#we are still on track with my new hyperfixations everyone. nothing has changed in the past 14 years

[lesbiansforandrew]

i read the aftg series in like a week and now i cant think about anything else anymore ofcourse

[gaijin-fujin-resonance]

How Buck-Tick Found Me: A Fan Origin Story

I though I had written this all out before, but probably on a more ephemeral format.

Buck-Tick discovered me by accident in early 2022. I don't even known how many near-misses I must have had. The only time I had ever previously heard them was Aphex Twin's remix of In The Glitter on 26 Mixes For Cash in 2003. (Why, oh why didn't B-T release Shapeless in the UK in 1994, when I was into many of the artists on it!?!?) But despite having many friends who were into the noisier end of J-Rock (and tried force-feeding me bORIS or Boredoms), not once did anyone suggest B-T. I'm still mad about that!

On 25th February 2022, I was idly reading an interview with a K-Pop producer on The Guardian, who mentioned his teenage obsession with Visual Kei. The picture (of Versailles) on that linked article intrigued me. So I went straight to Spotify and looked up "Old School Visual Kei". The fourth song in grabbed my attention to the point where I looked up the artist - the combination of trip-hop beats; ethereal, shoegazey guitars; and deep, breathy, slightly gothic vocals immediately sucked me in. Yes, like most western fans, my introduction to B-T was ドレス.

I listened to a couple more Visual Kei songs, but none of them did for me what that one Buck-Tick track did. I went back and hit play on their Spotify profile, and ended up listening to them for the rest of the night, until way past my bedtime. I listened to nothing else for the rest of the week, absolutely captivated by everything I heard. It was like someone had taken every single genre of music I had ever cared about from the age of 15 - positive punk, new wave, goth, techno, industrial, cyberpunk, shoegaze, electro, spacerock, drone - and just simmered them in a crockpot with distinctive Japanese flavouring.

This seems crazy to admit now, but I listened to B-T for over a year without ever even knowing what they looked like. I was vaguely aware that they were still going (the latest release at that point was Go-Go B-T Train - I love trains with all my middle-aged British heart so that was a winner for me.) But the singles from Izora started popping up on my Release Radar. Every time one came on, I would find myself sitting upright, paying attention and going to check who it was by. Oh, wow, that old Japanese band has got a new album out? Cool!

I started following the tags on Tumblr. I liked the look of the singer; he reminded me of a cross between Blixa Bargeld and Brett Anderson. In May 2023, shortly after the release of Izora, a gifset wandered across my feed. No source, no tag of what video or song or even album it was. Just the most AESTHETIC images I had ever seen.

The singer was beautiful, but it wasn't the singer that captured me, it was the visual world that this video hinted at.

I spent the next two months chasing down every B-T video on YouTube, trying to find the source of this snippet. Annoyingly, it wasn't in the official videos on their channel. I went on a Deep Dive, until I found it was Love Me, in a fan-assembled playlist of all their early videos. Honestly, whoever compiled this thing: you CHANGED MY LIFE. I wish I could pinpoint the moment that I switched from "wow, I really like this band" to "OH MY GOD THE NEW HYPERFIXATION THAT WILL CONSUME ME FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS" - maybe it was somewhere between Love Letter and Heroine on this playlist?

I honestly thought I was going to fall in love with the handsome singer, like everyone else on earth. I started devouring Cayce's blog and BT Zone, looking for clues. I read the Japanese Wikipedia entry through Google Translate back when the EngliIh language version was little more than a stub. (Honestly, there was more information about the band on TV Tropes when i started researching.) But the more I read, the more I watched, the more I listened, the more I found myself drawn to the little blond guitarist. Interviews and fact sheets revealed we had a huge number of random, coincidental commonalities. But when he whipped out a theremin during SSL (inbetween commanding said singer to lick his boots) I was lost. You don't choose your Honmei, your Honmei chooses you. He chose hard. I can remember my oldest friend, around her birthday in August, laughing at me, saying "this Imai person has eaten your brain, huh?"

So I guess I had about a year and a half of liking the music, and about 3 or 4 months of being in the fandom before Atsushi collapsed onstage, and everything changed.

...

So although I'm no longer a New Fan, I feel like I have more in common with that experience. I wish I had decades of Deep History with the band - listening to their albums in order, I can hear all of the places in their long history where their taste and aesthetic aligned perfectly with whatever music I was listening to at the time. I do have that Deep History with many of their influences, enough that I feel I have secondhand familiarity with what they were doing.

I certainly understand why fans with a 30+ year history with the band might feel unsettled about the future and trepidation about B-T Mk II. (Except... among the people I follow, it doesn't seem like it's the long-haul fans who have already weathered so many changes, who are having the most trouble with it? The 30+ year fans seem to be the most loyal to the whole group as a concept, with or without Atsushi's corporeal presence.) But that's not where I am.

I had a 35 year history thrown at me to absorb in a few months. I've had 20 months of B-T with Atsushi, and 13 months of B-T without. Change is inevitable. So I feel like I am completely open to a second chapter of my fandom which is different from the first?

Note: Your Mileage May Vary. The way I do fandom is not the only way of doing fandom. All approaches to fandom are valid. You do you, and allow me to do me.

[criticalrolo]

level one, prep, and tpk; secret and heart for sigrun

Level One: What was your first experience with D&D? How did you hear about it? What was your first game like?

My first experience was DMing a one shot LOL

I had just gotten really into critical role in 2016, and was nearly caught up, when some of my friends (who didn't know I was currently Hyperfixating On DnD) actually casually brought up that they'd never played dnd before but it sounded like fun. They just needed someone to run the game since no one there really knew the rules. Cue me jumping into the conversation being like, "HAHAHAH HeyyyYyy you guys wanna play some dnd and need someone to run it? as it JUST SO HAPPENS, I know the rules and would LOOOVE to try running a game hahahaha..."

So I prepped more for that one shot than I ever did for any session ever, it was a level 1 4 hour game where I made everyone character sheets, bought dice sets for everyone, and had them clear out a wizard's basement filled with giant rats. It was REALLY fun, no one seemed to catch on that i ALSO had no idea what i was doing, and afterwards I asked if they would be interested in a Longer Campaign. I had a couple takers, and that first campaign ran for probably about five sessions before the school year ended, so nothing too wild happened, but after that I got some real games set up and ... here we are several years later :)

Prep: How much prep work do you do? How far out do you prep?

I do like... 1-3 hours of prep work before each individual session. And even then, it's mostly like... finding maps and stat blocks for NPCs. I go into each Arc that I run with a general outline in mind for what big beats I want to have happen, but otherwise I let each session progress based on what the PCs decide to do. It's definitely a combination of laying down tracks vs improv on the fly, but so far it's worked out for me! Having a really loose style has definitely helped make the story feel organic and player choice-oriented while still keeping things moving in the direction I'm hoping it'll go. And it gives flexibility for when players do things WILDLY unexpected!

TPK: Have you ever had a game go completely off the rails? TPK? How did you adjust?

I've come CLOSE to some TPKs but the players juuuust managed to squeak by, which is always my favorite kind of vibe. It's way harder to plan for that than you'd think when you've been DMing for 7 PCs for so long LOL

Honestly I don't think I've had anything go completely off the rails, or even really come Close to being that out of control? I've definitely had players make WILD choices that altered the course of FUTURE sessions, but my DMing style allows for a lot of flexibility I think, so I've never really been. THROWN by anything if that makes sense. I always LOVE it when the players make choices that Alter The Narrative Entirely.

My favorite example is when a friend of mine playing a cleric who was devoted (by accident) to Chaos, decided at the last second, in game, to NOT accept the help of their Chaos God and decided to just DIE instead. We had worked out a plan for her corruption arc!! It was going to be sick!! But apparently in the moment, during a big fight against a really difficult Boss, she looked around at her friends and decided her character would actually rather die than become corrupted and potentially break the world/hurt her friends. it was INSANE and COMPLETELY changed the next arc of the campaign since Ethros. DIED and couldn't be revived. And I loved it and we worked out a whole new arc for Ethros later :)

Secret: Is there anything that you know about your character but your character doesn’t know? What is it? How did you come up with this secret?

AUGH YES -- this was actually something that happened in game. From her backstory, Sigrun's village was attacked by raiders and she nearly died in the assault. She was healed by a strange figure she didn't recognize, swore an oath to what she Believed To Be the old gods to get revenge for them, and then this figure gave her Daisy and sent her off to safety.

NOW SIGRUN DOESN'T KNOW THIS... but that figure was actually her dad Osvald. who was sent forward in time by the Old God of Negentropy. to fulfill his wish to protect her. So I was playing Osvald at the time in a mini campaign, got this wish, and wished to Protect Sigrun. Then the DM narrated Osvald getting sent into the future, and I realized it was a scene from SIGRUN'S backstory, and I promptly lost my mind casting cure wounds on her and find familiar to give her Daisy. it was SOOOO GOOD

Heart: What drives your character? Do they have a theme, question, mission, etc. that they’re holding onto? How did you pick it for them?

Sigrun's character absolutely revolves around the theme of Family, in all its messiness and love. What do you do when the people who raised you tried their best but couldn't give you what you needed? How do you feel about them? How do you deal with people leaving, with being alone, with them going off without you? What do you owe family, if anything?

She has this mission to rescue her family members (yes I do this backstory in different variations for like. all of my PCs. dont worry about it) who have all been taken by this interdimensional raiding group, but something she doesn't admit to herself is that she's somehow trying to rescue her Dead Father too. And maybe she's trying to rescue herself? She's got insane abandonment issues from the various family members Leaving (by choice or by force), and I think there's a part of her subconscious that desperately wishes someone had come back for her when she was little, so now she's trying to act out that wish by Rescuing Everyone Else.

[spade-snax]

Alright, follow-up post to the "ooooo serious post" I made earlier. You can tell I wasn't really feeling too well when I made it appear ten times more serious than it really is. My apologies, I was overthinking things again.

But my point stands, it is more serious than more things and I need to step my foot down and listen to my needs. (And all the other things around me. Oh, here's a quick sorry again if this is written way worse than my previous post, I woke up a while ago and I haven't been able to stop thinking about this since I went to sleep.)

What I want to talk about first is the name for the AU, being "Cingesnax". I haven't chosen the name myself, it popped up suddenly and people began using it/recognizing the AU as such and so I began tagging my reblogs and posts using the name. However to myself I still just call it "Shadow Filbo AU"

I'm not naming names, and you probably know who I am talking about but for a while there was an user who felt quite hurt by the use of "Cringe" in the name. I don't really like the name either, but I don't mind it as much.

I hammer it in often, which I am sure everyone knows and respects but - this AU is NOT meant for any harassment or making fun out of things. It's purely lighthearted fun and shitposting. It's tributing those things. To me these characters are based on me and my childhood which I poke fun at.

I can see why someone would feel hurt or targeted by the use of the word cringe around these things, considering how it's been used/overused to harm people.

I feel like I had to address this because I do not want to feel like anyone is targeted because of my creation. There won't always be people who like it, yes - but as the creator I feel liek I need to take some respolsibility here. And seeing people ahrmed is the last thing I want, really.

(The person does understand now though, they've replied to me and they're fine, so that's good, but I wonder if there's people who feel upset and haven't spoken up. I mean, that's their thing, they can just block the tag, which is why I overtag my things wich character names and such if you just don't want to see them for any reasons, especially triggers.)

I am still overthinking this and making this more serious, sure. And I KNOW not everyone will read and agree to this, but a simple solution to stop people from coming to conclusions would be figuring out a new name, or just me hammering it in even more as the og creator of this whole thing that it is lighthearted fun.

(Hell, a lot of the things being "made fun of" in this AU I genuinely like or are still a part of. Like Furry Gramble - I am a furry myself, and as I've said many times before he is heavily based on me when I was a younger, way more edgy furry kid.)

But that isn't the main and only reason why I am here and I am just overexplaining myself and making things appear way worse than they are. It's just me overthinking, really - but I still feel like letting everyone know and be responsible is important. Just a lil' reminder, a bop on the head if you will. Nothing too bad, but I fear nobody will read it if I'm not serious in the slightest.

Anyways, onto the other thing, being how this affected me as a peson. I absolutely LOVE seeing everyone's involvement and creations! I'm so very glad my creation brings joy to so many people, not only me and my friends. That it brings us together to just have fun, bond, and create. As said to me before, the fandom hasn't had anything like this before so I believe Shadow Filbo is important in that regard.

I'm still just a person and I want to talk about my work and interests to other people. Like people, you know. But I've also made it as an effort as a creator of a thing to respond to all the fanart I get, and just help people's work get out there. Same with OCs and all other creations within the AU. It all deserves to be seen, you're a great artist. And it makes me really happy to see people happy themselves when I respond to their work.

And even if the amount of stuff I've been getting daily has slowed down, it's still quite overwhelming to me sometimes. It feels like a chore sometimes and I don't wanna force a "YOOO ADSJDFEWRGREWGBRSTH" reaction onto everything because it's not always so genuine. I love seeing all the work but I won't have the excitement if reblogging it and putting in all the tags feels like a chore to me.

I want all this to be genuine and I've been feeling drained. It's absolutely amazing and I am glad that I had the chance and luck to have my work well-knowna nd noticed within a small community to be recognized even by the CREATORS of the thing I am hyperfixating on. But at the same time I feel responsible for a lot of stuff, and the effort I've made to be interactive is quite draining, as I've stated before.

It's taking a bit of a toll on me, and getting more stuff to respond to is like - dishes in the sink piling up into a bigger pile. I genuinely love all of this, but I'm just tired. I need a little break from responding to all of this... Just all the attention and stuff is making me socially exhausted. Definitely the fact I'm a massive introvert and my ADHD kicking in veery nicely. /s

I'm probably going to only reblog stuff involving my characters for the AU and Shadow Filbo himself - and any discussion in regards to the AU. Not someone else's art and OCs for the AU. There's a lot of it. Anyways, I'm starting to lag a little bit with how long this is getting. Yes, my computer is just that weak.

I'm already loosing track of what I've said but, yeah.

This AU has been great, I love it. I love you guys. I am happy for all the cool new people I've met, even if we aren't exactly friends. It's taken a bit of a toll on me and I'll do my best to take care of myself and just - not let it take effect on me. And I hope we can keep this place as accepting and inviting as it can be. Even if it takes changing the name etc. Though i know I cannot change individual folk's opinions.

Yeah, this is realy long now and I am getting double thoughts on this - and I have a test in 20 minutes so I am not sure how active I can be with this, but I doubt I'll be getting many responses yet considering it's 3 or so AM in the US. (9:50 AM here)

Cya guys, take care too. I'll upload a doodle I did yesterday as a little comfort thing after this :)

I hope I can get back onto working on OCs too, and just kinda sit down without artblock or executive dysfunction. Buh-bye now

(Also, sorry this is written in weird blocks/paragraphs, I'm doing this so it's easy on *my* eyes.)

[hannah-deactivated20220725]

2020 End of Year Friendship Post

Alright, you guys know that I love to make gushing posts about people I’ve grown fond of.

Well, I’ve decided to make a big one for the end of the year. Celebrate the friendships I’ve created and/or maintained in the last year. This is obviously not EVERYBODY as I have shit memory and some of my friends have left the site (T_T) but this list will be a bit long, so I’m gonna post everything under a cut so that it doesn’t bother people having to scroll past it. (: to the people not mentioned in this but that follow me: thank you so much for supporting me & my writing adventure. I know that my blog has been through ups and downs, has changed immensely in the course of the past year, but I hope that you guys still enjoy and do not regret following it.

If you do, feel free to unfollow. I understand that some of you probably followed me for my games or events, which I no longer post here. If you do follow for my games, don’t forget I have a blog centered around writer games now!! You can find it at mywritinggames. You don’t have to follow this blog if you just followed for games. You can follow that blog. I won’t be offended. <3

Alright, enough of that. Let’s get into some lovey-dovey mushy-gushy words of adoration for all a lot of my friends!

