#this is the BROAD ASPECTS btw. there would be like

[drabbles-of-writing]

as the OG source of the A Little Kindness AU aka Raine adopting Hunter I would LOVE to know how you would change it to be canon compliant. i mean obviously the reveal would be after everything, but god just imagine Hunter worrying about his anonymous friend/caretaker and he finds out its the FUCKING OWL LADY'S PARTNER and hes just so happy theyre ok and to know who helped him out all the time but also OH TITAN LUZ IS GONNA BE HIS SISTER EVEN MORE NOW!

~adoption anon

the little gray box who started it all!!!! welcome back

good lord there would be so many overhauls...just so incredibly many I gotta try to break it all down to smaller sections to even get. a glimpse

1) okay so as we have learned Raine was NOT, in fact, under any mind control, just pulling the biggest brained move on Snapdragon she ever did see. so raine doesn't even go missing in the first place, if anything they might halt the notes altogether but still remain in the castle just because they were under constant vigilance and meeting eda again mightve made them triply afraid of getting other people involved with their work. hunter stresses about it, as you do, but flapjack isn't freaking out cause HE'S seen raine's face, and he knows that they're fine, but he has no idea what happened, so Hunter is less concerned since Flapjack isn't. not by a lot tho.

2) so INSTEAD of Hunter booking it to Luz to plead for help on some criminals, he instead takes all of this suppressed fear and worry and stress and just kinda. balls it up. and then shoves all of it out in the open during Eclipse Lake. he goes HARD trying to get that Titan's Blood and the thing where he tried to relate to Amity over being a failure? he doubles down on that shit TREMENDOUSLY and their shared failing to live up to what other ppl wanted and pushing away their friends (granted Amity actually pushed Willow away to try and help, Hunter didn't push Raine away he just thought he did). you think his breakdown in Eclipse Lake was concerning? hes about to make it even more concerning. hes very very afraid for Bat and he would really rather they hate him than anyone found out they'd been talking to him and they got murdered, so he better try and beat the shit out of Amity! if Belos is pleased with him, maybe he'll hesitate on whatever punishment Bat might be having right now

3) Raine, bless 'em, keeps trying to help Hunter how they can, dropping these tiny hints they don't mean to drop. Hunter's part of setting up and preparing everything for the Coven Day Parade and Raine is noticeably always checking in on the Golden Guard. we know now that Hunter started showing his face more after the Palisman incident, but Raine isn't seen around often, so I imagine it's around the Coven Day Parade that they finally see what Hunter looks like--and good lord that IS a literal teenager what the hell did they DO TO HIM---alright scrap all the plans. darius, eberwolf, change of plans. everything stays the same, but we're kidnapping Hunter on the way out

4) Any Sport in a Storm is pretty much the same, Hunter is just even antsier & more desperate to get these new friends to like him bc. Bat. and also punts Darius twice as hard. Darius for his part is only marginally nicer because he knows Raine's weirdly attached to this little rat of a child--oh wait nvm he sees why now. alright valid point. Darius is a firm believer in "for the love of god just tell him you're Bat it will save everyone a lot of stress" but unfortunately Raine subscribes to "if anyone i really care about is within fifty feet of me we are All Going To Die"

5) mostly everything would stay the same in Hollow Mind, i think? Raine, Darius and Eberwolf might actually go up to the Owl House and speak when Hunter and Luz get trapped in Belos's mind since its both Raine and Darius that are stressed as fuck over the kid? in that instance then everyone teams up much quicker (and in confusion) but Hunter still books it out at fast speeds into the woods and somehow makes it to Hexside. he's a slippery little bastard, but luckily now theres a whole gang teamed together to track him down and hes found by Darius pretty quickly after the Owl House is evacuated and torn apart. however Hexside is VERYYYYY on edge over coven heads claiming to want to "help" and "have betrayed the Coven" so they're all beating Darius back like a rabid raccoon and Hunter thinks he's here to kill him. so thats fun. eventually Darius gives up, scruffs Raine, and throws them down at Hexside and demands they finally clear shit up. its a very cute scene of Raine sneaking in and slipping little notes under the door of whatever classroom Hunter's hiding for his life in, wherein he realizes Bat's come back. and Hunter's finally brave enough to yank open the door to---RAINE?????

6) more stuff that mostly stays the same. Hunter however is very stressed over Raine when they're trapped in the human realm which eventually leads to him and Luz talking a lot and him realizing "im sorry waht the fuck do you MEAN that the owl lady and raine whispers were a THING??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERES STILL SOMETHING THERE????" but above all i want to fuck this boy up so insanely bad and at least give him a GLIMPSE of Raine's puppet body being possessed by Belos. even if there is no interaction other than Hunter seeing them for a brief flash I know in my heart that would fuck him up so bad. he would blame himself so so much. Belos really here to kill everything he loves before he can finally be free huh

7) MOST importantly they finally get to hug when everyones reunited and hunter feels SO INCREDIBLY GUILTY when he sees all the fresh new scars Raine has courtesy of Belos. to which Raine, in peak parent fashion, just goes "nah, i dont mind 'em. now we match :]" and Hunter's just god u are missing the point so badly but i'll let it slide. how'd you know my new scars were from belos. and raine just stares like "how did i know your new scars were from WHAT????? oh im so glad i killed his ass" "YOU DID WHAT"

[nyaagolor]

Merry DL6mas!

I wrote an inordinate amnt of words about Edgeworth and MVK and dynamics and meta and w/e, stuck it below the cut so I don't obliterate ur dashes

So originally I wanted to make a relationship flowchart for all the characters and then realized that the amnt of caveats would make the image entirely text so I’m just forgoing the image altogether and doing this group by group starting with the VKs bc DL6mas and whatnot. It’s an essay and also unorganized so um. Have fun or apologies in advance? 

Anyway. I think AA1 intending to be standalone and then getting these additional games does some fun things to the characters but especially for Manfred. I’m of the opinion that he was not created or written to be deep or nuanced or anything. He’s the final boss, we weren’t supposed to get more on him, he’s honestly just a symbolic representation of the forces Phoenix works against rather than a character in his own right (in AA1 at least). He’s cartoonishly evil and that was supposed to be it— and then we get JFA and Franziska and suddenly Manfred gets all this retroactive characterization as the story is built beyond its initial parameters. That’s part of the reason why I’m so interested in him— all this new information comes exclusively through other characters and insinuations rather than him actually being on screen up until Investigations and even then it’s like 4 lines. We get more on Manfred, yes, but it’s a shadow on the wall. I’m sorry to bring up allegory of the cave about the gay lawyer simulator but w/e I’m a melodramatist, it’s an allegory of the cave situation. The reason I bring that up is because I don’t really think about Manfred in the same way as other characters; I piece together how I think of him though his relationships and impact on others rather than as an independent dude. His past is inconsequential to me and the ppl who flesh him out are the real troopers but he matters to me more as a vessel for narrative themes than anything. This is all to say that everything I’m doing is conjecture and just kind of filling in the gaps based on my current understanding of the text. Headcanons for the broad and far-reaching audience of me, myself, and I. 

That being said. The whole spiel I just went on about “Manfred as defined by his relation to others” works quite nicely as tie-in to how he feels about Edgeworth, because I think Edgeworth occupies this symbolic space in MVK’s mind. Yes, Edgeworth is a kid he mentors and who lives in his house and who he is legally responsible for, but Edgeworth is also this physical manifestation of his failures. Edgeworth is a child, yes, but to MVK he’s a ghost, a consequence, a punishment. He may not be a VK, but he IS karma (sound the turnabout melody I am kissing you on the lips for this line btw). 

This also means that the way MVK views Edgeworth as an extension of his own thoughts about the DL6 incident rather than solely as his own person, which is something that changes pretty drastically over time. The way he talks about and to Edgeworth goes beyond who and what Edgeworth is as a person because for MVK, there was always an aspect of the self in there, and MVK interacting with Edgeworth is as much a reflection of his own identity as it is how he feels about Miles. 

If there is one thing the entire VK family does extraordinarily well it's projection, and I think MVK has been doing this since he brought Edgeworth into the picture (and before that, but it’s only relevant to me now). This is personally how I rationalize how absolutely batshit half of MVK’s actions are. I know the actual reason is “we expanded the characters around him which necessitates certain actions to drive the plot and inconsistency results from this expansion” blah blah blah paratext more or less confirms this, but we are going full Watsonian in this bitch. 

I have talked at length about the actual medical stuff around gunshots and how bullets are typically removed from joints specifically because of how badly they damage the surrounding tissues over time, I’ll link the post if anyone is curious, but tldr bullet wound symbolism. I bring this up now because I think the bullet acts as a physical representation for DL6, it literally and metaphorically tears him up inside. No one else knows about this murder, most people have forgotten the penalty, but he never did, because he can’t. For someone who has structured his entire self on the idea of perfection, this is an event of unprecedented magnitude, and the living proof of it is eating dinner at his table every night. MVK sits with the weight of what he’s done, and whether or not he feels justified or guilty or w/e doesn’t even matter because it’s making him lose his goddamn mind. His behavior gets more intense, more irrational, because before he was just a massive, scheming, paragon of perfection (and corruption but shh) but now he is in this inescapable cycle as the result of his choices and his choices exclusively. I don’t propose to know nor care about how he felt about it or what the specific emotions he felt were because they’re not particularly important in my mind, only that the lingering ghost of DL6 is driving MVK kinda bonkers and that drastically alters how he interacts with Edgeworth and Franziska. 

I’ve seen a lot of debate about why MVK took in Edgeworth, but my hot take is that he actually doesn’t know. I don’t think MVK ever processed DL6, I think he is filled with contradictory feelings (how ironic) and that this is what eats at him through all those years. Why did he take in Edgeworth? Because he felt guilty? Because he wanted to train him into everything his father hated as a twisted kind of revenge? Because he wanted a prodigy and saw himself in Edgeworth? It’s all of them, it’s none of them, it doesn’t matter, he doesn’t know. Why did he prosecute Edgeworth right before the statute of limitations ended? Was it revenge? Hatred? A way to test his prodigy? To project his own gnawing nest of emotions onto the person he felt embodied the incident? Same deal. (the real answer is that it doesn’t really matter bc we were not supposed to think about it this hard but. Shh. dw about it.)

