#sensitive conversations

[howdoesone]

How does one ask their new friend if they also feel like a science experiment gone right?

In today’s rapidly advancing world of reproductive technology, the concept of children conceived through sperm donation is no longer rare. Yet, despite the growing number of kids who share this unique origin story, the conversation surrounding it remains sensitive and often awkward. One particularly tricky scenario is asking a new friend, who might also be a sperm donor child, if they too feel…

[woahjo]

mmmm high lord katsuki and new attendant reader…

he’s a cold man, with an icy stare and a fiery temper that is set off at the drop of a hat. the high lord katsuki has a reputation for being harsh on his peers and servants alike, though he has enough political sense to keep the peace.

he’s from an important family, born and bred with a silver spoon in his mouth and taught all of the niceties of good society. katsuki has read all of the classics and, in addition to an impressive family home (which he manages along with familial business), he has an extensive library, which he visits frequently.

you are low-born, only granted to opportunity of reading because your father taught you before he passed away. you’d been forced to find work when he passed and, by some stroke of luck, someone in the kitchens was willing to take you in and have you keep inventory for a small monthly salary. reading and writing comes in handy for that.

you consider yourself unlucky, however, at being noticed by katsuki’s first officer and personal attendant, kirishima, who happens to be of common birth with a position that should belong to a noble and thus, outranks you. well, just about everyone our ranks you. it’s him who recommends you for the “promotion” and lands you in katsuki’s personal office in the main house.

“my lord,” he says, stepping into the room with the comfort only a noble could have. “i’ve brought them.”

“who?” katsuki doesn’t raise his head. his voice is low and gravelly.

“the new serving staff, my lord,” he states. “the one from the kitchen inventory.”

katsuki looks up at this, his gaze unimpressed and unyielding. he looks you over for a moment, staring as if to size you up.

oh, he’s beautiful. it’s shameful thing to think of such a harsh man, but it’s the truth. he almost looks like a painting, with hard set eyes and round lips. you’d expected someone frightening, with harsh features and sharp, cutting proportions befitting of a man with rumors like the ones surrounding him. instead, the man who sits before you seems a prince with a slightly colder gaze. you suppose that his beauty is drowned out by the other rumors surrounding him.

“you said they could read?” katsuki snaps.

“yes, my lord,” he responds.

katsuki doesn’t comment on this, instead, he shifts his gaze to you and harshly barks a question.

“you’re willing to work?”

what does that matter? you don’t have much of a choice.

“yes, my lord.”

“very good,” katsuki says. “kirishima, see her to her quarters.”

kirishima excuses himself and you bow deeply and do the same. katsuki’s gaze lingers on you for a moment as you bow. it is so intense that you can almost feel the moment he tears it from you and returns to pouring over the papers in front of him. he does not look up again as you shut the door.

katsuki gives the impression that he is made of stone, stubborn and immovable. you imagine that his peers have trouble convincing him of anything and you briefly wonder, judging by the hard look he’d given you, if you’ll run into the same trouble.

[danandfuckingjonlmao]

edwin is a better, stronger man than i, because i would be infinitely more dramatic and petty in his position when crystal enters the scene and charles starts paying attention to her. i would have comic!edwin’s reaction at least (accusing charles of choosing girls over him, storming off to solve cases on his own and deciding to do shit that will get him into trouble so that charles has to come rescue him, etc) but i’d probably take it a step further. i’d be like “i guess you want me to go back to hell then since i’m basically nothing to you 😒” and then i’d legitimately go back to hell JUST to see if he came after me. if he didn’t come after me then an eternity of torture in hell is nothing compared to the pain of rejection and being replaced. but i’m also incredibly mentally ill, so.

(james acaster once told a story about a christmas where he asked his parents for a spice girls cd. he found out whilst at the pool with his family that his sister was getting the cd instead of him. naturally, he tried to drown himself in the pool to make his parents feel guilty. that’s my vibe if i were ever in edwin’s position.)

