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stardustdiiving · 1 year ago

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I would love to hear more about your thoughts regarding Wanderer being trans whenever you find the time to write about it more!

(follow up to this post)

AWESOME. okay. So. This got super long and I keep nitpicking if it clearly says every single thought that goes through my head or not so I’m just going to post it

There’s many interpretations about this headcanon I enjoy, but one particular angle I would find interesting to explore that I’ll pitch here is basically centered on a characterization where Wanderer’s internal relationship with his own transness is very tied with his non-humanness, maybe even more so than his gender.

The appeal of this angle for me is essentially having a character’s queerness tie into genshin’s overarching themes about identity & personhood, especially in regards to the relationship between divinity & humanity—themes that obviously apply to Scaramouche (and also basically every other not human genshin character I can think of that people generally agree are engaging characters)

Scaramouche (which name I use for him is intentional & reflects what era of his life I’m talking about) to me is someone who basically enforces a sense of apathy over his own emotions, especially ones relating to his sense of identity—he seeks godhood in hopes of being able to purge himself clean of experiencing (human) emotions, and therefore the vulnerability & trauma he associates with having them.

Intuitively I can see him feeling a similar conscious apathy about his gender: I see him as viewing gender identity as a “too human” trait and therefore something he’s above, basically—which is really a deeper deflection of his own insecurities with his personhood/identity.

So to Scaramouche, internally, anything about his transition or transness is less about gender and actually far more about his desire to obtain godhood, and this is a mental narrative he really sticks to because it fits in comfortably with his hatred of humans and desire for a purpose/identity for his existence as a non human entity “without a heart”.

If this were a fic I were writing, Scaramouche would undergo a lot of physical/medical transitioning during his time as a Harbringer and he would essentially be narrating & viewing anything gender affirming thing he does as him becoming closer to godhood and further from being human. This would contrast how I’d portray Kabukimono earlier on in his arc—where I imagine Kabukimono took on a lot of social transitions based on observing humans and building a sense for what human things he liked to participate in or mimic.

Kabukimono, in a manner similar to Scaramouche, might sometimes categorize some of his transness as relating to being more of a puppet/nonhuman origin thing than a gender thing, (ie getting gender dysphoria from having long hair but rationalizing it has more to do with not wanting to look like Ei), Kabukimono was more in a position of building towards his transness being a positive thing that affirmed him his sense of personhood & sense of belonging with others. By the time Scaramouche reaches the point of resenting humans, and in turn resenting his own sense of humanity in his arc, he needs to establish all parts of his identity as the farthest thing from human as possible

The irony, however, that I’d highlight in the hypothetical fic of this, is that Scaramouche’s experiences with his transness are narrated as being things no one could ever understand because of how inhuman he is—while in practice you see a lot of his trans experiences are actually pretty common ones many trans people would understand.

So like, Dottore does his canon typical physical experiments/modifications on Scaramouche, and the entire time Scara is undergoing but also gloating the entire time how he’s able to endure this because he’s not as weak as humans are—and this continues when, at Scara’s request, Dottore gives him Evil Mad Scientist Top Surgery, and he’s having this snide internal monologue about how godlike he is because of all the inhuman ways he can physically modify and mold his body to be to his liking, and then suddenly he looks in a mirror and sees himself with a flat chest for the first time and just has… like, a moment of very genuine happiness with feeling more like himself for the first time, and processing all the ways he can exist more comfortably in his body without having to work around dysphoria constantly. He imagines himself existing among humans in these brief thoughts without even realizing it, and the idea is this is written in a way that makes him sound very human—and how he seems happier when he lets himself be.

Meanwhile Dottore in the background is just, very nonchalant about this and makes some bored comment about they ought to not delay more important procedures any further if he wants to ascend to godhood anytime soon. Scaramouche kind of snaps out of it & back into his usual sort of headspace/mindset and kind of sneers at him how this was a far more significant step in ascending to godhood than Dottore could ever understand.

And after he says this he mentally pauses, because he really hadn’t been thinking of it like that before—and then wonders if it was true, because it wasn’t an experiment that made him feel more powerful like the other ones had. What he feels now is something other than more powerful—but there’s not really any other explanation for this reaction. More godly, maybe. It makes him feel not more powerful, but closer to what he wants—which is a god.

So from there my idea is Scaramouche kind of…attributes the joy associated with his top surgery, and other similar major landmarks in his transition, with his pursuit of godhood. It spurs him on to want to be a god even more, because it's solidified in his mind as the one thing he really needs to be himself/truly happy

And then he does finally reach godhood—and is plugged into the Everlasting Lord of Arcane Wisdom’s body, he’s just finds himself feeling disappointed.

He has this minor mental crisis about it where he’s not unsatisfied—he’s more exhilarated than he has ever felt in his entire life, because he feels unspeakably powerful in the way he should be. It /is/ everything he wanted, and he savors the sheer triumph and power of the movement, but it’s just not the same. It’s not enough to make him regret what it took to get here but he’s really frustrated, because he doesn’t feel happy. Which is not an emotion Scaramouche really cares about, but even one thing he wants being somewhat out of his reach when he had hoped to suppress all the unpleasantness of having emotions is deeply unpleasant for him.

I think the next time Scaramouche really feels something close to what he’d been missing is post Inversion of Genesis, after he becomes the Wanderer.

In this narrative I think it would be an extra kick in the face that Dottore had helped him with part of his transition while Scaramouche watches Dottore kill Niwa, where Dottore basically affirms Scara’s dehumanization while Niwa insists on affirming his humanity with his dying breath. There’s the obvious violation violation of realizing someone basically sabotaged your support systems to isolate/alienate you from the world, then manipulated and groomed you into joining the fatui so they could experiment on you for their own satisfaction and intrigue, but he also finds himself grappling with recontextualizing alot of his interactions with Dottore, and coming to this conclusion that Dottore was only ever vaguely interested in Scaramouche’s potential for godhood, and doesn’t care about…this other part of why that was important to Scaramouche as a person. (Which is his transness, basically)

It’s not that he ever believed Dottore cared about him or wasn’t pursuing his own interests, but I think recontextualizing how dehumanizing Dottore’s treatment + view of him is, forces him to really pick apart his transness vs desire for godhood, and realize there’s sort of a distinction between the two he hadn’t been making.

Post IoG I think this line of thinking, along with learning Niwa hadn’t betrayed him making him hate humans much less, lets Wanderer start developing a much healthier relationship with his transness, and also just his entire identity in general. He can reconcile with his own humanity, which lets him reflect on himself more, and I think eventually he can come to an answer on why becoming god wasn’t what he needed to be happy with himself + his gender.

So essentially I’d write present day Wanderer as being more comfortable with his gender than Scaramouche would be. If I were to apply our contemporary English labels/language to his gender I think he’d more or less jsut view himself as a trans guy, but I guess by technicality has a sort of “non binary” gender bc he just doesn’t view himself in terms of human binaries due to being a puppet?? That’s just my own characterization tho. All in all I bend characterizations of characters’ queerness in line with what whatever sort of transformative work I feel like doing so this isn’t even the only way I’d write trans Wanderer. Just usually the one I go off the most when portraying him as a character

#additional thing. in my og post I mentioned I kind of default view Wanderer as trans whenever I portray him in my fan works right #u can absolutely do a trans reading of the fic I wrote based off this concept of Wanderer/Makoto resemblance #I have thoughts on a more active trans reading of it that I did actually consider while writing it #even tho there wasn’t rlly a way for me to like mention wanderer’s transness naturally in the text #scaramouche #wanderer #Genshin #genshin tangents #gender impact #asks #fern.txt

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albertserra · 16 days ago

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hii bc i’m really curious and would love to engage more deeply & widely with cinema myself… can i ask how you got into film as an art form and how you cultivate your relationship to it? bonus if you could share (i’m sure you have before) what are the things you look out for in a film that makes it both good and a personal favourite. and how/where do you keep discovering things to watch (aside from the obvious like mubi and criterion collection)!!

I’ll start with the finding things to watch because that part is easier. You obv touched on the easy ones - though I’ll say some online ‘film festivals’ are more niche and also really good. My friend told me about this one and there’s some interesting stuff in it. There’s also kanopy which is free with a library card. Solidarity cinema’s archive is also great! Other sites for stuff you can’t find on these ofc. Then with all this access it comes down to actually picking what to watch. At this point I just kind of have things I gravitate towards - actors, directors, themes, etc. and the people I follow on here/letterboxd also introduce me to some really cool stuff. To just get your feet wet though I get it can be overwhelming! I’m happy to help with recs if you give some criteria or things you like. My letterboxd account has helped me a lot in terms of not only keeping track of what I’ve seen and my thoughts on them but also finding things to watch through lists or other people. I started with the imdb top 250 when I was in high school which wasn’t necessarily bad but my taste has changed drastically since then lmao. Which kind of gets into the other part of your question

Like I said I started in high school idk why I think I was just bored of the video games I was currently playing and had a lot of time since I couldn’t find a job for a summer. Ended up deciding to get into movies and started an imdb account and scrolling through the imdb top 250. I liked thrillers and crime movies a lot, then I got really into Kevin spacey because I thought he was hot (LMFAOO) which led me to watch se7en, which lead me to David fincher. Stuff like that. But my enjoyment was still mostly superficial. It’s only when I had the opportunity to take film electives in college that I really started thinking about film seriously as art. It exposed me to a lot more and I learned the basics about film language/techniques-mise en scene, editing etc. inwhat was essentially a ‘film 101’ class which was a prerequisite for the more interesting classes. Then in those I got exposed to more world cinema and film theory (two highlights were classes that mixed the domain of film theory with other disciplines, one for queer theory and another for feminist theory). Reading and watching all this and being forced to write long form for assignments helped me develop my appreciation for what I was watching as well as the language I could use to talk about the films. My personal taste developed kind of alongside all this and is of course still developing. Jeanne dielman is how I learned I loved slow cinema, a Soviet cinema class got me to think about political messaging in film, stuff like that. But even then these were still just seeds I think. I was too young and inexperienced to really appreciate some of it but looking back I see how valuable it all was. Someone like you would def have an advantage starting out with a literary background, so I think a lot of the skills are transferable

Good and personal favorite, for me, don’t have much difference. But I think that’s me just being spoiled from having seen so many “classics” that a really well executed film doesn’t do much for me if it doesn’t do something new/different that excites me or doesn’t trigger any kind of emotional response in me. Good example of this would be the brutalist recently - undeniably well made, but narratively and technically not really anything special or fresh, not to mention the murky politics. Something like “the white silk dress” / áo lụa hà đông on the other hand- it’s not as pretty to look at, it’s not as polished, but it’s so much better imo. Heart and soul and a real driving force instead of empty aesthetics and an Oscar bait narrative.

