#she left tumblr before I could actually see any callout post or whatever but still

[neechees]

I’ll still never be 100% sure if that My Immortal author was really a pretendian or not but like I did see she called herself Cree and then listed words in Ojibwe when asked if she knew any of the language, so I found that weird. A lot of non-natives actually get Crees and Ojibwe ppl mixed up so if she was a pretendian that’s evidence.

[imbeccablee]

DekuShield Week Day 1: First Kiss

soooo apparently my first post got eaten by tumblr??? I was gonna submit it to the dekushield tumblr itself but apparently it doesn't have submissions on lmao. oh well, hopefully this one gets through!!

anyway, so here's a little Christmas special!

(yes I know its October and no I don't care)

enjoy!!

--

When All Might told Izuku the two of them had been invited back to I-Island for a Christmas celebration with the Shield family, Izuku had been ecstatic.

He'd really gotten along with Melissa and though things had gotten a little rough with David near the end there, he truly respected the man and knew All Might still trusted him. Izuku was really excited to see the two of them again (maybe one more than the other…), and he was really looking forward to seeing I-Island again!

Now that he's here, though, in the midst of the aforementioned party, Izuku can't help but feel sick to his stomach.

And like, not necessarily in a bad way? It's hard to explain, really. Like, he had been almost giddy with excitement, but the moment he and All Might met up with Melissa and David, all those happy feelings turned into anxiety and nervous energy. He couldn't form sentences correctly, couldn't sit still, he was hyper aware of everything that was going on - he'd almost think he was having a panic attack if he didn't acutely know how those actually felt. But at the same time, he knew he didn't want to be anywhere else in the whole world at that moment. He just doesn't understand it!

And the feeling had persisted all throughout the day, as Melissa and David escorted them to their hotel and to the new additions that had been built in their time away. Izuku wondered if he had suddenly gotten sick, but that wouldn't explain the lingering positivity, nor the fact that All Might seemed perfectly fine, and the man's immune system was worse than Izuku's.

Even now, as he stands off to the side of the party, clinging to his cup of soda like a lifeline, he feels like keeling over on the spot. All Might had left him briefly, having been pulled away by David so he could introduce the retired hero to some of his newer scientist friends, so now Izuku is just awkwardly standing alone, looking like he's about to die on the spot.

This is why I don't do parties…

"Ah, Deku!" 

Izuku jolts violently, some of his drink spilling over the side of his cup and onto his hands, and whips towards the voice. Melissa stands to the side of him, looking unfairly beautiful in her elegant, floor-length dress. His voice catches in his throat as he tries to respond and the sick feeling rockets up to an eleven. He feels like he might throw up, but also like he's two seconds away from breaking out into song, and he doesn't understand.

"Deku?" Melissa's face has taken on a confused note and Izuku realizes he's just been staring at her like an idiot.

He clears his throat, but he still sounds ragged when he says, "H-Hey, Melissa." They both flinch in unison.

"Oof," she says in English, before switching to Japanese. "You don't sound too good. Are you feeling alright?"

And then she steps closer so she can press her hand to his forehead. He physically feels blood rush into his face as her hand lands on his skin, and she gasps. "You're burning up! Let's go find Uncle Might, he can take you back to the hotel. You shouldn't be here if you're sick - "

"W-Wait, no, I-I'm fine, just," he tries to protest, still reeling from the gentle touch of her soft hand on his face.

"No, if you're not feeling well, you should rest!" she insists, before taking his free hand (making his heart flip) and pulling him toward where, presumably, All Might is. "You need to take better care of yourself, Deku."

"Melissa, please, I-I swear I'm fine!" he says again, allowing himself to be dragged through the crowd and toward his mentor.

"Uncle Might!" Melissa calls out and Izuku groans softly.

All Might turns at the sound of his name and greets the two of them. "Young Melissa, Young Midoriya, how are you two doing? Enjoying the party?"

Melissa pulls Izuku up beside her and he barely has enough time to be flustered over how her heels make her absolutely tower over him when he's so close before she says, "Deku isn't feeling well, I'm gonna take him back, alright?"

All Might's content joy turns to worry in an instant. "Young Midoriya, you're feeling unwell? Why didn't you say any - well, actually, that's quite in-character now that I think about it."

Izuku ducks his head in embarrassment and exasperation at the blatant callout for a moment, before lifting his eyes and saying, "Really, I'm fine! It's just hot in here, that's all!"

The two of them stare at All Might with pleading eyes, both trying to get him to do the opposite the other wants. All Might looks a little pinned down.

Finally, All Might says, "Um, well, how about this? Young Midoriya takes a breather outside and Young Melissa can watch him, and if he doesn't get any better, I'll take him back to the hotel."

Melissa huffs a little, but nods. "I suppose that's fine."

Izuku nods. "Yeah, alright." He wasn't lying when he said it was hot inside. Maybe he just needs some fresh air.

He follows Melissa outside until she stops at the street, under one of the street lamps. It's dark enough now that all of them have turned on, as have the light-up Christmas decorations on the surrounding buildings, making everything glow in pretty reds, greens, and blues.

The cold air is already doing wonders on his face. He does feel a bit sick still, but he can feel himself calming down. Maybe he'd just had too much excitement all at once; his day had been jam-packed with reunions and tours. Not to mention, spending all day with Melissa, an incredible, inspirational,, and stunning girl, probably had something to do with his nerves.

Speaking of, he should probably thank her for caring so much. Even if he didn't want to fully leave the party yet (mostly 'cause he doesn't want to disappoint All Might), it made his heart sing that she was so concerned for him.

He turns towards her, mouth opening with a thank you on his tongue, when he sees her shivering, arms wrapped around herself. His thanks dies on his tongue, replaced with, "Melissa! You're cold!"

Way to state the obvious, genius.

Melissa giggles a little, her smile twisted into something mirroring a grimace. "A little. But it's fine, we'll be back inside sooner or later."

Izuku's having none of it. He shrugs off his jacket and feels a chill crawl up the skin under his shirt. Ignoring it, he steps closer to her and quickly wraps his jacket around her shoulders, pulling it tight over her chest so it's covering as much of her as possible.

Melissa looks down at him in surprise, her hands automatically sliding from her arms to grab at the jacket's opening. "Deku?"