I don’t take much interest into Manfred’s inner world because I ultimately think that a lot of his actions, while completely under his control, are him acting on impulse, on him doing irrational things because DL6, in a sense, killed him too. He comes out of that elevator a different person (not worse (can’t go down from rock bottom), not better, just a different kind of asshole), but destroyed from the inside out by a murder he committed. He’s so arrogant, so entitled, that he could never let this go, and I think that drives so much of the insane shit he tries to pull. He has centered his life around the axis of DL6 and he will always be pulled back into its orbit. The further we get from DL6 the more time he has to think, the more it tears him apart, the more the contradictory feelings about it rear their heads in turn and create this guy who is just desperate and angry. And when it’s days before the statute of limitations he just becomes completely subsumed by it all. He was always cruel, but now he’s cruel and desperate and completely willing to drag everyone down with him. The desperation is the important part. 

I will say though that he is, irrefutably, his own downfall. He molded Edgeworth in his own image, he created Phoenix Wright the defense attorney as a consequence, and it is the two of them who send him to his death. He is the one who planned the murder of Turnabout Goodbyes. From beginning to end, it’s his own hand. Manfred is one of the only characters in this series whose actions are not precedented by extenuating circumstances. It’s allllll him. He’s the bitch. He has been and will always be a selfish prick and for as much as he is lashing out because of DL6 he does so by dragging others in. 

Extremely long prelude to say that I think how he treats edgeworth varies so wildly over time and is so irrational in its presentation because of everything I mentioned before. He is Edgeworth’s greatest kindness and his worst nightmare— at the same time!! Multitasking king. He takes in Edgeworth as a snap decision for reasons he doesn’t entirely understand, and I think because of that he never quite views Edgeworth as a son (at least in the traditional sense). Edgeworth is not his child in the same way that Franziska is his child (and we will get to her in a different post I promise), but he’s not just some random kid either. Manfred is emotionally tied to him through DL6, and I think the fact colors the way that Manfred treats him. It’s a dynamic that I can’t really put a label on, because it’s mentor/student with so much extra baggage that it feels different than that. There is an emotional connection between them, a sense of atonement and revenge, and I don’t think either of them will ever be able to articulate what that means. Manfred does not address Edgeworth as his child, and I think there is an attempt in his language to distance himself from Edgeworth, but he finds himself drawn to Edgeworth all the same (bc Edgeworth is DL6 etc etc). He did not ask for a child, he does not WANT a child, but he has one! Get fucked!

MVK is obsessed with his own image, with this idea of perfection, and insofar as Edgeworth is DL6, Edgeworth is an extension of MVK. He pushes his ideals and tactics onto Edgeworth the second Edgeworth decides he wants to be a prosecutor, because even more than Franziska, Edgeworth is MVK’s living legacy. He is quite literally Manfred’s midlife crisis and I think Edgeworth wanting to be like him and becoming this Demon Prosecutor is this insanely fucked up kind of catharsis in MVK’s mind. And as Edgeworth becomes more like him, as he takes up MVK’s mantle, he becomes a mirror— that is where shit gets fun. I don’t think I need to spell out the ways in which MVK was simultaneously caring and cruel to his kids— you’ve seen Sound the Turnabout Melody, you’re seen Turnabout Goodbyes, we know this song and dance. 

The more time Edgeworth spends around him, as Edgeworth reflects more of Manfred back at himself, MVK simultaneously becomes proud and revolted. Edgeworth is growing beyond the consequences of DL6 and into a mirror of his adopted father figure mentor person. He is, from the ashes of DL6, becoming Manfred von Karma, and I think that drives MVK insane. He is becoming firmly entrenched in MVK’s life at this point. For as much as Edgeworth is DL6, he is now MVK himself. He becomes a walking contradiction, and Manfred’s projection then manifests as this rapidly oscillating clusterfuck of reactions. Edgeworth is out of his control but he’s super important to MVK— recipe for disaster. 

He builds Edgeworth up, teaches him everything he knows, starts to treat him like a son while at the same time irrevocably traumatizing for the rest of his life. He loves who Edgeworth is becoming while hating everything he stands for, and I think this absolute garbage pile of a child-rearing philosophy is as much a projection of himself as anything. It was never about Edgeworth the person. At first, MVK does not care in the slightest about Miles Edgeworth and it is only when he does, even a little bit, that shit hits the fan in my mind. Edgeworth the physical manifestation of DL6 is being overtaken by Edgeworth the Demon Prosecutor, and MVK starts to be proud of him— but this is an eventuality he did not plan for and cannot do anything about. For both of them, it’s personal now, and no amount of pushing each other away is really going to fix that. 

Anyway I don’t think literally any of this was intended. Manfred is not this deep, I am making literally all of this up, but it’s fine. If you got this far I salute you. Miles time. To pivot to Edgeworth’s POV for a while, I think that from the very beginning, Edgeworth looked up to MVK. It’s not the same idolization that Franziska does, but it’s up there. Obviously he idolized his father, but DL6 not only served as a complete evisceration of his family but also his ideals. Gregory the man was dead, but if criminals can kill his father and get away with it, that collapses the foundation on which Miles built his understanding of justice. Gregory the defense attorney– his ideals, his legacy, his philosophy– he died in that elevator too. Edgeworth pivots, completely independently, from a man who wants to protect to a man who wants to punish (and I firmly believe that this was his own decision and not Manfred pushing him into it, if MVK had not adopted him he still would have become a prosecutor just not so much of a dick). 

But so Manfred takes him in, and was spectacularly ill-equipped to handle this. I always saw Manfred as emotionally distant on the best of days (he’s born in the 50s what did u expect) but for Miles, who he barely considers a son at all, he isn’t capable of being the emotional support he needs. He never would be and never wanted to be. That’s layer one of baggage. What MVK does provide for Miles, though, is a purpose. Miles does not wallow in his father’s death, because he is taken in by someone who acts as a paragon of Miles’ new worldview. Manfred never lets a criminal get away. He is perfect in that way, and it gives Miles a tangible (albeit impossible) goal to strive for. MVK mentors him in this worldview and gives him the tools to outlet his grief and rage into something productive— fucked up and wrong, maybe, but productive. That’s layer two of baggage. 

For as complicated and twisted and contradictory as MVK’s feelings towards Edgeworth are, Edgeworth for most of his childhood sees MVK as this pillar of everything that is good and treats him with intense amounts of respect. He accepts any cruelty as tough love, he adopts his ideals and his tactics and his suit. Edgeworth needed *something* after the grief of DL6 and MVK is what he got, so Miles latches on and never lets go, for better or for worse. Miles Edgeworth is not Manfred von Karma but he actively tries to take his shape because whether or not it’s reciprocated, Edgeworth loves him and everything that he stands for. Manfred cares about him in that respect at the very least. And ultimately, this is my big take on Edgeworth: I think Edgeworth actively chased MVK. He became MVK on purpose. It’s a result of trauma and built entirely on false pretenses, but Miles is the one who takes the initiative and Manfred indulges him— And then Turnabout Goodbyes happens. 

Everything Edgeworth is, everything he made himself become, is wrong. Edgeworth has molded himself into a person he does not recognize and that person turned out to be a monster. The person Edgeworth idolized, respected, and maybe even loved is the very person who destroyed his life. He is wearing the skin of the monster he wanted to destroy, and he did it on purpose (in his mind). This is not to say he had much if any agency in this situation— this is not a path he would naturally take, this is structured entirely under false pretenses, and he was clouded by grief, traumatized, and most importantly nine, but what matters here is that Edgeworth FEELS like it’s his fault, and the complete collapse of his worldview AGAIN is what drives all the bullshit of RFTA. Edgeworth is not MVK (and you can tell because he is capable of self-reflection which MVK is ostensibly not (or at least unwilling to)), but it still drives him to this complete and utter devastation. He sees Manfred in himself and it isn’t until AAI1/2 that he’s able to see Gregory as well. MVK filled a need for Edgeworth at the lowest point in his life (and absolutely made him worse but that’s not the point). Edgeworth respected and loved Manfred’s ideals, STILL chases the idea of the man, and because of that still cares about him. He becomes aware of who the monster he loved is, and how has to reconcile with what it means to be that person’s reflection and legacy despite knowing— and feeling, and BEING— all the harm he caused.

Those contradictory feelings that I talked about earlier? Love and hatred all mixed together— questions that cannot be answered and actions taken without knowing why? That’s Edgeworth’s final gift from Manfred: he inherits the bullet and the legacy he carries forward. Unlike Manfred, though, Edgeworth takes that pain and shares it, lets other people in, scoffs at the veneer of perfection and allows himself to be hurt and vulnerable and it is only in that way that Edgeworth can break out of VK’s shadow and break the cycle. He holds onto the ideals that he learned from Manfred, separates them from the nastiness and acknowledges the place they came from. It’s obvious in the way that Edgeworth carries aspects of that legacy forward that he’s capable of disseminating everything that Manfred is, acknowledging the way he’s been influenced by him and what he still respects about the man despite it all, and make peace with the rest of it. The cycle of violence and corruption started with Manfred and Edgeworth makes sure that it ends with him too. 

I have a ton more to talk about with respect to his teaching methods and the nitty gritty of how he interacts with his kids but that’s for the Fran post. This is more of the “whys” than the “hows” but I’ll get there :)

Anyway, I think that’s it. I’m sure there’s more that I’m missing but my head is beyond empty rn and I can’t think of anything else I wanna talk about with respect to these two. I know I literally just spewed 3k words about into this textpost but I do love chatting about them (total shock I know) so if u also have thoughts or ideas abt anything related to them lmk :3

[smugpugchimera]

The tutorial on Shading\lighting Pt. 1!

