#i talk about my life in an unholy infodump

[appri-dot]

Pls infodump I wanna know stuff Abt ur ocs🥺🥺🥺🐟🐟

I SAVED THIS ASK FOR WHEN I GET INTO AN OC RAMBLING MOOD BUT I SHOULD PROBABLY JUST USE IT THIS ISN'T UNO!!! OKAY SO UHM- LET ME TALK ABOUT SOME GUYS THAT I NEVER EVER DO! under read more though because they are embarrassing..sigh

Anyway, back to fun things! BSS and Reserved Complex are my dynamic duo Iterator ocs.

Reserved Complex was an early-age Iterator ontop of a preexisting city, she was extremely populated an adored. As they had already grown fond of her before she was created by where she was placed. effectively presenting her as the conscious embodiment of home. As the movement for ascension developed and became more feasible the overly attached iterator started a campaign against it, and even attempted to dissuade her citizens from partaking until forced correction had disabled her ability to propagandize.

She couldn't do anything. And it ruined her a bit.

She became obsessed with their absence, interested in the evolution of life that sprouted from it. Her local group saw her as a very maternal figure, posed as graceful and a parallel to ancients. She earned the trust and adoration of many aside from an individual named Brothers Sworn Secrecy.

Brothers Sworn Secrecy is sort of controversial, he was made to solve the great problem, but a division of ancients who were adverse to the common culture developed on his superstructure. Hedonism and taboo acts were a staple, hidden by a shared sense of secrecy amongst the population. Where they would live to experience pleasure until the era of ascension.

BSS was very VERY closed off because of this, it was obnoxious how impossible it was to communicate with him or his citizens. Until finally there was a seizure of his people to be quickly straightened out for their negative influences, and BSS was abandoned, left with a gift of independence, acutely aware of each and every functional system inside and out of his can, as they one day hoped he could join them.

He had kept all the secrets they buried with himself, removing himself from the local group communications and dedicating his life to secretly discovering the taboo of self elimination.

And everyone lived that way, existing through cycles and cycles with no real deviation from their previous experiences. Until RC did something so unacceptable and offensive that she was effectively blacklisted from any and all communications. (She tried to force the evolution of a new sapient species to replace the ancients, revealing that thousands of cycles of trust lead to some unholy abomination that triggered taboos never considered)

Afterwards she considered trying to communicate with BSS who didn't exactly have her blocked but was just literally off radar. Developing a means to earn the consideration and grace of the group again by using BSS as her target. She made a slugcat🥰 awww! One with a short lifespan and in such a way that it couldn't exactly function properly, and the only thing it could do was reach BSS...atleast that's what it hid itself as. It was an infection, it could breed and fast, as cycles past the creature would essentially just die and have its children die aswell. Many cycles, many generations. Destroying the local ecosystem of BSS's structure, like a virus.

Nothing stopped them, they had no message, and they had no mercy.

So he eventually reinstated his communication to everybody's shock to plea for help and beg anybody to save him. That's where RC steps in. Basically working to "fix" the issue. Using her gross abomination lizards to kill the slugcats in mass. But they couldn't really persist against a monument of icky critters. And RC knew they wouldn't.

BSS as of current is managed by the group as a sick loser. RC earning her spot back as the sweet and tender mother who only wants what's best. And she would've gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling slugcat!!!! (Leech)

I NEED TO STOP BEFORE I REACH SOME KIND OF LIMIT!!! I LOVE THESE TWO SO SO SO SO MUCH THEY MAKE ME SICK AND ILL AND CLAP MY HANDS, the reason I'm embarrassed and don't talk about them much is because they are what I call, "unofficial fandom ocs" I don't know enough canon story elements to confidently talk about them aloud because there might be some lore inconsistencies in how they are portrayed

Also there's other dudes lol

[unfortunately-orange-curtains]

I kind of want to take a second to say a little bit about the Austere Academy and how I processed it as a youngin because I have ramblings to sort through and I don't want to commit to assigning a notebook to be for personal thoughts about things.