"I'm trying to cool down anway," he reasons. "If you're going to stay out here, I want to make sure you're warm too. Don't want you to actually get sick."

Her surprise melts into a warm smile and Izuku's heart jumps into his throat. That sick feeling registers again. "You're too kind, Deku," she whispers as she tilts her head back, presumably to look at the stars. Then she stills, staring up at something directly above them.

She stares for long enough that Izuku gets curious and tilts his head up too, starting to say, "What are you…?" He stops, however, when he sees the white berries and green leaves of a mistletoe hanging from the streetlight.

Immediately, warmth blooms full force in his face again, but he can clearly understand where that came from. His hands tighten on his jacket around Melissa's shoulders as a wheeze exits his lungs. 

Melissa laughs a little at the noise he made and tilts her head down to look at him. He mimics her a second later, feeling like he's about to combust. Before she can say anything, he nearly shouts, "We don't have to!"

She blinks in surprise, but the mirth never leaves her face. "Why, Deku, are you saying you don't want to kiss me?"

Izuku squeaks as he tries to deny it, "What? No, of course not! Who wouldn't want to kiss you?" Kill him. "Ah, I mean, that is, I don't mean that I want to kiss you!" KILL HIM. "No, no, not that, what I mean is, if you don't want to kiss me, then we won't, because I know there's that whole tradition or whatever but that's really old-school and also kind of gross if you think about the implications of two people needing to kiss just because they're standing over a plant so there's a whole weird consent issue surrounding the whole thing and basically all I'm saying is we can break the cycle right here right now and - " He takes in a gasping breath as he runs out of air, the cold having made it so his spiel was shorter than normal.

Melissa just smiles, giggling lightly at his fumbling. Then, she says, "Who said I didn't want to kiss you?"

Now, he feels breathless for another reason.

He stills, staring up at her in shock, trying to process her sentence. Melissa lets him, still smiling softly, like they have all the time in the world.

"You… what?" he says, dumbly. 

"I said," she repeats, "who said I didn't want to kiss you?"

"You…" He can't even wrap his head around this, what?? "You want to kiss me? You want to kiss me?"

Melissa laughs again. "Don't look so surprised! I would've thought it was obvious, with how I've been acting."

"Well, you thought wrong." It slips out before he can stop it, and he quickly takes his hand from where it's holding his jacket closed and covers his mouth. Her laughter increases as he apologizes.

"No, no, I suppose that's my fault," she says. "I should have known better than to assume you knew how I felt."

How she FELT?

Izuku doesn't know if he can physically handle the implications of that.

"Anyway," she continues, "I'll be straight forward then. May I kiss you, Deku?"

Another wheeze escapes his throat and his knees buckle a little. He doesn’t quite fall, but Melissa's hands do surge up and catch his arms. That sick feeling is mixing with a wonderful giddiness, jumping around in his stomach, almost feeling like beating wings - and oh. Oh, he's just stupid, isn't he.

Oh, he's in love with her, isn't he.

"Yes," he breathes, high on the feeling of love realized, blissfully ignoring his own stupidity of the day. He'd been feeling sick because he was nervous and in love and he'd been with her all day, holy shit, he can be so dumb sometimes.

Melissa breathes a sigh of relief, tension dropping from her shoulders, and he realizes she'd been scared he'd reject her. As if anyone in their right mind would reject her. 

Her hands slide up from his arms and cup his jaw, fingertips buried in his unruly hair. She tilts her head forward, slowly, unrushed, and Izuku's eyes flutter shut in preparation. He feels her nose brushes his, feels her breath against his lips, and then - she's kissing him.

He sighs a bit, in relief, a small, hurt part of him, that will never truly die, having expected this to all be a huge prank. But it's not, of course, because Melissa would never hurt him like that. 

Her lips press a bit harder against his, and her hands slide further back on his head until her arms having fully wrapped around his neck. His own hands jolt up, unsurely landing on her waist, as she leads him. She's obviously done this before, while he's completely green.

The kiss lasts another few seconds before Melissa slowly leans back. Embarrassingly, Izuku starts to follow, before catching himself and letting them part. 

They both pant lightly, breathing the same air and still wrapped up in each other. She beams at him, face flushed from more than just the cold. "That was wonderful, Deku."

"R-Really? I-I didn't know what I was doing…"

Melissa hums. "Maybe, but… because it's you, I thought it was amazing." His face turns a few shades darker. She giggles, before her voice takes on a more serious tone. "And… if you wanted, there could be more chances to… you know, improve…?"

It takes him a second.

Then another. 

And another.

"Wait, are you asking me out?"

Melissa snorts a little, before nodding.

"Like, me me? Like, Midoriya Izuku?"

"I don't see any other hero-in-training here, currently wrapped in my arms and standing under a mistletoe, do you?" she teases.

"N-No, I just…" Ah, shit, he's gonna cry at this rate. "This is just too unreal. There's no way this all just happened, that I kissed you and then you asked me out. I have to be dreaming."

Melissa tilts his head towards her (when had he looked away?) and smiles brightly at him. "It's all real. I kissed you and then I asked you out. If it's too much at once, we can wait. I can wait. You're worth it, to me, Deku. I want to be with you, wholly and truly."

Aaaaand now he's crying.

Melissa takes it in stride, leaning back so her hands can comfortably cup his face again and her thumbs can wipe his tears. He grips her wrists tightly, but not enough to hurt.

"I - I just - I never thought you'd actually - that someone like you would - " He's cut off by another sob and Melissa shushes him.

"It's okay, Deku, I understand. It's a lot right now, we can talk about it tomorrow - "

"N-No, wait," he cuts in, sniffing noisily and forcing his tears to halt. He looks her in the eye, breathing shakily, and says, "Y-Yes. I-I'd like to go out with you. Please."

Melissa lets out a breath of her own, eyes wide and shining. Oh no, is she going to -

Tears drip from her eyes as her smile widens and widens, and she throws herself at him, wrapping him up in a tight hug. "Oh, that's wonderful, Deku! I'm so happy!"

Izuku laughs breathlessly, feeling like he's on top of the world. He tightens his arms around her waist and lifts her up, spinning her around as their joyous laughter fills the empty street.