[buk-kakyoin]

Sam, about to word vomit at his workplace about government secrets that'll get him literally killed: "oh good, no computers in sight. They are the sole enemy we need to worry about and we're free to talk in secret here!"

The nosy-ass CCTV camera that see all and craves the hot goss: *whirring camera laughter* *popcorn making sounds*

[hindahoney]

Wild and revolutionary concept: maybe don't treat converts like trash just because they're converts? And also don't ask someone if they're a convert in a public setting?

[valtsv]

i gotta talk about my low empathy james fitzjames headcanon actually. i prommy i don't use it to excuse any of the acts of violence he committed against his fellow man (not just the colonialism either, but things like the petty rivalry with crozier that borders on bullying prior to the death of franklin) because as a low empathy person i know that's not how it works. but i do think that viewing his actions through a lens of understanding that both circumstances such as his birth and being a part of the british empire as well several choices he's made in life (particularly his sycophantic attitude towards those in positions of greater authority whose favour can work in his and his participation in active combat) have led him to become broadly alienated from other people and both their and his own emotions makes them more interesting.

[honeyblockm]

generalizing statements like 'all men are evil' are for sure wrong but also i think its important not to cut discussions of gender out of the picture esp bc they are extremely relevant in this case as misogyny is a big part of wilbur's abusive actions and the wider discussion of the. social environment of cc spaces that enables things like this. so.

[buwheal]

Glitches and bugs. Doodle page.

Getting used to drawing his cheeks specifically and stretching the boundries of his shape. Somewhat.

[daily-hanamura]

[basims]

We made it. Found our happy ending. Who would have think?

[chirpsythismorning]

I rest easy knowing that the planted milkvan roof pap photos will be referenced on the straight-baiting Wikipedia page soon enough.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

One of my hotter takes is that putting media criticism on one side and fan creation on the other as completely different activities, where one is intellectual and nourishing and engaged even if a little dry and joyless and mean and soul-killing at times, and the other is indulgent and vapid and meaningless but also joyful and emotionally fulfilling, is kind of weird and sells both disciplines completely short of what they are, which is a pretty obvious extension of each other.

No, I can't just "remove copyrighted stuff" from my stuff so I can sell it and it suddenly has worthwhile value. I am talking about copyrighted stuff through creation! It is critique! It is conversation! It is celebration! To remove this essential context would be making the entire endeavor meaningless then! aa

[dreadfuldevotee]

Thank you for this last post. The discourse on this fandom can often be so annoying. I hate it when people are like "this is a Gothic horror, let them be toxic and problematic!!!!11!!!1" because it's not take they think it is? At the end of the day, they still want us to root for these characters and relationships, right? So how can we do that if they're stereotyped vampires, who is dark, cold, just hurt each other and don't have an ounce of growth, development, empathy and humanity? And this is such a dismissive opinion of the show and even the books, because their conflict with humanity and vampirism is a central aspect of the plot. That said, if you reduce them to the abuse alone, you're also missing the point of the story? I mean, you can totally have your opinion, you can see them as unforgivable even on this fictional universe, you can hate and root against them... But this show isn't about punitivism, it is about them navigating immortality. There are consequences for their actions, as there should be, but the goal is for them to find a way to make this work. You don't need to agree (idgaf about the British monarchy and still watched a few episodes of The Crown for the acting, for example), but if you expect otherwise, you're just playing yourself? But this fandom seems to have a problem with finding a good balance. Not to mention the hypocrisy of never forgiving certain characters and reducing them to their problematic actions, but treating their faves very different lol. And I'm like, okay, you don't need to love everyone, it's okay to have a favorite, but at least don't be contradictory? Your fave does the exact same thing or worse? Anyways. Thanks again for putting it so well. It's refreshing to see posts like that here.

Thank you! I'm glad that other people get anything out of my ranting and raving, as I am a chronic yapper and really only talk for my own health LOL.