It's finally here! This is an extremely broad and complicated topic! I would like to kick this off from a little theory rundown, at the very least the way I understand it. I hope this will make sense for y'all :) The basics: I’ll try to concisely break down the “model” of the Shading “structure”

BTW this is also why the Moon shadow looks so dark and overbearing, there's no medium for the light to scatter in, or surface for it to bounce off :D

With this in mind, the first step of shading can be as simple as marking out the proportion between the dark and the light, before thinking of any subtleties of additional elements. For simple styles this can be enough on it’s own

In my humble opinion, the exact physics and geometry of the way light interacts with the object isn’t that important. There’s a lot of very neat resources and apps that can help you with it, but it is not the subject of this particular tutorial. In most cases, a vague gesture at the flight’s direction and the shape of an object is enough. In a lot of cases, even for fairly realistic styles, it’s helpful to neglect accuracy sometimes in favor of readability and\or expression :0 The other important aspect of shading is the angle. This is primarily what causes the terminator (edge between light and dark) to have variations in how sharp the transition is. Curved surface makes the transition look smooth. Sharp turns and twists cause the change to be sudden.

Note: the further the casting object is from the surface it projects on, the blur-ier the shadow gets.

If I understand correctly: Light reflected sharply retains more of it’s energy (brightness), while wide angle makes it lose more of it to the object and surrounding medium. I think it has something to do with the wavelength stuff, which effects color outcomes too! I’m not 100% sure of the specifics on all that, it’s been a while since I learned this. I highly recommend this website that has a lot of rly cool info on the topic as a whole!: http://www.huevaluechroma.com/index.php And that's it for today! I hope this was somewhat informative, this is my first time ever attempting something like this :3 Next time I will specifically focus on application and techniques!~ 💜BuyMeaCoffee💜Patreon💜Twitter💜  

[souji-upseta]

yo my name is nyx, it's my birthday today (2/3). my birthdays have sucked SHIT the past few years for reasons that are depressing—

—cringe is also dead, i killed her myself, and i'm still grieving her loss. its been very hard for me—

—since i am the protagonist of Me and can do st abt this, this year i turn 31, and i will at some point turn 31.4, with all of this in mind, what do i want for my birthday? i'll tell you:

to talk about homestuck.

i'll do that, anyways, but you'd be doing me a gift by giving me a prompt to follow, and to feel slightly more validated in my inability to shut up about my hyperfixation.

so i'm asking YOU to talk about homestuck with me.

talk to me abt homestuck? ask me my headcanons. my thoughts. my relationship to the work. tell me yours. expect nothing that's profound, and plenty that's stupid.

i'm even turning anon on, for the first time in 6 fucking years. where making this happen.

this never expires btw. today is my birthday, but, for story purposes, let's say that it's still my birthday after it isn't, bc i will still want and, if i am honest, NEED you to talk to me about homestuck for years onward. i'm very metatextual like that.

i get the feeling it's going to be a long day.

>Nyx: Be the other guy.

You are now the other guy! What will you do?

>Web Tumblr User: Inbox Tumblr user souji-upseta?

>Mobile App Tumblr User: Do that, but hyperlink is unavailable?

=(n×∞)>

FOURTH WALL BREAK!

you are now nyx again, and i am now me, and i need to exposit some lore.

as in, some starting points to get u going, since "homestuck" is a very broad subject:

•i'm a massive massive slut for the epilogues and post canon content/hsbc. pesterquest is too good for this gay earth.

•dirk is my fav, ALL of the dirks, all of them, and it isn't even close. my fav relationship is the canon platonic/familial one between dirk and dave. i fucking love the striders. dave is my 1.5th fav.

•im more invested in dave's relationship to corndogs (and corn dogs) than you even know.

•mspa reader is my second fav after the striders, bc they are a good thembo friendsimp and also bc they are me and they are You. i might be biased. i love You. i love me. i love us. we're fucking gr8.

•im pretty canon-compliant, so my fav ship is dirkjake as exes (for now), and my fav ship as not-exes is panquadrant (canon) davekat.

i'm also really fascinated by rosemary and would welcome more opportunities to learn abt and talk about them but if homestuck makes a statement about anything it's to let the women and the sapphic characters tell their story (thats a joke, talk to me abt them too)

•june eg(g)bert real.

•i'm fascinated by classpects and the applications of paradox space's classpecting and extended zodiac system when applied to real life, since our only experience of those fictional systems is in linear dimensions of spacetime, and our only experience of astrology is as a species that in-universe cannot experience the sign caste system the same way the fictional aliens that created our species in their own image do. skaia knows, but we sure as fuck don't.

•i'm a former prince of heart (2012-2020) and a current knight of space, and my aspect is light. that is a thing that actually makes perfect sense for the reasons i just said.

don't ask me about vriska serket or (vriska) serket. not bc i'm not willing to discuss dark or problematic characters (hello, lanque bombyx) but bc:

for one, she can speak for her damn self, and has, tyvm.

for two, talking at length about a problematic character in any positive capacity marks you as an enemy of the state if that character is a woman, and being an enemy of the state is way too much fucking pressure for me for reasons i already explained as soon as i told you i'm a knignt of space. i wouldnt make a very good enemy of the state. it'd be an unhealthy blackrom relationship to the detriment of us all.

for three, i can just give you all my opinions/headcanons on vriska that matter:

•JOHN HUGGING VRISKA IN HSBC YESSSSSSSSSS

•she's greasy and gross and unkept af but not unclean or unsanitary, like, she bathes, she smells fine, she changes her clothes, but she's got the troll crust punk aesthetic absolutely on LOCK. she doesn't comb her hair.

•it would have been funny if she did even more bad things

•aradia did nothing wrong. vriska did but the meme is funny even if someone needs to take that meme out back and shoot it for the good of humanity.

•she should beat up ultimate dirk, and my reasoning for that is bc that would, also, be really fucking funny if she did

•john has both punched her in the face and hugged her, and now that john has punched aranea in the face, all that's left is for june—i assume she will have come out of her egg(bert) by then—to hug aranea and complete the circle of stupidity.

•she is trans yeah but she doesn't wanna get into it, she doesn't have to, and neither do i.

•vrisrezi most important relationship in homestuck.

there. you already got me to talk about vriska at length, and you didn't have to try. moot issue.

[ocean-sapphics]

what are ocean sapphics? & flags!

'ocean' is the umbrella grouping term for presentation labels that lesbian & bi/pan sapphics can use regarding femininity, masculinity, and androgyny.

these terms were initially coined by strwbryfemme on twitter, using their gimmick account sapphicimagines back in january of 2022. both accounts have since been deactivated and therefore this thread is long gone. i found them in an old flag hoard album on my camera roll recently and decided to respectfully reupload them in case anyone else would enjoy.

NOTE #1: i will not be putting the rest of this, admittedly quite long, post under a ‘read more’ cut due to the fact that all the information would be lost if someone decided to reblog it and the original post ended up gone sometime in the future. you would not be able to view anything under it, since whatever is there can only be seen on the original page. i apologize if you have to scroll a lot because of this, but that’s unfortunately one of the many inconvenient ways tumblr works.

NOTE #2 (MUST READ): i felt it would be best to swap their usage of 'pearl' to mean masc, not androgyne. this is because these chosen words feel unbalanced in their meanings to me. 'ocean' feels too broad and vague to cover just one category (hence why i made it overarching instead), and doesn't fit its place in the hierarchy of the theme. it'd be like saying, for example: 'cat' is fem, 'animal' is masc, and 'dog' is androgynous; instead of saying 'cat' is fem, 'dog' is masc, and 'furry' (lmao idk ok? bear with me) is androgynous. i then turned what was previously 'pearl' into 'coral' as a replacement, since that made more sense from my perspective. if this confuses you while reading the tweets below, i have put my corrections for the labels/flags in alt text, which you can click on each image to access. if that doesn't help, feel free to ask questions. i tried to make this as easy and least complex as possible, so i apologize if that didn't work.

NOTE #3: if cat (strwbryfemme) and/or atlas (ilikegaycookies, who designed the bi flags btw) finds this and would like me to take it down, i will do so upon request, directly or indirectly, and also delete this blog. i intend no disrespect to either of you and i'm posting this because i like your ideas and don't want them to rot and be forgotten anymore than they already have. i edited the words themselves because i thought they would fit better, but i can also revert them back to their original versions if need be.

with that out of the way, let’s get onto the flags first!

sapphic:

lesbian:

bisexual:

information (REMINDER THAT I HAVE RE-COINED A COUPLE OF TERMS. READ ALT TEXT TO KNOW WHICH WORDS TO SWAP OUT WHEN READING THE SCREENSHOTS!):

any and all help with IDs/PTs are appreciated! i do not have the spoons to write them out as of now due to the rest of the work i'm putting into this post, but if someone wants to volunteer then i can put all the text into a rentry (or multiple) and edit it here to make the images more accessible to disabled readers. thank you!

here is some more stuff i would like to add (please also read these too if you are interested in claiming, or even if you are not on board with all this):

you should keep in mind that i am a white tme bi sapphic who knows my history and claims 'butch', so i will not argue about butch/femme discourse because i strongly support the terms not being lesbian-exclusive. however, it should be understood that i still know my place and privilege regarding other applicable aspects and do not wish to offend anyone or start discourse here. this post is simply a reupload and attempt at re-suggesting cute terms for personal use only, entirely by choice. they are not designed to be forced on anyone or become mainstream, especially not to replace femme/butch/futch or even the infamous doe/stag/tomcat. you do not have to like these or agree with them. you are allowed to dismiss the idea and move on as it wasn't made to erase or hurt anyone. please hold anyone who does spread these in bad faith accountable, thanks.

with that being said, it is my opinion that we should grant their wishes for wanting to keep this series exclusive to the sapphic community. i do not personally consider either of these individuals to be overall 'bad people', even if we disagree on some things heavily. they still deserve respect for the positive contributions they have made to our community, which is why, again, i will remove all of the above without hesitation if asked by a credible messenger.

one last thing to be reminded of ─ if anyone else ends up playing around with the theme of these terms + flags, for any given reason (such as designing pan/trans/enby/etc. versions), please do not use the word 'fish', especially if you are also white, as that already exists within a Black-exclusive context to be a cultural identity adjacent to 'femme'! i will not speak or give an opinion about what to do or not if you are Black, as i'm sure you will be able to take it from there.

this is not necessary to read, so you can stop now lol ─ anyway, thank you for your attention, and enjoy! reblogs are appreciated, and comments will be listened to. if you have any complaints directed towards the content itself, then i unfortunately cannot help you with that as said content is not really mine. however, i will try to respond to stuff related to my act of reuploading and/or adjusting the terminology. remember that i self-identify as butch and am critical of coining ideas with a similar purpose to doe/stag, but obviously i am not against it. as long as you can understand my point of view, your opinions will matter, even if they (respectfully!) dissent. have a lovely rest of your day/night!