After a few moments of mirth, he sets her back down and they pant heavily. Their foreheads lean against one another as they breathe each other's air.

They stand in silence, enjoying each other's company as they catch their breath. Then, nervously, Izuku whispers, "You know, we're… we're still under the mistletoe. If you, um, wanted to�� help me improve, like you said…?" He anxiously looks at her, feeling simultaneously too close and like he never wants to be away from her again.

Melissa huffs a laugh and buries her hand into the curls on the back of his head. "You know, Deku? I think I'll take you up on your offer."

She leans in and catches him in another scorching kiss, and before Izuku loses himself in her, he wonders how he could ever believe he didn't love her.

[dgcatanisiri]

This is too long for me to be comfortable to put out without a cut, but dear god, did I need to rant and ramble on this subject...

I always feel awkward when I want to complain about how video games portray and fandom reacts to queer men, because I feel like the conversation (at least here on Tumblr) gets focused on the female protagonists - you know, the Commander Shepard or Alexios/Kassandra debates and that sort. The things where there’s valid comments to make about how important these female protagonists are, especially in an industry that is deeply misogynistic, and, in the case of the Assassin’s Creed protagonists, keep being developed with an eye towards the female-only protagonists, only to have a male protagonist shoved alongside them, if not upstaging entirely (such as Jacob being the center of Syndicate’s marketing, or how Bayek was originally going to die and Aya be the central protagonist of Origins, or the creation of Alexios and probably male Eivor on the basis of “women protagonists don’t sell.”)...

BUT, when I want to talk about my perspective as a gay man, as wanting to play these games for that empowerment, get to enjoy these games for representing me as a gay man, because Shepard, Ryder, Alexios, etc. get to be played as such, that having these male characters who are able to be played as attracted to other men means something to me, and that leads me to not just play the male characters, but prefer them to the female characters, or even to talk about the subject of homophobia in both the games themselves and the fandoms surrounding them... I do feel like there’s this pressure to just effectively shut up and stay quiet and let the women have their empowerment, that the moment needs to be theirs, not mine, that “fandom” (meaning the monolithic entity that is ‘the fandom’ and not necessarily any singular individual who I’m referring to or anything) is pressuring for anyone who enjoys the male protagonists for whatever reason to be silent and let the women enjoy their win, even if there’s a win for underrepresented men in there as well, or even a need to address the problems of homophobia by not representing queer men. That in its way, it’s effectively saying that a win against the sexism against the industry is outweighing or more important than any win against the homophobia. (Or, since I brought up Shepard, racism, considering that Shepard, Ryder, any game with the character creator, can be different skin tones as well, but that’s outside my lane.)

Like, this isn’t a callout post or any kind of directed screed against anyone, just... I suppose it’s a cumulative effect, based on the fact that I remember what the internet in the corners I frequent was like when Odyssey dropped, focused very much (and understandably - let me be clear that I have no desire to step on anyone’s victory or enjoyment of these games here) on Kassandra, and it felt like the fact that I got to play a character I could portray as gay (don’t start me on the bloody DLC though...) was a victory celebration at a table set for one, while (to really stretch my metaphor) seeing this massive party happening across the dining room at the same time, and that (and again, I’m really straining my metaphor, I’m aware), if I wanted to join that party, they would not combine our celebrations, I would have to join in theirs, and, in my wanting to pay attention to my victory, getting laughed at for it. It’s one of those things that makes fandom feel a little alienating, because I don’t particularly have much of a place that feels like it’s a space for me to celebrate my victories, rare as they are, and on occasion, even end up with the impression that, so far as fandom at large cares, that victory I want to celebrate is somehow less important. That the importance of Alexios, playable as a gay man, meant less than Kassandra, period. And, with Valhalla and Cyberpunk’s release on the horizon, along with (maaaaaaybe?) a Mass Effect Trilogy remaster, I find myself bracing myself for this to start up all over again.

And I know some of this is based in the fact that Tumblr and the transformative elements of fandom in general are more of a space that is dominated by women in fandom, who are going to celebrate the wins for them. That’s just how things shake out, I understand that it’s as much the place I’m going for involvement and interaction with fandom at large as it is anything else. Just... I obviously don’t fit in to the areas of “straight male” fandom, and then getting to the places in the “marginalized” segments of the fandom, it still feels like I need to find my way over to the margins of the margins to feel like I have a place in fandom more generally.

Like, I understand that I have male privilege and that is a factor in things - the male characters are probably more likely to be the ones in the marketing, so I get to see that idealized image of myself individually all over the covers and posters and trailers. BUT that doesn’t remove the straight privilege of the people who are shutting down conversations about the importance of the male PCs being portrayed in M/M relationships, even starts going into the realm of casual homophobia - because no acknowledgement of how important it is for the portrayal of gay men, or bi men, IS homophobic. I mean, how often do these companies have their official accounts post images of the M/M pairings? I’ve seen BioWare account retweet FemShep/Garrus and FemShep/Kaidan things, on top of the MaleShep/Female LI pairings. I’ve even seen FemShep/Liara content, which... We could go into the way that F/F pairings get fetishized and tend to be there as either fodder for cishet male titillation or just because the female PC gets swapped in for the male PC (in the way of Peebee riding a non-existent dick in the FemRyder romance scene in Mass Effect Andromeda), I don’t mean to discount that being a thing, so queer women are getting a short stick too. But where’s the M/M relationships? Hell, remember the whole #MakeJaalBi thing? After we got that notice about the patch for his romance would come... Has any official Mass Effect account actually SHOWN content of BroRyder and Jaal?

I mean, remember the Citadel DLC? The appearances of Kaidan’s romance material included FemShep, and Cortez’s content included a split second shot of just him and Shepard holding hands, and since it was blink and you’ll miss it, that means that it doesn’t even make any effort to portray the M/M relationships. And since I brought up Jaal already, BioWare had to be publicly shamed into offering M/M relationships in equal amounts to the other pairings in Mass Effect Andromeda. Like, it’s bad that Peebee’s romance for FemRyder just had the model swapped in for BroRyder, sure. But at least that content was THERE, at release. For gay/bi men who wanted to romance male characters, we have to make sure that we get that patch downloaded (meaning if you play the game without an internet connection, you can’t get access to his romance) - and only because the outrage actually GOT a response, which is not necessarily the norm in this industry.