PS here’s a list of everyone I tagged on here with comments and the paragraph number in case you want to skip straight to your mush comments:

1. Toby 2. Franka 3. Szandra 4. Raev 5. Jade 6. Lynxxie 7. Ravage 8. Andy 9. Pax 10. Keena 11. Ariadne 12. Ellie 13. Katie 14. Etta 15. Jake 16. Aurelien 17. LJ 18. Fatal 19. Avery 20. Amanda 21. Ari  22. Galaxy 23. Elizabeth 24. Dawny 25. Cat 26. Kry 27. Eris 28. Vermont 29. Erin 30. Piya

The final paragraph is a general comment to everyone, so please make sure to read the final paragraph as well! Thank you all for existing, for staying alive through a rough year, for being here for me and for being my friends. You are all amazing and deserve everything, all the energy love and positivity you put into the world. <3 I love you guys!

1. @lordkingsmith - I’ve already beaten this dead horse, but you are SO INCREDIBLE and I have no idea what my entire mentality would be if not for you. You’ve saved me from giving up on my dreams multiple times by your positivity and always knowing how to help me!! Any time something happens, you’re right there with a solution and it’s mind boggling. You’re literally the only person that can be like “here, help yourself this way” and I won’t get upset about it because I trust you in a way I trust SO few people. You are my little brother and I am so, so happy Jason Zephyr and a stupid tomato guessing game brought us together ;)

2. @franky-ts - girl... you’ll always be my twinny. Always, always. I can’t imagine life without you in it. Even through me deleting my blogs what, 3-4 times now since we met? I always come back to you. You are always the top 2-3 people I search for when I come back because you are my twinny and if I don’t get to have a tumblr experience without you, I don’t want it! <3 I love everything about you and I’m so glad to know you. I’m so grateful to have friends like you that always reach out to me and try to cheer me up when I’m feeling down. I always want to share my ups and downs with you. If not for the damned timezone difference, I probably would. Love you, sis.

3. @catharticallysarcastic - probably my favorite person I rarely speak to ;) A friendship started with writer games and the beauty of her name (Szandra for those that don’t know)... you are a remarkable and beautiful person and you deserve the world and all of your dreams with it. I wish this world was perfect so you could live in a perfect world because you, my friend, are great. And sweet. And amazing! Thank you for being a good friend to me.

4. @raevenlywrites - I know we don’t talk much anymore. I don’t really bombard you with asks like I used to, but I do still cherish you, not only as a writer, but as a person. You have a beautiful heart and are such a caring individual. You will go out of your way for other people and this world needs MORE PEOPLE like that! You are incredible and I hope you reach the absolute apex of what you think life should be. That is my 2020 wish for you. <3

5. @jade-island-lives - Jade.... Jade, Jade. Another great friend that’s been here through my ups and downs of a couple of different blogs I’ve ended up remaking. Jeez, it’s been so long I can’t even remember how we met. But I’m so, so glad we did. You are beautiful. You are so caring and kind. Your writing is amazing and your characters are just... *chef kiss* But this isn’t about your writing, as amazing as it is. This is about you. This is about how amazing YOU, as a person, are. This is about how much I love and appreciate you as a person. This is about how much I am grateful to have friends like you in my life. This about how you’ve been here for me through so much and how I can’t imagine if I’d never met you. Even though we rarely talk like we used to, I still cherish you like we talk every freaking day. Life gets busy, especially as adults. Shit happens, life gets hard. But through everything, just know I love you and am always, no matter what, here for you. <3

6. @wyldlynxx - Lynxxieeee ~ my little Nane fangirl xDDDD you are amazing. You don’t give yourself near enough credit for how awesome you are. You make me laugh and so happy to be alive. We don’t chat like we used to, which... to be fair there are very few that I do still talk to regularly. But I still love you and our friendship. I wouldn’t trade it - for you - for anything. (: I hope one day we can catch up again and start chatting more again because our chats always, always put a smile on my face.

7. @mrs-raven-writes - Ravage! My savage little Ravage!! My buddy! Hey! Hi! You are awesome. Our conversations are so unique every time. We don’t just have the typical ‘hi how are you’ talks. I mean yes, sometimes we do if it’s been a while since we chatted, but for the most part, we’ve had all different kinds of talks. My favorite is when you randomly approached me saying you almost threw down with someone because of a game. xD And finding out that even through your absence you still keep track of me? T_T I was so flattered and still am. You are amazing and you also do not give yourself near enough credit for how amazing you are. I am so glad to know you and I hope that 2021 treats you better than 2020 did because I’d love more than anything for you to message me telling me how incredible you feel and how much life has improved. I freaking love you, girl, and I want nothing but happiness and love for you. (:

8. @violetcancerian - Andyyyyyyyy~ hi!!! omg what to say... I’m not even sure how to say what I want to say. xD A friendship forged by mutual love of King Arthur fiction... turned into what it is now. Even though we rarely ever talk anymore, I still feel so close to you... and I hope that you know that you’re still a very special friend to me. ^_^ you are so sweet and so ENTHUSIASTIC! You spread so much love to others and it just makes me smile! It makes me so happy to see you on my dash, not just for the fics, but for YOU. You, as a person, are worth so much, and I hope you get everything you ever wanted because I want nothing but the best for you, my friend! Happy new year and thank you so much for being my friend. <3

9. @magic-is-something-we-create - Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaxy!! One of my most enthusiastic friends! I always know that I can just chat your ear off about the things that have me excited because you just get so excited with me! You’re like my “pump me up” buddy because your excitement then causes me to get more excited! Instead of mocking my hyperfixations, you get enthralled with me, and I LOVE that!!! You are so encouraging and so increidbly sweet and thoughtful. You always put a smile on my face and even when it’s been weeks since we’ve chatted, our conversations are never stale. I always know if I message you, we’re about to have a fun, exciting conversation. I never get bored of our chats or of you because you’re just so FUN and put such a big smile on my face!!! I love the friendship we’ve built and I really, honestly hope it never ends because you’re amazing. <3

10. @keen2meecha - hey, buddy! We haven’t really chatted in a while but I wanted to include you because we used to chat a lot more. And it was so fun getting to know you and sharing my passions with you. I really hope that we get into touch more in 2021 because I never want to lose that bond we shared back when we chatted more! I enjoy so much talking with you and getting to know your works and sharing mine with you! I hope you have an phenomenal 2021, my friend.

11. @confundere - another buddy that I always look for when I restart my blog (which has happened an embarrassing amount of times). Ariadne is a passionate person with so much to offer this world and I cannot imagine ever restarting my blogs without contacting her. You are someone I think of frequently, even if we don’t chat as much as we used to, and I’m so glad to have met you. (: thank you for being such a great friend to me, and for being so supportive of me. I hope you have a terrific 2021. Happy new year, friend!

12. @howdy-writes - Ellieeee~ we have had many fun chats via our posts and I have massively enjoyed going from “oh what a cute blog” to “wow this girl is amazing!” I have enjoyed from going “aw how cute, she likes lesbian cowgirls” to “this girl IS a lesbian cowgirl!” You have so many incredible layers that are so fun to figure out and you are such a joy to get to know! I’m so glad I got the courage to reach out to you and talk to you because you are one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met on this site. You always have nothing but sweet things to say and I just.... I look up to you so much. Your kindness, your positivity, your love. You, all-in-all, are a role model I wish I’d grown up watching. I hope that all the youngesters following you realize that you are someone to look up to. ^_^

13. @abalonetea - you... oh, Katie, you. It still makes me laugh how long it took me to stop calling you Emily in my head xDDD you’re incredibly talented. But beyond that, you’re a great friend. Always supporting others. Always willing to be there for others. You’re a great person and deserve as much love and support, if not more, as you give. You are so kindhearted and just all around, the best kind of friend to have. Thank you for being one of mine. <3

14. @ettawritesnstudies - one of my newer friends from this year! It was so fun collabing on a positivity event with you! My hope is we can do something like that again because you were a joy to work with. ^_^ you are so kind though. So kind and so thoughtful and supportive. You are exactly the kind of friend I want in my real life. You are the kind of person I could see myself really opening up to and texting every day if I knew you irl. People like you are what make this world worth living in and people like you are what make the world a nicer, better place. I’m so grateful to know you and that you decided to join tumblr. Thank you for everything this year and I look forward to another year of friendship!

15. @homesteadchronicles - Jaaake!! Omg we don’t chat like we did when I was first recommended your blog, but I still cherish every conversation. I cherish every hi and am always sad when we have to part ways. I think about you frequently, even if we don’t always talk. I’m always wondering how you are, how your writing’s going, how your year’s going. You have been a joy to get to know and I really hope one day we can start chatting more again because our conversations always leave me with a smile on my face by the end, and I simply cannot say that about just anybody. Happy new year, friend, and I hope you have a terrific 2021.

16. @copperplatescript - Aurelien!!! I’ve probably said it before but I LOVE your name. It’s so unique compared to names I’ve heard in the past. But beyond that, there’s an amazing person attached to the name!! I love sharing things with you because interesting conversation always follows. You are so fun to chat with and you have so much interesting stuff to share! Your fascinations are so fascinating and it’s so much fun watching the progression of your projects!! I miss our chats but I know 2020 has been a hectic year for most. I just hope 2021 brings more fun and fascinating conversation and brings us closer as friends ^_^ thank you for several months of a wonderful friendship. (:

17. @ljscrawls - sheesh, I can’t believe it took me this long to get to LJ!!!! My buddy ol’ pal. Talented, sweet, fun, funny!!! Pretty much all the best traits in one amazing person. You always bring a smile to my face and leave me feeling so freaking special. There are very few that can make me laugh, cry, flattered and just so happy in one single conversation. You bring so much joy and love in my life and I just can’t imagine ever losing your friendship. And I hope I never have to because I don’t want to be without you in my life. ^_^ thank you for being such a great friend. I love ya!!

18. @fatal-blow - I know we’re not like SUPER close or anything. But I wanted to let you know that you are amazing. Not just because your talent is beyond anything I have the words to voice but... you are such a fun, passionate person to speak with and it’s fun watching you talk about things you love, especially your characters. The way that you make your characters feel so familiar when you talk about them, like you’re talking about an old friend. It’s simply inspiring. I’m so glad I found your blog and started commenting on your posts because the conversations that have ensued due to it have been so memorable. I’ll never forget you, even long after I stop being on tumblr, whenever that happens. Thank you for everything.

19. @just-a-little-bit-of-sugar - girrrrl. You’re someone that I really miss. You are so sweet, just like your name implies, and such an uplifting person to talk about. You’re so positive, and you know. I do really cherish that about you but that isn’t what makes you so special to me. Everyone has down days and I don’t ever want to make you feel like I’ll appreciate you any less for having them, like your positivity is the only thing that makes you worth friendship. Good or bad days, you are a great friend and I want to be here to celebrate the good and help you through the bad! You’ve been a great friend to me over the last year and I only hope you can say the same to me. <3 hope you’re doing well.

20. @amandahoyle - god, our friendship started with a mutual love of DARK writing. Started with my writing of Death Has a Face and other dark stories centered around death and your series I’m reading with DEFINITE darkness in it.... but it evolved into this beautiful thing it is now, that I wouldn’t trade for the world. You are a remarkable friend, always having nothing but nice words for me and I so appreciate how you lift me up during hard times. You’re always here for me and willing to help bring me out of my own personal darkness. And I love and appreciate that so much about you. You are a phenomenal friend and I just don’t want to imagine ever losing your friendship. Thank you for being so kind and so patient with me over the last several months. I’m so grateful to have you in my life, even if just virtually.

21. @leafgreen6 - Ariiiii!!!!!!! One of my earlier friends! I met you through Galaxy and our friendship kind of blossomed. The three of us together create quite a dynamic trio even if we don’t chat together like we used to. You are amazing. I hope you realize how incredible you are. You’re so beautiful, inside and out, and you are so caring toward your friends. You love and support those around you and have such a beautiful heart. You are talented af and a total badass. <3 I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. Thank you. Thank you.

22. @books-of-lunacy - Jesus! Girl, we literally never talk anymore! I hope you’re well. I miss you. We forged a great friendship that I will never, ever forget, even if it fades away. Because you’ve been amazing over the months and I’m so glad to have met you virtually. I used to imagine if we met in person many times xD and I think you’d be a fun person to like go on adventures with at midnight, when the world around us is asleep. (: I’m glad to know you and I hope that 2021 brings you joys that 2020 tried to take away. Miss you and again, I hope you’re well. Thank you for being a friend.

23. @incandescent-creativity - we used to chat sooo much when I discovered your blog, when I originally created this blog! You were one of the first people I sought out when I recreated it because you inspire me SO MUCH. Your passion for your writing and characters... your kindness when answering questions... your silliness and just overall personality and attitude, it all inspires me. Every. Damn. Day. I know I haven’t done my “ask spree” stuff I used to do frequently, which got you accustomed to my url (and was also the reason you apparently actually noticed my disappearance when I deleted my original blog) but just know that I think about you frequently. Not just as a writer and creator, but as a person. As an amazing, inspiring person that I strive to be more and more like. You are incredible. Thank you for showing the world who you are.

24. @dawnsplaceyt - I know you’ve been busy lately and life has gotten hectic but I just wanted to let you know I still think of you frequently and am grateful for the friendship we’ve built over the last year. You are such a warm person with so much passion and love and I’m so glad to have been one of the people that got to witness that. I am so thrilled that your relationship took the next step and I can’t wait to see you start the next chapter of your life. <3 I hope you’re doing well and that the end of 2020 and all of 2021 treat you well. Love ya girl.

25. @missionkitty - Jesus. I can’t believe you’re all the way down at 25. But either way, here we are. One of my favorite people that I met through the odds of an otome game we share a passion for. Your art is breathtaking. I love your style and you as a person are just as breathtaking. You are so free and passionate!! You have so much love for the things you care about and that is so admirable. I look up to you so much, especially as an artist! I strive to be more like you one day. <3 thank you for being so amazing! I look forward to another year of friendship.

26. @kryskakikomi - okay, we know each other more through games and events than we do through actual chats, but I’ve always WANTED to talk to you... and build a friendship? One of my goals for 2021 is to do more outreach toward people I have wanted to talk to but never quite got the nerve to reach out to and you’re one of the top on the list!! I’m thrilled we’ve had interactions at all but I’d be so happy if we could have more in the coming year! Hope your year goes well. (:

27. @leave-her-a-tome - uh, you’re awesome. Enough said, next! No, just kidding. xD but I wasn’t kidding when I said you’re awesome. Even just seeing you on my dash gives me a thrill. You have so much talent, yet are so humble about it and are so happy to support others. It’s quite inspiring to see someone that is so incredible be so down to earth and not full of themself. You are so fun to chat with too! Our chats are usually short but they still bring me such joy. To know that someone as amazing as you LIKES to chat with me? Humbling. And thrilling at the same time! I will never, ever forget you or the time we’ve spent talking and working together!! Thank you for everything and for the support and I hope you have a great 2021!

28. @vermontwrites​ - okay, I know we haven’t spoken much since the Prompt Pals days but I really enjoy your presence - both on my dash and my DMs. You have been through so much yet hold strong. Yes, I know some days are really hard for you but your strength and resilience are inspirational. I hope you know you’re not alone and that I’m here if you need someone to lean on, if you need someone to vent to. You aren’t alone. You don’t have to push through everything alone. You have friends that care and that want to be here for you. You are incredible and deserve love and friendship. I hope you recognize that. Thank you for sticking around and for being you. I hope 2021 goes better for you, my friend.

29. @rhikasa - okay. I know, we mostly communicate via games, but you have been such a positive force on my dash and notes in the last year. I know we don’t chat much but I do still appreciate you and want you to know that. I don’t know like if you think about me beyond the games, but I certainly do think about you and am always hoping you’re having a great day/night. You’re awesome and creative and kindhearted and I’m so appreciative to have you as a mutual. <3

30. @piyawrites - Piya!!! We haven’t really communicated in a long time but I still cherish the times we did chat. We have had so many good conversations with giggles and enthusiasm and support and I love your energy! You’re such a positive force and such a great person to know and chat with and I’m so so grateful for that. You’re wonderful and I hope you recognize the light that you shine on others lives because you do. And you deserve that same level of loving energy that you bring to others. Thank you for being a part of my online world.