I’ve never liked the idea of a film “canon”, especially because of how much it tends to leave by the wayside when I much prefer “third world” cinema, films that fall through the cracks, etc. But I can understand the importance of films like citizen Kane and breathless and the rules of the game even if on an enjoyment level idrc about any of them. But I think they’re a good base to then branch out/away from.

This was really long sorry…. Ummm. Feel free to ask more or dm or whatever!!

#asks #sawasawako

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g-oblincat · 1 year ago

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The other manga I've been keeping up with that recently just ended! And I'm going to talk about it!

Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru (Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!) by Sal Jiang

A lesbian office drama written by a Twitter artist I really like! Ayaka has a crush on her senior at work, Hiroko, and constantly tries to make Hiroko notice her. Hiroko is a lesbian who’s closeted at work and trying her hardest not to fall for Ayaka, who she thinks is an oblivious straight girl. The appeal is the comedy of watching two women made stupid by love freak out over each other, underlined by queer angst.

Things I like about it:

Charming characters! The main couple is SO easy to fall in love with and root for- they are so earnest and funny and have great chemistry. It also doesn’t hurt that they’re drawn REALLY well with fun, expressive faces and cute designs.

Themes of queerness as identity and community! More in the spoiler section, but my favorite scenes in this story take place in in a gay bar with a character’s WLW friendgroup as they talk about being gay. The community is my favorite part of being queer and I never see it reflected in manga, and I love how much fun and love is put into the scenes with the friendgroup.

You can read the official English comic online here! I think this is the most affordable I’ve ever seen a manga actually, so it’s definitely worth a buy! I will admit I am using the Dynasty Scans pages in the spoiler section of this post, since that’s the version I read before finding out about the official English version.

Expanding on my two points above in the spoilers section!

Time for the section where I play show and tell

That’s the premise!

Great characters and chemistry

Ayaka is SO cute. I love pretty femme girls who are kind of bratty, and she’s portrayed in a way where you know the author’s having so much fun with her.

Some random out of order/context Ayaka faces from the earlier chapters! I forgot how cute and sweet she comes off in the earlier chapters, she’s a total goblin later lol

Hiroko is also such a fun character! I love the contrast between a really serious, straight laced, determined-to-not-fall-in-love person at work to uhhhhh womanizer at night lol.

Speaking of fun, a character interaction trope I’ll never get tired of are “characters who comedically overreact when they’re in love with someone” and that fits this couple to a T!

What a cute sequence….

Both characters’ POVs from the same chapter. Hiroko focusing on how hot Ayaka is, and Ayaka imagining wedding bells when Hiroko looks at her LOL.

I could keep showing screenshots of these two until I basically go through the entire comic lol.

But even outside the main two, I really like the side characters as well! A standout is Risa - Ayaka’s colleague who’s also a baby gay and has a crush on her. I’m unusual in that I usually like love triangles, but I do think this one is written really well! She’s sympathetic, her doomed longing for Ayaka is delicious and relatable. (Spoilers) I love how her selfishness and selflessness is balanced- her crush and competition with Hiroko makes her sabotage Ayaka’s crush in small ways in the beginning, but she fundamentally cares for her friend and roots for them in the end. Also, (BIG SPOILERS) she and Ayaka end up dating and breaking up but still remain friends, which is another favorite trope of mine. (HUGE SPOILERS) I love this page, any manga that includes a scene like this is top tier for me…. She feels realistic and her story is really sweet!

(Left) Baby gays smashing braincells against each other and (Right) Risa’s eyes wander….

Queer community and identity

This section has more spoilers than the last one!! If you haven’t read this comic but plan on it, I recommend you not read this part!!

In my last post, I said that Yuri as a genre doesn’t need to have anything about queerness as an identity to be good, but then I realized that most of my favorites did have a focus on identity…. Yeah IDK what to say LOL. But the identity aspect is a big plot point/theme of this story, and it’s written SUPER well.

First of all- Hiroko’s backstory centers on homophobia and her being super closeted at her workplace. I’m iffy on homophobia stories (just cause I’ve read a lot of them and they tend to hit on the same points), but the homophobia theme leads to one of my fav scenes:

Context: Risa knows Hiroko is closeted and rants about it to the bartender at a lesbian bar who knows Hiroko.

I love this focus on how queer people interact with the straight world, and the generational divide between older and younger queers. I can only speak from a US perspective, but progress around LGBTQ acceptance has come so far and so fast the past few years that if I was born a few years earlier or a few years later, I’d have a radically different life experience. It’s something I think about a lot when reading memoirs and articles by older queer people, and contrasting that with my life and the observed lives of people younger than me online. This theme is explored well in this story- the cultural tensions between Hiroko and Ayaka and Risa, how straight people may react more positively to queer people now but it’s still not perfect, and how Hiroko has changed her workplace for the better.

Also speaking of the lesbian bar- I love the girls at the bar lol. Right after the scene with Risa, a gaggle of lesbians come in and comfort her and it’s SOOOO heartwarming and cute. I love how this friendgroup is written- supportive, but also will call you out.

It’s so fun to read these guys gossip, give each other relationship advice, bicker with each other, and be horny at women together.

Hiroko’s relationship with the girls is more bickering, but Risa and Ayaka end up going to them for advice a lot which is so sweet and the elder/baby queer relationship I need (not portrayed because I can’t find a screenshot that doesn’t reveal a big plot twist)

Anyway…that’s it…. If you’ve read this comic please talk to me about it…if you haven’t please read it. Thank you.

#personal #manga recommendation #yuri #Ayaka-chan wa Hiroko-senpai ni Koishiteru #Ayaka is in Love with Hiroko!

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misty-caligula · 2 years ago

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Okay, so I’m not used to really getting... noticed... in the way that I have been recently. And I’ve been kind of just vibing quietly before I actually respond to anything. But I got some responses to my big thesis post which I think warrant extra attention, because I think perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be.

It’s worth mentioning that I have almost 500 posts up at this point, and have been very much immersed in yj theory for a fair while, so it’s hard to necessarily know how clear I am in any given context, and if I’m making assumptions of a reader. So I’m going to respond to a couple of things and see if I can redo a bit of Jackie/Coach stuff. My intention isn’t to say “Ah you’re wrong!” but to reframe my own position. If you don’t like what I’ve got to say that’s fine, I’m just a random on the internet. I’m not Right, I’m just thinking thoughts.

(Long post ahead about meta analysis of jackie and coach and society)

@inthegloomglow

Really good post but… coach and Jackie didn’t deserve to die for not being calm about all of this. They murdered his brother. I’m not sure that’s the point I’m supposed to get? But it’s weird to condemn them for that.

@areyoushuri

!!!! Criticizing Jackie and Coach for not being well adapted to the willingness and struggling to accept the rituals and cannibalism created is odd considering that the vast majority of viewers probably wouldn't survive/accept something like that. Yes, they're stubborn, not built for the wilderness, etc. but so many of the traits we criticize now served them well before the crash.

Okay! So first thing’s first. I do not hate Jackie or Coach. I think they’re both really interesting characters, with interesting through-lines. I think that they’re well acted, well written, and bring a lot of value to the plot. I’ve completely fallen in love with Jackie and Shauna’s really messy ... mess, and will absolutely go on giant tangents about it if you don’t stop me. I find Coach to be a really intricate and tragic portrayal of being queer in the 90s, one that speaks to me as someone who was struggling with being queer in the 90s, and whose dad was queer in the decades prior. I love these disasters, as I love all the disasters on this show.

I’m not critiquing them as people, I’m digging into the metatext of their actions as thematic devices. I also don’t know if this actually needs to be said but I’ll be very clear: If these were actual human beings then I wouldn’t want any of them to die, the point is that they are not humans, they are commentaries on society and culture and trauma and the way that people adapt or fail to adapt to changing situations. I don’t think people deserve to die for being wrong, or making mistakes... I just accept the theme of characters either surviving or dying based on their values within the show. I hope that’s clear, but just in case... there you go.

So my big concept of the show is that there’s this one giant question that the yellowjackets keep getting asked: “What really happened out there?” And that what DID really happen out there, fundamentally, is that there was a fracturing of social realities. Think of it like... the ‘jackets used to be part of “Society,” a huge world-wide group of all connected human cultures as a whole. And then they went off to the wilderness and they lost contact with Society, and they had to build a whole new culture all of their own from the ground up. We’ll call that the Team. Then they were suddenly rescued, after they’d fully given up on ever seeing Society again, and were forcibly thrown back in, and now are expected to just... reassimilate. And they’re struggling to do so.

So if you think about the show as a collection of big chunks, you can think of it like this:

> The ‘jackets are normal kids, living in and learning from, and protected by Society

> Their connection to Society is severed, but they expect rescue, and so they build a micro outpost of Society in the wilderness

> They slowly realise they’re never going to be saved

> They begin to recognise that the values and lessons that Society gave them are not all helpful in the wilderness and will get them killed. They start to develop the Team to replace what’s not working

> The Team grows in power, and the individual survivors have to make a decision about whether they’re going to remain loyal to Society or join the Team. Those who don’t join the Team die, not because they’re bad but because Society cannot protect them in the wilderness. To be very clear, neither Society, nor the Team, are inherently good or bad, they’re simply cultures that exist and offer each individual a place within them to provide and be provided for. But Society is NOT here, it’s a memory of a culture that’s been severed, and cannot provide anything anymore, only the Team is capable of doing so. THAT’S why only Team members can survive.

> The only survivors left are Team members, the Team stabilizes into a functioning self-perpetuating system

> They’re rescued and forcibly reintegrated into Society

> The remaining Team members now find themselves in the opposite situation, the Team is now toxic and can’t help them anymore, just like Society couldn’t help them in the wilderness, and they need to shed it to adapt back to Society just like they shed Society the first time. Those who can do so will eventually live long and happy lives. Those who can’t will die.

