#to be clear I am sure she is extremely problematic but

[loud-unknown]

....okay we're all thinking it.

[gunsandspaceships]

About HP fandom and JKR

Hate is trending these days, isn't it? First, I want to state my position on JKR: I am a trans guy and I support trans women. To me, trans women are women. Period. I also fully support women's rights. But I do not support extreme views. Any extreme views. I do not support views or actions that are intended to harm people. Thus I do not support JKR's views on transgender women. I also do not support the views of people who hate J.K. Rowling just because of her views. I hope everything is clear with this.

Nobody is perfect. We are biological creatures. Look at our internal organs - it's gross. Why do we think that our inner worlds are better? Each of us has "good" and "bad" sides. JKR has a thing for transgender women, but she helps people with multiple sclerosis. To hate her and wish the worst for her is to hate those people who benefited from her charity. Better wish her understanding of the problems of transgender women. Sometimes people change for the better.

Next. What people have created throughout history is unique and important. We produce what no one else in the world can. No, not only plastic. We produce culture. We create stories. We produce art. We create lives. We live in a multiverse of fictional worlds that we have created for ourselves and for other people. Every one of them is valuable. Losing any of them is a tragedy because each one is unique and impacts other stories, even if sometimes it's not obvious.

Most people before us were homophobic, transphobic, nationalistic, treated women like property and animals like things without feelings. Some of them owned slaves and killed other people. But we all live in the world they created. With all its good and bad. Many of our parents are transphobic and homophobic, but they created us. Many writers, artists, scientists, philosophers, etc. held views that are problematic by modern standards. But they have shaped human literature, art, science and philosophy. Now all of it is ours to enrich with our own stories. We do not start from scratch - we stand on their shoulders.

JKR created Harry Potter fandom. But Harry Potter fandom is not only JKR. It's not her views on trans women. It's much more than that. It's the story she told, and millions of other stories. Including stories of transgender women. I'm sure there are fanfics written by them and fan art drawn by them in the fandom. Do you hate them too?

What you, cancel culture guys, want is to erase human history. Thus destroying the foundation of the present. And ultimately putting an end to the future. Censor all the inconvenient moments. Close eyes, shut mouths, put earplugs in ears. Burn books. Remove all inconvenient people. Witch hunters did the same. Nazi did the same. I know who you are. The worst enemy of humankind.

HP fandom - don't let cancel "culture" discourage you. Don't let it destroy worlds. Live and create.

[suffarustuffaru]

Hey, how are you doing? Firstly, i'll understand if you choose not to answer this ask since the subject is controversial and kinda heavy

We currently have at least two pedos in the story, like, actual pedos (the guy obsessed with Liliana and the creepy butler that i forgot the name) and then tappei's writing in some things is just... weird?

I get that subaru and beatrice are supposed to have a sibling relationship, but it just weirds me out

And he keeps adding loli characters with questionable designs too

What is your opinion on this? Its something i manage to ignore, but it still weird me out a little

hi anon!! :o thanks for asking how im doing pfft im doing pretty well - though i am a college student and its This Time of Year (end of semester) so im hanging in here lmao 👍

also ok as for the topic at hand!! yeah no i 100% hate it. ive been thinking about rezeros flaws lately because the further you get into watching/reading rezero the Clearer it gets. its mostly fine at say, arc 1, but by the time you get to arc 5 or arc 8 its like. What the hell. This again?? so yeah its 100% understandable to be weirded out and uncomfortable by it because tappeis writing is frankly Gross sometimes.

(okay also yes this ask has minor or major arc 5+ spoilers yes and also. You know. detailed discussion regarding rezero sexualizing children.)

yeah so tappei writes problematic things into rezero regarding both women and children especially, and while theres exceptions its like. very Prevalent in rezero. i talked about it a bit in my last ask if youd like to check that out!! but yeah like. i hate how children are treated in rezero. its very Problematic a lot of the time.

tappeis writing follows very similar patterns regarding treatment of children and women that you see in a Lot of other anime/manga/japanese media - and media in general, really, but im sure most anime watchers / manga readers will know what im talking about because its unfortunately That common. we're all seen this. like fan service shots, lolis and shotas, etc etc. but rezero is a little more insidious i think, just because tappei is capable of writing good characters regardless of age or gender. and theres Less of stuff like fan service - or at least rezero is a little less obvious about it or its just seen less in rezero, but thats also because media in general is so in your face about it and Unfortunately Common so rezero looks like a tiny bit of paradise in the middle of a barren desert.

i mean look at the amount of people who've thought rezero was a harem anime until they watched rezero - rezero seems like an outlier but thats only because its just a tiny bit less gratuitous and it still has a lot of good writing. and also because i am pretty sure the bar for media like this - especially media in rezeros genre (isekai) is Extremely Low. like depressingly low. and despite rezero being a deconstruction of isekai, rezero also contradicts its own damn messages sometimes about treating others like the People they are, respecting others Personhood, treating women well, etc. and its easy to see that the moment you look at some of otsuka's artwork and designs for rezero or if you look at all the rezero merch mainly based around the girls and Sexualizing the girls and its like. my god this is a little depressing to look at. rezero is just a tiny step in the right direction away from say, misogynist shounen/seinen media thats also weird about kids or something, but then rezero trips and falls on its own face after taking several right moves.

the problem is that these problematic aspects are still there, theyre still clear to see if youre paying attention, and often character arcs start well but then fall flat despite the good foundation. and then the problematic aspects hammer the already Poor/Inconsistent Writing into the ground which it makes it Even Worse.

like louis is a great character. shes fascinating, really. and then you hit arc 7 and she regresses immediately into the mind of a toddler so we only get to see her amnesiabaru/Suffering From Rbd arc in arc 6, her confrontation with subaru, and then BAM its arc 7 time and now she is an entirely different person????? i remember raging the further i got into arc 7/8 and realizing she hasnt gotten any development, she just changed instantly. it just feels lazy to me!! unless tappei proves me wrong and writes her developing but right now louis has spent two goddamn arcs being subaru and rems loli prop/daughter prop/a plot device to use in battle, basically. okay sorry i got passionate there but i SWEAR it gets on my nerves a bit. the louis/spica conflict now would feel so much more thrilling if she didnt have her weird half assed arc 7 development.

like if i was really in the fantasy world, of course i wouldnt vote to kill spica, shes innocent now. she doesnt know shit about her crimes, shes a whole other person now. she didnt do those things. she is an innocent child. i did a poll on this a while back actually haah and yeah a lot of rz tumblr, including myself, voted to let her live for this reason!! but also like. narratively speaking. i do not care about spica at all. shes a blank slate, shes just there to move the plot, she is taking up space in the plot right now and she does not need to be here forever. i 1000% want her dead hah. yeah shes this cute little kid now, but again, she got zero development. why should i care about her?? all the interesting things about her in arc 6, all the potential that couldve happened out of her gradually going from her arc 6 self to someone who genuinely cares about rem and subaru is gone. If we actually saw this change, personally id care more about spica and be invested in her character but as it stands im really Not. and i think if we saw her actually Develop a lot of us readers would be more invested to see this conflict out - not only because our Favs are fighting over it, but also because we’d actually care about spica. Like. im not sure how many people actually care about louis past arc 6, but yeah thats just my personal thoughts on it.

And also the Other big flaw with louis’s character is tappei once again being creepy regarding kids and. Okay im gonna show an excerpt from the arc 6 WN (iirc ch60 to be exact?) and yeah fair warning because it is once again sexualizing a child (louis). But also im putting it here in case anyone wants to see some vivid proof of rezero being weird about kids. Im not sure if this was cut from the LN version or not but the fact that it exists At All makes me want to put tappei on a watchlist.

And okay i know you might be thinking about how louis represents the sin of gluttony anyway and gluttony includes sexual or romantic desire too and how having louis, who looks like a child, say this makes it even more Offputting - like. Yeah. but is it Necessary? because making louis, WHO LOOKS LIKE A CHILD, say all this and then use descriptors like “expressed a bewitching smile unsuited to her age” - is this Actually necessary? You have to be careful writing this sort of thing, because a child/character who looks like a child saying things like this due to being, you know, Mentally Unwell, is different from Emphasizing What Theyre Saying By Sexualizing Them via the narration and descriptions. And why is the sexologist line there?? its just frankly uncomfortable, to an unnecessary extent, i think. I just dont think we need all this emphasis on louis’s body, louis’s apparent “arousal”, or how her smile is “unsuited to her age” (this is the narrative once again sexualizing a child), and plot-related sex/sexual content in rezero is kept to a minimum anyway so you could also literally just have louis be weird about “loving subaru” without the sexual aspect. Because she literally just said that she was aroused by him. she looks like shes twelve at most and then in the arc immediately after this one she regresses back to having the mentality of a toddler!!! and then shes subaru’s daughter there.

And again, i know that the whole point of this scene is to be off-putting and disturbing and wrong in all sorts of ways (and also subaru tries to kill louis a page later so like.) but i think if youre going to keep the appetite=sexual desire detail (which IS a good point about gluttonys nature, on its own), then this scene absolutely needed to be handled better than what we got when the character saying this is a child. you can write a child sexualizing herself because shes frankly Unwell or Doesnt Know Better, because this is fiction and you can write sensitive topics like this with proper care, but if you, the author, are sexualizing this child, then that is a Whole Other Thing.

or you can entirely dodge this whole debate over whether or not this is actually okay to write by making louis look older. but tappei went with this route once again in a sea of rezeros various child characters despite the fact that tappei then decides to link sexual desire to the sin of gluttony, which is a sin occupied in rezero by three children. I know ley has a very traumatic backstory, and the specific details are escaping me but iirc he was likely a slave or something along those lines, with implications that hes been abused by adults, so you could delicately handle what kind of abuse he Couldve unfortunately had to go through, and also of course roy and louis are clearly not okay in the head either, but. Once again. Children in rezero Not Being Sexualized in some way is a rarity. Unfortunately.

you see this pop up again and again and again. petra? Yeah iirc theres a side story where shes weird about subarus underwear. Correct me if im wrong on that but also i would not be surprised if that was a real side story. Unfortunately. Also theres Uncomfortable lines regarding petras chest.

according to rezero wiki, schult is… well iirc al makes creepy comments about schult being a shota (and of course this isnt really called out in canon), and theres also these two details about schult:

also regarding sin archbishops who look very young, capella represents lust and yet she also looks like a child. i know the point of her design is to make her a bit grotesque, but you can get that point across without making her look fifteen years old at most. this is the sin of lust too. and shes already called “Mama” in canon—she doesnt need to look that young!!**

also side note about pandora. she also looks like a child, which—its okay with her, except for the frankly lazy outfit design imo?? why is she wearing a bedsheet??**

