#my personal tag is very helpful in that i can scroll through it before therapy so i can remember what to talk about

[sob-dylan]

i made my friends laugh a lot tonight and it made me so so so happy, but then on my drive home i started thinking about how it probably says something about my psychology that i care this much about people thinking i'm funny and got ready to go on this whole spiral until i stopped myself and said no! you dummie! people like to make their friends laugh! that's normal and healthy! it's hard work but i am slowly learning to be less of a dumbass. or at least a dumbass that's a little kinder to herself 🙃🙃🙃

[goodluckclove]

I've been meaning to say something. (100 follower hot take)

Hey! Thanks for stopping by. I hope you've had a nice day. Why don't you rest with me for a while? I made some chocolate chip cookies - with shortening instead of butter, so they're very soft and very chocolatey. I made way too many and they aren't my wife's favorite, so I could use some help in eating them.

You're probably a writer, right? Or maybe you think about how you could be. Browse the tags here, or on other social media platforms. Maybe you used to write stories as a kid. I bet those were fun. Teachers might've thought they were impressive, or they dissected them line by line until the words didn't make sense in your head anymore. Either way, if you're here you're probably here for a reason.

(rant alert)

I dipped a toe in online writing communities on and off. My last attempt was forty-five minutes scrolling through the writing hashtag on Youtube Shorts (so TikTok, I guess? I don't know). I didn't like it. I really didn't. The thing that sticks out the strongest in my mind is one particular video where a woman claims that every story needs a second act plot twist.

Huh? Every story? All of them? Why? Since when? Who are you? What qualifications do you have to make a statement like that?

That's the common thread that makes a lot of writing spaces very uncomfortable for me. Successful writers are really only successful in their genre and for the given moment, so they don't have that much objective authority in the craft. And yet I see a lot of people deciding the things that you can't do in writing. Or the things you have to do, and how you have to do them. It was so much of Writeblr at first glance that I almost dipped out once again. I didn't, though, and I'm glad I didn't because now I get to watch some of the next great storytellers from across the world grow and examine and forge their way forward.

No one can teach you how to write. No, that's not true. Teachers teach literacy. Handwriting. Typing maybe - do schools still teach typing? Let me try saying it in a different way - no one, not one single person on this goddamned planet, has the right to tell you how to make a story.

I was supposed to get my MFA in creative writing before my first breakdown. My uncle stayed in the program I was meant to be in, and a few years after I dropped out he graduated. Recently I had the thought to look up his thesis novella, and as I searched I found myself regretting my decision to leave school. If I stayed and got to develop my writing in an actual class, with other writers and a knowledgeable professor, how much further along would I be than where I am right now?

It was bad. His novella was terrible. It was so bad I had a small existential crisis for, like, three days. He spent so much money on years and years of professional education and came out with a truly soulless story that read as if you prompted an AI to write the next Great American Novel. So if you think you need a writing degree to be a legitimate author, it could help connections-wise, but it ultimately won't be the thing that does the work for you.

Not all advice I see online on writing is bad. I find the people who are able to capture the "I" statements of therapy and phrase advice as things that have worked for them, or things that they personally enjoy, to be fine. Some writing advice can spark inspiration.

But if someone is the type of person to boil every story down to troupes and cliches, and then immediately say that every story that uses the trait they don't like is automatically bad for everyone? I'm dropping the kindness for a second - that's trash. That's a trash take and I see far too many writers use it as a reason to stop before they begin.

I don't like whump. I say my reasons in previous posts if you go back through my blog. But you will never hear me say that any story with whump in it is bad, because I don't know that. You might prove me wrong. I am an adult human being and I have the humility to admit that I can like something I didn't expect to. I genuinely enjoy the direction of The Human Centipede (only the first one) and if you cringed just now that probably means you haven't seen it.

There are so many types of books and movies and plays and comics out there. To enjoy a specific genre is fine, to ignore the existence of everything else is a really, really, really odd thing to do. Maybe someone will hate your story because they think everything should be Neil Gaiman, and therefore have no way to understand your epistolary high-Western. You are not the wrong end of that situation just for existing.

And at there is a definite threshold on how many writing tips you can gather before they stop being useful. If you find them interesting, that's one thing. That's fine. But if the culture of creativity online has made you feel like you need to educate yourself on every possible angle before you can write a story, you are actively harming yourself.

Imagine taking the level of structure you put on yourself in that way and putting it on children playing pretend in the backyard. Oh, Susie, don't you know that it's overdone for your Kitsune have dead parents? Xyler, shouldn't you ask someone else before you decide how Spiderman would react to this? It would make no sense and they do not need it. Kids will make a whole world out of nothing and it's the most fucked thing in my heart that at some point they get access to Reddit and dipshits start insisting that's wrong.

They aren't wrong and you aren't either. Your favorite creative influencer can't tell you your story, strangers on the internet can't tell you your story, your teachers and loved ones can't tell you your story. They can influence it, but they can't write it honestly the way you can.

You do that. That's the thing you do.

Man that makes me upset. I can't tell you how to make a story, either. If anyone sends me asks for writing advice the most I'll do is say what I've done before hopping into your DMs and starting a direct conversation. it's so personal to each individual artist, and I'd like to think that the people selling these classes and software and promoting these platforms haven't thought about that before. Otherwise it does feel manipulative. If you have a willingness to practice and imagine and really experiment with the possibilities, you are ready to write your story.

And if it doesn't work? Try again. That's what you do.

Stephen King has written roughly a thousand books and maybe five of them have decent endings. He is unimaginably successful.

I'm rambling now. I think I got that out of my system. I was really worried to say this out of fear of being too weird or somehow reverse-gatekeeping so hard that it circles back into also being a bad thing. I've just spoken to a lot of people who I still think of throughout my day, and I truly ache for them to get past the fear of creation. Because it's worth it. It's worth it and it's fun, even when it's messy and you're tired.

Let it Be just came on. Beatles. I haven't listened to The Beatles in a long time. Feels a little apropos.

I love you, reader. Reader, Writer, Colleague. Take care of yourself. Especially the little you, still sitting there in the backyard of your soul, bathing in the sun with their bare feet in the damp earth.

Consider joining them, maybe.

[gibbearish]

"Am I Trans?" UQuiz Masterpost

hey there folks, my pinned was getting a bit unwieldy so i figured itd be prudent to set up this landing pad for uquiz visitors. this is not the FAQ, that is still in the works, this is just the intro stuff moved to its own post.

so, with all that out of the way, welcome! my asks and messages are currently OPEN and response times are SLOW. i will be updating this post on a regular basis, so if that says open then you can rest assured it is still current. or if it's not and i forgot to update it, that's on me, not you.

before anything else, i do just want to make it extremely, deeply, incredibly, achingly, transparently clear that i am not in any way a certified / licensed gender therapist. i do not have any training, nor is there an ethics board with which you can take up a complaint if i end up misreading things. i am simply a trans person on the internet who noticed a couple years ago that there were pretty much no "am i trans" quizzes that i could find that werent uhhh let's say unhelpful, and so i made my own, using my own feelings and experiences as a starting point. i may misread you, i may project myself or previous visitors onto you, i may get frustrated with you, i may be wrong about you. i ask that you try to give me grace, to remember that i am human, and to proceed at your own risk.

i take these conversations very seriously and want to be as thorough as possible, but that takes a good deal of work / effort / energy to do well, and as i am currently over a year into a massive depressive episode, that all compounds into long response times. which i do understand can be frustrating, feeling like you're waiting for someone's permission to be yourself (although if that is how it makes you feel, consider what that might say about the answer - i am not actually holding you back from anything by not responding. you can be trans, you don't need my permission or anyone else's. only your own), but i ask for patience, and that you please refrain from spamming me every time i come online. playing stardew valley is a lot less taxing than doing bootleg internet therapy. i haven't forgotten about you, i just havent found the right words yet.

in the meantime, i would recommend a quick scroll through my #uquibberish tag, which contains any asks from other uquiz visitors as well as posts i think are thematically relevant to a lot of these conversations. who knows, maybe you'll find that the answers you seek are very similar to the answers i've given another.

one thing to note is that asks do take a good deal less mental energy to respond to given the more one-and-done nature, so responses to those will likely be faster than for DMs, however i won't be able to get as personal (unless you give me a lot to work with, please do not feel self conscious about sending long asks/messages, they really are quite helpful in terms of giving me stuff to analyze). i also sometimes get a little silly with the ask responses, however i will still always make sure to include a real answer of some sort in the tags.

that all being said, i really do need to stress the fact that i am a real person you are talking to. i am not a gender therapy chatbot and i am not paid to do this. i do this because i want to help, but in order to do that successfully, i need your help as well. i do not know you as a person beyond the things that you tell me, and i am both unable and unwilling to simply assign you a new gender, to pluck your "true" gender out of your head. usually, all i really end up doing is pointing out what things are holding you back from the answer you already know. if you are unwilling to tell me anything about your thoughts and feelings, then i'm sorry, but i'm just. not going to be able to help you out very much. figuring out who you are is something that is difficult and takes a lot of introspection, and is something that you may even never actually get a solid answer on. the question you should be asking is not "what am i, really?" but "what do i want to be? what would it make me happy to be? how would i like to exist in my time on this earth?"

now, with all of that out of the way, i do also know that it can be difficult to know where to start, so here is a rough list of things that i've found helpful in the past. you do not need to provide any of these if you are not comfortable doing so, they are here exclusively to give ideas on where to start. now, with that out of the way:

- age range: to be clear, i do not need to know your exact age and you should always be wary of someone who asks for that. that being said, a general range can be pretty helpful for me to contextualize your message to your stage of life. like, think "middle school vs. high school vs. college or older" type general range.

- similarly, what country/state you live in, and if non-US, a bit about your local political climate vis a vis trans people. once again i do not want or need your exact location and you should be wary of those who try to get it from you, but for a lot of people, the main thing holding them back from transitioning is that the world simply isn't a safe place for trans people at the moment, so knowing if that is in play can be very helpful. I am a USAmerican and have a pretty good grasp of which way the states here tend to lean, and have a much rougher grasp on other countries. I don't want to go into this with some wildly propagandized version of your home in my head and would much prefer to get my information about it from you, the person being actively affected.

- your quiz answer and how it made you feel: with this one the important part is really the second part. i said this in the quiz itself but it bears repeating, i do not have any knowledge of how to properly weight the answers in a personality test, i assigned each answer a result (or multiple results) based entirely on vibes. that being said, if you are now having a lot of complicated feelings about your result, those feelings are the ones we're going to be examining. whether you've been having these feelings for a long time or they only just recently started, if you've been quizhopping searching for an answer (and if there's been a common denominator among those answers that you're avoiding looking in the eye), what the shape of those feelings are, that's the kind of thing we're going to be looking at. don't feel bad if you can't see the feelings themselves yet, this is an exercise in finding the negative space. the thing about facing the things you don't want to face is that you don't want to face them, which sounds obvious put like that, but like. you can't look straight at the sun without the right glasses. not without hurting yourself. the things your brain hides from you, takes away your ability to look at, are hidden for a reason, there is something that is scaring you, something you are defending against, a knot that must be unraveled before we can continue unwinding the thread. it's ok if all you can do for now is point to where the knot is.

- what name you used on the quiz and what day you took it: uquiz allows you to view individual quiz taker's results so if you are comfortable with it, i'm happy to take a peek through to see if there are any trends. as i write this the quiz is sitting at good god, 13000 takers, so if you keysmashed a name unfortunately it has probably been lost to the sands of time :( that being said...

- any questions / answers that hit especially hard: here is a link to a google doc where i've compiled all the questions and answers as reference, so this way if we can't find your quiz or you don't want to share the whole thing, we still have a pretty good starting point on which parts apply to you (side note, i also have a feedback form, however i couldnt think of very many specific questions to ask so just put in two textboxes for you to put your suggestions in)

- family dynamics: as with the country of origin question, something that can hold a lot of trans people back from transitioning is pressure from their family to. well. to not do that, so knowing if that is contributing can be very helpful

- friend dynamics: same as above, some people are held back by the potential reaction of their friendgroup, or alternatively are certain their friends would react positively but still can't shake that feeling, and figuring out if that fear is warranted can be a huge stepping stone in this.

that's all i have for now, though this post may be subject to changes as time goes on. as i said before i am also (slowly) working on a FAQ, so hopefully soon we'll have a way to bridge the response time gap. in the meantime, i hope this was helpful, and i do again highly recommend taking a look through the #uquibberish tag to see if any past questions/answers might apply to you as well. thanks!

