#this is largely a personal post this time I'll make posts later engaging with the actual content of the show

[cookinguptales]

So a few days ago I finished listening to the last of (the public episodes of) Old Gods of Appalachia. It was... honestly kind of a weird and personal listening experience, and I had to go slowly because I'd be lying if I said it didn't pull up some stuff from my childhood that I didn't enjoy.

I loved writing of the show and most of the voice acting! Most of the storylines were so, so, so good. I wish I could write like that. But the best writing in the world is still a very strange experience when it has ties to a life you left behind a very long time ago.

(cut for length! don't want to spam the poor tag)

Mama's side of the family is from that part of the country, and I have never had a good relationship with any of them. Same old story. Pentecostal/Baptist/Church of God. Enough said, right? lmao. I'm a queer disabled woman with a strong interest in magic and folklore so you can probably guess how well all that went. I'm NC with most of them now, very LC with what's left, and most of what I hear about them is through Mama, who still tries to talk to them as much as they abuse her. Last I heard, they were mostly Q.

Old Gods is an incredibly accurate show when it comes to depicting that part of the world, to the point where I had to stop even just that first episode several times to just kind of. Sit there with my thoughts and then let them go. Even just hearing Mamaw and Papaw made me thing about my gramma and my paw-paw and the uh. Very complicated relationship we "enjoyed". I feel like memories cropped up at the strangest things, like when he talked about copperheads out in the woods and I remembered that Easter when the egg hunt was canceled because one of the parents went to put an egg in a hole in the ground and found a whole nest of baby copperheads. I remembered the woods out there on the Tennessee side of Bristol twenty-five years ago when Mama would still let me visit my grandparents.

He'd say "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" and I'd be right back there at Gramma's kitchen table, seven years old and reading through every verse the Bible had on witches as punishment after Gramma found a Harry Potter book in my suitcase.

But listening to the podcast was also a deeply surreal experience because so much of it was familiar that shouldn't have been. My family never would have taught me magic or local folklore. Not ever. Well -- they had their own folklore, as we all do. Laying hands and the like. But the stories that were there before them. Oh no. Not ever.

When I was finally turned loose on the world when I was 18, I was frustratingly liberal for my own family, but annoyingly conservative on a college campus. I had a lot to learn very, very quickly. Thankfully, I did -- and I learned it through taking classes that I never, ever would have been allowed at home. I went from being unwilling to be in the same room as a tarot deck to collecting them myself. (And I have a very lovely collection now, too.) I went from being sort of fascinated if afraid of concepts of magic to taking classes on it.

I've always had a particular interest in cunning magic. It came up in my first class on the history of witchcraft, and something about it... I don't know. The combination of folk magic and mainstream religion and the elevation and degradation of them both. I ended up learning a lot about British cunning folk, but particularly quite a bit about those up in Scotland. (Just ask my Sleep No More friends. They'll vouch, probably with a laugh and a shake of the head.)

I never learned much about Appalachia, though. Not about folk magic. So imagine my confusion when I understood all the references made to folk magic in this show. Some of it, sure, was from my childhood. Haints and the lord, etc. But other things, witch bottles and charms and running water, none of this was stuff my family would have taught me. This was the stuff I'd learned in school. On my own, once I graduated. This was the Scottish folk magic which had always called to me in my classes.

And then, y'know, they mentioned it explicitly in the show. That whole Scotch-Irish thing that Appalachia's got going on. And I thought... oh, I've heard Mama talk about that. But I never felt like any of that had much to do with me; I don't have strong familial connections with either side of our family, Mama or Dad's both, and so why would I feel connected to their family history? I feel like an orphan and a mutt most days.

But oh. Of course they did. Of course they brought Scottish and Irish traditions with them when they came, and of course they weren't too dissimilar from the things Scotland had before and after they'd left.

God. Imagine how I felt when I realized that I'd spent over a decade studying the exact subject that my grandmother had always tried to keep from me. I'd come to it a roundabout way after that day sitting at Gramma's table, feet too small to reach the ground and puzzling through verses of the Bible that I've learned since were about necromancy, but I'd done it by accident all the same. I studied the traditions that my family would have had before they picked up the snakes, so to speak, and I'd done it by going right back to the source.

How perfectly fucking bizarre.

And that, all that took some getting used to. But I got used to it. I kept listening, glad that at least that part of my childhood was something I'd managed to put to bed. I could listen to the rest of the show without being hurled back to my infancy.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I mention that Dad's side is Pennsylvania Dutch? :')

Who the fuck has characters who are Pennsylvania Dutch?

So then all that's happening in the show, and I'm thinking about when I went to Alsace just before the pandemic hit, when I spent Christmastime there and I was inundated with traditions that had been passed down to me from my father. How strange it was to finally light candles for an advent wreath and know exactly from whence that tradition had come. When I was in Strasbourg, our tour guide was genuinely psyched to meet someone whose family was Pennsylvania Dutch because, well, he knew exactly where my family was from. It was such a very weird experience.

And now! Fuck! Here it is again! And I'm thinking about advent wreaths and baked butter beans and Braucherei and hex signs... all things that, again, I'd had to piece together myself in absentia. All traditions that I had received piecemeal, and ones that I'd had to confront when I myself moved up here to Philadelphia for school.

It's... like going to a family reunion, I guess, where they all recognize you but you don't speak the language. It's the strangest feeling.

But, I mean. I didn't grow up with all this. Mama and Dad went up north, much to the disappointment of her family. (They got upset when she married a Yankee, but then they moved and oof.) So okay, listening to this podcast is a weird trip for me, but it's not that reminiscent of my actual childhood. It's not like there's a character who left her family in Appalachia to go have a baby in Cincinnati, Ohio and what the fuck is going on here? lmao

(Though thankfully, my mama didn't die in childbirth with me. It was just awful close and I was one blue baby.)

When I tell you I had to turn the podcast off and go for a fucking walk!

Like... look. Old Gods of Appalachia is a good podcast. Not every arc and character landed for me, but there are certain episodes that I still marvel at. (The Boy oh The Boy.) Ways of weaving together threads that I really wish I could do as an author. The storytelling is fantastic and the production design nearly impeccable. There are transcripts, which as a woman where we passed down both haints and sign language I very thoroughly appreciate. It's perfectly creepy and the worldbuilding is fantastic.

Those vibes hit is what I'm telling you.

But it's also a podcast that felt in some ways like a history of my family that I had never learned on my own terms. I actually ended up going to my parents and talking about our ethnicity and history and traditions a few times while listening to this show, and I actually ended up learning a lot about my own background. Which... I still feel isn't totally my own to claim, but perhaps I came around to it my own way. It was honestly one of the strangest listening experiences that I have ever experienced.

I'm going back and forth on being a Patreon backer so I can listen to those episodes, too. It's not that I've never backed Patreons before. It's not even that I've never backed podcasts! (I backed TMA back in the day, at least before it changed course a bit and I lost interest.) But, and you are not allowed to judge me for this, damn. Did they have to call it tithing? I just. I know it's just a bit, I know it's not real, but I apparently still have just enough religious damage that I can't make myself do it. It's so dumb. But man. I don't fucking tithe.

We'll see if I make it over that particular hurdle. I'll probably be able to design some mental gymnastics to get me through it. Maybe.

They'll be in Brooklyn the day before my birthday and. idk. Maybe I'll go, if the venue is accessible. Book a trip to Sleep No More as well, make a fun little trip of it.

But... hell. I can't help but notice that the first stop is in Columbus, Ohio, where I once wore a little tiger mask at the zoo, and the last stop is in goddamn Bristol, Tennessee.

[penkura]

last forever [9/13]

Summary: Zoro only offered to marry you to keep you out of an arranged marriage with a man much older than you. You agreed with the caveat of ending it via annulment once you received word from your parents regarding the original engagement, despite your growing feelings for your close friend.

Pairing: Zoro x Fem!reader, mentioned Sanami later (like epilogue later so chill)

Warnings: Marriage of Convenience, Fake Marriage, referenced sex (waaaaaay later on), mutual pining, Zoro is bad at feelings but what's new there, eventual romance I promise, mention of past attempted assault (I'll warn in that chapter), creepy older dude later on

Note: Post-timeskip, go let's go. Of course, they're a little older now, we know Zoro is 21, so Reader is now 20. :) This chapter IS shorter than the others that are left, but that just means we're getting into the better parts of the story. I really can't wait for you all to see what's next. :)

Taglist:

@misfits1a

[Ch. 1] ● [Ch. 2] ● [Ch. 3] ● [Ch. 4] ● [Ch. 5] ● [Ch. 6] ● [Ch. 7] ● [Ch. 8]

It’s been a long time since you’ve felt such strong anxiety about seeing people, not since the last time you’d met with your parents’ chosen fiancé for you, but it’s come back in spades at the thought of seeing your crew again after two years.

At the thought of seeing Zoro again, more than anything.

The thought of him deciding to dissolve your marriage when he sees you again is the main source of your anxiety, what you try to push away as you leave the lovely group of swordswomen who took care of you for the last two years, those who you’d told about your situationship with Zoro wishing you the best as they dropped you off. You hope no one is jinxing anything, but still feel nervous every time you see someone or something that could be Zoro as you go about, looking for things to purchase and for your friends.

When Nami and Usopp find you, the happiness between the three of you makes all your worries and anxieties dissipate for the time being. Both hug you so tightly, a three-person group hug, you almost cry out of happiness at seeing them again, before Nami starts fawning over how you look so much stronger yourself. She can’t believe how different you seem! She adores your outfit of course, a fitted tank top with knee-length shorts to match and ankle boots, your beloved sword from Elias still attached to your hip. You tell her how wonderful she looks, giving Usopp the same compliment as the three of you start making your way towards Sunny, running into a distraught Chopper who you’re able to calm down after an explanation of the fake Starw Hats on Sabaody.

Chopper gives you a big hug and lets you carry him the rest of the way, its like you have a child but you don’t mind it. You’ll baby Chopper all he wants, it’s the least you can do after he’d taken such great care of you all as your crew’s doctor before you were separated.

Once you make it to Sunny, you’re glad to see your ship and home is safe, and receive compliments from Franky and Robin regarding how more grown up you look. You are twenty now, after all, but it makes you smile shyly and your face feel warm as you thank them both.

After Chopper leaves to retrieve the missing members of your crew once Brook arrives, you start to feel your anxiety creep in again, Robin noticing right away and giving you a soft smile.

