative hollows out the story completely.

[paulkleefishmagic]

shoutout to @oldtimeydildomachine for asking me about whether i think Hell is real because i genuinely have not been able to stop thinking about it since. my answer is always changing because it depends on how cynical i am feeling about our ability to understand any kind of justice from God without putting it through flawed human logic.

i think the vast majority of people believe in Hell simply as an excuse to get around Christ's command to love your neighbor and pray for your enemy. i also think that if Hell is real, most people probably wouldnt go anyway. i do still have faith that most people at their core are pretty alright, i think

but on the other hand, it feels wrong in an intuitive sense to imagine someone who has done a grave sin like molestation or murder to be in the same heaven as my dead loved ones? just to put it bluntly. i struggle a lot on whether this is a normal way to think. "forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" means that we are to forgive as God forgives, but what does that mean in terms of what happens when those who have hurt us, who we have forgiven but who they have not reprented from their sins, die?

i dont know man. /shrug

[la5t-res0rt]

Wanted to ask about beetlelyds, sorry, I thought it was technically cannon? Like in the old comics after the show ended she grew up and married him. Sorry I’m an old school fan and have no idea why this whole thing is such a big deal. Wasn’t the actor like 20 too? I’m sorry if I sound very dumb. I’m not used to this new tumblr.

youre fine you are one hundred percent allowed to especially when you do it civilly as you have done here

first of all the biggest issue faced in the whole what is and is not canon debate is the fact that there are three (four if you count the limited comics run) publicized iterations of my media

i will go over each very briefly just kidding this is going to a long answer so i will spare the dashboard with a readmore

there is the movie which im sure you dont need me to explain the plot since youre an old school fan but basically the climax is that yes beetlejuice does go for the marriage angle in exchange for stopping the exorcism of adam and barbara and his motive for this is so that he can cause as much chaos as he wants on the mortal coil but his plan is thwarted when barbara rides a sandworm into the house which promptly eats beetlejuice sending him to bureaucratic death limbo

the end of the movie features the deetz and the maitlands happily living together with lydia havign a new appreciation for her situation and beetlejuice gets his head made real small which is very funny haha 

so no in the movie they are not canon editors note the actress who played lydia winona ryder was a teenager while filming the movie she turned 17 the year it released 

the next is the cartoon which i will admit has the most grounds for being considered canon but in the end the show is about a middle schooler and her best friend who is a ghost which in itself is a pretty iffy gray area sort of thing but for a childrens cartoon to work a friendship is better than the obvious enemy status they held in the movie

anyway in the cartoon they are potrayed to be very close friends with lydia being the person beetlejuice cares about the most and honestly if you were to watch it with no prior knowledge of the media and if you ignored their massive and obvious age difference than yeah you probably would read it as a romantic relationship 

however lydia is a middle schooler and that is simply immoral

there have been writers for the cartoon who have been credited to say that a relationship is what they were trying to invoke but for obvious reasons they couldnt exactly move forward with that angle with them establishing that lydia is a child in middle school and a fully grown adult man dating a child who is in middle school is immoral and also illegal in the united states and in canada 

this isnt a good argument for whether or not something is canon and i will tell you why with one simple name and that is luke weber

if you dont know who luke weber is he was a storyboard artist on the cartoon steven universe he is known for making a lot of self ship artwork of him and the character pearl

he worked on the show isnt his material canon no of course it isnt it wasnt put in the actual publication and also if memory serves he was eventually asked to leave the project after he drew art of the shows creator giving him permission to date pearl and calling them her otp and a lot of fans hated this because the most generally accepted interpretation of pearls character is that she is sapphic so a lot of people took issue however that again is just a widely perceived headcanon it is never stated what her actual sexuality is no one in that show is because it isnt a show about that its about wait im getting off topic sorry

what im saying is what can truly be considered canon is what you see on the screen and with the cartoon they are definitely the most friendly with each other and that is why so many people in the beetlebabe shipping community take so much stock in the cartoon because it is the easiest to read the relationship between the mas romantic although that is not what the show actually provides in black and white terms

interpretation does not equal canon and in this case no matter what anyone says the fact remains that in the cartoon itself they are friends good friends yes but friends all the same

it is definitely not a show about a grown man grooming an adult and if it were you definitely shouldn’t be stanning it the extreme because grooming a minor is wrong and it is apparently a problem in the fandom

anyway if the cartoon and the movie are both products of their time and there was more leniency on content bear in mind this was the same era as notorious animation powerhouse and known predator john k who was a showrunner on ren and stimpy and he maintained a relationship with a teenager which was an open secret that nobody really took issue with because in that time being a woman in the animation industry was tricky business and your career could be ended easily if you rejected advances luckily time has moved forward and the animation industry although still full of problems of a similar nature at least people are getting called out and punished for it

you can look more into that yourself its really upsetting though

as for comics i havent been able to find good scans of them and im not willing to purchase them but in my search i never found anything about the two of them ever being married in the cartoon again because she is a child i did find a cover where he appears to be getting married and hes asking lydia to get him out of it but im not sure where the comic actually goes all i know is she is standing off to the side shrugging and looking like she doesnt really care

anyway that brings us to the musical which is set in the modern day 

in the original libretto lydia is described as thirteen but since they got an actress who was older in the updated librettos she is listed as 15 and the story is pretty similar to the movie the young girl befriends ghosts and they try to scare her family out etc etc

the major difference between the film and the musical are that lydia and beetlejuice are more like friends like in the cartoon 

she summons him to help scare after the maitlands attempt doesnt really work so he shows up and they have fun terrorizing people together however she drops him for the opportunity to perhaps get her mom back but when no one will help she goes back to beetlejuice who tricks her into almost exorcising barbara

she agrees to marry him in order to stop the exorcism and he only wants to get married so he can be alive again and cause problems on the mortal coil like in the movie in the musical he states several times its a green card thing whihc obviously doesnt make it okay but still

anyway lydia tricks him and runs off into the underworld before the wedding can happen blah blah blah she goes back blah blah and she agrees to go through with the wedding to save her friends and family with a plan to make him go away for good

theres a very tongue and cheek song called creepy old guy which points out how wrong the whole thing is but everyone is going along with it in a very comedic matter and it includes the line 

i cant believe some cultures think this kind of things alright

basically saying yeah this is very very wrong anyway they do get married and beeltjeuice is alive for like 6 seconds before lydia stabs him to death with bad art and he dies thus nullifying the marriage because death do you part etc

