#this is strictly how it plays in my brain not necessarily how i think it would actually play out

[strmpt]

in my brain there’s the 5 emotions from inside out but they’re the 4 strilondes and karkat

[tumblingxelian]

Outcast Society Headcanons - Wednesday (Netflix)

I have no clue how much longer this hyperfixation is gonna have its claws embedded in my brain matter. So I decided to get my mixture of analytical headcanons (IE based on canon) and more out there headcanon (Based on what I think/want) out in one big post!

Supernatural Magic - Analysis It is clear based on visions, seances and the resurrection of Crackstone that magic is entirely-doable within the Nevermore universe. What's more, as opposed to being strictly tied to specific types of Outcasts it seems anyone can use these powers with right tools and materials.

This makes their magic incredibly ritualistic, with key times of year, location, supplies and even stuff like blood or historical connection playing a large part in magic's use. Along with more simplistic but still incredibly useful items like Crystal Balls, living plants and more falling into a 'easily replicated' mold, relatively speaking.

I imagine that "Monster Hunters" would explain away their use of magic either as fire to fight fire, disguise its nature or claim it came from their god rather than 'unnatural' sources. Though this would exclusively be in periods where magic was considered suspect to use such as the Pilgrim times.

Though I do think it likely remained only in use among relatively small groups or secretive factions to maintain its power, similar to how the recipe for Greek Fire was lost because those who held it did not want it stolen. Modern use is likely relatively tightly regulated and access to magical knowledge horded.

Supernatural Locations - Headcanon

Certain locations are inherently magical all year round and all the time. The Addams's family Manor is built on one, the Balkan countryside Esther wanted to send Enid too would be another and there would be numerous other examples around the world.

These locations, be they forest, lake, mountain or desert will all be in possession of some degree of if not intelligence then will and supernatural powers. The Addam's family's land predates their arrival and is attuned to death and specters. Thus, the Addams who came to be its caretakers are themselves influenced and so are a form of not quite undead Outcast. The Balkan countryside could, if its forests were damaged, drive its attackers into beastial rages and have them set up one another and so on.

These locations tend to need caretakers because while they can counteract direct physical threats. More subtle or nebulous one's are much harder to deal with. And intern these caretakers are tolerated by most local governments because even if they could destroy the region the cost would usually be extensive. Such as, bombing a sacred grove leading to a mass forest first that could not be out out.

Supernatural Families- Analysis Based on the existence of the Thorpe family, references to other legacies, talk of the Morning Song Cult and the preferential treatment given to the Addams family. I think it is entirely reasonable to assume that there is some degree of class hierarchy among the Outcasts. One that can, but does not necessarily, crossover into the human world.

Put simply, not all Outcasts have major businesses or are represented by famous seers, or live in fancy manors. What's more, not all and in fact most Outcasts cannot expect their children to, for example, escape putting piranhas in the school pool and seriously injuring people and to get away with a slap on the wrist. Given what we've seen and heard regarding Outcast treatment, it would likely be prison or potentially shot dead by trigger happy police.

This of course does not entirely insulate them from potential threats or hate crimes as the show demonstrates. But wealth, or the connections born of being well respected families with many friends can create a large buffer zone between what other Outcasts face.

I will add however, that while the Addams are both well off and well connected they are not the equivalent of Outcast royalty. They are essentially old money rich, they don't need day jobs, but they do need to make appearances at events, network and dole out favors as necessary. They can protect themselves or their children from some degree of criminal charges, but it can only go so far. And while some students seemed aware of them, most did not seem to regard the Addams as more notable than any other.

Supernatural Alternate History - Analysis/Headcanon Based on the show itself we know elements of history have gone slightly ajar. What with actual magic existing and the like, but also that humans still ended up as the 'dominant species' so to speak. This seems to have come about in part thanks to humanities larger numbers and thus their ability to organize large scale persecution campaigns.

Obviously history going the same at all requires something of a "Unicorn" world building wise, but that's hardly a story telling crime.

Now, if I were to come up with an explanation as to how this happened given some of what we have seen magic and Outcasts be able to do I would say it came down to several factors.

First things first I would say it was not necessarily always this way. Athens likely did have several Snake/Gorgon monarchs before some human figure used a mirrored shield on them and took over. There likely was a Count Dracula in some form or another who may well have made similar attempts to the novel and met a similar end and so on.

Second among them would be that whatever their origins, Outcast unity and even unity among singular species of Outcasts was relatively rare. It can often be the case that if a group falls into a comfortable niche it can be all too easy to rest on one's laurels and then be snuck up on.

Werewolves for instance would have an easy time hunting and controlling an extensive territory and may well have found it more trouble than it was worth to adopt things like farming or herding. But that also means most families and wider packs would be relatively small in number and so when humans began to outnumber them extensively and cull areas of food it became harder to survive. Even if they did drive the humans off and more would always come back.

Similar stories among other outcast species likely echo in history.

Thirdly, Outcasts would be no more immune to holding onto power possessively than anyone else. A vampire for instance may not want to share its extended lifespan with any but those it is fond of, even if more vampires might mean greater safety in the long run. Thus they may have seen each other as threats, or otherwise not sought large-scale unity and generally could well have neglected focusing on humans for each other. A house divided cannot stand and if none of them were even in said house it becomes very easy to burn down.

Fourthly, as noted regular humans can also use magic which can easily become a great equalizer. Though many of such humans may have themselves become inhuman themselves in time, others might not have, or faded before they could and would pose a threat regardless.

Fifthly, I don't think Outcasts necessarily have to have 'lost' everywhere. I have some elaborate headcanons regarding a surviving but radically different Kanem–Bornu nation built around Lake Chad in Africa. IE, with colonialism in full swing, many Outcasts fled death by going inland and united with local nations and eventually formed a coalition strong enough to resist the imperial powers even at their peak, making the resulting nation one of the few with a major Outcast population. Though like Ethiopia, Japan and Thailand they likely had to compromise a lot in terms of policy. There are likely others as well, though I have less specific ideas regarding those.

Sixthly is very much a me thing but I would love to explore Outcast biology, IE, they are different species if closely related to humans, and how that influences culture and behavior, thus:

Supernatural Species - Headcanon Each Supernatural species is capable of communicating with humans and can to one degree or another pass as human at least part of the time. Though the effort and plausibility varies wildly and how effectively they could intermingle genetically is likely down to 'type', Gorgons would likely struggle to conceive a child with a human more than a werewolf would.

Notes: Unique Supernatural Species List:

Shapeshifters: These are not a society unto themselves, so much as a random mutation/blessing that sometimes appears in random Outcast or more rarely human children. More closely related to Lycens than anything else and they need to maintain concentration on their shifted form at all times or revert to their 'true form' which can be but is not necessarily the one they were assigned at birth.

Hydes: These beings are complicated as they are not considered Outcasts by some. This is because they were not 'born' or 'turned' as others might be but engineered. Specifically by covens and Monster Hunters by taking an infant, an animal and a Lycan. Torturing and eventually, once they were 'broken', killing the latter two during a transformation and latching some of their essence onto the infant. Ensuring a separate creature would grow on their being like a tumor until awoken into a powerful and malevolent but obedient creature.

Well, obedient for a few years before they gained the maturity to think for themselves and usually kill their masters, if not killed before by their masters, foes or their hosts if the walls dividing their identities did not fall fast enough. They became a curse that could appear in people at seemingly random. Much of this is only known to Lycans who keep a tight lid on it.

Psychics/Witches: This category covers those like Eugene, the Addams and more. They often began their ancestor as normally humans but not only learned 'some' magic but became so engrossed with it that it began to alter their fundamental nature. Usually aligning them with a 'type' of magic, such as the Addams penchant for death and spirits, or Eugene's Bees and so on.

Some of these would be absorbed into pre-existing communities such as the Lycan or vampiric depending on their magic, but others would not and go on to form their own clans or covens. What's more the occasional 'mutation' can appear among humans, though they are usually limited to whatever innate ability they were granted without training and growing closer to the 'source' of their magic.

Most Supernatural species outside these groups can be broken down into two major categories, the born and the transformed.

The born - Sirens and Gorgons:

The only means by which there can be more of them is through procreation or magical ritual designed to emulate the process. Which is a problem given both species none human sides are not social creatures.

That is to say where a human may lose their mind and die from stress or self destruction in isolation, a Gorgon could happily spend years alone and be largely unaffected. Hence the most famous being Medusa who resided on an island alone.

Sirens operate in a rather similar manner, usually only acting collectively to hunt more easily rather than for companionship. It is also reflected in Sirens rarely bearing last names as even familial ties tend to be rather loose at best.

Gorgons and Sirens do not dislike company they simply do not need it to survive except against external enemies and thus did not form families, clans or large-scale organizations until they needed to. But by that time they were already falling well behind and there were a great many learning curves to overcome and little time to do it in.

These factors made them somewhat easier prey than more organized Outcast factions that usually had stronger support networks.

Notes:

There are also deep Sea Sirens and Fresh Water Sirens. Most seen in Nevermore are of the latter variety, as they are usually marginally more comfortable on land, while Sea Siren primarily live in the ocean.

Gorgons also generally have snakes on their head, but can also have snake like torsos, or legs, or some combination there-of. Though less "Human" gorgon tended to be more aggressively targeted by Hunters.

The transformed- Lycan & Vampires:

The name is something of a misnomer as both vampires and werewolves 'can' procreate, but they can also turn humans without a strong supernatural affiliation into their own kind.

(Those with strong affiliations such as the Addams are nearly impossible to turn, though they can at times loose some of their natural attunement for an adoptive one.)

This process of transformation is not swift and needs to be carefully managed; otherwise it can fail, or worse cause physical and psychological instability, harm and even death.

It is however, something inherent to both species, which tends to lead vampires and Lycans to feel a bit closer to each other than their born counterparts and visa versa.

Beyond this, both species are incredibly social minded, even if it is not obvious on the surface. This is because they are essentially two very social species in one body. Thus, there is twice the need for companionship, further buoyed by their predator instincts necessitating a strong sense of community to keep the species alive.

Lycan: These can be werewolves, were-hyena (bultungin) and others can, once they have transformed, begin mastering it in day to day life. This means a werewolf is always a werewolf, the full moon simply eases the process and being able to retain one's human form or exhibit perfect control when transformed are signs of maturity and strength in Lycan society. Some may struggle to transform their entire bodies outside of a full moon, but hands becoming paws, maws becoming massive and full of fangs are nearly always possible.

Much like with Vampires, Lycan ca both reproduce and transform others, though because of their tight family bonds they usually trend towards the former. This is far from universal and the family and especially wider pack structure can be quite open to newly transformed members. What's more, Lycan will usually form small family units, but be apart of larger packs, these can be blood related but do not need to be, their pack bond however tends to only be shared with direct family members, blood relatives, adopted or transformed, one's mate and in the case of the transformed, the one who turned them and the turned.

Lycan turning is akin to popular media, with strategic bites, usually on full moons, but rituals can also pass on the change or otherwise aid and enhance it.

The Lycan pack bond is reflective of their intense needs for communities as they can quite literally die when bereft of them. The connection is subtle but ever present, creating a sense that the Lycan has family, has others and separation from this by it being severed can be violently traumatic.

If shocking enough the resulting heart attack may kill them. If not a surprise they may die slowly due to heartbreak syndrome with their body slowly shutting down. Lycan parents can also be driven to permanently feral states the loss of newborns, a fact often taken advantage of by monsters hunters.

It is possible to avoid dying from the loss of the bond, but it usually requires a mate, turning others to recreate it. Or a tightly knit friend group tnhat live together and can always spare one or two people to perpetually be in the Lycans company, thus helping simulate the pack bonds inherent awareness its fellow family is alive and present.

These are not surefire ways however.

Vampires: form into clans of shared blood, there is a subtle bond between all members. Not to the point of mind reading or loss of identity, but it does tend to let moods bleed over somewhat and further still, let them know when kindred have been killed.

Yoko: We are not a hive mind, we are a hive vibe.

Vampires with even a small family can often becomes dangerously unhinged and lose their sense of selves such as Count Dracula's wife and children and to a lesser extent the count himself. This is why Vampire's form clans or "Colonies"; because isolation breeds madness.

Most vampires even in the modern day practice 'adoption'. This is in part because it allows the clan to assess many potential candidates and pick someone who will actually acclimate well to being a vampire rather that rely on unpredictability. But there are exceptions.

To become a vampire one first becomes a thrall, tied to the network and feeding off the elder vampires blood and gaining power. The process to change however takes time and usually stalls out until the thrall has reached their age of maturity before they are fully converting and the powers become their own.

