#tbh I wanna know how long the recovery canonically took

[kirkothy]

something interesting I finally put together on my rewatch of iwtv 2x05 is that Louis didn’t just “forget” the act of walking into the sunlight, he “forgot” he ever tried to kill himself. Which means he doesn’t remember the pain, the weeks (months?) of recovery. Which then begs the question of how much time Armand took from him. Even if Louis asked him to erase it, how much did he lose?

“I knew who I was without those pieces” how big are the pieces???

[btnclmrttn]

Hi! Recently came across your blog and I absolutely LOVE your Saitama HC SM

Anyways I can here to request H/C  With Saitama, Genos, Garou, and mumen rider (all my fucking beloved)��

With a Fem!Be it friend or S/o that’s part Phoenix or is a result of a lab experiment, with a shit ton of scars from being hunted or tested on with her healing abilities (Phoenix example being like Marco from one piece, can turn into a giant blue flaming bird, and/or can turn her arms into flaming wings, have talons for feet near shit)

Please and thank you! Your amazin!

Man these animal requests are so cool I'm digging it. Thanks for asking! I'll give it my best! Sorry it took so long I've been working for days n days straight 😭

Asks the weirdest fucking questions. Nothing to do with the experiment, but like if you lay eggs or some shit

He thinks you look fucking sick when you on your flame shit

Hunters? What hunters? They've mysteriously vanished? A weirdly long strain of good luck? Who knows

If you're ever upset in anyway he always has a small fire extinguisher nearby and whips it out. Mostly to make you laugh but just in case he has no idea what phoenix's are capable of

Prick move but he's always buying sunflower seeds or nuts and giving them to you. The fact he's spending money to joke with you though shows he does like you and thinks of you often

If you got bird feets, it doesn't bother him. However, you CAN bother him if you like grab his knee with them or something it gives him the creeps

Also asks weird questions but he has answered most himself thankfully. By hyper analysing everything of you, of course

Trauma bonding! Woo hoo! (Not rly woo hoo y'all just find good connection with that)

Anyone that even stares too long is at risk of being deleted. Watch out for his canons

Can you heal a cyborg? Maybe? Y'all both wondering but by the time you find out he got his ass mowed he's at Kuseno's already.

The people that experimented on you are also now on his revenge list. You're not talking him out of it if you wanted to try.

Lots of drawings of you n your bird anatomy fill his notebook. He just thinks you're hella cool tbh.

He knows exactly how many scars and marks are on your body and WILL detect if there's a new one so to save you trouble just call/text him if something happens. Whether it was a hunter or you hurt yourself on accident

Oh lawd, this boi

He is extremely protective and defensive of you. Absolutely no one will lay a hand on you like that ever again

Straight up will just snap their neck or something unnecessarily overkill he has zero humanity for the hunters after you

Sometimes you'll catch him staring at your scars, but he won't admit it. He isn't trying to be rude. He just can't imagine how you got them specifically and it bothers him

Also trauma bonding but he has the vibe where he jokes about it and continues his day like nothing is wrong

Refuses. REFUSES to let you heal him if he's injured. He doesn't want to use you in any way.

If you wait till he falls asleep and just heal him a tad he won't notice. He'll believe he's just a fast healer, tbh. And he bragging like, "See, I healed just fine by myself!"

Lucky him you're a healer. Ass whooping magnet. Feels hella bad though despite saving multiple hospital trips.

Always complimenting you and your features/abilities you have. Literally your #1 fan

He wanna see if he is as fast as your top flight speed and always wanna race you on his bike. He's rly trying to get you both at your best speeds. Like fun training.

He's always checking up on you and is constantly worried about hunters. Like your mental health and recovery is one thing but the fact you can't catch a break kills him.

Never bothered tho unproblematic boi as usual he wouldn't flinch at the sight of your scars or feets or wings

He do worry about them scars tho but he never gonna ask like he'd feel so rude.

[tuwasduwillst]

Shadowbringers (pt 4/end)

This just has spoilers for everything, basically. :U I finished it and don’t feel like splitting stuff up because I have over 1k screenshots to go through...

Katana-bearing Centurion: Besides, there is but one hand that can make me whole again. My enemy... my friend...

He probably just says “friend” there in Japanese, but I don’t have my whole game switched, so I don’t get to know for sure. Good to know you’re still being weird, Zenos.