so in the musical no at the end of the show they are not canon because he is dead their marriage is nullified and they go their separate ways

anyway sorry about that i just need to make it very clear that these three properties are all very distinct from each other and basically all three are indeed canon since they are publicized material and arguing the validity of which one is pointless editors note all actresses who played with the exception of dana steingold were minors for the majority of their runs as lydia with sophia ann caruso the originator of the role turning 18 during the run and dana being in her late twenties presley ryan however was a minor the whole time and still is one

tldr no they aren’t canon but to the credit of some people in this fandom their interpretation isnt too far of a stretch thanks to the era and some of the writers wishing to imply a relationship between an adult and a child

i also need to address how this is all a big deal and i suggest you take a peak through my discourse tag and check out @leedia‘s blog to see some of the more harmful things done by beetlebabe shippers

the beetlejuice fandom is home to many minors after the musical came out since musical fandom is vast and the ages of its members varies and normalizing pedophilia is harmful to them not to mention the people who have been effected by sexual harassment at the hands of adults

both sides have victims of csa but one side continues to perpetuate the cycle by showing time and time again that this behavior is normal and easily romanticized in the name of coping and literally anyone who has ever been to a good and credible therapist could tell you that posting cp even if it is simulated cp isnt a really good way to cope and you can get mad at me for saying that its totally fine but and im going to remove my character veil here for just a second as a csa survivor myself i think its harmful to not only myself but many others ok the veil is back down

tldr again there is a lot of bullying and harassment going on with both sides having their own issues but there is one side whos issues run a bit deeper in my humble opinion 

thank you for your question it allowed me to talk a lot you are welcome to discuss further with me in dms if you wish i honestly recommend giving the musical a listen because it is very fun and despite what some people say its very clever and if you get a chance to see a boot of it its visually stunning

one last note that i couldnt really fit in here but a large portion of the beetlebabes shipping community ignore the musical because it openly condemns the idea of beeltejuice and lydia having a relationship and a lot of the antis take issue with much of the writing and characterizations of the cartoon just a note that i think is important since were talking about canon

[crimeronan]

ik youre not a therapist and i dont want like therapy or anything but im 17 and ive known i was bipolar for 3 years now and i dont know how im supposed to live the rest of my life like this. im so fucking tired. how do you stay alive

you sent this a couple days ago & i’m posting at a weird time so i’m not sure if you’ll see it but.  

i’ve been looking at this message trying to decide how to respond

because i don’t know your situation, your symptoms, how you’re feeling, whether you’ve had positive or negative experiences with medication, psychiatrists, therapists, hospitals, all that related shit

the bipolar life advice i give to people is vastly different depending on the individual. it’s not a one size fits all thing.  and there’s never even a guarantee that my advice will be the right choice

so since i don’t know about your situation or experiences or what you want, i’m not gonna tell you what to do.  i’m gonna focus on the “how do you stay alive” question and try to pen down some personal feelings. and if they help then great, and if they don’t then... this is the most honest i can be

(you can always ask another question to get a better answer. my inbox is a coin slot and i am a vending machine of varied-degrees-of-helpfulness replies offered at varied-inconvenient-too-long-intervals)

-

how do i stay alive

it’s a 2-parter, actually.  i pondered how to condense my thoughts/feelings, and it came down to these two things

1. love 2. spite

-

1. love

the spite is easier to write about than the love.  love is hard to reach when i feel like shit.

spite is where i go when i want to die.  love is where i go when i want to want to live.

maybe i don’t want to be alive.  but maybe i wish i did.  spite doesn’t help me much there.  spite keeps me afloat, but it doesn’t make the floating pleasurable.  there’s more to life than outlasting everything that ever hurt me.  i need a reason to continue when there’s no enemy to fight

so. love

i almost wrote about the spite alone because that’s rawer, realer, more visceral.  that’s the shit that CONNECTS when everything feels hopeless.  but it would be a lie of omission.  spite is only one of the major food groups, you’ll waste away from malnutrition if you eat it for every meal. or at least, i will.

“so you’ve got a bunch of people you love,” you say, “and you stick around for them.  cry on them.  support each other.  like each other.  fine.”  you’ve heard this story before

nah.

i mean - yes.  i have people i love.  i live with two partners, i’ve got a third girlfriend, i’ve got a long-distance platonic life partner.  i have a support net, i have a family i’ve forged, i have confidence that i’m not alone.  i have, in a bare-bones checklist sort of way, fulfilled my physiological human need for connection

but i could live without every single one of them.  i’m not dependent upon any of them for my survival.  i’m not dependent upon them for love, given or received.  (this isn’t a callous cruelty, it won’t hurt them if/when they read this.  i’ve told them all this, they know.  they’re glad of it.)

so.  what the fuck does “love” mean, then?

the short explanation is that it’s my love of life, of things in the world.  it’s all the little connections i’ve made.  every time i love something, a hook tethers to the universe.  hook enough tethers, and i no longer feel the need to float away.  no dissolution of self today, sir

the rest of this section is some of the things i love. partially it’s to show how i connect to little things and ascribe magic to the mundane.  partially it’s because i like thinking about things i love, i like typing them out, and i like that i could keep going for thousands and thousands of words.

i am laying in bed at 7:30 AM with the lights off and the shades drawn.  blue  light comes through the slats because it’s the better time of year, the one where i finally get vitamin D, the one where the birds chirp at 4AM, the one where the sky isn’t impenetrably black til 10PM.

there’s a weighted blanket tucked around my legs.  my partner rafi bought it for us to share because it’s soothing and heavy and comforting and helps with my physical pain.  right now it’s soft on my skin and if i get too emotional as i write, i can pull it over me like a cloak until i’m settled.

the apartment’s walls are blank because we’ve spent eight months intending to put art up and keep forgetting.  but there’s a newly-unearthed dining area in the kitchen because i finally shifted around the unpacked boxes that were dominating the space.  it’s new and it surprises me every time i walk out there.  it’s open and inviting and bright and it’s a sign that we’re making this place home.

we’ll put a cheap IKEA table by the window and we’ll probably never eat family dinners there - why would we sit in hard chairs and make stiff conversation when we could all cuddle on the couch - but my partner dev will create a place to do their art and the surface will be constantly littered with drying watercolor experiments.