(last edited 9/8/24)

[theharrowing]

"writing some of the darker themes is always going to evoke some negative feelings and invite controversy, but for those of us who find it cathartic, i think it can be very warm and healing."

wow lol what a playful way to say you like to write about rape, murder and abuse. please seek therapy.

friends, sorry i can’t post content warnings before messages, but you can see what this one deals with. my response doesn’t have such blatant language, but feel free to skip this post if it makes you uncomfortable. 

hello, darling anon! thank you for taking the time to write such a concise, thoughtful message! it always brightens my day to hear from strangers online who clearly have no experience with my actual body of work, nor knowledge of who i am as a person, and who hide behind anonymity and self-righteousness.

funny you should assume that i have not sought therapy, but you may be surprised to find that those from whom i have turned to for counsel have told me the very opposite, and have had some pretty interesting, deep conversations with me about catharsis and nuance.

writing and reading about darker topics is cathartic to some, whether you like it or not. it's fine if you disagree, but you can literally just scroll on without complaining. it's actually free of cost to curate your space in a way that feels safe for you and only engage in content that you feel safe engaging with.

i am reminded of a really thoughtful twitter thread on this topic, and i will post some individual tweets from that thread here, with links to each tweet, starting with this graphic:

(image link)

You do not "own" trauma. Some random stranger is NOT "romanticizing (your) trauma" when they write about or draw fictional characters in a traumatic situation. In many cases, the person is writing about THEIR OWN trauma using fictional characters. It has nothing to do with you. (link)

You're gonna see triggering things online. That's how the internet works. It's like Russian Roulette. Even if you utilize mute and block features, sometimes things still slip through the cracks and you see triggering stuff anyway. It's a risk that comes with using the internet. (link)

So the fact that people are complaining about fanart and fanfic - THINGS THAT ARE USUALLY TAGGED - is infuriating to me. You see that the fanfic has triggering tropes in the tag? Don't read it. You see an art tag that upsets you? Mute the tag so you won't see it on your tl. (link)

The internet is not a true "safe space." There's no way to 100% safety proof the internet to your specific comforts. I'm not saying this to be cruel. I'm just being realistic and practical. You can't blame others because your personal trauma was triggered by a random thing online (link)

If you see triggering content online on accident, that sucks and I'm so sorry that you experienced that. But it is not anyone's fault. People are allowed to post (nearly) anything they want online (especially in fandom spaces when fictional characters are involved)- (link)

It's not your fault either, especially when you take precautions like using muted terms. It's just an accident and the nature of the internet. And getting angry and upset at random strangers isn't going to help anything. (link)

You're allowed to feel discomfort ofc. But this misplaced... entitlement? Anger at others for posting fictional content? That isn't it. That's not the way to deal with that. (link)

It's a waste of energy, first of all. Good luck trying to get people to stop posting things that upset you. It's a lost cause. No matter how much I dislike (certain tropes), this is the World Wide Web that billions of people have access to and people will post that thing anyway- (link)

So it's better to just - as best as you can - let it roll of your shoulders. It is literally impossible to stop people from posting the thing (especially in fandom) so instead, switch your energy to seeking out things that you know appeal to you and bring you good feelings. (link)

You see something triggering? You close the window, take a moment to yourself, start fresh and find something that is more appealing or healing to you. Feeling discomfort or being upset is fine. Trying to go on some crusade to stop it? It's just not practical, I'm sorry. (link)

Being angry about others posting certain fictional content is like being disgusted by seafood and going to a restaurant and getting angry and upset because the diner the table next to you ordered fish. You are at a place that can and does serve fish. (link)

It's not practical to get upset at them about it. You can be annoyed or irritated that now you had to smell fish during your dinner. But you can't be angry at the restaurant or the servers or the other person for doing what they are allowed to do in that space. (link)

Also - you can complain about it, I guess! My issue is y'all need to stop demonizing people who are into darker FICTIONAL themes and who tag their content. You can dislike their crap yeah but stop acting like they're literally Satan and stop blaming them and fiction for abuse. (link)

...i think that sums up, pretty well, my thoughts on the matter. and, again, if you disagree, that is perfectly within your rights. but accusing folks of romanticizing something awful (which is what your message felt like) is...silly. grow up. hide tags, mute words, block me! it's really so easy.

thanks for the message, sweetie! have a great night!

[opinated-user]

Anon who found the EbaraTara account here:

I'm on Sankaku because several artists on there have been caught using real life pictures and videos of children having sex as references for their art, and if you can submit proof, Sankaku will track the IP of the artist who uploaded it/use their email and contact info to inform the police about this and will start the legal process necessary to allow for legal transfer of your evidence to the police. This allows for victims of predators who recognize themselves as the image reference to get the police involved in the case.

I was a victim of a predator and groomer from age 6 to age 12. He was a 3D shota/loli/sholicon artist, and I was used for reference pictures. I know I was, and so I'm on Sankaku because I chronically search through tags I know he could have produced art for. Although he's in prison now, the internet is forever - the art is probably still in circulation, maybe even the actual pictures, too. And the idea of them being out there gives me tremendous anxiety. I'm on anxiety meds, I'm in both individual therapy and a support group, and this has been a problem for me for years at this point. As more and more sites refuse to host hyperrealistic 3D shota, loli and sholicon, and as I get deeper into therapy and find a medication regime that helps me more, I don't go tag trawling like I used to nearly as often. I still have panic attacks, paranoid episodes and dissociative episodes, but the need to check five times a day and scroll through every new upload in the tags has gone down. I do it like once a week now at most.

And if you click on an image on Sankaku, say, to look closer and see if the image looks like it was a modified version of one of you or if the proportions are off enough that you can assume it's not based on real references, then the site has a rating bar for images and a favorite function off on the left side. Under the favorite function is a list of the last handful of users who favorited the image.

That's how I found EbaraTara's account. Alchorative, I searched for manually later, but I found EbaraTara's account on accident. I wasn't looking for it.

I clicked on the profile, which was empty, went to the faves and at the time the most recent page was all bestiality stuff, which reminded me of Lily. I sat on that for a while, not sure if I should tell anyone about it. The most recent page of favorites kept updating frequently (there were 855 faves before the account shut down) and there was a lot of gay shota, which I didn't associate with her since she talks mostly about F/F ships. I thought it could be a very weird coincidence. It still might be. It might not be Lily. I'm not saying it absolutely has to be her because all I have is what I found and what I found doesn't have identifying information beyond the name EbaraTara on it.

I don't resent anon for calling me a pedophile because I know having a Sankaku account looks bad. I know without context it looks sus. And I know it's really awful that when I look at these images I numb over and feel nothing and nothing is real and nothing matters, and that being able to browse the site probably means I'm not a good person. But 1. I am in therapy to fix the damage that has been done to me by my rapist/groomer/"boyfriend and 2. the fact that I am extremely damaged and not a good person does not change the legitimately concerning nature of what I found.

I'm not asking anon to forgive the fact that I browse the site. That's probably not excusable and my therapist has told me many times it's not healthy.

But I am asking them not to rush to assume that my being there invalidates what was found on it.

(Sorry for the wall of text, just. Being accused of pedophilia myself is really frustrating and angering given what I've been through.)

for whatever is worth, anon, me and others who recieved those messages didn't immediately jumped to make any accusation as that anon did. we could all clearly see that it was deflection from the main issue, that's still LO being a hypocrite. i'm terribly sorry for what you went through but i'm glad that you're currently recieving the help you deserve and are in a better space. wether this is all one big coincidence or happened to come across the secret account of LO, we're grateful that you brought this information to light and we can all come out with our own conclusions.

[neworleansspecial]

Summary: An instagram post Marjan makes is interpreted as a coming out post. This was not her intention.

WC: 1.6k | AO3

Warnings: Internalized Homophobia

This is quite possibly the worst outcome Marjan can think of. She posted the roller derby photos because her feed has been quite dead since the whole “cancelling of firefox” thing that happened. It’s something non-controversial, and she loves to show off her brilliant team mates in the way that she assumes most people feel about their friends. She wants the world to see these talented, confident, beautiful women the way she sees them. Marjan spent a few minutes meticulously tagging each member of the team in the photos she posted, lining up each black bar with the correct face. She figures it’s a good appreciation of these women.

What happens instead of her friends being showered in compliments is speculation Marjan could have never, ever predicted. She knows that many of her fans are gay, particularly gay young women. Young lesbians. It’s a fact that she keeps in the back of her mind for no reason at all other than to just know it. This majority, however, make themselves known in the aftermath of the photos being posted. 

Marjan reads a comment that simply states, “ONE OF US! ONE OF US! ONE OF US!” followed by a bunch of heart emojis and wonders what it means. One of what? She scrolls through the thousands of comments on her post and tries to make sense of them when she realizes the error she’s made. 

The team photo on the first slide was when they all went to pride together, since most of the members of the roller derby team are LGBT+ and wanted to go as a group. Marjan went as an ally, but failed to clarify this point when she posted it. The thought smacks her in the face. 

People think this post was her coming out.

And it’s too late to take it back, but Marjan deletes the post the moment she connects the dots. Her first thought is for her family, who follow her on instagram. Her mother. Her siblings. They likely already saw. Marjan can just imagine the horror in her mother’s voice over the phone, asking Marjan if it’s true. One of her little sisters is still in high school, she could get bullied if anyone thinks that she might be related to a gay person. It’s going to be a disaster. 

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

“Marjan?”

She looks up to see Mateo peeking into the bunk room. He looks concerned. 

“Cap sent me to get you for dinner. Are you okay?”

“It’s nothing,” she lies, quickly putting her phone into her pocket. “Paul cooked, right? So it should be pretty good.”

Mateo easily moves on from his first question, chatting about the salad he helped make to go with dinner, and Marjan is able to just nod along to his words without really paying attention or responding. She’s in so much trouble. The last time she checked, there’s already a handful of articles about her photo. People know. It’s only a matter of time before everyone she’s ever met to know about the alleged coming out. Just thinking about it has Marjan’s eyes stinging with tears. 

By the time she sits down in her seat at the table, she can feel all their eyes on her. Being calm and collected is kind of her thing, and she feels so unbearably seen right now, in ways she’s never wanted to be. They all wait for her to speak, but once they realize she’s not going to on her own, Paul reaches across the table to take one of her hands. 

“Marjan, what’s wrong? We’re all here for you.”

She glances around at them. They could dismiss her in disgust easily. But she knows TK is gay, and everyone seems okay with it. At the very least, she knows TK won’t let them say anything too bad about the situation. 

“I posted some roller derby photos, on instagram. Um, one of them was from pride.”

Mateo’s face lights up. “That was such a cool day! It was my first time going to pride, since I wasn’t, like, out before. I can see why you’d wanna post those photos.”

“People think it was a coming out post.” She glances around the table to see neutral faces. “They think I’m gay.”

At that, TK stabs his fork particularly hard into his dinner and shoots a look at her. “And what’s wrong with being gay, Marj?”

His words get Mateo’s attention, honing in on the hurt and the concept that Marjan could be something less than accepting. Mateo’s self-discovery of bisexuality is recent, recent enough that he’s still rather insecure in his open identity. She doesn’t want him to think she cares about this sort of thing, even if she kind of does. But only when it’s her. Other people can be gay, or bi, but she knows it’s not something that’s allowed to her. Her family would be devastated.

“Is there something wrong?” Mateo asks. 

Marjan rushes to say no as Judd lowers his head and folds his hands like he’s praying. 

“It’s not that, it’s just… I…”

“Are you?” Paul asks.

Everyone’s attention snaps to him, and then to Marjan. She can almost feel the blood drain from her face as they all turn with the same look on their face, the same question. It’s all a given what they’re asking. What they want to know. She can’t handle their rejection for this. 

