#when i say adults i was thinking for example 25 ish or more

[can-of-pringles]

Why does it seem like it's always the adults writing rpf... like shouldn't you know better by that point

[redheadwannabesblog]

Hinny romance

I think Ginny is very romantic. Not cheesy madam puddyfoots with hearts everywhere. That makes her roll her eyes. She’s spent her whole life watching Arthur and Molly who after 25 ish years of marriage and 7 children are still head over heels for each. Molly says they were made for each other. Ginny has probably heard the story of their elopement a thousand times. Imagine little Ginny sneaking out of bed and catching her parents slow dancing in the living room. Arthur always able to make Molly laugh when she’s stressed. How could you not believe in true love when that’s your example?

I thinks she is embarrassed by it when she’s young. She downplayed anything too “girly” to avoid being teased. She’s not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve (singing valentines) but she knows being too open about it is gonna get her laughed at. Imagine Hermione introducing her to Jane Austen and she starts reading romances and poetry but hides them under her floor boards so her brothers don’t find out. As she gets more confident she doesn’t care what people think and doesn’t hide it as much and when she is with Harry she is openly affectionate. And that’s perfect for Harry because he wasn’t raised by people who made him feel loved so getting it from Ginny is healing. And he’s never going to be someone who articulates his feelings well so he shows her with gestures like kissing her in front of 50 people and not just telling her he likes her. So as an adult I think that transfers to getting her flowers, surprising her with gifts just because, and being so supportive of her career. I love the idea that they are the couple who make everyone around them, especially their kids, embarrassed by their romance but also a little jealous.

[gingeredmink]

i don’t know if you’ve posted something like this before, but what are your general headcanons about ynfg protags? like their ages, personalities, etcetera. i really like hearing about other people’s interpretations ^^

thank you for giving me an excuse to use this again hehe

I've probably posted something like this in the past but honestly memory is so bad these days I've completely forgotten and as you said, it's fun hearing others interpretations and stuff!

Sorta umbrella generalization is I think most are quiet, shy, soft spoken people. Outside of a few exceptions [Uro for example, she just comes off as a more loud and vibrant kind of character]. Maybe it's the ambience or lack of dialogue but a lot of the games make me feel like the character has a more somber/quiet personality.

A lot also feel like the outcast, always in their head and not really paying much attention to the world around them [either something happened that made them want to shut outside out or they suffer from ostracization and it's a coping mechanism for loneliness]

More for individual characters under cause long

Mado's kinda the poster child for this. Think she's around 16 or so and she became a shut in due to a mix of depression in general and it being exacerbated by experiencing trauma that caused her to snap or distance herself from her remaining friends [Car accident, loss of a friend, something like that.] She grew up playing weird little collectathon/pixel games and she's more interested in funky sorta characters than usual normie stuff her peers prefer, so she doesn't really connect much to those around her and focuses on fantasy more than reality.

Urotsuki [really young adult, maybe around 23-25?] feels like the, "I don't have much in real life but I can be myself and have lots of friends online." sorta character. People aren't intentionally mean to her per say, but she's weird and often doesn't feel like she fits in. Parents are sort of the same in that their main problem is they were distant and not there for her when she needed them.

Admit I am a sucker for this sorta stuff, but adore the idea that she went through a rough patch of self-value issues [was put off from being herself due to being weird, doesn't fall into the conventionally attractive type and had issues with image due to it, ect] but eventually overcame them and is now one of those loud and proud to be herself and very aggressively supports other weirdos around her because she doesn't want others to go through that type of people. She still has her skeletons, having an on-off issue with substance abuse and tendency to get excited and overstep boundaries.

Fluorette [Young adult?] comes across as a sort of lost child that just wants to feel like she belong somewhere. She has personality and such but doesn't fit in with those around her, and her humor can sometimes make her come off as a delinquent which results in her feeling more out of place.

Sometsuki [16-ish?] feels really similar to Mado in that she doesn't really connect much to those around her and prefers to spend her time alone. Can't explain why but feel like she has a bit more of a pessimistic outlook stemming from anxiety [she's afraid of messing up and being looked down on so she's reluctant to try things due to feeling like she's already failed kinda deal.]

NEVER SEE HER MENTIONED ENOUGH BUT I feel like Yayoi from Nobetsu Maku Nashi would be one of the more chill, sort of calm happy dreamers. [i am so heartbroken that the dev deleted because god i wanted to learn more about her so bad.] Sonoko from -1 is similar, though with a bit more of a depressed undertone. Both also young adults.

[strawberrystar7]

The Miraculous Fandom can be misogynistic. And I can prove it. Just look at the different characters.

Also: Please read this until the end.

Luka vs Kagami:

Kagami is straight-up being hated for no reason just because she's an alternative love interest for Adrien while Luka is literally being loved even tho he is an alternative love interest for Marinette. And why is that? It's not because Kagami is less interesting of a character. If anything she's even more interesting than Luka is if you consider her background. I get it most people think Luka is more likable than Kagami but the only reason why Luka is loved while Kagami is hated is that Kagami is female and Luka is male. The majority of the fandom consists of teenage girls. They find him attractive and sexualize him. So the only reason for this is literally because they find him attractive.

I bet with you if Kagami was a dominant, powerful and independent male everyone would call her "hot" and everyone would love her. But she isn't she's a female so everyone calls her a "bitch" and "Cacagami" just because she's a damn love interest.

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

Lukanette vs Adrigami:

Kagami is being hated because apparently, she is a bad girlfriend. But if anyone was a bad girlfriend/boyfriend in that relationship it's Adrien. In that world, Adrien and Cat Noir are seen as two different people but we know better. We know that Adrien and Cat Noir are the same person. He had been in a romantic relationship with Kagami yet he STILL went on to flirt with Ladybug and danced romantically under the moonlight with Marinette. Adrien was NOT being faithful towards Kagami. Even if you don't count the New York Special he had STILL been flirting with Ladybug as Cat Noir.

Marinette is being called out for being a bad girlfriend towards Luka because she is using him to get over Adrien but Adrien is never being called out for what he did to Kagami! Not only did he use her to get over Ladybug but he also kept flirting with Ladybug while he was in that relationship.

And why is that? Because again: Adrien is male and most of the fandom consists of teenage girls who sexualize him. So the only reason is that Adrien is hot.

Again people say Luka deserved better but Kagami deserved what Adrien did to her. And why is that? Because Luka is a hot male.

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

Kagami vs Cat Noir:

The fandom hates Kagami for not letting go of Adrien but they also love Cat Noir for not letting Ladybug go.

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

Adrien/Cat Noir vs Marinette/Ladybug:

The fandom hates Marinette for being a stalker but Cat Noir is straight-up harassing Ladybug. Yet no one calls him out for that.

Every once in a while, Adrien crosses a line. Despite the show's attempts to frame his crush on Ladybug as sweet and endearing, he sometimes exhibits obsessive, borderline stalker-ish attitudes and behaviors.

He repeatedly professes his love for Ladybug as Cat Noir, time and time again. He is forcing her to endlessly rebuff his affections. He literally sometimes does this in the middle of their battles against supervillains. There's even that part in the episode Animan when he tries to stealthily smell her without her noticing.

There also is this part in Frozer when he didn't want to work with Ladybug because she didn't accept his advances. He also sometimes tries to force kisses on Ladybug, Prime Queen is an example of that. Heck, there even is this one part where he tries to kiss the Ladybug Sentimonster.

The fandom hates Marinette for trying to kiss Adrien's wax statue but they don't say anything about Cat Noir trying to kiss a Sentimonster. The fandom hates Marinette for smelling Adrien's pillows but they love Cat Noir for trying to smell Ladybug in Animan. They hate her for having Adrien's schedule and a lot of pictures of him but they love Adrien for doing that. And I bet with you if Adrien was able to get Ladybug's schedule he would get it.

I have seen someone calling Adrien out for having those Ladybug and Cat Noir dolls he uses for who knows what. Those toxic Adrien/Cat Noir simps literally tried to counter that with Marinette having those Ladybug, Cat Noir, LadyWifi, Evillustrator and Rogercop dolls. Like what? Those are two completely seperate things. Marinette has them for her babysitting duties. Adrien has those for who knows what. Probably to imagine himself kissing with Ladybug. Marinette has those to play with children like Manon. Now tell me where is this not misogynistic?

The Fandom hates Ladybug for rejecting Cat Noir but they are happy when Cat Noir rejected Marinette because it showed he's loyal towards Ladybug. Where is the difference here? Ladybug is rejecting Cat Noir because she is in love with Adrien. She doesn't owe Cat Noir to love him back just like how Adrien/Cat Noir doesn't owe Marinette to love her back.

What do you want her to do? Accept his advances and play with his feelings? Because that is what she would be doing if she would accept his advances. She would be doing what she did to Luka. After all, she is in love with Adrien. Yes, Adrien and Cat Noir are the same person but she doesn't know that. And yes, I know Marinette was in love with Luka. Truth, Gang of Secrets, and even earlier Episodes showed us that much. The same goes for Adrien and Kagami. They showed us Adrien was in love with Kagami. But that isn't the point. Even if both of them were in love with Luka and Kagami it doesn't change they had been using them. Yet only Marinette is being bashed for that. Even Kagami is being bashed for her relationship with Adrien even tho that had not been her fault. Adrien was the one who had been unfaithful. But again no one called him out because he is a hot male.

Do you really want Ladybug to do to Cat Noir what Marinette and Adrien did to Luka and Kagami? At least she's being honest with him and telling him straight up that she is not interested.

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

Don't you guys find it weird how only the female characters are being called out and trash-talked? The point I am trying to make is that a large part of the fandom is being misogynistic. The male characters are being loved but the female characters are being hated. And the only reason for that is because the majority thinks the males are hot.

People keep calling out Marinette and Kagami for "being in love with the perfect side of Adrien" or idolizing him yet they are doing exactly the same thing they have accused those characters of. They are literally idolizing Adrien/Cat Noir and Luka (and possibly other male characters).

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

Yes, Marinette HAS her flaws but SO DOES everyone else. Also, a show with main characters without flaws would be extremely boring to watch. That aside, EVERYONE has flaws EVEN Adrien/Cat Noir. People seem to forget that these characters are teenagers.

The human brain isn't fully developed until 25 years of age. Everything is there except for the frontal cortex, which is the last thing to mature. An immature frontal cortex explains the spectrum of teenage behaviors: it's what makes adolescents adolescent.

The rational part of a teen's brain isn't fully developed and won't be until age 25. Adults think with the prefrontal cortex, the brain's rational part. This is the part of the brain that responds to situations with good judgment and an awareness of long-term consequences.

So of course the characters in MLB act accordingly.

Humans ARE NOT perfect. They are flawed. We all can agree that Marinette's crush on Adrien IS unhealthy but did you ever come to think that Cat Noir's crush on Ladybug IS ALSO unhealthy?

I probably could find even more proof that Adrien's crush on Ladybug isn't as healthy as people think but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

The point I'm trying to make is that a large part of the fandom (not the entire fandom) is being misogynistic.

People see Marinette as this creepy stalker while Adrien is perfect and could never do a mistake. People are literally criticizing Marinette for thinking he's perfect while they do the same. And the only reason for this is because they sexualize him and the other male characters.

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

What I also do not understand is this "Cat Noir is way better than Adrien" nonsense. Like why? That makes zero sense. Those two are the same characters.

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

Don't get me wrong. I do not hate Luka or Adrien. Luka is an amazing guy and Adrien is literally a cinnamon roll. Those two are amazing but I can't stand all the hate Marinette and Kagami are getting.

