#i've had to read so many essays that were trying so hard to sound like their point was valid

[child-of-asbestos]

anyone else notice how academic culture and institutions are so obsessed with looking like they have dignity that they forget to actually have any dignity? shit's kinda fucked

[classica-meretrix]

i love your writing!!!! could i perhaps request a mortal friends to lovers leo valdez x reader au?? like they're both at college, leo takes mec eng(obviously lol) and reader takes psychology and it's just painful fluff with mutual pining losers with smut when they end up sleeping together after a super romcom dramatic like confession from leo?? lol sorry for the big ass text i'm just way into romcoms rn😅 (also subby leo lmao)

thank you so much for the request, love! leo is so fun to write for, and I ended up making this a two parter, so stay tuned for next week!

Are You Mad?

pt1, pt2

pairing: mortal leo valdez x fem!reader genre: fluff content/warnings: couldn't help but add some greek references lol, readers in denial, hoo friend group, dramatic love confession of course summary: you and leo end up as best friends after a chance collision, but soon it looks like it might be more a/n: I'm so excited to write the part 2 for this. should probably be out next thursday!

I tossed my empty cup into a trash can as I passed, trying to shuffle through the mass of papers and folders stacked in my arms one-handed. At this point I was only half convinced I'd finished that paper, and if I didn't find it before I got Mr. Whitman's class, I was as good as dead.

Just as I thought I saw the header of the essay I had been searching for, I collided with something hard, and all my papers flew out of my arms, littering the sidewalk.

"Shit, I'm so sorry," the guy hurried out, immediately ducking down to collect my mess. All I could see of him from this angle was a mess of black curls, and the back of a beat up Carhartt jacket.

"No, no, that was on me. I wasn't looking where I was going." I grabbed as many of the papers as I could, attempting to put them back in a neat stack. "I was trying to find an essay."

"This one?" he asked, looking up. I was met with warm chocolate brown eyes, leaving me stunned for a moment. He had picked up a thin stack that had been stapled together at the corner, holding it at an awkward angle to read the title. "The Self: Human Nature or All in Our Heads?"

"Yep. That's the one." I had gathered myself enough to answer with a shy smile.

"Psychology?" he continued with a mischievous looking grin, handing over the last few rogue papers.

"Second year."

"Me too!" he said enthusiastically. "I mean—second year, not psych. I'm mechanical engineering."

"That's my roommates major! She loves it, but I've never been able to follow it much."

"It's not too hard once you get the hang of it. I'm Leo, by the way."

"It's nice to meet you! I'd shake your hand, but I'd probably drop all this again."

"We wouldn't want that," he laughed.

Just as I was about to make another comment, I caught a glance of his watch. "Shit. I'm gonna be late. It was lovely to talk to you, hope to see you around," I called over my shoulder as I hurried off to my class.

"That's the second time today!" Percy yelled, hopping up from his seat, the front of his shirt and pants soaked. "Why can't this shit be waterproof or something?"

"Sorry, man," Leo apologized, though his teasing tone and proud smile suggested otherwise.

As soon as Percy was out of the dorm room, hurrying off to change, Jason turned to his friend. "You've got to stop doing that," he laughed. "I think he's almost at the breaking point."

Leo shrugged, turning his attention back to me. I was laid in his bed on my stomach as he sat on the floor, resting his chin on the edge of the mattress.

"What was I saying?" he asked, his nose scrunching adorably.

"Those... Sphere thingies."

"Right!" he said, his eyes lighting up. "Archimedes' spheres. We were talking about them in class today. I mean, he had some crazy ideas, but these things were just wild. They're way too complicated. Those things would never work. They don't even know what half of them are supposed to do."

"He sounds rather ambitious. Like someone else I know," I responded, gently tapping the end of his nose. He scrunched it again at my actions, making me what to repeat my actions a thousand times over.

What the hell are you doing? Snap out of it.

I pulled my hand back to my side as he went on, rambling about the impossibility of the inventions. We were only a few inches away from each other, his chin on the edge of the bed and mine resting on the back of my palm, but neither of us seemed to notice the proximity.

How the hell I ended up in this position, I couldn't really tell you. It was probably Percy's stupid idea to come to this stupid party.

Leo was across the room, talking to some girl, and for some reason I couldn't pinpoint, I was pissed about it. Part of myself was saying he's just talking to some girl, what's the big deal? But another—much louder—part of me wanted to scream at how close they were, talking maybe a few inches apart at most, and neither had looked up for six minutes and fifty-two seconds. Not that I was counting. What has gotten into me?

I eventually tore my eyes away from them, afraid I'd make myself sick if I stared at them any longer. Set on searching out Annabeth, I took off into the crowd, eventually finding her in the kitchen, tucked under Percy's arm.

"I'm gonna head out."

Her expression immediately turned to worry as she saw my own. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?" I answered, though my words came out sharp and uncomfortable, clearly not convincing either of us.

"I'll go with you."

"No, really. Percy's way too drunk to be left with the boys." My excuse was true, he was slurring aggressively, telling an overly exaggerated story.

"Jason isn't drinking, he'll be fine."

"Really," I tried again, practically pleading. I was more eager than ever now to get out of there, my skin heating to an unbearable temperature in the time I'd been standing there.

She hesitated, studying me. "Fine. But text me as soon as your back in the dorm. Kay?"

"Mhm," I nodded, immediately ducking towards the door. I was eager for the fresh air, but as soon as I pushed my way outside I was pelted with thick, cold rain drops. Great.

I tried to ignore my shivering, tugging off my heels to avoid slipping. I was halfway home when my phone started ringing, playing the custom ringtone Leo had insisted I used for his contact. I hurriedly ignored it, fumbling with my heels and the slippery screen, but just as soon as I had put my phone away, it was blaring again.

"For fuck's sake!" I yelled, scrambling to clear it again.

'Where are you?' his text read. 'Are you okay?' 'Answer me please.'

"Give it up," I muttered angrily, shoving my phone into my bag. I had just made it to my building when an all too familiar voice came from somewhere behind me through the heavy patter of rain.

"Thank God! Are you okay?"

"Would everyone stop asking that?" I snapped, spinning around to face him. Leo was climbing out of his cherry red Cadillac he'd fixed up, hurrying over to me.

"I thought something had happened to you? Why didn't you answer my calls or texts?" His eyes quickly scanned over me, taking in the thin dress sticking to my skin, heels in one hands, and arms wrapped tightly around myself as I shivered violently. "You're shaking. Take my jacket," he started, shrugging off his coat.

I brushed him off, ignoring his attempts. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"What? I'm making sure you're okay. You shouldn't be walking home by yourself at two in the morning. Please, take the jacket."

"No."

"Are you mad at me or something?"

"Yes! No... I–I don't know! Can you just leave me alone?" I angrily pleaded. His expression was somewhere between confused and hurt, the arm holding his jacket now hanging by his side. "Shouldn't you be off with some little blonde?"

That comment struck a chord, only deepening his confusion. "No?" he said, almost as more of a question. "Are you mad about me talking to a girl?"

"I don't want to talk about this!" I yelled back, desperately wanting to get out of the heavy rain. I could practically feel the cold in my bones, and my clothes were clinging to me uncomfortably.

"I do," he pouted, looking like a kicked puppy. His curls were matted down on his forehead, his grease-stained t-shirt sticking to his skin, and his jacket hanging limping at his side, not bothering to put it back on.

"What is there to talk about? I'm soaking wet, cold, and tired, I don't want to talk about some skank at a frat party!"

"Are you jealous or something?" He had begun to raise his voice, from a mix of the loud rain and aggravation.

"Maybe I am!" I yelled in response. "Is that what you want to hear?"

"Yes," he answered, not skipping a beat.

I was too stunned to answer him, the anger suddenly leaving me. The image of us yelling at each other in the rain about something so simple suddenly seemed absurd, and I was frantically trying to figure out how we had ended up here. I was just beginning to realize I may feel something different for my best friend, and here he was saying he might feel the same.

He stared at me for what felt like forever, until I managed to croak out a barely audible, "What?"

"I like you. Hell, if we're being honest, I think I'm in love with you."

His big brown eyes watched me with no expectation, just observing. I realized he wasn't waiting for me to say it back, or even acknowledge it, he was just... watching me process.

Before I knew what I was doing I had thrown my heels to the ground, launching myself at him. I pressed my lips against his as I threaded my fingers through his soaked curls. Leo's hands instinctively found my waist, tugging me closer.

His teeth tugged my bottom lip, nipping me before his tongue darted out to lick across the area in a soothing manner. I tugged his hair at the action, silently praising him.

I pulled away breathlessly, trying to get even closer to him. "You're so warm," I muttered against his lips. My shivering had decreased significantly since he'd wrapped his arms around me.

"Let's get you inside." My only option for a response was a mindless nod, before returning to his lips.