Coach and Jackie’s big thing in common isn’t that they suck, or that they’re unpleasant to be around. It’s that they’re Society loyalists. They just can’t let go. And what I think is most interesting about that is that both of them are being MISTREATED by Society. They’ve both been assigned roles that they cannot fill, and have held onto those roles SO tightly that it’s getting them killed.

Jackie’s absolutely plastered with unearned privilege. She’s constantly being told how perfect and brilliant and incredible she is. But she knows it’s a lie. And in order to defend her place, to justify her situation, and protect herself from anyone finding out, she holds Shauna SO close to her, so that she can have someone to feel constantly superior to. To make her look good by comparison. Except that Shauna is so many of the things that she secretly knows she isn’t and feels she NEEDS to be. So she spends a lot of effort beating Shauna down and focusing on convincing her that she has all these flaws and things so that she doesn’t realise that Jackie’s not actually this perfect person that people tell her she has to be.

Once she’s in the wilderness and Shauna starts to shine on her own - because the Team simply needs a different set of skills than Society did and Shauna’s willing to engage with it - Jackie’s control slips and she resents it, she fears it so much. And she can’t accept losing that level of authority that she got given by Society, to take a lower role with the Team. And so she stays loyal to Society even when it’s nonsensical. She sits in the snow and simply waits to be rescued, because that’s what Society has taught her to do.

But the Team doesn’t work like that. It requires Team members to be self-sufficient, and to work together. Jackie won’t go inside because Society has taught her to wait for Shauna to submit to her authority and apologise and invite her in, to give her the position that she Deserves. Shauna won’t do that because the Team has taught her that each Team member needs to be a part of the whole, that Jackie must eventually request permission to join the Team as a regular member. It’s a conflict that doesn’t get resolved, because neither will budge, but in the wilderness the Team can protect you and Society cannot, so Jackie’s faith in Society is punished with death.

That’s why Jackie can’t make a basic campfire to literally save her life. Because the Team would’ve taught her how, would’ve required her to learn. Society would provide her with someone to do it for her. So she just never bothered to learn. It’s why she’s unable to recognise just how dangerously cold it’s getting and be REASONABLE and knock on the door. Because Society has taught her that she’s protected from danger, that if it ever got Dangerous someone would come and help her. She doesn’t know the difference between damn cold and dying cold. Society works because of hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of people working together in intricate systems of mutual support and deep heirarchy. You don’t need to know how to put out a fire because when your house catches fire you call 911. You don’t need to know how to escape the wilderness because when you get lost they send a rescue helicopter. But without the connection to Society its lessons are literally destructive - Sit and wait until you die. Rescue isn’t coming.

Sidenote: If you want to go REALLY deep into the meta of it, the Team then gets rewarded with food by predating on Jackie as a vestige of Society, much the same way as they get little bits of technology by picking apart the wreckage of the plane. The plane is useful to Society as a transport, it’s useful to the Team as a source of supplies. Jackie is useful to Society as a member, is useful to the Team as a source of food. But I digress.

Now Society isn’t always a nice place to be, and Jackie’s not treated all that well within it either. People find her frustrating and comment on how undeserving she is of her position. They actively go behind her back when they can, Jeff cheats on her with her supposedly lesser best friend, Coach Martinez tells her to her face that she’s kinda mid, and people are generally mildly annoyed at her most of the time. But Society has her back, and as long as she plays by the rules, and follows the lessons, her life is pretty much made. It won��t necessarily be everything she ever dreamed of, but she’s solid, pragmatically. But the stress it puts on her, to conform and try to fit the role she’s arbitrarily placed into by Society is going to slowly ruin her and she’ll end up a bitter and unhappy person if she remains completely committed to it (assuming they never crashed, obviously). And what she doesn’t seem to realise is that the Team offers her community, and acceptance, and respect on the terms of her actual reality, on what she’s able to genuinely provide, whatever that is. But she’s so caught up in holding onto Society that it literally gets her killed.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t have a potential place in Society where she could be genuinely happy. Just that the one that she’s assigned isn’t right for her. If she was able to be let go of her fear, if she was able to be honest and stop trying to conform to the expectations put on her by those around her, and take a position in Society that more suited her she COULD have a perfectly comfortable life, happy and healthy. But the fact that she’s been assigned this life path that she knows doesn’t fit, that she’s so insecure about, is what MAKES her such an unwavering loyalist for Society, because she has so much to lose.

And that’s what makes her and Coach so similar. Coach is born in the ‘60s, is brought up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We don’t know when he realised he’s gay, but it has to have been a very scary thing for him. He has been living in a world of deep and abiding homophobia his whole life (I remember the 90s, I can only imagine the 70s...) and then came AIDS. For his whole life Society has convinced him that living in the closet is a life-preserving choice. That he can get all kinds of value from Society, all sorts of good things, as long as he plays by the rules, fits his assigned role. And being gay simply doesn’t fit his role.

So he hides it. He hides it despite the fear it causes, the pain it causes, the fact that it keeps him away from Paul whom he loves. He takes on a job that he hates, surrounding himself with a bunch of girls who he despises. Because, as Natalie said, if he actually threw in his lot with Paul, if he went against Society, then he’d be reliant on Paul (and by extension the Gay microculture) in a really intense way and if he lost him then he’d have nothing left. He’d have blown his entire life up, and been stuck. Coach, like Jackie, is ruled by his fear that without Society’s handouts of privilege and gifts and authority that he’d simply have nothing left on his own. It’s a painfully real portrayal of the fear and self-hatred that perpetuates the ongoing trauma of the closet in the real world.

He’s spent his entire life giving up real parts of himself for the sake of Society, he’s all-in. And he, like Jackie, is just too invested to let go. He can’t appreciate that Society has nothing to offer him in the wilderness, that the Team can and will protect him if he lets it. A lot of people make jokes about the idea that Coach might be eaten if he sticks around too long, because he only has one leg. But that kind of ablest absolutism is Society thinking. Because the Team still hasn’t turned on him. When they decided they needed to sacrifice someone for Lottie they didn’t say “Okay, where’s Coach gone? Let’s go hunt him.”

The Team just doesn’t have the room to see him that way. NOBODY is expendable in the wilderness, every sacrifice is an agony they struggle to cope with. And... I guess if you wanted to get very dark with it, Coach’s missing leg means that his food value ratio to his potential value as a Team member is lower.

And Coach has shown plenty of value to the team in the wilderness. He’s actually capable of providing real advice as an adult with life experience. He taught them to shoot and hunt, he made sure that Nat wouldn’t get pregnant (thank GOD after the nightmare that Shauna went through), he’s perfectly capable of holding down the fort, and once he’s adapted he’s remarkably capable of getting around. To the Team he’s a pair of hands, a thinking mind, company, experience, and just... a human being. To Society he’s lost a lot of value, but the Team simply doesn’t conceptualise him like that.

And when he WANTS to, he proves how capable he really is. He got to the cliff on his own without too much struggle. He got into and out of the cave all on his own. Not saying it’s easy to be an amputee, but it’s not AS disabling as a lot of people would assume. And he’s still got a perfectly functioning mind, hands, etc. What he doesn’t have is a will to join the Team. To genuinely engage with the reality they’re in.

Again, this is reiterated with a second camp fire disaster, making the point that he’s been in the wilderness for most of a year now and he still can’t do something as simple, as fundamental to Team survival (but not Society survival) as lighting a tiny fire. Because in Society he’d never have to, Society simply provides. And in the wilderness he’s been relying on the Team to provide and not recognised that he’s been doing that. Not recognised the fact that he’s not been pitching in. That every fire he didn’t light someone else did. Every scrap of warmth he’s enjoyed all winter has been provided by the Team, not Society.

In S1E10 when Shauna gives up on Society and finally commits to the Team she does so with a fight with Jackie. And the only person on Jackie’s side is Coach, the other Society loyalist, who - like Jackie - assumes a position of authority based on his status within Society. And Lottie - the Team authority - says “Stay out of it, Coach.” She asserts that this is Team business, that Society has no say here. And, without Society providing the backup behind his words, and without actually contributing anything to the Team (not because he Can’t but because he Won’t) Coach has absolutely no power and no say, and he disengages from this point. And because he simply won’t join the Team his fate is sealed.

Coach also provides a viewpoint on the Team from Society’s perspective. Because the audience perspective is so deeply rooted in the Team, Coach’s viewpoint is the alternative. He’s the last tiny vestige of what they left behind. Like a tourist, watching a culture he doesn’t understand, assuming that he’s better than them, that they’re evil, that he knows what’s Really Going On. That his loyalty to Society will someday gain him some sort of advantage or reward, even as he stands on the edge of the cliff. Because his attachment to Society is so strong that he’d rather die than join the Team, an unthinkable option.

So when Coach sees the ‘jackets eating Jackie, his response of horror is not just that of Coach Ben Scott reacting to cannibalism in his face. It’s also the response of Society to the unforgivable breach of social laws by the Team. The fact that they’re able to do it, that they seem to be enjoying it, completely giving into the deepest taboo... he can’t handle it and neither, by extension, can Society. And as he’s powerless to stop it he simply closes the door, trying to separate himself from them. When he finds Shauna carving up Javi he tries to rescue Nat, the only Team member he sees as somehow redeemable, as a potential Society ally. And when she rejects him, when she shows him that she, who was on the fence, has now willingly and knowingly joined the Team he sees in her his faith in Society collapsing. Because here’s the girl who he put up on a pedestal, as “the good one” and she’s rejected Society. So either a) he’s wrong about Society, and Nat’s right. Or b) he’s wrong about Nat and right about Society.

Or a secret, third option, he could lose himself in a tantrum of repressed rage, burn down the cabin and also throw himself off the cliff, giving up on EVERYTHING in the process. (That’s my personal theory, but we’ll have to wait to find out)

Now he COULD respond at this point by going “Fuck it, fine, I can be a Team member too, if it saves my life.” And he might find in it the kind of value the rest have found. But doing that would require him to accept that they’re never ever going to be rescued. That Society truly is gone. That it was all for nothing. That he gave up his life, gave up Paul, gave up happiness and love and everything ... and never got his reward. No, he HAS to keep holding on, has to keep believing that there is a point, is a purpose to it. For his own sanity.