“Marjan,” he says gently, “it’s okay if you’re LGBT. You know that us, of all people, are going to love and support and defend you no matter what.”

Marjan stands up from the table, her chair scooting back loudly. “I need some air.”

She all but runs to the stairs, hopping down each step to get to the doors on the first floor to the cool outside air. It’s a relief against her suddenly flushed cheeks. She knows she can’t be gay. It’s not allowed. She had a fiancé for most of her life. It was always a given that she’d marry a man, one of her family’s choosing, without much of her say in the matter. Of course she could veto someone, or say they weren’t right for her, but the fact is that her husband was always going to be chosen for her. There’s been no room, no time, for her to consider any other romantic pursuits, especially with a woman.

For the very first time, Marjan allows herself to think about that. About women, and the possibility of being in a romantic relationship with a woman. In her mind’s eye, the woman is generic. Dark hair, big eyes, soft skin. There’s no face, just the imagined feeling of curves under her hands, perhaps the softness of a breast pressed to her palm. Thinking about this for the very first time as a possibility overwhelms her with its suddenness. She feels especially guilty when the imagined woman begins to take the shape of one of her friends. This isn’t right. This is perverse, an intrusion, worse than peeping. 

She feels sick to her stomach as she sinks to sit against the wall. This isn’t okay. She should’ve never posted that picture, and then people wouldn’t be saying these things about her. If they never said those things, she wouldn’t be having the most upsetting realization of her life right now either. 

Marjan isn’t sure how long she’s sitting out on the asphalt before Paul comes out and joins her, taking a seat at her side. His warm shoulder meets hers in a silent comfort for nearly five full minutes before he speaks. 

“I was already an adult when I realized,” he says to her. “I didn’t ‘always know,’ at least not in my conscious mind. It wasn’t until I was already out in the world as a firefighter that I truly realized who I was, and that was really scary. I had a long road ahead of me, with a lot of self-discovery, and I had a lot of people to tell. I was terrified.”

“How did you know?” Marjan asks. “That you really are trans?”

Paul sighs. “I didn’t. I questioned it a lot when I was first beginning my transition. For some people, they just know, and they have for a long time, but I was both certain that I was a man and worried that I was doing it for attention. It was hard. I went to therapy for a long time, to understand myself and to help me do what was best for myself. I had a lot of internalized transphobia to work through. On top of that, I had thought I was a lesbian for a long time before I realized I wasn’t, so I kind of understand what you might be going through. Questioning your gender and your sexuality are really similar in a lot of ways, but incredibly different in others. Regardless of your journey, Marjan, whether you’re straight or not, it’s going to take a lot of reflection. All of us here at the 126 have your back. If you need to listen, or talk, or just be distracted, we’re all here for you. We love you, Marj. I love you. And if you need anything, I’m here.”

She leans into his side and he puts an arm around her for the closest approximation of a hug they can manage while sitting side-by-side on the ground. Marjan knows she has a long path ahead of her of understanding her sexuality, and not just in terms of orientation. What she wants in a relationship and how to have one are things she doesn’t really understand yet, and that’s something she’s going to have to confront to move forward in her life. She’s scared of what it means for her future. She’s scared of what her family will think. She’s scared of what the world will think. But as she sits beside Paul, it is clear that there are people who are going to support her no matter what. 

With that, she may be able to learn this about herself.

[smp-live]

Was scrolling through c!Wilbur crit blogs again and it got me thinking about why exactly I argue in favour of him so much so here’s a random ramble (that got long) about it:

Most c!Wilbur critics (at least, in the tag, not directly post-lore stream. The ones that do actual analysis on him) are like... really reasonable about it, actually, lmao. Like it’s mostly just calling him a bad person because of power hunger/manipulation/being a bad dad/whatever else. (Not talking about antis. I mean people who are really critical of him, but recognize that he’s a well-crafted character with nuance.)

Which I agree with! I consider myself an apologist, my writing and analysis leans really sympathetic, and I still agree that he’s a shitty rat bastard that I would run far away from irl. Even at the beginning of the story, he’s very morally grey, sometimes using underhanded persuasion tactics, doing ehh things like stealing, and it only gets worse from there.

But on the other hand, he’s... not that bad. Like I saw one person say about c!Dream, “My reaction to most critique of him is... so what?” and that’s how I feel about c!Wilbur, I suppose. Yeah, he tried to rig an election - but it was a last-ditch effort at not going full dictator, he didn’t follow through, and later on he - in part - decided to blow it up because they couldn’t get it back while being democratic. And yeah, he manipulated people - all in all, it wasn’t really really bad things, mostly to paint himself in a better light because of his insecurities, and people sometimes fall into manipulative language without even outwardly realizing that it’s a shitty thing to do. Of course, that shows a bigger underlying problem in their mindset and the way they interpret relationships and possession, but then that’s a different discussion - and definitely one that applies to c!Wilbur.

(Not saying he doesn’t ever intentionally manipulate people. I think that a. sometimes it might be accidental, (”If you wanna be President you’re gonna have to get on my good side,” mans was Not thinking straight,) and b. other times he falls into old habits/coping mechanisms that happen to be manipulation, (Tommy at Las Nevadas.) Other than the election and maybe some times in the early founding of L’Manberg, I can’t think of any moments where I’m like, “Yeah, he is Purposefully Manipulating here.” And even then, it just doesn’t strike me as a terrible thing. People manipulate, it’s a thing they do. That’s it. A morally grey action.)

And I think the majority of the reason I make more posts painting him in a positive light and don’t really discuss my critique of him is because it feels like the fandom has an overwhelming bias of hatred/crit, even if a lot of that isn’t, y’know, proper analysis of his character. I instinctively want to balance it out for this character I love/relate to, because a lot of what I see straight-up ignores the lighter side of his moral-greyness.

Like, a while back, I posted a couple clips from late-election arc, of Wilbur talking about how he feels about Fundy siding with Quackity and against him. And the way I initially saw it while watching was, “Okay. He feels betrayed by his son who disagrees with his politics - and thus, him as a person, because your politics are a reflection of your identity, especially in Wilbur’s mind - and it’s perfectly understandable that he’d want to vent about that in private to a close friend. On the other hand, he should be able to recognize that Fundy’s allowed to be his own person and shouldn’t be babied. Fundy is in the right, here, but Wilbur’s feelings shouldn’t be dismissed.”

But then 90% of the tags were just straight-up hate for c!Wilbur, going as far as to say that he should die again. (And this was after we found out how bad the afterlife was for him.) That fucking floored me. I just couldn’t understand how they took this nuanced character aching for ‘the son he knew’ back (hm. very similar to c!Phil, actually) and turned it into ‘wow. This suicidal man sucks and should maybe die.’ I was so close to making a post defending him before realizing - I was letting fandom bias against a character push me further onto the sympathetic side.

And that’s such a fuckin’ weird thing to have happen, because you’d think that exposure to negativity about a character would make you feel more negative about them? But without fail, every time I scroll through the crit tag, or read a critical post about c!Wilbur/L’Manberg, I maybe lean a bit more towards that side for a few hours before swinging back hard onto the apologist side. Because a lot of the critique, to me, is really just, “so what?” after I let it stew a bit.

Then there’s the whole mental health issue. Obviously it doesn’t excuse the shit he did - I know people who have been in the middle of breakdowns and the stuff they say still fucking hurts, even if they didn’t truly mean it. But recognizing that he needs help? That for pretty much all his time on-screen, he was depressed and paranoid, which obviously affects the way he acts? That’s obvious. And were he in the position to get professional help - which he deserves - everything would be much better off. That’s the root of my apologism, I think: He deserves to get better. He’s not inherently evil, or bad, just a fucked up little man who’s ruined his own life and needs help. I want to see him, specifically him, get better.

Narratively, his punishment has been extreme and disproportionate. Every mistake, every choice - good or bad - has led to suffering, on his part. Start a fun little rebellion, maybe to gain some power? War and betrayal. Declare an election to consolidate said power? Lose, and get exiled. Blow up a nation? Die, and even in the afterlife, he can't catch a break. Purely as a sympathetic human, it feels like he deserves to rest. Deserves to heal.

But even medicated and less anxious, or going to therapy for his neuroticism and depression, or whatever, he still would be quite morally grey. A lot of his manipulation, his power hunger, comes from this neuroticism; from needing to feel safe and needed, (just like Quackity.) Not all of it, though. He’d still have his unhealthy ideals about relationships and possession, for example. Less prominent, sure, but still there. Some people, I feel, discount how tied up with his mental illness it is, while others don’t really recognize that it’s also a personality problem. Like, changing those beliefs is changing part of who he fundamentally is, as a person.

Actually, I think the c!Wilbur apologist community, in general, tends to scapegoat his mental illness a little too much? Not in that we explain his actions with it or ask people not to villainize it, (although sometimes I feel that what we call villainizing mental illness is a bit excessive, but it’s not my place to talk about that as someone who doesn’t really relate to Pogtopia!Wilbur,) but in that we use it in discussions a lot. Which is fair, because it permeates every single aspect of his character, but even without it he’d have toxic traits? Like his possessiveness is not purely a byproduct of his mental illness, imo. Nor is his treatment of Fundy. It’s amplified by it, surely, but that little seed of it is there in the first place. Just as c!Dream’s abuse needs to be addressed as a central part of his character, c!Wilbur’s possessiveness does too - and also outside of the context of their mental health, because they’re both brought on by an internal personality flaw, some fucked-up belief, if that makes sense.

As I said before: c!Wilbur is a mess of a human being that I would hate if I actually met. (irl I would’ve been a SWAG supporter, based on policies, but since this is fiction, I was POG.) But because he’s a character, that flies out the window, and I can love him - not even just as a character, in the sense that I appreciate he’s well-crafted, but in terms of personality and all that shit, while recognizing he’s a kinda crappy guy. Because he’s a character. That’s the fun of it.

[inevitably-johnlocked]

can we adress how toxic some of these self/harm and suicide fics are?? as someone who has struggled with these issues, treating them as just a way for the two characters to get together, or one character to be the savior who cures someone of their problems? I'm so frickin over it. continuing to put your partner in limbo by threatening this behavior when they don't give you enough attention is a symptom of something major. This is not something i like seeing romanticized. at all.

[CONTENT WARNING FOR ENTIRE POST: heavy discussions of trauma, suicide, self harm, depression, political issue mentions, and eating disorders. Please proceed with care. I am not cutting the post because I think the message is important, so scroll past until my icon disappears <3 Stay safe, My Lovelies.]

Hey Nonny

Okay, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you mention you DO have struggles with these issues, so I’m going to state right up front here and say I AM NOT DISREGARDING YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AT ALL. Your view of this topic is valid, and it’s not something I am ever going to say is wrong for you. 

I would like to offer an olive branch, here, Nonny, and give you an alternative take on this, because I’m concerned that perhaps you are still coping with your own struggles and in return, you unwittingly and unintentionally are coming off as unsympathetic to other people’s coping mechanisms.

I KNOW how hard it is to see another view when yours is the only one that seems right, especially after a tragedy or after dealing with heavy things. But all I am asking is for you to temporarily extend some empathy as I discuss my thoughts in this post, and I apologize in advance if I come off as dickish, because, again, it’s hard to see past your own feelings, and I tend to give a “firm but understanding” approach to asks like this. It’s NOT meant to call you our personally. Just asking for an open mind.

I will tackle this ask in a similar fashion to this post here, which talks about shipping vs fetishization so CW for that, as well as like this post here, where we discuss pet peeves. My assumption here is that Nonny is unsure about what “romanticizing” actually entails, and how much this ask is basically Gatekeeping Fiction 101, a thing that’s been going on since the beginning of storytelling. The ask is perceived by me to be emotionally unaware of how unsympathetic it actually sounds, and in turn can unintentionally upset people who engage in these stories.

First thing’s first, Nonny, and I said it before, I GET IT. I understand what you’re going for here, why you feel it’s toxic, and why you think it shouldn’t exist. Here’s the thing, though: what you’re ACTUALLY calling for here is censorship and gatekeeping because YOU PERSONALLY take issue with something, want the fandom specially curated just for you, because it PERSONALLY OFFENDS YOU. And that, it itself, is what’s really toxic, here. Just because YOU are offended, does not mean that it’s not helpful to SOMEONE ELSE, and it’s selfish to make such a demand of people.