[more-than-tender-curiosity]

hey i just watched tgg musical on broadway yesterday for a choir trip and i have thoughts and so i'm sharing them here lol. sorry if this sounds disjointed; i've not read gatsby in a year

i didn't like how they wrote nick. i don't think it was the actor's fault, though there were times i didn't like his delivery. idk he was fine overall. occasionally he had that petty bitch energy but he altogether just seemed kinda bland? unaware? he seemed like he needed explanations for things he should already know if that makes sense. i think since you can't really have one person controlling the narrative to the extent he does in the book on stage they try to give him other roles. like with his relationship with jordan.

i really hated his relationship with jordan on stage. my friend who had never read the book found it cute, but it just felt so wrong.

they had nick deliver the lines about how gatsby believed in the green light the orgastic future etc etc (i remembered that line surprisingly clearly. it just kinda rattled in my head after reading it in ap lang like i've just never forgot that one.) but tbh during the song my green light it seemed like they wanted the light to be something else.

that kinda segues into the colors. that's another thing they lost on stage that you'd think could have really good potential—all the color symbolism. where did it go? was i just paying attention to other things and missed it or did it actually give us nothing?

overall i think it plays gatsby and nick too straight. not even in the sexuality way i think it just kinda takes them at their words way too often. i think the entirety of chapter 6 (i did in fact have to google to verify which chapter i was thinking of😭) was kinda just mostly left off. we're never even told gatsby has a name that's not jay gatsby.

hhhhhh the death scene. gatsby's death. i remember this part clearer bc i wrote a whole essay about the funeral and it wasn't that good—especially compared to this year in ap lit because i've tried harder and written so many bangers as a result imo—but man do i remember that scene. and they included wolfsheim saying he wouldn't go but that's really about it. and the stupid ass death scene itself where he falls onto the fucking pre placed towel. bullshit. like that actually killed me i almost laughed. (i think a lot of people in the audience had never read tgg bc there were a lottt of shocked reactions. even more after the suicide right after. i was told later there were a bunch of middle schoolers in the crowd so.)

i think gatsby broadway wanted to do an adaptation without having anything to say about the source material.

So I’m just gonna link you my essay comparing broadway gatsby to gatsby: an american myth first and foremost

That will tell you everything you need to know.

(Blease read it I work so hard .)

But yeah, I fully agree with you. Everything I have learned about this musical I have learned against my will and none of it is good. And like I tried. I’m the bitch buying bookmarks i’ll never use just because they say The Great Gatsby. If you slap that shit on something, I will give it a chance.

And I just. With the broadway musical. I just don’t get it. I don’t get why it’s popular. Even the people who say they hate it as an adaptation ‘but the music slaps’,,, like,,, No??? It’s???? Fucking obnoxious??? ‘Only Tea’ did to Jay Gatsby what ipad babies did to public spaces. And every time I try to come to peace with that, and move on with my life, @jeremyjordanstan09 is in my inbox telling me to kill myself. So I can’t even just coexist with this musical without it Trying To Kill Me. It’s like a toxic miasma spreading throughout the tag.

I just.

I don’t. Like it. Sjsisjsosdjdoeoeorjfr

But yeah. I don’t remember how much I covered the straightening of Jordan and Nick in the broadway musical but it just. It pisses me off. It does. Like that’s where you choose to lean into canon? Really? ESPECIALLY when gatsby: an american myth leans so wholeheartedly into more contemporary readings of gatsby as a whole (nick rails mr. mckee onstage. artistically. chester’s in the artistic game, you see—)

And myrtle? With the Baby? That? Thats why she was runnin out to the car ? She was just ? Excited to tell tom she was knocked up ? Yeah? Yeah?

It used to begin with a covid joke? For real?

Literally every time I hear something new about this musical it is against my will and it is worse than the last thing.

It’s not clever. It’s not intelligently written. It’s memorable only for its mediocrity. It is, to me, a flashy little cash grab that would make Jay’s bullshit look like solid fucking gold.

[rowanfalls]

No joke, I think dungeon meshi has seriously impacted my desire to be healthy for the better. A very long and heartfelt (but spoiler free) essay is under the cut.

I have Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. Because of my OCD, some foods are safe and some are not and I would literally rather starve than eat an unsafe food (i know because it happened once on a trip to Switzerland). This means I mostly eat chicken nuggets, buttered noodles, donuts, soda, the like. The only vegetable I can eat is cooked broccoli and the only fruit I can eat is apples (smoothies not withstanding).

I'm also physically disabled in a way that makes it hard for me to exercise or do physical activity, not to mention how my ADHD and Depression fuck with that as well. I'm 'lucky'* in that I have a genetic disposition towards being very thin and probably will stay that way until I'm in my 40s (my dad was exactly the same at my age).

So I eat mostly junk food and I sit at my computer all day every day and for a long time, I've been happy with that. When I tell people about my Eating Disorder, they usually say "oh, is there a way to fix it?" and my answer is always "why would I want to?" Its not like an allergy or a medical dietary restriction. I don't LIKE any of the foods I can't eat. I don't have any reason to want to learn how to eat them.

Besides health reasons of course. I know in my head that not eating any vegetables isn't good for me but I also know that I don't really want to eat them and, for most of my adulthood, I've lived with the mindset that I think a lot of people my age have where they hear so many people say 'just eat well and exercise!' as a solution to every problem and so they tend to hate the idea of doing that. The health industry is full of too many people who are fatphobic assholes or who think a green smoothie can cure your depression for good or who just want your money or whatever and I hate that. And so I've kind of felt above exercise and nutrition.

But then I read Dungeon Meshi.

Even in the beginning, the manga was super inspiring. The way Senshi talks about taking care of your body so you can go on adventures makes it sound like something I might want to do. So much of today's health advice is shame based and, as someone who grew up in and left a high demand control group, I work hard not to tolerate shame in my life. But Dungeon Meshi posits a new view of health and nutrition, one that is centered in love for the self, love for your friends, and love for your food. It resonated with me in a way that I really wasn't expecting it to.

Over the last few years, I've been working really hard to become a compassionate person. This year, my new goal is learning to turn that compassion inward and I've been trying to do that in several different ways. When I finished reading Dungeon Meshi I knew that one of those ways was going to have to be improving my diet and exercise.

I want to be able to go on adventures (as tame and simple as they may be). I want to live as long as possible to spend time with my loved ones. I want to be able to walk around and exist without pain for as much of that time as I can. I want to love my body and act accordingly, making sure it is well fed and cared for. Hell, I've always loved the idea of cooking but haven't had the energy to really learn, especially since I can't eat most foods, but now the idea of taking the time to cultivate a skill like that, one that I can be proud of and that can be used to care for my friends, fills me with a sense of hope and excitement.

So thank you Dungeon Meshi, and thank you Ryoko Kui. If you haven't read the manga, I highly recommend that you do.

*by lucky I mean that my diet hasn't forced me to deal with the stigma that comes with being fat. I have no idea what kinds of problems it's been causing that I just can't see. I am not saying that it would be bad if I were fat, just that not being thin would mean I faced a lot more stigma and discrimination in my life, which is bad.

[yandereocs]

*rubs hands together* Imagine Husk’s de-faced darling asking to cut off one of his hands before they’ll forgive them

* YEAHHHH

* Let us both evily rub our hands together like super villains

* For context, this is related to this post right here!!

Defaced and declawed - Yandere Husk x Reader

* CW: Descriptions of violence and gore

You don't like looking in mirrors anymore.

It makes sense, given your circumstances. You're not sure anyone would be a fan of looking at themselves after having their face ripped off.

The pain has long subsided and the wound had scarred cleanly. But you swear that you can still feel the agony of your skin pulling off.

It's terrible.

Both you and Husk prefer the bandages stay on.

Speaking of Husk, he feels terrible. You know he does. His mask is in a constant state of expressing sadness or nothing at all. His loving gestures have increase by tenfold. He keeps writing elegant essays begging for forgiveness.

But you can never bring yourself to accept any of it.

Today was no different. Husk was desperately trying to win your affection back, to make everything okay again. He was writing something in his notebook, the sound of pen scratching against paper mixing with the noise of whatever you were watching on TV.

"Please, my love. I'm sorry. It was a lapse of judgement, I never meant to harm you like that. I've told you before that I'll do anything for your forgiveness and I meant it. Anything at all."

Your eyes scan the paper as the notebook was suddenly handed to you. His handwriting had deteriorated in the past months, slowly going from calm and smooth to frantic and shaky.

As soon as you finish reading, your eyes immediately flicked over to Husk's hands. Even now, all you could see was his bloodstained hands, how the thick red liquid dried under his fingernails. It disgusted you.

Those hands...they hurt you. Caused you more pain then you could imagine, caused pain to so many other lives. You turned away from Husk. Looking at him was sickening.

"Your hands."

You felt him perk up when you spoke. Ever since the incident, you've barely spoken to him, if at all.

"I want...I want you to cut off your hands."

The monster immediately stiffened. Cut off his hands? What an insane request.

But he was so desperate for your love again.

"If I do this, you'll forgive me?"

The notebook appears in front of you again. You sigh. You don't want to forgive him. But, if his hands were gone, then no harm can come to you again.

You'd be safe.

"Yeah, sure."

Your reply was half-hearted but it seemed enough for Husk. The man immediately rose from his seat and scurried away to the kitchen, leaving you alone with your thoughts. What would happen afterwards? Husk needed his hands to communicate with you. He was normally the one initiating conversations after the incident. Will the two of you just be in silence forever?

Husk returns promptly, interrupting your thoughts. He was holding a butcher knife. He placed his hand on the coffee table, glancing your way multiple times to make sure you were watching.

You were.

The knife was raised.

