#which is why i've become so grateful to the kinds of people who make active efforts to include new people

[rubberbandballqueen]

had one of them "quarterly work meetings" just now and what i have learned is that i am severely lacking in the genre of social script that dictates how to behave when first joining a group of people you will be working with regularly from that point on

[flyingraven]

My updated MCYT fanfic worldbuilding!

Both for anyone who’s interested in how I imagine the minecraft sphere so to speak works and for linking to my ao3 page, here is my MCYT worldbuilding! Long post ahead! I've been working on this for a long time and it's actively being worked on as well, but here's the current version!

Gods and sentient beings 

Basic information

Only multiple gods together or one of the elder gods can truly kill a god. Lesser beings (demigods or a single other god) could kill their vessel but not destroy their seat so to speak. When their vessel is killed their essence just kind of floats around the deep void until they find a next suitable vessel. This act of seemingly killing a god and taking part of their power is referred to as diminishing them. 

Respawns and souls

You can generally respawn infinitely, but it slowly eats away at your soul. And at some point you don’t respawn anymore. This is generally the same as dying of old age, but it’s not uncommon for very heavy pvp players to die younger because their soul is ruined by continuous respawns. 

When your soul hits a certain point of damage it passes on into Kristin’s domain. This is where souls recover and combine into new souls, which is how new players are made/born. 

Good gods 

There was at least one being called the Elder God. They created the other gods and the prime players. These days they have disappeared, and nobody seems to know where they are. 

Kristin is the goddess of Life and Death. But most mortals only see and refer to her as the Goddess of Death. She along with many of the other gods were created by the two elder gods. She resides over the domain of life and death. Watching over souls as they recover, get born, slowly tear apart and return to her eventually. 

Her main adversary is the god of Chaos. She’s not a fan of the Watchers either, because their grey morals grate against hers. Phil is an ex Watcher, but defected and joined Kristin. They fell in love. Most of Kristin's angels were originally mortals. On very rare occasions, when someone died in a certain way which really captures her attention she might decide to ask them to join her ranks. This is how Scott became an angel of hers. A few of her angels are kids of other angels. 

Evil gods

Evil gods are evil as currently defined by human/Kristin's definition.

 The god of the demons is the god of chaos. Has been diminished once or twice before. This is why he can only create demons with the power level of Watchers instead of demons at the level of demigods.

Maybe there's just more demons than angels which would give him the appearance of having more people under his control, thus appearing to be as powerful as Kristin even though they would not be. Makes sense as demons can also possess people and thus hide among mortals. Maybe angels need Kristin's power to detect possession which would account for why Phil can't detect Dream.

The god who ascended Techno. The original bloodgod, and when Techno "killed" him (killed his vessel with the help of Phil cuz who else, which diminished his power and spread some of it to Techno) He took on the title of the blood god, even though he technically is only a demigod, not a true god. He was ascended Techno to groom him into his next vessel. Unfortunately he didn’t account on Techno becoming friends with the Angel of Death. 

The god of Corruption. Ties into the sculk. With the elder gods being gone he weaved a web of corruption until he managed to sneak it in into the next update behind the back of the good gods.

Demigods

Ascension 

Any god can ascend a mortal to become a demigod. But it's a violent act and will usually completely kill off the world the former mortal was inhabiting. And it hurts. A lot. The combination of these factors is what made Eret's ascension so bad. Because usually the newly ascended demigod will wake up with their god. But Eret didn't. They woke up alone in a dead realm.

Cults can try to get a gods attention to get them to ascend one of their own to demigod status. Really, no good gods will respond to these rituals. They usually involve mass sacrifice. 

Gods can also just choose to ascend a living mortal, but again, this is not often done and when it is, usually only by evil gods. That's what happened to Techno.

Kristin works in a different way. When mortals die she sometimes (very rarely) offers them to become one of her angels. Her angels are demigods, but due to being in her service they are referred to as angels.

Demons are demigods aligned to the god of Chaos.

Banishment

Banishment of a demigod only works if the demigod is on a physical plane like a world, the void or the deep void. If a demigod is in the inbetween however… funky shit happens. The effects can vary. But total amnesia of the targeted demigod is one of them.

Watchers, voidwalkers, prime players

Watchers 

A representation of one of the highest ranked Watchers (drawing by @the-uk-is-jk)

Watchers are creatures that were created by the elder gods with the sole purpose of watching the worlds they created. This would mean they were maybe created before the gods, and just kind of stuck around after. They possess strong powers of code manipulation. 

A Watcher in humanoid form

Physiology: Junior Watchers, or Watchers in training have purple wings. Full Watchers have purely white wings. Elder Watchers have multiple. The highest ranked Watchers usually don’t bother to maintain a humanoid form, instead existing purely as beings made of eyes and wings. Watchers use their wings as a means of channelling their powers. They don’t reproduce in the traditional sense. They can choose to take players and turn them into Watchers by means of code manipulation, or to create new Watchers by means of combining powers and creating a new being. This is rare however, as this comes close to their idea of interference. 

Culture: Watchers strongly believe in the fact that they were created to Watch over worlds. They are a strongly insular race who refuse to interact with other (“lesser”) beings until they decree it absolutely necessary. There have been moments however, such as their war against the Voidwalkers. Well, they call it a war. The Voidwalkers would’ve referred to it as a massacre. One of the few ways they interact with mortals is to sometimes punish them if they decree it necessary. Their powers compared to players are vast, and due to how long they’ve been around they are generally left alone by demigods and gods alike. 

There are currently three known players who used to be Watchers before they defected. These are Philza, now the Angel of Death married to Kristin, and Grian and Pearl, two former players who were taken by the Watchers involuntarily and turned into one of them. 

Voidwalkers 

Voidwalkers were beings that lived in the End. They were also created by the Elder god, kind of as an experiment before they created the prime players. They were at war with the Watchers until they got massacred by them. Xisuma and EX are the only known (among players) survivors.

Physiology: Voidwalkers cannot breathe the normal oxygenated air of the overworld, instead being adapted to the thin air of the low void. 

Culture: Hoping something to End and Aether is generally a Voidwalker expression, though older immortals have been known to sometimes adopt it as well. The origin of it has been lost.  

Prime players

Prime players were the first players created by the Elder God. It’s unknown how many there are, since they tend to stay in hiding. What sets prime players apart from normal players is that respawns have no effect on their souls and that they don’t age. Meaning they are functionally immortal. There are ways to kill them, but no normal mortal could easily get them to stay down so to speak. 

Players

Players can become admins through training. Not everybody has the natural aptitudes to become an admin. Everyone can access the code of the world if they learn how to, but utilising it wrong can be the end of someone. Admins have the power to create worlds. Everyone above the power level of a normal player can. The difference is that some beings (Watchers) make the choice to not do this. Gods and some demigods reside in their personal worlds with practically impenetrable firewalls. The more powerful a being the more control they have over creating worlds and the less likely they are to make mistakes. 

Worlds

At it’s core worlds, players and everything else are code. Code is the foundation of everything. 

Worlds are generally connected to hubworlds. Travelling to other worlds usually happens through these. Hubworlds can vary from simple planes with rows and rows of portals to massive cities where people live, interspersed with portals. It’s not uncommon for kids to get dumped on hubworlds to fend for themselves. They often end up banding together, since hubworlds are pretty often fairly hostile places to live in due to the lack of admin oversight. Kids like this are generally called children of the hub. 

Hubworlds take a lot of power to create and to keep safe. They are usually created by a whole group of admins. 

Besides travelling through official portals there are ways to jump to other worlds. This is why you can protect your worlds with whitelists. They take the form of physical barriers in the code surrounding worlds. Think of it like a satellite defence system around a planet, combined with a literal wall of fire in some cases. 

Worldhoppers are players who make a habit of jumping from world to world without portals. Often these are players who grew up in the hub and learned admin magic through other people. They basically break into other worlds and thus aren’t always seen as the best people. Most worldhoppers are friendly though. Hubkids often end up worldhopping, at least during their teenage years until they find a place to settle down or until a mistake tears their soul apart. 

Worldhoppers have general agreements between them. Not snitching on each other is the main one. 

Sometimes worlds connect themselves to each other through rifts. Nobody knows how these occur, and they can’t really be controlled. Maybe gods could control them, but nobody below them. 

There is something called being worldlocked. Its generally something the Watchers do to worlds as a punishment. It involves messing with the code of the world and all the people on it. Leaving them unable to leave the world and unable to contact anyone outside of it. A lot of locked worlds eventually devolve into chaos due to the isolation, with people turning on each other. Dream worldlocked the DreamSMP. 

Improper coding of a world can lead to the world getting corrupted. What happens to corrupted worlds varies, but generally they completely destroy themselves and everyone on it. EVO got corrupted, less due to Grian making mistakes but more due to being an experimental world surrounded by experimental worlds that were corrupted. The Watchers helped the process along as a punishment for Grian. 

Experimental worlds are harder to create since you are messing more with the coding of the worlds. Known safe modifications are more popular though. 

Hardcore worlds are worlds that lock you out when you die. You simply can’t enter them anymore, only view them through your communicator. Dying in them is also way harder on your soul, so players are weary of playing in them too much. 