** another edit: its easy to see capella and pandora as women also, but again, tappei and otsuka In General keep mixing up short/young women and Children and it should be easy to tell if pandora and capella are children or young women or not. but i dont feel that its clear enough given tappei and otsuka’s Track Record.

and typhons design with the see through skirt is so creepy and disturbing that im Really glad the anime fixes it most of the time. heres the fixed version:

but also the anime Really doesnt fix it as much as it probably should, because her dress is Still see-through in some shots. you can even see a bit in this shot—we dont need to see her lower body area like That!! this skirt doesnt need to be see-through!! and the bar was already in hell anyway because otsuka makes typhon’s skirt Really see-through.

theres also this photo of typhons design and its Way better without that see-through skirt.

granted, there is some good child character designs—felt’s arc 1 design frankly sucks though purely because of the way her outfit is handled. like its Really bad. it takes only like one look to see that. but her arc 5 design is a Huge Improvement:

characters like meili, schult, child subaru, etc have good designs too, but you know, this doesnt change the Creepiness regarding children, because this also applies to subaru and Some Lines about him in arc 8 iirc. if i find them again ill talk about it another time (or if someone else finds it feel free to add on to this post?) but yeah just. urgh.

regarding felt again, theres a scene in a felt camp side story where she wakes up naked in bed, post arc 1, after reinhard kidnaps her to his mansion. and yeah, the whole point of the scene is to show reinhard is kind of dense and bad at reading social cues because hes still trying to talk to her very civilly while shes covering herself with the bedsheets and she Literally just got kidnapped by him, but, say it with me, she doesnt need to be naked. she couldve woken up in bed in her usual clothes and the point still wouldve come across!! WHY is she naked??? shes fourteen.

and also like capella, liliana looks like a child. and of course theres kiritaka, as anon said, whos obsessed with liliana, and then theres clind, the creepy butler. and of course tappei has “deniability” because lilianas not Really a child (she STILL looks like one), and clinds not Really a pedophile, he just likes youthful souls!! (this is literally disgusting.) and clind may have interesting lore or whatever about how hes kind of involved with the sin archbishop of melancholy but i just dont give a shit about him when hes a pedophile that tappei keeps excusing.

also mimi? mimi is a Special Case.

the thing with mimi and her brothers is that its implied in the kararagi girl and cats eye side stories that kittypersons (??) are fully grown by age 1. theyre rescued from dying on the streets but they insist theyre “fully grown” (at age 2-3). they havent changed physically at all. and they dont change physically at all later, because now in the Present Day they all look Exactly the same as they did when they were 1, 2, 3 years old. did they grow mentally???? theyre like 14-15 in the main route. and then you look at aganau route from the lost in memories mobile game which takes place around twenty (??) years after arc 3, and mimi is a grown woman and she looks exactly the same as she did when she was 14 or 2 years old. and then this makes her romance with garfiel a little weird because hes a normal fourteen year old??? but mimis been fully grown all this time??? what??

this is mimi. yeah, she and her brothers look EXACTLY this age their WHOLE LIVES.

and meili? yeah shes definitely one of the better child characters, though she does have an Extremely Traumatic backstory and has had a habit of copying elsa. this on its own is fine and understandable. elsa was her only support and shes a child, of course shes gonna copy elsa. though iirc she also copies elsa’s “flirtatious” aspects, which is honestly also understandable given elsa is a Questionable Influence, but this detail about meili’s character gets worse when you think about it in the context of all the other child characters—

why is it that all the children tappei (and otsuka) keep sexualizing are in the same age range? theyre about 9 or 10 to 14. louis stops being sexualized when she reverts to being a toddler and becomes subarus daughter. felt stops being sexualized when she turns 15 in arc 5. emilia is the main love interest to subaru and shes apparently “mentally 14”?? and shes tappeis favorite character too? but also mimis case is so weird because shes been “fully grown” since the tender age of ONE YEARS OLD?? well also i sure hope im wrong on this point but given the amount of child characters that fall in this age range and also how Often theyre all sexualized and also the majority of them are Young Girls—yeah its. its not a great look.

(and again a side note about meili again—tappei uses similar descriptors that he used for louis: that its “inappropriate for her age” and that she’ll “attract many men in the future”. tappei stfu. please.)

subaru’s lolimancer title is kind of funny. maybe. until you remember rezero being creepy about kids. and also like—i dont like the idea of tying a word like “loli” to the literal main character of the story anyway skdnd. theres just Connotations to it.**

**EDIT: i was told that “loli” is apparently a fan translation thing, while in japanese its “little girl user”, but in an inoffensive way (like Jojo’s “stand user”). make of that what you will!! (not great that the fan translation makes rezeros already poor treatment of kids Even Worse.)

and also—was subaru, al, medium, etc turning into children really necessary?

like in subarus case, its so he can have more ego, more confidence, more recklessness while being nerfed a bit and being mistaken as the emperor’s son—but at the same time, this just feels like a watered down version of the amnesiabaru arc to me where he has more ego, more confidence, more recklessness, and hes nerfed, but then he learns to love himself more. it just feels too similar to the amnesiabaru arc imo. him turning into a child feels very unnecessary imo and it doesnt look great when you remember tappei and otsuka’s fixation on children. literally arc 8 would be exactly or almost exactly the same if subaru was back to his usual 18/19-year old self. but he has to keep being a kid right now because Plot, apparently. then again if anyone disagrees with me on this feel free to explain your stance!! but yeah as of rn i just want subaru to be back to his usual age.

also tappeis weird about young priscilla/prisca and lamia but i havent read the ex novels about them yet so i cannot go in depth 👍 but just know you get nice lovely lines (sarcasm) like “flirty way she caresses her own thighs”. great!!! thanks tappei for fanservicing underage teenage girls once again!!

and again, treatment of child characters / characters who look younger than they are in rezero—this is so so creepy also as someone who does in fact look younger than my age. and im also Very Short (4’11) too. so like. thanks tappei and otsuka!! i feel very comfortable right now 👍

and women are often infantilized in rezero which you can. Easily connect to the pedophilia, yeah. theres also age gap romances in general, and i mentioned emilia already (yeah. emisuba is an age gap romance.), but theres also ram and roswaal, frederica and clind, anastasia iirc gets described Weirdly sometimes because shes a short flat-chested woman, and recently theres been madeline and balleroy having a small moment (that feels. Romance coded. iirc.) in an arc 8 chapter.

they look like this by the way:

thanks tappei and otsuka once again for the creepy writing and designs that actively work against all the good parts of the damn story 👍

on a lighter note, i think beatrice in general + beatrice and subarus relationship is one of the better parts of rezero—iirc theres nothing creepy about it, and beatrice and subaru are very easy to read as a sister and brother relationship. theyve helped each other out in many ways, and theyve grown Very close by the time we see them in arc 5!! you could. Technically see their relationship as a father-daughter one too, but i dislike that take—not for bad reasons, but just because i feel like it doesnt fit them.

the thing with beatrice though is that shes simultaneously A Child but shes also like. 400 years old. so i do wish the narrative balanced that more post-arc 4–not in a creepy way of course. god no. but in the sense that shes mature in a lot of ways!! shes familiar with death and suffering!! shes intimately known Isolation!! that sort of thing. shes the one whos closest to subaru because of how he helped her in arc 4 (“choose me”), and also because she knows about his self-harm and heals his injuries. shes someone who can deeply understand subaru in a lot of ways in this sense, at least. the way they support each other feels more like a sibling bond to me and not a Parent-Child one just because youre not Really supposed to be leaning this much on your child for support. theres a power dynamic to a Parent-Child relationship, and beatrice and subaru are Equals.

plus echidna gaslight gatekeep girlbossed both of them, so theyre also siblings in that sense hah…

but yeah correct me if im wrong on that though regarding beatrice and subaru and im missing something?? but yeah as far as i remember and as far as i can tell, i think theyre actually one of the least creepy parts of rezero hah :,)

and then because this sort of thing is Unfortunately so common in media like rezero, we’re kind of conditioned to try and ignore it so we can keep reading or watching because its Everywhere. i still enjoy some of rezero, but its hard to ignore All Of This. and i think its important not to turn your brain off to it and recognize whats Wrong here, yeah. (unless it makes you so uncomfortable that you have to stop looking at rezero, which is very understandable.)

but yep. thats rezero for you.

[hifumihime]

Not sure anyone will read/care about this but I need a spot to vent about this whole "Idols "recommending" Made in Abyss" thing that's currently trending on twitter because I feel like I'm losing my mind (also I have no one else to talk about this).

So, one tweet from an unverified account posted that several idols were out here promoting and recommending the manga/anime Made in Abyss to their fans... and like... that's not at all what happened? One of them mentioned in a live off hand that he was going to watch it (along with a list of other shows), but stated he probably wouldn't finish them because he was currently touring. He apparently has never brought it up again. Another had a volume on the floor in the corner of a photo he took on his instagram story. He has also never talked about it before or since.

I have not read or watched Made in Abyss, but I follow several anime accounts online and basically every single person was recommending this show when it came out in 2017. It's still highly regarded in the anime community. I have never seen a single person ever speak about the "sexual" moments in it. I was curious and decided to read the first 3 chapters and... yeah, there's one part right in chapter 1 that has a pretty gross illustration of the child protagonist, which I'm not going to go into more detail here because it did make me extremely uncomfortable. I will note that apparently the South Korean version of the manga/anime is heavily censored and also rated mature, but I've not seen what the censoring in question looks like, so I don't know how much they could have read/watched that in, say, the North American/Japanese versions.

My overall opinion, after sleeping on this, is that calling these idols predators or worse is an extreme over-exaggeration. I'm not surprised people are saying this because the tendency for fandoms to overreact and be the morality police are worse than ever before, but if we're really cancelling these people for reading "problematic" fiction/dead dove content, then I'd be right alongside them.

From my physical manga collection alone, I can name three series I own that would get me cancelled:

After the Rain: protagonist, a high school girl, falls in love with an older man (mid-40s?) who serves her at a family diner. She starts working there, and they develop a friendship. Spoiler: nothing happens between them

Cardcaptor Sakura: pretty well known magical girl series so I won't go into the plot, but like.... looking back on it, there were a TON of age-gap romances in here, one of which being a teacher and an elementary school student. I remember being in elementary school and reading it for the first time and being weirded out by it. Spoiler: nothing happens here either (though I have not read the clear card sequel series)

Daytime Shooting Star: Romance with a love triangle between her teacher (wow I'm realizing I read a lot of age gap/teacher/student stuff) and a classmate. Spoiler: she doesn't end up with her teacher!!