And was brought down swiftly.

Immediately the knife clattered to the table as Husk stumbled backwards, his remaining hand gripping the base of his wrist. Blood was pouring out, staining the floor, and Husk's form was becoming unstable. Your eyes widened ever so slightly as you watched the man in front of you shift from something humanoid to monstrous to back to humanoid. He was letting out low groans and growls of pain, his body shivering.

It was a disgusting sight.

You could see the hand that he had chopped off just laying on the coffee table, the once human hand shifting into someone much larger with sharp claws. Perhaps that's how his original hand looks like.

The stench of blood filled the air and make your stomach churn. But you couldn't tear your eyes away no matter who hard you tried.

Husk turns to you, his mask blank. But you could tell he was in pain. You stared back, not offering any words of comfort. Why would you?

Husk lets out another low groan before reaching for the butcher knife again. But then he stops, and he looks down at himself. He isn't exactly sure how to chop off his other hand. He looks to you for help. You shrug.

Husk drops the knife again and stumbles to his notebook, picking up his pencil with shaking, blood stained hand as he writes something down before showing it to you.

The handwriting is barely legible and it isn't in his usual cursive, instead looking more like frantic chicken scratches. But the words could be made out with close enough reading.

"Is chopping one hand enough?"

You stare at the question written, mulling it over. Just one hand wasn't enough to compensate what he did to you. After all, he had used both hands. You scoff and turn away once more, shaking your head.

"No."

Husk immediately let's out a low groan and drops the notebook, his body shaking. His form is still unstable, occasionally sprouting large antlers or growing significantly taller before shifting back to his usual form. He's struggling to keep it together. To keep you from seeing just how much of a monster he really is.

It doesn't really matter, though. You already know what kind of a beast he is. You learned that the second he laid his hands on you.

Husk stumbles out of the room and leaves the house, slamming the door. Most likely accidentally. You watch him as he goes.

And now you're left in just your thoughts.

As always, they immediately swarm your head. Regrets, fears, pleas for mercy, they all resurface.

Your head throbs.

Your face aches.

You're so tired.

The door abruptly swings open and your gaze immediately jerks over in it's direction.

It's Husk, of course. He kicked the door shut and makes his way towards you, standing in front of where you were sitting. He holds his hands out. Or, you know. Lack thereof.

Somehow he found a way to get rid of his second hand. The wound wasn't a clean as a swift chop. It honestly looked like he got some wild animal to maul his other hand off. Maybe that is what he did.

Blood was staining the floor under the two of you. You can't tear your eyes away. The exposed, pulsating muscle and the contrast of cleanly cut bone compared to the gnawed off end of his wrists was disgusting to see, the overwhelming stench of iron flooding your nose, causing you to cover it.

He's looking at you.

He needs an answer.

You'll forgive him now, right?

He did what you asked.

So what if he can't communicate with you anymore? He'll find a way.

So, please. He's silently pleading. He needs your forgiveness.

Surely this was enough for you, right?

As you look at him, your stomach churns with the familiar feeling of fear, disgust and hatred.

Nothing has changed.

It wasn't enough.

[cookinguptales]

I almost wrote a small essay in the tags of that "fanwork as content" post but realized that it would probably be better off as its own post. So now it's... a large, rambling essay. lmao

Like... to preface, AO3 is great, it's a great resource for fandom, it feels good to have a centralized location that works well. That said, there has been a steady decline in how I've felt treated as an author since we switched to an archive-only model of fic.

For people who are newer to fandom, pre-AO3 (and even in the early days of AO3), people often crossposted fic. Sometimes to websites, sometimes to journals (particularly LJ/DW), sometimes to communities, sometimes to kink memes...

AO3, while certainly one of the primary places you could upload stuff, wasn't necessarily where you would get most of your primary interaction about your fic. It was always designed to be an archive, not a social media site.

But since we moved to an archive model (and away from LJ/DW) I've noticed that fic gets almost no traction on sites that actually are intended for social interaction. I'm not saying it's easy for any creator in fandom, but god. The numbers on fic posts are just downright demoralizing.

I don't mean to sound arrogant here, but I think I'm a pretty good writer. People seem to really connect with my fic. In multiple fandoms, I've written fic that most people have read and enjoyed, to the point where people have just taken it for granted that if someone reads fic in the fandom, they've probably read something I've written.

All this is to say, I know I've written fics that people like. I know I've written fics that people connect with. And I know those posts still only get like 5 notes sometimes on Tumblr.

I'm proud of my work and I'm happy that it's gotten such a warm welcome on AO3!!! But there are times when I feel like all this means that I could write literally the best fic on earth and still no one would talk to me. People still wouldn't want to interact with me on social media sites.

I wrestled for... honestly, a long time with all this. I had a hard time putting into words why this felt so uh. Bad. Was I just self-conscious about my own writing? Yes, but that's a separate issue. Was I just jealous of others' popularity? Sort of, but it went deeper than that.

I had an issue with a fandom that I don't write in anymore. I got a lot of fanart based on my fic, which was great, which was amazing, there were even fan comics made. Visual media travels better on social media than fic. That's just a fact. And I had to watch as repeatedly, art based on the fic I wrote got thousands of notes while my fic got maybe 12. And I realized the power of social media vs. AO3 because it did get to audiences that weren't familiar with my fic and people started to give those artists credit for my ideas.

I remember watching the tags of those posts because it was occasionally the only way I'd hear feedback on what I'd written (imagine getting one comment and 5 notes on a fic, then seeing dozens of people in the tags of fanart saying that it was their favorite fic in the fandom! it was weird!) and seeing the tags gradually devolve into "oh, this is such a neat idea for an AU, artist OP" or "wow this dialogue is perfect [artist] I love it" and like

It's weird to feel so happy because so many people are enjoying your work in a transformative way but also so unhappy because you have been completely removed from the equation. No one... even knows you wrote those things anymore. You have been removed in favor of a more "marketable" version of your work.

It's uh. It's a bad feeling. I stopped writing in that fandom eventually.

So again, I felt like... idk, like there was no point in me even trying. Because I could write the best fic on earth and still somehow get erased as a person. People would want my "content," but they wouldn't want me.

I think that's what hurt my feelings so much.

What I've realized is this: what I miss is the sense of community. On LJ, you could post a fic, cross-post it to a community, and there would be comments that would become conversations that would become lasting friendships. Not always! But often. I still talk to some people daily who I met through fic on LJ over a decade ago.

In the archive model, there has almost become a death of the author. The me on social media and the me on AO3 are very different; more importantly, it's almost like it's viewed as the "me" is on social media, but the work is on AO3. I am absent. There is only the fic, not the person who created it.

And that's okay, but when you try to combine those two things on social media and it goes over like a lead balloon... idk. There's an odd sense of dehumanization. I don't mean it in like... I don't know, a dramatic human rights violation kind of way. More that I literally feel like less of a human person the way I interact with fandom these days. Like I'm no longer a person who writes fic as a way to connect with my fellow fans and more a "content creator" whose human side is separate from my creation and never the twain shall meet.

(And I'll admit it feels especially galling to be forced into the capitalistic "content creator" box when it's not even a thing I can make money off of, lmao. It's like the worst of both worlds. I feel like if I can't make money off fanfic, I should at least be exempt from capitalistic social trends during its creation.)

I'm not so much complaining about my current fandom; WWDITS has actually been one of the best fandoms for interaction I've been in since the birth of AO3. That's one of the reasons I keep writing stories for fellow fans to read -- many of those fans feel like my friends, and I want to make them happy.

I think that poster was right when they talked about how the pivot from fan to "content creator" has fucked up fandom. There is this sense that we should be treating fandom like a job, often a fast-paced one with no pay. There is this idea that we should be separated from our "content" like you might a worker from their product, and blah blah blah alienation of labor, Marx, I get it, but damn if that isn't a shitty thing to do to your fellow fans who are making art for the love of art.

There are so many things I do love about AO3. I like having a central, organized place to put my fic. I like not having to worry about my work being lost to the ages. I like having an organized comments section I can return to on bad days to cheer myself up.

But I don't like the way that fic has kind of been relegated to a portion of fandom where people aren't particularly social. I don't like the way that authors are separated from their writing. I hear people complain sometimes about A/Ns because god forbid an author leave any trace of their actual personality to distract you from their content.

I can't have DMs with someone on AO3. I can't add someone to my friends list. There are no "beloved mutuals." There is just my work and the people who are kind enough to comment on it, even if they never actually engage with me elsewhere.

It's... a weird feeling, to feel so loved and unloved at the same time. Like you keep writing trying to make something good enough that people will talk to you but like. That's really not how it works. lmao. The best fic in the world won't make you friends anymore. It won't make people see you as a fellow fan rather than a pen name under a title.

My fic is some of the most personal stuff in the entire world, but my personhood is stripped away from it. It's so fucking weird. People like my fic, but they don't like me. They remember my stories but not the person who told them. It's bizarre. It feels like having your life and experiences strip-mined for content, and then the rest of it is just... left behind.

Frankly... I work in the publishing industry IRL and I have had opportunities to write professionally. Real, tangible opportunities. But I turned them down because I've seen it, the way that trying to fit such an intensely personal art form into a capitalistic framework can be exhausting, dehumanizing, and stressful. I don't want that for my work. Fandom has always been an escape from that.