And I know not all Cat Noir/Adrien fans/simps are like that but a lot of them are. And I think not all of them are even aware of this.

I also know that a large part of the fandom isn't even aware that this is happening. So I thought I should make people aware that this happens.

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

I don't even know if "misogynistic" is the right word for this or if I should have used "sexist" but I hope what I am trying to say came across. Because this really is a problem the fandom does have.

[ephemeral-afterlight]

quite whack of me to let myself be perceived online but scrolling through roughly 3 years-ish worth of some of my greatest hits has led me to a few realizations

me from 2-3 years ago was a dramatic fuck and cannot be held accountable for any crimes against cringe law committed during a time of high emotional vulnerability and also god complex

it seems like half of the badass people i used to be friends with here have deactivated and are lost in the wind and i am fucking devastated. where did kitkatz go. where is jelly. why can i not be confident enough to slide in the dms of the cool people who ARE still here

when i wasn't taking absolutely every fucking thing to heart and then spewing out emotionally-charged drivel like a perpetually online little bitch, some of my written analyses slapped. they were actually so articulate and coherent. unlike anything else i say ever

holy shit i am so glad i got off tumblr when i did because otherwise i might still be here now, unhappy as fuck, supporting purity culture 🤢 the amount of times i decided to make anti-remrom posts instead of caring about my mental wellbeing and dealing with my trauma in a healthy way is genuinely kinda hilarious looking back at it now. Weewooweewooweewoo I am going to cry on the internet to people who write fanfic about figments of imagination. Weewooweewooweewoo I am so morally superior because I echo all the rhetoric that my friends do and am scared to dissent. like shut the fuck up and try touching grass for once bestie 🥰 ur depressed and have no sense of self so u steal ur opinions from the nearest person who will give you attention, ur not special, get over urself

bro i am so much sexier now than i ever was when i was on here wallowing in negativity for hours at a time and that is a scientific fact

i do remember my interactions with my friends here extremely fondly but in general this fandom was an actual shitshow for a very long time and altho i can't speak to how it is recently, i refuse to make excuses for the absolute nightmare that was ts sides tumblr from clbg to svs era. reading through old debates and all the times i got pissed about tagging only speaks to that

loving note to my past self: tagging is very important in ways that i could go into a lot more coherently another time but it does not warrant all caps screaming and crying and pissing and shitting. calm down for once and turn your phone off

i am so "problematic" now according to past me's standards and i take pride in that actually. dark fiction fucking rocks and "problematic" writers have been some of the coolest, smartest, kindest people i've ever met. i think jasper circa 2019 would have keeled over if he knew i'd be saying this eventually, but—barring a few very specific examples, you can separate fiction from reality, actually, and Mr. 25-Follower-Tumblr-Nobody's remrom fanfiction will never have the real-life influence and power that ACTUAL propaganda in mainstream media has. the character growth from delusion to enlightenment on my part was absolutely legendary, pure poetry

man in general i'm so glad limiting my time on this account helped prompt me to grow up a little more. i've been an adult, but getting away from here and into healthier spaces in turn gave me healthier outlooks on life and made me realize that acceptance from self-righteous randos on the internet is absolutely not worth limiting my own creativity and destroying my mental health + confidence over it

past me predicted like the entirety of the pof video and i cannot believe i never fucking talked about it like WHAT that shit is crazy did y'all see that???? i recited some of the EXACT points and situations they brought up in that video i cannot stop thinking about this

anyway sexies i still don't intend to be active in this fandom because i just,. man i don't fixate on it anymore. i still appreciate the posts and will stay up-to-date on all the vids but i think for now i'm staying checked out of the ts sides fandom.

if anyone even sees this (especially if we were friends before!) and u have any desire to reconnect with me i am so down! current biggest interests are kpop (as always), mcyt, and mcu, but i've been in so many goddamn fandoms over my two decades of life that you could talk to me about most things and i'd be able to contribute something.

i actually fully expect this post to lose me followers bc my stance on purity culture has changed so drastically, but i actually think it will be incredibly funny more than anything. if u want a more in-depth explanation on my thoughts, motivations, and moral standings, you can always shoot me a message :*

[vincent-g-writer]

The Silver Screen Savant, pt 2- the Meh, the Bad and The yikes.

Hello Writers!

Last time here on Starry Starry Write, I talked a little about Autism in the media and my personal experiences therein. Today, I’d like to go a little broader, and tackle the topic from a macro perspective.

In recent times, you’ve probably heard “Representation Matters” oft repeated. Especially in prominent talking spaces like social media. But what does that mean, exactly?

Why “Representation Matters,” and how.

The short answer:

Diverse representation in media tells us that everyone has a place in the world. That everyone’s story matters.

The long answer:

It’s no secret that we begin engaging with media at a young age. When I was growing up in the 90’s and 00’s, TV and video games were often the babysitters of my peers. I was one of the few kids in my neighborhood whose parents weren’t divorced. The kids I knew? Not so much. Most of them were raised by single parents, grandparents and of course-the boob tube. I personally prefered books, when my mom wasn’t yelling “it’s too nice out to be holed up in that dark bedroom!”

Now, don’t mistake my preference for some kind of intellectual superiority. I watched plenty of TV too. Besides, books aren’t magically out of the equation. Printed material is our oldest form of media. And- often just as problematic. Though I will say- I saw a much broader range of people on covers adoring library shelves than I ever did titles on a TV roster. But, I digress. The point is: for many of us, consuming media begins at an early time of our life. And that’s where the problem starts. Even in my childhood, where The Magic School Bus, Hey Arnold, and Sesame Street showed people of all kinds, I can point to many that did not. Especially not people like me. Which did me a grave disservice. I didn’t know I was on the spectrum for a long time, and when I finally found out, I was horrified, thanks to what I had seen on TV.

Because media is not only a wonderful way to learn about people that don’t look, act or sound like us. It also informs our ideas of who we are, and what we can be. Whether we like it or not: it shapes how we understand the world. And it doesn’t stop with Childhood.

Time Changes Much, but not all.

Things are better now. Well, a little bit, anyway.

As an adult, I see more people like me on the screen nowadays. Which is nice.

Ish.

Why “ish?” Well…

Frequently, these “noticeably different” characters (read: Autistically coded) are branded “NOT AUTISTIC!” You heard it here first, folks! That one character (insert your favorite) is Totally Not Autistic. Despite being written in a way that gives every indication otherwise.

*Facepalm*

Now for some examples, which we’ll call the “Meh,” “The Bad” and the “Yikes.” For “fun,” we’ll also go into the off-air perceptions of the characters.

The “Meh.”

First on the list is Dr. Spencer Reid, from CBS’s “Criminal Minds.”

Dr. Reid is the youngest member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, having joined at the age of 22. He holds three B.A degrees in Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy, as well as three Ph.D’s in Engineering, Chemistry, and Mathematics.

He also has the social skills of a limp dishrag. Wait, what’s that? High Intelligence + Low Social Awareness? Hmmm…Then there’s his restrictive behavioral patterns, obsessive interests, and general “quirkiness!” that we could talk about. But let’s hear a quote from the actor who plays him, Matthew Gray Gubler:

“..an eccentric genius, with hints of schizophrenia and minor autism, Asperger’s Syndrome. Reid is 24, 25 years old with three PH.D.s and one can’t usually achieve that without some form of autism.”

Hoooo-boy. I could go into all the things wrong with this, including why the term “Asperger’s” is both horrific (TW: Eugenics,Ableism, N*zis) and harmful. However, today we’ll simply leave it with the fact that this term is no longer applicable, having been reclassified in 2013 as part of Autism Spectrum disorder.

The “Bad.”

Next up, we have Will Graham, from NBC’s Hannibal.

Like our first example, Will works for the FBI. He’s a gifted criminal profiler with “special” abilities, namely hyper empathy, which allows him to reconstruct the actions and fantasies of the killers he hunts. He’s intellectually gifted, hates eye contact, socializing, and prefers to spend…most of his time…alone.

Oh dear. Haven’t we been here before? But, I mean, he doesn’t have Autism! The show runner says so!

For Will Graham, there’s a line in the pilot about him being on the spectrum of autism or Asperger’s, and he’s neither of those things. He actually has an empathy disorder where he feels way too much and that’s relatable in some way. There’s something about people who connect more to animals than they do to other people because it’s too intense for whatever reason.

You can’t see me right now, but I’m cringing. A lot. This is just…ugh. I mean, for starters, I know a handful of autistic people who struggle with hyper empathy, which can make social situations overwhelming and hard to navigate. In fact, I happen to be one of them. Plus, there’s a cool little thing about how, frequently, people on the spectrum more readily identify with animals. But, y’know. Who am I to say? I’m just someone, one of many, who’s dealt with this my whole life.

Now, onto the “Yikes.”

*sigh*

And finally, we have BBC’s Sherlock, a modern adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s renowned “consulting” detective, and probably the most famous fictional character of all time.

Now, I’ll start by saying that the BBC incarnation is not the first to be Spectrum labeled. In fact, Sherlock was my childhood hero, and the first “person” I saw referred to this way. My aunt, an avid reader herself, casually remarked to a friend “I’ve always wondered if Holmes is Autistic,” after I came yammering on about how fantastic the books were. Had I not been champing at the bit to get back to my reading, I might have asked her what that meant.

I also believe this fandom driven speculation is why many detective type characters (see above) are often coded as Autistic, intentionally or otherwise.

In this New York Times article, Lisa Sanders, M.D. describes Holmes traits:

He appears oblivious to the rhythms and courtesies of normal social intercourse — he doesn’t converse so much as lecture. His interests and knowledge are deep but narrow. He is strangely “coldblooded,” and perhaps as a consequence, he is also alone in the world.

Now, before we go any father, let me take a moment to defend his creator. During the time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first created his most famous work, Autism was not known. That isn’t to say it didn’t exist. We’ve always existed. In fact, it’s now believed that the Changeling Myth, a common European folk story, was a way to explain Autism. In one telling (there are a few) children displaying “intelligence beyond their years” and “uncanny knowledge” were imposters, traded out by Fae creatures for offspring of their own. Children believed to be “Changlings,” regretfully, often came to a bad end. A chilling reminder that the stories we tell impact our real lives.

So while Autism was at least somewhat recognized, it did not become its own official diagnosis until 1943.

Meanwhile, Sherlock Holmes was first published in 1892. Now, as a writer who often draws from my personal reality, I imagine Doyle probably “wrote what he knew,” which is to say, acquainted with one or more Autistic people, he used them as inspiration.

On the other hand…

BBC’s Sherlock first aired in 2010. And while one might argue that the writers simply capitalized on the Autistic fan-theory, or took already available traits and exaggerated them for their version… they left a lot to be desired. Autism aside, this new Sherlock is…well…an asshole. Narcissistic, abusive and egocentric (to name a few) he sweeps his caustic behavior under the rug of “high functioning sociopath,” and blytly ignores the consequences.

Which is a major problem. Because while doing this, he’s still “obviously” (at least in the Hollywood sense) Autistic. In my previous post, where I said some characters are “too smart™, and logical© to ever have feelings, friends or empathy,” this is what I meant.

This is bad. We’re looping right back to Representation Matters. Bad representation, and the navigating of such, is just as important for writers to think about as good representation. Maybe even moreso. Because bad representation paints real people into cardboard, stereotyped people-shaped things. It otherizes. And it’s harmful. You would not believe the people I’ve met assume I’m not Autistic because I’m not an egotistical jerk. Why? Because they watched, you guessed it, BBC Sherlock.