[dogtoling]

if you could rework the plots (and/or gameplay aspects?) of the single-player campaigns you were unsatisfied with, what changes would you make? can be as broad strokes or detailed as you like!

oh god, that's a hard question and I know from solely a business and game standpoint, the singleplayer campaign is pretty much perfect as is (aside from the stories or lack thereof) because it's simple yet functions as a tutorial and doesn't take up too many development resources from the main game. For what I actually wish the single player campaigns were, I am fully aware that they'd just need to be like, independent singleplayer side games. Which btw is something I NEEEEEEEDDDDD to happen some time in the future. (long post warning, I am writing this afterwards. this got really long, unsurprisingly)

For my ideal singleplayer Splatoon experience I would kill for open-world, even open-zone style exploration of the city settings. Something the platforming and ink mechanics of the game would literally be perfect for. More exploration and more space and they went in that direction already with Alterna, which is amazing. My main gripe with the platforming levels we actually get in the game (mostly Octo Valley and Canyon) is that they just DESTROY game immersion and turn the world into a collection of random abstract stuff that's just kind of there.

It would be much, MUCH cooler if we had grounded levels that, even if they were small, had you infiltrate an actual dome and go into Octarian military bases and they were like... actual areas with rooms, enemies, vents and stuff. You could still have platforming - just not on pointless floating slabs of concrete or metal that are just in the air for some reason and someone placed a guy there. As an example of like the only game I can think of as an example, Ratchet & Clank? Those games have planets you fly to that are a mixture of outside areas and bases that you infiltrate. (I have never played Ratchet & Clank so I have no idea what is actually going on, I just watched it being played by other people as a kid, and that's what LOOKS like is going on... lol.)

And, you know, as an even CLOSER example to what I mean... the Octo Expansion escape sequence! Just any improved case of a more grounded world and the levels being something that's NOT just random floating platforms would do SOOOO MUCH for the game in my opinion. I know that floating platforms is like an Octarian thing, but the game fails to explain WHY that is. Are they like using those for something other than having it be in the sky to literally just be in the way and achieve nothing else? To people saying maybe it's purposefully an obstacle course built so it's harder to get to the Zapfish... why build an obstacle course to it in the first place. That's still just providing people a direct route to the Zapfish. Just don't. The Octarians have flying saucers. Just put a smart lock on the freaking thing that works with some passcode or scan or something and make it only accessible to the people who need to be able to access it. Seriously, they have insanely good tech and it's just not being utilized. And this isn't even "insanely good tech", WE literally have smart locks.... lol

In Splatoon 1, for some reason a lot of the abstract things felt easier to pass off as something that would be there naturally, like Inkrails to get from point A to point B - it might be because a lot of the stages still felt more natural for some reason? In Splatoon 2, a lot of new gimmicks and really strange things like bounce pads, grind rails, inkfurlers and the like were added, and even the hubs felt a lot more artificial. They felt like they were deliberately made as video game hubs full of random obstacles and stuff scattered around, instead of the hubs in Splatoon 1 which (mostly) felt like abandoned pieces of a city with hidden entrances. Needless to say I did not like that, lol.

TL;DR for what the single player campaigns currently are, I deeply wish they would just be more grounded with less outright abstract elements even if the areas weren't very big. As for something that could more realistically be added and would still improve literally every story mode by a MILE is making the characters MATTER. I've said before that it frustrates me that the idol characters are "just kind of there" in the story modes and their presence feels more like corporate quota than them actually being intended to be there and I'm going to go into why I feel that.

Sure, the idol characters aren't technically there for "no reason". But my god, do they still add bare minimum to the actual ACTIVE stories of... well, the stories. They're commentators if anything and nothing they DO meaningfully justifies them being there or adds anything interesting to the stories. They're literally there just to add some random spectacle to the last 5 minutes of the campaign while they did next to nothing the whole time before that, and in almost every case (Octo Expansion is different since Pearl and Marina actually DID SOMETHING that the player couldn't have done alone) nothing they do in the last segment of the game justifies them even being there? In Splatoon 1 it felt fresh because that was literally the first game, in Splatoon 2 Marie actually had a reason to be at the final boss because Callie was there, in OE Pearl and Marina become invested in Agent 8's journey for... frankly no reason, they just happened to be on a random mountain and found a walkie-talkie and are really empathetic, i guess. RotM is the worst of them all with Deep Cut literally Just Being There and even the Squidbeak Splatoon Just Being There. NONE OF THEM needed to be there that whole time. Big Man is there to give you a space helmet because.... he just happened to have one for some reason, none of these mfs even know who Mr. Grizz is, Mr. Sir Craig Cuttlefish got kidnapped or something so that technically justifies the NSS being there but I didn't see any of their asses lift a finger the whole time to find gramps, lol. And I know some people disagree with my notion of the idols not doing enough to justify them being there, which is fair. But they literally don't do much of anything. In all the campaigns, almost nothing they do matters to the story - you could remove them completely and like nothing would change, in fact the atmosphere would probably IMPROVE.

My main problem with the idols being shoved into the stories is that the game is trying to make me care about these characters that rarely have a sensible role in the ACTUAL STORY THE GAME IS MAKING ME PLAY THROUGH and sacrifices what could be... the ACTUAL STORY... in favor of making an idol just Be There and throw some funny quips and have some kind of shallow character arc in the background while my guy is just doing some platforming. The concepts seem to be at total odds with each other. I always use Octo Expansion as an example of this: I'm playing as an amnesiac Octoling test subject trying to get through a terrifying test facility and find their way out of the dead darkness of the Deep Sea. Tell me: why is the "story" I'm being told while all this is happening that Marina from famous pop idol duo Off the Hook is a war criminal and Pearl swore in a song lyric once? Because she and her GF just happened to be, again, ON A MOUNTAIN FOR FUN and FOUND a WALKIE TALKIE. Like girls, I really feel like there's much more important things at stake here that I should be learning about instead.

The game is making me play through a story while forcing me to sit through a completely irrelevant, shallow, barely-a-story about an often irrelevant canon character that doesn't even do anything that's integral to that story until the last 5 minutes. And even then it would've made much more sense for something or someone else to have done that thing at the end, or a completely different thing could've happened to cap off a better story that doesn't involve a pop star for no reason. It just looks to me like the developers have really cool often grim story ideas, but corporate NEEDS to have the marketable character be in there. And that's business, but my god does it lead to a ton of wasted potential.

So. What would be "enough" to "justify" the idols being major players in the stories of the game? I mean, I think I've made myself kind of clear on the main reasons I don't like the idols in the stories being:

they're just not relevant to what the story actually is,

their presence is taking away from what the actual story COULD BE if it was allowed to be something original, and

the idols aren't even doing anything significant to justify being there.

So, if we just have to keep having the idols be in the stories, like there's NO way around that... I would like for them to have ACTUAL PROPER ROLES. The main thing I wish for with Splatoon is more world immersion, the other thing is BETTER STORIES, and better stories means compelling characters, a story that might change because of other people's actions instead of JUST your own, and actual events within the story!

Give me stories that involve the idols for GOOD REASON instead of completely unrelated stories that they just have to get involved with for some reason. For the Squid Sisters their inclusion in the Splatoon 1 and 2 story modes at least made sense because they ARE secret agents that work in that exact field, even if the execution could've been much better. Off the Hook's integration in OE felt ridiculous and unnatural, but they at least had a major role towards the end. Deep Cut literally did not need to be in RotM AT ALL and the entire campaign just made them look like really badly written morons with extremely hazy goals and yes I will die on this hill lol

Give me a campaign that Pearl and Marina are part of because they are RELEVANT characters. Give me a campaign where Pearl and Marina are major players that affect the story because the story is also relevant to them - more relevant than it is to YOU as a random Inkling. Hell, give me a story where Octarian forces storm Inkopolis trying to get Marina back and that's an EXCELLENT reason for them both to be part of it! Give me a story about treasure hunting in the desert where you fight Deep Cut because you're rival treasure hunters but your main enemy is like idk, desert eels or something. Or a story where you're finding artifacts FOR Deep Cut but you're unearthing some really weird shit. Blam, immediately reason to have the idols be an active part of the story, build friendships, learn their intricate lore AND learn world lore passively because you keep finding human bones and like nuclear warheads. I'm not against the idols being major characters in the stories: just make them MAJOR characters that are written WELL and have a REASON to be there. Make the stories ABOUT THEM instead of "here's a cool thing, but we're not telling you the story about it: we're telling you random stuff about this idol that's here for some reason instead".

Enough ranting about idols, now I'm going to finally get into what I would prefer the stories to do instead of idols. I already talked about what I wish idol-based stories would be - now into the fantasy of idols not being part of the stories at all!

Honestly, they can stay in the stories of Octo Valley and Octo Canyon. As I said, Callie and Marie are agents of the New Squidbeak Splatoon, so their inclusion is understandable. If I could rewrite anything though, I would really love if they actually DID something in the stories. Cause things to drastically change in the story and game that are beyond your control! Something like this happened in Splatoon 1 where DJ Octavio kidnaps Cuttlefish (spoilers, by the way), leading into a brief moment where you're left without anyone telling you what to do or where to go, and it's desolate! I want more things like that to happen; maybe Agent 2 went in and stirred the pot a bit too much and now there's an overworld boss. Just things that make it a STORY rather than a checklist where nothing interesting will ever happen. Or even better, if they let you play as Agents 1 or 2: that would also have been really cool and made you go through some levels from a different perspective with a Charger and Roller. Again, just something to justify them being a story focus. It's frustrating to play through a story where you're clearly the story focus, but nothing is happening in that story because the game is focusing on characters that aren't even contributing.