I can think of a ton of other non-anime related examples of "problematic"/dark fiction that I love too: Game of Thrones, Last of Us, House of Leaves, My Dark Vanessa.... One of the best books I've read last year was about a cannibal. I guess to twitter, I am also a cannibal?

I think the unfortunate reality of being an anime fan is that basically 80% of the shit out there has "problematic" elements to it, or as I like to call it, "anime bullshit". And I think a lot of kpop fans have not actually watched anime or read manga and aren't aware of this.

You're allowed to feel uncomfortable with fiction. You're allowed to be weirded out that an idol likes a dark manga that has children as the main protagonists, where awful things happen to them. But at the same time, people are allowed to read dark content as well and that does NOT make them pedos, abusers, etc. That is a horrible accusation to make against someone, especially with no proof other than the fact that they may or may not own a volume of an extremely popular manga series. I really feel like the internet as a whole does not realize that words have meaning, and accusing someone of such vile behavior because of the fiction they may or may not read is just... insane. It's insane behavior. Please go outside.

Anyway if you read all of this, congrats. I'm basically word vomiting this all out at 6 am because I'm bad at sleeping. Would love to hear anyone else's thoughts on the matter honestly!

[tirkdi]

no i will get you started on that kiss. speak your mind.

haha oh no, anon! (re my comment at the end of this ask)

look. I try not to be too down on things on main because I think we are all just here to have a good time, so for anyone who loves the darklina kiss scenes in the show, this ask is not for you! I'm not trying to make people enjoy them less, but since you asked I will share the ways in which I wish they were done differently

so first – the kisses/sexual consent in the books are terrible, and I think we all know that. In my modern au/occasional-retelling of the series, I initially tried writing their first kiss the way it was in the books and it felt soooooo gross. we all expected they'd do better in the show with consent, and they did! but to me a lot of it was still not done as well as it could have been

alina takes the initiative in kissing aleks in the show, which, given the power dynamics between them, is great. love that, it gets rid of some of the problems. (their power dynamics are also very different in the show vs books to begin with, which gets rid of some other problems.) but she kisses him and then he says: 'not that many people surprise me, miss starkov.'

(we are going to leave aside that I hate when men in romances call the women 'miss,' because I realize that is a personal problem, but I really, really do hate it. rip me reading or watching literally anything these days)

but the fact is: she kissed him, for the first time, and he was surprised about it. and that doesn't feel good to me! he's smiling when he says it, and it's pretty clear from his reaction that he was into it, but what if he hadn't been? women don't get to go around surprising people with kisses just because they're women (and, in this particular scenario, not running the army the other person is in)

rather than the show writers being like 'oh it was problematic when he surprised her with a kiss – let's have her surprise him instead!' I would have loved to see some ... I don't know ... actual conversation about it? they're adults! they can ask a question about whether or not the other person is into kissing in a way that is still sexy! they have both done much, much harder things

and I believe I am in the extreme minority here (I certainly am amongst my friends) but I also disliked the 'are you sure' that aleks says mid-make out on the war room table. 'are you sure' – of what???? I definitely expected him, after he collared her and she's like 'what are you doing??', to retort 'well you said you were sure.' I recently read a fic where he said something along the lines of 'you said you were sure – I thought you understood that that meant you were willing to risk getting pregnant' which like ... the fact that it is so vague is what makes it not a good question! (also what a random time to ask, she literally just kissed you?)

and, now I am on a full tangent, but it was interesting how, though they clearly cared more about sexual consent in the show than in the books, the scene where he collars her and then uses her power felt much more physically violating in the show than it ever did when I read it. I wondered if that was the tradeoff they made – they wanted to show some of that violation and lack of consent but they didn't want it to be around kissing

so. anyway. I am thrilled for much of the fandom (and many of my friends!) that those scenes did it for them. while certainly miles better than the books, I still think it could have – pretty easily – been done a lot better. especially since it seemed like they were trying to make it not problematic, I'm surprised it was done the way it was

[eeriehowl]

eredin for the character ask thingy of course! but also maybe auberon? 👀 up to you

thank you so much elis!! i really appreciate it.💛

eredin

sexuality headcanon: gay. i actually tend to block ppl if they ship him with women no matter who he is shipped with because this is my strongest sexuality headcanon in witcher...it's obviously not anything inherently problematic, just makes me personally very uncomfortable, so i curate my experience. gender headcanon: he's definitely masculine and enjoys it, that's all i can say. a ship I have with said character: avallac'h. i'm usually not much of a multishipper, so...that's it. a brotp I have with said character: imlerith! he actually has the opposite effect of ava on eredin though...when ava is around, his impulse control is better, while imlerith makes it worse. they are besties though. a notp I have with said character: ciri. over all else is that i think it's creepy but i can also easily add further to that. i'm sure there is no attraction from either side, ciri has an aversion to anything actually happening between them if her anxiety is anything to go by. i find it strange that people think her attraction to him was genuine. however, this is about eredin, so i will go more into how he acts and feels towards her instead. eredin isn't even slightly attracted to her. the only line that could even slightly indicate that is an offhanded comment... he notes that some prefer being roughly caressed and that he would not personally do something of the sort non-consensually ("only if you permit me"). this p much potentially points out his own general view on sex and i do not think at all that he was actually flirting. he changes the subject without any further ado because he doesn't care for continuing that topic...it was, as said, an off-hand comment. ciri very much specifies that he showed no interest in her or doing anything with her; he stares at her with cold eyes and only thinks about his own shenanigans and straight out specifies how little he thinks of her *twice*...he straight-up says that he doesn't think that she is special in any way, seemingly not even believing that she has any powers at all from the way he talks. explains that he thinks ava & auberon are wrong about her. in conclusion, why people think ciri & eredin would want anything to do with one another is beyond me. a random headcanon: eredin had a decent relationship with his mother before he left her to be independent. he never met his father but that doesn't matter to him and didn't affect him. eredin got his brutal honesty from his mother, she was like that too. she was not toxic in any way though. in the end, he ended up seeing value in the things she had taught him, but did not choose to take her name because it did not seem vital to him that he'd have his origins be clear in his name. she had already given him his own name and he would carry that with him as a reminder instead. eredin wasn't born into a higher up family, pretty much got his recognition by just being an extremely talented swordsman. it was a passion of his. he's got the personality of a natural leader and earned the respect of many despite his sharp tongue...though he was partially feared too and would grow to be revered and feared more and more over time. wasn't much of a surprise when he ended up becoming a general. general opinion over said character: i love him. i didn't give a shit about him in witcher 3 after seeing his face because i thought elves were boring back then...i wanted him to be a monster...and here i am now. he is a type of monster, but very different from what i initially wanted him to be. eredin in the books has lots of layers and can be interpreted in several different ways. he's also very clearly intelligent to a certain degree. game eredin is just all about loving violence and dominance with little to nothing else.

auberon

sexuality headcanon: he's tried everything. gender headcanon: i think auberon is too old to care about his gender. a ship I have with said character: with shiadhal. lara looked at them and hoped she would find something like what they had. she did not truly find it until she got to know cregennan. shiadhal died young, at least for an elf. many depict her as a warrior and i like that idea. a brotp I have with said character: never had many close friends, and many individuals he did consider friends are gone. i imagine he was sort-of friends with avallac'h's mentor. a notp I have with said character: i guess i could say with eredin, because i've seen some of that and it's not for me. doesn't induce disgust in me like ciri with aen elle does so i don't mind running into it much but i don't enjoy it. a random headcanon: his relationship with avallac'h isn't exactly friendly, it's very professional. auberon calls ava "crevan", mainly to express his authority and only partially because that used to be his potential "son-in-law" (or whatever the elven equivalent of that is, at least). general opinion over said character: i have very mixed feelings about him, though i think it leans more towards dislike. he makes me uncomfortable in many ways, which makes it ironic that his gwent card's 3rd stage is my favorite card in gwent....

[borderpolarblog]

Thoughts on recent Mental hospital visit

Dear diary, How it came to admission:

I just left from the mental hospital I admitted myself to a week ago or so. I was at a point where my studies were stressing me out so much I didn't sleep in 3 days. :(( So when I packed my bag and sat in the bus as always to go to my school I just kept sitting in the bus, passing my stop. I decided I will go to my psychiatrist for an emergency visit.

I believe at that point I was severly depressed and thought about ending my life but since I DONT wanna do that I went to see the doctor.

So when I arrived there I couldnt help but cry (Which was kinda embarassing considering I was at the info thingy to ask if she is there and the poor guy called my doctor and said like "Hello Miss 'Boderpolar' is there, she is really doing bad, could she speak with you?") But anyway.. when I got sent to her office i just kept crying saying i couldnt do it anymore and school is killing me, all the assigments and pressure etc.

She was really compassionate and suggested me to admit myself to the station 7.

(keep in mind I was admitted before for 8 weeks overall, which is why i had to reapeat the year since i was gone for too long ( ˘︹˘ ) ) I thought about it with her and decided I would go. It was the only way I could maybe get some rest and think about what i wanted.

Anyhow, she told me to grab my stuff and admit myself at the same day since she was scared I would go home and then get anxious again and not go. (pretty smart of her ngl cuz thats pretty sure exactly what would have happened ( 〃▽〃) )

How the Week went:

When I was Admitted I had a roomate. She was a young 25 year old woman. We talked a bit but not too much. She told me she worked for the Federal Criminal Police Office but was very unhappy.

I was surprised honestly cuz that job sounded stressful and she seemed pretty unstable but yeah she later told me she wishes to work as a mental health nurse since she can relate to the people so much. I got that and said when she gets better thats a great idea.

However, eventhough she was nice she was a really difficult roommate. She had OCD and Bipolar (Her OCD seemed to be more problematic from the outside though..)

She always asked things like 4-5 times wanting to hear people answer her at least 2 times!! That was so stressfull because when I answered her she always said "huh?" or "what did you say?" Even though I KNEW I spoke very clear and she heard me but she just wanted to hear it one more time.

Then she was extremely anxious of infections or illnesses and asked if she could wear clinical masks all the time. What really bothered me though was that she woke up in the night like every HOUR to go smoke outside and then, I kid you not, chucked down a whole waterbottle. EVERY. TIME.

She drank like 8 water bottles per night and I had never in my entire life heard someone drink water so super loud. Maybe it sounds like I am being sensitive right now but man you should have heard that. I woke up all the time EVEN WITH NOISE CANCELING HEADPHONES I wore at night to try to sleep at all.

So yeah that was crazy.. But besides that everyone was chill. Surely they had their problems but nothing that bothered me or anything. I had a bed with a remote to put the head up or the feet up that was pretty dope. („• ᴗ •„) So then I had a lot of tense moments where i felt like the nurses hated me or insulted me which i dont know anymore if they actually did or idk.. Maybe i saw signs that didnt exist. could be. not sure.

