#which is important to know.) and then when people do vent art or different kinds of poetry and whatnot

[astrxealis]

art is so beautiful... every artist has their own style. and their soul is there in their work.

[anonymousredactedconfessions]

Let's have a talk, shall we?

Major Trigger Warning for rape, false accusations, and mentions of child sex crimes

I let you guys get away with a lot of shit. I let you be a little bitter, or mean spirited, or pissed off. I let you guys vent and let out grievances and complain for the sake of complaining. And i do all of this because it is important to have a space that you can do so without fear of judgement, it is unhealthy for you to bottle up negative emotions. I provide this in a public space because with the way this fandom is, if I didn't many of you would be pressured into not doing so at all. This fandom has a habit of ostracizing those who have differing opinions and interpretations, those who wish to critique the art they consume, those who have unpopular opinions, and all of it is done with the utmost aggression and vitriol. The things that have been said to some of the people in this fandom genuinely makes me lose faith in humanity if i think about it too hard.

This blog exists explicitly to counteract that. I refuse to encourage or enable it. What you are doing is actively dangerous, and I won't be having it in the space I curate within this fandom.

If you haven't noticed, this is one of my rules:

It means that you are not allowed to come in my inbox and accuse people of serious harm over this fiction.

You will not come and accuse people of something as egregious as rape apologia in my inbox. You will not accuse people of rape, abuse, assault, or child abuse/rape/exploitation in my inbox.

These are serious real world issues, and the reason they are bad is because they cause direct harm to real living people who can feel pain and can be violated. Your disgust holds absolutely no ethical weight. At All. You should have the mental, emotional, and intellectual capability to understand the ethical difference between allegories for rape, stories with/about rape, erotica of rape, and actual real life people being raped. Making accusations of this weight over make believe is abhorrent, and as a matter of fact, it shows that you don't treat these tragedies with the weight or gravity that they deserve. If you believe that it is appropriate to accuse someone of violating another person like so because of the creation of or opinions about art, then you have some serious learning and growing to do as a person if you wish to navigate these topics with any level of maturity or respect towards victims.

There is no good that comes out of accusations such as these. They only ever serve to:

Demonstrate to victims that the tragedy of their abuse is as trivial as fanfiction/art that you deem nasty (but is ultimately ethical), or even something as inconsequential as someones' love for a fictional character.

Shame those who love these characters, or this art, or creating, into hiding their opinions for fear of harassment and serious accusations when they have done zero harm by enjoying it.

Stifle creation and participation in fandoms.

Limit the spread of ideas, interpretations, critique/criticism, and general opinions in the fandom, which just turns fandoms into boring echo chambers devoid of variety and creativity.

Encourage actual censorship and moral policing. (More on that on this reblog by @escapedaudios on a post of mine. Thank you Escaped for your two cents, they are much appreciated 💖)

Spread the incredibly harmful idea that people are defined by the art they enjoy. You cannot accurately judge a person’s values or morals based on what tropes and themes they enjoy in fiction. You create an environment and culture incredibly dangerous for vulnerable individuals (like minors) when you tell them that they can know who is safe to trust based on whether they consume "the good kind" or "the bad kind" of fiction. This makes it so very easy for predators to virtue signal about fiction to lure in potential victims to abuse.

The majority of you are very good and well behaved when it comes to this, but the amount of people i have had come into my inbox and accuse others of being rapists with no evidence other than "they made X" or "they like Y" is not zero. And i will not be satisfied until it is.

This is all i have to say about the subject.

[rnp5324]

Tell me about your wolverine headcanons NOW 🙏🔥💥

HEE HEE HEE....HAHAHAHAHAHA I've got plenty (Some of these apply to my Logan too) ════ ⋆★⋆ ════ 1. Due to his time under Weapon X, Logan still contains some robotic mannerisms, especially when scanning for nearby threats. I like to imagine his face becoming stiff and expressionless, while his head rotates like a wall mounted security camera; He does it unconsciously. 2. He likes to cuss people out in different languages under his breath. I mean, the man knows like what, 18? He'll find one that somebody doesn't know in case they hear him. I also envision him using his knowledge for different code words he'd teach his teammates to give them special commands, def stems from his military work. 3. Logan likes to listen to Oldies, and Rock/Metal. It's an...interesting blend. Depends on his mood, really. He doesn't mind a nice classical jazz to wind down after a long days of work o spending time with his partners, otherwise Metal has been a healthier way to vent out his frustrations. 4. Absolutely has some animalistic quirks. Like, he purrs when he's close to his partner. He growls, snarls, roars, the whole package. He shakes like a wet dog. He cocks his head to his shoulder when he's confused about something (also like a dog (I have a bias)). He absolutely runs on all 4s in battles/climbing. Yes, he bites, and not in the hickey way. If you ask him to bite your neck, he will take a chunk with him. 5. Despite being totally left brained, he knows how to do calligraphy for meditation (something he picked up more frequently from Kikyo). He can also be kinda poetic when he feels like it, his penmanship is surprisingly good and he can write in cursive when he's focused. He's not wrong when he says he's an art teacher!! 6. Logan's sense of humor can get really grotesque. This is most likely due to his desensitization towards violence, which unfortunately, freaks most people out. A chunk of his humor is usually derived at his own expense. 7. He's always known he's Bi, he just doesn't bother telling anyone about it unless they ask. Logan thinks in the grand scheme of things, saving the world from threats is more important than who he shares a room with. 8. I made a poll about this, but I believe Logan has some type of Neurodivergence (I have AUDHD lemme cook). He def struggles with PTSD from, well, a lot of things in his life. I also like to think he has some sort of ADHD? Not just for having hyperfixations for Japan, Military machinery/weapons, animals, etc., but also the mood swing aspect of it too; Maybe it's just me, but I find Logan's angry impulse kinda relatable to my experiences? Also how he frequently forgets things. Just like me fr.... 9. Logan's body is able to insulate himself from extremely cold weather, due to his Mutation being based off of a Wolverine. This...also makes him hot easily during the warmer months of the year, and he much prefers the cold. He'll ask storm for a little snow cloud over his head every once and awhile. 10. Being so old, Logan uses a wide variety of slang from all sorts of time periods, which he has to explain to his teammates a lot so it can get pretty annoying. This also extends to his game, his old time flirts can be kind of confusing to their meaning, therefor not landing too well most of the time. 11. Despite being a grouchy old man, he is an anxious sweetheart!! Logan will pour his heart out on the people he loves, but the anxiety comes with how almost all of his relationships historically end in either tragedy or in a horrific fallout, meaning he's rather hesitant to getting into a relationship right away.

════ ⋆★⋆ ════

TYSM for the ask!! ^^ omg I wish people would send me more of these, I absolutely love doing them!!!

[olderthannetfic]

Just gonna... not exactly vent because I'm not pissed off just baffled, but gonna ramble about something that's consistently happened to me, which is my fanart getting mistagged when people reblog it.

I like to draw genderbends of the male main character in a fandom, and because I like girls with small titties and short hair, these genderbends aren't... super obviously different from how the guy normally looks? Admittedly this one's a bit on me, but I go out of my way to tag my art with every genderbend tag imaginable so nobody stumbled across it by accident. But that means that once it gets reblogged and has a degree of separation from its original tags, people start tagging it with stuff like "omg look at my beautiful boy! He's so cute!"

Another time someone reblogged an OC I'd created for the same fandom and tagged them as a canon character because I'd drawn them with that character's hair colour for funsies.

Like I said, I'm not really mad about this happening, but I feel kind of bad about it because it feels like I'm deceiving these people? Unintentionally? Particularly the genderbend stuff, because I know it can be contentious, I'm left anxious about whether or not the rebloggers would still enjoy it if they knew it was genderbend? But I feel like going into their askboxes like "hey you tagged this wrong" would be making too big of a deal about it, and it's honestly not that important.

I think I'm just going to have to start including this stuff in the work's actual captions so it doesn't happen in the future... I've always found plastering the captions with disclaimers to be kinda obnoxious which is why I didn't do it before, but at least then it will persist through reblogs and I won't feel like I'm tricking people by accident...