Don’t you smirk at me like that, mister.

Here’s Urianger being handsome, as usual

I hated fighting this old dude as Thancred.

1) I still can’t believe he can easily take out the WoL like he did

2) Stop making me be sword dudes!!

3) I get why they wanted people to see the dialogue here, but it was so slooooow and I died once near the end and had to do it all over again and ughhh, just go away

Ryne looks cute with her new hair and eyes, at least. :) Thancred is still a bad dad, but at least he’s doing better now... I guess.

Also, Urianger’s reaction to finding out that Thancred was paying attention to some of his talks about pixies was really good, haha.

...I wanna listen to Urianger give a pixie lecture...

Wow

This was something the game threw together when I asked it to pick recommended gear. It’s... some kind of look.

The Exarch/G’raha Tia is a qt. Y’know, I figured it was probably G’raha Tia, but I didn’t remember him being so short... and the lack of cat ears also made me doubt myself, haha.

I’m really glad I did the Crystal Tower stuff, though, because otherwise I’d... well, I’d still think that G’raha Tia/the Exarch is cute and like him a lot, but it wouldn’t have had the same impact.

I took a bunch of screenshots of Mikh’a. :U

& Emet-Selch, ofc

that one old dude: If you would pass me, you must endure all that I have learned on the battlefield... For I am a weapon forged in the fires of war!

~*oooh, I’m so scared of you and your tiny amount of health left*~

My MP doesn’t even have a dent in it, really. This is why I had such a hard time believing this dude could take out the WoL!! Even the first time we fought, I had tons of MP available to me and could’ve made a full recovery from being brought down to 1 HP. (...well, I have Benediction which is kind of cheating, but still.)

At least this was the last time I had to deal with him. He’s probably the worst thing about the expansion, which I guess I can deal with since the rest of it was so good.

Lots of really pretty screenshot opportunities in this expansion. c:

Mt. Gulg is something I thought was common to a bunch of FF games for some reason, but apparently it was in the original Final Fantasy, FFIX, and some random spin-off games. Weird.

How did Mikh’a hear him talking from that far away??

Emet-Selch has such a good design and you can tell that a lot of work was put into him. The expressions he makes, the way he stands and walks--it’s all unique to him and it makes him stand out a lot.

Even after everything that happened in the expansion, I’m really fond of him. They made the right move in having him kind of forge a more personal relationship with you/the WoL, because if he hadn’t been obnoxious in the background throughout most of the expansion it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as interesting/good as it ended up being.

I obviously chose to say that they were all Alphinaud’s assistants. :P

This little scene was so cute... lali-hos for everyone...

Crystal Exarch: Ugh! I would thank you not to shoot me!

I’m sorryyyyyy ; ~; You were there and I wanted to see what would happen!!!

Crystal Exarch: Ah heh... It may interest you to know that Mikh’a is a great hero in the land whence he hails. Some would say the greatest.

This little venture made me feel like I’d suddenly gotten married and adopted a child

(Which I’d be totally fine with, tbh.)

I loved this thing, actually!! I got to heal G’raha Tia, he healed me, we both healed our new tiny dwarf child, it was great.

c:

I’m still using the Mogrod. I’m never going to stop using it. Give me another thing that has a flower and swirly rainbows all over and maybe I’ll switch weapons, but until then? No.

...unless there’s, like... a really, really pretty plant weapon, especially if it matches Mikh’a’s outfit... but I don’t think there is.

I got to put my bubble on them. :D

He’s so cuuuuuute. And Mikh’a clearly agrees with my thoughts on him, considering the expression on his face when he looks at him.

One of the reasons I keep Mikh’a wearing the WHM gear is because I really like the contrast I get--a lot of the major characters wear black, so it looks nice when they stand next to each other. :D

Katana-bearing Centurion: The whereabouts of my one true friend, however--they interest me greatly. I but hope the beasts of this “First” are providing him proper sport.

Zenos is so funny to me. He just pops up like “did someone mention my friend” while his dad and Elidibus are having a serious conversation.

Innocence has beautiful hair and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d never believe that he was Vauthry.

You can kind of see @tarifu in this screenshot! :D

You can definitely see her here--wait... why is half the party wearing dwarf beard outfits...