Thank you everyone that is listed on this. You are are all so freaking wonderful and each and every one of you hs made a difference in my life. You all have played a big part in why I have stayed on this site and I cherish each and every one of you for all kinds of reasons. I hope you all know how loved and appreciated you are and I wish you all a very happy New Year. May 2021 show many improvements upon the last year <3

[mcrmadness]

This is just me talking about (my) asexuality and aromanticism and mainly about how I figured I'm aroace. I'm from Finland and recently turned 30 so my experience and "lgbt+ history" might not be what you know it as, especially if you are not from Europe, or if your native language is English.

Also this is highly personal, so I doubt anyone here will have 100% same experience. But that's fine because remember: we're all individuals here and these are NEVER universal. You're still valid even if you wouldn't relate to what being aspec is to me.

It might be IS a long post so beware, but I've just been feeling like writing down some thoughts so here we go...

What I have been able to track is that I was 17, in 2008, when I first stumbled upon the term "asexuality". I don't remember exactly how, but I just remember reading about it and immediately going "yeah that's me". But what I do remember is that no one talked it being about sexual attraction. Basically how understood it was: asexuality = sex-repulsion.

I was 17, and somehow I knew I was sex-repulsed, but at the same time also thought I'm just a minor, so it's normal to be sex-repulsed. But even after turning 18, I don't recall ever feeling sexual attraction. I didn't think of myself as a "late bloomer" but just as someone who just has no interest towards sex. At some point I became really anxious of men, however. Nothing has ever happened to me* but still I, for some reason, developed terrible fear of men. I'm afab and just did not want to be seen as an object, and it made, still makes me, terrified to think someone might look at me and have Emotions. I know that we can't control our brains, I mean, I can't look at someone and force myself to feel attraction - just like those who do feel attraction, can't force themselves to stop feeling attraction. They can only control their actions. But yeah, I also had horrible (sexual) intrusive thoughts due to my generalized anxiety disorder at some point, which did not really help. They got a bit better when I came into terms with my asexuality and aromanticism, but sometimes they still come at me and it's never fun, but at least they're not as strong as what they used to be.

*(Unless if you can count that as sexual harrasment when, CW, I was 11 and a classmate was "into" me and tried to touch my face and talk "sweet things" to me but made it into a show despite me being uncomfortable and usually crying cos as a neurodivergent I didn't know how else to react.)

But anyway, back to the topic. So for years I understood asexuality as sex-repulsion, but I guess it's because I, well, am a sex-repulsed ace. So if I'm sex-repulsed, why would I then look at someone and feel something if I'm repulsed by the thing anyway? Like, it probably can't get any simpler than this :D And I know today that it's not as simple anymore. But that was 2008, at school (in ~2005) they only talked about gays a little, on one page in a sex.ed. book that otherwise was maybe 100 pages long. Only one page. About gays. And it was basically "Some boys like boys or some girls like girls and it's totally fine." and that was it, but the overall assumption was that everyone likes someone. And also there were no romantic orientations. Liking someone = both sexually and romantically. Not liking = not a thing except when you were depressed or otherwise mentally ill, or autistic or mentally disabled (which is a SUPER ableist take btw). I don't remember teachers ever talking about this, but it could also just be my adhd, maybe they did mention, but I just don't remember. At least in my notebooks there is no mention of this, everything was very much heteronormative and amatonormative, and also there was only two genders. I don't remember ever hearing about transgender people, apart from foreign documentaries and in them they were always portrayed as some shocking freaks of the nature, and loads of wrong terms were used. And this is still the mid and late 2000s we're talking about!

So this takes us to the other part aka aromanticism. Back then asexuality was not only sex-repulsion but also merged together with aromanticism, because people didn't talk about romantic orientations yet. So asexuality was not only sex-repulsion, but also you simply just not wanting a relationship. Again, nothing about attraction, just someone who did not care about sex nor relationships. A "forever single", if you will.

This was already annoying me a lot back then because I was really annoyed by sex "running the world". I was so angry because why is asexual the only sexuality that doesn't like sex? All the other sexualities had the assumption of them always wanting to have sex. Like, even think about someone who is straight, you hear that someone is straight, and you automatically assume(d) that oh they're into sex too cos why wouldn't they be. This was really driving me nuts because I was sure there are people who want to have a partner, but never want to have sex! I was still experiencing crushes, and I knew for sure it was nothing sexual, so it annoyed me that just because I'm asexual, it means I can't have crushes. That's why I actually called myself as "asexual bi" for a while, because "bisexual" indicated I would have not been sex-repulsed and I wanted to point out that I'm NOT into sexual things, at all - and remember that this was still the late 2000s or early 2010s and I had not heard of romantic orientations yet! So I was up to something, there just were no terms for that yet! Today that would be called bi-/panromantic asexual.

I haven't been able to track the exact date or even year when did I figure out I'm aromantic, or when did I hear about romantic orientations for the first time. From the messages I've been able to find, I was already in my early 20s. Aka somewhere around maybe 2011-2013. In those, I have still been wondering what I am or if I even want to have a relationship, not being really able to tell what I wanted or didn't want. Again, no one told me romantic orientations are about ATTRACTION and not about whether you have commitment issues or not (this as a half-joke, cos I have severe commitment issues with everything :D I need to feel free!).

Anyway, I do remember my key moment with aromanticism, or the "aromantic awakening" as you could call it too, was when I was 17 or 18. Or maybe I was older? I don't know, I have time blindness. Anyway, I had this one online friend I had a "crush" on (I think it was just undiagnosed adhd's person hyperfixation) and I even told her about it. Everything just is super shady, from those years, I was not really on my best and there are so many overlapping memories that feel like different alternative universes instead of memories on a same timeline. Anyway, I just remember at some point thinking about this girl and I thought about some "romantic" stuff, like kissing, and I just remember my brain going "NOOOOOPE!" I had wanted to meet with her some day so bad, but when I started thinking about actually meeting with her, I started to nope the fuck out. All I had in my head was awkward embarrassing "first kiss" scenarios from movies and I just was not having it! I basically went "lol I guess I'm aro too, then XD" but I still don't remember when did I have this realization. Was I 17? Or was I, say, 22? I guess I need to go through my old MSN Messenger and Skype convos some day to investigate this further because I really want to know. I couldn't even find anything from my Tumblr from those times (I registered here in 2011), but I don't know if that's just me not tagging or Tumblr search functioning normally (aka it never finds anything).

But yeah, I am touch-repulsed. And kiss-repulsed, and romance-repulsed, too, (unless it's my OTP we're talking about). I'm still not exactly sure if I'm touch repulsed because I'm aromantic, or if I'm aromantic because I'm touch-repulsed. I only know that because of my sensory issues (I'm neurodivergent), I have never liked touching nor being touched. Even as a little kid I hated hugs and never liked sitting on anyone's lap. I only tolerated my parents, mainly my mom, because they were my safe place as an extremely shy baby/toddler/kid, who was especially wary about men. I can't explain the latter, but there was something about adult men that caused me (as a baby) to hide my face against my mom's shoulder if they talked to me. I did that to everyone I didn't know, but especially to men I didn't know. No idea why.

I also remember how my siblings loved to sit on people's laps and were always climbing onto their laps, and I didn't like this. And once my (late) grandma was so touched when she asked me if I want to sit on her lap (I was maybe 5-7?) and I agreed just to make her happy. I still remember how it felt, and I did not like it at all, but it still made my grandma so happy that I THINK she almost cried when she told my mom I actually agreed to sit on her lap. I'm not sure how real this last part of the memory is because I was so young. But I do remember thinking I do that for a change because I knew my grandma would be happy.

So yeah, my touch-repulsion is not exactly a new thing but just something that has been a part of my personality forever. But is that the core reason for why I only feel aesthetic attraction? I never look at people and feel like I wanna touch. More of the opposite, the idea of having to touch them or them touching me makes me go "eeewww". If you have seen that video of a gibbon shaking their whole body after seeing a rat in their exhibit? That's what I feel like when I think about touching or being touched, in just any way, also platonically.

The only time I feel "sensual attraction" is when I see photos or videos of animals. The urge to pet a tiger is insane. But the feel of another human's skin or muscle (or hair or whatever) is very repulsive to me.

I still remember how disgusting it felt to e.g. sit on a cousin's lap. We sometimes used swings like this, and somehow I was aware of it not feeling nice, but still not doing anything about it cos it also was okay? Only later I have realized I really, really loathe the texture of human skin. Or the warmth and overall feeling of a human body. For example, I was at least 7 or younger when I sat on my cousin's lap while we were sitting on a swing and STILL, after over 20 years, I have that all in my body memory. I remember how the thigh bone felt under my legs and how freaking disgusting the muscles felt inbetween. Also at school, on the 1st grade, we often had to walk in a line of twos after the teacher and hold the pair's hand so no one gets lost. My then-friend had so ridiculously dry skin that the only thing I could think of was how I felt like throwing up because the skin on her palm felt so damn disgusting. I still can feel that in my hand when I think of it. That's one of my "core memories" from 1st grade - how disgusting the human skin can feel like.

I don't think I have ever felt actual romantic attraction towards anyone. It's really difficult to differentiate because as I mentioned, I get those people hyperfixations easily. I guess it's the same hormones but I never really want to do anything with them? I guess it's the emotional intimacy that "attracts" me and what gets me excited, but I'm still not exactly sure what emotional intimacy means to me. I don't exactly fall into the QPR category either, in a way I wish I had a best friend whose best friend also I would be, and that neither would have anyone else who is "better" than the other one. But the only intimacy there would be emotional intimacy, nothing else. And I need my freedom so I wouldn't move in with any human being, either.

Sometimes I've thought my "ideal partner" would be a robot because if I get annoyed, I could just turn it off and stuff into a closet and leave there, and if I felt like not having a "relationship" anymore, I could just remove the harddrive and destroy the robot, or both. That way I would be the only one with the memories, and I wouldn't have to worry about someone out there knowing things about me, things that only the closest can know, and I'm really afraid of letting anyone close in case it won't work (also with regular friendships) because I can't stop thinking about how much I wish I had that MIB memory cancelling device so that they would again know almost nothing, or at least much much less about me. There's already one friendship that ended a few years ago and I still keep thinking about how I wish I could take everything back and how I wish they delete(d) all the files and drawings and stuff I sent them. There are so many things about me I wish I never told them, now as we are no longer friends. Back then it felt like "of course this is gonna last a lifetime!" but turns out that nope, not all friendships will.

I guess it's time to stop rambling. This post is really long already. If you read it all the way here: congrats. And thanks. You probably just wasted your time but... that's on you I guess :DDD But yeah, some thoughts from a 30-years-old aroace who has been aware of their identity for at least or almost 10 years now.

[ishouldreallybeelsewhere]

okay so that loki video essay thing was going well, and then like a day into writing it i lost the hyperfixation so it's never gonna be finished. i still think it's alright, completely unedited, entirely a train of thought, i hope you like commas and pacific rim, it's only 2.8k

btw if something doesn't make sense, i was writing this while watching some video essays, and also haven't read it

Introduction

Loki is a show, well you know that, but a show that does everything right, until it doesn’t (crazy, I know). If you’re here, I assume you’ll already know a fair bit about it, but if you don’t, here’s a quick refresher. Spoilers for everything MCU.

Loki begins in 2012, technically, just after the Avengers go back through time from Endgame to meet themselves and grab the infinity stones. Unfortunately, the plan goes awri, and Loki ends up in possession of the Tesseract, the mind stone. With this, he teleports to a desert in [a place] and is quickly arrested and apprehended by the Time Keepers for ‘Crimes Against the Sacred Timeline.’ Sounds a bit cult-y if you ask me, and given that you’re stuck here, you will ask me. Essentially, his actions (taking the tesseract) were not supposed to happen. They created a branch, a new timeline, and, according to the TVA, if left unchecked, the timeline could cause a multiversal war that would result in the end of time. This is, to put it simply, a very interesting premise, and the first two episodes do a wonderful job of exploring the TVA and searching for the mysterious Loki variant who causes chaos and mischief, all while evading the time cops.

What is the TVA? Well, it’s the Time Variance Authority, which clears up nothing to those who haven’t seen the show. I would let a clip explaining it play, but I think I’d get a copyright strike, even though I’m fairly sure it’s within fair use. Regardless, the TVA is an organisation supposedly created by the Time Keepers, space lizards who brought together all of time into a singular sacred timeline. Had they not done this, time itself would have ended, how they did this is unexplained, and likely either impossible, or they are greater than gods in their power. Loki is immediately doubtful, but can’t deny that they must hold some power, because not only does his magic not work in the TVA, but infinity stones are useless too. Time is also stranger there too, more an idea as opposed to a set part of their reality. Many theorise that they reside within the quantum realm, which makes sense, as that is how one travels through time, at least in the marvel universe, but we can’t be sure until we get an explanation. Of course, I’m writing this long before I’ll see the finale, so who knows, perhaps I’ll have to rewrite it.

Now I’ve said all that without explaining what the TVA actually does. It’s pretty simple, similar to Stephen Hawking’s (???) ideas of the multiverse, every decision you make has the ability to make another timeline, one that is not part of the sacred way of time, and therefore must be pruned by the TVA before it grows enough to cause another multiversal war, despite multiverses being well-established in the MCU, but I know that’s different. Or perhaps the Time Keepers are lying (spoiler, they are, just not exactly in that way). Anyway, when someone makes a decision or takes an action that creates a new timeline, the TVA arrives. Minutemen arrest the ‘Variant’ responsible, despite their lack of intentional crime, and prune the new timeline, which we are told destroys it. Then Variants must stand trial for their crimes, in which they can either plead guilty or not, but really, that doesn’t make much difference, as they’re unable to make a case, let alone get away as innocent. Before they reach the court, however, Variants are dressed in TVA jumpsuits, have to sign off every word they’ve ever said, and a snapshot of their temporal aura is taken, for some reason. Yeah, it’s not really ever explained why they have to go through all that, like, why don’t they just prune them all, or just send them straight to court. It seems like they’re putting on a big show for nothing. Of course, if you have to go through all that, you probably won’t have time to think about the whys of your situation, which I’m sure the TVA uses to their advantage.

Now, we’re heading into real spoiler-y stuff, just in case anyone here hasn't watched episode three. If you haven’t, why are you here? Go, finish the whole series, and then come back. Alrighty. Now that everyone’s seen it all (apart from me at this point) we can continue.

Everyone working at the TVA is a Variant, and they don’t know it. The Time Keepers are said to have created everything within the TVA, every analyst, Minuteman, and whatever the other roles are. But that’s not true. They’re all variants who’ve been taken from their own timelines and had their memories wiped. This gives an explanation for the courtrooms, and the process to get into them. Robots will be melted from the inside out if they go through the temporal aura machine thingy, and I have a feeling it’s harder to reset a robot’s memories. Living beings are let through, and their actions in the courtroom could give a good overview of their strengths and intelligence, so it can be decided whether they’ll be pruned or ‘reset’ which we are told is killed, but with the information of them all being variants now available, is more likely having all their memories hidden, replaced with the idea that they’ve been at the TVA their whole lives, and that they were created by the timekeepers. Though why would space lizards create workers in the image of humans instead of like their own lizard-y selves. The TVA as a whole, as we are introduced to it, feels very cult-y. Things such as the videos Variants are shown upon being arrested, the whole ‘Sacred Timeline’ thing, the Time Keepers being viewed as almost gods, and that when one of the TVA’s own minutemen is told the truth (C-20) she is, well, removed. The TVA views Variants as criminals of the highest order. How dare they violate the sacred timeline?!!? Only, no variant knew that what they were doing was wrong, or that it even mattered, but if you’re late to work on a day where you weren’t supposed to be, then you’re removed from your timeline and charged. The sentence? Essentially death, or removal of all your memories and being lied to about everything, which might be worse depending on your stance on that kind of thing.

Anyway, the minutemen themselves are another issue that the TVA has. They respond with violence at every available opportunity, like when a young french child from the 1500s walks into a church, the first thing a minuteman does is reach for his weapon. This is also the scene where we’re introduced to my favourite character, Mobius, but more on him later. For now, I need to stay on track and keep in mind this part of the view has to remain consistent. All I can think of are the nerds I split. It seems I have an inability to stay on topic, however, I’m gonna try so you have fun keeping up with that.