But now fandom is starting to conform to those exact same capitalistic frameworks (and ofc without any kind of capitalistic compensation) and I hate to see it. It's so stressful. I feel like we're losing a lot of what makes fandom fun for writers and we're getting pretty much nothing in return. I'm not surprised that so many writer friends I know in fandom have quit.

like damn, I just wanna have fun with a bunch of dumbshits who love to overanalyze vampires and cry over their dumbshit shenanigans, not take on a second job. one that, I reiterate, I am not being paid for.

(Note: I am not asking for payment, just that I not be treated like a worker. The tradeoff for treating someone like a worker is that they get compensated for it. If I'm not being compensated, no one gets to treat me like this is my fucking job.)

It's a weird thing, because for a lot of people, fandom has become their job. Fanartists at cons selling fanart, youtube essayists making money off videos, professional cosplayers with sponsorships, etc. And so fandom is becoming more corporate, more capitalistic, more marketable. It's frustrating for those who don't want to capitalize on our fannish output, and doubly frustrating for people who are legally unable to do so.

I'm realizing as I write this that I'm most upset about the nonconsensual capitalization of fandom, particularly when imposed on people who are unable to access the very meager benefits of capitalism. I didn't ask for any of this!

Feels like when I'd be forced to go to assemblies for the US military when I was in high school. Like I'm morally opposed to all this but I'm also not physically fit for "service" anyway, so it's doubly insulting. I feel like I've been opted into the, ah, corporatization of fandom when I'm not even eligible for employee benefits. None of this should even apply to me! ;;

Okay!! I'm all het up now so I'm gonna go eat lunch and go for a walk! No monetization of hobbies, only trees.

[purplesurveys]

1961

Do people tell you you have cold hands? Never. I do have chicken skin on my arms, so people are always remarking that I must be cold and if I want a jacket. That's probably the closest, most relevant thing I can answer for this hahaha.

Do you feel that the shape of the pasta alters the taste? Well, no. I have preferences that I enjoy more than others though so I will typically go for meals that use the shapes I like.

How often do you listen to rock music? Not nearly as often as I used to.

In games, do you like to roleplay as good or bad? I don't really do roleplaying.

What was your favourite colour when you were 10? Oh it was most definitely black by that point and remained black for several years, lol.

When were you last in a hospital? Last time in a hospital was ~3 years ago when I visited my mom post-hysterectomy. I was the most useless visitor and barely served as a source of comfort for my mom because all I did was cringe and grimace at all the tubes and needles and dried blood fdskfhksdhf

Is there an instrument you don't like the sound of? I don't think so.

Have you ever sponsored an animal? I haven't...I can only do individual donations at the moment. I would love to be able to do this and it's one of my goals.

Would you rather be a kangaroo or a sea turtle? Kangaroo.

Do you like to get ready in the bathroom or the bedroom? Bedroom, I can move around more.

What's your favourite Coldplay song? Charlie Brown!

Do you have a favourite insect? No.

Have you ever worn coloured contacts for Halloween? Nope, I've never put on contacts at all.

Do you own a scooter? No, my balance is too terrible to get something like that for myself.

Which pastel colour is the nicest? Pink and purple.

When did you last play a Mario game? Safe guess would be 2-3 years ago; I haven't played the Switch in a looooong time.

Ever owned an actual piggy bank? I don't think so.

When did you last swing on a swing-set? There was a swing set in our Bulacan Airbnb in June-ish last year.

Do you study any subjects in your free time? I mean I read books with history essays in my free time, if that counts as studying. I do it for leisure more than anything, though.

Would you rather become fluent in 3 European languages or 3 Asian languages? 3 Asian.

Are your bedroom curtains long or short? Quite short.

Have you ever been zip-lining? I haven't. I was scared before, but it's something I'd try now if given the opportunity.

Did you carve a pumpkin this past year? No we don't do that here.

Have you volunteered in the past 6 months? I have not.

French fries or onion rings? That's hard...I LOVE both of them. Fries for me overtake the onion rings by the smallest bit, because I find them more filling. Onion rings feel like air to me, hahaha.

Why do you take surveys? I like keeping an extremely small circle of friends and we don't always get to talk, so having this allows me to be constantly in touch with myself and how I'm feeling. It also serves as my diary without me having to think of what to write about, since the survey questions themselves already serve as the prompts.

Do you suffer from anxiety? I definitely think I do. I take every scenario more heavily and seriously than anybody I know.

Did you ever take a swimming class? I did! I took summer swimming classes as a kid + we also had to take up swimming in PE classes for one whole quarter, every school year until I graduated high school.

Favorite healthy snack? Salad wraps.

Favorite Disney movie? Toy Story.

Do you consider yourself an artist? No.

How well can you bake a cake? I could follow a recipe but it would still taste terrible/like nothing. I know that because I've done the same with cookies only for them to be the most tasteless things on Earth lol.

Have you ever tasted banana milk? I have not sorry JK hahahaha I would love to though!

How many pairs of skinny jeans do you think you own? No skinny jeans. So uncomfortable.

Do you own a pair of Converse sneakers? Nope.

If you see a bee in your house... are you going to kill it? I'd completely avoid it and wait somewhere away until it finds its way back outside.

I’m ordering Chinese food; what do you want? My treat! Fried rice and eggplant casserole :)

Do you have a cat? We do!

Ever been in love? Yeah, I like to believe so.

Any piercings that you want? I'm good, thanks.

OTP? I uh, don't have any. Wow, is this what it's like to age? HAHAHA

Favorite quote? "You need some time alone. Myself, who's inside me, is also my friend. This friend has lived with me for 23 years. This friend has been in me for 23 years, but I might not know this friend perfectly. So it's important to take time to get to know this friend. Being alone is not a weird thing. Eating alone doesn't make you an outcast. Since we're born alone, we all need some time to be alone." ♡

Favorite singer? Beyonce, Hayley Williams, and Bruno Mars.

How long does it take you to shower? Anywhere between 10-15 minutes.

The reason I joined Tumblr? Tumblr was the lowkey cool thing to be part of when I was around 12-13. It was the era of fish-eye photography, and the most popular people on here were posting photos of their Arizona iced tea, Vans flags in their rooms, fireworks with long-exposure LOL IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW. It was a space for the cool kids and me being a wallflower and hearing all about it, decided to join it to see what the fuss is about.

Eventually I grew out of that photographer wannabe bubble and turned my blog into a stan account for wrestling for a few years.

Baked macaroni and cheese or regular? Regular one is ok but baked is fine too! I did have baked mac a sickening amount in high school so that's why I went with regular.

What’s the first thing you learned how to draw? I dunno. Probably a simple triangle-square house, haha.

Who wrote the last book you read? Baek Sehee.

What’s the middle name of your best friend? I'm not giving that away :)

How far away do you live from the closest aquarium? Around an hour and a half away.

Who in your family has a birthday in January? My dad!

What’s your favorite country song? Obsssssssesssssssssed with Beyoncé's Sweet Honey Buckiin.

Pizza rolls or bagel bites? I will never get sick of pizza rolls.

What’s the last show you really got into that you have to wait for the next season of? Extraordinary Attorney Woo. < Nice, a K-drama sighting! :) Anywho, mine is Squid Game hahaha. That Season 2 was so great. K-dramas tend to suuuUUUUUCK! at Season 2s so I didn't walk in with much expectations, but Squid Game seemed to break the streak for me.

When’s the last time you saw fireworks? January 1st, of course.

Have you ever witnessed a car accident? I've seen a few happen in real-time.

Do you own a pair of fuzzy socks? Nope.

Have you ever been skinny dipping? No thanks.

Sprinkles or frosting? Frosting.

Do you like mushrooms? Yes! I love the earthy, deep taste.

Have you ever worked in a grocery store? I haven't.

What’s your Subway order? I've never ordered from Subway.

Do you know how to roller skate? I mean I know how to balance and glide, but no tricks. I had a pair of roller skates until my early teens.

Can you read sheet music? No.

What’s one food your family has at Thanksgiving? At what?

Do you like painting? I like painting if it's the paint-by-numbers kind, meaning I just have to follow directions and I know I'll be able to complete an image. I never paint from scratch because...well, I'm just not creative, and I don't have the ability to make images in my head and turn them into art.

Do you have to sleep with a fan on? Technically I have to but I hate how loud fans are lol, so what I do is to turn on the aircon until it's freezing enough, then I turn it off when I go to bed so that I fall asleep while it's still cold, even without no fan.

Name one thing you put on a salad: Idk but at Salad Stop - which is the only place I get salads/salad wraps from - I like their Caesar salad wrap or their seared tuna one.

What’s the last thing you ordered from a Mexican restaurant? Chipotle chicken sandwich + fries + iced coffee from Army Navy. They're Mexican-American more than anything which explains why all the stuff I got is literally the furthest from Mexican cuisine lmao.

Do you carry a purse or a backpack? Handbag.

What kind of soda is your favorite? I'll drink Pepsi or Sprite, but I'd rather not have soda at all.

Do you like your in-laws? I only have one in-law and I really like her!

Toe socks or ankle socks? I haven't tried toe socks so ankle socks win by default, even though they aren't also necessarily my favorite thing in the world. They never hang on to my feet lol

Nachos or chips and salsa? Nachos!