This is probably weird to say, but I genuinely like when characters I play in games like this suffer/are in pain. Not, like... constantly. I just like it when NPCs get to express concern and you aren’t some kind of unbreakable hero 24/7. >_>

Obviously I was going to say his name, who wouldn’t.

This made me cry!! I thought he was dead. :C

But thankfully Emet-Selch didn’t want him dead, so he did not die.

...why’d he even need a gun? Has he always had a gun?

I wish I could just float off into the sky after ruining everything and being a big jerk

sad kitty

I died when I came here with Jack and Mari because I didn’t realize I was being targeted by the boss until it was too late. :,)

I got to practice using my shield, though!! I’m not used to having one so I’m not super great at remembering it exists and using it; the tether thing is a good visual for “this specific person is going to be damaged soon and a shield would be Good”. ...unless everyone’s bunched up and I can’t tell who has it until it’s too late, I guess.

I know I’m level 80 now, but there’s still a lot I haven’t done and I’m still trying to figure out what the best way to do things is sometimes... I still need to mess with my hotbars and stuff, actually. I think I might switch some things around more than I already have, because some useful things aren’t as easy to use as they could/should be and I’ve been wanting to mess around with stuff for a while. The Trust dungeons should be a really good opportunity to test new configurations! Or the squad dungeons, I guess. :/a

I’m still not Ardbert’s biggest fan, but I don’t dislike him.

Poor Urianger, getting stuck with the role of the only other person to know the Exarch’s plans. :(

& then everyone died going to the bottom of the sea and the game ended

I got to help put dwarf helmets on sineaters :U

I also remembered that I have fancy wings now, wheee

I got a nice new outfit after doing my last Healer role quest! :D I like it a lot~ The whites are brighter than the last outfit, and the bit in back accommodates his tail much better than the corset did.

I might play around with mixing and matching some pieces once I get newer stuff, but for now this is what I’ve got! c:

...and I refuse to wear the hat. 100%. I’m not making Mikh’a look like a weird nun. :|

Amaurot was really good, even if being there mostly just made me sad. >_> The not-people were so cute and nice, though...

Big

The WoL hanging out on this giant bench is so cute.

I liked getting to talk to Emet-Selch’s friend. c: Well... kind of, anyway. Since it’s not really his friend...

tiny

Emet-Selch: I have broken bread with you, fought with you, grown ill, grown old! Sired children and yes, welcomed death’s sweet embrace.

I still don’t 100% understand how Ascians work, but I guess it’s canon that Emet-Selch fucks :/a

I regret typing that, I think, but it is apparently true

i think your fireplace has something wrong with it

Really though, this dungeon was excellent.

Alisaie decided that she wanted to LB right as one of the bosses was doing one of those “hide behind a rock Or You Will Die” things so she died & I accidentally walked right off the edge near the end of the last boss fight (oops), but other than that things went okay!

D:

ardbert could you please clean your axe somehow before you point it at me like that. tia

This was a really neat moment :U

I’m not calling Emet-Selch Hades ever. Sorry, Emet-Selch.

I was kind of afraid to do this trial and almost waited until someone would be able to do it with me, but it really wasn’t that bad in the end!

...except for when I died five times to the same attack... orz It was that arm-sweeping one, too, so it’s not like it’s not obvious that it’s coming. My problem was that I kept getting Raised in bad places right before it happened, so he basically just kept smacking me down over and over again.

(Which was partially my fault, because I should’ve waited to accept the Raise until I knew it was safe to be alive, but... I don’t like leaving the other healer alone and I don’t want to just be lying there uselessly if I can avoid it.)

Fortunately(?) the party wiped due to something completely unrelated (a failed mechanic I had nothing to do with) and I didn’t die at all the second time around! So at least there was that.

I liked this bit in the dark. c:

I also liked when I got trapped in the bubble and didn’t have to do anything. Thanks, Emet-Selch!

Genuinely though, it was a nice little chance for me to calm the hell down because my anxiety was getting real bad before/during this fight. >_>

Poor dude. :c Obviously he’s responsible for some absolutely terrible things and I’m not going to try to deny that or anything, but he’s lived for so long and he’s had to deal with the loss of basically everyone he ever cared about for that whole time. He recreated that entire city and all of its people, that’s how much he cared.

Still no excuse for basically trying to kill all of the people he didn’t consider “real”! But also still sad, IMO.

This made me go “awww” out loud and start to tear up, haha...