As for Octo Expansion I would literally change EVERYTHING about it. I think about the Octo Expansion concept art literally so fucking often. The idea that it could've taken place in OCTARIAN CITIES, IN OCTARIAN DOMES? LITERALLY ROBBED. You're telling me we could've potentially had a story where you're an Octoling that wants to get to the surface and has to navigate through the domes because for some reason other Octarians really want you NOT TO do that? Man, I'm sold instantly. On the wishful thinking train that it wouldn't have been platforming levels in the air again, it would've been the chance we needed for learning all the things about Octarians that we could EVER want. About their society, about their cities, about their military, about their culture. ALL OF THAT. ALL OF THAT AND WE DIDN'T GET ANY OF IT because we ended up going into a genocide subway with a telephone instead.

btw, quick point: with the Inkadia Map that we got preceding Splatoon 3's release, we can see that the Deep Sea isn't ANYWHERE NEAR OCTARIAN HABITATS. I always assumed that Octo Valley and Canyon were literally in the bay next to Inkopolis and the Metro is also there, which is why so many Octarians ended up in the metro. But it's literally nowhere close. It drives me insane. So Tartar literally traveled like at least 20 miles every time to kidnap Octarians into his funny house one by one for no reason? Literally what. Just kidnap the Inklings or something THEY ARE LITERALLY RIGHT THERE.

The thing with Octo Expansion is that if it took place in Octaria, like, the whole premise would've made so much more sense. Why are Cap'n Cuttlefish and Agent 3 part of the story? Because canonically, they patrol the Octarian areas and help Octarians. Why are Pearl and Marina here? Not sure, but it sure would make way more sense for Pearl and Marina to be part of a story that takes place in the domes, where Marina is presumably from. Why are you playing as an Octoling? Because of course there's Octolings, they live here. Why is it called Octo Expansion? Because we get the ability to play as an Octoling for completely good reason! They live here, and we're learning a lot more about Octarian society because we are in the Octarian domes! (And then we weren't in the Octarian domes, and all the plot integrity falls apart.)

The concept art where Agent 3 is in a little fishbowl on Agent 8's back? Idk, maybe Cap'n Cuttlefish got kidnapped by the Octarian Military or something and Agent 3 got injured and Agent 8 is an anarchist or something and REALLY needs to get in on this adventure to save some old man and Agent 3 is their guide. Or maybe the story could've been about this Octoling just REALLY wanting to get to the surface for some reason, but maybe people really don't want you to leave the domes because if everyone left then society would fall apart and if squid propaganda stops working then who's funding the military projects - and you beat up the guy making the rules and gatekeeping the surface and bam, there's an in-universe reason why all the Octolings suddenly showed up on the surface at once. Or if you really wanted to have the same kind of levels that Octo Expansion did, then why not make Agent 8 an Octarian military soldier in-training? The tests could've been military training, it would've made sense to fight the Octoweapons for practice, it would've even made sense to fight Agent 3, and maybe at the end 8 decides to rebel and the superiors really hate that. There's so many options and I would honestly take any of these over the Deep Sea plot.

As for what I would change about the current OE plot... just take Pearl and Marina out of it. I don't care about what they're doing. I would've loved if the story went more in-depth about life in the Deep Sea and we focused more on the relevant characters, like Iso Padre or even the other Deep-Sea Denizens that never even speak. I would've loved to see terrifying hints about the endgame being dropped throughout the story and unique, fucked-up body horror boss fights that aren't just recycled Octoweapons. Some of the concept art for the bosses was straight up dreadful. I wanted to learn about the facility, about the depths of what the hell is going on, about sanitization, about the damage that has already been done. There's a lot of really messed up things that a proper deep-sea story could've had if the story stayed on track (ha, train pun) instead of insisting on Pearl and Marina rambling about some random stuff instead.

Now, about RotM, my thoughts are extremely similar... let's start with just taking ALL the characters out of it. Here's some quick ideas on how RotM could've been way cooler and more focused than it currently is:

The same premise, but Mr. Grizz would be trying to use Golden Eggs to bioengineer salmon embryos into mammals - those are vertebrates and are WAY CLOSER to mammals than a freaking decapitated octopus limb is. It instantly explains why he's been hoarding Golden Eggs this whole time. Your buddy Smallfry could've even been one of these eggs and gotten lost, and Neo Agent 3 could've found it in the desert and found the Alterna site as a result. This plot would've immediately set the story apart from others and not having fluffy Octarians as the enemy would've made it look way less like a bad overdone joke.

This goes for literally every version that I'm going to suggest: replace the bosses with some sort of horrifying mammalian lab experiment abominations that take the form of what's clearly TRYING to be a mammal, but not quite. It would foreshadow the end boss.

Have Mr. Grizz be an orca instead of being a poorly justified literal bear. It's foreshadowed a lot in the game as is but doesn't end up happening. Not saying it can't have later game plot relevance, but it's disappointing in the game as is. Alterna could've been a secret marine mammal society and they could've had a secret plan to bring back mammals for... some reason. It might have forced the story not to be about Grizzco, but honestly, the story doesn't even have anything to do with Grizzco until the final boss and it feels horrible as is.

Something I was rooting for (desperately hoping) before the game came out: have Mr. Grizz be an Inkling or some other creature that's trying to recreate BEARS. Why are they trying to recreate bears? To create a working, terrifying bioweapon against the growing Salmonid threat, given that bears are a natural enemy of Salmon but they're also extinct. Why should they not be allowed to recreate bears? Because salmonid extinction is kind of not cool, you're playing as a squid that's best buds with a Smallfry, and the introduction of whole-ass massive mutant bears into the world would be disastrous.

Just remove the Grizzco plot entirely and have some sort of other plot that still has you venture into Alterna, because Alterna as a place is SO FUCKING COOL. I don't know what the hell kind of plot you would have instead. Maybe you could finally have a sensible Deep Cut plot just based on all of you trying to look for artifacts in Alterna, and Alterna is literally just a bunch of ruins with no life in there... or so you think.

Curveball: something in Alterna is Killing the octarians that are trying to settle in the Crater like a monster of the deep and you go in there to save DJ Octavio this time. That would be cool as hell. (again, maybe it could be an orca (boring answer) or some kind of eldritch horror formed out of the remains of life in alterna's cavern (cooler answer). Granted, if this was the actual plot it would still disappoint me because it's not really adding anything to the world, but neither was Mr. Grizz being a cartoon intelligent bear.

Curveball 2: Literally the same story but remove the Squidbeak Splatoon and Deep Cut from it and the story has DJ Octavio guiding you because he wants to find out who the hell stole his army and you're the first guy he saw. This is literally in line of what already happens in the campaign, except Octavio gets pulled into Alterna and then just disappears until the last 10 minutes in true idol fashion.

My main problem with RotM's plot (i have an essay on why i didn't like that as well, lmao) is that it mashes together a lot of characters, a lot of story and a lot of concepts and none of them make any sense together. Like why are any of these guys where and what the hell is happening and why are they in space now and... what? List goes on: it's unfocused and misses the mark on being TRULY relevant to any of the questions that it poses.

That's pretty much as much as I have on my mind right now and writing this has already taken probably over 2 hours, so do let me know what you think about these ideas and thoughts. And also I want a Splatoon rhythm game.

[alexanderwales]

hy Mr. Welles love your work there an inspration here are some questions I have been meaning to ask sorry if these are too many btw

1.what ar your favorites superman stories if that's okay to ask.

2. uh have you read the Gothamite fic which is a para/internal to your fanfic here it is in case you haven't read it https://the Gothamite.net .

3. How has life been going for you in general.

4. what is your favorite piece of media.

5.what is your favorite marvel character and did you ever plan on making a rational fic for a marvel superhero.

6. speaking of fics what is your favorite Superman fic since you have made one yourself mine Gettine Eating Alive by tandrelmairon and Dc the Golden Age of heroes by Komradekgbeast.

9. what has been your favorite story to write.

10. what are your thought on the Jewish aspect of superman do you thinks it under utilized or dont care about it or what.

11. what are stories you want to write some day.

and that's it love your work Alexander wells just keep on writing your stories are beutifual and amazing have a nice day.

On a plane right now, so you've caught me at a good moment:

I'm a huge fan of Superman: Red Son and Superman: Secret Identity. Generally I like stories that examine Superman as a powerful entity who needs to figure things out, and especially those that have some kind of Superman/Clark tension. I also like Lois Lane a lot, and the brash reporter archetype generally.

I have not read it, no. I generally don't enjoy reading fanfic of my stuff, though I'm happy that it exists, because it means people are getting something from the work.

Life has been fine. Just getting back from a convention where there was a ton of social stuff, and I am very drained, but also missing my wife. I also have piles of work to do right now.

Uh ... that's too broad. Favorite game is The Witness, favorite movie is Primer, favorite book is The Time Traveler's Wife, favorite painting is Birth of Venus (Bouguereau, not Boticelli), favorite comic is Calvin and Hobbes, favorite TV show is The Good Place (minus the ending), favorite song changes a lot, but is currently Father of Mine. All answers subject to change on the basis of mood, but none of those are going to drop out of the top ten.

Favorite Marvel character is difficult, but I guess I would say The Hulk because he seems really thematically rich. I am planning to write a movie script for Multiple Man this year, it's one of my New Year's Resolutions. No fanfic writing planned at the moment, unless someone from Marvel or DC gets in touch with me, in which case it's not technically fanfic.

It's been years since I've read any Superman fanfic, so I have to punt on this one, sorry.

Favorite story to write is probably one of the shorts, since they're usually finished in a single frantic sitting. Eager Readers in Your Area or Instruments of Destruction.