Loki stood trial for crimes against the Sacred Timeline and, like any logical person may in that situation, relentlessly questions the validity of his conviction. The answers he’s provided with he just,, kind of,, disagrees with, which is fair. The concept of the TVA and the sacred timeline as a whole is absurd to him, as who would a god serve?

Part one: Glorious Purpose

Loki, in his own words, it ‘Burdened With Glorious Purpose.’ I’m so glad no one but me is gonna read this draft cuz I managed to spell many of those words wrong. His glorious purpose, in his eyes, is becoming the ruler of all, removing free will and choice from those beneath him, in a twisted attempt to make it easy for all living things. He believes in free will, at least, the free will of himself, and also believes that, out of everyone in the universe, he is the one who is right, the one who can make the world better, that is his burden. Now, you may look at that and think, ‘hey, for a god of mischief, that doesn’t seem very mischievous,’ and you’d be right. It isn’t. He’s evil, like, without a doubt, an evil person in his ideals and views of the universe, however, the change from mischief to villainy was rapid, as it’s shown that he was D.B. Cooper, and, when asked, said it was because he was ‘young and lost a bet to Thor’, which, like, okay, but that was the 60s or something. 50 years aren’t a lot in the face of 1,500, but a lot can happen then

Part something: ethics

So, as you’ve probably gathered by now, I’m a pretentious asshole, and with that comes three years of philosophy classes and a superiority complex, though perhaps that comes from the whole leftist thing. Anyway, as per usual, I got sidetracked. I’m watching a really good video atm, so lots of things are happening in my head right now. Back to being pretentious, I’m going to be talking about ethics, fun, and how that relates to the TVA, the sacred timeline, Kang, sorry, he who remains. Regarding the whole Kang thing, I haven’t read a single Marvel comic since I was a member of the comic book club 4(???) years ago. Gods, I’m so old. Yup Percy Jackson took up too much of my childhood. Sidetracked again! I apologise, anyway, everything I know about Kang the Conqueror comes from Tumblr, so I’m not going to spend any time talking about any parts of the character that aren’t shown in the show. I really want to be writing about Doctor Who right now but I have my notes up so I’m gonna do this. Okay, right. Ethics. I hope I don’t go into free will right now because I will never stop going on about that. Anyway, let's look at the TVA, ignoring Kang, not for simplicity, but to see if the ends do in fact justify the means as Mobius said. And by that I mean, if what employees of the TVA think is true, are their actions justified? Finally got to the point, after how many words? Too many, anyway, let’s start from the start (kinda).

In an actual, proper, organised essay, I think that whole last paragraph was supposed to be 1 (one) sentence long, maybe. I have been writing year nine level essays for many years, despite not being in year nine for many, many years, so, be glad you’re reading something I’m interested in. Back to the topic at hand, please. Sorry I just got distracted again. I shouldn’t have Tumblr open atm. Anyway, what are the TVA’s means? So, I’ve already explained what the TVA is, and what it does, but let’s use a fun example to show what they really do. Imagine you’re a kid (or maybe you are a kid, so imagine you’re a younger one) and you just got home from school. You just made an awesome new friend who believes in you and loves your art. This sparks your interest in art, leading to countless pieces, days and days spent drawing and painting and having a great time. Your art begins to take hold on the world, speaking to people, letting them believe in themselves, thousands upon thousands of people inspired to start their own art, to rebel against the system of capitalism and teach people that there’s more to life than a job. This begins the global radicalisation of the working class, and with that, rebellion and the downfall of capitalism. I’m in a good mood rn, feeling optimistic, so don’t worry about what’s happening. Anyway, with the downfall of human exploitation and eradication of poverty comes a branch in the Sacred Timeline, and as the root of it is you as a child making a friend, your 5-year-old self just committed a crime that, according to the TVA, is worthy of what they believe to be actual death, like, being pruned.

Now, this was a very umm, off-the-top-of-my-head example, and entirely makes no sense, but give me two seconds and I’ll remember my original point. Right. The risk of allowing the downfall of capitalism is the end of all time. Always. Maybe? But, in the eyes of the TVA, kidnapping a 5-year-old, putting them through a dehumanising process to be shoved in a courtroom and being accused of crimes against the sacred timeline, and what was the crime? Making a goddamn friend. As a child. Being supported in art. Doing what you enjoy, destroying oppressive systems that will eventually be the downfall of us all and so entwined with all the problems in the world that any chance of saving it revolves around its deconstruction. I’ve been hunched over too long and my back is really starting to hurt, but the essay must go on. And remember, the domino effect of that friendship never actually happened. The timeline was pruned before it could happen, so the crime is literally making a friend. Very extreme example sorry, but shock makes your point go across faster, and also sparks outrage, which I don’t want to happen, but with doing literally anything comes backlash, like stepping on the wrong leaf, or a butterfly. I hope you guys know that this is unplanned and probably unedited. Okay I need to watch Pacific Rim again. Okay imagine now they kill the child. Right. That’s likely what would happen. Children are weak (usually, Sylvie is just on another level of awesome) [author’s note, Crimson Peak is a horror movie and I’m very upset by that cuz now I won’t be able to watch it]. Alright, so, kill a child, or destroy all of time. Always. Maybe. The way we see the TVA in the first two episodes is through Loki’s eyes, as a cult-like lie with a cool retro/futuristic aesthetic (like Doctor Who, but more on that later). I have been sitting here for 4 hours and I can confidently say my cat is an asshole whose sole purpose in life is to want to come in right when I’m in the middle of a point only to not want to come in but allow me to lose exactly what I was about to say, meaning I’ve gotten next to nothing done. Hi, I'm back. I got distracted by My Little Pony and Pacific Rim. And checkers. Issues with pacing? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Okay, so, I’m going to say something possibly controversial. When the stakes are the endings of the entirety of time, it’s okay to let a child die, and technically they might not die they’d just be sent to be either devoured the void or saved by a ragtag team of loki variants. Which is not great. That might sound like I agree with the TVA, but trust me, I do not. Not in the slightest. I hate the slimy bastards. (I do love every single character though, like all of them are awesome) The prickly pricks will bury us all!!! I don’t agree with them because I think there is a better way to handle the multiversal problem and the issue that arises regarding the particular cause of the multiversal war. That made no sense. You’re really just gonna have to guess at this point, however, for the solution, we must look into the finale and the reasoning behind He Who Remains’ plan. I said I wasn’t going to talk about him, but I lied (rule number one). Basically, from what I understood of his plan (which wasn’t much, I’m pretty stupid) was that there were two options; option number one was to leave him there, looking over all of time, preventing free will, so that the infinite variants of him that would come from timelines wouldn’t once again attempt to conquer all of the timelines (though if there are infinite ones, how would that work? Just kidding, you’re not allowed to question this). He dictates all. There’s no such thing as free will, and if you dare veer off the path, you will be pruned, and your timeline destroyed. His plan is to hand that power over to Loki and Sylvie, because he’s getting old and has lived long enough. The other option (and the one that’s taken in the show) is to allow Sylvie to kill He Who Remains and let the multiverse unfold, allow free will and chaos to reign, with the possibility and established likelihood of the destruction of time itself. Now, just putting this out here, what if there was a third option? My proposition is based of knowing next to nothing and not having seen Loki in a while, and that is,

[roseofithaca]

King Takes Knight

A quick Michael whump drabble mini-fic, written for catharsis sake. I’ve had a rough week.

TW: Captivity, torture, impaling.

His wrists are bound together behind his back, chains clamping tight around his skin, looped to a stake on the stage. He’s constantly hanging forward, feet impaled into the wood by rusty nails. The laughter had rippled around him when those had been hammered in, slow as fork, half a minute between each pound to give Michael a chance to appreciate the pain. Enough time for everyone to enjoy his groans.

At first he’d done his best not to give them the satisfaction. Demons fed off the sounds of misery. No, seriously, it’s like a vampire feeding off blood. It’s like their own crack cocaine. Michael had grown tired of the ‘kick’ many centuries ago. Why him? Why none of the others? Oh, right, of course. That’s the whole reason he’s here. It’s why he’s now the main, impromptu, attraction at this DemonCon.

He’s a freak.

That was always a fact, as much as he had tried to hide from it. Demons don’t collect human objects for a hobby unless its teeth or kidneys. Demons don’t binge watch human TV shows to help them fantasise about what it would be like to live the way they do, up above on Earth in the fresh air, with dating and parties and their own laugh track. Demons don’t get tired of what they were designed for; torture, maiming, eviscerating. For so long he told himself, It’s just a phase, a hyperfix, it will be pass, I just need something new....

The psychological experiment had worked. Until it hadn’t.

Now here he was. Still a freak, to them, more so than ever. He has no intention of running from it anymore. Not that he’ll be able to run or walk for a while now.

Sometimes they loosen the chain and one of them will yank it, making him crawl. Typically after they’ve smashed a broken bottle on the floor, open palms falling onto the scattered shards, trousers tearing at the knee as they cut in deep.

He’d barely felt anything the first time he’d noticed the crimson pooling beneath him. He had already worked out that they’d done something to heighten the pain receptors in his skin suit. But how could he have blood?

“Just an illusion, you tuft of pubic hair.” Shawn had snarled at him, disgusted at the curios look on his prisoner’s face; “You don’t get to have blue goo like a true demon. You’re an abomination. A holy spawn of Nothing.”

He’d have tried to give a snappy comeback, had they not threaded a steel wire through his lips. Michael almost took it with pride; as if Shawn was afraid to hear him talk after he’d given his speech before. Clearly it had him worried that he was losing control, that there may have been demons listening who agreed with him, who were believed it was time to change. Maybe Michael wasn’t the only freak. A small, foolish part of him held out hope it would be one of them who would try to free him.

Nothing yet. Maybe all his words fell on deaf, wicked ears. Maybe they had considered it, for a moment, before distracted by the new attraction of a Michael piñata to play with.

The remainders of his suit stick to burned, bruised and bloodied skin. His jacket is gone, one of the Trolls borrowed his bow-tie to use as a handkerchief so he doesn’t expect to see that again given their snot is acidic. He knows they’re working their way up to the penis flattener. Just his luck, he was just starting to get used to the weird hanging bits, even having the odd fantasy of how he might be able to use them...and now it seems the first bit of action they’re going to get is being slammed with a mallet. If given a choice, he might prefer to try the butthole spiders.

His vision fades in and out after taking several punches to the head from one of the Rock Giants. He’s sure his eye nearly popped out of its socket and his jaw is broken, barely held together by the metal in his lips. They all chant their names at him. Not just freak. Traitor. Weakling. Disgrace. Failure. Hopeless. Loser.

They want tears. They want him to break.

But he’s never felt more strong in his life...at least, for now.

He closes his eyes, swaying in his bonds, head rolling as the pain thumps through his skull. He can still hear Janet screaming his name. Her magnet-bound hands reaching out for him. Jason’s hands on her arms, his distraught face looking past his not-a-girlfriend as Michael shoved the handcart away as soon as the guards caught up with them.

“GO! NOW! DON’T COME BACK! DON’T RESET! JUST GET OUT!”

It was one of them or all of them. It had to be him.

This was all his fault, after all. Janet had been taken because he’d been foolish enough to underestimate his former colleagues. They’d failed to notice the imposter among them because Michael was too busy keeping all his anxieties over his own potential double to himself. Had he just told Eleanor and the others the truth about Shawn’s call from before the experiment, the reason for his ‘breakdown’ from the start, they might have known something was up. They might have known better than to let Janet get on that train alone. 

He might not have let everyone down.

Her hand grabs his wrist as they leave Mindy’s. He says nothing as Tahani and Jason continue to walk on ahead.

He turns around.

“Listen...about last night.” Eleanor looks up at him, taking a deep breath. He can see that she’s slept very little between the few hours they took to rest up and prepare for this journey, “The whole....trust issue dealy. I just wanted to say-.”

“It’s okay.” He raises his hand; “You don’t have to apologise.”

She blinks at him.

“Uhmm...Good, because I wasn’t gonna.”

Michael’s mouth forms a silent ‘Oh’. Why had he been expecting that? 

“I meant what I said, dude. I don’t know if I can ever trust you.” She tells him, straight; “I believe that you’re Michael and not Vicky, you proved that much. But, like I told Tahani, even if it is you, I don’t fully trust you. You know why right?”

He swallows, looking down at his shoes; “The lying...I know.”

He doesn’t try to excuse himself anymore. It was bad. That’s all there is.

“Not just the lying but the lying about the lying!” She berates him; “It has to stop! And don’t get me wrong, the whole offering to sacrifice yourself thing, that’s done you credit. I need you to keep that shirt up. I need to be sure that you understand how important this whole show we got going on is. Whole of humanity is riding on us beating Shawn and those goons. It’s more important for us to win this than worrying about just any one of us. Got it?”

He nods. Of course he’s got it. Does she still consider him a liability? Would she have preferred it if Jason hadn’t interrupted his attempt earlier?

No, he tries to reassure himself. She’s not being mean. She’s being a leader.

And she’s right.

“Got it, Boss.” He tells her, quietly, the shame still burrowing deep in his chest.

She gives him a small smile and bumps his arm with her first; “There! Glad we got that settled. Look, I just want my partner in running-fake-Heaven back at my side is all. Not hiding things from me or putting me through crab like you did last night.”

“I understand. I’m sorry.” Was he unreasonable to hope for an apology back?

He’ll never understand what it means to be human, he realises sadly.

“Apology accepted. Now go bring back our favorite not-a-robot or I’ll be demoting you to my personal shrimp-serving butler.” She teases with a twinkle in her eye as they continue their walk to the train station.

Michael laughs to himself, spluttering droplets of blood from his encased tongue, as her words ring in his ears. He hopes they win. He hopes he gets to see his friends one last time before they go to the Good Place, the real one, and he’s sent to...wherever. Hopefully somewhere nicer than here.

The more time passes, the more he’s beaten and scalded and whipped, the more he knows Janet has obeyed his request. They haven’t gone to the Judge. They’re carrying on the experiment, best as they can, with Chidi as their best chance to succeed as one of the subjects. He hears Shawn muttering one time about the train tunnel having mysteriously caved in.

Well done, Janet, old friend. Or was it Jason with his last molotov?

He knows they can do it without him. He believes in nothing else in this world except his incredible friends and their ability to save the forking world. 

They don’t need him...They have each other. And Eleanor.

His girl from Arizona. The only one who can take charge of this. The one who knows what is at stake and what needs to be done. There’s an odd tightness in his chest, which may be from where his fake ribs were crushed earlier, but may be something else. He can’t deny it...He misses being at her side, he misses watching her take charge, of being on her ‘team’, her...partner. Fork it, he doesn’t want to be sad about it. He doesn’t want to...

It’s his own fault that’s over. You ruined everything, y’know that?

“You’re thinking of her, aren’t you? Your favorite yellow cockroach.” Shawn whispers, appearing as a blur in the corner of his distorted eyesight; “Funny how they haven’t come for you. You and that idiot came for your Good Janet. But their own pet demon? So much for human friendship, huh.”

He closes his eyes tight. He doesn’t...want them to come.

His hair is grabbed, head pulled back, a small block of freezing ice pressed against his stomach. He moans into the wires. His natural fire-element essence is violently reacting to the cold. It’s worse than a thousand volts of electricity. 

“They left you, Mikey. They abandoned you to us.”

N-no...He chose to stay....He made them g-g-go...

“And don’t get me wrong, the whole offering to sacrifice yourself thing, that’s done you credit. I need you to keep that shirt up...”

And he did.

“It’s more important for us to win this than having to worry about just any one of us. Got it?”

Got it.

That’s why they haven’t come. They can’t throw away the progress they’ve made just to save him. They need to see it through till the end now. That’s all it is. Eleanor understands, he’s sure of it...It’s not because they don’t care...

The chill seeps into him. He feels parts of his goo crystalize sharply.

“I don’t think I can ever trust you.”

“Why don’t we just lock you up in Janet’s void?”

“Get out of here. You don’t get to be part of this.”

