#legitimately if anyone ever has questions about even the most basic of fandom stuff. go for it. i love talking about it

[aroaceleovaldez]

i had a thought of "do people not know what AUs are anymore?" and then i remembered nobody explains fandom stuff to new people anymore so it is entirely plausible people genuinely don't know what AUs are and nobody has explained it to them, so for today's lucky 10,000:

"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.

an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.

You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.

If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.

Okay that's my schpeal. everybody go have fun and play nice now.

[ablednt]

Actually helpful advice for the kids on this hellsite

Once again tired of "don't make a carrd or tell people your triggers" posts going around literally telling kids it's Dangerous to set boundaries. So here's what I've learned in my teen years on how to stay safe in the hellscape that's the internet.

Identity

You don't have to link all your social media together but you can if you want to. Don't give out something that is more private (like discord account, Skype or zoom account, facebook, Snapchat etc.) publicly or to people who aren't familiar with yet though.

Use a nickname rather than your real name or birth name, an account and name change may unfortunately be necessary so if you want to keep a name safe or use it irl then don't attach it to public social media. This can be fun though! Go apeshit coming up with different aliases and names! Call yourself lizard if you want to!

The only thing you absolutely need to put somewhere on your account (or carrd) is that you're a minor. You don't have to give the exact age but I promise this is important because even if there's plenty of context clues that you're a minor if you don't indicate this somewhere clear and adults start treating you like shit you need to be able to point out that they're knowingly doing this to a minor. That has saved me from gross bullshit a lot. Yes, people should default to treating people who's ages they don't know as a minor to play it safe but the majority of people assume everyone is the same age as them so you need to make it clear you're not an adult.

Pronouns don't make you identifiable and anyone who acts like putting your pronouns in your bio is unsafe is probably transphobic lmao. You don't have to if you don't want to (and don't mind people not using/knowing your pronouns) but it's safe to put them there most of the time. (The only exception I can think of is if you're closeted and your parents may find your account but in that case you should probably stay closeted online to unless you feel safe/know they aren't likely to find your account.)

You don't have to list every privilege you have and you probably shouldn't but if you're white you probably should indicate this somewhere. This is to hold yourself accountable because yes even teenagers can be racist and underaged people of color also deserve to feel safe. If you're nonwhite and don't feel safe doing so you don't have to list your race or ethnicity.

If you're part of a system/plural or questioning you do NOT have to say your systems origins, if you have DID/OSDD, or list your headmates/alters. The system community has a lot of people in it (and singlets adjacent to parts of the community due to bullshit discourse groups welcoming them) who will target underaged systems to fakeclaim them or harass them etc. I suggest having everyone use aliases/nicknames on a system account and you only tell your origin to people you feel comfortable around and safe with. Your safety and privacy is more important than your trendy system carrd goals I promise!

You shouldn't really just list any disorders you have but it really does no harm to put marginalized identities you're proud of on a carrd or in your bio. You might get a shitty anon or two but I promise people aren't going to dox you if you say you're autistic on your carrd or something.

I personally wouldn't list any special interests that are particularly recognizable (popular media should be ok but more niche stuff may not be) or publicly share a kin list just because you never know if you'll want to switch up your identity online to feel safe and the more things are clearly tied to your current nickname and handle the harder it will be to do this. However if you feel safe doing so it's not the end of the world. Just be careful about it and don't feel pressured to give more info than you're comfortable giving.

You do NOT need to tell people your trauma in order to tell them your triggers. If you need something tagged with a tw you really should indicate this somewhere so people know to tag it (unless you intend to send every you're mutuals with an anon with what to tag which is also an option but may be difficult) but you shouldn't tell them your trauma or medical history to justify it. Your boundaries aren't up for debate and you have nothing to prove. You should only talk about your trauma if you feel safe doing so (and even then please don't give identifiable details like.names of people involved or specifics as that can cause serious problems.)

Boundaries & etiquette

DNIs are good! BYFs are good! Anyone who tells you that they're not good or useful is absolutely trying to disrespect your and other people's boundaries. You can and should make a DNI and list the people you don't want to interact with. (Generally it's better to say groups rather than specific people or names because it's easier to again not be recognized if you need to change accounts/aliases but you can do this if you have strong reasoning and absolutely have to to feel safe.)

DNIs (and also.trigger lists) don't have to all be bad things! You can put fandoms that make you uncomfortable, things that trigger you but aren't bad inherently, etc. on these lists. They're about helping you feel safe not having the hottest takes or being the most morally correct.

Some people you should put in your DNIs as a minor are proshippers/anti-antis and MAPs. Both of these groups have been proven time and time again to groom minors online so the earlier you get away from them the better.

Once you have your DNI please do be aggressive in reinforcing it! Block people who break your DNI, tell people who complain about your DNI to fuck off! Do not tolerate people trying to debate the boundaries You have set this is your corner of the internet to feel safe! They can go somewhere else! Being blocked by a kid on the internet is not the emotional blow abusers act like it is. You're not mean for having boundaries please internalize this and stand up for yourself!

If other people have a DNI you need to check that before following them this is for both your own safety and theirs. If you're unsure what something on someone's DNI means ask around to find out before following just in case.

Do NOT get involved in discourse! This doesn't mean you can't ever take part in or boost serious things. Discussing/calling out bigotry (racism, ableism, transphobia, etc.) isn't discourse. Sometimes callout posts for legitimately harmful people is necessary so that's not automatically bad. But I'm taking about the shit that's #discourse. Stay out of ace discourse. Stay away from syscourse. Don't debate with terfs or transmeds or shitty people. I know it seems like it'd be cathartic to win debates with shitty people, I know there's people who will try to bait you into the latest argument over which lgbt+ identities can say what slurs or whatever the fuck the pointless bad faith argument is, and I know you want to prove that your marginalized identity doesn't make you a bad person like bigots say it does. But as someone who's mental health was absolutely destroyed by discourse as a teen it's not worth it. By all means discuss issues as they arise, broaden your perspectives and horizons, etc. but don't engage knowingly in discourse it will save you so much trouble in the long run.

Try to avoid talking to adults 1x1 if you can avoid it! It's okay to dm with an adult you feel safe talking to sometimes and while it's certainly okay not to interact with adults at all if you don't feel.comfortable it's generally okay to do so. But if an adult is going out of their way to consistently talk to you in private needlessly that can be a red flag. If an adult tries to insinuate that they're the only adult around you can trust that's DEFINITELY a red flag. Basically talk to people in places you can easily involve others if needs be. If someone sends you a dm that makes you uncomfortable screenshot it in case you need to show someone etc.

Don't discuss NSFW things with adults, in spaces adults have easy access to (for example a discord server open to all ages), or even with other underaged people who haven't indicated they're comfortable with it. There's nothing inherently wrong with being aware of nsfw stuff or experiencing sexual attraction as a teenager but it's very important that you don't put yourself in situations that may be unsafe for you or others. Most good discord servers have rules against this for this exact reason. Now, to make it abundantly clear, if you did or do ever say something nsfw and an adult takes advantage of this or responds in a way that makes you uncomfortable this is NOT your fault! The responsibility falls on adults to act appropriately but it's still a good idea to keep youeself out of harms way.

That's basically it on a general level. Once again, posts telling you not to make DNIs or carrds or trigger lists (all used to set clear boundaries) are very suspect and either grossly misunderstand how these things work or are intentionally demonizing them in order to have more opportunity it excuse to do harm. Setting clear boundaries is good. Doing things that help you feel safe and respected is good. Just don't go and get involved in discourse or give out personal information or anything.

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 76: Interlocking Horns

Chapters: 76/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: pg

Relationships: Loki x Reader

Characters: Loki (Marvel),

Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Culture Clash Imminent, Protective Dad

Summary:  You and your father discuss your living situation, and you mull over your thoughts on Buridag.

Loki was agitated when he lay beside you that night. You'd spent most of the evening showing Tara and your father around to all the places you spent your time. The library, the training grounds, the courtyards, the banquet halls, the common rooms, and even the throne room, which was empty at the time. Over dinner, you told sanitized versions of your adventures; the battle with the Huldra and the Frost Giant, The magical illusion lessons, and the magic you were also capable of, how you had exploded a plate, and met the legendary Sleipnir, whom Tara demanded to see as soon as possible. You showed them your knife, and told them about your armor, and your glorious helmet.

Your father was not terribly impressed by the food. “Not enough seasonings.” he declared, and you told him about the time you'd pranked Loki by putting chili pepper in his meal. He got a good laugh out of your description of the composed prince turning purple, and trying to pretend to all onlookers that everything was just fine.

“Hope he didn't get mad at you.” Tara said.

“Nah. The thing about Loki is that he actually appreciates it when you get the best of him. He likes getting legitimately got. I get the feeling he had to deal with a lot of sycophants growing up, while at the same time being overshadowed in everything he did. Loki can sense lies, did you know that? He can just tell when you're lying. Imagine growing up surrounded by people who don't even like you, but will constantly lie to your face about it. And keep doing it even after they know you can tell they're lying. And they're still doing it! It's wild! Some of these aristocrats are stupidly bigoted, and they keep trying to fool Thor or Loki into making laws that exclude humans from things, but both of them have personal reasons not to do that, as well as political reasons. I mean, there's seven billion of us, we're not gonna be excluded from anything on this planet, and it's ludicrous to even try. But I guess they've been at this for so long, that they can't even think of doing things any differently.

That's part of where I come in. Loki says I represent an inevitability. That humans like us will come to be a part of Asgard, just like the Vanir and Alfar did before us. Some of these nobles want to put that off as long as possible, but I think Loki and Thor are right; better get that integration started early.”

“Then why is there only you?” your father pointed out, “Why not integrate more humans in a group? Why not those people in the weird lodges outside the city?”

“Couple reasons.” you said, “first off, I think they wanted to make sure humans and Asgardians could be culturally compatible. Like, that we could stand to live with one another.”

“Yeah, saw some of that cultural compatibility just a little while ago.” your father grumbled.

“We used to do stuff like that too, you know. And until recently, too. I think there's still some places that do dowries and such, just not us. But if you think about it, Asgardians live to be thousands of years old, and they used to visit Earth a lot. There was cultural exchange for sure. It's just that we change and evolve culturally at the speed of light compared to them. He really should have asked me about it though, I coulda told him it didn't work that way. He does love surprises, and he wants to preserve his culture, but we could have at least discussed it.”

“You discuss things with him? And he listens?”

“Sometimes. That's a part of my job too; advising, on human matters especially. That's why he should have asked, but I think he just really wanted to impress you.”

Your father rolled his eyes. You sighed. This was going to be difficult.

“Dad, this is so important. Doing this for me is unprecedented. I know it doesn't look like it, but we've been working hard, and dealing with some tough situations, but we've come through them all, and kept going. He's proud of me, I'm proud of me, and I am okay with my life here. I'm happy with it even. I miss you, and I know you miss me, but I like my work here.”

“You've almost died three times! In one year! Three times! Keeping you alive is the most basic possible thing, and he's almost failed three times!” he exclaimed.

“His only fault is not seeing the future, then!” You exclaimed back. “Who could predict that a crazy man would come all the way out here to try and assassinate literally anyone he saw? Who could expect that one of their own people would be so monumentally stupid as to hit me right in front of him? Why would anyone ever think that there were giants sleeping under our feet for a thousand years? How could anyone plan for any of that?”

“You're starting to talk like them, you know.” Tara pointed out. “You're picking up the accent. Your vocabulary's changed.”

“I've been studying a lot. I hadn't noticed the accent though. Is it very obvious?”

“Eh, it's no big deal. If you'd just moved here on your own, you'd probably sound kinda Icelandic anyway. I just think it's cute, you sounding like all these high-falutin', fancy alien folks.”

You wanted to thank her. For years and years, when you and your father had started arguing, she would brazenly interrupt with something completely off topic, and completely derail the dispute. Your father was as passionate an individual as you were, which was probably where you got it in the first place, but Tara had always known when to interject.

“The point is,” you said, much more calmly, “is that the world has gotten weird. And since I've been studying, I've been finding out that it was weird in the past too. We've just been coasting by on a short period of relative calm, but it's not going to last forever. In fact, it's over. There is an entire alien species  living on Earth now. Nobody has to like them, but they are here. Loki can't demand forgiveness, and he's told me he's prepared to accept that there may be people who never accept him, no matter what he does. But he is doing things. He's doing good for his people; he knows how to do that. He's trying to do his best by me, and I'm helping him to know how to do that. I clearly need to communicate with him a bit more about that. He doesn't have to do any of this, but he chose to. From the beginning, he chose to do this. I mean, don't get me wrong, he sucked at it in the beginning; he had no idea what he was doing.  He was kind of an overbearing creep, and when I got hurt the first time, I swear, he was inches away from locking me away in a closet somewhere so no one else could hurt me.”

Your father raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, he totally freaked out. I had to convince him that there was no way he could protect me from everything, but he sure wanted to. I wasn't gonna let that happen though. Maybe I can't leave, but I haven't let this place become a prison either.”

“Baby girl, I'm proud of you, don't ever think I'm not, but a father really never cares for a man who takes his daughter away.” your father said, “I don't think he deserves your defense. But you seem happy, and that's what I'm supposed to care most about right? I'm not gonna be his friend, but I'm not gonna cause trouble while I'm here, for your sake, and also because I gotta represent humanity, right? I love you, and I'm not trying to ride your case, I just don't like that guy. I'm not as forgiving as you are. But I'm not gonna get into a public fight with him or anything.”

“Thanks. And hey, I'm not gonna demand that you be friends with all my friends, I just have a really big day looming over me, and I'm already stressed. But, like, if you have any questions, now is probably the best time.”

“Oh, I got a few!” Tara said. “What actually is wrong with you?”

“Uh, loaded question.”

“No, no. I mean, yeah, but no. I mean, you said these guys were taking care of your medical problems, but you never actually said what they were. Have they figured out what's going on?”

“Ehhh, kinda. It's not exactly a medical problem. It's this.” You held out your hand, showing the mark. “You know how we couldn't figure out what caused this? It's magical in nature.”

“You told me you got drunk and got a tattoo!” your father accused.

“What was I supposed to say? I didn't know what had happened at the time! I didn't even know it was Loki I had grabbed, I didn't find that out until later. Tara saw: I took his hand to get his attention, and this shape burned into my palm. It did the same to him, I found out. It made us both sick. But when we're close together, we heal. Even when I got hurt, being close heals me faster. This is also what woke up my magic. It was always there, but this was what made it accessible. The whole thing is just magic. The only thing we don't really know is why it happened.”

“Magic. It's so weird.” your father said. “It just doesn't make any sense. What is magic? How do you do it?”

“It's a kind of energy manipulation. Like electricity or solar power, but it's less generalized. Like, some things are actual spells that always work the same way, but I haven't learned much of that yet. Gotta get my specific magic under control first. I'm getting pretty good at it. I do it by...well, it feels a certain way. So I concentrate on feeling like that...”

A bowl of apples disappeared from the end of the table, and reappeared in your hands. Both Tara and your father leaned away in surprise as you set the bowl back on the table.

“I move things from one place to another. I don't know the upper limit on size or distance yet. Maybe someday I will move mountains.”

“Does that scare you?” your father asked. “All this magic stuff?”

“Sometimes. It's so strange to think that it's me doing this, and not some woman in a book, or a movie. That it's really real. Even after everything that's happened over the past few years, it's still hard to really understand that all this is real. That every single person you've seen here is hundreds of years older than you, and was born light years away, in space, on a whole other world. That they have millions of years of history that I'm learning about. Some of these people remember a time before the language we are speaking even existed.”

“That's freaky.” Tara said.

“Don't I know it. But somehow, they manage to live in the moment in a way I find kinda enviable. They're looking to the future, but they aren't worried about it like I used to be. It's so liberating not to have to worry about that. About rent, or healthcare, or who's gonna take care of me when I get old, or if I'm even gonna get old. All of that has been lifted off of me, and I'm free to study and learn, and be something unique, and I actually really like it.”

“I'm glad for you.” Tara said. “So who's your tailor?”