How I left:

So I told the doctor yesterday I wanted to leave because I need to go back to school and the stress is gone mostly now and I could sleep again! So I said I really really wanna leave now. He was confused and tried to talk me out of it. Like I get it I guess but I really couldnt bare being there anymore I needed my home.

So he told me to come back at 8 am the next day (21.01.2025) which is today, and we would have the goodbye talk and the doctor letter with his evaluation and stuff.

HOWEVER.. I came today at 8 am as he requested (mind you I already packed my things up yesterday and my room is empty since I said I will leave this hospital) and when i walked to his office he asked me if I really wanna leave and I said YES. He then continued to tell me that at 2 PM he does the speaking with the patients and there we could have the talk.

Excuse me?

He asked me to be there at 8 am meaning I had to wake up at 6 am since i live not in the same city as the hospital is, just to wait more 6 hours until he can speak with me? BRUH HELL NO

So end of the story I just left. With no letter of the doctor and no evaluation nothing. I am a free person, I admitted myself willingly so I can go when I want.

And that was just straight up disrespectful. As if I didnt had anything else to do?

But yeah I am home again and at least my stress level sank. :)

I am trying school again and will keep trying my best!

Thats all for today, much love mwa mwa kisses and hugs xoxo <333

[glassyeyedblinddivine]

when i was in my first undergrad my class brought a professor to tears because we collectively decided that a reading she had assigned was problematic, since it was a white woman writing about her experiences in indigenous australian communities. nevermind that her experiences were an anecdote that led into the actual meat of the reading, which was about health and disease being understood in different ways based on culture. we decided nope, this is unreadable and useless because it's problematic. this was in 2013. (yes, i am embarrassed to have done this.)

online discourse is gonna do this forever, is the thing, and if you're currently a student i beg you to engage with what your professors are having you read and discuss with an open mind. if you think something's problematic, read it anyway. if you get nervous saying something because you're not sure you know the words that are agreed by the Discourse to be Correct, say it anyway. be open to new things, be open to things that you've been unsure or uncomfortable to engage with. (obviously this is up to your personal threshold of discomfort; some topics are, of course, triggering. in the truest and least jokey sense of the word.)

you're there to learn, and the profs are there to teach you. let yourself learn- widen your horizons. and if you read something you disagree with - that's good! but you have to let yourself read and understand it first! (i read so much andrea dworkin for my womens studies classes, which was always introduced with a list of caveats. my profs made it clear that while dworkin has some extremely, fiendishly transphobic beliefs -among others- that aren't exactly peak feminism, she was at the bleeding edge of things for her time, and that work, while no longer accurate to our lives, is still valuable.)

we have GOT to kill tiktok/twitter self-censorship i just witnessed a grown adult say the word “smex” out loud to our professor

[xtrablak674]

If We Share a Relation We're Related

My moms was hard-core in her thoughts about family, and this was her position, I am not sure if her philosophies would have changed if she was still with us, but these values are at the core of who I am and how I teach her grandchildren.

She didn't believe in pre-fixes my brothers were my brothers, full stop. Not half, not step, not foster, they were my brothers. #period Expanding on these positions if my siblings had other siblings by their other parent she would look out for all of the children. Meaning if she got something for one child she would get for them for all.

My late youngest brother has six children, those kids have an older sister that wasn't his, but when I visited with the children I would see seven children. Following my moms philosophies, if I got something for the six than I got the same for the seventh child. How crazy would I look treating one child different because the law doesn't clearly define our relationship? As far as I am concerned she is my niece and I treat her as such.

The father of my former favorite nephew was mad at me because this nephew wanted to come visit with me for a week and wanted to bring his brother along with him. Per my previous statements I was totally down for all this, as far as I was concerned the more nephews the more fun!

My former sibling attempted to forbid me from this action, like I am not a grown ass adult who pays for all of my own bill. Last I checked, I never came out of his nut sack so he had no sway over what I do or whom I invite to my home.

Anyhow this was a point of animosity and he was particularly pissed when I shared photos of the children's trip. "That other boy ain't no kin to me, I don't want to see photos of him." Well I made it clear he will either see photos of everyone or no photos at all, because I wasn't cherry-picking photos based on his distorted perceptions of who is and isn't family.

It was sad to me because this wasn't how we were raised, I wonder who had distorted his ideas of family and it was curious that I the pariah of the family had a better understanding of what family was and wasn't. If we share a relation than you're related to me. So my nephew's sister and brother were my niece and nephew and they could call me Uncle Trevor just like he does. Even though his younger sibling only visited with me for that one week they still call me Uncle Trevor and feel comfortable enough to be asking me to borrow money, which I constantly deny.

This all takes me to the conversation with the niece who will probably send me to my grave, the Florida-based one with the dead-weight boyfriend of nearly a decade. She's telling me how she's caring for her beau's daughter who stays with them every other weekend. She's talked about how the child has malnutrition, cavities and is addicted to coffee.

From my perspective all I see is red-flags, the trifling father of this child has never made my niece an honest woman, but expects her to care for his child emotionally and provide for her as if she was her own. I called bullshit and told her as much. I told her this child is clearly under some kind of ACS and once this neglect is discovered all the courts will care about is pointing fingers at the adults around the child. If she has no clear relation to the child it would be best for her to defer all decisions to the father and stay in her childless lane.

She went on to tell me she feels like a camp counselor to the child and that her roll has never been clearly defined for herself or the child. All of this is extremely problematic to me. I told her she is a parental figure, because if the child is ten and she's been with her dad eight years, she is all the child has known outside of her moms. I told her she has done herself a disservice to allow herself to be put in this undefined relationship purgatory.

One of the first thing I do with any kids I am interacting with is be clear about what our relationship is and what will and will not be tolerated within that relationship. I told her this is a theme of her life, continuing to exist within mediocre or sub-standard situations because they are familiar or comfortable. She is clearly a maternal or aunt-figure to this child and the dad is a fool for not making this clearer to both of them.

Both child and father share a relation her which by my definition makes them family no matter how blended. Its only through clarifying these relationships and acknowledging their existence can we grow and understand the importance of those in our life.

[Photos by Brown Estate]

[timetobeaghost]

what’s your thoughts on jk rowling? genuine question I saw smthn on the byler confession page about her but i don’t know anything about her or Harry Potter and I saw you have the hogwarts houses and yorue into Stranger things so I figured I would ask because idk what is going on

Oh thank you for the question! Freaking love her! Genius, goddess, queen!

I mean really love the Harry Potter books, don't care for Robert whatthename crime novels.

I also think she is a great person and very brave, obviously a Gryffindor (that means you value bravery above all else, and are maybe a bit rash and passionate) and am inspired by her.

So for an explanation of the issue: What she did was retweet an article that said "People who menstruate face problems in (poor countries?" - don't remember how it was worded exactly) and commented "I'm sure there used to be a name for these people. Help me out here - wambus? womputs?" (from memory)

Because the erasure of women and dehumanizing attempt to reduce them on bodily functions is not OK. It's insane that counts as political correct now, when it's clear misogyny.

So then she was targeted by a bunch of Trans Rights Activists with death and rape threats, accomponinded by nude pics and lots of gross things. Also there was a huge meltdown with cries cancellation on twitter because she is supposedly transphobic. It was reported in the news. Ungrateful bratty Harry Potter actors disowned her. Of course others were coming to her defense and whatnot.

It turns out JKR can not be cancelled and she continues to be hugely successful, but she is now super caught up in the issue and doesn't let up - Obviously being under constant attack and also encouraged by "her side" and being of the Gryffindor temperament, living by the motto "you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy" (Dumbledore, Harry Potter) So she sometimes retweets valuable gender critical content, like how it is a problem that so many child lesbians are now pushed to trans to male (happens especially easily to autistic young lesbians, who can't shake the feeling they do not belong) and later regret this very much and have to live with awful consequences, like male voices and their breast being cut off.

She does not at all hate trans people, of course absolutely understands and respects that some people are happier living trans, and also has trans allies. TRA like to claim any disagreement with their partly insane opinions is transphobia, hatred and violence. Which in itself is insane. The movement to get as many kids on meds as possible and pretend sex doesn't exist, the homophobic attempt to erase same sex attraction - and for example pressure lesbians to have penetrative sex with trans women whether they want to or not - are all extremely problematic ans we need to talk about it.

Do not silence feminist, do not silence women! Hey, how about not silencing anyone!

[butwhatifidothis]

Hoo boy if this ain't a doozy.

To start with: it's been some time but I don't think I've linked to Cap'n's fic before. Going through my older posts I have yet to find any that do. If anyone does find anything like that, I will immediately delete it.

But, yes. I'd only gone over the fic due to seeing how influential it was in the fandom, and I had continued going over the fic due to the various problematic elements OP listed out.

And, well, yes, that does very much include how Byleth, as she is presented as a mixed-race person, is portrayed in this fic. And I say this with no ill-meaning directed towards Cap'n as a person, since I'm pretty sure he wrote pretty much everything problematic in this fic due to ignorance and not malice; reading Byleth's character arc in his fic was genuinely extremely uncomfortable for me, as a mixed-race person. Here's a doc that breaks down why that is in a more detailed fashion than my critique does.

Off of that: the main issue I see with Raxis doing this with Reyna is that he seems to take deliberate actions to spread his critiques around as far as possible. He makes his pinned post on Tumblr a table of contents for his critique of Reyna's fic (which includes links to the fic he's critiquing, the series the fic is in, and her AO3 profile - these links also appear in his critique of the first chapter), he keeps bringing it up on his Twitter, he brings it up on the public Edelgang discord. It's not that it's wrong of him to vent or rant about things he doesn't like, so much as it is... kinda weird that he's doing it to a fic that has such minimal impact or influence regarding anything in the fandom, and doing so on at least three different platforms.

This isn't like Cap'n's fic, which was known to some degree to large portions of the fandom, or was taken as meta. Reyna's fic that Raxis is critiquing isn't touted out as required reading, no one is recommending it to VA's, it's incredibly new and was released during a low-point in 3H's general fandom activity, and it involves crossing over with a title fewer people in the general FE fandom (and especially 3H fandom specifically) have played. The only reason he'd likely even know the fic exists at all is because of Reyna's other much more popular fic... which as OP stated didn't seem to have had the same impact as Cap'n's did, and if it did then it'd make sense for him to critique that one instead of the no-name-nothing fic.

So honestly? It really comes off as Raxis targeting an easy fic to try and get attention. Especially when his spork has something like this passage in it:

(and to make clear, yes, I am still not blocked by him, despite what he's said in the Edelgang discord)

Bringing up my name in a completely unrelated fic for basically no reason but to bring me up... it's just very strange, in my opinion.