Confession time:

Now here’s my little secret:

I love all of these characters. They are some of my favorite on tv. Why? Because for good or ill, I recognize myself in them. Finally, I can turn on the TV, and see myself. Or, somewhat, anyway.

My favorite character out of this list? Loath though I am to admit it… Is Sherlock. See, what those well meaning folks didn’t know (the ones who say I’m I’m “too nice,” to be Autistic) is… well, if we’re being honest, I wasn’t always nice. A few years ago, I was that guy. I was a jerk because I thought I was the smartest person in the room. Which is really not a good look. In fact, sitting down and watching the first season of sherlock, (around three or four years after it came out) made me realize how much of a jerk I actually was.

There are other things there too. Things that tie me to all these characters, that I didn’t list. But that’s for another today.

For now, I’d like to add a caveat or two:

1) I’ve watched all the shows listed above, and adore them. As I mentioned, Sherlock is my favorite. He’s also the one I’ve watched the most (Repeatedly, in fact. Whoops.) and I recognize it’s not all bad. In the end, he learned to treat people better (somewhat) and certainly became more human over time. And, there are other deeply problematic elements of the show I’d like to tackle, eventually.

*cough* Queerbating! *cough*

2) I’m well aware that the above cases are all thin, white, able bodied, “straight” males. But I chose these characters for a couple of reasons. One, they’re the most prominent type on TV. Again, we loop back around to representation, and why we need more positive, diverse examples of it.

And finally-

3) In my last post, I mentioned I’d give some “good” instances of Hollywood Autism trope. But I didn’t exactly do that. Partially, because half way through, I thought…perhaps…I’m not the best to judge what might be a good Autistic character. I mean, I’m sure someone will read this and think my current aforementioned characters are fine. Heck! They might even argue my perception here, and say the characters are just fine. I accept that. In my life, both on and off the page, I recognize that I cannot, should not (and don’t want to) speak for an entire community.

Because of this, I cannot tell you how to write a “good” Autistic character, or what media is “acceptable.” I can’t even really tell you what a bad character is. Sure, I have a lot of opinions about it. But- if you’re on the spectrum and like and identify with the above? That’s fine. I mean, even with all the problems I noted (and some I didn’t) I certainly do.

On the other hand, if you’re a writer, and you want to write a character from this (or any, for that matter) community you aren’t part of, I caution you.

Do your research. Preferably from multiple credible sources.

Talk to people on the spectrum about what it’s really like. (Though try to steer clear of asking for emotional labor.You could, say, hop on reddit and ask the community there, for instance, which is a no pressure way to obtain potentially decent info.)

Finally, whatever you do, remember this-

Autistic people can look like anyone. We can act, and think and be different, like anyone. We are real, living, breathing people. Not robots, not sob stories, not tropes. People. So if you write about us, write us like people. And your work will be all the better for it.

-Your Loving Vincent

[ts1989fanatic]

Taylor Swift is the millennial Bruce Springsteen.

If there were any doubts about this, they should have been dispelled by her latest release: the haunting Folklore, which filters the exact kinds of story-songs Springsteen excels at through Swift’s modern, orchestral-pop aesthetic. The album has been one of the best-received of her career, but then, the response to essentially everything she’s produced since her 2010 album Speak Now has involved critics grudgingly being dragged toward having respect for her skills.

The overlaps between millennial Swift (30 and born in 1989) and baby boomer Springsteen (70 and born in 1949) — both of whom are among the best songwriters alive right now — are considerable beyond their songwriting prowess. But comparisons, by necessity, must start there.

Both musicians love songs about a kind of white Americana that’s never really existed but that the central characters of which feel compelled to chase anyway. They use those songs to tell stories about those people and the places they live. They’re terrifically good at wordplay. Both are fascinated by the ways that adolescence and memories of adolescence continue to have incredible power for adults. Both are amazing at crafting bridges that take already good songs to another level. And both write songs featuring fictional people whose lives are sketched in via tiny, intimate details that stand in for their whole selves.

For example: The opening lines to Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” (“The screen door slams / Mary’s dress waves / Like a vision she dances across the porch / as the radio plays”) tell you everything about that woman and the man observing her.

Similarly, the opening lines of Swift’s “All Too Well” (“I walked through the door with you, the air was cold / but something ‘bout it felt like home somehow and I / left my scarf there at your sister’s house / and you still got it in your drawer even now”) tell you everything about this doomed relationship and the nostalgia both people involved in it still feel, compressed into a tiny little stanza.

Springsteen released “Thunder Road” when he was 25; Swift released “All Too Well” when she was 22. Both songs continue to stand as touchstones for who the artists were at that point in their lives.

But leave this comparison aside for a moment. What’s most interesting about drawing this connection are the ways in which the overlap between Springsteen and Swift’s styles can tell us about how our culture treats art made by men versus art made by women — and art made by baby boomers versus art made by millennials.

Springsteen and Swift each entered the music industry as young wunderkinds with lots to prove. Springsteen’s first album — the loose and rambling Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. — was released when he was just 23. He had been playing in bands all around New Jersey for most of his teens, and signed a record deal with Columbia Records at 22.

He was expected to become an acoustic folk singer in the vein of Bob Dylan, at a time when the music industry was uniquely preoccupied with finding the “next” Bob Dylan. Springsteen quickly flaunted those expectations, assembling a group of musicians who would go on to be known as the E Street Band, in the name of creating a sound that captured a massive, orchestral blast of rock. Springsteen would finally perfect this sound on his third album, 1975’s Born to Run, and he’s been a global superstar ever since, even decades after reaching his pinnacle with 1984’s Born in the USA.

Swift’s rise was slightly more meteoric. She released her debut album, Taylor Swift, when she was just 16, and it featured songs that she had written as a freshman in high school. Swift broke into the industry via country music, and her country-ish second album, 2008’s Fearless, won her the Grammy for Album of the Year.

Just as Springsteen shirked folk in the name of rock, Swift’s sound quickly shifted away from the girl-with-a-guitar country archetype and more toward pop. By her fourth album, 2012’s Red, she had largely left country music behind.

(A fun game: If you line up Swift and Springsteen’s album releases roughly by how old they were when they recorded them, you’ll find surprisingly similar career trajectories. For instance, Born to Run and Swift’s 2014 album 1989 were released when their respective artists were 25. Both broke the artists through to even wider acclaim than they had before.)

Yet the two artists’ backgrounds are quite different, which may explain the different ways in which they’ve understood American political divides. Springsteen grew up in a blue-collar family in New Jersey, while Swift is the daughter of a former Merrill Lynch stockbroker who could afford to move the entire family to Nashville, Tennessee, when his daughter showed a talent for songwriting.

Springsteen’s songs have always reflected growing up in a world where poverty is just a lost paycheck away, even as he’s become incredibly rich. Swift has no such perspective. Her songs take place largely in a wistful world where money is rarely an object. And the artists came of age in very different political climates, too.

But the political divide has narrowed in recent years. Swift has taken a recent turn toward more political topics — particularly social justice issues involving the mistreatment of women and LGBTQ rights. That turn stems from her struggles to differentiate herself as an artist in an industry that routinely turns young, beautiful women into disposable products, wringing out of them a few years of hit singles and then tossing them aside. Her embrace of the ways her growing sense of (extremely white) feminism helped her attain more artistic control over her image has slowly but surely led to a greater understanding of the yawning disparities inherent to the US. She is more tapped into the ways that power is unequally distributed throughout American society and increasingly speaks out to that effect. (She’s still pretty lousy at confronting class issues, though.)

But even with all of their similarities as songwriters and increasing similarities as explicitly political artists — and even with all of the awards they have won and records they have sold — there’s still a knee-jerk insistence that Swift is either too self-obsessed or too much a creation of the music industry, while Springsteen went from being rock’s heir apparent to an elder statesman with only a few bumps along the way. And the reasons for that disparity go well beyond any artistic differences or similarities they might possess.

The most obvious difference between the reception of Springsteen and Swift is also the most obvious difference between the two of them as people: He is a man, and she is a woman.

Swift didn’t exactly discourage listeners from constantly parsing her lyrics to figure out which of her famous exes she was singing about early in her career; she even hid hints in her liner notes to help fans decode her clues. But the degree to which she was written off, for years, as a fundamentally unserious and self-involved artist reflects the ways in which domestic and romantic concerns are written off as unimportant when women talk about them.

By comparison, Springsteen has so many songs about teenage boys crushing on teenage girls, but few people try to figure out who he’s talking about when he mentions the almost mythical “Mary” in songs throughout his career. Perhaps it’s because he wasn’t dating famous people as a teenager, and perhaps because it’s sadly still too common to think a man singing about an adolescent crush has more artistic merit than a woman doing the same thing.

Even in the wake of Folklore’s release, many corners of the music-discussing internet insist upon talking about the album more in terms of Swift’s male collaborators — namely Aaron Dessner of The National and Justin Vernon (a.k.a. Bon Iver), both indie-rock royalty — than in terms of her own talents, even when, say, Dessner does a whole interview with Pitchfork talking extensively about Swift’s preternatural songwriting talents. The idea that Taylor Swift has somehow been “created” by someone is one that seems to persist, regardless of how much control she has over her own image.

But the ways in which people doubt Swift’s talent, or her control over her image, reflect larger questions about how baby boomers remade pop culture in their image versus how millennials continue to do.

Baby boomers were born into the era of radio’s dominance over American airwaves, and television entered their lives during their childhoods. The presence of these mass media influenced how much pop culture boomers could be exposed to, pushing into hyperdrive the artistic loop of influence becoming creation. American popular art exploded and proliferated as a result.

Whether that explosion led to the rise of rock and pop music or the invention of the cinematic blockbuster, baby boomers took the popular forms their parents adored and accelerated them toward something more raucous and purely entertaining.

The dominant new medium of millennials’ lives was the internet, which arrived when we were still very young. And a major element of internet culture is remix culture. From the earliest days of the “information superhighway,” jokes that mashed up disparate elements of pop culture — now we’d call them memes — were incredibly common, because the central idea of the internet has always been many people iterating on an idea rather than one person releasing that idea into the world.

Inherent to this kind of remixing is the idea of transforming something, often something disreputable, into something else. Thus, many of the greatest millennial artists work in forms that have previously been written off as unworthy — like, say, pop music — because the gatekeepers in those areas weren’t as likely to be aging baby boomers whose taste was ossifying. (This progression is not all that dissimilar from what the boomers did to the popular culture they were born into.)

Millennial artists grew up amid the splintering of the monoculture and, therefore, feel less of an obligation toward it than older generations might. When all you’ve known are niches, it’s better to try to find a niche that appeals to you and explore it as much as possible, then hope enough people come along for the ride.

Swift’s eagerness to collaborate with other artists who really excite her isn’t a uniquely millennial trait: Artists have been doing this since artists have existed. That she is only too happy to spread that credit around (even as her increasingly well-known “voice memos” that show her coming up with the central ideas behind her songs center her authorship first and foremost) is a testament to how millennial artists feel comfortable with both celebrating their influences and revealing how their art gets built, brick by brick, often thanks to the work of other people.

This is not to say that all baby boomer or millennial artists operate exactly the same way as Springsteen or Swift. Both artists write music that is equal parts heartbreaking and fun, evocative, and ephemeral. They’re constantly searching for their version of an America that does not exist, while not forgetting to make sure that we all have some fun in the one that does.