You giggled. “I'm super fashionable, for someone a thousand years ago, aren't I? This isn't actually Asgardian fashion, exactly. It's more of a fusion. Isn't it fancy?”

“It's freakin' gorgeous. Is it some kind of uniform?”

“It didn't start out that way, but it sorta became that. The seamstresses hadn't visited Earth in like, a thousand years, so all the illustrations and memories they had were from then or before. So at first they thought that must be how I was supposed to be dressed, and then it just became my signature. It's really comfy, and pretty, and most importantly, it's warm. I mean, I know the place is called Iceland, but I was still surprised at how cold it gets. If you want, I bet I could get you some.”

Tara went to bed happy, and your father went to bed grumpy, but quiet. Then you went to bed, and Loki slunk under the thick blankets with you, holding you uneasily.

He got like this occasionally, cradling you as if he feared you would disappear in the night. It wasn't any real surprise, when you thought about some of the things he'd been through, the abandonment, the loss. You knew he wasn't, and would never be perfect, but you were still prepared to defend him to all comers. You weren't going to vanish from his arms, but you'd probably have to prove it every night. You could do that. You were more than willing to; there hadn't been another man in your life that had made you feel so safe and comfortable when sleeping, and you wanted to keep that feeling.

Tomorrow was the first day of Buridag festivities. Loki said it would start out with a parade that would lead to the site of the new courthouse. There would be traditional poetry and song, and everyone would perform the building task that had been assigned to them weeks ago. Then there would be the First Feast; a meal composed of worker's foods, prettied up for the nobles palettes. You'd seen the menu; it was grain salads and porridges, hearty soups and rustic breads with eggs, jams, young cheeses, winter vegetables, dried fruit, and herbs and spices in approximation with traditional Asgardian flavors. It was a reminder that, in Buri's day, Asgard's prosperity had not been assured, and many of the working class had to make do with rougher fare. Supposedly, the First Feast was meant to rebuke those who took workers for granted, and remind everyone whose hands had built their world.

Personally you thought that was a little patronizing, but you also didn't come from a monarchical culture. Perhaps this was something like an Asgardian Saturnalia, a festival of transformation. A celebration of something being built from nothing, Asgard being built by Asgardian hands.

And yours. Loki and Thor would be laying the foundations and blessing them with some of their more ephemeral power, the thing that awoke the primordial fear in you, made you instinctively cower and search for a tree to hide in when Loki became truly angry. The power that was beyond magic, that reached into the divine.

You, however, had been assigned a brick. It was a decorative brick, that would line a window, and it lay in a stack of other window-bricks at the site. Just one piece of a huge community project. You rather liked that. You knew for sure that the aristocracy did not engage with the common Asgardian nearly often enough before the tragedy of Ragnarok, but now both Loki and Thor went out among their people often, nobles and commoners mingled every day, and the community was becoming less and less divided. There were people who resisted that, of course. People who wanted to claw back every ounce of their perceived power, who tried to pass deliberately discriminatory legislation, people who simply hadn't yet come to accept that their lives had changed.

You were change. Loki was very approving about it. You represented the New, the Necessary Change, the Social Upheaval that led to a Bright Future. You couldn't help but wonder if that was too big for you to carry all by yourself. On the one hand, you weren't exactly alone; Loki was beside you all the way, Andsvarr, Saldis and the Valkyries supported you, even down to the twins. Saga, and even the strange Lofn approved of you.

On the other hand, your father was right; you were still the only human who actually lived here. The first and only human with Asgardian citizenship. A trial run, essentially alone, to see if you, as a stand-in for all humankind, could make it. It was heavy.

But you were doing it. In a little less than a year, you had learned a great deal of Asgardian history and law, had helped actual royalty with things like resource management and policy reform, learned knifework, learned actual magic! You had met several of Earth's greatest heroes, were going to be titled, were becoming a liaison between Asgard and the human settlements growing next door. You had learned some Asgardian, become a prince's lover, and even learned how to play a drum. You yourself were becoming something new. Embodying the Necessary Change.

And maybe that was what you had needed in the first place. For so long, it seemed like you had been trying to let go of an old self, let go of everything you'd gone through. Shed your old skin and emerge, clean and soft into the light of a new day. And so you were. You just hadn't realized that once you started, it would happen again and again, skin after skin, quivering and raw. But you felt new. Despite the pressure, you felt new.

[supertransural]

supernatural made me realize a bunch of shit about myself, specifically identity and it’s part of the reasons why i think it’s an inherently queer story.

allow me to clarify. once upon a time, 6 years ago, i found supernatural. back then i was mostly in the closet, even to myself. i’d gotten to that point of “hah wouldn’t it be nice to be like guys on tv and kiss the pretty girls” but not much further than that, because in most of the movies i had watched with my parents, the personality of the guy wasn’t really explored in the way supernatural (mostly unintentionally ngl) does with its characters.

so picture a teen, finding my first tv show to watch alone, being able to think my very own comments about it and not fear any repercussions from those thoughts because hey, i’m alone in my room i can think what i like about what i’m seeing. and feeling.

and here enters dean. complicated, comes from a rough childhood, parental expectations weighing so heavy on him it’s bleeding through his smiles, has a brother he feels is his duty to protect, is stuck in a loop of denial repression depression sublimation denial repression depression sublimation den-

you get the gist. i related to that guy. and then here he goes getting bi-coded (didn’t know what that was at the time but looking back, i could sure as hell feel it) and then kissing girls on screen, despite his wavering self-confidence. little ol’ gay me was like “yoooo i relate to this character on most of his character points, do i also relate to like..... wanting to do what he does??? do i wanna kiss other girls????”. fast forward one season and i’ve already figured out i was maybe bi. literally thanks to season 1 dean.

so, having figured out this “minor” aspect of myself, i went on youtube to find some other people like me and try to see if i was right to be homophobic towards myself or not. figured out, hey uh, definitely not. so you can also add “it ended up making me try to put a stop to my internalized homophobia” on the list of things that shitpost of a show helped me with.

i went back to the show for another season, relating even more to dean, and “blah blah blah queer coded character blah blah blah gay me could feel it before i knew what it was blah blah blah happy gay stuff”. several seasons passed by before anything new came up on my “hm this show rly out here bringing out all the queer aspects of myself huh” journey, but anyways i was still slowly but surely thinking holy shit i wanna be this goddamn man i want to be dean.

then comes season 4, walzing into my questioning little heart. oof ok, this season hit ALL the right spots for me. because i could feel what was going on between cas and dean and even though everything was still blurry as fuck, the parallel between sam/ruby and dean/cas was clear as day. and i was like “oh so you’re saying there’s a love here and it’s like that tarnished love between sam and ruby and it’s forbidden so that’s why we’re not seeing it and it’s like... gay”. so it made me realize “holy shit, i wanna see more gay content, and it’s ok to want that.”

then cas became another extremely relatable character, because i just kept thinking “he doesn’t really have a gender the same way other humans do” and i shit you not, he started me questioning my own gender. because again, a relatable character that you somewhat identify with that makes you ask questions about their identity INEVITABLY makes you ask questions about yourself. queue me going on youtube yet again to understand this shit a little better. i went through a few months of thinking “maybe i’m nb”, joined a few more gay communities on the internet, started learning about lgbtq+ things, watched a few more gay shows, and basically just grew a little more into my queerness.

fasforward several seasons, a couple gap years where i stopped watching it, and you’ll get to me a year ago. i thought i was a gay woman, fairly happy in that mental space and identity. but then. the whole “i wanna be dean” thing came up a lot again. because he just kept on being more and more visibly queer coded as i kept on learning more about this shit.

lo and behold, i jumped straight into the idea i was trans. and wouldya look at dat, i was right. quarantine happened, so i had to get even more of my interactions through online platforms, and quite obviously hovered around the gayer ones, or at least the lgbtq+ sides of them. and as i kept watching the show on and off, binging the first seasons for the 4th time, i kept learning more and more about myself. and those acts of gay frenzy were always started by seeing something relatable or strange in that show and looking it up. like, legitimately every time.

i found this community on tumblr a few weeks ago because i was tired of having my own little hypotheticals in my head and not knowing if anyone agreed, and the more i’ve been here the more i’ve learned about myself. the more i’ve let go of a lot of internalized hatred. the more i’ve been really ok with myself, as a trans guy. BUT ITS NOT FINISHED YET.

because, as we all know, it is common understanding here that dean is bi. WELL, i’ve been re-binging the show with that mindset finally clear in my head, and the “haha dean relatable lol” thing came up again, except it was really a “haha dean (who is bi) super relatable lol” thing now. so i paused, yet again, to think about that a little more. AND FIGURED OUT I WASNT STRAIGHT, IM BI AS FUCK.

that happened 1 month ago. i thought i’d grown fully into my queer self, that i’d gone through enough realizations and coming outs (to friends only, god forbid i come out to my parents (unfortunately quite literally god forbid lmao) before i’m out of here) for a lifetime. but apparently not. AND IT WAS STILL BECAUSE OF SUPERNATURAL. destiel and trans!dean fics helped with my internalized transphobia and homophobia, they helped with acceptance of those parts of myself. something that helped was also seeing the fact that shipping two guys in a tv show wasn’t just “being greedy with my grubby little gay hands” and wanting to think of a character as trans wasn’t just “being delusional and ridiculous”. and reading fics wasn’t cringy, it was nice and comforting.

so to try and sum up this unhinged gay rant, what i meant by my initial statement is this.

looking back on this entire self-discovery journey that i went on, it really felt like i was in the impala with the boys, except i was on a different kind of route (just picture this giant road painted in rainbow colors with baby driving at 80mph on it, that’s what it felt like). i grew with those characters, but most importantly i grew THANKS to those characters. their story was queer enough to make me, a fairly homophobic, traditional, conservative kid into a lib trans bi dude. and not in a “i got converted by the fandoms” way. i found the fandom waaaaayyyyyyyy later. i stumbled upon the fandoms looking for answers about this gayass goddamn show that i could FEEL was like me but couldn’t verbalize yet.

their story felt like a queer self discovery story and i could already see that before i went on it myself. no other shows have ever done that for me, and i’ve watched shows that had lgbtq+ characters in them, scripted gay scenes, not just subtext but text. and they still didn’t do that for me.

so this is why this show is so meaningful to be, and incidentally so very gay. like genuinely.

[vohalika]

The Clitical Discordening

So by basically shitposting vaguely into the wind, I got involved with… something. Oh boy.

What the hell is going on?

Two days ago, a blog called “defenderofcrqueers” run by an 18 year old acequeer French girl called Sofia, calling herself tired of predatory lesbians, started a series of call out posts on a BeauYasha Discord Server which, from what I have been able to gather, is actually called Clitical Hole

The blog and the posts have been deleted

The first post was reblogged 40 times by the person who made it. 40 times. I counted.

In the posts, Sofia made serious accusations of transpbobia, biphobia, and aphobia, which some of the screenshots provided corroborated

There was also a section labelled xenophobia, which contained someone saying “fuck the French”

Put a pin in that

In between that were also “general violent behavior” or “objectifying the cast/each other” and liberate usage of trigger warnings, most memorable being “tw: lesbians”

Those posts very clearly already read as people shooting the shit with each other, making fun of being called predatory lesbians, talking about their personal relationships in sometimes maybe bad phrasing or poor taste, but that’s, you know, a matter of taste

The ratio between benign stuff and serious accusations was roughly 50:50, balanced enough for it to not be clearly discernable whether it was serious or not

Again, the blog itself reblogged this 40. Times. It got maybe 100 notes total.

I found this because a friend linked it in our 4 people discord after she got it from the mod of another discord

This led me to make two posts; one just vaguely making fun of how badly you can fuck up a call out post, and another explaining to an anon what had happened.

I stand by all of the points made in there, under the assumption that this was someone trying to do what has recently been done to a Fjorester discord server and failing miserably, while the members of the server largely treated it as a joke

Parts 2 and 3 were published, too, not reblogged 40 times. They contained more of the same, with some of the usual ace discourse you see all over tumblr in it

You know, claims that aces want to be oppressed to badly, acehets aren’t lgbtq, just the usual stuff you see everywhere which made it look pretty genuine.

Members of the server in question largely considered this a joke and trolled the author of the posts on the blog.

There were hints of a 4th post coming, including racism and antisemitism. You know, things a tad bit more serious than a bunch of lesbians being horny towards each other.

After sleeping on it for another day, I made a third post. Again, everything is now deleted, but keep in mind there were serious accusations and some pretty disgusting things in the screenshots.

This post was updated after the “saviorofcrqueers” blog and everything on it was deleted

Now I’ll have you know that my 3 posts on the subject had maybe 30 notes between them, largely by the same people. That’s fewer times than the blog self-reblogged the first post!

And yet somehow my posts were screenshotted and posted by the server in question, leading to of its members to contact me to clear the air

I will stress that these members have been nothing but polite to me

After talking things over with them and asking a few choice questions I’ll get into later, a new blog, “notallwhatitseems”, which is still up at the time of writing this, reblogged my most current post, owning up to all of this having been a prank to get back at the server for insulting her home country of France

So everything about that server is fake?

Well. Mostly?

For the record, I am not a member, have never been a member, and have no interest in ever being a member. It is not my ship and the general tone is not my vibe. In fact, they are very much against my ship, out of everything the fake call out included the 52 pages of BeauJester hate are probably the least manipulated and the most real, and you know what? That’s their prerogative. As I said in my first post, back in my days, people would raid tags with hate and then get raided back. Making your own community to hate on rival ships to your community is progress here. Godspeed.

(Ship hate, of course, rarely exists in a vacuum and can feature other shit, blah. I’m talking about it in isolation here. This is seriously not the most pressing issue by a long shot.)

The general tone of what I’ve seen from the server, even when it was kinda funny sometimes, is also just, plain and simple, not my cup of tea. Very frequently in what I consider to be poor taste. And that is fine, too. I’m not here to police how anyone talks to their friends in a private space outside of, you know, actual bigotry. To quote one of the people who got in contact with me:

So the two members who got into contact with me after seeing my post on the server. Source S is more of an outsider looking in, source Y is, from what I can tell, very much involved with this and was featured in some of the screenshots.

They both, independently of each other, confirmed to me that the transphobia and biphobia weren’t real, either manipulated or taken out of context, and that there’s actually a lot of trans people on the server. They also both reported that no one knew what the alleged racism and antisemitism would have been; probably members of color or Jewish members making fun of themselves.

So. Is that legit? I’m inclined to say sure. Three people confirmed this. Until anyone else comes forward, this is as far as it goes.

Except for the aphobia.

Source S told me unprovoked that there is indeed very standard aphobia going on in that server. I asked source Y about it, here’s what she said:

However, I would be amiss not to mention that the only person in this situation who identifies as asexual has said the following:

And, like. It is probably not my place to speak over what an actual ace person thinks about this, is it?

Wait, is that?

It sure is! I figured if I was already talking to primary sources here, I could as well talk to the primary primary source. Which I will now post unabridged.

At time of writing, there has been no response to that. And that conveniently also answers the probably most pressing question:

Why are you even posting this?

Or, in the words of an anon I received this morning in Germany and also France:

Anon, I’m not gonna delete shit.

Why? Because I think this is kinda important.

As you can see in the conversation up there, it really, really rubs me the wrong way when you abuse call out posts as a prank. Like, yeah, I am aware the whole concept has been meme’d to death on tumblr anyway and really bad call out posts have a long tradition. However, you kinda gotta put this into context, don’t you?

We’ve had a discord server called out for saying vile shit in this fandom before. First of all, the willingness to even hint at (and then reblog yourself for 40 times) another discord server being similar kinds of bad, toxic, and possibly harmful is pretty callous. Like, yeah, the post got no reach and I have even less, but throwing a community you apparently care about under the bus like that is, you know, not a very nice and actually kinda callous thing to do.

And second, fake accusations of bigotry hurt everyone affected by that bigotry. Yes, even in tumblr call out post format. The comical overuse of trigger warnings, a concept that is wildly mocked and misunderstood in the first place, is already in very poor taste. Manipulating content to believably depict pretty violent transphobia? Crosses a few lines.