Let me explain.

As I mention in the link above re: shipping, many people read and write fics to cope with the reality of their own experiences. Nonny, your experience is NOT the same as someone else’s. Your pain is NOT universal, and you DON’T KNOW what that author has been through; for all you know, they spent 6 months in-hospital after attempting suicide, and they are now simply processing their trauma through storytelling. 

Or, “continuing to put your partner in limbo by threatening this behavior when they don't give you enough attention” ? It’s a VERY REAL THING that ACTUALLY happens in real life, and perhaps it happened to that author, or they want to write an alternate ending to their pain.

Or, “one character to be the saviour who cures someone of their problems?” is something a suicide survivor WISHES someone did for them. Because they feel alone in the world and don’t want to be alone anymore.

These stories are simply escapism for people, either to learn about or share what these mental illnesses do to people, or are the “fantasies” of survivors, of their ideal outcome to their own tragedies. Coping with guilt over the loss of someone they feel they could have saved. The brutal truth about realty.

And sometimes, it is because some people need a good cry and a feel-good happy ending, because real life? Well, it rarely has those happy endings and so few opportunities to let us cry, and sometimes life is just easier when we view it through the eyes of fictional characters. Do you not want someone to save you sometimes Nonny? And I mean metaphorically here, too. Someone to just take all of your hellish burdens off those shoulders for one day. Someone who will come in to save you from yourself. I know I do.

And, well, sometimes, Nonny, it makes people feel less alone in this socially distanced world.

They’re not glorifying that issue Nonny. They’re telling their story.

Here are some thoughts:

Romanticization: Some trendy teen outlet selling a shirt with “mentally diseased” written across it.

NOT Romanticization: A character in a story coming to terms with a diagnosis of mental illness and learning ways to adapt. Their partner is involved 100% and they learn together.

Romanticization: Sherlock merchandise being sold with “I’m a high functioning sociopath” (not mention ableist as all heck)

NOT Romanticization: A character self-harms because of depression, and character B helps the character through their pain and together they get proper therapy and treatment.

Romanticization: Calling yourself “OMG I’m so bipolar!” because it’s trendy.

NOT Romanticization: A clinically depressed author, who survived a suicide attempt, wanting to tell their story through characters the world is already familiar with, and one that a touchy subject can be expressed and understood by other people, because they’re not ready to write the “real” book. Fandom is a safety net for them.

See what I mean Nonny? We don’t KNOW what kind of pain these authors have PERSONALLY been through, and to censor them from having their voices heard and their stories told is just not on for me.

And let me be clear: YES OF COURSE romanticization happens EVERYWHERE. I am not denying that. But your ask is coming off like EVERY STORY EVER WRITTEN is glorification of something. By your logic:

Disabled people shouldn’t write about their disabilities because they’re romanticising themselves.

The authors with medical degrees shouldn’t write realistic med-fics because some where in the world, ONE person MAY HAVE had a similar experience as Character A and B.

Someone broke their foot in ballet so they shouldn’t write a story about a ballet dancer who broke their hip because it may offend ONE ballerina SOMEWHERE in space and time who got sideline at the prime of their career? 

Stories about LGBT+ people shouldn’t be written because homophobes think it’s icky.

We shouldn’t write about wizards because it offends high school catholic pastors (an actual thing that happened)? 

How about cancer stories because kids die of cancer all the time? 

Non-fiction autobiographies about holocaust survivors is not okay.

Science books offend flat earthers, so we shouldn’t write those.

Books about the Big Bang and a 4.5 billion-year-old earth offends creationists, so burn those.

A now-adult child rape victim writing their survival stories to help get their often-in-power abusers behind bars are taboo.

True crime stories from detectives on those cases shouldn’t be told because they weren’t the victim.

Non-fiction in general because someone somewhere may have had that one singular thing happen to them.

How about coping with grief over a parent’s sudden death because I personally might find offense in that since that was a horridly traumatic experience in my life?

Do you see how progressively out of touch this argument is? (the answer to all of these: authors should be allowed to write them, because stories make us human). Your argument leads down the very dangerous path to censorship of books, the internet, and history... to have people only read and learn what someone else dictates, leading to... well.

I’m not trying to be a dick here, Nonny, I’m really not. But I think you’re really missing the entire point of fiction and story telling. I feel you’re failing in the empathy game here, and failing to understand what romanticizing really actually is. 

Whenever I get asks like this, I always feel like the Nonnies don’t really know much about pre-Ao3. I come from “early internet” fandom age, and I’m talking before tags existed. Back when I had to go buy a book at Coles and guess what was in it based on a cover description. No “amazon reviews”. No “harmful content warning” stickers. You just picked up that book, and sometimes you get a sweet story about a friends exploring an alien landscape, and other times WHOOOPS ACCIDENTAL ALIEN SEX I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR. And sometimes, it ended with a dark story about death, and the reality of coping with it.

Twenty years ago, books on the shelves at bookstores and libraries were the only place you could do your reading and they certainly do NOT have tags on them... Modern tagging of stories are a REALLY recent thing introduced probably no less than 15 years ago and was perfected by Ao3 (which was started in 2009). 

These days, there is no excuse if you only consume fanfiction on Ao3. Fics are tagged with proper possible-trigger tags 90% of the time. They have a VERY METICULOUS filtering system. You aren’t being forced to read the fics, you don’t have to read the fics, so use those tag filters, they exist for a reason.

So, with that in mind, I genuinely DON’T GET this attitude about people wanting everything sugar coated and saccharine by default. Especially when you can LITERALLY CURATE YOUR OWN CONTENT. Life isn’t sugar coated. And fiction shouldn’t have to be either. People tag fics with triggers for a reason.

As they used to say back in my early internet days: Don’t like it? Don’t read it. Don’t comment, skip, next story.

And to put this ALL into perspective, so that you don’t think I’m talking out of my ass, I’m going to reveal something here: Do you know what fics I can’t read, Nonny, because they trigger me? Eating disorders. That’s self harm, Nonny, in a very different way. But you know what? I know that those fics DO help other ED people so I’m not going to sit her and tell people NOT to rec or write them. And some of those authors who write those stories are processing their own ED through those stories, healing in their own way. And you know what I do when I see one of those fics? I don’t read them, move on, next story.

I’m sorry if you perceive this as me being harsh with you here, Nonny, and you DON’T have to agree with me and you can block me and never talk to me again, and I’ll understand. As I stated at the beginning, I’m offering an alternative perspective, and helping you to see that some people take comfort in these types of stories.

I think what this all boils down to Nonny, after all of this, and rereading your question a final time to see if I missed covering anything, is that (and feel free to shit on me if I am wrong here) I’m getting the impression – as an unprofessional outsider looking in – that you’re still struggling with your inner demons, whether you realize it or not. The tone and brashness of your ask has me believing this... It feels like it was written after a trigger-moment and you needed to vent AT someone because you are alone, and that hurts my heart so much. I truly hope you find peace in your mind, soon, and I hope you have someone to talk to professionally, or at least a friend. (tw under link, suicidal ideation discussion and links to phone numbers that can help you). I only wish the best for you, my Nonny.

Anyway. I welcome other people to chime in here, respectfully, and let me know if I have the wrong take here. Because I genuinely don’t think I do, but I am not a professional, so my entire thing that took me 3 hours to write here is probably moot. I’m especially interested (on anon in my asks if you’re not comfy with revealing yourselves) on thoughts from other people who have survived the original topics here, as well as any therapists and authors as well.

Take care of yourself Nonny. And please curate your own content for your mental health. Ao3 has an “exclusionary tag system” as well, please use it. *hugs*

[vivithefolle]

I'm a bit confused. You said in one post that you thoroughly dislike Hermione and that you had no respect for her at all. Yet ... you like Romione? idk, it seems contradictory tbh. I like when Romione shippers acknowledge her flaws and messed up moments but when someone that dislike and even hate her character that much ships Romione and I see them posting about them and calling them "cute" just seems weird

I’ll share with you my whole thought process so you can understand where I’m coming from:

Itty-bitty Vivi who read Harry Potter for the first time (at 13/14, so not so itty-bitty I guess, oops): Woaaah Hermione and Ron yaay!!! They're awesome I love them! They're my OTP always and forever!! Best thing to happen in Harry Potter!! JKR is a genius!

Slightly less itty-bitty Vivi discovering the Harry Potter fandom online (thankfully years after the ship wars, else I probably wouldn't have survived): Why is there so much hate towards Ron? And why are people so opposed to Romione?? It was meant to be since the first book! Or, okay, the second book is when I realized it was gonna happen, but still! Oh well, here is a fic where Hermione berates Ron for everything and he is the only one actually working for their relationship. Cool, more Romione!

Even less itty-bitty Vivi starting her own Tumblr and going around, adding her grain of salt to debates and talking about stuff: Yeah! Ron is great! He's done bad things of course but Hermione has done her fair share of bad things too! Actually, now that I'm rereading the books, I'm reminded of this person I used to call a friend, who was quite smart and cultured but would often be very harsh to me because they claimed it was “for your own good" and “because I'm more mature than you"… I still wanted to be around them, because they were just so smart and passionate, but we often rowed and eventually they really just went too far and tried to make ME out to be the bad guy and most people believed them because they had a reputation as someone cool and logical while I was known for being emotional… wait, what the fuck, that's… that's exactly what happens in the fandom with Ron and Hermione! What the fuck, was I Ron? Admired their intelligence, praised and supported them, fell in love even but was met with scorn and open disdain?!… no, no, come on. Hermione wasn't that bad.

Vivi rereading Half-Blood Prince (and no, this wasn't about the canaries, but about what Hermione was doing after): Oh my god she was that bad.

Vivi as she ponders alternately: Wait, what about JK Rowling? What does she think about all that? What was her intention, what did she want to accomplish with the characters? I know books belong to their readers but if I want as objective an analysis as possible I must try to understand her thought process while she wrote.

Vivi learning about a staple of British literature called “literary alchemy”: The quarreling couple!! Sulfur and Mercury, the Red King and the White Queen, who must marry for the story to end happily!! And their union is represented by… a rose!! Oh my god, that is brilliant, that is so cool! Romione was ALWAYS going to happen, I knew it! Ha!

Vivi discovering the “[Ron] needed to make himself worthy of Hermione” quote: Wha… but… what? Worthy? As if Hermione was some sort of precious trophy or whatever? What the hell? Wait, Ron had to make himself worthy of her but Hermione didn't have to make herself worthy of him? Is it because Ron is the boy or some shit like that??

Vivi going through JK Rowling's interviews and finding sexism and double-standards galore: Yep, it's because he's the boy. And that bit about Hermione being based off herself when she was younger… ouch. And to top it off the scriptwriter pretty much worshipped Hermione…

Vivi rereading the books again: Is it just me, or does Ron hardly ever get any praise or acknowledgement from the adult characters? Meanwhile Harry and Hermione get stuff like “as good as Charlie Weasley" or “brightest witch of her age"! And, damn, I used to side with Hermione because I love cats, but she was completely awful in POA! She apologized but then the plot made her out to be right even then?? And I always thought her Yule Ball entrance was kinda over-the-top, but damn if that's not compensating for something! Also what the hell, I get that Harry is suffering and all but will someone PLEASE pay attention to the fact that Ron is being bullied BY A FOURTH OF THE STUDENT BODY AND NOBODY SEEMS EVEN REMOTELY CONCERNED????? Also what the hell is wrong with the sixth book, I never liked it much but it's like it's trying to make every character look bad, wtf?? And, and, holy shit I never noticed but Ron was asking legit questions during the Horcrux Hunt debate but Harry kept deflecting or mocking him but it's still Ron who had to apologize in the end??? And I've read a whole post about how Hermione punching Ron is the appropriate reaction for a very small child and not a supposedly “mature" character, and that Harry had to SHIELD RON FROM HER, oh my god?? It's… oh my god, what the fuck is wrong with JK Rowling?