“Zoro will be glad to see you again.”

“You,” you gulp a bit, smiling nervously now, “you think so?”

“I do. You two have been close since I’ve been with everyone, I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you’re well.”

You really do hope Robin is right, especially when you hear Chopper calling for you all, the large bird he’d left on returning now with Luffy, Sanji, and Zoro aboard as well. You surprise yourself by not crying when you see Zoro, instead grinning brightly and joining Usopp at waving widely to the three of them, shouting their names.

It slightly catches Zoro off guard to see you so happy, but still makes him keep his own smile on his face when he sees you. Robin is correct, though Zoro doesn’t know that, but he is truly glad to see you’re fine, you look so much stronger than two years ago, and seeing how you keep yourself up on your feet when Luffy flings himself down to give you a hug, he’s even more impressed. He wants, needs, to talk to you alone, but after making it on deck, Luffy still hasn’t let you go, Zoro realizes its going to be a bit before he can take you elsewhere to talk, especially so once Sanji recovers from his nosebleed and also gives you a hug. He turns to fawning over you like Nami did, telling you how lovely you look.

Zoro can’t disagree with that statement.

He gives you time with Sanji, who continues to talk to you and tries to tell you about his own two years, until he notices you’re constantly glancing past him, and he knows exactly why.

Sanji smiles at you, before taking you by the shoulder and pushing you towards Zoro, essentially telling you to go see your husband already, he’s been waiting for you to be free so you could talk maybe. It makes you smile at him before you finally walk over to Zoro, who had turned to leaning against the rail with his arms crossed and eyes closed, until you tap his shoulder and he opens his one good eye to see you.

“Hey there.”

“Hey.”

You feel nervous, for some reason, before you notice the scar over his left eye finally and tilt your head.

“What happened with your eye?”

“Training accident,” Shrugging, Zoro stands up straight and you realize he’s gotten slightly taller in the last two years, he notices the same for you but you’re still shorter than him, “Come with me for a bit, yeah?”

Nodding, you follow Zoro up to the crow’s nest, the two of you briefly talking about your two years. You’re amazed to hear he trained under Mihawk, while Zoro is beyond impressed you ended up in a village for swordswoman. He knew you looked stronger, he can’t wait to see how much better you’ve become with your sword.

Once you’re both in the crow’s nest, before you can say anything else, Zoro surprises you this time but hugging you as tightly as he can, which you return once you’ve shaken off the shock that he’s initiated this. You thought the two years would make the two of you drift apart, not being around each other or anything, but perhaps you’d just been paranoid the whole time.

Don’t cry, I don’t want to cry right now…

“I missed you.”

He’s making it difficult for you not to cry, so you just nod a bit, biting your tongue to keep from crying.

“I missed you too, Zoro…”

Neither of you say anything for a while, you’re impressed the rest of your crew hasn’t tried to bother and bring you both back down with everyone, but you’re also grateful for it. You both need this, just some time together, time alone, it’s probably not enough time to discuss your marriage and what’s next, but you don’t really care that much.

“I…I love you…”

Zoro nods, pressing a soft kiss to your forehead briefly.

“I know.”

That’s enough for you right now, it still makes you smile up at him, before you frown a bit, causing Zoro to raise an eyebrow at you.

“My parents…they still want me to go back and marry him…”

“Oh yeah?”

You nod, staying quiet for a moment before you sigh and lay your head back against his chest and gripping his top while he strokes your hair a bit. He may not agree with what you’re about to say, but after two and a half years, your marriage could only be ended by divorce, a thought you’ve hated since this came into being. You even hated the thought of the annulment plans, and now, you two only had the choices of divorcing or staying married.

“I don’t want a divorce…”

“We’re not gonna. Not now,” Zoro hugs you a little tighter, one arm around your shoulders and the other around your waist as he gives you a kiss on the top of your head, “I won’t let anyone take you away from the crew, even if we stay married forever.”

“Thank you…thank you so, so much, Zoro…”

“Of course. I’d never let anyone force you into anything, wife.”

+!+

You think Fishman Island was one of the fastest “get to city enter battle” events you’ve experienced do far, maybe second only to Sabaody. Your crew was separated almost immediately, you ended up with Nami and she took you to the shops right away, demanding discounts and trying to put cute clothes on you, things she swears Zoro would probably like to see you in with a grin while you shy away and push her off a bit. Admitting to her and Robin that you’re in love with Zoro might have been a mistake, but at least you have people to talk to about the situation.

Of course, though, nothing is easy as a member of the Straw Hats and you all quickly are defending the Ryugyu Kingdom from Hordy Jones, fighting off masses of Fishmen to protect yourselves and the innocent citizens of the kingdom.

While you don’t take out anywhere near as many enemies as Zoro or Sanji, you still fight enough to help keep them at bay, getting some compliments post-battle from your crewmates and some of the citizens. It makes you feel both shy and proud at the same time, your two years of training weren’t a waste after all, even Zoro can see the changes in your fighting style and how well your attacks land now. You don’t look as nervous as you used to either, despite the confidant air you’d put on back then. The little bout you two had when you asked to stay with him, he saw you shaking so badly because you were scared but also still recovering from being sick, you tried your best and Zoro could see that, it’s part of why he had no problem with you following him, especially once you let him start teaching you more about swordsmanship.

You’ve definitely improved from the shaky, scared girl he met four years ago.

You feel like Zoro hasn’t changed at all, despite the scar over his left eye and definitely becoming bulkier, he was still the same to you. Still makes your heart flutter when you watch him fight, he still checks on you after fights, it makes you happy to see he’s still the same. He’s still Zoro, of course he wouldn’t change.

“Hey, come with me for a minute.”

During the celebration that’s being thrown for you all as thanks for saving Fishman Island, Zoro takes your hand leads you off again, just the two of you. It makes you comment that if he keeps taking you away from everyone, someone is going to get the wrong idea, but Zoro just shrugs it off. He doesn’t really care what others think still, you’ve always known that.

Once you’re far enough away from everyone, he guides you to sit beside him before surprising you with what he says next.

“We should talk about our situation.”

The fact Zoro actually wants to discuss what’s going to happen next is the surprise, but you still nod, agreeing with him.

“Change your mind on us divorcing?”

“No, I haven’t,” Zoro brushes a bit of hair behind your ear, placing his hand on your cheek which makes you smile at him, “We’re not divorcing unless you want to, but…I think we should try, you know, dating, or whatever you want to call it…”

You blink a few times, completely confused and shocked before tilting your head.

“…huh? You…what?”

“What, you suddenly going deaf or something?” Zoro pinches your cheek a little which makes you wince and pout, before giving him a glare that makes him smirk at you, “We should try a relationship, forget your parents and our original deal. I…I want to try being your boyfriend.”

You really didn’t expect this, you first thought,  like you asked, that Zoro had changed his mind and decided he was done with your fake marriage, but instead, he actually wants to give the two of you a try. Wants to see if this might be something that really could last, not a temporary solution to your personal problems.

While you think it through for a moment, you barely register that Zoro is starting to look nervous, something you’ve never really seen before. Once you make up your mind, before he can say anything more, you lean up and kiss him, pulling away with a smile that Zoro returns.

“I’d love to give us a real try, Zoro.”

Everything is going to be okay, you’re sure of it.

+!+

Sanji and Nami can see a difference in your and Zoro’s relationship quickly after you leave Fishman Island. As you approach Punk Hazard, Zoro doesn’t really let you go, keeping you near to him even as you all draw straws and you end up being one of the group to stay on Sunny and keep watch. Neither of them say anything when he pulls you aside once again, but the smile you have while you talk to Zoro tells them both everything is fine, especially when you nod once more and hug him, which he returns to their surprise.

The two look at each with questioning glances, trying to see if you’ve said anything to the other, but both shrug. Truthfully there’s not been time to talk to either of them, and when the group Zoro’s a part of leaves, the two drag you to the kitchen and start asking questions, which causes you to laugh, but Nami doesn’t really think it’s funny.

“Come oooonnnn,” Nami leans against your arm, giving you a pout, “You guys are acting weird, you can’t tell us something isn’t going on.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nami.”

The blush on your face starts to give you away, and Sanji figures it out, giving you a slight grin.

“Did he finally tell you he likes you back?”

“Mm…something like that.”

“Are you guys dating then?”

“Maybe~” You’re not very good at being coy, to the point Nami gasps and shouts that she knew it before hugging you tightly while you laugh and Sanji sighs, still smiling.

“About damn time. That stupid mosshead, taming two years to tell you anything.”

“Well, all he said was that he wants to try a relationship, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“So he’s your boyfriend!” The little squeal and giggle from Nami makes you join in. “Finally, I told you he liked you back!!”

“Yeah, yeah, you were right!”

Sanji is quiet while he watches the two of you for a few moments. He really does hope that you and Zoro are going to be okay one day, that he’ll stay your husband and neither of you has to deal with the divorce papers or anything like that. He doesn’t want to watch another couple in his life break down, even as you two are just starting out.

Well, minus your two and a half years of actually being married, even though it hasn’t been a real marriage yet. It still isn’t, as you explain after a bit, but your friends seem to get it. You still want things kept under wraps, until Nami brings something up.

“Yeah…umm…about that…”

You give her a confused look as Sanji sighs again.

“Luffy kind of told everyone that didn’t know. It was the day Franky was making comments about you and mosshead being in his bed.”

Groaning, you lean back in your seat before nodding.

“All right then…let’s keep me and Zoro dating between the four of us then?”

“A good idea.”

“At least we can keep a secret.”

[valrvn]

SURVEY BREAKDOWN

(long post warning)

**A FEW DISCLAIMERS**

I AM NOT A SCIENTIST, I AM A HUMANITIES BITCH. My math skills are limited, and I have no training on processing/presenting this sort of data. I am also one person with a shitty laptop, an unreliable internet connection, and a very busy personal life. Take all of this with an extremely large grain of salt.

Participants are self-reporting. They may not know for sure, they may be wrong, they may be lying. I took everyone here at their word. I tried not to extrapolate much from what they were saying, because I do not want to misrepresent what they said.

I will be covering why people thought they developed this fetish in a later post because this is already too long.