Again, we can read really deep into the meta of this and say... that’s what coming out of the closet really is. It’s saying “I’m SICK of giving up so much for Society, and I don’t believe that the reward is there, or if it is that it’s worth it. If the alternative is to be a monster, as Society tells me I am if I’m queer, then fuck it I’ll be the monster you say I am. Because that’s what’s going to keep me happy, to give me love, to feed me, and give me a life I want to live.” I’m not saying that it’s a completely 1 to 1 exact match, but you get the idea.

And so Coach tries to destroy the Team, tries to reassert the dominance of Society, because the Team is a bunch of inhuman monsters as far as Society is concerned. They’re deviant, corrupted, feral. But they’re not. They’re just trying to create a new culture that will get them from monday to sunday without dying on tuesday. They’re just trying to face a harsh reality with a perspective that makes sense, to them. They’re neither bad, nor good, neither moral or immoral. They’re surviving, or dying, and that’s what matters in the wilderness.

*Intermission, go grab some snacks*

Okay so this is already really really long, but you can flip the script and watch the exact same story happening in reverse in the adult timeline too. In Season 1 the whole big question is why is Travis dead? Who killed him?

And the answer is... the Team did. Like, in a LITERAL sense, he put the noose on his own neck. And Lottie pressed the button, at his command. He literally did kill himself. But he never intended to die, and what got him there was the Team. He genuinely believed that he needed to do the ritual in order to connect with It for all their sakes. And he - like Coach and Jackie in the wilderness - was wrong. The rituals they’d developed, the beliefs they’d formed to cope in the Team simply were of no use now they were back in Society.

But he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t accept that they were truly out of the danger, that the trauma was really over. That Society could protect them, when he’d had it proven so powerfully to him that it couldn’t help them in the wilderness. And his unending and irrational faith in the Team is literally what killed him. And Lottie, who MIGHT’VE been able to somehow rescue him from the situation - she was standing RIGHT THERE - was herself so absorbed in Team thinking that she instead just stood by as he died.

(Again, I really really need to be clear, I do not hate any of these characters, I love them all dearly and I’m reading into the meta rather than their literal actions, I don’t blame Lott for her actions as I don’t blame Travis for his, this is just how the story is written and WHY)

I could make a similar argument about Nat, and almost did, but she’s SO complex (she and Shauna have such intricate relationships to the Team and Society) it would honestly take up as much space as I’ve already written now and my brain’s getting tired. But I will end with a little thing I thought of as I was writing this.

There’s a third Society loyalist I forgot to mention: Laura Lee.

Laura’s faith in God is mirrored with her faith in Society. Neither are based on anything solid in the wilderness, she never gets any form of external validation of any of her beliefs. She just interprets what happens through her own lens and assumes she’s right. She’s been provided with a role of spiritual authority by Society, in an acceptable religion, and she assumes that she’s competent to hold it. When Lottie comes to her for advice, she provides it and assumes she’s correct. When Lottie sees things she interprets them as though her opinions were fact. When she sees the plane she decides that she should use it to save everyone, and because she decided that, she assumes that it’s God’s will, and so she assumes she cannot fail. That God has her back. Just as she, and Jackie, and Coach, assume that Society has their backs.

In the plane, Laura Lee sees her opportunity to reconnect with Society. And her unwavering faith in the capacity of God to provide protection from harm and Society to provide functional and reliable transportation without needing to work for it ... gets her killed. The lack of connection to Society, and the incapability of Society, and its’ God, to provide for the Team is displayed as a giant fireball in the sky for all to see, proof that they are truly, deeply alone. That Society cannot help them here. But it still takes a while for the lesson to really sink in. And for some of them, it just never does.

#yellowjackets #long post #spoilers #theory #meta

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mackeydoodledoo · 2 years ago

Text

Burning Sun: Chapter 9

Pairing: Rosalie Hale x (Fem!)Reader

Summary: You've seen her in the school halls, the cafeteria, anywhere really. You, for the longest time, hoped... Wanted to be noticed by Rosalie Hale. However, you give up when you realize it was getting you nowhere... Throughout high school and just some time after the high school years, Rosalie’s true feelings come to fruition.

Chapter Warnings: Push-n-pull Relationship

Chapter Theme: War with my Mind - Crimson Apple

Key: Italics = Thought, +*+ = Time Skip, Bold/Indent = Text messaging

A/n: None

--------------------------------------------------------------

You packed your suitcase and follow Rosalie to her car, awkward silence filling the tension between the both of you...

No words were exchanged when the both of you finally reached back to your apartment. She only drove off when you exited the car with your things.

+*+

It was all bullshit...

At one point Rosalie Hale wanted to be in your presence... Next thing you knew she wasn’t willing to go the distance with you in actually trying out a queer relationship.

Maybe it was because the cooling system in your apartment was getting repaired that day and the heat was really getting to you...

“You do know that sometimes it's hard for her to open up about certain things?” Your friend asks, over the phone

“Doesn’t mean she has to hide them from me,” You say, “I want her to feel like she can trust me with anything...”

“Has she given you anything she felt that she can trust you with?” She asks

I found out she was a Vampire and knew about it since high school...

“No...” You lie

“See, maybe she wasn’t ready to tell you certain things yet,” Your friend attempts to enlighten you

“Yeah, well... I have no time for waiting,” You say, “She can feel comfortable in her own time. For me, right now at least is to get this degree... I can’t afford any distractions...”

“What about after college?” She asks, “Would you come back here to mend things with Rosalie?”

Before you could leave for classes, you stop. Attempting to contemplate an answer.

“I don’t know,” You confess, “That isn’t in my plans right now... I’ll talk to you later...”

You hang up the phone and slide it into your back pocket as you sling your backpack over your shoulder; heading out to your classes of the day.

+*+

After the day, you finish any class assignments due tomorrow. But, you lie wide awake in your bed... Thinking of your last interaction with Rosalie. Internally fighting how much you harbor your undying love for her, and the fact she’s been very one sided with you and solely thinking of herself.

“God Rosalie...” You groan as you thrash yourself around: trying to find a good position to sleep in

Rosalie knew how to put me to sleep...

You were naturally warmer than the average person; the night wasn’t cool enough to keep you sound asleep...

+*+

It was difficult trying to get goodnight’s rest throughout the week. You didn’t tell any of your friends out of fear that they’ll judge you and encourage you to take the leap to go back to Rosalie. As well as

As you finish the assignments for the week, you heard your phone go off for the billionth time today.

God Rosalie enough...

However, she was persistent...

Finally, having enough hearing your own ringtone, you finally cave in and decide to pick up your phone.

“What Rosalie?” You ask

“Wow is that how you greet your future in-laws?” Alice asks

“Oh... Sorry Alice,” You sigh, disregarding the fact Alice said ‘future in-laws’, “Rosalie has not stopped attempting to call me all day...”

“She could be in worse shape...” She says, “She's been in and out a lot.”

“Not my turn to watch her like a damn hawk Alice,” You scoff

“But, that’s not why I’m calling you,” She says

“Then.... Why are you calling?” You ask

“Since I couldn't track down your new address to send wedding invitations-”

“Wait hold on, ‘wedding invitations’?” You ask, interrupting

“For Bella and Edward,” She clarifies, “Don’t worry, Rosalie hasn’t stopped thinking about you.”

You couldn’t help but blush as Alice gives you tea on Rosalie.

“Go on,” You clear your throat

“I’m inviting you to be Rosalie’s date,” She bluntly says

“Huh?” You ask

“Rosalie doesn’t want to ask you herself out of fear of rejection so I agreed to do it for her,” Alice explains

“Why me?” You ask

“Because you’re the only one she wants,” Alice says

“Well she’s going to be much more stubborn,” You scoff

“I know deep down in that big heart of yours you’re going to change your mind,” Alice tells you

“Try me,” You reply

You hang up your phone and lean back into the couch as the laptop sits in front of you: a half-done document on the screen. For some reason that sole phone conversation took a lot out of you. You walked into the kitchen to grab a snack and walked back to the couch.

It... Would be nice to see everyone... Especially Rosalie...

Yeah no chance buddy. She plays with our feelings how many times now?

You continuously argued with your easily loving side that Rosalie had hurt you, more times than you would have liked. But, to be Rosalie’s date at a wedding....

Would have all of the boys jealous...

You decided to play along with Alice’s little plan. Since you were aware of her “I can predict the future” gift.

Buuuut, this essay comes first...

*Alice’s POV* You pick up your phone as it rung, smiling at the screen.

“I knew you’d change your mind,” You smile

“You didn’t even hear my question,” She says

But not long before she makes the realization of your gift.

“Nevermind, forget that,” She says, “When is the wedding?”

“August 13th,” You answer

You hear her nearly choking on something over the phone...

“That’s literally a month away!” She yelps

“Don’t worry, I’ll have everything ready by then,” You say, in a chipper tone

You hang up after a thorough conversation with Y/n to give her all the details and you text them to her too, to make sure she doesn’t forget anything while she continues school.

*Y/n’s POV* 1 Month Later...

As you pack your medium-sized suitcase, you double-check if you have your wedding outfit: you do. You finish up packing all of the little things you need to bring.

“Okay... Got everything,” You sigh, closing your suitcase

You bring your suitcase out from the closet room and head to the door, slipping on your shoes.

“Time to face some old friends,” You sight to yourself, exiting your apartment

Chapter 10

#Rosalie Hale #rosalie twilight #Rosalie Hale x Reader #rosalie hale imagine #twilight saga #female reader

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vacantgodling · 2 years ago

Text

re. about

ren (or rimz for cool kids). he/him. twenty five. black. queer. neurodivergent.

i'm redoing this because i'm losing steam (thanks work) and i'm pulling back on a lot of projects to mostly focus on things that make me personally happy. as is the nature of my brain, i will still jump back and forth between projects when i lose the flow for another, but i’ve narrowed my important wips down to just three main ones. other projects are currently being shelved, or put to the side as half baked ideas that i still need to keep in the oven before i introduce them to anyone formally.

