#so if you see different spellings in the post vs the tags that’s because I editted the posts but cba to rewrite my tags lol

[mintmentos]

Love finishing an audiobook and going to the tags only to discover I’ve been spelling absolutely everything wrong :))

[dawnslight-aegis]

and that's a wrap on my tarot series! the upright majors, at least. there may be others sometime in the future if I am seized by a combination of insanity and hyperfixation once again.

you might notice a few cards are a bit (or in the case of the fool and alternate chariot, a lot) different! I did a few retakes for consistency/style.

below the read more I've included a bunch of notes about symbolism and reasoning behind my choices if that interests you!

(tag for individual card posts)

0. The Fool: Ardbert was really the only choice for this one. He's our stand-in, our shard, our mirror. Feo Ul is included partially because of lore (they are my co-WoL's shard on the First) and also because they also fit the themes of adventure and new beginnings and exploration. Most of the cards I played pretty loose on the posing vs traditional depictions, but this one I wanted to hew a little closer, which is why he's on a cliff with a foot hanging over the edge a bit, with his axe standing in for the bindle. This is my second attempt at the card -- the first was in Il Mheg, but I moved it to Kholusia (Ardbert's home) and dawn to more closely symbolize that it's the beginning of something. Attempts: 2. Difficulty: 8/10, posing Feo Ul was annoying.

1. The Magician: This card could have had several subjects, chief among them Alphinaud or a more modern G'raha, but I settled on Alisaie a) because the other two cards I had in mind for her (Chariot and Justice) were already taken, and b) the card's focus on physical magic and depicting the "tools of the trade" reminded me a lot of Angelo's creation! So that's why she's here, and why I set the card in Matoya's Relict, among the tools of magicians who came before (Matoya, Y'shtola). I retook the shot because I was unsatisfied with the blurriness/the way the light covered her face in the first one. Attempts: 2. Difficulty: 5/10, simple pose but working with Impact's spell effect complicated things.

2. The High Priestess: Another that I never questioned who would appear on it. Y'shtola's arc is entirely about uncovering forbidden, secret knowledge and wisdom, so she fits beautifully. The blue-white orb and the purple staff depict duality between dark and light, and how Y'shtola walks in two worlds, seeing things that are beyond sight, standing before an altar/holy place to the Night's Blessed. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 2/10. Premade pose, knew where I wanted to place her -- the only thing was finding a prop for her off hand.

3. The Empress: Hoo boy did Minfi give me some trouble. I knew that I wanted our Antecedent, who provides both authority and care for the Scions, to represent the Empress, but I struggled to find a depiction that wasn't, well, boring. Minfilia is deeply linked with the Solar, and I didn't want to lean too hard into Word of the Mother/Hydaelyn territory, so I settled on a triple goddess-like idea. Attempts: 3. Difficulty: 6/10. Not mechanically difficult, just conceptually.

4. The Emperor: Another one that I knew who I wanted but struggled with the concept. Haurchefant is very much emblematic of the stability, structure, and masculinity provided by the Emperor, but it wasn't until I decided to add his equally-Emperor-coded father that things settled into place. Together, Edmont and Haurchefant evoke the image of father and son as well as king and knight, filling both major male authority roles that the Emperor exemplifies. Attempts: 4. Difficulty: 6/10. Same as the Empress.

5. The Hierophant: this one was one of the hardest to choose a subject for -- the WoL's allies are largely a bunch of revolutionary firebrands, and I disagree HEAVILY with the popular choice of placing Aymeric here. So I landed on Alphinaud -- out of the Scions, he is the one most concerned with tradition and the "right" way to do things, with formal education and structure. He wants to bring Sharlayan into the modern day, not upend the institutions that raised him and that he very much still respects, much like how he still respects his very traditionally Hierophant-coded father. So I placed him in his family home with a sort of smug look since he can be a pretentious little shit sometimes (affectionate). The spell effect is from Kardia, and I paid special attention to having the shapes align perfectly with the lines in the background, to give a sense of stability and order to the shot, especially contrasted with Alisaie's more dynamic and chaotic depiction. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 4/10, entirely in alignment.

6. The Lovers: Hrasevelgr and Saint Shiva are a great choice for depicting the Lovers as two people, but no one does the Lovers in one subject better than Ysayle. Invoking the spirit of a woman who died for love in order to bring harmony to her people, but it truly being her own power and her own choice the whole time... it's great. Her pose is her transformation/summoning pose, turned into a gesture of affection, which I was particularly proud of. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 3/10, posing monsters is always a little funky.

7. The Chariot: This one has two options -- my co-WoL, Marz, and Tataru/Cid/Nero for the NPC variant. All 4 characters share a singular drive and refusal to let anything stop them once they've set their mind to something, and the 3 NPCs have the added benefit of being associated with a literal "chariot" in the form of airship design. Marz's place on Shadowkeeper has some lore associations (Cylva is her shard on the 13th) as well as being a void mirror to Kaede's sin eater shot. For both I wanted to have dynamic poses to evoke the activity of the card. Attempts: 1 (Marz), 2 (NPCs). Difficulty: 3/10 for both, no major hurdles once the lovely @/karoiseka pointed me at an airship in NG+.

8. Justice: The heart of the Justice card is its emphasis on truth, and no character in FFXIV is more committed to truth even in the face of great suffering than Aymeric de Borel. Because of this, the shot is taken at the top of the Vault, where he confronted his father over his concealment of the truth of the Dragonsong War. The card is usually depicted with a woman holding a sword and balanced scales -- Aymeric is holding his sword in a pose used in statues in the Pillars, and the symmetry of the shot/light and shadow split down the middle is meant to give the feeling of balance. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 1/10. I knew my concept, location, and shader before I even went in, and it came out exactly like I wanted.

9. The Hermit: Originally I had Urianger for this card, who still fits well, but when I moved him to Wheel of Fortune, there was a clear second choice: The Exarch. He even resembles the Hermit, with his cloak and staff, holding himself in isolation and possessing secret knowledge with which he guides the party. G'raha has grown out of this role as of Endwalker, but the Exarch fits it to a tee. I wanted to show his longing to return through his body language and reaching out for the portal that shows him the world he is set apart from. Attempts: 2. Difficulty: 4/10. Nothing major but did have to do two entirely separate cards lmao.

10. The Wheel of Fortune: The one I struggled with the most, conceptually. At first I had a more abstract choice, with the 3 starting city state leaders and Tataru, in a sort of "fate leads to the Scions" idea. But then I remembered that Urianger is a fortune teller who uses a wheel-like weapon with a literal wheel of cards, and, well. Yeah. The man is intimately associated with fate and choice, and the choice to place him on the moon is intentional, to separate him from his more secretive depictions in HW/ShB. He is the one who prepares our second option (flight) while giving us the choice to make our first (fight). Attempts: 2. Difficulty: 7/10. He's up on a high ledge that's not normally accessible and that's always a pain in the ass.

11. Strength: The one that started it all. The original shot of Kaede contained some layer elements I wasn't happy with so I ended up retaking it to better cohere with the others. Strength is about confidence and inner strength "leashing" power, symbolized by the woman and the tamed lion, and there's exactly one good lion model in XIV -- Forgiven Cruelty. It also has the fun side meaning of Kaede conquering and wielding the light that almost killed her. For Moenbryda's, I went with something simple -- her axe to symbolize her strength, but with her archon mark and the Sharlayan Thaliak statue prominently featured, emphasizing her intelligence. Attempts: 2 (Kaede), 1 (Moenbryda). Difficulty: 6/10. Kaede's was straightforward enough (though I had to wait an annoyingly long time for the sky to shift colors correctly), but Moenbryda's involved me floating her up on a building so i could get Thaliak in the shot correctly.

12. The Hanged Man: Holy moly this one was a PAIN IN THE ASS. I knew from the minute I started this what I wanted to do with it -- Lahabrea holding Thancred's ankle as he reaches for Minfilia. The Hanged Man is one that I felt it was especially important to mimic the iconic pose on the card, and this was how I decided to do it, but it took me over an hour and a half to accomplish. Anyway, the Zodiark idol stands in for the Tree of Life, which I really liked. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 10/10. Absolutely infuriating to have to pose 3 actors in three dimensional space like that.

13. Death: I only ever considered Estinien for this card. It stands for transformation and change, for shedding the old to make way for the new, and I chose to depict that by having his old corrupted drachen mail posed behind him like a shadow or an abandoned husk. He has left the hate and the rage behind, but the helmet is meant to symbolize that he always remembers it, and carries it with him so that he can do better. His lance is also vaguely reminiscent of the traditional Death scythe. That spot in Coerthas is where he challenges you in the early DRG quests while controlled by Nidhogg, as well as being just visually striking. Attempts: 1, but it took a while. Difficulty: 9/10. The ground is very much not flat, the helmet is on a minion, and I had to change angles and locations a few times.

14. Temperance: I briefly considered Hythlodaeus here, but Krile fits very well. Calm, competent, but unsure of her own worth. I chose Eureka Hydatos both for its importance to Krile as well as its easily accessible water -- instead of pouring from a cup, Krile is looking at her reflection. This one came together so quickly and easily. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 1/10. In and out of Eureka in less than 20 minutes.

15. The Tower: Originally, before I reshuffled, G'raha was going to be the Tower simply because I didn't know where to put him, and I couldn't think of an ally who is ultimately a destructive force, but it always bothered me because he truly didn't fit. Meteion, though -- despite her innocence and unwillingness, is THE destructive force within Endwalker's story. This card had the highest hurdles -- I had to get 7 friends to help me queue for Endsinger and then leave, and I almost couldn't get my tools to load Meteion in properly. After that it was smooth sailing, however. I used the whole lockout timer, but this was only the 4th shot I took, and it's one of my personal favorites. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 4/10, purely for queuing.

16. The Devil: Addiction, obsession, and control -- Zenos was the only answer for this card. I included Zero as well, despite intending this to be a primarily 6.0 and earlier set, to represent the humans bound in chains to the Devil, using the way she's pinned between Zenos and the scythe to symbolize that she's trapped. Afterward I realized this exact shot and character choice would have also worked quite well for the Tower, as well, but I ultimately prefer the Devil for him. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 3/10. Came together surprisingly easily, despite the fact that I had to make Zero's hat touch pose myself.

17. The Star: Symbolizing hope and new life, I can think of no one better suited than Ryne and the Empty. Ryne herself was given her own new life when Minfilia passed on her power, and the ability to make her own destiny -- and she used that power to revitalize a barren wasteland. My first version of this shot had a photoshopped in central star, but I decided to revisit the concept with an in game effect for the star instead. Helios provided what I needed, with the fun extra benefit of some additional rainbows (happy pride!). Attempts: 3. Difficulty: 3/10. Nothing crazy beyond trying to find a good angle to get the star in the shot, as well as Eden and the rainbow crystal. Second attempt I messed up the framing and had to redo it again.

18. The Moon: The card of dreams, fear, anxiety, and secrets, Gaia is perfect here (and a lovely companion to Ryne as the Star), though I did briefly consider Urianger as well. I wanted to have Gaia on the sand, with the moon hanging between the crystal walls of the Empty above her, but the angles would NOT cooperate to allow me to get the moon in the shot. So, levitation was the only answer. Fortunately it suits Gaia well, especially the distance that it evokes. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 6/10. I hate midair posing.

19. The Sun: Another card that sprang fully formed into my mind. Joy and fulfillment is symbolized by Lyse enjoying the morning light in a free Ala Mhigo, thinking of Papalymo. It also allowed me to get both of these very different characters into a single card, as they are very much a package deal, though I did consider Papalymo for the Hierophant as well. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 2/10. Came together very quickly.

20. Judgement: The last two cards of the Major Arcana are very high concept, with very lofty ideals, so they felt hard to pin down. I thought of doing both my WoLs here, or maybe Elidibus with his three forms for light, dark, and balance. But ultimately I ended up on Emet-Selch and Hythlodaeus, as the sort of "final judgement" before the battle with the endsinger, the last step before everything ends. Their literal rebirth, the resolution of Emet-Selch's conflict with the WoL, the not-redemption but understanding reached, our efforts judged worthy -- it all just seemed to fit. The card design is simple but I hope the colors and emotion of the scene carry the weight of the arcana. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 2/10. No major roadblocks.

21. The World: At last we arrive at the end, not only the last posted but the last taken as well. I always knew I wanted Venat/Hydaelyn for this card, as she is the literal heart of our world, as well as an Azem who has reached the end of her journey, as Ardbert was one who was at the beginning of his all the way back at the Fool. But when I didn't use Elidibus anywhere else, I decided to add him here as well, since he also served as the heart of the star for a time. Light and dark united together, watching over Etheirys. The one who destroyed our world in order to save it, and the one who saved our world only to try to destroy it. Perfect symmetry, a completion of the circle. Attempts: 1. Difficulty: 9/10. I had to stitch together 3 separate screenshots in photoshop, with the fore and backgrounds cut apart so I could control the opacities separately. Probably the card that took me the longest, but it was worth it.

[tonydaddingham]

orwellian's a great word for it actually. "appropriate raiments will be provided" is the most disturbing thing in the whole series and i stand by that. this interpretation of heaven has definitely coloured my reading of the show especially how i see the fall so it's cool to see someone who agrees!

hard agree that pure coercion would be a total cop out. it's just that he does seem nervous so i do think he's aware of a certain degree of potential danger. i initially thought the metatron must have let slip an implication somewhere but i much prefer your idea that he suspected something. and well. i've been saying basically since season 2 came out that accepting the offer doesn't equal having completely fallen for it. will come back to that in my thoughts on the whole mess that was that domestic.

the blanket permission to come scream at you is greatly appreciated and i'll definitely make use of it; i love this kind of media dissection and speculation. 🦭

(p.s. i did indeed end up making the chekov's list since my ocd never can leave well enough alone lol. brace yourself: incoming!)

hihi again, 🦭 anon!!!✨

yes!!! in the context of 1984, especially, that line really is ominous; obviously there is a fine line between a corporate uniform and dictated dress, especially as the only scene where we see all of the angels look the same (iirc) is the waiting platoon in s1. otherwise, all of the angels do have individual dress/style (but similar enough to show belonging), even in the job scene, even if certain elements of their designs indicate shared rank or moral alignment... but the implication of subjugation made by clothes being specifically chosen for the prospective mind-wiped gabriel is... interesting.

and of course - aziraphale's outfit is very different to that of the other angels, in it being actual human clothing, and showing unashamed signs of wear and comfort. i remarked in a post that in job especially, his jobes (job robes) are very similar in aesthetic to that of michael and gabriel compared to say muriel's. could be that it's the appropriate dress of a principality rank, but im not... wholly convinced.

anyway, let's get on with your list!!! a herculean effort, truly!!! hope you don't mind, but a) ive copied and pasted it under the cut, because b) id love to use it as a checklist for myself (and of course if anyone else does!) re: things ive talked about, or indeed things that i have Thoughts on... or even things that i haven't thought to talk about and will probably look into doing so in the future!!!✨✨

episode 1:

starting with the big one there's the pre-fall sequence. the fall itself. talked a lot about these two things/the whole theme in general, found under the #the fall/the great war spec tag

maggie's spelling under the #we need to talk about maggie theory tag - babygirl is an angel, im convinced of it

"what's the point of it all" i mean, kinda talked about this in connection with stuff under the #god is dead theory tag, and in a couple of different asks; mainly that god doesn't give two hoots about any of it, and just wanted to give everyone and everything free will - and they have to work out the consequences for themselves (whilst she throws in a few chaotic sprinkles to keep things interesting)

shax's insider information about heaven ive definitely not discussed shax at all really, and i definitely have a few things id like to work out... main one being, for me, how she went from wondering where aziraphale was in ep3, to suddenly knowing how to exactly triangulate his position in ep4 finally talked about her in the #shax meta tag!!!

the demons being on half rations didn't really think to look at this!!! that could be interesting, especially with the short-staffed comment... someone did put to me that bc the apocalypse failed, everyone on earth continues dying and adding to the population of the Damned, so the work vs demon ration is steadily getting outweighed... but hm, could be something more than that!