So far as I understand it, most of the Jewish stuff comes from the Kryptonian religion stuff, which is just ... not that interesting to me? Superman was canonically raised either Lutheran or Methodist or something. I think if you wanted to examine it, having it be a parallel to someone who comes to their chosen religion late in life might be ... interesting? But I was raised Mennonite, not Jewish, so maybe I'm uninterested because I know there would be a ton of research to do if I wanted to write it, and if I was reading it, there's a lot that would go over my head. I think "Superman as immigrant" is much more fertile ground.

I've got a very long list of things that I want to write. The next one is Doomsday Pivot, a system apocalypse type thing that I'm editing up right now. But there are more ideas than I have time to write.

Sorry if the numbering got messed up.

[thatsthewrongwallcraig]

if you can only write for one character for the rest of your life, which character would it be? btw, u my favorite tumblr writer 😙

Tysm, I can barely handle all the love you guys give me 🥺🤧🫶🏻

Okay, so, I thought about this for a very long time and it nearly broke my brain because with every character I write for, I relate to in one way or another. In some, sometimes larger sometimes smaller, aspects they feel like they are a part of me, living inside my head as little, obscure creatures. With this said, please note that this ask will get pretty personal under the cut, okay?

I think, if I had to write about one character for the rest of my days it would most likely be Jack Thurlow because we are a bit too similar.

We suffer from the exact same trauma of being severely abused as children and what do we do? We try to cope with arguably shitty coping mechanisms. It is what it is, I guess.

His family is a raging dumpsterfire whereas mine it a complete shitshow in the most parts too.

Long story short, I relate to this character in such an insanely broad and emotionally deep way that, if I had to stick to one character, I'd choose him because maybe, with every Jack Thurlow fic, I could heal him on paper and the many misplaced pieces inside of my mind, too.

[nobuverse]

( Holy moly

I really underestimated how well Kagetora in fate represents the core beliefs of Buddhism; specifically, the eight noble paths.

You can really tell how desperately she's trying to adhere to them.

It makes it all the more interesting that she choses to break one of the five precepts with her clear addiction to sake. It's like she's already given up ?? Not surprising since she's already breaking the first and most important of them ( not to take a life )

From what I understand, the paths she probably thinks she can't open for herself is the path of Understanding and the Right Intent, since she mentions constantly about how she doesn't understand humans when she's going a little nuts

For real though, check this out because it's so cool ( But below the cut because its a lot of info

( Using this source btw for all this )

Keeping this brief, this is how the paths line up:

The Right Understanding: Seeing the world for what it is rather than what we want it to be something which can only be achieved by ridding oneself of all "uncleanliness" ( The aspect I think Kagetora thinks she fails at )

The Right Intent: The drive to decide what the heart wants- that which gives gives grit and determination for the Journey. ( I think she goes back and forth on this a lot. she certainly has the determination, but probably doesn't think it comes from the right place for her, given her lack of empathy; despite wanting to do the right thing )

The Right Speech: Pretty straightforward. Speak only in truths and realize that gossip might cloud your perspective on people. Keep an open mind, and never speak unkindly or with anger. ( If you notice, Kagetora never lies, even if its inconvenient for her )

The Right Action: Taking an ethical approach to life. This one's pretty broad but its mostly talking about things like not breaking your promises, not stealing ect. ( I do believe Kagetora also expands this to mean that she should intervene if an unethical action is taking place, hence why she just can't stand back when bad things are happening )

The Right Livelihood: Defines the way in which Buddhism demands its followers to have an equal respect for all life as well as mandating that one much provide some service to the Buddhist community ( Which Kagetora does in the form of being a warrior and defender )

The Right Effort: To promote joy and a positive attitude in a balanced way, leaving out thoughts of jealousy and anger. ( This one's obvious. This is why Kagetora never EVER stops smiling )

The Right Mindfulness: A change in the way of thinking, to be clear and focused with all attention on the current situation. ( Kagetora believes that fighting hoping to live will lead to your death - it is plausible she thinks you should fight without fear of death as to not cloud your judgement )

The Right Concentration: While this is going back to to that idea of mental concentration we just talked about, it's also in a broader sense of putting your energy in the right places. This is linked a lot of to concertation of objects for meditation ( Really hard to define for how it applies to Kagetora, but I would think she'd have to question if what she's doing is the right thing for her to focus on at times )

And for fun, the precepts or "do nots" of Buddhism. Because she breaks

Not to take a life - human or animal ( She really fails at this one so she's already doomed herself. I do believe she spares lives when given the chance to do so, but will not resort to self-sacrificial means to achieve it. Interesting to note that she does get upset when she sees other Buddhists eating meat, though - so I suspect she's vegetarian )

Not to take things which aren't yours - very straightforward. No stealing

Avoid Sexual Misconduct : interestingly, this isn't defined as complete abstinence, but rather an avoidance of excessiveness and wrongdoings of a sexual nature ( I believe Kagetora to be Aromantic by nature, but interesting to note )

Refrain from False Speech: Includes lying, deception, slander and hateful words ( Again, my girl never intentionally lies - I'd be lying though to say she hasn't broken that hateful word one a few times already. Still, this might be because she says these things because she considers them as 'truths' rather than forms of hate)

No Intoxication - No alcohol or drugs. ( Obviously, she fails the alcohol one quite miserably, but what's the point when, again, she's already doomed herself? )

[coffincanary]

happy DFF! coming to you yet again with a more broad question (i really apperciated your lenghty answer on wincest wednesday btw) but what is the most compelling (can be multiple things) about the deanjohn dynamic/their relationship to you?

Happy dff (well, technically dadfucker sunday actually) and thank you for the ask!! This answer is not gonne be long (mostly because I'm absolutely beat) but I really wanna answer it, I've been thinking about this for so long I think my favorite thing about them is their devotion to each other <3 I mean we see that Dean is very devoted to John to the point of idolization and not thinking that his dad can really do any wrong (and if he does, it is always justified in some way). Dean would do pretty much everything John told him, and I love that. But, John is also absolutely devoted to his sonwife too! I know Dean's worship is sometimes seen as one-sided but I absolutely believe that John worships his son too, either physically or internally, noting certain aspects about Dean that he really, really likes (he absolutely journals about it too, writing down in meticulous detail wjhat he loves about Dean :) ) And, in relation to that, I love how far that devotion pushes them. They will go to new heights of fucked up just to protect each other. I mean murder, torture, kidnapping, anything is on the table for the sake of protecting each other, and I just really like that about them!

[sprnklersplashes]

#i do find it very weird how the discourse surrounding taylor swift seems to have a recurring theme of “she doesn’t understand her own art”#as if her singing about mental illness = some republic exec told her to create a tiktok trend that capitalizes on anxiety#rather than her venting her anxiety about being The Most Famous Woman Ever through song. which is what her job is.#this isn’t a new phenomenon btw ppl do it to LDR to this day#idk i just find her work to be very self-aware

I have been waiting all day to finish work and get to these tags because I feel like you've hit on exactly what my issue was with this particular criticism of TTPD and I just hope I can articulate myself well enough.

Back during TTPD release week, a lot of people on this site and the clock app were taking the opinion that the themes of mental health were generic and basic because, essentially, "she's a rich billionaire who has never had any real problems" and she was simply making music that romanticised and simplifies mental illness because it's "trendy". Setting aside that I just don't agree with the first part because I think TTPD gives us a depiction of someone who was having very clearly struggling with alcoholism, passive suicidal ideation (seriously the amount of times she references wanting to die or feeling dead on this album is insane), manic phases (the title track and ICDIWABH come to mind) and self-sabotage via relationships. And these are just the broad strokes, you can break each thing I mentioned into sub-categories that still feature on TTPD. I am tempted to do so now, but that's not the point of this reblog and it would just feel like belabouring the point, so one we go. Basically, when you actually listen to the album, Taylor draws attention to specific struggles in a way that is so intimate because it is from personal experiences and is too personal have been made by some record label exec to be relatable and consumable. If that were the case, there would be generic "I'm sad" songs, not "getting lovebombed then ghosted has left me feeling broken, alone, naked and like I will never love again" or "this man is repulsive but it is my duty to fix him" or "I can't greive the end of a six-year relationship because people are already hounding at me for the juicy details". Each song highlights a new aspect of Taylor's psyche at the time and some of them feel like they can only exist in her circumstances.

But moving onto the second part, I think people made up their minds about TTPD before even listening to it, because Taylor is White Billionaire, and these words exist to handwave away any possible struggle she could have or sympathy another person could have for her. I remember seeing a comment on a TikTok saying "she's a billionaire, she hasn't had a non-generic problem in years". Which on the one hand feels strange given that a few months ago there was AI porn of her being shared on the internet, but I'm also interested in the phrase "generic problem". What is a generic problem and why does it matter? Do people who have quote-unquote "generic" problems deserve no sympathy and should not make art about their feelings? And again-who decides what these 'generic' problems are?

It is also worth noting that Taylor's wealth comes with the price of being the most famous person alive. As she said in the Lover music video, her life is a fishbowl. She gained insane amounts of wealth and influence but in turn lost privacy and basic normalcy and as such her "problems" are pushed so far down the spectrum to things most of us cannot understand.

I feel people made the assumption before listening to the album that Taylor Swift has no 'real' problems because she is Taylor Swift and therefore all the struggles she sings about are fake, generic, made up to capitalise on a mental illness trend. They don't want Taylor to have struggles, because they don't like her and don't want to sympathise with her, so any and all struggles are brushed off.

Which honestly brings up some interesting questions on how far should your personal opinion of the author influence the art. And if I wanted to be spiteful, I could say it shows a significant unwillingness to sympathise with anyone whose mental illness doesn't present in a way you would like it to.

once again being reminded of how weird being a taylor swift fan on this website is because the people who claim to hate her just clearly do not listen to her. I saw someone say "does taylor swift even know she's been turned into a brand and stripped of her humanity? is she aware of the fact she lives in a gilded cage where she can't be imperfect?" like my sibling in christ that's what her past two albums have been about about. what exactly did you guys think anti-hero was?

[xxxpu55yslay3rxxx]

Hey girlssssss 💁‍♀️

Help me make an about paragraph for my "social media enthusiasts and meta discussion" community 😘. I have a link to join it at the bottom of this post for anyone looking through my blog or "communities" tag.

