#thank you for letting me ramble about clay Anon <3 Also the fact that you added an explication point made me go 💕✨💖‼️✨💕/pos

[seawing-vibes]

Clay!

favorite thing about them

Hes so nice !! Just unapologetically kind! I adore him for just being this big ol’ guy with the biggest heart, hes so sweet and its so cute I love characters that are just nice without needing any compensation. Of course Clay can still like. Defend himself & stuff , being sweet isnt his only personality trait, its just an addition that is really good to have in a protagonist I think. I just like Clay, I need to re-read his book

least favorite thing about them

Why was he reduced to nothing after the first book </3 Im sorry he got his good moments but really Tui made eating his prime gag which sucked, I dont even mind that he likes eating, I just wish it wasnt his main thing?? Like can we just let him express his other traits too please??? Remember how he was so emotional and open to express emotion and emotion towards others?? What happened to that?? Where was him comforting & checking up on everyone when he could? Like,, poof gone. No more </3 I love him but the way he was written kills me, so I guess it wasnt him specifically but more so how he was written

favorite line

"I'd die to save you and Starflight over and over if I had to." This line kills me despite it being quite simple , I dunno just the context overall and that entire scene just makes me loose it

brOTP

Clay and Sunny!! Besties/Sibling !! Love their lil side friendship, Sunny using Clay as a microphone (megaphone?) when she needed to be heard and clay just being sweet and defending her wail still letting her be her own person just so good!!

Friendship wise outside of sibling-hood, I actually think Peril & Clay are best friends! I have A Lot of thoughts on Peril, but I like to think that she mixed up romantic feelings with platonic ones (no thats not a bad thing!! Do not think I’m framing this as bad please !!) and either way Clay doesn’t reciprocate any romantic feelings. Despite this Clay & Peril become very close friends and are very physically affectionate too <3! Lots of big hugs and hand (talon?) holding in a very platonic and best-friends way

OTP

hes Aro Ace what do you mean /lh

nOTP

U h , romantically shipping him & peril makes me extreamly uncomfortable!! Not just because I view them as friends and my hc of him being Aro, but just due to how Peril perceives them in a romantic light and I feel is very unhealthy for both of them. The fact that the abscesses of Clay in Perils life canonically makes her “”evil”” again just gives me funky vibes /neg and I dunno I just dont enjoy! I dont know many other ships with Clay though so thats all I can thing of sorry to any Cleril fans reading </3

random headcanon

He just really likes pointing out small things that he enjoys ALL the time! At the end of the day he’ll sit with whoever is around and just list small things, like he witnessed two cardinals feeding eachother and he thought it was cute (cardinals do do this by the way, its a courtship thing its cute), he noticed that Pike was starting to enjoy paining more, just small things he takes notice of and likes to talk about. Starflight loves listing to this, but Clay tends to purposefully go down to visit Stonemover to tell him about all the cool things he saw that day, Stonemover is extremely grateful

unpopular opinion

Oh no uh i dont know, are there really any unpopular opinions,, on Clay?? I dont know I think my thoughts on him vibe with everyone else ?? I’m not sure really BHGV

song i associate with them

I listened to 200+ different genres this year and I have forgotten every single one of those songs I listened to Im sorry I have no idea

favorite picture of them

This one really embodies him <3333333333

[yrbutchgf]

hey, i'm feeling a bit insecure in my identity rn and i was wondering if you have any... tips, or anything like that. i'm a lesbian who feels more comfortable in a masc role, and i think i would identify as butch... but i feel like i'm too emotional. i cry SO often. my mental health has been less than stellar for the last 10 years or so lol, so that plays a part, but i'm also just a crier. things that make me cry: criticism, heated discussions, presentations, movie/game/book endings, all music with violins, some music without violins, christmas commercials, those miniature food clay charms... literally everything. and it's always in public too, which is embarrassing enough as it is. and i know that doesn't have to mean anything for my gender identity, but the whole "boys/men don't cry" thing kind of did a number on me lol. i always feel like a little girl when others watch me cry, even though i want to be the protector. sorry for rambling, but i feel like you always have good takes on butchness and stuff like that, so i was wondering if you have any tips on feeling more secure in my butch/masc side :)

ok before i say anything else, thank you, i’m honestly really flattered you think that highly of my takes lol <3 i do try my best, i’m glad i’m able to help people to whatever extent i do with my posts. also, bit of a length warning -- i always set out with the intention of writing succinct responses to asks, but it always gets away from me, and this time "getting away from me" meant "turning into a manifesto." well, oops. c'est la butch/femme.