Conclusion:

These aforementioned traits, be they prone to isolationism or such intense bonds that they can become crippling could often be taken advantage of by "Monster Hunters". At least before the Supernatural community began organizing itself to better protect itself from death and exploitation.

Outcast Magic - Headcanon As noted above, those born with Supernatural powers will have a natural affiliation. This does not strictly preclude other magics, but will often make learning them much harder unless one's inherent nature shifts.

Sirens most obviously hold influence over mind magics and sound. These powers are inherently immense. Though they can be overcome by some creatures innately. Such as Lycan due to their minds changing during shifts, with proper magical defenses, or ear plugs in the case of mind control.

Gorgons have a natural power towards stone and petrification, it is extremely powerful, but also rather hard to utilize safely, control, or use in other ways. Though with time and effort it can be done and there are many spells and rituals a gorgon can use that take from their natural affinity.

Vampires magic is tied both to blood but also the draining of essence in of itself. A vampire may use blood to power spells, or they can 'drink' the energy from magical defenses. It is often hard for them to externalize magic aggressively, especially without blood as a catalyst, but they can weaken their foes very effectively. Hence often being called parasites by the more hateful.

Lycan magic is reflective of the body in meat and bone, muscle and flesh, as well as an ability to tap into and draw on lunar energies for spells and protections that would often require rituals and regents. It is primal but powerful and tends to be reflected in their ability to heal and their voracious appetites to fuel it.

Faceless: I know very little of them, though given they seem to feed n fear, it is likely they would often make enemies and they likely did not easily form families, let alone communities.

Supernatural Origins & Species- Headcanon the Supernatural community does not know of their specific origins, be it gods, or demons or mere mutations and magic. Or even if they came first or humans did. Though everyone has a theory and faith of their own.

Supernatural Community - Analysis/Headcanon It is clear from Nevermore, the Nightshade society, Principle Weems efforts to diplomatically represent Outcasts and connections between powerful families (& if one wants to touch on older series, arranged marriages) That the Supernatural Community is organized and at least relatively united in mutual defense against humans, even as they live amongst them.

This state of affairs likely emerged in small cases in history with pacts, deals and alliances. Before becoming more necessary during the era of colonialism with many nations invaded grappling with disease, climate change, invaders, political instability and more. While in other regions, organized crusades to drive out Outcasts became ever more intense and dangerous.

In the past a werewolf pack might be struck for trespassing on the lands of an Italian city state. Or the Achaemenid Empire might coopt Sirens into their courtly intrigue by bribery or force. If an anti Supernatural ideology emerged it would often be localized and could be escaped or fought. But with events like the Crusades this became more and more dangerous and that danger was eventually exported around the world.

(Some other regions and powers, such as the Mongols or Song Dynasty may have already engaged in such efforts on their own before this.)

In the case of the "New World" many Outcasts fled to these regions, hoping to recoup and reorganize in what was said to be uninhabited land.

Naturally, encountering colonies, indigenous nations and local Outcasts disrupted such plans. Leading to an increasingly violent and chaotic era for all involved that benefited but a few.

The West Coast Pack Alliance: (A Success Story)

Not all was grim however, the 'San Fran Pack' not known as such at the time, not only aligned with their cousin Lycan, but with indigenous nations in mutual defense pacts that nearly pushed the colonizers out of the Colorado region entirely.

However the invaders scorched earth policies and willingness to potentially risk their own destruction for victory, along with other such hold outs such as the Siren and their allies in the Great Lakes region, led to a set of grudging treaties.

These varied rather wildly and there have been efforts to change, improve, undermine, work around, worsen or destroy them over the centuries but most still hold to some degree.

Usually the signees would be granted some degree of land over which they held dominion, but would be expected to pay some degree of tax and exist in 'peace' with the newly formed colonies.

Reception and attitudes on whether signing these rather than trying to fight and win have long been debated.

In the 'Colorado' region, the mountains were signed away to the indigenous nations and their Outcast allies, with mixed results, but one's that survive to this day.

The Sinclairs and several other families reside on the San Bruno Mountain in various small homesteads or compounds that would be considered somewhere between working and middle class. Meanwhile Montara Mountain and others hold larger collectives.

The West Coast Packs Alliance raise wolves and turn them into Dire Wolves to gift to their allies, sell as elite guards, to allied vampire clans who get the next best deals, then outcasts and finally charging humans out the nose. This is not their only means of making money but it is a major one.

Their mountain homes are surrounded by large, spiked silver gates and walls, as well as armed guards, creating a clear dividing line between those deemed inhuman, their human allies and everyone else.

Residents of the mountains also cannot vote in local elections, and if they wish to must cut themselves off entirely and become citizens of the USA rather than its "territories".

The relationship with police and locals can be rather tense, and werewolves are taught never to show their teeth or nails in public lest they be deemed a threat and attacked, arrested or shot. They also still have strong ties to surviving and in some cases thriving Lycan clans in areas like the Balkans, as well as are part of a wider Lycan Lunar Society that have yearly conventions in different countries.

The Lycan Legion is a self defense organization made up of many Lycan community members. Its influence on their society is seen in the prevalence of what are essentially boot camps for young Lycan. Even those who struggled to transform such as Enid Sinclair still learned some degree of martial arts in these places in their youth. (Check the Wiki, its on her skill list XD)

Facets like these larger scale organizations and meet ups are also true for vampires and Covens (The Coven Convention) but less so for Gorgons and Sirens, but these have become more common in recent centuries due to political necessity. Though these are usually more meet ups between small collectives of powerful or well connected members of the respective species and their allies.

Similarly, there are many Outcast Collective events, often with intense secrecy and security details in case of Monsters Hunters.

There can also at times be rivalries between these factions, though it rarely amounts to more than political scheming or duels. It can sometimes evolve into some variation of a Turf war, or none linear war, but this is incredibly rare and much loathed by the wider community.

Monster Hunters: As discussed before, Monster Hunters are those who hate the Supernatural for one reason or another.

Some, especially the more modern groups will outlaw the use of supernatural elements at all they deem unnatural. Thus using silver bullets and blades but not spells or charms. Most though use a mixture of magic, machine and even martial arts.

As the motives of these groups can often vary wildly, from religious extremists, to rank bigotry, or personal trauma (Real or otherwise) there is not 'as' much communication as one might expect. Especially if there are ideological disagreements regarding magic or methods.

Most governments have deals with their Outcast communities that if Hunters attack then on their own land the matter will be ignored, provided it does not become public. Self defense outside their lands however, will usually see the Monster Hunter framed in the right and the Outcast arrested or put down, assuming they survived long enough for trial.

Despite this, at times Monster Hunters will even work with Outcasts if their targets align, though this is rare, especially in the modern day. Such alliances however usually end with one side all dead, or both sides all dead.

Laurel Gates attack on Nevermore is considered by many Monster Hunters to have been brave, bold and tragic for its failure.

The main reason such an attack had not happened before is because, many in the Supernatural community do have the connections and resources and skills to potentially target and violently uproot many Monster Hunter organizations if they were willing to risk the ire of their governments.

What's more there are often spies seeking such groups and security to be called in upon their arrival at locations like Nevermore. This is another reason why Laurel Gates had to work through an Outcast and in such secrecy. To avoid swarms of Outcast inspectors and even well paid human agents from being called in and destroying her plans.

[wherewilligofromhere]

hi! im mae!

well, my name is actually macey... but i like to go by mae online. i don't really care if you call me either. i thought id make a little intro post given i recently created this blog (it is actually a copy of an older one, but i wanted a fresh start).

my bio states most of it, i am 21 years old, i live in the united states, i identify as female, those are pretty much the basics. i consider myself a bit of a hobby collector and a gullible hyperfixater. some of my main hobbies include but are not necessarily limited to:

photography (i adore film, but due to no access to a darkroom anymore, i am primarily digital)

reading (mainly fiction, romance, fantasy, although i do enjoy an article concerning my special interests or mental health)

music (i play guitar, uke, and bass, as well as write my own music and lyrics, im a subpar vocalist though)

music listener (i am very passionate about the music i listen to, if it has resonating lyrics, i will listen to it, some of my favorite artists are mcr, coldplay, billie eilish (altho i think shes been a little iffy lately), eminem, $uicideboy$, brand new, and lana del rey)

crochet (mainly clothing, bags, and plushies)

doodling (i used to want to pursue art career wise, however was very burnt out and scarred by art teachers in high school and decided i couldn't use that for grades or income)

journaling (this is my most recent hobby picked up, however I've stuck with it decently strictly for over a month now and i am adoring it)

cd collecting (this is a passive hobby for me due to costs of CDs and a general life on spotify, however i do love collecting my favorite albums)

tarot and crystals (this is another passive hobby for me. i do not consistently practice tarot nor crystal meditation, however, if given the time and inspiration i will practice them. i wish i was more consistent, but i find these two to be moderately daunting)

I am currently pursuing an ASD diagnosis and am working with a clinic and insurance on finalizing testing, if anyone has gone through this process you know just how exhausting it is. I am diagnosed with ADHD. I believe these two things to be the driving forces in why i am the way i am and if not who i am. i strongly dislike statements such as "you are not your diagnosis" or "its just in your head." i am my diagnosis. it affects all aspects of my life. invalidating or denying that is invalidating me and ignoring a majority of my life and struggles. regardless, i may update here on how that whole process is going, tips i learn along the way, or further revelations that may occur during said process.

that being said i am a huge fidget toy enthusiast and am always looking for new fidget recommendations, i adore tangles, and these little edamame poppers, but id like to have more one-handed quiet fidgets.

some of my special interests are:

mental health and some disorders, i generally love learning how our brains work, both neurotypically and neuro-divergently

currently journaling its my main special interest and i adore looking for new spreads (ik a hobby sh)

crocheting (ik another hobby)

whales and whale sharks!!

collecting things, such as yarn, books, stickers, games, candles, skincare, and makeup (ngl most of it is purely collection)

japanese culture and foooooood

the northern lights

lake superior (i have always loved her and spent a year living a 15min walk from her)

i am a university student as well as working part-time, so the amount of activity on this page may not be consistent, as i already have an ever-changing life with variability in intensity from week to week.

i finally think that is all. if any of this resonates with you, maybe consider following! id love to have you as a mutual if we are alike, and i definitely do not consider myself someone to have many friends, i certainly do not have a best friend, so i am always open to chatting with new people :)

-mae

[sehtoast]

What inspired your oc?

what inspired Ben?

that’s a hell of a rabbit hole, but lemme give it a crack. hope you're ready to read a whole book lol :

so, for starters, i’ve always been a spider-man kid for as long as I can remember.  I’m not sure what my first introduction to spidey would’ve been, but i’d bet it was either the 90s animated series or tobey maguire’s spider-man movies.  The first maguire movie came out when i was 2, but i’m positive i saw it super young because i don’t remember a time where i didn’t absolutely fucking adore spidey. Some of my strongest memories are actually of ‘wall crawling’ up my grandma’s brick sidewalk and running around her yard like i was swinging from a web.  I had the toys, the pajama suit, the string-can webshooters, plastic masks, played all the games growing up, etc etc. Spider-man stuff is just like, idk INGRAINED in me. He’s what i wanted to be- and, honestly, i still dream of swinging from a web.

Now, that said: Ben.

Ben started as a x reader concept. I’d never written fics before stumbling onto homelander, but i ended up finally snapping one day and giving it a shot for two reasons.  a) blindmagdalena inspired me to write and b) i wanted to finally see some form of trans rep for fanfics, particularly for transmasculine people.  I have my brain trained so strictly to swap pronouns, gendered terms, and even body part names that it actually affects my reading outside of fics, too. Which isn’t necessarily good, but it just goes to show how little is out there for us (fic is usually always skewed toward fem readers- which isn’t a bad thing! It just makes it hard for transmasc folks to indulge sometimes).  But yeah, i really fucking wanted to finally put something out there for us.

But, this fella had to have powers right?  Tender Threads was the start of my writing adventures and i was adamant that it would follow a supe!reader.  And what powers would i want if i were a supe? Spider powers, of course!  Initially i was really insecure about doing this because webweaver already exists in the boys comics and i felt like a copycat.  I couldn’t even figure out a better spidery hero name than spider-man, so i said fuck it and went with it.  Of course, months later across the spider-verse came out and validated me putting a spider-man in another universe, but that’s besides the point lol.