Like, if you’re gonna do it for a joke, stick to posting the things that made members of the server celebrate themselves in the comments as “the funniest bitches on the internet”. And maybe don’t reblog it yourself 40 times, that shows a certain kind of conviction, doesn’t it?

I’m not gonna comment any further on the motivation behind this; as I said, my brain does not compute patriotism and I find it equally likely that “Sofia” is fucking with me, as she was with everyone else. I entertained the thought of this post being fake kinda from the beginning because the identities so perfectly fit several things being called out; xenophobia against the French at the forefront, of course.

Like, the only thing that made me believe in this being a genuine but misguided attempt at a legitimate call-out was the apparently manipulated content out of context and the fact that the OP apparently believed in their own post enough to reblog it 40 times.

So what my issue is here comes down to a crying wolf kind of thing: A fear that this goes down as a great prank, and the next time someone comes forward about fucked up things going on in a fandom space, everyone has gotta wonder if the tw: lesbians insulted France again. Something that by my estimation happens about five times an hour on the internet anyway.

Everyone, call out responsibly.

  (Yes I know I am basically contributing to how this incident will be remembered here. But at least it’s, you know, full of a whole lot of context.)

(Also, Sofia has used two throwaways, so at least that’s something she’s smart about. It’s why I don’t feel too bad about not censoring her name here. I expect the “notwhatitlookslike” blog to be gone by morning. Well, maybe afternoon, it is a little late in both Germany and France.)

[miraculouscontent]

Kwami Buster reaction/analysis please!!!

You got it!

This episode is fun. Like, it’s a lot of fun. It feels like it’s been a while since I just had fun with an episode (I know this season doesn’t have a wide range to choose from there - probably still going to die when attempting to pick a top 5 - but still).

[Kwamitruster]

Just to start off, I’m legitimately surprised that it took this long to get a Ms. Mendeleiev akumatization. On the very small list of people I’ve been waiting to see akumatized, Ms. Mendeleiev has been on it since Season 1 and it’s almost weird that it took this much time considering that she’s basically the school’s only other notable teacher.

Of course, with kwami being what she was seeking before being akumatized… yeah, definitely makes sense for a season 3 episode.

I also enjoy that Ms. Mendeleiev is a bit hammy as Kwamibuster even though I question why in the world she’d go on a show like that to get an important theory out there; maybe she was just that desperate and they were the only ones who’d have her, who knows.

Kwamibuster also almost killed Alec so, y’know, that was great too.

AND MORE TIKKI AND PLAGG INTERACTIONS, YES.

I know we got some in episodes like “Sandboy” and “Reflekdoll”, but this is the prime Tikki-Plagg episode (which��� yeah, granted, makes total sense considering kwami is in the darn title). It’s a little more of the same we’ve already seen, with Tikki just being like ugh Plagg why, but this expands on it a bit and has them meeting multiple times and also on Marinette’s balcony, which is nice.

And Marinette isn’t the one blamed for stuff this time, finally–

LIKE, REALLY, LEMME JUST SAY: it was so satisfying to see Marinette stay mad at Tikki for a bit (I was upset too when she tried to brush it off as “kwami nonsense” like excuse me???), and especially for Tikki to actually apologize in the end.

I do wish there was a little more on Plagg, but he does get berated a lot already so it was probably not even worth mentioning after the fact.

By the way, I choked with laughter as Adrien tried to scold SOMEONE ELSE for being irresponsible and almost getting captured. Dude, have you LOOKED in a mirror lately?

I guess the conflict concerning Tikki though is more about how believable it is that Tikki would do this sort of thing. It’s already one character flaw that Tikki seemed to have a hard time admitting that she made a mistake, but for Marinette to basically tell Tikki about how much she trusts Tikki and how she can be herself around Tikki, just for Tikki to not even look immediately guilty…

Yeah, that’s… not Tikki’s best moment there. I really think that Marinette bit wasn’t needed and made Tikki look worse than she needed to.

And speaking of Marinette–

[Mari-Net Result]

THE MIRACULOUS QUEEN HAS ARRIVED AND WE HAVE BEEN GRACED WITH HER PRESENCE.

So, not only does this episode have great Plagg-Tikki interactions, but it’s also Marinette doing one of the many things that Marinette does best. Before she’s even left Fu’s home, she’s already got her entire plan figured out to the last detail, and all we’re told about is her intending to let herself get captured, so we’re just left to guess until we see everything unfold.

And what a great bonus it was to see her wearing so many miraculouses at once. I always feel particularly spoiled when we get to see the design of various miraculouses (like how Adrien’s snake miraculous is really smooth and rounded while Luka’s has little ridges on them, then Marinette’s has a snake-inspired design that looks different enough from the miraculous itself).

(also, side-note: considering how different most of those miraculouses look on Marinette, I’m pretty sure the fox was intentionally similar to the original because she had to transform with it, so it had to be recognizable enough to the viewing audience; I imagine it might look different if she ever has the chance to use just the fox, but that’ll probably never happen)

Plus, there’s just something inherently perfect about the girl who can have 2928374 tasks at any given time using a miraculous that has the power to divide yourself so you can accomplish multiple tasks.

She should honestly keep it just for personal use.

And basically all of the miraculouses are very Marinette, like the ram miraculous becoming bows (is that a reference to that one 3D model of hers with the single bow? I hope so) and most of the miraculouses getting a pink/rose-gold color to them.

…She also looks so silly yet somehow so precious wearing them, of course.

Anarka would be proud, just sayin’. Have you SEEN all the accessories that woman wears?

…Actually, imagine Anarka with all the miraculouses. Like, don’t even take off the jewelry she already wears.

…I’m getting off-topic.

I think it’s interesting that Wayzz seems to have a lot of faith in Marinette compared to Master Fu. I mean, it makes total sense given “Feast”, which showed that Wayzz thinks things through a lot more than Fu, and… I don’t know. It’s just really sweet to see Wayzz believing in Marinette so strongly, and I already like Wayzz in general so it warmed my heart.

By the way, just a quick hooray for Multifox too, who is USING MIRAGE LIKE IT SHOULD BE USED; WHEN YOU’RE HIDDEN AWAY AND NO ONE CAN SEE YOU.

And… yeah, I know that we should probably see more instances of her being exhausted from using multiple miraculouses. I do think that her falling down before she’s even left the house set some expectations, and most other instances are either implied (i.e: the icons for the kwami starting to become more and more shattered the more she unifies) or is just Multifox slowly stepping out, hunched over and looking tired (which did at least make sense since she was the one unified the longest). She does get carried by the kwami throughout most of the episode so I’m not really that bothered about it, even with Fu and Wayzz talking about how special she is (this is always what I mean when I say that her crush on Adrien and her anxiety/clumsiness are massive nerfs that she needs; this girl would destroy the world otherwise).

But, of course, I can’t talk about Marinette wearing all these miraculouses and having this big plan and all these other things without talking about why she’s doing these things.

[Mousetrap]

Alright, everyone knew I couldn’t gush for long forever. Let’s get this over with.

The main thing that brings this episode down - and brings it down hard - is the identity shenanigans. Identity stuff has always been a sore spot in the fandom and this episode keeps poking and prodding at that spot like they’re trying to win an award for it.

It’s this whole thing about “giving up your miraculous” if you find out someone’s identity.

Marinette points it out to Tikki.

Plagg mentions it to Adrien.

Fu implies it to Marinette.

And then Tikki brings it up to Marinette.

Four instances in one episode. One would’ve already been distracting enough but this is four. Like, that’s already dumb, but the logic behind it makes no sense.

First off, the obvious: Ladybug and Chat Noir have been doing this for three seasons. I presume that Marinette would’ve just continued her guardian training had she found out Adrien was Chat, but still, she’s been Ladybug for a long while now and she’s good at it.

It just seems like the show only brought it up to make a point about why Marinette and Adrien specifically can’t know each other’s identities, but having it be mentioned four times and leaving so many holes just has it looking like a desperate attempt. Being so quick in an episode to essentially say, “Hey! If this one thing happens, prepare for two and a half seasons of content to suddenly mean a lot less!” was undeniably going to make people upset (think “Weredad”, but for identities instead of romance).

Secondly, yes, in a theoretical sense, someone figuring out someone’s identity may very well mean that they purposefully tried to figure out their identity, so they should get their miraculous revoked, but that is not such a simple case.

Let’s say that Chat just de-transformed in front of Ladybug. That would technically qualify since now Ladybug knows his identity, so should she get her miraculous revoked because someone else revealed themself and she couldn’t have controlled that?

Not only that, but it was Plagg’s fault that this happened and it’s hard to not let one’s mind wander. It’s not either Adrien nor Marinette’s fault if they’d accidentally figured each other out; it would be Plagg’s.

Thirdly, I am baffled at the idea that figuring out someone’s identity means that the person who figured it out gets their miraculous revoked. That just seems like a recipe for disaster, especially when the rule for temporary heroes (we’ll get to that, by the way) is that one can’t have the miraculous back if anyone else knows their identities.

Getting a miraculous revoked risks akumatization from the negative emotions that would stir up, and that akumatized person could very well just tell Hawk Moth about the identity of the hero they’d figured out, then everything is ruined, just like that.

And no, it’s not fair for, say, Marinette’s miraculous to get revoked because Adrien - hypothetically - went out of his way to discover her identity, but that’s the logical path to take if one is going to pull this “identity reveal = miraculous revoked” card.

Plus, if miraculouses were all about being fair, Chloe never would’ve gotten hers back.

The idea behind protecting one’s identity has always been about “protecting loved ones” or whatever, but then this episode comes along and takes the opposite stance, which is just confusing. It’s as if the rules apply differently just because one has a permanent miraculous, like, “oh, your loved ones would be in danger if they knew, but you won’t get your miraculous taken unless you figure out another hero’s identity.”

…Now, that said, even though that identity thing bothers me in the episode, the identity thing that doesn’t bother me here is when “Ladybug” tells “Marinette” that she can’t get the mouse miraculous back because Chat saw her.

The reason it doesn’t is because it’s not important for us as an audience to believe that Marinette wouldn’t be allowed to have the miraculous back. We already know that Marinette is Ladybug so she can’t really get the mouse back unless there are very specific circumstances involved.

The important thing is for Chat to believe that Marinette can’t get the mouse back and also that Marinette is not Ladybug.

Chat doesn’t know that Rena Rouge and Carapace know each other’s identities.

Max couldn’t have gone into the next room had he not been given the horse.

Chat can’t bring up Viperion without revealing that he’s Adrien (and Ladybug doesn’t know he’s Adrien either, nor is expecting him to be Chat, so she couldn’t make that connection). Not only that, but Adrien didn’t technically see Luka transform into Viperion, so plausible deniability there.

Ryuko hasn’t even happened yet because Fu isn’t on the run yet in “Kwamibuster.”

In addition, “Party Crasher” hasn’t happened (Fu is on the run then) so Chat hasn’t seen Viperion nor Pegase return as heroes. A hero being picked once doesn’t mean that they’ll be picked again, and Fu could’ve just said, “oh, I picked these heroes and it was an emergency.”

Also, it wasn’t just Chat who was there. Ms. Mendeleiev was there as well, and she’d just tried to out the existence of kwami. It was absolutely a mistake on the storyboarders’ parts to not show Mendeleiev being there as well until Mendeleiev approaches Chat, but she was indeed there and she would’ve seen Multimouse de-transform into Marinette as well.

It was also absolutely in-character for Marinette to have this big elaborate plan to clear her as Ladybug whereas Adrien was just like, “um–elementary school?” (he did actually call it a high school earlier but meh, details), so that was a bonus.

But… yeah, no, the episode is definitely not perfect. I mean, just off the top of my head:

- The show Ms. Mendeleiev is on is only fun because of the students’ reactions to it. I didn’t laugh at all otherwise.

- Marinette and Adrien do a similar ramble-y thing back to back which was already done in “Frozer” and I still don’t like it.

- I legitimately don’t know how to feel about Adrien only presuming that Marinette is Ladybug because of what he saw and not because he sees similarities between them. I mean, in a way, I’m glad I get to pile on more evidence to the “Desperada” stuff that was already there but this kid has like, no reaction to the idea that one of his friends is Ladybug. I’m not surprised exactly, but… I’m confused?

- Still going off of Adrien, Chat INTERRUPTS THE BATTLE TO TALK WHICH DISTRACTS LADYBUG ENOUGH FOR HER TO GET SHOT–I mean, like, Adrien/Chat is MOSTLY tolerable in this episode (”Awesome plan, girls!” was nice to hear) but I’d be lying if I said that moment didn’t grate a little on me. Save your internal struggle for patrol, Chat.

- Multimouse’s transformation track is AWESOME but the fact that she holds her pose while the background is still moving at the end looks strange to me when basically all other transformations have the pose and background freeze at almost the exact same time.

- Multimouse’s mask breaks in the model multiple times throughout the episode and it’s really distracting. Also, judging by the shot with Adrien giving Multimouse the ring, I think they shrunk the ring just slightly to fit around her waist, so her model size can sometimes be inconsistent.

- I want to know more about how Multitude works. Like, the dividing of it makes total sense, but can Marinette pick the size she wants? She divides into basically exactly enough Marinette to fit into the kwami mouths, and the fact that she’s the perfect size for it seems too convenient unless there’s a height limit based on how many multiples she has but she can go smaller if she wants. Does the division start at the height of her glowing white legs, so no Multimouse divided could be taller than that, and that’s why the division doesn’t seem to be based on her full height?? I NEED ANSWERS!!!

- I–I just… can we talk about “the mouth thing” in this show? I don’t want to say the cursed “v” word but with Gigantitan almost eating people and the actual POV shots for it, and now Multimouse riding in multiple kwami mouths (additional mention to that gross thing the Astruc head did in “The Puppeteer 2″), I’m just really weirded out, man! Like, can we not????

- I’m still mildly confused about how unifying and dividing works. I mean, unifying, not so much, since it seems like a very basic, “say the name of the new kwami and then the kwami you’re already transformed with, then unify”, but dividing is still weird. Like, after some thought, the best I can muster is that you say the name of the kwami you’re transformed with, then the kwami you’re taking away (as seen in, “Mullo, Trixx, divide!” and, “Mullo, Plagg, divide!”), unless you have to take away the kwami you’re transformed with, in which case you only say their name (”Mullo, divide!” and she becomes Ladybug instead of Multimouse). I feel like just saying the name of the kwami you want taken away should be enough and also be not as confusing, because I keep thinking that it’s an error (ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY SAY “TOPPO” AND NOT “MULLO” AND THEN DON’T EVEN GET THE KWAMI RIGHT WITH THE ICON USED FOR THEM).

- We didn’t see much of Mullo because the episode wastes so much time on characters talking. We see Mullo once when Ladybug divides them and then again when all the kwami are flying off with her, but that’s it. I presume they’re saving Mullo for the “official” mouse holder but still, just a line from Mullo would’ve been nice.

Ultimately, I think how one views the episode really depends on how much they’re taken by plot and lore. If one likes it for flavor, I think they’ll find the episode to be fun, but if details are important, I think it’ll be a little more frustrating.

For me personally, I can just edit out the identity mentions tune out the stuff that bothers me, because the main part of this episode that I focus on is the fun of Tikki-Plagg shenanigans and BLESSED QUEEN MININETTE.

It has a lot of flaws (I mean, I just went on for a good while about things that were probably nitpicks but still noticeable on first viewing), but… I dunno.

I like it. I think an episode like “Startain” is technically better put together plot-wise and has fewer things to complain about, but I like “Kwamibuster” more because it’s more fun overall.

[theartfuldodger26]

Bellamort for the ship meme

 Thank you @knightessofwalpurgis for the ask and apologies for taking me a month to answer - March has been... quite the experience.  But Bellamort exists to give us comfort, so let’s get crackin’!

who is more likely to hurt the other?

Voldemort can tear anyone apart with some well-chosen words (as we see Locket!Voldemort do to Ron), but he rarely uses those on Bella, because a. she rarely deserves to be humiliated like that, and b. he just wouldn’t do that to her. 