Vivi, in denial: Well, Harry Potter is decidedly not a romance. It's about love, but romantic love is quite far down the priority list when it comes to it. JKR has herself confessed that she wasn't too good at writing romance, and I don't blame her because writing romance is hard. But I did enjoy Romione! When I was little I saw it coming from a mile away, granted I was already savvy in literature but that must have been because she was doing something right! And then the sixth book happened… the sixth book which… which was released after the Harry Potter movies were being filmed, wasn't it?

Vivi looking up the timelines: Oh my god. Oh my god it's even worse, the movies were being discussed before Goblet of Fire came out. Come to think of it, I always found that the Trio felt… different, after Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry and Ron especially felt like they had gotten dumber? And Hermione was suddenly explaining everything when exposition used to be split between her and Ron…

Vivi, in mourning: So that's what happened. Ron ended up being shortchanged to make Hermione look better, because Rowling was fonder of Hermione than she was of Ron, and the scriptwriter too come to think of it. Curse you, Steve Kloves!!!

Vivi, who is nothing if not what Pokémon fans call a nostalgiafag: But… but… yeah, it sucks that Ron was shortchanged, and actually yeah it's a freaking travesty and I WILL freaking spread the world about this, mark my words, but, but I still… I can't help it, when Hermione “looked up at Ron and her frostiness seemed to melt" I melt too. When Ron compliments Hermione or tries to take care of her as much as he can I… it still does something to me, I still find myself rooting for them even if I know there's the awful sixth book and the stupid post-Locket beatdown. Their kiss, for God's sake, I've just realized that Ron may have swept Hermione off her feet physically, but it's Hermione who jumped him, you could say Hermione metaphorically swept Ron off his feet!! God damn it, that's good, that's so good!

Vivi, at war with herself: No, I can't let myself be blinded by nostalgia!! The facts are that Hermione shows borderline abusive - even actually abusive - behaviour, this can't be denied! I don't want to root for an abusive relationship! I don't want to root for a relationship that relies on my favourite character being dumbed down to work!!!

Vivi, about to uncover the secrets of the universe: … wait a second. I don't have to.

Vivi, having an epiphany: Reading Solstice Muse's Romione fanfics gives me such happiness because she just gets the characters! She doesn't portray Hermione as perfect and never fucking up, and she always treats what happens to Ron with respect… Well, especially since she can't play them off as a joke since she often makes Ron the POV character. But, yeah! I can still like Romione… if it's well-written. Which, well, isn't the case in the original books… at least, isn't the case anymore after Rowling's bias got the best of her. Even though they do have their great moments.

Vivi, finding purpose in her life: I am going to spread awareness. I am going to tell the world. Fuck, just rereading the books, I've noticed how blatant the favouritism is and how unbalanced it can be. No wonder the fandom seems to collectively scoff at Ron - the books themselves do whenever it's convenient for them! The fandom plays favourites, because the author herself played favourites, and the worst part is that she didn't even realize it! Imagine you spend your life getting into traumatic situations out of love for your friends who always receive compassion and validation for their feelings about said traumas, but YOUR trauma is hardly touched upon and in the rare case it is, it's only to be mocked or used against you… Fuck! You're a piece of work, JKR! And the fandom just swallows it whole like a bunch of lobotomized snakes! Screw it! Screw it, I'm going to say it like it is, and I'm going to say it LOUDLY! People are going to hear about what Ron goes through and we'll see if Harry and Hermione look like the only ones worthy of therapy then!!

Present day Vivi, as she scrolls through the (heavily filtered) Romione tag on AO3: Ugh, another Drarry… and another… and another… oh, a Hinny-centric fic for a change, cool but I'm looking for more Romione than that, sorry. Gah, why is it that Romione appears as a secondary ship everywhere but they can't get their own stories? I've just seen a Snupin come up for God's sake! Oh, finally, a full Romione!! *clicks* … … … awww that was so sweet. Kudos! Okay back to the search… oh, another one!! *clicks* … … … it's Ron-bashing. It's Ron-bashing and it's not tagged Ron-bashing and that's why it showed up in my search AND I'M GOING TO FREAKING RIOT-

[babi-correia]

What Could Have Been (Part 15)

Words: 1286 Warnings: None?

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 |  Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9| Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14

“What do we got?” Voight asks as Intelligence gathers around him. Kevin grabs his notepad, flicking the pages to the beginning.

“The Emergency Center was heavily sabotaged, their servers have been completely destroyed, thus explaining the inability to respond to calls.”

“What about the fire here? It’s very odd for a building to randomly catch fire in the middle of the winter.” Voight continues.

“Severide says it’s foul play, for sure. Mainly with the bomb.” Jay says, leaning against his table. “It’s very weird, mainly with the fact that it would only catch the firefighters, because most of the researchers are home for the holidays.”

“What if it was directed at the firefighters?” Kim suggests hesitantly, earning confused looks from the rest of the team. She looks at Adam before she continues. “We got that package about (Y/N)… Maybe it was Eric. He has a weird grudge towards her because she knows Jay.”

“Are you sure?” Voight asks, noticing the distraught look on Jay’s face.

“Not sure, but it’s the best theory we have.” She says, wringing her hands together. “And Adam’s CI said he heard a buzz about the whole university ordeal being planned.”

“Why go after her and not me?” Jay asks, anger seeping into his voice. “His problem is with me, not her.”

“He wants to get to you, to anger you, make you drop your guard.” Adam says, crossing his arms. “He knows you’re pissed at this, and he’s counting on your anger to make you be brash and create an opening for him to get to you.”

“Well, he’s succeeding.”

“Jay, why don’t you get to the hospital? I think (Y/N) would really like to see you when she wakes up.” Voight suggests, noticing the weight on the younger detective’s shoulders. “I can give you a ride there on my way to question my CIs.”

“What?” Jay’s brows furrow in confusion. “I can take my truck.”

“I want your truck to be inspected. He rigged a random room to get to (Y/N) and was able to, I don’t want to risk your car being tampered with in any way.” Voight explains, grabbing his jacket and keys.

Jay grabs his jacket and beanie, rubbing his hands on his face as he goes down the stairs after Voight. Trudy sends him a sympathetic look as he follows Voight through the main lobby, and he nods at her in an appreciative way.

The trip to the hospital is quiet until Voight stops his car by the ER door and turns towards Jay.

“I know how you’re feeling right now, like it’s your fault.” The Sergeant says, making Jay look at him. “But it’s not. Eric’s twisted in his head, there was no way we could have predicted or prevented it. You went above and beyond, there was nothing more you could have done.”

“Will says she’s not out of danger yet.” Jay mutters. “That the rod did quite a bit of damage, she lost a lot of blood, the gash on her leg severed a muscle. She’s still in ICU and unconscious, and they don’t know if she’s going to be able to keep on being a firefighter, much less part of Squad.”

“Halstead, none of that is your fault. You helped her the most you could and quite probably saved her life. And now you’re going to be there for her through the recovery, and we’ll nail that son of a bitch down.” Voight says, nodding towards the hospital. “Be there. We’ll let you know if there’s any developments.”

Jay nods and exits the car, entering the ER and spotting Will almost immediately. The older brother leads the youngest into the waiting area filled with firefighters. Their heads turn as they see the brothers come in and Boden, Casey and Severide seem to have a silent conversation before nodding.

“51.” Boden calls, making everyone turn to him. “We have to get back to our job. Jay will stay with (Y/N) and keep us updated. Let’s go.”

The firefighters clap Jay’s shoulder or nod at him as they go by, recognizing him as a trustworthy person to stay and “keep guard” on you. It makes him feel weird on the inside, but he pushes it aside as Will guides him into your room.

He sucks in a breath as he sees you laying in the hospital bed, pale, unmoving, hooked up to numerous machines.

“This looks worse than what you told me on the phone, Will.” Jay manages to say, gingerly sitting at the foot of the bed and resting one hand on your shin. He feels the guilt gnawing at his mind along with an anger he can’t contain; he’s sure that if he’s the one to catch Eric, he won’t make it to prison.

“It does, but it’s mostly preventive.” Will says, looking between Jay and you with a confused face. “I didn’t know you knew her.”

“I’ve known her for longer than you.” Jay chuckles, spotting your dog tags on the small table by the bed and pointing at them. “We served together on my last tour.”

Will’s brows knit in confusion as he approaches his brother, leaning against the foot of the hospital bed.

“You never told me about her.”

“Well… It’s complicated.”

-

A couple of days later and Jay feels at his wit’s end: they have nothing on Eric and you still haven’t waken up. He’s sitting on the crappy hospital chair, laptop atop his legs, left hand scrolling through the little information they have on Eric while his right hand holds yours. His right leg bounces as he feels his patience dwindling and his desperation nipping at his subconscious.

Will walks into the room, making his normal rounds and taking in his brother’s nervous behavior.

“If you bounce that leg more, the laptop is going to fall.” He remarks, marking your vitals on the chart.

“Shouldn’t she be awake by now, Will?” Jay asks, the desperation evident in his voice. Maybe the coffee Mouse had brought him wasn’t such a good idea after all.

“Jay, this is a game of patience. It will take some time for her to recover even after she awakes. The wounds are closing up nicely, but they still did a lot of damage that needs to be reversed with physical therapy.” Will says, setting the chart back on its’ spot. He watches as Jay runs a hand through his face, the bags in his eyes evident, as well as the longer beard. “Shouldn’t you go home and rest for a bit?”

“I’m fine, I just don’t want to leave her side.” Jay admits, earning a nod from Will.

“You know where to find me if you need anything.” Will says, leaving the room.

Jay closes the laptop and sets it on the floor, turning to you and holding your left hand with both of his, leaning his forehead against them.

He stays like that for a few moments, listening to the steady beeping of the machines until his phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He fishes it out, unlocking it and looking at the text on the screen.

Ruzek: We got a lead. Will text details later.

Jay’s heart jumps in his chest at the news, his free hand gripping your tighter as he types back a reply.

Jay: If you get him, let Voight do his thing and let me know.

He feels excited in a weird way that makes him feel guilty for a brief moment before he looks at you again; Eric had put you in an hospital bed, fighting for your life, and there is no way that Jay is going to let him get away with it.

-

@thexplosivegirl​ | @godohammers​ | @savingprivatecass​ | @princxss-fia | @fullwattpadmusictree​ | @bethii1​ | @doramstr​ | @annaallicce​ | @hehurst23​ | @dreamslove92 | @lostsoulwalking | @magicxshadows​ | @lookatallthefeels | @miranda0102​ | @killjoys-make-some-noise-na-na​ | @corebore123​ | @talicat713​ | @jayxuptons​ | @detectiveinchicago​ | @cozyfandoms​ | @justanotheronechicagofan​ | @redsmemories​ | @nocturnalherb16 (I can’t tag you anymore???) | @lovejessejay​ | @zizzlekwum​ | @music-is-my-escape71 | @inlovewith3​ | @panaitbeatrice​ | @goingwiththewind​ | @sesamepancakes​ | @caitoszmerlo​ | @rebel-without-care​ | @poguesvixen​ | @cookiecakeslive​ | @csigeoblue​ | @samantha-chicago​

[reynaruina]

So, I've scrolled through your PT Dib AU tag, and I've seen lots of people interested on Dib's thoughts and psychology cause, as you said, he's some sort of vent character to you, so you can see very clearly what's going on in his mind.

One of the things that made me like your AU so much (i'm not really a big fan of AUs, i rarely get into one at any fandom) is that the course of things isn't at all inconceivable leaving from the canon's viewpoint. Of course, there are a lot of different aspects from canon, but it is not an unbelievable path. If Membrane was this cold monster, I could totally capture Dib ending up an alcoholic, paranoid, problematic depressive adult. Specially paranoid.

But some stuff are still veeeeery interesting to me. You see, I've always felt a strange connection with Zim, since the first time I watched IZ. Only recently I discovered that he is typed not only with the same mbti type as me, but also the same enneagram. While re-watching the show I related to him in a spiritual level that honestly I never felt with any other character before. So I'm really interested on how you're picturing him!