On "space"

Space is kind of the Void. You have the void in which world reside. But if you keep flying up you will not hit the true void. Your would simply slow down. The stars are other realms visible in the void.

The void and the deep void

The Voidwalkers lived in the void before they were all killed by the Watchers. 

The void is split between two almost subrealms? You have the void layer which contains normal, player made/controlled worlds and the layer that contains the end. Called the high void and the low void? Names are a work in progress. The membrane between the high void and the low void is fairly thin, which is why end portals are an easy way to access it. 

The Watchers reside in the deep void. Which is almost inaccessible to normal players. To get to it you need to travel through the inbetween. 

The inbetween

The inbetween is the space between the void and the deep void. It is incredibly hard to access, and even harder to competently navigate. Normal mortals would simply tear their soul apart trying if they recklessly attempted to do so. Gods have limited influence in this realm.

On exorcising players

Sometimes players can get overtaken by things. Vexes are the most common, though there are other things. Glitched “networks” like mycelium or more recently, the sculk that was added by the god of chaos in an update. 

Zooming in more on the Vex. The Vex aren't fully sentient like players or more-than-players are. But they aren’t quite mobs either. They exist in a space between categories, but have a strong desire to achieve… more. The way they try to achieve this is by trying to possess vulnerable players. They don’t often succeed, but when they do they will try to take over servers and hubworlds. They kind of function like a computer virus. Overtaking a player and ‘overlapping’ their code with their own Vex code manipulation. 

Sculk and Mycelium work a little differently. They are more so connected through a hivemind. A sculk block is the same as a warden is the same as a shrieker is the- you get the point. The sculk is not an individual block. And it has one goal. To spread. To overtake more of a world. To overtake more players. Similar to Vex it will latch on to a player and ‘overlap’ their code with its own. 

Exorcising players from any type of possession is possible, but a nasty process. First of all it requires someone with at powers at least akin to a voidwalker or a prime player. Then they basically have to tear the Vex, sculk or mycelium from the player line by line. Piece by piece. And it hurts. Especially when the player regains enough awareness to recognise that they are being hurt by someone they know, but not why or how. Removing sculk can leave scars akin to burn scars. 

[myjunkisyuzuruhanyu]

Shoma's press con on his retirement 14/05/2024

Japanese transcript (not sure if it's full though) of Shoma's 1 hour retirement press con. I put a machine translation with Google lense on each paragraph. Beware that it's not a word for word translation but only for getting the gist of Shoma's words!

livedoor news

@livedoornews

[Shoma Uno's retirement press conference] The most vivid memory I have is ``the sight of coach Stéphane Lambiel when he won his first world championship.''

Q.When was the moment when you decided to end your career with this season?

It was about two years ago that I started thinking about retiring.

However, since then, I have had a hard time imagining myself retiring, so of course I have been working hard on skating with all my might, but I have had many experiences since then, and I am now where I am now.

It's already time to decide on a clear time.

However, regarding when I told my coach, right after the All Japan Championships ended, I told Coach Stefan that I was thinking of retiring as an active athlete at the next tournament.

Q. What did you gain or feel because you experienced the big stage?

I've never been someone who was good at standing up in front of people and talking like this, or performing on a big stage.

Once you experience something on a big stage, you become less nervous about everything than you were then.

I've had a lot of experiences on big stages, but even if it's not a big stage at all, there are parts of my life that make me nervous.

My biggest thought is that when I look back on it, I think it was a precious experience, a precious treasure that I only get to have now.

Q. No matter how many times I think about it, I think it's a good memory.

I think seeing Stefan's joy after winning his first World Championship is a very memorable and vivid memory for me as well.

[Shoma Uno's retirement press conference] "I'm looking forward to figure skating as he continues to reach a high level."

Q. You have been able to express yourself even among players with large physiques.

I have never felt at a disadvantage in figure skating because of my short height.

I'm really glad I chose figure skating.

First of all, with my height of 157 cm, there are not many other sports where I can excel, so I am truly blessed to have started figure skating.

I don't think I ever had such negative feelings.

Q. Do you have a message for your juniors who are competing against rising players such as [Ilia] Malinin?

I skated an old program at an ice show the other day, so I had the opportunity to watch videos of old competitions.

When I looked at my own videos, I realized that I had really evolved in terms of expression compared to before.

I'm looking forward to the future of figure skating, which will continue to rise to a higher and higher level, and all the juniors in Japan are really good kids. First of all, we get along very well. Of course I want everyone to have a good result, but I also hope that at least one athlete who has the most fun and embodies the kind of skating that they are aiming for can emerge.

Q. What do you think about when you are skating?

When I was little, I had a very introverted personality and couldn't speak in front of people.

I don't think my parents thought I would be able to stand on the ice alone and perform in front of so many people.

On the other hand, because I'm the only one there, people can really see the world I create and the way I express myself.

Even here, I'm very grateful to have a place where everyone listens to what I say sincerely and reports on it, and I think that's why it's a place where it's easy to express my true colors. Because I think so.

I don't think I'm the type of person who can communicate much, so I think the competition and environment suited me very well.

Also, when it comes to skating, which I would like to do in the future, I want to give it my all.

I also want to be able to create a program that I find enjoyable every day, and show it to everyone in a way that brings out my own emotions.I don't feel like I have to do this first, but I want to. I'm excited about the possibility of creating some great programs in the future that emerge from this feeling.

Q.What is the driving force behind skating?

To be honest, I don't know.

I've loved games since I was very young, so at first I just wanted to play games and work hard at skating.

However, as I continued skating every day, I gradually became attracted to the appeal of skating and the idea that I could compete at the top of the world. I think it's really important to have a place to devote all your time to, including your hobbies.

No matter how depressed you are, being able to put your all into something is extremely valuable.

Although it may be tiring at times.

However, I believe that the time I spent facing this wholeheartedly will be an asset for me in the future, and I think that this experience will be something I can continue to utilize in my life. Masu.

___

Feimeicheng did a translation on her Instagram Account so you can check for translation discrepancies.

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[vincord]

Because of college and exams, I completely forgot that I was tagged in this, so yeah.

It's so hard to say something intelligible about this year. Milgram definitely made it a little more alive, but I don't know if this is a good thing or not. This is an interesting project that has definitely become a part of my life, but conflicts with people in the fandom have worsened my condition. This post not about that, of course. I feel good on Tumblr milgram fandom side. reading analyses and theories here helps a little to distract from other bad thoughts in your head. not always, but it helps.

I'm not the most social and active person and I have almost no contact with anyone here, so again, I was very surprised that I was tagged. It's kind of like when you just exist and stay away from everyone. I don't know. Again, it's hard to write something.

I don't even know who to tag, really. now I'm tagging not so much to pass the baton, but just to let people know that yes, I remembered them from the whole bunch of people on this site.

@tsuwmya You're definitely the one who makes staying in the milgram fandom so much better. and of all the russian fandom, you're probably the only one I trust and don't treat with suspicion or caution. Я очень рада так сказать что мы контачим я готова писать это каждый раз ты очень умная и с умными мыслями и цумиграм я твой съела в целом хочется чтоб у тебя всё хорошо было((

@roseofcards90 @plan-3-tmars Rlly like u!! I am very happy when I see you by the milgram tag. And from time to time it is quite pleasant to contact you in comments or tags, I would say. Literally remember you as "main kotoko fan" | "main kazui fan". And it's interesting to read your posts about these characters, and from time to time discuss them with you!

@salviadivin0rum too. I couldn't help but take the chance to write again how much I love your art. It's always so airy and soft. + the colors that you select for the art. always so warm. There's something about it all that I've never seen from anyone else.

And since @archivalofsins had tagged me (which I'm very surprised and grateful for at the same time!! Really, thanks) I will say that without you and your texts, being in this fandom would be completely different. Completely different. I don't know how to say it exactly. Clever texts with thoughts that I didn't even think about, which is why a more detailed thinking begins and "oh, this really makes sense" or "oh, this is really interesting. I'll think about it." Your firm and confident position is inspiring. That's all I can write at one o'clock in the morning, huh.

And that's it, I guess. My friends outside of tumblr know that I love them, so I won't tag them here. If I wanted to write something, but I didn't write it, then I forgot. I just hope that the winter holidays will go well to you. That's all.

[justsomestoicguy]

Close Call

"You had a quirk like that??"

I'm in absolute shock.

"Yeah. And God, does it make kissing sooo annoying," Nishiyama sighs, crossing her hands.

I know who Nishiyama is, of course.

Not just because I unknowingly made her faint during P.E. (sorry, Nishiyama-san!)

She's Hikari's best friend. Why wouldn't I know her?

But what I didn't know was the terrifying quirk she had!

It sends shivers up my spine to even think about her knowing everything about me.

So I'm apologetically but absolutely grateful Nishiyama passed out instead of getting anything out of my mind. (no offense, Nishiyama-san!)

And I think I know what caused her to faint.

My past life.

My guess is that her brain's engineered to soak in a person's life story, not stories.

She can handle absorbing multiple people's memories, but not someone who holds twice the regular amount.

But Nishiyama doesn't know that. So she keeps looking at me with those curious plum eyes, and I know the question that's coming before she even opens her mouth. 