I didn’t want to leave him ; ~;

Estinien said a full sentence here about how these guards were dead, too (in a way that implied he assumed that’s what they’d find), and the localization translated it as “hmph”. Kind of a weird choice there, but okay.

Zenos basically went Full Yandere since he killed his father just because he could potentially get in the way of his thing with the WoL, so... that’s something that’s going to have to be dealt with at some point.

I’m interested in seeing how things go, but I’m also a wee bit concerned that other people might get caught up in whatever this obsession is. I don’t want anyone to get hurt or killed because of Zenos’s yandere tendencies. :(

Elidibus is being Boring on the moon.

But who cares about that! I got to lead a Girl Scout meeting for my level 80 WHM quest.

Oh! Almost forgot about the story I got to tell the girls: “The tale of a man who crossed time and space to save the world... and me.”

I think the second one is about (original) Minfilia, maybe? :/a I wanted to tell them about G’raha Tia, though.

Aaaand that’s all I’ve done! \o/ I unlocked a new dungeon and I know there’s more than one post-80 dungeon, so I’ll probably check those out when I get a chance... but I finished the main stuff.

Which is kinda weird, because now I’m done again, haha... but I’ve got plenty of stuff to do before the next new stuff comes out. Especially since I discovered that Vamo alla Flamenco is the “dancer’s theme”, apparently. Need to dance ASAP >:O

[starberry-cupcake]

your tags make me worry. did lapidot become canon behind my back?

I also received a reply about this so I’m answering both things under read more because the su fandom scares me a lot lol 

count-di-luna replied to your post “Reblog and put in the tags something seemingly everyone in your fandom…”

this! Peridot has way better chemistry with Amethyst anyway and Lapis just needs her space

First, I don’t know if they’re “canon” but it’s very heavily implied in the show that there’s something going on between them that’s more romantic than not, for what it seems like to me. The way in which their relationship is shown isn’t in the same way as the relationships of other characters that don’t have romantic relationships, so I don’t know what to tell you. 

I’ve been told about some “behind the scenes” reasons why this was, I don’t wanna delve into any of that because I care about what the story depicts in this instance, so I’m leaving all “behind the scenes” reasons the crewniverse may have aside. As for the “behind my back” part, probably, since we haven’t seen the development of their relationship kind of at all, aside from when there’s some conflict Steven needs to get in between, so if it’s happening, it’s going on behind all of our backs. 

When it comes to the comparative aspects with other ships, I don’t really have much opinion on the majority of fanon SU ships, it’s not something I’ve ever been much involved in, so I can’t really say what ship is better or not. 

What I wanted to focus on for my tags, what really makes me a bit uncomfortable when it comes to Lapis and the way the fandom sees her, is that a lot of the things that are criticized about her come from writing problems, which is not to diss the crewniverse because SU is fantastic and I love it, but I do feel Lapis hasn’t been handled well as of late.

I feel like her whole reaction when she left and took the barn would have been taken less harshly by fandom had it not been at the expense of a relationship that had little to no development in-show and that was with a fan favorite character that everyone loves. It wasn’t so much Lapis’s reaction and her choice of leaving what made fandom react like they did but the way in which she left Peridot, which represented a state in a relationship we never saw them arrive at because they were always off-camera.

Lapis has had too much trauma related to other people exercising choices for her for me to be comfortable with her having a relationship so soon with someone who had her as a prisoner before, someone who was Jasper’s second in command in the ship she was kept in. Which hey, I’m totally cool with redemption arcs and I feel Peridot evolved and learned maybe more than most characters on the show, I’m not saying Peridot is the same she was or that she doesn’t deserve to be trusted, she absolutely does, but making it romantic in such a short period of time and WITHOUT SHOWING IT ON SCREEN is too much believability to ask for me tbh.

I wish Lapis’s arc had centered on her recovery and her healing without having to compromise her decisions to romantic relationships. I wish we had taken more time to develop her trauma in a way that makes more sense to the plot, because I hate when people say they’re tired of her whining or they hate her for not fighting.

Lapis represents a very important part of war, she is, from the group of Gems, the one who was most affected by BOTH SIDES of the fight. She was a war prisoner and considered an enemy by BOTH the Diamonds and the Crystal Gems and, as such, was imprisoned for so long, until Steven listened to her.