Hell, the disparity there actually GOT noticed - if you include Scout Harding as a romance, M/M romances are the lowest numerical romances in Dragon Age Inquisition as well, with only Dorian and Bull as options. And I didn’t even realize this until this past year, despite being disappointed in those two options. Even recognizing that Harding is more of a fling than a full romance, it’s still more than M/M romances had. The closest we got was being able to flirt with Cullen twice before he shuts it down (and the rants I’ve had on THAT subject...). 

And that’s just the focus with BioWare - I saw it all through the initial release of Odyssey, while I know that the official metrics are all saying that Alexios saw more play than Kassandra, Kassandra got a lot of positive response in the fandom that was often framed in opposition to Alexios, that she was the “better” protagonist. 

Like, I’m bolding this for emphasis, and so if anyone is TL;DRing this it’s eye-catching enough: My issue is the dismissal and denigration of the male PCs when building up the female PCs. It is not being against celebrating the female PCs. It’s just the way that people will, in their positivity towards a female PC, dismiss the audience who relates to and connects with the male PC. The way that I’ve seen since day one the common “joke” that male Shepard is unnecessary, condemning the voice acting, even asking why he’s there when female Shepard is “the real Shepard”.

It makes fandom a hostile place to be when you’re looking to that character as your representation, your inspiration. Yeah, it’s a joke, but when it is coming from all corners, or at least feels like it, all the time, the humor dies, and you’re left with just the words. The words telling you that this mirror for yourself is something that people don’t care about.

Again, it’s that feeling of already being on the margins and then being pushed further. You are the freak among the freaks. 

But it feels like saying any of this, like I have, is opening the door to be dismissed as being sexist, or misogynistic, or lesbophobic, or anything like that, because people want to boil down what I’m saying to no more than “but what about MEN? Why aren’t you talking about MEN?” in that dismissive way that so many MRA trolls attempt to derail the conversation - except, no, I am TRYING to have a genuine conversation, about men who aren’t represented, men who need these male characters as much as women need the female ones - queer men get the short stick in a lot of cases, like this goes back to the representational matters in a lot of kids TV shows - while we can absolutely talk about the bad representation it was broadly, I remember when Voltron concluded, having Shiro, having arguably the lead male character of the show, end the show marrying and kissing another man... That was heavily ignored by Tumblr. Meanwhile Tumblr EXPLODED for Korra and Asami or Bubblegum and Marceline. 

It’s seeing what is representation for me as a queer man being played down or ignored while the queer women are praised. And, again, I’m not trying to take anything away from queer women, or women in general, but... Where, exactly, am I supposed to look for that same empowerment? And, more importantly, when the same media offers the empowerment for both groups, like video games do, why does it seem almost expected that I as a queer man back off and allow this to just be for the women in general, when the whole point of a variable protagonist is that it allows that empowerment for EVERYONE?

I mean, I say it feels like “opening the door” to these comments because it has happened before, and likely will again. Because saying “this joke feels hostile to me, as a member of an underrepresented group, can we please not?” or speaking about my individual experiences and feelings - often even just in my own space, on my blog, frequently only tagged with my individual tags for organization in my space, rather than publicly shouting it through a megaphone by putting it in public tags, and somehow STILL getting attacked for these comments - is apparently all those things... That’s been the response I’ve gotten to saying things like this in the past. 

And, in case I haven’t been clear with the repeated comments and the bolded statement above, it’s not about me, a man, trying to take away this thing for women. Rather, it’s me, a queer person - and fine, yes, a queer man - who wants to celebrate being seen, wants to celebrate what is still not a common thing of seeing myself in my media, and then feeling like I’m being shoved out of the way because other people celebrating their representation is considered more important, to hell with me and my mirrors.

Like, I’m not saying any of this is anything actively conscious or even intentionally malicious. It does seem like a reflexive defensive position - “men have tried to take this from us, so we’re not letting ANY man through.” I don’t want to come across as flippant or not aware of the fact that this isn’t a walk in the park for women. I get it, I really do. I’m just... It does feel like my struggles are something that I’m being told to downplay in the name of allowing others to have their celebration.

Thing is, my own experiences as a queer person already leave me feeling like I’m getting that as well - I mentioned before (and have elsewhere) that Dragon Age Inquisition’s M/M romances didn’t work for me. But I have often felt like I need to downplay the fact that I don’t emotionally connect to Dorian as a character - in the immediate aftermath of the game’s release, you could not say ANYTHING negative about him without getting shouted down as either a homophobe or dealing with internalized homophobia. Meanwhile, I’m here, pointing out that, hey, the previous games did not really have any direct homophobia, and the little bits that did lean in that direction felt more like the writers living in a homophobic society and not able to wholly divorce that in their writing than anything in-universe. To me, Thedas was a place where being gay was a difference that made no difference. And then Inquisition tore away that escape from homophobia so bluntly.

So, Dorian doesn’t empower me, you ask, so what about Bull? Yeah, I identify with “queer man” because while I’m a man romantically attracted to other men, I’m also asexual - just regular vanilla sex is in the fringes of my comfort zone. Bondage is an outright catapult out of there. At mach three. So I’m left uncomfortable by both of my “options” in Inquisition. And the response I have always braced myself for when I bring this up, when I do add my voice to the conversation about the M/M options, is “well, they can’t please everyone, and this was good for some people, so you should be content with that.” Being told I can’t have everything, so feeling uncomfortable at best is just something I have to live with, because hey, THOSE OTHER PEOPLE got satisfied, and so you should just be happy for them.

It’s that pained metaphor I offered earlier - the victory celebration isn’t for me, I’m on the outside looking in EVEN STILL. I am the freak among freaks. 

Where is my place to belong, in all of this? Because it’s honestly hard to find, when all the spaces deemed “for me” still feel like an exclusionary party?

[fletchlingfletcher]

It’s really fun finding out from people that after MONTHS of avoiding making a callout post about someone to stay out of the drama and the sphere of abuse, they decide to go that route involving exactly that.

After months of thinking I was out of this bullshit, I’m still being dragged back in and I am so, SO tired of it.

So if you want the callout, if you want THE post about it, here it is.