"So, Aka-tin," she starts, leaning in, "what's the deal with your quirk? I know I've seen it in action before but I wanna know more about it."

Hikari perks up beside her. "Ooh, give us a demo, give us a demo!" she beams. 

"But don't just do objects again, please? I wanna see you use your quirk on yourself this time. It's been a while, y'know?"

I scratch the back of my neck, trying to play it cool. "Uh, sure, why not?" 

Better to keep the focus on what they already know. I don't want to dive into the whole reincarnation mess. Not like this, at least.

I walk over to our classroom's whiteboard—which seems as good a place as any to do this—and place my palm flat against it.

The familiar sensation washes over me as I activate my quirk. The surface seems to ripple under my hand, and I feel that pull, like slipping into a different layer of reality.

The girls watch, leaning forward with anticipation, as my form flattens against the whiteboard. 

I become part of the surface; a two-dimensional plane turned three-dimensional world. I turn to face them, raising a hand in a little wave. 

From their perspective, it probably looks like I'm some kind of hyper-realistic living drawing.

Inside, it's an endless, quiet void. I've never really gotten used to how strange it feels. Like being submerged in clear water, but without the wetness or pressure. 

I can see out, though, and I catch Hikari grinning while Nishiyama leans in closer, squinting at me like I'm some freaky social experiment.

I move around a bit, tracing the edges of the board. It's always weird, feeling like I'm gliding through nothingness but knowing I'm just skimming the surface from their perspective. 

I can see their lips moving, probably chatting about how strange this all is, but I can't hear them. 

Sound doesn't carry into this space, but I can still catch their laughter through the glassy barrier separating our worlds.

Huh. Maybe I should learn how to lip-read.

Soon enough, I pop back out near the bottom corner of the board, rematerializing as the dimensions snap back into place. 

The whole thing barely took a minute, but it's enough to remind me how bizarre my quirk is.

"So cool!" Hikari claps, eyes shining with excitement. "It's like you're part of a comic strip!"

Nishiyama nods, still looking a bit puzzled. "Yeah, but like… how did my quirk not work on you? Usually, I get everything from just a lick, but I got nothing and blacked out instead."

I shrug, trying to come up with something believable. "Maybe it's because my quirk's kinda like a shield? Like, I become part of the surface, so maybe it messes with how your quirk works."

It's a total lie, but it's not like I can just go and tell her: "Oh, that silly thing? No, my quirk isn't what saved me from your power, Nishiyama-san, but rather the fact that I'm a reincarnator!"

Yeah, right.

The fact that I've lived before, in a different world, with a different life, isn't exactly something I'm eager to share.

Hikari nods thoughtfully, accepting my explanation without question. "Yeah, that makes sense. I guess everyone's quirk has its own kinks, huh?"

"Totally," Nishiyama agrees, though she still looks a tad more skeptical than Hikari. "Still, it's kinda cool that your quirk does that. You'd make a killer spy, Aka-tin!"

I laugh, trying to brush off the comment. "Or a really good escape artist."

Maybe one day, I'll tell them the whole truth. But not today. Today, I'm just Ran, the guy with the odd quirk.

And to me, that's more than enough.

—

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter

Chapter 1

[feral-radfem]

Hi, I'm the anon before who asked about written erotica. Thank you for answering my ask. It was a long response and I'm sure it took a little bit of time, so I'm grateful for that.

As I said I'm new to radical feminism so I haven't had the chance yet to delve too deeply into anti-pornography, just mainly about how women in porn are treated and how it skews men's view of women. So that was why I wanted to ask about erotica. I always saw it as a creative outlet, esp. for women writers since so much of written erotica is... well, you know. But that it rots your brain like any other pornography does make sense actually.

I was quite young when I first got on the internet and I think I may have also been influenced by what you said. And how it kind of fucks with your sexuality. That erotica can also be an addiction never occurred to me, but again, it makes sense.

I've got a lot to think about! I hope you have a nice day.

Thank you for reaching back out. I like knowing that the people I write the responses to do get to see them at some point. Sometimes it feels like answering anons is just screaming into the void, so this was nice.

There is no shame in trying to learn or being new to the subject you're trying to learn. It's good to ask questions. I can definitely see how you came to the conclusion that written erotica is a creative release for women, though. In an era where choice feminism is the dominant strain of feminism all women's choices were framed as a feminist choice. However, things women choose to do, even if they do individually benefit them, cannot be considered feminist if it is detrimental to other women and girls. It's just individualism and women can be just as self-centered as men when they want to be. That's a human condition, unfortunately.

You are not alone in having been young and entering internet spaces that made no effort of regulating this material around the children they knew were there. A lot of them actively encouraged young girls to read it because 5-10 years ago began the revival of the free love movement. Porn, and erotica for women, were equated with masturbation and sexual healthy development. Falsely equated but they were in mainstream media regardless.

It was seen as puritan to try to shame children from engaging in pornography because they hit puberty of course they want to be sexually curious. That was a mass grooming of children being done during the early 2010s on the internet. Now, we have a whole generation of young girls who were pressured or shamed by being told that they were vanilla and to engage with media that continued this pressuring and shaming into their adulthood that they should treat their expressions of sexuality as a performance for others.

Much like Dworkin suggested, we have entered a period in which girls are being convinced that porn is good for them and it's being encouraged by women who have already internalized this message as children. It's our job as radical feminist to make it very clear that pornography of any type has nothing to do with the natural sexual curiosity that comes with puberty nor does it need to be involved in any of your sexuality as you grow older. It never becomes healthy, it is always detrimental, in all its iterations.

Hope you have a great day. Thanks for the follow-up message. :)

[rollercoasterwords]

ok look i have a lot of thoughts abt the way i see lesbians discussed in the marauders fandom BUT for tonight the thoughts that have been toppling like dominoes in my head are mostly centered around this idea of "representation" bc like. ok. scrolling back up here and putting a cut halfway through writing this bc it got long (of course. once again. i need to just accept that i am incapable of being concise at this point).

so i talked abt this a while back somewhere on my silly little tumblr blog and i'm gonna refrain from getting too deep into it rn but just generally just like overall i've noticed this like...specific tone in which people discuss wlw marauders fanfic as though writing about lesbian couples (as opposed to writing about gay couples) holds some sort of like...inherent moral worth? like people will say "ugh we need more lesbian fanfic!!" and like shout about how there is so little wlw fic because of sexism as though tweeting repeatedly about how you just wish there were more good lesbian fics but the only good fics out there are about men because of sexism is like...activism. which. ok. already talked about it NOT getting into it tonight just. the point i'm trying to make here is that i see this general attitude in the marauders fandom where people act like writing lesbian fanfiction is Inherently Morally Superior.

and like. usually when i see those takes i just kinda roll my eyes and move on, because like...i know the people spreading that rhetoric are well-intentioned, and at the end of the day it's fanfiction, it's not that serious, etc. etc. BUT i have sort of...started to notice that attitude bleeding over into some of the responses i've gotten to my writing, mainly from people who say stuff along the lines of, "thank you so much for providing lesbian/sapphic/wlw representation". and those responses have always sort of made me pause and scrunch my nose and go huh. like...you're....welcome? i guess?

and i wanna clarify here--i'm not, like, upset about people saying that to me, and in fact i'm grateful for the kind words, because i understand that the intention behind them is to say "your writing connected with me; i saw pieces of my own experience in your writing; thank you for sharing something that resonated with me in that way." y'know?

but representation. i'm stuck on the word "representation." and it always makes me pause because it's just like. i'm not netflix? y'know? like i didn't write my stories to...represent anyone? i'm just. a lesbian. writing about lesbians. and sometimes not writing about lesbians. y'know?

and the thing that clicked for me tonight about why i think this kind of response throws me off a little is that it's centering an audience. like...i kind of think that conversations about representation are inherently tied to a consumer economy, because they operate on the assumption that the art you're engaging with has been created for an audience--an audience that wants to see themselves in it, meaning there are standards for representation that you should expect and critique. and i think any time the purpose of art starts to orbit around an audience, it starts to sort of...become a product.

and that throws me off! because i'm not writing fanfiction for an audience. i'm not writing it for anyone, really, except myself. in fact, if i find myself thinking too much about my ~readers~, i purposely take a step back and force myself to re-evaluate what i'm writing and why i'm writing it. because for me, the value in writing fanfiction comes from just the simple joy of creating a story that i want to create, and then being able to read that story back to myself. and i only ever started posting on ao3 because i figured "might as well, maybe someone else'll get a kick out of this." and while i value the community that i've found through sharing my writing, that doesn't mean that i want an audience. i've talked about the difference between those two things a lot on this blog, so hopefully u guys get what i mean by that if you've been hanging around my blog for a minute.

anyway, i honestly think this is just like...a perfect example of the insidious ways in which fanfiction getting sucked further and further into a consumer economy alters the ways we engage with it, without even realizing. because like i said, i understand the intention behind the words "thank you for providing representation"--the intention is to say "i connected with this; thank you for sharing something where i could see myself." but if we're growing more and more used to only engaging with media and art through the framework of creator/audience, then we miss out on emphasizing that connection, and instead we end up thanking each other in a way that feels almost transactional, as though we've been provided a service. like...yeah. i've connected the dots. i think that's it.

anyway at the end of the day it's just like...it doesn't really make sense to me to act as though there is some moral obligation or necessity to call for specific types of representations in fanfiction. if there's a story you want to write, you can write it. that's what fanfiction is. but i think a lot of this rhetoric that sort of moralizes the act of Writing About Lesbians runs the risk of insidiously tying fanfiction into a consumer economy, simply because it's engaging with fanfiction as though it's like...content or a product, y'know? and that makes me wary. so. yeah. that's one of the things i've been Pondering tonight i suppose!