She then decided to imprison herself AGAIN to save the one person who had shown her kindness, because it was the only way she felt she could. And when confronted with that, she was manipulated into thinking that it was only with someone toxic, with someone who wanted to use her at the time, how she could have any value.

Lapis deciding not to fight is a valid, important and realistic part of war. She is a victim who was once and again mistreated by EVERY SIDE of it. It’s understandable that she’d want to flee and it’s powerful that she not only came back but used her sadness and her scars as a way of facing a major enemy. She had felt worse. 

She was a prisoner of war, a survivor of abuse and was banished from every place she knew. She had no home, not in Homeworld, not on Earth, and it’s understandable and valid that someone who was faced with this past would choose to not stand for people who let her down. 

It is, however, understandable that she would come back and fight for Steven, because he is the character Lapis was shown to have a trusting friendship with. Steven was the one who listened, cared and healed her, he is the one who offered her a home and, most importantly, the one who, no questions asked, respected her decision to leave without pressuring her into staying to fight a war that had destroyed her. This is a friendship the show took time to show me and develop, Lapis caring for Steven like an older sister, more so than a mother figure, as most of the other gems are (there’s a parallel dissertation here between Steven’s mother figures when he has never had a present mother, but that’s another subject matter entirely). I didn’t need from Lapis more than this pure friendship, a sibling sort of bond. 

So, when it comes to this friendship, the conflict of Lapis leaving and then coming back makes narrative sense. The strain of the decision and of Steven’s understanding of her leaving have implications that are easy to understand because we’ve seen the friendship develop. 

When it comes to Peridot, I was lost. I didn’t understand where this strong emotional bond had formed and how, when the episodes they had together didn’t quite showcase a development aside from “they’re getting along better”. Added to that, their personalities don’t really fit in a way in which you could fill in the blanks easily, because Lapis is a complicated character that tends to be unpredictable with others, because of her long isolation. 

It isn’t that a romantic relationship wouldn’t be possible or that it takes away from her character, it’s that it gives a layer on her decisions that makes her choices questionable in the audience’s standpoint, because you don’t know what’s going on between them but you’re gonna root for Peridot because she’s the easily likeable one of the two and because she’s staying to fight. 

It stops being about trauma, war and fear and starts being about the betrayal of someone’s trust. It undermines the importance of a character like Lapis, imo, when the conflict of her choices is transformed into a romantic issue where clearly Peridot will be the favorite to be on the “right”, because as a viewer with nothing to lose it’s easier to understand that fighting is the “right thing to do”. It’s easy to have an opinion on war and political strife when it’s about fictional characters in a fictional world, it’s easy to say “the right thing is to be brave and fight the authority”, but within that situation, it wouldn’t be that easy. 

So, basically, my problem, all shipping preferences aside, is that, for a show that is otherwise amazingly written and planned out to the t, this whole situation seems shoehorned and strained and causes fans to turn on a character whose representation of trauma, ptsd and past abuse should be something to understand more. 

Again, this is not to hate on the crewniverse (past or present) at all, it’s their story to tell and I’m grateful to be able to hear it, this is just my opinion as an adult with access to the internet and nothing better to do at the time, so my opinion isn’t worth a damn. They did their best and chose to tell this story and that’s ok. I heard that some people have been rather aggressive to some of the crew for this before and I wouldn’t dream on doing that at all, so please let’s not do any of that. 

[christinamirabilis]

gay ask game for gays only (stolen from @fakeking)

doing this myself cos i’m bored and i don’t care

1. describe your idea of a perfect date?  okay like, perfect date that is (currently) unrealistic would be an extended overseas vacation with my love - somewhere warm but with lots of exciting things to do - culture, shopping, nightlife - i’m thinking like mediterranean europe, south america, thailand.  skinny dipping, lazy days lying in bed all day in a room with open French doors leading out onto a balcony with a nice view over cobbled streets and a warm breeze stirring the sheet white curtains, sitting outside a café eating delicious food, buying cool shit at the markets... just, yeah, travel.  perfect.

but otherwise, i guess like honestly my favourite thing to do is to go to a bar somewhere with outdoor seating where it’s warm, and we get antipasto platters and sangria or pizza and margaritas, or just whatever, food and drink, and we sit for hours and chat.  there’s a bar on the waterfront that has a bunch of beanbags out on the lawn and you can order food and drink and i went there once with soph and it was really nice even though we ended up having a fight later that night and it was awful, but i wanna go back there next summer i think, with a cute girl who loves me and isn’t planning on leaving lmao.  but anyway.