we’ll hang our art one of these days, too, when our collective adhd offers a miraculous combo of remembering + having time + having motivation + having inspiration.  rafi has the most art because they’ve been collecting it for years.  i have to start smaller.  i’m not used to keeping physical objects.  dev has a few pieces thrifted or bought at local artist events or painted themselves

so we’ll put art up in the living room, my single “you are magic” flower print alongside a naked monster lady that dev fell in love with when we browsed art at a yuletide event months ago, alongside rafi’s monster girls and comic characters and book characters and literature art and quotes and abstract pieces and whatever else they have hiding in boxes.

my head protests that naked monster ladies do not belong in the living room, although the picture isn’t overtly sexual.  but then i remember that they do, actually, because it’s our space and we can do whatever we want with it as long as the lease isn’t broken.  there isn’t anyone in the local social circles who’d be perturbed by the decor, as far as i know.  i don’t have to hide anything from my parents because i live 3600 miles from them, and even though i miss my mom, the distance is good for me

there are two exquisite chairs on the porch.  they fold and recline from thrones to nearly-horizontal beds.  there are pillows and cupholders and trays and specific spaces for both a book and a phone.  i can sit there while the morning sun rises and read or play word games or browse tumblr, cup of coffee beside me, trees shielding my eyes from stabby sunbeams

there are remnants of the last tenant’s garden in one corner of the yard.  we’ve done fuckall for yardwork but plants struggle through anyway.  some seem to have sprouted by accident.  mushroom clusters populate the edges of the fence.  the apartment squirrel (there are probably several, but i like to think it’s a single energetic creature) runs back and forth along the fence & i always lose my train of thought & then laugh my ASS off at the “SQUIRREL! XD” adhd moment.  birds kick up leaf litter and play on the ground looking for insects to eat, they wiggle their tail feathers and flap their wings and sometimes they disappear and then return with friends

a little more than eleven months ago, i packed all of dev’s and my shit into a uhaul and drove and drove and drove to get to this city i’d never been in before to live with a partner i’d never cohabitated with.  we were homeless for more than a month, we weathered some financial disasters, we met some great people and some shitty ones

on the drive i fell in love with the sky.  i didn’t know how big it can get - actually, that’s a lie.  i’d FORGOTTEN how big it can get.  i’ve loved the sky thirty miles out to sea, no land in sight in any direction, just blue water and blue space above.  i’ve loved the vastness and the yawning beneath me and the knowledge that everything is BIGGER than i can fathom.  the depth of the sea doesn’t frighten me, it’s home. i don’t want to die, but if i had to, the ocean makes a soothing grave

in north dakota i discovered that i’ve been partially blind my whole life, which is a different tale that showed me i’ll never stop learning myself.  in montana we struggled up thousands of feet of mountains with the car huffing and puffing at the trailer’s weight, and when we finally coasted downward, it felt like sudden freefall.  we ended up in the pitch darkness of night on sheer winding interstates with midnight construction projects forcing detours.  the mountains felt hungry, they had teeth.  mountain cliffs are much scarier to me than the ocean depths

i bought a red bull and poured a little out the driver’s side door as an offering to hermes, because i’m not particularly religious but i’ll take help where i can get it.  slammed that back in a few gulps and shook to bright-eyed alertness and ended up behind a slow-driving red pickup truck that guided us over about a hundred miles of mountain terrain

i thought, that’s just some construction worker driving between sites.  the roads are empty at this time of night, but it’s an interstate.  of course we’d end up behind someone.  this isn’t divine intervention.  this isn’t the benevolence of a god

i thought, but it can be a little magic.  if i want it to be.  

and it was.  it stays with me.

god help me but i’ve been writing this stream of consciousness for more than 30 minutes and i’ve said nothing.  i haven’t talked about the city, the parks, the people, the conversations, the books, the tv shows, the movies, the communities, the library, the animals, writing, reading, singing, acting, swimming, analyzing, creating, supporting, building.  and i can keep going.  i can come up with hundreds and hundreds of things i love and i can write paragraphs about all of them

so i’ll stop here.  you get the picture.  love is the life i’ve made for myself, the surroundings i’ve built, the quiet moments i can capture, the inspiration i pin, the magic i commit to memory.

i had to work so damn hard for every single bit of this.

i’ll be fucking damned if i let it go because my brain tried to trick me into thinking death is better.

-

2. spite

there are people who want me to die.

i don’t mean that i have a giant entourage of personalized enemies who curse my name and plan my individual demise.  although there have been plenty of people who have not liked me much.  probably some of them would enjoy my death.  i don’t give a shit about that

there are people who want me dead because i am a dot on a grid they dislike.  a faceless anonymous enemy who meets too many bad criteria with numbers and percentages and shrinking majorities and shifting public opinion

because i’m gay.  because i’m bipolar.  because i’m autistic.  because i’m a dropout.  because i grew up poor.  because my spine curves and my shoulders ache.  because i squandered my potential, because i didn’t have enough potential, because i didn’t love god enough, because i love the wrong gods, because i don’t worship, because i worship wrong, because i didn’t seek a husband, because i never wanted one, because i talk too much, because i can’t be controlled, because i chose to leave the fold when i realized it was suffocating me, because i’m ugly, because i’m gorgeous, because my body belongs to me

pick your poison.

this bothered me growing up, a lot. i knew i did not deserve to die. but if enough people tell you that you should, a little part of you will wonder if they’re right.  that little part might become bigger the closer they get and the louder they shout and the longer they wear you down

we know the rough shape of this story, i don’t need to tell it.  mine was messy and not triumphant and i survived more by chance than premeditation.

i’m older now.  by and large i’m still young as shit - i’m 24 - but GOD i am LEAGUES away from 15, 16, 17. i know who i am. i know what i want. i know how to get it. and when i don’t know that, i find out. i tell the truth.  i ask for what i want.  i use my time how i want.  i do what i want.

there are days that i can’t access the “love” side of the equation.  no finding poetry in birdsong or sugared coffee for me, thank you, i feel like shit and the world is awful and everything is too big and fast and cruel and everything wants me to die and it wants everything i love to die, too.  everyone i love.  it’s all garbage. the good doesn’t touch me

trauma is difficult to describe.  the difficulty is compounded by the fact that my trauma is influenced by my various neurodivergences, bipolar included.  i never know if i’m feeling what other people do.  i don’t know if i’m voicing unpalatable feelings others are afraid to express - or if i’m just othering myself, admitting i’m not as human as everyone else.