"something terrible" because are we sure we're sure that that was about the stuff we've already seen you know, i wondered this too after ep6!!! it was a very interesting choice of words for me, bc whilst yes gabriel's fate was looking pretty shit, the line was almost a bit... well, over-announced? they kept repeating it? like, gabriel said he had to bring the box to aziraphale/the bookshop otherwise something terrible would happen... but why specifically the shop? is it just because aziraphale is the only angel/sanctuary on earth? is it because he was drawn to an angel that's also fallen for a demon? is it because aziraphale is simply kind? i don't trust that it's any of these explanations at all (or maybe all of them and another besides)... and tbh i think god has something to do with it. another speculation for the to-do list!!!

the book of life this one ive remarked on a fair bit under the #book of life theory tag, but it's fairly disjointed from other bits and pieces - tbh i probably need to do a long post at some point as to where all my theories etc join up... bc for the moment all of them are full of loopholes

michael and uriel's power politics oooooh i literally don't have a single scooby on this... id have to think on this a little more

the very highlighted matchbox quote this one ive had sat in the drafts for ages bc i can't quite parse it out - where does leviathan come into it? is it a reference to crowley-as-aziraphale spitting fire during the execution? why would it be on a matchbox of a bloody pub? is it a clue from god? is god linked to jim/gabriel somehow? gahd this one is still giving me a headache kinda? wrote about this - here, no tag for this specifically - and im still not fully satisfied that is the meaning of the matchbox but i think (hope) it might be somewhere near the mark?

1650 i speculated (or, well, dreamt up a hc) as to what this potential flashback could entail in a LWA response somewhere - in any case, give me the boys in cromwellian england and give it to me Now

the 25 lazarii miracle my batshit theory (and yet it makes complete sense to me, i stand by it) is in my #25 lazarii theory tag

episode 2:

heaven and hell working together as a single good cop bad cop system this is similarly stagnating in my drafts at the moment!!! but it's a bit of a mindbender for me bc it means i need to pick apart what everything thinks the job/satan bet was actually about... basically, i think it all comes back to understanding god's will - and all of them (yes, even crowley) have it wrong because imo god is completely amoral and is just the strongest advocate for free will... weirdly, i think the person that had the most right of it was gabriel.

"forces them under an awning together" god i hope this happens in s3... i mean there's no way it won't, right? and so many juicy possibilities (for my money itll be the bandstand, but equally would love, like, the stoop of the bookshop, and then have it mirrored again under like the porch of the south downs cottage) 🥺

gabriel's eyes glowing statements this tbh harks back to what i posted under the #25 lazarii theory tag - definitely something weird going on, and i have a gut feeling the boys accidentally made it even worse lmao

tricking heaven with a sleight of hand this is also going to require a bit more thought!!!

episode 3:

aziraphale's chekhov's diaries see im not sure how important i truly think theyre going to be, but if we go by the prominent influence of the crow road, it definitely has to be a s3 plot device, right? the only thing im scared of is that aziraphale's memory gets wiped, or he goes missing, and the books are key to getting back his memory/finding him... hmmm

crowley's consciousness extending into the bentley i think the crank is certainly important, even if just symbolic of his power - uses it to create nebulae, it survived the s1 explosion, etc. i do think bentley has its own kind of personality, but think it's borne out of proximity, use, and influence of her demon owner... obviously i could be entirely wrong, but i kinda hope it's more that he made her, and her allegiance as a sentient being is with him (and of course aziraphale by extension), mainly bc i want something to look after crowley... but then is it more poetic that the bentley is basically just him, and representative of him finding comfort in himself? idk tbh but she's a bad bitch and i love her

general resurrection themes ive talked a fair bit about the second coming aspect, but not about the resurrection and last judgement so much, so this is one for the list

gabriel's glowing eyes statements part 2 as above (and i realise that you might be talking about what he specifically says, not the general thing itself, 🦭 anon, but in a way what is being said is fairly self-explanatory imo, but why is the heftier question)

shax can sense gabriel in a way the archangels couldn't i personally don't think there's much by way of implication in the method in which she senses him (ie... smell? vs michael's weird sixth sense), but i do think there is something about the fact they can sense him at all... talked about in #25 lazarii spec and the #shax meta tag!!!

"it's always too late" oh god 💀 i had the most batshit theory about this that i don't even want to talk about BUT im with you that it's... an odd line. i love that it potentially references line in the book about crowley's watch being set to hell's time, which is set at "too late", but beyond that... not entirely sure why the line was said or said so... blatantly? feels like something obvious would explain it

rumours that aziraphale and crowley were an item that so far don't seem justified based on what hell knew. rumours that apparently had no major consequences for crowley despite one harmless photo warranting a legion to collect him [screams at 1941 truther sign] yeah this is how it read to me too, 🦭! something definitely happened after that dinner, and im not saying a move was made (and potentially witnessed by a couple of errant nazi zombies) but i think a move was made (and witnessed by a couple of errant nazi zombies) - #1941 spec tag

the literal chekhov's gun in the bookshop this one has flummoxed me, but i did read a speculation about continuing the 1941 flashback today, which was utter genius (and so much better than what i managed to dream up in the above tag), and suggested the derringer will make an appearance in a fight-ish scenario in that scene... which is frankly bloody inspired tbh, and im very much convinced by

the miracle blocker oooooh i don't have a dedicated tag for this but i definitely talked about it in a post under the #sanctuary/bentley theory tag!!! i think it was potentially a chekhov's gun that we didn't see get fired

sleight hand to trick hell probably one to look at in hand with the one above about tricking heaven

the zombies just running around london kinda as i said above tbh, not sure what'll happen to them afterwards but presumably a grisly end being eaten and pooped out by a spider

1941 full stop. we have not seen the last of that night. goddamn right we havent [skips around the 1941 truther sign]

episode 5:

the lack of demons available for the attack pretty much what i said above in ep1 about being short staffed bc the Damned population keeps increasing... maybe? still one to look at in more detail though!!!

"i know. do it anyway" "i know. looking at where the furniture isn't" not necessarily in reference to these quotes specifically, but in the general context - discussed this (and potential crowley memory loss) in the #the fall/the great war spec and #book of life theory tags

"if it happens twice it might seem like an institutional problem" oh. OH. THIRD EYE HAS OPENED. because we know two things, right? gabriel didnt fall/wasnt intended to, so the 'happens twice' isn't realised. and heaven does have an institutional problem, practically embodies the term. so if this is foreshadowing. does aziraphale fall. oh no. Oh No (ive sort of discussed this in #scapegoat theory tag but that was strictly pre-eden context...) this however has actually just made me realise that this is a chekhov's gun literally pointed at aziraphale's head... shitshitshitshitshjthka

mrs cheng's weird look across the street see this is on my list but waaaay down it. think she could be a demon. will work on it at some point edit: talked a little bit about this in the #shax meta tag, but possibly needs a dedicated post, idk

nina and maggie's semi immunity to miracles so the bit where aziraphale can't miracle them? that to me is potentially the same explanation as the miracle blocker post (like it all connects). maggie is more immune than normal to the ball miracle? see #we need to talk about maggie theory tag. as for nina... im still not sure on. idk if she's a demon (which for me is a Thought if we consider that hell are short-staffed; she could be one of Many) but it feels a little on the nose... one for the list edit: talked a little bit about nina in the #shax meta tag, but definitely needs a separate post at some point

shax saying the shop isn't an embassy anymore but the demons still unable to get in i didn't think of it from this angle, but i think my theory still stands - under the #sanctuary/bentley theory tag

nina and maggie's immunity to miracles part 2 oh oops - see above

episode 6:

maggie being able to invite the demons into the shop i think she's an angeeeeeeellllll (see #we need to talk about maggie tag)

the speed at which the portal opens and it's potential as a means of spying my latest galaxy brain moment (i hope) - #sanctuary/bentley theory tag

haloes and the potential consequences of blowing them up this one is in the #halo theory tag

crowley opening the files not quite sure what you mean by this one, 🦭!!! do you mean about his rank? definitely tried parsing this particular headscratcher in the #AWCW spec tag

heaven was trying to restart armageddon in a way that seems awfully unofficial oooooohhh.... haven't looked at it this way, but definitely will be!!! might link in with #god is dead theory stuff, but will need more exploring!!!

saraqael having their own agenda honestly saraqael is my newest bad bitch (gn) and if my #saraqael spec is even halfway true, im going to explode i love them

"i'm the only first order archangel in the universe" *camera cuts to crowley* kinda talk about this in the #AWCW spec tag but since neil cremated the lucifer theory (rip) ive kinda left this aspect alone... tbh i don't think he was as important as he's set out to have been

"i'm the only first order archangel in the universe" full stop. statement's plenty suspicious on its own too. this is....... potentially very intriguing

memory wiping as just a thing heaven does when someone disobeys i need to reconcile #book of life theory with this tbh - like, the focus on memory is so strong in s2 that i strongly believe it has connection to falling... at which point, where does gabriel demotion/mem wipe punishment fit in? and where does saraqael fit in, too?

muriel having the same kind of position gabriel was going to be demoted to vaguely looked at this in #book of life theory tag posts i think, especially in reference to how their potential punishments (in muriel's case) mirror each other

heaven and hell are technically at war now. its not like anyone with authority actually called it off danced around this in the #halo theory tag, in reference to aziraphale declaring this new war, and yet they've been at war for a long time? yes the reflection of it being a cold war but still... interesting to think about especially when framed like this

it's possible to remove your essence and store it elsewhere definitely need to explore the possibilities and implications of this at some point, but the suggestion i made in the #25 lazarii theory post somewhat starts to look at this

hell is understaffed as already mentioned above

the shax furfur alliance not quite sure what to think about this, and whether it necessarily means anything more than it's put across (ie just that they are the danger duo of hell in s3?) idk tbh i just need to look at them both as individual characters a bit more first #shax meta tag!!!

the many strange things that could indicate something going on in the last fifteen minutes god.... just anything in the #feral domestic/final fifteen meta tag tbh

"does anyone ever ask for death" idk whether or not to take this as meaning anything deeper than metatron just idly thinking "hmmm aziraphale could refuse my coffee, refuse a chat... at which point ill probably need to destroy him etc. hey, i wonder if anyone - instead of coffee - has ever actually asked for death? funny name for a coffee shop"... and possibly a double meaning meant by Nina saying 'everything else was taken'?

saraqael being the only one other than crowley who recognises the metatron and their reaction well theres my school of thought that saraqael is potentially closer to metatron that we maybe thought (#saraqael spec tag), but then again - and this exact sentence just reminded me - i think in this particular instance, both saraqael and crowley have just come fresh from watching the trial, so that's why they both remember metatron... which begs the question of what happened between the trial and the final fifteen to make them forget? hmmm

almond syrup imo, #omelas theory

the possible miracle chime ehhhh i know i wrote about this but im still like 50/50 on it... but it fits my theory (in the #feral domestic/final fifteen tag) so im rolling with it - i think there might be a chime and i think it might be a failed miracle to change the coffee

the metatron and crowley seeming to have some kind of history lmao anything in #metatron spec or indeed #the fall/the great war spec tags tbh

aziraphale's peculiar mannerisms im getting so lazy with these responses now 🦭 anon im so sorry, but again recently speculated in the #feral domestic/final fifteen meta tag

the way the conversation between aziraphale and the metatron is only reported and very strangely transitioned in and out of as above

the nothing to see here shooting of the kiss this one...

i know ng said it was a continuity error but. the time skip on the clocks ...and this one ive looked at in the #time-stop theory tag, and im the same - not trusting continuity error on this... not just yet

the something's up vibes of metatron. the general scheming and manipulativeness. the framing as the wizard of oz. the colour scheme and the dice on his tie. the sigh of relief in the elevator lol #metatron spec

the credits scene i haven't really gone into this in any detail and tbh idk if it needs it - i think it's pretty reflective of some stuff ive talked about in the #aziraphale meta and the #feral domestic/final fifteen meta tags

plus special mention: not technically in the episode but the distinctly ominous madonna/crucifixion promo photos aaaaaaaand this one is in the #mary/pieta spec tag

again 🦭 anon im really sorry it got a little lazy towards the end!!! but im very, very grateful that you put this all in a list, because ive definitely got some stuff in mind that id like to parse out!!! and as ever - more than happy to scream about things so pop on back if you feel the need to scream with me!!!✨

[catcatb0y]

I'm sure both of us came off a lot more "aggressive," upset, and/or 'pressed' than what was behind the acreen, because like. I need your to carefully read what I am saying right now. Because if I sound annoyed I honestly kind of am, but I'm trying not to be. Most people will not assume anything you say in good faith. Especially not when you say so aggressively.

"I just thought it was weird as fuck of you to say that BBj didn't have a personality..."

That is not what you said in your initial reblog. You literally just repeated what I had already said in the tags, which was that he suffers from not knowing who he is outside of his one goal.

And also, specifically pointed out the fact that you enjoy Trans!KT headcanons, so like. Honestly, if I didn't draw the conclusion that you were saying "I agree with Trans!KT, but you're wrong about Trans!BBj, because you're not even watching the show-" (when you repeated the same thing that I had said about the show), then I would have been fucking reaching.

"I don't care about canon compliance versus AU transmasc BBj"

Again, not what you started with, but I talked in MY BLOG in MY POST about MY HEADCANONS (/emphasis), and you as a random stranger got mad at that. So yeah like I'm going to pretty obviously defend the original intent of my post. Which is my headcanons.

I don't think you care about canon versus AU- or realistically, I don't care if you do or don't. That post was how I FEEL and the reblog why I made the post on MY blog. I am emphasizing that I did not make the post for you (not in a mean way, just genuinely).