(so if you don’t see a wip listed in the wips tab, it’s either shelved indefinitely or i want to work on it on my own for a bit. you can ask me about my other wips if you know/remember them but i can’t guarantee i’ll answer about them at this time. this also doesn’t mean i won’t ramble about them when i feel like it.)

important sideblogs = no pressure to follow just fyi

@babylonsfalling -> all my fandom and other nonsense goes here

@todazzlingreading -> this is a personal checklist for things i want to read by y’all that i don’t have time or spoons to get to at the moment i see it. once i read a post there i’ll delete it from that blog and rb it over here with any comments in the tags :3

to find my art commissions, please look here: https://www.tumblr.com/vacantgodling/715216537870532608/commissions-are-open

re. disclaimers / interaction

i mainly write fantasy; it’s a broad overarching label that covers all of my interests and it’s my first love in writing. horror and horror adjacent elements always make an appearance in my works. i emphasize complex mlm relationships and male leads, and romance is a great love of mine as you’ll notice from the king of my current wips. worldbuilding is also a great love of mine. i also love writing smut and talking about my characters having sex.

as such some disclaimers: following me is a very much curate your own experience. i don’t want to hold back talking about adult and mature themes so if you’re uncomfortable with anything i talk about i’d just suggest you unfollow lol nothing personal.

i’m open to asks and talking about anything but there’s no pressure. anons are always cool. i’m probably not gonna do writing based tag games too too much bc writing has been nonexistent lately but character asks or ramble ones i will do :)

also, as a personal ask: please do not refer to any of my characters as babygirl or girlie(s). shit makes me squick thanks.

re. main wips

linked are the main tags & once i finish the wip intros for paramour and tcol (revamping them) i’ll link them as well. feel free to ask to be on the taglist for any of these (i’m going to do better with these) — taglists will be activated for all writing and official posts. this won’t include ask games or random babbling.

PARAMOUR || “saved” from an imminent social death through arranged marriage, HYACINTHUS SHRAPNEL is whisked away to The Chateau aux Aisles D’or, where an unlikely sexual relationship with his butler AMON leads to far more than he bargained for.

THE CHRONICLES OF LATHSBURY (check out the crash course HERE) || The Aegean Guild of Explorers, led by the mysterious newcomer to Lathsbury Madja Fandel welcomes its newest contingent after the guild bid: PIPER FAIRWIND a MBW with a fighting spirit and desire for money and glory, DEUX UNDERSHIELD a naive protector seeking answers for her brother’s spurn, SANDRA “SAN” DEARBORN a vicious hunter with a chip on their shoulder, CLEAR BRIGHTENDALE a medic with a host of dark secrets, and FORTE SYMPHONIA a ranger seeking his own destiny, are as ready as they’ll ever be to enter the fray, to conquer the mysterious and dangerous LABYRINTH. Forces that have been in motion since before their lives even began are finally reaching their peak, and the five of them will have to use everything they’ve learned and then some to stay alive.

re. navigation

talking -> musings and personal thoughts

about renjamin -> insight to me / who i am

ren analysis -> when i get meta about my wips

ren mix -> a treasure trove of my music taste

ren polls -> any polls i make

ren reads -> for my ramblings and analysis as i try to get back into books

friends tag -> talking with friends or boosting my friends work

others work -> boosting other writeblrs work

hall of fame -> praise / things that make me happy that i want to keep

ren writing -> all of my writing in one place

ren poems -> all of my poems in one place

ren fic -> all of my fandom related writing in one place

ren art -> all my art

q eh you eh -> queue

sex mention -> tag for any sexual content.

worldbuilding -> all of my worldbuilding notes across all my wips

find the word tag -> for this game specifically so i can find it

last line tag -> for this game specifically so i can find it

ren hot cakes -> specifically for my overly opinionated opinions

writing recap -> tracking my writing journey so i can hold myself accountable

#writeblr #re intro #writeblr intro #about renjamin

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knotwerk · 2 years ago

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Poetry and Proper Hydration

“There's a poem for this!” Stede exclaims.

Ed smiles. “Of course there is,” he says, delighting in the power of words to ground his sweet man.

—Tango

Reading poetry feels intimate to me, like a deep conversation. Poets let me into their innermost world, and all I can offer is my close listening. Putting poetry in Proper Hydration feels like another way I get to continue the conversation.

The idea for including poetry in PH emerged organically as I wrote the very first chapter. PH1 is all Ed POV, and I wanted to be sure that I showed as much of Stede’s interiority as I could even without access to his perspective (which felt too close to home to write, lmao). As Ed & Stede’s first evening together wound down, I was like, fuck yes, I’m going to give this blorbo my cluttered-ass nightstand poetry pile, and then Kayleb Rae Candrilli’s poem “Water I Won’t Touch” fluttered up to the surface of my consciousness and offered itself, and I was like, wait, no, I can’t put a poem in a fic—and then I was like, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING IN FIC, and it felt so good to let this be a way that Stede could share inner feelings with Ed, and Ed could receive them through his own filters but always with appreciation, which would in turn encourage Stede to share more of himself—and then it was just natural to continue that ritual. I mean, I literally do it every night, myself.

My writing process is: 1. scenes drop into my head 2. outline a few beats I want to hit, a theme I want to explore/question I want to ask (and many emerge as I write, so this one’s also nonlinear lol) 3. insert the scenes I can see in my mind already, and then 4. go. The first draft is basically me finding out what the story is (thanks @gaypiratebrainrot for that language), so I tend to write a piece in order from start to finish. Which means that as I’m writing a Tuesday day for them, I’m sort of percolating on what the Tuesday night poem should be.

Sometimes the poem just bubbles up to the surface, like the way that you’ll be going on about your day and find that a fitting song has popped into your head. Sometimes I [re-]read a collection from an author I’d particularly like to feature in the installment to see if anything fits or jumps out at me. Sometimes I have to go hunting, especially if I know that there’s a specific emotion or question I want to play with and nothing’s already come to mind. Sometimes I literally google “queer poems about X” and go down a few rabbit holes. I encountered Michael Field on one of those lil trips, for instance.

I’d say 40% of the poems in PH bubble up in my mind as I’m writing. Another 40% are deliberately sought by choosing an author I want to include and [re-]reading their work, and the other 20% is from a hunt by theme or feel (the poetry foundation website and poets.org are super helpful—you can literally search by theme on poets.org, which is fuckin fun as fuck). I hang out with the poem, let it sort of marinate during my processing time, and see if it fits the vibe; like, I’ll read them poem for myself, and then I’ll read it again and think of how it would hit the PH guys. Does any of the imagery fit the theme, etc. (the first poem in Buttons [Ars Empathica by Donika Kelly] includes the mention of a man with metal teeth, which in the poem is referring to a fuckin chainsaw, but it also made me think of OFMD Buttons and his fuckin metal teeth—my dot-connecty brain looooves this shit—retconning canon references in poetry YES HELLO CONVERSATION WITH POETRY AND CANON AND MY FIC THEMES GAAAAH SO FUN BRAIN GO BRRRR).

And sometimes, I read something and am just like must give to blorbos STAT.

How I Got Into Poetry

“Years ago, [Stede] had turned to poetry to explore the mystery of emotion, to increase his tolerance for the ineffable. It always seemed as though poets were able to show him things that he didn’t quite have access to within his own experience. He often felt a bit like an outsider as he read—hell, as he went about his life. Lately, though, each poem resonates with him in a profound new way, revealing a depth of emotion inside him that he didn’t even know he had the capacity to feel. It's like he’s reading these poems for the first time, now that he's reading them with Ed's arms around him—now that he has a clearer sense of himself.”

—Buttons

It me, lol

Poetry as a means to explore the mystery of emotion has always been a thing for me, and actually most of my journaling/personal writing over the years has been in free verse. But I had some traumatic shit go down in my life a few years back (2016ish), and on the other side of it, I couldn’t really tolerate big feelings, especially the ineffable shit. I couldn’t even read shit with feelings in it. Like, even chill fiction was unsafe. I read nonfiction for a while, and then little by little, as I found my way back to myself, I could tolerate a little more. Not an entire novelsworth of feelz and interiority, but… a page. I could do a page. And it felt *good,* and omg actually you can pack an entire novelsworth of feelz into one fucking page. And I know that there isn’t necessarily a conclusion to the idea/experience/feeling that the poet is writing about, but they were able to integrate it enough to a) write it down b) workshop it c) submit it to a million publications and then d) publish it in a collection. Made it feel kind of safe to read. To be clear: that’s not because said poem was "good enough for publishing" (because lol fuck publication as a sign of good/worthy reading) so much as it probably meant the content was integrated enough for the writer to look at it a million times in the process. I don’t need a happily ever after, or an integratedly-ever-after in a poem. I just need to know that the poet was able to fathom integration—or their survival of the un-integratableness—of the subject matter.

So I started following poetryisnotaluxury on Instagram and my tolerance grew further. That account made me remember how much I love poetry, so I made the conscious decision to start reading more. Worked out well cuz around that time (2019ish?) my shoulders and connective tissues were like FUCK NO to holding up larger books, so I kind of went for it. I had also just come out as trans, so I decided to focus my reading on queer poets. Little by little I found myself with a bedtime poetry reading practice that continues to this day.

How Do I Find Shit to Read in the First Place

poetryisnotaluxury is still a primo source. I also now get POETRY magazine and American Poetry Review, and when I read something in there that hits me, I track down the writer and explore their other works, too (and sometimes I search their name in [podcast app] and listen to any interviews they’ve done!). I also listen to the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast (I HEART Helena de Groot) and get a lot of my reading recs from there. If I really vibe with a poet, I’ll look up poets they’ve named in the acknowledgments section of their book, or see who they’re quoting in their socials.

#proper hydration ofmd #poetry 🤝 fanfic #fanfic #poetry #it’s personal and I’m having a great time

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zucchinibread777books · 10 months ago

Text

More Than a Best Friend Book Review

More Than a Best Friend (Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend) by Emma Alban Book Review

Summary:

When Beth enters her first season, she finds that the only friend she can make is the slightly infamous Gwen, who is already a few seasons in with no sign of a match. After learning that their (recently single) parents have history with each other, they become determined to set up their own match. Little did they know that they would find their own love in the process.

The good:

I thought that this was a super cute lesbian romance! It was just the right length for this kind of story and I’ll definitely be reading the sequel when it comes out.

I really appreciate that this wasn’t some sort of enemies to lovers arc. I’ve had to avoid a lot of lesbian romances recently because they all seem to start with one character who is just absolutely horrible but is excused because of some trauma they’ll reveal later. Those romances always make it seem like the two characters would be the most toxic relationship and I just can’t stand them. There’s also usually emphasis on one of them being closeted. Despite this being a period piece, there wasn’t a lot of focus on them coming to terms with liking someone of the same gender. Gwen and Beth were a cute match from the start and I found myself rooting for them immediately. Rather than drama between the two of them, it was mostly outside issues that prevented them from being together.