--

[turuin]

Inktober

So, in a few days it will be Inktober again.

Many (ill-informed and arrogant) people think Inktober is a silly thing, a show-off, a stupid challenge that has nothing to do with art, and generally despise those who partake in it. We will not talk of such people: they are just another specimen of the archaic "internet troll", and we know well one should not feed trolls. They are only expressing themselves to grief others, or to spoil their fun, and this is pretty much their top aspiration for their internet persona - and I think this speaks volumes of what kind of people they might be in real life.

I'll tell you this instead: Inktober was the very reason why I started considering my stupid office-time doodles something more than that; and, potentially, the very thing that made me understand a couple of important things about art in general.

So, it boils to this: you have a list of verbal prompts, one per day, which you pick from many lists. Yes, there is an official Inktober challenge, set up by Jake Parker and normally available on Instagram and on its own website. Parker was part of an internet controversy, a couple of years ago, about having stolen the idea for an Inking Textbook from another very good artist, Alphonso Dunn; whether you choose to use Parker's prompts or entirely different ones, though, is entirely up to you. I have skipped them, back then, and then I started using them again a couple of years afterwards. They are handy, and you can use them without sponsoring Parker at all, if you feel like it (he has trademarked the Inktober brand for sketchbooks but you can't really trademark a challenge, so hashtags are still free to use).

List controversy aside, the fun thing is that it asks you to draw once per day, possibly with ink (but not solely, and rules are entirely up to you about the medium you want to use whether it is digital or traditional) for a total of 31 days, the whole month of October.

Back when I started, I didn't think myself capable of doing this until the end, and surely my skill was much lower than today. And yet, Inktober taught me many things:

stick to the plan, but if you skip a day, or multiple days, don't worry! Nobody is paying you for that, and there are many people who will keep drawing from the list well into November, but when you decide to draw for the day, put yourself into it - don't do it just because. Inktober is not about speed or skill, it's about challenging your brain and hand on interpretation and execution.

share your art. It is basic? Share it. It is made at the top of your abilities? Share it. People are insulting it? SHARE IT. You have to be able to disconnect emotionally from your art when it is done. You like it? Fine! You don't like it? Fine! I've made it. It is there. Do what you will with it. I have already accomplished my goal: the process.

It will be an occasion for you to learn. You never used ink? Try! You never used ink pens? Try! You never used an old brush with dried ink on it to create strange effects? TRY! Inktober might as well be about trying anything that crosses your mind. Also, you don't need expensive tools; a sheet of paper and a ballpoint pen can, and often will, be enough.

People mock you because you do Inktober or are stressed out because you post Inktober updates? That is a perfect time to remind them of the existence of the "unfollow" button. It does wonders with people who live in troll caves.

You feel like you need to vent? You feel like you're being left behind and stress because you think you will not complete it? First of all: VENT. Your blog / page / online space is yours and you should keep in mind that whatever you post has to do with YOU, not others. People may not like what you post, it's fine. They can unfollow, or start their personal rant in their online space about you - at the end, we are all passing by, if people want to live their life in anger or ranting about your art or your blog, it's their liver, not yours. No, that's not a typo: I'm actually referring to their liver, which probably will not be in very good conditions to start with.

People give you unsolicited advice or opinion on your art? Gracefully nod, and forget about it one fraction of a second later. When you will need advice, you will ask for it, and welcome it. My suggestion is you stick by that rule for pretty much everything in your life: you should be asking, that is of paramount importance, and learning how to ask something is at least as important, but nobody should force you into their opinion. TL;DR: fuck'em opinons.

Again: don't fall in love with your art. It's a piece of paper; you can burn it afterwards. You already possess that art within your hands. It is lost forever? It's ok. You have made it. It existed. You ceased caring about it as soon as it was on paper. Let it go. It is not yours anymore. Let people make what they will of it. You are already unto the next one.

So: I will partake in Inktober, and vent, and chat about it, and post art. I will also do this in our community, https://www.tumblr.com/communities/ars-gratia-artis , and for the time being, I will allow people who want to share their art, participate in the community and not be toxic about it, to join with a link. I would also very much love for community members to attempt Inktober, even with a little doodle whenever they are able. It's fun, I promise!

If you want to join our community, Inktober or not, here's the link:

[campgender]

Hi, my friend has a chronic illness that flares up sometimes and we've been wanting to hang out but it has gotten cancelled a couple times lately bc of her not feeling well enough on the day. I want to ask her how she feels cuz I care abt her a lot and want an update but 1, I don't want her to feel pressured or like I'm asking just to ask can we hang out now, and not bc I care abt how she's feeling (does that make sense? I may be overthinking this) and 2, I genuinely wanna know how she's doing but idk what to say if she responds with her not being better, sometimes u don't feel better and that's ok but I always want to offer comfort somehow or just convey my friendship? but I feel the same everytime and don't want to sound repetitive ?

Any thoughts?

this is really kind of you & it means so much to me that you want to support your friend & are putting so much thought into it! my response is inherently based in my own experience to an extent & everybody’s different, but a lot if not all of this is stuff i’ve heard regularly from other chronically ill people. of course, don’t say anything you don’t mean – if some of this isn’t the case for you, just adapt accordingly :)

i understand worrying about being repetitive but i think that’s totally okay to do! for one thing, it can be difficult to remember things period when you’re ill, especially during a flare, & for another, internalized + societal ableism is a hell of a force. it never hurts to have a reminder that not everyone is trying to force ableist expectations onto you + your friendship & that someone cares about you!

i think you can definitely tell your friend pretty much what you told me! like, “hey, it’s okay if you aren’t feeling up for responding but i just wanted to check on you! not trying to pressure you to hang out or anything, i just care about you & how you’re doing”

honestly the most important + supportive thing people have ever told me is that it’s okay if the answer is “bad.” i’m literally like surprised pikachu meme every time somebody offers to let me vent about having a rough time & then it helps me just to talk about it. it’s really socially unacceptable to talk about chronic pain & a lot of people get frustrated when you’re complaining about the same thing & there’s not really anything they can do, so just the opportunity to be like “yeah shit fucking sucks right now” means a lot.

obv the appropriateness of this depends on the person & their relationship to disability but most of the time i’m very like, radical acceptance / embracing / etc about the fact that i’m probably just gonna get sicker, so sometimes when i’m having a rough time emotionally & am like “what if i’m this bad for the rest of my life” my gf (who doesn’t have chronic pain / chronic illness) will say something like “then i can’t wait to be there with you ❤️” & it’s more meaningful to me than i can begin to put into words.

again everybody’s different but for me one of the biggest things is when disability stuff just… isn’t a big deal to the other person. which, it’s totally okay for you to need support from others when someone you care about is going through a hard time & when things change! but abled people are constantly horrified about like, every aspect of my life, so being able to talk casually about symptoms & somebody mirror the mood / tone i set – laugh if i’m joking, be upset about the ableism i experience & not my body itself if i’m complaining about people being weird about it, taking things as they come – is so affirming.

other things that have been helpful + meaningful for me are friends sending me notes, stickers, & art in the mail – having something tangible can make me feel more “real” & part of the world, something i struggle with due to being homebound – & peer support around medical neglect, which often just looks like talking to someone after a doctor’s appointment & them reaffirming my reality / experiences & saying i didn’t deserve to be treated that way.

oh one other change in language i’ve made over time & probably picked up from a few other ill people in my life is a sort of realistic encouragement – there’s not necessarily anything wrong with “i hope you feel better soon!” because like, i get that the message is well-intentioned, but it can be awkward & difficult to receive when you don’t know if that’s gonna happen. instead, i try to tell people something like “i hope you get a bit of relief soon” or “i hope things are a little easier tomorrow.” a 7/10 pain day may be horrifying for most people, but when you’ve had a streak of 9s, it can be a much-needed taking the edge off, & i try to make space for that breadth of experience in my language.

i’ve answered a few similar questions before so i’ll add my “asks” & “faq” tags on my chronic illness blog in the reblogs if you want to browse! much love to you & your friend and feel free to lmk if you have any other questions 💓💓

[gigidragonbbxxx]

a personal struggle + an education

this is all just gigi's opinions + thoughts

Reader, I'm struggling with empathy right now.