2. whats your “type”?  honestly i don’t really know like i just really love girls?  all girls?  i mean i guess i like girls who are curvy or a little on the chubby side, with an “alternative” look in some way - crazy hair or tattoos and piercings or just in the way they dress.  girls with loud laughs and big appetites and dirty minds.  i mean, i’m pretty much describing myself here, i’m aware of that.  there’s probably something ominously freudian or whatever in the fact that i’m attracted to girls who are similar to, but better versions of, me, but it’s whatever.  

3. do you want kids?  yeah i think i do.  it’s something i go back and forth on.  it’s not something that i absolutely need to be happy - i have dated people in the past who have not wanted children and honestly it’s more important to me to be with someone who i feel is my soulmate but who won’t have kids with me, rather than someone who i don’t love as much but who will?  but yeah i do want kids, i think, but i’m not sure, and i’m not set on it?

4. if you do, will you adopt or use some other form of child birth? well i’m definitely not getting pregnant myself.  if my partner wants to get pregnant, that would be fine, although i’m gonna have to get over my phobia of pregnant people lmao.  but i think my first choice would be adoption, purely because there are so many kids in the system who need a loving home, so i feel like it would be better for the world if i could make a tiny difference by adopting some of those kids?

5. describe the cutest date you’ve ever been on? ah man i don’t even know.  i’m just thinking about all the things i did with sophie and it’s making me sad so i’m not going to answer this one haha.

6. describe your experience having sex for the first time (were you nervous? or was it easy peasy?)?  i mean, yeah, i was nervous, but more than anything i was kind of like, “oh wow, this is really happening,” because it was a girl who i’d been on one date with and then we met up in town a few days later and i went home with her.  i was mostly worried that i tasted bad?  but i personally didn’t struggle with it like it just felt natural, and i was pretty stoked that i made her cum several times on my first time, like, i was worried i would be “bad” at it or whatever.

7. are you a morning time gay or night time gay?  night time gay.

8. opinion on nap dates?  good.

9. opinion on brown eyes?  good.

10. dog gay or cat gay?  i like both.  i am bipetual, if you will.  but if i had to choose, cats - but only marginally.

11. would you ever date someone who owned rodents or reptiles?  of course, except probably not snakes, but there are no snakes in new zealand.  but i love rats, and i don’t mind lizards and stuff.

12. whats a turn off you look for before you start officially dating someone?  if they’re polyamorous, non-monogamy is my only absolute dealbreaker - and in my experience, the consequences of trying non-monogamy have, for me anyway, been disastrous.

13. what is a misconception you had about lgb people before you realized you were one?  well, to be honest, i’d never ~met~ a gay person, to my knowledge, like, no one that was openly out (although in hindsight i had probably met a few) - and certainly no one that i had more than a passing interaction with, until my friend nic came to the therapeutic community i was living in.  and it was such a shock to me to meet someone who was so openly gay and so confident and unashamed?  because, to me, i had nothing against gay people, but i just felt like i myself couldn’t be one, there was shame to it somehow (a lot of this is tied into my ptsd, it’s hard to explain without going into all of that which i don’t feel like doing) - and i expected that other gay people would similarly be ashamed, like it was some kind of illness that they couldn’t help and they didn’t choose and that they’d rather be straight if they could.  and yeah, so it was a shock meeting nic.  but it was life changing, because it gave me room to consider what i had been in denial about for so long - that maybe i was gay too.  so i’ll always be so very grateful to nic for being in my life in general, because we went through recovery together, but particularly because she allowed me the opportunity to become my true self, and that has been more liberating than anything.

14. what is a piece of advice you would give to your younger self?  i guess to not worry, and that things will become clear to her when she’s ready - and to not worry about why she doesn’t find boys attractive and what might be wrong with her, and especially not to do the dangerous and self-destructive things she did (sending nudes to and sexting a boy she had never met, which could have gone horribly fucking wrong - and for all i know he might have shown all of his mates, but this was prior to social media and smart phones so it wouldn’t have been that bad, getting herself into a situation where she was date-raped at a party, trying to organise anonymous sexual meetings with strangers on the internet) to try and FORCE herself to feel attraction to men.  and that there’s no shame in being gay.