The impulse they share to tell stories about average Americans searching for meaning amid a crumbling world is a natural one for artists in the US. Yet Springsteen has so often been celebrated for doing just that, his rugged vision of a fading nation and talent for making national crises deeply personal treated as authentic and brilliant.

By comparison, Swift is often derided for how she digs into the ways personal apocalypses visit themselves onto the rest of reality, making her something like Springsteen’s inverse. The struggles she faces are deeply rooted in biases against women, the genre of music she operates in, and her generation. It’s worth reexamining the notions that drive this disparity in the two artists’ reception, if nothing else.

Perhaps we take Springsteen more seriously than Swift because he’s a man, or because all the great rockers of his generation have been venerated by time and nostalgia, or because his influences were men like Chuck Berry and Woody Guthrie instead of Shania Twain, Patsy Cline, and a litany of contemporary collaborators. But one of art’s great pleasures is finding the ways in which artists of different generations talk about the same topics across the span of years.

Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift craft their impeccable story-songs utilizing the tropes of very different musical genres. But they’re equally good at crafting songs built to both sing loudly on the freeway and accompany a flood of tears in the wake of some new heartache. Different as they might be, Springsteen and Swift are always talking about the same thing — all of the ways that every new day, no matter how promising, carries within it the potential to bring about the end of the world all over again. Until then, though, let’s sing about it.

ts1989fanatic all of that just to Tell us something swifties have known for years, the music industry is sexist and misogynistic DUH!!!

[kpokels]

For the sake of just making this so that I feel like I’ve gotten some more public knowledge of issues going on in the US internet world, let us turn to the FTC being idiots in understanding how people work. So COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), may or may not end up turning the entirety of the internet on its head starting with YouTube. In case you aren’t up to date, the FTC more recently made a settlement with Google/YouTube about how children’s content had targeted ads amongst other breakage of their rules. In just over a month, the FTC will start going after YouTube channels that appeal to kids if they don’t get hip to these rules themselves. Because of course they are.

tl;dr: please comment to the FTC here about how they need to tighten up the wording of what is content for children. Especially with acknowledgement of much adult content being indistinguishable from a quick glance.

There is just some problems, the people who wrote these rules forgot when making them. The things that appeal to children are often things that appeal to everyone. That content meant for all audiences means it includes kids but isn’t really aimed at them. And there is plenty of content out there that looks like it might be for kids that definitely isn’t. So specifically anything that could appeal to children is supposedly now kids content according to this bizarre set of rules, which have rarely been enforced at a larger level. These rules have content appealing to children include but is not limited to: cartoons, video games, stories, popular music, bright colors, and fast moving footage.

Let’s see, tonight I was on a musical kick. So we’ll start there. While I would say that Beauty and the Beast is actually a general/family friendly show, we are going to call it kids content because I can’t remember a musical actually meant most exclusively for kids right now.

Pretty boring right? Yeah, generally not what I’d have picked as a kid just based on the look of the thumbnail if I wasn’t already familiar with Beast’s silhouette. You can tell it isn’t currently marked as children’s content, as YouTube actually doesn’t allow any comments on children content. So let’s go up a step to actually a general audience, we’ll even keep with the fairytales theme and go with Into the Woods (, admittedly not a musical I actually like all that much but fits with what I’m going for.)

Oh that looks much closer to something a kid might pick, it’s got some color and personality, and if you aren’t familiar with the musical you’d think nothing of this song and even then still might not. For those who don’t know, two of the musical’s characters cheat on their spouses by the end of the song, how’s that for family friendly?

How about I give the one I wouldn’t blame anyone without a hint of pop culture from the 80s, musical theatre scene, or recent-ish television series wouldn’t blink to have their kids listen to until, like, 25 words in,

From the words “Dear Diary,” Heathers is definitely not for kids, and add in the fun with the musical being fairly raunchy as well. However it is marketed much like many other popular musicals, with cartoony drawings of some characters and bright colors. We even have costume examples and Wicked as examples here of that being a thing, regardless of the content or method of delivery. However between the name of several songs (Candy Store, Big Fun, Kindergarten Boyfriend), the colors, the images, I’d expect exactly no one to be able to determine from where you are supposedly suppose to be able to identify-aka before you even click the link- that this is definitely not for children. However , the rules make it very... interesting that this is still content that appeals to kids even though, uh they very much shouldnt be there.

Oh how bout we talk about one of my other loves in theatre, puppets. I’m personally surprised that those aren’t explicitly mentioned in any part of the rules I remember, as until more recently the US seems to mostly think of puppets as either for children or for family entertainment. But then again we got the big puppet-show for adults, Avenue Q, around the same time this version of the rules were being made. But still, Avenue Q is quite strongly made for adults, what about its inspiration, Seasame Street and its sibling the Muppets? They probably all qualify as appealing to kids even though only one of them should be considered so, as the Muppets is for general audiences, not even mostly kids, especially more recent versions.

And you might be wondering why me, a tumblr user who isn’t a content creator on YouTube cares? And it quite simply is: why would the FTC stop just at YouTube, especially if that site collapses or otherwise wrecks into a shadow of itself? Twitch probably ain’t safe for much the same reasons as YouTube. My Crunchyroll ads seem pretty well targeted a good 3/4 of the time, and it is plenty of cartoons aimed for children. But let’s step away from videos for a moment, let’s go see some other websites that might not be safe. Text doesn’t seem obvious but it is a form of storytelling, something the FTC includes as being children oriented, and god forbid it be about a children’s cartoon like Invader Zim. I could see ff.net get into some potential trouble, and even AO3, depending on how each passively collects data along with how the review function is taken into account, especially since both allow “guest” reviews. Amazon and other online shopping sites might have some fun, as they often REALLY track your movements and I would be particularly interested in whether or not they would actually destroy the useful data of “kids clicked this from that item” the way they are supposed to if they discover a user is under 13.

Oh have I brought up Tumblr, the joke that our advertiser’s records are, might also be in trouble? We really like our cartoons, video games, music, etc. that might appeal to kids. We are also a modern website that collects a fuckton of information. And guess what? Being for general audiences might have put us in more danger.

[raisingsupergirl]

Losing Our Traditions: How Are YOU Handling It?

This past Friday was supposed to be the Simpson Relays—Farmington, MO's annual high school track meet. It's an event that I not only participated in for four years in high school, but I've also covered it as a physical therapist every year since I returned to town in 2011. Because of this, it holds a nostalgic place in my heart. Sure, it rains almost every year, but it's still a chance for me to catch up with all of the Farmington students, coaches, and parents whom I've gotten to know so well over the years. And it's a chance to spend a relaxing afternoon in a place where I spent a large portion of my formative years. In short, it feels a little like coming home. Which is ironic since the very thing that caused this track meet to be cancelled this year is the same thing that's got us all stuck at home. Corona virus: robbing us of our traditions since 2019.

I'm a pretty optimistic person, but I've always had a peculiarly morbid way of looking at yearly traditions—birthdays, Easter, July 4th, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve, rifle season. You know, all the important stuff. For the average human, we'll only experience about 80 of each of these, at most. And we remember an even smaller amount than that. So missing just one is more than 1% of our total life experiences for that event. So "skipping" Easter or baseball season or spring for a year is kind of a big deal. A few weeks ago, I talked about living in the moment, and I stand by that. My point here is that sometimes we don't have a choice. Sometimes we're forced to miss things that we love. We lose 1% of that memory. So my question is this: what do we do about it?

Obviously, everyone is dealing with this pandemic a little differently. Some are really hunkering down, spending hours sanitizing door-dropped groceries and investing in chemical warfare-grade gas masks to wear while checking the mail. Others are ignoring it completely, shaking hands with everyone they see and picking their noses afterward. Most of us are somewhere in the middle, and the same goes with our emotional responses. We're not in complete denial, but we're not having daily breakdowns, either. And that's what makes the whole situation so hard to wrangle. There's no one piece of advice or world-view to recommend. I, for example, am still working full time—about 25 hours in the clinic and 15-ish from home. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and my two daughters are still too young to miss out on any serious schooling. So, our lives are very much the same as they've always been. And yet, there are still some strange emotional tensions and fears that we're dealing with. They're not the same as yours, or the same as an eighty-year-old asthmatic atheist stuck in a nursing home (yes, religious beliefs are significant when dealing with mortality and fear of death). So, with all of that in mind, how could I possibly give you useable advice on how to deal with the loss of our dearest holidays and traditions?

The obvious answer? I can't. If I tell you to create new traditions on those days, some of you will drown in the sense of loss caused by moving on. If I tell you to spend time reminiscing on the best memories created in years past, some of you will find the bittersweet nostalgia too heavy to bear. But if there's no advice to be given, what are we to do? Well, if you're still reading this, you're already doing what needs to be done—you're thinking about your situation. You're evaluating your own life, your own senses of loss, missing out, and new experiences.

When I sat at home this past rainy Friday, I thought back on all of the Simpson Relays I'd attended in the past—both those while I was in high school and those I've covered as an adult. I reminisced over the track and field events I (mediocrely) participated in, the friends I made, the girlfriends I made (none so beautiful or talented as you, dear), the games I played, the wins, losses, highs, lows, and in-betweens. I'm only thirty-four, but my life has already been long enough that some of my great memories are starting to fade into the mists of time. And it's events such as the corona pandemic (as horrible as they are) that give me the chance to reflect and reevaluate the good times and just how important they have been to me. I'm not saying you have to ruminate over the past like I do. I'm not saying you have to ignore that past and forge ahead. I am saying that you need to take five seconds and figure out what's best for you.

Don't be a victim of circumstance. Don't spend your time blaming and lamenting and throwing a fit. Take control of your situation. And by that, I mean take control of you—not of the president or the World Health Organization or the crazy lady at the grocery store. You. Make the choice of how you're going to respond to these hard times, and then follow through. And if that choice doesn't work out as well as planned, try something different. We're all learning here. We're all going through loss and confinement and uncharted waters. But that’s no excuse to lose our crap.

You know the crazy thing about 1%? It's only 1%. It may seem like a lot at the time, but it's not. And even that 1% hasn't been completely stolen from us. We still got to have Easter, even if it was different. And even though the Simpson Relays were cancelled this year along with all spring sports, that doesn't mean spring was cancelled. Or sports. This afternoon, I watched my daughter play Wii baseball/bowling/golf for like two hours. And yesterday, I sat outside and grilled all the meats. Life isn't cancelled right now. 1% of it just looks a little different. And how you deal with that is 100% your choice.

Have a good one, y'all, and keep living your best life.

[kabrac]

So I kinda wrote an essay

I’ve been mad about entrapdak lately, so I broke down why the ship is bad/toxic. I also posted this on my Instagram (@adora.wlw) :)

—————————

Why I don’t ship entrapdak/ why entrapdak is toxic, a (hopefully) comprehensive essay by @adora.wlw

To start off, this isn’t because this is a straight ship, I’m actually a bit of a glimbow shipper, and not to mention, that would be a stupid reason not to ship something. This would be an equally bad and harmful ship if it was gay. Without further ado, let’s get into my reasons :)

Part one: the age gap.