Don't worry, I'm not suffering from a personality pathology, I promise I am quite sympathetic and empathetic. It's just battling the feeling of wanting to be kind but also seeing a major problem and knowing I need to get it off my chest.

Let me give it to yall straight (with tweaked/paraphrased details to protect privacy and not to out anyone):

I saw a favorite loass coach/twt account/subliminal creator make fun of an "old timey" English sentence either from Neville Goddard or Edward Art. They proceeded to say that they "hate" it and "why can't they just say it simpler". and then someone else commented "they're talking bullshit fr".

The convo thread on twt devolved into an echo chamber that essentially boiled down to the old fool's adage "If I don't understand it, it must be stupid and not worth it."

This really triggered me because

The phrase quoted was not that hard to understand.

It was clear these women were not educated

Why am I judging or mad at people for their ignorance? (this is why I kept quiet on twt and went here to vent. I acknowledge that two things can be true, I can be kind and still be honest.)

I was and currently am still wrestling with these things within me.

On one hand I don't want to judge. I want to be inclusive and welcoming and supportive.

On the other hand - yall don't look educated, yall wind up looking dumb.

I'll say a harsh truth yall and you can go argue with a damn wall but I know I'm right: stupidity is not cute.

My Hot Take (not so hot when you think about it)

The Law of Assumption rewards those who feed their mind with knowledge

Before you argue with me, think about it. Seriously.

I don't want to seem ableist if someone suffers from dyslexia or if someone struggles in school. It's totally okay to have different paths to learning. The importance is still obtaining the information. You can read or listen to the audiobook, etc. The paths to knowledge are varied but in the end the result is the same - THE KNOWING.

The "old timey" sentence that the creator complained about COULD BE READ BY NINTH GRADERS BECAUSE OF SHAKESPEARE EXPOSURE.

That's why I was exasperated. They were complaining about English (the only language in which they are fluent) that is regularly taught to 14 year olds.

Guys. Stand up. Please stand the fuck up.

Who in this world is gonna take you seriously without BASIC COMPETENCY in literature or math?

Lemme roast some of yall if you want to disagree:

Yall wanna be master manifesters and claim to understand the double slit experiment but can't even name the fundamental laws of science or explain them.

Yall wanna be successful in your businesses and don't know how to calculate your profits.

Yall wanna be seen as intellectuals who "understand" more than the majority of the population and yall can't even fucking read Descartes or Shakespeare.

Yall wanna be content creators and don't know how to proofread.

One time I bought an affirmation tape that came with a pdf with all the affirmations listed. The tape itself was excellent but the pdf was riddled with errors! It makes me sad because something that can help change your life, like a sleep tape to saturate, "cheapens" in its authenticity at the price of minor errors. Sigh.

Let me tell you that 100% you can be successful in this world just by going to the end and claiming it.

BUT YOU LOSE A LOT OF TREASURE BY NOT GIVING YOURSELF THE TOOLS TO DIG FOR IT.

THERE IS SO MUCH FOUNDATIONAL INFORMATION WITHIN THESE "OLD TIMEY" TEXTS.

and if you don't like any of it and just wanna watch sammy ingram and manifest like that THEN GO AHEAD BUT DONT CLAIM TO NOT UNDERSTAND A SENTENCE AND THEN CALL IT BULLSHIT.

just be honest and own it!

be honest that you don't wanna read, that you don't wanna be academic and that's 100% okay and you're still beautiful and worth everything but

do not put down the value of what is being said just because you don't understand it

That's why I am frustrated, reader.

I am educated enough to recognize when someone's ignorance is just that - ignorance.

But I am human enough to be annoyed.

So please give yourselves some grace and take the time to appreciate knowledge. Without the knowledge of the law of assumption, we wouldn't all be here interacting with one another.

xx, gigi

p.s. for those of you who are more familiar with reading the Bible via the law of assumption lens - I beg you to think of Solomon. He was asked by God what he would like and Solomon chose wisdom over material things. Why is that? Because through wisdom comes the ability to know how to obtain all one's desires. Food for thought.

[magpiefngrl]

8, 14 & a wildcard of your choice for the love your fandom asks, pls and thank youuuuu!! if those do not spark joy for any reason or you've done them, feel free to swap out for anything you like!! xox

Hello, hello! Thanks for the ask xx

8. you hope more people will come to appreciate ___ (a ship, a trope, an episode, etc)

I wrote a Voldemort Wins AU (The Boy Who Died) four years ago and I'd love to see more stories or art exploring that AU. There are so many juicy directions one can take it and I love me some angst. (I think there's been a few fics featuring a Voldemort Wins AU since I wrote TBWD, I should prob go track them down.) I know Voldemort Wins AU is a hard-sell, dystopian settings aren't what drarry fans tend to flock to, but I'm very much here for it.

14. the ship that always makes you smile

Oh that's actually a hard one, because drarry authors explore so many combinations of ships and rarepairs and it's very tough to choose. Also, although I love some rarepairs a normal amount, they often don't make me smile as such (prongsfoot is mostly about the angst and the sex, for example).

But you know who makes me smile, even now as I'm thinking about them? Luna and Neville. He's incredibly shy and awkward and she doesn't give a fuck about conventions: they're the cutest.

Wildcard! I used a random generator:

24. how has fandom positively impacted your life?

Oh thank you, random generator, awesome question!

Fandom has made a huge, real life difference to my life. I know I'm a bit absent now because I've learned that less is more (for me) regarding the time I spend on fandom, but the benefits have been immense.

First and foremost, I've made some very good friends. I've met several of them in real life too. I spent 4 days in Bologna with a fandom pal. I have people I chat to fairly regularly and I know I can rely on them for writing advice or just to be there when I need to vent.

Second, before fandom, I'd been writing original for a long time. Although I'd written a few short stories, I struggled with finishing a longer fic. I thought I'd never be able to do it. And lo and behold, when I fell into drarry, I completed a 36k fic! The longest completed work I'd managed back then. It gave me the confidence to know that I can finish longer works, I'm not incapable of it. I also learned what kind of writer I am. When I wrote original, I was inexperienced and I consulted a lot of websites about writing advice which is all SHIT (ask me about it) and it was one of the main reasons I'd struggled. But fanfic took the pressure of this-will-be-seen-by-agents-so-it'd-better-be-perfect. I wrote for fun and discovered my writing process along the way. This was an invaluable gift.

Third and equally important, being in fandom and writing fanfic in the heyday of a super popular ship gave me the recognition I was starved for. Writing alone in a solitary room can make one doubt whether she's any good or whether she's kidding herself. But receiving comments on my stories, knowing hundreds of eyes have seen them, possibly thousands, gave me the warmth and joy and reassurance that perhaps, if I am lucky and try hard, I can touch some people's hearts. That my writing isn't ridiculous or a waste of time or that I'm kidding myself. Again: an invaluable gift.

love your fandom asks

[aqueousablution]

Vent but not really? Or at least not as wallowy as my usual vent post, anyway okay never mind it got wallowy at the end haha whoops

Realizing part of why I never understood the appeal of "found family" might be because I haven't had a close relationship with my actual family in many years

"He's like a brother to me" means so much less when your frame of reference for how siblings interact as adults is seeing each other once a month at most and mostly just sitting in silence while the sibling who no longer lives with your parents catches up with them, and occasionally trying to share parts of your life and realizing just how much your interests have diverged

"He's like the father I never had" means so much less when your frame of reference for how a father interacts with his adult child is pretty much just him paying your bills and otherwise just sitting around watching Youtube a little too loud on the TV in the living room

"She's so motherly" means so much less when your frame of reference for how a mother interacts with her adult child... okay actually while we're not close my mother is admittedly at least a regular fixture in my life and does a lot to help me directly, personally, in a way that feels appropriate for a mother and her adult daughter who still lives with her due to disability. She's still kind of a jerk though so I still have a hard time seeing it as a desirable dynamic.