JURIEN ASHUR/MISATO OTSUKA/YUKINE OSHIGA IS MANIPULATIVE, ABUSIVE, TOXIC PERSON 

I met Jurien several years ago in WoW. I was her RP partner up until Fall of 2018 from the time I met her in early 2015. I visited her in person. I had her on Facebook. I met her family. For all intents and purposes, Jurien and I were very good friends for a very long time.

But friends can be just as abusive as romantic partners. And it took me an unfortunately long time to realize that. I’m not sure when the realizations started to hit me, but once they did it was a downhill spiral.

I won’t claim to have been the best person to Jurien either. Years of isolation, manipulation, and gaslighting will do that to you. But there’s a difference between learned and trained reactions to abuse and actual abuse.

I’m not going to go into my whole history with Jurien here. If any of you want to know, you can come to me, but please understand if, after all of this, I’m cautious.

Someone came to me a few days ago expressing concern over the way Jurien had been treating them. They had come to me before, but due to their closeness to Jurien at the time, I kept some distance in sharing too much, as you can very clearly see.

The second time around, I figured they had learned, so I sympathized and opened up about what I had been through. Though clearly that was a mistake since they abused that trust to paint me as the bad guy.

The ONLY reason I shared information with Lin here is because I genuinely believed her in saying she was tired of how Jurien had treated her- in a way that, from what she described, was nearly identical to the way she had treated me. She infantilized me. She manipulated me. She isolated me, threatened me, guilt-tripped me, gaslit me. Everything Lin showed me, Jurien had done to me too.

The “personal” information I shared with Lin was a screenshot between me and Jurien from what I had hoped would be our last conversation. It was an emphasis on how I have done NOTHING but try to keep out of this and away from this and not spread this negativity she insists I’ve done. You can see the entirety of that conversation here, though I’ve now taken the liberty to redact part of it since it seems that was the catalyst for all of this. 

So that was it. Jurien was transferring off of Mateus, I had a new RP partner, you’d think things were settled. I was happy, or at least content and still dealing with recovering from all that toxicity. Jurien found new partners, but just as quickly lost them. There was one in particular I befriended because of a simple mutual aesthetic. I said little to them about Jurien, and definitely nothing bad. They came to their own conclusion she wasn’t worth their time. 

But I have been consistently blamed for Jurien’s falling outs with her RP partners since me. Try as I might to avoid anything having to do with Jurien, I inevitably blocked her on Tumblr and Discord. She continued to do as she did and I continued on with my current RP partner until I got a mysterious anon about how I jumped right into shipping with Miah and was a horrible person for it in a tone and style eerily similar to how Jurien writes. 

I didn’t answer it. I didn’t want to feed into it, though she was keen on trying to start things with similar anons on Jurien’s blog...AND EVEN DEATH THREATS TO MY RP PARTNER’S TUMBLR

This eventually bubbled into Jurien reaching out to my RP partner on Discord all in an effort to get me to speak to her again, not just once regarding these anons, but the very next day as well.

That is my last conversation with Jurien. Not the entirety of it, unfortunately I didn’t screenshot the entirety because I thought after MONTHS we could have been over this and was tired of dealing with it. But that’s it. Even the last conversation I had was Jurien trying to manipulate me and STILL PAINT ME AS THE BAD GUY. 

I wasn’t always a good person to Jurien in the time we knew each other. I can accept that, I can admit that. Us parting ways should have been good for both of us, but I am not the one that can’t seem to let it go. I am not the one reaching out to people, people have come to me because they know I put up with enough of Jurien to sympathize with whatever she did to them.

THIS WAS NOT A POST I EVER WANTED TO MAKE.

I apologize for sharing Jurien’s child’s name, but I shared that screenshot with someone in confidence and sympathy for what they went through and what I went through.

If I was so keen on ruining Jurien or slandering her or having any malicious intent towards her, then this post would have come MONTHS AGO. This would have come in September or October when we officially split. This would have come in December after she reached out to my RP partner to bait me into speaking to her again.

I am so SO tired of all of this SHIT. Every time I think I’m done with it and things have settled and Jurien has FINALLY moved on and left me be, things like this happen. I really just want to be left alone. I don’t want to continue reliving all of this every time someone else gets hurts by Jurien. I’ve never told anyone to steer clear, I’ve never lied or slander. You can make your own decisions about whose side to take or not.

I didn’t want to air any of this. I have been content to keep it to myself to protect myself. I want to be done with this. I want to be done with Jurien. 

Please just leave me alone

[kincringeemporium]

The Promised Party Cat Callout (Long Post!)

Here we go, y’all. I’m not gonna go all-out with the salt and vitriol typical of my longer posts, because... this isn’t about me being salty. This is about highlighting the issues with Mod Party Cat of the fictionkinfessions blog. 

Nor is it intended to bully or chase Party Cat off of Tumblr. Yes, this is a callout post; no, it’s not an invitation to attack the blog with hate or stalk their sideblogs. And no, it’s not just my personal opinion, which we will get to. 

This is intended to show Party Cat exactly what is wrong with how they’re running the blog and how they’re behaving. If they learn from it, good. If they don’t... then, they don’t. 

Last of all, we did gather opinions from both kin and non-kin in a survey. This isn’t meant to antagonize the entire kin community. In fact, the information from kin really helped to support this argument. Thank you to the kin people who did respond to the survey. 

(Btw, survey is still open: https://goo.gl/forms/lDoffQVVmELDo2EZ2 ) 

Obvious content warnings for dark shit apply. (Abuse, depression/suicide, etc.)

With that being said... let’s begin. 

The main reasons for the callout are these: 

Passive aggressiveness to or about other mods

Passive aggressiveness to anons/senders 

“Cutesy” or overly positive typing/behavior in serious situations 

Material that is generally improper for this kind of confession blog 

Hypocrisy

Majority of survey takers agreed with each other and with the points made in this callout

We’ll go one by one. 

Passive-aggressiveness to/about mods

(The bottom half of the mod page was linking to Party Cat’s other blogs and crediting some theme elements. Not relevant to callout.)

There isn’t a lot of information about the other mods or why they left; the general consensus on Maude is that they left because of school, but nothing about Kuroocrow. Now, why is this passive aggressive? 