[benlaksana]

2021

It's been roughly a year and a half since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic here in Indonesia, and I've recently been trying to understand where I'm at. Not physically, as in physical space, but mentally and probably existentially. What is the state of my mind? I am aware that I've become somewhat bitter, my late nights are sometimes riddled with anxiety for what the next day may bring and reoccurring personal-collective grief has at times, and recently more often than I would like to admit, numbed me.

This may probably be my mind's automatic coping mechanism seeing all this death mainly as a result of how my government has failed us, its citizens, especially during a time of crises. And I really need to stress this point: how my government has failed us Indonesians during the times we need it the most and I very much believe that it is because of this why many of us Indonesians are in constant misery and haunted by that feeling of despair. If chronic physical pain causes constant daily anguish, I am not surprised if chronic physical and mental pain caused by structural violence causes persistent misery as well.

I'm somewhat fortunate in this regard, I'm grateful that I've learned ways to keep my sanity in check. My contemplative practice is key for me. Honestly, I wouldn't have gotten far in life without it. I have many people to thank, but Art Buehler especially, my former professor in esoteric contemplative/meditative practices who reminded me and pointed a certain possible direction of where I should head when I sense a lost in my life's direction, is one those I should thank the most. I know this seems like an individualized response to structural oppression, and I don't intend to paint such a picture, but I do believe we need some kind of mental stability to keep on going. To survive if not thrive.

Art sadly passed away in 2019. I received an email about his passing. And come to think of it I never really did allow myself to properly grieve for his passing. I don't know why. To be told through a short concise email that someone you cared for died, without having the opportunity to properly say goodbye feels like that person never really passed away. It is horrible way to end relationships. A sudden cut, nothing finalized, and since goodbyes are relational, now nothing can really ever be concluded. I have to make amends with myself and only with myself. If I said goodbye yesterday, or if I say goodbye today or perhaps tomorrow, will it ever be enough for me?

Life is individual yet also relational. It's good to have friends, family, people that care for you or the odd mix of all three to get you through life. So although I have these array of tools to possibly help get me through life but if the people whom you look for some kind direction is no longer present, I'm just not sure for how long I can maintain it if I'm doing all this by myself. Will a breaking point come to me?

The mind is a fickle thing, and the mind is as strong as its habits. Bad habits, bad mind. Good habits, good healthy mind (no habits, no mind?). They also say that things that might happen, will indeed happen. It is just a matter of time. If so, how will I break? To what extent? For how long? What will change? What will I lose? Will there be something renewed? Will I come out the same person? Will I come out changed but for the worst?

This is one of the things that worries me. That certainty of uncertainty. The certainty of breaking, the uncertainty of when and of its form. Will I explode in sudden exasperation, engulfed in madness? Will it be a quick balloon pop yet a slow descend into meaninglessness? An unabashed diatribe rant towards someone I care? Something that's just a twitter post away from me on actually doing it. Will this be an opening, an opportunity for 'satori', a sudden lift of the 'veil', bringing about comprehension and understanding of the true nature of things? Questions, questions, questions, not much when it comes to answers, is all I have for now. To be hopeful is hard these days and with the wavering hope, very much coming and going like waves, it has become incredibly hard to even retain any semblance of kindness. That is something I do not want to actively become a habit of. Without hope, comes the cold embrace of fatalism that many on the 'left' are guilty of. Clutched by fatalism, empathy becomes harder to come by. I've seen it, and I have felt it.

I know that my eroding sense of hope is connected to my personal dreams. Specifically how it has become very hard to actualize it. Rara and I never really planned on staying in Indonesia for long. I was confident enough, a bit too confident come to think of it, that we will be out of Indonesia by 2021 the latest. A mere 2 1/2 years after our last stay in New Zealand. The plan was for me to continue my studies, getting into a Ph.D. program and of course a scholarship. That was our ticket out. Hoping that we'll be back to our old routine in Wellington, in and out the university's library, my head in books, loving our 'flatwhites' while regretting having too much of it, the usual stint doing some university tutoring, community organizing stuff, lazy gardening, out and about on the weekends tramping around Wellington and if Covid did not happen or/and maybe if my government handled things much, much better I think that would've been the case. Or at least I constantly would like to imagine that would be the case.

Yet here we are still in Indonesia, me struggling to do my Ph.D. through this wretched distant learning, initially in the comfort of my home yet steadily devolving into cabin fever. And Rara with her own struggles trying her best to get back on her feet as an aspiring musician. None of it is going as well as we had hoped for. All this while juggling trying our best to keep ourselves safe and our families and friends safe. Both of us have become direct witnesses how challenging this has been, physically and mentally. Both of us slowly grappling with the continual kick in the gut, the never ending structural absurdity, violently absurd.

That slow grueling realization of how fragile our lives are. Not just existentially. It is existentially precarious yet at the same time understanding that precariousness in many of its aspects is structurally and politically maintained. It is this political construction of precarity, which Isabell Lorey elaborates in her book State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious, that angers and saddens us the most.

Lorey provides a nuanced approach in unpacking and differentiating this thing called being 'precarious'. The three dimensions of being precarious: precariousness, precarity and then precarization. On precariousness, Lorey draw's on Judith Butler's conceptualization of precariousness which she sees as existential, relational and inevitable. I'll insert my existential philosophy and Buddhist values here, to help me see and more importantly accept the transient nature of life and that impermanence or change is the only constant. Our lives, our bodies are destined to die and wither away. We humans are fragile mortal beings. The loss of life, the loss of one's identity, the loss of everything that makes us, us is unavoidable. It's also a 'relational' thing, as in it is also a shared experience. Everyone will experience it. It is the great equalizer some say.

Then we have precarity. Yes everyone dies, but the process of dying or even the process of grieving someone's death is dependent on what Lorey see as the “effects of different political, social and legal compensations of a general precariousness”. Some die at young age due to starvation, riddled with poverty and disease and have nothing or no one to ease their pain, others die surrounded by family and friends in a well-cared for hospital. Some have days or weeks to grieve, others have to go back to work the next day as she or he have no luxury to stop working even just for a moment and simply grieve. To stop working even for a day draws some closer to the possibility of death for the person or those dependent on the person working. This is the inequality of dying and grieving due to our social hierarchies. How fragile we are, is dependent on those social hierarchies.

And last we have Lorey's third dimension, governmental precarization which is the instrumentalization of insecurity by the government. In other words, the government using the idea and the reality of insecurity as a tool or device to control its citizens. The calculated, deliberate attempt by the government in destabilizing our lives in order for us to be easily governed. Insecurity, be it real or due to perceived constructed fear of insecurity is an effective governing tool. The fear of being labeled "useless and lacking in contribution to the nation-state". The genuine insecurity of not being able to get a job due to the false understanding that it is simply a result of an individual's laziness rather than due to systematic government policies. The deliberate attempt in making our lives constantly insecure, constantly on the edge, without us initially knowing it and when we do come to understand, the blame is on us. It is normalized and it is internalized.

This is not simply a social issue, it is a deeply existential one as well. We Indonesians have very little to make us feel safe at the moment. Covid and the government's response to it has severely limited our movements and it's not simply physical immobility, but also an existential one, the inability to even have the imagination that our lives are actually "going somewhere", towards a forward direction. Perhaps some sort of minute incremental progress, but progress nonetheless. This imagined mobility is what Ghassan Hage calls as "existential mobility" and this immobility suffered by many of us is what he also calls as "stuckedness".

Turning an often momentary or the ephemeral nature of a crisis into something prolonged and perhaps even permanent is another part of the strategy of governmental precarization. Our lives or jobs are always on the line and again coupled with the sick prevailing idea that we only have ourselves to find the solution. The crisis is permanent, we don't know why but we've been told that way, if we fail to overcome it is because of our personal inabilities thus proliferating and intensifying this sense of stuckedness.

Forcing us to accept whatever solution the government-messiah presents us with in order to relieve us from this suffering. From labour laws that normalizes precariousness even more, to oppressive new laws that limits our desire and ability to dissent, to including who or how our enemies are defined, easily accepting who is to blame for all this insecurity we are all suffering.

Be it the long dead Indonesian communists, the Chinese Indonesians and the racist perception of them being "selfish and greedy", the Indonesian Islamists - the kadruns and their conservatism, the "foreign forces" whomever they may be constantly trying to take over Indonesia, anyone or anything is to blame. Anyone but the Indonesian government and its affluent patrons. Insecurity and the fear that rises from it renders many of us easily governable and compliant.

This governmental precarization and this 'stuckedness', which Hage sees no longer as a possibility that may or may not happen but an "inevitable pathological state which has to be endured" is how Rara and I feel at the moment.