Granted, we used to be closer when I was much younger - my brother and I spent a lot of time hanging out when we were kids (we started drifting apart when he hit his teens, and then even further when i hit mine), and my parents used to take a lot more interest in my life and my hobbies and me as a person in general, and seemed more interested in spending time with me

But now? My brother is broadly aware I've been writing a TTRPG (which I haven't worked on in ages, but that's a different issue) but he doesn't seem overly interested in it (when he does ask how it's going, it increasingly feels like he's just asking to be polite since that's What's Going On In My Life), and my parents are aware of it because they've overheard me telling my brother about it the one or two times it's come up but otherwise don't seem to care much (bear in mind that my father used to be a huge TTRPG and especially D&D nerd back in the day and even DMed a session for me and a few of my friends when I was about 18 or 19, and he's generally pretty into sci-fi, so it's not like it's completely outside his wheelhouse). Not a single one of them knows a thing about the characters who were the basis for the setting of that RPG - not even my dear sweet sorXa, a character so important to me that I can earnestly say she's saved my life. When would I even bring that sort of thing up? The last time I tried to show my parents my art unprompted back in... 2019, maybe? they seemed largely uninterested, and my mother seemed outright confused as to why I thought she'd care. Y'know, about the work of her own child, the one who's always had a strong interest in drawing and storytelling since before she could even write so much as the word "hey".

It probably also doesn't help that experiencing platonic love is a pretty new phenomenon for me, so I always kind of assumed that people were being overdramatic when they talked about loving their friends. Like, sure, they're nice and I enjoy spending time with them, but love is a pretty strong word, y'know? I certainly like my friends - otherwise we wouldn't be friends - but love?

There was someone I had a squish (platonic crush) on somewhat recently, but we were never really close enough for much to come of it (we were friendly acquaintances at most, maybe), and I have a friend now who I do genuinely think I can call a friend - not a close one but a friend nonetheless - who I love very dearly (maybe a bit romantically but also definitely platonically), but I'm also not close enough with her to feel confident about whether she feels the same way, or if she instead only feels about me the way I've felt about all my other friends, and for various reasons I'm not actually sure it'd go well if we did get that close.

(It probably also says something that my first instinct both times was to assume it was romantic love, since I'm more used to that feeling, even if nothing has ever come of the times I've experienced that either. Granted, there might actually be a bit of that in the second instance on top of the platonic love, but still.)

... All of this probably factors into why I've felt so lonely for so long, I think. The idea of anyone sincerely and wholeheartedly loving me feels kinda alien at this point, something to daydream about but not something I'm liable to experience anytime soon, if ever.

It probably doesn't help that I might be some kinda aplatonic, so platonic love - not just fondness but love - feels foreign to me on a fundamental level, y'know? I can count on one hand the times I've felt it (or the seeds of it anyway, even if they never bloomed), and most of that is after I started transitioning about two years ago. Not sure if that's related or just a coincidence, but part of me likes to imagine that accepting that I'm a woman and taking steps to alleviate my dysphoria freed up some part of me that's letting me more easily experience that kind of love... but more realistically it's probably just that I've coincidentally met more people I feel platonic love for in these past few years. Still doesn't feel like much will come of it though, and so the loneliness persists. :^(

Also I still haven't found anywhere that I truly feel like I fit in. I had that with my old high school friend group, but as so often happens we've drifted apart over the years, and I've never really found a good replacement (to whatever extent one can "replace" a group of close friends) since then. I thought I might have found one once or twice, but for various reasons I felt too out of place, or too unwanted by too many people in the group, or whatever, to really feel like I belonged.

At this point it's beginning to feel like I'm never going to belong somewhere, tbh, even if that "somewhere" is just with one singular person

........ annnnnnd I'm reaching the whinyness levels this post wasn't meant to reach. oops. guess i should call it here before i start feeling more worthless than i already do and making it everyone else's problem

[ninelivesart]

About Me (Kind of)

Doing this Drawing My Reads challenge this last year, made me realize there's a lot people don't know about me. You don't have to know anything about me, of course. But since I've had an uptick in followers, I thought I'd share a few things anyway. For context.

I'm a librarian! Technically a Library Clerk because I don't have my Master's. But this last year I got promoted to Programming Clerk. And I specifically run my library's Makerspace. Which means I get to play with cool, creative machines all day. This also means that I sometimes get to just vibe to audiobooks and draw stupid stuff (it's ideal). My primary focus at the moment is our laser printer. So I will 1000% be adding those creations into my rotation soon. Expect to see some SVG files and wooden bookmarks and things on my Etsy shop soon.

2. That being said, it's important to note that I hardly ever pay for books. I have access to a full library 40 hours a week. So please don't think I'm out here spending hundreds of dollars on these books. I very rarely pay for them.

3. My education is in books. I have a degree in English and Literature. I minored in Journalism. I didn't get to go to art school because there just weren't a lot of options for me back then. So I am a self-taught artist. And I'm lucky to have found a job that combines both of my passions.

4. I am a fully adult woman. I read a lot of very adult books. I'm closer to 40 than 20 and I have a teenage son. Please keep that in mind when interacting with me.

5. My reading tastes can sometimes seem contradictory. I love romances but I tend to stick to fantasy and scifi. I don't do contemporaries very often. And I don't read classics because chances are, I've already read it, analyzed it, wrote an essay on it, and read it again. I did my time and now I'm in debt for classic literature. I'm just trying to have fun. So sometimes I might diss a popular book and be very critical about it. And then turn around and wax poetic about alien smut. I don't expect much from the alien smut. I do expect more from serious books.

6. I pick my reads with a randomizer! This is why I sometimes take a long time getting to a sequel. I have made exceptions for a series I wanted to continue right away. And sometimes I roll again if I'm not in the mood for the book I got. I'm going to try to be a little stricter on this in 2024 though. With the exception of the audio books I listen to at work. I always search Libby for what's available now so I'm not wasting my work time, searching every book on my TBR to see if it's in.

7. You are more than welcome to send me suggestions! I'll probably just stick them on my TBR so I can't guarantee I'll read it quickly. But if you think I'll like it, feel free to recommend it. I'm also happy to talk books with you if you need someone to vent to about a book you know I've read.

8. You are also welcome to add me on Storygraph (beautawn) or TikTok (NineLivesArt). I'm stepping away from Goodreads, so you probably won't see a lot of updates on there. But I post drawing videos on TikTok and I update my Storygraph pretty regularly.

9. However, I don't do reviews! Why? They make me uncomfy! Sometimes I really need to marinate with a book before I decide if I like it or not. Rating systems make me anxious. And my mood alters my decisions. I also don't like being mean. I'm fine talking about my feelings with other readers, but I don't like leaving reviews. Especially if I plan to make art for it. Don't want to draw a lovely portrait and then bash the book.

10. I do plan to continue this project into the new year. But I am planning on doing it a little different. I have some other (non book related) projects I want to work on, and I want to push myself to focus more on the things I need to improve. I really want to focus on environments this year, so I'll be drawing scenes from the book instead. Which means I may not draw a book even if I loved it.

Thank you for following my reading/art journey! I didn't expect this silly little project to have such a positive response. I love when people talk books with me and I actually made friends with a few authors this year! So overall, it's been a very positive experience and I'm ready to jump into the New Year and see what it brings!

[estellamiraiauthor]

So, can someone help me figure out what I did wrong here? (Or not… I think it’ll make me feel better just to vent even if no one interacts but feel free to comment if you see something I could’ve done differently.)

So I’ve been reaching out to a couple of artists lately about commissions. Most have been great, and I’ve got one commission underway already and am considering a couple of others. But this one artist like… rejected me as a client and I don’t know why.

As a bit of background, this artist was one who had done Phantom-related stuff before, and the VERY first question I asked was whether they would be okay with drawing characters from MY retelling. Personally, I don’t see all the different retellings and reimaginings as “competition” because I think people who are interested in one version are MORE likely, not less likely, to seek out others… but I knew it COULD be an issue and asked, and they said it was fine. So at that point, when they had a super easy out, they were apparently interested in potentially taking my commission.