What’s more likely, is that he hurts her inadvertently, since he may fail to understand certain emotional needs that Bella most people have - a touch, a kind word after success, casual conversation over a cup of tea. In addition to that, Bella, who is obsessed with him and the position she holds in his eyes, tends to overreact to those “omissions”, getting convinced he ‘never truly valued her’ and he’s going to ‘kick her out any day now’. 

However, let us take a moment to note the day that Bella deeply hurt Voldemort: the night of her betrothal to Rodolphus, when Voldemort proposed marriage and Bella turned him down for reasons that, in retrospect, she finds ridiculous. 

So in a way, you could say that of the two, Voldemort is the brokenhearted one, even if it’s Bella who cries herself to sleep from time to time. 

who is emotionally stronger?

They’re both incredibly strong people. 

Voldemort pulled himself out of the gutter, basically raised himself and became one of the most powerful and learned wizards ever.

Bella survived fucking Azkaban, which is code for severe depression in HP-land, so all I can do is salute her and ask for her secrets. 

The answer is a little tricky, in the sense that Voldemort appears to be a psychopath, medically speaking, who are... resilient people emotionally, if you will. This means that an event that would have had a massive effect on a neurotypical person, say witnessing a murder or war, to him it’s very blunted or even irrelevant. This description is very vague and generalising, but it’s supported by a lot of evidence. In fact, psychopaths can’t really feel fear, because their amygdala is the size of a pea, so it’s not fair comparing his emotional strength to others. In fact, I’d add that since he’s not used to “negative emotions” like sadness and fear, if they happen, they’d be more devastating to him, because he’s never learnt to cope with them, like the rest of us do. 

Bella obviously has her own emotional/psychiatric problems, but I don’t feel comfortable making guesses, since I’m not a psychiatrist and she’s no textbook description of any personality disorder I’ve heard. However, she got an interestng upbringing, that trained her to be a person of importance. So I’d say that even after Azkaban and with whatever issues she has, she can still hold her own in a very difficult emotional situation. 

I realise I haven’t answered the question, because honestly Idk. Also, take with a grain of salt anything psychiatry-related I said, I’m no expert, merely done some research, which I’m regurgitating here. 

who is physically stronger?

Naturally, Bella. She trains a lot, does ballet (which is fucking hardcore, let me tell you), enjoys physical activities and martial arts. 

However, after Voldemort’s transformation, he’s got many of his physical attributes improved, like the cat-eyes that allow him to see in the dark and so on (been reading a lot of the Witcher series as of recent so there’s that too), so he’s deceptively strong and yes, eventually stronger than her.who is more likely to break a bone? 

Bella, 100% XD She’s in battle all the time, and when taking part in Voldemort’s magical research (which is their day-job, world domination is a weekend hobby in case you haven’t noticed) her motto is ‘safety third’. 

An interesting point tho. Psychopaths have no fear and low-impulse control if they don’t train themselves. Fear is useful, informs us of danger ahead, so I HC that young Tom/Voldemort broke almost every bone in his body at some point doing something really dangerous simply because he didnt realise it’s stupid - like, say, go down a fucking cliff with waves crushing at it. Now he’s learnt to control those impulses and polices himself when it comes to danger, so no more broken bones. who knows best what to say to upset the other? 

They’re both excellent at judging characters and have tongues that sting. Bella will rarely truly dare upset Voldemort, but she does love torturing him a little with  something silly and not-truly important, like refusing sex, or messing with his OCD by taking stuff from “their proper place”. She knows that there’s only few things that tick him off: his loss of power to an infant, death and the abandonment from his mother. And she’s not that sadistic to bring up that last one unless absolutely provoked. 

Voldemort can be a tease as well, but he’s too mature and dignified for such childish behaviour most of the time. who is most likely to apologise first after an argument?

 Bella apologises compulsively out of fear she’s lost him even for things that aren’t her fault, tho in her mind they might be. However, she’s stubborn too, so if it’s a petty argument she might not apologise at all. Shes a spoilt little rich girl after all ;)

Voldemort’s never apologised in his life and never shall say the words, but he will change his behaviour if he realises he’s been wrong, because it’s the rational thing to do- also Bella is supersexy when she’s angry, so he wants to fuck her and he needs to her to be accepting to that. who treats who’s wounds more often? 

Voldemort treats Bella’s wounds more often by default, since she’s the one out in the battlefield more often, and also can be clumsy and absentminded. And very rarely *trigger alert* she might self-harm. 

Voldemort not only gets hurt rarely, but he also views it demeaning to accept help, so he won’t even mention it if he’s hurt. Bella will find out by accident or because he’s in so much pain he can’t hide it anymore, and with scold him first, he’ll storm off, she’ll hunt him down, they’ll argue and finally she’ll heal his wounds (usually his back which hurts because he’s Tall^TM) and he’ll act like a literal cat during this, touch-starved as he is. who is in constant need of comfort? 

Right after Azkaban Bella is in need of a lot of care and comfort, understandably. Her physical and emotional problems are their reality for many months after her escape, but the physical ones mend themselves relatively quickly. She’s forever changed emotionally, again understandably, but I wouldn’t say she’s in *constant* need of comfort. In an AU where they win, she’s perfectly functional as his right hand woman and partner, with only the occasional problem. 

Voldemort needs to get through his tough, bald head that he deserves love and comfort like everyone else, but he’ll never get it, so, in the whole, it’s him I’d say. who gets more jealous? 

Interesting question, because fandom’s given so many answers relating to those characters, especially since Bella is married. Starting with this piece of solid information, I’d hazard a guess that Voldemort doesn’t care that much that Bella also sleeps with her husband from time to time - maybe it even turns him on and strokes his ego that she doesnt get all she needs from her legitimate, pureblooded husband. How he’d react if she slept with a random bloke... probably badly; tho I cant think of a situation where that’d happen. My Bella at least, doesnt sleep around. She might tease with her sex, but she’s a well-bred lady after all, who does what is expected of her. 

Voldemort, I HC, used to be a bit of a whoremonger in his youth; good looks, mummy issues and no emotional attachment are the ingredients for that particular potion. Also he might have also been overcompensating for the fact that he was unable to marry the only women he found worthy of him: his pureblooded classmates. So he’d show up with a different, gorgeous girl at parties, which drove child!Bella crazy with jealousy, since she was still out of the healthy sexual attraction part for him and never thought he’d notice her. She’d stalk him behind curtains and through keyholes, keep her ears on alert for when the adults talked about him etc. Poor thing was really tortured by it. But now that they’re adults and, well, in a relationship, she’s far too confident to think he’d seriously care for another woman; after all, half the time she’s not sure he truly cares about her, and she’s the person who’s been closest to him. 

One thing I forgot to mention about Voldemort’s jealousy, or lack thereof, is that Bella has certain emotional needs that he cannot serve, and I’m not talking about tenderness, because to some degree he can give her that, and it’s not the same with her husband anyway. No, I mean that Bella is a sexual sadist, who gets direct sexual pleasure by hurting people. Voldemort on the other hand, is not a masochist. Not that when they have rough sex/BDSM sex he’s never in a sub position, but he’d never just sit there to be whipped or something, it just doesn’t turn him on, and that’s totally fine. So they may invite a girl (and very rarely a boy) to join them, so that Bella can get it out of her system if the war is slow/over. Don’t ask where these people end up, just don’t hang your coat in the second floor closet is all I’m saying. who’s most likely to walk out on the other? 

Depends on the situation? 

Bella would NEVER abandon Voldemort in battle or for the Cause. In a Muggle setting though, if he pissed her off she’d totally walk out of the restaurant :P 

Voldemort would never walk out on Bella either, tho, would he? He’s devoted to her, plus he does feel like he owes her after Azkaban. 

The only concept I can imagine relevant to this is Voldemort saying something in his anger that he doesnt exactly mean tho it holds some truth in it, that hurts Bella so deeply, that she leaves, both out of spite but also because she thinks it’s the best for him. In fact, I have a very specific HC for this which takes place in the afterlife, after they;re both killed in the battle for Hogwarts, but there’s no time for that here. 

There’s also another thing, but it’d quite controversial. If you, like me, HC that Bella started training with Voldemort since she was a child, and entered a sexual and later romantic relationship with him while still underage, this means that she literally hasn’t been alone as an individual, ever. So there’s also the chance that she, after they’ve had a huge fight and he’s terrible with her, leaves so she can find who she is without him. *cue the tears*who will propose? 

Voldemort did propose, on the night of Bella’s formal betrothal. Very rude and uncourteous of him, yes, but it had to be the last minute for him to realise his feelings, because he only has one (1) brain cell that works part-time on the Emotions Department of his brain. She turned him down, because she was young, immature, didnt realise how deep her own feelings were (she believed what her mother told her, that ‘all girls fall for Riddle, it’s an infatuation, it will pass’), wanted the power, fame, money and public adoration that her position as the Black Heir brought, not to mention that she was loyal to her family and terrified since Andromeda had just eloped with Ted. So she broke his heart then, even if neither realised it. But they did continue with their affair, because that’s how it happened in the olden days if you had money and space. 

After the war is over, neither proposes. They talk about it as a given (Rodolphus has fucked off to study penguins in Antarctica) and only need to figure out the details: how public it will be, who’s invited, what titles the ceremony gives them and so on.  who has the most difficult parents?

Spoiler alert: Voldemort’s an orphan! 

Okay, so hypothetically speaking, had any of his parents survived and raised him one way or the other, they’d for sure be a handful. Tom Sr. is a posh bloke used to getting his own way and being considered special due to his status as a squire, so he’d be fucking pissed if he were introduced to a world where he’s not all the shit. Nonetheless, I’d hazard a guess that in the end he, Bella and her parents would get along well-enough; after all they’re the same sort of people. 

Merope, on the other hand, is a whole other story. In the most sensible AU, where she survives giving birth and raises her son but they’re still poor and she’s got trouble with magic due to the trauma of Tom Sr. leaving her, I think she wouldn’t like Bella at all actually. Because Bella is all she ever wanted to be: beautiful, wealthy, well-bred and shows it, and, most importantly, emotionally strong. So she pesters Tom all the time about how Bella is not ‘feminine enough’ in her behaviour, too outspoken, too bitchy, not for ‘her boy’. Tom/Voldemort gives exactly one shit about her opinion and moves on. 

In the canon universe, it’d be naive to say that Bella’s parents were into Tom, simply due to his blood status. In the longrun, however, I think they'd come to terms with it, and they remember how brilliant and ambitious he was in school, so when he becomes successful in life, whether in-universe as Voldemort, or Minister or whatever in an AU, they’re sort of okay with it. Idk if they hand over the Heir of Blacks title to Bella tho, their kids wouldn’t be pureblooded after all. who initiates hand-holding when they’re out in public? 

No one. Not allowed. Not happening. Ever. It’s not their thing, anyway. Voldemort will offer her his arm, like a gentleman, tho. :)

who hogs the blankets? 

Bella, especially after Azkaban. She sleeps with five blankets piled on top of her, has the fireplace going all year round and puts a warmth charm on the sheets. Voldemort doesn’t care. He experienced such cold temperatures in so little clothing as a child, that hot and cold make little impression on him; he even takes cold showers because it’s all the same to him. *sobs* who gets more sad? 

Bella. She overthinks everything. Did she disappoint him today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? Will she ever be the person she was before prison? Why does Cissy wince every time she sees her? Should she have had children after all? These and all sorts of thoughts race through her mind all the time, torturing her to no end. 

Interestingly enough, psychopaths in general dont get that sad, but Voldemort can be very... pensive. who is better at cheering the other up? 

Bella has a wicked sense of humor that only Voldemort seems to find hilarious (comments from other people include ‘disturbing’, ‘scary’ and ‘morbid’), and even though he’s rarely sad, he can be very very serious and in need to relax his body and mind. 

Still, Voldemort, the eternal student of human nature that he is, if he does notice that Bella is sad (which isn’t always because he’s... you know), knows exactly how to distract her, just like he can do with any other person. Just, in her case, it’s sincere. who’s the one that playfully slaps the other all the time after they make silly jokes?

No one ever hits anyone. Voldemort’s been beaten and whipped and flogged enough as a young boy that he wouldn’t do it to the only person he cares about in a non-sexy way, and Bella’s been raised to view such things as ‘Muggle animalistic violence’. She might bite him hard for fun, tho :Dwho is more streetwise?

This may come as a surprise to you because of my username, but Voldemort grew up on the streets in a  Dickensian world. He knows all the tricks in the book; in fact he created many of them. Bella begged him to take her along in his travels incognito, and not on these formal things she attends with her family, and he did, so she’s learnt a lot, but she’s very much a pampered princess. who is more wise?

Hmmm... Hard to say. They have their areas of wisdom and their areas of not-having-a-fucking-clue. Bella, for example, understands emotions better than Voldemort, because she actually experiences them. Jk, jk, but you get what I mean. She’s also more knowledgeable in certain magical things, that, for example, not all prophecies have to be fulfilled and that there’s so much magic that it’s pointless to wish to acquire *everything*; had Voldemort listened to her more often, the books would have been very different. 

Voldemort of course is much older and has more diverse life-experience. He’s also less impulsive in his older years than Bella; he can be the voice of rationality and reason if he’s not superobsessed with something; at which point Bella should remind him to take his meds, because they really do help with fixations. who’s the shyest? 

Neither, in the strict sense of the meaning. They both know what they want and they’re not afraid to demand it. In the end, it’s Voldemort who’ll never say what he truly needs and feels, though, speaking about their everyday life together, it’d be Bella who’d rather have more affection from him but is too shy to ask. But yeah, Voldemort, not because he’s shy per se, but rather in deep hurt and denial. who boasts about the other more? 

In the books it’s obvious that it’s Bella. However, Voldemort does this hilarious thing where he praises Bella in random conversation with other people without even noticing; like, he brings her up every ten seconds even if she’s barely relevant to the subject, so *shrugs* have your pick. who sits on who’s lap?

Nobody, because they’re both tall. Bella will straddle him even in a non sexual manner from time to time, and they often spend their evenings relaxing on the same sofa: Bella will put her legs on Voldemort’s lap and he strokes them absentmindedly (after all they’re superlong and soft and hot), and Voldemort, who refuses to nap in bed, might catch a nap with his head on her lap. The reason Bella doesn’t nap with her head on his lap is because he’s very thin and his femurs hurt her skull, when she’s got plenty of skirts and petticoats cushioning Voldemort. Finally, Bella often sleeps with her head on his chest, because his heart-beat, even tho abnormally slow, relaxes her panic attacks, after Azkaban that is. He will then stroke her hair compulsively - it’s a bit of a fixation of his.

Well,what a ride! Thanks again @knightessofwalpurgis for the ask, this was tremendous fun to write, especially after a very difficult month! And it did help put some of my thoughts on those evil babies in a row. Hope you found it entertaining! I get that those types of asks are usually made for monolectic answers, but yeah, explanations are better. If you made it to the end, dear reader, thank you very much for your time! 

[bluerosesburnblue]

I just want to look at Pokémon stuff for five minutes without being bombarded by recommended YouTube videos/posts/comments about how SWORD AND SHIELD ARE GOING TO BE THE WORST GAMES EVER GAMEFREAK IS SO LAZY AND IF YOU BUY THESE GAMES THEN YOU'RE A TRAITOR TO THE FANDOM AND YOURE RUINING EVERYTHING

Not even gonna censor myself with the opinions below because this situation is so frustrating

Just shut the FUCK up already! You all sound like entitled children! If you think the game is going to be bad and you don’t want to buy it, then fine, don’t buy it! But STOP telling other people that they're not allowed to get it or even still just be excited for it because you're not. Because you don't like the changes they're making. I haven't been having a great year and I want to look forward to the cute cartoon monster game. So sue me

Half of the outrage is overblown anyway. There's still so much we just don't know about these games. There's so far nothing offensive about them beyond making changes to the series that a lot of people don’t like, and now you're all scrounging for any and every way to declare that these games will be the worst ever because they aren't catering to your standards. I get wanting the series to be better, really. But for fuck's sake, just wait for the game to come out and THEN get outraged

If you were expecting Breath of the Wild: Pokemon Edition, that’s your fucking problem. GameFreak never promised that. They never even hinted that a fully open-world Pokemon game was their plan. You are the one who raised your own expectations too high and disappointed yourself. That’s not their fault that you decided to compare their game to one that isn’t even in the same genre and got yourself excited over nothing. Learn to curb your own expectations, get off of hype culture because it’s never done anything good, and then reconcile reality with what you wanted and whether you still like what you’re getting

Also, I don’t like open-world! Making it open-world wouldn’t make it inherently better!