15. (if attracted to more than one gender) do you have different “types” for different genders?  i’m gay af.

16. who is an ex you regret?  ugh i don’t know, like, i have been through some awful shit with some of my exes, but i don’t regret any of them, because they all taught me lessons about life that i took into my next relationship, and into other situations, and i have become a better person as a result - and i have very fond memories with all of them, even if things did go really sour at the end?  particularly my last relationship - it was by far the most painful and chaotic relationship i’ve ever been in, towards the end, and i have so many regrets about how things went and how i should have done this, and shouldn’t have done that, but i don’t for a moment regret being with that person, because i loved her so much (and still do) and i have had some of the best experiences of my life with her and wouldn’t trade it for the world.  so yeah, i don’t regret any of them.

17. night club gay or cafe gay?  both, depends.

18. who is one person you would “go straight” for?  ugh you know i feel like i always have an answer prepared for this, until someone actually asks me?  i used to say kit harington but now i’m not sure?  fuck damn i was literally talking about this with my boss last week, but i can’t remember who it was.

19. video game gay, book gay, or movie gay?  book or movie.

20. favourite gay ship (canon or not)?  ah i’m not really into the whole ship thing but i guess clarke and lexa because that’s the first one i can think of.  OH and i definitely ship daenerys targaryen and asha/yara greyjoy - i know it’s never going to happen but it’s nice to imagine.  emilia clarke is my number one celebrity crush - she doesn’t know it yet but she’s gonna marry me.

21. favourite gay youtuber?  literally could not give a single fuck about youtubers.

22. have you ever unknowingly asked out a straight person?  not to my knowledge, like, i have only ever asked out people who i have been talking to on dating apps tbh.

23. have you ever been in love?  yeah.

24. have you ever been heartbroken?  oh god yes.

25. how do you determine if you want to be them or be with someone?  honestly i don’t!  the only way i can know is if i date them for a little bit?  sometimes it’s both and that’s okay too.

26. favourite lgb musician/band?  ok so i had to google a list of them to make sure i didn’t miss them.  my very favourite is jónsi, cos he’s the lead singer of my favourite band sigur rós.  also i love david bowie, and i like sia and beth ditto.  also apparently jackie cruz, who plays flaca on oitnb, is also a singer - and bisexual!  so that’s exciting.  there’s a whole bunch of people on that list who i didn’t know were queer.

27. what is a piece of advice you have for young / baby gays?  take no shit from straight people - live your truth and stand up for yourself.  but also, keep yourself safe - this is more important than anything else.  lastly, don’t let terfs and racists in the community get into your head - we are a minority, we MUST stand up for other minorities as well.  some of us are also trans or people of colour, and we must protect and uplift them.  we have to be better.

28. are you out? if so how did you come out?  i am completely out now, but it was a process over a couple of years, because it was really fucking hard.  i am now openly gay, to the point that i’ll mention it in passing to strangers if it’s relevant, assuming i feel safe to do so.  but anyway this is a long story, so settle in.