So I provided my character info files, which admittedly have more information than anyone needs for any one artwork, because they’re master files that I use for ALL commissions. They include some visual references including past commissions, some written physical descriptions, and stuff that may not be important like age and place of birth and personality, which is there for reference, and if an individual artist doesn’t care about it they don’t need to read it.

I also provided a file with a description of the specific scene I wanted. I gave a short description of what I wanted drawn, and maybe a 1.5 page excerpt from my actual book. Again, this is for reference… it seemed to me that having what happened immediately before and after the specific moment I wanted drawn might help with the emotional aspects like facial expressions and body language? But again, it was there for reference; i figured too much information was better than not enough, and it was a page and a half, not an entire chapter or anything. It also had a very rough sketch of the pose and props I had in mind… I’m not good at drawing, but I’ve provided similar sketches to artists before and been told they were more helpful than nothing?

I told the artist to tell me if they needed anything more, and the response felt a little cold, but I know you can’t always tell how a person really feels about something via text, with no intonation or facial expression. They basically said: 1. There is more than one scene here, which do you want? (It was only one SCENE, in a writing sense, but I guess they probably meant more than one pose), 2. Give me a pose reference, tell me what they LOOK like not just what they’re saying, 3. Tell me exactly what they’re wearing.

So I went back to the file and highlighted the specific part (about a paragraph) I wanted drawn and added a more specific note that the rest of the scene was provided for context and reference. I deleted an image I’d provided as an example of the kind of “vibe” I wanted but that was NOT the exact same physical pose. I told the artist that my sketch had been intended as a pose reference, but that I would try to find a photograph or existing art instead. I was trying very hard to find something but had not found it yet. As for clothing, I’m actually not super picky and would be 100% fine with the artist just making something up based on the previous art and references in my character files but since they asked me to choose, i was planning on finding some clothing references. I hadn’t gotten to it yet because i was stuck on the pose.

In other words, the file wasn’t ready yet. I hadn’t found all of the additional resources they had asked for, so I HADNT CONTACTED THE ARTIST ASKING THEM TO CHECK THE FILE AGAIN. It’s a Google Doc so they absolutely COULD go back and see the changes in real time, but I assumed they either wouldn’t check the file at all or would assume it was still in progress until I told them I’d updated it.

But then I got a DM this morning that said they would have to charge me FOUR TIMES their typical price for two characters because it was “full illustration” rather than a portrait. Now, I was expecting it to maybe be a LITTLE more because I’d asked for a couple of props. And it was a request for a specific scene, not just two characters looking straight at the “camera”. But four times the price on their commission sheet felt a little like they were trying to discourage me from actually commissioning them.

Now, I used to do freelance editing. I know all about the asshole surcharge…. But I don’t think anything I’d done up to that point was assholey? Maybe I included too much written information and not enough visual information but I was actively working on fixing that, and I wasn’t finished looking for everything they’d requested, which I explained. I asked if the higher price covered things like creating a pose based on the written description or if they still wanted me to keep looking for a visual reference, and how long it would take to complete if I agreed to the price…

And they responded with “I don’t know if it’s a language or cultural thing about communication” and I… JUST DONT KNOW? Like, I told them I was located in Japan so they’d know what I meant when I said “tonight” or “tomorrow,” but… English is my first language. I lived in the US until I was 19. Did they mean THEMSELVES? That THEY had a language issue? Did they mean that quoting me four times the listed price was supposed to mean “hell no” and that I should’ve understood that? Or did they just assume that because I live in Japan there would be a “language issue”??? I just don’t know.

Because again, former freelancer here, and there are other ways to reject a client you just don’t like. “I’m sorry, but this just doesn’t look like a good match for my skills.” “Actually, I just got offered another major job that’s going to keep me occupied for the next few months.” Etc?

So at that point I basically said “You really seem like you don’t want to do this so I’m going to pass at this point.” And they replied with “As a client I’m going to pass” (which kind of makes me think maybe it WAS a language issue on their part??? It was just such a weird way to say it, and like I HAD JUST SAID NO. I had already ended the potential working relationship, they didn’t need to pass too?)

It just… feels like they took one look at my characters and specific scene request and from that point just really didn’t want to do it, and it’s really hard not to take that personally. I actually kind of HOPE I committed some horrible faux pas that I’m just not seeing but I HAVE NO IDEA.

[ferrn0]

REGARDING POSTING

heads up / TW: this looks at personal stuff + vent(? sorta) ALSO this is not super important / not essential for you to read

TL;DR:

less posting due to massive lack of motivation

want to post more and take art serious but its hard

could be depression or hormones idk dont know what to do

overthinking lots -> dont know why this is happening

crave regular change but havent had it + difficult to get change bc of parents -> maybe this is why??

going to try my best not to stress abt it

do not worry about me, im going to be okay

i havent been posting much proper/ finished/ full art ( not sketches ) because ive been really struggling with motivation this year. For all i know, it could be a depression(?) thing or perhaps hormones ( i have a uterus unfortunately) or maybe it just comes down to ADHD.. i do take medication for adhd but they dont really do much regarding dopamine so my motivation is still kinda low even when i take the meds. I really want to be posting proper art and i want to take my art more seriously however, without motivation its really difficult. Im finding myslef slipping back into what feels like a depressive mindset. kind of. yet, im super happy in so many aspects of my life where i used to be affected by this mindset. I have found a better group of people to be around ive found more things i want to do and ive got goals for the year- i didnt have those this time last year. And now.. my creativity has been affected and i dont know what to do.

-

I feel guilty for not posting. Or maybe i feel frustrated that i dont post (which leaves me with noone seeing my work). Either way, i want to post. but i cant get myself to.

this leaves me thinking...

"maybe i just need to improve my skills"

"maybe im not putting enpugh effort in, what if im just not 'trust(ing) the process' enough"

"i might need to just try a new medium"

"maybe i need a new intrest or fandom to join so i can make fanart"

"what if i was just qrong my whole life and im not cut out to be an artist?"

"perhaps theres something else wrong with me and thats why i cant get myself to do things"

And this circles round and round. So what do i do about it?? should i just take a break and not focus on posting? but i already do that anyway! do i just try to do a month long or a week long challenge? but i always miss days and eventually give up!

The more i write about this the more i realise i am not okay. and that im getting worked up over a small thing. but i am miniscule and to me this small thing is ginormous.

-

i am a kind of person who craves change. but only when i want it. And i have gone a very long time without the kind of change i need in my immediate environment. so maybe thats the issue. but i happen to be a child. who lives with his parents. so that causes some problems, dont it? not that my parents are horrible people or incredibly unfair. but because they have their own ideas of how we (me and my brothers) should grow up and what sort of privileges we get ect. because they are my parents. My parents believe that we should each have atleast one physical out-of-school activity we do each week. I do basketball. and i have been since i was in grade 5. its been almost 5 years. dont get me wrong, i love the game and i love playing it. but i find myself dreading going to each game everyweek. i need change. i want to quit bball. i also do drama classes each week(since yr 6/7)- but i like that. and i dont want to quit. because its different every week, every year. My bedroom has also been that same for the past 3 or so years, yes i have moved things around, but the furniture hasnt changed, and the walls have been the same colour with the same wall stickers since we moved in when i was in year 1. I spend a lot of time in here(my room) and it doesnt feel like mine anymore.

-

TW- eating

my medication for ADHD gives me a smaller to no appetite during the day. I no longer bring much or anything to school to eat. i dont really eat breakfast either(but i did that before i got meds anyway). I still eat dinner everyday, just a little less that i used to. and i will eat lunch (depending on situation) during the holidays and weekends mostly because it ends up getting made dor me half the time. i do suspect the rather sudden change un my eating habbits might be affecting me. but nothing terrible has happened to me yet(i have lost a few kgs but that isnt worrying as i was a little overweight beforehand). perhaps this is affecting my motivation too. but who i am to know for sure?.