What’s the name of your pets? Cooper, Agi, and Max. We also had Tobi, Michelle, Andi, Kimi, Miki, and Arlee :)

What’s your Chick-fil-A order? I'd order from there if we actually had them here, sorry survey maker for not living in the US!

Regular or pink lemonade? Regular idk what the pink one is.

Chinese or Japanese cuisine? Japanese. Chinese is super underwhelming and unexciting for me, which I guess is because of all the influences it's already passed onto Filipino cuisine. It feels like ordinary everyday food, just with different spices. At least Japanese cuisine has raw fish and fermented soybeans and such.

Do you own a pair of Crocs? No. I think they look fine, it's just that texture-wise I hate how it feels to the feet.

Does anyone in your family have a birthday in February? One of my uncles, yes.

What’s your Taco Bell order? I've never memorized their menu because Taco Bells are soooooo hard to find here. So whenever I find one, I usually just go for the largest, most ridiculously stuffed burrito they have to make most of my time there.

Have you ever lived in a trailer/doublewide? Nope.

Pizza or nacho lunchables? Idk man please pick for me haha

Have you ever been to a strip club? Nopes.

Did you ever participate in any pageants when you were younger? Ewwwwwwww no.

What kind of cheese is your favorite? Mozzarella.

Make the perfect taco salad: I've never had that.

Name a character from your favorite TV show: Gus Fring, king of my heart.

Do you like going to arcades? They're okay. I only go to uncrowded ones though.

What kind of meat do you like the most? Pork.

Snakes or spiders? Snakes.

Have you ever had your nails done professionally? No.

Is anyone in your family in law enforcement? I don't think so, no.

What’s a fruit you dislike? All of them, except for avocado.

Make the perfect omelet: In breakfast buffets, we usually have the omelet chef add all the fillings they have :) So anything goes for me really when it comes to omelets!

[lyxthen]

Extremely mildly niche academic-ish rambling ahead. Might wanna skip this one. It is long and boring

One thing that does make me happy is the Latinoamerican Literary Boom was so big it actually went on to be translated in other languages. There are still authors that I feel need to have their works translated (mostly women, I wonder why) but many of the video essayist I watch keep mentioning Borges in their videos, and truly I can't blame them because his work is rad. I don't know about him as a person but he lives 30 layers of post ironic meta fantasy or some shit like that. Cortazar is really cool also. In terms of living authors I really like Juan Villoro, his writing style is very fun. The Wild Book is a children's book about literary theory, like, Theory of Reception, Death of the Author, stuff like that. It was a really fun read as a child but the themes are interesting as well.

I feel like, I don't know, it's so hard to find Latin American fantasy books these days, or at least they are not as available. The YA genre is dominated by books originally writen in English or on books written in Spain (think Laura Gallego, which I just found out has a Netflix series made out of her most famous series of novels, but I am derailing) with the exception of Benito Taibo, who is Mexican, and has one (1) high fantasy trilogy that is kinda mid. The ideas were great, but they could've been expanded, you know? Camino a Sognum had so much potential, and you can *see* that it was inspired by classic epic fantasy like Earthsea, but it needed some more *spark* to actually work. I have not read Normal Person, but I plan to. Maybe it is better made?

And it's funny, because a book like Mexican Gothic, that was written in English, is so darn good! But only if you read it *in English* because the Spanish translation did this thing where they try to "neutralize" the accent and manerismd of the characters to make it appeal to the wider Spanish-speaking world and it doesn't sound or feel Mexican at all.

I am not sure where I am going with this. I have been discovering the local literary scene lately (and I mean *local*, like city-wide local) and it is mostly so boring because no one is writing fantasy! No magic realism! It's all kind of depressing dwellings on how we are being gentrified and indigenous people keep being oppressed by the mestizo majority and corporations and the goverment keep stealing the land to make Coca Cola and we are dying of diabetes and we don't got water and Capitalism sucks. LIKE I AGREE BUT CAN YOU PUT FAIRIES IN THERE OR SOMETHING. And I guess that's why I've never wanted to read Cómo Agua para Chocolate, because it is just *too real*, cuz it's a story I know by memory and I don't wanna live it all over again verbatim. Probably a great book, but I just cannot.

I don't know man idk idk.

The funniest think about this is that my favorite book ever (like actually, for real) is a children's book, written from the perspective of the imaginary friend of a child, and it is so gracefully narrated, and the characters so well constructed, and it touches real problems like Teen Pregnancy and Childhood Depression and Anxiety while also managing to be funny and whimsical? The very premise of the book (memories of an almost true friend, it's called) is already so creative and the execution is masterful. BUT I AM THE ONLY GUY ON PLANET EARTH THAT SEEMS TO KNOW ABOUT ITS EXISTENCE ITS DRIVING ME INSANE.

Where was I going with this. Ah yes. Youtubers talking about Borges. Well. Um. I. I think imma translate some of my own texts to English and put them on Wattpad or something. They are not the kind of thing Wattpad people are into but I gotta archive them somewhere and doing it on AO3 feels wrong since they aren't fan works. And on that note, I also wanna write more fan works.

Ugh I could be writing an essay but you got me writing a Tumblr post. What is wrong with me. I'm too bad at word weaving.

Aaaa (??????

Thoughts?

Help

I did take my meds today BTW. I don't know what is happening to me I just wanna WRITE ok I LOVE WRITING BUT WHY MUST I DO TUMBLR INSTEAD OF MY PASSIONS?

Oi I'll end it there

[janeaustenprotagonist]

I haven't done this in a while, but I must admit my feelings somewhere where no one knows me.

good evening internet, I like a boy. really, truly, and incandescently. I've listened to Pancakes For Dinner by Lizzy McAlpine maybe a million times. I long to tell him, but rather I ask him silly things like his favorite friends character and his favorite dinosaur, I guess that's just how the words "I want to be with you" are coming out. I think he's beautiful, but I don't think he thinks so. he thinks I'm beautiful. I feel my heart aching. I don't feel annoying with him, I don't feel like a burden. he's so easy to talk to, jesus I could've talked to him all day. I swear we were the loudest in the restaurant, taking up a table and not ordering anything. I made him late for an appointment and I don't think he minded one bit, I think he could've stayed there all night with me. we have many mutual friends so it's hard because I can't talk about him anywhere. he's the type to ask consent to hold your hand. the sunsets shimmer beautiful with his admiration. I made a playlist I am longing to send to him but I am terrifiedTM, thank god he hasn't found my spotify. we both love the silliest things and we're just- so similar. jesus it sounds like I'm quoting pride and prejudice but I'm not, I truly mean this. I feel my broken bones mending. he makes me feel magical, like the sunset or a dewy spring morning where the flowers are barely opening and the birds are waking up with the sunrise with a slight chill in the wind. I'm trying not to jinx it, but he makes me feel like daylight.

I recall last fall when I first heard about him, he sounded lovely. I found his socials and I thought "he's so cute," little did I know he thought the same. apparently I'm an "urban legend" around the community here that we're both a part of. I hope he's only heard good things, he said that he kept hearing things about me and just had to know who I was. when he texted me that day, I thought we were going to be merely friends. now I want him to hold me. go on picnics. read books together. watch movies. make pancakes with strawberries. cosplay. kiss me. love me. wake up next to eachother. I want to be best friends who can kiss. I want to be his lover, his daylight, his tinkerbell.

jesus christ, internet. I like him.

I think he might be the best thing that's ever happened to me and I don't want to fuck it up. I'm trying so hard not to fuck it up. or jinx it. I could write poems and essays about how I feel but none of it will ever get sent to him, out of fear mainly.

I'm afraid of opening my heart up too much after what my ex did to me. for context, my ex was abusive. I'm afraid of getting hurt. unreciprocated love.

I think if I had met his boy any earlier, i wouldn't have been ready. but if I'd met him any later, I would be gone.

jesus he makes me happy. I feel like I'm glowing when he texts me.

I really like this boy.

we're getting lunch when I get back from my trip. I'm beyond excited. I hope it lasts for hours and we are still there by dinner. I hope he kisses me.

I pray he never sees this. if you see this, you didn't.

[paintedrecs]

"Creative inbreeding" is such an apt term. It is, quite frankly, why I've pretty much given up on reading fantasy YA for the time being. A lot of the popular ones I'd been picking up - widely discussed, pretty covers, interesting summaries - are nearly indistinguishable from each other in terms of actual writing style.

Lead characters with copy/paste personalities. A love interest that hits all the popular tropes, even if the relationship doesn't really work within the story structure. A narrative arc that hits all the key stops along the way, like it's following a map. The same types of descriptions of food, clothing, towns, etc. I set the book down when I'm done and can't even remember who the author was without flipping back to that nicely illustrated cover.

I don't mean to criticize the authors, because obviously they're working hard, and it's amazing that they got their books out into the world. I'm just...tired of reading so many of the same stories, with different hats.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that people are writing what they think sells - and agents and publishing houses are probably picking up specific stories for the same reason. It's like Disney doing endless remakes of stories that were originally something creative and inspiring.

But you can tell when you're reading something that's sort of just...cobbled together from all the other books that person has encountered from within the same exact genre. They're assembling bits of everyone else's voices instead of developing their own. It might be readable, but it's not terribly memorable.