There's also the fact that Raxis has a history of both having it to where people harass others directly off of the posts he makes of them, and of harassing people himself. He's bragged about driving users off of Tumblr, and the people who used to send a shit ton of anons like this to us

are the exact same people who would go on to do similar things to Reyna's new fic, hours after he'd make his spork - down to copy-pasting his words verbatim again:

And while yes, Raxis can't exactly mind control everyone who reads his posts into not harassing people, he also, well. Has a history of this sort of thing happening with him, and one that has been made known by those affected by it for quite some times now. Given that, from my reading of his spork, his only real main gripes are that Reyna writes Edelgard poorly in a fic that no one but him cares about (in a way relating to "meta" that is), it just seems like it's... uncalled for? For him to so continuously go on about this fic on so many different platforms, especially when considering said history he has regarding harassment

Edit: Referring to OP saying I would delete certain parts of my critique: yes, that's entirely correct. I was asked if I would and I said yes, which was relayed to people who said they had contact with Cap'n, but no one was ever told which parts I should edit/remove. I said that I would delete everything if given the chance to speak with Cap'n and discuss with him all of the more problematic elements of his fic - not the strikes against canon, but all of the racism, sexism, homophobia, victim-blaming, etc. that was unintentionally being presented in a harmful way. Again, I was never given this chance to go through with this.

I am still willing to do this, by the way. But nothing has ever happened yet

It's okay if butwhatifidothis risks leading people to harass Captain Flash by going over his fic but it's not okay if Raxis does the same to reynaattheend?

Okay I feel like I want to get one thing out of the way before I go into this.

BWIIDT agreed to remove parts of the old reviews that were particularly rude or offensive if they were pointed out to her, something that was literally promised to the MODS of the Edelstan discord server (who claimed to have a direct line of communication to Cap).

So the guy literally had a chance to air his grievances with the posts and have the parts he didn’t like removed within reason, and we never got any examples of things to ask her to remove. So either she’s not as rude as people make her out to be, or they never actually cared about her critiques and haven’t bothered reading them, even when handed the literal opportunity to edit things out they didn’t like.

Additionally BWIIDT has said that she would be willing to remove all the postings completely if the guy would just hear her criticisms and learn from them, so he could better handle the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic. Of which there is a lot.

I don’t know how you could possibly compromise more without just straight up being a door mat and pretending like this white man never had any issues with the way he wrote race and women.

Anyway as for why I view these as two completely different situations that are not really comparable IMO:

1) Cap’s fic is/was at the time literally being shoved at people. We were told to read it to “understand canon better”.

This isn’t just me saying this. I remember around the time before/slightly after BWIIDT started giving her criticisms of the fic I was seeing it getting recommended to a bunch of people. There were people on various social media sites complaining about the Edel crowd shoving the fic down their throats. I had it recommended to me on some different platforms, etc.

And that’s not just fans of the fics’ perception. Cap himself has stated that he views the fic as meta commentary on the game/discussion of canon, not just a fun little fic he did. And he’s happy people view it as essential for understanding canon.

As far as I’m aware, Reyna’s fic has never had that sort of culture around it, nor has she wanted it to have that kind of impact on fandom. I’m pretty sure she’s even explicitly stated that she KNOWS it’s not always aligned with canon and she doesn’t care, because it’s just a fun little project for her.

2) As far as I’m aware, BWIIDT never linked to Cap’s fic? I don’t even think she gave the title of it at first, it’s just that most people figured out what fic she was talking about BECAUSE of the aforementioned it getting shoved down everyone’s throats. But I wasn’t really following her in the beginning so I don’t remember, I’m sure she can reblog this posting if she wants and further clarify.

Raxy has literally been linking to Reyna’s fic on every posting and spelling out the full name of the fics and the author. Given his followers’ propensity for harassment (which he claims to not support) he really should have known better. He wasn’t “risking” sending her harassment it was basically a foregone conclusion.

He definitely should have taken all of the links down and stopped linking or naming the author or fic after it became clear people were literally going and harassing her, using his posts and material to throw at her. But as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done ANY of that.

3) I know from talking with BWIIDT since Raxy started harassing everyone here that she wasn’t going to bother with Cap’s fic originally, but then the annoying fans shoving it down people’s throats + she noticed a lot of very problematic handling of race that she wanted to talk about in greater depth = her discussing the fic at length.

I haven’t read through Raxy’s criticisms, but I feel like there’s a BIG difference between a woman of color pointing out the problems regarding race and gender in a fic (written by a white man) that’s being recommended to everyone as ESSENTIAL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE GAME vs. Some Guy Who Doesn’t Like A Random Fic

Additionally, I don’t really feel like it’s my place to tell her to shut up because, uh, it just feels kind of gross to tell her to just not be mad about the way the white guy is butchering the biracial experience when she’s a biracial woman and I’m not? Which again, very different from telling a 35 year old cishet white guy who is acting like a dick about anime chess to be less of a dick about anime chess.

4) And again, I also know for a fact that BWIIDT is just interested in critiquing/venting about the fic, and would be willing to stop making postings about it if Cap actually bothered to read the critiques and learn from the mistakes he’s made regarding the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. in his fic.

But like, he keeps doubling down on it insisting that because he grew up next to a reservation and he has one queer woman doing his beta reading there could never be any problems with his handling of any of these sensitive topics, so he doesn’t need to listen to any of us ever, and people are still touting it as essential for understanding canon, and he’s still okay with that, sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s VERY different from what Raxy is doing, which is basically just calling Reyna’s fics “cringe” and “not canon” from the snippets I’ve seen. He’s also blasting them over LITERALLY every social media platform he has for some godforsaken reason. Which like. If your goal was just to critique the fic why are you posting that shut EVERYWHERE?

5) I really don’t think Raxy is that bothered by the criticisms of Cap’s fic. He harasses people regardless of if they’ve talked about Cap or his fic, and after his aborted attempt to drum up harassment against BWIIDT on GameFaqs he came to Tumblr and started begging her to “do his fic next”

Like honestly I don’t even know what goes on in that guy’s head. Weird ass behavior. I really don’t care what he has going on, it’d just be nice if he’d act like the 35 year old he actually is and quit being so petty and childish.

Even if you think what BWIIDT did with Cap’s fic is wrong, why would it EVER be acceptable to drag an uninvolved third party into the mix and bash their fic and send them harassment as “retaliation”? Reina has nothing to do with this. She doesn’t even have fucking social media accounts outside of AO3. I know because I literally left her a comment to warn her about this clown and she told me.

What BWIIDT has done with Cap’s fic is admittedly a bit of a grey area, but ultimately I fall on the side of “whatever” with it because of the notoriety and influence on fandom fans of the fic desperately want it to have, and because of just how problematic elements of it are for various communities.

I mean you can’t go reccing a fic as essential for understanding the game and shoving it down the entire fandoms’ collective throat and then expect it to be treated like a 14 year old’s silly self insert fic when the people you told to read it critique it with the gravitas you assigned to it.

If you wanna critique BWIIDT for what she did with Cap’s fic, or critique me or anyone else for interacting with her, or you just think my logic is stupid and you want to critique that, then that’s… fine? I’m an adult, I’m a person, I know there’s places I can grow. But I’m sick of people acting like it’s okay to be a shitty person just because you got your feelings hurt once, so now it’s okay to go making it everyone else’s problem. And I don’t know if it was your intention to defend the guy with this ask anon, but it’s definitely happened too damn much with this guy and the Edelgard fandom as a whole.

That was another thing that really fucked me off in that conversation with the Edelstan server mods. I had one of them acting like I run fucking Reddit and I’m somehow responsible for some trolls calling Edelgard fans Nazis four fucking years ago. You can bet your ass I would get crucified if I tried to shit talk some random ass Edeleth fic and tried to justify it with “but it’s ok cuz some Edelgard fans were mean to me once :(“. There’s a reason why the fic being touted as essential for understanding canon is the one getting critiques and not any of the THOUSANDS of other Edeleth fics in existence. Because no one fucking cares about fanfics when they aren’t getting shoved down your throat and touted as “essential”.

I mean fuck dude, I got called a fake queer and an r-slur and intentionally triggered with genocide bullshit and had people talking about killing me. Am I going around harassing random fic authors over it? No, cuz I’m a grown ass fucking adult and I know how to act like it, and I know that 99% of the people who write/have written Edeleth fics had absolutely nothing to do with that.

So if you’re justifying going after Reyna with “but BWIIDT was mean to Cap!” Then knock it off, Reyna has literally nothing to do with this and you’re being shitty by trying to drag her into it. If you just did this to spork a fic, then you’re currently being a dick over a fanfic for no reason and clearly it’s leading to the author being harassed.

@butwhatifidothis if you wanna add onto this feel free.

[gentil-minou]

First of all I am so gla see have you in the fandom, I can't imagine the discourse and my own confusion if it wasn't for your metas<333

So, a common arguement I see now is that people are not accepting sentibeings are real humans too, because sentibug, sentinino, sentialec, etc have been casually released from existence on screen without any indication that it was actually murder?? And that Astruc saying things on twitter doesn't count. And that there is no buildup and it is problematic?

Again, I don't agree especially because of sentibug - Chat's response was pretty tragic. But still, I would like to know your opinions on it because I am really confused now sjhzhx

I think I talked about it a little bit in this post about why I think we need to stop calling them sentimonsters, but I can't really remember to well.

It's worth noting that the other senti's created by Gabe and Mayura weren't created to be seen as humans, at least by them, but as puppets. This is awful but it also serves as another reason why the two of them sucks.

But I think they way I look at the humanlike sentis is we are meant to look at senti's with pity, the same way we look at akuma victims. As beings that are being forced to work for someone else, without free will.

And especially the ones that look like people, we've had some poignant shots that speak volumes.

For instance in Optigami we get this look on Alya's face

Where she is noticeably shaken, to the point where she doesn't stand up until the real Nino comes back. There's so much we could infer from this scene and it depends on the person but to me it spoke of how shocked she was that she didn't even notice. That he was just like the real thing. Then witnessing him disappear, just like that.

Then there's sentibug, where it's extremely clear to me who we are supposed to root for here.

It seems very clear to me that the narrative here is supposed to make you realize how cruel the peacock is. How unfair it is that sentis are fleeting, and how the heroes know this. It's supposed to make sure we see that the bad guys aren't the sentis, but GarbageMoth

I think calling it murder is a bit extreme and blow out of proportion, but we are supposed to question it a little bit. Even in Kuro Neko I found myself feeling for the little kid, because all he wanted was his kitty (also a senti, like a certain other black cat, which also seems a bit on the nose.