There was no need to publicly say that there’d been a “catfight” (ha ha, funny) with Maude. We don’t know if Maude even gave Cat permission to say this. If not, it’s disrespectful. (Nothing wrong with saying they’ll be okay.)

What Cat is saying about Kuro is even more aggressive than that. “They refuse to do anything to help!” Okay. That could be true. There’s still no need to rant about it. 

“Ask them on my behalf what the fuck is going on with them!” Adding ‘on my behalf’ comes across as incredibly self-centered. And saying ‘what the fuck’ adds to the aggressiveness. Even if not intentional, that is how it looks, and it needs to be changed.  

All that needs to be said is something like this: “It’s just me, Party Cat! Maude is on hiatus, and Kuro is absent. If anyone knows what’s going on with them, please DM me!” There. That’s respectful and to the point. 

Passive-aggressiveness to Anons/Senders 

This section will be... long. 

So.. there’s a lot of overlap here with the ‘cutesy typing’ issue, but I’ll get to that later. I had to crop the screenshot to just this because there was so much that wasn’t 100% relevant to the callout. (Context for this post: Cat promo’d a kin server, an anon found some unsavory things happening in the server, anon warned Cat, and Cat said this.)

“...Seriously there’s like a few thousand people following this blog” is an unnecessarily rude way to say this. The point itself is legitimate and understandable. It really just need to be reworded so as not to come off as salty. 

Alright, I’d understand this one if there was anything in the blog description or about pages to warn people that the blog can get dark. Confessions about death, suicide, rape, incest, murder, violence, high emotional distress, etc are jarring to see when this blog tends to be lighthearted.  

While this anon does look a little bit defensive or offended, that’s so slight compared to the defensiveness of the response. Personally, I read the question as confused. (Y’all, who agrees with me? Who disagrees?)  

Cat... people don’t tend to expect very dark content on a blog like this, especially when there’s no warning, and they might not even bother to blacklist the tags you use because they don’t expect it. (That’s a guess. If I’m wrong, then smeone should explain it. ) There isn’t much of an answer here - you just answer their question with another question. 

So, okay, I agree with Cat saying that this ask is vague. And it’s not good to add “but” after something like ‘No disrespect...’ -- because “but” does negate whatever precedes it. 

Those are the only things in this screenshot that make sense. Now we’ll get to the things that are passive-aggressive. 

“Maybe it’s because...” Vague in itself. ‘Maybe’ gives you wiggle room to get out of this perfectly legitimate critique, instead of saying “Hey, I seem this way because...” 

“People keep asking me things without providing the barest amount of information...” People actually do provide information. Sometimes it isn’t enough. That doesn’t mean they aren’t trying, and they could be dropping the subject because of how you respond (nobody really wants to interact with someone being rude). 

“I just fill up the dead air with jokes!” Plenty of people do. And it’s fine... just not in this situation. When something serious comes up, you shouldn’t simply make a joke and move on. This reads like an excuse, and even a way to shame people. (”Oh... it was only a joke? Now I feel bad! :(” ) 

“And then people get more mad because... I don’t know!” This looks like you are blaming people for their feelings. People are allowed to feel mad. It’s never okay for them to send hate or be dicks -- which they’re not doing. 

“Nobody reads that page, lollerskates!!” This could easily be solved by a regular, repeated post linking to the FAQ. Or a regular, repeated post explaining why confessions sometimes aren’t answered. Or something like that. Just a bit more effort. 

Okay: “This blog is only for kin. We want to keep it within our community. If you have questions, check out this FAQ!” 

Not okay: “You have no business interacting! You don’t know anything!” 

That ‘sincerely’ isn’t very sincere at all. Most antikin will respect kin not wanting anti interaction on their blogs. Those that don’t are being dicks. And non-kin people who don’t have anything against kin are not at all likely to be hostile toward you, so being this hostile to them is unwarranted. 

It’s confusing that this community, in general, would like non-kin and antis to become educated about what kin is/means... then such an influential blog sends a message like this. Regardless of how people feel about Cat, she does have pretty decent influence and a huge following; it’s very easy for impressionable kids to pick up on this weird double standard. 

There’s nothing wrong with preferring to let someone else educate non-kin. There’s nothing wrong with pointing non-kin in a different direction. 

There’s a lot wrong with blatantly pushing them away like this. It’s rude. 

Inappropriate Cutesy/Overly Positive Typing 

Cat isn’t stupid and knows full well what this anon (same one from before) meant. There was no need whatsoever to make such a giant joke of the question. 

(Not to mention... why the hell would she tell everybody that she has so much medical debt and can’t afford electricity? I don’t know her situation so I can’t say it is/isn’t a joke too. It is something that could genuinely upset people, and some would even believe it. It’s a terrible thing to say.)

“:3c” Not harmful in itself. Just doesn’t belong in a serious ask. 

This anon meant a post in which they were venting about abuse... they were angry that a character had abused their kintype. Cat knew that, considering their abuse content/trigger warning tags. This response looks sugarcoated and mentions some random anecdote about a thing Cat does, which is not appropriate in a situation regarding child abuse. 

This was in response to something that was legitimately annoying Cat and breaking a blog rule. It does not look like an appropriate or effective way to address the issue - even looks immature. Did people take this seriously? 

Yes, this really is a tag on a venting ask about a real life abusive stepfather. A joke. In a venting ask... about an abusive home life. There is a tag saying ‘Your stepdad sucks’, which is good. A joke, though, is too far. 

(Apologies for a repeat screenshot - I saved this one for right now, for the sake of organization.) 

There is, as I’ve been saying, no need for this. It’s very strange to ‘roleplay’ and act cute when there’s possibly a toxic Discord server going around.  

When asked if any of Party Cat’s mannerisms were bothersome, one person said this: 

Others said these things: 

Inappropriate Material 

Shoutout to @queen-dragon-slut (damn Tumblr won’t link you) for getting me this screenshot. 

What the hell, Cat? This is serious -- this is even more serious than people sending confessions saying things like “Ugh, I hate this kintype!” or “Ugh! I hate that character!” This person actually endangered their own health and safety to force themselves into a ‘kin shift’. And it’s in no way Cat’s fault. 

However. 