For context, Past M took way longer than was needed to read that book.

I don't quite remember how long it actually took because my brain dumps all information it doesn't immediately decide is needed into the flaming pits of Hell, but I do know that I got about halfway through it at normal pace, put a bookmark into it, and didn't pick it up again for over a month. That was in no way normal behavior for me at the time (I wasn't cycling through being either too distracted, too busy, or too drained to read for the sake of reading back then), and this was the only book in ASOUE that I did this with intentionally. I passionately disliked the Austere Academy at the time, and it is still definitely not a book I go to when I want to reread something.

In reviews of the book and its episodes in the Netflix adaptation, people seem to mention how they find much of what goes on in the boarding school absolutely, completely out there beyond the realm of plausibility. Nero making the students eat like dogs for being late to class? The whole school having an anti-orphan policy? Carmelita being allowed to harass anyone she wants to? Preposterous.

I didn't really think so as a younger person.

In the present day, I know that a lot of Nero's policies would not be considered legal, and that I personally cannot speak for the administration in private schools as a whole, but, as a small human, I recognized a lot of how the school around me worked in the pages of tAA. Largely in regards to Carmelita at the time, but now I see some of the teachers' behavior in teachers I have (or have previously had).

It isn't a big plot twist that Carmelita is essentially allowed to mistreat her peers however much she likes. While there are theories about why she acts like this regarding how her parents raised her, the school does not make any real effort to curb unacceptable and actively harmful behaviors that she exhibits (implied to be because Nero is an incompetent, malicious, self-centered fool who can't make any efforts to manage the children under his "care" properly). This is not something that strikes me as outlandish at all, as I've seen students get off with barely a slap on the wrist for actively bullying others, while other students are reprimanded considerably more aggressively for standing up for themselves. I've been the student getting reprimanded for standing up for myself. Hell, I've been the student getting reprimanded far worse for not being able to focus well and for reading when I wasn't supposed to than a lot of the kids who would target myself and others for being different could expect for long-term bullying a student (not me, a classmate who they also didn't like) into transferring entirely into home schooling.

A lot of what I'm about to discuss is my personal experience when I was 10 years old. I would have been beginning to read ASOUE around the time, as my parents decided that I needed to read things that were not the 32+ book long series I'd developed a strong hyperfixation on at that point. Information needed to provide context for some of what I'm going to talk about includes:

I have ADHD. I was actively being medicated + seeing a counselor at the time.

I experienced intense hyperfixations on content that was not considered socially acceptable by my peers and lacked the social filters to avoid constantly infodumping about said hyperfixations in conversation.

I had the motor skills of a recently deceased animal at the time; this was most noticable when I ran, as I galloped awkwardly instead of running like a human. I legitimately didn't know how to run properly.

During my fifth grade year, I was placed in a class with no friends, under a teacher who didn't actually require that students respected anyone in the room other than herself. I was repeatedly placed into groups of students who actively bullied me, even in front of the teacher, without punishment. In spite of me having far fewer issues with any other people in the class that this teacher would occasionally, by some miracle, group me with, she never seemed to grasp that forcing me to interact with people who would mock me, kick me under the table, and point-blank tell me that I was worthless was a bad idea. These kids didn't get let off the hook for a lack of me reporting incidents or them concealing their nonsense particularly well; I'd talk to the teacher in private about them, but she never made any attempt to pull them aside and say anything to them about issues. The teacher didn't take my claims seriously, despite them often doing these things in front of her. The only time that things went to a really serious phase was when I wound up being accused by one of these kids of telling him to fuck off. The teacher pulled me aside, made a big deal about the accusation, and wound up sending me to the office when I disagreed with her.

I'd told this kid to back off because he was continuing a running joke at my expense about how I was the horse girl since I didn't run correctly.

