#that will be the tag i use for this niche headcanon topic

[kurthummeldeservesbetter]

Arcane & Taylor Swift: Eras Tour: What are they doing?

As a swiftie everything I am about to say is correct. you're welcome. also i miss the eras tour.

Caitlyn and Vi have the floor seats. Caitlyn made at least two bracelets for every song on the setlist. Vi barely managed to convince her to do so (the original plan was 2 bracelets for every song in her catalogue.) Vi is making friends with everyone around them, headbanging to every song. every song. Caitlyn is wearing Red-era inspired fits, Vi is in reputation.

Mel is sitting in one of the covered box seats with Elora and Sky. Make no mistake, she is enjoying the concert-she's treating it like a Broadway show. She wore her best casual gown to go with the Speak Now setlist. Don't ask how she knew it matched Taylor's. Did get teary during surprise songs of Mean and Mad Woman (Tampa N3 rise up!)

Elora and Sky, btw, are bracelet-making queens. They made mash-up bracelets. they made meme bracelets. they used charms. Elora is in a Folklore-inspired fit, Sky is also in her speak-now era (she is wearing the purple dress from the Speak Now tour). (Mel is a little jealous of the dress but she is living her speak now truth).

Jinx is one of the heroes who is livestreaming the show. She is singing, loudly, so people do complain in the steam, but she doesn't talk when Taylor is giving a speech AND she keeps it pointed at Taylor at all times, plus she has the clearest stream, so people don't mind the singing. She is somehow wearing every era.

Isha gets the 22 hat.

Ekko is with Jinx, he's the boyfriend who came along and is respecting the vibes, even though he knows maybe one song per era. (He DANCED throughout 1989 era though. Bad Blood stan.) He and Isha are in matching 1989 fits, Jinx is...wearing every era.

Viktor and Jayce are in the accessible seats in the first level of the stadium, first row, so they are high enough to see the stage (at the front) but don't get trampled or knocked around on the floor, and so they can sit comfortably when needed.

Jayce BELTED his heart out to All Too Well, even though he's incredibly happy. Viktor cried during this is me trying/daylight. (Miami N1 rise up!). Jayce is dressed for the Lover Era. Viktor is folklore/evermore (indecisive king).

Sevika is at the local bar keeping track of her kids via Jinx's livestream. She turned it up only for surprise songs and made everyone else around her quiet down so she could hear it.

[heart-democracy]

TDI Advice wanted!

Hi TD fans! I'm planning a rewrite of TDI, the cast will be 18 for in-universe reasons (think legal contracts, I'm not gonna be weird about them). I'm aiming to make it more realistic and in line with the 2007 aesthetic, i.e era appropriate lingo & references, mobile phones are rare, homophobia is a bigger concern etc, but I'm wondering how far I should take it?

In the end I'll write what I enjoy, but should I lean more heavily into the gritty side of reality TV both on and behind the screen, include more notable sexism, potential slurs and creepy behaviours etc? The point is for there to be believable drama in-universe and the topics planned all have some merit to be present. I have some hard lines I'll never cross (see last tags on the post for those curious) and I want people familiar with the themes to feel seen rather than exploited reading it.

At the end of the day the cast are just youngsters getting to know each other and themselves. I want to humanize them and write believable conflicts without demonizing anyone, it is intended as a character driven story after all. But I also want to know what others think would make for an enjoyable read/take on the show.

The cast will inevitably diverge from their canon counterparts, but I am unsure how to handle certain characters, an example being LeShawna. She's clearly based on a racist stereotype, but her personality, background and lingo are a huge part of her appeal and I'd rather portray her in a better light than change her from the ground up. If you have any pointers I can keep in mind for her or anyone else you think is often portrayed poorly in canon or fanon then please let me hear your takes! This goes for non-TDI castmates as well, even if they don't show up in the story I wanna know what people think does and doesn't work for them and their tropes/traits cause it might still be relevant!

[bungo-neurodivergent-dogs]

" TW for mentions of programming and torture (nothing in detail but please lmk if I over stepped by sending this) "

" Possibly a more niche headcanon but I think Chuuya is in a programmed system. He isn’t aware of his system and has no communication with his alters, who can mostly mask as him so he doesn't have many 'obvious' symptoms to pick up on besides memory loss and PTSD.

My main 'theory' is that corruption is something the scientists tortured him into being able to do and that it's another alter who uses corruption (hence why Chuuya has no memory or control over his ability in that state).

I think those close to him (Dazai and certian members of the flags) have picked up on his system but Chuuya shuts down any talk about it almost instantly and wont listen to others about this topic.

(As a disclaimer I know this doesn't correlate with canon a lot. As another disclaimer I'm a member of a system who possibly has programmed parts and this hc brings me comfort) "

Requested by anon // mod notes under cut

i decided not to add this mod notes to tag because i want to write a bit more than tumblr would probably let me. as someone who is in a torture based mind control) and probably programmed system (because I sincerely have no memories of our past. i cannot say or remember anything who happened before I split and I avoid talking about it with others because its a negative trigger.) this headcannon genuinely brings us so much comfort.

[birdyverdie]

Hiya! Just wanted to drop by and say hi and thanks for reaching out and saying hi on my silly little post about talking about DD :,)

I love seeing all the Paracelsus enjoyers, she is the best shrimp posture doctor. <3 Do you have any personal favourite/niche headcanons for her?

Also good luck with your exams! Are you studying medicine/biomedicine? (I did a few classes a few years ago, and kudos -- it's so much material, especially the anatomy classes.) Do you have a favourite class? :o

Hi hi! :D! I put the personal stuff under a read more because by GOD can I ramble </3

Of course! I always like saying hi to people I see in the Darkest Dungeon tag! I think your art is SO lovely too!! I adore the way you draw Dismas and Reynauld!! They're so shapely in your style <3 pair that up with a Bloodborne crossover?? you're spoiling us fans fr!!

I'm a Para enjoyer first and foremost because I relate with the thirst for random medical knowledge that Para has, and also her bird motif!! (She's bird-like in my heart and soul. And I'm a bird enjoyer <3)

I have a few stray headcanons for her, mostly everything is about her scope of practice because that's where my thought process tends to stray when I study. We know that she's named after the father of toxicology, so most of her study goes into figuring out external agents effects on the human body. Though, I like to imagine her to have side interest in hematology as well! Mixing blood with a bunch of other agents seems like something she would be interested at least. (Perhaps that's how she finds out about blood types...*cough* I've been thinking about writing a Paracelsus fic about this for literal months *cough*)

This is a personal thing of mine, but I refuse to believe that Paracelsus actually believed in Humorism. I mean, the first iteration of it was basically a glorified personality test, nay horoscopes! (Yes I know that knowledge was limited back then, but alas, I'd like to imagine her scope is more experimental than observational.)

So instead I headcanon her to--if not the progenitor of Germ Theory--then at least a constituent of it. I think she and Louis Pasteur would have really fun conversations about it.

Another stray headcanon I have is that she receives the equivalent of a newspaper subscription from historical medical practitioners/researchers. So her daily newspaper could be about Edward Jenner's vaccine studies or Ferdinand Cohn's endospores. I don't care that the two of them existed 100 years apart, if we can have a 7th century BC Roman Vestal and a 14th century Plague Doctor in the same room then I can have Edward Jenner and Andrew Wakefield ("vaccines cause autism" guy) duking it out in scientific papers that Paracelsus reads like a WWE match.

Thank you for the luck fellow science enjoyer! Are you also studying medicine :0!?

Thankfully, my exam period is finally over, so I'm taking it easy with recuperating with the post-exam burnout :P And I'm a health major with a nutrition minor, but with a program path towards perfusion! My far-future end goal is to become a surgeon, but due to life circumstances I'll have to settle for perfusion for the time being :P Which I don't mind at all! I think it's such an interesting field, and a hidden hero for many cardiac surgeries! I also really like learning about the circulatory system so I think it's a little perfect ehehe :D!

My favorite class is currently Anatomy & Physiology, I have a really good professor this year, but my god It's actually a lot more complex than I thought it was gonna be while walking in. I genuinely thought it was mostly memorizing like...the bones of the skeleton and perhaps the muscles or something like that. Nahhh it takes a lot of micrology concepts too ;; Which I don't mind! But some days I'm staring at some topics like the neuromuscular junction and wishing I never knew what acetylcholine was. Though some days I do wish to return to Medical Terminology, that class was what I imagined: simple.