END OF TW

-

i think i will just continue as i have been. but i will try my best to not worry myself over not posting. although i cannot make any garantees. not many people follow or interact with me here so i doubt this will cause too many concerns but if it does, please do not worry. i will be okay. i am working on myself.

I apologise to those who want/wanted to see my work more/more often. i hope this all makes sense and that you can understand ♡

with sillies,

thomas[FERRN0]

[gokucarrot]

Introduction Post!

(I will probably update as time goes on)

Now that we've got that up above everything else lol, Hi! I'm Goku! My main pronouns are He/Him/Xe/Xim/They/Them, but I also use other pronouns! They are in a Pronouny in the About Me section of my carrd :3, but I also want to say that the Xe/Xim part is a full set (Xe/Xey/Xim/Xyr/Xir) but Xe/Xim/Xyr is what I mainly prefer from that set itself.

I will probably be posting art, fic updates, and Q&As if I ever get big enough for that lolll, maybe along with some other things like vents (I'll TW and c3nsor the best I can) or ideas or many different things that I can't post on Instagram lol.

My Interests!

Dragon Ball Series

Omori

Minecraft

Scene/Emo stuff (not the problematic stuff @~@)

Style

Aesthetics

Music

Art

Psychology

ofc queer stuff <3333

Kinda still FNAF

learning about nature, especially foxes, specifically arctic foxes!

What to expect when following me besides what I post:

I might need tone tags sometimes so if you ask a question, Dm, etc, please just go ahead and use tone tags! I struggle with Obsessive Love Disorder, possibly caused by BPD (Discouraged/Quiet) if I have it, so there's that. I also struggle with possible psych0sis (possibly linked to the same thing, but there are other possibilities to consider), or positive symptoms (not the kind of positive you're probably thinking lol) of such things. I also involuntarily (though sometimes voluntarily) age regress which- surprise, surprise- could also be caused the same darn thing ;-;.

I think I'm in a good enough headspace to talk about this, so if anyone is wondering; this is a *genuine* Identity Delusion, along with Fictionkin. I also use the term IRL to describe this. I do believe I'm a version of Son Goku, yes, but not all the time! Sometimes it's just me strongly kinning or having a very strong connection to him, probably due to neurodivergence (sorry if you hear that a lot XD)! I also want to say; just because there is no concrete diagnosis, does not mean the problem isn't there! So if you feel as though this is fake because I don't have one, trust me, I tell myself that allllll the time, but I've learned to realize that I can't ignore it simply because of that and that's why I'm so open about it. I am not going to share my real chosen name because I know what that might lead some people to do and, personally, I don't appreciate reality checks. Some of us do, some of us don't! I have few exceptions to reality checks and it'll be obvious when I need it, even if I can't say "reality check" in that moment.

If you're still reading, I'm so thankful for that ;-;

With all that said, and you reading at least the most important part of my carrd, I hope this account is interesting and you like it! <3

(I'll update this banner eventually)

(Edit from 6-5-23: Xe/Xim/Xyr*, minor grammar mistakes)

(Edit from 01-22-24: removed south park from interests, added minecraft)

PLS READ THIS BEFORE ANYTHING AT ALL WHATSOEVER

[themetalvirus]

hi, i can tell some of my followers are from twitter, so here's some tips:

LIKING a post increments the note counter and lets the original poster know you saw the post.

liking art is appreciated, but does not get more people to see it. liking vent posts is also a way of nonverbally patting someone on the back / nodding along sympathetically. likes basically just give the original poster the info that you saw their post and felt the need to interact with it in some way but didn't have anything to add and didn't want to share it.

REBLOGGING is the main verb of this site. the etiquette is hard to nail down for newbies, and i think it's the second hardest thing to grasp for a lot of people.

reblogging is extremely important. if you do not reblog posts, the posts will not be shared, and there is no other efficient way to spread posts. your dashboard is populated by people you follow (if you have every algorythmic recommendation turned off, which is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to curate your experience; those who use tumblr regularly and have for years have "based on your likes" and "best stuff first" turned off) and if you do not populate your followers' dashboards then they will not have any reason to follow you. they cannot see posts you have liked on their dashboards.

if you do not reblog posts and only like posts, you will be assumed to be a bot and blocked. even if there's evidence you are a person, going through someone's whole blog and reblogging absolutely nothing while spam liking for a half hour straight may very well also get you blocked. every like shows up on the op's feed AND in the blog you're browsing's feed. be polite!

when you comment on a post in the main post body while reblogging (not in tags or in replies), that comment will stick to the post and be seen when others reblog it. it's considered rude to add a comment to the main post body without having something meaningful to add, whether it be a joke, more information, or continuing a discussion. commenting something like "yes, lol" adds clutter to OP's notes and the notes of whoever you reblogged from, and others down the reblog chain will have to manually remove your junk comment.

be kind! reblog! share! there are other ways to comment on posts, like...

REPLYING which is an alternate way to get your comments to stick to a post semi-invisibly.

everyone who opens the notes can see your reply, like when you open replies on twitter, but it won't show up attached to the post, like twitter. this also pings the op and the person whose blog you left the reply on. it's useful for questions or conversations that you want to have but don't want on your blog! it's great to add feedback to a post without sharing it.

THE TAGS are the most difficult part of tumblr culture to grasp for a lot of people.

tags can be used as organizational tools (for instance, categorizing pictures or fandom posts or your own posts) and can be browsed either exclusively on your blog or globally. if you put organizational tags like #photo on a reblogged post, it will not show up in the global tags, but will show up when you look at the #photo tag on your blog. if the post is original and not reblogged, the post will show up both in global tags and in your blog's tag, so if you search #photo on either your blog or the search function, it'll show up.

however... tags are the primary way people comment on posts. it is a tidy way to say "lol" or "OH MY GOD???" or make a small, potentially funny quip that you don't want to stick to the main post. commenting in tags is customary and will make you look more like a local. if the post is funny, it's normal to say in the tags "i snorted" or "i am on the FLOOR" or something like that. you can say pretty much any comment in the tags as long as it's broken up between multiple different ones.

if you want someone to know how much you appreciate their art, leave a comment in the tags and the op will see it! your tags also show up in the notes of the person you reblogged from, so, for example, if you wanna say hi, you can say "hi [friend's name]" and they will see it in their activity. (i recommend using DMs for this though, lol)

if you never ever talk in the tags and never ever make your own posts, people will have no clue who you are and will have no clue what you think or what you want to create. if you enjoy that, then go ahead! but talking in tags is how you make your blog your own without your comment sticking on others' reblogs. it's also a way to mumble under your breath on your own posts, make little additions that people can see on the original post but not on reblogs!

i recommend really trying to get to know how to talk in tags instead of adding comments directly to posts you'd like to share. it helps everybody!

aaand that's all i've got

[mellosakicc]

kind of as an aside to that reblog, i think nowhere else is it as important to not be afraid of the mentally ill and to offer genuine support networks as in our community. especially in the depths of it like black metal.

we came from rock and rock has always been a genre about anger, protest, and frustration... and rock came from blues, which i don’t even need to explain that one, do i? we come from generations of people who wanted to change the world they lived in with their art, and true metal keeps the same mission at its heart. they keep making protest songs even when their pockets are deep and they have many more eyes on them. they sing what they believe even if they are booed off the stage. that is the difference between rock + its child genres, and everything else.

metal has the addition of venting sorrows often + far more frequent delves into purposefully experiencing and studying painful emotions through art. we wage our wars not on politics and government but on people. on bigots. on pompous trash. on the comfortable. on the privileged. we are a community built on expressing ourselves even when others don’t like what we have to say or aren’t ready to hear it yet. we would be hypocrites to turn our backs on our brothers in need. we would be just like the people we sing about hating.

we are all outcasts here. it is liberating but it can be a hard life to lead. rockers are plagued with suicides, addictions, and assault, and metal is perhaps even worse for it, especially when you go further down the rabbit hole. most of the musician suicides you know are probably rockers, aren’t they? and most of the musicians struggling with addictions too? there is a reason the music is angry, depressing, and fear inducing. it isn’t happy people who are making it. and there is a much longer history of our people taken by their illness because we were too hypocritical to help them than there should be, often because we gave into the normal stigmas that our entire culture is surrounded around rejecting and changing.

we let men suffer because men don’t suffer, when we know full well they do. it was just more fashionable to look away and passively say you never expected it when something finally went wrong.

we were never here to please others.

we were never here to be the it-crowd.

we were never here to make bigots, or anyone, comfortable.

we never were here to be normal.

and that means we need to look out for each other, because no one else is gonna like our difficult selves enough to do it.

