#so many feelings right now

[vivid-ink]

Hello babe <3 If you don't already know, I am obsessed with your story the Love Shack! Since it has come to a beautiful close I figure it was time to pay my respects and let you know specifically why this story is so fantastic.

First of all let me start by saying, I was so entranced by this story and emotional over it that after reading the last chapter I ended up talking about it with my boyfriend for over an hour! He let me reccount the whole story in full detail while we ate dinner and let me tell you, he got invested!! At first he was just listening to be nice to me but it got to a point where when I would pause to scarf down food for a few minutes he would get so impatient for me to continue. He's just glaring at me like "Bitch, what did Neyomi do? You can't leave me hanging like that!" I thoroughly enjoyed it, so basically he too is a fan now.

Girl, the way I went into this series thinking "ooh this will be a nice steamy threesome" and then somehow ended up balling my eyes out with every chaper, ILLEGAL! You had me crying within the first few paragraphs of the last chapter. Just for some perspective I actually don't remember the last time I legitimately cried full on while reading. I was holding back sobs so my roomate wouldn't come check up on me. Needless to say, you had me in a chokehold, sis. And I'm living for it! This will definitely be one of my favorite stories to reread and I think about it very often.

I could go on and on about the specific reasons I feel that this story enraptured me, but here are just a few.

Your depiction of Neteyam is honest to Eywa one of my all time favorites! Not only do I feel like he is very representative of the canon character but also extremely captivating. One of the reasons I think Neteyam (and truly all Na'vi men) is so hot is becuase of the raw male power tha radiates off of him, and I mean in the best way possible. Like other Na'vi males he shows that he can be a provider and protector (which biologically does something to me so I can not be blamed for finding this appealing haha) while also holding himself with a confidence and sense of responsibility that only a true man can capture. You get so many reminders of this power in your writing, even just in the way you describe his attire. Things like his battle band and sheathed knife or bow all serve as visual reminders that Neteyam is a respectable powerful and influential male that will someday be Olo'eyktan. And then to see him crumble and shake and quiver for Neyomi....that is so hot! I'm not sure if any of that made sense but basically, you nailed Neteyam. (not mad about the double meaning there haha).

Then there's Lo'ak who I have decided is the MVP in this story AND NO ONE CAN CHANGE MY MIND! He shows such a wonderful side of Lo'ak's character that doesn't often get displayed. He is still rebellious and free and a troublemaker, but deep down he loves his brother so much and isn't wiling to let Neteyam get in his own way of his happiness. Not only did the poor man have to witness Neyomi and Neteyam disregard his advice constantly while he suffered to watch but he straight up took a few punches in the face just to get Neteyam to work out his own shit. That is the fire I love about, Lo'ak. Consequences be damned, he will do what needs to be done. He is the ultimate wingman and I truly love him so much in this story. Without him let's face it, those two would have ended up miserable. He is the hero of this story and the main person that made me hold onto hope throughout each chapter.

Neyomi was also such a beautiful character. She is a perfect blend of independant and strong while still embracing her feminine side. I love seeing female characters like this because it shows that this duality exists and it's okay to embrace our own masculine and feminine traits within each of us. Sure she was stubborn as heck (and so was Neteyam of course) but she never completely surrendered herself to grief. She let herself cry and feel her emotions, but still tried to press forward with her life no matter how much her heart ached. I respect that.

What I'm trying to get at babe is that you have TALENT! Your storytelling completely transported me and I wish I could read the whole thing again for the first time. Please write a book or something because I would genuinly read an 800 page book if it meant you were the author. Thank you for all the time and efffort that you have put into your stories and into this community. I know how long projects like these take and I really do appreciate you putting the work in. I hope you have fabulous day! Thanks for reading my very long ramble. Sending you many forehead kisses <3

Oh my goodness, @wheneclipsefalls THANK YOU for your amazing message! I can't believe you got your boyfriend invested in 'The Love Shack'! Your storytelling skills must be A+++ if you recounted it all to him & it kept his interest! 🤣 My husband sighs every time I start talking about Avatar lol!