The whole POINT was I DO care about canon compliance!!! That's why I made the first post, that's why I responded the way I did in the second post because I do!! If that came across as anything other than ME explaining the intentions behind MY POST, then Idk how to help you sorry homie. Right now you have proving my point and I am getting frustrated because I already know I navigate fandom differently that is why I am JOKING about it on my personal blog. (A point that you didn't acknowledge in your first reblog, since you went straight to getting upset at a point you didn't actually make in your initial reblog)

You were not at all clear about what you said was supposedly the reason you had reblogged my post, so, reasonably, I was Not Happy seeing someone read 'my headcanons don't make me an asshole' IMMEDIATELY then treating me like I was a fucking asshole.

"I just scrolled through the TnB tag like I always do."

I was, indeed, just asking how you found the post in curiosity and not anger. Because I am just Some Loser Dude who makes two note posts on a website with Endless Doomscrolling. None of my tags had lone titles or character names. I didn't namedrop in the og post.

I was just asking because like. Dude Tumblr's algorithm is SO FUCKING WEIRD. Sometimes partial tags show up. Sometimes they don't. Some people say base text show up if you look for it. Some people say it doesn't.

Tumblr literally still recommends me a shit ton of blogs who post exclusively about my blacklisted tags- I have ZERO clue how the flying fuck this website last decided to categorize its doomscrolling.

"Stop accusing me of being a stalker"

I'm not acusing you of being a stalker, I'm acusing you of being a /stranger/, because you are. If you were a stalker, you would have seen my dozens of rbs about how I don't like canon contradicting fanon.

I have an established personality and ongoing thoughts on this matter. If you were a stalker, you would be a really bad one.*

"I'm not the hc police. I just found your wording insulting."

Yeah homie again that is not at all what you said in your first out of the blue reblog.

Also YOU might not be the headcanon police but BELIEVE ME (/emphasis) there ARE headcanon police out there. I genuinely DO NOT KNOW YOU enough to know whether you're joking or being serious or being hateful or why you're getting irrationally aggressive over a random post.

* You seem to have taken "How did you find this? (No one else did)" as me accusing you of being a stalker, but I am pointing out that you are a stranger. Are you fucking with me? Are you joking? Are you going to send death threats and harassment because I don't like your favorite headcanon?

These have all happened to me. Most people aren't going to assume you're jokingly YELLING AT THEM IN YOUR POST.

"Why do English speakers (not translate words that would realistically just be translated)"

I find translated names weird because they sound out of their element. That's like, the closest thing she was given to a name, so that's why I use it like one. The characters in No. 6 who live in the slums don't have real names, so they go by Dogkeeper and Rat. I find this weird and call them Inukashi and Nezumi.

And also your last line is literally in all caps getting mad at me for spelling a character name more phonetically than it was on screen. YOU guess why /maybe/ I didn't just call her "grandma" and maybe think a little bit about why I would have specifically pointed out that I am bad at phonetic spelling.

When you aggressively made a point to single out the fact that I spelled a character's name wrong. Just reread that one for a bit.

"Who is asking you to just guess her name?"

Literally the only one making any comment on my spelling is YOU. I'm. Honestly a little baffled you read all that and your takeaway was "I don't want people to find my posts" and not "I don't want people LIKE YOU to find my posts," because as you already pointed out I very much emphasized the only one responding to my post was YOU.

I did actually say "Maybe I'll spell it wrong on purpose so that you don't find my posts," so like. Idk why you repeated it back to me like that, tbh. I didn't say "people" were getting mad at me for spelling her name wrong, I said YOU got mad at me for spelling her name wrong.

I don't care if your aggression is joking or real. I do not know you like that and stated in my initial post that I don't [deserve] aggression for a harmless difference in opinions. You, for whatever reason, decides that your best reblog idea was being aggressive. Not really setting yourself up for a heart to heart.

For future reference, homie, literally no one knows when you're "mad in jest." Like. I don't know you. I've never seen you. I follow the TnB tag and scroll through it sometimes, too. You could try and say the same about me, but YELLING IN ALL CAPS WITH NO BREAK does not exactly come across as "joking," and dude this is fucking Tumblr. If you haven't seen people get weirdly pressed and genuinely about stupid posts- I'm jealous, honestly.

You don't really get to start being 'a little irritated', when you walked up to a stranger and decided that the funniest thing you could possibly do is be An Asshole (for jokes).

I've already stated that I DO NOT KNOW YOU. I can explain myself and MY reasonings over MY post about MY opinion, and if that's not how you meant for your relpy to come across: that's not my problem. Your first reply was rude and frankly uncalled for, so I responded to it as it was.

If anyone heard me talk about some of my 'takes' on inclusivity/diversity headcanons, they would think of me as an asshole- but it's not because I don't want/enjoy/indulge in diversity/inclusivity headcanons, it's because you FOOLS the PERFECT candidate is right THERE!!

[save-the-spiral]

okay im just now getting into w101 fanfic even tho ive had an account since 2008.

FIRST OF ALL.

holy shit did you know theres an official wizard101 fanfic page STILL HOSTED ON THEIR SITE updated as recently as 3 years ago. what the hell

your nb wizard fic where they become a prof wrenched my heart open. belladonna crisp trans headcanon is so goddamn real

cantrips. like. okay. so. let me explain this one: i just got back into the game like a month ago and cantrips BLEW MY MIND. as a kid i LOVED the spell quests where the rules of w101 were seemingly broken and spells were cast outside of battle. it always felt like early w101 "deep lore" was about the spell circles -- go into Dalea Falmea's tower with the classic textures, for example, and there's a really fascinating visual that represents all the possible points of the like... swinging compass thing. it got removed in the new texture rerelease but it's super striking! we see the spell circle ALL THE TIME and we have NO IDEA what the symbols on it mean and why and then when cantrips were introduced and we can just. DO ANY MAGIC ANYWHERE?????? that blew my mind is there fanfic with cantrips or that examines spell circles (more spell circle headcanons: the only reason such a young wizard is allowed to fight monsters is because the spell circle stops these beasts from tearing them limb from limb, instead forcing them to fight thru the magical proxies of cards. another hc: being sent back to a world's hub when you run out of HP is the spell circle activating a failsafe for you.) (be interesting to see a p101 fic which deals w the pirate like. PERSONALLY SMACKING PEOPLE AROUND vs the wizard w their protective magics... that always interested me) but yeah! cantrips, archmastery, all the Weird Edge-case Lore

wizard101 fanfic is so real im gonna post a homestuck crossover soon

HI <- saw this ask and forgot to respond/post it!

YEAH .

I've never actually checked out the official fanfic page!

unfortunately i have memory issues so i cant remember if/when i wrote this fic but based if i did

I Also Love The Edgecase lore and the stuff abt the like, constraints of the game. which i know you can easily bypass in fanfic (like saying the pet snacks are objects, not cards, etc) but its FUN to work with a unique and interesting system already implemented in the game as the structure of this universe. Also YEAH . pirate101 fics are so different bc when i write them i haven't really written any with gunslingers so its all Up Close and personal fighting (i have a pirate101 tag i think you can look through for that, also one extended fic on my Ao3 for it)

FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS POST THAT HOMESTUCK CROSSOVER FUCK YEAH

[hullomoon]

ao3 wrapped 2022

i was tagged by @goodiecornbread and @five678patty, thank you 💙💙💙 (also the wrapped lists were fairly close, so i combined them because there was only a difference of two)

Works published: 74!

Hits: 18, 592

Bookmarks: 172

Most popular by Kudos: The Haus Official Ship Names

Most Hits: when i’m alone and blue as can be

Longest: It’ll be Alright, When the Morning Comes (co-written with @kindofspecificstore) (16, 200 words) | [podfic] Fine (5 hours 27 minutes 27 seconds)

Shortest: tits a dream (265 words) | [podfic] holiday volcanoes (2 minutes 52 seconds)

Most Comments: and maybe it all comes around

Work that made me cry: definitely podding Fine

Work that made me smile: if only i could have a puppy. that was truly a project i wrote just so i could make fun goofs

Gifts I have received: 10. as close as pages in a book by @stereopticons

[Podfic] Brewer Birthday (Non)Bombardments for Budd by @godoflaundrybaskets and @petrodobreva

[Podfic] spelling it out by @godoflaundrybaskets

[Podfic] The Guestbook of David and Patrick Rose-Brewer! by Amanita_Fierce, @schittposting, @cottagepodfics, @thesleepyskipper, @petalwritesx, @whetherwoman, B13_MaybeThisTime, @n0connections, @sunlightsymphony, @sweatersinthesummer, HowOldAreWe, Djapchan, @godoflaundrybaskets, @roseszain, wi22iou, @devilwithabirddress, and @landofsonlali

Best (Friend) Practices by @sarahlevys

Let’s Take This Offline by @sarahlevys and @middyblue

[Podfic] Hold you in my arms all night by AlexisSomethingRose

Wanna be your girl by @the-kellephant

[Podfic] in her brown eyes (the ones she gave to me) by @godoflaundrybaskets

[Podfic] David Rose vs the House Hippo by LittleRedRobinHood

Gifts I've given: [podfic] Learned Our Lessons Well for LittleRedRobinHood, sunrise in our eyes for nontoxic, through the airwaves (collab) for schittposting and danieljradcliffe, slow and sure for sonlali, [podfic] A String of Bad Luck (collab) for HowOldAreWe, [Podfic] Wellies Always Kiss and Tell (collab) for ThirdEye1234, throw wishes to the well (collab) for MelancholyMorningstar, [podfic] your body’s poetry (speak to me) for poddingthemost, but it’s golden for kindospecificstore,

Collaborations: okay, so because i do multivoices i do a lot of collabing. so much, i don’t i even think i can properly list them here because this poor post would end up super long lol. I can tell you that a rough estimate is that i collabed on 17-20 of my works. you can look at my yearly round-up posts or my ao3 to see specifically which works i collabed on.

Series: Cuddling Podficlets which was a collab with friends, Whumptober Lite 2022, and the ever present: from readers like you, thank you!

Events:

Schitt’s Creek Secret Valentine 2022: but it’s golden

Hey Sweetheart 2022: a united front

Schitt’s Creek Winter Podfic Exchange 2022: [podfic] your body’s poetry (speak to me)

SC Mediafest: It’ll be Alright When the Morning Comes - [podfic] Fine Repairs - You Remember It All Too Well (collab) - [podfic] Pride and Prejudice and Schitt’s Creek - [podfic] and by tomorrow i’ll be on my way

Podfic Please!: [podfic] what could i do (but follow your love)

Voiceteam 2022

Schitt’s Creek Finish-it fest: you take the (cheese) cake

SC Pride Fest: whittling away at the self (who am i?) (collab)

Schitt’s Creek Rare Fest: [Podfic] The Seven Husbands of Alexis Rose (collab) - Simply the Vet

SC Passions and Pastimes 2022: [podfic] we stood steady as the stars

Summer Podfic Swap: [podfic] Learned Our Lessons Well

OMGCP Peach Week 2022: baby, i’m so into you

PodTogether 2022: The Haus Official Ship Names (collab)

Elevate! 2022: it’s fine if it’s with you - [podfic] wherever you go there you are

Flufftoberfest 2022

SC Frozen Over 2022: [podfic] The Big Chill - [podfic] just a little bit of magic (collab)

tagging: i’m tagging anyone who i @ in this post, anyone who i collabed with this year, and anyone who wants to participate!

[businesstiramisu]

Hi! How are you? Your ask box is open again! Would you like to see cats? What is the difference between Ayin and Tsaddik? How did you make the Dreamwidth captcha thing? It looks very professional! I got the book "Witch King" by Martha Wells! Unfortunately, it seems that the Murderbot Diaries are colluding against me to prevent me from reading it. Also your tagging system is very great! I love it!

Hello! I don't remember why I closed it, but usually if it's been a while and it's not open it's b/c I forgot indeed *that* I closed it, and you can ask me to open it again (that's what happened here lol).

Ayin vs. Tsaddik (Romanization/spelling varies) -- re: this post

As you can see, they are slightly similar looking letters. I expect no one actually literate in Hebrew would make this mistake (any more than you would mix-up lower-case 'a' and lower-case 'c') but lots of us are not literate in Hebrew. Hence the humor of the mis-spelled mug. My tags were b/c I tend to make a game out of trying to read all foreign-language text I come across, if I've got the time. I'm actually pretty good at sounding out Russian, now, and sometimes also Japanese (I blame all the weebs on here). But I'm absolutely terrible with Hebrew, and part of me feels I ought to be better b/c I have relatives who speak it. (I don't talk to those relatives nearly as much as I read weeb things online, though, so it only make sense). I don't remember for sure but I think with that post I also mixed up Bet with something stupid like Nun or even Resh.

2. Dreamwidth captcha -- re: this post -- INSPECT ELEMENT BAYBEEEE Seriously, it looks professional because it literally just the dreamwidth website with one word added by me. Two clicks and a bit of time poking around CSS you, too, can use this knowledge for evil

3. The Witch King by Martha Wells-- Oh, nice!! I actually read quite a bit of Wells' fantasy catalogue this month, and i've been meaning to write up a post reviewing and comparing them. Wells definitely has some favorite motifs that she keeps returning to (e.g. prominent ruins of past societies) and it would be fun to compare them. I really enjoyed The Witch King, but I will say as one fan of Unsounded to another, I actually really recommend The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy! I think it has some overlapping setitng and characterization stuff that I think might especially appeal to an Unsounded fan. (TREMAINE. LOVE TREMAINE)

Though you should really keep trying to get Murderbot b/c those are by far her best work IMO (not to say any of her fantasy is bad, just Murderbot is 11/10 for me on so many axes). (How is reality colluding against you, if you don't mind sharing? sounds like a story lol)

4. Tagging -- thank you!! i do it for myself b/c I like to find my old things but glad it's working for you too <3

[pandas-pandemonium]

I posted 164 times in 2022

That's 58 more posts than 2021!

45 posts created (27%)

119 posts reblogged (73%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@pandas-pandemonium

@raven-at-the-writing-desk

@twiwoncrackpopcorn

@yandere-daze

@bluemoondust

I tagged 110 of my posts in 2022

Only 33% of my posts had no tags

#twst spoilers - 8 posts

#twst chapter 6 - 8 posts

#asks - 7 posts

#twisted wonderland - 4 posts

#yandere sentient twst asks - 3 posts

#yandere obey me - 2 posts

#twst guide - 2 posts

#yeah - 2 posts

#happinesss - 2 posts

#yandere headcanons - 2 posts

Longest Tag: 106 characters

#if you want original works i have quotev for that but i haven't updated any of my stories in years so uhhh

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

MAN

they're Really keeping Idia/Ortho's OB design a secret huh

The painnn

I have so many things to talk about idk where to start??

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR LATEST CHAPTER 6 UPDATE

i cannot add a spoiler tag on mobile so SCROLL PAST!!!

Okay now...

First up:

the Pomefiore fan in me is So SOO happy??? Epel got his UM - Sleep Kiss, Rook being a good senpai and guiding Epel with his new magic spell, Vil being so happy to see them, Mann

His voice when he saw Epel like-🥺🥺🥺 Villl you missed your friends so muchh

I love Pomefiore so much, their dynamics are eVeRYTHiNG

Next

Ortho?? Um- Ortho?? He really went "Sayonara bitches" the moment the dorm leaders didn't agree with the plan to reset the world like- Buddy??