Thank you so much for this ask!! It was lovely talking about it!!

[graysongraysoff]

i think switching over from twitter to bluesky these last couple days and watching my timeline as folks try to find each other over there has helped me isolate something that’s been bothering me for the last couple of years that i haven’t been able to articulate until now.

see, the fandoms and fanfic-sharing spaces i have been in until recently were very much just about enjoying x thing together in the very simplest sense. even in the bigger and more “topical” fandoms i’ve been in over the years, it was all about making a small, close-knit group of friends really casually in the tags by exchanging headcanons and rping and writing fics for each other in a very, like, “non-commercial” way. just hanging out and having fun and feeding off of each other’s passion in forums or later on tumblr with no expectations beyond just enjoying each other’s work and company. like sure i still got in my head about kudos and comments from time to time, who doesn't, but it was more of an every-once-in-a-while thing rather than being like. daily.

now, i don’t know if this is because of the specific fandoms i’m in currently or if fandom in general has made this shift as forum sites and tumblr have fallen off and more algorithmic sites like twitter and instagram have taken over, but recently trying to engage in fan spaces feels so much more like. capitalist now, lol. it’s all about networking and promoting your work and Getting That Bag (either figuratively via kudos and comments or literally via commissions and zines). not that this hasn't always been an element of fandom — i know it has, and a big one at that. and i know a lot of people enjoy this side of things, which is awesome! go get that bag! hell knows i’m gonna buy that merch and support those zines!

i’m just saying that, to me, it feels like that's the whole thing now rather than just a part of it. i largely haven’t been successful with finding fandom friends the way i used to, because, well, how do you start bantering casually with people in fandom tags now that everyone has left tumblr, and twitter and instagram et al basically function as fandom linkedin? the larger shift away from just goofing off in forums to creating promotional threads for your fanfic on bluesky and huge discord servers to network in... i don't know. i don't love it.

i’ve started using reddit a little more over the last few days, so we'll see; maybe that's where my chiller, more vibey fandom niche has vanished to. but i think trying to carve a space in this larger fandom culture is the root of this constant feeling of inadequacy i’ve been wrestling with these last couple years. everyone takes everything so much more seriously, and i pay so much more attention to my ao3 stats than i used to as a result. i’m simply not having fun anymore.

it's no wonder i want to orphan my fics and delete my accounts when it feels like the only way to make fandom friends now is through fucking marketing. i do enough of that at my job without making it a part of my hobbies, too.

[lemonhemlock]

i have to say, you guys are relentless, i only need to post one helaemond-related ask and it inevitably brings all the boys to the yard :))

don't get me wrong, i enjoyed reading your takes & i'm posting them under the cut for anyone who wants to read such rants, but, at this point, with so little content, i feel like there's not really a lot more i can personally add to fandom critique that i haven't already said (discourse and metas anyone can find if they go through my designated tag).

so i hope you won't feel offended & this is 100% a helaemond blog but i am going to pause the shipping wars topic for the time being unless something fresh hits our port or we get some kind of news / additional content (maybe like scripts? would love to see those!)

it's been more than a year since the season ended and we've made all the arguments we could possibly make, but we can't control if there are users who still rehash the same three talking points over and over

Anonymous asked: The kids theory was always a long shot and to be fair, their paternity doesn't really matter for the ship to happen. Helaemond can still have romantic feelings to each other without the kids being his, but like you said, if the ship doesn't get confirmed as canon antis and Aemondwives will all be like "We told you so!!! You were all delusional and you should've stopped shipping it!!!!"...okay? It still doesn't change the fact the writers most likely played with the possibility. Setting up potential storylines and not picking them up in a later season is something that has always been happening in TV especially when the team behind the show changes in between seasons like it happened with hotd this time (maybe those who speculated that Sapochnik came up with the idea of Helaemond were right?). Idk how many chances the ships still has if the leaks about B&C being at the end of episode 1 or in episode 2 are real (I doubt there can be a romance after the event), but whatever happens people won't stop shipping it. Non-canon pairings have always been a thing in fandoms and sometimes they may even be more popular than canon ones. It's still baffling to me how hated this ship has become in the fandom though.

Anonymous asked: it feels very obvious because a lot of these fans won’t bring the same “it’s non-canon/made up/etc” vibe to something like Aegond or Daemond, but they will to Helaemond bc they fear it might actually happen in canon. Which, if it does, has nothing to do with the shippers and comes from the writers 😭

Anonymous asked: Some antis are now making up crap about Helaemond shippers hating on Ewan. One of them even made a list and they were listed as his top haters (they also included TB stans and L*cemond shippers but...Alicent and Aegon stans for some reasons as well lmao) while another one claimed Helaemonds are currently bashing Ewan by generally making fun of him and of his looks because of the ship not happening???? I don't know whose comments made them angry but I've yet to see one Helaemond bullying and actually hating on him. Not saying nasty H shippers don't exist but why claim all of them are doing something like this when it clearly isn't the case? At most I've seen people making fun of some of the things he says in interviews but this is not hate. People are allowed to joke.

lmao, people lightheartedly joshing around and pointing out some cringe statements is not hate, dictionaries exist!

Anonymous asked: The funniest thing about the crowing reaction all of the Ewan-obsessed twitter fans had to this supposed leak is when it comes to what canonical "confirmation" Helaemond shippers as a whole most often discussed it was a type of courtly love; probably unconsummated feelings between the two. The kids theory was a niche fun fanon theory mainly used for fics and headcanons, and most people who are still participating in this fandom had little to no "expectation" that we would see that on the show. Funny to point out that expectation isn't even the correct word to use here, as Helaemonds by and large were completely fine with no type of canonical confirmation, and were mainly excited for any Aemond and Helaena interactions we may get in the new season. It's a non-canon ship, people are drawn to all of the potentials they personally see in this dynamic, and how it can be explored in fan content. Shippers like this very rarely care about canonicity - not to say they wouldn't welcome it of course on the off chance it happened, but that is not a priority of their engagement in fandom.

[franki-lew-yo]

My speech and social interaction is lame as hell so pardon me if this is a weird question, but I think it's relevant since people are currently talking about allies being performative anyway.

Is there a way to posit a question without disturbing any communities tags?

Example 1: Say I want to ask is goblins in media are inherently antisemetic or not. How do I ask that/what tags do I use? Isn't "jumblr" or even "jewish tumblr", "gentile", or "jewish history" invading the tags and tacky to do when I'm asking as a curious gentile and not in the Jewish community myself?

"Just ask a friend"/"Get a Sensitivity reader"

Yeah I know but,

I'm not looking for single opinion and I'm not looking for use in any of my own writings. I'm legit just curious as an 'outsider' to this (if I do end making something that, for whatever reason, involves someone else's perspective obv then I'd seek out a beta reader). I think a lot of allies, when they hear about a topic or insight they legit can't speak for, want to see a thread/discussion/talk being held to get an idea of the broader opinion - not to have an opinion themselves just to know what they're getting into/what's this all about'.

It's the feeling of wanting somesort of insight without making other people feel like they exist just to be your insight??

Example 2: Say I were a trans sensitivity reader and a cis person paying me for my intakeopinion that'd be, like, my job. Noproblem. But if I'm off the clock and some cisally asked me if they should block people for playing Hogwarts Legacy because they heard from their other ally-friend that they should, what would I even say to that? What if I

have very specific feelings abt Harry Potter outside the controversy? would/how would my perspective be 'off'?

don't know if the person's friend was speaking in earnest or if the person asking me is just speaking in hyperbole? It's none of my business to get that involved, I know, but that helps me to know what to say.

don't want to have an opinion myself?

don't want to be asked that??? I mean unless I'm known by my watchers for tackling this kind of stuff how could I know?

There's only one demographic I belong to and that'd be people with autism and I gotta say I'm not always comfortable when neurotypical people ask me for my specific autist opinion (especially irl). I can't speak for every autistic, adhd+ocd person in the world! We're not a hive mind and we definitely don't all share the same opinion on something. Now, I may be more inclined or interested in eventually replying if I saw a post posited to multiple people. Like if I say something that read: "is it okay to headcanon 'x character 'as autistic when I'm not autistic; is that stereotyping?" I'd give my own niche opinion best I could as someone with that disability and hope the person I'm talking to knows that that still only accounts for me and keep looking.