In one of my college lit classes, our final exam was to read excerpts from various literary works and write a short essay response identifying the authors and explaining our reasons. It wasn't a test to check whether we'd read and memorized everything by these authors - it was to see how closely we'd been paying attention to the ones we had read and discussed in class.

For instance, the Jack London excerpt wasn't from White Fang or The Call of the Wild - it was a paragraph from a short story we hadn't read, where you could pick up on setting, style, themes, tone, etc to say hey...I think this was probably written by him.

I still remember that exam because it was a pretty cool exercise that showed how distinct an author's voice can be, even for ones that carry over into different genres. (Jack London is a little bit of a cheat if you go "oh it's set in Alaska.") It's like hearing a song you've never listened to before and recognizing their voice, or identifying a painting without having to look at the signature.

And yes, you can see this in fanfiction, too: I used to enjoy trying to identify authors in fandom exchange festivals, before the anon switch flipped off and they were revealed. Sometimes I was wrong. Sometimes I got it right, and it was so fun!

My favorite fic authors do often have a distinct tone and style that they carry through their writing, even while drawing from canonical sources and keeping it "in character." Just like the paintings from two artists sitting next to each other in front of a bowl of fruit will depict the "same" subject on the canvas, but with their point of view and personality in the brushstrokes.

Which is all just to say that I agree, so strongly, with the need to not only read if you're going to write...but to read widely and across genres. Across time periods and languages, too: I very much recommend reading stories from other cultures and other countries, to develop a wider view of the world.

If you only read modern YA fantasy written by US-based authors, your stories are...going to sound a lot like theirs, even if you don't intend them to.

If you read a ton of fic, you'll probably learn how to write something that aligns well with what everyone seems to like and gravitate towards in fandom. Maybe that's the goal. But even if you don't have the drive or the energy to write or try to publish original works, all the advice from earlier in this thread will help you in fandom.

If you want to write a story that isn't an entirely unique concept but IS your unique voice, you have to develop that voice through wider experience.

I've seen fanfic authors brag about how they never read at all, fic or otherwise...and quite frankly, it shows. You can only improve through practice, and some of that practice includes studying and learning from others, which can really be as simple as just sitting down with a cup of tea and a stack of books.

They don't have to be "literary." They don't need glowing 5 star reviews. They should just be what books are meant to be: a way for you to dive into a whole bunch of different worlds and time periods and discover the huge range of creativity that's out there for you to enjoy.

fascinating that when you tell people "you have to learn the rules to break them" when talking about drawing/painting etc everyone nods and agrees but the second you say "you have to read books if you want to write better" there's a horde of contrarians begging to be the wrongest people ever all of a sudden

[mysticdragon3md3]

lrb~lrt

The algorithms are reading my offline journaling too, if they're putting posts like my last reblog, in view of my timeline, right after I wrote the whole essay below.

I was rewatching this video:

Just had the horrifying thought: What if the reason these anti-JayVik dude bros are so against even other people shipping JayVik, is because they think that once someone is your sexual partner, they are less than, nothing more than a sexual object without a brain or need for respect?…Because that's how these heteronormative, patriarchal dude bros have been conditioned to think of women as? Just sex objects to disrespect. Youch.

I think I came to this realization because a lot of these anti-JayVik comments seem to be dividing Friendship and Romance, as if people can't be friends with their romantic/sexual partners. They act like because JayVik are friends, then they "can't" be in a romantic romantic/sexual relationship TOO. It reminded me of when my aunt told my sister and I that her husband of several decades was NOT her best friend. We were flabbergasted. How can you marry someone, spend so much time with them, want to spend your ENTIRE life with them, if they aren't even also your best friend???? But their marriage had worked for all this time, so we figured, that it must work for them. But we could never imagine being in relationships like that, and that was just a difference of preferences. Not just opinions---broadly judging all, setting standards and ideals for everyone to follow, with a hierarchy and only one ideal image at the top. We concluded that some people don't need their spouses to be their best friends, and some people do (like us). And that was that. But these dude bros leaving anti-JayVik comments sound like they can't comprehend that other people have different preferences, have different needs in their lives, live different lives, and that that is okay. I know we all fall into the fallacy of thinking everyone thinks just like us, at some points in our lives. But wow. It always astonishes me when I see someone even more sheltered than I am. As the saying goes, "Oh, to have the confidence of a white man". At least when I learn something new and realize other people think differently than me, I accept it. But these dude bros just can't accept that some people's ideal relationship is built on friendship. Astonishing. Well, good luck, dude bros. We'll be over here, enjoying JayVik.

Also it's so weird that they're assuming all JayVik shippers are women. Since I got into JayVik fandom, I have never before seen so many male fans of a male-gay ship! It's like a half or a third of the prolific shippers (fanartists, analysis posters, fanfic authors) are GUYS. I've never seen this many guys in a shipping fandom before! It just makes it more clear that these Weak dude bros are just clumsily trying to build arguments for misogyny.

Every time I hear these dude bros trying so hard to police ships that don't align with their interpretations, while oddly, simultaneously, dogmatically adhering to canon, I remember Disney's Frozen. Everyone from gays, to bisexuals, to autistic people, to introverts, to people with depression and social anxiety, all related to Elsa...Even though, the song composers said in an interview, that their intention was to convey the creative urges that artists feel and the pain of repressing their creative expressions. Some people would call that Authorial Intent or canon. But it doesn't invalidate how much those other interpretations meant to other people, who read-in their own experiences. Just like shippers read-in their own ideals/values into each of their interpretations of any ship or media. Frozen made me realize that one of the things that makes an artwork great, is "relatability", also known as "the capacity to have multiple interpretations by many people". So every time I hear the "ship police" try to constrain others' ability to have different interpretations of an artwork, it sounds like they're trying to make the artwork less-than.

It's fine to agree with canon and Authorial Intent. It's fine to prefer one interpretation of an artwork, more than any others. I have ships I hate. I have characters I hate---no matter how popular they are with the fandom, at large. I have platonic readings of series that are saturated with shipping within their fandoms. But we're supposed to know better than to try to control others and limit the interpretations "allowed". It's defensive and clearly Weak, in the worst way.

Also, as a fellow aroace, I appreciate that last reblog's OP, for not using platonic relationships as an excuse to moralize our supposed "superiority". If there's one thing us aces hate, it's having our orientation co-opted by bigots, who use us to push "Purity Culture" and veiled heteronormativity, disguised as queer-allyship, all while they're against sex positivity and are just trying to find politically-correct dogwhistles to be bigoted through.

I also liked the emphasis that friendship and romance aren't mutually exclusive. Some of us ship because our ideals involve romantic relationships built on friendships. A+. No notes.

[lovesoakedd]

🌳 (dear god I'm so sorry for how long this is)

Good luck with your semester! Mine just started but the pace will pick up here soon as well. What are you studying if I may ask?

And thanks for the recommendations! I've heard about Leaugue of their own, and will definitely try to check it out! Thank you so much for the essays too.

I definitely understand where you're coming from, since I grew up in a slavic household where television and shows that ever showed queerness would either only show gay men being flamboyant and pink with a high sex drive that made everyone else in the scene uncomfortable (and would make the audience laugh) or very very rarely lesbians that just existed. They were acknowledged but kind of a taboo subject to stay quiet about. Not even a sniff of trans media that wasn't just transvestites that were used as a gag to be laughed at for "how weird and absurd the concept of dressing as a different gender is". So yeah, found out about queerness (outside of stereotypes) in my teens and only really delved into it in my late teens.

Have fun with Stone Butch Blues once you get around to it! There is an audiobook series on YouTube by Paula Sternberg that has content warnings for each chapter at the start that I used as a reference point back when I started reading it (https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkMNUXey1GjQ7BoXj8vkADQP4coduchuH&si=up2KCI3uXMAE6ry3)

And genuinely thanks for asking about my opinion! I picked up Stone Butch Blues cause I was still figuring out why I liked the identity so much inspite of not being a lesbian and probably being a trans man (both of which turned out to not be true). I started reading it cause I've seen a bunch of posts about butches and butch/femme dynamics for months and liked them a confusing amount, so since I kept seeing it being called the lesbian bible, I picked up the official pdf found on the author's (Leslie Feinberg) website and started reading.

It's kinda hard to describe, but reading and experiencing the story through the protagonist's mind was a mirror-like experience, because a lot of their way of thinking and life philosophy was one I shared. Their journey of self discovery and identity crisis, how they see relationships, their partners and themselves really resonated with me on an uncomfortably close level. Or more so comfortably close level, cause that really was the first time I saw a character who I could really look up to. A role model if you will.

I've had such in media before, but it was more so moral compass role models, usually male characters in media and no one who I could really 100% identify with. Stone Butch Blue's protagonist really hit home in ways literally nothing and no one in life ever did for me before, and it was really the first time in 20ish years that I really felt understood/seen by a story. Like, it's literally indescribable life changing stuff.

If I could bring an artist back to life to have a conversation with, I'd definitely choose Leslie Feinberg. It'd be nice to hear from someone older that there is a place in the world for you and that there are others like you that have existed and do exist, and that life will continue and you'll make it to your 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s like others have before you, y'know?