And also-

What happened to Ortho from "That Day" that Idia gave up so easily?? He really went down to the Titans chamber, then Phantom Ortho was all, "Nii-chan, I've been dreaming of the day i could see you!" and Idia was all, "Leave it up to your big bro" and just- OBed...

It's pretty cool seeing his OB gem tho. At least now we know where it is?

Finally:

Grim... It's crazy how he can sniff out blot immediate honestly. By the end of this chapter, Idek if Grim will be the same after this. Any sign of someone OBing sets him off into feral mode. Yuu is going to be so heartbroken when they find him.

Also, Idk if he broke out already, but if he hasn't, someone is going to get hurt when he does.

It'll be pretty funny if they found him gnawing on OB Idia's heels tho lmao

Anyways...

we now have to wait until April or longer... Man... and I read this in one sitting too

118 notes - Posted March 24, 2022

#4

Speculations on Claude's difference in character in 3 Hopes vs 3 Houses

Writing this because I'm so tired of seeing so many angry comments and tweets and posts about his supposed character assassination (among other things) and because I have faith in my guy. As of writing this, I've only just finished Part 1 of Golden Wildfire and only know some tidbits from spoilers (which I willingly exposed myself to)

The main gripe people seem to have about Claude's character is to do with how forceful and unwilling to hear people out and inquire about situations and people's motives. Personally, I don't see it as character assassination but rather a different way he could have developed if he hadn't gone through White Clouds in 3 Houses or met Byleth, or hadn't had to kill his half-brother, Shahid.

What I think was the turning point for Claude's forceful and aggressive actions, was very likely the event that he killed his own brother. We see traces of 3 Houses Claude, him trying to reason with Shahid and wanting to talk things out but alas, Shahid doesn't care and Claude ultimately makes the decision to kill him. Post-battle, we see Claude is very clearly affected by that event.

6 months later, Claude reforms the Alliance into the Leicester Federation and is placed as its king.

Perhaps it's all the stress built up from the war. The Alliance has been going through battle after battle and it's taking a toll on him. It doesn't help that because he wasn't in the Academy for a year to get to know his classmates and learn to trust others, he feels like as the Alliance Leader (as of Part 1), he has to shoulder all the decisions and be responsible for everything that happens. The Roundtable Conferences don't help with his frustrations either.

Through supports and the story itself, Claude has shown signs of disdain for the Alliance's system, but he hasn't really seen the need to change it, although it is inefficient. Then Shez comes along and goes, "Hey, why don't you make yourself the sole leader so decisions will go by faster during wartime?" and it opens up a possibility he hadn't even thought about. If he becomes the sole leader and doesn't need to go through the endless circling of decisions waiting for all 5 lords to come to a unanimous decision, things will be done faster and he can do what he wants to do quicker.

Back to Shahid's death and his impact on Claude's mental state - it definitely changed him. Perhaps after making the choice to kill his own blood, he made the decision to no longer hold back. He can't be too "soft" or hesitant anymore. He needs to be more resolved in his decisions and perhaps that is why we see the Claude we see in 3 Hopes. The aggressive, cutthroat Claude who doesn't consider choosing to hear people out. This can be seen in his decision to send troops to the 3 lords' territories to create public order instead of Lorenz's suggestion to send an envoy first. Claude even says that they'll "probably make half-baked excuses anyway" and that there's no point talking things out. This is pretty much where I've left off from the game, but it's clear that Shahid's refusal to reason with him still affects him.

I do think that perhaps the writers could have shown that a bit more, but Claude is way more reserved in his emotions and willingness to express himself and it may have been difficult to show that internal turmoil. Either way, I still think calling Claude's change of character, "character assassination" is going too far especially if you don't consider the prior events and the what-if's and differences in situation and events that occur between both games.

119 notes - Posted June 28, 2022

#3

I have a big weakness for self-aware, yandere characters so your headcanons are a miracle to me. Could you do something with Deuce where the player always compliments him whenever they get a card or see him? He is my best boy and I love him so darn much that I always louldy anounce it when I see him :,) Thank you!

A/N: Figured I should get this out since the 2022 January Masterchef event and the New Years event are so Deuce-focused. (he's a good boy and I love him)

Yan! Sentient! Twst AU - Deuce being complimented

Every time Deuce receives a compliment, he can't help but feel all warm and shy inside

You're just so nice! So kind! The fact that you acknowledge his efforts and his presence is so rewarding. He sometimes feels like he doesn't deserve all that praise

The compliments you give him fuels his desire to make sure the mirror gives you his cards more often - his Dorm SSR, his Birthday Suit SSR and more!

Unfortunately, despite having a UM, his magic still isn't strong enough to really have much of an effect on the gacha system

It does mean however, that your praise has a greater effect on the blue-haired first year

"You came home! My precious boy!"

Deuce has to do everything in his power to not overload in embarrassment

Yes, he's your precious boy and he hopes he won't ever lose that position

He's also especially thankful towards the developers of the game whenever he gets an event that he features in

It just means that you'll be paying more attention to him!

Deuce truly hopes that you'll always love him and that your attention and love for him doesn't wane any time soon.

If it does, he'll be truly heartbroken...

309 notes - Posted January 11, 2022

#2

Yandere! Mammon and his obsession with being "first"

Mild/Implied NSFW

Note: This is slightly spicy, and completely unprompted. Just something that's been sitting in the back of my mind lol. Please don't send me NSFW requests! My NSFW rule still applies to even mild spicy requests.

Mammon who learns that you're a virgin who's never had their first kiss

Mammon who insists on taking all your firsts upon learning about it, cockblocking all his brothers when they attempt to have some alone time with you; he can't risk you casually giving away your first kiss or first time to someone else, after all

"[Name], you've never had your first kiss?"

His eyes are wide, and his body trembling with pure ecstasy

"If you haven't then... I'll do it! I, the Great Mammon will be the one to give you all your firsts! After all, I am your first demon!"

If you let him, he's over the moon, bragging about it to anyone in passing

If not, well...he hates to do it, but he'll have to take it by force

Cornering you in your room, forcing you down on the bed as he steals your first kiss, impatiently undressing you, eager to take everything

Mammon's not going to let this chance slip by

He's the avatar of Greed and he's desperate to take and take whatever you've got

359 notes - Posted February 6, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Yandere! Asmo has been on my mind a lot lately

Mildly spicy headcanons, so mild you'll barely notice it

Asmo who claims to be so deeply in love that he wants everything about you

He wants to be in you, in some way or another and vice versa

Exceptionally clingy

"Hey MC, why don't we take a bath together? Just you and me~?"

If you refuse...well, he'll just take whatever you may have left behind

your bathwater

Absolutely loves it if you ever borrow his makeup or skincare products

It's like having his scent all over you!

May or may not take up the habit of using your lipbalm or lip products on his own

It's an indirect kiss! How romantic, no? Though he'd much prefer the real deal

Hates it if you ever wear someone else's perfume or get someone's scent on you

"Hey, whose shampoo did you use?"

"Mammon's?! Why didn't you ask me?!"

This simply won't do. He's dragging you to the bathroom to smother anything of his own onto your body

It's how he stakes his claim on you, after all

366 notes - Posted March 9, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[comeandreadawhile]

I love your Clone Social Media post! Do you think they'd ever film/post responses to the SW equivalent to the reddit advice threads like r/Relationships or r/AmITheAssh0le? Or would any of them (the medics maybe?) develop an Ask Column? I feel like the clones would have a unique world view and their personalities would lend to some hilarious (or amazing) advice going out on the holonet.

Definitely. Kix and the other medics probably start an ask blog crossed with WebMD, drowning in gallows humor

“‘How quickly can you amputate a leg?’ That depends, how close is the nearest Jedi’s lightsaber?”

“‘I can’t stop sneezing and I have a fever’—sounds like Rhinovirus, no known cure. Terrible shame, but you might live.”

Ponds runs an Ask Abby/Miss Manners ask column about clones and Jedi, with Mace as a reference for the Jedi and a popular guest for philosophical debate.

Gree makes sci-show vlogs about alien species and documents his brothers’ antics. Sometimes Bly makes guest appearances to talk science.

As for r/relationships and r/AITA, Wolffe co-admins both, with Bly on the former and Rex on the latter. Pretty much every AITA post is responded to with ‘yes’, either earnestly, or with blatant sarcasm for the ‘no’s followed by why it’s a no. While Bly has the rose-tinted glasses on for the relationship blog, Wolffe is that one perpetual single in every friend group who gives stone-cold logical advice.

Stone is on Space!youtube, explaining laws and their pros and cons, explaining loopholes and weird technicalities and the process of the Senate to pass laws, as well as updates from around Coruscant. It’s basically the SW version of Last Week Tonight.

Fox runs r/JustSenatorThings. He documents the antics and mannerisms of senators. He also answers personal questions.

“How often do I—hey, Thire! What’s this word?”

“How’s it spelled?”

“S-L-E-E-P.”

“FOX.”

“No, I know how to spell that.”

Thorn runs r/JustFoxThings. He documents the on-going war between the caf mug stack vs Fox’s paperwork.

There emerges Space!Insta, where GAR clone art is posted. Dogma posts foodporn, both actual food and GAR rations. “Here we see another beautiful nutrient stick. Full of 100% of a brother’s daily iron requirement and not a hint of flavor to be found.” He sneaks into the temple when the 501st is planetside to document the snack bar in the knights’ quarters. It’s only open odd hours and there is a single hotdog spinning, on and on, that none of the knights will even make eye contact with.

Toast clone runs a blog solely about different types of bread and his attempts at making them in the meager kitchens he has access to.

Wooley and Tup make hair tutorials, taking requests and experimenting on their own time. 212th and 501st meet ups are fun for them.

A space!reddit is made of Cryptid Commanders, made by their men finding said commanders up at force-forsaken hours getting caf, once of Bly hanging from the ceiling with the camera light reflecting off his helmet visor, and of Fox passed out in various ways around his office.

Space!Tiktok is sees a lot of Ahsoka and her men. Unfortunately Rex and Anakin are terrible at tiktok dances, so they’re usually her camera crew while Fives and Tup back her up; it starts a craze. Caleb (and eventually Depa) dance with Gray and their men, which means Mace and Ponds have to do something (classy of course, but it pleases the kids so Mace does it and will never admit to it being fun), Aayla and Bly look well rehearsed but claim they did it by mirroring the video reference they had on, eventually Ahsoka, Shaak, Aayla AND Luminara do one together. Quinlan does them just to annoy his commander; it works. The clones are more than happy to answer questions their followers send in as well, about themselves or the war, about anything. They like giving civilians the chance to see them in a better, individual light than dime a dozen flesh droids.

There begin r/JustCloneThings where brothers post about specifically clone related jokes and issues, and r/JustJediThings, where they post about their Jedi. (When your Jedi says the drop zone failed the vibe check.) (Won’t sleep for more than ten minutes but will meditate for four hours because the Martial Commander smiled.)

(If you suspect your Jedi knows Mando’a, switch to complete gibberish and see if they react at all. Feel free to make up hand signs to mess with them.)

Then come the proud big brother postings about their Jedi commanders, the good ole Mandalorian genes making the men gush over their respective kids when it’s safe to do so. The kids making progress in their training, and some have the honor of seeing their commanders knighted and made generals. They teach the little ones to track and lay low, how to shoot straight and wield vibroblades when they’ve grown some. Sometimes just the kids being cute, like Caleb napping against Depa, or Kal riding his master’s shoulders, and Ahsoka snuggling between Anakin and Rex on a long flight. ‘Doting grandmaster’ is a popular tag thanks to Mace and Obi-wan; Caleb and Ahsoka get away with things Depa and Anakin would’ve been severely grounded for, and the clones love watching them steam in the background while their padawans are protected by said doting grandmasters.

Note: the cursed hot dog is a joke between my roommate and I. Upon learning the knights’ snack bar existed, we determined it was only open for ten minutes at 2 am and that there’s a magical enigmatic hot dog amongst the misfit food (cotton candy jello, broken granola bars). It guards the temple and anyone who takes it and eats it gets super sick, and the hot dog is magically whole back in its case, ever rolling, on and on. It’s not meat, probably. No one’s sure, especially not the ones who attempted to eat it. Respect and fear the hot dog. It is eternal.

[sideprince]

To hell with it, I'll do a reblog instead of clogging up the comments.

@larularusworld on a post with several reblogs it's helpful to tag the person you're directing your comment to but I assume you mean these tags I left since I got the notification:

Voldemort is an antagonist whose actions inform the journey of the protagonist, Harry. While they are the author's imagination manifesting through character arcs, the political landscape I referred to is part of her world-building, ie. creating the world these characters inhabit and experience their arcs within. So right off the bat we're talking about two different aspects of story structure and it's unclear to me why they're being equated; it's like comparing apples and oranges.

Re: the world-building, it reveals a lot about the author's imagination that, in the wizarding society she's created, the main political leader -and one of the few politicians relevant to the narrative - is appointed and not elected. This is significant particularly because, while each individual minister as well as the Ministry are criticized by Harry, whose perspective we see the story from, the system itself isn't questioned, only the people working within it. In fact, at the end of DH Rowling makes a point of resolving the story by reinstating the same political order that existed before Voldemort gained power. It's particularly mentioned that Kingsley Shacklebolt is installed as interim Minister for Magic, and it's done so in the context of the positive changes that entail reverting back to how things are supposed to be. It's meant to be a good thing because Kingsley is a character we like, while the system itself is never questioned.

A lot of other meta posts have talked about the ways that Rowling posits the fantasy of the wizarding world as one which is superior to the Muggle world (you're welcome to look through the #meta tag on my blog). There's a consistent theme throughout the books of similar actions and choices being celebrated or vilified depending more on whether or not we're supposed to like a character or hate them, instead of on the action itself. This is most prominent with the theme of light vs. dark magic, which quickly becomes murky if you take away the element of who's using a given spell and for what purpose, ie. Ginny Weasley can use a hex, ie. dark magic, and it gets her into the slug club and is considered funny because she's a character we're meant to like, or James Potter can use a simple cleaning spell that's considered light magic to abuse a fellow student and choke them, which seems like it should be dark magic.

As soon as you start to try parsing out what's what, it becomes clear that light and dark magic can't be quantified because it's how a spell is used that matters, and dark magic can be used for good while light magic can be used to harm others. The message the narrative gives us, however, is that whether magic is light or dark is dependent on our subjective opinion of the character casting the spell. Another example of the ways the author projects her subjective opinions onto the story and bases value on choices depending on which character is making them: when Voldemort takes over the Ministry and installs his own people in positions it's a reflection of his evil and corrupt ways, but when Kingsley is installed (by who? We're never told) in the exact same manner, it's celebrated.