Gender of Participants

*According to a 2024 survey, 1.14% of American adults identify as transgender, while 1.52% do not identify as male, female, or trans (some of whom identified as Non-Binary.) That makes the presence of trans and non-binary participants VASTLY disproportional to the American average. I'm sure some of it can be explained by younger people being more likely to identify as not cis, and younger people using the internet far more than the older generations. I also read a paper once that suggested the internet was responsible for the development of more niche fetishes. It's also possible that trans people are more likely to be comfortable engaging with communities surrounding 'deviant' sexual interests because they've already been labeled 'abnormal' (BUT THESE ARE ALL JUST GUESSES). What I theorize is that, because pregnancy is inextricable from sex organs and gender rolls, trans people (ESPECIALLY AFAB trans/non-binary people) are more likely to have those early, strong emotional reactions to pregnancy that seem to develop into fetishes. I'll get into this more on my next post.

*cis women outnumbering cis men was not something I was expecting, but makes sense, since young girls often have to think about pregnancy much sooner than boys, and it threatens to have a much greater impact on their life.

*in retrospect, I wish I'd included a question on how the participants found the survey, since knowing might help explain the disparity between trans and cis people.

Sexuality of Participants

*most (but not all) of the people who chose "other" wrote in an ace-spec identity not included in the above choices (ace lesbian, demi-sexual, etc.,)

Content of Fetish Material Consumed

*the vast majority of participants selected multiple answers, the exception to this was straight cis men, who often only selected the 'Cis Female Pregnancy' option (a small percentage of this group also answered femboys). The minority of straight cis men who chose other options most often fantasized about becoming pregnant themselves.

When the Fetish was Developed

*One person wrote in that they didn't believe children could have fetishes. Their entry was shortly followed by one from someone who described frequently masturbating to fantasies surrounding pregnancy at the age of 5. This isn't important to the overall data, I just find it funny.

How Great a Role does the Participants' Fetish Play in their Achieving Arousal?

How Great a Role does Sex Play in the Participants' Fetish Related Fantasies?

Did the Participants' Pregnancy Fetish Play a Role in their First Time Experiencing Arousal?

*most of the "it's complicated" answers were people who couldn't remember their first time experiencing arousal.

...

That's the basics down, stay tuned for a breakdown of why people think they developed their fetish.

(will be linked when post is done).

[vaya-writes]

I'll give you a prompt. You are in a dungeon and one day you wake up and there is no one else around. No guards, no prisoners, save for yourself and your cellmate. But they have a dark dangerous look to in their eyes that they didn't before.

Thanks for the prompt! Here's a little drabble, eight months later.

TW: body horror, vore that's not meant to be sexy, off screen gore

There may have been Things in the lead up to tonight that you overlooked. Your cellmate stops eating. There’s less noise from your neighbours. The flickering torchlight doesn’t seem to reach the corners of your cell anymore. A new, strange and off-putting smell seems to permeate through the dungeon.  

But the first difference that you truly notice is the lack of guards. 

Your stomach rumbles when you wake in the morning. Breakfast is late.  

Usually you’re woken to the sound of a club dragging along the bars of your cell. A clanging that reverberates through your skull and hurts your ears. The splatter of food on the stone floor as a tray is shoved haphazardly beneath the bars.  

Today you wake to silence.  

Your cellmate is relaxed. They sit cross legged, across from you, eyes trained unerringly on your face. 

You wonder if they ate your breakfast. You cast your eyes around the room but see no tray. No sign of their guilt. 

The torches in the hall are instead, almost burnt out. Nobody has been by to replace them. And the cell across from yours sits empty, where yesterday there’d been a handful of drunkards sobering up. 

Most unusual (most unnerving) is the lack of guards. There’s at least two, normally. Leaning against a wall, or patrolling the hall. Engaging in small talk to stay awake, or occasionally even playing cards at the other end of the dungeon. 

Without breakfast there’s no reason to wake. Nothing to do, except ignore the stares of your cellmate. So, you pull up the blanket, and go back to sleep. 

You wake up at the guard change. Just after lunch, and still no meals have been delivered. As a prisoner you’re grateful to be given food and water at all, but it’s still most unusual for you to go without.  

Curled up on your mattress, facing the wall, you note the bootsteps. The first you’ve heard today. A soft oath. 

“Where’s the morning shift?” 

Your cellmate replies, voice low and smooth – with none of its usual rasp.  

“They left early. Had somewhere to be.” 

Your brow crinkles, because that’s an outright lie. They didn’t even show today, as far as you’re aware. 

Another curse.  

“Go report to the captain, kid. There should always be someone on post. Come back when you’re done, I’ll watch this lot.” 

Bootsteps again, lighter this time, scuffing the stone as one of the guards leave. 

“And you, back it up. Keep away from the bars.” 

There’s a silence. You itch to roll over and watch the confrontation, but the hair rising on the back of your neck tells you to hold still. That something isn’t right. 

“Are you deaf? I said mov-” 

The words cut off in a strangled gurgle.  

And then there’s a scream. 

There are more noises.  A metallic and heavy thud. Choking. Gasping. Wet, and high pitched. Boots dragging and kicking against stone.  

And then what starts out as the sound of scuffle gets worse. Visceral. Sounds of wet tearing, of some kind of loud and unmissable cracking. Noises so disturbing that you can’t for the life of you visualise what’s happening just a dozen paces away from your unguarded back. 

You’re stiff with terror, but when the ghastly popping starts, you just have to know what the fuck is going on. 

And though you need to look (look, just fucking look) it still takes a monumental effort to turn your head. To crane your neck and peek over your shoulder. 

The angle makes it harder to figure out what you’re seeing.  

Your cell is empty. Your companion gone. And just beyond the wall of bars stands... something. Something large and malleable, with skin that stretches like elastic and limbs and joints that aren’t doing what a person’s limbs and joints should do. 

And the guard is- 

Well, the guard is only half visible. 

Because the creature has its maw halfway down his torso. 

Its maw –  

-mouths don’t do that. You’ve never seen a snake eat its prey, but this has to be something similar. Some dislocation of its jaw bones, some splitting apart at the chin. And it’s teeth. Why does it even need teeth, with how it swallows your jailor with a single gulp? 

What the fuck is happening? 

You twist your shoulders, your neck further, you need to (scream- need to hide, to get away to cower-) you need to know what is happening, need to make sense of the scene. 

The creature is larger now. It has to be, to fit a fully grown human inside. Its stomach is distended beyond human proportion. Bulbous and sickening, its torso stretches to accommodate the meal. 

The maw closes. Its jaw regains a regular shape. There’re no more sounds of struggle. Just a slow shuffle as the monster waddles – it’s too full, too fucking shaped to walk like a person – towards you. 

It doesn’t look your direction. But it’s your cell that it pushes its head into. Pressing its skull against the bars, pulling the skin taut and rearranging the fats in its face until with an awful sound it slips (slips is too smooth a word, not with the way skin is grazed from its face, smearing dark blood across its cheeks and the sides of its forehead) its head into your cell. 

Then it moves. 

You know that thing that some animals can do, where if they get their head through a hole, the rest of their body can follow because of their cartilaginous frame? 

It does that.  

Your blood feels like it’s curdling. Your stomach is knotted with terror. You- fuck. You wet yourself. 

A grown ass person shouldn’t be able to do this. Its body moves in a way that a body shouldn’t. There’re more popping noises. More rough scraping of flesh against rusted bars. More smearing of darkened blood. And it goes on and on and on, sliding its distended mass into a pooling shape at the front wall of your cell. 

And then it’s inside. 

It pauses. Reshapes itself from the puddle, looming tall and pants-shittingly large once more. And then it ripples.  

Skin begins to tighten, and shrink. Joints begin to pop and twist. Bones groan and shorten. The horrifying paunch that houses a corpse (gods you hope he’s a corpse by now) flattens back to regular proportions. Until it starts to resemble a regular person again. 

A person you recognise. 

You want nothing more than to roll over and pretend you hadn’t seen... it. To go back to sleep and pray that this is just a nightmare. A hallucination. 

But your cellmate is looking directly at you, and there’s no hiding what you’ve just witnessed. 

They smile and you want to vomit. To cry. But you just lay there. Witless and frozen as they cross the room and crouch in front of you.  

There’s a grubby little blanket at the base of your mattress. Your cellmate pulls it up over your shoulders and tucks it in against your arms. 

That serene smile is still on their lips as they pat you on the head. Ruffle your hair.  

“Go back to sleep, baby.” 

[deviantartdramahub]

Hello, I'm Jasper Rolls, the subject of previous posts on this blog submitted by monstermaster13 (hereafter referred to as Nathan because I don't want to write that username 400 fucking times). I would like to make it clear that I would rather be doing literally anything other than this right now, but since Nathan has apparently made it his mission in life to try and mess with mine in any way he can, I'd like to clear things up where I can. I'll be going over the events of the story chronologically, in a sort of abridged cliff notes version, and then picking up on specific points that Nathan submitted in his telling that I feel are worth addressing. Apologies for the length, this whole stupid affair is just...like that. Believe me, I'm trying to be as concise as possible. A lot of the stuff described has since been deleted since Nathan frequently removes stuff he later realizes is potentially embarrassing or makes him looks bad, but we have evidence of a number of things in here which I can try and provide if necessary.

Doing this chronologically means addressing the grooming stuff first, which is largely irrelevant to the "current" drama, but since it's been brought up I have to mention it. Put simply friend of mine, Bernnyx (hereafter referred to as Bernie), befriended Nathan in 2012, when she was around 13 or 14, and they engaged in roleplays focusing around themselves transforming into characters from Tim Burton movies. How does this function as grooming? Well...

Nathan has in the past described transformation, and specifically transformation into Tim Burton movie characters, as a fetish he has, and one that he greatly enjoys. "Fetish" and "love this particular fetish a lot" are the exact terms he has previously used to describe this interest, which indicates that he considers content of that ilk sexually gratifying, since that's what a fetish means.

Bernie had their age listed on their profile, which indicated they were a minor. In addition, Nathan once publicly posted a screencap of his DeviantArt settings on Twitter, which indicated that his year of birth was 1973. Unlike Nathan, I'm not here to criticize what a person finds sexually appealing - if there's a trait Nathan and I share, it's an interest in transformation, so being critical of that would be throwing stones in glass houses. However, given the information that Nathan has chosen to provide himself, it seems to indicate that he was nearly 40 years old when he was engaging in roleplay involving a topic he considers sexually gratifying, with someone he was fully aware was a minor. Unless he was just specifically blind when reading the age part of a DeviantArt profile, I don't know.

There's every chance that the year of birth that he put into DeviantArt is one he made up for whatever reason. I don't know for certain. If Nathan ever wants to clarify his actual age and clear this part up, he is more than welcome to, but the fact that he hasn't after all this time is curious. Surely, it would be so easy to disprove.