Rara and I feel our lives are going nowhere. We feel that our lives are stuck, constantly rotating in a hamster wheel trying our best to overcome our precariousness. No progress, no forward movement, no growth, just trying our best to survive from this sustained uncertainty. It's an awful feeling, paving way to existential dread. We are very much looking forward to moving back to New Zealand as soon as possible but with the conditions right now, that is something I can't even dare to imagine.

And although I am grateful that the weave of our privilege with at many times just pure sheer luck has kept us alive and physically well for the time being, we both now realize that we have hit a proverbial concrete wall here. Adding to the already precarious nature of life here in Indonesia, our line of work as a fledgling social science academic and aspiring artist and what Rara and I aspire to do socially, what we aspire to become, easily ends in stagnation if we intend to continue to live our lives in Indonesia. (I want to direct you to Social Science and Power edited by Vedi Hadiz and Daniel Dhakkidae to get the gist of what I'm trying to get at here.)

This is a hard pill to swallow, harder to write and even more so to act upon. I am existentially tied to Indonesia, my family and friends are here, my father is buried here and so will my mother. Memories of the distant past, the colloquial language when shitposting on social media, my mind and body have been shaped by Indonesia in ways I possibly do not even fully realize. This is why I oscillate between guilt towards others and guilt towards the self. I feel guilty for simply having an exit strategy when many others don't, I have the luxury of choice. Yet I also I feel guilty for feeling guilty about this, as it means I am also neglecting the well-being of myself, now and in the future. I need to work on this and find my bearings, being stuck in a guilty limbo won't get me anywhere.

And the future is far from stable, I wonder what is on the other end of surviving this pandemic? There is so much collective grief, collective anger and of course personal anger. All this will amount to something, I'm sure of that. Although I don't know what exactly, I'm not entirely confident this something will be good. John Keane's new book 'The New Despotism' comes into mind.

What do I personally do with all this anger? I’ve noticed how anger, especially when it is on the verge of hatred, morphs itself and easily descends into madness, into aggression and often showing itself, unawaringly to us, when the act of expressing anger happens. Your mind becomes instantly clouded, ending in mindless action. This inability to have control over oneself terrifies me. I already have so very little semblance of control over life in general at the moment, if I truly have no control over myself whatsoever, what then do I have?

And I wonder if it is a waste of time asking these pseudo-intellectual questions? I don't know, yet I do know I live in a society where it hones aggression and hostility, whether it be in physical and digital spaces, and I would like to draw myself away from all this at the moment before I transform myself into something I do not wish to be. Anger I can fully understand, and it is needed and useful. Yet to actively transform it into deep blinding hatred and sustain it daily, is something I feel psychologically destructive for me and I'm trying my best not to go on that path.

I rarely update this blog I know, but this blog has always been used as a personal chronicle of how much I have progressed, digressed or both. And I needed to write all this, because I've never been this least sure of what my life should be like and where it should go. I know I am not alone at this. This pandemic has destroyed the lives of many, our futures, our dreams, our sources of love and I hope that anyone of you reading this finds a way to get through it, doing anything you can do day in, day out.

I'm not sure it if amounts to anything. Maybe it won't, maybe it will, or maybe it has but maybe we just can't see it. All I can personally do for now, is to hold on to these 'maybes', and maybe, just maybe I'll get through this too.

“Where must we go...

We who wonder this Wasteland

in search of our better selves?”

- The First History Man, George Miller

[sadbagofbones]

Today I feel exceptionally lonely.

Festivals do that to you sometimes. Especially if you're away from home slaving away towards a goal, when you don't even have an ounce of hope in you. You'd think, hey! Just be positive! Honest effort never goes to waste. Right? I would agree, but my life is a living exception to that idea, and I can't help but feel pessimistic about the prospect of ever becoming successful in these endeavours. I am not saying I want to party, drink, dance or do any of these extremely energy-draining activities which my fellow batchmates are actively doing without a morsel of regret.

I just want to feel, like I belong. That all the sacrifices I'm making, are being noticed, being acknowledged and hopefully, being appreciated. I don't mind not having fun while others do, or studying while the others don't. I just want some assurance, something, to let me know that I will make it. That I won't disappoint, again. That it will be for something, and not another failure like the many I've had in life.

What is the point of festivals, you ask me? Other than the mythological aspects, it is a time when families come together and celebrate each other, be grateful for each other and express their love for each other. They say. festivals are just an excuse for loved ones to come together and thank God for each other. And here I am, spiralling down a self-deprecating path, with no family member, no friend, no loved one in sight to pull me out and tell me otherwise. Funny, right? The very people who are supposed to celebrate you, have reduced you only to your failures, and would rather mock you for your efforts than support you for them. Only if you do good, or are useful, are you celebrated, are your efforts noticed and valued. Don't do so well, everyone is too busy in their lives, having fun in their own victories and banal pleasures to offer a few words of kindness to you.

We humans are social creatures, but why is our communication resorted only to humiliate someone? To look down on them? Why is it so hard to embrace someone when they fall, to lift them up with a little support and whisper sweet motivations into their ears? Why is it so hard to put aside our anger, our disappointment and tell them that things will be okay? That they aren't alone?

I wish I had the answers to these questions, or at least have the energy to whisper these things to myself.

But here I am, waiting, like an idiot, for someone to hold me and tell me it will all be fine. And what an endless wait this is going to be.

[shyrose57]

2: I will figure it out eventually and that's a promise.

3: Watson is aboustely heart broken and near tears multiple times as well hearing Ran in so much distress and actually crying. Jackie does cry, he attempts multiple times to hug Ran and make it known he's there to comfort him, but it only works sometimes, and when it doesn't work Ran gets scared and tries to get away believing an attacker has gotten him. Grievous is almost like silently grieving, knowing he can't do anything to help his close friend. Cletus feels bad, and since he isnt too good with emotions, focuses on instead attempting to cheer everyone else up. Isaac and Benjamin feel awful as they feel at fault for letting it happen, so to hopefully help they make plans on how to make Ran as comfortable and safe as can be while also getting him to a nearby town they heard about to hopefully reverse it. Charles is doing his damn best to comfort Ran while also distracting him from his own thoughts, which mostly means Charles (and Watson) play the role of story teller for a while. Ranbob is the hardest hit by it, he's suffering so much because he so badly just wants to go over and hug his little brother and comfort him, tell him that it'll all be ok and that Bobby would protect him. But also knows he can't because he knows that would most likely do nothing but make it worse. For a while he spends his time blocking his ears and wrapped in a comfort blanket trying to comfort himself, as everyone else tend to his suffering brother. One thing that makes it harder is that Ran begins to purr to himself in a vain attempt to comfort himself (cause I personally like to think Enderman hybrids are like cats and purr like them, when their happy, content, comfortable, but also to soothe themselves and heal wounds), when Ranbob knows Ran's never purred, so knowing he's so desperate to try it now hurts him. 

You will get some comfort, like Watson manages to convince Ranbob to at least hug Ran, and Ranbob manages to purr alongside Ran a bit, which does actually help to calm Ran down. Ran getting wrapped up with the fluffiest blanket they have and always having Watson, Jackie, or Grievous by his side. With Jackie tending to hold his hand. 

4: All of the above. Sudden touch can be overwhelming to Ranbob at times, especially when he's not doing well mentally. Also while in this state, touch reminds him of the desperate grabbing and touching of the people he killed that tried to escape or fend him off. And Dream was able to hurt Ranbob by starving and dehydrating him of course, but when Ranbob was being particularly disobedient and tried to fight back Dream would often take control and cut or stab Ranbob then gave back control as punishment. 

10: It does get better! Idk if I already said but Kelalen is actually where they get the antidote for Rans blindness potion! And when their given it for free and it works, they become very grateful to Adler and Lucia (the one who actually convinced Adler to give them the potion in the first place cause it was the only one left). And a few days after they arrive they actually decide to explore the town, where they meet Siren and get more information on Dream and who he was, they also get their weapons and armor repaired by them. But while talking with Siren, Cletus and Grievous sneak off and run into Atlas, then Cletus and Grievous agree to help Atlas with his prank. But by the end of their second week in Kelalen the group starts to truly enjoy their stay, Ranbob often saying how it kind of reminds him of Mizu before everything happened. 

12: Thats funny though and is exactly how I'd want to be seen.

13: *CLAPS HANDS* OH BOY DO I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU. I RECENTLY TOLD MY FRIEND ABOUT RANBOB SEEING HIS DEAD FRIENDS AND FAMILY BUT FAILED TO TELL THEM IT WASNT ACTUALLY PART OF THE STORY. SO THEY TOOK IT LITTERALY AND THEY HAVE GIVEN ME IDEAS, WHILE ALSO HELPING ME REALIZE THAT THIS COULD ACTUALLY BE USED TO SET UP FOR RANBOB MOVING PAST HIS TRAUMAS AND CAN LEAD TO MORE FLUFF AND ANGST. SO NOW IT IS PART OF THE STORY, WITH CHANGES THAT IT HAPPENED DURING A DREAM AND HE DIDNT BELIEVE IT AND CONSIDERED IT A CRUEL JOKE BY FATE ITSELF AT FIRST. AND YES BY AT FIRST I MEAN THIS HAPPENS MANY MORE TIMES.

