#sorry to Go Off op

[uncle-fruity]

I am BEGGING y'all to stop posting hateful anons. Even if you have the funniest, cutest little quip that'll really show them! Specifically stop posting anyone on anon at all who is clearly trying to stir up some shit. Make these fuckers show themselves if they want to be platformed.

Anon hate? Block outright!

You do not know who that is. You don't know if that anon is really trans. You don't know if that anon is a cop. You don't know what the motivations of that anon are outside of spreading obvious hate & community division. ANYONE who is trying to divide our community -- to make trans people argue with and exclude each other, to pit us against each other -- is The Enemy. Whether they're being sincere in their bullshit or are just a bad actor trying to intentionally divide us, they are doing the work of the feds, of the oppressor, of the patriarchy.

We must be UNITED with each other! Stop throwing each other under the bus! Stop acting like these people speak for the community they *claim* to be from. Don't just fucking take their word for it! "Trans women hate trans men" NO! "Trans men just want to oppress people" NO! "Nonbinary & agender folks don't know what ~real~ oppression is" NO, NO, A THOUSAND TIMES NO!

We LOVE and RESPECT each other, damn it! There is no divide between our interests! It does not benefit me to see trans women suffer under the patriarchy! It does not benefit trans women to wave away my (transmasc) pain! It benefits no one to force gender roles & expectations onto each other. It benefits no one to write off nonbinary folks as having a "less important" experience. None of this furthers our goal for peace and human rights. It will NEVER benefit us to make snap judgements about people based on their identity. Especially when those snap judgements are based on INTERNET ANON HATE. The spread of hate & misinformation is too big a deal to just spread it willy nilly in the spirit of discourse or trying to be the funniest person on the internet.

Fucking hell. I get so SICK of this shit. If you feel like trans women as an ENTIRE GROUP are hostile towards trans men, check your fucking sources. If you think trans men as an ENTIRE GROUP are trying to escape misogyny & exercise their male privilege all over the place, check your fucking sources. If you think all nonbinary people even have the same experiences across the board, you need to expand your fucking mind to include people you never thought about existing. Use your logic: is every person in a single demographic ever the same? And by "check your fucking sources" I mean get the fuck out of your little bubble for a little while and expand the diversity of the voices you're listening to. And then LISTEN, don't weigh in; just absorb the information and think on it. You might not agree with everyone & their hot takes, but as you learn about how varied & nuanced our experiences are, you get a better sense of the overarching similarities we do share, because those things start to stick out after you've actually listened to 50+ [trans community members] who aren't all from the same corner of the internet as you. Read some damn solidarity posts and share those.

Solidarity begins and ends with us. We are the ones who make it, we are the ones who have to strengthen & protect it. I have unfollowed other trans folks who I generally agree with because of how much anon hate they uncritically respond to publicly that just furthers the division & hatred within our community. I do not experience a lot of online hate because I block/ignore the fuckos who come at me in bad faith 99% of the time, and when my fellow trans folks are the ones constantly exposing me to the kind of hate I actively avoid & whose ideals I actively fight, they are not doing me a favor. They are not doing any of us a favor. And the best way to drown out the non-anon people making bad faith arguments in our tags is similar: either ignore & block them outright or say, "This is bullshit and untrue," *without reblogging it* and let that statement speak for itself. If we all just shut these things down with one simple, "You're wrong about this," it is a lot harder for them to find enough fodder to further pit us against each other. Because even well reasoned people say stupid things in the heat of the moment that can easily be taken out of context & twisted to fit a specific narrative.

I know the urge to respond and Be Right or Own Them or Be Funny or whatever part of the brain it tickles for you is Strong. But it is careless at best, and harmful at worst. I assure you that we are better off responding to anon hate by just deleting their shit and making our own solidarity posts to counteract the kind of division they think should exist in our community.

Please, y'all. I'm begging you to post more love & solidarity than you do hate & division. I'm begging y'all to recognize how toxic it is & how easily people can manipulate you if all you do is stay angry and engage in bad faith arguments. I'm begging y'all to reach out to your community and find ways to love & spread kindness. The anger will destroy us, otherwise.

Just blocked another two people who showed up in the transandrophobia tag because they’ve decided they can’t support discussions around transandrophobia in light of these recent sexually harassing anons that trans women have been receiving that are supposedly on behalf of trans men.

And I just…

Can you imagine if there had been a similar response months ago when there were anons about correctively raping and impregnating trans men that were supposedly on behalf of trans women? If there had been people posting that we can’t take discussions of transmisogyny seriously anymore?

Honestly though? I think the people who’ve been making these posts weren’t really taking discussions on transandrophobia seriously in the first place, and were just waiting for a “good reason” to voice their antagonism.