For the rest of this story we have to skip forward to 2020. While Bernie and Nathan still mutually followed each other on DeviantArt, they had drifted apart and not directly spoken for some time. For various reasons, Bernie chose to deactivate their DeviantArt account, and prior to doing so, politely requested that Nathan remove them from a "DeviantArt Family" list he'd made. Nathan claimed her reasoning was "dumb", but complied. Later the same day, checking in on Nathan's account to confirm that he had done what Bernie requested, Bernie discovered that they had been blocked. Shortly after, Nathan uploaded a short story synopsis very clearly based on the prior events, with the names changed, as well as a short rant written in character as one of his OCs, in which they directly name Bernie as the wrongdoer, and transform Bernie into a Pokemon as punishment for the crime of not wanting to talk to Nathan anymore.

This is where I get involved. I had been mildly aware of Nathan for some years as he had frequently commented on and favourited my work on various art galleries, and was a fan of what I did. Prior to this point I had considered him strange but largely harmless. However, the vindictiveness of Nathan's actions in this instance struck me as highly unsettling, and I chose to block him as I did not want someone who acted in this way towards a friend of mine to interact with me any further. I did not directly speak with him during any of this. I was, in retrospect, rather naively hoping that the block would speak for itself.

Nathan reacted extremely negatively to the block, posting a rant in which he assumed that I had blocked him for being fatphobic. I have never accused him of of this, and if it was a trait he had, I wasn't aware of it and it played no part in my decision to block him. Judging by his comments in the time since, however, he has since chosen to wear this particular boot with aplomb, considering the venom with which he criticizes my After Dark Twitter account, which is his prerogative, I suppose.

From here, Nathan repeatedly tried to get into contact with me any way he could, begging for my forgiveness and asking me to unblock him. He repeatedly attempted to add me on Discord, sent unwarranted messages to any account I hadn't already blocked him on, and when he ran out of those, he started sending messages to my romantic partners, as well as any previous romantic partners he knew I'd been involved with and any friends he thought would have my ear. This resulted in no shortage of embarrassment for me as I had to repeatedly explain to the people in my life who Nathan was and why he was contacting them. The entire time this was happening, Nathan was also uploading various journals along the same line of asking forgiveness, as well as at least one original character bio (since deleted), very obviously based on his experience with me. At the same time, he obsessed about Bernie leaving him like he was a heartbroken former lover (despite the complete lack of personal interaction for years), and ranted angrily and offensively about another friend of ours who he highly disliked, and who he blamed for "stealing" Bernie away from him.

We all tried our best to ignore Nathan's actions, even as he actively attempted to get us punished through moderation channels for the crime of upsetting him by establishing boundaries against him (including once attempting to report Bernie to the Discord subreddit). Really, there's so much shit he did that this story would get even more disgustingly long than it already is in this truncated version if I tried to describe all of it. I cannot impress upon you how much he would not fucking stop trying to get into my view as much as he could to harass me, demanding that I unblock him because he considered himself completely innocent of any crimes.

Eventually, I responded to him via an ask here on Tumblr, which is I believe the sole time I have ever directly interacted with him, making clear exactly what my grievances with him were, and that I wished for him to no longer contact me. Nathan ignored this and still kept trying, although his tone shifted from apologetic to self-hating instead, where he admitted that everything I had stated was true, although at various points he attempted to pass the blame for these actions to various alter egos or characters he has invented.

After this, I and my friends elected to once again go back to the policy of ignoring him as much as humanly possible, an act which Nathan was seemingly determined to test. For a solid year afterwards, he continued to harass us in ways that are largely similar to the above and would belabor the point to describe in any detail - the only point of note is that he eventually shifted his tone from self-hating and apologetic to venomous and hateful towards me. Clearly he decided at some point that actually he'd never done anything wrong, and we were all just meaninglessly hating him in all his perfect innocence. This eventually lead to a sequence of events in which, mere hours after one of my partners suffered the loss of an extremely close family member, Nathan chose to send a hateful message to a side blog I had neglected to block him on, adding to my already considerable emotional stress at the time.

This, combined with a number of other things that I don't have the time to go into detail about (but considering you've had multiple submissions from Nathan where he describes getting into fights with literally anyone and everyone, I imagine you have some idea), led to us deciding that we needed to make a document detailing what exactly had happened, because we considered Nathan to be an active danger to the community we were in. Additionally, we were sick of him lying about what happened between us. We had said extremely little on the matter publicly prior to then, while he had been posting every day about his rewritten version of events where he was completely innocent of any wrongdoing. The document in question was posted in July 2022. While most people in my circle online are now aware of Nathan and what's happened with him, Nathan leveraged various moderation tools to get the document taken down, and it can't be read publicly anymore. We still have copies of it and all the evidence of what I've been talking about contained therein, so if you would like more direct proof of any of this fucking nonsense, then it can be provided, but I won't be posting it publicly as Nathan will probably do the same thing again given the opportunity.

Since then, we have, of course, tried to go back to the policy of ignoring him, which for the most part I've succeeded at doing, and would really, really, REALLY rather continue doing, since every time I see hide or hair of Nathan I feel sick, and I'd rather not feel that way. However, every 4-5 months or so, he's ended up floating into my vision since he is intent on stalking me across the internet, harassing me wherever he can, and talking shit about me and my friends, telling a highly biased and skewed version of the events to anyone who will listen. Most recently, I believe he is responsible for trying to sign one of my e-mail accounts up to various random forums and websites with usernames intended to embarrass me. I would very much like him to stop harassing me, and if he must spew his bile, I would rather he kept it to his own blogs and accounts, rather than trying to slander me publicly or directly try to harass me like this. Unlike Nathan, who seems to have all of time to yell incoherently at me online, I have a life, and a job, and friends I would much prefer to engage with rather than having to deal with his continued persistent harassment.

That's a rough overview of the events. As mentioned, I have pretty direct evidence of most of the stuff I've discussed here so if you need that then I can provide. Now to discuss some of the more specific points that Nathan has discussed.

"And it gets worse, Jasper very much did this too. He dedicated more than a few posts to me for the past couple of years, oh yeah sure dude…i'm the obsessed one, says the person who is still mad about something that didn't even concern him until he got involved himself."

I post about Nathan maybe once or twice a year, if that, when his repeated continued harassment gets so out of hand that I have no other outlet than to vent frustration about it publicly because I am sick to fucking death of him continuing to force himself into my life. When I do so, I tend to mention him in broad terms that do not directly name him. I can't exactly prove a negative, but the only accounts I know Nathan actively uses are his DeviantArt and FurAffinity accounts, and I have absolutely no interest in seeking out any of his other accounts because I would rather be witness to Nathan's existence as little as humanly possible. Nathan, in comparison, whenever I've had reason to check, seems to post about me and what I do daily, covertly following every account I use online and ranting on his own accounts about how much he hates everything I say and do, no matter how benign. I believe this should be somewhat self-evident from the posts he has submitted to your blog, in which he has described actively stalking any account I happen to post on with regular activity, including my Bluesky, Letterboxd, and Storygraph accounts. He posts about me plenty on his own accounts too, and with comparative venom - and when he stops doing that, he makes AI generated knockoffs of mine and others work, because he is apparently completely void of creativity.

"In the document that was made about me one of the writers behind it either Jasper, Bernnyx, Baeksangeo or Gavin said they used the Anonymousdevi account to accuse me of being transphobic…"

This is an incredibly bizarre point Nathan has repeated several times over the time since the document was posted. This incident involved another person entirely, who directly stated who they were in said document and described the events in first person. Nathan seems to have gotten incredibly confused by this and believes it was actually me, Bernie, or one of our other friends using a pseudonym. I don't know why. His belief that they deserve a callout is just plain strange considering they had this one exact interaction with him and nothing else.

"I am sorry dude but you don't have the right to speak for all gay men or the LGBT community at all."

Actually I do, sorry. Cry about it. [THIS IS A HYPERBOLIC JOKE]

"I rarely talk about what happened regarding him and me on my posts or even in my deviantart page (despite the accusations), so i very much just try to ignore the guy."

This is an absolute lie. As I have described, Nathan stalks my accounts and posts angrily about what I do in specific detail with extreme, nigh on daily frequency, from what I've seen whenever I've come across him in the wild and checked in on how he's doing. His claim that he "rarely talks about me" and "tries to ignore me" could not be more of an outright fabrication. The only way I can figure him seriously believing this is that he considers the daily rants and harassment as being not him, because he posts them in character as one of his OCs - therefore, it's not him stalking and harassing and ranting about me, it's one of his characters. I'm sure you can agree the difference is negligible.

That's everything I have to say. I have no interest in discussing this further with Nathan. I and my friends merely want to live in peace and enjoy our time online, something Nathan has seemingly dedicated his life to attempting to ruin. I ask that he please do literally anything else with his time other than spend it harassing and stalking me and my friends for years on end. Thank you.

All noted. A classic chain of two sides bringing things up the scale after one's mistake. There is no shame in two sides in a conflict where nobody is perfect to consider/acknowledge such.

Having seen everything, if Nathan is reading this, if he may ceasefire in return for the other side wrapping up their own open-fire, as well as look down on how he may have challenged TOS (unspoken norms are unspoken norms but TOS is TOS when it regards that, and maybe the other side went against TOS), I would prescribe the conflict be considered having ended. What say he?

[anarchywoofwoof]

Hello, Thank You For Being Here (Pt. 3)

other links: twitter | twitch | bluesky | neocities

side blogs: @toocoolforghoul & @in-the-woods

old pinned post

hello. my name is biddy. my pronouns are whatever, but you can use he/him if that makes it easier. i am a degenerate Anarchist dog from the Midwestern United States. i am 34 years old and taken (@thatcrazywitch). i am AuDHD, i suffer from anxiety, cptsd, depression, and dyspraxia.

this blog serves as the primary source for my thoughts, feelings, ramblings, shitposts, life happenings, art, and whatever else crosses my mind. the topics will vary wildly, but you can expect a lot of the following:

anarchist and leftist agitprop

general us political news and opinions

world news

climate change/environmental news

poetry, prose, and other writing

random personal diatribes

animals

memes

silly text posts

photos of my dog

i find DNIs pointless, but i would ask if you are a TERF, transphobe, zionist, hardline religious zealot, or otherwise a fascist, for you to unkindly go fuck yourself. this blog is an unyielding ally to all marginalized and/or oppressed peoples, including but not limited to trans folks or any other queer-identifying individuals, Black and Indigenous peoples, and many others. you get a block immediately when interacting with my posts. i will not engage, so please do not waste anyone's time.

here are some tags that i frequently use. i am terrible at keeping up with them and i largely reblog without tags and then go back and add them later when i have time.