Also my friend has a message for you, "HahA THEY BETTER THANK ME I SET THEM UP FOR MORE MISERY 😈😈 /j" (I wanna be safe so if you don't know /j means that their joking)

14: Im not doing Foolish and Dream brothers because I personally don't like/get it. But I was thinking maybe they meet Foolish after Mripat tells them that there was a member of the SMP who was said to be a god and immortal. And after some long conversations they decide to go hunt for this apparently immortal god. Which takes a while since no one actually knows where he is, just that he likes deserts, and have to go off possible sightings or hints in history books. And when they finally meet him they manage to learn about totems (which they previously didn't know about) and even get some. They also learn that infact even during the SMP time no one quite knew what Dream was, and learns the ways the SMP tried to permanently get rid of him. Foolish is also devastated to know that Dream infact survived and becomes determined to help them. Even offering his help that if they ever go back to Mizu to face Dream, he'll come along and help in anyway he can. 

15: I like to imagine Edward remembers Ranboo as the young troubled enderman that he basically adopted and took care of. So Edward sees Ranboo in both Ran and Ranbob, so he offers his help and advice. Basically becoming their Grandad, telling stories about everything he's seen. Especially about Ranboo because Ranbob is so curious about his ancestor he just cant help but ask. One convo I've been particularly thinking about goes something like, "Edward: Older one, what do you think your brother thinks about you? Ranbob: I..I think he doesnt like me, and that he wants me gone. Edward: Hmm, your wrong. Ranbob: What? Edward: When I look at Ran, I see a child, not an adult yet, scarred, scared and traumatized. A child that wishes you two were closer, that he could forgive you and wants to believe you, just so you two could be family again. But is afraid too, for he already has a family, that he is terrified of losing, and is scared if he attempts to trust you again that they may leave him. But make no mistake, your brother wants to make amends, your brother cares about you and wants you happy. He knows deep down that he can trust you, and that you are innocent, but you all must help him acknowledge those parts, and stand by him, helping him walk when needed, as he traverses his own nightmares." AKA I really want Edward to be the reason Ranbob realizes that Ran does want to be family again but needs help. Cause if I had to describe the brothers current positions with their trauma it'll be, Ranbob-Knows he has trauma and is trying to get better and live with it, willingly getting help. Ran-Is fucking drowning in trauma cause he refuses to acknowledge he has it and hides it well most of the time, also doesn't ask for help. 

2: I fear the day.

3: Hahaha, ow, ow, ow. That, overall, is...heartbreaking. At the same time though, it’s sweet to see everyone pitching in to do their best and help him. We got it with Ranbob, now we get it with Ran.

I am curious, though. From what you’ve said, Blindness potions don’t wear off immediately? Why’s that?

4: *Chants* Please punch Dream. Please punch Dream. Please punch Dream. How do the fishermen deal with this, and help Ranbob?

10: Oh, god, Ran’s blind when they arrive in town. That’s definitely a high tension situation. Not only have you got him out of commission, but everyone else high strung from it, and probably having their protective instincts in overdrive when they randomly get treated hostilely. What exactly does an antidote for blindness consist of? Do most potions have antidotes, or counters? Is milk no longer used, or is that not a thing in the AU? It does sound nice that they all end up making friends later on though. How does Ran adjust to having his sight back? And, y’know, having everyone see him like that, and his brother comfort him(if they aren’t on good terms at this point, the timeline’s confusing me a bit)

12: Throughout this conversation, every time I read something sad, the image struck me, and honestly, it’s what you deserve. If these keeps up, I’m gonna start inserting these little 🏹s every time you hurt my heart. 

13: I’m being conspired against. Does everyone see this? Brothers Anon and their friend are conspiring to break my heart. Such gremlins. What did I ever do to you two?

Also, you can tell your friend that from this point on, I will closely associate them with a tiny, purple, cackling imp. 

14: Huh. Why do they want to find Foolish? Curiosity? To learn more about the Smp? About Dream? Sounds like it has a lot of potential to be quite the interesting encounter. And, since they didn’t previously know about the totems, they probably wouldn’t notice if one activated in a certain situation where it’s popped...do with that what you will.

15: Anon, I love all of this. Tell me more about Grandpa Edward. Does he fondly look back to Ranboo being polite and quiet while Ranbob and Ran cause havoc in the background? Does he bake them snacks and tell them about Ranboo’s adventures, and how much he loved to mine-which, in hindsight, is kind of funny, considering you just mentioned that so few people follow Skeppy because of the mining, but apparently their ancestor did that thing for fun.

[xbellaxcarolinax]

Forging A Heart (Ivar the Boneless) 24- Let Them Come

Pairings: Ivar x Artemis (OFC)

Word Count: 3134

Warnings: Corpse burning.

AN: I found this GIF a long time ago on tumblr and I have no idea who made, but credit to them.

23- Silver Fox

... The makeshift pyre was constructed in a matter of hours. Dabria was secured tightly against the wood with mountains of hay surrounding her corpse. Artemis's eyes followed the dancing flames as they licked at the dead woman's feet.

She stood beside Ivar and all the people behind them, to watch her burn. The colorful flames illuminated the night sky and the smell of scorching flesh lingered in the air.

Dabria's face was a mangled mess of loose beating red flesh. Her skull was visible under all the flapping skin, cracked and deformed. It did not bother Artemis in the least, not as it would have before. She assumed her heart would ache, or at the very least, grieve the death of a misfortunate woman. But she didn't. Her heart hardened and her eyes were blank. Perhaps it was because the woman was not alive, but merely a corpse. The dead could not feel anymore pain.

Ivar looked dissatisfied, almost disappointed, at the lack of torture and pain. He would have preferred the woman alive, begging and screaming for her life for daring to hurt his wife. Instead he watched a lifeless body become cinders. To him, it was a dull affair, but it was enough to send a message.

He turns to look at Artemis. Even with the hood of her cloak on he could still make out her expression in the night. Apathetic. It made him smile. She was becoming stronger.

"Let the people watch if they wish," She tells him, her voice low, "I tire of watching her burn." She absentmindedly places her hand on her wounded shoulder, the wrappings easily felt through the fabric of her cloak. Ivar nods, bringing her hand to his lips and placing a chaste kiss on her knuckles.

"As you wish, baby bird." The king raises a hand, signaling the guard of their departure. Walking away from the docks, Artemis takes one last look at the pyre. She was happy to see her burn.

...

"Strike me." Artemis raises a brow at Ivar, looking down at the sword in her hands. It was Hvitserk's, one of his prized possessions. She's worked on it more than a few times, the handle already familiar in her hands.

It had been decided that she should receive training in self defense. So far, she had done well on her own, but it had been sheer luck, likely divine intervention from the gods.

"Well?" Ivar smirks. He sat upon the tree stump located in the old training grounds of his youth. He held a blue shield covering his left side and his favored axe held in his right. He sat perfectly still, resembling a statue, legs bound together as he had no need for his metal cages.

"Do you think it wise...?" She begins to ask, and Hvitserk laughs, crossing his arms.

"My brother deserves a beating, use that strength," Ivar scowls at his older brother before smacking his axe against his shield.

"Come now, wife." Ivar calls out to her. Artemis was some distance away, but not far enough to ignore her husband's taunting smile. He wanted to raise an anger out of her, make her attack him like some kind of berserker.

She takes a cautious step forward, and then another before running at full speed in the way Hvitserk had taught her. She intended a quick strike, though she knew Ivar would block it with ease. Raising the large sword, she brings it down with all her might. It was an attempt at a slash, and just as she predicted, Ivar deflected the blow with his shield. The wood splintered slightly at the pressure of her force, and Ivar used his shield to smack it from her hands.

With a quickness he swings his axe, to which Artemis blocks with her own shield, pushing at him. She was heaving, chest rising and falling under her leather vest. Raising her shield, she attempts to strike him with it, but he was much faster, embedding his axe into the wood, successfully lodging it in deeply.

He pulls with all his might, bringing her forward with his brute strength. She lets out a yelp, body colliding atop of his, dropping her now useless shield.

"So, this is what you prefer, hmm?" Ivar says from under her, looking up at her with his infuriating smirk and sparkling eyes. He drops his weapons in favor of placing his large hands on her waist, using his thumbs to stroke her sides under her training tunic.

"Shut up," She retorts, pushing his face away from her own. She rolls off of him comically, body softly landing on the  grass. Hvitserk laughs something fierce, arms crossed and a smirk on his face.

Training would prove to be difficult.

...

The days began to shorten and the nights grew long. The cold swept over Kattegat unmercifully, changing its leaves into different shades of red, yellow, and brown until there was nothing left but thin branches.

Then autumn was set aside for winter, its icy grip coating every inch of the town in snow. Trade had decreased for the time being, children played about less frequently, and families remained inside their homes where their hearth would keep them warm against the harsh elements.

That did not stop their Queen from stepping out to speak with the people. Though she was never an admirer of Kattegat's winters, she was slowly learning to embrace her new home and culture.

Artemis shivers from the cold despite wearing her warmest fur lined cloak, a luxury she was grateful for. Her newest guard Tordis, a shieldmaiden, follows behind her. Tordis was stoic, tall and brooding just like Heahmund, with dark eyes and thin lips set in a tight line. She wasn't the best company as Dafi had been, but Ivar trusted her enough to be Artemis's new shadow.