And to be perfectly fair, there probably were some transmisogynist trans men/mascs who, months ago, when the copypasta targeting us was going around, similarly used the fact that those asks existed to further their bias against trans women.

But I can say that I only ever saw condemnations of that possibility months ago, and never any actual posts going around claiming we should trust trans women less or dismiss the concept of transmisogyny.

And I certainly never saw people saying that it would be understandable for the trans men who had been receiving these asks to trust trans women less because of it—because the ask, as heinous as it was, was a troll, it was sent to portray trans women as dangerous and untrustworthy to divide the trans community—unlike what I’ve seen in the wake of this current wave of asks.

[parallelpie]

First off this absolutely cursed AU was inspired by Lemonomelette and a post they made -X Secondly I imagine it all being about bots and cons trying to one up each others factions and not actually helping in any serious way because their too busy with their own faction bs.

Think of two rival car dealerships across the street one upping each other to get business and instead of business with cars its interstellar robot fairys trying to woo sm children to let them grant their inconsequential wishes (which may or may not be worth it) instead of the other guy next door.

[stiffyck]

Saw a post that made me furious yesterday so if people STILL don't understand this:

Aspec people are queer.

And no, it's not our love that makes us queer, it's our LACK of certain types of love that make us queer.

There is of course aspec people who are queer both because of their love and their lack of love, but being aspec is queer because of the lack of love.

Saying "but aspecs love too! Their love is also important! Aro and ace people have love and their love is also important!" is not the support you think it is for a lot of aspec people.

My love for my mother isn't what makes me queer. My love for my friends isn't what makes me queer. It's my lack or romantic love that makes me queer. Yea love is important to me, especially platonic love, but that is not what makes me queer.

And let's not forget about loveless aros.

For the love of god stop going "but aros love too!" just so you can relate to us somehow or just so you can include us. We don't need love to be included.

And because some people are going to take this as a personal attack: no, there is nothing wrong with being gay. There is nothing wrong with love is love. Love is important to a lot of people and I am not saying love is bad.

Happy pride everyone

[emil1863]

The most illegal thing Koby has done is learn a divine language... Which is only a little bit more illegal than dating a God

So.

Thoughts on language/religion in regards to this au. They aren't fully fleshed out but I'll clean it up as I go.

Learning a divine language is kinda taboo, like, you can learn them, and it's certainly less frowned upon than poneglyph, but outward practice isn't really accepted. Many people who are religious or follow religious practices are well versed in divine languages, in order to feel closer to their respective Gods.

Besides, religion makes people feel at ease and the world government is pretty relaxed when it comes to punishing those for worshiping or following their Gods. With how many there are, and how deeply a lot of it is ingrained into so many cultures, it'd also be a pain in the ass to control both that and pirates.

Koby learns through the people he meets while traveling. A lot of them think it's odd but fascinating that a young, wide-eyed marine wants to learn something like that. They indulge him anyways.

He did get better at understanding the language but his pronunciation isn't great, kinda hard to make some of the sounds Luffy makes too. Especially when he isn't used to talking like that, nor are most people. Demigods have an easier time picking up on speaking the actual... Words?

Robin understands the language of the Gods, and the rest of the Straw Hats do pick up on it a little bit just through exposure to Luffy. Luffy isn't the greatest teacher, but having people who want to understand him is always exciting. He is thrilled when he meets up with Koby on Water 7 and Koby can understand him.

[racewinnerlandonorris]

it’s a love story, baby just say yes

[halfthealphabet]

look i love the lighting thief and im actually not arguing that it deserved to win because im not familiar with the other musicals but not even being NOMINATED???? hideous. next level cruelty. there was no reason the actors weren't nominated (chris maccarrell esp because only one other person was nominated as a male lead that year) and score should have also been nominated (re again how it was up again jukebox musicals)

is the lighting thief a timeless masterpiece? no. but its fun and was a fantastic adaptation of the source material. i saw it as a workshop, off broadway, and on browadway and was absolutely delighted every single time.

These options DO NOT reflect my personal opinions! I have simply seen people complain about these.

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[minniiaa]

making koby hot was actually a CRIME cause I could have gone the entire fucking series irritated by this pathetic annoying little marine wannabe bitchass luffy simp and now i’m low key rooting for him every time and swooning at how much he loves luffy and hypes him up from afar even though they’re so supposed to be enemies. how dare he show up post-ts and he’s HOT??? like in a way that i want to crush him under my boot and make him cry but WHY IS IS HOT???