Even with those outside influences, there wasn’t really any homophobia against the main characters. In fact, there was no direct homophobia against them, just mentions of how society would view them. It’s a nice break for people who are tired of homophobia being such a main theme in queer stories.

I also really loved that there was an older lesbian couple in this story too. It’s so nice to see different generations of queer characters and have them give advice and talk to one another. Gwen especially had such a great support system and I was so glad they weren’t entirely alone as they went through their issues.

The Bad:

If you are looking for something historically accurate, this definitely isn’t for you. There were a lot of times I noticed certain phrasing and lingo that was so modern it took me out of it a bit. Not necessarily modern slang, but definitely not language that would be used in the time period it is set in. And as much as I loved the lack of homophobia, the amount of characters who knew and accepted their relationship was definitely not realistic.

Adding on to that, the sex scenes. They were very unrealistic for the time period, especially because of how entirely public they were. Even in the comfort of their own homes, they should have worried a lot more about being caught. I also just personally wish they weren’t so integral to the story. I understand smut is really big in the publishing world right now thanks to things like booktok, but once the characters had sex it felt like that was their only motivation for anything. The constant mention of each others fingers having been inside them really took me out of the story.

I’m always iffy on relationships like the one in this book too. Where parents get together and their respective kids also get together. Step siblings being a couple just feels odd to me. It felt right for the situation they were placed in but still.

This is also a personal pet peeve but I’m really not a fan of main characters having similar names. Beth and Gwen were very easy to confuse, being the same length and the only vowel being e. They were interchangeable in my brain for a while. Mason and Montson were even worse. If it weren’t for context clues, I would’ve assumed I misread and they were the same person.

Overall:

I thought this was really good, especially for a debut novel. It definitely took influence from a lot of popular stories, including Parent Trap and Bridgerton, but put its own spin on them. (It also reminded me a little of the comic High Class Homos) I enjoyed reading it a lot and it was a good break from the heavier-topic books that I was in the process of reading at the same time. I’m not sure it’s at the top of my reread list because it did hit a few of my pet peeves, but I definitely want to read the sequel. I’d also recommend it for anyone looking to read more cute lesbian romances!

3.5 Stars

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fanby-fckry · 11 months ago

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23, 33 and 2 for the writer ask!♡

Yet another writing ask

Thank you for the ask! <3

23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

Dialogue comes easier to me than anything else 9 times out of 10. But honestly? It’s only certain aspects of description that are difficult for me.

Specifically, I have trouble describing where people/things are and how they’re positioned. Trying to write fight scenes is a nightmare, I often forget to describe what a character is doing in favor of dialogue or describing sensations, and trying to figure out where characters are in relation to each other sometimes requires brainstorming sessions with my beta and visual references.

I’m assuming this probably has something to do with the fact that I struggle with spacial awareness irl. I run into walls a lot, I suck at directions, and if you ask me to guess how tall someone is, my answer will likely be, “uhh, taller than me,” with no further elaboration.

33. Give your writing a compliment.

It has vastly improved since 2020.

I know that sounds like kind of a backhanded compliment, but I really am incredibly proud of how far my writing has come.

It’s much more organized and plot-lines make actual sense. The overall prose has improved, and I think my character voices are becoming more consistent.

Looking back at my old work fills me with both cringe and pride because wow, that sucks compared to what I can do now, and I can do so much better now.

2. Anything that you'd like to write but feel like you're unable to?

Occasionally I think to myself, “wow, I wanna tackle [insert big project with heavy themes here]!” And then I think about how much of a responsibility that would be, from research, to actually writing it, to the potential negative feedback… And I kinda drop it for a while.

One of those projects was a big deconstruction of the A/B/O trope with commentary on a lot of real-world relevant topics including trauma, rape culture, and how gender roles and stereotypes surrounding masculinity/femininity are applied within queer culture and same sex couples vs het culture.

Idk if it’ll ever see the light of day, though, because it’s a really heavy fic. I don’t know if I could even commit to writing it long-term because it hits a little too close to home, sometimes, and I tend to find myself needing to take long breaks whenever I do work on it.

So, it’s a story I want to tell, full of topics I want to comment on, and I’m not sure if it’s one I’ll be able to write.

#fanby answers #boyywithluv #and they were mutuals #ask game

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maeofthenoldor · 2 years ago

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400 follower special

[open]

Before I start, I would just like to say, I am so grateful for all of you!! For supporting me, for sharing your thoughts and ideas and creating such a wonderful community. it has been such a wonderful time in this fandom, all of you have been soo amazing and sweet!

So as a celebration, I'll be taking writing requests! This means you can send me in a ship and a prompt and I will respond with a drabble based on the prompt. This ficlet will be less then 1k words but more then 100 words, but again, sometimes my mind gets ahead of me and the idea will spin out of control and may hit more then the limit. But we will see! This is my first time doing this type of thing, so please be aware that it might take some time to finish the drabble. I will also only be taking Tolkien ships at this time (lotr, the silm, the hobbit...ect).

Rules:

-Send me an ask with the pairing you want to receive, this could either be platonic or romantic, so please specify what you want. Also send in a prompt so I know what type of ficlet you want. (more into that later)

-I will write for any type of relationship, this meaning family, friendship, queer platonic and romantic.

-I will not write any smut, or anything like sexual innuendos and so forth. Please respect that.

-I will write for any canon character and only my Ocs. I love learning about other peoples Ocs, but I will not write them for this.

-I will take any pairing, except incest (siblings, parent/child, nephew/uncle ect) but cousin pairings are okay

-Their are few exceptions to my last rule, I will not write for a few pairings, like Eol/Aredhel or Pharazon/Tar-Mirel. Especially not Boromir/any of the hobbits.

-Though I dont think this will be a problem, I do have the right to refuse a request,, due to it making me uncomfortable or for other reasons. If this happens I will delete it or ask you to request something different

-I will not write any pairing with Legolas that is not Gimli. Sorry Aralas shippers. Same thing with Russigon, I can only see them together.

-Otherwise, feel free to request your rare pairs :))

Prompts:

I do not have a prompt list, nor am i planning on making one, so I have an alternative. First you will choose what theme you want, if its going to be angsty, fluffy, humor, romantic, dark-ect you will have to make this clear.

Second choose a word that will create the story. ex: Captured/Caged/Locked or Holding hands/Forehead-touches/Warmth. I will find a way to incorporate it into the drabble in some way or another. If you have a prompt list or one from the internet you want to share or take from, feel free to do so. OR you can create your own dialogue prompts/or something you really want to be added into the story. it is a group contribution after all.

Again, I would like to say that if you do not like the drabble, ie it was not the direction you wanted to go in the story, or you didn't like the writing..ect I do not tolerate any harassment and you will be blocked by me and my mutuals.

Thank you so much for 400 followers, this really means so much to me!

#follower celebration #writing asks #ficlet #prompts #open requests #tolkien #400 followers #lotr #the hobbit

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i-revolve-around-you · 2 years ago

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I think it's about time I wrote a proper introduction post

Hey y'all, welcome to my blog! I'm a tumblr veteran but decided to start over on a new account recently. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.

🎵 the basics 🎵

nick ~ 28 ~ he/him ~ bi ~ white author ~ musician ~ gamer ~ nerd multi-fandom/shitposting this blog will be (mostly) SFW, but i still would rather not have minors following me. i just prefer interacting with adults, sorry. it's not personal. my likes, however, will be N/SFW, so be warned

my messages and ask box are always open! feel free to hit me up!

more info (including other links, and a list of fandoms/things i like) under the cut

tags: my ramblings | my face

🤩 a bit more about me 🤩

heya! the name's nick. i've been on tumblr since like...2011 or so? i was really big into it in my college years (2012-2017) but after The Great Tumblr Porn Ban of 2017 I've sorta been drifting in an out. When The Great Twitter Debacle of 2022 happened, I decided to migrate back on a new account so I could start fresh.

this account was immediately suspended because of my side-blog. which was a bit too unsafe for work for tumblr's guidelines ig 🙄 not mentioning that they had just recently updated their policy and everything i was posting was PERFECTLY FINE under them but w/e

so i started another one lmao and that's the one that you're looking at right now! my other account has since been restored but at that point I was already situated over here so like. whatever i guess. lol

i'm currently 28, and bisexual. semi-recently out of the closed as bi, actually. for years i identified as gay, but over time i started realizing "actually...i do kinda like girls?" i still identified as "gay" cuz it was easier than saying "so like i'm bi-sexual but mostly homo-romantic but also maybe potentially demi-sexual but only when it comes to real people?" then around 2020 it just kinda clicked with me, and the label of "bisexual" just felt right

anywho you didn't come here for my full life story. here's just a little bit more about me:

i'm a total nerd. i love video games, playing Yugioh, DND (just starting to get into that one), etc. i'm a writer. i've written several fanfics (some of which i'm really proud of, some of which i'm...less), and have a goal of one day publishing a novel (my main genre is YA contemporary with queer themes and characters). i'm a musician. i actually got my bachelor's degree in music (BA in Music). my main instrument is drums/percussion, but i'm learning a bit of guitar and can play a little bit of piano. i'm also a composer/songwriter, though haven't been writing as much these days. if i write anything cool i'll be sure to post it here!