Is everything I'm describing legit too distinct a question? Is this a Franki and/or just autistic person problem or does any one else relate to this feeling regarding being asked or asking around for insight? How much of this has anything to do with allies of any race/gender/minority speaking for other people?

Part of me thinks this is just my own incompetence talking to other people...but I don't know.

Thoughts?

[pastelxapplecore]

My name is Xed/Pastel ^v^ (He/Xe/They)! I am 25 years old and any other art accts will likely have the username pastelxapple if you want to find me on other platforms!

This is gonna be my multifandom page for my insane thoughts and hyperfixations :3 expect cringe, LOTS of cringe

Blog intro, tags, & rules ⬇️

TAGS:

#my art (or #xed art) - My art tag! You can find my artwork directly with this tag 🐍✨

#ask box - All replies to my inbox are tagged with this! It comprises mostly of Q&As of my mercs or other characters, art requests, and other questions!

#lore crumbs 🍰 - Small pieces of art and/or posts about my ocs or AUs! 👏🏼✨ I try to tag posts with any info or headcanons about my characters/AUs ^^

#pastelsneksona (or #snakesona) Tag used for any art I make of my snakesona! 🐍💖

#tsu art - (or #twin art) - Art tag for my twin's artwork 🦊 (@/hoshi-tsubasa )! I love sharing her work and she deserves more praise for it! ^v^✨ Yes she is a furry so be kind!!!

#moot art 💖 - Art tag for my artist mutuals! I love to share their work so I keep this tagged to their stuff so I can find it again (cuz I'm dumb and don't wanna scroll through reblogs for eternity)

Note: I may tag some ships with more personal labels so please keep in mind that they will usually have their own individual tags!

General Info:

Pr0shipper/“problematic” (l0licon, AI "art", etc...) accounts DNI!!! I will block you >:(((

IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY CONTENT PLEASE BE POLITE AND MOVE ON!!! I'll post some niche/rarepair ships sometimes, which are often comfort ships for different reasons (some personal)! I'm just here to have fun and draw what I like 💌 If any ship that I post is not your cup of tea I kindly suggest to keep any comments to yourself and just move on, harassment and hate on my art blog(s) will not be tolerated here. You WILL be blocked if you leave rude comments over me for liking a ship. I love the ships I love for deeper reasons often for personal comfort and/or self healing purposes, and I do not go around claiming them as canon (I respect the source content, I just ship outside of it as fanon). I also have favorite ships from many fandoms so keep in mind that I do fandom hop.

Please be aware I likely will not draw nsfw! There may be suggestive art tho from time to time :3c Some things will be tagged with tw if needed!

Please do not use ship tags on my art unless I have them put down myself! I am not comfortable with certain dynamics being labeled as ships, especially if the dynamic is not meant to be in any form romantic/sexual ;;

In addition, please be aware I have ADHD and an alter system (DID), so please note that I may go silent with posts every once in a while. My mental health is not a subject I care to make front and center here, so I prefer any questions or topics of such be kept private! Thank you! 💖

If you can I encourage you to reblog my artwork if you like it! Traction on tumblr is very different than on other social sites like twitter and tiktok, so it would mean a lot to me if you could share my art! 🥺💌 I'm deeply humbled if you enjoy my content, thank you!

Ask Box Rules:

This is a 16+ ask blog, so if you wanna ask me anything something pls feel free! Please keep questions relatively appropriate (a few dirty jokes I don't mind depending on the context)! Anon questions will be turned on and off from time to time, but if people completely abuse it or things get out of hand I will shut them off permanently ;3; Also please respect that there's a limit for how much you can ask of me, I won't consistently draw the same thing over and over if it's asked for like more than 3 times (especially by the same person)!

If I do not respond to your ask, it may be because I am either uncomfortable with the ask, am unsure how to respond, or simply do not feel that it is an ask that needs to be posted. I am also NOT an rp blog so I will not respond to rp-like asks. Please respect this, thank you!

Please be respectful! I have major anxiety and communication/socializing is difficult for me, so I may not engage in conversations much ;0; I do get super nervous with parasocial behavior!!! I will do my best to respond to my inbox so please be patient with me 💌

Fanart/Art Rules:

Art Trades are for mutuals only! I rarely do them but think they're fun! Also will only do an art trade if the level of art quality and skill is the similar to my own, thank you! 💖

This isn't entirely an art request blog but depending on the question in the ask box I might doodle something if I'm interested enough! 🍰✨ I don't really draw ship requests often tho! ;3; Might do some that I like but depends!

I don't mind fanart! If you'd like to make fanart for me please tag me so I can see your lovely work! However pls don't draw any of my ocs or version (aus included) of characters inappropriately or in ships I otherwise am not comfortable with, as they likely have pre-established relationships ;; Also please do not misinterpret/take creative liberties with my ocs or snakesona, as they are my personal reflections of myself and I am more sensitive about art of them. I am uncomfortable with misinterpretations and/or nsfw art of them. If you are unsure about anything please ask me first, I am very firm and particular about them! Thank you!!! 💖

If you want to use my art as a profile pic please ask me first!!! DO NOT REPOST OR EDIT MY ARTWORK!!!!

[albwreckt]

✢⁎. ALBWRECKT — an affiliated roleplay blog for balthus of fire emblem: three houses, WITH THEMES OF — rebellion, trueness to oneself, nonconformists, breaking free, repaying debts, golden hearts, carving niches, punching monsters.

mobile links  — ( about , stats , headcanons

HEADCANONS BELOW:

-Balthus' character will be confined to FE3H's Academy Phase. For the sake of keeping continuity with the other Ashen Wolves muses, Cindered Shadows is being treated as though it has not happened. The same goes for the events of Three Hopes.

-As an FE3H canon, Balthus has been in TOA the entire time. I headcanon that he was too busy being a bum to show up to any of the events or really take classes seriously, and that things are now changing with a sudden spike in motivation (read: empty pockets).

-If your muse is an Abyssian, they can have some level of familiarity with him. For any muses who have canon supports with Balthus in FE3H, I treat B supports as canon, though please do message me if you'd like me to make an exception for your muse!

-I use certain aspects of his Three Hopes interactions to color his character. While they aren't canon, certain details that stand to reason as being core to Balthus (his impressions, for example) will be referenced from time to time.

-While I don't have any ships for him planned, I'll be tagging any that spring up just due to the age issue he presents. Feel free to blacklist any that make you uncomfortable.

-Other triggering topics that are frequent character beats for him include alcohol and gambling. If you don't want either of these mentioned in threads, please try to say so before we start one.

-Balthus has an official gold tracker! Every bit of money he borrows or earns from any source in toa will be logged, as well as any that he not-so-wisely spends during his time here. Each week, I'll include a smaller expense to represent things like food and nights at the tavern, and each month a bigger expense that he uses to keep his family safe.

-Of note is that this tracker does not include any of his past debts. I simply think I'd suffer a migraine if I tried to calculate this sum. Just know that it's there and the number is Big.

-If your muse loans any money to him, I make no guarantees that he'll pay it back.

[tuiyla]

Glee analysis/meta masterpost

I haven’t shut up about Glee in months so I thought it was high time for a proper masterpost. I’ll be linking to all asks and most posts written unprompted but I also tried to do categories and subcategories of what ended up as my niche topics. There are overlaps but here are the main ones I narrowed it down to and categorized as. Will be an ever-updating post, hopefully. Highlighted in bold are the meatier, longer posts.