Sorry for the long ramble, I'm someone with many thoughts

(omg no apology needed! i love hearing book thoughts)

thank you so much! i hope you have a great semester, i always get excited at the start, what with all the new classes and all. i'm an english major! how about you?

yayyy sounds good, let me know what you think!

yes! same, like in bollywood, all the queer rep we got was often two guys just being mistaken as gay for the sake of comedy, or men who are clearly being mocked through the film for being gay. it felt like those were the only ways a lot of people in my community could "handle" seeing queer people -- so long as it was without nuance and exaggerated in order to make cishet people laugh. or just represented in a way that's very othering for queer folk, which again, was for the sake of making cishet people feel humoured and comfortable, since they could look at those characters and distance themselves from them in a way that doesn't demand they question their homophobia and transphobia. so, i totally get that -- it must've been really frustrating :( i'm so glad you were able to explore more of it as you got older, it's always a really exciting and eye-opening experience to find more nuanced and relatable queer rep in media. i remember when i first saw representation of south asian queer people, or muslim queer people, i was so amazed and happy.

thank you so much for the audiobook! it's so helpful to have those content warnings at the start, as well as have the audio to follow along with.

of course! and i'm so glad you picked it up. it's great that you wanted to explore that desire and sense of kinship you felt towards the butch-femme community, and really delve into it in terms of literature. i think that's a great way to learn more about identities and labels, and see if you feel a connection to them. and i'm so glad it helped reveal things for you, i'm sure that must've felt so affirming and exciting!

omg, i know that feeling, and it's literally such a cool experience to read from the perspective of a character and see certain thoughts and ideas you've had expressed in solid sentences for the first time. it's so cool, because it's almost like you get to... idk, re-learn those thoughts and have them validated all over again? because it truly is just so comforting to see it reflected in literature, and it gives your own thoughts this kind of solid weight through shared relatability and tangible expression. i'm so, so happy you got to experience that, and gain someone to look up to due to it. did that help a lot in terms of identifying as a butch? like, having that role model?

and wow, it's amazing you found a book that you resonated with so much and that made you feel so solid in terms of your thoughts and identity. truly, it's so affirming to read something, and feel, "oh, my god, wow, you experience that too? i've never seen it written out/expressed before, but now that i do, wow, i'm realizing just how much i experience this thing too." like, ugh, literature has such a connective way of bouncing all of our experiences upon each other's and making us feel so real and grounded in this world.

for sure! i had an uncle in my family, and he was one of the only people who was known for having a partner of the same gender. not everyone knew, of course, but several of us did, and that's already an accomplishment in my family. he passed around the time i realized i was queer, and sometimes, i really wish he was alive so i can talk to him about what his life was like in the eighties and nineties being a gay man, and his love story with his partner. i always heard he was known to be someone incredibly kind and open, and i just wish i had more of a relationship with him. and so, yeah, i definitely get it, it's incredibly moving to hear of people in our community whose existences prove that queer people have always had a place in this world and the chance to flourish in found families and communities.

omg all good! same here, so it's really nice to read hehe

[euos-the-cat]

Long post about writing things ahead (Basic Story Structure):

The biggest problem I've had with attempting creative writing is that I'd been in honors English classes for half of my schooling. That sounds insane until you hear that they only taught writing essays, and eventually just one kind of essay. It wasn't until I decided to move to basic English in 12th grade that I actually started to learn more about constructing stories and creative writing, something I was told by a teacher the year before I'd learn in college.

Now, if you're any flavor of neurodivergent like I am, the way story structure was taught in school at the more basic levels was... Confusing at best. I didn't understand the whole "rise to the conflict and then conclusion" part, since to me, stories didn't operate that way, and trying to fit them into that structure felt restricting even as a kid.

This structure is known as the "classic structure", and the reason it didn't make that much sense to me is the fact that, well, not every story is set up like that. Even the stories young children read aren't only set up with that one structure. You can see what I mean on this reedsy article; while each structure contains elements of the classic structure, they all have variations that can make it hard to see how they do fit into that structure.

Since I'm not going to college and I was barely taught how stories actually function (which, in turn, made writing essays about them stupidly confusing for me), I'm kinda stuck having to figure this out from scratch. This whole long post is just to introduce me figuring this out on my own, and taking you guys with me so that you can get something out of me trying to reverse engineer this knowledge.

So, what are my basics? How do you form a story?

Before we go curving the lines like every other story structure, let's just start with a line:

start ===========> goal

Now, I know more can come after obtaining the goal, but that complicates the line. For now, this is what we're starting with. We need to establish how things start, and what the characters are working towards.

Let's imagine a mouse, it's sitting in a hole, wanting to eat a piece of cheese sitting at the table. Pretty simple, but if the mouse were able to just eat the cheese without anything else happening, that's not an interesting story.

That's why you've gotta add obstacles, which in most story structures, will cause the bends you see in the lines.

start ======/=====> goal

Now we have an obstruction to the goal. The mouse can't get to the cheese because there's a cat patrolling the house, and if it tries to leave the hole, it will be eaten itself.

The way your characters respond to these obstacles will not only tell you more about the characters themselves, but shape the way the story progresses.

That seems obvious to some people, but considering how bare bones a lot of this stuff is taught, even outright excluding vital information, having that basic line to start with can help some people make more sense of why stories work the way they do. A spoiler to the end of a movie doesn't mean much if you don't have context to plug it into, after all. It's hard to build off of skills you're taught if some basic piece of information is excluded (trying to learn Japanese has been an actual nightmare for me for this very reason. Many lessons skip casual speech until later when casual speech forms the foundations for more formal speech).

I hope this helps at least someone else, and if not.. eh, I still have it for myself, so it's not a waste.

[everythingispirates]

watching a video essay abt misinformation rn and it's making me think many thoughts so like. sorry in advance but I'm gonna have to do some serious talk now, if very rambly.

the whole gay pirate divorce thing is like. it's funny I've very much settled on it being funny but it has also really opened my eyes to how misinformation spreads online. like believe it or not a lot of this was very carefully planned. I had ppl peer review the screenshots, I made sure to post it when I knew ppl were gonna be online and I recruited a bunch of friends outside the potc fandom to spread the post once it was done bc I knew it wasn't going to convince anyone within this blog's "circle". and the whole thing to begin with was very much like. shameless opportunism with ofmd trending like it did, I like to think I've made that clear. I was definitely shocked at how much traction it got which was why I freaked out a bit, but it was also in one way the exact reaction I had planned on, just on a larger scale.

and like a lot of people have gotten kinda pissy when I say they should have been wary of there not being sources and I do get that but also like it's definitely something to keep in mind for the future if you got tricked by the post. like, what ppl will say is that oh it's just a disney movie it's no big deal and that's def true but at the same time it's worth reflecting on which claims we consider worthy of fact checking you know? like if something feels like it should be true, or if it's something we want to believe in or just something we don't care enough abt to question like in this case we're def more likely to just take it at face value and pass it along. and in this particular case the debunked version of the post is definitely the most popular which is kind of a relief, but like it's common knowledge that debunkings or retractions of viral misinfo rarely get as much traction as the original claims.

the thing about me is like. I'm not particularly clever or anything. this wasn't a difficult scheme to pull off, all I needed to do was keep an eye on what tumblr was into right now, remember what they'd been into in the past and do some light photoshopping. like, the whole thing was very much designed for tumblr and it was honestly kind of fascinating watching tumblr take the bait so hard. and the thing is I might have fallen for something similar for the reasons I've already listed! like that whole dinosaur king post that showed up after mine is definitely something I might have read in passing and not questioned, I'm not writing all this to point the finger at people. I'm just trying to remind you how like. incredibly easy it is to get this stuff out there. like all you need is to know the platform you're on and its userbase decently well and have some creativity, then boom you're absolutely set. like not to rattle my own bones but need I remind you that pirates of the caribbean trended, if only for a short while? and once again that was after the post had been epically debunked but at that point it doesn't really matter anymore. if I were, say, paid by disney to do this for some reason which like for the record I was absolutely not, it wouldn't matter to them that the post got debunked bc people would still be talking about potc and thinking about potc and maybe even rewatching potc like do you get what I'm getting at here? when misinfo goes gigaviral it's gonna get whatever it's about a lot of attention, even when the original claim has been proven false.

anyway my point here is like idk trust no one I guess? or at least like. the next time you see a post that sounds reasonable but has no sources remember the time I out of all people managed to trick a good chunk of the tumblr crows into rewatching pirates of the caribbean

[chrisodonline]

Stray Thoughts on "Sleeping Dogs"

Or "Stray Dogs," if you will.

I had intended a few different posts, and while threatening promising to write up more about this Sunday's episode, I never really got to.

HOWEVER, I did want to just mention some random things, or things of note. Most of it good. Some of it, "Hmmm?" It wasn't an episode for everyone, as I've noted. But I've read far too many things that really just seemed like some people watched it and did everything they could to find things wrong with it. Now, more often than not, I know the exact reason why. It's cool if it's not your cup of tea, but trying to make it sound like it shouldn't be anybody else's cup of tea is just...calm down.

Yes, I was determined to enjoy this because this was one of the rarer birthday week episodes where there wasn't sparse Callen due to Pebble Beach scheduling. And I was not expecting the rich and joyous Sallen we got, but I loved it. One of the best gifts this week!