Entrapta is apparently supposed to be older than the other princesses, about 30 or so, although I couldn’t find mention of this on her wiki or in the show, I will be operating under this assumption, because this is the mindset many entrapdak shippers follow. Hordak in the show has to be at least 70 (if not more) if we follow his storyline of being sent crashing to etheria after helping his “brother.” His brother must be at least 35- 40 when he clones himself just by looking at his appearance, and how similar it is to hordak’s current appearance, obviously with a few exceptions. making hordak at least 40 (ish) to start, then he must’ve helped his brother for many years, he had to rise through the ranks to become his brother’s second in command, the youngest commanding officer (second in command) in the United States was 25 when he assumed the position, assuming he joined the military at age 18 this took about 7 years, but that’s at the least. The oldest of that same rank (when they were promoted) was 49, also under the assumption he joined at age 18 this took 31 years. Making the average, or the one we’ll use for hordak, 19 years. Now we’ve got hordak at age 69 (lol), But, he wouldn’t be in that position for a day, so I’m gonna add 2 years until the defect became noticeable. Giving us 71 when he crashes to etheria. We know when the horde starts out that Micha is about 11 and his sister (spinerella) is about 5 or 6. But, when we talk about present day etheria, or when he meets entrapta, That had to have been at least 30-35 years ago, since within that time Angela had to have glimmer with micha and glimmer had to reach about age 16. So that makes hordak over 100 years old, not much of a stretch since his body is literally falling apart, and entrapta about 30. No matter what way you cut the age, it is creepy! Yes, they’re both adults but that is a 70 year age gap. It’s legal, but that doesn’t make it moral.

Part 2: emotional abuse and manipulation

In this part I will be using specific moments from the show to prove my point, so prepare to open Netflix a bit. First, let’s talk about how hordak emotionally manipulates people around him other than entrapta. This is obviously no surprise, since he is the villain of the show. He tosses around people like shadow weaver when they make the smallest mistakes, see when he was going to have catra sent to beast island because shadow weaver got loose. It’s not exactly a small mistake but that is definitely not the correct or sane reaction to this situation, especially to one of, if not, the best commanding officers you have. Entrapta even says this when hordak talks about how he’s sending catra away. It’s clear by doing even just a surface level check that hordak isn’t a good person. He constantly proves that he doesn’t really care about much of anyone except for his “brother” whom he so desperately wants to please.

Part 3: mistreatment of entrapta

Entrapta is constantly mistreated by hordak. The most obvious example comes in season 3 nearing the end of the season in the episode “Moment of Truth” about 6 minutes in hordak’s suit has a malfunction, causing him to fall. When entrapta goes over to help him up, and then put’s her hair on his shoulder, he slaps her away, and tells her to get back to work. If you even just look at her sad face in that scene then that should be enough to convince you. But hey, I’ve got more examples. Hordak hardly congratulates her accomplishments, like when she designs the new suit for him that stops him from completely falling apart at the seams, he hardly seems thankful. This emotional abuse continues in the episode “Huntara” at about 3 minutes in, the portal fails to ignite, entrapta wants to experiment further, saying that it was just their first test, which is completely reasonable. Hordak decides that the portal is a failure and that they’re done, she tries to explain why they should continue, and again, he screams at her to get out. And again in the first episode of the season, when Entrapta explains that they need catra, since catra was so successful with getting new tech, Entrapta holds up a map and says that they should send Catra to the crimson waste to get the tech they need, hordak slaps it out of her hands and screams at her.

Part 4: why catradora shippers are different

So I always see the argument, in response to people calling out entrapdak shippers, that catradora is also a toxic ship. And yeah, it is. Within the context of the current canon. The difference between catradora shippers and entrapdak shippers is that catradora shippers (for the most part) don’t ship it within the context of the current canon. We ship it within the assumption that they will makeup and catra will change. Entrapdak shippers, however, do ship their ship within the context of the current canon (at least from what I’ve seen.) which makes entrapdak shippers that much worse.

Part 5: conclusion

I know ultimately I’m going to lose followers for this, and although it’s not going to be a lot, Since my account is so small, I really don’t care either way. If you still think entrapdak is okay after reading this then, I don’t know what to tell you other than good riddance.

Sincerely,

A very tired she-ra fan.

[comicteaparty]

September 21st-September 27th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from September 21st, 2019 to September 27th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

How would you describe the target audience for your comic?  Did you intend to aim at that audience, or did it just happen?

Deo101 (Millennium)

My target audience for millennium http://millennium.spiderforest.com/ was and is LGBT youth. Specifically teens. I know when I was a kid reading a story where gay people are just kind of... There? No jokes, no stereotypes, more than one... That would have helped me a lot. So I'm trying to make that for other kids! I think the story has reached a much wider/older audience then I intended, but I know it has helped at least some LGBT youth/young adults and that's all I could ever ask for.(edited)

spacerocketbunny

The target audience for Ghost Junk Sickness is definitely queer youth and young adults! Much like what @Deo101 (Millennium) is saying, basically we wanted something like the cool action scifi comics we read when we were younger with good queer rep that's integrated and normalized in the universe! As it turned out though, the audience we reached has been all over the place ranging from older women to big biker dudes?? Every time we go to cons we can never guess who'll purchase a book because the range is so varied! I'm sure we still reach the original target to an extent but the rest is all over the map it seems! I don't think it's a bad thing, it's just been pretty unexpected

Deo101 (Millennium)

Not bad at all ^^ more like a pleasant surprise!

spacerocketbunny

Exactly!

Deo101 (Millennium)

I think those other, older people are also looking for a story to reach their inner child... And I think that's great

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Lol, I feel the similarly way about my own story. My goal was definitely to make something me as a kiddo would have loved, which essentially would have been shonen stories but with a female majority cast. I think I already figured my target audience would be similar to me, but I've been consistently surprised by how many male identifying folks like it. I guess I do like that they can hang though X) Anyway, these are my floppy, post work out thoughts. Hopefully they make sense.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

The target audience for Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) was never super clear from the beginning - I just wanted to make something I'd like as a teen. Luckily (or unluckily! in terms of describing it to people ) the story is a mishmash of a bunch of different genres. It's not quite a ghost story, not quite a pirate adventure, not quite a fantasy epic, but it has elements of them all. And it does seem to have attracted people who like those different genres. It may not be easy if I ever want to publish it properly (it's a little difficult to describe my 'brand' ) but as it is, it's got everything I would have liked when I was between 14 and 18.

My happiest surprise is hearing about the younger kids who have read it, understood it, and really enjoyed it. Knowing that 10-12 year olds can appreciate my work is really awesome. I try to keep the language and scary/questionable content at Harry Potter levels, but I like having some of the depth/maturity of stories like The Golden Compass. If they like Phantomarine now, I really hope they find extra enjoyment with it as they grow up. It's going to be a ride!

mariah (rainy day dreams)

Gosh, I get that feel of being multi-genre and not knowing quite how to describe your Brand X') I feel like I've gotten better at defining it over time but it's still a struggle to briefly describe what my thing even is some days. Also Golden Compass I'm always excited to find other comic folks who were also influenced by that series.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

It's my gold standard for the right blend of fantasy, reality, and maturity. It's just the best

keii4ii

The target audience for Heart of Keol (https://heartofkeol.com/) is extremely tiny, but it does have appeal for people outside of that niche. I make it for myself, and the relevant aspects of "myself" here are: a) Grew up in Korea, is living (or has lived for an extended period of time) in a predominantly English-speaking part of the world b) Bonus points if they spent some time living in rural Korea c) Is into slow burn drama about characters who could be described as being "genuine" and probably "lawful" as well d) Likes the aesthetics of fantasy settings, but is more into the mundane, almost slice of life, side of drama e) Is very much into reading between the lines for more emotional stuff. Reads a lot of heart from sceneries, possibly more than from faces. (I have face blindness and this affects how I experience comics both as a reader and as a creator)

Obviously people who meet both a) and b) are gonna be harder to find! But if one can meet c), d) and e), that's enough to enjoy the comic the way it's meant to be enjoyed, or so I hope.

The reason a) and b) matter is because it affects how the setting/aesthetics come across. To someone like me, the old Korea setting feels homey, warm, nostalgic. It's like a shorthand for "sit down and enjoy this heartfelt slow burn tale." But to others, Magical Asia might feel exciting and exotic, which isn't really what the story is meant to be, so there may be some dissonance.

seetherabbit

I haven't given much thought about the target audience for Vulperra. (https://vulperra.com/) other than then it's probably for people who like adventure, fantasy and cartoony-ish animals

Cronaj

My target audience is kind of all of the place. Initially when I began scripting my comic, Whispers of the Past, I was really into anime and manga, especially ones like Attack on Titan that were a gritty fantasy. However, since then, my style and story have changed tremendously. My target audience now tends to be young women, aged 15-25, who enjoy detailed world building in high fantasy and are definitely into family drama in story telling. Initially, I wrote the story to fit certain perameters that I myself enjoyed. For example, I am particularly obsessed with the idea of the mundane meeting the fantastical and amazing. The quiet lull of ordinary life juxtaposed by the rigor of magical entities. I specifically focus a lot on drawing beautiful artwork for the panels, because I myself am a picky-pants when it comes to selecting comics I want to read. Another one of my obsessions is a fantasy setting so detailed that you feel like if the story ended, the world would still live on. (One of my inspirations was the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini, in which the author essentially wrote several languages, similar to Tolkien.) In reality, my readers tend to be women aged 30+ (probably who watch k-dramas like I do), and a lot of D&D players. It's fun really, discovering how much of my own hobbies bleed into my stories.

AntiBunny

Early on with AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ I was hoping for fans of scifi and film noir. What I got were fans of classic cartoons and furries. Which is fine by me really. Furries are nice people who are passionate about their hobbies (and spend money).

Jonny Aleksey

A superhero audience was always the intention for J-Man (http://jonnyalekseydrawscomics.com/the-undefeatable-j-man/), but specifically, right now, I'm aiming for something all ages. Slightly teen drama, cartoony but grounded. My inspirations were Spectacular Spider-Man and the DCAU so anyone who likes that is the readership I expect. Hopefully I can reach people who are on the fence about superheroes. The all ages aspect is something newish relatively speaking. When I started my webcomic I wanted to stay away from the "deep real edgy" tone I made when I was in high school (shiver). It took me a bit to really get that tone down. I don't use curse words and only mild blood, but occasionally stuff that borders on teen+ go through. (there's one instance in #5 where J-Man's face gets burnt by the villain that might've been a bit much) I don't think the all ages banner is going to restrict me from telling certain storylines/character development. Just means it won't be excessively grim.

Erin/Leif & Thorn on Kickstarter

The target audience for my webcomics is LGBT nerds who want stories that give them strong feelings, and who like SF/F, anime, competent characters that don't have to take turns with the Idiot Ball to keep the plot moving, and cats. Admittedly that last bit might be redundant, since everyone on the internet likes cats.

Ash🦀

I’ll be honest with you, I’m the target audience of my comic. (http://www.fwmgofficial.com/) it’s not out yet (it’ll be out October 31st) but as the writer I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Mostly, it’s just targeted to young adults and autistic people. I never got to see people like me in comics, so I wrote a comic where an autistic person can be the hero too, even in his own way. For me, I figure whoever likes it likes it and that’s good enough for me. (also furries. Definitely targeted furries)

Kay Rose

@Ash🦀 cant wait to read it!

Ash🦀

QwQ thank you!!

MJ Massey

So far Black Ball is pulling in a mix of people who like the vintage aesthetic (1920s and art deco with some old-school macabre for some reason?) and people who like shonen manga, which is great. Even if Black Ball isn't specifically macabre or strictly shounen (though I myself have made shounen battle manga-esque comics in the past)

DaemonDan (The Demon Archives)

Audience of my comic... Per Google it's 18-35 year old men from the US and Russia XD Which makes sense given it's a pretty hard sci-fi with a lot of military action from dudes in power armor and etc. Though I try not to go too "high octane action!1!" and explore more psychological elements too.