now to start this answer off: i definitely relate. i’m also pretty emotional. when i get stressed i get really shaky, especially in my hands, and then after that my body turns on the waterworks. i also have a fairly exuberant personality in general, and i'm very expressive with my hands & body language. the only times i’ve ever really fit the stoic archetype have been on accident, usually when i’ve felt uncomfortable in a social situation and it’s come off as strong silence. at the same time, i also don’t like when people see me cry or be emotional in general, especially in public. it makes me feel vulnerable in a way that i don’t like to give most people, and the fact that i can’t fully control when or if i do is uncomfortable. and i think disliking that feeling is totally normal, or at the very least it’s a common boundary to have. regardless of sexuality, gender, or presentation, there’s a social urge to cover up when we’re feeling our feelings, but even beyond that there is, i think, a reflexive, self-preservation level urge to cover up what can be easily damaged. so to an extent, i think it’s natural to shy away from vulnerability.

at the same time, the urge to push down one’s tears is not necessarily a HEALTHY urge, only a COMMON one, because you’re right: emotionality has no bearing on your gender or what roles you can take up. some of my best butch and masc friends are also extremely emotional people, and they’re very open about it, and in a lot of ways that openness almost feels to me more masculine or more butch, because they’re embracing their feelings, and that’s obviously a really hard thing to learn to do, so it’s powerful, admirable, and also to be honest, it’s attractive! the ability of someone to be brave enough to be vulnerable can in many situations make the people around them feel more at ease, and i think it can become a very steady, very stabilizing sort of masculinity. in other words, someone who is very comfortable in their tears is also very good and healing to be around. so i think in a lot of ways, when you learn to own your emotions rather than push them away, that can very easily augment your butchness rather than take away from it.

now obviously everyone views butch/femme differently, whether as genders/sexuality labels/dynamics/what have you, but for me no matter what at the center of these terms there is always this nexus, this core focus, of care. in the dynamic, butch/femme is about butches & femmes caring for one another in complementary ways both in- and out-side of romantic relationships. so when we talk about butchness standalone, you and many other people reach for words like “protector,” and i don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with that, i think protection can and often is a key role, but my point here is, where is that urge to protect coming from? it’s from love, from caring about the people you love. and i think it’s important to remember that and to frame it that way, because when you do, it becomes pretty simple: your emotionalism is more than anything a sign of that urge to care/protect/provide in you, or a driving force to those urges, however you want to frame it. far from taking away from your butchness, your emotions are at the very foundation of what it can be. i talked about this in the butch/femme server a bit, and thren @lesbiandaemon said it perfectly:

i genuinely think i (and many others!) would feel so much safety and security being w someone who allows themself to be vulnerable and earnest abt their emotions and it definitely augments butchness, from my perspective as a femme. i envy and care deeply for the butch whose emotions and vulnerability are on display, there's a strength in that imo, even if you've been made to feel self conscious and dysphoric and "less than" bc of that. i think of phrases like "the strength to remain tender", "the violence it took to be this gentle" in the lens of trauma but if that applies and you're ok w it, i think it could also apply here too [...]

whether ppl know it or not, sometimes the way one carries themselves can be projected onto others; there's already an example in how anon mentions the "big boys/men don't cry" thing, vulnerability being shut out and dismissed/disparaged isn't going to make anyone more eager/open abt their emotions. and like, going back to the butch/femme dynamic, it does feel so much more stable and steady if someone has the courage to acknowledge and let themselves feel their emotions, it's very welcoming and validating, knowing that someone can have a strong image and show their tenderness, knowing that you're safe and free from mockery/scorn to do the same when someone protective of you knows how it feels and will care for you because they feel touched to their core and have let you know in more than one way.

and i want to add an important caveat here: obviously not everyone who cares very deeply is going to be outwardly emotional or show it in the same ways. that’s true for all kinds of reasons. i think a lot of the stoicism we see in traditional depictions of butches can come from how people relate emotions to masculinity (that is to say, how people view masculinity as inherently based around a distance from one’s “softer” side), but also, honestly, i think this may also have roots in the historical coping mechanisms that a lot of butches took on in the face of a world that was unkind to them.

in stone butch blues, for example, there’s a lot of talk about this idea of “hard” versus “soft,” or “going stone,” especially when jess is first getting into the bar scene and she’s still fresh-faced to violence. and going stone in this context isn’t just about sexuality, it's also about how so many butches learned to stop letting people in even at a basic emotional level. for them, hardening up was an inevitability of circumstance, not an inherent facet of their personality or a building block of butch identity. i’m sure plenty of old-school butches would be glad to know it’s no longer inevitable or necessary for a butch to close themselves off completely in order to survive.