Santanalysis:

A case study in compulsory heterosexuality

Part 1, season 1

Part 2, season 2

The Outing and IKAG

Santana shouldn’t have been outed

All IKAG posts

Anger and other flaws

Why being outed didn’t magically solve all her issues

Anger issues

Kind, not nice

Doubling down on worst expectations and the Lopez cycle

Where anger stems from

Harmful ways of coping (anger and spite)

I’m glad she’s a bitch

Quinntana and anger

Other

“The male Santana”: the unholy trinity of gay bullies (no, not that one)

Pride Month feature 2021

Best Santana episodes

Santana in season 4

Mental health // ED

Other comphet posts

Glee-ver, education and fame

On law vs PR

Sancedes

Brittana:

Mashups that could have been

“Rules don’t apply to us” - Brittana and shifting the narrative

Brettiago aka genderbent Glee

All or Nothing aka believing in each other

Brittana’s PDA

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face smile

Familial dynamics

Post-breakup Brittana

Seasons ranking

Resolving the season 2 angst

Compatibility

Why they fell in love

Why they’re OTP

placeholder for when I find and tag posts about the sunshine and grump dynamic

Song analyses:

Ranking Pezberry duets by how Gay they are

Mine and Mr. Lopez

At the Ballet and Mr. Lopez

Glee covers that recontextualized the original song

10 years of Rumour Has It/Someone Like You: Glee’s musical storytelling

“Alfie” and Santana’s vulnerability

Glee sing-offs winners

Ranking Santana’s solos based on importance to her character, part I & part II

Other:

Pezberry thought of the week

Quinn headcanons/AUs

Quinntana midgame HCs

Kitty and Ryder in 4x20

Accidental Bartie analysis

Glee restructure

How to divide a Glee season

Found family - case study: where What the World Needs Now falls short

Favourite things about X

Gleewrites (rewrites and could have beens)

Scene analyses

Silly rankings

The Glee girls cast as the Six Queens

Finn sucks

Glee asks links:

All

Santana

Brittana

Pezberry

Quinntana

Quinn

Kitty

Brittany

Headcanons

Friendships

ND girls

[mushroomjeremy]

CW: PSA about Montauk House

Can’t believe I have to make this but I think people who aren’t active or occasionally tag something in the main SCP 4231 tag might need to be reminded of certain things. And I’m willing to not say this kindly or bushing certain part of this article that don’t really get brought up normally or just fucking never. But I think this might be necessary for the people in the back to hear or a link-able post to explain to those who forgot about something or just never knew about in the first place.

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND IF YOU LINK A MINOR WITH THIS POST. JUST BE VERY FUCKING CAREFUL. THIS IS A VERY ADULT TOPIC AND THEY MAYBE SHOULDN’T READ THIS IF THEY THEMSELVES HAVE NOT SEEMED TO READ THE ARTICLE ITSELF.

I’m writing this post as bluntly and uncensored as I can do as it’s the best way for people to understand. If anything below is triggering or you begin to become triggered as you read, PLEASE STOP AND LEAVE THIS POST IT’S NOT WORTH YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

If you want to make an AU/Headcanon about Lilly being redeemable, a good mother, or about her having ‘good intentions’ (seriously or jokingly) NEVER SHOULD YOU EVER USES RITUALS LILLY/SCP-4231-A! She is unsalvageable in this regard.

And for those that don’t know why or need a reminder about what canon 4231 takes place in and that SHE IS LITERALLY TRYING TO BE THE WORST PERSON AND SUPPOSE TO BE WRITTEN THAT WAY. Here a good chuck of what we knew she has canonically done and the explanation/motives of such actions. And why you should not be posting this in the main tag.

TLDR: Don’t uses SCP-4231-A Lilly ever and uses the Black Type/Eden Garden Lilly if you want a ‘good/fix it’ Lilly. And NEVER tag it with SCP 4231 or SCP 4231 - A.

I’m not bring up anyone specifically that has done this. I see different people do so around every 6 months and it has gotten under my skin every time I’ve seen it. I feel that this still needs to be said in some form.

I beg of you with this. Many frequent people in main tag are there for their own trauma relief from similar experiences in their own lives. It’s become  a niche for talking about abuse through Francis. She is not to be brought up lightly there.

There is a reason that the SCP fandom in general doesn’t just randomly bring up SCP 4231 to the point of sometimes it seems like an obscure article. It physically and mentally fucks readers up. People can’t finish the thing sometimes. You do not bring this up unless the space is known for it and main tag is one of the ‘do not talk about some of this stuff’ oddly enough.

CW/TW for what’s past ‘Keep Reading’:

Everything, Just Everything: Sexual Assault, Rape, Domestic Abuse, Physical Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Verbal Abuse, Financial Abuse, Murder, Torture, Disembodiment, Forced Impregnation, Forced Marriage, Sex Slavery, Sex Trafficking, Kidnapping, Hostages, Grooming, Incest, Genocide, Gaslighting, Victim Blaming, Psychosis, PTSD, Cults, Child Soldiers, Pregnancy, Birth, done to various degrees to women, men, children, and animals. Very heavy on the children side of things. And I’ve probably missed a lot of other warnings. Tread very lightly.

Here we fucking go. Buckle in this is almost as long as the article itself.

Anyone who knows a lot about SCP you're going to have to bare with stuff being generalized such as the actual 110 Procedures and 999 not wholly relevant to this post. This is to understand what Lilly thought she was doing not what actually going on/happened. As well as boiling the names Francis, Agent Ukulele, and Dr. Alto Clef to just Clef for simplicity. Also not much mention of A Major system because that’s it’s own can of worms that not relevant for this topic at hand.

Let’s start with the basics of what Montauk House is/is about:

SCP-4231 The Montauk House generally takes place in a conglomerate canon call Rituals/Montauk Procedures/Dust and Blood/Scarlet King Mythos or Lore. While these canon vague allude to various different connective events/concepts, to 90% of the SCP Fandom these are the same canon and should be treating as such unless you know who you are talking too.

As a basic understanding this all revolves around SCP-231. Which if you don’t know is about the torture of 7 girls around the ages of single to double digits (think ages 6~14) that were impregnation by a sex cult (Children of the Scarlet King) that wants to bring the closes thing to the embodiment of evil (Scarlet King) to destroy reality; the torture is the only way to stop all the babies from being born, reality collapses after the last one is born. The torture is call Montauk-110 Procedures.

Montauk-110 has a few variation in canon of what it is. However for this know that there are 2 different versions. One that Dr. Robert Montauk himself made as a revenge torture manifesto from fragments of a ritual written in a Codex and miscellaneous other Daevite texts. These containment procedures are horrific and makes characters in canon physically ill from just reading what is happening to them. The ritual in the codex is also called the Montauk Procedures, but is worse than whatever Dr. Montauk wrote for the 110 procedures. He made an alt version of the ritual but not a one to one. I’m just calling it ritual for ease of reading. Remember this fact throughout this whole thing; Rituals spell is worse than Montauk-110.

SCP 4231 is basically an origin of where the Foundation found the pregnant kids, or who I’ll be revering to as ‘Scarlet King Brides vessels’ and slight variations of this concept, where found. As per the title ‘Montauk’ and 4(231).

However, if you are main tagging, you know this article isn’t really about the brides themselves, mostly. It’s main point is an origin story for Dr. Alto Clef, his daughter SCP-166, and his girlfriend/wife Lilly. You all know who Clef and 166 are, I shouldn’t need to explain either of them as a concept.

The main theme of this article is the domestic abuse and rape of Clef and the psychologically effects and creation of his mental illnesses/disorders, in excruciating detail, it had/has on him for the rest of his life.

That is what everything is revolving around.

Before going deep into SCP 4231′s events I’d like to explain who/what a 231 instance is and can be as it will be very important...

Some explaining of who the Scarlet King is. For the sack of this post, he’s a god of rape and suffering. That what he is known for doing, like a lot. He had an original wife he forced to marry him, impregnated her 7 times, all daughters, and she died from the birth of the 7th child. He than married all seven of them, just calling them brides, ‘sealed’ them away, and impregnate them too, multiple times which each one. He also wage war on Death itself and is destroying/genocide realities to accomplish this goal.

He has a religious following, Children of the Scarlet King, that almost everything they do revolves around impregnation of various people and things; while sex cult may not be the right term for what they are, most people in the fandom refer or associate them as such. Lily is a member of this group, and Clef may or may not have been a member as it’s not wholly confirmed yes or no, this point will be important later.

This GoI got a hold of religious text, Erikesh Codex, that explain how to summon the Scarlet King to that reality to destroy everything and enslave everyone who doesn’t die. Which was the creation of 231 instances.