[definition-of-awkward]

all the odd number questions >:3

okay first of all how dare you and second of all I still love you ok but just. you do realise no one here actually cares abt this ??  so I’ll put the answers under the break

ask game

1. who’s your celebrity crush?

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuh I don’t think I really have the stereotypical celebrity crushes?  if we count lesser-known celebrities, then I’d have to say the amazing youtuber TBSkyen, who runs a wonderful channel all about character design in videogames and such. I admire his skills and the content he puts out is very informative & also he happens to be one of the rare people online who pay attention to LGBTQ issues and cultivates a safe space in the community surrounding his channel & also is aware of the issues of sexism and ALSO just happens to have a lovely voice (example: x x x )so how can you blame me for crushing hard?

he made me care about League of Legends and DARK SOULS, for god’s sake!

3. rant. just do it

I feel like the previous answer was enough of a rant already lol (I just love him so much uuuugh he says at one point in his life he was gonna be a teacher and IT SHOWS! he explains art theory so well! fml)

5. how many accounts do you have?

on tumblr? on all of the internet? I only have 1 tumblr account and uuuuuh 7 sideblogs, which I barely use.

7. opinion on… (specify to the person you’re asking to)

oh hello heidi. asking me to give an opinion on one of my best friends now huh? very sneaky indeed!

well She is a lovely lovely person who I met/got to know thanks to tumblr and mtg (I’m not sure how we became mutuals in the first place but I’m not complaining) and I love Her very much! She’s sweet and terribly kind and I have a plushie and a cute plastic snail to prove that! Also She is adorable and deserves all the happiness in the world and I will cut anyone who even looks at Her wrong

(also probably one of the people whom i talk to the most these days. how did that happen OH RIGHT because she’s an enabler and lets me rant. read this ask.)

9. favorite brand of clothing?

not much of a brand person, I just pick out stuff that’s comfy, cheap-ish, and at least vaguely gay

11. what unusual talent do you have?

……. I can purr, I think?

13. ever prank called a store?

I’m sure people in my school tried & my cousins did that as well when we were kids, but me personally? no. I was merely a witness. A co-conspirator, if you will.

15. what’s a question you constantly get asked?

no single question stands out rn, but I guess these days it’s just university-related things. :/

17. google the top song from the year you were born

google has a lot of results for me but the ones that immediately stand out are Livin’ La Vida Loca & All Star.     …… yes that fits perfectly

19. what’s your favorite teacher you’ve ever had?

art history/drama/english (I think?) high school teacher. she’s queer and super chill, likes dnd and not to be dramatic but I WOULD DIE FOR HER. first adult outside of my family who I came out to & she was way better about it than my mom and CAN YOU GUESS why she’s my fave and I look up to her so much??

21. what’s a conspiracy you believe in?

I don’t.

23. if you could break one of your bad habits which would you choose?

that’s. not enough. please give me more of those I have like 24 bad habits that need my immediate attention please and thank you.

(probably my severe procrastination. but that’s very broad and generic.)

25. what’s something you can’t stop buying?

binge food. no it’s not fun. yes, maybe this would be a better answer to the previous question. the two of us have a bad relationship and it sucks.

27. how long before a trip do you pack?

last minute. if we leave in the afternoon then I pack the morning of the trip. if we leave in the morning, I pack at night.

29. what quote or inspirational setting do you think is bs?

anything that comes out of rich people’s mouths. “believe in your dreams // anything is possible” is easier to say for someone from a dual-income family who gets a car for their 18th birthday and goes on vacation every year. fuck off.

31. you can change one thing about your life right now. what are you changing?

capitalism.

33. what do you think about a lot

gorgeous men. this blog is a testament to that.

also? great animation/visual effects

35. what does home mean to you?

messy rooms, late night trips to the freezer, worn matresses, leaky windows & the only place where I feel comfortable singing loud

37. have you ever been called down to the principals office?

only for good results in competitions

39. describe your aesthetic

pop-culture references, dark undereye circles, worn sneakers, oversized jumpers, long showers, cool breeze, late summer nights, staring at the moon, physical affection

…

this took way longer to type up than I thought it would

[radarsteddybear]

Jewish Holidays: A Guide for Teachers

Every year, without fail, teachers prove that they have absolutely no knowledge of how Jewish holidays work beyond what their school districts have told them, which tends to be shaky at best (although I'm sure there are districts that get it right...somewhere...).  So I, a young Conservative(ish) Jewish (substitute) teacher from a very non-Jewish area on the east coast of the United States, am going to give you a short rundown on which Jewish holidays are the most important/going to be observed in some way by most of your Jewish kids and what you should do to accommodate that (hint: it involves not giving homework or tests, but not quite how you probably think).

Other Jewish people, feel free to chime in with any additions and your own experiences, and fellow teachers, I would be very interested in hearing what sorts of things your districts/administrations tell you to do about the Jewish holidays (and also holidays of other religions), what sorts of things you personally do about them, and what kinds of pressures that you're under from your districts that conflict with accommodating the Jewish (and other) holidays.  And if anybody has any questions, feel free to ask :D

First thing's first: Jewish holidays begin in the evening because that's how the Jewish calendar works--each new day begins with sundown rather than sunup.   Every calendar sold in America (I can't speak for anywhere else) that includes holidays of any kind mark this in one of two ways--they'll either label the day before the holiday starts with "[Holiday] begins at sundown" or they'll label the day of the holiday as "[Holiday]" and have a note somewhere either at the beginning or the end of the calendar that states that the Jewish holidays listed within the calendar actually start the evening before the day they are listed.

This is super important and often means that Jewish students will be busy the evening before the days of holidays.

Another thing I want to say is that the easiest and best way to accommodate for Jewish (and other) holidays is to do so equally for all of your students, regardless of religion.  In other words, instead of giving your Jewish kids an extra day or two to do the homework, don't assign homework.  Instead of allowing the Jewish kids the opportunity to take the test at a later date, schedule the test for that later date.  Because no matter how good your intentions are, forcing the Jewish kids to single themselves out to you to request these accommodations is putting the responsibility of the students, who, for a variety of reasons (antisemitism, anxiety, etc.) might feel uncomfortable doing so.  Additionally, they often decide that it's simply not worth it to have to reschedule the test or be saddled with two or more nights' worth of homework in one.

Another thing I've seen teachers do is tell the class that they "don't have homework tonight because it's some Jewish holiday [or something]" or "the test has to be [day] because we're not allowed to give tests on [other day] because it's a Jewish holiday [or something]."  As a Jewish kid, very often the only Jewish kid in the class, it always made me feel really self-conscious and almost like it was somehow my fault that the teacher couldn't give homework or the test had to be moved.  Either don't bring the fact that it's a Jewish holiday into your announcement about there being no homework or when the test is, or state it matter-of-factly and move on. 

I would say that there are three really, really big Jewish holidays that most of your Jewish students will be celebrating/observing:

Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year): usually occurs in September.  This and Yom Kippur are collectively referred to as the High Holy Days or High Holidays.  It's the second-most important Jewish holiday (not counting Shabbat, the Sabbath).  It lasts two days, and if you have school those days, some of your Jewish students may be absent for one or both days.  A large part of the holiday is spent in synagogue, both during the evening of the day before and the next two days.

How to accommodate: 

Do not assign homework over Rosh Hashanah.

Do not assign homework or projects to be due the day after Rosh Hashanah.

Do not assign homework or projects to be due the evening/night of Rosh Hashanah.  For example, if Rosh Hashanah starts on Thursday evening, don't make anything due Thursday evening/night.

If Rosh Hashanah falls on a weekend, do not have assignments due on that day or the evening before.  Ideally, there should be no homework over that weekend.

Do not give tests the day after Rosh Hashanah.

Depending on the nature of the test, consider moving tests back an extra day or two, or announcing tests a day or two early.  If you normally give your students a week to study and prepare for a test, Rosh Hashanah does not count as part of that week.  Students cannot and should not be forced to study secular subjects during Rosh Hashanah.

Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement): usually occurs in September or early October, ten days after the beginning of Rosh Hashanah.  It's the most important Jewish holiday (again, not counting Shabbat).  This and Rosh Hashanah are collectively referred to as the High Holy Days or High Holidays.  It lasts one day, and if you have school that day, some of your Jewish students may be absent.  Yom Kippur is a fasting day, so students who are Jewish adults (post Bar/Bat Mitzvah, age 12/13+), might not be eating or drinking for the entire holiday (about 25 hours).  It is nearly impossible to get any kind of homework done during or after the fast.  Fasting makes you feel like crap, and during the years I've fasted, I didn't feel like myself again until the next day after a good night's sleep.  Students cannot effectively do any homework or studying the evening after Yom Kippur ends.  Students will also be spending much of the evening (one of the most important synagogue services of the year) and day in synagogue. 

How to accommodate:

Do not assign homework over Yom Kippur.

Do not assign homework or projects to be due the day after Yom Kippur.

Do not assign homework or projects to be due the evening/night of Yom Kippur.  For example, if Yom Kippur starts on Monday evening, don't make anything due Monday evening/night.

Do not give tests the day after Yom Kippur.

Depending on the nature of the test, consider moving tests back an extra day or two, or announcing tests a day or two early.  If you normally give your students a week to study and prepare for a test, Yom Kippur does not count as part of that week.  Students cannot and should not be forced to study secular subjects during Yom Kippur.

Passover: usually occurs in March or April.  This holiday commemorates the liberation of the Jewish people by Moses from slavery in Egypt.  It lasts for eight days, and the first two evenings are each spent having a Sedar, a big, long dinner during which the Passover story is retold, prayers are said, and certain symbolic foods are eaten.  Even a short Sedar takes up a good part of the evening.  Many people do not go to synagogue during Passover.  Jewish students might be absent the days of and after the first two Sedars if they are traveling to have the Sedar with family or friends.

How to accommodate:

Do not assign homework the day before the first night of Passover or the first full day of Passover.  For example, if Passover begins on Monday evening, don't assign homework Monday or Tuesday.

Do night assign homework or projects to be due the first night of Passover, the first full day of Passover, or the second full day of Passover.  For example, if Passover begins on Monday evening, don't assign homework or projects to be due Monday evening, Tuesday, OR Wednesday.

Do not give tests for the first two full days of Passover.  For example, if Passover begins on Monday evening, don't give any tests on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Depending on the nature of the test, consider moving tests back an extra day or two, or announcing tests a day or two early.  If you normally give your students a week to study and prepare for a test, the first two nights of Passover do not count as part of that week.  Students cannot and should not be forced to study secular subjects during or instead of the Passover Sedar.

Be aware that Jewish students observing the holiday will not be able to eat a large number of foods during the holiday.  These foods include anything leavened (bread, cake, cookies, brownies, crackers) and a number of other things that may include corn, rice, and peanuts (among other things), depending on the student's personal beliefs and traditions.  This shouldn't affect you as the teacher too much, although if you know that a student is going to be bringing in treats to celebrate their birthday during this time, you might want to consider giving the families of Jewish students a heads-up in case they want to send in an alternate, kosher for Passover treat for their child to eat instead.  You also probably want to avoid holding food-related parties during Passover.

Plus a surprise bonus holiday:

Shabbat/Shabbos (the Sabbath): Shabbat happens every week.  It starts at sundown on Friday and ends at sundown on Saturday.  The amount of students you'll have that are shomer Shabbos (in other words, who observe the sabbath) will vary.  Chances are, unless you live in a community with a lot of Jewish people, there won't be a whole lot.  Anyway, the big thing is that if you have any kids who are shomer Shabbos in your class, you should avoid having assignments due online at 11:59 (or any other time) Friday night, especially if it's that time of year where it's getting dark out early.  Actually, it would be very nice of you to avoid having assignments due Friday nights in general, but since this post is specifically about Jewish holidays, I'll save that rant for another time.