[apple-spider-vinegar]

Not a Norman Osborn Apologist or a Norman Osborn Hater but a secret third thing

[butchhansolo]

in-universe "logistics" aside, i think it's good that echo has the permanent scomp arm instead of a hand for like. real-world representation reasons.

in star wars sure they have fully articulated replacement prosthetics but we very much don't have that in real life, and i feel like echo with the scomp is good rep for that. he's one of the most competent characters and i think it's good to show that he can do All That as he is, especially with how irl people with only one hand usually are very capable, even more if they've been living with it for a long time, and very rarely do we see that in media.

like, mark hamill once said he talked to a kid for a make a wish thing who was about to have his arm amputated, and the kid said that he wasn't worried because luke did it too. i think that's important

[xamaxenta]

Blood Frenzy V3

[runawaymarbles]

at this point i am simply uninterested in any opinion on a hot-button political topic that treats human beings as a mass of meaningless hypotheticals

[moongothic]

You know, a long time ago I read this stupid ass Reddit comment complaining how they couldn't understand why people were "obsessed with making Crocodile a woman", and of course I just looked at it like "bro, if he's trans then he literally ISN'T a woman, that's the whole point, nobody wants Croc to be a woman 💀"

But I feel like the more and more Dragodile seems to pick up in popularity the more I keep on running into fanart where Croc's either being feminized/woobified/intentionally made to look smaller, more petite and feminine than Dragon, or straight up he's been detransitioned to live as a woman farting out more babies 24/7, not to mention the constant she/her'ing and calling Croc a "mom"

Like people are allowed to do whatever the fuck they want, but man. Some of y'all really do want Croc to stop being a trans man and be a woman instead. That's just so emotionally distressing to realize.

[melit0n]

for the lyrics thing: “there’s something in the way you lay / that makes the dead switch graves / you take your leave” from Jericho. is “you lay” a euphemism for sleeping around (so the person is so sexually active that they make the dead roll in their grave)? or is it saying that the person is so wonderful that they can even move the dead? i’ve never been able to figure it out so i’d love to hear your thoughts!

I was hoping someone would ask about the Two ep! Just my luck, thank you anon <33

In the UK, and in America as well I'm pretty sure, "lay" is used as slang for having sex with someone, so you're right on that part, definitely. However, the line "there's something in the way you lay" brings both negative and positive connotations to me. He's saying 'there's just something about you. The way you look like that.' There's either a sense of stillness and serenity with it; a calm brought about by the way they lay, possibly asleep next to their partner.

On note of the next line, which I'll talk about in a moment, a large amount of people are known to 'sleep like they're dead', and others note that having Sleep Paralysis feels like death. The Dead are often confused for the sleeping as well, as long as they don't have any noticible abnormalities.

Even though two is quite sexually charged, I mean hey, take a look at Nazareth, I'd like to go with it being they're just so wonderful, or, in the least, appear to be so.

"Enough to make the dead switch graves" Is a stupidly powerful line. Whoever this is is just asleep, or sleeping around, and they have enough authority to make the dead switch graves.

In addition to this, a typical euphemism you may hear is 'make the dead roll in their grave'. It's one thing to do something so disgusting that you make the dead roll around, but this is something enough for these corpses to get reanimated, dig their selves out, get up, walk to another grave, and switch. This person's mere existence is potent enough that it causes the deceased to get up and leave.

It gives the vibe of a shift in the natural order of things, if that makes sense.

Plus, plus, in Islam (I know, I'm back at the religion again, bare with me lads), after a person has died, it is believed they will rest in their grave until The Day Of Judgement where they will be full body resurrected and either be taken to Paradice or Hell. Aka, the corpse will be reanimated to be eternally judged. There's also a similar idea in Christian theology; some denominations believe they die and either straight up go to Heaven or Hell, or will wait in their grave to be reanimated and judged on Judgement Day. Just something to think about.

Further, Jericho is the 'oldest city in the world', and makes an appearance in the Bible and the Qur'an; Israelites conquer the city and destroy it's protective walls. Nazareth was the home of Mary in the Bible and also where she received Annunciation. Calcutta is the old name for the capital of British India (now called Kolkata). Overarching theme of big cities with violent histories.

Lastly, we have "you take your leave". It's sung in a very final tone, if you get what I mean. Basically a 'you leaving isn't a big deal...but it means a lot to me. You've hurt me; again.'. There's not much to analyse here; it's simple and it's final. Whoever this is is gone, either 'dead' and so thoroughly disgusted/angered by Vessel that they've reanimated themselves and walked off, and Vessel will spend his time dissecting old encounters and feeding off of whatever he can salvage.

On the note of 'death', a bed can also be a grave for some people, either a metaphorical one or a literal one.

[russadler]

A Little Death - A Note From The Author

For those on this website back when Cold War came out in 2020, you may have read a fic I wrote around that time titled ‘A Little Death’. It was pretty successful (at least by my standards as a first time author) and likely may even be the reason many of you are following me in the first place.