The principal, the former Vice Principal who got a promotion and was not given a new VP due to budget cuts, heard me out and called the guy accusing me and one of the other guys who was in on the joke up to her office, where she lectured them and forced them to apologise. And did nothing else, despite hearing nine months of shit they and a girl in this class had been pulling. The guy who accused me was removed from the school for the remainder of the year shortly after for bringing a taser onto campus and attempting to tase other kids with it. The second guy and the girl remained assholes for the duration of the year, still not getting punishments beyond a stern talking-to. I got the school's equivalent of detention for reading during the wrong parts of the day.

The administration of Prufrock Prep's lack of response to Carmelita (and her behavior overall, if I'm to be completely honest) were too real for Past M. I couldn't deal with that at the time, so I didn't.

On a more recent note, I had a teacher a few years ago who talked about a lot of inappropriate stuff with his class of 14 year olds, a teacher who would give us nonsense essay prompts and take planned absences while leaving her subs to explain that we had multiple group projects to do in class at once in separate groups, and a Spanish teacher who made students who didn't pay attention during her classes too many times buy her candy to make up points that she'd dock them.

TL;DR:

I didn't like tAA because Carmelita was too real for younger me, and I've had teachers who lined up too well with teachers in tAA after reading it.

[tillman]

Pls infodump about lancelot from what i observe almost everyone hates him? (Ok its understandable bec of his affair with queen) im curious why do you like lancelot? And i remember a few days ago you post that there so many things you want to talk about him? And i want to see you rant/gush about his character, relationships, mental illness, his flaws etc ans also what is the difference between fate lancelot and lancelot in the legends? I want to know more about him he is complicated

OK its not that everyone hates him its that people hate what he stands for. the french side of arthurian lit is VERY focused on making lancelot seem like the greatest knight in the entire world because…. wow… hes french. and french people suck. stop normalizing the french. i like lancelot because of what he COULD stand for. theres a lot of things that could be delved into more (his mental illnesses, his communication issues, his inability to comprehend love, the struggle with being unholy or wrong, ect) but no one ever does. so i stole him hes mine now fuck the french they did him dirty.

uhm ok this is under a cut for talks of kinda heavy topics (lots of mental health talk, lots of abuse talk) and also cus its long. sorry i have a lot to say about him) 

i like lancelot a lot cus i see myself a lot in him. mostly in his mental health and how he ends up dealing with situations. his struggle with violent mood swings and his huge burden of being labeled as a sinner or whatever for a relationship he admits to feeling trapped in is…. relateable… comforting to see in a fictional character i guess. as flawed as he is hes still heralded as a good person. hes still loved by his friends and his family. and thats nice.. i like it. 

uhm for his mental health the main thing that comes out is his struggles with trauma, awful depression, and also just the fact he dissociates a lot. in knight of the cart he is so out of it he doesnt realize a knight is attacking him until hes thrown into the water in which he reacts violently and freaks the fuck out, trying to rip the guy off his horse. he like. physically can not handle extreme emotions and will either fall asleep so he doesnt have to face it (le morte says this is a known quality of him, he does this enough dinadan expects it as soon as he gets mad) or he swings so hard he has an extreme bout of depression (in the vulgate when trying to comprehend his relationship with guenevere and galehaut he just shuts down and spends all his time sleeping or staring at the river) or awful mania (see: the many times guenevere freaks out at him and he gets so upset he jumps out a window and lives in the woods). Lancelot has a lot of unworked out trauma from being r*** twice by the same woman who continues to use him and freak him out so much he cant find camelot safe (triggering another huge spike where he runs off into the woods) or the literal entire end of the legends where he has to deal with the trauma of while having one of his dissociative episodes in combat he accidentally kills gareth, someone he loves and adores like a brother or son and gets so upset he just accepts everything happening and hides in joyous gard, where his cousins have to BEG him to go and defend his honor from gawain whos basically knocking on his door pleading with lancelot to kill him. 