This is what I mean by JKR's fantasy being projected onto the page. She's designing this world. She's determining how it functions and which of her choices exist to make critical statements, which are meant to make the reader question things, and which are just her own imagination being projected. My interpretation is that the latter is clear in the parts of the wizarding world that are taken for granted and never addressed by any of the characters, ie. the things that are part of the landscape and unquestioned. I would categorize political leaders being appointed and not elected as such. By virtue of the fact that there's no significance to the plot, themes, or character development that the Minister for Magic is an appointment and not an elected position, that it's something that is never questioned or changed even in the moments where abuse of power is centered, I think it's fair to interpret this authorial choice as one that is more connected to Rowling's personal fantasies being enacted in her narrative because it's part of the idealized wizard world she has posited is superior to the Muggle world, in which elections are held. The Ministry has the right to interfere in the educational system with impunity, despite there being a board of directors. If your critical reading of the narrative is that Rowling has projected colonial fantasies onto it as well as imbued it with her own biases in the same way, then it also makes sense that her own fantasies inform a lot of her world-building.

For me, personally, I find it unpalatable, to say the least, that an author who has consistently claimed to be politically informed and actively uses her money to affect politics, has chosen to create this kind of political system in her imaginary world in ways that go unquestioned and are part of the landscape, not the plot. While we see Hermione's criticism of the Ministry's interference, the havoc wreaked is centered around the individual characters doing the wreaking, who are villainized, ie. Umbridge and Fudge, and not the political system itself. The Board of Governors, who in previous books had the power the remove the Headmaster, are suddenly nowhere to be seen and no longer a relevant part of the power structure, and this isn't questioned at all. I don't know how to justify any of this, other than that this is an extension of the world Rowling has already built, in which a Minister is not only appointed but their political power extends much further than that of a muggle British Prime Minister. While this specific abuse of power may be a plot device, it's still ultimately an extension of the unquestioned landscape created by the author's imagination that is put on a pedestal above its muggle equivalent and perpetuated beyond the timeline of the narrative.

As to Voldemort's obsession with Harry, no I don't think "it's JK Rowling's dream for sociopathic wizards to become obsessed with babies." Mainly because Harry Potter is a thinly veiled Christian allegory in which Harry is a Christ-like character who's the "chosen one" and has to suffer, die, and come back to life in order to redeem the wizarding world from evil. While this is also a fantasy, it's approached and functions differently than the world-building does because of the whole character arc. vs. world-building elements thing, not to mention that it's a deliberate narrative choice and not part of the background/landscape the way the structure of the political system is.

You don't have to agree with my metas/analyses of the text and I enjoy a good debate, but my tags weren't nearly as reductive as you assumed them to be. The assumption that my perspective on Rowling's world-building extends to every other literary element of the series was, though.

hot labour summer: hogwarts professors have walked out after dumbledore gave another 200 points to Gryfindor to reward harry potter for a particularly loud sneeze

[cyancherub]

Hey sorry if you already answered this before but how did you start writing and putting your work out there? It's so hard trying to put myself out there when no ones paying attention.

That got kinda deep lol I love your writing btw <3

hello !!! so i actually started off reading (and then writing) on AO3! i posted my work on there for a while before i got on here because tumblr seemed really confusing to me at the time 😩 but i liked the interaction that i saw on here so i ended up making an account !!!

as for posting things and getting traction (at least in my experience), making use of the (character) x reader, (fandom) x reader, (character) smut, and (fandom) smut tags is the biggest piece of advice i can give you. that’s how people will see your work, especially when you’re starting off with a smaller following.

you can take a look at my writing tag and see how i tag fics for various fandoms and characters at the bottom of each post. there are different ways to spell and order character names (e.g. itadori yuuji vs itadori yuji vs yuji itadori... and so on) and also fandom names (e.g. jjk vs jujutsu kaisen) so i tend to tag them all (e.g. jujutsu kaisen x reader and jjk x reader). it might seem redundant and im not sure how much this step in particular helps but it’s what i’ve been doing since the get go and it’s worked for me!

also pay attention to the times at which tumblr is most active. that’ll be the prime time to post because there are more people online. i don’t know when exactly this is? but i THINK (from what i’ve heard/seen), tumblr tends to be more active from 3-6pm EST, and weekdays are more active than weekends. you can queue posts to go out at more active times, so there’ll be more people browsing the x reader and other tags (and also the dash) when a fic drops.

make a taglist for your upcoming work and encourage people to join it too! that’s a good way to make sure that your work gets seen since things often get lost/buried on the dash. and that’ll encourage interaction (especially reblogging) which will make your work rise up in popularity in the x reader and other tags that i mentioned previously.

keep in mind that there are different factors that’ll influence how well your work does. character popularity (e.g. bakugou pieces almost always will do better than denki pieces, just because more people like his character), themes in your writing, etc.

my point here is not to encourage you to write more popular characters for more notes, but to reassure you that notes aren’t a reflection of how good your work is. don’t get down on yourself if certain things don’t do well. don’t let that dissuade you. write for yourself — that’s the most important thing!

and you can always send your work to me, i’d be happy to read + rb!!!! 💖 i think a lot of great work on this site gets lost because the algorithm is kind of finicky and hard to deal with. it can be discouraging when it feels like no one’s paying attention, but if writing is something that brings you joy, keep going!

i hope that helps!!!

[faemytho]

I’m not really in the hazbin hotel fandom ((I love the show don’t get me wrong I’m just not in the fandom)) but I kinda wanna see what you mean? Also I figure you’re still okay with people shipping him just either the fact that people ignore that canonical he is aroace sex repulsed or use it as a “oh we just have to fix him” trope (which fuck that trope)

Same asker that admitted to not really being in the hazbin hotel fandom but liking the show- thought it over and i actually don’t know how you could do Alstser (can’t spell bare with me) without having him as aroace sex repulsed without having him look barely anything like the original- maybe apart from that fic you made a while back

-

okay so, in regards to this post i made earlier about aroace romantic/sex repulsed alastor, that was a headcanon. (i said, and i quote, its canon bc i said so, but in reality ive fooled u all it was just a headcanon i even said so in the tags)

my headcanons aside, alastor IS canonically ace, as referenced by this tweet below (and hey, canon bi character!!! we love that!!)

there is also a footnote on the HH wiki that says alastor is aromantic as well, but the footnote links to a four hour stream video, and i do not actually have the patience to comb through it to see if that's true or not (or if it even came from the mouth of vivzie)

uh, yeah. here's the link to the stream, in case anyone wanted it/was curious.

canonicities aside, lets get one thing out of the way:

i am all for ignoring canon, using fandom to do whatever you want, ect ect, all power to the fans and whatnot, do what you want and be free because its fiction

which means, yes, i am 1000% okay with people shipping alastor with whoever they want! with angel, with charlie, with husk, with vaggie, with nifty, ect ect ect, i don't care, ship what you want, be free, live your best life.

my problem, though, is this: literally nobody in this fandom knows how to write an ace character. and when they do write him as "ace", its OFFENSIVE.

i cannot COUNT the amount of alastor fics ive read where he's supposedly written as asexual (and its usually even tagged in the fic tags, "asexual character"), then ends up sexually attracted to his given partner for that fic, and when they actually go to do the deed, alastor is infantilized to, well, hell and back. and by that, i mean a few things.

he either:

doesn't understand his sudden sexual attraction and/or sexual feelings

doesn't understand what's going on during the sex scene

doesn't know the proper terms for body parts and sexual processes

is HIGHLY feminized and is categorized as "submissive" while the partner becomes the "dominant" and continues on with the sex scene

not only is that fourth one misogynistic and homophobic (an entire other can of worms about how feminine sub/masculine dom in homosexual relationships enforces toxic heteronormativity, aka, the idea that one must "be the girl" and one must "be the man"), but all four of these together are aphobic when you realize, "hey, alastor is an ace character".

off my point a little bit, but ANY relationship (gay, straight, and/or otherwise) should not be using sub/dom as a model to follow - sub/dom is a BDSM kink thing; it should NOT be the normalized sex model for ANY relationship.

there's nothing wrong with kink! but doing BDSM wrong can severely hurt/mentally damage either partner if done incorrectly. normalizing it means that so many young people don't actually understand what sub/dom actually means, and even less the consequences if done wrong.

but back to my point: asexual people get infantilized. and we get infantilized often, because people think "oh, you're not interested in sex/you've never had sex, so you must not 1) know anything about it, 2) know anything about the real world and how nitty gritty it is to survive out here"

basically, ace people get treated like children. a lot.

here is a fantastic article that explains the rampant infantilization of both aro and ace people, and why it is aphobic to do that.

i highly recommend you all read the article, because it is fantastically well written and concise. here's my favorite paragraph:

"Society conditions us to believe that a lack of romantic or sexual attraction is a transitory period. This viewpoint assumes an inevitable progression from a nonsexual to sexual state of being that marks entry into adulthood. Similarly, engaging in romantic relationships is recognized as a milestone of maturity. This stereotyping results in the infantilization of all aromantic and asexual spectra people, especially those who are entirely romance and/or sex-averse. It also incorrectly characterizes asexual people as sex-negative, even though personal sex-aversion and general sex positivity are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, the idea of “being ready” to progress from friendships to romantic and sexual relations undermines the value of platonic relationships, which are integral to our community."

i'm going to move on to one more point, because i know if i don't, i'll get SO many alastor allo-pologist authors whining and screaming about how ace people can have sex too

and yes, here's the thing: asexual people can have sex, can want to have sex, can be sex positive... but that doesn't change the fact that to be not-asexual (or allosexual, if you'd like to use proper terms), you have to be sexually attracted or experience sexual attraction - WHICH IS NOT THE SAME THING AS HAVING A LIBIDO, AND ITS NOT SOMETHING ACE PEOPLE CAN DO/HAVE.

what ace people can have:

a libido

sex

sexual arousal

sex drive

kinks

a partner they're not necessarily sexually attracted to, but trust to have sex with them anyways

what ace people can't have (unless they're not actually ace and are instead allosexual):

sexual attraction to someone

wanting to have sex with a specific person because of this attraction (a partner, celebrity, people they find explicitly attractive)

still confused? don't be!

here's a post where i better explain the difference between sexual attraction vs sexual drive and what that means for ace people

to close this out, im going to attempt to summarize why im so pissed about this.

alastor is canonically asexual.

he may be sex negative, sex neutral, or sex positive; we don't know, but this is fandom and we're allowed to headcanon him however we wish - we can even headcanon him as not asexual!

which is great, yea, but when the ace character is the fan favorite...

people constantly and consistently write alastor as "ace".

which would be GREAT! if they ever did it correctly.

here's what i see most often. instead of headcanoning him as not asexual, they've heard something about how ace people can have sex anyways!

so for woke points, they slap their alastor ship/sex fics with the "asexual character" tag, and write alastor in one of two ways

uwu baby "ive never said a bad word in my life and i dont understand how the world works" asexual

allosexual, but call him ace anyways

both of those are aphobic. i have yet to come across ONE fic where alastor's asexuality (negative, neutral, or positive) is written, and labeled, CORRECTLY.

you know, it actually hurts MORE when he's written as "ace (actually allo)" than it does if people just headcanon him as not asexual.

alastor is a successful serial killer. he has spent decades in hell.

ALASTOR IS A SUCCESSFUL SERIAL KILLER. HE HAS SPENT DECADES IN HELL.

and you cowards are going to write him as inexperienced, ""innocent"", sexually uneducated?? i think the fuck NOT.

NOT ONLY THAT.

alastor lived through the roaring 20s. the flapper movement. the harlem renaissance. AND the sexual revolution of the 1920s. HE LIVED THROUGH ALL OF THAT. and you're going to act like he doesn't know what sex is?? we even KNOW he lived through all that because he says it himself, "i havent been that entertained since the stock market crash of 1929", and 1929 was the end of all those movements and the beginning of the great depression - and then alastor died in 1933 after living a successful serial killer life in louisiana.

tell me again, why wouldn't alastor know what sex is or how it works? and if you can't, THEN STOP WRITING HIM LIKE THAT.

please please PLEASE educate yourself before you write an asexual character. ESPECIALLY if you're going to write them with a libido, and actually ACTING on that libido.

thank you.

sincerely, an exhausted sex positive asexual.

[upstartcrow42]

Fic Writer Interview

Thanks for the tag, @chelsfic!

How many works do you have on AO3?

16

What’s your total AO3 word count?

201,056 👀

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

If we’re just counting AO3, then it’s just one. What We Do in the Shadows. I’ve only had this username for a year. Under different names in different places I have other fics for other fandoms. That would bring the grand total up to 5. I tend to have huge fic dry spells.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

66 - Especially For You - Nandor/Guillermo. Gen - Gift fic for @jujubeas. Guillermo is injured (very minor) and Nandor cares for him by buying him food from Panera Bread.

44 - Tell Me Things Will Be Okay - Nandor/Guillermo. Gen - Gift fic for @riskylatte and a collaboration with @andyandnormski. Nandor tries to calm Guillermo’s frayed nerves after they arrive home from the theater massacre.

35 - The Protocols of Revenge - Nandor/Nadja that leads to Nandor/Nadja/Laszlo. NSFW - My first fic for the fandom. Laszlo makes Nadja made, so Nandor proposes revenge. Nadja eventual relents but on the condition that Laszlo watch.

33 - Just Right - Nandor/Guillermo. Gen. Gift fic for @andyandnormski. A seasonal storm spooks Guillermo, so Nandor takes matters into his own hands as far as his relaxation goes. Naturally, things go awry.

32- He Demands Satisfaction. - Nandor/Guillermo Gen. Tumblr Prompt request for @andyandnormski. Nandor and Guillermo are taking their relationship to new levels post theater massacre, but the threat of sunlight puts a damper on things. 

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I get so few comments on my fics these days, so I reply to them all. I understand why people don’t comment on fics, especially NSFW ones, but I love hearing from readers, even if the comment is super short. I love getting replies back from authors when I comment, so I try to do the same for anyone who comments on my fics. I like engaging with the readers.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Rooftop Reflections. Nandor/Nadja. She’s been missing Laszlo since he want on the run and tries to escape by sitting on the roof. Nandor joins her and then leaves her be. She is really bummed out at the end after Nandor leaves and has to be alone with her thoughts about Laszlo.

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

I have not yet, but I’m not against.

I’ve been wanting do a weird one with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/What We Do in the Shadows. They’re both in NYC, and they both have to keep to the shadows, so it makes sense that they’d run into each other. Leonardo vs. Nandor as leaders, lol. Donatello and Colin Robinson getting into technical details about topics. Raphael and Nadja being just the rudest. Micaelangelo and Laszlo straight up chillin’. And Master Splinter and Guillermo shaking their head at their charges acting like such fools.

I’ve also thought about them running away to Canada and meeting the crew from Letterkenny.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

When I was writing HP, yes. It was mainly about how I was ending my chapters, and to be fair, the endings were not great for what I was trying to achieve (setting up some context - kind of omncient). I’m pretty sure I’ve deleted all of those from existence now.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Most definitely. I’ve written mainly mlw and wlw with reference to mlm. I’ve also written OT3 situations with mmw.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I’m aware of. How does that even happen?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have not.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes.