[sketching-shark]

LMK fandom: Oh, what do we do about this guy who has nothing but hurt Xiaotian, tried to replace Sun Wukong and his crew, hurt Tripitaka and ordered servants to cannibalize a monkey? Oh I know! We’ll turn him into our little meow meow~ he’s so innocent and Sun Wukong is obviously the villain!

What doesn’t help is this idea is perpetuated by multiple fan fic writers and artists for some reason. Especially some aus they make that turn SWK into a bastard for the sake of the story rather than considering cultural context and thinking they should be respectful.

And almost everyone lets them get away with it just because the art or fanfic is good and they get so popular that no one can point what is actually wrong without feeling like they’re going to get attacked.

I'm starting to feel like my blog is the one anons go to specifically to vent their frustrations about the Six Eared Macaque in his lego monkey show form & the associated fandom lmao. But I guess this makes sense, as I’ve had fun quasi-dragging him before & will in fact use this anon submission as an opportunity to have my own, to put it academically, bitch fest about not just this fandom's favorite protagonist-traumatizing meow meow, but about the way villains are often treated in not just fanon, but increasingly in canon works as well. But same policy as with the last anon; I'll post my opinions below the cut, and as fandoms love to say, don’t like don't read if you don't want to see me dunking on the six eared simian & common fandom tendencies towards villains.

Oh man I would say where would you even begin with this but anon you’ve pretty much started yourself with my main gripe with a lot of ways that the Six-Eared Macaque is portrayed in fandom; there seems to be this unspoken agreement that his acts of violence towards Sun Wukong, Qi Xioatian, and Qi Xioatian’s loved ones are either to be framed as somewhat or totally justified, to be immediately forgiven/excused, or to simply & completely be ignored. Like friends maybe this is just me not seeing the proper posts but while the fandom is inundated with art and fanfics of Macaque as a generally decent individual & a true member of team good guy, I have yet to see one person address the fact that this monkey literally kidnapped & mind-controlled Xiaotian’s best friend and father figures & forced them to brutalize Xiaotian while ol’ Six Ear looked on and laughed (X_X). Like this kind of fandom villain treatment is definitely not something that’s solely at work for Monkie Kid, but it is kind of nutty how fandoms will swing between yelling that people should be allowed to like villains without even mild critique, and then will just flat-out not address the villainous behavior, and will even bend over backwards to frame even characters who committed genocide as just poor innocent widdle victims who need a hug. At its worst, I’ve even seen tons of people in a fandom get really angry at other people who don’t like a villain, and will even start accusing those people of hating real-life mentally disabled or abused individuals all because they don’t like the fandom’s favorite literal war criminal. The Monkie Kid fandom is FAR more chill & better than a lot of other fandoms I’ve come across in that regard, but that is an exceedingly low bar, & the tendency to woobify certain kinds of villains-- as with Macaque and the extreme emphasis on his bad boy/sad boy thing--is very much at work.  

 I’ve also talked before about a kind of monoculturalization of certain character interpretations and story beats in fandoms, and one of the more popular ones that seems to be applied to Macaque a lot is the “hero actually bad, villain actually good” cliche, as observable from the general fandom assumption that Mr. Six-Ears he wasn’t even slightly lying or remembering things through a rose-tinted or skewed lens when he gave his version of his and Sun Wukong’s past. Like at this point it seems the possibility that people WILL NOT even consider is that Sun Wukong never did & still doesn't care that much about the Six Eared Macaque (in JTTW they weren’t sworn brothers & in Monkie Kid the only thing the monkey king really said to Macaque before attacking him was a pretty contemptuous "Aren't you ever going to get sick of living under my shadow?," & responds to his "beloved friend" getting blown up with "You did good, bud" to Qi Xiaotian, who did the exploding), or that their original fight may in fact have mostly been instigated by Macaque. After all, to repeat what this anon summarized & what I've said before about their original JTTW context (& in an example of the things that do feel like it's often lost in translation) is that the Six Ear Macaque was a villain not just because he beat up the Tang Monk, but because he wanted to take over Sun Wukong's entire life and identity so he could have all that glory, prestige, and power for himself. To quote the macaque himself from the Anthony C. Yu translation, "I struck the T'ang monk and I took the luggage...precisely because I want to go to the West all by myself to ask Buddha for the scriptures. When I deliver them to the Land of the East, it will be my success and no one else's. Those people of the South Jambudvipa Continent will honor me then as their patriarch and my fame will last for all posterity." And in order to do this, the Six Eared Macaque had apparently made Sun Wukong's "little ones," his monkey family, his captives through either trickery or force, and gotten a number of them to take on the appearance of Tang Sanzang and the other pilgrims. It's also made clear that in very direct contrast to Sun Wukong, he doesn't care about these monkeys beyond how they might serve him. In fact, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey posing as him the Six Eared Macaque not only all but immediately replaces him with another, but also "told his little ones to have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines." So this monkey is not only willing to risk the lives of a lot of other monkeys for his own personal benefit, but is also a literal cannibal. And yes yes, I know a lot of people have argued that Monkie Kid shouldn't be considered a direct sequel to JTTW & that's fair enough (for example, Sun Wukong probably shouldn't be smashing anyone into a meat patty in a children's cartoon lol). And of course, it needs to be noted that there are a buttload of really out there & really cursed pieces of media based on JTTW & that were created in China. Yet the above description is the oft-ignored in the west original facet of the Six Eared Macaque's character. And it is this selfishness, entitlement, and treatment of other individuals as tools for his own self-serving ends  that is, from where I’m standing, still very much present in Monkie Kid. Like besides repeatedly going out of his way to physically and psychologically traumatize Xioatian, with the last episode Macaque seemed to be going right back to his manipulative ways. I’ve seen people frame their last conversation as Macaque softening to Xioatian a little bit, but personally that read a lot more like that common tactic among abusers where even after they’ve hurt you they’ll dangle something you want or need over your head (in Macaque’s case, the promise of desperately needed training and information about a serious looming threat), with the implication that you’ll only get it if you do what they want you to, such as, in this case, Xioatian going back to Macaque as his student even after having been so terribly hurt by this monkey, which would give Macaque power over Xiaotian and probably Sun Wukong as a result. And it is this violence and manipulation that it seems the fandom at large has tacitly decided shouldn’t even be addressed, instead leaning more towards a (and this is an exaggeration) “Six-Eared Macaque my poor meow meow Sun Wukong has always been bad & has always been wrong about literally everything” reading. 

And while it is the case that I am not Chinese and feel that as such it would be best left to someone who actually comes from that background to provide more context into how common interpretations of the Six Eared Macaque from China may clash really badly with the stuff the western fandom creates, it also must be noted that, as much as we all want to have fun in fandom & in spite of all the out-there versions of JTTW from China, we westerners should recognize that there is a very long and very ugly history of western countries stripping other cultures’ important religious and literary works for parts & mashing them into their own thing while implying or even insisting that what they present provides a true understanding of the original piece. And while I trust most individuals in regards to Monkie Kid are able to step back and think “this is a lego cartoon and not a set guide for how I should understand JTTW” (especially given the insistence that JTTW and Monkie Kid should be considered there own separate works) there does nevertheless seem to be something of a tendency to take the conclusions people come to, for example, about Sun Wukong’s characteristic in his lego form & then assume that’s just reflective to Sun Wukong as a totality. I imagine a good portion of this is due to people not reading JTTW & especially to not having easy access to solid information or answers about JTTW’s many different facets (like geez awhile ago I was trying to get a clear answer on what is considered the most accurate translation of the names of Sun Wukong’s six sworn brothers & got like 5 different responses lmao), but that tendency to take a western fandom interpretation & run with it instead of doing any background research or questioning said interpretation is still very much at play. As such, & as made prominent in the way people have been interpreting the dynamic between Sun Wukong and the Six Eared Macaque in the lego monkey show, tbh it does seem kind of shitty for western creators & audience to sometimes go really out of their way to ignore all of this original cultural & narrative context for the sake of Angst (TM) in Macaque's favor, demonizing Sun Wukong, and shipping the monkey king with his evil twin (X_X).