there is something malevolent and monstrous inside me.  i don’t touch it all the time.  but i don’t pretend it isn’t there.  it sits in my chest and molders or radiates or oozes.  it presses at my throat.  it curdles in my stomach.  it hurts what it touches, whether that’s me or someone i love or someone i hate.  it sets things aflame with no regard for the precious or the fragile.  it tears down walls and razes shelters and begs for apocalyptic rain.

i can give this thing names, clinical descriptors.  i know what it is on a diagnostic chart, in a ponderous article, in an academic debate, in a fiction novel, in a war movie, in a memoir.  there are a thousand ways to describe this thing.  the descriptors aren’t important.  what is important is this - i have learned that most people do not walk side-by-side with a tornado-hurricane-hellfire-weaponized-open-nuclear-reactor.  this is not a “normal” expression of human emotion, this is not me trying to ascribe power to “bad bipolar feelings.”  this thing lives in me and i know why it’s there and it is not designed to be held/silenced/muzzled/controlled by my body.

it does not help to pretend this thing does not exist.  it does not help to try to reason it away or ignore it or tell it to stop.  it wants what it wants, it does what it does.  possibly if i was better at therapy or stubbornness then i wouldn’t resign myself to that

but it is fucking EXHAUSTING to try to fight something that’s part of me.  to try to reshape it, rename it, pare it down, make it consumable for the masses.  it’s a war i have never won and it’s a war that i will lose if i keep fighting it.  i cannot fight with myself.  i cannot beat my monster into submission.  if we’re gonna battle like that, head to head, me trying to cut it down, me trying to be the hero, it rearing back like a fire-breathing dragon,

then it’s stronger.  it’s always stronger.

so i surrender.

but that’s not where i stop.

can’t fight it.  can’t kill it.  can’t muzzle it.  can’t reshape it, can’t disarm it, can’t contain it.  

alright.  

so what now.

if the surrender was a full giving-up, this is where i’d passively accept that i’m doomed to hurt and destroy everything precious to me.  can’t fix it.  will lose everything, will never experience or deserve happiness, will make the world worse simply by existing.

that sure does sound like impending-doom rhetoric.  hop skip and a jump from some dire-ass conclusions.  

so fuck that, i say. 

here’s a better question.

if it has to get out, then what happens if i control where it goes?

here’s the thing.

the monster doesn’t care what it kills or destroys or hurts.  

“have a conscience, care about things, remember love, stop yourself, don’t do this don’t do this don’t do this.” 

 losing battle.  lost war.

 it’s not the monster’s fault.  the monster doesn’t have complex motivations or hates or fears.  it exists to protect me through scorched earth.  a remnant of a chemical imbalance, maladaptive coping mechanism, bipolar crazy, traumatized injury.  it doesn’t know that its job is obsolete.

i can’t change the monster.

but my mind is a separate thing.  my mind knows what matters, what my priorities are, what i find precious, what i want to protect.  my mind remembers all the things the monster doesn’t.  

my mind has learned things the monster can’t.

when i fight it head-on, the malevolence is stronger than me.  but as i am, walking with it, sitting in my bed writing this while examining the void and the consciousness, describing it, quantifying it,

that’s when i’m stronger.

and with my mind as the stronger force, i can decide where the monster goes.  what it touches.  what it destroys.  what it burns.  where the ashes land.

i do not want to be a destructive person.  i want to be someone who builds, repairs, changes.  i want to make the world better for kids like me.  i want to stop pouring more gasoline onto a fire that’s been burning since long before i was born.  i want to believe - i do believe - that positive change is better than negative.  i do my best to plant good things and enact that positive change instead of becoming a beacon of wrath.

but there are a lot of kids surrounded by people who want them to die, and not all of them have a protective monster.

so it’s good.

when i’m depressed, my mind loses its battles.  my cognizance slips.  i forget why i care.  i forget what i want.  i forget how happiness feels, how to find pleasure in quiet moments.  

i don’t get depressed as often as i used to since my meds are adjusted correctly now.  but it still happens.  it will keep happening for the rest of my life.

my mind weakens and curls up and stops fighting, and the monster is always there.

it’s a very powerful thing when it wants to be.

it wants to survive.

the thing is, it knows there are people that want me/us/whatever dead.  it’s been fighting them forever.  die like they want?  my mind says, sure, what does it matter.

the monster says, nah.  our work isn’t done.  and fuck them, anyway.

so we get up.

-

so that’s how i stay alive.

i typed this for 90 minutes and after editing i’d spent two hours on this post.  i don’t know if anyone will read it all.  i don’t know if it’ll mean anything.  i don’t know if these thoughts even make sense, much less if i’ve conveyed the feelings i have.

i love being alive.  and when i don’t, i love being a monster.  it’s good.  all of it is good.  i’ve reconciled my uglier pieces.  it’s not one or the other, love or spite.  it’s symbiosis.  i need both, i love both.

no guarantees that this is helpful, but based purely on my own life experience, these are my tips for survival:

you’ll have to find your own roots.  i can’t give them to you.  

but it’s possible to dig them in and spread them far enough that one uprooted peg doesn’t shift your whole equilibrium.  

and when you’re tired, rest, and let yourself be tired, and find the reason why you’re staying in the world. 

 i’m positive there’s at least one.

figure out why you’re losing your battles and then change the game.

if you can’t win one setup, don’t try to beat the system.  adjust your strategy.

you’ll be surprised by what you can love when you stop fighting the disparate pieces of you, and instead figure out how to use them.

[jynzandtonic]

asks + answers (4/26)

Yo yo yo! I’ve been working my through my ask box, and wanted a way to answer some of the anon questions without feeling like I’m spamming y’all with bazillions of short info posts.

Instead of “killing two birds with one stone,” my mom would always say “feeding two birds with one seed,” which is a lot cuter, and also who the fuck is going around throwing rocks at birds for fuck’s sake. 

In that spirit, I hope this type of post is a good way to feed the birbs. xoxo

ANON ASKS:

Heyyy! So you have a masterlist?

Yes, or at least the humble beginnings of one! I just got a laptop last week, so I’m excited to finally get my shit together.

Today, I’ve been getting together all the fic links, and I’ll also be including links to browse all posts for each individual boy. The vast majority of what I’ve written is in ficlet/drabble/HC form, aka snaccs and thots, which will prove more timely to catalog. You can always track #jyn z snaccs for HCs and #jyn z thots for ficlets/drabbles if you don’t want to miss ‘em!

feels pretty shitty to see you responding to all these other asks but not the ones I’ve sent. oh well   

I thought about just deleting this ask like I did with the small handful of similar ones I’d received before posting about pausing writing requests to catch up, but considering this came in just a few hours ago, it’s probably worth addressing.