Canon Zim is a big-picture person, so much indeed that his lack of attention to details is what most backfires at him. So PT Dib's Zim believing that if he keeps waiting and persisting on Dib they will eventually work it out seems totally on point, is a long-term plan, and it's very likely it will work. On the other hand tho, gosh, I'm totally astunned by his patience. Canon Zim can get impatient and try using shortcuts that obviously end up becoming self-sabotage, and he not being aware of other people's feelings at all doesn't help either.

The fact that PT AU Zim is so, so dedicated to Dib to the point that he has to be careful with everything he does and says must be so stressful to him. Like, at least from what I interpreted, I know Zim doesn't have anything else to put his efforts on; He was banished from his own planet, ripped out from his mission, and Earth doesn't have anything to offer to him, besides from Dib, which incredibly (and I think the most shocking thing on this AU) he was able to notice his feelings for. So he kinda can't mess this up, cause if he does, it's all over for him too.

So having not only to deal with his own frustrations but also with somebody else's seems like a fucking nightmare (if I was on his place, at some point I would just explode with Dib, and the nearest your Zim got to it from what I remember was the "What's wrong with you?!" moment). How exactly is he dealing with it? Or is he not, at all?

I mean, at least he can still get distract from his own feelings by paying attention to Dib's, but suppressing it can be unhealthy, and he can't really talk to Dib about what is tormenting him cause, as you said, he will just interpret everything as he wants to and it would probably worsen things. He has Computer and Gir to talk to but, they're AI, so how well can they help him with that?

We all talking about getting Dib a psychiatrist but honestly Zim should be getting one either lol he can just make some small arrangements on the entire story not to sound crazy (imagine him going to therapy and "my irken leaders send me to conquer earth as a joke :(" lmao) but god I feel claustrophobic thinking about his side of things. He is truly strong for it.

As someone already said, you better be giving this man the fucking best orgasm of his life after this, preferably more than one. we're counting on you. no pressure. u_u

Hi there! First of all let me give you a big fat Thank You for this whole ass short story of a comment! It’s rare I get long ones about my content like these, and especially rare to see one that digs so deep into something in my story. Honestly I almost teared up a bit with your descriptions of Zim’s mental state because fuck, yes, this is all what I’ve been trying to point out this whole time!! Dib is the more obviously in need of help just because he looks like he was pulled right out of the sewers five minutes ago, but if you take a moment to consider what Zim’s going thru just to try and save him (as you have) you can tell he’s in more in more danger of breaking down as time passes. You are right to say that canon Zim is not very patient and does try to use shortcuts wherever he can, and this Zim was no different a few years back, but ever since he realized his feelings for Dib and started noticing his state he’s just had a few too many close calls for comfort by allowing his impulsive behaviour to push through and has learned the painful way to take his time w shit. I might delve into stuff like that more later on c:<.   And about how Zim’s dealing with all this pressure...well, he’s not. He’s mostly ignoring the whole issue, and he surely isn’t trying to bring anything up with Sober Dib. Gotta keep up appearances, ya know? For the good of the fragile human. No matter how much his own psyche is starting to break apart in the background... But he does break down sometimes, and wherever that happens whoever’s closes to him bears the blunt of it as you saw with the Gir stuff and the Computer chapter. And I can assure you these kinds of things will keep on happening, keep on getting worse as time goes on, and there will come a point where he can’t keep it all in anymore.  I can’t tell what’s gonna happen when that comes thru, all I can say is, it won’t be a pretty sight :c

[miralenmagpie]

Sea of Solitude: The Director's Cut

Ah, Sea of Solitude. This one hit me right in the feels. As a reminder, if you don't have the spoilers tag blocked and you want to experience this game yourself, I recommend scrolling on. I thoroughly recommend this game, but do reference specific material from the plot line and have screenshots for various parts of the story.

Sea of Solitude was developed by [indie studio] Jo-Mei Games. [The story follows] a young woman named Kay who suffers from such strong loneliness that her inner feelings of hopelessness, anger, and worthlessness turn to the outside and she becomes a monster. The emotions of her manifest into giant monsters standing in her way, trying to help, but also destroy her. Kay needs to interact with and understand their underlying intentions in order to overcome the negative effects of those emotions. [Source]

I've had Sea of Solitude on my Switch list for most of 2021, so I was excited to delve into this concept game. I've been very active in my own personal quest for balanced mental health for a few years now, so the initial summaries I was reading about the game were immensely interesting to me. I've never played a game quite like this.

My first impression of SoS was based on the graphics alone. I loved the look and feel of the world immediately. I felt the darkness of Kay's state of mind and this theme continued to resonate with me throughout the story. I loved zooming on different parts of the world and taking photos, which made the Photo Mode aspect of The Director's Cut really enjoyable. You can change the look of the world around you for the exact shot you're going for. I'm glad I played this game now and not when it first launched without the Photo Mode.

Nothing should be taken at face value in the game. Everything is symbolic in one way or another, from the monsters to the shifts in environment, and even Kay's backpack. SoS is about a young woman coming to terms with her shortcomings and understanding the traumas she's endured. If you've been to therapy, this is going to sound very familiar to you.

Although spanning numerous scenes and "Chapters," I find it's easiest to describe SoS in 5 major arcs:

Lost with Kay. This is our initial impression of the drowned world we find ourselves in, the first look at Kay's "monsters," and finding our way around.

Finding Sunny. While Kay was trying to live her life and do her thing, her younger brother was experiencing some serious bullying in school. This eventually drove them apart.

Understanding her parents. Kay's mom and dad built a life with each other based on what they thought the other's expectations were and have come to resent each other, leading to divorce.

Letting go of Jack. Jack, Kay's boyfriend, also suffers from depression and is spiraling while together with her. She tries desperately to help him but loses herself in the process.

Awakening with Kay. The darkness boils over and overtakes Kay and she tries to find her way to her *sea of solitude.*

Without going into much more detail, each of these arcs during Kay's life has impacted her in some way traumatically, and it's really up to her to unpack what's happened (just like in real life). The 2nd and 3rd arcs especially hit home for me based on my personally experiences, like I'm sure they have and will for many folx, so much so that I had to put the game down for nearly a week before jumping back in. I definitely recommend this game in small batches for your own health, but also to make it last.

Speaking of timing, the main story from beginning to end took me about 4 hours of playtime, but there are collectibles and achievements! The latter took me an additional hour to sort through, and I did have to google a couple of them to figure them out. So the game is a bit short, but it's beautifully written and I already miss playing it. I feel like less value should be placed on games for their length alone, as I've played a lot of long games that haven't left me with the same feeling as this one has.

Mechanically, SoS is pretty simple. Most of the gameplay will involve running and jumping around the world, often avoiding one particular creature and finding ways around it. Exploration is big, especially by boat! If you love boating, you're going to love this game. Most of the collectibles can be found by challenging yourself to see the world like a scavenger hunt that's meant to be explored. With that said, I wouldn't let the load screens empty slots deter you from simply enjoying mindlessly exploring or just following the story. After completing the story, I went back to find a lot of stuff I had missed, but I also got more than I expected along the way from just poking around.

If you're looking for a meaningful game that will have you looking at yourself introspectively throughout the story, I highly recommend picking up Sea of Solitude.

Let me know if you decide to play, or if you have already! I'm open to chatting about this and other games, and my asks are open if you have specific questions about the game. I honestly want to say a lot more about this one, but don't want to spoil too much, haha. Thanks for reading!

Sea of Solitude is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Steam.

- M. Magpie

(I am in no way sponsored by or affiliated with Sea of Solitude, Jo Mei Games, Nintendo, or other parties affiliated with the release of this game.)

[runnfromtheak]

tagged by @icosagens!!! such an eloquent and stunning writer with a sharp sense of humor srsly go check him out on ao3! <3 Specifically check out his JayDickDonna fic, CHCl3 which is beautiful and painful and just E V E R Y T H I N GGGGG.

I'll put everything under the cut so there isn't a terrible amount of scrolling for those wishing to skip <3

Rules: list the first lines of your last ten stories. See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

Anchors of Mortality

AKA my new passion project where Dick has a savior complex and no self-preservation skills featuring a Constantine who just wants to Tap That, a Zatanna who is tired and also wants to Tap That, and a host of resurrected characters because Dick can't let things lie or die. Ships include JayDick and Magic^2Dick (or Dick/Zee/Constantine)

Life ends and life begins in rain, at least as far as Dick Grayson is concerned. His parents died on a rainy day, ice-cold droplets seeping in through the bright, thick cloth of the circus tents. A drizzle, Haly had called it beforehand, telling them not to worry. But rain is an omen – a warning – of an uncertain future, of conflicting emotions and thoughts. It had been a sign he’d been foolish to ignore, a sign Haly had been foolish to ignore.

everything casts a shadow

AKA SladeDick with Slade being the Worst and Dick straight up not having a good time

Zatanna used to say that rain has a cleansing effect on the heart and the soul – and the cock, Constantine would always interject with a filthy leer of promise. Rain purifies negative energy from a space, murder or magic, and rain settles the anxious mind. The three of them had made love in the rain once, intertwining limbs and the glow of magic refracted throughout the cold droplets. Three hearts aligned in a crystalline world of skin and water, for a perfect moment.

a prayer for which no words exist

JayDick where Dick has issues and needs therapy. Like a true emotional support/projection character, he reads instead.

On nights he can’t sleep, he reads.

Dick’s always enjoyed books, had grown up with yellowed pages musty with the scent of age as comfort and entertainment, but he’d stopped reading frequently when he’d grown up. With everything else, with responsibility atop responsibility atop responsibility as he’d aged, he hadn’t the time or the mental capacity to love reading like he had before. He hadn’t been able to focus or concentrate, always oscillating between too keyed up and too exhausted. The words, when he’d try and sift through the neurochemical adrenaline high and sift through the luring temptress of melatonin and sleep deprivation, would float and float and float away like distant birds migrating to a new land.

i'm addicted to the way you hurt (i don't mind if you fuck up my life)

JayDick where Dick is a female and also depressed but not in a sexy way. Very Spuffy s6 vibes if ya know what I mean.

When she comes back to life, her world is a nuclear green.

She’s embraced by something; it cradles her, like she’s a precious bundle of jewels, like something perfect to be coveted. There’s warmth where she rests her head, breasts pillowed beneath her, and she’s held close enough to feel that rhythmic cadence like a siren call to life.

warning signs can feel like they're butterflies (i won't stop 'till i get where you are)

Johnlock fic because I got into the fandom late where Sherlock just can't say no and everyone is sad.

He shoots her blackmailer on Christmas Day on the front porch of a cold mansion.

It’s a good shot – clean, precise – with an entry wound and an exit wound. Bits of brain matter coated in blood spatter at Magnussen's back, a dead-eyed look of shock in his empty eyes.

hold your breath 'till we're in too deep (my love is a mood ring)

JayDick where Dick just wants to love Jason and people (*cough* Jason *cough*) make this a difficult venture.

The thing is: Jason Todd is dead.

The thing is: Jason Todd is holding a detonator in his right fist and a gun in his left, both pointed in Dick’s direction in a fairly menacing way.

The thing is: Dick’s vision is blurry from what may or may not be a concussion and there are little floating Batmen spinning around his head in diapers like a horrifying rendition of Cupid, so his assessments may not be entirely accurate.

i wanna waste my youth on you

DickDonna where Dick Grayson is a fucking simp for Donna Troy but aren't we all? (the correct answer is yes. if you said no, only god can help you now.)

He’s ten and she’s eleven and she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

heart on your sleeve like you've never been loved (running in circles now look what you've done)

Johnlock and Adlock where Sherlock picks sex over drugs and John is Not Pleased.

It starts right after the funeral dressed up as a wedding. Tables of decorations he’d picked, dishes he’d selected, color pallets he’d painstakingly coordinated and plotted. John and Mary’s song, weaved from his tears and his blood spilt like ink over the dancefloor as his violin grieves with him.

She’s pregnant. Sherlock smiles, as the best friend is meant to, and John smiles, as the father is meant to, and Mary smiles and it’s all normal and proper and Sherlock’s frozen before she pulls John away with something so horribly knowing in her eyes, before they kiss sweetly on a dancefloor he’d helped pick and lose themselves in throngs of friends and family.

light at the beginning of the tunnel (but he tells me that i'm dreaming)

Johnlock where Sherlock pines and does drugs post T6T.