The show has been building up towards this realization that the sentis are more than just puppets, and sentiadrien and sentifelix are just the catalysts needed to completely shift the narrative. I have a feeling once the characters learn about the sentiboys, they will change their perceptions of how they defeat them, with at least some remorse. Maybe we will see this as early on as Strike Back.

[thequibblah]

I’m kinda surprised by the dark James discourse. Obviously, everyone is totally valid in their feelings and reactions. Certain versions of deatheater!James have not been my cup of tea in the past but why is a reluctant DE James is the bridge too far for some people when it seems like par for course for the fandom? Fics involving DE ships are consistently the most popular in the HP fandom (Dramione, Drarry, Tom/Harry) and the biggest Marauders’ WIP right now has James cheating on his pregnant girlfriend with a Deatheater. Like yeah it’s all problematic if it was real life but it’s fiction. I would love your perspective if I’m missing something.

Sure! If I wanted to read a death eater love interest as you mentioned, I’d be a fan of those ships. I’m not. I’m not here for that. I’m here for Order members. Par for the course for the Harry Potter fandom is not the same in each niche at all. Personally I have never cared about or run into darkfic until last year, when it entered the community’s discussion spaces and IMO popped into the mainstream — i.e. written by extremely popular authors, read widely, recommended on jilyarchive (IIRC???), and fairly represented in awards nominations. Let me be absolutely clear, I am well aware there is stuff I would hate all over AO3. My discomfort is when becomes impossible for me to ignore.

The reluctant Death Eater as a character cutout personally makes me extremely wary. First, I’m not really interested in stories where a so-called “reluctant” member of a hate group (surely we can agree this is what Voldemort’s followers are?) is shown the light by a marginalised woman. Big “I can fix him” vibes, when in reality the “right woman’s love” does not “turn” anyone. You change if you want to change. Nor am I interested in reading morally anguished lust — never have I ever felt shamefully attracted to someone who (pressured or not!!!!) has thought of me as less-than or hurt people like me. And that is in everyday life, where the stakes are certainly not as high as murder or torture.

Now, specifics: it seems especially twisted to write James this way. I’ve been in this fandom on Tumblr for ten years and I remember the days we used to actively argue with Sn*ly fans (😭😭😭). We spent ridiculous amounts of time on James’s sense of honour, on his aversion to the Dark arts, on those being the reasons — and rightfully so! — Lily fell in love with him. I fail to see how ANY kind of DE James is not Sn*pe. I fail to see how James, who became an Animagus for his best friend, would not fight tooth and nail against an institution that would turn him into a weapon. I fail to see how James, who was a brother to Sirius, would side even nominally with the people Sirius ran away from. I fail to see how James, who made a fucking magical map of Hogwarts, would not find a way to join the resistance. That’s so far from the James I know and love that I am not interested in what boils down to an OC with his name slapped on it. And that’s not even touching on the jarring unreality of his position as the wealthy heir of a well-known, pro-Muggle pure-blood family still somehow…not being protection and privilege enough that he must join in genocide?

Further, even if James is truly dragging his heels in this, I do not see Lily falling for him at all. It does her a disservice and imo insults her sense of dignity. If she could drop her best friend at the age of 16 for calling her a slur, she can resist the charms of someone turning weapons on people like her. I am not interested in these stories, where a young woman is faced with brutal prejudice on all fronts and has to deal with the violence of it even from her love. I find it distasteful to revel in that so-called angst.

Finally — I don’t believe there is any possibility of nuance in a romance-centric fanfiction that explores a story like this. Because we as readers, and certainly the author as a shipper, thinks they’re soulmates! So…if they’re soulmates, he loved her all along, right? If they’re soulmates, he didn’t mean anything by it, right? If they’re soulmates, she has to forgive him, right, because she loves him. There is no way it cannot be romanticised. There is no atonement that feels earned because in the reader’s eyes he doesn’t have to atone for anything, really — he’s loved her all along and surely James and Lily have a love that conquers all!

It reeks of apologia. Not interested in fic like that about my ship that centres personal growth and maturing, and kicking Voldemort’s mouldy ass. In any universe.

I don’t think the implications of this can be restricted to just fiction and I think the stated discomfort of fans based on personal marginalisation proves that. We don’t write in a vacuum. We can’t claim to love the antifascism of canon or express distaste for Sn*pe’s flawed love for Lily and then turn around and act surprised when our own writing — again in the MAINSTREAM, I don’t care about what’s written far from the centre of this fandom and easy to ignore — is hypocritical and hurts people because of it. We can’t extol fanfiction’s powerful themes and talk about what fic has taught us and made us think about and then say “oh it’s just fiction” when it suits us. If it’s moved you so much clearly words have impact.

Again let me underscore this: this hurts people. Drives away fans and creators. You would not believe the specific writers and fans who feel sad and upset and discouraged and again, WANT TO STOP WRITING AND INTERACTING HERE because of this.

That to me is why this is a very clear line in the sand.

[devilsskettle]

oh man i have a Lot of thoughts about the autopsy of jane doe, both positive and critical For Sure, i'd be SO excited to see your analysis of it! definitely keeping an eye out for that 👀

thanks! i'm working on something article-like to talk about the film and i don't know what i want to do with it yet lol but if i don't post it on here i'll definitely link it. it's mainly a discussion of gender in possession/occult films in the same way that carol clover describes in men, women, and chainsaws - that there are dual plot lines in occult films, usually gendered masculine and feminine respectively, where the "main" feminine plot (the actual possession) is actually a way to explore the "real" masculine plot (the emotional conflict of the "man in crisis" protagonist). typically the man in crisis is too masculine, or "closed" emotionally, where the woman is too "open," which is why she acts as the vehicle for the supernatural occurrence as well as the core emotions of the film. the man has to learn how to become more open (though if he becomes too open, like father karras in the exorcist, he has to die by the end - he has to find a happy medium, where he doesn't actually transgress gender expectations too much. clover calls this state the "new masculine," and we might apply the term "toxic masculinity" to the "closed" emotional state). part of the "opening up" feature of the story is that it allows men to be highly emotionally expressive in situations where they otherwise might not be allowed to, which is cathartic for the assumed primary audience of these films (young men). another feature of the genre is white science vs black magic (once you exhaust the scientific "rational" explanations, you have to accept that something magic is happening). the autopsy of jane doe does this even more than the films she discusses when she published the book in 1992 (the exorcist, poltergeist, christine, etc) because the supernaturally influenced young woman who becomes this kind of vehicle is more of an object than a character. she doesn't have a single line of dialogue or even blink for the entire runtime of the movie. the camerawork often pans to her as if to show her reactions to the events of the movie, which seems kind of pointless because it's the same reaction the whole time (none) but it allows the viewer to project anything they want onto her - from personal suffering to cunning and spite. 

compare again to the exorcist: is the story actually about regan mcneil? no. but do we care about her? sure (clover says no, but i think we at least feel for her situation lol). and do we get an idea of what she's like as a person? yes. even though her pain and her body are used narratively as a framework for karras' emotional/religious crisis, we at least see her as a person. both she and her mother are expendable to the "real" plot but they're very active in their roles in the "main" plot - our "jane doe" isn't afforded even that level of agency or identity. so. is that inherently sexist? well, no - if there were other women in the film who were part of the "real" plot, i would say that the presence of women with agency and identity demonstrate enough regard for the personhood of women to make the gender of the subject of the autopsy irrelevant. but there are none. of the three important women in the film, we have 1) an almost corpse, 2) an absent (dead) mother, and 3) a one dimensional girlfriend who is killed off for a man's character development/cathartic expression of emotions. all three are just platforms for the men in crisis of this narrative. 

and, to my surprise, much of the reception to the film is to embrace it as a feminist story because the witch is misconstrued as a badass, powerful, Strong Female Character girl boss type for getting revenge on the men who wronged her, with absolutely no consideration given to what the movie actually ends up saying about women. and the director has said that he embraces this interpretation, but never intended it. so like. of course you're going to embrace the interpretation that gives you critical acclaim and the moral high ground. but it's so fucking clear that it was never his intention to say anything about feminism, or women in general, or gender at all. so i find it very frustrating that people read the film that way because it's just. objectively wrong.

there's also things i want to say about this idea that clover talks about in a different chapter of the book when she discusses the country/city divide in a lot of horror (especially rape-revenge films) in which the writer intends the audience to identify with the city characters and be against the country characters (think of, like, house of 1000 corpses - there's pretty explicit socioeconomic regional tension between the evil country residents and the travelers from the city) but first, they have to address the real harm that the City (as a whole) has inflicted upon the Country (usually in the forms of environmental and economic destruction) so in order to justify the antagonization the country people are characterized by, their "retaliation" for these wrongs has to be so extreme and misdirected that we identify with the city people by default (if country men feel victimized by the City and react by attacking a city woman who isn't complicit in the crimes of the City in any of the violent, heinous ways horror movies employ, of course we won't sympathize with them). why am i bringing this up? well, clover says this idea is actually borrowed from the western genre, where native americans are the Villains even as white settlers commit genocide - so they characterize them as extremely savage and violent in order to justify violence against them (in fiction and in real life). the idea is to address the suffering of the Other and delegitimize it through extreme negative characterization (often, with both the people from the country and native americans, through negative stereotyping as well as their actions). so i think that shows how this idea is transferred between different genres and whatever group of people the writers want the viewers to be against, and in this movie it’s happening on the axis of gender instead of race, region, or class. obviously the victims of the salem witch trials suffered extreme injustice and physical violence (especially in the film as victim of the ritual the body clearly underwent) BUT by retaliating for the wrongs done to her, apparently (according to the main characters) at random, she's characterized as monstrous and dangerous and spiteful. her revenge is unjustified because it’s not targeted at the people who actually committed violence against her. they say that the ritual created the very thing it was trying to destroy - i.e. an evil witch. she becomes the thing we're supposed to be afraid of, not someone we’re supposed to sympathize with. she’s othered by this framework, not supported by it, so even if she’s afforded some power through her posthumous magical abilities, we the viewer are not supposed to root for her. if the viewer does sympathize with her, it’s in spite of the writing, not because of it. the main characters who we are intended to identify with feel only shallow sympathy for her, if any - even when they realize they’ve been cutting open a living person, they express shock and revulsion, but not regret. in fact, they go back and scalp her and take out her brain. after realizing that she’s alive! we’re intended to see this as an acceptable retaliation against the witch, not an act of extreme cruelty or at the very least a stupid idea lol. 