And before anyone starts trying to argue sales and how GameFreak needs to be punished somehow:

Lemme just... drag over this box and get out my megaphone here

*ahem*

You don't have to preorder a game or buy a game the day it releases. If the quality is questionable to you in pre-release materials, wait for the DAMN game to release and reviews to come out before buying. If you're that on the fence about buying: JUST WAIT. What do you think game reviews exist for?

Preorder culture is bullshit anyway

Like, really. Do you know what I see a lot that drives me absolutely insane? The fact that most of these arguments boil down to “we’re the ones paying for it, so we’re entitled to what we want!” And hey, hey. Hey. No, actually, you’re not. Because. And here’s the thing I don’t think some of you have realized yet

YOU HAVE NOT BOUGHT THE GAME YET AND NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO BUY IT

If the game looks bad to you? Don’t buy it! If you disagree with the executive decisions? Don’t BUY it! That’s the joy of being a consumer! You get to just... not buy things if you think it’s not worth the money! It’s not like GameFreak has hacked into your Amazon account and forced you to preorder the game and won’t let you cancel. It’s not even like you funded the game’s development. You are not. Entitled. To a better game. Stop acting like you already bought it and wanted more for what you spent. You haven’t spent anything and you can very easily just... not!

And the people who decide to factor in the cost of the Switch and Pokemon Home into their “Sword and Shield” calculations are full of shit. If you’re buying the console just for this game, that’s a you problem. It has nothing to do with GameFreak. And Home is an optional service. Should they have revealed the cut Pokemon closer to Home’s announcement? Yes. But no one’s forcing you to use it. I never used Bank and didn’t enjoy the 3DS games any less

And this wouldn’t even be an issue if people weren’t being so pushy about the game. I am totally fine with people not agreeing with the decisions that have been confirmed for the game and venting on their personals or something. It doesn’t effect me. But do NOT go on positivity posts about the game, or people’s posts about how they really don’t care about the changes and start writing argumentative comments about how they’re wrong and the game is going to be awful. Or about how they’re “excusing GameFreak’s laziness.” Or even just “Bad post OP.” Basically: stop being snide assholes because you’re pissy

WHO ARE YOU TO TRY TO KILL OTHERS’ HAPPINESS ABOUT SOMETHING BECAUSE YOU AREN’T?!

Criticize the game all you want. I, personally, think the criticisms are bullshit because the game isn’t out yet. We legitimately can’t judge the final product. We know a few things that were removed, and very few things that were added. Hell, at the time of writing we only have, like 10 new Pokemon revealed. I get why people are upset that there are some old Pokemon that they won’t be able to transfer over. But we also don’t know how GameFreak works internally. Just... stop being so damn judgy, and then attacking people who are actually still okay with the game

Like, Christ you know you people are toxic when I actually start to agree with the King of Clickbait and Notable Asshole Verlisify on something

[antivancoffeelover]

SO! i have been asked to give advice a couple times by a couple different writers in fandom who are cis and want to know how to/if it’s okay to write trans characters, so here’s my take and a few pieces of advice. it’s gonna be a little long lol

to answer the question “can cis writers write trans characters?”

Y E S 

i would personally love it, and i know other trans people who would also love it, if more cis writers wrote trans characters. the only limitation that i’d ever put on this is to say that i wouldn’t want to see a cis writer writing about trans self-discovery or a Trans Journey bc... i mean... those are our stories to tell, y’know?

generally most of the trans people i know feel the same way. we want to see ourselves in stories, even if we’re not the main characters. we want to know that you see us and think us worth writing about. representation matters. 

but if you’re writing a story about female friendship and you wanna make one of those women trans? please do bc we need more normalized representation. seeing these really intense Trans Journey stories is great, it is, but it feels one-note when it’s like.... practically the only thing we ever see.

wanna write a story about brotherhood and the bonds of found family and male friendship? make a dude trans! he’s a dude! who’s trans! 

quick advice for writing trans men:

not all trans men bind. i don’t. i have a triple D chest, so yeah it’s kind of obvious that i have tits. with the full beard it can be a confusing look lmao. your trans male character doesn’t have to bind, and it doesn’t have to be bc he’s had top surgery, or because he’s flat chested. some of us just don’t want to have the damage done to our bodies that binding can and will do if done consistently enough for long enough.

not all trans men use packers, which are prosthetics made to give a bulge where trans guys don’t have one. 

trans men can top lol. it isn’t just skinny cis women using strap-ons, and a guy can cum using a harness bc of where it sits. also, emotionally, that shit is fantastic (speaking from personal experience). 

if you’re writing erotica, then be aware that some trans guys are okay with the word clit, some aren’t. this is more of a stylistic choice on the part of the writer, but if you’re using AFAB language for trans male genitals then make a note bc for some men that’s legitimately triggering. personally, i’m fine w/ my vagina, he’s a chill dude.

testosterone doesn’t make you taller, and it won’t make your character taller either lol. physical changes from T are increased muscle mass, changes in fat distribution on the body, voice drop, hairline receding around the temples, facial and body hair growth for some (takes 6+ months usually), clitoral growth, some men experience vaginal dryness some don’t, in the beginning there’s an increased sex drive which tends to even out once T levels are stable, since it’s basically a second puberty a lot of trans guys do get acne, hair can become coarser over time texture wise, and tends to thin

testosterone is administered via injection or with androgel which is topical, generally. if you want to write about a guy giving himself his T, then he’s probably on a weekly or bi-weekly injection schedule at home, or he’s using androgel which is daily and gets rubbed into the skin and has to dry fully. there’s no option right now to take testosterone orally that i know of. there’s also the option for a 3-month dose of testosterone to be given via injection, but it’s always done by a nurse and every trans guy i’ve talked to who’s had it has said they can’t even sit down for an hour afterward bc it’s injected into the ass and it hurts like a motherfucker. however it’s also only once every 3 months. personally i don’t mind my wee thigh shot lol. 

if anyone has more specific questions for writing trans male characters send me an ask and i’ll be glad to help

full disclaimer that i’m not a trans woman, but here’s some advice for writing trans women based on what i’ve heard from them:

unlike with T, where trans men can basically just start T and begin the process of a testosterone-based puberty, trans women first have to go on T blockers so that their T levels drop to where they should be for a woman, then they go on estrogen, which is usually??? a pill (not dissimilar to birth control)

when trans women have been on estrogen for long enough they can have multiple orgasms like any other woman, which is a pretty nifty perk

loss of muscle mass is common

breast growth happens differently for everyone, but breasts become more sensitive and as they grow a lot of women can experience some tenderness, and if the chest is struck/prodded that tenderness can be painful. (as someone who naturally developed breasts as a teen, i remember fucking crying when someone hit me in chest once bc everything was so sensitive)

trans women have natural hormone cycles and can experience period-like symptoms! so yeah! a trans woman can wake up and be >:( and have mood swings!

the penis and balls will shrink over time on estrogen, some trans women stop getting hard, some don’t

some trans women tuck their penises, some don’t

trans women have to make the choice to raise their voices, as most of the effects of testosterone-based puberty cannot be reversed. T thickens the vocal chords, which is what makes a trans guy’s voice drop, but if a trans woman is transitioning after she’s experienced a full T-based puberty, her voice isn’t going to raise. a lot of trans women do vocal training to get used to talking in their head voice versus their chest voice. some even pick out like a celebrity or a character to emulate bc it’s a lot easier when you’ve got a goal to aim for.

facial hair generally doesn’t stop growing. the follicles being active doesn’t change when testosterone levels drop. hair growth can slow, but it’s probably not going to stop entirely without laser hair removal or electrolysis. same with body hair. 

hair texture can change, though, and become softer over time

if any trans women followers want to add to this feel free :D

your character might not have IDs that match up w/ their identity. having your government docs changed can be a pain in the ass depending on where you live, and a lot of places require some kind of surgery as “proof” which is bullshit but... y’know, it happens. 

big thing to remember: not all trans people want surgery. not all trans people fall into the gender binary. the way i define being trans is that your gender doesn’t match what you were assigned at birth. that’s it. i consider non-binary people transgender bc. y’know. they fucking are. not all of them want to ID that way or feel like they can, but if they do then i fully welcome them bc they’re my people. 

i think cis writers can feel like it’s a taboo or a no-go to write trans characters bc “well what if i do it wrong” and i think it comes down to being really caught up in the fact that the character is trans, rather than them just being a trans character. like. here’s my day as an out, transitioning trans man:

i wake up between 6am and 7am, i dick around on my phone, i let my dogs out, feed them, have breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, work more, come home, eat dinner, dick around on my phone more, go to bed. repeat. my weekends consist of writing, primarily, and watching stuff on netflix. and every other sunday i give myself an injection of testosterone into my thigh. every couple months i see my endocrinologist and maybe have a blood test.

diabetics have a more rigorous schedule than i do, health-wise. 

me being trans is part of who i am, a defining part even, but it’s not all i am. if someone were to write a story about my life and make it all about me being trans, they’d first be ignoring like... the first 25 years of my life, but also everything that happens to me in between these big transition milestones. 

not everything with trans people is about being trans. sometimes it’s about being bored. or wanting to play video games.

on another personal note, some of the signs that i was trans weren’t very obvious. they make a lot of sense in hind sight (like when i was 4 and told my mom i was going to wear a suit to prom, or when i was 5 and told my dad that my husband was taking my last name bc that just seemed how shit should work to me) but at the time they were just these small, weird little quirks that no one saw as anything more.

in fandom a lot of our stories tend to veer toward the romantic or erotic, so let me just say that you don’t need to write about dysphoria or remark on the topic within the story. i know this is a sticking point for a lot of cis writers bc most of them haven’t experienced dysphoria so they don’t know how to write it. good news is you don’t have to, a trans person can be happy with their body, especially if they’re far enough along in their transition, and it can just be a smutty, smutty story about people fucking lol.

this is a really loose guide w/ very loose bits of advice and seriously if anyone ever wants to ask more specific questions or my opinion you can DM me or send an ask on or off anon and i’ll be glad to offer any help i can

[beyondthetemples]

Multimuse RP questions!

{{ I couldn’t figure out which RP blog to stick these on (since I have like. nine), so I figured I’d just skip to the Answering Part over here. =w=

Found here: https://memesfortheroleplayerssoul.tumblr.com/post/163688858676

is there a muse that you wish gets more attention? Honestly? Dove. There are a couple of people who've said they love reading about her, and I'm so absolutely eternally delighted for them, too deeply appreciative for words! A couple friends I met via rping her, and a couple friends I met in Certain discord servers, but that's about it anymore. But she's my baby, you know? I love her, she's amazing, and I wish more people took the time to write stories with her, because she just has so much potential! I mean, yeah, for angst of course, but also for healing and comfort, for action and fantasy, for mystical and mundane plots alike. She's so multi-faceted and fascinating to explore, I just... well, maybe it's more selfish in that I need help exploring some of the more mundane stuff with her. Because if it doesn't really Have Relevance to a Particular Plot, I generally won't wind up writing it, let alone publishing it. :P But this answer's already too long; I could rave about Dove for hours! All I'm trying to say is, I wish more people cared about OCs.

if you HAD to choose, who’s your favorite muse? Favorite to RP with? Far and away, Dove! Favorite for crack RPs, Srentha or Leyla. Favorite canon character is a GIGANTIC toss-up between Raven and Lapis. Favorite characters to explore for personal reasons are Ryou Bakura and Blue Diamond, but I have a hard time bringing myself to actually WRITE about them, for some reason...

is there a muse that not a lot of people roleplay with? (Besides the ones I haven't advertised? ^^';;) Maybe Phobia? She has only ever existed in comic canons-- though she WAS in the Teen Titans Go comics too! (The original series, not the... bastardization). Anyways, she's a much lesser-known muse. And my muse for her is wildly unreliable, she's a volatile and abrasive character, and my inspiration for her has run dry for awhile now...

if you HAD to choose, who’s your least favorite muse? Phobia. o_o See above, actually.

which one of your muses have you been playing the longest? Prooobably Dove? She was the one I started rping with, of course!

which one of your muses has the most ships? Ships in their canon, or ships in my rps? Because you're talking to a demigray here; I don't really do romance? But in my stories, Dove has 3 ships (all at different times in her life). In rps, Dove has been kinda-contemplating-it shipped a couple times, but never got to the point of, you know, kissing... and in fandom, Lapis probably has the most.

what is each of your muses’ otps? notps? ~ Dove and Srentha together~ (Don't have notps for them.) ~ Kary: food? sleep? Her canon boyfriend Eric ~ Leyla has a qpp named Toby in the stories. ~ Raven: I'm demonbirds trash. I don't even know how that happened, honestly. (Notps include B|BRae and, while not as strong of a NO in the jlvtt canon, ter/raven.) ~ Lapis Lazuli: OTP with Peridot! Intensely notp with jasper. ~ Blue Diamond: OTP with Yellow hardcore, no notps to speak of. ~ Phobia: Utterly unexplored??? I think she voluntarily abstains. ~ Ryou: OTP with Joey (thank my girlfriend for that one)! Notp with Yami Bakura, it’s absolutely 100% possibly my most violently-disgusted NOtp yet. Also with Diva because... What The Fuck??? But I won't rant about that just now. ~ Jess: I haven't really done much shipping, though Mistress and Trick are a hella canon, deeply bonded breeding couple. ~ Evangeline? Sorta-OTP with my gf's character Taex, though it's not exactly a ~romantic~ dynamic. Notp with Srentha, probably, considering she'd try to kill him, given the chance, and she’s pissed at Dove for marrying him.

why were you drawn to each one of your characters? Okay, listen, you can't just ask something like this and expect an easy answer! I could write an Actual Legitimate Essay on EACH ONE, because I only write a character when I'm Extremely Highkey Personally Emotionally Inspired by them!