He hadn’t intended to return. Victorian London holds its own sort of allure, delicious danger at every corner, nothing but pure intellect unaided by modern machinations to solve puzzles of every sort—

(a John Watson that still looks at you like you hung the sun and the stars just for him, like you’re the center he orbits, a gravity he doesn’t care to escape. A place where deductions still evoke tenderness, approval. Where John Watson still wants to hear your voice and cares for you, even with Mary.)

—but it had been dangerous. It had been utterly reckless, a calculated OD with no less than five compounds of varying effects, each boosting the others into a delightful failing of his heart that hadn’t lasted because his transport’s tenacity outweighed his mind’s desires. The fanciful realm where his life hadn’t gone to complete and utter shite had never been a conscious plan. Sherlock hadn’t intended for his brain to grasp for a chain, a link to reality in the form of delusions and hallucinations and awful attempts at honesty. He hadn’t planned for a did you miss me? Despite all his claims to the contrary at the time.

me and you are such a beautiful tragedy (in love with agony)

JayDick Jason wants to be a good person but he's horny. AKA the new pitch for evil: come to the dark side, we have great sex or your ex that can and will kill you if you don't.

The thing about the Lazarus Pit is it consumes you. It’s greedy, like Midas’s touch on a cellular level. It replaces the old with the new – with it – carving a home in blood and soul for its will. For its intentions, passive though they seem at first. Mental stability is only one cost of such a bargain, but it’s by far the worst.

I mean, I used rain as a symbol/parallel twice but mehhh. I don't think I'm super duper set in any formula as far as first lines go. I think my fave would either be the Lazarus Pit line or the nuclear green one. I love my Pit consequences, okay?

Tagging @boyblunder-thedarkheir, @behindtherobinsmask, @luthienluinwe, @stevieraebarnes, and @bitterleafs!! <3

[confusedhost-archive]

She-Ra tumblr au

I made this with @maycombhoney​ at some point and was thinking about it earlier today.

---

Adora: Has a popular sideblog named She-Ra about her boxing and fighting abilities but very few people follow her main account. Her sideblog is simple, with a lot of self defense tips and stuff, and sometimes people see reblogs of stuff that are supposed to go to her main account show up. They’re pretty boring, so they usually don’t check out the main account

Glimmer: Lots of sparkly moodboards and stuff with a really pretty aesthetic, and that’s all you see when you follow, but once you’re following, your dash starts having a bunch of vent posts about her mom and there’s a lot of discourse. Glimmer gets mad at posts easily. There’s also a lot of anon hate to her. It’s kinda depressing. If she ever posts art, she often has to take it down because no matter how often she says not to, people repost it, and she can’t let her mom connect the dots. 

Bow: He talks a lot about bows. Shows off a lot of his arrow creations and how-to's on making them at home. They’re too complicated to actually work though. Most of his followers find him through Adora’s side blog She-Ra, where he’s often tagged. It’s usually because she posts selfies of their adventures and he’s in them. Glimmer is too, but she’s well known on her own. 

Double Trouble: Their username is from some small fandom no one has ever heard of, their profile pic is from some abandoned cartoon from a year ago, their header is a gif scene from at least three different shows that were shot in the same place, and their line underneath is a quote from an old musical from the 90′s. The blog is about none of those and has a bunch of posts from a show no one can find. They often get asks about what show it is, to which they give a name, and when they’re asked for a link, it never seems to work. People have given up. At some point, someone noticed that you can actually figure out what’s going on in the show if you look at the gif sets and put them together in order of episode (which is labeled at the bottom). See the thing is, Double Trouble is using the mystery and confusion of this blog to advertise the show they wrote, directed and acted out. No one knows how it’s possible, but the people who know what happened are both under oath to not tell anyone and also extremely confused as to how Double Trouble managed it. Including me. I don’t know how it was managed, but I do have a theory that I’m about to send to @sheblah​. This does mean that she’s required to post my thing the moment she sees it.  Edit: She didn’t so I have to take matters into my own hands. Here’s the post I made with it

Catra: Catra’s posts have been a lot of discourse posts, with her being wrong. You can see in the tags that she knows exactly what she’s doing and that she’s making the wrong posts to be a jerk. She and Adora used to be mutuals (no one knows how, there’s no way their blogs should have ever crossed) but Adora saw one of her discourse posts and blocked her for around a month. After that, Catra stopped trying to reconnect. Now! Catra is less of a jerk on her tumblr and posts a bunch of cute photos of her therapy animal, Melog (no one knows what species Melog is but whatever-) and reblogs a lot of stuff about therapy and anger management. One day she put up a post about how she was getting therapy, and people spammed her with congratulations. She told them that she was crying and thanked them all deeply. Sometimes people still bring up how horrible she was and she has to put out a post saying how she recognizes this and she apologizes for everything she did. She nearly never answers the hate asks. She’s getting better. 

Perfuma: She has a cottagecore aesthetic account, it’s really pretty. She once made a cactus hating post and it blew up. She gets anons making fun of her for it to this day. Very annoying. Most people follow her for the discourse she participates in. It can be quiet for weeks, months even, and then she’ll find some idiot saying something dumb and will fight for, days sometimes, to set them right. It used to be Catra that she would fight with a lot. They ended up becoming enemy mutuals, following each other in order to mess up the other’s discourse post. This also meant that Perfuma was the first to see and cause change in Catra’s way of thinking and actions. Perfuma always reminds herself of the fact that she helped someone change for the better once. She’s proud.

Frosta: Is not legally allowed to be on tumblr. It’s a problem. But at the same time she just? Doesn’t seem to follow anyone at all? Sometimes people will send asks about a post that went viral, and she never seems to know anything about it. She hasn’t been affected by tumblr at all, and seems to post something, answer questions, and then log off to make her next thing. It’s... kind of strange, actually. Everyone knows she’s underage, but has no proof, so they can’t tell her to get off tumblr or anything. And if anyone asks how old she is, she gives a random number (A few favorites are “69,” “420,” “I stopped counting after the first hundred years,” “It’s a bit of a pardox actually, because in total I’m around 80, but I’ll be born in three years so... I’m -3 apparently,” “Old enough to beat you in a drinking contest,” “I’m a god, and have no beginning nor end,” and the best of them all, a video of someone being thrown into the air by a pillar of ice with the caption, “Begone thot.”) Frosta picks and chooses her battles when it comes to answering asks. No hate is ever seen on her blog and no one is sure whether it’s because she never gets it, or because she never answers it. She doesn’t get it. 

Entrapta: A lot of cool videos and vlogs and experiments. After about three months of being on tumblr, someone said they had an experiment she might like, and asked if they could send an ask about it and have her try it out. After that, she made it her pinned post to say, “Taking experiment requests! Have something you want me to try out?” She’s always tinkering now, and she loves it! Someone once asked her to explain one of her videos more simply, and she did! But it was too simple, and the person who asked thought she was making fun of them. A helpful follower of Entrapta’s made a better explanation in a reblog and was seen as better, so Entrapta now lets her followers explain how they see is best! She’ll reblog it onto the main account so everyone can see. If they need help, she can always take back the reigns! 

Mermista: No one is quite sure what her blog is about. There’s a lot of posts about this really obscure murder mystery book series. The ones made by the blog itself are videos of arson and mild theft. The videos are horrible quality, and no one knows what’s going on until at the very end of this three minute long vid, the camera stills, zooms in, and shows a boat on fire. It’s not on the news. Sometimes you’ll see a reblogged post that seems eerily relevant to the posts before and after. The mood the entire way through is basically just this meme

She once made a uquiz that told you what crime you committed. It is... scarily accurate. The questions had nothing to do with the answer at all. You are horrified. There was once an audio that was basically just running for three minutes with sirens in the background (the post has gone viral and people are beginning to wonder if the sirens are actually mermaid type sirens. It’s becoming more and more likely every time it’s addressed). The audio was a voice reveal. It was one word, and it just made everyone who heard it pause for a moment and sit in complete confusion and mild fear before scrolling further, because they live in the lie that perhaps if they go further, they’ll understand what’s going on. It was just, “Fire,” in the most astonished voice, and then the crackling of a flame. The blog never seems to end. After hours of scrolling, you finally reach the end, and there is and never has been context for a single thing the blog has done. You are slowly filled with dread and anticipation for the next post as you hit the follow button.  

[massivedrickhead]

Would you be able to do a Bechloe prompt set between pp2 and pp3 in New York, Chloe accidentally reveals to Beca that she used to have anorexia and Beca is completely shocked at first because she doesn’t understand. Chloe explains it slightly to beca and beca says she will always be there for her because she loves her? Xx

Sorry this took so long  Trigger Warning: Anorexia/eating disorders discussed

Read on AO3

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“Oh my god you did not go to prom in a tux!” Chloe exclaimed, looking at the photo Beca had just shown her on her phone. “That is so badass!”

Beca laughed, swiping along so Chloe could see more.

“And were they your date?” Chloe asked, pointing at the person standing beside them. 

“Kind of yeah. That was my best friend David, they went in full drag,” Beca said, smiling fondly. “Our school had this dumb rule that same-sex couples couldn’t go as dates. So we decided to be really edgy and go together but, like, with our roles swapped.” Beca swiped again. 

“That’s so fucking cool, Beca,” Chloe said. “I was not edgy at my prom.”

“I bet you looked cute though,” Beca said. “Have you got any photos?”

“Probably,” Chloe said, leaning over to pick her phone up from the nightstand. She felt Beca’s hand absentmindedly trail across her back and she smiled. She was still getting used to this side of Beca that had emerged ever since they’d started dating. 

She found any excuse she could to touch her, as if she was making up for lost time. Chloe wasn’t complaining.

“Here,” Chloe said, scrolling back through her tagged photos on facebook. She handed Beca her phone.

Beca looked down at the picture of Chloe in a powder-blue dress, her hair in all kinds of elaborate plaits and twists, with a blandly handsome boy standing beside her, his arm resting cautiously on her hip. As if he was ready to whip it away at any second.

“Cute,” Beca said before she swiped across to another photo, this one a clearer, more zoomed in duplicate of the previous one. Beca frowned at it but couldn’t immediately say why. “You look… different. She tilted her head to the side. “You’re really thin.”

“Thanks?”

“No, like you’re thin now. You’re perfect now. You just look a lot thinner there,” Beca said. She kept staring at the photo, well aware she might be offending her girlfriend. The Chloe in this picture looked like a different person to the one she was currently dating. Her face was thinner, much thinner. Her waist was tiny. Her eyes weren’t as bright and her smile looked forced. 

The silence between them was getting almost uncomfortable, so Beca handed Chloe back her phone. “Was that your boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “That’s Tom.” She climbed off the bed and went to the kitchen.

“You okay?” Beca asked, following her.

“Yeah,” Chloe said, pouring herself a glass of water. “It’s just been a while since I saw those pictures.”

Beca nodded, biting her lip. “I feel like I might have said something wrong?”

Chloe smiled and shook her head, holding out her hand for Beca to take. Beca did, and Chloe pulled her close. 

“I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t thin now,” Beca said. “If anything I think you look better now. You’ve really aged well. Like a fine wine.”

“Shut up,” Chloe said, laughing. “Of course I look better now, I was…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“No, go on,” Beca said.

“It’s nothing,” Chloe said, letting Beca go and returning to their bed.

“It’s obviously not nothing,” Beca said. “Talk to me.”

“I was just… I wasn’t very well at that time. For like the last two years of high school and the beginning of college I had, uh, some trouble with my weight,” Chloe said, trying to avoid looking at Beca.

“What do you mean?”

“I had, like, anorexia. For a while,” Chloe said, running a hand through her hair.

Beca didn’t say anything for a few minutes. She looked confused. “I don’t… I don’t understand.”

“What bit don’t you understand?” Chloe asked, mirroring Beca’s look of confusion. “I felt like I was too fat and I hated the way I looked so I stopped eating.”

“But… You’re beautiful. I’ve seen pictures of you in high school and you’ve always been beautiful. How can you not see that?”

“I was ill,” Chloe said. “It isn’t as simple as all that, Bec.”