And speaking of which, even beyond the potential inherent creepiness & revulsion that can be inspired by this specific ship given common interpretations of the og classic's original meaning (again, it's my understanding, given both summaries of translated Chinese academic texts I've been kindly provided with, my own reading of the Anthony C. Yu translation of JTTW, & vents from a number of Chinese people I've seen on this site, that the Six-Eared Macaque is commonly interpreted in China as having originated from Sun Wukong himself as a living embodiment of his worst traits, hence why only Buddha can tell the difference between them & why the monkey king is much more slow to violence after he kills the macaque), I'd argue that in the face of all the uwu poor widdle meow meow portrayals lego show Macaque is, especially if you include JTTW's events, still in the role of “Sun Wukong but worse” as he is very much a violent & selfish creep. Like he was basically running around in JTTW wearing a Sun Wukong fursuit, but there he had the sole reason of wanting to replace Sun Wukong wholesale so he could have all the good things in the monkey king's life without actually having to work as hard for them. But if you combine that with Macaque now claiming that he used to be best friend with Sun Wukong in his pre-journey days (something that's made funny from a JTTW context given that that status actually belongs to the Demon Bull King lol), his original violence has now blown into this centuries long and really unhealthy obsession with the monkey king. Like he's apparently gone from wanting to literally be Sun Wukong to being so obsessed with getting revenge on Sun Wukong that he's got basically nothing else going on in his life. Like he's only appeared in two episodes but...does he have any friends? Any family? A career or even a hobby that DOESN'T center the monkey king? Anything at all outside of his "get revenge on and/or kill Sun Wukong/use his successor as my personal punching bag” thing? Like dude! That is extremely creepy and extremely bad for everyone all around! As I’ve said before, this seeming refusal to see beyond the past or to do something that doesn’t involve Sun Wukong in some capacity is a trait that makes Macaque an interesting and somewhat tragic villain--he even seems to be working as Sun Wukong’s reflection in a mirror darkly, with lego show Sun Wukong pretty clearly not being able to heal from his own past which is hinted to be defined by one loss after another, and with Monkie Kid even kind of having these two characters somewhat follow their JTTW characterizations in that in the latter half of the journey Sun Wukong often gets sad & starts crying in the face of what seems insurmountable odds (& Monkie Kid Sun Wukong does seem to be hiding some serious depression behind a cheerful facade), whereas the Six-Eared Macaque retains a worse version of Sun Wukong’s pre-journey characteristic of getting pissed and lashing out if things don’t go his way--but it’s also what would make any current friendship or romantic relationship between these monkeys horrific. Although to be fair even the fandom seems to recognize this in an unconscious way, in that a lot of the art & fanfic seems to swing erratically between them kissing & screaming at each other in yet another example of bog-standard fandom adulation of romanticized toxic relationships lol.  

At the end of the day, of course, this is nothing new. You'll find versions of this dynamic across a ton of fandoms and now even canonical work. And as such, I can only look at this kind of popularized relationship dynamic with a kind of resigned weariness whenever it pops up, & my frustrated question with the popularity of this kind of pairing is the exact same one that I have for a multitude of blatantly toxic villain/hero ships, given common fandom discourse & the tendency to either ignore or justify the villain's actions & demonize the hero: if you're THAT convinced that everything is the hero's fault, if you believe THAT much that the hero is the one in the wrong for the villain's pain and their subsequent actions, then why are you so set on them not only becoming a romantic pair, but framing this get-together as a good thing? Like I know we contain multitudes but that's waaay too many contradictions for me to wrap my head around. And it definitely doesn’t help that one branch of underlying reasoning behind this kind of pairing seems to be the ever-present “you break it, you fix it” mentality, where the assumption is that if you’re in a failing, abusive, and/or generally toxic relationship (platonically or romantically), if you put in enough time and effort & attempts to compromise, you’ll be able to restore/have the relationship you dreamed of, even with someone who hurt you really badly. And this assumption isn’t limited to fandom: I’d even argue that it’s everywhere in the culture, hence why a lot of people feel like they “failed” if they have to get a divorce or make the choice to leave an unhealthy friendship. Personally, I feel like people could really benefit from more stories about how it is not only the case that the people you hurt don’t owe you their forgiveness & you can still become a better and happier person without the one you hurt in your life, & that while it can be really hard it can also be a good thing to leave a relationship, even if it’s one that once meant a lot to you. 

  But in all honestly, from my own perspective this kind of pairing is starting to read far less like enemies to lovers and far more like a horrible fantasy where you can pull whatever shit you want, even on the people you "love," & never be held accountable for your terrible behavior or even have to consider that maybe you were in the wrong. It's another facet that makes me larf every time I see people insist that fandom is an inherently "transformative" or "progressive" form of storytelling like friends you are literally just taking status quo toxic monogamy & rebranding it as somehow beneficial & romantic (X_X).

But as to anon’s last frustration, it is hard to know what is the appropriate response with this kind of thing...like for my own part I’m keeping my frustrations to my blog & now increasingly to posts that you would have to click on the “read more” button to see what I have to say, but I totally get the hesitation to give even a mild critique to big names in a fandom. Like I've now seen it happen repeatedly where someone who has a big name in a fandom will make something that's kind of shitty for one reason or another, someone will message them with some version of "hey, that's kind of shitty, you shouldn't do that," and the typical response is either to blatantly ignore the issue completely, or more popularly to make a giant crying circus that seems deliberately geared towards stoking emotions on both sides of the, for example, fiction does/doesn't affect reality issue so that something that didn't even have to be that big a deal gets blown out of all proportion, with the big name often framing what often started out as a very mild critique into a long crying jag about how the initial response to their kind of shitty thing was so mean/cruel and they're just a poor innocent & that YOU'RE the true racist/sexist/bigot etc. if you don't agree with their opinion. It must of course be noted that there have also been numerous instances of people taking it too far the other way & sending not just big names but smaller creators literal deaths threats over stuff like innocuous ships which like holy hell bells people that’s a horrible thing to do. But for the big names at least, the end result of all this fighting is usually that once the dust has settled they have more attention/fame/money/power in the fandom than before, and with anyone who might have a problem with their stuff feeling afraid to voice their opinion lest they be swarmed by that person's fans. In that way fandom does often seem to increasingly be geared towards presenting an “official” fandom perspective about various facets of a piece of media instead of allowing for a multitude of interpretations, and with criticism, no matter its shape or form or how genuinely warranted it may be, being hounded out of existence. I feel like a lot of this could be made less bad if there wasn’t this constant assumption & even drive to think that a different interpretation of or criticism of your favorite work of fiction or your fanwork isn’t a direct claim that you are a thoroughly loathsome individual (& maybe also if people cultivated an enjoyment of learning things about important works from a culture outside their own, even if what you learn clashes with your own initial understandings), but I guess we’ll see if that ever happens. 

So these are my general thinks about the Six Eared Macaque’s current fandom meow meow status & some of my bigger gripes with fandom tendencies as a whole. I stand by my idea that the most interesting & beneficial route for Macaque moving forward would be a kind of “redemption without forgiveness from the ones you hurt” arc--as I think was done pretty excellently with the character Grace in Infinity Train--and if for no other reason than gosh dern this monkey really needs to cultivate some sort of identity beyond his “Sun Wukong but worse” persona.