The Foundation tell their staff all 231 instances are/were children. Impregnated via a ritual of mimicking the Scarlet King and his original 7 daughter; mimicking like a character in a play, a vessel for them. This involved torture to get this done. The vessel were also sealed in tombs in a dinghy makeshift basement which where really difficult to get into.

They were meant to give birth to demon gods that would bring Scarlet King there, like a weird beacon. The birth will always end in the vessels death and the death would mean that the CHILD was arranged married to Scarlet King, then considered a wife instead of bride.

This is a lie, somewhat. The first instance, 231-1, is generally know to be Lilly, an adult. She willingly and intentionally became this, this was not forced upon her. She was not locked away like the other 6 children and allowed to do whatever the fuck she wanted to. She did not die from the birth, she was alive quite a few hour after it, she would have continued to live if she wasn’t shot.

However this might even be a larger lie, as sometimes CLEF IS 231-1, HE IS THE BRIDE. Unwillingly and Unknowingly doomed to marry basically the fucking devil in death. We do not know if Clef was locked in the basement ever or was ever in the basement or even know the basement existed, but we know at some point he is allowed to roam about and go to work with the GoC.

HOW COULD HE BE THE BRIDE THAN? HE’S AN AMAB/CIS MAN? Well the ritual doesn’t give two fucks who play which character, not age nor gender. As long as the end result is that seven children are born, it doesn’t matter.

So who was Lilly being? Scarlet King. She is willingly playing/mimicking various things that god would do. She is purposely being the worst to complete this task.

So at this point we know she has done the following: Complicit of rape, murder, and genocide; fine with and propagated incest; has preformed child sex trafficking; tortured 6 children and her boyfriend; imprisonment of 6 children, intent/attempt to murder 6 children; made 6 arrange child marriages and arranged marriage of herself or her own boyfriend with the actual devil; and is trying to be the Scarlet King in someway, again a rape deity.

So what is she doing/how did she do it?

Well it isn’t pretty in the slightest and I won’t be sugar coating this. So let’s get into this timeline and actions.

This is the last warning I’ll give: Below is a long and lengthy detail of the story’s events. This will not be a fun read. Please leave now if what above was already to much.

While we do not know when Lily joined CoTSK cult, we do know she did at some point. And it all kinda started when she meet Clef for the first time.

She seemed to be an orphan, if she even actually had parents, girl Clef stumbled upon in the back woods from his family’s home. They seemed to get along very well, to the point she was Clef’s best friend, and only friend, and the person he trusted the most in the world. At some point Clef’s mom left him and his dad when he was really young (think 5~9) and than somehow later on his dad died when he was a teen (12~17.) Lily invited him to live with her, he agreed, that house is the Montauk House. Not really to much about this for now but he joined the GoC a little while after this, you know, to kill people for profit, we’ll get back to that.

At this point Clef is at least co-depend on Lily as shelter and emotional company. Lily knows this.

There was something odd in Clef’s house though, the Erikesh Codex was just kinda sitting in a study room... the entire time he was alive. When he and Lilly left, they took this book with them. At this point the cult already had a copy of the Codex, so its not 100% known if the GoI was tracking both of them this entire time or they found out the two had the OG copy and then sought them out after the move.

However at some point the cult was in contact/extremely close with at least one of these two (Lily at minimum.) Why? Well because Dipesh (High Priest/leader of group) knew of where, when, and how the vessels where made and took ownership of the brides creation. However Lilly almost seemingly alone did 90% of all of this and guarded the vessels as she was the only one at the property the whole time.

There are two things that could have happened here.

1. Lilly converted from reading the codex after taking the book or the cult started talking and convinced her to join and participate again after taking the book.

Or

2. She could have been a plant for the group from the beginning. Intentionally befriending Clef to get to the Codex and took him as a bonus prize in the deal.

Also sometime Lilly age is up to debate, so she could be 100s of years old and just mimicked being a child and grow up.

So many levels down of grooming and maybe an worrying age gap while knowing the other throughout childhood at this point.

So going back to the GoC here. While the house did have a flower shop, North Access that town is so small itself is not on physical maps and in bum fuck nowhere, wouldn’t pay the bills much, who’’s buying so many plants?, they are also kids but at least at this age can legally get a job, so Clef ended up getting a job at the GoC somehow, also probably weird and telling to let in a teenager. He’s only friend was Lily, so how? Probably someone from Lily circle of people. A disturbing fact here: Clef original hated hurting people to an extreme extent, to the point he, at least thought, would rather die himself than fight someone back. He became an assassin for hire and is really fine and good at hurting and murdering people now, so why? We aren’t 100% sure, but this leads to thinking there might have been peer pressure and attempt to desensitize him too abhorrent acts. Also because Clef would leave for long periods at a time, Lilly took care of most of the money, we have no idea how much control Clef himself had of the cash pool.

This is financial abuse when coupled with all this.

An unknown amount of years went by, we know nothing really of this time. However the GoC started noting wounds on their agent, thought nothing of it that just happens in this line of work. This coupled with Clef’s initially interview with the Foundation (thought to be the most truthful he’s been) most of this was from Lilly PHYSICALLY HURTING HIM; cuts and bruise increasing with size and frequency. We also kind of know that gaslighting and verbal abuse was also already going on for very long at this point. Years and years of this.

Then the beach happened. It seemed that Lilly been trying to get him to have sex with her for a while but always back off after several ‘no’s’, she’s been sexual assaulting him, at this point with inappropriate unwanted touching with sexual intent, start long before this here... until the beach. That was the first time he was raped, not just sexually assaulted with unwanted physical contact but forced sexual acts. And she keep doing it once she noticed Clef wouldn’t physically stop her. We do not know how long she’s been doing this, could be a few months to years.

Unknown amount of time. Six girls got kidnapped by Lilly or other Cotsk members and brought to the basement in the house. While we don’t know what actual happened, it involves lot of torture, we don’t know what’s happening with Clef but he started showing disassociation and memory blocks by this time. Clef’s night terrors later on make him have large bloody gashes on his stomach and a very bruised pelvis; you know like knifes were carving him up and extreme force was happening during the rapes. Was it the ritual or Lilly, at this point normal abuse, being constant; no ones knows and IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER. At this point something happen, She at this point chose to be the Scarlet King larper, somehow, which no one should want the answer to, most likely got Clef to impregnate children, and stuck the six girls in tiny ass rooms in the basement that she created for this propose.

A motif of the Scarlet King is breaking people down, wearing people down mentally until submission. Another one being fear, create fear at all cost. This is what she’s been doing, purposely, for years with Clef. And she succeeded to a large extent; he’s got c-ptsd, he has a  disassociation disorder, and showing signs of amnesia at this point. If the Foundation (and various other GoI with lots of knowledge at hand) are to be believed and aren’t being idiots here, Reality Benders take a lot of shit happening to traumatize them that it’s almost never seen or heard of one getting one.

AND SHE MEANT TO GIVE HIM THESE, SHE WANTED HIM TO FEAR HER. TO THE POINT WHERE SHE MADE CLEF SOMETHING THAT HASN’T BEEN SEEN FOR CENTURIES OR THOUGHT TO BE IMPOSSIBLE.

FEAR IS THE POINT

Near the end of working with the GoC, Clef was taking more bounties, one after another after another. To stay the fuck away from her. He doesn’t want to return home, but he does because that’s what the cycle of abuse is. He has no one to trust but her. She has most of the money. He has nothing but her. And now he has a least one child on the way that he knows of. She made all of that. She wanted all of this.

The flood and Meri birth isn’t overly important here (until I get to the a part of what Lilly probably think of her daughter.) Except, we know Clef was found with a black eye, bleeding head from it being bashed into something, various cuts and bruises made on that day. The only wound on Lily was the head shot. There was evidence of someone throwing kitchen plates and other items. There are fake reality bent cats disemboweled and stung up by their guts in the bathroom. All of that happen while she probably had her water broken and a little bit after giving birth. After giving birth she should be exhausted and right before that pregnant people at full term averagely have a hard time just walking around. And she still wounded him to that extent.