I want it to be very broad to get in as many topics I can. So here's a list of topics (hopefully this is comprehensive):

Mainstream ones, like facebook, insta, pinterest and etc. Talk about what's good, what you don't like, compare them.

Instant messaging services like discord. Hell, include encrypted ones like matrix

"oldhead" things such as IRC and BBS. Yes, even forums.

Fediverse and other self-hosted social media, like mastodon and wordpress

Dead or dying ones like myspace. tell me what you liked about those and if you want them to come back.

Technical aspects such as web development, self hosting and encryption

Research articles and books that talk about social media and its effects. e.g: a common one is how it affects productivity, but it can be more than that

Search engine optimization and social media management. These are more corporate but I don't mind them getting covered

Now I listed things that give a very broad domain. Here are examples of topics that are irrelevant, to make this group more focused:

While I did mention technical topics, they should be related to web or social media. No need to mention the fundamentals of programming or computer engineering unless it helps you make a point or you can tie it back to web/social development.

MMO's and online games do have inbuilt chat. discussing these would be a stretch and not recommended unless it ties back to the allowed topics

Likewise, some corporate sites have a chat function with a bot or member of staff. This also doesn't count as social media discussion as it feels too thin.

Soooooooo, if anybody can write an about page/paragraph that would be so awesome 😝. You can regurgitate what I said but make it cleaner/more polished I wouldn't mind.

And no, I'm not just making other people do my work for me 👺. I'm just busy so I'm throwing this out there for myself and others. Who knows I might come back and make one myself, I'm just being efficient and outsourcing this a bit 👆🤓.

link to community btw: https://www.tumblr.com/communities/social-media-enthusiasts-and-m

[dustward]

This is the most IMO post of the batch as it relates to the fusing mechanic and zonai technology in general. This is probably what made the game for most, and I bounced off it, leading to all the issues mentioned in the other posts being that much more visible to me, who constantly struggled to find the fun. I’m really bad with finding the fun btw. Realizing I definitely prefer more streamlined, linear experiences. BotW2 might’ve killed openworld games in general for me, not kidding

This is a mainline Zelda that received the same 5 or so years of dev time the first BotW got. The last proper Zelda that wasn’t BotW in make, a spinoff, a remake, or that awful coop game Triforce Heroes was A Link Between Worlds, and that game is now a decade old. I’m terrified to think we’re gonna get a BotW3 after this, which is a large part of why I feel ready to check out with this series. It’s not just the multitude of gameplay issues, many of which I feel had easy fixes if they were simply given some measure of time and focus. It’s also  how immersion breaking and off the rails the worldbuilding’s getting with the BotW side of things.

There’s rockets, actual cars, lasers. I know there was some goofy bike in BotW1′s dlc but that’s dlc, that’s allowed to be dumb and quirky. The cars aren’t even that good. The rockets break quite readily. The fans+gliders were borderline acceptable within the context of the world, but how is the future of this world not a zonai-industrial revolution after all this tech has been thrust upon it anew? The Yiga sure were making good use of it in the depths. Every time I saw the more baffling, techy choices my brain just went “this isn’t Zelda” and my mood soured immensely. Obviously there’s fun to be had with this material that likely took a long time to get right, but I was simply incapable of getting past the immersion broken phase. And it was required So Damn Often. And then you get a robot ally via a dungeon. It somehow feels worse when you’re the one using the robo tech as opposed to fighting it, don’t ask me why. This is definitely the aspect of the game that leans most heavily into Personal Opinions for me.

And with all the work that went into fusing? I still had trouble with it. Joycon drift issues aside (and that’s a very big aside), trying to attach stuff in the exact way I wanted to often did not end well. Physics gets involved often with trying to build, and I already spoke my peace with how this game’s physics work. Shout out to the shrine I never got to but read up on that most people couldn’t do properly, involving a curved slope and some metal spheres that needed to hit a target at the bottom of it. Early on I went out of my way to avoid fusing when I could and seeing just how much of the game is built around it was really sad to see. Not a gmod kinda player, clearly. While Ascend got proper treatment as a mechanic, rewind felt like an afterthought that rarely had a good idea of a puzzle applied to it. And I’ve already complained about the fusing weapons system.

BotW1′s main mechanics were so straightforward and practical and I loved the game for that. Two types of infinite use bombs, freezing chunks of water, stasis to readjust heavier objects, and magnesis which was such a clear-cut way of distinguishing which items can be grabbed/puzzled and which can’t. Ultrahand obviously served this purpose as well, but with the much broader application I feel it made using it way too openended. (One wonderful example comes in the form of ultrahanding the first shrine crystal I found before its respective shrine location ((by Tarrey Town)) - it didn’t react the same way it would if you physically touched it, to tell you where it needed to go, and I did not learn this for another 70 hours, so it sat there forgotten) That’s the game though, way too broad for its own good. We really doubled, kinda x2.5′d the size of the world, we really couldn’t just focus on the Depths as being most of the game, and maybe granting access to the surface after the 4 main quests?

I of course found the Depths early, following Robbie down there, but when I realized that place lacked the crucial upgrade materials that were shrines and koroks (which I did NOT actively look for, but wasn’t about to ignore the ones I saw so I could fix a lacking inventory), I decided to save it for later. Knowing it’s primarily a place to find zonai building/expansion slot materials further deterred me from prioritizing it, even though I found the auto-build feature that early as well. Didn’t realize till later, but the underground was *also* mostly there for nostalgia gear, which...I’m tired of NIntendo banking on nostalgia in every one of its series. Focus on making new content folks.

I used auto-build, sometimes, but the fact it required zonai material to make filler items that weren’t around once again killed motivation to use a core gameplay feature. All the preset build unlocks you got similarly went unused. Sorry, again, but my mindset was to play an older Zelda game and not whatever this whole system was. When I saw the Hudson construction material depot upon falling back down to Hyrule after the tutorial section, I knew me and this game were gonna be oil and water. Given how the game gives you what’s required for zonai fusing during puzzles, this also negated them as a useful collectable outside of the times I slapped rockets to shields. An aside, but I rolled my eyes at yet another gachapon inclusion in a triple A game - such a feature should be illegal.

There’s a new type of korok which asks you to bring it to its friend, apparently meant to be a building challenge of sorts. I did maybe 5 of these, most of them just ultrahanding the lil guy over to their destination. Afterward, I ignored them entirely, That needed to be a 5 korok piece reward minimum to get me to care. I obliged Addison a bunch, but that grew old as well. Why is that guy showing up in parts of the world where nobody’s lived perhaps ever??

One last fuse rant from my itemized list I kept on every gripe I had with the game: It ground the Gerudo story to a halt as I got stuck on the three mirriors portion. That was probably the best of the 4 main quests overall, from start to boss slain, aside from that moment. Though the weak attempt at tower defense was very ??? as well

Any fun to be had with this mechanic was primarily through watching videos of other people who understood and wanted to spend the time building their goofy, elaborate creations. Part of me feels I would’ve been happier not buying/playing the game and simply enjoying compilations of these videos.

[thetrashthatsmilesback]

@undianosedd 's tags

Transcript: ohh you're so right! like people praise women for taking semi nude photos all the time now (as they should)/ at every age even/ where's this kinda energy with men tho? It's really scary tbh how some people took dans photos because/ yes he is 32 but he genuinely looked good! like what fucked up standards you need to meet in order to post thirst traps on the internet/ then/ be underage?

Yeah the standard does seem to be "super skinny, very young to the point of passing as a teenager." I will say that older women (32 is not "older" but I am speaking more generally here) also get horrible treatment for posting anything like this unless they have managed to remain super skinny or get aesthetic surgeries (not shaming that btw, I am 100% pro aesthetic surgeries if you want them.) Like Dolly Parton trending the other day for the football half time show. Yes she is still a gorgeous woman, she looks phenomenal, but if she were to have a less flat stomach or more wrinkles, she would have gotten horrible comments about how she shouldn't be wearing that costume and how she's past her prime. Even Margot Robbie, one of the prettiest women ever, got called "mid," "chubby," and "too old" for the Barbie role.

This is partially why I brought up the possible homophobia actually. When it comes to women getting these comments, its 9 times out of 10 due to misogyny. Dan and Phil are men, but they are gay men and we all know how weird people get about gay sex, especially gay men. (Lesbophobic sexual bigotry manifests a little different from gay men's and its actually something I'm considering pursuing for research once I get to grad school). Dan started his career as a pretty androgynous, twig thin, emo twink. This isn't a bad thing, its who he was at the time. This also, imo, made people more "okay" with his more "risky" posts. He could be put into a more effeminate role due to his more androgynous look (think the "Tall Lesbian" memes). Again, this is not a bad thing and obviously people who look like that get hit with rampant homophobia (and transphobia) as well, but I think in a way his more androgynous look from 2009-2013 could protect him on a certain level. Those who found him attractive in his thirst traps could get away slightly from the fact that they are attracted to a man because he was an androgynous man - they're not /actually/ attracted to him, just his feminine aspects.

We actually saw a lot of this when Dan began gaining weight in 2013. The comments on so many of the old radio show videos are about how he's gaining weight, how he's bulking out more, how broad his shoulders are looking, etc. Its said a lot, but the internet really did watch Dan go through puberty (his voice cracks in 2010/2011 videos my beloved <3). By 2013-2014, he had mostly lost his androgynous look. Other than the sexy end screen dance and some videos' "unbelievably censored" bits, he also wasn't posting nearly as many thirst traps (like, I hate to bring them up because he has buried them, but the nakedbooths of 2009 are actually relevant here as they have more skin showing than the catboy photos but aren't met with the same vitriol) during this period. In this time, we were also fully in "no homo howell" mode to the point that there were genuinely people who thought he might be homophobic. Its important to remember that promiscuous photos are associated with femininity. When a guy posts a shirtless gym photo that is clearly supposed to be sexually arousing, that is "masculine" because he isn't posing in a way that is clearly sexually submissive and is a more subtle form of thirst trap. The subtle thirst trap is "masculine" while the more explicit thirst trap is associated with femininity.