As the agony shoots through him, he blinks and he sees her. Staring at him. Uncertain, afraid, but silent. Complicit in his fate, if it’s for the greater good. No longer hers to worry about. No longer a distraction from what’s truly important - would she react the same if it was Chi-? No, stop it! Don’t! 

Shawn moves away with the ice block and Michael sags against the stake.

“Ahh...Would you look at that.”

A finger reaches out to graze Michael’s cheek, picking off a tiny frozen droplet on his cheek. Fork. How long had he been crying? He didn’t want to give them that satisfaction!

Shawn puts it between his lips and smiles; “Mmmm, not bad. Not as salty as human tears. Let’s see if I can get you to fill my glass.”

Michael glares at him now, shaking roughly. Shame quickly simmers into a flash of rage before his old boss slams the ice block against him again. He screams.

Fork, fork, fork. This has to be worth it.

If it’s the only way he can prove, without a doubt, he’s on their side...That he wants nothing but to be worthy to be her ‘partner’ again...To be wanted...Forgiven?

Win, you guys. If he can ask for nothing else, do this for him. Please, damn it...Win.

[razanartuk]

about me tag game thing

i was tagged by the wonderful @nothingunrealistic! thank you very much ily <3

under read more bc i was not capable of keeping my answers brief this time around

why did you choose your url?

this...was supposed to be a short explanation but it turned into quite a tale so strap in i guess because we are going on a ride. back in 2017 i was just getting into musical theatre rp and i was still feeling too shy to really talk to anyone ooc so i would just wait for people i wanted to interact with to post starter calls so i could just do things in character with them the easy way. So i did this with my friend cam, who posted a starter for me using a lyric from If I Could Tell Her. she linked the song so i could listen to it, so i did and i went ‘wait a minute, is that Ben Platt from Pitch Perfect?? (and other things too, but i only recognized his voice at the time bc of the acappella girl movies)’ and yes it certainly was.

i had zero idea what the plot of Dear Evan Hansen was about at that point, and for some reason based off Just That One Song and the poster art of who i assumed was Some Guy in a Polo Shirt i started to think it was about some jock guy who broke his arm and had an emo/goth friend who had either died or gone missing under mysterious circumstances. also i intuited that Evan had a crush on his friend’s sister but he couldn’t tell her that directly or his emo friend would kick his ass. so i was like mostly wrong, but a little bit right.

oh and i knew jared and alana were characters from the show bc cam said that they were i think?? but i had no idea what their role was. so after listening to if i could tell her, i listened to good for you and all i really got out of that was that evan the apparently not-jock guy had done...something... that really hurt jared and alana. and at that point i finally decided to go look up a plot synopsis and i found out i was waaay off base. but honestly this is why cast recordings should include scene dialogue in the songs bc otherwise you just get soundtracks like dear evan hansen where the songs have like. zero context. we really just go from waving through a window to for forever to sincerely me without like. any reason as to what is happening huh. It’s honestly not a surprise anymore that all those people on twitter had no idea the plot isn’t about gay teenagers.

anyways. cam was writing jared and she made a post at one point about wishing somebody would write alana and i was like ‘oh i could do that!’ (after i had actually Seen a bootleg and finally knew what the whole story was, of course) so i made a multimuse rp blog featuring alana beck, nabulungi hatimbi, chloe valentine and some other characters, and cam started sharing her headcanons with me that alana is trans, jared and alana were close friends when they were little kids but they sort of drifted apart as they got older and their priorities in life changed, jared was the first person alana came out to when she realized she’s trans, etc.

one night i started talking about wanting to pick a more theatre-relevant url for my blog and trans-[character name] urls were getting pretty popular, and at least 3 of the friends i made through rp had changed theirs to coordinating trans-[character name] and i think it was cam suggested i should make mine be trans-alana so i did. eventually i realized the unhyphenated version was available so i changed it to transalana with no hyphen and i have lived here ever since. sometimes i think about changing it but i feel like transalana has become a part of My Brand and i am not so great with coming up with cool names for things.

any side blogs? if you have them, name them and why you have them

in theory, i have sideblogs... i don’t really use them, but of the ones i do have, there is:

emsbookblog - this was supposed to be where i would post excerpts of the book that i’m working on, but i think i did that maybe one time roughly 2 years ago and then promptly forgot about it/got nervous about my writing and was scared to share anything else. the rest of the stuff that is there is assorted writing tips. i don’t really know what to do with it now. i probably should post all my little thoughts about em and anita and caleb there instead of infodumping on my main from time to time, but if i do that then i have to promo a sideblog and direct people over to it which is always annoying to me when i could just do it on this blog which is much easier

dearnovelhansen - this is basically no longer used, but was a sideblog i made specifically to talk/complain about the novel adaptation of Dear Evan Hansen which was about 3 years ago?? maybe? i can’t be trusted to understand the passage of time. but to summarize: i thought it was an honor just to have the story be made more accessible since many of us couldn’t see the stage performance, but i hated a lot of the creative liberties that were taken. my main grumbles are that everyone who isn’t evan or connor is done so dirty in the novel. connor’s still kind of done dirty in the book, but not as much as like. heidi, alana, jared, and zoe are.

horseisle3 - this one was meant to be a place where i could just enthusiastically post screenshots from hi3, but instead it turned into a blog where i occasionally reblog other players’ hi3 content and bitch about how bad the game admins are bc hi3 is the tumblr famous (infamous?) homophobic horse game. the game where it was once okay to call your club store the gulag bc according to their head of hr, ‘it’s just a russian word for prison’ but you can’t say ‘im gay’ without somebody accusing you of corrupting young children who play the game. unfortunately there aren’t very many good interactive horse games out there, so this one is still about as good as it gets. it’s either that or star stable and i don’t care about star stable.

mlaenie - i’ve had this url saved for i don’t even know how long. way way way back in the day when i wanted to escape from the clutches of the onceler fandom i abandoned my first blog where i basically had an alter ego i guess?? and i decided to just be myself on the new blog. i don’t fully remember who came up with it, but one of my sister’s mutuals suggested that if you scrambled the letters in your name you could come up with aesthetic-looking urls. so lauren’s url became lrauen, and to match with her mine became mlaenie, which i abandoned on tumblr after about a year or so? but have continued to use as my main username on twitter, reddit, youtube, xbox, steam, and discord. i barely ever use any of these accounts aside from twitter, steam, and xbox, but yeah. so i’ve decided to try and turn this empty sideblog into a place for video game thoughts maybe. we’ll see how long it lasts this time around.

how long have you been on tumblr?

i made my first tumblr account in december of 2010, but i didn’t understand how to use it at all or how to customize my theme to look cool and unique so i quickly abandoned it. i made a new account in september of 2011 after some kids at school and my sister told me i should and i have been trapped here with varying degrees of activity/inactivity ever since. i have witnessed the rise and fall of the lorax/onceler fandom, hyperfocused on lord of the rings, star wars and back to the future all at the same time, and for the past 4 years i’ve mostly been a musical theatre blog with assorted other fandom stuff mixed in. i feel i have seen everything and nothing, but mostly i’m just tired and bored.

do you have a queue tag?

no bc i don’t use a queue. i’ve tried using it in the past but i irrationally feel pressured to sustain a coherent theme to queued posts and my brain simply does not vibe with that so i just don’t use it at all anymore. Instead i instantly reblog or post several unrelated thoughts in succession and then don’t post again at all for 3 days. the way god intended

why did you start your blog in the first place?

my very first blog was intended to be a place for me to post all of my petz 5 animals’ profile info, but i didn’t have any understanding of how coding worked at all and i don’t think i really wanted to learn, either. so it just sat there, unused. my second attempt at blogging was as a classic rock fandom person, so as you can probably imagine i was pretty pretentious about ‘modern pop’ vs the beatles, the rolling stones, the who, the monkees, and so on. and then i slowly devolved into a lorax fandom blog and everything went to shit so i made a new blog for lord of the rings/the hobbit which later evolved to include star wars and back to the future blogging. and then for the past 4 years i’ve been mainly a musical theatre blog with other random stuff i like thrown haphazardly into the pot. wonderful.

why did you choose your icon/pfp?

because my url is transalana and two of my most prominent lgbt headcanons are that alana beck is trans and a lesbian. i gotta be shouting out @kinqmike though bc she’s the one i adopted the trans alana beck headcanon from in the first place!

why did you choose your header?

in 2017 i was hyperfixating on Dear Evan Hansen (and Be More Chill, but there weren’t many gif-able videos then considering it ran for a month in New Jersey in 2015 and there was only one yet-to-resurface 35 minute bootleg) so i just grabbed a random gif off of google. i really should get to replacing it with a new header of my own though. i just don’t know what i should do for it.

what’s your post with the most notes?

i have lost track of how many notes it has (i think it’s somewhere around 200 now?) but when Will Roland and George Salazar performed Two Player Game on Good Morning America, i posted a screencap of their Jeremy and Michael along with that one quiz answer meme that says stuff like ‘i want to see it grow up healthy’. i didn’t tag it with any ship names or anything because i was anxious about having it show up in the tags, but somebody who reblogged it from me did tag it as boyf riends and i firmly believe it took off because of that. i don’t think i make posts that are relevant enough to amass thousands of notes, even by accident. which is probably a good thing bc if i did i would have to block so many of them.

how many followers do you have?

on this blog? 175 according to the counter. how many of those are still real people and how many are bots and abandoned accounts? i have no idea.

how many people do you follow?

i try to keep it somewhere around 200. i think i’m sitting at 180 right now but i kind of need to go through and clear out the really inactive blogs.

have you made a shitpost?

let’s think about this for a second. i’ve been on tumblr for nearly 10 years. you might even be able to say i’ve made more than one. they’re just not what you would call...popular shitposts.

how do you feel about ‘you need to reblog this’ post?

that stuff makes me so incredibly anxious that i have to fight the urge to want to yeet my laptop or mobile device through the closest window whenever i read it, so i try very hard to avoid any sort of ‘if you don’t reblog this, i’m judging you’ posts. i find them very manipulative and not particularly helpful

do you like tag games?

yeah babey!! i just frequently forget to do them, but please know that if you have ever tagged me in a tag game i felt incredibly touched by the gesture and the @mention even if i completely forgot to do the thing afterward

do you like ask games?

i do! but also rip to literally anyone who has ever sent me an ask meme bc it takes me so long to answer them. i’m still working on a micro fic prompt from a few weeks ago. also, horrified to realized that it has in fact been a few weeks and not 3 days anymore.

which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?

i don’t know that any are tumblr famous as a whole. but probably @neverheardnothing

do you have a crush on a mutual?

in any sort of romantic connotation? no. not that i’m aware of. there are mutuals that i have friend crushes on where i want to be friends with them but i get so anxious when it comes to meeting new people that usually nothing ever comes of it. i’m really not good at small talk or other casual conversation either which, as you may or may not be able to imagine, sucks. i just wanna skip over all of the awkward introductions and ‘hey how are you, how is life, what are you doing with yourself?’ stuff. not because i don’t care about it. i do, but i think most of my friends/the people i want to be my friends are also depressed and anxious so asking these basic questions about life tends to uh. make us all nervous. and i don’t do much with my life so i always have the most boring answers anyways.

i’m not tagging anyone officially bc the @ thing has just completely given up on me at this point, but if you want to do it, go for it. and then say i tagged you so i can read it c:

[happymeishappylife]

DC CW Shows

I finally caught up on all the DC Universe shows. Quite an accomplishment for me considering I was 2 seasons behind. It feels good to finally get caught up to speed, but some of them are starting to feel like chores getting through them, rather than fun entertainment. A concern that gets amplified by the fact that the producers want to add on 2 more shows to the line up. So I felt like it was a good idea to breakdown my thoughts on each of the shows and what I liked/didn’t like. Plus then I will break down my thoughts on Crisis, because I have a lot of them. I’ll also rank these as I go as far as which ones I liked best, beginning with least to best. So let’s begin:

#7 - The Flash

I used to love this show so much. The first two seasons were a lot of fun and I loved all the characters so much. Thanks to the writing though, I can’t honestly say I don’t like this show much at all anymore and that’s kinda sad. Part of the reason is it became soooo angsty. Like the reason The Flash was great, was it was the antithesis to the angst on Arrow which made it so refreshing to watch. Now it’s like everyone must suffer some sort of pain over the tiniest things or worse, they become entrapped in characters and situations like its been haunting them for years when it only got introduced a couple episodes ago. At this point the only characters I care about are Caitlyn/Frost, Joe and Cecile West, Wally (when he’s on, which is like never), and Ralph. And that’s painful that Hartley won’t be returning to fill that role anymore because he was the only one who still could joke and laugh around like old Team Flash.

Season 5: Overall season 5 had a pretty solid storyline despite some of the angsty writing. After a while though I got pretty sick of fighting Chicada over and over again, especially Grace’s version. My one big pet peeve with it though was the relationship of Nora to Barry and Iris. I’m sorry. I can’t honestly picture any 20-30 something meeting their adult daughter and automatically assuming the role of an actual parent and treating her like a preteen. That always felt super weird and uncomfortable. Not to mention it happened almost automatically with little to no hang ups on ‘is this really our kid? Should we trust her?’ Plus then it created angst between Barry and Iris which I’m really over at this point in the series because their relationship was never my favorite to begin with.

Season 6: A hot mess. Granted, because of Crisis and Covid-19, the season probably didn’t get a fair chance to play out to it’s full potential. But cutting the season into two arcs didn’t do it any justice. Especially because instead of having character growth, I felt like a lot of the characters regressed. Take Barry for instance. The whole first part of the season is him prepping/training the team to take over for him after Crisis since he believes he is going to die. Only when he doesn’t, he assumes the role of leader still without actually leading. He stops telling his team members key details and putting aside the fact he killed the speed force, he stopped being a hero. The whole fight scene with Mirror-Iris, was so bizarre to watch. Yes, Barry would never hurt the real Iris, but she’s not and instead he just stands there and gets stabbed over and over, crying at the end that she’s not there. It’s really hard to watch.

#6 - Arrow

Arrow used to be in my top 3 slots as last I left it. The storylines were still on point. But leading up to Crisis and the show ending, there were some things that worked for me and some that didn’t. Still, kudos to the team for standing their ground and saying that we’ve told all we can tell, let’s put this show to bed and give it a close it deserves. It made the ending super emotional, but at the same time satisfying despite, Oliver’s death in the universe. My only complaint is the fact that the producers can’t put it fully to bed and now want to reboot Arrow all over again with Mia and the canaries. Don’t get me wrong watching strong women take more of the leading roles is awesome, but not to tell and retell the same storylines.

Season 7: The first half of the season when Oliver was in Iron Heights was not my favorite. Mainly because as it continues to develop it was like all the reasons he got put in Iron Heights to begin with no longer mattered. Diaz is still on the lose, he’s still playing his games in prison, and really what was the point? Now the second half of the season where we focus on his rehabilitation into society and working with the SCPD to track and take down his sister Emiko, was actually good. Too bad it got horribly overshadowed by a time travel flash-forward storyline to introduce and make us care about Mia.

Season 8: Obviously this season was the closeout season and the season leading up to Crisis. But I liked the way they treated it. They gave cameo spots and guest starring spots to former faces like Thea (she’s still freaking awesome), Tommy, Moira, and even Merlyn came back. My only complaint was that all of sudden we did have another time travel situation on our hands to meet our future kids. Thankfully I felt Arrow overall took that development better than the Flash, which since that was only a couple episodes and not a season, says something about the writing. Plus the post-Crisis pilot for the Green Arrow and Canaries felt a little out of place given everything that happened and a little insulting.

#5 - Supergirl

There’s parts of Supergirl I still absolutely love to pieces and the writing that are still doing it the justice that started the show by telling storylines of not only heroism, but commentary on today’s events to help push for progress. I love the whole cast of characters and think the acting has been great. My only complaint is with Season 5 and the fact that the show is beginning to find its tipping point of being less than stellar. I mean, I still enjoy it, but it’s beginning to show its where and tear so I’m worried what’s going to happen as it continues forward. Especially as it gets hyperfixated on Lex Luthor, who don’t get me wrong is a fabulous villain, but isn’t that Superman’s arch nemesis, not Supergirl’s?