These are the big holidays that I observed growing up.  This is by no means a comprehensive list of Jewish holidays.  Your district might list additional Jewish holidays as days that you're not allowed to assign homework or tests, and that's great!  (I know the district I substitute in included another one in the list of no homework/no test holidays they gave each teacher last year; unfortunately, I can't remember what it is.)

Just remember that each and every holiday begins the evening before, and students who are observing the holiday have little to no time during the holiday to do any kind of school work.

"But Allison, surely it's ok for me to assign projects/assignments to be due the days you've just told me not to if I assign them early so the students have plenty of time before the holiday to do get it done!  If the holiday is really that important to them, the Jewish kids will manage their time to make sure they're finished by the time the holiday starts!"  First of all, the vast majority of kids are absolutely terrible at managing their time and procrastinate like crazy, and you know this.  It is your responsibility as the teacher to refrain from assigning work over a holiday, not your students' responsibility to get it done before the holiday (not to mention that you're essentially giving your Jewish students less time to complete the assignment, which isn't fair).  A day or two without homework here and there will not kill you or your students, it will not stunt their learning, and it will not negatively affect their standardized test scores.  You'll all survive, and the worst that'll happen is that your non-Jewish students will get a break from school and might instead spend the day catching up on much-needed sleep, playing video games, hanging out with friends and family, and other activities that school usually gets in the way of.  And honestly?  That's better for them than any homework you could assign.

Please stop making Jewish kids pick between observing their religion and doing well in school.

[birdthany]

So I got tagged in two different ask memes at around the same time, once by @subarulesbian and once by @mollyglock and I’m going to consolidate them under one cut because some of the questions repeat

First, the one I was tagged in by @subarulesbian​. Because this one is longer and therefore has more of the repeats 1. How tall are you? 5′6.5

2. What color and style is your hair? Right now it’s shoulder-length brown fluff. Think like Regina Spektor’s hair if she didn’t brush or style it and rolled around a lot in her sleep.

3. What color are your eyes? Blueish grayish.

4. Do you wear glasses? Yes, though I often go without them

5. Do you wear braces? Not since eighth grade

6. What is your fashion style? Don’t have much of one, but I like leggings, sweaters, and adding pins and patches to jackets and jeans. 

7. Full name? Bethany Johanna

8. When were you born? October ‘97, though for Reasons I consider April 22 to be my Birthday, and it’s the one I Celebrate

9. Where are you from and where do you live now? Massachusetts, near Boston. And Massachusetts, near Boston.

10. What school do you go to? I go to a local Comewnitty Cawledge. 

11. What kind of student are you? Not an amazing one. Usually I know all the material but my executive dysfunction and anxiety causes me to miss or lose a bunch of the assignments and/or tests, and my migraines make me miss class, so I end up with very middling grades.

12. Do you like school? Depends on the subject, the atmosphere of the class, and how understanding the professor is about the aforementioned issues I have.

13. What are your favourite school subjects? well i majored in philosophy so i guess that lol.

14. Favorite TV shows? okay i like hardly watch tv anymore but i will come out of my cave for better call saul, stranger things, westworld, and bob’s burgers. also i’ve seen scrubs and the x files all the way through like a hundred times each.

16. Favorite books? The Animorphs series. Lately I’ve been rereading ASOUE, too. Other than excellent childrens’ series I mostly read nonfiction.

17. Favourite past-time? Chilling, talking to friends, art, listening to music

18. Do you have any regrets? Hah. Haha. I guess I’ll say “being too tolerant of bullshit.”

19. Dream job? Last time I got an ask meme I said “head of a successful band and author,” and then I realized I was describing Gerard Way, but I don’t really have a different answer. I’d love to rescue guinea pigs professionally but that’s even less attainable. 

20. Would you like to get married? Theoretically..... Dunno how likely it is though. Because of Circumstances

21. Would you like to have kids someday? Not biologically, never ever biologically, but I’d like to adopt.

22. How many? 2 or 3, probably. Sibling relationships are important to me

23. Do you like shopping? If I have a gift card and a lot of energy, yeah. Otherwise, no. and I hate clothes shopping

24. What countries have you visited? I can name every country in the world, but I have been to none outside the US.

25. What’s the scariest nightmare you’ve ever had? Oh, boy. You’ve gotta be way more specific than that. 

26. Do you have any enemies? Not super sure. I think there are some people who would consider me an enemy that I’ve just moved on from thinking about at all.

27. Do you have a s/o? Noooope. Not gonna do that again for awhile, either

28. Do you believe in miracles? Probably? Depends on what exactly you mean, again. I’ll say probably. Now, the one I was tagged in by @mollyglock

★ nickname: Most people just call me Bethany, but my ex used to call me “Bread” and Jay sometimes calls me “B” or “Bthany” (pronounced like bee-thany)

★ zodiac: tauruś 

★ height: 5′6.5″. yes the half inch is important (I know I already answered this but I think it’s funny that I didn’t have to change Robin’s answer at all)

★ last movie i saw: hhhhh I.... uh..... Oh! It was Bohemian Rhapsody.

★ last thing i googled: “november 2018 movies” trying to remember what the last movie I saw was. Before that “regina spektor hair” to make sure I was remembering right for my previous answers

★ favorite musician: 

now the last thing I googled was “gerard way deviantart stamp” 

★ song stuck in my head: “Come One, Come All” by All Time Low. I don’t really listen to them, but it’s on my playlist of “songs that are weirdly hateful towards DJs” 

★ other blogs: This is it babey

★ do i get asks: Sometimes! More often I get posts sent to me from the Messaging function

★ following: 569 but probably like half are inactive

★ followers: 339

★ amount of sleep: Absolutely completely varied and random. Today it was a lot, tomorrow it might be none.

★ lucky number: 13, I suppose

★ what i’m wearing: Magic school bus T-shirt, Cape Cod sweatshirt, and Jeggings. Because I’m an adult. Oh, and a warm beanie-ish type hat.

★ dream job: Already answered!

★ dream trip: I really want to see the world eventually... I’d be happy going just about anywhere tbh, but I really want to leave the country. Somewhere warm with really cool wildlife like Australia would be awesome.

★ favorite food: Anything that combines tomatoes with mozzarella or chocolate with peppermint. 

★ play any instruments: I did violin as a kid and still kinda remember how to play it, I’m an amateur at guitar, and I did voice for quite awhile but my voice is different than it was before so I fuck up singing a lot now

★ language: I’m only fluent in English, but I'm also conversational in ASL because my mom is an ASL interpreter and her BF and many of her friends I grew up around are all Deaf

★ favorite song: I’m going to follow Robin’s example and pick a Danger Days song, I’m gonna go with Party Poison! It seems appropriate since that whole ‘verse but also that song specifically is why the Party Poison symbol is the one I had Gerard draw so I can get it tattooed 

★ random fact: Birds are my Brand(tm) but I love guinea pigs just as much, and I have Three of them. whereas I only have the one bird

★ describe yourself in an aesthetic: I have little-to-no awareness of my own appearance or vibe, I don’t really know if I have an aesthetic? I’d like to think I give off an artsy and loving vibe. I pretty much always have paint and/or animal fur/hay on my clothes, so it seems possible. 

[personal-galaxies-blog]

November 25, 2018, 2:21am

TRIGGER WARNING: the “s” word. self-harm.

subject of my anxiety: myself i guess

i’ve been writing s****** notes to cope with how i feel. i’ve developed anger management issues stemming from my anxiety. i get triggered when people misunderstand me and think i’m being rude when i’m being as polite as possible about what i say.

i’ve been writing s****** notes to cope how i feel.

i don’t really know if that’s something someone should be doing. essentially, i’ve been feeling hopeless and felt life is meaningless. i don’t know why i should be waking up in the morning or why i should continue preserving myself when i’m useless. there’s literally no use for me. if i disappeared the world would continue turning anyways and ok a small group of people would have their lives affected temporarily but so what? what kind of impact does my life have compared to someone else? i’m insignificant. i’m 17. i’m not gonna make that big of a difference so i don’t understand why i’m here. life is so chaotic and it rarely has any order so what kind of plan am i even living for? 

i want to die, but i’m also too scared to end my life. theres that small part of me that wants to live my life out with my boyfriend and see my baby brother grow up. god, he’s a kid, i can’t bring myself to cause emotional trauma to a kid. i don’t care about adults, i care about that kid. i care about my boyfriend. i want to be with him, but that’s literally the only thing i’m holding onto. otherwise, i don’t see why i shouldn’t just go now. these random s****** notes are just there in the event i do accidentally kill myself. at least i’ve gotten some of the words out.

i’ve developed anger management issues stemming from my anxiety.

in high school, i’ve had slight anger management issues triggered by my close friends unloading their emotional baggage onto me. i can handle it in gradual increments usually, but constant negativity drags me down that i get angry about it and want to avoid it. it usually went okay ish with that friend and we’re best friends too and we dealt with it in this way. now i’m in college and there’s someone similar to her that lives right next to me. she triggers this anger inside me when she constantly talks about her emotional problems and while i can take it to an extent, there’s only so much i can take. it’s gotten to the point that i lash out at myself and cut because i have no other way to cope because i’m in a new space and the space isn’t the safest either. now these anger management issues have stuck and are just ever occurring and a new obstacle for me. i used to just have the normal panic attacks and all about school, but now because of the triggers i can’t control i got this stuff on me. i want to learn how to control my anger, but, like college, it’s all so new and i need help and any of the remedies offered aren’t helping much if at all. i want to get out.

i get triggered when people misunderstand me and think i’m being rude when i’m being as polite as possible about what i say.

essentially, because of my anger management issues, i get triggered when other people get triggered by me when i don’t think i’ve done much to get them to be triggered the way they are for them to give me the response they’ve given me. it builds up honestly. for example, with the person who i live next to who triggers me, i told her how i felt about her and living with her and it put me off that i wanted to switch universities because of it. the other night, two people got buzzed off because of my opinion which wasn’t really the worst opinion imo but they got quite triggered which caused me to get triggered. i felt despair like never before and wanted to remove myself from the world entirely and not just the situation. i have no idea how to deal with these problems right now. i just want everything and everyone to be chill but obviously that’s not how the world works and i hate the world.

i hate the world. i hate that i’m in a university i don’t particularly enjoy. i hate how i now have anger issues added to the emotional baggage i already carry. i hate how i was so optimistic about life initially and now i just want life to end. i hate how the one person that anchors me down is 3,995 miles away from me. 

don’t get me wrong. i know im more privileged than a lot of other people, i try my best to look at the world in that way. but making my problems seem insignificant and people that make me feel that way trigger me further and i really don’t know how to cope. i thought i was getting better, but i’m not.

i hate me.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Rules: Answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people. I was tagged by @dyannehs​

LAST:

1. Drink: Water 2. Phone call: Myself. Because I lost my cell phone. Outside of that, my mom! 3. Text message: One of my awesomeful friends of awesomeness who I’ve nicknamed Hux (she’s the Hux to my Kylo!) 4. Song you listen to: A nerdy composition project I’m working on. *grins* It’s a secret ’cause I’m gonna share online when I’m done! 5. Time you cried: Actual-actual cry? Don’t remember. Tears in the eyes? Maybe like two days ago? Yay for being broke.