🎭 the artist formerly known as 🎭

previous account: @excuuuseme-princess other previous urls: musicdork, sincerely-whelmed, futuremehatesme, @nickplayswhat, @spearfeld, among others, probably

🔍 other places to find me 🔎

tumblr sideblog (N/SFW, seriously be warned): @fadingfast1 twitter: @libromancerfire n/sfw twitter (again...be warned): @whatifitspriv tiktok: @libromancer_fireburst ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkjaden825698

⚔ fandoms/things i like ⚔

Books 📚

Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Orphan X series by Gregg Hurwitz

Darius the Great is Not Okay / Darius the Great Deserves Better by Adib Khorram

TV shows 📺

Arrowverse (especially Legend of Tomorrow [r.i.p. 😢])

Doctor Who

Travelers

Manifest

Movies 📽

Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

Love, Simon

Cartoons/Anime 🍞

Yu-Gi-Oh! (DM, GX, 5Ds, ZeXal, Arc-V, currently watching VRAINS and Sevens, have yet to start Go-Rush)

Code Lyoko*

Video Games 🎮

Resident Evil (played all mainline games, some spinoffs, faves are RE2make, Village, and Revelations 2, Ethan Winters is my husband)

Horizon (Zero Dawn, Forbidden West)

Persona (mostly 3 and 5, still need to finish 4, but Kanji is bae)

Fire Emblem (have played all except FE1, 2, 3, and about halfway through 5 but keep losing interest, Engage was FANTASTIC, but Ike is my favorite character)

Zero Escape (999, VLR, ZTD, Sigma Klim is my husband)

Life is Strange (particularly LiS2, but I love them all)

The Legend of Zelda

Golden Sun*

Music Artists 🎼

Paramore

Neck Deep

The Wonder Years*

Other

Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG

*fandoms/media I was once very involved in, but not as much anymore, still enjoy though fandoms/media i consider to be some of my faves/am very active in will (try and remember to) update as new things become relevant to me lmfaoo

#about me #my ramblings #introduction post #intro post #introducing myself #i like to talk about myself shut up #long post #readmore

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talenlee · 2 years ago

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Cancon 2023 Wrapup

As I write this, I have gotten home from Cancon 2023. The day started at around 7 AM, then started on the con floor at 8:30, and following that we had to pack down at 12:30 and finally got ourselves on the road at 1:30. It’s now many hours later than that and much of my time has been spent recovering from the drive and the weekend of standing on my two feet and shouting at people a lot. What follows is memories constructed, as best I can, from the notes I took of the time, and the information present to me now.

First things first, this is a convention that differs from most I do by being so far away from my home that I have to sleep near the event. This year, we got lodgings in someone’s spare room, with myself, Fox, and the driver who took us. That driver, who I won’t name on this blog so as to not blow up their spot, was super helpful the whole time, didn’t have to be there and was generally 100% great. I do not know how to repay them the effort they put forth to help us get the convention run.

But anyway, we drove down on Friday morning; this gave us time to get to the convention centre, register our presence, then set up our table area and the display of our goods. Our displays this year featured three 3-meter long tables arranged in a L shape, and we had some card tables as well, that put some of our stock out away from us, and meant that you didn’t have to approach us as people to look at the products we were selling. I thought this was a bad idea because I thought our most useful tool for converting attention to sales was me, talking to people, but I also didn’t think it was good to argue about it, so I just let it go.

Turns out I was completely wrong: By having the table there, we invited people to stop from the flow of traffic, then I saw them slip in closer to avoid being an impediment, then they’d come to the table and just… buy things. Just buy them! No explanation, no hard sell, no rules explainers, just… they’d buy them based on the boxes.

That’s weird enough as it is, but know what made it weirder? The things they chose to buy. There are a bunch of games I sell that are, in my opinion, aggressively weird. Some of our games have a great clear aesthetic that pulls the eye – games like You Can’t Win, Hook Line & Sinker, and The Botch and The Botch Is Back are all based around clear and bright designs that I think hold attention. But Winston’s Archive is a game I made with an incredible niche theme: Sorting books. What’s more, Winston’s Archive is a game where, thanks to trying to incorporate dysexic-free fonts, the cover kind of looks a bit… drafty? Like a first draft. Like the things that would normally make it look more interesting make it harder to read, so the result is a box cover that I feel a little awkward about.

We have one copy of Winston’s Archive left.

I have no story about it, no viral hit, no explanation from some source about a game that infected a group and then they all came back to play it more. I have no story about that. I just know that somehow, left to their own devices, a bunch of people looked at this game box and went ‘oh yeah, I’ll have that for $15’ and they just straight up bought it. That’s really exciting!

Another memorable thing is that on the first day, I wore my This Shirt Says Trans Rights shirt. I did this because I figured it’d be the busiest day and if I was going to get into a fuss over it, I’d rather get it over and done with. What I got instead was a consistent response from strangers, even people I walked past, complimenting the shirt, which was really nice. What’s more, I wound up having a lot of conversations with queer gamers and parents of queer gamers who wanted to be able to connect to people, and also get games that didn’t seem they were going to be likely to shock anyone with anything upsetting.

It reminded me of that awkward phrase I don’t like, ‘find your tribe,’ where the whole point in our disconnected landscape of socially unmoored people-bubbles, there are definitely factors that let us anchor ourselves to one another, and bereft of anything else, finding one another is helpful, it’s a way to be able to say ‘I can connect on at least this.’

We sold a bunch of Queer Coding too; a game that I think of as just an icebreaker, something you want for cons and meetups where you’ll be dealing with people you don’t know. Similarly, Senpai Notice Me flew off the shelves, but it always does: people love a meme and this one is also very pretty. Finally, You Can’t Win continued its weird presence selling itself, because despite the game being very clear about how hard it is, people kept buying it.

The other thing I usually bring back from Cancon, aside from stories of people I yelled at and a sore throat, is a haul of games I bought, and this year I didn’t buy any. It was a conscious decision: I was busy, and afraid of spending money at first, but then as things became more relaxed, and the large stall I was excited by dropped their prices more and more, I found myself nonetheless deciding to instead not buy new games this year. This wasn’t a wholly painless choice: What I wanted to ‘buy’ effectively, was more space in my house; by not buying new things until I had exhausted what I owned, I was making sure I didn’t have an ever-growing stack of games I didn’t know if I wanted any more.

There are a few things I kind of wish I had picked up, but not enough to have actually done it; Red Rising was down to $20, B’Twixt: A Game Of Thrones is a game I want to have a copy of but not a Game of Thrones copy, and that’s all we have so far. Wise Guys, a $100 big box game, was going for $10 and I passed it over, and I even saw games on my wishlist – like Not Alone and Fog Of Love at steep discount, and decided to not get them.

I am thinking about this feeling, this decision to do things this way and about how excited I was to see how many of the games I took to the Bring-And-Buy had sold. I want to make sure I’m not focusing on acquisition and instead on what board games are; Experiences.

The last story of Cancon – at least for now, as I remember it – is of my Tyranids. I have some Tyranids, a whole army’s worth, from 2004. I have played with them once, and then they sat in a drawer, in a box. I decided this year to try and rehome them, to put them in the bring-and-buy and sell them on to someone else. Since it’s a whole army, it’s expensive, and people interested in the field have told me it’s a good price for them… but also someone needs to want to buy a whole army’s worth of Tyranids, even retro metal ones.

They didn’t sell, but I’m not upset about it. I want them to go to someone who wants them, not someone who was afraid of missing out. We’ll try again at MOAB and maybe if they don’t move after enough tries, we’ll find some other place to put them. Who knows, maybe the spaces for play will have opened up enough that I get to play with them. I know One Page Rules is a cool looking system with something Tyraniddy in it. Could be useful there!

But this is the joy of material games: They are material. I can share them with people and I can give them away and nobody controls the central authority on how people play with them.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Diary

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ocpdramblings · 1 year ago

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Maybe I should start using this blog to talk about my hobbies as well so that I can associate it with things I like. I like art, I do a variety of mediums. Watercolor, charcoal, graphite, trying to get into pastels and gouache, digital, not a fan of acrylic but I can do it, really want to try oil painting but I don’t have the space for it to dry.

I like reading classics a lot. Pride and prejudice is a fave rn and I impulse purchased Jane Austen’s entire works. Read the predecessor to Dracula, Carmilla. Very good. Very gay. Way more gay than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be subtext. It was not. I also like reading trashy books as well. I really enjoy the ones that TikTok recommends that have absolutely insane plot premises. I don’t care about the writing at that point I just need to read.

I’ve recently gotten into Overwatch. Never played a FPS before. Made a couple new friends from it. Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, I really wanna get into Celeste. On the second Ace Attorney game, I love mobile and gacha games, I wanna play more otomes even tho I’m not a big fan of romance when I am implicated.

I unmask a lot with this blog and every time I reread a post I can’t help but think of how bland it is and how I’d never talk like that in real life.

My favorite game is Okami. Never met other people who like it. Very sad.

I watch anime, tho I do this thing where I’ll watch a popular anime a couple years after it comes out. And I tell myself that it’s to see if it lives up to the hype but honestly it’s bc I’ll have random moments in which I want to watch anime and then the only ones that come to mind are popular ones on social media years ago. I say my favorite is Bungou Stray Dogs but that’s actually my favorite manga not my favorite anime. My fav anime rn is probably High Card. Doesn’t have the highest budget but I like the premise so far and the characters. My favorite mangas are Bungou Stray Dogs, Kuroshitsuji, and Witch Hat Atelier (also not caught up on). I wanna start reading firefly wedding.

I read a lot of romance manhwas, mainly with female leads but I have a couple with male leads that I adore. I haven’t watched any tv shows in a while but I’ve been telling myself that I’m either going to watch Hannibal or Dexter. I’ve been wanting to consume more queer material involving women since I’ve found that despite being sapphic, very few women media shows up recommended to me. Favorite movie of last year was Bottoms. I watched it several times. I want to get into cdramas. The next film I see will either be The Handmaiden or Maja Ma. Or one of the Saw movies. Been on a Saw movie binge with friends. I find the themes inconsistent. An unforgivable crime.

There’s no actors I’m particularly into. Never got into anything Marvel aside from Spider Man. I plan on reading the comics soon bc a friend of mine really likes Spider man and I want him to know I care about his interests.

I’ve found a new enjoyment for figure skating. I have a couple of male skaters that I quite enjoy, but I’d like to watch more and eventually get into some female and ice dancing pairs as well.

I crochet. Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday. I graduate with my bachelors in the spring. I plan on doing my masters in IO psychology. My favorite color is blue and pink. I’ve been dying my hair for I think two years now. Maybe six months away from two. My friends say that I am surprisingly progressive in regards to my political views. I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.

I have a new car cause I recently got into a car crash. I’m very privileged. I don’t have to worry about money. I do regardless. I somehow have this personality disorder, and I have had one of the best life’s a child could have. Though every time I say that my friends say that’s weird considering the amount of trauma I’ve gone through. I think I have turned out well despite my circumstances. I like caring about other people. I’d like to make it my life’s goal to improve the life of somebody I don’t know yet.

Feel free to reach out to this blog anytime. It’s a side blog so I’m likely not gonna end up following anybody but I like talking.

#my post #personal

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lucifers-writing · 1 year ago

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Original blog (pls check this one out too): @coven-of-cards

Hey, this is a writing blog for the host of the Coven of Cards System, I encourage you to read all of this before requesting or checking out the blog please!!