Season 4: What a great commentary to tell throughout the season that parallels the feelings and conversations being had about immigration in our own world. I thought the idea of the Alien Amnesty Act squaring off against Ben Lockwood and his Agents of Liberty was not only great commentary but great story telling. I also loved that we got to introduce Nia Nall into the series because she’s fantastic and has become one of my favorite characters. I even love the twist reveal of how Ben Lockwood isn’t the enemy, it’s really Lex Luthor and his communist Supergirl clone. Plus Jon Crier plays an amazing Lex Luthor.

Season 5: Don’t get me wrong, the stakes and the storylines with Leviathan and Obsidian North, I do think are important and worth telling, but they detracted from the main storyline that developed at the end of last season which was Lena and Kara’s new relationship. Yes, it was still hit on and explored, but by far that was the storyline I was interested in seeing the most, not Ramah Khan or Virtual Reality horror stories. Also, while I like Lex, thanks to his antics during Crisis, the second half of the season felt hijacked and became this witch hunt. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to see what he and Lillian are doing, but I wish it played out more in the shadows and less of the actual screen time. I’m also glad Lena is back on Kara’s side again. But Brainy better not be dead! He’s one of my favorites even if his motives during this season were hard to watch.

#4 - Batwoman

I actually really, really, really liked Batwoman’s first season. Getting to know the badass that is Kate Kane and watch the horror’s of Gotham play out week to week was such a refreshing change of pace. After all, The Flash and Supergirl are undeniably heroes and must carry those burdens(?) as they fight for truth and justice. And Oliver was a vigilante, but while he took down drug lords, weapons dealers, etc. the stakes of being a vigilante in Star City is nothing compared to wearing the cape in Gotham. I loved the cast and seeing the stories play out of their past and how they connect to each other and also how some of them discover who Batwoman is, was fantastic. Even as creepy as Alice is, I enjoyed seeing the performance of the completely unhinged and psychotic villain take the stage to play out her twisted fantasies. I also appreciate the openness that Kate brought to being an out and proud lesbian, even revealing her super identity to a teenager to prove that it does get better and lesbians can be awesome is super freaking powerful. I even like that with the shortened season, it didn’t feel like we got robbed of an awesome storyline, but now we get to why this ranks fourth on my list instead of higher: Ruby Rose left the show and we get a whole new Batwoman. I get that this is out of the hands of the producers and the writers and I am super sad to see her go. But its hard not to feel like we lost a whole season of introduction and development to just reset and begin again. I’m not sure how they will handle it, but I do hope that a lot of the cast stays and stays in their roles. Especially Luke and Mary who are a great team. Mary is also like my all time, instant-favorite character because not only is she super wicked smart, but she has so much humanity in her so I hope she still continues on the show.

#3 - Stargirl

 Yes, yes, this show is still airing which is why I can’t speak to the overall season arc in finality yet, but I absolutely have been loving this first season. Again, what a refreshing new reality to step into and what a great new storyline to pursue. This rag-tag group of teenagers becoming the new Justice Society of America is a fun telling and already, the stakes of the Injustice Society are so high! Like I was expecting that it was going to be like the other shows where slowly by slowly we meet all the bad guys in different seasons, but instead it feels a little flipped since we don’t have all our new heroes on the stage yet. Still I love Courtney and her relationship with Pat as she discovers these secrets of his past and their new home of Blue Valley. I love her recruiting reasoning to bring Yolanda and Rick into this crazy plan and even her acceptance of Beth becoming the new Doctor Midnight. Plus, the show keeps surprising me because on one hand, giving these teenagers these powers to help them redeem their self esteem is a great storyline, which is why I was expecting them to force us to like Cindy since the beginning of that episode was leading up to maybe becoming friends with her, but no. Turns out she is the super bitch and super villain of the show and that’s kinda awesome. Also I like how because their teenagers, their secret identities aren’t really that secret, which makes it’s kinda fun, but also dangerous. We’ll see how the last 3 episodes play out, but I can’t wait.

#2 - Black Lightening

Talk about real gritty, dark, and powerful storytelling. I enjoyed the first season, but these last two have been a real punch in the gut in good ways and the writers have been outdoing themselves to provide heartfelt, real, honest emotions and discussions to the world of superheroes, compared to the other shows. And it’s hard, but the gruesome nature of the show also highlights some of the real struggles going on in the Freeland Community which of course highlights the issues in our own world around the Black Community. The whole spinal chord ripping scene will haunt me forever and not only because they keep replaying it, but because of how insane that was. The cast is also great and I love that at the end of Season 3, it’s not just a family of super heroes, but a group of powerful metas squaring off against the government and the most dangerous threat of all so far: Gravedigger. Gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.

Season 2: Now that the whole family knows the stakes of what they have gotten themselves into with Tobias and revealing the girls have power, I love the way we got introduced to the ASA and the pod kids as a menial threat while still struggling to take down the perceived ‘bigger threat’ that is Tobias. Jennifer also having trouble coming to terms with her powers and how to use them I think was a great way to explore that not everyone wants to be a superhero, especially in antithesis to Nyssa who is a full on badass as Thunder and Blackbird. Watching Khalil’s story in this go from obedient lap dog to a runaway and finally a victim of Tobias’ violence was hard, but I felt was justified throughout and made him that character you want to root for, even when not everything he’s done has been great.

Season 3: What a harsh turn of direction. A full on occupation of Freeland, house arrest, killings on the street, and an underground railroad of metas or suspected metas completely changed the tune of this show. Watching each of the Peirces struggle to find out who the ASA is, what their doing, if their actions are justified and if the Marcovian threat was real was really fascinating to watch. The showdown with the Marcovians too with a whole team behind them was also a nice change of pace, even if their mission didn’t end the way they expected. I think the amplified stakes though of what happened and what’s to come will continue to develop into an incredible show, minus one now big problem I have, but I will detail that out below when we talk about Crisis.

#1 - Legends of Tomorrow

You can fight me, but Legends of Tomorrow is the best goddamn shown on this network for one simple fact: They don’t take themselves seriously. There is no real angst and because of that it makes the adventures so fun and so hilarious that its such a great break from all of the other shows. Plus, because they keep swapping new and old cast members into the show, it always feels new. Kinda that Doctor Who spirit, which I love. That and because there are hardly any rules to a time travelling group of heroes who don’t really want to be heroes, you get ridiculously themed episodes like Bollywood Musical or TV Crossovers. It is what makes the show a total blast.

Season 4: As the team gears up to track down magical creatures throughout history, you get the introduction of permanent team member, John Constantine who I freaking love for his cool, aloof character and yet sarcastic and sassy contrast to the sunshine and bro-squad that is Ray and Nate. I also love that the season not only was about capturing these magical creatures, but fully rehabilitating Norah Dhark into a good guy now accidentally turned fairy godmother. To be honest, I definitely did not see that one coming. I like that fighting the demon lord also helped transition the show from Season 4 to 5 to fight hell spawn creatures. Quite a leap from the original Legends concept, but again that’s what makes this show so fresh.

Season 5: Part of the other fun of Legends is getting to see old characters get reinvented. I loved the storyline with Charlie and her reveal to be Clothos, one of the 3 fate sisters and the reason the ancient loom got destroyed. I also loved Tala Ashe’s portrayal of Zari in a different timeline because the difference between tech-geek, super smart Zari and social influencer extraordinaire Zari were well done. Plus we got another awesome bro-squad member in Behrad who I hope sticks around for a while. The only bummer was saying goodbye to Ray Palmer. Ray has been one of my favorite characters in the Arrow-verse and seeing his exit was sad and partly because I think it could have been handled better. Like don’t get me wrong, seeing him have to get approval from Damian Dhark to marry Nora was entertaining and I’m glad he isn’t dead like Dr. Stein or Leonard Snart, but I just feel like the exit was a bit rushed. The good news is, it opens the door for Ray to return and I hope we get to seem in the future.

Alright...... To end this long spiel, let’s talk about Crisis on Infinite Earths and what that now means for all these shows. Because unfortunately.... it can’t be ignored. And I’m sorry to sound pessimistic, but to be honest, Crisis wasn’t my favorite story and was too hyped for the end result.

The only show who came out better for Crisis, in my opinion, was Arrow. Mainly because the story of Oliver’s last sacrifice to reboot the universe was the only one that made complete sense and doesn’t complicate the show after it happens. Granted it could be because it was used as the show’s exit, but still. I used to love crossover episodes and getting the whole team together, but now because there is soooo much going on in each show and such a large cast, these big multi-night and multi-universe shows just feel scattered because you are constantly hopping around and between each of the characters and all the individual storylines don’t matter. Like remember when Barry and Oliver would actually talk about what they were up against? Miss that. That and Oliver, Barry, and Kara stole the show even when it was other shows turn to shine. Like Kate was hardly in it, even in her own episode and the Legends weren’t in it at all. It was just Sara and Ray which was disappointing because as Crisis was their season opener, you missed a real chance to have the Legends save the day. Don’t get my wrong, there were some great moments during crisis and I liked the nod to past versions of the DC characters, including Brandon Routh getting to play Superman again, but overall it just made chaos for things that don’t make sense post-crisis.

Like yay, all our favorite heroes are in one place and created the justice league to help each other, but once Crisis is over, nope sorry, no one can be bothered to borrow a hero friend. Like that makes sense for some shows, Batwoman for instance isn’t that close to everyone and her storyline is so rooted in her own family drama, that ignoring the other supers made sense. The Flash’s stakes weren’t high enough to involve anyone else, so fine. And Legends of course travel through time and so aren’t around, fine. But Supergirl’s takedown of a longstanding secret group of people capable of bending Earth’s elements to create catastrophic events, isn’t enough to at least reach out to Cisco or Luke for help tracking them? That seems underwhelming. Plus where are the aliens in all the other cities now? Or the metas in National City? That’s a pet peeve, but more so because of the biggest twist in Crisis:

Pulling Black Lightening into the Arrowverse. Like the shows writers and producers, I think Black Lightening works better outside the Arrowverse which was the intent and goal from the get go. Pulling Jefferson Pierce’s family and world into the same Earth as all the other shows, no longer makes the shows storytelling as strong and maybe it was because this was a last minute decision, but there is just no justification post Crisis as to why they had to come in. I mean, The Flash and Black Lightening have metas related issues, you would think that alone would be a prime source of teaming up. Especially when Cisco goes out on a worldwide quest to document metas, you’re telling me skipped over Freeland? And where’s our favorite Kyrptonian to fight for truth, justice, and the American way as Freeland is being occupied by the ASA? Oh, what too busy going after Lex Luthor? Sorry, I’m not buying that Kara Danvers ignores racial injustice. Like I get that maybe it was a way to be able to use Black Lightening later in cross-over events, but the fallout from bringing them in this season with everything going on is a huge mistake in my opinion. And heck, having shows exist outside each other is probably a good thing. Too many and these crossover events don’t feel fun anymore, they just feel chaotic. I think I’m with the Legends on this one: the crossovers aren’t worth it anymore.

[ineffablefool]

I got an ask which I have decided to respond to anonymoosely, because I can.

I just read your post about Fat Aziraphale and how it made you feel better - I'm trying to use Aziraphale to convince my wife (also fat) that really, she's wonderfully friend- and wife-shaped and people find her pleasant to look at.

Oof.  This kind of situation is such a hard one to be in, for all parties concerned, because we’re all stewing in nigh-constant fatphobic garbage, and almost no fat person, no matter how good their self-esteem, can ignore that garbage 100% of the time.  So the person feels bad because they don’t look the way someone else decided they should look, and the people who care about them feel bad because, well, they care.  Just yuck all around.

I have Thoughts on this, and I figured I’d put ‘em on the blog.  They are not specific to asker, especially since asker didn’t ask for advice.  Asker can totally ignore me if they like, that’s fine.  But now the Thoughts will Live on the Blog.  Oh -- and I use “fat” as a neutral descriptor throughout all this.  Not “plus-sized” or “larger” or the o word which I hate with the blue-hot screaming fire of an oxyacetylene torch of rage.  Fat.  Simple term to contrast with thin in the same way tall contrasts with short.  I like simple.

(this gets exceptionally long without being the least bit organized)

Disclaimer, I am not an expert in anything except being me.  But that means I’m an expert in being a fat human, and one who ID’d as female for over 30 years and still gets read as female 99.44% of the time (women get hit harder with this crap), and one who has done a lot of thinking about this whole mess.  So maybe that will be useful to someone.

And I don’t know if this is ever a “convince” sort of thing.  I think it’s more a “come to realize, slowly, over time, with a lot of work and hopefully support”.  (Asks aren’t the best place to craft the very finest of language, so I know there’s a lot of wiggle room in the meaning of “convince” in the ask that spurred this post, but again, I’m taking this more general.  )  It’s very hard to show a fat person your inner understanding of them as a whole and wonderful and important human being. This is because we get so many little reinforcements, day in and day out, that being fat is inherently bad, and that we are inherently bad if we are fat.  It creates a narrative which hits us from almost every conceivable angle, and it can feel very, very convincing.  (Read this 2010 post by Ragen Chastain if you want to be sad.  I’m not saying her results are typical, because her work involves dealing with fatphobia, but I am saying that if any of us sat down to do this math, we are not likely to be happy about whatever result we do get.)

So it’s a bunch of little things needed to turn things around, and it’s over a period of potentially years, and it’s the fat person in question having both the willingness and the energy to put in a bunch of boring yucky work.

Positive representation is a huge part of it, though.  It builds a new narrative.  It gives examples of fat people accomplishing things, creating things, living and having fun and just actually being people.  Of fat people being loveable, and loved, although that’s not the most important part.  I focus on it in the Good Omens hyperfixation part of my life, because my hyperfixation is completely around a romantic Aziraphale/Crowley relationship, but being a valid romantic partner is not nearly as important as all that other stuff (hi my aro and ace people you are not forgotten).  And I’ve seen a bunch of posts by people talking about how Sheen’s Aziraphale, and the fandom response to the character, have helped with their own self-esteem -- because it’s the new narrative.  It’s not “this character is (barely, if you squint, but we’ll let it ride for a sec) fat, and therefore bad or the butt of a joke or less than the thinner characters”.  It’s “this character is fat and important and loved”.  Type of love is up for all of us to decide per Mr. Gaiman, but you don’t get to argue the love.  Aziraphale’s appearance has nothing to do with his value as a human-like entity.  He’s literally tied with Crowley for most important character, given that the show has been reframed from the book to both begin and end with our ineffable duo (plus the emphasis given by the Hard Times cold open).

Sharing that new narrative with the important fat person in one’s life can be one very small part of helping them unlearn the old narrative.  If it helps, I kinda not-officially-but-it-works-out-that-way curate fatter-versions-of-Aziraphale artwork in my fat positivity tag, along with all the other fat-positive stuff that runs through my blog.  (I don’t think there’s any fics in that tag besides mine, just commentary, but I can’t remember right now.)

Over on my other Tumblr account, I follow a bunch of fat-positive blogs, although I haven’t refreshed the list in a while (I just... don’t need it as much as I used to, which is fascinating, now that I think about it), and some of them have gone dormant.  But I can recommend, in no particular order, fuckyeahfatpositive, ok2befat, and fatqueerlove (assuming the person IDs as/is comfortable with the label “queer”) for the more affirmation side of things (though there’s some activism mixed in); and bigfatscience, the-exercist, and fatphobiabusters for the more activism side of things (debunking bad science and fatphobic myths; speaking out against fatphobia in medicine, legislation, reporting, and wherever else it shoves its ugly head out from its troll-cave). The Fat Nutritionist hasn’t updated in a year, but she still has lots of good stuff up. thisisthinprivilege is... hard to read, sometimes, and I think it’s better for after you’re energized and angry about the garbage you’ve been taught.

(If anyone gets through this ridiculously long post and knows of other good resources for that last paragraph, by the way, I’d love to hear about ‘em.)

But it takes the fat person actually seeking out the new narrative, and shoving fat-positive content and mindsets into their eyeballs and brainpan, for there to be a real change, I think.  And that’s the boring yucky work part.  A lot of people find that they can’t really pull their thoughts out of the old track and into the new one without getting some help from a therapist -- and therapists are great and there’s nothing wrong with going to therapy, I see a therapist every two weeks myself -- but therapy takes time and money and energy and a therapist you can actually work with.  Not everyone has all four of those things.