UPDATE: I tried to summarize, I really did! But there's just so MUCH, and it turned into an essay on its own. --> https://beyondthetemples-ooc.tumblr.com/post/189837029682/why-were-you-drawn-to-each-one-of-your-characters

Summaries go like this: Dove is brave, complex enough to delve deeply in and constantly discover new facets of, and inspiring enough to create a positive experience while doing so. Srentha is fun, positive, and passionate, and legitimate ADHD representation. Leyla is a chill miracle child of creativity and quiet passion. Raven is the reason I'm still alive and perfectly reflected me at about age 14, so I have a very deep personal connection to her. Kary is so fun to explore because she's my polar opposite, as a temperamental pyrokinetic who revels in chaos and really just wants to have a good time. Evangeline is everything Dove suppresses, brought to life, so she's fun to explore as an extension of Dove! Lapis has a lot of struggles to explore and has done a lot of healing and growth that I'd like to expand on someday. Blue Diamond and Ryou Bakura were basically literally me, so I can explore the trauma and healing from their perspectives in a safe space. And Phobia? I just wanted to put characters' mettle to the test honestly, and see what would happen.

which muse is the most fun to write for? Oh, Srentha, absolutely hands down! Dove does have the best close-friends casual-fun kind of rp relationships, though. And Mistress the Mismagius has this sardonic teasing sense of humor that always makes me smile, especially with Murky (Murkrow).

is there another muse you’ve been thinking of adding or writing for? who? Oh stars, I don't need another one. =w= I've been... struggling to get my Ryou blog actually up and running for a long while now. Nobody new has inspired me lately, but I'm pretty stuck in my fandom ways.

what is something everyone should know about your muses before interacting? I stick it all in their bios! But, let's see... Dove: Even though she's Raven's half-sister, she keeps it DESPERATELY hidden, and nobody IC is supposed to know about that. Srentha is very deeply rooted in Azarathean pacifism and won't do much in battle besides help people retreat. Leyla has her father's heart condition and can't do anything too active. Kary will rarely use her powers, as conjuring even a simple spark stings her scar badly. Lapis is more than her toxic relationship! Blue Diamond is NOT the dictator she once was! Ryou does NOT want the spirit of the millennium ring in his life anymore! Jess just... sticks mostly to Sinnoh and rarely ever leaves. And Evangeline has a palpable evil aura about her; she makes SURE of it.

what’s a weird headcanon you have for each of your muses? Dove hates pie. Srentha loves colorful things. Leyla will cover everything in glitter if you let her. Kary will do anything for some good food and/or a nap. Ryou's hair is untamable. Lapis doesn't guard her gem as carefully as she should. Blue Diamond may be more emotional, but she won't sing about it as frequently as other Gems. Raven... doesn't wear underwear?

which muse has the most aus or verses? I mean, the Lapis I was writing for was 97% canon divergent. Evangeline only exists as her own person (and not merely a partition of Dove's mind) in a DCUO-compatible timeline. But I don't really do aus or verses otherwise; it's just more stressful for me.

can you sort your muses from youngest to oldest? Sorting based on the ages I'll generally play them: Leyla (8-14), Dove (15-25), Kary (18+), Ryou (19+), Srentha (20+), Jess (22+), Phobia (23+), Lapis (5k+), Blue Diamond (10k+).

which muse is most willing to fight another muse? Oh, definitely Kary. (She won't fight Dove or Leyla, even if there's a really good reason. And Srentha has this weird power of defusing her. But anyone else, she can easily be provoked to fight on a dime.) Or maybe Evangeline, who will fight anyone at any time for any reason whatsoever?

do your muses get along with each other? Evangeline gets along with nobody. Dove/Srentha/Leyla are all a very tight-knit family, and Kary considers herself Dove's sister and Leyla's aunt. I've thought about what might happen if Lapis met Blue Diamond, but I don’t have the faintest idea of how that'd go? I did start an RP once where Lapis met Dove, and I planned to have them bond over homesickness and purpose-seeking, but then I lost the ehd I had that prewritten on, and never had the heart to try rewriting it. Ryou and Jess kinda exist in their own universe's bubble. (Jess has a whole cast of Pokemon creature muses she very much gets along with, though~)

would you ship any of your muses together? who? Dove and Srentha are hella-canon endgame already, that's been decided for like 12 years!

for each muse, is there a character you wish had a blog so you could interact with them? You know, I've never really been one much for wishing like that. I do wish Dove had a stable Raven again, since both of my all-time favorite Raven rpers have left the rp circle... but that's about it, really.

have you ever considered making a multimuse/is it easier having a multimuse? I mean, my Pokemon blog has like 19 muses built into the breeding center... 8F But no, I prefer to keep my drafts, rps, and tag systems for each muse on separate sideblogs. Tumblr's tags break WAY too often to shove them all in one place. (And with a sideblog, I don't have to log in and out every time I want to check for replies!)

which muse is the most problematic towards other muses? Toss-up between Phobia and Evangeline, obviously. Blue Diamond is a reformed Gem, the way I play her. (I don't care what anyone says, THAT'S CANON as HELL too!) But Evangeline actively goes out of her way to hurt and/or sacrifice people to her own ends,

which muse is most likely to make new friends? Probably Leyla, though now that SU has sent out a message across the Gem universe that Gems are welcome on Earth, Lapis could wind up meeting quite a lot of new acquaintances. It's much harder to befriend her, though. Srentha has a lot of charismatic energy too, and he’ll go out and make friends with anyone, given the chance.

which muses’ fandom do you like the best? Ahhh, don't make me CHOOSE like that! ;; Fandom like being a fan of them, or fandom like, liking the other people in the fandom? Because Steven Universe, Teen Titans, and YuGiOh all have incredibly special places in my heart, while having Their Issues amongst the fandom... Pokemon seems to be the best mannered fandom though, especially amidst the RP community.

is there someone playing the same muse/s as you and you really look up to them? Ohgosh, well there's a blog called, I think, melancholeyes?, that plays Blue so well, it's like reading canon scenes. I did see a blog that played a Ryou I respected, but I can't remember their name... and of course Larissa and Pix played great Ravens, but each a different version.

which muse do people send the most asks for? Probably Dove, thanks in large part to Caleb!

which muse is most likely to have kids? Leyla is already Dove's kid, so... 8F

is there a rule that someone keeps breaking for your muses? Not to my knowledge, but my rules aren't strict anyways.

can you sort your muses from weakest to strongest? ...Oh, stars. How am I supposed to sort them? Well, let's try this.

Weakest to strongest in combat (based on their style of choice): Ryou, Leyla, Srentha, Phobia, Evangeline, Jess, Kary, Dove, Lapis, Blue Diamond, Raven. ( * i switched raven and blue diamond around SO many times. both are immensely powerful with god-like abilities, but raven can literally destroy reality itself. so...)

Weakest to strongest by strength of heart and character: Phobia, Evangeline, uh... Kary? Srentha...? Uh... frICK THIS ONE'S HARD. Because they're all so strong in their own ways. Probably Leyla? Next tier is probably Blue, Lapis, and Jess, and Dove, Raven, and Ryou are highest tier.

which muse are you considering deleting? Phobia, and maybe sometimes Blue. (I actually... never got a single RP or follower on Blue. I'm still debating if I really WANT to rp as her, at least on Tumblr, knowing how toxic the fandom can get around the Diamonds...)

most importantly, are you having fun playing each one of your muses? Pretty much! Especially Dove, Srentha, Leyla, and Raven!~ Raven's wit and clipped verbiage can be tricky to for me sometimes, but all it takes is a little tlc on her dialogue, and it doesn't slow down my enjoyment one bit. :} And when I'm in a Pokemon-hyperfocus mood, writing the Pokemon team is ALWAYS a blast! (Especially the Pokemon; their personalities are so dynamic together.) With muses like Lapis and Blue, and even Kary, the mood for their emotionality waxes and wanes, but I don't write for them unless I'm in The Right Frame of Mind to KEEP UP with them, you know? I never push myself in an rp until it's not fun anymore; at least I know where my writing burnout limits are.

Phobia and Evangeline are both sadistic, and when you're a compassionate person, that can be very hard to write out in the painstaking detail of my style. But sometimes my mind just Won't Shut UP about 'Vangie unless I WRITE IT OUT. Which is a good exercise of course, stretching my horizons and all that, and I do love writing the drama and conflict they stir up.

But beyond the momentary discomforts, I'm just so eager to explore their lives and minds and adventures, so yes, I absolutely DO have fun writing for each and every one!

[silver-falling-star]

Sing me a song, o muse, of your bitter hatred against catcher in the rye bc SAME

Oooooh boy, I smell one of my long winded rants coming on. Strap in folks its about to be a wild ride.

So, Ima preface this by saying that I have NOT read it since I was forced to read it in 11th grade. For like, several fucking reasons. (the primary one being that I don’t want to, the 2nd one being I don’t know which bookshelf my dad stashed my copy on. He stashed all my required readings on various bookshelves after I was done with them. Because we were all given copies for free by the teachers that we were allowed to keep. I’ll chalk this up to private school benefits I guess? I’ve been out of the public school circuit since the end of 5th grade) So basically my memory of like, most of the events that take place in the book are foggy at best and unremembered at worst.

@ my mutuals and followers who like this book, that’s fine you do you, but I personally am not and probably will never be a fan of Catcher in the Rye. My feelings of why I dislike it are my opinions and I’m not gonna force them on you.

Problem 1: Main character is an unsympathetic asshole

My biggest gripe about the book is honestly a gripe I have about SEVERAL books. Unlikable characters, and I don’t necessarily mean written poorly (though I don’t remember being awed by how the book was written, I’ll be honest.) I mean unsympathetic asshole little bastards that make you want to just chuck the book across the room. Other books that share this problem are The Great Gatsby (that book is hot fucking garbage in terms of likeable characters and I WILL die on that fucking hill do not even @ me), Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Main character is an asshole little snobby bitch and despite being a murder mystery written in first person she literally figures things out at such a pace its not fun for the reader because she STILL ends up caught in shit situations she KNEW WAS GOING TO GO DOWN BECAUSE SHES SUCH A SPECIAL LITTLE SHIT- okay that’s a rant for a different post) and The King Must Die. (If you ever want to read a book with shit diction, pick it up.)

Now, as a writer/roleplayer of almost a decade, I’ve made plenty of characters that fall into the unsympathetic asshole role. My problem isn’t with the archetype, it’s often used and often done well (fandoms later trying to apologize for them aside) My PROBLEM comes when that’s either the archetype for the only character given any spotlight, or ALL the characters have that problem. (see, Great Gatsby.) Holden Caulfield(or however the fuck you spell it) is an unsympathetic asshole, and also the character who’s perspective is the only one we get to see, and the only character we really know much about. (Mainly cause he just doesn’t deign to care to give a legitimate effort in giving a damn about anyone else aside from how innocent children/his sister are. More on how creepy that shit is later.) Making a book like this means that I’m far less likely to enjoy it because I want to be able to root for someone. I can root for an asshole, so long as they’re likeable in some regard. Holden is a grade A fuckboy in the making and as such I am not a fan.

TL/DR: It’s possible to have likeable unsympathetic asshole characters, it is almost impossible to do that if that’s all you have exposure too in your cast.

Problem 2: I was really not in the best place to receive such a fucking depresso espresso lesson about life.

Switching gears momentarily from problems with the writing/book itself to problems with the timing of this book showing up in my life. High school was the time when all my trauma I’d successfully… repressed? Avoided dealing with? whatever, basically all my mental health shit suddenly decided to spring itself on me and yell “SURPRISE, YOU’RE MENTALLY FUCKED AND WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!” in 10th grade and it wasn’t until halfway through 11th grade that I even started getting a handle on shit. I almost failed high school and it was *bad*, especially for someone who was just trying to get to college so I could get to vet school and be qualified for a job that requires an ass load of education. So in walks this fucking book and it’s message of “adulthood is a sham, nothing matters and you really should just fuck around and do whatever because it’s all bullshit anyway. Childhood was where it’s at.”

Like???? Alright, that’s not what I need to hear when I’m barely passing high school. Go to fucking therapy and get some help, we all have trauma and therapy is the best path to work through it. I dunno like, yeah okay some people need to hear that message at whatever time in their life they read the book, but that message really wasn’t great to my Anxiety/Depression/ADHD struggling ass trying to just stay steady enough to get into college.

Honestly, even to this day I HATE HATE HATE books with depressing messages like that. I already deal with the struggle of being afraid of failure, getting where I want to be, all that shit. I don’t want that in my literature. Give me a person who struggles but still succeeds and finds some sort of happiness and self-worth in the end. Give me someone overcoming their traumas in such a way that they can at least have a good quality of life afterwards, even if the trauma will never leave, so long as they’re happy. I’m tired of YA novels that try and sell our generation and gen z the message that life sucks. Give me more hope, more heroes, more people making a difference because hell life is short so best make the most of it making a difference.

To quote GotG, why do I care so much about stories that revolve around saving the world, even if that world is just as small as a found family?

And my existence might as well be a happy one and have HOPE GOD DAMMIT.

TL/DR: If a book leaves me feeling like shit after reading it because it ends on a super shitty note, I’m generally not going to enjoy that book. And the fact that most YA novels these days that are given to highschoolers fall into this category is hot garbage when this is around the time they’re trying to find some sort of direction in life.

*Note: I realize that there are times and places for books that give more somber messages. Hell, I’ve even enjoyed some books with messages of such a tone. But media these days, and honestly for most of my life starting in mid to late teenage years (and maybe earlier) has started taking a turn towards the more depressing/somber stuff, and its overwhelming and just bad. And even back then when first reading it this was something I picked up on and didn’t enjoy. It just was not the right time in my life to hear a message so devoid of giving a shit.

Problem 3: Holden is honestly, super fucking creepy.

Okay, we back on the train of the actual book’s writing. Holden the dipshit is honestly, really fucking creepy. Towards women specifically. I have no direct quotes from the book specifically, but I DISTINCTLY remember the way he talked about women (or even young children/girls) being creepy as shit. Like, he waxes lyrical about his kid sister and her classmates and how innocent they are and how he wants to be the “Catcher in the Rye” to keep them innocent and to keep them from realizing how bad the world is. Great, lovely sentiment Holden. Except that the way you’re going about it comes across as being a pedophile.  You’re at the very least sexist as fuck, because you’re objectifying the fuck out of people anyway.

That scene with the sex worker in the hotel room is also one I remember making me feel super uncomfortable. Not because the sex worker is there, but because uh, just, god, that whole scene gave me the creeps. Probably because I felt bad for the woman, coming into the room expecting to be paid for work and there’s just this kid who breaks the fuck down, tells her some depressing shit, and maybe pays her? (does he pay her? I can’t fucking remember, I’d like to think he does, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t, because he’s an ass.) Actually, bigger question IS HE EVEN OF AGE TO HAVE SEX WITH HER LEGALLY? HOW OLD IS THIS KID? HES STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL RIGHT?

…. so I looked it up, he’s 17. SEVENTEEN. HE IS A M I N O R. I’m like 99% sure that the woman he hires is like, twice his age at least. That’s straight up illegal.

god this just gets worse.

TL/DR: Holden is a 17 year old creep who comes off as a pedophile in the way he talks about kids, and also definitely hired a sex worker while he was underage. Idk if that was legal at the time this book was written, but if it was (and I doubt it), that has aged very poorly.

Problem 4: It’s got a lot of male fans who fall into that all too dangerous category of having Fight Club or Rick and Morty being their favorite bit of visual media.

Okay, again, not a problem of the book. But when the majority fanbase (or at least, the most vocal part) are a bunch of abusive men who don’t realize that the message they took away from a work of fiction is incredibly problematic? Or worse, know and don’t care because they think their take is superior? Uhhh, how do I say, big yikes.

Like, this could be your favorite book, whatever, that’s you, I don’t care, but if your reasoning for it is because Holden is, in your opinion, an unflawed idealized version of yourself/your ideals?

thats a nope from me bro.

———-

That’s all I can do off the top of my head without going in and reading the book again. Which I probably won’t do for a long time, because I don’t need to hear that struggling to make a place for yourself is dumb and proves you’re just “part of the machine, the man has made you his bitch.” while I’m still trying to y’know, get to where I want to go.

But there you go, four solid reasons why I really really do not like Catcher in the Rye.

[synthaphone]

doing this whole OC meme thing for me mostly, very likely not interesting to anyone else (because I’m not really explaining who any of these guys are and I don’t expect anyone to know all of them, also its formatted badly and i didn’t edit it well) so i’m putting it under a cut

The oldest OC I still bring back occasionally is Bluebell, who is an alien creature I invented in 6th grade. She used to be named Hana, because I was taking Japanese lessons and was in that phase of elementary school where you think that naming your characters after a word in another language is always the best and coolest idea

The newest OC I have that’s like, a main character is I guess Viarnne, but my newest OC that’s not a fan character is Slice the rainbow layer cake dragon

I can’t pick a favorite OC very easily- I love Pike and Tu personality-wise a whole lot out of my Dialien characters, and I think Viarnne is my favorite Neopet right now. OH also i love my old character Alkaline

picking a favorite OC design is even harder- of my neopets, Alxxa has the coolest design I think, both to draw and as far as general appearance goes. For all original characters, my favorite for a long time was the character I made whose design was... literally adapted from Alxxa but not a Neopet. I think I called it Tiramisu?? its been a while since I’ve actually drawn Tiramisu

My main reason for making OCs is sort of different for different types of characters- I think part of it is that I legitimately want to tell stories, but the biggest thing IS that I just find character design fun, in particular designing and drawing creatures.