lancelots inability to understand a lot of social nuances is also really interesting but like, ultimately leads to a lot of strife for him most namely galehauts death and gueneveres constant abuse. The thing is Lancelot basically idolizes guenevere and this is where a lot of the abuse and weird shit comes from in their relationship. lancelot was a very young knight who honestly didnt understand anything about BEING a knight when he came to court. the queen knighted him and him, being young and not understanding, took this as “i am her knight! i will do anything for her!” and guenevere just kinda ran with this? i dont rlly wanna go too into it ill do that later when i get farther in the vulgate and can talk more on it but it leads to lancelot being trapped in a relationship he admit hurts him, but the small sliver of love guenevere gives him when she needs him is enough to keep him in because his mindset is still “im her knight! this is what a knight should do for his lady!” Galehaut is a different situation where his blindness to social cues and other shit leads to a lot of drama and hellish shit and when he finally snaps and realizes “oh. oh no this is what love should be” its too late and galehaut is dead and lancelot isnt much better. his own mother has to come and convince him not to literally kill himself over this and sends him into a spiral of depression where he doesnt leave the joyous gard for months. when he does and when he comes back to court, no one really … cares? that galehaut is dead. and this is lancelots first experience with actual love and his first experience with the death of someone close to him. which is an awful double whammy to have to experience. he does have good friends like gawain and dinadan and tristan and his relationship with galahad is good but they all end up dead or turned against him by something thats he did and its just. god its so sad to watch. the only people lancelot is left with in the end are his cousins, and even at the end of all of that hes left alone with the corpses of people he thought he loved. 

like hes a very flawed man. lancelot is a problem causer and not a problem solver. he doesnt try to he really doesnt, he strives to be the perfect knight mostly for some sliver of appreciation from someone he idolizes he never really ends up getting. he doesnt know how to cope, and ends up making things worse when he inevitably ends up screwing shit up because of this. hes called a sinner and unholy by god, and while he is very proud of his son for what he ends up achieving, has to deal with the trauma of the grail quest alone. he ends up killing someone he loves, and who genuinely respected and cared for him like a brother in a fit of him not being able to deal with heavy emotions. like he truly is in the wrong in most situations but like. in such a pitiable way. hes a good person, but lets his flaws overtake him a lot and pushes away the people who want the best for him. its like…. sad. 

(about to talk about fate u can drop off now if u just wanted to read my arthurian lit opinions :-) )

i could go off about fate lancelot and all the problems i have with him for hours but i think the main thing i wanna talk about rn is how they handle his internalization of his life and then just did nothing with it. his wish for the grail is just to be told he was wrong. thats so fucking GOOD!! in life he was heralded as the best knight like of course his one regret was that no one ever stopped him and went “you are wrong. this is wrong. you are doing the wrong thing.” and that being all he wants out of the thing that can grant any wishes is soooooo soo cool and neat. and then they just reduced his personality to “oh boo hoo im so sad im going to fuck a married woman now” like. the fucking dissonance. like lancelot isnt the type for random flings. tristan sure i understand that a bit hes unhinged and hard to characterize and .. honestly does just go around fucking married woman. weirdo. but lancelots entire struggle is over his relationship with guenevere being both wrong morally and literally abusive! i jsut dont get it i dont understand how they built up something so interesting with zero and threw it all out the window it makes me so mad. i dont even wanna talk about fate lancelot anymore rn its giving me a headache cus im so mad. 

[bookwyrminspiration]

>:))))))

I'm proud that a story that I'm pretty sure you enjoy was your 3000th post!

Also have fun on the road trip! I enjoy being in cars, personally, but I do also understand the need to just move and then you get cramped in the car and suddenly the music isn't enough to keep you distracted and your Brian ahs locked you out of your internal world and you can't even just get lost in the music and you are noticing Every Sensation and Detail or Everything and you Can't Turn It Off and then you can start to actually smell the smell of the car and you start getting a headache and you can't escape it- (Sorry, I got oddly specific there, that usually doesn't happen to me when I'm in cars though!!)