Anon, I am so sorry you’re feeling crappy about not seeing your prompt(s) fulfilled. I would never want to do something to intentionally make you feel bad. 

For the most part, I answer asks in the order they are received--perhaps peppering in others out-of-order to diversify the smattering of characters/kinks/themes. I write around 2k words a day just for asks. Up until a week ago, I was plinking out every word I wrote on a phone keyboard, too.

The reason you haven’t seen your ask posted is this:

I am just a smol bean. With two opposable thumbs. And a dwindling supply of beer and coffee. I have only been on tumblr for five weeks. I am still trying to figure this whole thing out. I can only write so much. I don’t want to annoy anyone by posting too much shit. I also live with pretty debilitating mental illness... but I don’t need any reason to justify not being able to churn out non-stop content. Yer babe here needs to take care of their basic needs. <3

~~I am try my best~~

Hugs to you. I hope you know you I value you, regardless of how dialed-in I am on this “web blogging” thing.

i loved your thicc thighs snacks and now im listening to lizzo 💖 sorry if this is personal but are you thicc?

How great is that Lizzo album, right? SHE SHOULDA SWEPT THE GRAMMYS DONT @ ME. Anyway. ^.^ I’m so glad you enjoyed the snaccs! 

And hey, ain’t no thang. I don’t think I’d categorize myself as thicc, but I would say I’m on the muscular side. A suitor once told me I had a “powerful butt,” which is (1) objectively funny, (2) a unique compliment, and (3) the best answer to your q.

In general, I’m a body glorifier. All bodies are good bodies. Anyone who says different can go fuck themselves.

the ‘someone you trust’ interaction in Swiped is very ‘i’m the bosses wife’ from don quixote and i appreciate it

HEY, YO, THANK YOU, I AM THRILLED ABOUT THAT RESONANCE

Also hearing Toby say “Yeah, you are the boss’ wife...” makes me rabid.

Nicole really made Charlie’s 6’3 ass sleep on that small couch

There are few things I find more endearing than extremely tall people on furniture that is obviously too short to accommodate them. AD on basically any furniture is in that category for me. 

Also, just to give a quick holler--for personal reasons, I tend to get really squicked by lingering resentment/spitefulness pertaining to the failed marriage of Marriage Story, so I prefer to steer clear of most emotionally-charged conversations around it! xo

You say y’all a lot, are you southern by chance?

Ha! No, I am not Southern. Quite the opposite: Pacific Northwestern. “Y’all” tends to be my default plural pronoun, as it’s quick and gender-neutral. My favorite gender-neutral plural pronoun is “party people,” but that takes a bit longer to type out.

two of my asks in one post! i asked about the baby steps too hehe. would you pretty please tell me about them? i’m so soft for loving daddy clyde 🥺🥺🥺 - 🤠

Howdy, Cowboy! Thanks for being so patient with your Clyde asks xo. I did mean it, though--that gets me a lil’ too soft and emotional right now! Perhaps when I’m not a quarantine sadboi. MORE FILTH TO NUMB THE PAIN!

If I could count down the days until you drop the flip chapter fic I would! I have been absolutely WHORING over him!! Can’t wait to read it!

AWWWWW I am so happy and also JESUS CHRIST ON A FUCKIN BICYCLE FLIP HAS HAD ME WILDIN RECENTLY. I have said it before and I will say it again: something about than man makes my nostrils flare involuntarily and that’s... that’s some shit.

Hello beautiful soul! I've come to ask about my boy Jude? He needs more recognition!! Stay safe!

Hiya, darling dearest! Thank you for your sweet message; I hope you’re safe and healthy wherever you are. Right now, I’m pretty darn stacked with characters to write, and I’ve gotta get my blog footing underneath me more before I consider adding any more boys. In the meantime, stay stocked up on Raisin Bran. ;)

I just have to stop and say you write some of the absolute best HCs and I just love the layout of your snaccs so much

I just have to stop and say that you are the absolute best and I so appreciate you reading and being here. HUGS!

XOXO, jyn z

[apprenticenerd]

"Anyone can send me an ask with one of the titles and I’ll post a snippet or talk about that WIP!" The Acropolis, Tacet, Checklist, A Tiny Galaxy, Hearsay, Going Back, Ella Disenchanted, Making Peace, The Slashed Circle, Wake Up, Tenno, Midnight, Heliotropism, Arrhythmia, the one about Among Us, the one about Library of Ruina, the one that’s a D&D world concept. Yes, all of them. I know you wanna talk about all of them. So go, go forth and do it!

Hoooo boy, this is gonna be a long post. Lots and lots of writing snippets under the cut to avoid dash stretch!

The Acropolis - original - length uncertain - 1.4k and counting

im not ready for this im not i thought it would be yrs i thought id at least get an english degree first

omg sal whats goin on

fuckin hell whyd it have to be now i have a chem lab tomorrow

sally-tate macpherson. u never swear. ever. wtf is goin on.

ok. jess. i need u to listen really really carefully. understand?

answer the goddamn question ur scarin me

shut up and listen and this will go a lot better

fine but u need to tell me wtf is happnenig

ok. im going to tell you a bunch of stuff. not giving u advice, thats not allowed, but im gonna tell u stuff it seems like itd be impossible for me to know.

?????????????

i said shut up this is really important dont question how i know it. just go with it and figure out what to do. and dont die. bc no matter how crazy stuff seems, if u die, ur dead. here and everywhere. ok?

This is an original story coming straight from a @/writing-prompt-s prompt about a crack in a kid’s hardwood floor that they fantasized was a portal actually being one. I originally intended to write the entire thing like this, as a conversation over text, but that may not be feasible given a certain world-building detail at the other end of the portal (and the limits of my creativity lmao).

---

Tacet - The Blackout Club - one-shot - 3.2k and counting

She closed her eyes again, and there it was. Hallucination? Some new science trick with electromagnetic radiation off the visible spectrum? Evidence that she was actually going insane? Whatever it was, it burned behind her eyelids in bright, incontrovertible red - and was completely invisible when she opened her eyes again. There was just the usual mess of club posters and one big one about someone’s exceedingly dumb-looking lost cat.