of course there are also plenty of butches who are just naturally reserved with their emotions, and that’s also fine -- that doesn’t mean they don’t feel things, or that they don’t care. they care -- all of us do! some of us showing it more or less than others doesn’t reflect badly on any of us, whether we’re of a more stoic or a more open variety. but some of us really can’t help showing it, and that’s okay. that’s just how the love spills out. the right person won’t see that as weakness or a crack in the fine china of your masculinity or whatever, they’ll see it as a lovely and endearing part of your whole and warming butchness. so embrace your emotions. do your best to honor the role they play in butch/femmeness. try to love your emotions, or at the very least not to be afraid of them. and remember: you are strong. your tenderness will not destroy you. in fact, it’s what built you to begin with.

[wroef]

how would you characterize the finches (as in who are they a person, what is their personality like, their aesthetics, etc). you don't have to write essays, i'd just like to know what you think of each of them. that would really interest me.

mod milton just went to go get food which has left me unattended so (peace sign emoji)

(EDIT MOD MILTON GOT BACK FROM GETTING FOOD AND IM ONLY ON WALTER, you can’t tell me to not write essays i will anyway im trying to be as brief as possible this is just how i AM)

milton is the aesthetic dude so he can either reblog or go back and edit this with what he thinks everyone’s aesthetics would be, i’ll just give descriptions of them and their personality. also im only gonna do the ones with portraits!!

odin - probably has an attitude a lot like dawn? i mean, he uprooted his whole house to sail to america to try to escape the curse. so like, paranoid family man that wants to keep his family safe. also probably likes boating/fishing or something. he’s probably sorta like my dad in that he cares deeply about his family, doesn’t like really anyone else, and can almost be sorta hotheaded when it comes to something getting in the way of him and his family. i sorta get that vibe? idk

edie - probably like how mod milton has described her before, like a kooky but weirdly lovable grandma? like the kind that would babysit the kids and then give them a bunch of chocolate and candy just before sending them back to their parents or something. probably a sweet old lady but also the kind that’s like ‘youre too nice wtf’ because she’d also be weirdly paranoid and such because of the family curse. definitely a person you could sit with and hear all of her stories though.

molly - i feel like she’d be the kinda kid who’d eat bugs and stuff as a kid and break her toys to figure out how they worked. she reminds me a lot of me as a kid, just more happy? and more interested in sea stuff. i feel like she’d be the kinda girl that you’d have to drag away from the beach whenever yall had to go home. just super bubbly and sweet but with sorta a weird fascination with dissecting things and figuring out how the innards of stuff work together. also probably spends more time eating than doing literally anything else

barbara - definitely the cute blonde that everyone said ‘she’s gonna be big one day’ and she did. she probably woulda loved watching child star stuff and when she had the opportunity to be in a movie she begged edie to let her audition. as she got older and america ‘grew out of her’, she probably was a theater kid type in high school, just waiting for another big break and auditioning anywhere she could. definitely the kind to roll her eyes whenever she had to babysit her little brothers, but she still cared a lot about them.

calvin - the kid to have probably gotten his head stuck in a fish bowl pretending to be an astronaut more than once. he was probably a big nerd growing up about space, begging for stuff like a telescope or astronomy books or anything he could get his hands on. he was the kid who said ‘im gonna be an astronaut when i grow up’ and was actually gearing to do just that. he was probably amazing as heck at school and sam might have even had him do his homework more than once. so smart kid, very hardheaded. think of like, how the majority of the fandom portrays clay terran from ace attorney (if anyone around here plays AA?)

sam - perfectly content staying on the ground, thanks. total one-with-nature type kid, probably wanted to be a nature photographer before calvin died. after the fact, he probably geared himself more toward military because he figured the thought of achieving your ‘true dream’ was all bs since he had then lost two siblings trying to achieve their dreams. so he dropped the photography except for recreational usage, and focused on gearing toward the military probably because this is vietnam war time and he didn’t really have a drive to go for anything else. he liked the structure that being in the military gave him and raised his kids with the same strict schedule, but it was probably a combination of his general stubborn pessimistic personality (which was never shown around the kids, of course) with his history and being away from the kids for a lot of their younger years because of the USMC that lead to his and Kay’s divorce. i feel like ive rambled a lot about sam for someone who doesn’t like him. tl;dr bad dad but also sad dad?