I will accept these rules! It is incredibly fun to hear about a series I know nothing about, and I will accept not reading it! I only have the book because my girlfriend gave it to me because she couldn't sell it and I thought the cover was cool and didn't realise it was twilight, and you can always hold my attention. Most of the time.

Speaking of you, I have to catch up on the wings au!! I want to see Linh's wings!! But I have to read like 6 or something more chapters!! This is gonna be fun. Also more void cat.

Also that meme was of ROBERT?? Bro I always wondered who it was but it was Robby Patty?? This is a travesty /lh

Ok that's kinda dissapointing about the tame vampires. But it's still cool!! I just like the whole unholy monsterousness of Vampires and parasites. (Also off topic but the only reason why vamps couldn't see their reflections in mirrors was because mirrors used silver, and modern mirrors use aluminium or something, so vamps would be able to see their reflection. Bit of a well known fact but I just like talking about it, also it would be fun to have a book about vamps in a modern setting but it isn't the bitey romance. It's pure terror about the epidemic of Vampires and no one knowing who is and who isn't until its too late, and people finding out Very Quickly that they cannot rely on the mirrors to help them.) Also that is amazing about the inside joke but also Red eyes my beloved <3

Also I love how the author went "hmm, I wonder how to make these immortal parasites not go outside during the day. Aha! They sparkle! Genius!" (/Gen) like who wouldn't want to sparkle. I'd love to sparkle. It'd probably piss people off having to see me sparkle, but that just makes it even better.

Off topic but as I haven't read the series or watched the movies, I have absolutly no clue what it's about whatsoever (Like with kotlc I still had some baseline information from my girlfriend) so I can't ask any meaningful questions but the concept of gifts sounds really cool! Also her poor sister, should been indestructible smh my head (/J)

I have no clue what my most prominent trait is but I'm gonna say either A) My absolutly, stunning, brilliantly devine good looks, B) My curiosity and love of asking questions of people that I like even if I already know the answers, C) My forgetfulness, or D) My spelling errors

Anyway I have to go now so I'm gonna send this out but yes!! Sparkly vampires!!

-Heathen

heathen! hello! It is true that I enjoy twilight, though I don't frequently talk about it in real life (my partner is the exception to that and takes like the full brunt of my twilight infodumps so huge thanks to them for that !!). Me making that post complaining about it was mostly a joke like of all the things...why that one post. It does seem fitting through, so I'm not really upset about it.

it has now been a significant length of time since the roadtrip (almost two months) but I appreciate the well wishes nonetheless! I wasn't a roadtrip for fun reasons, but we got through it. Did a lot of sitting in a car though...

but it's so annoying when you're in the zone and time is moving fast (a good thing when it's a long drive) but then all the sudden you accidentally break yourself out of it and can't get back into it and now time is infuriatingly slow and you're just Stuck There and if you try to actively go back it only makes it harder. Definitely not fun

also I have no idea what rules I proposed! it takes me a little bit to answer asks (though I am finally starting to actually make decent progress on them!!) and also I started this one and then left it in my drafts for a hot minute, so...whoops. Hang on I can probably find the post--found it! Well, the rules are rules. I simply must talk about Twilight when it's brought up. The thing is though that it can be brought up so often...my parents asked my sister how badminton went in her P.E. class yesterday and I just sat there thinking "you know, Bella Swan is really bad at playing badminton. she hit Mike in the arm hard enough to leave a bruise and herself in the head in the same swing. it was the first time Edward ever saw hos disastrous her P.E. classes were as he watched through Mike's thoughts from across the school because she'd brought up that he'd never seen her in P.E. when they were talking about lunch." But like that's not something a normal person would probably say in a conversation and I was having one of my silent moments where for some reason I haven't figured out my brain makes me not talk at all despite being fully capable.