GURLLL, we all go crazy for a big, strong man who has a good balance of dominance and tenderness... I'm glad you like my portrayal of an adult Neteyam. 😁 I try to keep my characters as well-balanced & as true to canon as I feel they should be. As for my OCs, I always create a little mindmap of them and what their personalities/characteristics are before I start writing. It's like I need to bring life to them that way first. I wanted Neyomi to have a good balance of hard and soft, if that makes sense (I feel like I always write my female leads this way, in different ways), so I'm happy if you feel I've nailed this. I seem to have an inability to write quick drabbles (you may have noticed lol), so the result is usually fleshed out characters and fleshed out plots. 😛 Lo'ak is absolutely MVP #1 in 'The Love Shack'. I often see Neteyam being touted as the 'bestest big bro ever', which I completely agree with. I wanted to portray a more mature Lo'ak who loves & appreciates his big bro, so I thought what better way to do this than to have him repay the favour and look out for Neteyam. 🥰

You want me to write a book?? 🥹 I'm so flattered. I kind of did, in a way. My first Neteyam story 'Violet Eyes' is 20 chapters and 150k words. I always promote this work because it's my proudest achievement to date. It's a real unpredictable rollercoaster with a completely original narrative. Give it a try if you haven't & I hope you love it too.

Honestly, thank you for taking the time to leave me your message. This past 10 months has been full of creative fulfilment writing for the ATWOW fandom. All my works are in my masterlist. It is always such a JOY to hear from readers who have been moved by my work. You have absolutely made my day, my lovely. 😘😘😘 Thank you, THANK YOU so much for your support. A thousand forehead kisses back at ya. xx

[rabbit-bf]

My brain is mush

I watch my Just Dance f/os maps at least five times a day each

I’m probably seeing Tinker and the elves tomorrow

I get elf content every weekend now

I get Tomura every weekend

I have many OCs to indulge in

My brain is in fact rotting

[perrieedwards]

i feel like people are skimming over the uk riots in a way that makes me want to tear my hair out. muslims in the uk are in active danger. immigrants in the uk are in active danger. refugees in the uk are in active danger. people of colour in the uk are in active danger. asian communities in the uk are in active danger. black communities in the uk are in active danger.

there are massive far right riots throughout the country right now and people like fucking elon musk and nigel farage are inciting it and still have a platform to speak. people have used three young girls deaths, people's genuine grief in southport, to try and gain traction for their own racist bullshit and it's working.

a lot of refugee charities have been forced to close leaving many people without support, homes, funding, food, etc. if you aren't able to donate please consider sending a message via the conversation over borders campaign! it will send a hopeful, welcoming letter to a refugee in the uk. there is also a guide to staying safe here.

please do your own research and donate to refugee charities, anti-islamophobia charities, mosques who are trying to rebuild after being destroyed, counter protesters, here are some i've heard positive things about but the list is extensive; southport strong together (support for the southport victims and their families), southport mosque rebuilding, riot repair fund, middlesbrough vulnerable residents, nasir mosque rebuilding, hull help for refugees, bristol welcomes migrants,

[bacchuschucklefuck]

summer of junior year 06/11

[identitty-dickruption]

one of the worst things in the world is that feeling unloveable can (and will) make you act in ways that reinforces itself. I feel unloveable so I don’t respond to messages so people reach out less so I feel unloveable. one of the hardest things in the world is fighting back the brain demons long enough to break the cycle

[lazylittledragon]

i'm in one of those phases where i really wish i believed in manifesting and spellcasting and things like that bc you know when you want something so bad you're literally praying for the universe to let it happen

[benevolenterrancy]

~ Extremely Unwilling Magical Protagonists Attempt To Outrun The Plot And Not Fucking Die ~

(@takofukkatsumi this tag is from a while ago but it hasn't left my brain -- L-Space got very weird all of a sudden)

[fizpup]

some whiteboard poke friends

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Good morning, Sleepyhead.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[relatablepicturesoffinnmertens]

THEY ARE FRIENDS

[noctuadora]

[inkskinned]

crows use tools and like to slide down snowy hills. today we saw a goose with a hurt foot who was kept safe by his flock - before taking off, they waited for him to catch up. there are colors only butterflies see. reindeer are matriarchical. cows have best friends and 4 stomachs and like jazz music. i watched a video recently of an octopus making himself a door out of a coconut shell.

i am a little soft, okay. but sometimes i can't talk either. the world is like fractal light to me, and passes through my skin in tendrils. i feel certain small things like a catapult; i skirt around the big things and somehow arrive in crisis without ever realizing i'm in pain.

in 5th grade we read The Curious Incident of the Dog In The Night-time, which is about a young autistic boy. it is how they introduced us to empathy about neurotypes, which was well-timed: around 10 years old was when i started having my life fully ruined by symptoms. people started noticing.

i wonder if birds can tell if another bird is odd. like the phrase odd duck. i have to believe that all odd ducks are still very much loved by the other normal ducks. i have to believe that, or i will cry.