Text Posts: #text, #bork bork thoughts

Ask Responses: #borking back

Tumblr-Related: #meta

My Dog: #sweet princess peregrine

Other Dogs: #anarchodogism

Cats: #cats on the bork blog

Anarchoposting: #anarchy, #anarchism, #anarchist

OC Graphics: #oc, #learning photoshop through play

OC Poetry: #oc, #poetry

Non-OC Memes: #memes, #not oc

Wholesome Posts: #happy borks

please be advised: if i fail to tag something appropriately or reblog from someone detestable, please message me or send me an anonymous ask and let me know. DO NOT REBLOG MY POSTS WITH PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE COMMENTS. i treat people with respect when they treat me with respect. but i will publicly dress you down if you break this rule and then block you. this is the only warning i will give. no exceptions.

otherwise, please feel free to like or reblog anything i post. if it was too personal to be reblogged, i wouldn't share it. so don't worry about breaking tumblr protocol. i'm too old and tired to care about that.

my sense of humor is also very deadpan/sarcastic, so please keep this in mind when interacting. if something seems out of character, ask me for clarification and i'll provide it. there's a good chance that i'm probably just being silly. i love you, enjoy your stay.

[sincerely-sofie]

I saw your tag about meeting your boyfriend because of posting on Tumblr and I'm very curious as to how that happened. Like, did you find each other's blogs, saw you had stuff in common and met up IRL? What happened? Please give us details (if you're willing to talk about it, no worries if not!)

Also, for a boyfriend tag, may I suggest... Calcium. Cuz you're a skeleton and calcium makes bones stronger... I'll see myself out

(Referencing the tags of this post)

Oh my gosh. Buddy you have just opened up Pandora’s box. Brace yourself for the most adorable couple origin story ever.

He followed me fairly early on into the process of me posting my work on Tumblr. I don’t remember exactly, but I think my TPiaG mini comic “Heart-to-Heartbreak” was the first post he ever reblogged from me. After that, he was super enthusiastic and involved with my blog and engaged with basically every post I ever made. This guy was one of THE followers of my work— if I posted something, he was always there to like it and share super thoughtful commentary or hilarious jokes.

I absolutely adored him even back then, and we had barely exchanged a handful of messages on Tumblr where he thanked me for inspiring him to get back into art and writing, and I blubbered about how meaningful that was to me. We eventually followed each other on Spotify and I think that’s about the point when I really should have realized I had it bad for him. I was CONSTANTLY rambling to my mom about how much I wanted to be this internet stranger’s best friend, but I was super hesitant because our family has been huge on online stranger danger and never really talking to anyone unless you know exactly who they are in real life. I’m an adult and all, yeah, but I was still super anxious about internet strangers at large— though he never once made me uncomfortable or wary :>

Eventually, he made a goofy post about it being his birthday, and I bolted to tell my mom about that and how I didn’t have enough time that day to polish up any content of his favorite characters I’ve written and post it as a gift for him. I was utterly distraught and pretty much full-on monologuing to my ever-so patient mother about how much I wanted to befriend this man and how amazing he was and how shy I felt about the matter, and she looked me dead in the eyes and told me to ask him if he wanted to message each other more and get to know each other better.

I sent him a message over Tumblr, we exchanged Discord usernames, and I’m pretty sure it was just over a week of messaging and getting to know each other more and more every day later when he told me he thought he was in love with me— to which I very eloquently rattled off a bunch of nonsense that ended in “I don’t know how to communicate this other than by saying ‘dude, same’.”

After that, we’ve only gotten more and more mutually obsessed. Thankfully he’s in the same country as me, and we’re even timezone neighbors, so he’s not on the opposite side of the world— and when I realized some of my household were going on a trip to the same state where he lived for a family wedding, I SCRAMBLED to insert myself into that trip last-minute. We had originally thought that we’d meet up when he could drive to my state (a process that would take a long time because of some complicating factors), but when I realized my family were flying down there, I was practically foaming at the mouth with the thought of seeing him so much sooner. We met up not that long ago and were even able to meet some of each other’s family members (my family absolutely adores him, and I think his likes me a fair bit too, hehe). But listen: when I tell you I adored him before, I was absolutely head-over-heels for him when we met in person. I got to hug him and I had this thought come to mind of “Oh. This is the person I want to marry.” And I’ve never once doubted it :>

During the times we met up we mostly sat around and basked in each other’s presence and stared at each other. I ended up breaking eye contact a lot because I kept getting flustered and also because this man is TALL and I had to periodically rest my neck 😂 I was able to give him some pins I had made of our PMD team that represents us, and my boyfriend. My boyfriend, you guys. He had the gall to send me a screenshot of an eBay listing of the world’s most adorable Snorlax plush weeks before while we were on a call together, bought it immediately after I had said I loved the plush’s face as we hung up, and then GAVE ME IT WHEN WE MET UP.

Look at him. That’s my son now. I was trying to think of what to name the little guy when my toddler niece dubbed him Tummy. My boyfriend approves of the monicker— as he should, because it’s the bestest name for the bestest boy.

TL;DR— He followed me on tumblr, I desperately wanted to be friends with him and sent him my Discord username on his birthday, we exchanged “I love you”s a week later, and I was almost sick on a plane because I was so excited to see him during a trip to his state for a family member’s wedding. We are absolutely obsessed with each other and kind of instantly Knew from the get-go that we’re going to be each other’s Person™️.

As for the tag, I'm not sure I’ll go with it but I’m starting to consider “The Boyfriend Bird Feeder”, because it works out to the acronym BFBF which I find funny, I mainly want to make the tag as a way for him to easily find posts where I’m talking about how amazing he is whenever he needs a pick-me-up (and so people can block the tag if they find me raving about my man so much annoying lol), and his persona that we spent all day yesterday cooking up looks like this:

[voxofthevoid]

Hello! We haven't really interacted before but I reviewed a Bleach fanfiction of yours a while ago, and I've loved your stories for the fandom! I'm sad that you no longer write for Bleach, but you've shared some amazing work, so thank you for that.

Just wanted to ask if you have any tips on how to connect more with other readers and writers, as it seems your conversations with other people in your fandoms bring a lot of joy and inspiration! While I wrote fanfiction in my teenage years, I felt very much like a fandom hermit back then but I'm coming back to it now many years later and want to actively engage with more people. I've joined some discord servers and am posting much more to twitter and tumblr, but I'm still pretty shy about messaging people privately as I feel like I don't really know what to say. I know it will take time, but any advice on how to get the ball rolling would be much appreciated.

Good luck with the writing!

Hi! I'm very glad you like my Bleach fics, and hey, being missed isn't a bad thing either ❤

(I do have one 80%–finished grimmichi fic that I'll put up on Ao3 soon-ish. The last chapter won't ever be written, but there's still some 28k of fluff and porn that ends on a fairly conclusive note on the emotional end.)

You're right that interacting with my fellow fans is a large part of what makes fandom fun for me. The community aspect of fandom is something that comes up a lot in conversations about why people flock to fandom, why they stay, and why they leave, and although I'm an introvert bordering on a hermit, the social aspects of fandom are its greatest draw. I write because I need to or I'll burst, but I share for the people here with me. That's not an uncommon attitude or experience. YMMV, but many of us want to connect with people who share our interests, and the level of creativity and commitment fandom inspires often thrives in collaboration and community.

How to get that sense of community is a trickier matter though. You're already in Discord servers, which seems to be the main fandom social space(s) these days. You're also on social media platforms where people can reach out to you or vice versa. So that's the basics covered. After that, it's largely a matter of organically developing relationships. But I do understand the hesitance to just roll up into someone's DMs; even though I have no issues with people popping up in my DMs, I also find it harder to initiate.

Plus, I've found that some sort of existing rapport gives you a better foundation when you do take the step into private exchanges. This can be Ao3 comment sections, Tumblr notes, or Discord group chat spaces. I tend to avoid Discord servers these days, but back when I had more tolerance for group chats, the people I met there often became closer friends. Mostly though, my pocket friends are people I met via Ao3 and, less frequently, Tumblr—fellow authors and readers in a specific fandom.

I know my regulars, here and on Ao3, and I've been a regular many times. Discussions in comments usually start out limited to the specific fic, but they can also include general fandom/canon stuff or even personal talk. Many times, you build a degree of familiarity with a person that way, and if the conversation moves to more private channels, you already have a shared base to build further conversation on.

So my best advice to find friends and like-minded fandom folks is to be active in Ao3 comments and Tumblr notes (...and whatever the corresponding thing is over on Xitter):

Reply to the comments on your stories and try to really engage with what your readers are saying. This is very much a personal preference, but the reason I try to reply with more than a generic "thanks" for longer, more in-depth comments is that, like I said above, nerding out with fellow fans is a huge part of why I love fandom. If people are already expressing interest in your story and you have a shared interest in canon, there's a lot of room there for fun conversations, even if they never go beyond one-off exchanges.

Comment on stories you like, and if you find specific authors you really love, let them know without reservations what you like about their takes and why you like them. One of my favorite commenting methods when I'm well and truly in love with something is to read everything once, then reread and leave longass comments on every chapter/fic. It's time-intensive, but I've never seen the effort go unappreciated. I've also been on the receiving end of this many times, and that's how several of my fandom friendships were born; one of my closest friends is someone I virtually kidnapped because I loved their tags on my JJK fic posts so much.

The above habits can be applied to Tumblr/Twitter too. Plus, there are plenty of people on such sites who engage deeply with fandom outside of fic writing. Be loud and proud about what you love. Sending a DM is an intimidating step, and not everyone will be receptive anyway, but most people welcome encouragement and appreciation. There are a lot of people I'm friendly with and fond of whom I've never interacted with directly, only via Tumble notes or asks.

I think all of this narrows down to being pretty generous when it comes to expressing your love for fandom and fellow fans. Won't always work out for various reasons, but as long as you're having fun, it's not wasted effort or time.

[cassi-pokeblogging-hub]

Heyo! I'm Cassiopeia!