The more i wrote this x transmasc!reader concept, the more and more i could see Ben in my head.  He started off as a concept and just… grew?  I picked his name because i really like ben reilly as spidey and i figure there’s gotta be another spider-man out there named benjamin, right? They can’t all be variants of peter and the more major characters. Funny enough, he was almost a Bennett.  Anyway, i imagined him quite similar to peter parker in the ultimate spider-man comic line, but he’s steadily grown to have his own appearance, especially once i went out looking for a face claim for him and found froy gutierrez.  Now, he looks like a ~2018 era froy!  Funny how ocs grow and change.

I decided that i wanted him to have powers more along the lines of Miles Morales in the insomniac games (bc i fucking ADORE miles and i think his bioelectricity is SO FUCKING COOL). So, i picked that. Kept the organic webbing bc that made sense to me. 

Also, it  wasn’t even a thought in my head of whether or not to carry over the aspect of being trans for ben.

His suit design was heavily inspired by the unbreakable spider-man suit by @ vaughanilla_cosplays on instagram, but i’m still working on building a design that is truly ben’s.

From there, i thought of him in terms of what my ideal spider-man would be like. This part i actually struggled with until i stumbled across this video of Peter Cullen about the day he auditioned for optimus prime (hopefully the time start works, otherwise it's at 1:38-2:10).  Those words hit me first, like, as a person, and i find them influencing me in my day to day life, surprisingly.  But then i realized, that’s what i want for ben.  If ben was going to be a hero, he was going to be a real hero.  Benjamin would be strong enough to be gentle.  Even being a character destined to love a man who is anything but, Ben would be strong enough to be gentle.

Above everything else, Benjamin is gentle.

And from there, he grew.  He grew and grew and grew, and now he’s actually very precious to me.  Ben is my spider-man, more than any iteration ever. When i think of spidey, i think of Ben.

But yeah. I guess ben was ultimately inspired by my love for spider-man meeting my love for the boys. Just, one day an egg appeared, you know?

Anyway, thank you so much for this ask. I fucking LOVE talking about my lil benny-boo 

[lamardeuse]

Temptation Tuesday

tagged by the massively talented and enabler extraordinaire @devirnis!

I don’t keep a lot of WIPs lying around - usually I think of it and write it - so the only one I have sitting around right now is a Strictly Come Dancing AU where Eddie is the latest hot Latino dancer from America and Evan Buckley is a firefighter with the London Fire Brigade. (I loved the idea of Karen, Janette and Eddie calling one another “New York”, “Miami” and “Texas” and dishing the dirt backstage in Spanish.) My sticking point with it is the tone, because it would need to deal with the aftermath of Grenfell and the culture of racist bullying in the LFB so it has the potential to be pretty grim. I might still write it but I’ll definitely have to plan it out carefully and right now I sadly lack the brain for that, but here’s the cute meet:

The first thing Eddie thinks is: goddamn, he is huge.

Not just ripped as hell, but tall, topping Eddie by half a head, which means he’s probably going to have to be the lead. And doesn’t that throw a monkey wrench into all of Eddie’s plans.

Plastering on a TV (sorry, telly) ready smile, he puts his best foot forward and extends a hand. “I’m Eddie,” he says. “And you must be Evan.”

“Buck, actually,” the guy says, returning the smile and making a small tingling feeling two-step along Eddie's nerve endings. “Everyone calls me Buck.”

“Your name is Buck Buckley?” Eddie asks, just as the guy’s warm, strong hand wraps around his and that tiny little tingle Eddie was feeling spikes to twenty thousand volts.

“Yeah, erm,” Buck begins, “it’s sort of a crap play on Evan Evans, because for a while there I was always traveling, and – you’ve never heard of them, have you?”

“Nope,” Eddie says. Evan’s – Buck’s eyes are a stunning, clear blue and his mouth has a sensual fullness to it that makes Eddie want to bite it.

Down, boy. Eddie has heard all about the Strictly curse from Karen, who has so many salacious stories about Blackpool after-parties and heated assignations outside of London clubs. She loves dishing the gossip while never being the subject of it herself; Eddie can only imagine what she’d have to say if he fucked the first guy who danced in a same-sex pairing on the show. He’d be on a plane back to LA before he could say Daily Mail.

Not that Buck Buckley – dios mio – is necessarily available, or interested in a fling that will doubtless get him paparazzi parked outside his door. But then, neither is Eddie. At the end of the day, he has a kid at home who comes first, and he’s not going to risk disrupting Christopher’s life for an affair.

Not that he'd be up for a relationship, either. That's not what he's here for; he can't afford to get too attached to anyone when he's not planning to be here any longer than he has to be.

Eddie belatedly realizes their hands are still entwined and pulls away, his fingertips gliding over Buck’s palm as they let go.

“I’m afraid you’ve got your work cut out,” Buck says, clearing his throat. “My mates say I have all the grace of a day-old giraffe on ice.”

“Any of your ‘mates’ professional dancers?” Eddie asks.

Buck shakes his head. “Not a one.”

“Then they don’t know shit,” Eddie tells him. He looks Buck up and down. “How much do you deadlift?”

“Erm,” Buck thinks about it. “Last week it was eighty.”

“Pounds?”

Buck snorts. “Kilos, bruv.”

“Uh,” Eddie says, “holy shit.”

They can do lifts. Buck could lift him.

And then Buck ducks his head and smiles, and Eddie thinks, this is going to be fun.

Tagging whoever would like to participate! Have at it. <3

[reverie-starlight]

{he comforts you while you’re grieving - m. atsumu}

Alright, I really, really needed this. It’s been a rough 9 months and today wasn’t necessarily horrible but I’ve always wanted to write a grief comfort story, so here’s some comfort from one of my comfort characters. I honestly don’t care if this does well or not, this is strictly for my own comfort and for anyone else who has lost a mother/someone close to them. I hope better days are ahead for all of us <3

gn!reader, no physical descriptions

warnings: death of a parent (mother specifically), grief, intrusive thoughts, depression, but it’s hurt/comfort! atsumu comforts you a ton. heavy angst to super fluff.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grief came in waves.

Most days you were fine. That’s the only word that really accurately described how life has been these last few months. After it happened.

You weren’t explicitly good or bad in any capacity, you were just fine. And you hid it well enough for people to think you were doing good. Getting better.

Moving on.

You hated that phrase so much in relation to grief. You don’t move on from what happened to you. To your loved one. You’re just forced to move forward with everything they left you with. The weight of the emotions you feel don’t get lighter over time, you just adjust over and over again until you grow used to it. Until you feel numb enough to forget how heavy it actually all is.

For some people, that didn’t really click. Nine months in and they were starting to act like your grieving was just an inconvenience. Like everyone was just waiting for you to be happy again.

“Come on, y/n, why don’t you ever come out anymore?” or “What, you don’t want to celebrate with us? You’re selfish,” were common phrases from friends and family alike.

It was made clear to you that they were all getting tired of your shit and that you were becoming a problem, so when you had your unscheduled breakdowns, you tended to hide away.

Even from the one person you could never hide anything from.

He was supposed to be at training, so you figured if you were going to breakdown, you’d try your best to hold it off until he left that morning.

And you had, you managed to hold off on the wave you had felt coming on for a bit. You knew it was bound to happen and you couldn’t (and shouldn’t) stop it completely, but you were at least able to wait until you were alone.

But you lost track of the days and forgot that he always came home early on Fridays.

You sat on the bed and looked through your flash drive of old pictures of your mom to try to remember the good times.

Then a video of the two of you started playing and you were immediately hit with the realization that you haven’t heard her voice in such a long time.

You’d never hear it in person again.

The wave hit full force and you were flooded with thoughts and realizations that she would never watch you get married, or graduate university or start your career.

You’d never see her again.

Everything you already had playing on loop in your brain 24/7 since your mother’s death felt fresher today.

You curled up on the bed and sobbed into a pillow. All you wanted was to be hugged by her but that wasn’t possible anymore.

The day she died and how you reacted was shown over and over again in your head, clear as day.

You didn’t hear the door open or your boyfriend calling out to you.

He had brought food home with him and was ready to catch up on your favourite show with you.

Normally on Fridays, Atsumu would be greeted with you singing along to whatever song was playing as you either cleaned or baked, but today the house was silent.

Save for some crying that could be heard from your shared room.

“Hey, are you in he- oh baby.” He walked in, both worried and confused as to what was wrong before taking in the sight of you.

In the moment, you didn’t register the fact that someone was seeing you breakdown again. All you were able to make sense of was the gentleness in Atsumu’s voice, so you whimpered and pathetically held your arms out for him. You just wanted to be held.

He immediately rushed to you and picked you up a bit to move you over so he’d have room to cuddle you. He frowned when you clung to him and sobbed into his chest, not yet understanding.

Running a hand up and down your back soothingly, he looked around the room. He noticed your laptop was open and saw the paused video.

He was able to piece together what had you in this state soon after that.

Atsumu just held you tighter against him, shushing you and moving his hand to the back of your head.

You were mumbling incoherent words, so he pulled away slightly to hear you better.

“I miss her so much, Atsumu,” you sounded tired.

His heart broke. He wondered how long you’d been crying. “I know, sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

His own eyes welled up with tears as you continued to ramble on about how she was going to miss out on the rest of your life and how unfair it was that you didn’t have a mom anymore.

You started to calm down and the realization of what was happening made you freeze. You did it again, you thought, you’re being a burden.

“Angel,” he said once he felt you stiffen. He knew how much the words of your family and friends had bothered you and he didn’t want you thinking that he thought of you as a burden.

You looked up at him pitifully. “Mhmm?”

“I love you so much. She loved you too, okay? I saw it every time we went to visit her. I don’t know how much you feel up to it, but if you want to talk about her, I’m all ears,” he pressed his forehead against yours and blew some air at your nose. He grinned when you scrunched it up and managed a small giggle. “You’re not a burden. This is natural, you don’t have to hide away from me. I’m all yours, baby. Let me be here for you.”

Your bottom lip wobbled again as he spoke. “Thank you, ‘tsum, that means the world to me.”

You thought of how often Atsumu defended you to everyone who thought you were dragging the grieving process on for too long. How he always held you and reminded you that only you knew what was best for you and to screw what anyone else says about how you’re coping.

You felt slightly silly for feeling like you needed to hide from someone as understanding as him.

You sighed and flopped onto your back, feeling emotionally and physically exhausted. You laughed when he quickly ran a finger over a piece of exposed skin on your stomach.

“There you are,” he smiled. You offered him a weak smile, still not feeling 100% but definitely a bit better than when you were keeping your emotions all penned up.

He rolled over on top of you and you made contact with his pretty brown eyes once again.

“I brought food home, do you feel like eating right now? I can bring it here if you want.”

You shook your head. “No, we can eat at the table… hey, ‘tsum?”

“Hm?”

“Do you think after we eat we can come back here and look through some of these pictures and videos together? I don’t feel like letting her go for the day yet.”

“Of course, my love, sounds like a plan.” He moved off of you and picked you up once again, carrying you to the kitchen.

“Baby,” you called.

He looked at you with a mouthful of food and nodded at you.

“Thank you for caring for me and being so gentle when I get like this. For trying to understand me and not letting me get so isolated. It’s really lonely, but you make it less so. I know it can’t be easy having to deal with me when I’m like this.”

He grasped your hand from across the table. “I love you so much and nothing you do or feel is ever too much for me. Looking out for you is never a chore and helping you when you’re going through something incredibly difficult may not be easy but it isn’t a negative thing for me, either.”

You squeezed his hand tight and brought it up to your mouth for a kiss.

The grief came in waves but at least you’d never drown as long as he was at your side.