“Explain it to me,” Beca said. “I want to understand.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t stand the thought of you ever thinking this kind of thing about yourself again. Because if it does happen again, I want to be able to help,” Beca said, taking Chloe’s hand. “Because I love you.”

Chloe smiled. “I love you too.”

“Come here,” Beca said, pulling Chloe so she was lying against her chest. “Tell me about it?”

“It was the one thing going on in my life that I could control,” Chloe said after a small silence. “I felt like everything else in my life were just things I was doing because that’s what was expected. You know, cheerleading, dating the quarterback, get straight As but still make sure I had a social life, go to church on Sundays… Trying not to think about girls in that way…” 

“Go on,” Beca said, softly. 

“I was the biggest out of my other… I don’t know if friends is the right word. The other girls in the cheerleading squad. I wasn’t overweight, I knew I wasn’t, but I felt it. So I started dieting and I started losing weight. And it felt good at first. I could fit into my clothes a little easier, I noticed boys looking at me more… I got praised for it. Everyone telling me how well I’d done. How good I looked. No one ever said… No one ever noticed when it started going too far. It’s kind of fucked up, isn’t it? No one noticed that I was only eating a salad and a granola bar every day. Not my parents or friends or even Tom. It wasn’t until I got to college and met Aubrey that I realised it wasn’t right.”

“She noticed?”

“She noticed,” Chloe said. “She just… She just asked me outright one day. She doesn’t pussyfoot around stuff.” Chloe laughed slightly at the memory. “She asked if I had an eating disorder. I told her no, of course not. I didn’t think I had one, I just thought I was a girl on a diet. Anyway, she helped me realise what I was doing to myself. I had some therapy and yeah… here we are.”

“Were you still struggling with this when we met?” Beca asked.

“I guess. It never really went away, Bec. I just… I’m better at dealing with those feelings. When my head is telling me I’m too fat and I’m disgusting and if I eat that slice of pizza everyone will hate me… I just have to be like ‘okay, thanks for sharing, but I disagree’,” Chloe said. “It doesn’t happen often anymore.”

“The next time it does, can you tell me?”

“Sure,” Chloe said. “Why?”

“I hate the thought of you dealing with this alone,” Beca said. 

Chloe sat up and kissed her. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Beca said. “No matter what you’re going through or how you look, I’ll be here for you.”

Chloe felt tears burning her eyes. “Promise?”

“Promise."

[sageblogsthings]

Do you have any tips on how to write characters with scoliosis in a respectful/accurate way?

Thank you so much for asking! I smiled like an idiot when I saw this ask. :) Let me preface this by saying that scoliosis can vary a lot from person to person depending on the severity of curvature, location of curvature, treatment methods, etc. So I think that, as with anything really, getting a wide range of viewpoints and voices on the issue will make it easier to write! Honestly just scrolling through the scoliosis tag on tumblr will give you a good sense of what it’s like for some people too. With that being said, I’ll talk a bit about my experience, and how I wish that characters with scoliosis were portrayed. Just know that my answer is far from universal amongst those with scoliosis. Also, medical treatment where I live is pretty shitty so I may have some other undiagnosed stuff that I’m attributing to scoliosis who knows lol. And I’m still learning a lot about it myself! Ok, with that caveat out of the way, here we go!

I’m gonna put a tw here for discussions of scoliosis, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression

Also, for those who don’t wanna read about my experiences with scoliosis, if you scroll down there’s 13 tips on how to write characters with scoliosis (a lot of these tips apply to chronic pain in general tho). :)

To talk about my own experience a bit, I was first diagnosed with scoliosis when I was about 10 or so. When I was first diagnosed they told me it was minor and just to watch my posture. Scoliosis runs in my family but for most of my family members it’s pretty mild so I didn’t worry about it and went on my merry way. In hindsight, not the best way to deal with that but ah well.

Flash-forward to college. I had been having back pain and headaches for awhile, but I just figured it was studying for prolonged periods of time, carrying a heavy backpack frequently, and not watching my posture when I studied. I never connected it to scoliosis because I hadn’t had a check-up since that first diagnosis. Again, not the best idea but life happens.

I just finished my junior year in college, and I have had almost non-stop doctors appointments all year. It started after I had some sharp pain in my lower back, and got x-rays to see what was going on. Several doctors appointments and an ER visit later I find out that my scoliosis has gotten significantly worse, and that I have a fractured L5 as well. One thing I don’t see mentioned a lot with scoliosis is that it significantly weakens your spine (usually lower) because your weight distribution is thrown off. I had a job that involved some pretty heavy lifting, and voila fractured L5. 13/10 would not recommend btw.

My curvature (I can’t get consistent answers from doctors) is somewhere in the 20′s in my lumbar region and in the upper 20′s/lower 30′s in my thoracic region. At least with the neurosurgeons I’ve spoken to, they don’t consider you a candidate for surgery until the upper thirties or forties, unless you have significant neurophysiological symptoms. Treatment options vary widely depending on where you live, what you can afford, and what your doctor will give you a referral for, but most doctors will recommend physical therapy off the bat. To my knowledge, most doctors do not recommend bracing anymore, though I think in children that might be different (not so sure on that). So currently, I am waiting on an appointment with a pain management specialist and will go from there. 

Even though the curvature in my spine is relatively minor, I still experience significant symptoms. Some of these symptoms include sciatica, pinched nerves in my arms, legs, and back, muscle spasms in my upper back and neck, swelling of my hands and feet, and numbness or pain in my hands and wrists. Also, because my spine curves more in the upper portion of my back, my left lung cannot expand as much as my right lung. This isn’t always a problem, but I get shortness of breath pretty easily, and any respiratory infections make it super hard to breathe properly (pneumonia sucks a butt). There’s also the obvious bit of scoliosis where I stand a little crooked. Another thing I think that not a lot of people know is that how “lopsided” you are can vary from day to day. This doesn’t mean that the curvature is changing day-to-day, but the muscles may be more relaxed or tightened on some days.

So that’s my experience pretty much (bless you if you read all that!). But, to show an example on the opposite end of the spectrum, my friend had (I think) a 30 degree curvature in the thoracic region and 50 degree curvature in the lumbar. He had immediate corrective surgery (I’m not sure exactly what kind) and now aside from the scar on his back and that he looks like a table when he bends over (his words lol i’m not being mean) you would never know. And even weirder, he had no significant symptoms before his surgery aside from occasional sciatica. So your symptoms don’t necessarily depend on the degree of curvature, where the curve is located has a lot to do with it. Typically, more curvature in the upper spine is more painful but that’s by no means always the case.

Ok, so how in the heck does this all apply to writing characters? I promise it does, I’m not just rambling (well, maybe haha).

13 Things to Consider When Writing Characters With Scoliosis:

Their symptoms may vary from day to day. This may mean that some days they can do activities like running or baseball, and other days they can barely type or walk without pain.

They may have no, mild, or severe symptoms, depending on the location and severity of curvature, and other factors.

What is medical care like where they live? Dealing with doctors, neurosurgeons, physical therapists, etc. is just a part of having scoliosis, and very often an incredibly draining aspect. This is especially true if you have anxiety or other factors that make going to the doctor even more unpleasant.

Were they misinformed about scoliosis? Unless you go to someone who specializes in scoliosis treatment, you’re probably gonna get inaccurate information about something. For example, I was told constantly as a kid to watch my posture. Yes, this can have an impact, but more and more research is showing that scoliosis in many cases is influenced more by hormones (especially in teenage years) than posture. There’s also more egregious examples of this, such as a neurosurgery PA who recently told me not to ever use CBD to alleviate pain because it’s a “gateway drug.” This is literally impossible. So for writing, this could translate into frustration or even anger for your character. But it could also make for some funny situations later! I wrote down everything that crazy PA told me and it still makes me laugh from time to time.

Don’t give them a back-breaking job. It will literally break their back lol. I’m not saying they can’t be active, but if someone is impacted by scoliosis on a daily basis they probably aren’t working as a professional wrestler. Or maybe they are, and your story is trying to explain how that works lol

What do they do to manage the pain (if they have it)? For me, the symptoms are typically inflammatory in nature so things like ice, heat, turmeric tea, and anti-inflammatory medications help relieve the symptoms. This is one of those things where getting other viewpoints is good though too!

Is their spine visibly crooked? If so, are they self-conscious about it? This varies a loooot, and may even vary with symptoms. For example, maybe some days when the pain isn’t bad they wear a cute dress that shows their shoulder-blades. But then when the pain is bad, they just want to look like a hobo. I say this from experience lol.

Have people treated them differently because of it (positively or negatively)? Some people may experience bullying if their scoliosis is more visible, especially as a child. They may also be treated differently by adults, who are trying to look out for them, but nevertheless it still makes them stand out from other kids.

Do they make jokes about it? For example, I can be found frequently saying “my spine said yeet!” or “straight spine? idk her” or my personal favorite “my spine is about as straight as I am.” Scoliosis sucks, but living with it you learn to find humor in it too.

Are they going to get surgery for it? I can’t speak on this part since I haven’t had surgery, but I would imagine that there is a psychological aspect to this that you would want to mention for your character, as well as any logistical aspects like finances, dealing with trash insurance companies, etc.

How does scoliosis impact their mental health? This is one of my pet peeves, and it’s entirely founded in a lack of resources and education, so I’m not aiming this at anyone specifically. But scoliosis does impact your mental health, especially if you have pre-existing conditions like anxiety or depression already. It can be incredibly depressing to want to do something as simple as going for a walk, but you’re in too much pain. It can also really impact anxiety. For example, when I found out about my curvature change in college I had one of the biggest anxiety attacks I’ve ever had. There is also the added issue of not being able to breathe properly at times, which can make a panic/anxiety attack much worse (in intensity or duration). Of course, mental health issues can also be exacerbated by the environment you’re in, so that is definitely something to consider for your character.

What was their diagnosis like? What factors impacted their ability to get a diagnosis? Lack of adequate medical care or having crappy insurance is a huge problem, and it makes it really hard or even impossible for some people to get a diagnosis. And for most neurosurgeons or specialized treatment facilities you have to have that diagnosis and referral for them to be able to do anything. There may also be aspects of your character’s home life that prevents them from getting a diagnosis. Do their parents think they’re faking it, or that they just need to sit up straight? Is your character trans, and/or wears baggy clothing? I’ve heard several stories of undiagnosed cases because of this, so it’s something to consider.

Ok, I think this is the last thing (huge huge thank you to anyone still reading this!!). But please, if you’re writing a character with scoliosis, or any chronic issue/disability for that matter, avoid the trope of you’re still beautiful to me/you’re beautiful anyways/I don’t see your disability. Some people might not get what I’m saying here, so let me explain a little. If you have a character with significant scoliosis, to the point it impacts their daily life, and they meet another character (potential friend, love interest, whatever) and this new person grows to love them in spite of their scoliosis/disability, that is a huge red flag. It implies that they are seeing them through a lens of not having the disability, and they love that version of your character. But that is not your character in reality, because your character in reality has a very real disability. In general, just try to avoid the “I don’t see __,” in writing and real life. That could be applied to a disability, or the character’s race, sexuality, etc. In all cases, it dismisses a fundamental part of who that character is, and what experiences have shaped them into who they are. If your character has scoliosis and it has shaped who they are, it is important for other characters to recognize that as well, otherwise they aren’t really seeing that character in their “full glory,” if that makes sense. I’m rambling a bit at this point and I’m sure there’s other posts that make this point better than I have, but the takeaway is just please don’t write scoliosis as “you’re beautiful anyways.” Scoliosis or no scoliosis, it’s just “you’re beautiful.” Full stop. But part of how your character may come to recognize that beauty within themselves, or how others see it within them, may be influenced by their experiences with scoliosis.

Phew, I did not expect that to get so long but it’s a topic I’m passionate about and I haven’t seen information on scoliosis geared towards writers before, so hopefully this will help! Again, a lot of this is based on my own experiences so please do not take any of this as a universal guide to scoliosis, it definitely isn’t. And if I’ve said anything that people disagree with (or even agree with!) or have questions about, I am always open to polite discourse and discussion. :)

I hope that this answered your question some, and if not feel free to let me know! Thank you so much for asking this!