The following blog is an ooc hub for all my pkmn irl accounts, and where the follows for all the accounts listed later in this post come from! This blog USED to be the rp blog for a character I no longer use and have no motivation for anymore, and is the main blog on this account, so I figured changing it into a hub blog of sorts would be a good idea.

I'm free to answer questions about my ocs ooc here, plot arcs, and generally talk about stuff in the pkmn irl community. I'll also possibly be boosting some accounts I think are cool, reblogging important posts and ask games in the community to hopefully spread them around a bit more, and just generally using this to store some posts about pokemon in general that I think are neat.

Info about the Mod and General Boundaries!

The following is some general information that might be useful. Like I said earlier, I'm Cassiopeia, but you can call me Cass, Cassi, or Pea! I use any pronouns, and I'm an adult (Adult meaning 18 or older in this case.) I'm the host of a system, and a splitroject (or whatever the term is I cant remember) with multiple sources, but notably several pokemon characters. Pokemon has been a systemwide special interest since we were a little kid, and we have a lot of opinions and headcanons, as well as know A LOT about the series as a whole. Our main account is @max-starfall but this is a seperate account so follows for pkmn irl stuff will come from here. A warning that we occasionally reblog heavy stuff or more adult oriented content on that blog (nothing outright nsfw, but usually some suggestive stuff and sexual humor, so minors beware)

I DO check peoples boundaries before I follow so don't worry! Only time I won't is if I miss them. Also sometimes I follow people just cause I think the blog is cool, but I tend to not interact outside of anons just cause while I like your blog, my blogs just can't or wouldn't interact, or I'm a little scared to, yknow?

Any pkmn irl rp account is allowed to interact with p much any of my blogs! Sentient pokemon, legendaries, eebies, etc etc etc. I run on Rotomblr being a multiverse. I may not interact much if our canons diverge too strongly for personal comfort but usually it's whatever cause of the previously mentioned multiverse thing. I will note that sometimes people just view things in such a way that sets our system off due to large amounts of pokemon alters that we will have to block you based off headcannon differences. Usually some pretty large stuff though. Minor differences are fine and we've been getting better.

Some general stuff I go by on all my blogs are people do eat pokemon, and pokemon do eat other pokemon. There are small bugs and bacteria and shit thatre still. alive but not pokemon. Not all pokemon lay eggs. A more mammalian pokemon like stoutland would give live birth like a real dog, and stuff like the more plant like pokemon like sunflora or oddish produce seeds. Not going to go too into details but thats something that happens.

While I am an adult, I prefer not to engage with more suggestive or outright nsfw content on the pkmn irl sphere (but i may rb some suggestive stuff or make brief jokes VERY RARELY, always tagged). There's a lot of minors in this community, and I'd like to keep my blogs generally safe spaces for them to interact. If it's anything you wouldn't joke about with a middle schooler or high schooler, probably not. There ARE some blogs I run that are exceptions to this, but if they are, you will see me making note that I'll be making a lot more suggestive jokes on that blog, and even then it will just be like sex jokes and not outright nsfw stuff. I try to tag stuff that can be upsetting on all my blogs, and I'll usually ask before doing anything big with anyone elses blogs. There's other stuff, but DNI's don't usually work, so I'll probably just block you if I don't like your vibes or find you really annoying.

My tumblr dms are always open, so if you'd like to plot anything out, I'm free to chat here or on the rp account in question! You CAN leave a message on my main account too, but I'd prefer to keep rp stuff here. If you already know my discord and we've chatted in dms there before in the past, that's also an option, but otherwise stick to tumblr.

If you have a problem with me, please tell me because I am stupid. If you don't want me following you please just block me, or tell me straight up because I will not realize.

Pokemon IRL Blogs I run:

Putting these under the cut cause there's a lot. Includes summaries.

@yveltalreal - maple is a narauva student with undoubtedly something wrong with her, yet insists she is completely normal and seems downright unaware of some of her own oddities. she cant see several of her own posts, regularly blacks out for several hours, and has a strange family history. not only that, there seems so be someone who ISN'T maple or her rotom occasionally using the account, someone who maple is unaware of completely. the fuck is up with that?

@fruitbasket-gossip - A joint blog with 3 friends. I play Mod Starf. A group of NaraUva students and Blueberry students fucking around on Rotomblr. What will they do? Who knows!

@nimbasawizard - guy preteneing to be a wizard for shits and giggles what more do you need?

@vital-spirit - A joint blog with a friend! A pmd blog in a setting inspired by various western movies. A whole new set of towns, dungeons, and characters unrelated to those in the various games. I play Lucario.

@blazingvictory - the blog of a bba student with so many problems and issues.

There's a few others but they're completely dead and I have no intent to use them again for a while, and are still attached to my main rather than this blog.

[ditchdwellersupreme]

The Religion Of The Spirits

One thing that I think very few people talk about is the actual Religion of the spirits we engage with. Sure, we talk about pagan gods, Christian saints, etc. but I'm not sure if we realize the extent of this. I honestly hadn't given it much thought until very recently, but there are certainly instances in which spirits I've engaged with have a clear and defined religious identity.

I was talking with one of my Islamic friends, and he was talking about how djinn have religions. For example, there are Christian jinn, Muslim jinn, etc. They have religious affiliations just like we do. This got me to thinking about some of my past experiences with spirits.

I've found that various "lower" spirits (i.e.: Elementals, local spirits, spirits of the air and local weather, etc.) have religious affiliations, and beliefs. I also noticed that this seemed to change depending on my locale. In Virginia, most of the terrestrial, nature, and local spirits were "pagan" or at least non-Christian. In fact some of them had their own gods they worshiped. I recall a classmate of mine actually discovered one of the goddesses he venerated found a river near us to be sacred to her. Revealed through dreams etc. Yet the weather/storm spirits responded really really well to Abrahamic, specifically Christian, invocations and prayers. They always calmed down when I would call on the Lunar Archangel (Gabriel) and certain other angels, and working with the lore of Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee. (I think I'll make a post later about using mythology, folklore, etc. to craft spells and rituals). Contrast that with when I moved to Georgia, and the local spirits (at least in Savannah) are largely Christian and/or Hermetic in some aspects, while the spirits of the weather respond so much better to pre-Christian deities and invocations. Zeus and Helios especially. Though I also have a feeling that they prefer other spirits, and other methods than just invocations and petitioning higher powers.

I think it's important to consider the religion of the spirits we call. I saw a post by Hoodoo Moses on instagram a while back where he linked an article about a certain charm. It was a Crucifix with Jesus on it, however it is common in Muslim dominated communities. The reason being that it was a charm used again Christian Jinn who may be harming or possessing a person. Even though the person may not believe in Christianity, they know that spirit does and to rid it, you need to go through the avenue that would best appeal to it. It's a unique and genius way of thinking and working. Yet so simple at the same time.

Just something to ponder on, perhaps I'll go more in-depth as I explore it further, maybe make a video on it. I just think it's neat!

It also makes me wonder if there's New Age and Starseed jinn/local spirits. I think that concept alone is supremely entertaining

[ozara13]

Pinned post!

Alright i don't really know how to make one of these but I'm seeing more and more people with them lately and as i want to be more active here i probably should have one as well. So here goes nothing.

Hello, I'm Ozara. A lot of my discord friends call me Oz, but if you're a mutual you can call me by my prefered name of Lila. I have been on this hellsite since 2014, long enough to be intimately familiar with the ancient texts/deep magic but not long enough to have been there when they were written. Despite coming up on 10 years here i have been largely silent for most of that time, just rebloging and liking the things that i enjoyed without tagging them at all. Recently though I've been wanting to change that and actually be social, however scary that is.

I was born in 1998 so as of writing this i am 26 years old. I specify the year because i probably won't be attentive enough to update that every year.

I am a trans woman, my egg cracked in the 2020 lockdown and i started hrt in October of 2022. My transition timeline post is currently my most popular so you'll probably see that at the top but here it is in case it gets lost

Now for the important part. I am one of those horny kinky subby tgirl lesbians you hear all about and i am pretty much always horny on main. You will see kinky nsft stuff on here and i will not feel shame for it.

Getting into my kinky side, i identify mainly as a puppydoll. So all of the things you expect from a puppy girl but add a ball jointed doll personality in there as well. Despite that being my Main Thing, i am not tied down to it. I also wanna experience being a myriad of other kinky personalities such as but not limited to, hucow, pony, maid, rope bunny, bimbo, fuckdoll, hypnoslut, latex drone, slave, toy, you name it, i want it. Long story short, I don't wanna be in control and i want a nice yet commanding (T4T) Mistress to take care of me and do all of the thinking while I simply obey.

Consent is important to me and I typically like to get to know someone as a person before engaging in the kinky stuff. My DMs are always open for mutuals but if i don't know you, don't come in expecting my submission from the get go.

One thing I have to mention is that I am broke and kink can be expensive so here is my Lovense Wishlist if anyone wants to be generous

https://www.lovense.com/wish-list/oav1?_utm_pro=2112141049

(ill probably make a venmo and throw that in here later for if someone wants to just give me money)

Umm, i think that's it? I'll update this if i can think of anything i missed.

[captainvulcant]

ATLA Live Action Review

I will preface this by saying that largely I enjoyed watching ATLA and I would watch a season 2, would even look forward to a season 2.

However, I did have a lot of issues with this series, issues which I don't feel can be solved by saying "well it's a different series it shouldn't be an exact copy paste of the original". If their changes are worse than the original then that is a failing, and there was a lot which was objectively worse. I'll begin with:

Dialogue Are these things written by AI now or something? The dialogue was giving me "I forced an AI to watch x hours of halmark movies and write one for me" but for your standard adventure series. Listen, we have had this already in 100s of other series and films. ATLA is so unique, could we not have kept the dialogue to that style instead of the expositiony "It's my responsibility" style basic adventure hero stuff? At best it was dull, at worst it was actively cringy. I felt that Zuko and Iroh's dialogue was better and most engaging, no real issues there, but only on a couple of occasions did I experience the Gaang's characteristics and dynamic that I was hoping for from the dialogue.

Music Would have very much liked to have heard some East-Asian instruments and music style. The bog-standard western orchestra did the same as mentioned above: it's dull, it's predictable, it didn't bring me into the world it took me out of it. I was metaphorically taking a shot every time the orchestra swelled at a dramatic or poignant moment. The exception was the little Leaves from the Vine motif they dotted in around Iroh, that was wonderful. Could have done with more of that for Aang's emotional moments.