(also - i hate how much of a buzzword salem is in movies like this lol, nothing about her injuries or the story they “read” on her is even remotely similar to what happened in salem, except for the time period. i know they don’t explicitly say oh yeah, she was definitely from salem, but her injuries really aren’t characteristic of american executions of witches at all so i wish they hadn’t muddied the water by trying to point to an actual historical event. especially since i think the connotation of “witch” and the victims of witch trials has taken on a modern projection of feminism that doesn’t really make sense under any scrutiny. anyway)

not to mention the ending: what was the writer intending the audience to get from the ending? that the cycle of violence continues, and the witch’s revenge will move on and repeat the same violence in the next place, wherever she ends up. we’re supposed to feel bad for whoever her next victims will be. but what about her? i think the movie figures her maybe as triumphant, but she’s going to keep being passed around from morgue to morgue, and she’s going to be vivisected again and again, with no way to communicate her pain or her story. the framework of the story doesn’t allow for this ending to be tragic for her, though - clearly the tragedy lies with the father and son, finally having opened up to one another, unfortunately too late, and dying early, unjust deaths at the hands of this unknowable malignant entity. it doesn’t do justice to her (or the girlfriend, who seems to be nothing but collateral damage in all of this - in the ending sequence, when the police finds the carnage, it only shows them finding the bodies of the men. the girlfriend is as irrelevant to the conclusion as she is to the rest of the plot). 

but does this mean the autopsy of jane doe is a “bad” movie? i guess it depends on your perspective. ultimately, it’s one of those questions that i find myself asking when faced with certain kinds of stories that inevitably crop up often in our media: how much can we excuse a story for upholding regressive social norms (even unintentionally) before we have to discount the whole work? i don’t think the autopsy of jane doe warrants complete rejection for being “problematic” but i think the critical acclaim based on the idea that it’s a feminist film should be rejected. i still consider it a very interesting concept with strong acting and a lot of visual appeal, and it’s a very good piece of atmospheric horror. it’s does get a bit boring at certain points, but the core of the film is solid. it’s also not trying to be sexist, arguably it’s not overtly sexist at all, it’s just very very androcentric at the expense of its female characters, and i’m genuinely shocked that anyone would call it feminist. so sure, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water, but let’s also be critical about how it’s using women as the stage for men’s emotional conflict 

also re: my description of this little project as “a film isn’t feminist just because there’s a woman’s name in the title” - i actually don’t want to skim over the fact that “jane doe” isn’t a real name. of the three women in the film, only one has a real name; the other two are referred to by names given to them by men. i’ll conclude on this note because i want to emphasize the lack of even very basic ways of recognizing individual identity afforded to women in this film. so yeah! the end! thanks for your consideration if you read this far! 

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

I'm curious, what are your thoughts on Canon Harry, Hermione, and Ron?

Given my absolute trashing everyone else and sparse comments on Harry, you can probably guess.

I honestly don’t even know where to start with this.

I guess we’ll start with Harry.

Harry Potter

First, sorry guys, Harry is painfully stupid. It’s not that he doesn’t try hard academically, that he’s not book smart, or that he’s just acting his own age, he is honestly, truly, painfully dumb and is consistently an idiot throughout the entire series.

Let’s take third year as a random example. Harry’s informed there’s a mass murdering Death Eater on the loose that has the country in such a panic that they send dementors to Hogwarts, he is told directly that this guy has motive to come directly after him, he even notices that he’s kept a close eye on that summer in Diagon Alley.

Harry decides that his life is a bottomless pit of despair if he can’t go to Hogsmeade every month with everyone else. Not even if he doesn’t get the candy, Hermione and Ron bring him that afterwards, but not going at all brings him misery. And I get it, it sucks to be stuck in the castle when all your friends get to go on a field trip. BUT HARRY, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN WHY EVERYONE’S MAKING YOU STAY IN THE CASTLE?! Harry’s response is he isn’t afraid of death because... he isn’t afraid of death. Really, it’s not so much that he’s that brave but more that he hasn’t thought this one through. 

Harry finally gets to sneak out to Hogsmeade and is thrilled and it takes Hermione pointing out that Sirius Black may very well know these other entrances (which he does) for Harry to even realize this is a possibility (even though Harry didn’t make the map). His response to Hermione is surprised Pikachu face for two seconds then, “No, there’s no way, Sirius Black could never figure out something as cool as this.” Then, when Harry’s finally caught, it takes both Snape and Lupin calling him a dick who dishonors his parent’s sacrifice and entire nation trying to keep him safe, for Harry to realize that maybe sneaking into Hogsmeade was a pretty shitty thing to do. 

We also have the whole firebolt incident in which Harry’s sent a very suspicious package that could very well kill him with no return address. Harry gets unbelievably pissed that Hermione narks on him, even though he does eventually get the broom back. How dare Hermione get in the way of his quidditch!

This is just one book, mind you, we could go through all seven and find equally mind bogglingly dumb moments. Harry’s just not a bright guy (he also is very academically lazy, but that’s not the same thing.)

Otherwise, Harry doesn’t just have a little anger issue, he has a serious problem and I’m convinced he’s a psychopath. 

Whoa, you say, hold on! Where does that come from?

Well, not so much the earlier books. While Harry is a dick (and yes, guys, he is) he doesn’t show really worrying tendencies. The worst he gets up to is icing out Hermione when she becomes inconvenient (see Firebolt fiasco), treating Neville like trash (Harry bails on Neville to sneak out to Hogsmeade), and just being generally self-centered. 

I’m talking about the Order of the Phoenix onward. First we have HARRY’S RAGING CAPS-LOCKS FOR AN ENTIRE NOVEL. Granted, he’s an angry dude in a stressful situation, but that was... a lot. But it’s really Half-Blood Prince were I start grimacing.

We have his reaction to Ginny. It never really seems like Harry ever likes Ginny, it’s more that he has this green rage monster in his chest that wants to possess her. It is the weirdest thing I’ve ever read in my life. Or, well, one of them. So that’s... a thing. 

Then we have the whole Draco thing. Harry becomes obsessed with Draco Malfoy, more so than usual. And yes, Draco was up to no good, and sure we can tilt our heads and say it’s pretext for Draco/Harry. Except guys, Harry’s scary about it. Take out the appeal of the slash for two seconds, Harry stalking Draco is that problematic thing that if Draco were a woman we’d be saying “ABORT ABORT ABORT”. It of course, culminates in the bathroom incident. Now, you say, Harry didn’t know what that spell would do. Well, he knew it was for enemies and even afterwards, though he panics and feels bad, what he really seems to be bad about is the potential consequences to himself not the action. he focuses more on the fact that the beloved Halfblood Prince was Snape than he does the fact that he nearly murdered Malfoy. If I’m remembering correctly, Harry in fact makes out with Ginny not long after, got to set that chest monster loose, y’all. 

Then in book seven Harry starts using the unforgivables with absolutely no regret. Torture for you, Bellatrix, I am edgy now. It’s very clear that Harry only cares superficially about morality. He generally follows the rules and various ideals because he likes the idea of being noble and virtuous, he isn’t actually a virtuous guy at all. 

I’m not even sure he really understands friendship. Harry’s friends are people who are great and all except when they become inconvenient, then he can treat them like the trash they are until they come back around (if ever). 

He’s kind of a monster actually. 

He’s also the poster child of why Voldemort may have a teensy-tiny point that the statute of secrecy as it stands around muggle children is not sustainable. Really doesn’t look good for the cause when the most famous child in the wizarding world is raised by extremely abusive muggles and grows up extremely maladjusted because of it. 

Hermione Granger

Now, I give Harry a lot of flak for his treatment of Hermione, but Hermione’s not a barrel of roses either. She may be friends with a pair of assholes who don’t really like her all that much, but she kind of dug her own grave.

First, Hermione has a bit of a superiority complex, even when she’s completely friendless. She absolutely looks down on girls like Pavarti and Lavender and part of the reason they hate her so much is because of that. That’s part of Hermione’s issue, she’s too good for everyone, and so she eventually becomes friends with famous Harry Potter and Ron Weasley who barely tolerate her because she was too good to be friends with, say, Neville.

Hermione never realizes this.

She also deeply enjoys, I believe, being the smartest person in the room and much smarter than her friends. Granted, this is what she defines herself as, and it means she’s needed by everyone around her for this reason, but she still does like it just a little too much.

And oh my god is she horrifyingly righteous.

This we see in what happens to Marietta, Umbridge, as well as her own parents. She permanently disfigures a girl for snitching them out to Umbridge, never telling anyone this was the consequence, and is smug when we see what happens to her because “snitches get stitches”. It’s pretty heavily implied by canon that Umbridge was raped by centaurs (first they’re centaurs, that’s what centaurs do, second we next see Umbridge in the hospital wing looking catatonic and the gang laughs and makes horsey noises). Yes, Umbridge is a vile evil woman, but that Hermione’s so proud of her vengeance is.... concerning.

Finally, her parents. Hermione, without asking her parents’ consent, wipes their memories and rewrites their entire lives. Congratulations Hermione, even more than Harry you are the poster child for Voldemort’s cause of “what goes wrong when muggles raise a magical child”. Hermione essentially kills her parents, treating them like no more than dolls, and the most she’s upset about is what it did to her. To Hermione, her parents aren’t people, not really.

People in general aren’t people, or at least, Hermione is more than willing to go to drastic lengths if she feels she has been slighted or betrayed. Never get on Hermione Granger’s bad side.

Ron Weasley

Shockingly, I’m not really a “Ron the Death Eater” kind of person. Ron clearly has an inferiority complex, he sees being friends with Harry as a way to make him special from his brothers, he’s overly ambitious and easily jealous, he’s academically lazy, kind of an ass, and he has many flaws as a person.

That said, he’s not the same level of scary asshole as Hermione and Harry. Ron doesn’t cut up Draco Malfoy in a bathroom or even disfigure the guy. He’s just your more or less normal dude who doesn’t realize he’s friends with lunatics. 

TL;DR Harry and Hermione are assholes. Ron’s kind of an asshole too but shockingly less so than the other two.

[dialovers-translations]

DIABOLIK LOVERS VERSUS SONG Bloody Night Vol.Ⅱ Mini Drama “Ruki VS Azusa”

Original title: 録り下ろしミニドラマ ｢ルキVSアズサ｣

Source: Diabolik Lovers VERSUS SONG Bloody Night Vol.II Mini Drama [CD not owned by me]

Audio: Here

Seiyuu: Takagi Sakurai & Daisuke Kishio

Translator’s note: I believe this is the first time I have translated some sort of VERSUS track featuring two Mukami’s and it does have a totally different feel to it, as to be expected. Even though there is still an obvious competition between the two, they aren’t nearly as hostile towards each other, even relying on the other or allowing their ‘brother’ to join in. This sibling bond between the Mukami’s is honestly what I like best about them and I’m glad it shows in this CD!

→  LIKE MY TRANSLATIONS? SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI!