i never voiced the thought that i might be gay until i was 20, during group at the therapeutic community.  i thought i was possibly bisexual for a long time, but in retrospect i think i was trying to compromise with myself, that being bisexual was somehow more acceptable to me than being gay.  but yeah, so after that i didn’t tell anyone again until i was nearly 21, when i was having dinner with my best friend sarah and another good friend from high school, heather.  i remember it vividly, because heather said about how she’d been in a relationship with a girl while she was on study exchange in scotland.  i got up abruptly from the table, went to the bathroom, nearly threw up, and then came back, and they both asked me if i was okay, and i said that i might be gay.  it was really scary because at the time sarah was studying to be an officer in the salvation army and i was scared that she would no longer want to be friends with me, but of course she is a perfect angel and it was no problem at all.  after that i went on a date with a girl while i was living by myself in napier, and then i freaked out and ghosted her, which i feel bad about.  i was also out to my friend mixx, who i met on tumblr that year.  and after that, i didn’t come out to anyone else until i was nearly 23.  i had moved down to wellington to start university, and i had to do summer school for six weeks to do a refresher music theory course, so i was sleeping on my sister’s couch for six weeks.  i hung out with her friends a lot, including her flatmate (her ex boyfriend who was now her best friend, who had come out as gay), and one night i was sitting out having a cigarette with his boyfriend, and i just told him i was gay, and that i was scared to come out, and asked him not to tell my sister.  and then a few days later i was in the car with my sister and i just kind of blurted it out, and she was like, “mate, i’ve known that for years,” and i was kind of offended because i thought i had been really good at hiding it and that she assumed i was gay because i hadn’t had a boyfriend like maybe i just didn’t want one?  haha but it was fine.  and then a week or so later we went up to hawkes bay to visit my parents, cos jen had to take her car up there so dad could sell it for her, and i told my parents while we were eating chinese food, again spur of the moment, and my dad was unfazed but my mum kind of freaked out a bit, i remember her dropping her fork and there was fried rice all over the floor.  and she rang her best friend crying, and the friend was like, “oh man, i thought you saw this coming, i sure did.”  like, she wasn’t upset that i was gay, just that she hadn’t known, and apparently everyone else she knew had.  and i think she did struggle with my being gay to begin with, it took her a long time to adjust, but she seems to be okay now.  and then i didn’t bother coming out to anyone else, i just let the grapevine do the trick/liked lgbt pages on facebook and posted photos of myself with girls.  but apparently my extended family didn’t figure it out and it all came out when we were all at my cousin’s 21st about six months later, but everyone was chill and unsurprised about it.  and since then i have been very open about it, because, like, i had been in recovery for years, but i had been really stagnant, and coming out was the catalyst i needed to truly become well.  i mean, i nearly died later that year cos i had a really bad psychotic episode and tried to kill myself.  and i had another bad episode two years later, but that was related to ptsd.  so neither of those was related to my sexuality, and i do honestly think that being out for me is a protective factor - i don’t have the added complication of trying to hard part of myself while also grappling with illness, so i have been able to recover faster?  i don’t know.  anyway that’s such a long wall of text i’m so sorry kudos to anyone who read it.

29. what is the most uncomfortable / strange coming out experience you have?  ugh honestly most of the experiences i have had have been positive or at least neutral.  i know one of my aunts doesn’t approve - she’s a hardcore salvation army person, threw a massive tantrum when my parents let me read harry potter as a kid - which is hypocritical as fuck because when my (male) cousin came out she sent him a text saying that she still loved him and was proud of him, but she has never said a word to me about my being gay.  although she still treats me the same as she always has so i guess it could be worse, i just have very little patience for her in general.

but probably the worst experience i have had was when i was 23, newly out to my family, had just moved into a hall of residence, and was scared about making friends because i had been pretty much out of society for five years - three years in hospital/residential and then two years of living first by myself and then with my parents, working at a supermarket and with only one friend.  so i was scared, i was still forming my identity as a lesbian.  anyway, a group of girls who lived on my floor decided to adopt me, and i hung out with them for a few days and it was really nice.  i went to an o-week party with them, and on the way back to the hall they decided it would be hilarious to go to a strip club (they were all 18 or 19 so y’know).  i went in but i wasn’t really feeling it - i’m not really a fan of strip clubs and i didn’t have any money to give the dancers but i didn’t want to be in there NOT giving them money.  one of the other girls looked visibly uncomfortable so i asked her if she wanted to go and wait outside until the others were ready to leave.  we were chatting, and she was like, “yeah, i just feel uncomfortable being in the presence of naked women,” and i was like, “fair enough, i don’t mind cos i’m gay, but i don’t really like strip clubs.”  after that she turned really frosty but i didn’t think anything of it until they all snobbed me at breakfast the next morning - turns out this girl goes to one of those evangelical megachurches who think that being gay can be “cured”, and she told the others that she didn’t want me hanging out with them anymore.  think she might have made some shit up about me to make them not like me either, lovely thing to do.  it didn’t matter because i made other friends in the hall, including probably the only two other lesbians living there, but it still hurt.  but the funny thing about it is this homophobic girl was my next door neighbour, and i knew it made her uncomfortable whenever she ran into me in the hallway - and i made a point to occasionally take girls home and have very loud sex with them, knowing she’d be able to hear hahahahahaha.

30. what is a piece of advice for people who may not be in a safe place to express their sexuality?  just do what you gotta do to survive - you’re no less queer if you can’t be out.  find someone you trust that you can talk to, so that you’re not alone.  it won’t always be like this - one day you’ll be able to live your truth.  just keep holding on.