Exposition So much exposition. Imo they shouldn't have shown the air nomads being attacked. We should have seen Aang fly off and then seen the fire nation making its way up the mountain ominously (on foot!! why do the firebenders have bending jet packs now??? this defeats the later plot??? why can everyone fly now????) before cutting to black. If they really wanted to show it it could have been in quick flashbacks as Aang makes his way through the air temple, which I think would have made it feel more personal to Aang and more devastating. As it was I was just reminded of Star Wars through the whole thing (so many Star Wars vibes at the air temple it really threw me off). Dialogue exposition also awful. If they had spent less time explaining every single plot point to the audience like we're stupid and more on the relationship between the characters and character development we might have actually felt like we progressed from episode 1 to 8. Which leads me to:

Characterisation I'm considering making an entirely different post for this honestly, but here it is in brief. I think we really lost something in this series, and for that I blame the 8 episode thing Netflix is obsessed with. The actors did a good job I felt, particularly with a script that was more rote phrases and platitudes than wise words and attitudes. We didn't really get to see friendships developing, they were just there. We didn't see the characters grow, and the issues which they faced and overcame in the series (which worked perfectly well!!!) have been changed for no reason. Sokka's dad was disappointed in him?? Why???? We already have Zuko whose dad is disappointed in him. I love Sokka's original character, I love seeing him getting over his mysogyny. You know what might have been helpful, in 2024 where all studies show that young men who spend time online become more conservative and sexism is rife?? Maybe showing that it's ok to change your views, that it's ok to work with and respect women, that people will still love you, and that it's not always your fault when you're taught stupid shit. That would have been useful. Taking away that aspect of his character meant changing Katara's and Sukis, and not for the better!!!! Like jesus Suki, my poor Suki. She's such a cool character in the animation. She has responsibility, she is competent and cool and knows her place in the world, but is also open to the idea of change. Why did they make her so awkward (original Suki is fun and funny as well) and unsure? And more parent drama?? Again??? Do they only have one plot?

I also felt that by missing key episodes like the Northern Air Temple we really missed out on Aang's character from the animation, and the emotional weight those scenes could have brought. This Aang doesn't goof off, he's already learned his lesson. This Aang doesn't struggle to balance his beliefs as an airbender (the last airbender, the only one who can continue them) with his job as the avatar, he's just 100% up for the fighting with no conflict. This is a huge part of his character's original internal struggle (and a massive plot point later on) and it feels like we lost something by taking it out.

Final Thoughts Once again, I did enjoy the series. I got super emotional at some parts, I particularly enjoyed the first 4 episodes. Overall I liked the casting and I think the actors did a pretty good job and I'm excited to see where this will go in season 2.

But, I do think that we are allowed to criticise and compare things. I'm seeing a lot of people on here being like stop over-analysing things!! No, lol. Firstly, this is tumblr, the over-analysing website. If you want a superficial review go to tiktok. Secondly, if I had one thing to place the blame on for my issues with this series it's that it is more generic and dumbed down than a cartoon made for kids almost 20 years ago. I am not alone in thinking that media is becoming very basic and sanitised (while at the same time becoming more explicit and violent? It's like no we can't have nuance or complex issues but we will show you explicit sex scenes and awful violence) and also it all feels the same. And I do think we should be wary of the homogenisation of media.

[leviathiane]

tagged by @murderkitten666! thank you 🎉❤️

*will be answering this with both my nsfw and sfw account in mind!

20 Questions for Fic Writers

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

105!! damn, didnt realize i crossed over 100. 43 on nsfw, 62 on sfw

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

427,882 on sfw, 147,849 on nsfw! A nice total of 575,731 words across accounts :3 someday when I hit a million, I'll go get a cake or something

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I've written for many fandoms at this point,, I tend to hop around, I get bored easily 😅 To shorten the answer, I am known best for my works in LOZ, one piece, qsmp, and pokemon-- though currently I am writing for solely HXH

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

sfw only* Hunted (LOZ), Warm (LOZ), Within Risk of Reason (OP), Something Shifting (LOZ), and Calling Out (LOZ). Wror was dethroned soundly by my LU LOZ series lmao, that fandom is big on engagement 🥺

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try my best to!! My response time varies pretty wildly, though. Could be anywhere from within the hour of posting to.... 5 months later. but i do my best to respond regardless. There's several reasons why: It's a courtesy thing, to me, to reply to people who have taken the time to comment, its fun to discuss things, I want to thank people for particularly kind or analytic comments, and because readers tend to remember a reply and comment more frequently. In the end, it just makes both writer and reader happy to reply.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

probably Romantic at Heart? (OP) I like hurt no comfort/bad end hanahaki fics, and that's the only one I currently have up. Personally, my saddest fic is An exercise in grief (LOZ), even though its bittersweet in nature rather than straight angsty.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That's pretty hard to quantify, a lot of them have happy endings kjsdahbdsa,, maybe Both Haunted and Holy? (OP) There's nothing angsty about it, just a selkie relearning safety and love among his found family in his skin.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

on my nsfw sometimes! Not often, and its usually just a one-off comment a single sentence long. Very easy to ignore, especially on porn. lots of weird purity people who open dark fiction just to call you gross. Brother, you clicked on the fic!

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

sajkdsanj ABSOLUTELY lmfaooo. It ranges, there's some vanilla stuff, but I by-large tend to write darker and often niche content.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I don't write crossovers! I read them every so often, but they're not really for me and I definitely don't want to write one.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of! Had art stolen before, though.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Had offers! But nothing posted

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Of a sort?? I've done round-robin with the boggers, and I've done a BigBang event, and I've co-hosted a collection, and I'm currently cowriting an original piece with a friend irl, but no ao3 fic of mine has another's name on it.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

impossible question, I'm a multishipper fandom-hopper. There Is no all-time ship, just many many many favorite ships that revolve and orbit in my head as I go. Currently into killugon, though!

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

oof. There's a lot of wips i have, both posted and not posted. I'm of the philosophy that no story is ever unfinished, though. At least not for me! It's only due to the nature of my attention span that i leave things unfinished-- eventually, I will return to the fandom that I left things unfinished, and my interest hopefully last long enough to finish them. it means a long wait, but I believe they'll get done.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Characterization, maybe? Specifically, characterization built through little actions, like how the character fidgets, walks, talks, dresses themselves. Hints that build a person into something real. I'm pretty decent with action scenes, as well.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Dialogue.... and also romance. I despise writing kissing. Romantic intimacy in general makes me kind of cringe to write. Dialogue CAN come easy to me, but only if the character is similar to myself? When I wrote for qsmp, foolish was the easiest I had ever written a character speaking, because he just kind of speaks the way I think. Otherwise, I really struggle. I also have trouble ending things. It always comes off kind of rushed and awkward sounding no matter what I do.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I've done it before! Felt cheesy and awkward, though. Though I think that's more because I was writing from the POV of a character adjusting their language over time than anything. This also depends on the language, of course, I could write something in Spanish pretty easily but if I tried to write in a language I'm not familiar in or at least have a friend who knows it, I'm fucked

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Warrior cats! When I was like 10, on FFN. On AO3, my first posted fic was for Moomins in like 2018?

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

sfw only* An exercise in grief. I reread that fic, and maybe only that fic of my own posted sfw writing. It was all my feelings and grief about AOC and mipha and hopeless, angry, bittersweet, guilty grief combined in a dense like 4.4k of words and it bothered me for a bit how slow it was for people to pick it up. That fic means a lot to me! It was raw in a way few of my fics do.

Tagging @touchmycoat, @midnightluck, @ruthlesslistener, @tciddaemina, @hergan416, @timeskip , @authenticaussie , and @ashyronfire ! Any mutual untagged, feel free to do as well :3

[johannestevans]

New media recs, new works, a new podcast!

Good evening!

A return to work after my time off for my birthday - I had a really good time resting over the birthday week, and I've been brewing a few new things in the meantime!

First and foremost, if you've been hoping for some of my fiction to be available in an audio format, you're in luck. The Story is a simple, no-frills podcast where it's just me reading short stories aloud - for the time being, I'll be doing a bunch of romance, fantasy, and horror pieces from my back catalogue, but later on I hope to make some of my erotica pieces available too!

I've set up a podcast that for now is available on Spotify and YouTube, but over the next few weeks will hopefully become available on other podcast platforms such as Google and Apple Podcasts. The first episode is already released and is an audio reading of Two Plates, with the plan from here to release weekly episodes on Thursday mornings.

Alongside Ashleigh Wilder, I was a guest on Trauma Talks with Jeremy Sachs and Katherine Cox a little while ago, and our episode, which is about our experiences of trauma alongside autism, is coming out on June 14th. I'll of course share the link next week when it's been released, but in the meantime, I absolutely recommend going back through some of their other episodes and giving them a listen, it's a really valuable podcast and so well-done.

If you're in or around California, my friend Rene Gannon-O'Gara's 2023 feature, Donut, is going to be screened at the Sherman Oaks Film Festival later this month, and I totally recommend it! I'll post my own review a little closer to the release, but in the meantime, general admission tickets are $15, and of course there are a bunch of other great flicks also being screened for the festival.

Some other media recs for this week:

The Boogeyman (2023, dir. Rob Savage) - This latest from Rob Savage was a real trip, and a friend and I had a great time seeing it in the cinema together - Rob Savage also did Host (2020), which I really enjoyed, but this piece was just impeccably constructed, so rich with layered meaning, such a cohesive concept and so well-executed. I want to rewatch this film in a little while and make some notes so that I can write about it at-length, but suffice it to say I absolutely recommend seeing it in a cinema if you can and it's safe for you - just some fucking A+ monster design, some great acting from Yellowjackets' Sophie Thatcher, a really excellent script.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick) - Lewis and I watched this last week and I fell asleep an hour in, and just finished it this week - it's a good flick, and this is another one I might write a bit more about later in the week, as I had a lot of feelings about the presentation of HAL and reading him as a gay man! I am personally not in the camp that this is one of the all-time greats, as I honestly only cared about the centre section of the film, not the beginning or the end, but it's still good even with those parts included.