[doctorgerth]

Hey Coop, maybe you will tell us what kind of smut/kinks/nsfw topics you don't see around much and you're dying to read/write 👀

Basi, kisses to your brain for this discussion. 💋

I’m so terribly behind on my reading, I can’t say for certain that these topics are lacking in the fandom because I might have just missed out due to my lack of reading 🥲 but here is what I’d love to see (and also write) more of:

LOTS of sinful rambling ahead, I apologize. plz do not read if you’re not comfy with sex talk. minors dni.

soft sex ➟ thankfully, this is becoming more and more popular lately and I have had the opportunity to write for it a few times now! I just love the intimacy, the emotional release. gentle touches and languid motions, skin to skin, praises of each other’s names. two ppl who love each other endlessly and express it through sweet sweet love-making. +bonus if it’s with a partner who is usually far from gentle or soft yet they’re trying so hard to be. ❤️‍🔥

awkward sex ➟ I understand why this is typically an avoided topic simply bc we all want to read about our wildest fantasies. most don’t care to read about someone cumming way too early, someone not getting off at all, struggling to put a condom on, bumping heads, queefing and other weird happenings but I wouldn’t mind one bit. I think we need more laughs because sex is kinda gross and weird when u think about it, but it’s also totally normal and reading about what sex is actually like can help normalize things that ppl are insecure about? everybody is going to do something totally weird at one point, even characters we hc as sex gods. I think highlighting the awkward aspects will help avoid developing unrealistic expectations for first timers. 💕 (I could go on and on about this topic but that will have to be a separate discussion)

corruption kink ➟ not necessarily like corrupting a virgin/virgin kink but it’s not bad either? I just like reading about innocent characters getting fucked stupid by people who get off on their innocence?? like when Person A tells Person B what to do, or teases Person B about how they’re reacting to what they are doing to them (“so hard/wet already?”) just hnnn that’s good shit right there. all completely consensual of course bc I don’t vibe with noncon/dubcon.

breeding kink (tw: pregnancy) ➟ mating press, mating press, mating press. 🥵 I can honestly enjoy this either way; men who go absolutely feral at the idea of putting a baby in reader orrrr men who just love to fuck reader raw and unload every drop of their cum inside of them (with or without risk of getting pregnant). I want to have kids someday so it really doesn’t bother me at all and it’s super duper hot to me. 🥸

car sex ➟ I dunno man, just something about cramped seating, faded radio noise, fogged up windows, and the shaking of the car has me 😮‍💨 we need more Modern AU! One Piece strictly for car sex purposes !!

chubby reader sex ➟ self-indulgent, but I wouldn’t mind reading or writing more about characters who go nuts for a chubby reader! hard to tackle without it coming off as a weird fetish tho…but I just wanna see more grabby hands and love for the fleshy bits!!

anal sex/anal play ➟ I know it’s taboo and gross to some, but I have zero shame about wanting to give the booty more love 🍑

more usage of “pretty baby/girl” “good girl” “that’s my girl” etc. ➟ bc my sub ass LIVES for that shit. and it’s just so so so ❤️‍🔥 to read (and write)

There’s also some topics that I’ve only recently discovered that I’m not entirely sure if I’m into or not yet…being dacryphilia and dumbification but I’ve already talked too much so I’m just gonna end it here 😂

thanks for the chat! sorry for the incessant rambling 😵‍💫

[hoekaashi]

3 am Talks - hq pt 4

a/n: first and foremost, please don’t attack me for the twins’ accent. i know i didn’t even try but i also don’t have the brain capacity to do it rn. second, i know i did karasuno but i was requested to do asahi after posting it and i wasn’t gonna make a separate post for just him so i slapped his ass onto this one (: pairings: kita x reader, atsumu x reader, osamu x reader, suna x reader, sakusa x reader, asahi x reader warnings: language, some spoilers for post time skip taglist: @babydabi​, @suckersuki​, @bakugoustanaccount​, @animoozies​ part 3

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾　*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* 　☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

⇾ omg this boy is gonna talk about how proud he his of his teammates ⇾ like full on proud dad moment (i imagine him like that one panel from the last chapter, just so proud) ⇾ he’s such a soft man, he would talk about how he wants to start a family with you ⇾ what do you mean the sheep aren’t our kids??? ⇾ so would wear a soft smile listening to you ramble on about something ⇾ he would love to hear whatever was going on inside your mind, would never tell you to stop talking or cut you off. Ever.

You climbed into bed after waking up to pee in the middle of the night. Kita had been up for a while and you were unsure as to why he was still up. Before you fell asleep, the two of you had been watching his old teammates play a match on tv and he had been praising them the entire time. “What are you doing up still?” “I was texting in the group chat after you fell asleep and I just can’t sleep now.” You sat cross legged next to him. “What’s on your mind now?” “How I want to start a family with you in the future.” That came out of the blue. Neither of you really talked about that far in the future. “The twins started arguing again and Aran started yelling at me to get them to stop. I asked him why he was telling me to stop them and everyone replied that it was because I’m the only one they still listen to. And then everyone started talking about how I was like the team dad even after all this time and I started thinking about how I would be if I was a father and if I would still act the same. I looked down at you sleeping and the thought just came to me.” You were speechless. “I mean, not that I have any problems with having kids with you, but I wouldn’t classify the twins as test subjects on your parental qualifications. I don’t think they compare to toddlers because the twins actually listen.” “Well, that’s why we have chicken. And sheep.” Kita gave you a warm smile. “Honey, I love you, but please don’t tell me that you just compared animals to human children. Possibly ours.” “It’s okay. It’s good practice.”

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ for as much as i shit on him, i do love atsumu (osamu is the superior twin, sorry lei) ⇾ but this poor baby would always be in such a negative head space after losing a match ⇾ literally thinks his entire team hates him, his coach wants to replace him, his brother and ex teammates would look down on him, wondering what was so great about him ⇾ he would just need to get his feelings out without judgement - just hold him while he word vomits but sometimes he does need to hear some motivation to get him out of his funk ⇾ this kind of feeds into the other things he would talk about if he didn’t have a match ⇾ just a lot of talk about his insecurities and how he feels inferior to other people his cocky persona is fake ⇾ just wrap him in a blanket and feed him comfort food as he lets out everything weighing down on his heart

“If I didn’t fuck up five serves, we coulda won.” Atsumu was laying on his stomach with his head on your lap as you ran your fingers through his hair. “You weren’t the only person who messed up today. You can’t blame yourself for losing the game when everyone made a mistake at some point.” “But mine were so easy to prevent.” He wrapped his arms around your waist tighter. “I know when I go into practice next week, coach is gonna bench me. I’m not even mad, I deserve it.” “Tsumu, don’t say that.” “It’s true. Samu even called me out on it after. And I know the entire team wants me out.” At this point, you didn’t know what else to say because no matter what, Atsumu was going to believe that he was the worst player on the team. “I’m just holding everyone back.” Your hand stilled in his hair. “Tsumu, the only other setter who’s managed to pull off that crazy quick with Hinata is Kageyama. Plus you got Bokuto on your team too! Both of those players are so high energy and hard to manage, yet you make it look so easy. So you had an off day, everyone does. Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days -” He got up and glared at you before you had a chance to finish what you were saying. “Hannah Montana is not the right person to bring into this motivational speech.” “But you sing Hoedown Throwdown and True Friend on a weekly basis.” “And you better take that sentence with you to the grave.” You grinned at him. “But imagine how much money I could get for selling those twelve little words to the press.” Yes. He tackled you and made you swear on your life that you wouldn’t tell a soul.

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ it depends on his mood: either he’s doing all the talking or he’s strictly listening, there’s no in between ⇾ when he’s talking, it could be about a n y t h i n g ⇾ from atsumu to food to you to work to a new show he’s watching to kita to meeting up with friends ⇾ literally anything ⇾ he doesn’t necessarily need to know you for a long time, but he does need to feel close to you if he ever talks about how he feels about you ⇾ he’s not the type to be soft of the regular, so when he is being soft, he’ll be even quieter, maybe even hide his face in your neck or your stomach depending on the position the two of you are cuddling in ⇾ when you’re the one doing the talking, his hands are always busy doing something - most of the time playing with your hair, but it could also be playing with your hands, massaging your hips, etc

“- so Kita blocked our numbers.” “I mean, you did cuss out Atsumu while his phone was on speaker and he was with his grandmother.” “How was I supposed to know that?” he asked quietly into your neck. You laughed. “Let him talk next time. You and your brother you are adults now, so stop arguing like children.” “I can’t help it, he pisses me off sometimes.” You hummed. “Give Kita a fruit basket or take him out to lunch and apologize.” He rubbed his thumb over your knuckles before pulling you closer into his chest. “Yeah I’ll do that.” “Ooo! What if you have him test out that new recipe you were telling -” “No. I always have you test new dishes and that won’t change,” he mumbled. “Samu?” He nuzzled his face further, his breath warm on your neck. His hand moved to your hip and alternated from massaging you to rubbing his hand up and down. “You’ve gotten me this far and everything worked fine. I don’t wanna change anything.” You reached back and lightly scratched the nape of his neck. You turned over and found his face closer to yours that you expected. His arm went back to resting on your hips with his hand on your butt, pulling you closer. He gave you a light kiss on the tip of your nose. “Are you saying I’m your good luck charm?” you asked teasingly. “Nothing’s gone wrong since you’ve come into my life. I’m gonna fucking marry you one day.” You smiled. “Yeah, you also said that when you got your wisdom teeth removed. I’m still waiting on the ring.” He pulled you into a hug, your head in his chest, his lips placing another kiss on your forehead. “Don’t rush me or your not getting anything.”

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ he wouldn’t talk at 3 am ⇾ would literally tell you to shut up and go to sleep ⇾ and if you didn’t stop talking, he would get up and either go to someone else’s place or tell you to leave ⇾ this man does not care about what you’re thinking or what you have to say when he’s trying to sleep ⇾ so don’t expect him to be all soft and listen to you - better yet, talk

“So I was thinking -” Suna grumbled. “Yeah? You better stop thinking.” “But I’ll forget in the morning.” “Then it wasn’t necessary to talk about.” “I’m gonna say it.” “You’re gonna shut the fuck up if you wanna sleep here tonight.”

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ a listener ⇾ would literally tell you to shut up and go to bed jk, not really ⇾ if he’s up at 3 am with you, he’s listening to music ⇾ for sure he won’t be talking and doesn’t really want to have to pay attention to whatever you’re saying ⇾ not in a rude way but like, it’s late and he doesn’t feel like using brain cells at the time ⇾ if you are talking and he loves you, he won’t tell you to shut up or stop, but don’t expect a reply from him ⇾ depending on his mood, he’ll choose to listen or not, and when he’s listening, he’ll make sure you know that he is

“Did you make this lofi playlist?” You were scrolling through your shared Spotify account on your phone, trying to find something to listen to since neither of you could sleep. “Yes.” You played it, both of you enjoying the soothing music that filled the quiet of the room. “Do you have a fanclub?” Sakusa hummed. “Is that a yes or a no?” It took him a minute, but he replied. “Not sure. Why?” “I don’t know how I feel about a group of girls drooling over you.” Were you proud? Jealous? Indifferent? You couldn’t figure it out. But the fact that he asked made you happy that he cared enough to bother listening to you. “Why should you care?” You looked over at him. “Well, what if they’re the crazy type of fans who try to break in here. Or don’t like that we’re dating and try to kill me?” He laid there in silence with his eyes closed as you spoke about all the extreme types of fans that you had heard about. Once you finished, he remained quiet. You felt bad, thinking that you bored him to sleep. “Love, I think you’ve been listening to too many true crime podcasts.” “But still, those types of people exist.” Sakusa shifted with his eyes closed, pulling you so you were resting on his chest. “Stop thinking about that. It’s stupid. Now go to sleep.” “But -” “Go to sleep.” “I can’t.” He shushed you. “Sleep. We can talk in the morning.”

.・゜-: ✧ :-　-: ✧ :-゜・．

⇾ jesus would talk about his insecurities ⇾ would catch you up with his friends aka the other third years ⇾ but also i feel like his anxiety traveled with him into adulthood so like, lots of stress talks about releasing new designs on time and not wanting to let people down/be a failure ⇾ he would talk about his travels too, the different things he enjoyed from each country he visited with noya ⇾ would make plans to go somewhere with you when both of you had the time to drop off the face of the earth for a little bit

“So where else did you want to visit?” you asked. “Maybe Switzerland?” You nodded. “That’s a good choice. Want to do anything specific?” “Not really. When I was with Noya, we kind of just winged everything. It was more exciting and memorable that way.” “I do remember you being more free.” Whenever he called you or sent you pictures and videos, he seemed more happy. “Really?” “Uh huh.” “I do remember feeling less stressed. I have a deadline coming up soon and the pressure is intense.” “Does it feel like volleyball stress?” He gave you a little shrug. “A bit? I have a team - a different type of team - and I don’t want to let them down, but in this case, I’m the captain without anyone to rely on. Everyone else needs me to have everything together, so I don’t have the time to freak out or be stressed.” “Yet, you’re still a ball of anxiety.” “Am I?” He grimaced. You nodded. “I’m trying to get better. It’s really hard when there’s a voice in the back of your mind telling you that if you mess up, everyone will be let down and disappointed in you. On top of that, the media and public are so harsh with everything. There’s just a lot of pressure.” “But you’ve done so well. Sure things were a little shaky when you first started, but you’re well known now and well loved.” “You have a point. I’ll do better for you.” You smiled. “I’m already proud of you, don’t worry about that.”