HAVE YOU:

6. Dated someone twice: Yes, I have dated the same person twice, and both experiences were quite wonderful indeed! And I’d probably date her a third time if life came around to it - both times we broke up came from us being too timid to do basic communication about relationship goals. We’re still really good friends rn - honestly either as friends or as dates, I’m happy either way! 7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Yes 8. Been cheated on: Not in the sex way, but my first relationship ended because my current gf was hitting blatantly on someone in front of my face, and while we were talking about maybe doing a poly thing, this hitting-on-someone-else was in the venue of putting aside and ignoring me, and that wasn’t okay.  9. Lost someone special: Yes. 10. Been depressed: Oh shit I forgot my depression meds again... *runs to take them* Umm. Yes. The answer’s yes. High-functioning depression, here I am, prime example. Yayyyy [sarcasm] 11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: I don’t drink alcohol so nope.

LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS: 

12. Silver 13. Chocolate brown 14. Black

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU:

15. Made new friends: Aye! 16. Fallen out of love: Not really? I mean I don’t know how to explain it. 17. Laughed until you cried: Thanks to Lance and Kaltenecker, yes. 18. Found out someone was talking about you: I guess my coworkers thought I was quitting instead of just reducing my hours, so I had to fix that rumor chain straight. 20. Found out who your friends are: I think that’s always an ongoing thing in life. This year, I’d say that I’ve had reaffirmations that the people I care about care about me, so that’s really awesome. It’s wonderful to know that people are thinking of me. And I’m thinking of you, friends! 21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Yep!

GENERAL:

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: About 99% of them. It’s very rare for me to add an internet friend to my FB contacts. 23. Do you have any pets: No. My apartment only allows cats and dogs, and I want guinea pigs again. ;_; 24. Do you want to change your name: I’m proud of my name and have used it as a source of inspiration (it means “pure”). That said, in the last few years, I feel increasingly distanced from my name and honestly think of myself far more as being named “Haddock.” Haddock is my name, my birth name is second. Still a good name, but I’m a Haddock. 25. What did you do for your last birthday: On the day itself: relaxed, bought myself froyo, Skyped family, chilled, was awesome. The general-ish week of my birthday: had a dinner with family, stayed up and binged all of VLD S4 the night it came out, hung out with a friend and also binged VLD. Basically, a lot of VLD. 26. What time do you wake up: The number fluctuates quite wildly day-per-day because “sleep schedule” is a myth. Today, I got up at 11 AM. 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Answering asks on tumblr and PMing/texting a few good friends. 28. Name something you can’t wait for: Having enough money to live comfortably and not stress every time rent week comes around. 29. When was the last time you saw your mom?: A few days ago, Friday. 30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: Oh where do I fucking start... Well. The biggest thing is I’d do is go back in time and prevent a terrifyingly bad argument/falling out with my ex/ex best friend that happened in 2011-2012, not because I want to still be friends with this person (I don’t anymore), but because the experience was very... traumatic... to both of us and I’d love us not to live with those mental scars. I’m still getting over those scars and it sucks. 31. What are you listening to right now: The composition I’m working on. 32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yeah. Don’t know anyone well named Tom, though. One of my coworkers is a Tommy if that counts? 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: There’s one wonderful friend of mine who’s going through a really challenging time. I want to help them so badly, but they’ve been closed off and hermitting themselves to the point I think it’s harmful for them, it’s hard to contact them to help them, and they live too far away for me to check on them in person easily. I want to do anything to see them in person to help, or to talk to them, or anything... sitting in silence makes me very worried because this wonderful human soul deserves all the love and support they can get for what they’re going through. 34. Most visited website: Tumblr, Facebook, Netflix, Google. 35. Mole/s: I have two bumps on my forehead, one to either side. I jokingly call them horns, but they’re not evenly lined up, and the one on my left is much larger than the one on my right. 36. Mark/s: Bellybutton scar from a second degree burning incident, lots of scars on my hands right now from falling on concrete two months back, lots of scars on my wrists from a whole bunch of whatnot (I even have one from my sophomore year of high school when a school binder scraped me?), oh. And I have basically leopard-speckled shoulders from countless acne/pimple scars. For unnatural marks... three tats! Plans to get at least two more. 37. Childhood dream: To be a published, bestselling author or a college prof. 38. Hair color: Currently dark brown with bleached bangs and a strip on the right side. Natural hair color is what I call “dusty brown” and some people would call dirty blonde; it’s in that random in-between blonde and brown where the top is blonde-ish and the bottom is rather brown. 39. Long or short hair: I have the conundrum of enjoying my hair either really long or really short. I’m in the process of regrowing it to the long stage. It’s sort of at the bottom-of-the-shoulder-blades/boob length now. Goal is to go back to waist length. 40. Do you have a crush on someone: Does Takashi Shirogane count? 41. What do you like about yourself: Honestly, quite a lot? XD I’m very thankful to be a nerd who is apt to learn anything from sciences to arts and music and sports. I’m thankful to be a musician, a composer, a creative writer, an animation junkie, an analytical and logical mind, a complete and utter NERD beyond belief who lives in nerd culture. I love my appearance, I love my facial hair, I love my eyebrows and face shape, I love my body shape, I love that I’m left-handed, I love that I’m not conventionally pretty. I love being a Christian. I love being aroace. I mean when I’m not in a depressive, self-deprecating mode, I really am proud and thankful to be who I am all across the board; there’s very little that I dislike about myself. Mostly what I dislike is my current life situation of not being anywhere career-wise. Everything else, pretty happy. :) 42. Piercings: Two on each earlobe and one halfway up the cartilage. Dammit and I wanted like a dozen piercings by this type in my life. Get me a more stable paycheck and we’re fixing this! 43. Blood type: O+. Most common blood type, woot? 44. Nicknames?: I’ve had a terrifying slew of nicknames over the years. Currently, the most common ones are Haddock, King, (Kylo) Ren, Spock, and Toast. 45. Relationship status: Single in my chill natural habitat. 46. Zodiac: I am so bitter about my Zodiac sign I refuse to say it even though it’s not too hard to figure out what it is given other answers to this meme. 47. Pronouns: He/his/him, though honestly I really don’t care too much what people toss at me. 48. Favorite TV Show: Voltron: Legendary Defender. 50. Right or left hand: LEFT-HANDED WOOOOOOOO LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFT LEFTY PRIDE YOOOO! 51. Surgery: When I was nine I had four baby teeth and then the four adult teeth under them removed. Basically, a wisdom tooth like surgery but younger and with different teeth. 52. Hair dyed in different color: FUCK YEAH! I was getting really bored of my natural hair color but was keeping it natural for the purpose of looking professional (job searches). I’d been wanting to reinstate some purple and black again, but with my current job only allowing “natural” hair colors, I decided I couldn’t go that route. Instead I bleached the front and dyed the rest dark brown in a sort of inspiration from Takashi Shirogane. 53. Sport: I played soccer all growing up, so much fun. Love jogging. Sports are great, miss having the opportunity to do team stuff. Also really enjoy watching professional gymnastics, soccer, American football, and especially tennis. 55. Vacation: I want to see so many locations oh my fuck. My “to go to” list includes Bhutan, Nepal, China/Tibet, Mongolia, Cambodia (again... come on I miss it!), Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Japan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom (England & Scotland), Norway, Canada, Peru, Mexico, South Korea, India, Myanmar, Austria, Germany, Iceland... um. Yeah. You. Get the picture. I NEED TO TRAVEL, YO! 56. Pair of trainers: Uh they’re like really raggedy and old and stuff

MORE GENERAL: 

57. Eating: I’m snacking on M&Ms again, like always. 58. Drinking: Water, though methinks I shall make some homemade ginger tea. 59. I’m about to: Probably go shower. It’s 3 PM and I still am in my pajamas. 62. Want: To fucking write and do NaNo and yet life’s been busy and I haven’t had the time for a word but I HAVE SO MANY VLD FANFICS I WANT TO DO AND AURGHGHGHGHGHGH the goal is to somehow write and finish my universal translator mix-up one this month???? We’ll see! Translators, stay tuned, and thanks again for offering to help! 63. Get married: 97% of me doesn’t want to get married I think? 64. Career: Linguistics consultant of doom. Not sure if this can be a career but if I could, I would enjoy continuing the remote work. To explain: I currently work contract positions with various companies who hire me for short-term projects, in which I use my linguistics expertise to analyze and annotate large sums of data according to certain guidelines. 65. Hugs or kisses: Hugs. I. LOVE. HUGS. SO. MUCH. HUGGGGGMEEEEE! I always look closed off in my body language but I swear the inside of me is always going “Giff me the cuddles and don’t let go.” 66. Lips or eyes: Eyes. Eyes are the most gorgeous thing about humans seriously. 67. Shorter or taller: I prefer to be the short one in all social situations. 68. Older or younger: For friends, I’m chill with whatever age you are. Dating, also chill, though I think I tend to prefer being slightly older just ’cause that’s how most of my relationships have been? But really doesn’t matter. 70. Nice arms or nice stomach: Arms. Nice arms are unique for me. I’m pretty happy with lots of different stomach types I see - tummies just are cute! :) 71. Sensitive or loud: A combo is fun but what I look for most in any platonic or anything relationship is someone with a deep heart. I want friends with whom I can confide in anything... so has to be that sensitive side (sensitive-logical if that makes sense is what I like best). 72. Hook up or relationship: I’ve done random PG hookups? But my answer for this is relationship; hookups are only fun for short-term boosts of self-confidence and not being 100% genuine and just being like carefree “whatever” for a night (make sure you both know you’re just doing the hookup night though, please guys, no deception!). Long-term relationships though are glorious like none other for their emotional power. <3 That is pure beauty, caring for someone deeply with lasting loyalty. But of course ya’ll know me... I find nothing more beautiful to cherish than deep platonic care! 73. Troublemaker or hesitant: Combo of both!

HAVE YOU EVER:

74. Kissed a Stranger: Yeppers 75. Drank hard liquor: Nope 76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: Yes ugh I have no clue where one of my pairs of glasses are again 77. Turned someone down: Yes 78. Sex on the first date: I’ve had sex never so this is an easy answer 79. Broken someone’s heart: Yes 80. Had your heart broken: Yes 81. Been arrested: No 82. Cried when someone died: Yes 83. Fallen for a friend: Yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84: Yourself: Yes, typically 85. Miracles: Absolutely 86. Love at first sight: I mean I don’t deny it happens. It happens. But I don’t think it’s pragmatic to think that’s what’ll happen to you. 87. Santa Claus: Come on, of course North and the Guardians are kicking Pitch’s butt! 88. Kiss on the first date: Sure, why not

OTHER: 

90. Current best friend name: I don’t have one best friend right now. A few of my current closest friends are named Josh, “Hux”, Keith, JuLee, Rachel, Peter, and Meredith. 91. Eye color: Brown 92. Favorite movie: HOW DO I PICK ONE FAVORITE MOVIE FUCK YOU?? The Prince of Egypt, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the How to Train Your Dragon movies, Pacific Rim, there, I made a list.

Uhhhhh let’s so who should I tag... if you want to do it... @akkeyroomi @the-mr-eggplant @chiefrosepetal @thefuriousnightfury @insaneskye @fanwriter02 @dragonpride99 @jettara @margarethelstone @shailyesshadow @hubwalker1 @godguy0001 @theravenfliesagain @frosty-viking @jackthevulture @hiccup-is-left-handed @dragonnan @spacekeet @nightfury326 yaknowwhat I am not going to count but we’ll say that’s about 20 XD