It’s also important to not draw any lines when trying to communicate to one’s important fat person that they are, in fact, important and worth whatever kind of love it is that one has for them.  No “you’re not actually that fat” (how will they feel if they gain more weight later?).  No “at least you’re healthy” (how will they feel if they become unhealthy?).  No “but you carry it well” or other variations on “at least you’re not one of the ugly ones” (how will they feel if their appearance changes later?).

If there’s a line, then your important fat person always has to be careful not to cross it.  Don’t imply to them that there is actually an appearance-related condition to your love for them, and they just luckily haven’t failed you yet.  If there actually is such a condition, maybe sit down and have a few deep thoughts with yourself.

Plus, speaking personally, I am “that fat”, and I’m not 100% healthy, and I carry it weird and am really-weird looking.  And I don’t appreciate being thrown under the bus so someone can tell someone else “at least you’re not one of those, you know, the fat people who aren’t valid and important human beings”.  So nobody ever do that.  Please.

Final words to my unhealthy, or really really fat, or weird-shaped or just plain ugly-by-current-common-standards fat people out there -- i got u fam.  You’re all valuable and important and I love you.  And you’re all doing, or going to do, amazing things, because doing amazing things has precisely jack to do with the amount or positioning of fat upon your very important and inherently worthy human self.

That’s all!  If you made it this far, then you get this link to a photo of a cute bearded dragon in a hat, if you’d like to click it.  I follow william-snekspeare on my other account and have commissioned him for artwork twice now and he is an absolute dear.

And I hope asker’s wife has a good body image day tomorrow.

[starfaring-princelotor]

Allura.... Allura is fucking racist how did I not even think about this before??? I mean, I get it, they destroyed her planet and her kingdom her father all of that, but she pins the actions of a single man with a group of followers on an entire fucking race. Like, Keith revealed to be galra? Nothing about him has changed except some new info arrived, but that has always been there, just unknown. I honestly cant stand allura....

Rather annoying, is it not? I wonder why she gets easily overlooked for her racist tendencies? Everyone is a little racist in the show, but DW doesn’t sugar coat her acts towards the Galra. Either through Keith, the BOM, and myself included, it is pretty obvious she holds us in something worse than contempt. Canon is simply a mess, but allow me to share with you a way Allura could have changed for the better. Let me see. Who else had the biggest influence on her in regards to the Galra and someone who she looked up to for the majority of her life?

King Alfor.

Before I continue, I should caution those who are hardcore Allura stans, whether fanon or canon, that you may not like what you read if you wish to continue. Especially if you view Allura as perfect and who grew for the better, for this talks more into exposing her flaws and criticizing DW for coding her as racist.

Also, big thank you to @legendofcarl for beta reading this. 

Many times throughout the earlier seasons, she states over and over again how her father sought peace and was a virtuous, intelligent leader. She was mostly riding his coattails and name dropping, though that does not mean she was wrong to be inspired by him or reignite hope in others with his title alone. In fact, it is a good thing to have a mentor.

Allura knows he messed up, as his AI even stated, and she understands that his mistake cost many lives. She put a lot of effort to fix her father’s mistake, an honorable goal and, ultimately, done out of revenge, too. A huge responsibility was placed on her shoulders as a Princess, daughter of King Alfor, the “last” living Altean of the universe.

However, let us take a step back and look at King Alfor from a larger point of view.

Coran explains the history of Voltron. He first starts out with a very important fact:

“In the beginning, the paladins were just five leaders, who despite coming from cultures which were vastly divergent, and in some cases, had been warring for generations managed to look past their differences in an effort to protect their common interests.”

The critical take away from this is that they were not initially allies. Some fought each other. Brutally. Now, the degree of fighting and number of death tolls may vary, but understand that they did have wars. Take note that they all joined together BEFORE Voltron was even created. This is a mutual agreement that turned into friendship, where all agreed to fight off those who wish to bring harm upon their solar system.

I will say this again. This is BEFORE Voltron was created, before Zarkon became poisoned by quintessence, before Honerva became obsessed with the Rift.

Why is this an important fact? The comet, the Rift, and the creation of Voltron is what started the friction between the group. I wholeheartedly believe that Allura first started seeing Galra as the “bad” guys when she first woke up from her slumber. Not before King Alfor used magic to knock her unconscious. There, she still had a young mind in the concerns of war. Much of her virtues were the same from S1-S3. Defeat Zarkon and everything will be a-okay.

However, when she awakes, her one-track sight transitions from hating Zarkon to hating everything and everyone who are under his Empire, who even look like a Galra, because Altea is gone, everyone she grew up with is gone. She had no chance to save them thanks to her father’s final decision. Altea was obliterated from the universe by Zarkon’s will. Perhaps if King Alfor had succeeded in fighting against Emperor Zarkon, she would have had more time to understand the true meaning behind the Galra ruler’s attack because I highly doubt Allura’s father explained every, single important detail to her.

You can see this by the way Shiro insists that Coran and Allura share the historic knowledge of Zarkon, Alfor, and Voltron.

“I know this is painful to talk about, but if we’re going to stop Lotor, it’s time we heard the rest of the story.”

But why didn’t Alfor explain all this to Allura? Why didn’t Alfor’s AI memory say anything? Is it because parents have an uncanny ability to shelter their children from their own past mistakes? Or was Allura so grief-stricken with the fact that Altea was gone, she hyperfixed on the past? Maybe Allura knew this history, but decided to keep it stored away as something irrelevant to the present circumstances? Was she purposely hiding information from the Paladins?

For whatever reason, let us say Allura did not know the entire history.

Yes, Alfor admitted that hiding the lions was a mistake, though if he explained why Zarkon was still alive, why Zarkon wants the lions, why his best friend went mad with power, then she would have a better understanding of how to take him down or, best route, not hold vengeful prejudice views of the Galra as a whole and instead see that the destruction of Altea was both Zarkon AND Alfor’s fault. Not because Alfor didn’t fight back, but because, as he said, it was too late. Zarkon has been given too much power for Alfor to fight against.

I am stating this: Alfor never saw Zarkon as this “evil Galra.” He saw him as a legitimate friend who became sick with quintessence until it led to his demise, despite the signs being glaringly obvious from the beginning. Alfor and Zarkon insisted on continuing the Rift and quintessence research for the greater good. They say this clear as day to each other.

Zarkon: Endlessly powerful ships for the Galra Empire.

Alfor: And an endless source of clean energy for the entire system.

Yes, King Alfor insisted they close the Rift after the initial creature came through, but there is a key point to take from their post conversation. Both of them knew what they were getting into and Alfor, albeit reluctantly, still supported Zarkon’s decision.

Zarkon: Your ships are the most powerful machines ever created. Who knows what else may be discovered if we continue working?

Alfor: You would risk your entire planet, the entire solar system, for what? For more power?

Zarkon: You know it’s more than that.

The discovery of quintessence, other realities, this was a dream come true for Alfor and Honerva. Alfor knew when to stop, but did not know HOW to stop his friends. He was not only fearful of the power of quintessence and the Rift, but also how it affected the minds of his allies. Was Alfor right in turning his back to his sick friends? No, but he did so anyways, and risked destruction on Daibazaal and his allies.

Alfor knew Zarkon was too obsessed, knew Honerva was too sick, and left them.

Then, Zarkon does realize the error of his ways when Honerva fell ill. The good old “I will do anything for the one I love, even lie to my friends” trick. Tragic, but it works, and we all know how that story ended. Both Zarkon and Honerva became overexposed to quintessence, which changed them completely. Apparently, Honerva transitioned into Haggar and lost part of her memories. Zarkon, however, seemed to still retain his past, for he became focused on obtaining Voltron.

For what reason? The show keeps saying it is because he wanted to rule the universe and Voltron was the only one able to stop him. Voltron was the only way he could rule the other realities, as well. Personally, I do not believe either of these options, but that is another story for another time.

One thing I would like to point out is that, while Zarkon was unable to rule Daibazaal, Alfor still sought to save the population by evacuating them to Altea and other planets in their solar system. Alfor still cared enough for Zarkon as a royal friend. He understood that all the grief which happened between Voltron, the comet, the realities, the quintessence, the paladins, it not only affected them, but the people who trusted them to rule as well. Alfor sought to save the Galra by any means possible, even if it meant destroying their home in HOPES to close the Rift, too.

The scary thing to understand from Alfor’s reckless decision to obliterate the planet? He could not have anticipated Zarkon’s recovery and powerful, vengeful strength once hearing Daibazaal had been destroyed. His home, the one he was unable to protect, the people he was unable to help, the wife who became someone else entirely, all resulted from his time being “dead.” I also find it personally disturbing that, whether or not Zarkon knew there were Galra ON Altea and other planets, he still only focused on ending Alfor’s life, despite the oncoming casualties from his own people.

Here is something many overlook. Zarkon does not blame all of Altea as a race for the destruction of Daibazaal. He solely blames King Alfor. His race was not mentioned at all, therefore he lashed out at someone he thought was his friend.

But why is it important to know all this? Ever heard of the famous saying “those who do not learn from history tend to repeat it?”

Who else was unable to rule due to being otherwise incapacitated for a long time? Who else woke to the knowledge that their home was gone? And who else immediately sought out to kill the person that purposely destroyed everything they knew?

That’s right. Allura. She has more of the same history as Zarkon which is why I truly understand she would be a ruthless ruler who would enslave planets like the Empress mentioned in the Altean AU.

Yes, in the canon AU, part of her righteous goal was to free planets from Zarkon’s hold, end the war, but you can not convince me that Alfor’s death, Altea’s death, her culture’s death, did not partake in her decision to take him down. In the very first episode of Voltron, Zarkon states “I shall wipe that foul race from the universe…” and, yes, this is a very racist claim. But you may be asking, why does he say this? Is it because he had years to cultivate the prejudice that Alfor, someone he considered his friend, turned on him? I believe that Zarkon’s degrading mind slowly began hating not just him, but Alteans as well, even if he already reaped his revenge on billions of innocent lives.

The same thought process happens with Allura as Voltron slowly saves worlds. Perhaps initially, when she awakens, she understands that Zarkon is the cause of this war. But over time, while freeing other planets under the hold of Galra bases and fighting Galra face to face, she began associating all of them to be a “blood thirsty, murderous race.” This is a terrible, terrible path to go down and, oh, if only there was SOMEONE she looked up to that could explain that lumping together an entire ethnicity based on prejudice views will only cloud her judgement in every decision she makes.

If only Alfor told Allura that Zarkon was his friend first and foremost. I am a firm believer that the best friendships form from common interest, not common race, and DW showed this clearly with the first paladins of Voltron. It is too bad they did not keep to it throughout the entire show.

Let’s examine Allura’s first encounter with the Galra outside of the Empire: Ulaz. Shiro vouched for Ulaz, claimed over and over again that this “evil” Galra helped him escape from Zarkon’s clutches. Ultimately, I believe that without Ulaz’s help, Voltron would not have been found and the storyline of the entire show would not have progressed. What is the first thing Allura says to Shiro once he mentions that Ulaz is a Galra?

“You know you cannot trust them.”

Allura takes on a very close-minded view of him, despite the fact that he has not done anything to HER directly. She says that the Galra can not be trusted more than twice during this episode and obviously does not hide the fact she intensely hates them at first glance, no matter who helped or aided her friends in the war. More often than not, she openly states her own opinions before thinking twice about her words.

Remember their conversation?

Allura: I will not have some quiznak-ing Galra soldier on the bridge of my ship!

Ulaz: If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.

Allura: Are your Galra threats supposed to win my trust?

Ulaz: I’m not trying to win your trust. I’m trying to win a war.

And yet, we clearly see her prejudice misconception already clouding her judgement, making her spit out venom to a man who saved Shiro’s life. Who saved the BLACK PALADIN’S life. Allura is so adamant about protecting the universe and the paladins that she purposely avoided telling them the small bit of history she knows about her father and Zarkon. She claims that “I wanted to protect you from the dark history of the paladins so that you would have a chance to bond with your lions on your own.”

I do not know about you guys, but knowing all the history of war is vitally important so miscommunications do not lead to irreversible decisions. The Princess hiding this information, as well placed as her heart is, means trouble when her misguided views of the Galra once again rear its ugly head. When news that Zarkon’s robobeast is headed to their location in the crystal clusters, who does she immediately accuse?

Ulaz. And again, “I knew he cannot be trusted!”

And once more, when Ulaz “fled.”

“I knew we should never trust a Galra!”

My biggest issue here is that she changed from “I cannot trust the Galra” to “WE cannot trust the Galra.” She is unconsciously imposing her views on the other Paladins. Right after Ulaz sacrificed himself, I half-expected the Princess to apologize to Shiro for doubting him. Yet, it was Keith who apologized to him after recognizing that Ulaz, despite being a Galra, rescued them from destruction.

What does Allura say when Shiro is grieving over Ulaz and the question of how Zarkon tracked them floats in the air?

Keith: Do you really think Zarkon is tracking us?

Allura: We cannot know for sure. Only Ulaz knew our whereabouts.

Shiro: You don’t really think Ulaz gave us up? After he sacrificed himself?

Keith: Yeah! Maybe Zarkon found out about this place on his own. He’s probably been searching for the Blade of Marmora.”

Allura: It’s clear the loss of Ulaz has caused you great concern, but, regardless of how Zarkon located us, we cannot stay here any longer. It isn’t safe.”

This scene rubbed me the wrong way completely. Not only does Allura brush off Ulaz’s sacrifice and Shiro’s grief like a flippant “Oh, he was just another Galra,” she does little to nothing to honor him because of how strongly she clings to her views that “I should never trust the Galra.” She refuses to see that it is not just the universe that are suffering under Zarkon’s rule, but the Galra who are actively fighting AGAINST him as well.

At this stage, she can’t differentiate that there are good and bad Galras, and keeps to holding them in the “never trust” side like it is their responsibility to make her trust them in the first place. It is very disgusting to view an entire race as “I don’t trust you, so good luck changing that!” because of ONE Galra’s actions that directly affected her. Is she right to be angry at Zarkon? Yes. The rest of the Galra? No.

She lacks the empathy for the Galra race as a whole and on the individual scale.

This leads to her first magical self-growth dealing with Keith, which you can read all about at @legendofcarl’s meta here. So, yes, she changed for the better, learned her mistakes and admitted she was wrong. I will be honest, her entire attitude towards Keith during his own personal self-discovery was probably the most off-putting aspects about her character. Friends are supposed to support you in times of difficulties, but here she does not hide nor try to reason at first that her actions towards Keith are very improper and rude.

Which is odd coming from a person who claims diplomacy first, but only to races she does not discriminate against.

I was glad she “saw the light” with Keith, but then, disappointed once more when she reluctantly accepted the Blade of Marmora’s help in fighting Zarkon. She jeopardizes the mission and throws in their face that it is THEIR fault for holding back. Allura does not understand the struggles BoM went through over 10,000 years of war and, perhaps, people may see her me-first command not racist at all.

Kolivan: We need to abort the mission immediately.Allura: Abort? No! We cannot back away now.Kolivan: The Blade of Marmora does not take chances.It’s how we’ve survived for so long. Allura: It’s held you back. Your caution is the reason Zarkon is still in power.Kolivan: We would rather wait than jeopardize everything.

Allura clearly did not think things through at all when arguing with Kolivan, nor did she watch was she was saying. Not only was she disrespectful, but she also decided on her own how to handle plans that the BoM carefully laid out. Speaking over Kolivan like this and undermining his work was completely unnecessary on Allura’s part. Does his race have anything to do with it? I would think, yes, because if Kolivan was any other leader of any other race, she would not have rudely stepped into his leadership role. She is not being diplomatic here, she is being controlling.

Lastly, let us examine the final “battle” Allura faces with racism. Yours truly, Lotor.

It is already established that Allura views Alteans in a more pure light, “can do no harm” despite her father’s ONE fuck-up that cost many lives. Not just Altean lives, but Galra and every other race in the universe. And yet, when she discovers that it was an Altean working with Zarkon, she never once looked back and thought, “Huh, that’s troubling. I should probably look into that since I thought I was the LAST living Altean in the universe.”