*Chop chop chop*

Azusa: Eve...What are you doing...?

You squeak.

Azusa: Ah...I’m sorry for scaring you...

You explain.

Azusa: You’re making...dinner? Hmー

Azusa paces around you.

Azusa: Hm...What’s on the menu for today? You chopped up...a bunch of vegetables, huh? 

*Rustle*

Azusa: Ah! That knife...It cuts extremely well, doesn’t it? I sharpened it...the other day. So I’d be able to cut...even the hardest materials...You see? I’m sure it could even...slice through bones and flesh with ease...Fufufu~ 

Your face goes pale.

Azusa: Want to...put it to the test? No, you want to try it out, right? I can tell as well, Eve...

*Rustle*

Azusa: Say...Try it on me? Right here, please?

You refuse.

Azusa: Justin, you see...He’s about to fade away. So...Please? Cut me here? ...Come on. You want to, don’t you?

You shake your head.

Azusa: ...Why not? Why would you say no? That’s strange. We should be...two of the same kind though...Ah! That’s wrong. You want it first, don’t you? I see. Of course you would.

He suddenly pins you down.

*Thud*

Azusa: Haah...I’m sorry for not realizing sooner. To make it up to you, I’ll make it...especially painful, okay? Fufufu~ I hope that’ll make you happy~

*Cling*

You start struggling. 

Azusa: It’ll be...okay...Just leave it...up to me...Ugh...

*Shatter*

Azusa: Ugh...Nn...Keep still...Eve...Come on...You can’t do that...Ugh!

*Thud*

Azusa: Haah...Fufu~ Like this, you can no longer move, can you? Ooh...But I can no longer use the knife like this...Hm...What to do...? Ah! Right!

He leans in close.

Azusa: Instead, I’ll give you this pain...which you’ve loved for so long...Haahn...

Azusa bites you.

*Sluuuurp*

*Gulp*

Azusa: Nn...Haah...Delicious...Eve’s blood...I wonder if it’s because...you enjoy pain...?

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: In that case...I’ll make it hurt even more, okay? By doing so...You get to feel even better...and I get to...savor more of your...delicious blood...It’s basically a two-for-one deal (1), right...? Fufu~

*Rustle rustle*

Azusa: Haah...Well then, this place is up next...Your ear...

He bites you again.

Azusa: ...Hm? Mm...What’s wrong, Eve? Don’t look at me...like that. Rest...asssured. I’ll make sure to give you pain...just like you wish...Not from your earlobe but...right here...if I suck from the upper part...I’m sure it’ll hurt. 

Your eyes widen in horror. 

Azusa: Come on...Relax. Then my fangs can...sink into you and...give you pain...from inside...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Nn...Hah...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Mm...

*Shatter*

Azusa: Haah...Nn...Mmh...Haah, haah...Seeing you have a hard time...Somehow made me feel good too...Fufu...Fufufu~ It looks as if I almost punctured a hole through your ear...In that case...Let’s put a pretty accessory in here. To symbolize that...I was the one who pierced these...Shall we give it a name too? Like Justin and Christina...Say? Don’t you like the sound of that? Fufufu~ 

*Rustle*

Azusa: Haahn...Mmh...

*Sluuuurp*

*Gulp*

Azusa: Mmh...Nn...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Haah...It’s my turn next, okay...? 

Azusa moves away.

Azusa: Come on, hurt me with this knife...Give me a new kind of pain...I’m begging you.

*Cling*

Azusa: ...Eve? What’s wrong? Hm...Come on, stand...

Ruki enters the kitchen.

Ruki: It has been awfully rowdy in here. What are you doing?

Azusa: Oh...Ruki.

He walks over.

Ruki: Haah...Care explain this to me? Livestock, explain. I should have ordered you to prepare our dinner? 

You frown.

Ruki: From the looks of it, rather than actually preparing the food, all you did was make a mess of our kitchen. You truly are hopeless. Can you not even prepare a single meal without messing up? Haah...Show me your hands.

You hesitate.

Ruki: Show me your hands, I said!

You present him your hands.

Ruki: This is your punishment.

*SMACK*

Azusa: Ah! Wait, Ruki...I’m the one one who...!

*SMACK*

Azusa: Ugh...Ah...

Ruki: Azusa, do not interfere.

Azusa: I’m the one...who got in the way of her cooking so punish me too...

Ruki: Cannot do. You simply want to feel the pain, no?

Azusa: Oh...

Ruki: Regardless of the circumstances, the fact she ignored the orders given by her master remains unchanged. I need to punish her. Azusa. You restrain her, okay?

Azusa: ...Eh?

Ruki: Hurry up.

Azusa: Understood...

Azusa keeps your arms behind your back.

*Rustle*

Azusa: Keep still, okay? Eve...

Ruki: That works. Livestock, I shall tame you right now. You should be grateful. Hmph.

You shiver in fear.

Ruki: Good grief...I can’t believe you would ignore your duties behind your Master’s back, only to indulge in your own selfish pleasures. You are quite the livestock. ...Hm? Are these fang marks Azusa’s? In that case, to start things off, I shall suck from this nape...

*Rustle*

Ruki: Mmh...Nn...

*Rustle rustle*

Ruki: Don’t move. It makes it hard to suck.

*Sluuurp*

You continue writhing around. 

Ruki: Tsk. Livestock. I told you to keep still! ...Azusa, keep her in check.

Azusa: Mmh...

Ruki: I cannot believe you can’t even simply stand still and keep quiet...

*RIIIIIP*

Ruki: Seems like I will have to be a little more strict with my training. To ensure your body actually remembers. You can decide where I shall punish you next. Your throat? Or perhaps, your shoulder? Come on, choose. 

You keep quiet.

Ruki: Good grief...To think you are this foolish, it almost seems refreshing. Show me your hands one more time. Hurry up.

*Rustle*

Ruki: Hmph. The whip has left clear marks behind. I’m sure it must sting painfully? 

You nod.

Ruki: In that case...I shall add onto said pain even more. Like this...

*Rustle*

Ruki bites your hand. 

*Sluuuurp*

Ruki: Mmh...Hah...Fufu...Those are lovely sounds...Cry out more!

You collapse but Azusa catches you in his arms.

*Rustle*

Azusa: ...Oh! Eve...? Are you okay...? I wonder if it simply felt too good...? Hey.

Ruki: Oi. 

*Smack*

Ruki: Wake up. ...You’re gravely mistaken if you think your punishment ends here. Oi, Azusa. You join in too.

Azusa: Ah...Are you sure?

Ruki: Hmph. It’d be more effective if the two of us discipline her simultaneously. Help me out.

Azusa: Mmh...Gotcha. Eve...This time...I’ll give you pain too...Are you happy? No...You obviously are, aren’t you? 

Ruki: You should accept your penalty, admitting to the crime you have committed towards your Master.

Azusa: In that case...I’ll go for this...shoulder. You like it here, Eve...Don’t you?

Ruki: Fufufu...Try your best to remain conscious, okay?

Azusa bites your shoulder.

Azusa: Mmh...

*Sluuurp*

Azusa: Nn...Ah...

*Rustle*

Azusa: Eve...? Does it feel good? ...You ahead...You can lean against me more...By doing so...My fangs can sink in...even deeper.

Ruki: Livestock. Open your eyes. Watch closely. At these wedges (2) piercing through your own wrist. 

Ruki bites her as well.

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Eve...Feel my fangs too...

*Sluuuurp*

*Gulp*

Azusa: Mmh...Ah...You want...more and more...right? This shouldn’t be...nearly enough to satisfy you...

Ruki: Azusa...Give it to her harder, and deeper. Despite her cries, that��s what this woman desires. I can tell.

Azusa: Mmh. I know. ...I’ll give it you as you wish, okay? After all...Eve’s desire...is my desire as well...Haahn...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Nn...

Ruki: Your sweet blood is spreading inside my mouth...Mmh...You sure know how to entice a man. 

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Haah...Hah...Eve...You’re so pretty...Dyed in this deep crimson blood...Mmh.

*Smooch*

Azusa: See? My lips are bright red too, aren’t they? Fufufu~ We match~

*Rustle rustle*

Azusa: Ah...It’s okay...Don’t worry about getting dirty?

*Rustle*

Azusa: Oh...You’ve got bite marks all over you...I bet it hurts a lot...Mmh. Oh. I suppose I shouldn’t be too rough with you, right? 

Ruki: Oi, Azusa. She’s a nosy woman, but it’d be troublesome if she becomes unable of saying anything. 

Azusa: Mmh. I know. 

*Rustle rustle*

Azusa: I’ll be careful, okay?

*Rustle*

Ruki: Well then...Next up, I’ll do it from behind like this. Let me engrave a pentalty into your nape. Haha...Have you even lost the energy to muster up a response? Good grief...You really always crave to be punished, don’t you? Being too greedy is problematic as well.

Azusa: Hey, Eve...Look at me...Okay? You’ve been looking at...Ruki this whole time, haven’t you? I have the right to make you mine as well...So...Please? I’ll give you...more and more pain...See? Like this...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Mmh...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Nn...Mmh...

Ruki: Do not let Azusa’s words sway you. In the end, you are still my livestock. I am the one you should prioritize. 

Azusa: ...I won’t lose either, Ruki!

Ruki: As you wish. Fufufu...

Azusa: Say, Eve? We are two of the same kind. Therefore...I will give you everything...your heart desires...

Ruki: Heh. Aren’t you rather desperate, Azusa? It is rather uncommon for you to get this worked up. 

Azusa: Because she is the one thing...I don’t want to hand over, not even to you...That’s why...

Ruki: Heh. I see. In that case, I shouldn’t sit still either. ...Oi, Livestock. Drown in me more. Mmh...Nn...

Azusa: Me too...! ...Hey, Eve? You can...have high hopes, okay? Mmh...

*Sluuuurp*

Azusa: Mmn...Nn...

Ruki: I am sure this situation is all you’ve ever dreamt of, isn’t it? Well, go ahead and enjoy it to the fullest. After all, you are a woman who feels joy from being pinned down. We still have plenty of time. I shall show you a kind of pleasure you have yet to ever experience.

Azusa: Eve...I will give it my all as well...Until you are thoroughly satisfied, okay?

Ruki: Hahaha...You are in luck. Seems like your punishment is still far from over.

The door closes.

*Creaaaak*

*Thud*

ーー THE END ーー

Translation notes

(1) Azusa uses the expression いいことづくし or ‘ii-koto-zukushi’ which literally means ‘all sorts of good things/joyful happenings’. 

(2) I’m not sure why Ruki refers to his fangs as 楔 or ‘kusabi’ (wedge) here but I suppose they have a somewhat similar shape.