[neonponders]

Thank you for tagging me, @lovebillyhargrove !! And for giving us a new head canon game ~~~

This got long, so I’ll put it below the cut, but I’ll tag you back 💋 🌹

1. Do they get together BEFORE MF possessing Billy or AFTER shit goes down? (Or maybe DURING😲)

I’m available for all of these scenarios haha but I’ve never seen a fic/let where they get together DURING Billy being flayed 😥. Goodness, Steve would really be his angel, then.

2. Who kisses who first?

Steve makes the moves. That boy has no chill. Plus he is miles ahead of Billy in terms of emotional awareness and maturity, so he’s wearing the pants in the relationship for a while lol

3. Where do they have their first sex? (Location) (HJs and BJs count)

As a former teenager with experience living in a small town *cough*. Their cars. You have to make your own private areas, and your parents’ houses are just. Not. It. lol You park your car in a field, a park, somewhere with a lot of trees or other parked cars, and hope to god that nobody gets curious lol

4. Who says 💖 I LOVE YOU 💖 first?

Billy. Steve’s been burned before, right? He’ll do literally everything else to display how much he cares, but he’ll wait for Billy to lay that card on the table first.

5. I believe this fandom is way past having hard feelings about it, so

Bottom!Steve or Bottom!Billy?

Yes to all. I think they have different needs at different times, and are capable of indulging each other / taking care of one another in both ways.

6. Do they give gifts to each other?

I’m always available for a lot of gift giving (sugar boo tropes, eat my ass out). Both of them are so emotionally stunted that I just want them both showered in affection and Stuff™

7. Where do they end up living? California, Chicago, Hawkins... Idk .. Alaska??)))) Any other location?

I see Billy being very attached to California, and both of them being very scarred by Hawkins, but I don’t necessarily think they’d end up in California. Maybe a new part of California, in between sunny southside for Billy, and the foresty north for Steve. I do always write about them living in Chicago/New York, though haha I think the city is a fun reset for both of them.

8. What are their future jobs?

Outside of a mobster lol, I tend to write Billy as a chiropractor / physical therapist. (I want to live vicariously through Steve as his husband cracks his bones like a stale pretzel). I’ve given Steve a lot of different jobs but art therapist for kids is my favorite.

9. Who's a better cook?

They both cook but make different things. The more fire involved, it’s Billy (grilling, southeast Asian cuisine). If it’s breakfast, it’s Steve. Literally any kind of breakfast, whether it’s bacon and eggs, to cheese and broccoli soufflés. Billy does the dangerous cooking and Steve does the tedious cooking.

10. Steve Hargrove or Billy Harrington?

Steven Hargrove or William Harrington. This breaks my brain.

11. What's Max's reaction when she hears they're together?

Depends on whether or not Neil’s in the picture. If he is, then she’s asking Will if he has any more narcotic syringes, because Steve survived Billy enough to be on his way to marrying him, but he won’t survive Neil Hargrove. Hopper will sooner clean up Max’s homicide than put her in prison, though.

If Neil isn’t an issue, she’s fully committed to her sisterly job of being disgusted yet supportive haha

12. Describe in ONE SENTENCE Hopper's reaction when he hears the names Hargrove and Harrington mentioned together? The Q is inspired by this genius post by @freyrapollo (their post is here).

*long, absorbing silence* And then, “Okay, nobody patrol the quarry after 9pm.”

13. Does Robin like Billy OR does Robin hate Billy?

Robin clocks Billy that first moment he walks through the parking lot ignoring literally every straight girl ogling him. I think she mostly feels sorry for him. It’s not easy being queer in Nowhere, Indiana. I think if they managed to interact on an open playing field, they’d get along fine. But in their canon universe, I don’t know. There’s a lot of baggage and layers around Billy; all of his interactions are kind of unfair.

14. What about Dustin?

Robin is fascinated by Dustin. He’s a smaller Steve who is uniquely smarter yet just as clueless lol It’s pretty clear that Dustin helps Steve just be Steve, so yeah: Robin likes him.

15. Fav Harringrove AU?

I’m an omegaverse creep. I’m a slut for mob au’s. Sugar boo au’s. I’m weak for soul mate tropes. s1 Steve and older Billy. I refuse to settle on one.

16. Billy+Camaro=...??? (Not strictly Harringrove, but I can't not to ..)

I want to see him in a Jeep Wrangler lol I think that’d be a good alternate car for him. He’d be one of those No Doors, rag top gone kind of Jeep drivers the moment it’s warm outside.

[rainingpouringetc]

Hi! So, I’ve been wondering what the problem with Anna Lightwood is, because my brain saw that she was bending gender norms and hit love. But, now that I’m on tumblr, people are saying that she is problematic?

hi! i’ll try my best to explain, idk if i’ll hit everything but i hope this helps. and i’m sorry it took me a while, i wanted to do it justice so i tried to cover my bases and do my research.

basically, anna has said and done things that came across to many as ignorant, racist, and even misogynistic. 

first, let’s look at “every exquisite thing” from ghosts of the shadowhunter market. 

“If I were to tell my parents the truth about myself, if I were to reveal who I really am, they would despise me. I would be friendless, cast out, alone.”

Anna shook her head.

“They would not,” she said. “They would love you. You are their daughter.”

Ariadne drew her hand back from Anna’s. “I am adopted, Anna. My father is the Inquisitor. I do not have parents who are as understanding as yours must be.”

“But love is what matters,” said Anna.

this is from when ariadne was trying to explain why she would be getting engaged to charles. anna is very lucky: her family loves and accepts her and she’s able to live her life as she wishes, which we see her doing in chain of gold. ariadne, however, is not as lucky, and she has to take into consideration the conditions of her parents’ love. anna apparently struggles to understand this, ignoring ariadne’s valid concerns and telling her that it doesn’t matter because “love is what matters,” as if it makes everything perfect.

this is where anna’s ignorance begins to show through. ariadne is: (a) a woman in the late 1800s/early 1900s (i don’t remember for sure what year this story took place but i’d assume 1900s), (b) indian at a time when india is under british rule, (c) adopted, and (d) a lesbian shadowhunter. we know enough about how intolerant people have been about homosexuality, but shadowhunters are a whole other story. put all of this together and you have someone who is terrified of letting down her family and being shunned by society more than she already has been. in ariadne’s mind, she has no choice but to hide who she is.

 anna ignores this. entirely. she doesn’t take the time to talk to ariadne about her concerns, but rather skirts around them and insists that what she wants is what’s more important. this is highly indicative of her privilege and how she puts herself before others and others’ feelings.

now let’s look at chain of gold. there are two scenes in particular that i want to look at, but there are more.

“I quite like your mother. She reminds me of a queen out of a fairy tale, or a peri from Lalla Rookh. You’re half-Persian, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Cordelia said, a little warily.

“Then why is your brother so blond?” Anna asked. “And you so redheaded--I thought Persians were darker-haired.”

Cordelia set her cup down. “There are all sorts of Persians, and we all look different,” she said. “You wouldn’t expect everyone in England to look alike, would you? Why should it be different for us? My father is British and very fair, and my mother’s hair was red when she was a little girl. Then it darkened, and as for Alastair--he dyes his hair.”

“He does?” Anna’s eyebrows, graceful swooping curves, went up. “Why?”

“Because he hates that his hair and skin and eyes are dark,” said Cordelia. “He always has. We have a country house in Devon, and people used to stare when we went into the village.”

Anna’s eyebrows had ceased swooping and taken on a decidedly menacing look. “People are--” She broke off with a sigh and a word Cordelia didn’t know. “Now I rather feel sympathy toward your brother, and that was the last thing I wanted. Quick, as me a question.”

this scene is from cordelia’s tea with anna. i won’t touch so much on the “peri from lalla rookh” comment so much as i’m afraid i don’t feel well enough qualified or researched to adequately represent people’s concerns about this statement, but i do know that there were several posts going around about people discussing how it rubbed them the wrong way, so i thought i would include it as well.

the rest, though, is a bit more obvious. one of the things about books is that it can be more difficult to interpret someone’s words and their meaning because we don’t have things like tone or facial expressions or any of that unless the author explicitly includes it. however, we can draw on the way other characters react to certain comments. cordelia goes on the defense, answering anna’s question “a little warily,” setting aside her tea and explaining rather bluntly that not all persians look the same. it’s pretty easy to infer from her reaction that she’s uncomfortable from anna’s words. now, is that to say anna was intentionally being racist toward cordelia and her family? absolutely not. this is where microaggressions come into play. we see them with anna and also with matthew and even jessamine (though we see hers in the infernal devices rather than the last hours). microaggressions, while often unintentional, are still a form of racism. given the times these characters have grown up in, it’s not necessarily a surprise, but that certainly doesn’t excuse her behavior.

there is, however, a more intentional party to this scene that really rubbed me the wrong way. it’s her discussion of alastair. cordelia has just explained that alastair dyes his hair to stop people from staring at him when he’s walking down the street, and anna replies that she feels sympathy for him and that is “the last thing” she wanted. i understand that she has her own feelings about alastair, likely from listening to the merry thieves’ depiction of him, but that doesn’t excuse her. she even starts to say something about it, likely drawing on her own experiences of wearing menswear at a time when fashion was much more strictly regulated in society than it is today. but she stops herself and instead goes on to reemphasize her dislike for cordelia’s brother and changes the subject.

She held up a small black-bound memorandum book... “This,” she announced, “will hold answers to all our questions.”

...

Matthew looked up, his eyes fever-bright. “Is this your list of conquests?”

“Of course not,” Anna declared. “It’s a memorandum book... about my conquests. That is an important but meaningful distinction.”

...

Anna flipped through the book. There were many pages, and many names written in a bold, sprawling hand.

“Hmm, let me see. Katherine, Alicia, Virginia--a very promising writer, you should look out for her work, James--Mariane, Virna, Eugenia--”

“Not my sister Eugenia?” Thomas nearly upended his cake.

“Oh, probably not,” Anna said. “Laura, Lily... ah, Hypatia. Well, it was a brief encounter, and I suppose you might say she seduced me...”

i hope i don’t have to explain this one too much. there’s just something... unsettling about the fact that anna is held up as this feminist icon and yet she keeps a book with the names of and her encounters with all the women she’s slept with... and then reads those names aloud to everyone. it’s a bit much, don’t you think? and all of this is even without touching the leak we got about her and ariadne, which i’d rather not speculate on too much but is also quite damning. 

all in all, i’d like to believe anna is really a good person who’s just misguided and confused, much because i love the idea of a genderqueer character, especially one in an era before stonewall, but her actions and behaviors have led me to believe that she has a long road ahead of her. as i said earlier this week:

let me get something clear: i would die for fanon anna but canon anna needs to get her shit together before i’ll willingly breathe in her direction

i really hope this was helpful... i did my best lol. if anyone else has more to add, please feel free.

[whoslaurapalmer]

so i never do this but i put a lot of thought into really specific details about the structure and scene layout of (the three-part folding mirror) and i really really really want to talk about it so here are some of my notes and some general commentary 

-the crux of the fic, at least the way i had envisioned it, is what vfd does to family, how it becomes biological family vs the family created by vfd

-what vfd did to specific families: -physically separated the calibans -morally separated the denouements and the snickets -somehow brought the anwhistles closer together

-in terms of ramona and olaf, ramona was there to stress the distinction of biological family vs. vfd family but also how they’re so inextricably intertwined with each other, and olaf, this is harder to tell bc he doesn’t have a point of view here, but olaf is scoping out potential candidates for his personal group of firestarters – his own sort of “family” (ramona bc she’s a duchess, ernest because he has a similar line of thought, josephine because her husband is working with the mushrooms, the white-faced women because, well they wind up in his troupe and I have very vague headcanons about how that happens)

-related; the reason frank asks olivia about miranda at the end is because, at that point in the fic, frank feels so terrible about what he said to ernest that he’s trying to reassure himself that his family is still okay because (dewey’s right) at least they’re together, compared to the calibans, who haven’t seen each other in years. it was one of the first ideas I had when I was jotting ideas down in april and it stuck with me the whole way through. I really wanted it in there. I went back and forth before I got to this plot, though, on whether or not frank or ernest would be the one asking it. but I think it fits frank. -(ahahahahahaha the kicker being that miranda really was at the party the whole time and olivia didn’t recognize her) -anyway 

-the parallels in the fic were: -the denouements start the fic together, and end the fic alone (by being honest about how they feel about each other) -the snickets start the fic relatively separated, and end the fic together (by being dishonest about what happened during the party) -the denouements start the fic by playing their game, and the snickets end the fic with theirs -frank is mistaken for ernest, ernest is mistaken for frank -frank pretends to be ernest on accident, ernest pretends to be frank on purpose -dewey has never slammed a door in his life; towards the end of the fic he slams the tray -i….think that’s all of them. I think

-character-wise, jacques and frank both see themselves as the people holding their families together; when in fact for the denouements, it’s dewey, which I think is clear in this, and for the snickets it’s lemony, which is less clear here? but definitely something I agree with -dewey and kit see themselves as the most ‘normal’, and they both have relatively solitary positions of acquiring information -ernest and lemony clearly both vibe on a ‘question vfd’ wavelength -i was also interested in kit and ernest, as siblings who feel stifled by an older/perceived older sibling, and dewey and lemony, who are sometimes unnecessarily protected by their siblings because they are the youngest/perceived youngest -this doesn’t show up in the fic bc olaf’s parents are still alive, but I thought ramona and olaf were also interesting foils re: reacting to their parent’s deaths

-some narration notes: -frank never refers to ernest and dewey as his brothers, except in the scene where he argues with ernest. because frank doesn’t necessarily see the split of biological family vs vfd family but has definitely swayed more to vfd family -ernest and dewey always refer to each other as brothers. -similarly, frank refers to the members of vfd as associates, most everyone else refers to them as friends. -ernest refers to vfd as strictly VFD because he’s distanced himself from it, while everyone else calls it ‘the organization’ -frank doesn’t swear even in his narration when he’s thinking them and not saying them because it’s, still his narration. he still wouldn’t quite completely say the words. (oh, he’s like gansey, like that. the raven cycle is still on my brain. i had so many scene sketches where ernest and frank were way too callous to each other bc they kept coming out like ronan and declan.)  -kit’s line at the beginning is “someone in this very room has betrayed us” which is jacques’s line from the building committee meeting in unauto. the clock saying wrong afterwards is because the someone who really betrayed them (lemony) isn’t in the room. 