But yeah, there is a lot of selective hearing in any fandom, really; but it pisses me off a lot here because of all the "Gothic Horror" handwaving going on. Interacting with the fandom, reading the books and seeing clips & bits of personal writings from Anne Rice, the image it paints for me is a profound unwillingness to engage with contents of the story if they're not fun and sexy. Shit, even my own odyssey into the books is spurred on in one part, to be able to form my own opinion and critique on the writing and secondly, realizing that book readers were straight up lying at times about how things went down.

And there is this persistent idea I've seen on here and twitter of "If you have issue with XYZ then this series isn't for you" and like, okay if you don't wanna see gay people who have everything-but-the-bagel of mental illnesses then, yeah, sure. But when someone goes "Hey there is like,,, a ton of casual pedophilia and CSA in these stories that is framed as cute n' casual and/or deeply romantic, I wonder what that's all about" and then people crawl out the woodwork trying to convince you its not weird or that you're weird or weak for think its kinda fucked up- then at that point, I think maybe there is actually a different issue occurring here, you know?

Anyway, I think where I'm going with this is- TVC is a cultural phenomenon and has a tangible impact on Vampire and Gothic Horror canon and that's good and fun. But if we can recognize something like H.P Lovecraft's racism/classism/general fear of change having a profound effect on his writing and the spark of the entire Cosmic Horror Genre, then I think we can interrogate how AR as a Rich White Woman who grew up in mid-21st century New Orleans has an effect on the kind of stories she writes and how she does it.

[jessicas-pi]

A time traveler we do not explore enough is Satine Kryze. She's a pacifist brimming with rage. We should toss her back a decade and set her loose on the senate.

[weirdmageddon]

how do people even find partners. i dont want a bullshit answer, like really

[northern-passage]

i've been thinking a lot about the word "representation" and what it means and how it's changed over the last few years, particularly when it comes to the writing/publishing landscape but also in movies and tv shows… and i really don't like it anymore. to be clear, of course i think it's important to have diversity in your work, i'm not saying i hate the concept of representation. but i do really dislike the way it's used now, and i really just hate the word itself

in a broader sense it's just become a marketing tool. i'm not impressed by any publisher or author who just describes their book by listing all of the minorities/identities the characters represent as if that should be enough. it feels very gross, very exploitative and disingenuous. it also really bothers me because it's always marginalized identities- which i understand Why, but it feels very othering to me (and again. Very exploitative as an advertisement). you would never list out "cishet able-bodied white man" as a character description to pat yourself on the back over. so why do it to everyone else? why insinuate that one is the "default" and the other one is "special"? (and when i say this i'm mainly talking about advertisements/marketing. i understand why people would specify about characters in descriptions with the plot, but i don't like to see an ad that's just "this book has gay people!" with nothing else)

which then leads me to my other point, which is that a lot of people treat "representation" as if it's "too hard." like "oh i don't know enough to write about that, i don't have that experience, etc" which is a fair way to feel! however… it's weird that people only say this about writing trans characters or characters of color. i'm writing a story right now with a character who is really into motorcycles. i personally do not know that much about motorcycles, so i researched what parts are what & what different kinds of models there are & what basic bike care looks like. i guarantee Most people will have to google something at some point in their writing process. so what's the problem? it also, again, feels very othering when authors treat certain groups of people as "impossible" to write, "too hard" to understand. they are just.. people. you write them as a person. and then you figure out the rest later.

and i think part of the refusal or fear to write something outside of your experience is because of the way representation is treated as So Special. these characters are So Special that they aren't allowed to be anything other than "representation." they're Not allowed to be characters with complex emotions and interesting motivations, they have to just be Trans or Gay or Disabled or whatever. they're not allowed to be people. which means, at the end of the day, we loop right back around to where we were at the start….

there is bad representation. there are depictions of certain marginalized people that are harmful and that are damaging, i'm not trying to minimize that or argue against it at all, in fact we should all be mindful of that while writing and reading. but i also think it's possible to swing too far in the opposite direction as well and put certain groups of people on a pedestal and not allow them to do anything at all but be Perfect Representation, if that makes sense.