I mentioned Tell Me Things will be okay earlier. Andy and I were very equal partners on that one and it was fun take their lead and then run with it and then see what they came up with next.

Nandor the Relentless: Conqueror of Courting. Nandor/Guillermo. A round robin fic where ideas were thrown out and shaped as a team. Nandor tries to court Guillermo in one-sided fake dating scenarios to protect him. I contributed to the last chapter of this gem of a fic series. I’m really proud that Nandor’s lament of the Windsor name was kept in.

Shoot Your Shot. Fendermo. Another round robin known by the writers as the Basketball AU. Nandor is a WNBA pro and Guillermo is her assistant. They’re even stupider in this story than in the show. It’s not complete, but one day we’ll finish it. I’m really proud of the text chain I wrote in the first chapter.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I know nearly all the stories I’ve talked about are Nandermo, but that’s not my all time favorite ship. I don’t know if I can really pick a favorite. It’s just Nandor/Anyone really.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

A Chance Encounter. Nandor/Silvia de la Cruz (Guillermo’s mom). NSFW. I’m only afraid I won’t finish it because I’m stuck on the next part for how the story should flow now that the smut is out of the way.

What are your writing strengths?

I’ve been told that I’m good and smooth dialogue.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I think I use the same descriptive language too much. The same facial expressions and dialogue reactions. I also need to work on differentiating my imagery and adding more figurative language to my stories. I love seeing that in other people’s works, but suddenly forget to do it in my own.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I love to see it, or even incorporating English language learning sentence structures into fics for characters whose primary language is not English. When I write in another language, I have had a friend who can speak that language check my work and phrasing to make it sound realistic. There was a lot of that in A Chance Encounter and @theoceanismyinkwell was immensely helpful with the Spanish dialogue and the Spanish Speaker in speaking in English lines too.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

The first one I ever published on a fic site was Gundam Wing. I really hope that is not floating around still as I can’t even remember the site it was pubished on. It was peak cringe.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

It’s not complete, but Written in the Stars has consumed an epic amount of my time. The word count alone is two novels worth. It’s been fun to look into Nandor’s past, but also make him somewhat of a softie at that time too for a fic that could be otherwise very dark (there are defintely some mildly dark elements, but it’s generally just regular flavor NSFW). And it’s fun to take a semi-canon character who has one trait and flesh her out into a full person. At least I hope she comes across that way.

Tagging: @safetyhazardfics

@walkwithursus

@andyandnormski

@mapnerdbloodbag

@satincowboys

@nandoor

[aceandart]

Hey! I read your recent post and it read differently to a lot of posts under the destiel tag as of now. Personally, I’ve seen the first 5 seasons (watched it about 5 yrs ago), but haven’t been caught up to date on any of the recent stuff other than the Destiel apocalypse that’s happening right now. Could you explain the following?

“...mostly being this show is a misogynistic racist homophobic consent issue-ridden pile of bad writing “.

I was contemplating returning to the show and tuning in for the missing seasons, but what you said about it has now placed me on the fence. Could you elaborate and advise?

Thank you so much! I appreciate seeing an honest post that doesn’t sugar-coat or overlook bad writing/negative characteristics of a show!! :)

[re this]

Hi!

Well, I feel like the finale probably took care of any fence-sitting you were doing (and sorry I couldn't reply sooner), but actually my answer wasn't going to change even if the finale was okay (good, imo, was always a stretch): No, I personally would not recommend watching this show. and while my answer is mostly because of the things I am going to list to answer the rest of this question, I was also going to say - you dropped the show in s5 and that was five years ago? Whatever caused you to drop it in the first place, it probably got a lot worse. (It literally doesn't even matter what your major grievance was, they have since doubled, tripled down in terms of how bad it was.) Trying to marathon through ten seasons (20-23 episodes long each) is hard; trying to marathon through all of that to get something without a satisfactory ending is a lot of emotional labor for no payout. It's not just that this is a bad show (though it really, really is, on every level); it's that you have already tried it, you tried arguably the better seasons of it, and you still didn't want to stick to it. By the nature of how tumblr works, it can make anything look so much better than it is, just because in general the people you see hyping it up *like* the product, have decided to devote their fandom time to it, are highlighting the choicest parts of it. spn was always about the potential around the edges, the story fans made of it; the actual product was always secondary to the could have, should have beens, and this gets truer the later into the show you get. I'm not saying there weren't some great episodes, some great scenes, and even some great mini-arcs, but it was a drop in the bucket to everything else. and I'm positing this answer on the idea that you are asking because you want to watch the show, and not because you want to use the show as a supplemental for your fandom experience, but if it is the latter, I'll just say I'm currently heavily involved in reading fanfic for a fandom I've never actually watched a whole episode for, and while I'm probably missing some context I'm still highly enjoying it. fandom, honestly, so often becomes so much more than the bones we build it on. and if you want a little more, catch some "greatest hits" videos or catch up on just some of the “must-see” episodes and save yourself from having to watch all the moments in-between, because there are a lot more of them than the good parts. very few shows improve as they age out, and before the nov 5th resurgence if you weren't already following spn blogs, likely the main spn meme you were coming across was the annual 'salt and burn this dead horse' that went out after each season renewal. the tl;dr answer is really, it's not worth it. (to be honest, at the end of the day, despite the sheer amount of time, energy, and words I've put into this fandom over the years, and I put in a lot, I didn't actually like the majority of the show. so, you know, grain of salt on my opinion. then again, you left it seasons before I did.) That said, buckle up, cause now I'm gonna tell you why:

Literally, The Shitty Writing

I feel like the finale speaks for this point by itself, but before I get into all the "problematic" bad writing spn does, I want to talk about the fact that the writers are also just fundamentally bad at the craft of writing.

continuity errors. they’d change their lore/creature ability to fit their plot. (the reapers esp got the end of that bad stick.)  the characters will often forget (monster-slaying) solutions that worked before (holy wood, yarrow, christo, creative approaches like exorcisms on recording, spells to remove angels from their vessels, bullet with a devil’s trap, etc).  the writers forgot their own timeline more than once. the random retcons they'd do. sometimes it would also lead to plot holes.

which, speaking of, they had plenty of

there's also things that don't count as plot holes but are very large missed opportunities (ex: Dean spends a year in Purgatory and no one recognizes him? he doesn't bring up his daughter?)

I don't even know what this one would fall under, but if a character wasn't right in front of them, they would forget that character's existence. not just Adam (though that was a big one), but there were so many secondary characters that even in places it would make sense to mention them, much less bring them around, they didn't. or because they would not expand their main character list, characters who should have been around a lot more than they were (*cough* Cas, but that's an easy one, I'm also talking about characters like Kevin) would have these huge gaps between episodes that didn't make sense

they don't really have character development. this isn't to say the brothers don't change, they do, but at the same time the characters face the exact same (internal) arguments over and over again, never resolving or growing from them; they just have more examples when they think about them and it gets worse and more unhealthy because of the new weight added to it. the problem with their brothers only format, and the problem with their biphobia but more on that later, is that Dean wasn't actually allowed to grow out of his John Winchester's son role, to let himself be comfortable (and dare to be happy) with himself because that meant changing the story into something they didn't like and/or didn't know how to do. at the same time, allowing Sam to grow meant breaking the Brothers Only format, because as the show stated multiple times, Sam's happy ending did not involve hunting.

and with that, they sometimes flattened the characters so badly they became caricatures more than anything else.  hell there's a whole season where Dean goes evil, and people had a hard time realizing it, which was not because it was a subtle slow descent but because shitty pacing, uneven (and contradictory) episodes, previous actions that weren't written as being evil but were the the exact same thing as when he was evil that were supposed to be "signs", and how they chose to represent that evil meant it was really hard to figure out that was what they were doing and not just writing Dean as more of an asshole than they previously were.  (he's not evil, he's just a prick.) and I don't mean I had trouble telling, I mean fandom as a whole had major arguments about it, much less the general viewing public.

the series finale put a definite end to the idea they would follow through on even one of their main series themes (family don't end in blood, free will vs destiny, always keep fighting, etc), but this was something they would build up to addressing and then just anti-climatically let fizzle out in multiple seasons. character and relationship themes (not just destiel but the brothers co/counter-dependency, the importance of found family, Dean's growth from Daddy's Blunt Little Instrument and Sam's acceptance that he deserves better/agency in his own life, etc) would be built and broken down in an effort to drag the question out into another season. it wasn't two steps forward, one step back, it was a reboot.

their filler vs arc episode ratios: there's nothing wrong with the Monster of the Week format as a stylistic choice, but this show

a) would kill its own plot momentum to focus on MotW episodes. [part of this is the general spn problem they created of constantly trying to one-up their season's Big Bad, which I understand but also means one episode they are going against The Most Powerful Being in Existence (for the Fifth Time) and then rather than focus on that world-ending threat, they hunt vampires for like six episodes straight. they had a very bad balance where rather than continuously weave the larger arc into the season, or at least build characters and relationships, they'd jam it all around the season premiere, finale, and mid-season finale/premiere episodes, and then all the rest was just, bullshit cases where nothing got resolved or had a lesson stick around for the next episode, making them very skippable. also more on this under the homophobia section]

b) the filler episodes contradicted themselves and the main plot all the time.

c) sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent a-plot. also: sometimes they focused so much on making the b-plot a mirror they forgot to write a coherent b-plot. 

I cringed my way through more than one episode of dialogue

the recycled plots

more on this in the next sections, but either they didn't notice, actively didn't care, or purposefully chose to overtly and subtly imply or state a bunch of really fucked up things, and then never address them at all

speaking of never addressing anything, I realize this is a fandom vs canon battle in general, but so many things get swept under the rug as they move on to the next issue (ex: Dean put an angel in Sam's body to "heal him", violating his consent and exasperating his issue with telling what reality is - a huge issue from previous season - and once the Mark of Cain story really took over the subject gets dropped.) 

death is so cheap on this show. and I don't just mean that the revolving doorway of resurrections means it's hard to get worked up about a death because (as long as the character was a white man and especially the brothers) there was a high chance they'd be back, and I don't just mean that their Murder Is the First, Last, and Best Solution to Any Issue, Ever means the faceless and not so faceless hoards of villains, monsters, and humans who get caught up in it are just hand waved as one of those things (they have ways of saving vessels and the later into the show the less likely they are to even try), but that there was no point in investing in (esp non-white, male) secondary characters because chances were they'd be dead pretty fast.  I'm honestly shocked characters like Jody (who actually at one point was in the middle of being killed off on-screen and then we didn't see her for eight episodes, so we assumed she was dead) made it until the end.

(speaking of dead characters though, what was with the habit of bringing them back constantly? just don't kill them in the first place! create new ones and let those ones stick around instead!)

when they can't use death as their solution, the other answer the writers fall back on is Deus Ex Machina

buckleming were a writing duo who had their own bingo cards that included things like shitty pacing, OOC-ness, flat one-liners, etc, and the question wasn't if you'd get bingo, it was a question of how often you got it during their episodes. at some point throughout the show, it became hard to tell what was a buckleming episode and what was just another episode in the season.  aka the writing quality went WAY DOWN as a whole

you know the tv trope Idiot Ball? or Idiot Plot?  spn should have it's own page for both. 

they constantly break viewer's trust, which is the basic tenet of what not to do when it comes to telling a story. (again, not just destiel, though the queerbaiting is a major part of it because it happened all the time to avoid actually answering that question.) when a writer violates their character's or story's core identity for a 'twist', it needs to have been carefully built so that it's a surprise to the viewer, not a betrayal. (you may not have seen it coming, but when you look back you can see the groundwork.) these writers, every time, chose the "shocking" choice regardless of how much they need to break canon or character to do so. their twists are either obvious, and/or they don't make sense with the rest of their story/lore of the show, and the viewer is left feeling stupid for believing they have more respect for the audience/characters than they do.

I realize this is pretty subjective, but huge swaths of it are just boring. fandom made the experience of watching it interesting, not the show itself.

and yet, for all of that, the quality of writing (while painful to have to sit through) was not the worst thing about it.

(note for the following: I stopped watching after s11, but I'm sure some if not all of these are still relevant until the very end)

Misogyny and Consent Issues: Is There a Limit? Signs Point to No

there is honestly so much under this topic I don't even know where to start. i'm going to focus on patterns rather than specific incidences, because otherwise I'll be writing this for a week, but just know I can easily provide examples of all of these because this is literally what I spent years writing meta on.

female characters were more likely to die quicker/earlier (esp vs other other male characters with similar reoccurring roles/characterizations), stay dead, and die often at the hands of their loved ones and/or in Stranger Danger situations. they died for man!pain. they died for fodder. they died as a sacrifice. they were turned into love interests (whether that was their original role or not) and then killed. they were put in mortal danger and then not given resolution for several episodes (Schrödinger's death.) they died in ways we've seen male characters survive. their deaths - the violence enacted on them - was constantly, consistently sexualized, and the camera lingered.

when it came to villains the show would go out of its way to kill the female one first, or act like she's the more pressing issue so that the male character could hang around longer (and honestly by male character I often mean specifically Crowley and the season's female villain. not only that but they'd often break canon to kill off a female character, and break canon to save Crowley/a male character)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring female characters vs male characters who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, female characters were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared male character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development

they have more than once used the story line of underage girl seducing a grown man. (it was a whole season arc even.) this is esp galling when you find out about crew member Jim Michaels, who sexually harassed and assaulted (minor) fans

(btw, not the only crew/cast member to do so! and still be invited to cons!)

Dean Winchester (who is narratively treated as the moral judgement for the show) has blamed more than one rape victim for their assault/trauma. they often get abused (or outright killed) for stopping their abuser. 