Eyes open, there was only Sargent Snuggles. Eyes closed, there was the normal darkness and then three lines of text where the poster had been, wavering like scarlet fire:

JOIN TBC JOIN TBC JOIN TBC

TBC? What the fuck was that? She’d never heard of any group with that acronym before. Hardly aware of the flurry of weird looks from half the other people in the hallway, she crossed the hall to examine the lost cat poster more closely. It felt like perfectly normal paper when she touched it, and there wasn’t even a hint of red with her eyes open, unless you counted the cat’s tacky pink sweater. How the hell was this even possible?

“You’re finally cracking, Bri,” she groaned under her breath, then headed for her locker. She did have to get home. Add another big fat entry to the weird shit list.

A backstory one-shot for my Blackout Club OC Briar, telling the story of how she got into the club in the first place. I’ve been stuck in the same spot for a while now, after Briar’s friend Dani explains the club to her, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the scene’s over as is. Of course, writing the next one is the tough part.

---

Checklist - The Blackout Club - one-shot - 1.7k and counting

8. You still have a headache. Shouldn’t you go back to sleep and try to do this in the morning?

9. (wake up)

10. Nah, you’ve always been a night owl, and school starts criminally early, too early to get much done beforehand. It’s quiet, except for Dad snoring. Your parents are asleep already. You can stay up until this is done, and they’ll be none the wiser.

11. Your head hurts worse. It’s getting harder to think. At only 9 pm? 9:30? Whatever. You should sleep.

12. (wake UP)

13. What are you thinking? You have to read at least a little of this chapter, or there’s no way you’ll be able to bullshit your way through class tomorrow. Besides, all of a sudden, the silence feels...strange. Heavier? You can’t describe it.

14. You need to sleep. You need a drink of water or something. You need to finish this damn homework. You need to sleep. You need to sleep.

15. Stare at The Great Gatsby. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

16. Realize what’s up with the silence. Dad’s not snoring anymore. You aren’t feeling like yourself. You need to sleep.

17. Something’s weird.

18. (WAKE UP) 

19. ...No. Something’s wrong.

Another Blackout Club story and another Interface Screw, as it were, this time in the form of a (very long) checklist. None of the characters have names (yet). It describes another way a kid could find themself running around at night with the Blackout Club, this time by fighting off the Song just enough to run into a club member who could wake them up the rest of the way. As with Tacet, I still need to write the suspenseful part.

---

A Tiny Galaxy - Warframe - 4 chapters planned, 1 complete, 1 in progress - 7.8k and counting

Try it if you don’t believe me, the kid in the vent had said.

It was impossible. It was physically impossible. All of this was impossible. Had the Void...? Could the Void...?

The ship was at a standstill. Her mother had tried to kill her, and something had happened. She’d made something happen. There had been no holoprojector in that kid’s hand. Nothing was impossible anymore.

Jhia took a deep breath. How the heck was she supposed to do this? Was she supposed to feel something, some internal guide? Blue Hair hadn’t said. Feeling incredibly stupid, she did a quick mental checkup on herself. Nothing felt wrong, or different - but now that she thought about it…

Afterward, she would try many times to explain it, and fail every time. The best she could come up with was that once she found the Void, calling on it was as easy and as natural as breathing. She opened her hands in front of her, concentrated on that force like an extension of herself, reopened her eyes, and there it was: a riotous little ball of energy, wisps and motes of light and not-quite-light like a tiny galaxy, the Tau system in the palm of her hand, raging.

More OC backstory time! This one’s for my Tenno, a nerdy fourteen-year-old (at the time of this story, anyway) by the name of Jhia, going through the hell that is the Zariman Ten-Zero and what happened on it. This is possibly the first part of the story I actually wrote: the roll-credits moment when Jhia realizes the Void’s changed her more already than she thought.

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Hearsay - Lobotomy Corporation/Library of Ruina - one-shot - 1k and counting

"Oh? Did they investigate further?"

"They tried. Found a few fingerprints, but they didn't match anyone in the database."

"What's the update, then?"

"Reports from elsewhere in the district of someone not in uniform carrying a Zwei sword. They're slippery, good at avoiding us, which would suggest Syndicate operative to me and HQ. Except that in every one of the descriptions we managed to get, our sword thief is a child."

"What? How?!"

"You tell me, Iona. You're the one who went to the crime scene."

"Right... Jeez, if it's a kid, I guess that'd explain why Petrov thought they weren't a threat..."

"My thoughts exactly. HQ has a fair amount of hearsay to go on, but nobody can quite agree on how old the child is, or whether or not she's with a Syndicate. Most agree that she appears to be a girl, tall for a child, auburn hair, clothes and demeanor typical of a Backstreets native."

"We got a name?"

"They've heard Yeri, Kali, Redbird, Suma, Aelfin... No one knows which is her real one, or if it's even any of them at all."

"Damn. ...Say, are you going to drink that entire pot of coffee?"

"Help yourself."

This is one of those stories that turned into an accidental AU when more of canon came out. The idea behind it is that it’s Kali’s backstory told entirely in conversations in which she did not participate, showcasing the fact that a Fixer’s fame is their livelihood and Kali was about as famous as they come, before the whole L Corp thing happened. Of course, the vast majority of the headcanons here got invalidated with a certain Ruina update, so my motivation’s kinda down on this one.

---

Going Back has already been talked about here!

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Ella Disenchanted - The Blackout Club - one-shot (maybe two-shot??) - 1.4k and counting

She woke. Her stomach went through a series of panicked flip-flops as she thought something strange had done it, Dad or a little-kid-nightmares shadow beast had made noise, but no - why had she fallen asleep in the first place? Her butt and shoulder were sore where they’d been leaning on the bottom and side of the windowsill, presumably all night, since the sun was full up over the trees on Old Growth Hill. 

All night. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t fall asleep, but she did anyway. God dammit.

As she unfolded herself from her cramped ball, though, she froze. Under the comforter she’d pulled around her shoulders for warmth, she was wearing her gray jacket, a T-shirt, jeans, sneakers getting dried mud all over the carpet. 

Last she remembered, she’d been in her pajamas.

In which a Blackout Club kid’s little sister wonders where he’s gone when he runs away to the boxcar, and tries to get to the bottom of the mystery herself. Usually she’d be too young for the club to recruit, but her investigations and an incident involving SAO are more than enough extenuating circumstance. Unlike most of my other WIPs, there’s a whole outline at the end of my doc for this one.