We also see on this day Lily was trying to gaslight Clef into saying he had cheated on her. Weird, almost like you literally forced him to do it, which at this point is sex slavery. He is/was a sex slave around this point and doesn’t remembers fuck all about this. But why? There is a common abuse practice where the abuser tries cutting off a person’s entire circle, to be just them. The Goc was his last and only contact outside of her. She wanted to get him to say ‘yes I cheated’ to use it to guilt him to leave the GoC (she was trying this for a while as we can see) and then he would be stuck at the house to monitor 24/7. You know like a slave almost; her own boyfriend/husband that she supposedly loved.

THE FOUNDATION ALMOST DIDN’T FIND ANY OF THIS. THEY ONLY CHECKED THIS AREA AFTER SOMEONE SAID ’HEY THIS RADIO SIGNAL IS WEIRD MAYBE WE SHOULD CHECK IT OUT’ AND THEY ALMOST DIDN’T DO THAT. THEY ONLY THOUGHT IT HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH RAIN OR RADIO SIGNALS. THE GOC KNOW NOTHING UNTIL THE FOUNDATION CALL THEM UP LIKE ‘HEY FUCKERS WE NEED YOUR HELP.’ IT’S A MIRACLE THE CHILDREN OF THE SCARLET KING WERE EVER CAUGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE. THEY ALMOST GOT AWAY WITH IT ALL.

She made it to the point they (Lilly and the Cult) would’ve gotten away with this, with every child born and reality collapsing. Untold amount of lives lost in the area from periodic apocalypses. If it wasn’t for Clef shooting her for his and Meri’s safety, he almost didn’t do it. At this point he deep in the amnesia, he doesn’t even remember there being a basement, and definitely not the you know fucking pregnant child brides. He did it as a mercy killing thinking it’s from her going Level 4 Type Green.

So maybe she wasn’t really the best person, but could she have been not abusive to Meri?

No. She would have. Abusers don’t stop at one person, especially when they have a history of doing it to animals and loved ones (see the cats, Clef, random children.)

She wanted Meri in an act to bring the destruction of reality. Meri is a tool to keep Clef under her control; if she hurt Meri it would be ‘his fault.’ She doesn’t see her as a person, just a thing to meet end goals. In the bed scene Lily seem really distance to her already. Still complain to Clef about some vague thing he might have done, asking why he won’t ‘touch her’ aka why don’t you willing have sex with me, telling him how bad it is to be in the GoC to get him to quit. From her it was just Clef Clef Clef, dismissive, shaming, and gaslighting. This could just be Clefs memory at this point but it kinda concerning none the less.

Oh I might have forgot about some Scarlet King Lore. The second generation of kids from him, his daughters, and vessels are called Leviathans. Despite what popular fandom canon, he gives zero shits about them, he only cares about him, his goal, and original 7 daughters/now wives. The Leviathans are used as canon fodder for the Scarlet King’s war on the Three Death Brothers and the Tree of Knowledge. He kills these kids without hesitation at the first perceived sight of disloyalty. The mothers are knowingly raising them as war machines to die. He kill A’habbat’s (7th bride) kids (SCP 999) as soon as possible so they can’t stop him.

If Lilly is acting like the Scarlet King in this respect and knows this is what will happen to her child the instant reality collapses, She doesn’t give a fuck about her. Meri was born to die in a war she will never comprehend and both her mothers (Lilly & A’tivik) will never think about her again after she is gone.

Nor any of the other Leviathans being made, she’d has even less connection to them. Meri at least has being in her stomach for 9 months.

Clef is the only one in this family that gives a shit about these kids, and look at him and their containment. If you apply the Law of Concrete she knows that these Leviathans might just always get contained by the Foundation (though all her info on them comes from the Cotsk and the Codex), so she even has a vague idea what Foundation testing is.

Does she seem redeemable in the slightest at this point!? Does this whole thing not disgust you to hell and back!?

So what could you do about your headcanon or AU? Yeah, you reading this might have forgot this is what this whole post was about. Headcanons and bad jokes. The Montauk House article itself tries pulling this same trick to make you kinda forget about 231 instances and the basement while reading it.

Well the easiest is to trash it or keep it personal. However there is another thing you could do.

SCP 4231 is not the only canon origin for Clef, Lilly, and Meri. It’s actual a very specific canon compared with all of the wiki writings.

While there are many. The best option if you must, is the origin for SCP-166-AR. Meri had a rewritten at some point and the newer SCP-166 also points to this canon still, Rituals/Leviathan!166 is very much its own thing and not baseline SCP canon.

The origin is much simpler and less graphic.

Clef and Lilly either had a prior relationship or just a one night stand. This may or may not also involve non consent, I’ve read many contradiction if it was a thing or that was 4231 bleeding in. Clef and Lilly hadn't meet up in a while, like a good chuck of years having Meri during this time. Clef came back, with the GoC unfortunately, to kill her for a bounty. This Lilly was this doing some magic rituals that would kinda end the world, but more in the sense of restart nature and humanity not complete and utter genocide of everyone. Usually referring to bringing back the Garden of Eden in concept. Clef didn’t know Meri was born, shot Lilly, and than found Meri hiding in a bush near. He than snuck her around and away from the GoC brought her to an out of the way nun church in Ireland, and than fucked off. The Foundation found Meri years after this and they had no idea Clef was the father until he said something/DNA testing.

That’s usable. That can be redeemed. She probably is a good(ish) mother in this canon itself.

But please never use SCP 4231 Lily, not even in a tagging sense (the main SCP 4231 tag or SCP 4231 A tag), if you make stuff for this. Everyone in that tag is thinking of everything I’ve written about above. They aren’t thinking about Lilly as a character encompassing hundreds of different canons. They are thinking about a domestic abuser rapist child sex trafficker that wanted to kill, torture, and enslave everyone in every universe she could get her hands on given the chance.

Nicer and better tags I’ve seen are SCP Lilly and Threat Entity 9927-Black.

That main tag is uses primarily, and a large amount of SCP 4231 fandom subculture, is using stuff in there for their own trauma. It’s a smaller safe space for testing the waters (unintentional joke) of what themselves and others have gone through from varying abuse. Extremely on the side of Clef’s experiences. Lilly is not to be brought up in any positive way. You can very easily fuck someone’s mental state from make light of this on and off Tumblr (I’ve accidentally did that to someone on the SCP meme Reddit, this isn’t a Tumblr thing this is the SCP Fandom as a whole.)

Please just think for a second before touching very serious topics. Most of SCP aren't very serious; SCP 4231 is one with a very serious and specific topic, and should be treated with care.

Flood jokes are funny, the flood itself is free game from what I can see.

I didn’t mean to be overall aggressive in this whole thing, but I really want someone who doesn’t understand why this is a big problem. And I needed to say this in the most encompassing way that people could get a wake up call. And talking about the story as a whole and never leaving SCP 231 out of this was that way.

If you made it to the end of this post, thank you for sticking through this essay psa post and slight rant. Take a break, get some water and some food, get some meds if you need them, take some deep breaths. Take some time to decompress from any stress that may have come from this. Take care of yourself.

[sazandorable]

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

[licncourt]

I know you get quite a lot of these but you have any more headcanons about Daniel and Louis' friendship? I just can't get enough of them!

Also what are your opinions about Daniel/Louis as a ship? It's kind of a rarepare but there's something about this ship that I find very appealing, and your headcanons make me ship them even harder.

Have a lovely day and keep being the best vc blog with the best and most correct opinions😘💗

Aside from Louis or Loustat, Daniel & Louis is probably my absolute favorite VC topic of all. I will always be an unshakable Loustat shipper, so I can't really imagine actively putting Louis with anyone else, BUT if I had to like. Pick another ship, it'd be Daniel/Louis. Honestly, I've always been sort of surprised that there isn't a niche of D/L shippers like there are for Lestat/Armand. It's kind of right there and there's so SO much potential material. If someone wants to write it for me I'll happily read it because I wholeheartedly approve of 'fancy 18th century sad vampire/70s stoner man' in any form it's offered.

On that note, I'm positive if Louis had propositioned Daniel at any point in their interview, that boy would've been tripping over his own feet to get that vampire D. If not for Armand, he probably would still be down, though the infatuation has worn off and he's no longer slightly in love. Louis is aware of how bad Daniel wanted to fuck him initially and is very nice about the situation. He's used to it.