Dean is ok with flirting with/leering at barely legal teenage girls. already sketchy when he's 26, really gross when he's in his mid/late thirties 

speaking of Dean. based on past personal experience I'm going to say up front people do not like me saying this, but that doesn't mean what I'm saying is wrong or even based on interpretations: Dean has more than one relationship that if it isn't rape, falls under extreme dubious consent.

there's actually a lot of rape (or "extreme dubious consent") and assault/molestation, both shown and mentioned: Cas and April, the cases were men take away free will and then have sex with the women (Ben Edlund was one of the better writers of series and even he did this a couple of times), Crowley orgy (and demon sex in general), random women in some episodes, Sam and meta!Gen, Becky and Sam, Sam and Lucifer, Dean and Alastair, several monsters (like the siren) and their victims, male characters secretly watching female characters undress/be naked, and so on. Dean was often attacked sexually by men, Sam by women. most of this is never addressed, never treated like what it is, and/or is made into a joke

and there's even more rape jokes beyond that, sub-sections: prison, vessels/demons, angel possession, sex work, childhood abuse, monster of the week, sexuality, etc.  huge chunks if not whole episodes were devoted to making what amounted to a rape joke. 

often ignored non-sexual consent (esp Dean’s actions, including a lot of mind-wiping and violations of body autonomy)

everything about Sam and body autonomy - he is frequently violated (multiple characters have possessed him; he is fed demon blood); how he feels unclean, how he feels disconnected from his own body, how he often is forced to act outside of his control and then blamed for those decisions

actually, Cas goes through that a lot too; he is trained, brainwashed, and forced to do things without his consent, and goes through major depressive episodes because of it

this show has a pattern of girls who are kidnapped, (sexually abused), raised in isolation, and expected to develop some perfect moral compass of acceptable behavior and were then killed off when they didn't. meanwhile, male characters get fourth, fifth chances.

female characters (and I'm talking about ones with speaking roles, who play an actual part in the plot, who are sometimes in multiple episodes) are more likely to be unnamed or given no last name

are you a Mother on spn (as in, that's your role)? you're either fridged for man!pain or abusive or both

it rarely could pass the bechdel test (including in s9 don't believe those fandom lies), and that's including episodes that focused on female characters. if the test included that the characters have to be named, that (small) number probably gets cut in half. if that test included both women are alive at the end...  

female monsters prove they deserve to live by killing off their family to prove they're the "good kind"  (this is not necessary for male monster characters)

female characters are not allowed to get vengeance

they took the Virgin vs Whore dynamic (and that that's all women are), and devoted a whole episode to it, but in general it underlines of ton of interactions, esp with regards to Dean and women.  {I actually never got around to writing it, but women tended to fall into four main classifications on this show, though overlap definitely allowed: Victim [sub-categories: Fodder, (Dean) Mirror, Mother], Love Interest, Sex Object, and Villain/Obstacle. very few female characters were either allowed to outgrow their category or didn't start in one.} 

we see the male characters assault female characters but it's okay because [insert supernatural reason here], ignoring that whatever explanations for why it's being allowed, we are still visually being shown this violence against women, and often from our "heroes"  (the women are then tossed away from the narrative after the violence and again, their aftermath gets regulated to off-screen who cares)

female characters were only allowed to be "so badass"; female hunters often fought female monsters or they lost/got regulated to the sidelines in battles. this gets even more contrasted as a male character/hunter will often do a nod about how "badass" she is, even as she is very easily beaten.

 the whorepobia of this show

had a tendency to strip female characters down to their underwear/make them nude before torturing them, and then adding sexualized torture on top of that

outside of actor injuries affecting this (like one of them broke his arm so he had a sling for a few episodes), female characters are often more likely to visually carry the bruises/violence of violent incidences much longer than male characters

gratuitous filming shots of breasts, asses

the use of the words: bitch, skank, whore, slut; the play on words they do so they can say "pussy"  

taking female myths/figures and reducing them to a cheap, sexist storyline (Amazons, Artemis, Lilith, Eve, witches - who are only allowed to live/be "good" if they're men, and are otherwise in league with demons/are evil and lose)

they often kept a character but switched out her actress; helps with the disposable feeling

how they treat women's ages (ex: Jody is not allowed to be a love interest to Sam because she's older than him/calling Dean 'kiddo'. ex: Rowena is played by a woman fifteen years younger than Crowley's actor. ex: Amara being one of the oldest things in existence but still having to age her way up.)

their treatment of teenage girls, ranging from how they sexualized them to expecting them to save themselves to treating them like they are grown adults and not children to the way they kept killing the ones who posted selfies to the fact the pr more than once used the tag "teenage girls - the scariest thing ever" for Claire's episodes 

actions and lasting legacies by female characters often got erased or passed on to male characters instead

it's a time honored tradition to treat certain monsters as metaphors for things. specifically for spn, they often use werewolves and vampires for sexual assault. (not the first to do so, not the last to do so.) however, that part of it gets textually glossed over, or treated as a joke, more often than not

and for all the patterns I talk about above, there's plenty of other one-off examples of misogyny/sexism or consent issues/rape culture this show did. like that time a grown man sniffed the bra of a dead teenage girl. not for any reason, just because it was there and that's what dudes do, apparently.

Racism: All the Flavors(+ Bonus Sexism)

when you compare the treatment of reoccurring white characters vs characters of color who occupied either similar roles or characterizations, characters of color were often punished and/or treated poorly for the same attitude and/or actions of their compared white character, who often got not just a (free) pass, but more screen time, dialogue, and development. 

usually Black men but in general men of color: 

a) got humiliated (often using feminization or infantilization) before their death  

b) had a more violent death; had a death that visually echoed racism (lynching, shot in the back, etc)

c) often used (racialized) rhetoric that in the real world is used against them

d) often filmed in ways to highlight their physicality, to portray them animalistically, to dehumanize them

e) even when victims, will add context to make them partially responsible for their death

characters of color were the villains or antagonists, very rarely "good guys"

this was a very white show, and while I'm speaking about speaking roles, reoccurring characters, and characters who get their own arcs, I'm also talking about background characters

using lore from groups they should not have and/or turned creatures into racist caricatures

having white actors play characters they shouldn't have

heavily depended on stereotypes for their characters of color

the treatment (esp narrative empathy level) of white angels vs angels of color.  again, screen time and character development differences between the two

a summary of (East) Asian woman on this show: fetishized porn/sexualized, “tiger mom”, Yoko Ono/The Girlfriend, monster. they were often silent or had no dialogue. microaggressions (usually spoken by Dean) were leveled at them.

antisemitism (styne issue, erasure of the Judah Initiative, Lilith, the golem)

like the sexism, just had random racist lines or visuals throughout the show (and sometimes those came in the absence of who should be there); some groups literally did not have enough characters to make a pattern, which is why this section looks a lot shorter than it really is

like for ex, I'm trying to stick with patterns but seriously, they put a Black woman in a dog collar and said her white boyfriend was her master/that she belonged to him

the ignorance of how white privilege worked to make them palatable

the replacement and/or elevation of a white character over a character of color (Lisa over Cassie, Bobby over Missouri, Charlie over Kevin in terms of how they were treated under Found Family, etc) 

how they treated non-Christian Gods: easily killed, evil, weak. they often repackaged them into a Christian framework and made them lesser than.

Bi/Homophobia, Queerbaiting, and Using Fans

they butchered Charlie.  they killed her, they killed her in a way that involved leaving behind plot, characters, and logic to do so, they killed her and used the violence of it for "shock," they butchered her and stuck her in a bathtub.  the guy who wrote Charlie in every other episode (Robbie Thompson, one of the better writers of the show) didn't write her last episode (assumption: because he wouldn't) and then he arguably left the show over her death. at one of the cons (comic-con?) the cast literally turned their backs when a fan questioned Carver (the showrunner) about what he did because they wanted no part of it. there was a mass exodus of fandom after they killed her (and another portion actually hung around because they got destiel queerbaited to stick out the rest of the season, and then they left.) she was un-apologetically queer, she was found family, she was widely popular, and they killed her for no reason at all. they didn't just Bury The Gay (their only reoccurring one), they salted and burnt the ground

they spent over a decade queerbaiting Destiel. they built queerbaiting destiel into the structure of the show: season opening/first couple of episodes whetted the appetite, which they then backed away from (usually removing Cas from Dean's physical area) and around this time they'd usually have some kind of heterosexual love interest, then mid-season they'd have some room to be together and share feelings, Cas would again disappear but this time they'd have some bi!Dean thrown in to keep you going, a few episodes before the end they'd have a major connection moment (I need you, I love you), and then the season would end with something to keep destiel fans occupied with during summer. it was never a trajectory, it was a cycle; just enough for plausible deniability but more than enough for fans to believe in. they had whole seasons where the b-plot were mirrors for destiel. they tried to sell DVDs by promising destiel cut scenes. they'd remove Cas from huge chunks of episodes just because they didn't want destiel interacting in the same physical space. they filmed them (I'm talking camera angles, physical positioning, etc) romantically.  (and sometimes, someone on crew/the network would accidentally reveal how not-fucking-happening destiel would be, and then backtrack when they realized fandom’s uproar.) 

a) Dean was only allowed to care so much for Cas, the narrative would only give him so much room to mourn/miss him. (Sam too.) it's beyond my general complaint that the writers/bros lose all interest in a character if they are not right in front of them (if they even cared when they were), but specifically they will spend episodes talking about how Cas is family, how much they care, and then because Dean and Cas cannot share the screen they come up with asinine reasons to remove Cas, which means Dean/the bros do not help him on his issues, and he is cast adrift until they need him, a push/pull of show vs tell with contradictory answers but made a lot of Cas/Destiel fans argue Cas deserved better.  

b) they also devoted seasons to the (subtextual) love triangle of Dean/Cas/Crowley. (I wish I was fucking kidding)

c) "you construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men": the way they use violence to supplement affection (which is actually a larger pattern with Dean and his loved ones in general, but specifically the show is willing to show - multiple times - Dean and Cas being violent (often with an arguably sexualized filming to it) in conjunction with or as replacement for expressing their care.)  other side of this: hugging/physical affection outside of the shoulder/hand thing is reserved for escaping or coming back from death, if then (and it took seasons and a few deaths to even get that.) 

d) "buddy"  

that time Dean was allowed to be textually attracted to his mother and a literal dog (who was visually made to be very clearly a girl dog), but his attraction to men always stays subtextual and/or treated as a joke

they spent the whole show queerbaiting bi!Dean. aside comments, checking out other guys, getting flustered by men he finds attractive, metaphors, mirror characters, the heterosexual overcompensation [which is different from but comes from a similar place of the macho compensation to counteract how he gets sexualized/feminized], everything with Cas and how they play that relationship romantically and with sexual attraction, the character development that led to his relaxation of his macho compensation coinciding with increasing subtextual readings of his bisexuality (and domesticity), the inspiration for his name/character is bi, his relationship to Charlie and the pattern of fictive kinship, etc etc.  

why are angels straight???? why do they have gender???? (why are they interested in sex???)  minus the queerbaiting of destiel, they spent a lot of seasons pushing Cas into a heterosexual box. other angels were often pushed into heterosexual boxes too. (or left in subtext and then killed.) closest we got to playing with gender was Raphael and maybe Hannah, and at least with Raphael it was not without its issues. (also: both dead.)

random transphobic lines

homosexuality was often treated like a joke/punchline. queer characters/scenes were often treated like a joke/punchline.

outside of Charlie, queer characters were small, two-bit roles, extremely rare, and often killed

how they treated and showcased fandom space and esp queer fans in-show (much less how they treated them in real life), comes from a deeply sexist and homophobic place 

The Show Was 328 Episodes Long And the thing is, these are the four big categories, but it's not like this is it. The show flip-flops on calling John an abusive parent/that the bros are childhood abuse survivors. The show doesn't even really call out when Dean is being abusive to Sam, and the way they always, always go back to the Brothers Only format means they are often ignoring or straight-up forgetting the unhealthy aspects of their relationship. The show ignores how their trauma builds (and all the things that happen because of it), disconnecting the current issues with the ones that came before. The way they flip flop on monster morality and never address what the winchester bros do to people who happen to be monsters but aren't evil (or definitely aren't as evil as they are).  How violence is always the answer. How the "saving people'' part of hunting got dropped the later the show goes on, and red shirt vessels/hosts die in droves. Depending on how you view it, the way they treat alcoholism and addiction. The ableism. The line between the narrative's opinion on acceptable violence and not is inconsistent and dependent on how much they like the character doing the violence vs who the violence is being done to. Etc.

(The above lists are definitely missing stuff. I haven't done anything in this fandom in like four years, I've forgotten a lot.) I'm not saying people didn't enjoy this show. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy (parts of) this show. I'm saying whether you are basing it on things like writing craft or things like 'social justice issues', this show is bad. It is of poor quality. I really don't know how to explain the hold it has on people, how a show can be charismatic, how fandom was able to squeeze so much out of so little, but that's probably what's got you attracted into the idea of watching it again. If you're thinking of watching it because you want a coherent, well done story, look elsewhere. The finale was the literal last straw, not the only one. 

[phoenixfell]

Protecting Yourself & Creating a Good Experience

An unfortunate post necessitated by recent events.  The unfortunate truth of reality is that we, as non-psychic human beings, are unable to determine with certainty the motives of other humans around us.  If someone claims to have good intentions but are hurting you, are they simply presenting themselves poorly or are they lying entirely?  This is a question you can never truly answer, but here I will guide you through some ways to protect yourself while being kind to yourself and others.

You may reblog this if you’d like.  

Although this post was created specifically in response to the turmoil in the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom, it’s not specific to this exact situation and the purpose is not to take a side.  The purpose is to encourage everyone to do their part in ending hateful behavior and crafting a good community.   

Contents:

0.  Don’t send mean asks to people 1.  Install an IP Tracker on your blog. 1.a (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog. 2.  Curating your Experience 3.  Making First Contact 4.  Analyzing a Message 5.  Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality 6.  The Author’s Duty 7.  Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking 8.  Accepting Differing Opinions 9.  Good Intentions (Pave the Road to Hell) 10.  Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways) 11.  Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)

0.  Don’t send mean asks to people.

You know, I saw a post some time ago on the internet that basically said:  Why do we see so many posts teaching people how to avoid being raped and virtually nothing telling people not to rape others?  So, as obvious as this may sound, I’m going to give you a gentle reminder to not send mean asks to people.

Perhaps you are angry.  Perhaps something else is bothering you.  Perhaps you honestly feel like you are doing the right thing.  These feelings are entirely valid and I understand.  However, being mean to someone else on the internet is not going to solve anything.  At best, it’s going to get you ignored and at worst, it’s going to actively escalate things.  

If you feel down, depressed, or upset, consider this service:  https://www.crisistextline.org/

US and Canada: text 741741 UK: text 85258 | Ireland: text 50808

It’s a confidential service that will help support you.

On the other hand, if you feel like you genuinely have a bone to pick with someone, take a step back.  Get a cup of coffee, or tea; watch a YouTube video, and later on in this post we’ll discuss cooperative problem solving, the importance of word choice, and how to deescalate a situation.  

1.  Install an IP Tracker on your blog.

This is a very simple and completely legal process.  The easiest way to do so is to sign up for Statcounter.  This is a website for market and visitor analysis, but it does IP tracking for free, which is what we’re looking for.  The site will even guide you through installing it.  However--do not post it into the description.  In my experiences, this does not work.  Instead, click Edit HTML, search for <body>, and paste it directly underneath that.

For this to work most effectively, make sure that you have the Timestamps extension enabled within the inbox in XKit.  If you do not have XKit installed, you can find directions on their Tumblr page, here:  https://new-xkit-extension.tumblr.com/

1.a.  (How to) Install an IP Blocker on your blog.

Although Tumblr claims to give you the ability to IP Block through the inbox by blocking anonymous asks, many people have expressed doubts that it actually works.  Therefore, here’s an explanation showing you how to do it yourself.  There are three steps to this, all taking place in the Edit HTML section we’ve left off in last section.

1.

Directly below where the web analytics code above ends, paste this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="https://l2.io/ip.js?var=userip"></script>

2.