The marketplace buzzed with activity despite the slow oncoming snowstorm. Light flurries fell from the sky, a welcomed distraction from the noisy docks. The people crowded by the pier, all pushing at each other to take a look at the ship nearing their harbor.

"My Queen," Tordis says to her, "I think it's best we head back to the hall." Artemis had just finished speaking with an elderly woman, the wife of a farmer.

"I haven't finished making my rounds," Artemis tells her, smiling in farewell to the old woman before peeking up at the tall shieldmaiden, "I haven't even spoken to the fishermen yet. One of the wives is with child, you know." Tordis sighs.

"But the ship, my Queen."

"Ship?" It was only then that she noticed the people rushing towards their small dock. She whips around to get a glance herself, but she was far too short to see over the others.

"The King would want you with him in the hall. The people can wait." Tordis urges. Artemis sighs but nods, walking the familiar path towards the hall.

Already Aria comes skittering out from the kitchens once she is informed of the Queen's arrival. The redhead seemed nervous, wasting no time in removing the snow covered cloak from Artemis's shoulders.

"What's wrong?" She asks Aria immediately, already sensing the girls discomfort. Before she can answer, Heahmund hurriedly rushes over to them, his steps matching a soldier's march.

"Queen Artemis," Heahmund greets her, the sound of his voice clashing with that of yelling in the background, "Perhaps we should take a walk together?"

"Bishop. I've just come from outside." She says to him with a roll of her eyes, but stops short after hearing more yelling. The recognizable tone was unmistakably Ivar.

"Why is he in a rage?" She attempts to walk towards the sound of her angry husband, but Heahmund blocks her way.

"Heahmund," She huffs out, "Move."

"He's merely having a discussion with Hvitserk." Something shatters.

"That's a discussion to you?" She raises a brow and makes to walk around him but again he blocks her.

"He is angry."

"Oh? I haven't noticed!"

"Hvitserk will deal with him."

"But there is a ship intending to dock soon." Artemis says exasperated.

"He knows. That is why he is in a rage."

"I did not see their banners, are they friend or foe?" She asks worriedly, turning to look towards Tordis.

"I could not tell, my Queen." The shieldmaiden says to her. Artemis sighs but dismisses her before turning to Heahmund.

"What are you not telling me?" She switches to her native tongue, in case he was worried about others hearing. Heahmund scratches at his cropped hair before dropping his hand atop the pommel of his notorious sword out of habit.

"His brothers are due to dock by tonight." The shouting continues, Ivar's and Hvitserk’s voices seeming to come from deep within the hall, perhaps from the council chambers.

"His brothers?" She asks in disbelief, "Are they a threat?"

"They come with one ship. A messenger was sent ahead. They wish to discuss things peacefully."

"Peacefully? The last time they all saw each other was during war!"

"Which is why your husband is in a rage." With a sigh, Artemis walks towards the council chambers, but Heahmund reaches out to grab her arm, halting her movements. She shakes his grip off and he rolls his eyes.

One could not miss the yelling that threatened to knock down the chamber doors. Thralls scurried about, frightened, just as Aria had been. Artemis knocks on the door before opening it slowly. Hvitserk rushes forward, attempting to close it back.

"Hvitserk, let me in."

"I'm afraid I can't do that, Artemis." He says hastily through the crack of the door.

"Artemis?" She hears Ivar question, already sensing his frustrations from the other side.

"I'm here, let me see you." She calls out to him, and after a whispered back and forth between him and Hvitserk, the elder brother reluctantly opens the door. He lets her and Heahmund through before softly shutting it.

The chamber was a complete mess. Parchments and maps strewn about and shattered pieces of things she could not identify littered the floor. The table was in disarray, with the candles used for nightly reading rolling off the surface. And in the center of it all was a very angry Ivar. He sat leaning over the table, body in a defensive mode, jaw clenched.

"Ivar," She begins softly, slowly making her way towards him as if he were a wounded animal. She carefully steps over the broken things that covered the floor, leaning up against him with a gentle hand on his back. This already seemed to calm him, though there was still a fire blazing in his eyes.

"They dare come to Kattegat!" He seethes for a moment, straightening his back to look her in the eyes, "They dare come here demanding peace?" His voice rose octaves, booming something fierce. Artemis quickly kneels to be at level with him.

"Do not strain yourself." She says, knowing fully well that he'd end up hurting his bones somehow. She places her cold hands on his heated face in an attempt to smooth out the angry lines, and for a moment it seemed to work. He then breathes out harshly, brows refusing to smooth over. He grits his teeth before speaking.

"You do not understand, wife." He was holding himself back, she could tell, from saying something offensive.

"I understand that you are angry, but your fury will cloud your judgement."

"I should execute them." He says suddenly, head raised as if he thought of the most brilliant plan.

"Ivar-" Hvitserk speaks up.

"I should have them executed the moment their feet touch the sand."

"They are our brothers!" Hvitserk roars, slamming both hands atop the wooden table.

"Yet they betrayed us, their kin!" Ivar roars back lurching forward, forgetting his own disability. The movement causes Artemis to step back with a frown. He turns to look at her, his wild eyes dimming at the sight of her. He plops back against his seat.

"I do not care for Ironside," He mutters, looking down for a moment towards the small dagger strapped to his side, "But perhaps I'll spare Ubbe." His tone was nonchalant.

"My king," Heahmund speaks up, "I believe you have a right to be suspicious," Hvitserk immediately turns to glare at the Bishop. Heahmund ignored him and continues, "But perhaps you should hear them out."

"And if it is a trap?" Ivar urges.

"We have the means to protect ourselves." Was the simple reply.

"They must be in dire need if they risk coming back to Kattegat," Artemis comments, flipping over a chair that was knocked over in Ivar's anger. She takes a seat beside him, grabbing his hand gently, making him look at her.

"Let them come," She tells them, "We shall then judge whether they come in pretense. What do you say?" She turns to look at Hvitserk, then Heahmund, who both look at each other, unsure.

"We can ready a few men," Hvitserk says after a moment, "And we meet them at shore."

"I will have your men at the ready, my King," Says Heahmund, "If you command it." Ivar drums his thick fingers against the table, his other hand in Artemis's grip. He then turns to look at her, as if searching her eyes for something.

"You need to be protected." He states.

"I need to be by your side, you mean," She counters, "I do not wish to appear weak."

"You are no warrior." His tone was finally softening, but there was still enough edge to understand that his decision would be final.

"I should be by your side to greet them!"

"Artemis is right," Hvitserk says, "If they do not see the Queen beside you, they will take it as a threat." Artemis smirks at Ivar's frown.

"She always gets in the way of danger," Ivar argues, "And it'll be more than an arrow to the ear or a slice to the shoulder. Lagertha's supporters rally with them."

"Tordis will be by my side," Artemis pleads, already setting that particular look she gave when she wanted something, "You trust her don't you?" Ivar huffs, sucking his teeth and ripping his hand away from her own to set it under his chin in thought.

"You are to come straight back to the hall with Tordis if danger does arise." Artemis nods her head enthusiastically and Ivar sighs.

"Very well," The king says, "Let them come."

...

The ship arrived late into the evening, just as the snow began to stick.

Ivar stood tall and proud, his eyes never leaving the sight of his brothers disembarking their ship. His jaw was clenched tight, his posture rigid and knuckles white from the tight grip on his crutch buried within the snow and through the sand.

Artemis shifts under the weight of her furs, the pelt of soft wolf hair heavy on her small shoulders. It was by far one of the most sumptuous articles of clothing that she had received. Ivar had made it a point that they were to be dressed in fine garments to display their wealth and power. It made her want to roll her eyes, as none of it was hers truly, but still, she indulged him. She stood to Ivar's right, the very vision of a beautiful queen with her dog beside her. Tordis stood behind her as agreed, one of the few things that eased Ivar's mind.

Hvitserk and Heahmund were on Ivar's left. Both were armed and ready incase of attack, though Hvitserk was far more apprehensive. He did not want to face his brothers in battle again. 20 armored men were lined up across the beach to protect their king. Some of the people stayed to watch while others scurried off home to avoid any potential conflict.

Torches were blazing along the edges of the docks to combat against the darkness. Only shadows could be seen disembarking the ship, one by one.

The tallest figure was Bjorn, who strides towards them with measured steps and a hand resting on his sword. He too was ready for any possible threat. He had hate emanating from his person, eyes a dead blue and lips tightly formed into a frown. He replaced his rope like hair with that of a shorter look, shaved down to his scalp. He looked frightening, as large as a bear standing on its hind legs. He quickly makes eye contact with Artemis, blue and grey clashing in an intense stare. Although his features did not betray him, there was a twinkle in his eye. He was surprised to see her.

Ubbe was behind him, hair as long as Bjorn's before he cut it, and a sadness in his eyes. Surely he missed his brothers. His eyes land on Ivar, though it was only for a fraction of a moment before he moves them to Hvitserk. They stared each other down for a few seconds, as if exchanging memories of their youth. Ubbe was not at all surprised by Artemis's appearance as Bjorn had been. Her cloak was finer than anything he'd ever seen her in. He knew she would elevate to her current position.