-the costumes, which i did decide very arbitrarily: monty: clearly a snake. olaf: sigh. wolf ramona and olivia: oh, there was actually a slight distinction that just no one notices because none of them have looked at an insect (and also because describing clothes properly but succinctly is the hardest thing. i've written fic for a long time!!!!! i did my time in block paragraph clothing description hell!!! it haunts me!!!!!!!!!!), but ramona was the butterfly and olivia was actually a dragonfly. their masks are roses because, well 1) I thought that would be cool 2) butterflies and dragonflies land on flowers…. jacques: the boxwood, but a lion otherwise. josephine: ocean widdershins: the octopus with the pirate hat jacquelyn: the gold star suit (because gustav said she should do it for a play on. star. like. actress star.) miranda: uranus’s moon named miranda. it was very vague and I put that in the fic before I decided to have her in the little scene with esme. and then i thought i would put her in that scene too. gustav: phantom of the opera.  haruki: tree frog hector: tree (not because of haruki’s costume but because i literally could not think of a damn thing for hector to be) lemony: uhhhhhh I had vague ideas he was. a cloud or something. like a stormcloud???? couldn’t pan out though. I like him in grey anyway. kit: I really just wanted her in red. with a big cape. and i spent so much time mentally deciding if i wanted her to have glasses or not in the archives that i forgot to mention her mask. everyone has one i swear to god  white faced women: did anyone recognize that was them? :) it’s not mentioned in any way at all but in my head they were all dressed identically as flappers

esme actually doesn’t have one, because I, forgot, to give her one. I’m taking suggestions. 

-references to lyeekha’s fics: -“that which is essential is invisible to the eye” is what frank says to jacques at the end of edge, and also the title of their snicket/denouement series  -it initially wasn’t in there, because I was worried it wasn’t, like, in the right tone, re: what happens in edge vs how I was interpreting jacques and frank? but i liked it a lot. so i put it back in.  -“frank quit smoking, but you didn’t” is a reference to frank smoking at the end of rigged  -guess the guest and the clock alcove are from the end of fragments, with dewey and ernest watching hotel guests. this is my favorite thing in the whole world and something i actually keep forgetting is not canon because it is SUCH the perfect beethoven parallel  -kit’s tattoo, which I was specifically imagining as the giant bombinating beast tattoo from ink on her back, which is definitely not around her neck but that was the only spot of skin she was showing so it was available and my thought was, it was kind of a low-cut in the back dress, and she was wearing the cape to cover up the giant tattoo on her back because beatrice was not there to cover it up with makeup (also bea picked out the dress.) (bea: if I can’t be there you have to make a statement) (kit: I have to what) -lemony being a “powerful, mythical figure” to the sugar bowl gen was actually something I wrote a long time ago, back in 2013, and I put it in the fic because I thought it fit, and then happened to reread double edged VERY late into the rewriting, literally THE DAY after I wrote that line in, and i saw a similar line of thought, and I was like “*cooper voice* sometimes you just get lucky ~ ” -jacques being in a lion costume, from the masquerade outfit sketches

additionally – -yes I am still cackling about ‘angel of my apple’ -angel of my apple -ANGEL OF MY APPLE  -writing olaf is constantly like, he can say the funniest fucking things. and then turn around and say the absolute cruelest shit and the balance can be difficult.  -but, angel of my a p p l e 

-i can’t believe that out of all the people here, frank and jacques are the ones having the most semi-successful romantic relationship. well, ramona and olivia, too, but frank and jacques actually kiss so good for them -i know it was very vague and it’s because writing romance is physically embarrassing, but yes that last line was supposed to be them kissing, i’m so sorry 

-undercover underwater was a last-minute addition because I didn’t want to take the time to try and google something real and good because I didn’t have the time. my guilty pleasure is super shitty hallmark murder mystery movies (I like good murder mysteries as well, thank you.) and my mom’s been reading terrible murder mysteries during lunch (where I was sitting across from her, also eating lunch, but also hiding behind my laptop and writing the fic) so I just came up with undercover underwater on the spot, but my mom came up with the tagline. it was originally ‘sleeps with the fishes’ (especially because i love the godfather movies which also, clearly has a very big stress on family vs The Family) but I thought ‘diving for the truth’ was funnier. -my mom and my brother (who has no interest in shitty murder mysteries, but loves to verbally smack them down with me re: their predictable tropes) and I decided that the plotline was something like, single woman scuba dives and keeps running into stuff (you know, hidden treasure, dead bodies, the like); her love interest drives the boat; her overbearing family member is an aunt; this is definitely like, book four in the series. there’s probably twelve books or something. (she goes on vacation on like book six and still finds a dead body, come on it practically writes itself.) (she probably owns a little fish tank......it’s a small sunny beach town.........etc etc.........) (it’s so easy to do this.)  -oh, fixer upper is the worst hallmark murder mystery series, murder she baked is the best. in my opinion. 

-dewey and lemony were supposed to have an actual conversation at the hors d’oeuvres table but every time I tried to put lemony in earlier he just wouldn’t work. it didn’t feel right. so he got saved for the reveal. -but i’m still delighted by the idea of lemony literally doing the shot of gazpacho.  -dewey uses a spoon because he doesn’t have the composure or the guts to do a shot of cold soup  -lemony was also supposed to have a scene with kit and one with jacques, i’m pretty sure, to lead up to the gazpacho conversation and the commiserating re: siblings. but again, didn’t work out. so then dewey had to fare alone in the scene. -oh!! the line about how lemony hides, in the least likely places, was actually something that was in my initial write of lemony’s scrapped pov of my ellington fic. jacques being responsible for sending olivia to the hinterlands was from a scrapped jacques fic.  -steal from your unused fic. 

-because I had to take scenes with lemony out, I had some, gaps in the night that I had to fill in (especially because this is a party more people are there than the snickets and the denouements), so that was how esme, the herpetology squad, and olaf and josephine came to be. (also olaf needed to show up again somewhere else otherwise he kind of, disappeared awkwardly, I thought?) -also because initially there was going to be a scene of bea and bertrand, elsewhere, but I wanted to keep the fic contained to the hotel, because one of the ideas I wasn’t able to put into the fic all that much was the sense of the hotel being its own world -oh, bea and bertrand don’t know that lemony used them as cover. the assignment they were working on instead of being at the party? planning the opera. the scene would’ve come right after ramona and olaf’s conversation. -the herpetology squad not only serves to highlight that people can’t tell the denouements apart (part of the foreshadowing that ernest would pretend to be frank), but was also me roasting myself because writing like a million different characters I had never written like this before had me very concerned about if their characterization was consistent, specifically for kit. (specifically, her with dewey.) also defining a character down to one base trait can be helpful when writing and creating characters, but for people no it’s not ideal. -haruki’s estimation of the denouement’s traits were not how i was mentally keeping track of them, because i definitely do do the ‘one base trait’ sometimes, but i had a lot more going on when i was thinking of them -but yes dewey is kind. in the way that bertrand is kind, but bertrand’s like, way more smooth about it. 

-lemony does not have his own pov because, for me personally, I can’t fathom writing him in any other way besides first person, and it just would not do to have one scene out of the whole fic not in third person. unless he was secretly narrating each scene, which, he clearly was not. i would’ve had to do it in a whole different style. 

-i love that dewey and kit are like ‘ahaha we’re the normal ones though’ and their normal conversation is them literally going ‘hey these creepy fish are AWESOME THOUGH’ -i looked at so many fish. for hours.  -ALL BECAUSE I came up with the phrase ‘oceanic intrigue’ as a fun phrase and decided I had to commit my soul to it and never look back. -oh, the fairy shrimp are really very cute though. and i think the cookiecutter shark is, fucked up but a neat little guy. 

-i’m eternally going to be laughing about this too  kit: where the fuck is frank frank: /three floors down, making out with jacques

-oh!! 40-49 is unassigned in the dewey decimal system (which I googled. many, many times.), and was previously biographies. there’s another section for biographies now, but because biography was the closest I could come to like, some sort of, identity category, I thought it was more fitting if it was the section that used to be biography but was now as blank as frank felt.

-dewey is the one responsible for the clock sounding like it does. he just thinks ‘wrong’ is a fun word. that, and frank recognizing jacques by sound, were from my earlier scene sketches for this when i thought this fic was going to be much, much shorter. 

[mallowstep]

how do you find the energy and motivation to write like... everyday?? i literally cannot write unless i am possessed by a thought in my brain and forced to spew out everything onto paper. and then i cant look at it again ot edit it. like, i really love writing and if im forced to do it for school i will, but i cant write for myslef.

practice.

first, i want to say that i am going to describe how i write, but it is not necessarily going to work for most people, because it has to do with my own psychology and mental health.

second, i want to say that i view writing as writing for pleasure or writing for work. poetry, for example, i write for pleasure, and i would not apply what i am going to discuss to poetry. that happens when i have something to say. it is OK to not want to write for work. that's acceptable and encouraged.

third, i want to dispel a myth. writing consistently is not about motivation. it is about discipline. and you should take heart in that, because motivation is hard to control. you can't force yourself to want to do something, no matter how hard you try. but if you build up discipline, you can learn to do it anyway.

i'm not going to go into that now, because i'm coming at this from the specific perspective of someone with adhd who uses pressure to force myself to function, which is...a hard balance to strike, and not something i can strictly recommend. it does work for some people. i think of it as an arch.

but i digress, i said i wasn't discussing the specifics of how i function in day-to-day life, lest i encourage others to do as i do.

okay. so. where am i going with all of this?

part one: a long, fairly incoherent ramble about me and mental health and writing

well. i don't think the idea of writing for yourself is very helpful to a lot of people. i do write for myself. but that doesn't get my ass in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard. the thing that does that is not social obligation to others, either, it is the firm knowledge that putting words on paper is going to keep me from falling apart.

i don't do that for myself. i don't do that for anyone but the human need to hold yourself together. i am very happy i feel that need at the moment, and every time i have stopped writing* in the past ten years, i have lost that need.