Fandoms I will write for

- Miyagi-Verse (all movies + cobra Kai)

- Star Wars

- The Outsiders

- Original pieces (own stories off the top of my head or book ideas I have planned out)

- Pokémon (I’ll try my best lol)

- Marvel/DC (not as much but I’ll try)

———————————————

Boundaries

Things I will, won’t, and will maybe write (This is for all my fics in general)

👍

- Fluff. OMG I LIVE FOR FLUFF. I LOVE JUST READING WHOLESOME STUFF ITS SO CUTE AND MAKES ME SO HAPPY. If u have a fluff request PLEASE drop a comment or send ur requests in my ask box! I love hearing your ideas!

- Angst. I love angst just as much as I love fluff! We gotta make the readers cry sometimes, that’s life. Just like with fluff, if u have an angst request, please drop a comment! Remember, this includes violence, major/minor character death, etc

- DIVERSITY. LIVE LAUGH LOVE DIVERSITY!!! POC characters? Bet, just don’t change the characters ethnicity or race! I will never make a character a different race than they actually are (example I won’t make a black character white or vise versa) but if a character doesn’t have a canon race and their race isn’t obvious, I will do my research! Queer characters? OMG YES!! Again, I won’t change a character’s canon sexuality. But if a character doesn’t have a canon sexuality, I’m willing to experiment! I have no problem headcanoning a character as bisexual. But (example) I won’t make a lesbian character bisexual for a story just bc someone asked me to. I find that to be disrespectful. I also will definitely have characters that are neurodivergent. As someone who is neurodivergent, I find it hard to find stories with a Y/N who rlly shows what anxiety feels like, or any mental disorder for that matter. So if you want to request a character who is neurodivergent, I’m all for it! I’ve always headcanoned Tommy (karate kid) to have ADHD and Jimmy (karate kid) to have social anxiety. If you request a certain mental disorder I don’t know much about, I will research the disorder first so it may take a little longer than usual! Anyways, I’m all for diversity and will have lots of diverse OCs and if requested, Y/N stories too!

- Ships!! Both platonic and romantic. I will not ship real people like actors though. I’m also all for writing abt ships that aren’t my own, again, love diversity! I personally don’t ship Lawrusso(karate kid) that much but I think they’re hella adorable and would love to write a Lawrusso fic in the future. Also, again, just bc I love diversity doesn’t mean I won’t write about heterosexual couples too. You ship Tommy and Susan and are struggling to find a fic abt them? I gotchu! It’s not a crime to like a ship that is not queer!

- A lil bit of spice. A little make out session will always be okay with me. I will only write the kissing, anything beyond that is considered smut in my eyes. So if u want a lil kissing then that’s alr. Kissing in general will always be okay with me, kissing in general falls under the fluff section. Making out has its own section.

- Crack fics. Another type of writing I love is comedy. I’ll write stories purely just about a group chat of people doing stupid shit. Or incorrect quotes bc you have to love those.

- Alcohol/drugs/smoking. News flash, most of my stories are gonna be karate kid/cobra Kai/the outsiders themed. Or just 80s movies and general. And guess what? During those movies everyone is smoking and drinking and having a whiff of cocaine once in a while. I’m not uncomfortable with writing about this type of stuff, but if you are remember I will always read back and add trigger warnings.

- Other alternate universes. Uhm, we need these! I love doing the occasional soulmate AU or a fantasy realm AU! It’s just such a fun way to add a little twist to the stories. If you want a crossover, it depends on if I’ve seen the movies or not but I’ll try my best.

- Gore. There are times I will write it and times I won’t. If it’s gore to get off, absolutely not. If it’s gore for angst, yes. If it’s gore for a horror story, yes. If it’s gore because I’m writing a fanfic/ one shot of a fandom that involves a lot of violence (examples are movies Star Wars), yes. Fantasy, yes. I will not write gore for you to get your rocks off or just to take pleasure in because that makes me uncomfortable. If gore is written, it is strictly for angst, horror, fantasy, etc.

- Headcanons for characters. I’ll do headcanons for characters, readers (as long as the request has enough info about the specific reader to do so), and same with OCs. Also, if requesting headcanons for a certain reader and your boundaries are different than mine (example not okay with kissing, PDA, etc) then tell me, and don’t be ashamed to tell me.

———————————————

Maybes

- Smut. This is definitely more on the no side. I’ve never written smut but like, it’s whatever the reader wants. I’ll try my best. Lists of things I won’t write in smut will be in the ‘no’ section. Anything on smut that’s a maybe will be on here, obviously. Also the smut will not be detailed, and will most likely just hint at it so pls don’t get your hopes up.

- Requests. It sounds bad at first but let me explain. If you comment a request once and wait, I will try my best to do it! Keep in mind I am busy and have a life outside of social media. But I won’t accept a request if it breaks my boundaries or you spam my comments with a certain request. If you do the first one, I’ll remind you to read my boundaries before requesting and if you continue to disrespect my boundaries, I’ll block you and you can’t read my stories. As for the second one, I’ll simply ignore you and if that doesn’t work I’ll block you. So don’t do those two things please.

- x female reader. I’m sorry to say this (truth hurts) but female readers have 50x the amount of writing content than male readers have. I can’t find a single Star Wars x male reader fic, can’t find a single Karate kid x male reader fic without smut that I haven’t written myself, and it sucks. And if it is a male reader, it’s usually a heterosexual couple. Nothing wrong with heterosexual couples, but queer male readers exist too. So I will only rarely write content for female readers. If it’s a WLW ship, then of course I’ll write than for you. But heterosexual ships are simply not my specialty.

———————————————

🚫

- Pro-shipping. Any pro-shippers are not allowed on any of my blogs. If I find out you’re a pro-shipper, you’re getting blocked.

- Zoophilia. Y’all are weird.

- Rape, dub-con, and non-con. All of these make me very uncomfortable and will simply never be written. Call me boring, call me rude, but I don’t think it’s healthy to get off to rape. This is a safe space page and will stay that way.

- Pedophilia or large age gaps. I think this explains itself. No minor x adult, no large age gaps (4-5 years is my limit. Nothing over that. And 4-5 is still on thin ice.)

- Omegaverse. It simply makes me uncomfortable. Anything to do with breeding makes me uncomfortable. So I’m sorry but if you’re into that, you won’t be getting it here.

- Kinks I will never write: CNC, scat, piss, spit, extreme choking, slapping/spanking, any form of hitting basically, pet play, age play (age regression does not count), whipping, rimming (I know a lot of people r gonna get annoyed at that but I just hate it. Any form of eating someone out makes me very uncomfortable.) These all make me uncomfortable and there are no ways to wiggle around them.

- Kinks I will add trigger warnings for: Extreme BDSM, any form of gags or covering the mouth, slight choking (even just a hand resting over the neck. This does not include someone lovingly holding the side of the neck), finger sucking, religious kinks as long as it’s respectful, (and usually I’ll add a warning for just the smut itself but these are specific kinks I will point out), degrading, uses of the safe word, inappropriate use of the force. And after smut I will ALWAYS WRITE AFTERCARE BC AFTERCARE IS SEXY ASF.

- Full on smut. The closest thing to smut you’re ever going to get on this page are hints that it happened, suggestive language, making out, and skipping the action but knowing that’s what happened. I’m leaving the smut to your imagination but I will never write it full on.

I am begging you on my hands and knees to KEEP YOUR REQUESTS INSIDE MY BOUNDARIES.

———————————————

Characters I will write for

Star Wars:

Also note, the reason a lot of Luke and Leia’s stories will be kinda tied together is because they are twins, we don’t do incest on this blog

- Luke Skywalker (PLEASE HE’S MY FAVORITE PLS REQUEST FOR HIM I LOVE HIM)

- Sith!Luke Skywalker (unpopular opinion but Sith Luke is such a cool idea)

- Farmboy!Luke Skywalker (can you tell I like Luke Skywalker?)

- Mechanic!Luke Skywalker (you can can’t you?)

- Literally any other AU!Luke Skywalker (send requests NOW /nf)

- Leia Organa (she was my bi awakening)

- Farmer!Leia Organa (ESPECIALLY if it’s Luke being a prince instead of a farmer, but I’ll make them both farmers too because both are cool ideas)

- Sith!Leia Organa (especially if Luke is also a Sith, but him as a Jedi instead is also accepted)

- Royal AU!Leia Organa (where both her and Luke are royals/political figures, but Luke can just be a regular farmer too if you want)

- Literally any other AU!Leia Organa (send requests within my boundaries)

- Han Solo (I thought he was kinda mean when I was 4 but like, 🤷)

- Request AU’s for Han Solo bc I don’t have much for him

- Chewie, Yoda, etc and all must be platonic/family

- Poe Dameron, request AUs

- Finn (FN-2187)

- Stormtrooper!Finn (omg imagine if the reader is a general or a rebel?! I’m giving you guys ideas)

- Actually rebel!Finn (where he was actually a rebel and didn’t lie about it lol)

- Just gonna say now if you have any other AU’S about characters besides ones I’ve listed just request

- Din Djarin (I think that’s how you spell it?)

- Sith!Din (read a fic like this once)

- Regular dude!Din Djarin (where he’s not a mandolorian)

- Kylo Ren (I want to boop his nose)

- Jedi!Kylo Ren (this was a cool concept in my head)

- Padawan!Kylo Ren (could be training under Luke still, training under the reader, just giving ideas)

- Ben Solo (yes they will be different, Ben Solo will be used if he’s just a regular guy and Kylo Ren is for any Jedi or Sith AUs)

- OCs x reader (OC must belong to the reader or have permission from the person owning the OC)

- General Hux

- Anything else, send requests

The Outsiders

(For this I’ll be more strict because most of these characters are minors)

- Ponyboy Curtis (ONLY MINORS AND NO SMUT)

- Johnny Cade (ONLY MINORS AND NO SMUT)

- Dallas Winston (I think he’s 17 so 16+ only and no smut)

- Two-Bit Matthews

- Darry Curtis

- Sodapop Curtis (16-17 only and no smut)

- Bob Sheldon (I think he is 18?)

- Cherry (16 and no smut)

- Marcia

- Randy

Request AUs

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Any other fandoms, I’ll write for any character and rules still apply. No proshipping here.

#the outsiders #karate kid #kk1 #kk #Star Wars

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