i remember my 5th grade teacher holding the curious incident up, dazzled by the language written by someone who is neurotypical. my teacher said: "sometimes i want to cut open their mind to know exactly how autistics are thinking. it's just so different! they must see the world so strangely!" later, at 22, in my education classes, we were taught to say a person with autism or a person on the spectrum or neurodivergent. i actually personally kind of like person-first language - it implies the other person is trying to protect me from myself. i know they had to teach themselves that pattern of speech, is all, and it shows they're at least trying. and i was a person first, even if i wasn't good at it.

plants learn information. they must encode data somehow, but where would they store it? when you cut open a sapling, you cannot find the how they think - if they "think" at all. they learn, but do not think. i want to paint that process - i think it would be mostly purple and blue.

the book was not about me, it was about a young boy. his life was patterned into a different set of categories. he did not cry about the tag on his shirt. i remember reading it and saying to myself: i am wrong, and broken, but it isn't in this way. something else is wrong with me instead. later, in that same person-first education class, my teacher would bring up the curious incident and mention that it is now widely panned as being inaccurate and stereotypical. she frowned and said we might not know how a person with autism thinks, but it is unlikely to be expressed in that way. this book was written with the best intentions by a special-ed teacher, but there's some debate as to if somebody who was on the spectrum would be even able to write something like this.

we might not understand it, but crows and ravens have developed their own language. this is also true of whales, dolphins, and many other species. i do not know how a crow thinks, but we do know they can problem solve. (is "thinking" equal to "problem solving"? or is "thinking" data processing? data management?) i do not know how my dog thinks, either, but we "talk" all the same - i know what he is asking for, even if he only asks once.

i am not a dolphin or reindeer or a dog in the nighttime, but i am an odd duck. in the ugly duckling, she grows up and comes home and is beautiful and finds her soulmate. all that ugliness she experienced lives in downy feathers inside of her, staining everything a muted grey. she is beautiful eventually, though, so she is loved. they do not want to cut her open to see how she thinks.

a while ago i got into an argument with a classmate about that weird sia music video about autism. my classmate said she thought it was good to raise awareness. i told her they should have just hired someone else to do it. she said it's not fair to an autistic person to expect them to be able to handle that kind of a thing.

today i saw a goose, and he was limping. i want to be loved like a flock loves a wounded creature: the phrase taken under a wing. which is to say i have always known i am not normal. desperate, mewling - i want to be loved beyond words.

loved beyond thinking.

[dreammeiser]

Kaloo, Kalay! Earl Conversational Sprites hastily put together for his Birthday Ask Session, which was on June 1st! Thank you to everyone that wished him a happy birthday and visited with him on his special day <:o)

[trans-axolotl]

my gendered experience growing up as an intersex person was overwhelmingly defined by my responses and resistance to everything that got me labeled as a failure: failure to quickly get a gender assigned at birth, failure to go through a normal puberty and grow up into a woman, failure at meeting the standards for "complete womanhood" because of my intersex sex traits, and yet simultaneously failing to ever be acknowledged as a "real man" and being treated as a threat when I expressed I wanted to transition.

before i realized i was a man and came out as trans, the ways that girlhood was denied to me was very often humiliating and painful. locker rooms filled with other girls were a frequent source of shame. there were many big and small ways that i was told that my intersex body made me insufficient, incomplete, broken. i was forced onto estrogen, forced into shaving my body hair, and was constantly being told to change myself to better fit this mystical idea of a "normal woman." and even though I ultimately ended up becoming a man, the denial of girlhood was painful.

but i think that these things would have been even more difficult to navigate as an intersex girl if on top of everything I already said, i was having to cope with the denial of my girlhood while i was forced into boys locker rooms. if my doctors were forcing me onto testosterone hrt and refusing to even discuss estrogen, if all my legal paperwork had "M" on it and was a logistical nightmare to change, if every support group for my intersex variation labeled it as a "men's support group," if the LGBTQ community spaces i tried to join were misogynistic towards me often to the point of exile, if my self determination as an intersex girl was denied in most spaces of my life, and on and on and on. while listing all these things out i also don't want to make it seem like it's all about suffering and pain--so much of transition for me has been about joy in my self determination and how much it feels like a reclamation of autonomy to decide what I want my body and self to be like--i know this is an experience i share with so many of my trans intersex friends.

as an person who was AFAB, although there were many ways that trying to grow up as an intersex girl were a painful, logistical nightmare, many times and places that i was excluded from woman's spaces, etc. however, there was a simultaneous affirmation that i was right to strive for that in the first place. which is logic rooted in some fucked up compulsory dyadism, but also which would have made some things slightly easier or even possible at all if i had wanted to embrace being an intersex girl within this fucked up system.