walter - my poor, sweet, paranoid delusional baby. he was probably the type to, like molly, enjoy the sea a lot. he probably wanted to be a marine biologist growing up, and when barbara died because of the supposed ‘monster’, being exposed to that kind of trauma of literally hearing your sister’s last words as she screams while being killed, that would kinda fuck you up. i could see him locking himself in his room for days on end, eventually forcing edie to have to drop him out of school and homeschool him. it probably took him months to even be able to step outside of his room. when calvin died he probably re-shut himself in, just terrified of everything. it said in game he had been down there for 30 years, and since he died at 53, that would mean he retreated to the basement at 23 years old. possibly, when no one else was living in the house aside from edie, she and him worked together to create the bunker that took a few years to make before it was livable.

dawn - she probably took after her dad a lot, not in the fact of the hunting or other activities he enjoyed but more in the pessimistic view of life. she’s seen in his story reading a lot and i feel like that’s because she’s the quiet type that would rather submerse herself in a fantasy world in a book than she would interact with the real world. sorta like how the whole “sam seemed to go out of his way to meet [death]”, conversely, dawn tried to stay away from it as much as possible. she probably grew up wanting to explore and ‘see the world’ before she died, which was why she started joining volunteer programs to help people in other countries. she probably became more religious after her dad passed but hid it more when she got close to sanjay because of religious differences, which was why she and sanjay would have decided to raise their kids without religion. she cared a lot, but she showed it in a weird way; she was angry and paranoid, sure, but she did care. sorta like how i wrote odin.

gus - rebel kid. probably grew up with a resentment for his dad and saw him as the source for ‘mom leaving’ and such. gregory died when he was around 8 years old, which is just around the time hormones are about to go wild and puberty sets in, so he probably launched himself into a punk rock lifestyle to sort of rebel against his parents and deal with his grief in his own way when he felt no one else really understood him. since dawn was pretty hardheaded and stern and pessimistic like their father, gus probably didn’t feel all that comfortable talking to her, so he just bottled a lot of stuff up. sad baby

gregory - i feel like his story sums him up personality wise pretty well, idk, hes a baby

lewis - stoner kid. he probably grew up in india learning both english and hindi from his parents, and was generally a normal happy kid until his dad died. when he did and they moved back to the states, he would have been about 14, with milton at 10 and edith at 3. milton and lewis probably got along a lot for the year they were together in the finch house and while they were being homeschooled, and when milton disappeared he probably fell into a depressive state as he had no one else to really talk to around his age about the losses he experienced. not to mention as another anon said, he was the only finch to not really show any artistic talents, which further ostracized him from his family and everyone else. he probably took to drugs as a means to cope, which became a habit. when he graduated and isolated himself in his room to smoke and occasionally talk to edith, that’s when dawn signed him up for a job at the cannery to try to help coax him out and into a more healthy life, which of course backfired. overall though, he would have been a really nice person, if not sort of standoffish emotionally. he loved spending time with his siblings and his dad, though never really had much attachment to his mom. nice dude, 10/10, would smoke a bowl with him

milton - (in the words of mod milton: college art student doesn’t get sleep) ok thanks mod milton. ok so like. i see milton as being the super artsy kid in class, the one who’d say ‘i wanna be an artist when i grow up!’ and fucked around with paint all the time and stuff. as he got older he figured out how to make stuff work better (might have even been signed up for art classes) and figured out how to make landscapes and animate (with flipbooks) and such like that. he was probably a kid very eager to learn and discover new things, like how in an entire year he managed to find all the passageways in the finch house and disclose that information to lewis before he disappeared. very smart kid, practically a prodigy for his age in the world of painting and art

edith - sweet sweetheart baby child. probably grew up like the others, wanting to learn and figure out as much stuff as she possibly could. she took to drawing a lot and maybe even took pointers as a young 4 year old from her 11 year old brother milton before he disappeared. when he disappeared this probably raised a lot of curiosity in the young child and she wanted to learn more about her family history, but dawn wouldn’t allow it and edie wanted to respect her grandchild’s wishes despite her great-grandchild’s arguments. once they stopped being homeschooled (which idk what age that would be, i’d have to do math) and edith started going to public school, she may have been kind of insecure and introverted and kept to herself a lot of the time. when lewis died and she had to switch schools she probably gained more confidence from being in a place where no one knew her or her family history anymore and got herself a boyfriend which would lead to current situations in game.

I KNOW YOU SAID TO NOT WRITE PARAGRAPHS BUT THIS IS JUST HOW I DO MAN SORRY

-mod lewis