In return, Daniel is very nice about Loustat relationship drama. Interview with the Vampire was far from the end. Now it's Weepy Vent Session with the Vampire and it's like. Every Thursday at best. Sometimes more. ("I just don't know if I can do this. It's all so much." "Okay, fine. Dump him." "What?? No! I couldn't!" "Then why the FUCK are we having this conversation again, Louis?")

Daniel gets Louis into a very strange assortment of music. He takes to the expected, but there are enough wild cards that Daniel keeps experimenting on him by offering various records. Most are rejected, but Motorhead (no other hard rock or metal), The Beach Boys, Alanis Morrisette, and Toto (yacht rock is generally a go it turns out) are kept.

Louis attempts the same with books for Daniel and achieves similar results. Most receive an "eh", but Louis is absolutely delighted when he gets a good response to Camus and the absurdist philosophers. He can't seem to replicate the outcome with other genres, but a stoned Daniel is the platonic ideal of a conversation partner for Louis when he's in a philosophical yet chatty mood. This is great news for Lestat.

Daniel really wants to impress Armand (he's feeling a little insecure about his journalism degree in the face of Armand's classical education) so Louis drops everything for a solid week to hole himself up with Daniel and teach him French and Latin (vampire brain allows for maximum efficiency). Unfortunately for Louis, this means he can no longer talk shit about Daniel in French with Lestat during game nights.

Daniel is the first person Louis ever "comes out" to. Obviously he's into men, as evidenced by the...everything. But the first time he manages to verbalize it is alone with Daniel.

When smartphones hit the market, Louis totally helps Daniel win his word and trivia games with Armand. Daniel feeds Louis pop culture facts to stump Lestat. They are cheaters.

He's also the one who finally makes Louis feel comfortable feeding in front of others. Lestat is very supportive, but Daniel never makes a big deal out of it. He just lets Louis tag along on his own hunts. He can join in if he feels up to it or not. Daniel won't say anything or treat him differently either way. Eventually Louis goes from just coming for the social aspect, to snagging the occasional victim out of sight, to taking part every time.

Daniel, vampire or not, still has trouble with his alcoholism. The cravings stay, as does the ability to give into them by finding drunk victims. He has a hard time talking about it in the beginning, but if Armand isn't around, he goes straight to Louis. Louis is actually great at helping given his immense experience comforting certain individuals who refuse to verbalize their feelings or let go of the carefree persona they hold onto for dear life.

Aside from their respective partners, the only people Daniel or Louis ever blood share with is each other. It's a pretty rare occasion, but sometimes it's the last resort for comfort or affection if things are particularly bad, especially if Lestat or Armand is unavailable to help (or if they are the problem du jour). It's part of the reason they're so tightly bonded as much as it is a result of that bond.

[ckret2]

Do you have any headcanons about the Hazbin's (minus Charlie) lives back when they were alive?

I scrolled through all 42 pages of the hazbin tag on my blog and literally every one of my premortem headcanons are about Alastor and Sir Pentious lmfao

So sure! Want an entire novella about my headcanons for Sir Pentious's backstory?

For Alastor, I can offer:

a traumatic toddler experience

his mother observing him with ghosts as a child

Alastor working with demons (funny)

Alastor working with demons (creepy)

Alastor and his asexuality/aromanticism (mostly postmortem but it has some premortem flashbacks)

Alastor with friends in the 20s trying to explain he does not get horny

a fic that didn't ACTUALLY happen but that demonstrates my headcanons for how he works with demons

And moving away from fics and on to tumblr posts!

For Alastor:

Alastor fought in World War I

another WWI post

headcanon about how he died (I've since changed my headcanon—hunting accident rather than manhunt—but the position's the same)

excerpt from one of the fics above about Alastor's first kiss

early headcanoning on Alastor's relationship with the queer community in life

Alastor saw but didn't learn the lindy hop in life

Alastor's accent makes people (in this case Sir Pentious) think that he's upper class when actually he's just had theater training

Alastor's family tree comes from a mix of socioeconomic backgrounds and before he died he achieved fame but not fortune

Alastor does not feel broken/insecure due to being ace/aro and never has

what people in Louisiana thought of Alastor as a radio host

what did Alastor look like (and Sir Pent)

Alastor only saw 10% of the Golden Age Of Radio and that's fucked up

fun fact when Alastor was on air radio stations weren't "just news" or "just (one genre of) music," a single station would play music and news and soap operas and sports etc

random links of queer history, 1920s gay culture, slang, and NOLA history

Alastor's mother grew up while Sir Pentious was menacing the US and she has very vivid memories of living in fear of him, and also she doesn't know her son is a cannibalistic murderer

Alastor wore glasses in life and only switched to a monocle in death

Alastor was never identified as a serial killer and there's probably unsolved true crime documentaries made about his killings (and these documentaries unknowingly use a recording of the killer's real voice, a clip from a news broadcast where Alastor read about the killings on air)

check out how hyped this newspaper in the 20s was for radio like goddamn

Alastor listened to radio all day every day

more 1920s research links

very loose overview of New Orleans race relations 1890-1920

how NOT to write about Voodoo

reminder that "alastor did magic in life" is a headcanon until we SEE him using magic before he died—also "Voodoo" is a religion not a magic power

how Alastor avoided getting caught as a serial killer

I doubt Alastor was famous enough for queer historians to have discovered he existed, only niche radio broadcast historians know about him

Alastor was raised to be courteous to (respectable) women, but not to genuinely see them as equals in a modern sense

1920s hair facts and headcanons on Alastor's hair

scene from one of the above fics of baby Alastor being haunted as shit

Alastor is a hedonistic thrill killer not a mission-oriented killer

his killing method was shooting from a distance, like hunting game

Alastor was kinda psychic in life and his psychicness interacted with radio signals

this includes developing a hella accurate sense of time

Alastor's always been hella into Mardi Gras

here he is in a ridiculous Cajun Mardi Gras costume

how the Great Depression probably affected Alastor

Alastor feels 0% empathy for other people but 500% empathy for fictional characters in musicals

For Sir Pentious:

he was so infamous that today he's a common character used in historical fiction in the same way that Victorian-era historical fiction commonly uses Queen Victoria as a character

(and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle references him in a Sherlock story)

(and he really did call himself Sir Pentious in life)

(and every character who lived after him had to study him in school, including Vaggie writing a paper about him and Alastor was cast as him in a school play)

(and now let's talk about historians dying and meeting the people they studied in Hell)

he has a son who's probably now in heaven

Sir Pent is trans

no seriously he has a son

Sir Pent has a chain of deadnames he used before settling on "Sir Pentious" and all of them are snake puns

one of Sir Pent's chosen names

based on Victorian sexual mores Sir Pent probably got kinda homoerotic with some dudes

this is just big Trans Sir Pent energy

what did Sir Pent look like (and Alastor)

I don't think Sir Pent used a wheelchair in life (but do think he had to for a while after he died)

Sir Pent is Pussyeating World Champ no I do not accept arguments

Sir Pent and his wife were very loving until his wife went "nope, you're planning world conquest, that's too evil for me"

he rigged his clothes to self-combust so he could choose death if he was ever on the verge of capture

his wife was named Helena and here's why

this is his self-destruct binder/corset

the one headcanon everyone shares

Sir Pent ain't Jack the Ripper

And there's a ton more headcanons on @dontasktheradiodemon my Alastor ask/RP blog but listen, I just went through 42 pages of one tag and it's 3 a.m., I'm not going to comb my roleplay blog for every premortem headcanon I've ever mentioned about him over there. It includes stuff like "he did deliberately shitty horoscope readings on air" and "the first time he summoned a demon he was on the Western Front and also coming down with Spanish flu so he's not sure how much of the ensuing chaos was real vs fevered hallucinations or how much was the Germans' fault vs the imp's" and "he lived a few years in New York and did drag."

These are not the only headcanons I have. These are just the headcanons I've been asked about or made time to type down. (And not counting all my postmortem headcanons. Or the premortem headcanons sprinkled into postmortem fics.) Feel free to ask me for more. Ideally with a topic you'd like to hear about; otherwise asking me "do you have any headcanons?" is like walking into a library and asking "do you have any books?" Gimme a section to start with.

[laurelnose]

new year update

- I am, in fact, still alive, I guess. almost surprising, tbh! doing a little better—still not great, but better. it’s cool, I don’t expect miracles from myself.