pretty much every time i've seen people on tumblr talking about "afab transfems" in an intersex context, people seem happy to collapse these experiences and act like there's no meaningful distinction or point in distinguishing between different types of intersex embodiment. it seems incredibly extractive, to be perfectly honest with you--taking terms already used by a community to make meaning of their experiences and to expand and dilute that term enough that it means something pretty different than the original.

it's making me think about the concept of epistemic injustice, which is a term coined by Miranda Fricker to describe oppression related to knowledge, communication, and making meaning of the world. There's two subtypes of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Testimonial injustice refers to the dynamic where marginalized people are labeled as not credible, excluded from conversations, and their testimony and knowledge is labeled as unreliable, even when they're the ones who are experts and have first hand experience of what people are talking about. (this is why i probably won't make this post rebloggable--i've noticed this pattern on tumblr many times where trans men speaking about transmisogyny get lots of notes and are given a lot of grace, where trans women are silenced, attacked for not having perfect wording, and otherwise delegitimized.)

the second type is called hermeneutical injustice. it describes how marginalized people are denied the right to make sense of the experiences in their own lives. this can look like preventing people from building community, terminology, a political understanding of themselves, and the interpretive resources needed to process how you live in the world.

this is a form of injustice that I think almost all intersex people are very familiar with--we are denied community and interpretive resources to the point that we're told we don't even exist, that intersex isn't a real word, and so many more examples that leave us isolated and with very few options for understanding what we're collectively experiencing. as an intersex person i really intimately understand how frustrating, confusing, and painful it is to not have words for your experiences, your identity, your life.

so it makes me really sad and pissed off when it seems like intersex people seem to be replicating this exact same type of epistemic injustice towards transfems and specifically towards intersex transfems. pretty much every time recently i see people talking about "afab transfems" they're doing so in a way that seems to deny that trans women even have the right to make sense of their own experiences in the world. there seems to be this mindset that these political frameworks, these interpretive resources that transfems have built up are just up for grabs for anyone. and then on top of that has come with it a lot of cruel, hateful language and direct attacks towards many intersex transfems who are facing so much harassment right now.

an important value to me is this idea of reciprocity as a foundation for solidarity. to me reciprocity means that we're prioritizing the ways we care for each other, we're thinking about how we can uplift each other, and we're watching out for extractive or exploitative patterns where one group is constantly expected to be in "solidarity" with another group without getting the same respect and care back toward them. i think that there could be so many ways that intersex people of all genders could share our overlapping experiences and actually be in true, meaningful solidarity with each other, but i barely ever actually see that happen on tumblr. and that pisses me off, because i do think that there's so much we have in common that we could celebrate and support each other with. i feel so much kinship with so, so many of my trans intersex friends, and ways where i see our lives converge. but i don't think that can happen in an environment where there's no acknowledgment of the ways that our experiences will sometimes (often) differ from each other, and the ways that we have unique needs.

another frustration i've had based on this most recent couple months of transmisogynistic intersex posting on tumblr is how intersex people have been mostly ignoring intersex community resources and devaluing the existing intersex terminology that people created to try to meet our needs. so much of what i've seen people describing on tumblr seems to really line up with the term ipsogender. Ipsogender is a term coined by an intersex sociologist Cary Gabriel Costello, and is used to describe intersex people whose gender matches the gender they were medically assigned at birth, but who might not feel like cis or trans fits them, might experience dysphoria, and who might feel like they've ended up transitioning medically or socially in some ways. this is a word that exists that an intersex person put time into coining because they wanted other intersex people to feel seen, embraced, and have ways of understanding themselves and communicating to others, and that's something that's super meaningful to me! and yet, i've rarely seen anyone reference it, and also seen multiple people making fun of it in other spaces online.

there's also intergender, which is another intersex specific gender term used to describe when your gender is inseparable from your intersex traits, and that your intersex identity is intertwined with your gender identity in some way. some people just identify as intergender, others use it as an adjective and exist as an intergender man or woman. intersex terminology like this is really important to me, especially because we're so often denied the right to make sense of our own experiences.

i think ultimately what i wanted to say with this post is just that when i think about intersex community, some of the most important values of intersex community for me are solidarity, care for each other, and affirming our right to define our own existence. and i don't think that can happen in a community where people are acting in extractive ways, harassing and attacking their fellow community members, and being dismissive of the realities of other intersex people's lives.

[chiricat]

honky star rail stuff 🍡