Even in “Hole in the Sky,” the alternate universe where Empress Allura stops the Galra Uprising, she does not once think that it was problematic to bestow “justice” on the Galra. The show does a good job of leaving details out in the open and many are wondering if the Galra race in this alternate reality are eradicated from history or enslaved. Though, I am more inclined to believe that Empress Allura enslaved the Galra from the uprising rather than kill them.

Why did I come to this conclusion? The hoktril. Throughout the entire episode, it was clear to the audience that a race’s freewill was forcefully being taken from them. Of course, Princess Allura does not immediately see it that way. She first sees that Alteans are alive and flourishing. She first recognizes them before understanding that these Alteans have enslaved their universe. The storyline basically paints Empress Allura as Emperor Zarkon, or rather, what WOULD have happened if Allura had succeeded in taking down Zarkon.

Even Keith tried to reason with her, yet Allura kept her focus on the fact that Alteans were The Best.

Keith: Maybe you should think about this, Allura. It wasn’t that long ago that we thought all Galra were bad. Maybe things aren’t as black and white as she’s making them out to be.Allura: Keith, these are my people, and they may be the strongest allies we have in this war.

One thing I would like to point out is that both Emperor Zarkon and Empress Allura took their hate out on race as a whole, not just against the ones who did them wrong. Both were deluded with their own views of conquering the universe. Empress Allura through spreading “peace” and Emperor Zarkon through endless war. Both took on this view because of a great loss they were forced to endure.

When it comes to a certain Prince, Allura’s “Alteans first” mentality really rears its hideousness once again. At first meet, she blatantly groups me with the Galra by stating I was the “leader of the most bloodthirsty race of murderers this universe has ever known.” I will always bring this back because, after knowing her own Altean race in the alternate reality were not good by her standards, she still sees that their progress had “the best intentions in mind.” Yet, with myself and the Galra, she does not give us the same benefit of doubt at all.

It takes patricide for Allura to even see me as different. It takes the knowledge that my mother was Altean, therefore making me half-Altean, for Allura to trust me a bit more. It takes me crossing the universe, giving her magical powers that I have been searching and studying for centuries, just to have Allura’s smidgen of approval. And, sad to say, it was not even an approval for my Galra side! It was an approval that I was less of a “bad” Galra and more of a “good” Altean!

Do I really need to point out how wrong it is to think of anyone in such a way?

She fell in love with her own ideals of Alteans and pretty much viewed only that side of myself, despite the fact that I am a mix of two races. Allura clung to my “good” side, regardless of clear evidence showing that not all Alteans are righteous and not all Galra are war-mongers. I doubt she really understood my struggles over the span of 10,000 years and that I am not just the child raised in war. I mean living as a half-Altean, half-Galra child coming to terms about myself and the stereotypes of both ethnicities.

I may have accepted my heritage, but Allura did not. That already points to red flags.

The bigger issue with this is that, when shit hit the fan, Allura listened to an Altean over myself. This entire scene reminded me again of Hira and the Altean AU where she listened to her people first and foremost. Does she not view me as someone who is also part of “her” people? Why? Because I am of mixed races? Because I am not a full Altean like Romelle? Because I do not look Altean? It seems like when “full-blooded” Alteans are presented before Allura, she completely throws out all of her morals for the sake of “her” people.

Yet, in the face of Galra, all that prejudice and stereotypes come rushing back. When Zarkon destroyed her home world, she blames the entire Galra race. When Hira, ONE Altean, said Allura was no Empress, she specifically said “You’re no Altean.” Yet, when Romelle, a stranger, an Altean from her reality, appears and accuses myself, the half-Atlean man she supposedly harbors feelings for, of murder? Again, Allura shows she can not differentiate between race and individuals.

Then she purposely used her hatred for the Galra and for Zarkon to insult me directly. It is no wonder I immediately reacted and compared her to King Alfor, the man who failed to protect his own people. I hurt her where she hurt me the most and, no, I was not thinking about “Allura is Altean, so is King Alfor. This is a perfect jab at her!” If I hold any contempt to Alteans and the Galra, it is not at the same racist level as Allura.

Both of us grew up in different environments, but I am less racist than Allura. Being ostracized from the Galra is not the same as Allura hating the Galra as a whole because of Zarkon’s will. Zarkon did not specifically say “Hey, loyal subjects, once you see Allura, just spit on her. Hate on her as much as you can. Make her life of 10,000 years totally awful.”

Facing such prejudice from the Galra is one reason which, I believe, is why I open up to Allura. Unbeknownst to her, I already met and spoke with Alteans from the colony and somewhat felt accepted by them. Maybe I even saw that there were good Alteans in the universe, aside from the only other Altean I grew up with: my mother who neglected me from birth. Perhaps I thought Allura would be just as kind and understanding like those from the Colony.

Nope. Allura proved to me that there are bad Alteans in the existence, not just Haggerva.

But let us analyze the friendship between Alfor and Zarkon, since DW enjoys comparing them to Allura and I respectively in the show far too often. Both are kings of their planet, respected by their culture, and care deeply for the safety of their people. Both kings used the power of the comet for their own need and, initially, both were careless with the miraculous capabilities of quintessence. Yes, one can argue that Honerva was the one who pushed Zarkon towards the tipping point, but it was Alfor who started it all and Alfor who turned his back on them when his leader needed them the most.  

This is not to say it is completely his fault. The main point to take from this is that King Alfor nor Emperor Zarkon saw each other by their race. They saw each other as allies with the same goal in mind. If only Allura and I could have worked the same way, moreso on Allura’s part since her racist views started the moment she woke up from her 10,000 years of slumber.

From all of this, I can wholeheartedly conclude that I am more like King Alfor and Allura is more like Emperor Zarkon. I do mean that in a literal sense, too. Take it like this: I helped empower her with magic that will aid her in the long run, we both worked closely to learn about quintessence, both sought to defend the universe in some way, yet when plans went awry and I tried to reason with her, she used her power to take control of the situation.

However, whereas Alfor saved Zarkon while he was in the Rift, despite his second betrayal to the team, Allura and the Paladins abandoned me to my fate over one accusation that had no grounds of proof or evidence. I suppose we were never really allies or friends if trust could so easily be broken like this, regardless of what the show made the audience believe. I truly wish DW was more inclined to start off the alliance between the Paladins and I with friendship. Friendship with all of them, not just romance with Allura, because it only enforced terrible tropes when a major plot movement was involved. Even worse that they involved racial discrimination between Allura and I.

TLDR; Allura is racist and has actually degraded as a character thanks to DW’s lack of insight.

[mad-queen-thorn]

Massive vent under the cut, its been a week and a half and I can’t seem to dwell on this any longer. Venting again only because I have very little followers and 90% of them are good friends I hang with regularly, so I feel safe spilling out my feelings here, don’t want to burden anyone with my thoughts and feelings, reading is optional.

I didn’t mention this here, because I didn’t feel the need to. 

When it comes to my Diabetes I’m almost in remission, its a good thing, and by June I might be off the meds and officially into remission. Which is looking promising, but knowing my luck, I beat one thing and two more take their place. Its like taking 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. 

And well, its 3 things this time, I’m now on blood pressure meds for hypertension, only weak ones, so its not that bad. Docs think it might be the pressure I’m putting on my body with the lifestyle changes, but when I lose more weight it should go back to normal. Other than that they want to check out my kidneys as they said there’s a lot of protein in there. They’ve pushed back one of my tests which is causing me worry. But it was merely because the equipment they wanted to give me hasn’t arrived yet. So maybe I’m worrying over nothing. 

Anyway, this isn’t the major thing I keep bottling up. 

Along with my Type 2 Meds and my Blood pressure meds, I take Fluoxetine, which I’ve been on since late 2015. For anxiety and depression. So with all the appointments I’ve been having the past few months they’ve also been keeping track of my mental health, and now the docs think it might be more than just my Anxiety and Depression. 

They think I’m Autistic. In fact, I’ve been told that its highly likely I am after them talking to me, a family member and a friend who has autistic children herself, talked together in the docs room about my past, my behaviours and such and how our friend sees a lot of traits in me, and the doc said “You’re most likely right.”.

We sent off a referral form with a tonne of information about myself, my hyper fixations, behaviours, stimming, social interaction and more.

I’m officially under investigation for Autism.

I’ve been trying to process the information for almost 2 weeks now, barely telling a soul about it. But with the information I’ve been given, the more I think about it, the more of my life is making sense: 

When I was younger, I had a hard time making friends and I still do. I thought it was because I was ugly, weird and because of my overbite that it drove people away. That it was my fault entirely for not being good enough, like bullies made be believe. 

Turns out, that making friends can be hard of Autistic people because of their differences in communication. 

Which at the end of day... explains a lot. 

I’ve noticed that in large groups, I’m very quiet, both in person and online. I don’t speak unless I feel its needed to, and I try to not speak over people and often find myself doing so. I really don’t mean to. I just find it really hard to understand when there’s a good window for me to chirp in without seeming rude. Other times I’ll wait and wait and then when its time for a moment for me to voice the conversation has most likely moved on, which isn’t a bad thing. It just seems like I don’t have a good grasp of social cues. 

My black and white thinking also seems to impact my social interaction. As in the past I’ve just assumed and read situations wrong. Sometimes accidentally upset friends on multiple occasions without meaning. As sometimes my mind is just: 

“It has to be 1 or 2″ And nothing like a 3rd option comes to mind until its pointed out or I’ve made my mistake and beat myself up for it. Thinking I was being selfish and horrible. But now I guess that this explains those moments. They happen a lot, but not in bad ways. Like I said, sometimes its either one or the other, and I fail to see alternative options unless stated. 

Like, the other day I was with my friend who has autistic children, we play Pokemon Go together. And we had a debate about the design of Attack and Normal Deoxys: 

(The top Two) 

She said that they are a different colour, yet I said they are the same colour. Yet she said they’re different. Now, my brain didn’t connect the dots and that she meant that parts of their body are different colour but they both have the same colour scheme. It took me a few moments to actually get what she meant... so??? I guess??

I tend to have little moments in communication like that. 

Also, when some of my family make a joke, most of the time I don’t laugh. My sense of humour tends to be niche and connected to my hyper fixations and spur of the moment puns. Or I’ll make a joke to my family or a friend and they don’t get it, and I have to explain and they still don’t find it funny. I seem to have stronger connections to people who are into the same things I am. Something for me to build a conversation off of or I’ll fail to maintain a conversation. 

I thought this was just normal?? But at the same time it might not be...

Idk I have so many questions. There has been many things I’ve questioned about myself.

Like the need for a second opinion on situations others would see as common sense. Sometimes I go to someone I trust, explain a situation only to be told my feelings are valid and why I’m even questioning them. 

I dunno, it feels good that there might be a possibility behind how I communicate. 

While explaining to me, the doc said: “Your brain seems wired different, and you see the world differently from everyone else. People need to understand that.”

And I... like I said, I don’t know. 

I mean, the following seems to also be signs: 

In person I find it hard to make eye contact. 

I like to be left alone sometimes. 

I can’t be alone for long periods of time as I get stressed and it pulls down my whole mood. 

I find it hard to take part in group conversations over voice. Text is fine. 

My body language and tone can be completely different to what I actually mean. I’ve gotten in trouble with this, but the person who was mad at me didn’t understand. 

I don’t pick up on body language. 

But I’ll be observant on everything else. I tend to spot most things others don’t notice. I’ve had this in person many times and people tend to compliment me with “Wow you’re so observant!”, “You have good eyes!”. 

Lack of excitement, this happened today. We got new carpets in and my mother was overjoyed, but I never felt a thing. I felt like I should be happy too but I couldn’t. I am capable of being happy for other people, but yet again, it has to be connected to a hyper fixation or someone I trust/care about. 

Relationship with my parents isn’t great, probably due to my communication issues.

I only express myself to people I deem I’m close to, other than that I seem very disconnected. I’ve heard people say that I seem to be in my “own little world” on more than one occasion.

Selective Mute or nonverbal. Sometimes I just can’t speak or come up with what to say and remain silent. 

Picky with food. For example, if someone puts beans on my plate, I simply can’t eat around them. I’ll dismiss the entire plate and feel bad about it. Cuz my mind tends to think the whole thing is “contaminated” by the beans and I can’t eat it. 

In person I can tend to point instead of using words sometimes. 

I’m not a touchy person, especially with my family. But if you’re someone I trust, I’ll probably cuddle you to death. Really selective of who I let close to me.

Nobody can touch my hair but me. Nobody can brush it but me. If I let you brush it, its a blessing. 

Always listening to music while doing things like drawing/walking ect. 

Questioning my place in social situations and how others think. I have a habit of putting myself below everyone else. The idea of other people thinking of me or thinking positively of me next to never crosses my mind, the whole thing seems foreign to me. 

Another major pointer to it is my stimming. 

Now, I’ve stimmed for many years now and felt BAD about it. Because I felt like I didn’t deserve the stim toys I have. But now everything is starting to make sense. Even though my stimming does piss some family members off, I try to not do it around them and simply can’t. Sometimes I start stimming without even noticing. The most common being my legs, I will bounce them. All the time. If my hands are busy its my legs, if my legs aren’t moving, I need something in my hands and I have quite a few stim toys. From fidget cubes to squishy pokeballs. I have a habit of making them click or rolling the ball in my hands between rounds on videogames or when watching youtube videos. I also tend to lean towards glitter shakers. Love those things. I tend to mute my mic a lot during voice calls as I get paranoid people can hear me stimming. Because I feel like the bump bump of my foot on the floor or the clicking of my fidget cube will annoy people. 

Not adjusting well to change and being in social situations with a lot of people are another two signs. For example, yesterday I was in the kitchen with all the furniture while the carpets had been getting put down, there was limited space to move, I had nothing to stim with and didn’t like it. I felt bad for being annoyed. I wanted to go to my room but couldn’t. I wanted to move around. 

When it comes to social situations, I can go to heavy populated situations like conventions but not for long. I start getting overwhelmed and feeling sick. I enjoy it as much as I can but I can only take so much. 

Same with social interaction. I can only take so much. 

Once I get overstimulated I can get moody and my temper shortens, but I usually isolate myself by the time it comes to that point.     

I blamed all my social woes on my Anxiety but at this point it might not be my anxiety. It might be Autism.

But one final thing that also points to it:

Hyperfixations

I currently have two massive fixations.

Pokémon which is one I've had all my life

And Guild Wars 2 which has been a fixation since 2017

But within them I have specific things I fixate on. Which I guess are sub fixations?

For example, in Pokémon. I love the lore, certain legendaries and I absolutely adore cat Pokémon. Every time there is a new Pokémon game out I almost cry in excitement. My bedroom is covered in Pokémon stuff with a few other fandoms scattered in there but it's 90% Pokémon.

Pokémon shirts, Pokémon bedding. Pokémon posters, Pokémon bags, Pokémon plushies, keyrings.

Whenever I get something my family tend to go "Ugh. Not more Pokémon"

And Guild Wars 2 is pretty self explanatory.

I love Aurene, Tybalt and most of the main characters and lore.

I have the Rytlock figure and art and the OST discs ext. Books of lore and stories.

But 90% of my fixation is on the Thorns.

Thorn Pyjamas, Thorn bags, Thorn plush. Anything I can get my grubby little hands on...

Go figure!

I also try to not express myself too much as in the past I've had people try to force me out of hyperfixations because I was too "annoying".

I feel like I talk about my two major fixes too much. So I try to curb down on it to not drive people away...?

I wish I knew the results as I have so many questions.

They said they think it's very likely I'm autistic.

I don't want to write myself off and say "Yeah, I'm Autistic."

Because there's that chance I'm not. But so many people who know me in person think I am. And I've been asked many times over the years and never had a second thought about it.

And like I said, the docs said I most likely am.

I'm just waiting for an assessment and the result which I got told could take months to years.

I just want answers so I know how to make life is easier for me.

I want answers so I can just be myself without fear because I keep holding myself back thinking I'm weird or a bad person or bad at communication.

I always notice my social flaws and say they're "habits I need to kick"

But maybe they're not. Maybe it's just how I am.

I want to know.

I need to know...

I just want answers...