To not even provide the anon with links to help blogs or any kind of resources, list some tags, and move on, shows an incredible lack of effort. Not only that, but I feel bad for this person. One note. That’s it. Nobody seemed to care that someone was suffering this badly, Cat included, which is, quite frankly, disgusting. 

Again, something this dark doesn’t belong on a casual confession blog (which is what your blog looks like it’s supposed to be). And again, it genuinely fucking worried me. Is this person okay? 

And it’s not even tagged. Not as ‘suicide’, not as ‘depression’, not as ‘suicidal ideation’, nothing. Which is what this is. This person feels like they’re not needed, like they’re pointless, which exactly what suicidal ideation does to you. 

You can’t DM an anon saying, “Hey, you alright?” You can, however, at the very least, link them to the help blog page. 

Mod Ryan, who is also part of the fictionkin community whether we like it or not, has seen: 

Confessions about incest 

Confessions about being abused otherwise 

Confessions about stalking and being stalked

People saying they liked to kill 

People saying they weren’t at all sorry for violent things their kintypes did

Asks saying characters or people should’ve killed themselves 

@queen-dragon-slut said about some of the suicide-ish confessions:  “ Tbh when somebody sends in a confession saying “I killed myself in my canon” it just sounds like they have some fantasies of wanting to kill themselves but cover it up by saying that their kin kill themselves and try to play it off. That’s not healthy.”

Hypocrisy: 

Alright. That looks reasonable -- but wait. 

The asks and other screenshots I just posted do strongly come off as suicide wishes, if not actual notes. 

Here’s what people had to say when asked if they’d seen Party Cat acting hypocritical. I did not even mention suicide asks or dark asks in the survey question: 

____  I wish I had time to say more but class starts in twenty minutes. When I’m back, I will add onto the callout with one more thing: that people feel Cat isn’t doing enough to help distressed anons.

Huge thank you to everyone who helped out with this! 

It’s something that people have wanted to say for quite a while, and something that should’ve been said a long time ago. 

Nobody should be demonizing Party Cat; there is a real person behind the screen. This should be a learning experience for her. Not an attack. 

-K 

[fair-fae]

You know, I'm not a drama person, I don't like it, but it came up on my dash so much that I kind of had to read it. All of that nonsense could've been avoided if you didn't even take it to the public. Judging people for THEIR characters that THEY made and can do WHATEVER the hell they want with them? Oh woo ho good job, you're so popular for taking the "barrage" of it. No. all it did was prove that you're a D-bag and I've got a nice, long list of people to block now and avoid contact with.

Okay, anon. I haven’t bothered setting the record straight with most of this shit, because I know folks like you will continue to believe what you want to believe and hear what you want to hear, just like you’re doing now. But I’ll bite. You’d think all of you getting onto your soapbox about how you shouldn’t judge or attack others wouldn’t keep talking shit about a situation you know nothing about and/or are terribly misinformed about. So I’ll enlighten you with what actually happened.