and excellent! it's absolutely lovely to be a complete substitute for an entire series. I mean, I think I know it pretty well at this point, so while I'm not infallible I definitely know a lot of what I'm talking about. But also feel free to read it if you want to! Just like...I highly doubt it's going to have an impact on your life or anything monumental, you'll just be able to say that you've read twilight. Then again why would you need to when I'm right here /j. Jokes aside though my partner did tell me that when they helped right a Twilight-themed (i'm forgetting the word) short play? like for drama and theater but it's small? and short? not a full play? when they helped write it they used some of the knowledge I had infodumped to them about over the years they've known me

as for the wings au--if you have caught up at this point, I hope you enjoy!! if you have not, I hope you enjoy it if you do decide to get caught up! There's a new chapter coming out this weekend and while I do have to do some finally additions to it that I am dreading, I am overall looking forward to sharing!! I may or may not have accidentally written myself into a bit of sticky situation, but I'll figure it out

yes that meme was of robert. it got quite popular within the fandom, so whenever I see it I'm always like ah yes. robert pattinson. it's the twilight tracksuit meme. there were several edits made, though my mind usually defaults to this one (linked)

same!! I don't know if you've noticed based on how I write the wings au, but I kinda like monsters to be more monstrous. there's nothing wrong with having tame vampires or anything, just a personal preference that there be something a little less human about them. though it is true that the Cullens are more civilized than any other vampires there are. they all kept their humanity when they were changed, so it may be less to do with the vampires as a whole being untamed and just the uniqueness of the cullen coven. I mean if you've read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (I'm assuming you haven't) you'd see that the newborns (proper newborns, not boring bella) are very much governed by instinct and an insatiable need for blood, a desire to feed. It's all they think about, practically out of their minds with bloodlust when they're thirsty.

(also I, too, love that mirror fact! It's one of my favorite little lesser known bits of vampire lore and whenever I see it reflected--pun unintended--in media it's a little haha I know something about that moment. there are moments where I'm willing to excuse the inaccuracy for the sake of humor, but othertimes it's like hmm. realistically this is not actually a problem at all because you could definitely 100% see your reflection. it would be interesting to see modern or futuristic vampire story where the reflection thing comes into play the way you suggested!!)

we can sparkle together!! I wouldn't turn donw immortality, and sparkling in the sun just seems like an added bonus. And while the decision to make vampires glitter is one that is very frequently ridiculed, I happen to find it amusing enough that I don't care. It's also a relatively minor part of the story so maybe I'm just focused on other things. I mean, yes they sparkle but also there skin is rock-hard and very cold which has more impact on the story. The sparkling is just like "oh yea we can't go out in the sun and that's why we live in Forks." But aside from that it's not really mentioned aside from when Bella marvels at it and is like "wow this guy is so beautiful" and Edward's simultaneously like "I am disgusting and hideous and monstrous." He's very angsty.

same with the gifts thing!! I always find the idea of a most prominent trait affecting a character some way fascinating, like this one thing about them that is so important it stays with them no matter what. It does make me wonder what Freaky Fred was like in his human life (he's character from short second life), as he literally repulsed everyone physically, mentally, emotionally) around him to keep himself safe. Like that is such a unique reaction and if gifts truly are a main traits carried over, Freaky Fred is of great interest to me.

not sure exactly how any of those would translate into twilight vampire gifts, but in the event you are turned into an undead creature of the night please do update me as I am very curious what your gift would be.

I hope you're doing well!! I have at least one or two more asks from you to answer, so I will get to those. This one happened to get forgotten for a little bit, but hopefully that will happen less. I have been using drafts less for this very reason, though sometimes I get interrupted and have to save it as a draft to go do something else and then I forget for an eternity. But! Either way it's nice to hear from you!!