The Terror by Dan Simmons, 2007 - I believe I've recommended AMC's The Terror (2018) before, which is a limited series I've got a lot of affection for, but this is my first time reading the book the series was based on, and I'm really enjoying it! Based on the once-lost expeditions of HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, two British explorer vessels which sought to find the Northwest Passage, written in a period style, this is a story effectively about a British colonial party who are punished by nature around them for their hubris and entitlement in desiring to be "explorers" - I would warn upfront that there's a lot of racism in this largely because it's written from the perspective of these 1800s white dudes in the past interacting with different Native Americans and other indigenous peoples, and in the course of the story engaging with different Inuit people. While the TV series is still good and I do plan to rewatch it after finishing this, the book is obviously much more rich, and it actually has more gay dudes than were included in the TV adaptation, as some of them were cut for time.

New Works Published

Narration: Two Plates

3k, rated M. Originally published Nov 20, 2022. A crotchety bookshop owner receives regular visits from the sex shop-owner across the way. Age gap, kissing, lots of banter and sharp back and forth. Note some mentions of past sexual abuse.

Listen on YouTube / / Listen on Spotify / / Read on Medium. / / Read on Patreon. 

Magazine Publication: Sheathed

This was originally published back in January, but has been republished this month by Bare Back Magazine!

A young man uses his coach’s mouth.

1.2k, cis M/M, rated E. Featuring blowjobs with throat-fucking, size difference, gagging, mild objectification, rough sex, coming in pants, and age difference.

Read from Bare Back Magazine / / On Medium / / On Patreon.

Blog Post: Advice for pre-transition trans men hooking up?

Anonymous asked:

possibly weird question but would you have any advice for trans men who are pre-any kind of medical transition who are looking to try dating apps and such?? I'm wanting to start living my best slut life but it's also a little intimidating when I don't always pass. Apologies because I do know this is probably a kind of broad question 😅 but thank you!

On Tumblr

Short Story: Two of A Kind

A boy washes up on shore and meets a pirate swordmaster. 

1.2k, rated M. Warnings for implied sexual abuse and reference to past sexual assault throughout, with a focus on survivors' solidarity. 

On Medium / / On Patreon

Short Story: The Secretary

A young woman goes to collect her inheritance.

4.1k, rated M. Content warnings for loss of a loved one and non-graphic references to sexual assault.

On Medium in The New North / / On Patreon

Short Story: The Butler

The captain's steward used to be a butler. About 1.3k, rated T.

On Medium in Prism & Pen / / On Patreon

[swordfright]

please write that essay

I assume based on your timing that this ask is in reference to this post, in which case I'm sorry it took me a couple days to get around to answering! This is not gonna be super well-organized but here are my thoughts:

The lore tidbit about c!Quackity actually having WON the bet with Glatt is literally the best possible way that whole situation could have gone. It’s such a solid storytelling move and I respect cc!Q to the moon and back for confirming it, both because I think c!Q's actions after having won the bet are very in-character for him and also because this option is, simply put, more narratively satisfying than the alternative. I'll explain why I think that.

c!Quackity's whole character arc is about belonging and agency and, importantly, how the pursuit of those things can go wrong. When he first joins the server he struggles to find somewhere to belong and gets used by others. His later attempts to exercise agency in order to foster his idea of a safe and stable community (yes, I'm including Butcher Army here) largely end in disaster. So eventually, Q establishes his own country, his own place where he can control every potential element and risk factor, but arguably he does so at the cost of love and friendship and community, the things he wanted to foster and maintain and protect in the first place. His defining fears about community safety eventually become reduced to fears about personal safety. To me, it’s a very clear negative character arc. When Q makes the bet with Schlatt’s ghost and ends up torturing c!Dream for the revival book, the audience are led to assume it’s because he lost the bet and is still beholden to Glatt in this one final way.

The exact nature of his and Schlatt's relationship prior to Schlatt's death carries some degree of ambiguity, but it's pretty widely interpreted as an abusive romantic relationship, and I'd argue that canon supports this interpretation. They were engaged following the Manberg coalition, and we know their relationship was increasingly rocky during this period. If you subscribe to this particular interpretation of their relationship (which I do because again, I believe canon supports it), then this adds a certain weight and gravity to Q's bet with Schlatt's ghost. The bet becomes a horrible postmortem extension of this toxic relationship that has deeply left its mark on c!Quackity, and Q losing the bet puts him in a vulnerable position both psychologically and literally. He is still beholden to his shitty ex, despite having put him in the fucking ground. That's a powerful motivation to get the book and be done with Glatt forever --- so it makes sense that when Q started torturing Dream for the book, many viewers automatically assumed it was because Q lost that bet.

Personally, I never really liked that assumption, because I feel it lets Q off too easy. It's too convenient an excuse. It dismisses the horror and cruelty of Q's deal with Sam by allowing Q the plausible deniability of desperation, characterizing the torture as his final desperate attempt to escape Schlatt's legacy, i.e. “My abuser made me do it, I’m still being threatened and coerced, I’m not culpable for my own actions!” (Which isn't even a justification that c!Quackity himself would ever use, so it's frustrating to see viewers fall back on it. The c!Quackity woobification in this fandom is much worse than the c!Dream woobification but let's leave that discussion for another day.)

But then (BUT THEN!!!) we find out that no, c!Quackity didn't lose the bet, he actually WON. He didn't want that book for Glatt, he wanted it for himself. He tortured Dream for this reason and because he enjoyed torturing Dream, and it’s an amazing anti-reveal because it pulls the rug out from under you but it also makes perfect sense given the sort of person we’ve watched Q becoming over the course of the past year’s worth of lore content. It’s about cycles of violence! In a story that has been about cyclical violence from the beginning, this is a natural conclusion for Q's character arc. DSMP is a story about building as an escape, and escaping what you've built. And ironically, this reveal makes c!Quackity a perfect foil to c!Tommy because Tommy is an abuse victim who, in a lot of ways, strives to be better than his abuser (hello I realize this is a controversial opinion but whatever this is my post) and Quackity is an abuse victim who intentionally strives to out-do his abuser.

Finally, Q winning the bet with Glatt is like, the only option that carries any kind of narrative catharsis. Because if he’d lost the bet, it means that despite Q's tireless efforts to gain agency, he never truly succeeded and is still being used as a pawn. Which is boring imo! It’s literally “area man ends up exactly where he started," which can be a compelling arc but it's not the most compelling possible arc for this particular character in my incredibly biased opinion. Whereas Quackity having won the bet gives his character arc direction. The arc then becomes “area man strives against all odds to achieve agency, succeeds, forfeits humanity in the process.” Area man escapes cycle of abuse only to perpetuate it. Which I personally like because I think it's interesting!

It may not be an uplifting arc, but it’s an arc! It starts in one place and ends up somewhere else. It has momentum! Even though this reveal technically reflects “poorly” on Quackity’s character (idc lol he will be my forever babygirl no matter how many times he violates the Geneva Convention), it’s a plot twist that respects his character so much more than the alternative. There's only so far you can take a story about a guy being powerless. It's much more fun to tell a story where the powerless guy finally attains the agency he always wanted, but at a great personal cost.

(Coincidentally, this is also the reason I wish c!Wilbur's finale stream had ended not with him leaving c!Tommy but with him asking Tommy to accompany him to Utah and Tommy rejecting his offer. But I digress lmfao I'll be bitter about that storytelling decision on my own time)

Anyway, I think @elmhat phrased it really well when they said "We care about Quackity because of his choices." Not just what happens to him, but how he decides to react.

[memorymessage]

re: leaving instagram

i've noticed the subtleties in the transactional interactions on instagram.

if i'm not actively posting bodychecks, people start to forget my existence. even people i thought were genuinely reaching out to me to become friends—they seem to only want to talk to me if i've been posting photos of my body. they only like the stories that are of my body.

(not everybody. you know who you guys are, and i appreciate you endlessly.)

i'm not naïve or foolish—this is what i signed up for. this is what i get for: A: engaging with an app that is personal-photo-based in the first place, and B: fostering a mutual community of people with eating disorders.

i made my bed, now lie in it; i reap what i sow; i dug my own grave, etc, etc.

when i first made the account, i was rabid about posting photos every day. i had been private online for so long that i felt like i was breaking open a dam. i grew up on myspace. i had a camera in my own face every single day. but, after i transitioned as masc years later, i became ashamed of my feminine features. i only posted photos where i passed as masc well enough, which took great effort, make up, and some costume tricks (yes...i may have cut up hair extensions and made myself a beard). and, even then, i would get nervous about posting any photos at all—deathly afraid of my femininity.

there were a few instances where i would create fake social media accounts, give myself a fake name, and post pictures of myself dolled up as femme to the nines. an outlet to release the feminine side of myself without fear, but keeping the entity as far away from the "real" me as possible. but, even that was fake and untrue to myself—wearing makeup i never wore. wearing extensions that were shoved away, tangled, in a box.

i haven't been honestly myself in online spaces in many, many years.

this instagram account was the first time i truly let myself be... me.

but the novelty of posting pictures every day wore on me. i do still have an ed and bdd, after all.

especially when i reached my lowest weight of all time spring of last year. i felt like every picture i posted should be "perfect". the smaller i became, the more i scrutinized myself. looking even the slightest bit too large in any given angle was unacceptable.

the attention i got during that time was also at its peak.

and my mentality from that time regarding photos of myself never recovered.

my weight went up. it became harder and harder for me to want to take pictures. even when i would force myself to take pictures, it became harder to pick one i even wanted to post. not to mention, chronic illness has absolutely debilitated me the past year. most days, i am in bed, in pajamas, in no state (mind and body) to take photos.

and people started talking to me less and less, liking my posts less and less, viewing my stories less and less. the only time people would remember i existed is when i posted an acceptable bodycheck. then i would get a short-lived spike in people liking me again. only to die down until i posted my next check.

people weren't interested in my text posts, or the videos i would share. to put it plainly—people are not interested in me as a person.

why does this matter?

two reasons: it reinforces my bdd-based belief that i am only worth anything if i am thin and pretty. and... i was on myspace trying to be the next audrey kitching scene queen at age 10, meaning attention from others validating my very existence was interwoven into my young, developing brain. and there it yet remains.

and it's not just about other people. taking a good photo of myself gives me sense of pride and rejuvenation so immense that i'll never be able to explain. i assume that feeling also took root from the myspace scene queen days. a new pfp was everything back then, after all. i guess my brain still thinks it is.

my instagram account did not start like this. it used to be a small, casual little place where i would upload daily snaps. and it's sad this is where it has ended.

my insecure little delusions raveled up in themselves, tangling my body and leaving me motionless in fear of judgment. paralyzed.

in short: we're not having fun anymore, and i need to do myself a service and take responsibility for that.

i need to leave.

(for now.)