A while back, the person in question got into an argument with some people on the RPC, trying to tell them that their interpretation of the lore was wrong. Rather than leaving it at that, when he effectively got shut down there, he proceeded to take a screenshot of the conversation and post it on his tumblr, complete with a rant about the people who disagreed with him, their opinions are so wrong and awful, how dare they disagree with him, etc. essentially playing the victim when he was the one to try to badger them for their opinions in the first place. He also left their names, icons, signatures, etc. in full view.I responded and told him he probably shouldn’t be trying to harass any other people about the lore considering his own character concept (thus, you would think, making my opinion on his character pretty clear). Why? Because it’s fucking true.I don’t give a shit about the lore or whether anyone follows it. Probably every single one of my own characters at least bends the lore. But at least have the self-awareness and respect for your fellow role-players to say “yeah, my character breaks the lore” or not get your jimmies rustled every time someone says “oh, yeah, his character is lore breaking.” You wanna break the lore? Cool. Own up to it. And if you do break the lore, don’t try to force everyone else into following it–especially when you can’t even admit you break lore and instead stretch the lore to try so hard to justify your entirely lore-breaking character concept. Don’t try to heckle people for presumably doing what you do but won’t admit. Granted, these people weren’t even breaking lore anyway, which makes his insistence that they were even more ridiculous.So after some excuses about how he was trying to start some intellectual discussion or something and not just drag these people despite featuring their identities and primarily just complaining about them throughout the post, he admitted he should have at least edited out their names and apologized. Great! You’d think that should be the end of it. I didn’t have anything against him at that point, but also had no desire/reason to associate with him, so I didn’t. A couple months go by. Some post comes across my dash. A girl in the community is doxxing her online ex-boyfriend in a callout post about him for unexpectedly breaking up with her because she “thinks” he was lying to her about serious issues and “believes” he was cheating on her. Because I’m a loud and opinionated person, and because that’s some heinous thing to do, I spoke out against it (via a post on my own blog without naming names, mind you, because I’m not going to hijack someone else’s post with negativity or call them out by name). The girl found it, assumed it was about herself, flipped out, and then of course I was the bad guy for saying doxxing isn’t okay. And then the person in question joins in. Not even to discuss the topic at hand, but to dredge up the old drama about how I was so mean to him and he did nothing wrong, etc. A pretty crappy 180 turn for a person who apologized and made it seem like there were no hard feelings, but whatever. Someone saw that he obviously didn’t like me, and seized the chance to try to talk shit and spread rumors because they knew he’d give them the platform. They sent him some anon about how I hate women (lmao). And of course, he published it, with no skepticism or disagreement, only more commentary about how I’m mean and awful. I went to respond, only to find myself blocked. So I went on about my life because it’s not that big of a deal, but hey. The moment you talk shit about me, especially in a venue where I can’t respond, especially facilitating some lies and BS rumors, especially after leading me to believe we’d made amends–you aren’t off limits. You don’t get spared niceness and politeness. Is that mean and petty? Probably.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ve never claimed to be a nice person.Now, to the horrible, awful thing I did to make this “public.” Fast forward to yesterday. I’d kept my mouth shut and left him alone. In a section of the RPC that doesn’t get a ton of traffic, largely because you have to make an account on the website and then manually opt in to this specific forum, several of us were discussing an absolutely awful person which is an unrelated story I won’t get into. Someone asked something along the lines of, “Are you guys talking about Underaged Looking Allagan Voidsent Chimera Demon Guy?” I responded with basically “No, we’re not talking about Underaged Looking Allagan Voidsent Chimera Demon Guy.” And that was it. We moved on with the conversation because he wasn’t who we’d been talking about. His name, tumblr, server info, in game race, class, etc. was all never given. No identifiable information beyond a very brief and tongue-in-cheek description of his RP character comprised of words taken directly from his own wiki, tumblr info, talk of his own character and RP posts.Someone saw the conversation, and based on our intentionally shitty description, was able to accurately guess who we were talking about and send him an anon to tell him about it. You’d think that would be pretty telling about his own RP, and this anon’s interpretation of it. He answered the anon in a long rant about me that featured both my in game name and my tumblr handle. In case you need me to spell this out for you, he went public with it first. I’ll also remind you that I was blocked, so I wasn’t/couldn’t be following him, and I was not properly @tagged in this rant, so I never would have seen it unless someone told/linked me, or someone I follow eventually reblogged it. And I honestly can’t imagine the level of narcissism it takes to write a long personal post full of wangst and victim-playing every time you hear a person had something negative to say about you or your RP character (not even by name–and by picking words from his own descriptions of his character), especially a person you have had issues with in the past and who you openly shit-talked yourself prior. Who does that? Lord knows my blog would be overflowing. Not everyone will like you, especially not people you jabbed at first. Especially not with an off the wall RP concept. Especially not with you trying to pass that concept is lore abiding and just “unusual.” Especially not with you trying to tell other people they’re “wrong” about the lore. Especially not with your character being a squicky, walking fetish and immortal jailbait. And that’s not even touching other things people have told me about this person that rubbed them the wrong way. Move on with your life.However, I found out about the post thanks to the OP himself when he unblocked me just to send me the link to the post and then before I could even read/respond to the post, sent me a barrage of IM’s still playing the innocent victim which is grating enough on its own but also included him straight up lying about ever posting/saying anything about me, insisting he’d done nothing to me, had nothing against me, this was so out of the blue and uncalled for, etc. When I pointed out this wasn’t the case, that I had seen and read the posts firsthand because blocking me doesn’t prevent me from seeing his posts, he began to lie instead about the contents of said posts and pulled some gaslighting bullshit about how I had just “misread” them, all the while either willfully or coincidentally not seeming to understand anything I said to him (I mentioned him publishing the anon about how I hate women at least twice and the response was always “I never said you hate women!!” Well no shit). He kept insisting that I had “gone behind his back” and that if I had a problem I should “say it to his face” despite the fact he’d had me blocked and that I’m not a douchey enough person to try to contact him despite that, and despite the fact that he had “gone behind my back” and not “said it to my face” twice now prior, and had done just that with his post about the folks from the RPC as well.He also insisted that the tumblr post was meant just to innocently “bring the issue to my attention to clear things up” despite me having no way to see it on my own unless by coincidence, and despite him proving to be willing and able to send me IM’s instead, which you’d think could render the need for a public post moot. When I pointed this out, he promptly deleted the post, lest anyone else see through his bullshit to what he was really trying to do.After my initial response to his wall of IM’s, he sent another wall this time with more insults and accusations, and promptly blocked me so I couldn’t respond. So yes, I made a vaguepost, I know, how awful, how dare I. A vague post vague enough that only someone who had seen his post, or who heard about it from him otherwise, would know who and what it was referencing. Until he responded to it himself, that is and unblocked me again to send me more angry messages to which I responded by permanently blocking him instead because this game of blocking and unblocking sure was getting old.Cue his charming friends sweeping in to tell me to eat a dick, making false accusations against my RP partner and I, sending me threats on Discord, telling people I flashed my breasts for money, etc. And the other person? The one who brought him up in the first place who I had only been responding to? Whose name he was given, was aired in the same public post on his blog as mine? As far as I know, she hasn’t gotten any hate, probably not a single message. And I’m glad, because she shouldn’t get any, she doesn’t deserve it. But at the same time, sure seems sketchy that the person who did the same exact thing as me–and who did it first–has not provoked anyone’s ire, not even been messaged. The public post in reply to the anon who named her, even, was aimed 100% at me. Now isn’t that funny. It’s almost like this was an excuse for people who already had beef with me to try to take shots at me and pretend it was justified. It’s almost like all you anon keyboard warriors don’t even know how this started or what actually happened.And now I’m going to talk about something else. You cannot do “whatever the hell you want” with your character. RP is a two-way (or more) street. There is a real person behind each and every character. These people are looking for fun just like you, and are every bit as deserving, and your fun shouldn’t impede on theirs. We are all allowed equal parts of fun.So when people play their weird ass lolicon/shotacon/pedobait characters, who is having fun? What if the other person in the RP was sexually abused as a child and you’re dredging up terrible old memories for them and making light of their pain? What if they’re a parent worried for their child, or worse, the parent of a child who’s already been abused? What if they’re an actual pedophile and seeing you RP this is tempting them, making them think they’re desires are normal and okay? Hell, what if they’re a goddamn ordinary person who finds it creepy and uncomfortable?What if the fetishized, futa ERP avatar is interacting with someone who is trans or nonbinary or intersex IRL? What if it’s triggering them (in the genuine, real sense of the word)? What if the walking affront against the lore character talking about being an Voidsent Half-Primal Garlean Spy in the middle of the Quicksand is ruining everyone’s immersion–particularly when they refuse to play along as others respond realistically IC and try to kill them or arrest them or kick them out? What if the OP af infinitely-stronger-than-everyone-else-around-him character is making the RP unfun for every other RPer involved because their characters can’t do anything but get beaten up or bow to his whims unless they stoop to godmodding or suddenly beefing up their own character?People can and will judge your character. Those judgments are usually best left kept themselves or quietly shared between trustworthy friends. But when your character trespasses on the OOC fun of the role-players around you? Sorry, my guy, people have every right to speak up. And all this nonsense? All this nonsense was a small handful of people who were already pretty nasty showing their true colors and getting told to pipe the fuck down. A pretty good outcome, if you ask me. So, please, block me, anon. My life will be better without idiots like you in it, and the same probably goes for anyone else you intend to block. Your nameless, ignorant, anonymous presence will not be missed–or noticed, for that matter.