Directly below the previous command, paste this:

<script>

function ipBlock() {        var ip = userip;     //example: "0.0.0.0", "5.5.5.5", "3.3.3.3",     var bannedips=[         "155.555.55.55"     ];     var handleips=bannedips.join("|");     handleips=new RegExp(handleips, "i");            if (ip.search(handleips)!=-1){ 

                window.location.replace("http://www.tumblr.com");        } 

} </script>

You can customize this script in a few ways.  First, bannedips needs to be the ip(s) you wish to block.  You can add more by separating them by commas and enclosing them in quotes, as the example shows.  Secondly, in the window.location.replace line, you can insert any valid address.  Here are some suggestions I give people:

Tumblr homepage.  Basic and effective.

A link to a Google search of something, e.g. How to not send mean asks on the internet

Your own tumblr blog, so they get stuck in a refresh loop

A similarly spelled but nonexistent blog, to give the illusion you deleted/moved 

3.  

Finally, add onload=“ipBlock()” to your body tag:

<body onload = "ipBlock()">

That should be everything to get it working.  If you want to test it, click the link in step two, copy and paste the IP address that is displayed into the bannedips, save, and visit your blog.  If it’s working right, you should get thrown off.   

If you don’t want your IP Block active, just remove step three and return your tag to <body>.  

2.  Curating Your Experience

Although Tumblr itself does not allow the functionality, there are ways to ensure that certain words do not appear on your dashboard.  XKit has a blacklist feature which will hide posts containing certain words.  Also of note is the wildcard feature, which is accessed by adding an asterisk after the word, ex.

nsfw   ->  Only blocks exactly that word and that tag nsfw*  ->  Will block any word or tag containing that phrase

However, I would like to gently notify you that there is significant research that actively avoiding content does more harm than good!  Only you can know what is best for you, but there is a such thing as excessive avoidance.  

3.  Making First Contact

If there’s anything you take from this post, please let it be this one thing:

Always be kind.  At first.  Then tear them a new one if necessary.  

The inevitable happens.  As far as you can tell, you’re minding your own business on your blog.  Your ask box lights up and you perk up, wondering which of your friends is reaching out to you.

Instead, the message is nasty, condemning you for your support of your favorite ship and the theme of your blog.

You’re upset, of course!  And you have every right to be!  You put a lot of time and effort into this blog and your ship, and to have someone so coldly butt in--you can feel the frustration mounting!  Tears are glistening and your body trembles as you type up a strongly worded essay and--

Stop.

It’s okay.

Take a deep breath and step away from your emotions for a minute.  Your emotions are valid-- but so are the sender’s.  

Instead of starting a fight, be kind.  It may hurt.  You may not want to be, but I promise you it’s worth it.  Here’s a template response:

Hi, anon.  I’m really sorry that you feel this way about [thing] and will gladly take it into consideration in the future.  Could you please tell me more about why you dislike [thing]?  If you’d like to take some time to gather your thoughts, I’d be happy to discuss this issue with you.  

Let me confess something.  I don’t suggest this out of pure kindness.  I suggest this because their response will tell you what you need to know.  Remember how the intro talked about how people’s intentions are incredibly hard to figure out?  This is a little trick I like to use to get them to play their cards.  

There are three possible responses:  They respond angrily, they respond kindly and respectfully, or they don’t respond at all.

In the first case, you may get something that resorts to expletives.  They may call you names.  They may tell you to delete your blog or any other amount of nasty things.  It’s very likely that your very attempt at kindness will anger this person!  This is a troll/bully whose sole interest is to get you upset and get themselves attention.  At this point, you can safely delete and ignore the messages without any guilt.  

In the second case, you have a person with a genuine grievance who just happened to address it poorly.  Both of you have a duty to humanity to resolve the problem respectfully and politely.  You’ve avoided escalating the conflict, you may learn something new and you may even make a new friend!

This also applies to reaching out to someone for the first time.  You see someone doing something you don’t like.  Oh, it just makes you blind with rage!

Again.  I’m going to advise you to stop. Take a deep breath.  No one responds well to name-calling and being condemned.  There’s a few techniques you can use (see if you can spot them in the template message):

Listen to their opinions

Actively ask to hear their opinion

Ask for clarification

Validate the way they feel

Avoid casting blame 

(These techniques work a lot in real life, too!)

Again, there are some genuinely scummy people in life!  But, there are many, many more ignorant people.  A gentle pointer goes much further than yelling and screaming.  

4.  Analyzing a Message

We’ve all been there.  We’ve gotten a message and we’ve panicked--do they hate me now?!  Is this a troll message or genuine criticism?!

Again.  Relax.  Push aside your emotions and focus on the logical words as they appear before you.  Ask yourself if you are reading a tone that doesn’t exist.  For example, not everyone puts active thought into choosing between “ok”, “Ok”, “okay”, “Okay”, “ok.” etc.  Sometimes an ok is just that.  An ok.  

Break the message into parts.  Find the logical structures and decipher them piece by piece.  Someone who throws some very hurtful words into a message may indeed have a point, despite coming off as very crude.  Accept that different parts of a message may mean different things.  The world is very complicated and multifaceted.  Try to avoid sticking labels to things.  

5.  Fiction as Fiction VS Fiction as Reality

I’ve seen a lot of arguments floating around recently that seem to think that these two ideas exist in a vacuum.  It’s simply not true.  The ideas are entwined intrinsically--Fiction is both fiction and reality.  Fiction was created to mimic reality yet extend it far beyond what can happen in the confines of reality.  What happens in reality impacts fiction and what happens in fiction impacts reality.  

This is undeniable.  

Both of these ideas exist, and as the author it is your duty to figure out what that means for you.

You cannot hide behind Fiction as Fiction to ignore your responsibilities as an author.

You cannot hide behind Fiction as Reality to promote censorship.  

Both of these ideas are far too simple for the complicated world we live in.  A complicated concept requires complicated solutions.  

Every word you write has an impact on the people that reads it.  This is the very definition of writing.  We use writing as a tool to share emotions.  Extend empathy.  We use writing to make people cry, to make people laugh, to make people angry.  

To deny that this impact exists is to deny what writing is.  

But censorship is not an option.  Censorship prevents these stories from being told, and quite frankly, no one should have the right to decide what story should and shouldn’t be told, regardless of what is in that story.  

What is the solution then?  There is no easy answer. 

6.  The Author’s Duty

When you put words before another human being, it becomes your responsibility as a moral individual to give your best effort into ensuring that those words have a positive impact on the individual.

This doesn’t mean not making them cry.  Or not making them upset.  It means ensuring that the morals you impart on them are sound and logical.  

How one achieves this is up to you.  

In general, tone makes all the difference.  Writing murder in a positive light versus writing murder in a negative light can drastically alter how the audience perceives your scene.  

Empathy, too, can help sway your audience.  If your writing must involve racist police officers stopping a young black man, make sure you delve into how unfair this is, how terrifying it is, how this needs to change.  Do not normalize it.  Do not let it go by without a somber note indicating your awareness of the topic.  

Sometimes, the solution is to simply avoid the issue.  There are certain topics that only some individuals should write about, and that’s just how it is.  This isn’t to say that you can’t write about it, but keep that writing private.  

Most importantly, do your research, and ask for help and keep an open mind.  It’s a grave responsibility and you may not do it right and that’s okay!  Everyone is capable of learning.  Everyone is capable of changing.  

7.  Echo Chambers & Lateral Thinking

An echo chamber is a phenomenon where an individual’s exposure to certain topics becomes self-enforcing because they don’t see, or actively avoid, differing opinions.  

Echo chambers are also exactly what happens when a rift this massive opens in a small community.  

When Orange blocks Green and starts posting about it, all of Orange’s friends decide whether they agree or not.  The overwhelming majority, due to peer pressure, will agree.  Many of them will then block Green and the users directly associated with them.  In retaliation, Green will defend themselves.  Because Orange’s group had already blocked Green, Green’s friends only seen Green’s point of view and will rise in response to the perceived slight.  

What results are two heavily biased groups of users that refuse to communicate with one another and many individuals swept into the mess because they don’t wish to be isolated.   

Even worse, it turns a complicated and multi-faceted issue into a binary issue.  Either you agree with Orange or you agree with Green.  The world is not this simple.  

Instead, I would encourage everyone to practice lateral thinking of their own accord.  I would encourage you to make your own decisions, rather than blindly supporting or condemning the people around you.  Everyone has their own opinions about what is or isn’t okay, and that’s perfectly fine.  Even your closest friends will have different opinions than you.  

8.  Accepting Differing Opinions 

Once you’ve accepted these different opinions (good on you!) what do you do now?  Simply put, the choice is on you!  There’s a few options:

Quietly accept it

Respectfully debate it

Avoid it

Escalate it

The first two are pretty obvious, and the third one is where blocking people and the blacklist comes in.

The fourth one is extreme and only recommended for activities causing active, known, measurable harm to other people.  

This involves actively seeking a legal entity to handle the issue.

Being mean to people on Tumblr is not a solution.  Tumblr is not a place to pursue a justice agenda.  There are bigger issues in the world, and I encourage you to find ways to make a difference that will actually be fruitful.  Donate to charities.  Extend yourself as support to victims.  Contribute to research.  

Changing the mind of strangers on the internet is not a good use of your time.  

9.  Good Intentions (Pave the Road To Hell)

This has been a phrase for a very long time.  

What does it mean?

Well, I’ll offer my own interpretation.  

It means that people often become absorbed with the idea that they are doing the right thing and forget to be mindful of the true consequences of their actions.  

It doesn’t mean to not do good things.  It means that good is relative and not everyone will find your actions good.  It’s important to keep an open mind and realize that just because you think something is good, doesn’t mean everyone agrees.  

10.  Being Mean is Fun (so do it in non-harmful ways)

Yeah.  

It’s okay.  You can admit it.

Being mean is fun!

If it wasn’t fun, people wouldn’t do it!  In fact, this very blog was created because I found that writing the character being mean was very enjoyable and cathartic!  

So, if you find yourself tempted to be mean to people in your life, maybe find another way to get those emotions out.  Hell, people on tumblr just might appreciate you taking up a nasty, villainous character that’ll tear their character up...

People love angst.  You can take this bad thing and twist it into something good.  

11.  Morality (Personal, Community, and Legal)

Bringing this long post to a close, I would like you all to end by thinking about what morality really is.  In particular, I’d like you to think about morality on three different scales:  Your personal morality, the morality of the community you’re in, and morals as described by laws.

You’ll find that these morals don’t overlap.  

Or, at least they shouldn’t. Please revisit section 7.  

Being aware of morality in these three ways may help you determine how to proceed when going forward.

Do I personally agree with this? Does the community I’m in agree with this? Do the laws have anything to say about this? 

None of these are right.  Everything has different morals, and it’s up to you to find the exact opinions that fit you.  

Don’t let people blindly tell you how you should and shouldn’t feel about a topic, and don’t let people bully you into changing your morals to fit into their perceived moral high ground.  

But at the same time, be open.  Extend yourself to new ideas.  If enough people tell you that something is wrong, it just may be time to listen.

Be you.

Be unique.

Be safe.

And above all, be kind.  

Have a nice night, everyone.  I hope we can all work to a brighter future.  

[roboromantic]

more gender thoughts woooooooooo

after thinking about it some more and especially after reading the op’s clarification I realize I misinterpreted the post; I was reading it as like “these terms don’t exclude all nb people so I’m going to say they should/do include all nb people” when really it was just more like “hey nb people are allowed to opt into using these terms if they want”

I just until recently have had a hard time wrapping my head around combining nonbinary with binary because my experience being gender-repulsed is (apparently) uncommon and extremely different from others using the nonbinary label, but between the really obvious in retrospect realization that not every nb person is repulsed by the idea of being associated w/the gender binary and the reply on that post that implies that people may be using it in a sense that I equate more with gender non-conforming I think I’ve finally got it sorted out.

I also see posts like the one I’ve been talking about that like “let aligned nb people be aligned in peace; they’re valid” but I rarely actually see anyone saying they can’t? just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen obviously and I guess people are more likely to spread positivity posts than people responding to asshole anons but I’ve always found it hard to find stuff that isn’t for/about aligned nb people

I will admit I’m not exactly active in any nb communities so maybe my experience is not as rare as it seems to be. I know I’ve had a couple followers in the past say they have similar experiences so, probably not?  it’s kinda hard to tell on tumblr bc the tags are always like 90% headcanons about fictional characters lmao

and also I think it’s kinda like I said in this post about pronouns – straight and lesbian are generally associated with liking/being one specific gender and saying that nb people can use these labels doesn’t mean everyone’s gonna immediately accept that right away (gay I think has kind of become an umbrella term and consequently lost the single-gendered connotations, at least online.)

anyway I kinda wanna see if I can find stuff about the usage of “nonbinary” and see how the meaning has or has not changed over time. mostly unrelated but I do think that the non-binary vs nonbinary spelling debate has largely settled on the latter and google trends seems to support that (the huge spike is when Demi Lovato came out lol)

also interesting to me is that if you check from the 2004-present option, neither term is really searched all that much until 2014-2015. I’ve known I was nonbinary since 2010 and I might have to dig through my blog and see if I mentioned much what terms I was using. I know when I was first figuring things out I was using neutrois for a good while; I’m trying to remember if I ever ID’d as genderqueer. anyway was I using non(-)binary before it was cool? or was I using other terms? It’s been a while and I don’t exactly remember 😔

actually I kinda wanna look at gender related terms in general; like, I remember when trans* was a thing and people were flip-flopping between AFAB/AMAB and FAAB/MAAB

another thing I’ve thought about from time to time is how people are VERY adamant that clothes and actions don’t define one’s gender but like..........................they kind of do? I guess not so much in liberal spaces in America and I grew up in a fundamentalist xian cult and am an outlier adn should not be counted but like. Less than 10 years ago I had a Sunday school class bemoaning the fact that you couldn’t tell men and women apart anymore because they were wearing the same clothes and doing the same things. Exactly what clothes and actions are part of one’s gender roles (and the genders there are) varies from culture to culture (which is one of the reasons I hate saying I’m transmasc – masculine according to whom and why is the answer WASPs) and it’s not like one’s body had absolutely nothing to do with it, but yeah. idk I’m a bit sleep-deprived and I’ve been writing this for like two hours now and my computer crashed so I lost this section and kinda forgot where I was going with this

anyway that’s not to say that I agree with that line of thought, it’s just that for the vast majority of people for the vast majority of history, clothes and actions did in fact play a huge role in one’s gender and like I said earlier about pronouns and sexuality labels, saying they’re not connected doesn’t instantly dissolve all those associations. frankly I have to wonder what kind of life experiences one has where they can just be like “ugh I can’t believe people don’t already know this 🙄” Like I know they’re almost certainly just venting and don’t expect people irl to understand but like.

where’s that post I saw the other day about how people can forget what it’s like to be new to a concept and thus have trouble explaining it and get frustrated bc they expect people to already have the same understandings that they do. It feels like maybe that’s what’s going on

ONE LAST THING why do people get mad about people making aesthetics for their gender. it’s not like cis people don’t do the same damn thing