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Making Peace - Warframe - multi-chapter - 1.5k and counting

“I…” Iksoh finally said. “Sorna, I hope you realize. I’m not into this. I never - I’m not doing this. Whatever you’re doing, I can’t.”

“I know,” Sorna said softly. The decision tore at her heart again and she almost backed out of the vent, but no. She had to go. She wouldn’t see another innocent crumple in her rifle sights. “I hope you realize. I’m not coming back.”

Behind her, Iksoh let out a long, shaky breath. “It’s taking all I’ve got not to report you right now. Sorna… the Queens’ll have my head for this. Please, please, let it be worth it. Go. Don’t let them take yours.”

“I won’t,” Sorna promised, and meant it.

Later, after her last fight for her freedom was done, on the Steel Meridian ship headed for Kronia Relay, Sorna looked out at the planet retreating behind her and thought of Iksoh. She’d just learned a new word from a Meridian soldier: vaykor tal, the defector’s spirit. Iksoh had let her go, at risk of their own life. They’d had a bit of the vaykor tal themself, even if they hadn’t known it, even if they’d thought it was just some weakness that was bound to get them killed.

“Ranre treri, duf krun,” she whispered into space, a Grineer well-wishing passed down from sergeant to tube-fresh lancer since time immemorial. May your hands be steady, and may life be kind.

This is an AU born of me and some friends wondering why in the heck Perrin and the Meridian hate each other so much in game. It’s about a group of Kavor - Grineer defectors distinguished from other Meridian members by their pacifism - who get to a Relay and start wondering the same thing. Besides Sorna (and, later in the story, Iksoh as well), there would have been Chakh, Beket, and Sydon, plus at least four of the syndicate leaders and a bunch of side-character OCs, all caught up somehow in what turns out to be a surprisingly far-reaching web of intrigue.

--

The Slashed Circle - Warframe - one-shot, probably - 429 and counting

In addition to their written and spoken language, the Grineer have a full language of hand signs. It has its quirks, as all languages do - be careful of confusing it with the Corpus sign language, in which the sign for “to pay” roughly approximates the Grineer sign for...a certain portion of the male anatomy. Among these is the common Grineer sentiment against those who defect from their ranks, baked into the sign just as much as their spoken words. 

The sign of the slashed circle, the sedashkur - a finger drawn in a circle on the chest, followed by a diagonal line - is the highest of taboos to any loyal Grineer. It shows support for such scum as the Kavor and Steel Meridian, enough so that it forms the basis for the Meridian’s battle standard. To sign the sedashkur is to betray your siblings, commit a grave insult to your superiors, paint a near-indelible target on your back. It is an object of hatred and fear throughout the ranks.

She fears it, yes, but she does not hate it, for all her life and into her death as well. It shouldn’t trouble her now, though. It is easy to hide a language, and she burned her journals before she was called to the fortress.

This is a fic about Jhia and her one (1) converted Kuva Lich, namely about the process of said Lich’s defeat and defection, that kinda never got off the ground. Contrary to this snippet, I think most of it would have been written in what are essentially space emails back and forth between Lich and Tenno? I definitely got as far as Jhia sending an audio recording of a bass-boosted dog fart, anyhow.

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Wake Up, Tenno - Warframe - one-shot - 950 and counting

“Wake up, Tenno.”

She wakes. She is - she is Tenno, right? She is a Tenno? Her mind is confused, so full of fog and dead ends - how long was she asleep?

The voice that woke her seems familiar. She might have loved the speaker, in her scrambled past life, the woman in the purple helmet, the one called Lotus in her HUD vision. Her surroundings are a ruin of some sort. Her body is—

...what?

She can move just fine. Her fingers and arms and legs respond with suspicious ease, given how long she must have slept to be this scattered upon waking up, and yet there’s some fundamental disconnect. This is her Warframe, her body, but it’s not her body somehow.

...wait, where did the term “Warframe” come from?

A Tenno, unnamed but intended to be Jhia on my end, wakes up on Earth at the very beginning of the in-game storyline. Since the tutorial has gotten an overhaul in recent months, I may have to modify even what little I have on this a lot.

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Midnight - Iconoclasts - poem - 280 and counting

been anything smaller than been anything

never been anything smaller than

“good morning, how’s miss grump doing today? i heard about that last mission...if you didn’t sleep well i can call you in sick, it’s alright-” “oh, shut up, grey”

there has never been anything

“oh, shut up, grey” “love you too”

smaller

“love you too”

than

me

A very fragmented, stream-of-consciousness-y poem meant to represent Agent Black’s failing sanity near the end of the game. The words of her famous one-liner (“there has never been anything smaller than me”) are interspersed, out of order until the end, with poetic descriptions of other characters and bits and pieces of a flashback involving Agent Grey.

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Heliotropism - Iconoclasts - one-shot - 1.1k and counting

Lily, though she’s superstitious, will have none of these self-important truths, none of these semblances of certainty when really all it is is wishing on Ivory and hoping for the best. She calls for Miss Andress instead. 

A stout but severe woman with ten grandchildren and a great-grandchild on the way, Miss Andress is perhaps the quintessential matriarch: nurturing, selfless, brutally honest. She is the one the people of 17 trust when they feel they can trust no one else. Lily needs the kind of reassurance only she can give, with the authority of ninety-one years and the wisdom of two sons, one daughter, and some five dogs raised under her care.

When Miss Andress visits House 4, she asks Polro and Lily to each bring an object they cherish the most. For Polro it’s his largest wrench, pitted with use but still polished to a brassy shine; Lily surprises everyone by pulling out a tiny, unloaded stun-gun, and surprises them more by not explaining it at all. Miss Andress doesn’t question it. She just turns the two tools over and over in her hands, head bowed, squinting at them as if trying to read the secrets of the universe in the scratches carved into them by time.

Finally she straightens up and sighs, pushing a strand of silver hair behind her ear. Her forehead is slick with sweat, though the night is cool outside. “I don’t know what she’ll do,” the wise woman says, heavily, as if delivering bad news. “I just know she’ll change the world.”

Can you tell I like backstory fic? This one is for Robin, with one short anecdote for each year of her life, up to age 17 and the events of the game. It’s also an excuse to world-build a bunch, lol.