* writing here should really be replaced with a broader term. creating things. making things. working with my hands and something real. but writing is the best thing i know to fill this in myself.

writing does not feel optional. i started writing seriously when i was not-quite-a-teenager and had untreated depression. it was desperate, then. the need to know i was capable of feeling emotions. since then, writing has been different things at different times. it has been a social need. it has been a creative need. it has been a demanding drive. it has been something i drag myself to do because i know it is good for me.

i don't have to write. i could paint, or draw, or knit, or code, or any number of things. i have used all of those things, and more, in the past, but writing is something i also enjoy.

sometimes writing is dragging myself to the keyboard. it is not always a flurry of words as an idea seizes me. it is, "i am publishing the next chapter of ashes because it is monday and that is what i do on mondays." but.

it is monday, and that is what i do on mondays.

i hate not posting every day. i hate it. i am Untethered. i spent ca. three weeks over the summer completely disconnected from time, but. i post ashes today, it is monday, i move on, i go through the days and they are not the same.

i hate not posting every day. i know that i would be doing better if i could just break through and start again, but figuring out how is hard. some things i know (ibtwicm is stressful because another person is involved, and that means that i cannot work with betas, even though the one i have is absolutely wonderful and i adore her), but other things are just that nebulous idea of not enough time to start.

i don't always have the energy to write. some days are bad. some days my head hurts. i don't have the expectation that i will never miss a day of posting. i've taken plenty of time off. but i like the rhythm.

anyway. let me try to turn that incoherent ramble about me into something...actionable?

part two: what i tangibly do

i have a schedule. that is not requisite, but it saves me from making decisions. i have a schedule and i have fics and one-shots and they all slot into that schedule by arc. i could have done it by anything, but arc was convenient.

anyway.

i figure out what i'm posting when i wake up in the morning, and i try to skim over what i've already got before starting my day. i flick back and forth between writing and whatever i am doing throughout the day.

(which is why, as i transition back into my normal pace, the thing i have been doing to fill the gap will diminish. less au chatter snippets etc, because that is what i have been doing instead of writing.)

by the evening, i'm usually close to done with the draft. i spend a solid chunk of time patching it up, then i do a round of edits, finish my other work, do line edits, and post.

if i have time after that, i start looking at tomorrow's post.

that's it. sometimes i don't want to work on something. too bad. it's on the schedule. or even, "too bad, we're posting something today." unless i am having a bad (read: low spoon) day, i do not waver in that expectation for myself.

in fact, i think the only way ibtwicm will get done is if the final chapter two chapters go up un-beta'd, because the deviation from routine makes me impossibly frustrated with them. we shall see.

anyway. i have spent years building the discipline to be able to do that. if you rely on motivation, do not think you can just flip over and magically learn how to turn an empty page into words because you told yourself that is what you are doing right now. so.

part three: how to build discipline

i said i won't be covering this, and i'm not Really. i'm going to tell you how to get started, and i am going to be the Bad Guy. i am not capable of doing this kindly. there are other, better, resources i encourage you to seek out.

so. you can't start by just. throwing yourself into it. it won't work, it'll be frustrating, etc.

you want to figure out what a reasonable word count/day is for you. i shoot for 3k words/day, but i figure as long as i'm above 1k, i'm happy.

[aside: if you are going to be writing a lot in a day, please take care of your body. have good posture. know how to hold yourself. etc. i credit years of playing piano as giving me strong wrists and nice, curved fingers, and exercises to build and strengthen the same muscles as you use for typing, but just keep this in mind.]

anyway, there's no right number. 100 words is enough. it should be -- what works for me is a number that's just slightly higher than what i can do comfortably, because it means i have to be focused, which keeps me on track. i think this is important. it is not the only way.

and then you just meet that goal. if you're new to this, writing 100 words every day might be hard. you don't have to limit yourself to 100, just hit 100 every. single. day.

eventually that will feel easy.

"i don't feel like writing," you will think, "but i've figured out how to get around that."

then you either feel happy with what you're doing or push your word count up.

me? i don't measure how many words i write, because i've already done all of that. for all i bemoan research and being stuck, i'm generally exceptionally effective. i don't think that's bragging; i think the number of asks i have answered with scenes i whipped out of nowhere demonstrate that.

i have spent years getting to the point where i can open up a blank page, on a day when i feel like crap (emotionally), when i have no ideas and no motivation and every word i put on paper feels robotic and stiff and terrible, and still finish what i started. it's hard work. it might not be worth the effort. but. that's what i do.

[saturatedsinset]

if you get a chance to see the elite segment from dynamite this week: i gotta know your thoughts on the hangmatt confrontation. like kenny and hangman has been Too Much for me already, but truly matt's audacity to want to get at hangman by himself is off the charts

i'm putting this under a readmore because it got away from me a little bit but! tldr: matt sucks so much because kenny sucks and it's about the cycle of toxicity in friendships

so i woke up to this before i got up for the day proper and it sure was A Way to start my day. anyway i've kind of said a little of this in tags already but i think it's very. funny? something. that matt conceives of friendship in the same terms kenny does, ie as a game of domination over another person. kenny has to feel like he can control the people closest to him and because matt's been in that insular toxic environment for so long (and also because he's the worst) he's internalised that as like. How Friendships Are. we're good wrestlers and we win and we give you purpose, hangman, how could you leave us? for people who don't do those things? like matt's very. kenny being controlling is fine (to him) because it gives him purpose, he knows what he's doing, etc, and he can mostly ignore the Bad Parts of that because he can mostly ameliorate them by just doing what kenny wants - which is why it's so interesting to see when and why the bucks choose to dig their heels in/say no/push back and how they eventually capitulate to what kenny wants, because they always do - and he's a deeply selfish person so he can't conceive of adam. Not seeing things that way. of adam seeking validation/friendship as not dependent on wrestling success. even as adam has difficulty accepting that from the dark order because he's so used to that being The Way Relationships Are.

it's also very funny(?) that matt is very clearly trying to use the same manipulation tactics on hangman that kenny uses on him - @cuil-meleth made that gifset of the parallels in how kenny talks to matt and how matt talks to hangman - but hangman, like, has friends now who don't manipulate him constantly so he can see that it's. maybe bad, actually. to be treated like that. also matt is just much worse at manipulation than kenny is like i think matt's a very straightforward character in that the things that are important to him are 1. his brother 2. kenny 3. winning at the wrestling and that's, like. that's him. where kenny is a better manipulator not because he's necessarily more complex but because he's better at using the things your brain tells you against you. because his brain is always telling him things that aren't, like. true. so matt's trying to replicate the kind of manipulation that works on him - because he'll always choose kenny over almost anything else. maybe even over nick, one day. (i can only hope) - but hangman isn't falling for it because matt's worse at it and also because hangman isn't the same kind of invested.

i think matt's promo voice is also really interesting because like obviously we have the layers of promo as performance, promo not as conversation but as dramatic monologue, but the intonation used is always really interesting to me? so when hangman talks it's very, like. he's performing to a crowd, he's exaggerating his gesture, he's speaking very loudly, there's a Drama to his tone, but he's more. it's more believable to me that he would also say something like this at normal volume in normal conversation. part of that is that hangman's the babyface, he gets to be the voice of reason, the straightforward hard-working man, but part of it is also that matt's promo style is, uh, different. by which i mean. just insanely annoying. on purpose, obviously, but god does he suck. so he's Performing Disgust at hangman for leaving them, for drinking, for hanging out with the dark order, but he's doing it in a way that's even more exaggerated than is strictly necessary to play as a promo. it's heel work to be sure but it's really interesting to look at the contrast there. i'm not sure i had a point. uhh i hate matt jackson

matt approaching hangman alone is fun especially because of that bte ending bit a couple [weeks/months] back where he's like Sadly Watching Hangman Have Fun With The Dark Order and on his way to make amends and clearly now he's abandoned that to just fully commit to being theeeeee worst. the worst. like it's fun that matt feels entitled to approach hangman alone because he clearly thinks he, matt, has some hold over hangman that hangman is doing a very good job of ignoring. obviously it's also fun given the whole hangman/bucks feud around revolution 2020 and the fact that matt very obviously still feels slighted by that (i mean, fair, it's not like hangman wasn't being shitty)

uhhhhhhhh so i sure did have some thoughts. didn't expect to write an essay but here you go

[armandyke]

The link between diet and autism: a critical analysis of the recent Earth Locker episode and a chance for River to relive her lab report title writing days

Link to the original video

So as I already mentioned I’ve seen a few people talking about the recent episode of the Earth Locker (a podcast by Robert Sheehan, Tom Hopper, and Bryon Knight) where they talk with Tom and his wife Laura about their experiences raising their autistic son. I watched the whole episode and while there were a lot of good points made, there was also some misinformation, statements that were poorly explained and could be misinterpreted, and a couple of pretty harmful ideas put across which I’m gonna go into below. 

Disclaimer one: I’m gonna be saying a lot of stuff that I’m not going to be posting sources for. This is because everything I’m saying comes from my experiences as an autistic person, my experiences working as a support worker for adults with autism where I am currently a key worker for two autistic individuals, my work related training on autism, mental health, and diet & nutrition, and my knowledge from my psychology degree in which I also spent a lot of time studying biology and physiology. This is all just stuff that I know, and at some point I might try to add some sources but I’m writing this fresh off watching and making notes on this video so my energy is already running a little low and I’d rather focus on getting my points across instead of having to take time to source every piece of information. 

Disclaimer two: The purpose of this post isn’t to attack or defend any of the people involved in the podcast. This is also in no way a criticism of Tom and Laura’s parenting. This is purely a criticism of the discussion that took place on the podcast, not on any of the choices they’ve made for their son.

Disclaimer three: I’m going to be using the phrase “challenging behaviour” a lot while I’m explaining things as this is the term used in most modern research and is what we use at work. This basically describes any behaviour that causes harm to the individual or to other people around them, or behaviour that is detrimental to the individual’s wellbeing. 

So the main thing I want to go into with this is the misinformation and misinterpretation of information that was central to the discussion in this podcast, and that was around the connection between diet and autism. Most of the things Tom and Laura said about the effects of diet weren’t incorrect, but it wasn’t explained accurately and missed out on some key points so let’s go: 

In terms of whether diet can “cause” autism: no it can’t. There’s absolutely no evidence to suggest it does. It also can’t “worsen” autism because autism isn’t something that can get “worse” or “better”. A person with autism can develop and learn new skills and they can also regress (and diet can influence this, which I’ll go into further on), but an autistic person at a lower stage of development does not have “worse” autism than a person at a higher stage of development. 

Poor diet can have an impact on autistic people in the same way as with neurotypical people. If we eat junk, we tend to feel like junk as a result, and when we feel like junk it can be harder to concentrate and carry out our usual day to day tasks. However, autistic people are also significantly more likely to suffer from digestive problems and food intolerances, and so for a lot of autistic people (or parents of autistic children) diet may be something that requires close attention. So saying that an autistic individual’s challenging behaviour could be a result of their diet isn’t necessarily untrue, but it does massively oversimplify the issue. The challenging behaviour is more likely a response to pain or discomfort, (as well as frustration if they are unable to communicate this), which is caused by a diet unsuitable for this specific individual, which is caused by an intolerance or digestive problem, which they were at greater risk of developing due to their autism. It’s worth mentioning that medical professionals still don’t know why this comorbidity exists. 

So, referring back to Tom and Laura’s experience with their son, they were explaining that their son’s challenging behaviour spiked while he was on a high-sugar diet. Laura also added that he had been suffering from increasingly frequent infections in his ears and throat while eating these foods, which makes sense because high blood sugar levels can weaken the immune system and make us more susceptible to infections. They then explained that these infections stopped following a tonsillectomy and a change to a sugar-free diet, which then also lead to a complete reduction in their son’s challenging behaviours. Again, implying that the reduction in behaviours is a result of cutting out the sugar is oversimplifying. It’s most likely that their son’s challenging behaviours were a response to the pain the infections were causing, which may or may not have been linked to his sugar intake. Either way, autistic people are all individuals and so while a reduction in sugar intake has benefited their son, by no means does that mean that all autistic people should be following a low-sugar diet or that this would be beneficial for them. 

This isn’t entirely on topic but there are two other things I want to address in terms of what Tom and Laura said while talking about their son, the first being when talking about their initial approach to their children's’ diet before they were aware that their son was autistic. Laura essentially said that she wanted their children to be able to try different foods and that the focus would be on education about health and diet rather than cutting “unhealthy” foods out of their diets completely, which I thought was a great way to approach things. However she then added that, had they known about their son’s autism at the time, they may have approached things differently, which I was confused about. I think (and hope) she was just trying to say that if they had known upfront that sugar particularly seemed to be detrimental to their son, they would have reduced that straight away rather than having to use a process of trial and error which makes sense, but just the way it was phrased set off alarm bells because it sounded like she was implying that they would have controlled his diet more strictly if they had known he was autistic. Hopefully this isn’t the case because autistic people don’t need to have their choices limited if there is no detriment to their health or wellbeing. 