- thank you everyone for all the well-wishes. i can’t respond to everything individually but i do appreciate all of them and all of you 💛

- i’ve been thinking about if/how I want to start re-engaging with fandom. definitely I want to change some things about the way I do fandom in 2021, as debilitating mood disorder aside, I’m pretty dissatisfied with the current state of affairs. just for one, my audience is larger than i ever expected it to get and i need to re-evaluate some stuff.

- @eskelchopchop​ tagged me in that 5-favorite-things-you-created-in-2020 thing, & I thought yeah, it’s probably a good idea to take some time to meditate a bit on the things I managed to create this year. made me realize I did make a fair amount of stuff I forgot about and that was nice to remember! so, thanks for the tag, i appreciate it. cutting for length!

rules: it’s time to love yourselves! choose your 5 (ish) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

so…we’re going to do this two different ways. here’s the self-promotion the challenge was asking for: my top five favorite fanworks I posted this year, no particular order.

On Monsters as Invasive Species: this meta essay was a response to a tumblr ask, but it was so goddamn long and at the time I did not want to post anything to tumblr, so I tidied it up for AO3, which also let me do real footnotes!! anyways it’s about monsters, invasive species, and extinction events, and i’m very pleased with how it came out. my thoughts on the topic were super knotty and I wasn’t even sure what conclusion I would end up coming to when I started trying to formulate my response to this question, so ironing all my drafts out into something coherent took some effort, but it was worth it. (& yeah i’ll still probably post the actual ask response here at some point.)

Medieval clothing studies, ft. Yennefer: just really pleased with the hatching on these! I’m trying to get more adventurous with my use of black in my inking, usually to mixed success, and I love how these ended up turning out. plus, the whole process of doing the studies was a lot of fun. also pretty proud of the matching Lambert set but that doesn’t exist on the internet lmao

The library catalogue at Kaer Morhen: extremely niche & self-indulgent oc content with some of the cuter baby geralts I’ve ever done? yes. i am still unsure if this qualifies as a “joke,” but it’s hilarious to me. plus, the number of people not in witcher fandom who said they reblogged it solely for the accurate depiction of libraries was very flattering.

baby eskeralt tackles: this was one of seventeen art prompts I did over the course of three days, which I feel was a pretty heroic drawing effort!! bit of a toss-up between this one and the eskeralt kiss for which one is my favorite, but this one turned out exactly like I wanted it to and I really love the movement and expression I achieved with it. (it just so happens the kiss is reversed in my notebooks: on paper, eskel’s on the right, and I was halfway through when I decided I wanted their scars visible and opted to flip the art in post rather than redo my entire sketch, so the baby witcher piece has a bit of an edge for actually looking the way it does in real life.)

rotfiend reproduction: this isn’t exactly meta so much as just a goofy headcanon post, but it’s a thing I created and fuck, I just love this headcanon a lot, okay, it’s so bonkers off-the-wall and yet also reasonably canon-based, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to top “rotfiend sex requires explosions.” legitimately my monster bio peaked early with this one

and for the second way: thinking about everything I created this year, I realized that while the challenge specifically asks for links, many of my favorites never made it onto the internet. so I’m just going to mention those briefly because they were my actual top five!

Sigurður Hjartarson (+ cover art)

the character design bible I did for Gill

City of Animal Electricity

The Obsidian Star

Open Hand or Closed Fist

if you made it all the way down here, thanks for reading. i have no idea which of my mutuals have or haven’t done this at this point so i’m just going to tag @she-who-drank-vodka-with-cats​ and @kerasines/@witcherrarepair and if anyone else would like to do it, feel free to say I tagged you, and may the new year be good to you 💛

[cupofcowboys]

What advice would you give to new fanfic writers? And, if you don’t mind answering, how long have you been writing fan fiction?

Hey there, friend!

I have only been consistently writing fanfiction for 5 months, so you may want to take my advice with a pinch of salt. I’m still learning and I’m nowhere near as knowledgeable as others, but I do have some advice for you!

Write. It seems obvious, I know, but do it. Put your pen to the paper, your fingers on the keys, your voice to the recorder, however you write - and go. Don’t wait around. Don’t “do it tomorrow”. Do. it. now.

Write what you want to write. No matter what you think the fandom wants or what others are doing - remember that you are writing for you. You don’t have to write anything you don’t want to, even if it’s a request.

Read. Read and share other’s creations in the fandom. Read books. Read writing advice. Read up on topics that interest you or are useful for your writing (i.e. research guns, horse care, 1890′s dress etc). Reading will teach and inspire you in new ways and research will make you more knowledgeable on what you’re writing.

Find your niche. Are you writing a ship? Self-inserts? OCs? A specific character? Characters? Tropes? Fics? Headcanons? Requests? All of them? Figure it out and find others in your niche or with overlapping interests and surround yourself with them and their content.

Be a critic. Critique your own works, but also critique others. No, I don’t mean send people unsolicited constructive criticism, I mean when you ingest media - think about it. Think about it’s strengths, it’s weaknesses, the parts you like, the parts you don’t. Do this with all media you ingest. It’s a useful life and literacy skill. You can learn a lot by doing it. If you don’t know how or where to start, watch film/TV/book critics on YouTube. 

Encourage yourself! Don’t depend on external validation. Notes don’t mean anything. Do not judge the value or quality of your fics based on numbers. Not notes, not followers, not comments, not requests, not even how many reblogs you get. Judge your value on your own terms. This is hard, but you will be discouraged from day one if you don’t. Write for you. Write for fun. Love what you create. Create what you love. Be happy in your successes, however you define them to yourself.

Encourage others! Other content creators are not your enemies. They are not rivals. They are your friends. Love what they create. Share what they create. Comment. Like. Request. Send asks. Private message! Be nice, be supportive, be who you want others to be to you. Do not tear someone else down to pull yourself up - you will build your creations on a negative foundation.

Blog smart. Blogging seems simple, just post and go! But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Make sure to tag smart. Tag everything and tag it well. Don’t tag anything that isn’t relevant to your fic though, only tag what is in or important to your creations. Don’t forget to add a unique tag to your fics so they are easy to find on your blog! They get buried easily, especially if you have an active blog. (i.e. #hanateawrite, which is mine)

Create a Masterlist. Having a simple, easy to update hub for reader’s to find your fics makes such a difference. It draws traffic to your older creations that might not otherwise be seen!

Create Rules or an FAQ. This is extremely important if you take requests. Have an easy to access and read list what you create, what you don’t and what you like. This will greatly reduce your number of requests for things you have no interest in writing. Even if you don’t take requests, you might still want to make one.

Adopt easy to read formatting. Make sure your fics are “viewer” friendly. Break up massive chunks of text, use text formatting, full stops and apostrophes, titles, content warning tags, ship tags, etc. 

How to handle criticism. This is different for everyone, but here is my take. There are two kinds of criticism - Constructive Criticism and Hate. The latter might look something like “Your writing shit, delete your blog”. If you get something like this, just delete it. It isn’t constructive. Don’t give it a voice, don’t react to it - throw it in the trash where it belongs. Don’t let it get to you. Acknowledge that it only exists to hurt you and that it can’t if you don’t allow it to.

As for criticism, it can take many forms. But it’s important to always view thoughtful criticism with positive intent. Do not assume criticism is an attack. Assume it is someone who cares about your creations trying to help and advise you, even if it’s not well-written at first glance. Dissect it and learn from it, even if you only take 1% of their critique.

Don’t be a workaholic! You are not a machine. You are not being paid. You do not owe anything to anyone. Write on your own terms, in your own time, and never at an expense. Take breaks. Relax. Have fun. That’s what fanfiction is all about!

And finally, don’t compare yourself to others. Let you and your writing be themselves. Don’t try to be like someone else. Only compare your creations with your past creations, not someone elses. Writing is a form of art and there is no “right” way to write. There are good ways to format, use syntax, descriptions, etc but there is no perfect writing formula. Your creative voice is unique to you - so only compare it you.

I hope that any of this helped. I can’t tell you how to write fanfiction, that is unique to you - but I can give you tips on how to manage yourself, your blog and how to improve your craft. There is so much fun to be had as long as you always remember that’s what you are doing it for. Good luck anon, I can’t wait to see what you do!