Uhh it’s different for different characters but it usually involves finding something fun to draw and then drawing it a bunch, to see if it stays fun, or if I can keep it fun. If I don’t have fun drawing a character, they tend to sort of fall away- like, you don’t see me drawing Jukebawks often, even though I had fun coming up with a design, because she’s... hard to draw, and doesn’t have as much range of expression as a lot of my other characters. (plus I don’t have a personality for her- if I have a backstory I’m really invested in for a character, I can basically draw very similar pictures of them over and over again and have fun because I like their story so much, which is probably a bit of a flaw)

I don’t really ship my OCs with anyone else’s- I’ve never even really shipped my OCs with like, canon characters from anything? I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea of shipping my characters with someone else’s, but I’m not very good at communication or roleplaying, and a lot of my characters aren’t really what I would call ‘shippable’, so it tends to be easier to just work by myself on that kind of thing.

uhhh i have a couple ocs who I ship but i’m really self conscious about doing so, so i talk about most of them almost never. I ship Sam and Viarnne but I want to actually have a story where it makes sense for them to end up forming a relationship like that, so for now i’m mostly focusing on how their friendship will work (also, just like, assume none of my OCs are fucking I guess?? even the ones i ship together- that’s one of those things that’s just never really been interesting to me, and i mostly just don’t want to deal with jokes about it because like, please?? i like relationship stuff but i just don’t get anything out of sex stuff, jokes or otherwise, most of the time. also please don’t take this as a moral judgement if that’s something you do, i don’t care as long as its not like, something morally reprehensible, you do you). oh i also have Alxxa and Sensurround (neopets), Zotyre and Gyronaut (neopets), Alkaline and Skurl (original story), uhhh kind of not sure if Tu and Iris are gonna end up having a romantic relationship in my Dialien story, i need to do more thinking

weirdest... oc... uhhhhh i’m not sure what that would entail, exactly. my fursona might be the weirdest just from like, not having any sort of world or story or anything, she just floats in space and picks up space radio signals and stuff

I don’t really have enough villain ocs- I guess at this point, Chexerton is kind of a villain, he’s like a shitty space security guard for Virtupets. most of my completely original stories don’t have villains- Dialiens (it needs a better name- maybe just Dial) is more about mental health struggles and potentially capitalism or colonialism, and with LOSER (a story i think i have barely ever talked about on here, its the one with Skurl and Alkaline) i straight up can’t decide whether its a fun road trip where character flaws are explored and then like, amends are made, or if it ultimately ends with the characters not overcoming their flaws and destroying each other. its kind of been both in my mind for a long time which is why i can’t write it- can’t decide whether the relationship should be ultimately healthy or toxic

This is a tough question- I don’t think of my OCs as real people, exactly, that I could be mean to or ‘torture, muahaha i love seeing my babies suffer’- but they’re deeply personal to me, and I don’t think its always useful to see them as constructs unworthy of being treated with kindness. I guess what I would consider being ‘nice’ to my OCs is trying to realize them better and have them make sense and function properly in whatever stories I’m trying to tell using them. In that regard, I guess there’s some I theoretically ‘neglect’ by not really focusing on them very often, or by getting tired of their stories but never officially ‘getting rid’ of them?? Plus I don’t have time to develop literally every character I’ve ever had. I have all kinds of old OCs that i’m not planning to do anything with anymore, but they meant something to me at some point, and its not like they’re going to pile up and take up space in my house if I don’t, like, sell them. I like knowing that if I ever need to look back at my old stuff for ideas, there’s a bunch of stuff I might be able to use or repurpose again someday.

Again, I don’t really think about it as ‘killed’. I guess I don’t have the main character from Skurl’s original story anymore, who was like a mammalian Invader Zim-esque fantasy evil fortress knight?? and Skurl was the funny animal curmudgeon sidekick. I made that protagonist up because the story needed a protagonist, and he never even really had a personality to speak of- his rival was better defined, the mad scientist from the idea had a more interesting character design- basically every other character from that story I might bring back, but that protagonist is probably gone for good. Maybe I’ll bring back his weird ear decorations that smushed his fabric-y rabbit ears down, those were kind of the most interesting thing he had going on. OH if you mean literally killed off in a story, in the nightmare angst version of LOSER Skurl ends up like, not DEAD exactly, but severely fucked up to the point where he’d be better off dead. And Viarnne is technically dead

Oh man years ago I had an OC named O-BR who was a robotic panda bear toy who was possessed by the soul of some dude who died who was a father, and now is kind of the robotic parental figure of the child who owns the bear toy. i don’t think that actually works well as a story- i never even figured out what that dude’s name was, just the name of the bear. it’s name was O-BR because its ears were like, floating purple plastic cheerio shapes that hovered next to his head. this was another ‘i’m obsessed with invader zim’ era character

80% of my Neopet OCs at any given time- also 80% of my non fandom based OCs at any given time. I don’t have time to come up with stories for all of them, and I tend to just focus on whatever is interesting enough that I remember it

I hate drawing Jukebawks... i’m sorry jukebawks........ maybe i should like, offer her up for trade, but i’m not sure anyone else would want her?? i like the idea of her!! i should actually probably design her to be easier for me to draw, in all honesty. When it comes to writing though, Moe has given me so much grief because I honest to god don’t know how he fits into the story and group dynamic in Dialiens. He’s like, kind of an asshole loner who keeps to himself and doesn’t want people to bother him?? i’m not even confident he uses ‘he’ pronouns. i don’t know

this feels like its more designed for people who have more humanoid ocs where they’re heights are more, like, similar, so being short or tall is a thing?? like, for Neopets, Alxxa’s the tallest because he’s really long, and Viarnne is the shortest because he’s an oval that’s like a foot tall. as far as the only character heights that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, the Dialiens, tallest to shortest, are: Pike, Moe (not counting the ears), Iris, Chives, Tu

I guess my oldest ocs are Zotyre, Gyronaut, and that mutant Moehog lady- youngest would be Chilston, i guess. and as far as OCs, i have no idea, i don’t think enough about age. approaching characters from the angle that they’re Cartoons!!!! and then deciding to try and give them nuance later means that everyone’s just sort of nebulously adult-ish

Do I dislike any of my OCs, like, as characters, or as people? I think Pike, despite being one of my favorite OCs, would irritate me quite a bit in real life, because his personality is heavily influenced by traits that annoyed me about other people I’ve met, but like, trying to see them more sympathetically?? but he’d get on my nerves. Iris fits this a lot too- I don’t think I’d like Moe much either?? i dunno its a weird question, i like them because they’re my characters and also because they’re not real. i don’t think most of them would be friends with me or anything if they were real, even if so many of them are based on parts of me

oh i’ve made self inserts- i definitely had a self insert Invader Zim character that i drew maybe a single time, and then pretended to be in daydreams in my head while bored during school. she had an angsty backstory. then after that i pretended to be Trigger in my daydream stories all the time in school for like, 3 years (like, during points in time where i was zoning out during class, or walking between classes)

uhhhhh I regret not doing more with these characters, and i regret that i can’t answer a lot of important questions about characters I’ve had for years Now. i’ve had them for years, so they feel really definitive and rock solid in my mind, so they’re hard to change, but also they’re really not as nuanced as i want them to be. its a bit tough

well someone in freshman year of college who i ended up cutting ties with because of some kind of wild friend group drama and like, important political and philosophical differences, actually knew me from deviantart and remembered one of my OCs. that was pretty wild. that’s one person though... uhhh, are any of my OCs popular?? I’m just excited when anyone finds a character i’ve come up with interesting. I’m glad other people seem to like Viarnne!!! it fills me with terror that i’ll like, ruin him by writing a bad story, but its also exciting and validating to come up with a character story and for other people to also enjoy it

uhhh its Viarnne again. i drew him to try and demonstrate how a robot Kiko could be an appealing character design and it backfired on me. i love drawing Orb with a Face and Arms and i am happy when i see him as my active pet on neopets. I guess Pike also qualifies- when I initially drew the Dialiens, I had very vague personality ideas for them, and I felt like he would be the bully. he has since become very much NOT the bully (like, he seems more like a person who would get bullied) and I’ve grown really fond of him. also i created Trigger to be a Chuck E Cheese style mascot back before fucking Five Nights At Freddy’s existed and destroyed that that as an original idea (fuck you FNAF i have two characters now who are basically... that and you can’t ruin that for me. i was here FIRST (this is a joke its not even that great of a premise, my shit isn’t horror, and i’ll deal)). he was also based on a glow in the dark grey alien and a skeleton and lived in an abandoned pizza entertainment building and was basically an evil villain, and then high school me decided that instead of being that he was gonna be a mutated teenager and it was going to be really angsty. I don’t really have as much interest in that backstory anymore??? but I sure had a lot of fun with it for like 4 years so i think that counts

[aparoxysm]

3,5,7,8,9,12,15,18,19,20

✿  Does anyone in real life know about your RPing hobby and what, if anything, have they said about it?

My parents know, because for as long as I’ve been on the internet, they’ve known that I like to write and write with friends overseas. My dad still calls it fanfiction somtimes to other people, like he’s proud of me or something, and that’s enough to make me want to never talk to him again out of embarrassment, ha, but I deal with it. Because I truly do love writing more than anything. Other than that, my boyfriend knows, but he doesn’t care about it / ask questions and I don’t really like to tell him about it either. I’m not as embarrassed about RP as I used to be, but I still feel like it’s just something for me that other people wouldn’t really understand the mechanics of. The only times my boyfriend and I do acknowledge it is when I start talking about an RP friend he hasn’t heard about before like a real life friend, so he’s like who dat and im like oh, new rp friend from > insert country <, and hes like oh ok. That’s about the extent of it.

That being said, he actually did surprise me the other week and I have been holding onto it for fear life. We were complaining about a friend who literally just sleeps and watches Netflix all day when she’s not working, and he’s like “I don’t get how you can do that” and im like “Well I have friends online who claim to do that a lot. Me, personally, I’d get too bored.” and hes like “I just don’t get how people can do nothing all the time? Like at least with you and your online stuff, that’s still doing something. I just feel like that’s actually a hobby.” and I kind of didn’t hear whatever else it is he said because he actually ??? referred to my RP addiction as something valid and worthy??? and all this time i’ve assumed he didn’t get it and thought it was dumb??? IDK, it made me feel good.

✿  Have you considered writing professionally or do you have plans to?

Always. But I never will, I don’t think.

✿  How do you handle the toxicity sometimes found in the roleplaying community, particularly in fandoms?How has roleplaying, specifically, impacted your life?

I use tumblr savior to blacklist a lot, because it really gets too much for me to be exposed to it a lot, and it makes me feel shitty and not want to rp with certain people because of how they behave, or makes me feel guilty for how I behave… I usually drift away from things that give me major negative vibes, otherwise I become in great, exponential danger of saying something i’ll regret. I’ve hated Tumblr RP a lot in this last year. It’s nowhere near as relaxed as it used to be, and I know there’s a lot of political debate on the topic of equality but I am not comfortable in a space where I have to edit everything I do and say or just not do or say it at all. When it gets like that level, a good dose of the unfollow button and keeping my mouth shut is what I find the most helpful.

✿  How has writing improved your life and do you see yourself sticking with it?

When I graduated high school, I went to college for art and animation, and it basically ruined my creative life. Before RP, I used to be an avid drawer, I sketched every day, I improved my skills and motivation so much, everyone knew me as the girl who drew in class instead of did her work, the girl who was going to grow up and be a famous artist, and when I went to college, it killed that for me. My ego took a big blow because the tech side of the course absolutely annihilated me, i couldn’t do it. so after that (and that was 2 years ago now) i haven’t really drawn since. but the silver lining was that I took on RP more dedicatedly after that, and found that I truly adored writing. Try as I might, I’ve never really comitted to a personal writing project, and it’s only in the recent times that I’ve taken the pressure off for me to do it, but. RP makes me happy, it makes me feel like I’m doing something good when I reply to people or make new friendships, it makes me feel like I’m wanted and needed, that my characters and plots are valid and that other people would care if I’m here or not. It was a big boost for my self confidence, and it’s also made me so much more privy to the creative world, which i needed after that. so yeah, i see myself sticking with writing.

✿  Is there a quote from a piece of literature that holds great value to you? What is it and why is it important to you?

She stood in front of her closet mirror in her T-shirt and twisted this way and that. What’s wrong with me? She wondered. There was nothing the matter that she could see. She was tall and leggy, like her mother, with full breasts, small waist, and slim hips that curved enough to show she was female. Her skin was gently golden; it was always golden, sun or not, and her tawny hair was thick and long and wild. So why was it that groups of girls stopped talking when she approached them at school and answered her openings with tense words that killed the conversations she tried to start? Was she too good-looking? Was that possible? Was that the threat they saw? 

Legitimately, this was the first and pretty much only female protagonist I had ever read about who fully and whole-heartedly loved herself where it mattered. Sure, she still had her shortcomings and moments of weakness, but god damn, Vivian was so proud of herself and what she stood for, and that was so refreshing to see during that period of young adult fiction. It’s why she became my first favourite character from a book. And has pretty much inspired me to write feirce, aggressive, self-assured female characters ever since. I was just so inspired by her way of thinking as a young girl, it appealed to me so much and so that moment in the book plus a whole lot of others, really stuck with me.

✿  What do you typically look for in a roleplay partner?

Cliche, but chemistry. And not always in the writing kind but a lot in the OOC kind. I like people who I can talk to super easily, who write in the same tumblr language I do, who reference memes and are not afraid to hit me up with IMs and head canons, etc. I just love it because it makes me feel comfortable with a person, and like I’m not being a bother. The better I get to know a player, the better I get to know their character away from IC interactions. Likewise, I adore it when players get to know me so well that they read the patterns in my characters easily, and I don’t feel like I have to explain them all the time? It’s like they just know, and they know what path I want to put them on. I also look for honesty, people who are down to tell me what they’re feeling about a situation or whether something bothers them, or is able to voice if I’m doing something wrong. Most importantly though, I look for decisive people. Not overly decisive but it’s just so important for me to have someone who is like “yes that sounds good, i can start a thing for you if you want” or “i dont think that really fits, how about this plot idea instead?” I really cannot stand sending IMs to people about plots and characters and them just agreeing off the bat the whole time, but never really deciding on anything either, and so it makes me feel like i’m just paddling in a circle until i make all the decisions for us. To me, that’s not what RP is about. It involves teamwork, and effort, and to me, that’s not putting in effort. It gets me really frustrated.

✿  What made you want to join the roleplaying community?

I kept seeing bios in celebrity tags, and so when i sussed out what group rp was on tumblr, i was like holy shit there is a name for the thing i have been doing with friends over email for so many years???? and you can use PICTURES? i gotta get on this.

so somehow, i found a group rp that allowed mythical creatures, i wanted to be a peter pan mermaid, and the rest is history~~

✿  What one piece of literature has been most inspirational/life changing for you? Why?

(( Blood & Chocolate, by Anette Curtis Klause — because of the main character, as per mentioned. She’s inspired me to write full-on, aggressive, assertive, don’t-tell-me-what-i-can-and-cant-do female characters without apology. ))

The Truth About Forever  by Sarah Dessen — it’s hard to explain exactly why, and it doesnt even just involve ONE of her books either, but they’ve kind of shaped my whole general character story directions?? her books always follow a pattern and i really admire that pattern, even if it is repetitive, and i am secretly a hopeless romantic so i really like how her love stories evolve. it’s always slow burning, the boy is usually a direct surprising love interest, and the girl always gains new friends and family out of it, and the stories always involve a nice little reoccurring theme. In the Truth About Forever, it’s a game that she and a boy plays throughout the entire book, which eventually leads to a shift from friendship to something more. THAT PLOT HAS APPEALED TO ME EVERY SINCE. the example of a teeny, tiny, otherwise-completely-average moment greatly impacting the rest of a characters life with someone else… i am weAK for this concept ok. her females are always usally feircely independent too and that gets me ♥

✿  Who are your top three favorite fictional characters and why?

Vivian Gandillon (Blood & Chocolate) — i swear i could go on repeat forever haha, but i’ve basically already mentioned why.