In 2021 I made the extremely difficult decision to delete it, with the intention of re-writing it as I had to come to the conclusion that the portrayal of the Adler/Bell relationship in this particular story was problematic for reasons I will expand on below the cut (for those curious)

I’ve had many people in the years since message me to ask what happened, and if I planned on re-writing it as I announced my intentions to. I’m incredibly touched that people have held my writing in such high regard, even after all these years ❤️

With Black Ops 6 coming in a few months, the topic has come to the forefront of my mind (and the minds of others) again. After an extremely difficult (and long) period of consideration, I am officially confirming that I will not be rewriting ‘A Little Death’ and consider it permanently shelved.

This is probably a surprise to absolutely no one since I’ve not really mentioned it since, but I have had several people still interested in what was going on. I still want to give thanks to everyone who has supported my writing, I’ve been wanting to start once again but felt like I couldn’t with the weight of this fic on my shoulders. I think finally closing this chapter will allow me to move on and evolve as a writer.

Please read the TW before continuing as I will be touching on some sensitive subjects in regards to Adler/Bell’s relationship dynamics. This is kind of long but honestly it’s a complicated subject, but I didn’t want to move forward without addressing some of the issues in detail.

TW: discussions of consent, sexual assault, manipulation, abuse

Why did I delete it in the first place?

‘A Little Death’ started off as a three part smut fic that grew into something more in part due to the positive reception I had received, but it was also my first ever piece of writing. It lit something in me, and it was no longer about just being “horny for Adler” and it involved into a bit of a character study.

I actually made a post years ago touching on this, but the jist of why I deleted the story was that someone who was close to me at the time I was quite deep into writing it pointed out that a brainwashed Bell, in an altered mental state, could not actually give consent to any sort of sexual relationship with Adler (who also facilitated their torture) I know this might seem to be fairly obvious to many, but honestly at the time I hadn’t even thought of it that way. I felt incredibly stupid someone had to tell me for me to even realize.

Now, I don’t intend this post to be one about total condemnation of the Adler/Bell ship. I mean we are talking about a game that revolves around some very dark subject matter like torture, murder, brainwashing etc. A lot of people have OC! Bells that they ship with Adler, and I still read fic of the ship and have my own OC. The ship is problematic for obvious reasons, but I began to realize that as an author I had a duty to portray dark subject matter with a certain level of responsibility, respect and with appropriate content warnings.

I was doing none of those things. I was writing a fic that portrayed a brainwashed Bell in a sexual relationship with Adler that begins to evolve into this emotional “affair” I had written something like 10 chapters, but I couldn’t continue with the knowledge that I had essentially been marketing sexual assault as smut without even really realizing the implication. I mean it wasn’t all smut, it did taper off into an actual story, but the damage had been done.

Wouldn’t that mean all Adler/Bell fic is problematic then?

I mean yes is probably the right answer, but my own feelings about the relationship in summary, is that a ‘romantic’ relationship with Bell utilized as a manipulation tactic by Adler would not be out of character for him, I mean it literally does happen in the game in a more platonic form. Dark? yes, very much so, but not totally out of the realm of the game’s themes.

Even then, we have to keep in mind that if we are going to write stories that have darker themes that could also contain potentially triggering subject matter, we have to approach these topics with respect and responsibility. Writing a scene or relationship that portrays sexual assault as romantic or sexy is not okay. (which was basically what I was doing, which was very bad) Appropriate content/trigger warnings should be used as well.

I think the Bell/Adler gold standard is fic where Bell and Adler meet each other long after the events of the game. Still a pair of messed of people with a messed up dynamic 100%, but Bell is no longer brainwashed and has developed into their own person who can make their own informed decisions. (My all time favourite fic is a Bell/Adler fic that follows this sort of plotline)

I wanted to try and salvage ‘A Little Death’ by re-writing it, but I just…couldn’t. I would have to re-write from the ground up, and honestly the central conflict was Adler “falling in love” and the guilt that subsequently followed because he knew the situation was fucked up and that he was in it for his own selfish reasons.

I have considered re-publishing in mostly the same form but with the sexual content removed and more as a dark fic focused on the messed up relationship Adler pursues with Bell because he wants ‘results’ that bad, but I wasn’t sure if that was any better???

Anyways, that’s why I deleted that fic in particular and not any other. It was deeply problematic and for that I apologize.

If there’s any other questions, please feel free to inbox or DM me.

Thanks ❤️

[blujayonthewing]

one thing that must be said for growing up with Very Sarcastic Parents is that I'm baseline equipped to recognize that sometimes people are doing a bit