This all compiles for the modern time where, when Dan - who is now much more masculine looking than he was in his late teens/early 20s - posts a thirst trap as a cat boy (a clearly submissive role), well that's blatantly "gay." If promiscuous photos on their own are already considered "feminine" (and as such flamboyant for a man), then one where he is posed with a collar on a bed with a bar implying the "submissive" role is going to get Way More Shit. Dan looks like society's idea of a man now, he is no longer forcing down flamboyancy, and is posed in a submissive manner in photos taken by his long term partner. The hatred is almost certainly not that he's 32 now, but that he's openly queer. People see queerness as something grown out of. If Dan at 21 with a naturally genderless figure wants to dress up as a woman for a skit, then that's fine because he still looks young and Kids Are Like That. But if Dan at 32, who looks 32, posts in the "womanly role" on the bed of he and his "actual soulmate," then that's him still being flamboyant and queer, and that's deemed wrong.

TLDR, I fully believe the issue isn't that he's 32, but instead that now they're faced with his queerness head on.

More serious response to people getting genuinely annoyed or insulting Dan for the photoshoot: if you had no issue with him as a 25 year old gyrating his hips for subscriptions (25 being an age which many would call "too old to still be thirst trapping" by many of the same people complaining about the catboy photos), but suddenly have an issue with a 32 year old Dan doing catboy thirst traps, then I think your issue is just that he's not an emo twink anymore so you aren't personally attracted to it and therefore it is "bad" in your mind.

Like, honestly Dan has done shit like this since Day 1, lest we forget the period where he was shirtless in literally every video, but if you only have an issue with it now that he's fully come into his adult body then maybe the issue isn't that he's "too old for it" but that he no longer fits what you personally are attracted to. Because, let's be honest here, 32 is not "too old" to be having sex or being sexually open. I'm probably asexual based on the everything about me and how I am regarding sex, but even I know the importance of not expecting sex to be reserved for people only aged 18-27 (which, btw, if you are one of those people, you're a creep!)

It's also really telling how people will be cool with guys in their 50s posting bikini shots of their 23 year old girlfriend but the moment two gay guys post photos from their bed that are promiscuous, everyone is suddenly worried about what age it becomes inappropriate to thirst trap on the Internet. Like, maybe you're just homophobic?

[glowingbadger]

This is incredibly random but love your writing and this is the first time I’ve ever sent an ask but I just wanted to share. I was joking around with my boyfriend about what we thought about some of our favorite fe3h men and their taste. I offer you, Felix, Sylvain, and Dimitri are all tit men. On a sliding scale of smaller to bigger. My boyfriend also jokingly said Felix’s taste was “tiny annoying women”. Which he means affectionately as Felix S supports some of his favorites. He also said Ferdinand and Claude are ass men. Would love to hear your thoughts HAH love to read your writing and I hope you have a lovely day 💕

Well would you look at that, it is headcanon break time! As always, no clue if any of these takes are hot, but here's what my dumb and rotted brain has to say bout this.

((edit - literally forgot that we've learned that Rodrigue is currently still happily married while writing this lmao whatever, disregard canon, fuck dilfs))

FE3H guys fav part of fem/AFAB Reader-chan's body

NSFW 18+ V

Dimitri - Agreed, way into tits, loves that you can embrace him and hold him while he kisses and sucks on them, loves being near your chest and hearing your heartbeat

Dedue - Ass man through and through, loves just filling those big hands of his with your ass and pulling you against him. He has a habit of staring at it when he's horny but doesn't want to bother you.

Felix - Easily flustered by all sorts of aspects of your body, but the tits are definitely way up there, as you say. He tries not to admit it because you can so easily hear him panting and see him blush when he plays with them.

Sylvain - Loves it all tbh lol- more specifically though, I think he genuinely loves getting to see and pleasure your pussy, and the soft, plush skin of your inner thighs and lower lips.

Ashe - Adores to tenderly kiss along the smooth skin of your back and shoulders and watch the way your spine arches when he makes you feel really good. It's subtle, but incredibly intimate.

Hubert - Your expressions, with special attention payed to your lips. His arousal is very psychological, so he wants to see you pleading, panting, blushing, the whole nine yards.

Ferdinand - Partially agree with 'ass' here, but imo, it's more about the hip/upper thigh area. He likes to watch your body move and the way the softness of your hips presses into his hands.

Linhardt - Tits, one hundred percent. He wants to use them as a pillow, surrounded by your scent while he caresses and buries his face in them.

Caspar - Ass, and loves to fuck you as hard as he can (which is damn hard, btw) so he can see it jiggle and bounce against him. Habitually grabs a handful of it for leverage to get nice and deep.

Claude - Also a hard agree on this one, definite ass-man, and will shamelessly grab it and give it a nice squeeze when he's feeling feisty. Definitely appreciates the overall physique though.

Lorenz - Legs, it's all about the legs. He wants them wrapped around his head and fucking suffocating him while he goes down on you, or trembling while you cum. There's something so elegant about the curves of your legs that he's obsessed with.

Raphael - Tits for sure- he likes cradling you against him on his lap to kiss you and suck on your breasts. Having you against him like this just emphasizes how big he is compared to you.

Ignatz - He's got broad tastes, but focuses a lot on movements, especially of your hips and your hands. Watching you stroke his cock or masturbate for him makes him positively desperate.

Seteth - As a man of intellect, age and experience, he's another who can appreciate a range of things, but ultimately I think it's kissing your breasts and especially your nipples that really riles him. He loves to know he's touching you in a way that you like.

Jeritza - He loves to kiss and bite your stomach. The softness and unexpected sensitivity is addicting, and he loves to leave bite-marks there knowing that only you will know they're there.

Yuri - Your hands, your neck - surprisingly erotic spots where he can feel your pulse while he makes your heart pound with deep, erotic kisses and playful bites.

Balthus - Another ass-man- like Caspar, he loves to fuck you deep and hard from behind and watch your ass bounce in response. He can definitely get into spanking you if you're into that.

Jeralt - Thighs specifically. He loves the way they squeeze around his hips when he pushes really deep and you're trembling from the stimulation, and likes to hold onto them while he fucks you.

Rodrigue - Tits, but especially your nipples. He adores feeling them stiffen against his tongue or between his fingers, the adorable and erotic way they respond to his touch.

[inclusiveplurality]

Sending this off anon so you can choose to answer privately or not: could you explain Mad liberation? We’ve heard it before but dont remember what ot stands for or what its about. Thanks and we love your& blog! We hope you feel better soon

sure!

so at its core, the term "Mad liberation" comes from reclaiming the term "mad"--synonymous with crazy, insane, etc. it's a term that people whose experiences do not line up with consensus reality--the reality experience that society punishes deviation from--are forcibly labeled in a world that devalues our experiences.

(a lot of people balk at the idea that consensus reality is something that it is "OK" to deviate from, or that it is not an entirely objective framework divorced from social context, but consensus reality is, in actuality, a very fluid construct. for example, a middle-class white Christian woman in the USA saying that G-d guides her decisions is saying something perfectly in-line with consensus reality in her social context--it's socially thought of as "OK" for her to believe that, even among people who don't personally believe that themselves. but change one aspect of that situation, and it could suddenly not line up with consensus reality, even if the beliefs themselves are essentially the same--a Black woman in the same situation, for example, is much more likely to be labeled as experiencing religious delusions. a pagan in the same situation would be labeled as mentally ill by the vast majority of psychiatric structures in the USA.)

(that's an incredibly simplified example, to be clear--there's so many factors that go into what determines consensus reality, and there's a ton of factors that go into what reality experiences are punished socially in every cultural context--i'm being US-centric because we're from the USA.)

Mad liberation and Mad pride grew out of the psychiatric survivor movement, and are often referred to in conjunction with Mad studies (academia focused on Mad identity and lived experience). they're, very loosely, about decentering the psychiatric lens through which Mad people are viewed, and centering lived experience and pride in identity.

Mad liberation is a neurodiversity movement, which means it often takes a psychiatry-critical stance, due to how the western psychiatric institution quashes a neurodiversity lens in favor of a pathology lens. (BTW, "neurodiversity" is a word that's been heavily, heavily watered down by the mainstream from its roots. its roots are directly opposed to the pathology paradigm; it's intended to mean that neurological variation is natural and non-pathological, and no neurological variation is inherently "disordered." here's a good article on the matter.)

i'm being incredibly vague and talking in general strokes, and that's on purpose--Mad liberation & pride is a very broad movement, and one that often requires a knowledge of certain paradigms and lenses that are seen as unthinkably radical from the perspective of someone raised in a white supremacist, hierarchical, pro-psychiatry, pathology-paradigm culture. without explaining the very broad strokes around the movement, without an understanding of the Mad history and survivorship that bonds the movement together, it's incredibly easy for an outsider to scoff at and dismiss it. "oh, those people are crazy!" and yet, that's the exact attitude that Mad folx want to challenge to begin with--the idea that our reality experiences are dismissable, are disordered, need to be dismissed for our own good.

(as a side note, no discussion of Mad liberation and Mad pride is complete without also discussing how often even completely "normal" behaviors and reality experiences are pathologized to uphold power structures in society such as white supremacy. Black activists have historically been, and still are, diagnosed with schizophrenia for talking about racism. homosexuality was a diagnosable mental illness under the psychiatric institution for decades. ODD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, is a disorder where the criteria is solely and only disobedience towards authority figures--disrespect for authority is considered a pathology all on its own and leveraged strongly against anarchists, socialists, anyone questioning the hierarchical structure of capitalist society. Mad liberation looks at these experiences as the logical end point of a society that pathologizes and punishes any reality experience outside of the status quo--so long as the system is what it is, it will always be carceral.)

anyway, i've talked for long enough, and i'm getting kind of repetitive/incoherent. interested parties can go to project LETS and the hearing voices network for more information, resources, and peer support/outreach. the Wikipedia article for Mad pride also has some pretty good links to follow in the citations, and does an OK job at summarizing some key historical moments. our DMs and askbox are also open for more specific questions or requests for more resources, if desired!

-dave