Jace Herondale (Shadowhunter Series) — back when the first like, two books had only been published, i super fell hard for this series and it was straight up because of the commentary done by Jace and his ability to senselessly bicker with everybody in his path. his comments to me, were always absolutely hysterical. i was so in love with his wry and witty comments, especially the way he kept at ease and casual through super distressing situations, and i really wish id kept reading the rest of the series as it was published, but i seriously fell behind. then the movie came out. then the netflix series. now i’ve grown too far out of it and having to see the cast on my dash every second of every day makes me want to burn the books.

Shane Collins (Morganville Vampire Series) — this is an oooold old series that i used to read religiously, and it was more in the style of anita blake and buffy vampires~ rather than twilight and true blood -esque content. it got really weird and complicated though so i gave up on it, but for a time, i adored it. and i loved shane because he was hilariously human, he hated everybody except his housemates (though sometimes that could be questioned) and nobody held a grudge better than him. he had a knack for getting in trouble, usually on his own accord, was feircely protective and spent most of his time just being a genuine nuisance and temper tantrum thrower. i saw a lot of me in him, and idk. i just like people with tempers, i think it makes them super fun to read. 

[amorremanet]

10, 23, 37, 42

asks for fanfic writers.

10. how do you do your researches?

Depends on what I’m researching, but usually, it starts with Google and/or Wikipedia, unless I have other sources that are immediately on-hand, or that have pointed me to places I should be looking. Sometimes, I’ll go use my grad student access to various academic databases for something that is actually useful.

Then, I filter through the stuff to find contradictions I should look at, find the pieces that are unreliable (e.g., gossip journalism with no demonstrable basis in fact, history about POC that was written by white people, LGBTIQ history written by straight people, things that might have been questionably translated, etc.). And then I sorta have to play it by ear, because this is about when it starts getting more variable, based on what I’m researching and what I’ve found or not.

23. least favorite story you’ve ever written

Do you want me to go chronologically or alphabetically? That being said:

* A lot of my old school, “I wrote this when I was fifteen and so deeply closeted that I was Katniss Everdeen levels of, ‘Everybody seems to know my secrets before I know them myself’ before Katniss was even a character who existed, and I really, really thought I was straight for like a minute. A really extended minute” Wolfstar fics are capital-B BAD.

Like, they’re OOC as fuck, they buy into all of the heterosexist and misogynistic top/bottom bullshit that fandom is still so fond of, I forced myself to write a bunch of fluff that I hated and that is absolutely disgusting to me because it’s: 1. overly derivative of “The Shoebox Project” but with absolutely no nuance or depth (so like, the fanon version of TSBP), because, like every other Wolfstar shipper at the time, I loved it and unfortunately, I subsequently emulated it way too much in my own writing, because I was fifteen and thought the only way to find any kind of a place or friends in fandom was to do the popular thing

Pro-tip, kids at home: this is an absolutely bullshit way to try and find a place or friends in fandom. It just straight up DOES NOT WORK.

All of the happy feels that resemble friendship you get will be totally surface-level at best, and unless you are really socially competent — which I was and still am not — you won’t be able to translate it into any meaningful connections with anyone else, because they won’t really be accepting YOU.

They will be giving you attention and appreciation, but you’ll be more or less the same as everyone else who’s doing The Popular Thing Of The Moment, especially if you’re creating content for a huge ship, like Wolfstar was at the time — or for newer examples, like K*laine, like S*terek, like V*iktuuri, like Skittles after a certain point, like [insert literally any popular dudeslash otp here] — but they won’t be accepting YOU, YOURSELF.

If what you are legitimately into happens to be The Popular Thing, then disregard this and keep doing your thing because you’re doing it in earnest and that means that you actually ARE sharing yourself with people through the content you make, and have an actual chance of finding a fannish place for yourself and finding friends in fandom who actually value you as a person, and not just as a creator of The Popular Thing.

But for everybody who’s just doing The Popular Thing because it happens to be The Popular Thing? No. Stop that. You are better and you deserve so much better than that.

Find what really makes you happy. This is a deceptively simple idea, because finding your bliss as a content creator — or the thing that gives you the most sense of purpose as a content creator, since tbh, finding happiness as a content creator is often going to feel pretty impossible — it’s hard. It takes time. It takes a lot of trial and error, it takes soul-searching, it might very well take skydiving and seeing what flashes through your mind (it didn’t for me but I wouldn’t be very surprised if it did for someone)

—but whatever it takes? Find what kind of content it REALLY makes you happy to create, and then do that. It won’t always be The Popular Thing, and yes, let’s be honest, it will fucking suck to put your heart and soul into something, only to feel like people are just totally ignoring it.

But it’s also more likely to help you find people who genuinely share your interests and who are more likely to click with you (especially out in Rarepair Hell; there aren’t enough of us, so we sometimes end up bonding more tightly), and in the end?

Artistic integrity and truly making something that you can be proud of? That’s worth more than how many kudos or followers you can get by doing The Popular Thing when your heart isn’t actually in it.

This has been the most pretentious, “you’re a star, baby, just be yourself” PSA ever, and now back to our regularly scheduled self-deprecation!

and 2. Those old Wolfstar fluff pieces I wrote are gross to me now because they are so fucking emotionally dishonest — both to how Sirius and Remus are as characters, and to how I felt at the time, which was, “meh, varying degrees of miserable but with no functional idea why this is and even less of an idea of how to articulate it” — because I was so desperate to be accepted somewhere and get validation in the form of people on FF.net liking my terrible fanfic.

Like, every sin you can commit as a writer, I probably committed it with those fics and as such, they’re all completely atrocious. Even the “angsty” ones aren’t worth shit because I copped out and gave most of them either pasted-on happy endings or, “lol i am using canon as an excuse to not do a happy ending but i’m still not actually exploring everything as much as it deserves la la laaaaaa~ (somebody please please love me)” endings. They are all hooooooorrible, period, end of discussion.

There’s exactly one (1) that I wouldn’t burn if it were an actual printed book, and it’s the one that has ‘vaguely genderfluid but I didn’t have that word in my vocabulary in 2005’!Sirius having gender and presentation feels about wearing pretty skirts, and a parallel Hermione/Luna story about soft dapper butch!Hermione having gender and presentation feels about wanting to wear suits that were Totally Not Inspired By The Pics from And Fanart of Tipping The Velvet That I’d Seen Online, Nuh Uh, Nope (except that they totally were).

It’s still pretty, “meh” because I wrote it when I was fifteen, and if I were to rewrite it now, I’d do a looooot of things differently but still. It’s about the only not-horrible thing I ever wrote.

oh wait, actually? There are two (2) that I wouldn’t burn.

The other one, I wrote right after we first got HBP and found out that Remus had been out with the werewolves, on Top Seekrit Spy Missions!!! — it had Albus (who was still assumed by most of us to probably be having it off in secret with McGoogles because DH hadn’t happened yet and brought us G*rindeldore For Real Though) going to his office after handling shit with Harry and the kids and all of the Order members who got injured at the battle at the end of OOTP

Because it was a Wolfstar fic, Remus is naturally in said office.

It’s, like, dawn or getting close to it, and Albus is like, “well fuck shit dammit, how am i supposed to have this conversation with Remus when he’s probably going to clam up and emotionally retreat and try to say that he isn’t hurting about losing Sirius, and i can’t entirely call him on it without invalidating him — which i am especially sensitive to at the moment because Harry just almost called me out on it lol — and it’s not like his and Sirius’s relationship was ever simple like fuck, they have one of the most complicated relationships i’ve ever seen, crap fuck dammit, remus make this easy on both of us and let me comfort you okay”

And Remus is just like, “no, fuck that, dnw”

“i don’t suppose that i can ask what you’re planning to do”

“well i’m homeless again but it’s nbd”

“the order still has headquarters—”

“I AM NOT GOING TO LIVE IN GRIMMAULD PLACE WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF SUGGESTION IS THAT”

“i’m just saying—”

“please just give me some pasted-on condolences and then give me a mission so i don’t have to think about anything”

“that sounds like one of the most emotionally unhealthy ideas that you have ever had this week”

“hey, so, you need somebody to go do reconnaissance/outreach with the werewolves, right”

“um i think that can wait—”

“NO IT CAN’T TELL ME TO GO UNDERGROUND WITH THE OTHER GODDAMN WEREWOLVES”

“…………*dumble-sighs* remus, will you please go underground to do information gathering and outreach with the werewolves :/”

“yes. thank you, professor. i absolutely will.”

“this is still one of your worst ideas ever, jsyk”

“la la la can’t hear you over the sound of you giving me permission to do it la la la”

this is, at best, a really sketchy recreation of it that isn’t historically accurate on the grounds that i’m writing the sketch with the view of canon that i have now — minus the obvious omission of the Truth of Grindeldore — but that’s the basic outline of things

if I were to rewrite the thing now, I would do a lot of things differently

but the original fic isn’t completely without its merits, even if it could be a lot better

* “Close Enough For Rock and Roll” — Absolutely terrible, forever abandoned WIP because it’s absolutely terrible. It’s completely bogus D*estiel cis mpreg that has no reason to exist because it’s TERRIBLE. I cringe so hard whenever I get any FF.net emails about people liking it because…… ew. no. why would you even. I don’t even know you but plz. Love yourself and read something better, you deserve that.

* It is a closely-guarded secret of mine — by which I mean that it’s on my FF.net account — that once upon a time, I wrote D*rarry not once, but twice. They’re patently horrible fics, and there’s a reason for that. Namely: I don’t ship it, I have never shipped it, I have never for the life of me understood why it is A Thing, and I am never, ever GOING to ship it — usually, this would be shooting myself in the foot but it’s been 16+ years and I still don’t ship it, so I think I’m in the clear — but the girl I was in love with at the time dared me to write it, just to see if I could. She had a beautiful smile, but I refused to lose.

The fics are garbage and the only reason I don’t regret them is that nah nah nah nah nah nah, I won.

* It is a less closely-guarded secret of mine — by which I mean that it is up on my AO3 — that I wrote NC-17 S*terek once. I hate it a bit less than everything else I’ve listed here, because it’s not completely awful and I wrote it for a friend who’d been having a shitty time of things, and hey, it made her happy so mission accomplished — but it’s still pretty bad. It has a Derek who’s a darker shade of morally gray than he usually is and unnecessarily special!Stiles and consent that is at best highly questionable (though at least I acknowledge it and tagged it as such).

But mostly I hate it because I don’t actually ship that and have so many better fics but ugh, of course the garbage, poorly-written porn for the fandom’s favorite OTP is one of my most popular fics on AO3. UGGGGGGGGGGGGH.

37. canon or AU?

*shrugs* Both are good, it depends on how I feel today.

42. do you plan or do you write whatever comes to your mind?

………Can I just say, “yes” and leave it at that, like??? Sometimes one, sometimes the other, but usually, it’s a mix of both?

[anxietyfilledscreaming-blog]

My Mental Health Month Input

Homestuck, seriously, helped me in my darkest times. Highschool was THE worst years of my life and honestly made me lose hope for my own future. It made me pissed off at the world to where I wanted the planet to be destroyed, i wanted to kill almost everyone i knew, and made me question existence in general because i truely hated the human race.

I wont get into details about how it helped me, any fan of it knows exactly what I'm talking about, and if you've haven't read it, you should honestly give it a try. The art style is a bit odd, and yes its kinda boring at first, and very confusing, but trust me it's amazing.

But my biggest issue now is that, I'm still super hyped over it. My hype hasnt died down one single bit because its just made THAT much of an impact on my life and i just love it so so much. The problem with that, is that the rest of the fandom has basically gone so quiet that its like over half of us are gone. The very few people i knew that liked it and read it with me, now dont care for it and almost seem to get annoyed anytime i talk about it.

Now, that might not seem like much, but it just really SADDENS me to such an extent. How can this fandom, the most accepting and loving fandom, go quiet so quickly, as if the comic never existed? The cosplay groups I always watched now hardly post anything, infact any good Homestuck cosplayers are almost hard to find now, and it just makes me so legitimately sad.

I honestly can't wait for Hiveswap to come out. Not just because its a Homestuck game all fans have been dying for, but because I CAN'T WAIT to turn around and see a fucking nuke of grey grease paint, fake horns, wigs, shades, tab, and faygo explode off in the distance and watch as fans pop out of hiding spots left and right so we can all be one huge ass family again. I can't wait for the cosplay to kick back up, for new huge sprite sheets to spawn from deviantart (props to you motherfuckers for having the patience to make those so fans can make their fantrolls), for walls and walls of text that are nothing but theories of how this and that works, for the ungodly amounts of fanfiction for who knows what OTPs will come from it, just ugh, I can't wait.

This year's 4/13 revived some hope in me, tbh i thought the fandom was dying out but just seeing all the posts from that gave me enough of a sneak peak to assure me that when Hiveswap drops everyone will come back with so much new excitement.

Now, why am I posting this for the Mental Health Month thing?

I have VERY bad Social Anxiety. To the point that I'd say its crippling (i haven't gotten tested yet). However, if I think about cosplaying with some Homestucks or even performing something with some Homestucks, I don't feel one single bit of nervousness. I get excited, I get overwhelmingly happy, and that's just me THINKING about it. I haven't been to a single con in my LIFE yet (just for the record I'm 20, almost 21), you'd think that since I have this particular disorder that the very thought of those things would freak me out, but it doesn't at all! Its the one thing that involves social interaction that DOESN'T make me scared. I want to do it SO BAD, but I wont do it alone because I'd feel way to awkward to be a lone Homestuck cosplayer, and I just honestly love doing stuff with friends but none of my real life friends will even give the comic a chance. If I had just one or two friends that would cosplay with me, that'd be SUCH a huge way to help me overcome my harsh anxiety, so if you know anyone that has anxiety and asks you or even begs you to give something they're obsessed with a chance, please PLEASE give it a chance. It will give them something good to talk about instead of them having to rack their brain for conversation topics that have a 50/50 chance of ending in awkward silences. Awkward moments can trigger an episode quicker than anything when it comes to anxiety because it'll replay in our heads over and over, and we just end up overthinking until we practically fry our circuits.

Friend want you to check out an anime? Give it a chance. Friend want you to check out a book series? Give it a chance. Friend obsessed with a horror movie? Let them tell you their favorite parts and why.

A good geek-out session can be the best medication we could ever have and is worth it.

[mugknife]

Somebody soberer then me should list out rest of the common fandom shorthands for the Rookies

i had a thought of "do people not know what AUs are anymore?" and then i remembered nobody explains fandom stuff to new people anymore so it is entirely plausible people genuinely don't know what AUs are and nobody has explained it to them, so for today's lucky 10,000:

"AU" stands for "Alternate Universe" or "Alternative Universe" (same difference) and is basically any thought scenario for a fandom that isn't canon and can't fit within the canon universe. If it takes place in the canon universe but something is notably different, that is typically what's known as a "Canon divergent AU," because it diverges from canon.

an AU can be absolutely anything. There's a couple of widespread pan-fandom au scenarios that often get thrown around, like coffee shop aus, genderbend aus, hanahaki aus (hanahaki is a whole thing in itself i'd recommend researching on your own), etc. One you might hear sometimes is "crossover AU" which is when you have characters from one fandom interacting with characters from another.

You can have as many aus as you want. They can be whatever you want and you can do whatever you want in them. It's a sandbox for you to play around in and explore how things would be different or how the characters would act in those circumstances or environments. Maybe they have different relationships with each other. Maybe they behave slightly differently. Or you can just say "Okay, [x] is true. How did they get here? How would things have to be different for this to occur?" which can also be fun.

If you are ever confused about why people ship something that seems completely out of the blue or doesn't make sense to you in the canon setting, there's a good chance they like it in an AU setting! Not everything everybody is interacting with is necessarily the canon! Not everybody wants things to exist in canon and just want to explore playing dolls in a different sandbox and that's okay. And their sandbox might look a lot different than yours, and that's also okay. You have the freedom to make your sandbox whatever you please. Do whatever you want forever. Get funky with it. AUs are fun.

Okay that's my schpeal. everybody go have fun and play nice now.