No one can ruin that opening banter scene for me. Sam's teasing. Callen's obliging him. And here's the other thing: Sam didn't tease Callen about the fact that he's doing whatever Anna is asking. Callen even tried to use the "We" pronoun. The only real joke Sam makes about Anna and the wedding is directed at Callen: Sam wants to warn Anna about what she's getting into. Sam doesn't agree with her taste (we'll get to that), but his jokes are not misogynistic nor do they show any real toxic masculinity. See, other shows (and, hell, even this one on more than one occasion), would mock Callen for being "whipped" when he really just wants to be married to this woman and will do whatever it takes to get her to that point. Callen's love language is acts, specifically acts of concession, which are even more significant when you consider the traits he's usually ascribed: loner, stubborn, individualistic, etc. There's an essay in there about how hard he's worked to earn that perception to keep people at bay, but we'll just move forward.

While the show as a whole creates jokes out of Anna's wedding planning, Sam doesn't go after her for being a bridezilla or crazy or ridiculous. He does not like that suit and has no reason to. But he doesn't say, "Your girl is crazy, G. Run." He says, "Please tell your lady this will not work on me, and I want to look my best when I'm roasting, er, toasting you." So, that's good. What's less good is the constant joke that is Anna's wedding planning and decisions that just aren't in character at all. I know I headcanoned and tried to make the wedding planner scene work, but I would've hoped she'd have stopped after that. But no. This is a problem. They worked really hard in her first two appearances this season to try and pretend like a lot of the issues they (the show) created with this relationship never really happened and that she has always been the girlfriend/love interest that other characters (like Sam) were used as mouthpieces to say she was. They made G and Anna have adult conversations that made sense, and they made them seem like a healthy couple you were like, "Oh, hey, I would've been rooting for this more and sooner."

And then the wedding stuff. I'm not going to say that the dragging of it it out is one-sided. Callen clearly is hesitant for Hetty-related reasons, but I think he is slowly letting himself realize maybe that's not the best thing. He outright said he just wanted to be married to Anna. I think he confuses even himself. Anna seemed, initially, more willing to move forward and more quickly. However, this constant changing or picking ridiculous approaches to the wedding ideas feels like nothing more than dragging something out or avoidance. Is she frustrated and trying not to let herself get frustrated by Callen's wishing to delay things, so she just keeps trying to fill time by making zanier decisions? Is that her way to try and incentivize Callen to hurry up and forget the Hetty Factor? Or is it more of her avoidance issue and not his? I've written pretty often about her tendency to run, even if she did the Hetty thing and always swore it was for reasons that were in his best interests. She would do things that made her really sus in the beginning: she showed interest then the minute he returned it, she ghosted him and mocked him about it in front of Sam. She tried to get away from the team on the motorcycle. She told him to tell the truth and then treated him like a jerk when she went to prison. But guess what? He still tended to her in the hospital. And then lying to him about where she was with the volunteer work, etc. etc. Again, she always said it was in his best interest, and boy has he heard that before...and been totally okay with it. The show has just botched things with patterns so many times, it's hard to write off these silly wedding planning jabs. So, there's my essay on that.

Back to highlights: The Castor thing and recurring joke? GOLD. GOLD. I will love it forever and ever. Callen's explanation for it made so much more sense than Sam's tux choice from Anna, and so the joke was more solid. I. was. howling. when Castor walked out for the visual gag. The fact that Castor's pride has taken a hit because of being disarmed and knocked out frequently, and Callen's noticing it and being willing to reach out, was the explanation? Perfect. It shows a guy having some self-esteem issues and another guy picking up on that without making it too awkward or sappy. Just...trying to make him feel like he's one of the guys, and it's all okay. Nothing to be ashamed about. This is the Callen who has made more and more efforts to not be such a lone wolf. We've seen it with Fatima, others, and he's just really been dropping his guard and taking his role as a mentor figure and respected leader more seriously. Growth. Growth with some jokes, yes, but growth. Again, Sam doesn't tease him about being kind or make fun of Castor for taking those "hits." He's just like, "I guess you have a new best friend now. Look at you." He plays off his fake jealousy and projects it onto Castor's potential jealousy. It's cute. It's banter. It's teasing. They are all still guys, and they do a lot of bonding this way. They're not always going to be This Is Us, and this is honestly more realistic.

Of course, poor Castor gets knocked out again. But, hey, Callen did, as well! So I bet he still feels okay. And Callen probably feels a little guilty. "Hey, this is my bad, Castor. Let me buy you a drink...after our sedatives wear off." Because this was a Bartels episode, and for some reason he's like, "Let's have the bad guy give Callen a sedative." It's a well he's gone to before, and now poor Castor has gotten dragged along for the ride. (I was, for a moment, really wondering if Callen was going to get abducted because we only have a few more eps left of the show, and that's right up there with explosions as being part of the show. Alas. Maybe his days of getting himself taken are truly behind him. Growth!)

The episode was paced just fine for me. I followed it all, actually! Whaaattt? I know. A bulleted list of things I liked, in which I try to avoid making this post even more of a novel:

The casting of the other subjects was pretty good.

There were some actual stakes and action scenes.

There were some actual twists. They didn't have to try and convince us a turn was serious with the ominous music cues.

Callen's admitting he may have let the guy get away because he wanted him to, so he could get Pembroke, pointed to a lot of the morally gray issues. It's complicated, and shows like this tend to take a very black and white approach. But the character of Callen has always lived more in the gray than the black or white.

Points to Chris O'D for somehow managing to deliver the line, "I'm Subject 17" without it being hokey: it is a fine line to hit with sounding serious but not overdoing the gravitas.

I'm still very annoyed with the Leah thing from last season because it was just such an OOC to do without more reasons or context -- or some explanation that it was a sign Callen was truly spiraling. However, at no point did he ever try to make an excuse for it in this episode. Now that I liked. When someone called him out for it, he never tried to say, "Ah, yeah...well, see..." He took it.

He was also not questioning the blame that he set Pembroke off...until he realized it didn't make sense with how things had happened. He would've been the first target, not the only one not on the list. And he was right to question that. Even if, by that point, his guilt about the whole Leah situation and her not believing him was probably what made him too trusting and took the guy to the hospital.

I also thought the other character scenes were good. They can never seem to make up their mind about the Admiral's characterization, but this ep had one for him that made sense and made him work. I will always <3 Shyla, and I am sad they didn't figure out how to bring her on sooner and more often. Fatima and Rountree (and their actors) have always had the unenviable tasks for trying to fill in so many different gaps -- from characters completely gone to characters having to appear and do less -- but they do it with smiles and eagerness. Bartels made sure there was some more depth for them here, too.

I won't even go into the whole Hetty thing. Y'all know how I feel on that. And what can I say that hasn't already been said? (Though that never seems to stop me, does it?)

[imopeningup]

lost my "american spirit" in Germany though I buy a new blue pack at the end of every week. I'm clamoring for strength, i want to persevere but im so damn tired. I can no longer write a good essay in a stimulant filled never ending night. i can no longer sit in a class full of people younger than me contemplating 40 pages of a book I half read or read and didn't understand. grief has taken me by surprise but depression not so much. i don't know what a good day is composed of though i make sure to be out in the sun, i make sure i write in my notebook, i make sure to take pictures, i make sure to take my lexapro, i make sure to say hi or smile at people i pass on campus and try to text friends back. in therapy i talk fast because i'm afraid it's the only space i have to truly say what I mean. the sky goes from blue to dark, the shades in the dorm suite go down, another tick mark made, and i'm tallying the days where i've simply carried on. I can no longer stand feeling secure without knowing I've worked hard for it. i want to leave this place, go back to Virginia, support my mom in her grief and simply work. schoolwork is killing my spirit. will i ever graduate? why is this the question, why is this the condition for doing other things im interested in? i miss nyc and feel sad about leaving, i've been out of contact with so many people because life seems to go on and i somehow proved to myself the ease with which i dropped out of peoples lives means that I don't belong in them. the twin bed i sleep on is so hard on my back. the rooms i go into make the loudest echo and im afraid to add my own noises to the sound. i hear laughter and ask god for silence. i wish i wasn't so sensitive to others, to noises, to shifts, and opinions. i wish change felt like taking a deep breath. i wish i could connect deeply with and show my most vulnerable sides to someone and feel the world opening up...right now i feel as though i'm hiding. my friend Mo told me there was a period of their life where they felt like they were hiding. They started to run, read a book by a rabbi about intergenerational trauma, and began to try to speak to their ancestor who also had to hide until their own movements into darkness made sense. i wonder if my mom is depressed, my dad tells me she is but he doesn't mention this because he cares. even with an ocean between us I float through the middle of their conflict, I guess because I was born out of it. the question arises: why was I born? And of course it's the depression but I stare at the ceiling trying to think my way into proof. the cursor is flashing on an open word document and i have two thousand words left to write. i'll take the tram and the s bahn to the library at least that will get me out of the space and maybe out of this mental space. i'll pray and try to notice things that are beautiful. i'll write these last two stupid papers and they'll be whatever they'll be. my friend is in town and now i don't have time to see her because i haven't made enough progress on these papers that my body / mind simply don't want to write. 26 so far has been stagnant and sad. I hope I can find courage to continue, or to change.