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Arrhythmia - Crypt of the NecroDancer - one-shot(?) - 4k and counting

The creature didn’t say anything, just beckoned to the shadows. Before I could move, two other creatures came for me, sending the other humans - former humans? - scrambling away in panic. One landed a hard blow on the back of my head that sent me to my hands and knees, seeing sparks; the other said “Freeze!” and I could only watch as ice sprouted from the leaf litter, cementing me to the ground.

The one who’d hit me produced a dagger from the inside of its cloak. I tried to pull myself up, to do anything at all to keep myself from getting shanked, but it was no good. There must have been a secondary effect on that spell; my limbs wouldn’t respond. I felt the dagger tear cloth in the region of my back, and prepared for the pain.

It didn’t come. The creature cut a slit in the back of my tunic, then another. Neither one touched the skin at all. I can’t really describe what happened next - my brain was having trouble computing how my arms were in front of me, visible, unable to move, but it felt like the creature was pulling them through the gashes in my tunic, but that was wrong, they didn’t feel like arms at all.

“Holy fuck,” I heard someone say.

The ice holding me down melted into nothing as the spell wore off. I jumped back up, head spinning a little, ready for another fight, only to spot two flicks of scarlet in my peripheral vision. I spun around, but they moved with me.

I think I already knew what they were. I just couldn’t admit it to myself.

You’ve already seen this one, Nick, though I’m pretty sure it was well over two years ago. It’s a pile of old headcanons, some of them now outdated I’m pretty sure, about how Nocturna ended up a vampire in the first place and a little bit about how vampire society works. According to Google Docs, I’ve been stuck on this one since March 2018. Whoops.

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untitled (working title “adult citra meets an impostor bc what is self-control”) - Among Us - one-shot - 572 and counting

“I know. You’re stuck, aren’t you?” Having well and truly gotten their full attention, Citra continues, “God, I can barely imagine. Having to take a weird-ass host whose biology might even be toxic to you, I don’t know. Needing to get to a whole other galaxy, feeling like the only way to do that is by deception and death.” “How…?”

She sighs. “I told you, this isn’t my first rodeo. One of your kind saved my life when I was a kid. Since he’d killed Mom and Dad had been out of the picture long before, he stayed here and helped raise me afterward. It’s how I learned to pronounce...a few of your words, at least.”

“You missed the ‘H’ sound.”

“Isn’t that the one that’s literally impossible to do right with Terran anatomy?”

“Maybe. You think I know Terran anatomy all that well?”

Citra chuckles. “Fair point. You let us find your buddy and fix the ship, I’ll raise Xai when we get comms back and he can try and help you get home. Deal?”

I found an Among Us comic on Tumblr, absolutely ran into left field with it to make a couple of OCs, and then made AUs of those OCs because of course I did. This one is from a future scenario in which Citra (typically orange) meets someone rather familiar on a mission with the crew of the Skeld.

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untitled (working title “library of ruina but they adopt half the guests”) - Library of Ruina - length uncertain - 1k and counting

“And what happened to not caring about others because it’s a waste of time and heartache?”

Now it’s Roland’s turn to sigh. “I don’t care about him. I just don’t want the guilt of killing - look at him, he can’t be older than eighteen or nineteen!”

Raised eyebrow. “Finn will be twenty years old in fifteen days’ time. He is a legal adult. I fail to see why this should matter to either of us.”

“He’s fresh off his first Fixer license! I have years of experience! He had no idea what he was getting into when he signed that invitation and you know it!”

Angela fixes him with a glare that turns his stomach, his freshly remade body reacting to the memory of its sudden, and extremely painful, dismemberment. “I could quite literally hold your soul in my hands if I wanted,” she reminds him in an undertone of steel. “I must do the same for him, following the invitation’s guidance, or my entire plan will be lost, my coworkers’ sacrifices all for naught. Do not disappoint me or ask any more impertinent questions. You know what to do, and what will happen if you do not.” 

Look, some of the people you fight in this game deserved so much better, okay? I came up with an AU concept where if a guest willingly concedes the fight and agrees to stick around, you can get their book without killing them. Finn doesn’t die; neither do Tomerry or Shi Association; all the former employees realize exactly what’s going on with Philip after the Wedge Office fight and manage to calm him down, avoiding the whole Crying Children situation. (And then Gebura makes him collect his jaw off the floor by revealing herself as the Red Mist.)

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The one that’s a D&D world concept doesn’t have anything concrete written for it yet. (Don’t read this bit if you might want to play in my campaign at some point!) Instead of your typical Forgotten Realms planar setup, the world at large would be called the Seven Spheres, each of them different in terms of climate, geography, native species and magic, etc. The First Sphere would be the most “generic” one (to our way of thinking) and the main setting of the campaign; it would also be the smallest of the Seven, its primary continent home to a former empire of dragons that spanned most of the Sphere until its mysterious fall a thousand years ago.

Now, since the empire fell, the dragons and their children have slowly been dying out. Best estimates are that there’s only a thousand or two left in the entire First Sphere, with fewer eggs hatched every decade. The player characters enter a world with pretty typical low-level quests to start with, but every so often, especially if they engage with optional story stuff (this would be a more roleplay-focused than combat-focused campaign), they get wind of changes in the air - a failed harvest here, an unusually hot and stormy summer there, a trade war once they start hitting mid-levels.

It mimics real-world climate change in all but cause. As coastal cities struggle to contend with rising seas and, more alarmingly, wizards all over the Sphere start to notice their magic falter and wane, the PCs’ goal becomes getting to the bottom of this. And what’s at the bottom is...your typical Nerd fusion of science with fantasy settings.

The Seven Spheres are not planes of existence in the normal D&D sense, but seven planets in the same solar system, each with its own ancient god far more powerful than any god in any mortal pantheon; the First Sphere is so named because it’s closest to the sun. These planetary gods are incredibly large and incredibly alien, thinking in geologic time and concepts far too broad and slow for most sapient beings to comprehend. A thousand years ago, the fall of the dragon empire was caused by an ill-advised ritual meddling with the god of the First Sphere’s natural process of rebirth, causing said god to die without a replacement.

It’s taken this long for the First Sphere to feel the effects because, again, geologic time - a thousand years is a blink of an eye in this kind of time scale. But now the ancient earth-magic that had kept the Sphere’s climate temperate and its magicians in business is failing. The dragons, as beings of magic intrinsically, have been failing all along. And now it’s up to the PCs, up at level 17-20 if not higher by that point, to figure out how to fix the situation and find a new planetary god for the First Sphere before the whole Sphere burns to death.