Another thing I was confused about, and I’m not sure if this was supposed to be more of a weird analogy rather than factual information, was when Tom started talking about “sensory glands” when talking about their son’s hypersensitivity to sounds. I think his exact words were something along the line of saying that the high sugar levels were causing his “sensory glands” to “swell” which was heightening his sensitivity. And like... unless I missed something there is no such thing as a sensory gland and they certainly don’t swell up when we’re over stimulated or when we have a lot of sugar. Sugar triggers high dopamine responses in our brains which then leads to cravings and can cause spikes and crashes in mood, and it can also cause inflammation, all of which can cause discomfort and in turn could lead to an increase in sensitivity, but as far as I know sugar doesn’t have a direct effect on our senses. 

Now on to the elephant in the room and the two big, glaring no-no's in this podcast, both of which were said by Tom (these are not direct quotes because I didn’t get a chance to jot them down in time so I’m paraphrasing slightly):

“we cannot ignore the correlation between rising autism rates and the increase in fast food consumption” (spoiler alert: yes we can)

“I really want to get to the cause of autism and see if there’s something that can be done to prevent it”

So, first of all, autism isn’t something that needs to be prevented. Autistic people are not a detriment to society. We don’t have an illness, we just experience the world differently and, in some cases, require additional support to live our lives as fully as possible. Obviously it can’t be ruled out that fast food, or anything else, has a part to play in rising rates, but there is absolutely no evidence to suggest that it does and correlation absolutely does not equal causation. Gay representation in the media has also been steadily rising with rates of autism diagnosis. Does this mean that seeing gay people on TV makes people autistic? No. As Laura briefly mentioned, it is far more likely that the rising rates are actually due to an increase in understanding about autism and the accessibility of diagnosis, especially when you consider how many people are still slipping under the radar even with all the knowledge we have today.

I appreciate that most of this podcast is just a conversation between friends about various topics, but when the goal of this podcast is to “raise awareness”, and with the shared platform the people involved have, casual statements like these are incredibly dangerous. With the general implication that if everyone lived a healthy, clean, and organic lifestyle, we could reduce the number of autistic people in our society, this not only puts the “blame” on parents of autistic people, and on the individuals themselves, but is also dipping into eugenics territory. And while I don’t think the intentions behind either statement were malicious, they were incredibly ignorant, and the fact that they went completely unchallenged was concerning and made me pretty uncomfortable. 

There were still a lot of positives in the podcast. I’m really glad Laura was also involved because she definitely came across as being the most educated on the subject of the four of them and did make a point of bringing up issues with diagnosis (particularly among girls with autism), her and Tom’s privilege in terms of being able to work with doctor’s to find out as much as possible about their son’s dietary needs and to then provide him with a tailored diet, and also addressing the issues with “high functioning vs low functioning” when Rob asked about the “severity” of their son’s autism. However there was still an undeniable amount of inaccurate or poorly presented information, as well as some things that were just plain incorrect and offensive. I appreciate that a lot of this was coming from personal experience rather than being generalised information, but I think this could have been communicated a lot more clearly and effectively considering the intention was to spread awareness, and the episode would have massively benefitted from the input of an autistic adult. Rob specifically had a lot of questions about autism in general and I think they would have been much better answered by somebody with autism, rather than a parent giving an outside perspective of their child’s experiences. It’s always a little uncomfortable to watch four neurotypical people discuss autism, regardless of how positive their intentions are, and I don’t think it would have been a great challenge for them to find an autistic person who would have been willing to talk about the topic with them. 

[writingwithmeraki]

Why Diversity and Good Rep Matters

General disclaimer: these are my opinions, my personal thoughts and reasons. I'm going to strictly talk about race in this post, but I think most of these points also work for having good rep on mental illnesses, disabilities, sexuality, and others.

I've seen a couple of these posts around instagram and tumblr, and here are my two cents on why good diversity is extremely important, especially in a topic like literature.

First off--the ability for readers to be able to connect with a certain character at a deeper level.

I'm not going to go too deep into this because there have been other fantastic posts (both here and on instagram) that explains this perfectly, but really, it's about inclusivity. Seeing a character that reflects you, or some big aspect of you, can be empowering and welcoming. You're able to relate to that character because there are similarities that go beyond just "oh x is also super organized." It's more like, "oh I understand why x does [specific action] because it's a highly respected custom in my culture" (specifically talking about race here). It's also just really cool seeing a character that does the same things as you.

For example, I recently read Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, which is a book telling the generational stories of a Korean family from the beginning of Japanese colonization and afterwards (highly recommend). And I kid you not, I got so, so excited when they mentioned a specific Korean dish within the first chapter.

Now, as a person of Korean descent, I rarely ate toast or cereal for breakfast, let alone call that a meal. I don't know what meatloaf is or what casseroles even look like. And nearly in every YA book that I read in elementary/middle school, they would be the casual mention of eating certain foods or snacks, and I could just never relate to it. Little things like that casually remind you that you're different, when in reality, you're not.

Ok, this blends into my next point about good, accurate representation: books shape your perception.

I really, really, really want to emphasize that when people ask for representation, it's not half-researched, token diversity. I don't want your Asian character to be smart, passive, docile, and a bad driver. Now, those aren't necessarily bad traits, I'm not saying your character can't have them. But they should not be the only traits they inhibit. Don't give your POC characters harmful stigmas and stereotypes as their personality and call it a day. Especially now, where diversity is extremely lacking in literature.

Good, accurate, representation is important because it shapes the readers perception of the group your character belongs in. Especially for people who do not share the same culture. Most readers aren't going to go research the history, culture, customs and practices of your x non-white character after finishing your book. In most cases, readers will casually adopt and generalize the traits you give that character.

Have you ever watched an actor first play an extremely villainous, rude, abusive character and then find it really jarring when you see them in another movie where they play an extremely nice, empathetic, smiling character? Even more so if the first role you've ever seen the actor play was the mean one. You can't see them playing a different character anymore. Like imagine anyone else playing Loki besides Tom Hiddleston.

Consequently, a lot of rookie actors get hate for playing a hateful character. You might be asking, why? It's not like the actor is actually like that character in real life. And you're absolutely right. But sometimes we forget that, and some completely disregard that.

Books work the same way. You didn't mean to extend your first impression of the character to the person who played it, your brain just associated the two together. And just like how you associate a character's personality with that of the actor, readers will internalize the personality of the character and their race.

Another example: my brother was reading a book and the literal words the author used when describing an Asian character was that "X Character had anime quality."

The character was Chinese.

Anime is Japanese, for those who don't know. And there's a bunch of other things I could nitpick within this single sentence (what on earth does 'anime quality' even mean??????), but my point is, it's almost dehumanizing to be described that way. Like you've never read a book describing a white character as cowboy or KFC quality.

Anyway, some, especially younger audiences, who aren't Asian won't even question it. Even those who are Asian might not even question it; my bother didn't even mention it until I read over his shoulder. I would never have seen those words. This is extremely problematic when books designed for 10-13 year olds describe their POC characters in a similar fashion.

And the problem is that it's repeatedly done in books. Look at Cho Chang (my gosh, the way I could go into a whole another spiel about this--) and Baljeet Tjinde from Phineas and Ferb. Subtly, they share similar characteristics; almost all the Asian characters I've read about in books have. Same idea extends towards other races. It's either always degrading representation or none at all.

These impressions build upon each other. It's dangerous. Literature is an extension of society, and more so a reflection of it. See these types of characterizations, and people will begin to internalize them. For younger kids, they'll grow up believing them. They'll impose these stereotypes onto other kids. Adults will too, and so will teachers*.

What's more, describing non-white characters in the fashion as said above, perpetuates the constant image of a foreigner. Of course, foreigners are not bad, by no means. But it just points a finger at the POC and labels them as the 'different' one. No specific characteristic or personality should be limited to a certain person or a certain race.

All in all, it's important to be inclusive because ideas played out in literature and children's books extend to society and our mindsets, as well as how we perceive other people. And, it's nice to be included beyond stereotypes. Non-white characters are people too! :)

This was more of a rant but I hope you've been able to see why diversity is really important. Books and authors have gotten better with inclusivity (which is great and so so awesome to see) but we can definitely be better! This is only the surface, and need for diverse characters go deeper than this but you're more than welcome to do outside research. Everything I've said here is what I've noticed and my personal opinions.

Thanks for reading and happy writing!

*Not everyone will fall under this category, nor am I trying to generalize everyone. Simply saying that these stereotypes can filter into the education system and affect students, especially if the teacher also has those internalized ideas. Also wrote it to say that casual racism can be a root of bigger racism.

[paradife-loft]

sms/jgy for the ship meme? (alt: also interested in thoughts on xueyao if you'd rather)

Mmm, boy, ok!

Suyao: so, unfortunately I think I have to go with “don’t ship” for this one...

1. Why don’t you ship it?

Gah, I feel like I don’t know how to answer this in a way that doesn’t make me sound hypocritical, but a decent part of it is that superior/subordinate ships mostly vary for me on a scale of “eh not my thing” to “nope nope nope squick”. I’m really not into (a majority of)* power differentials, and I feel like the way I read SMS buying into the class structure of their society, just tilts things in that direction for me. (Relatedly, I think “I’m happy or satisfied to die for your benefit” is likewise a not ship thing for me. Depending on the context. Idk, it’s complicated.)

2. What would’ve made you like it?

I mean frankly, I think if I were more emotionally invested in SMS (as opposed to intellectually invested in the part he plays in the story thematically), I’d be better able to pull out aspects of the ship I like despite having others I’m ehh about. And that’s partially down to framing, and what kind of time he & Moling Su get onscreen since he’s a minor character, and the way I personally end up reacting to like. Characters visibly being not as good at something as another person is, and also visibly/publicly upset/jealous/angry about it. So just - yeah, a different focus in a story that gives more of his POV in the manner of being his own multifaceted protagonist, can really help there? And/or, for that matter, a more hyperpersonal, erotic spin on the dynamic, for that matter :P Sometimes I’m shallow.

3. Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Yeah! I think there’s absolutely a lot to be said about the importance that each of them has to the other, and the way they function as partners in trying to be seen more respectably by a society stacked against them? I’m absolutely interested in what must have transpired in the early stages of their relationship becoming what we see by the end of canon, where SMS is so clearly trusted with these dirty, distasteful parts of JGY���s life that he doesn’t willingly let anyone else into, certainly not if he cares about their opinion of him and, y’know, wants to keep them alive.

Also, the parallels of JGY & SMS’s first meeting at Jinlintai, with the Xiyao interaction in CQL ep 4? Extremely good and crunchy.

-

Xueyao under the cut for length and alsooooo nsfw XD

1. What made you ship it?

Poooooorn :P Like, this is not a ship that I consider as “canon” for any worldstate I write in or ramble about as a general rule, but in ~pornland~ where characters get to fuck far more people and in far more contexts than I consider strictly likely in reality? Yes. Yes yes yes. I believe the instantiation of my shipping this had to do with a conversation with @veliseraptor where I ended up having Peak Gremlin Brain and saying something about how they should fuck on the murder table next to NMJ’s dead body?

Basically I just think they have a really hot push-and-pull relationship, and a-Yao deserves a whole lot of fucked up under-negotiated kink in hypothetical iterations of his life, ok XD

2. What are your favourite things about the ship?

See “fucked up under-negotiated kink” above :P Like, I am here for Xue Yang being the wonderful, hilarious, boundary-crossing id machine that he is, and for JGY getting pushed thoroughly out of his comfort zone into things he... enjoys?? for some definitions of the word “enjoy”? but is not really okay about in any capacity and would never in a million years end up doing in a more SSC/RACK way with er-ge.

And the material underpinning that, which relates to why I enjoy them in that context and think they work well in this sort of fantasy-based reality fork, is how they do seem to have this semi-playful dynamic once they’re in their own walled-off space, of a bit more indulgence than usual, and knowing each other differently than everyone else around them? Like, the walls JGY has to keep up are quite different from the ones he normally engages; and then I think there’s something appealing (at least for a little while) for Xue Yang of being in a rich family’s pocket, and having access to that level of material security-to-the-point-of-frivolity that he can just fuck with and never seriously have to worry about overstepping. It’s a very good circumstantial friendship that pokes at the edges of each of their vulnerabilities in society, and because of that allows a lot of really hot pushing at those vulnerabilities in a way they can’t elsewhere.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on this ship?

Mmmmm, shruuuugggg??? I have no idea, honestly. I guess on one hand, I’ve seen stuff that posits them knowing each other when they were younger / what if?, and that’s really not something I have any interest in? But idk if that’s popular, necessarily. Oh, I also see them both as very switchy with each other. And for that matter my general opinions on JGY Having Hella Sex And Touch Hangups also apply, as usual. But again, not sure if those are “unpopular” so much as “I vaguely remember seeing material that did the opposite at one point, and I disagreed with it” /shrug