Behind him was Torvi the shieldmaiden and her children. She had a determination in her kohl lined eyes, a fire that could burn through all of them. Artemis focused her eyes on Torvi's children, afraid and gripping their mothers skirts. They had no fault in this.

"Brothers," Bjorn greets, crossing his hands over his front, "I see you've made the blacksmith a Queen." Bjorn's lips form a smirk, shifting his eyes to Heahmund, "And you've kept the bishop." Ivar snorts.

"Observant. Welcome back to Kattegat, brothers," Ivar's eyes land on the flaxen haired shieldmaiden, "And Torvi." The shieldmaiden glares, but does nothing more.

"To what do we owe...the pleasure of such a visit? Hmm?"

"Pleasantries." Says Bjorn, almost jokingly. If it weren't for the breeze and the loud crackling of the fires, anyone would have heard Ivar intake a breath of annoyance. He was certainly not amused.

"What do you want?" Ivar says, voice sharp as a whip.

"An alliance."

"I have enough of those. I don't need you."

"May we continue this inside? My children are cold." Ivar sucks his teeth, eyes shifting to the children in between Torvi's skirts. He feels Artemis tug on the sleeve of his tunic to get his attention.

"Don't turn the children away," She says to him, "They are innocent. Let them inside the hall." Ivar's nose flares, the furs wrapped around his shoulders making him look almost frightening. He licks his lips but nods reluctantly.

"You may enter my hall, but you must leave your weapons with my men."

Bjorn stares him down, before grunting and nodding his head.

"Agreed."

...

@heavenly1927​ @didiintheblog​ @leilabeaux​ @jzr201​ @inforapound​ @a-mess-of-fandoms​ @rastakami23 @ostra814​ @zumzum96​

[nikkigrand]

i saw that you've been reblogging posts and stuff, but you dont update, which is totally fine! no pressure!! but i've noticed that you're such a loner in fandom and barely talk to anyone, and disappear alot??? can i ask why?? we all love your work and would love to be more involved with you

I wanna start by saying thank you for reading and supporting my work. It gives me the fuzzies to know that people like the things I put out. 

Now, on to your question! I guess this will be a long one lol. 

I’ve been a part of the Naruto fandom for about 15 years now - as a silent lurker and as a contributor. That’s a large part of my life. 

When I first started, fandom was this thing where you could unleash your creativity upon the world and people’s comments were either constructive criticisms (such as spelling, grammar, plot, character development, etc.) or praise for your work. 

There were flames, of course, but i can’t remember if these flames were personally incendiary or along the spectrum of, “your character is a Mary Sue, and this is terrible and I hate it.”

There were dark!fics, squik!fics, fetish!fics, all types of fics that were creative in a way that would challenge the author and the reader. And we all knew that just because they liked writing about it, it didn’t mean that they did these things in real life. 

In fact, fanfiction.net hadn’t even been around for a decade when I first logged on. I only created an account 5 years after finding it. I remember when character slots were being updated each time a new Shippuden chapter was released.  

Don’t get me wrong, these were also the days of active character bashing. I guess things in that respect haven’t changed, but back then, if you didn’t like a character or a pairing, you just didn’t read or actively search for it. This is where the term “Don’t like, don’t read” or “DLDR” came from. 

Now, you’ll have people who disagree with what you contribute to the point where they’ll actually dox you. That was simply unheard of back in the early 2000s and 2010′s. For some, fandom is a secret part of their lives - a guilty pleasure, something they don’t want others to know about. That’s why usernames exist. 

A lot of us write erotica, and some of us don’t want people knowing that - i sure don’t. 

And now, because users are becoming more guarded, they feel protective over their work, who they share it with, and who they allow into their circles. Which is fine for them, I guess, that’s their prerogative. But, I miss the days where fandom was all inclusive. 

For example, I tried joining a server for a pairing I really enjoyed and was excited because I could talk about this thing that brought me joy with other people who would also be excited to share what they thought. Except, I was told I could not join because my content “made them uncomfortable” and I need more recommendations from other users.

Being told I could essentially “not sit with them,” was a Mean Girl way of saying I did not fit into their mold and their ideals of what fandom should be. Their 2020 definition of a fandom “safe space” is not the same as it was back then.

And that absolutely blew my mind. That I would be excluded from an environment that used to be so inclusive that I could theoretically write a story about a tailed beast orgy and no one would have batted an eye. 

I mean, what is this? An exclusive club I need recommendation letters to join? The hell? Is this college? A corporate job? The Illuminati???

Since when was that even a THING in fandom??

So now, I keep to myself. 

I disappear often because this is just a hobby. If I want to write, I will write. If I don’t, I don’t. Once I feel like this is a job, it is no longer enjoyable for me. I am under no obligation to post anything I write, I only do so because I want to share. 

I have never been a writer who updates based on reviews or kudos. I have stories with over 30k words that have 8 reviews, and I don’t care. I have stories with 10k words with 100 reviews, and I still don’t care. Why? Because I write for ME. Because it makes ME feel better. And if you enjoy what makes me feel better, then that is simply a bonus for me. (this doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate reviews, they’re just not necessary for me.)

Bashing does not affect me, I couldn’t care less what losers who have nothing better to do have to say. Like, how weird do you have to be to attack someone over fictional characters? I mean, there’s weird and then there’s fucking weird. 

So, yeah, I keep to myself because the Naruto fandom has become toxic and I like keeping my blog a drama free zone. This has always been my own version of a safe space. This blog is still in the 2000s days of fandom. Back when it was FUN. I talk about what I want, post what I want, and do what I want.

Some people may see me as cut throat and a hard ass, but I don’t believe in bowing down to people I don’t know over the internet lol. I have thick enough skin to ignore weirdos.

Don’t get me wrong, any of my readers can message me and talk to me and ask me anything without fear. I believe in respect, kindness, and courtesy. I have NOT ONCE ever treated one of my followers like they were beneath me, or like they should be grateful for what I’ve shared with them. 

Because for me, that is not what fandom is about. 

[x0401x]

Hi there! Just want to thank you so much for translating for the VE fandom! I've been looking through your VE posts and noticed you mentioned how anime!Gil is completely different from LN!Gil. I agree with you and was wholeheartedly disappointed in the anime. I was hoping you could elaborate more on your thoughts, where you thought anime!Gil and anime!Violet went wrong and how they were different from the anime. Sorry if you've already made a post on this previously. Thanks again!

Hi! You’re welcome!

This reply took me long enough, lol. I haven’t gone too much into detail, or else I’d just end up writing a bible. It still turned out long as hell, though, so I’ve put it under a cut.

I really didn’t know how to begin with this. “Where they went wrong” kinda implies that those two were going right until some point, and that’s just… not the case. They were a trainwreck from start to finish. And it’s kind of impossible to really discuss this without touching upon the massive fails in the writing of the entire show. It does try to convey important messages to the viewers, but mostly with visuals and repetitive lines, never with the actual plot or the characters. You get an inkling of what the story was attempting to do with them, and that initial idea is what seems to stay with most people, because there’s nearly nothing beyond it.

As director Ishidate has stated more than once before, he made changes to the story because he thought the novel was, in his words, “too orthodox”. But watering it down meant watering the characters down too, Gil and Violet more than anyone else. And this results in a show that ironically fails to grasp its own themes and cast — the personalities and conflicts get lost in the details and have to be patched up with excuses that end up displaying how little the show trusts its own audience. It keeps spelling out plot devices and character traits in an almost robotic manner, with very scarce effort put into actually showcasing them in the situations and dialogues. Everyone is too one-dimensional and the main plot line is repeated over and over instead of being alluded in parallels or even just slightly more intelligent exchanges. Animators like Ishidate have grown dangerously used to committing a grave narrative suicide: to give vague and unconvincing reasons for things to be the way they are and expect the audience to take it all as is simply because it was stated there. Everything is oversimplified because they clearly want the viewers to get invested in the emotional baggage of the show, and only the emotional baggage, because they think that’s all we get invested on. They forget that details are necessary for the whole experience.

These problems are recurrent in Violet and Gil, and they never stop. I’ll start with Gil, since he was mentioned first.

Gilbert Bougainvillea is a very complex, humane and multi-faceted character in the novel. What’s interesting is that he doesn’t look like it at first, so he surprised many readers in volume 1 with how caring and endearing he can be. And I mean caring for real. Anime!Gil seemed like a poor excuse for what he was supposed to represent, which in turn made him into a walking contradiction. In the novel, Gil is by far the person that emphasizes the most with Violet, because the two of them are two sides of the same coin. This is where the anime falls short most frequently. They at first look like polar-opposites, but are absolutely not, yet the show portrays them as such. Novel!Gil is gratuitously kind and righteous, and he’s brave and pure-hearted enough to stand by his values no matter what. He’s used to giving up everything for the sake of other people, but he has morals that he holds to the roots of his very being, so he always chooses to donate himself to what he deems as good causes. And once he has his mind set on an objective, he doesn’t mind playing dirty to achieve it, as long as he’s not hurting anyone. That’s exactly the same as Violet, and Gil isn’t the only one who sees himself in her — Hodgins and Dietfried also notice how alike the two are. Novel!Gil relates to Violet on a spiritual level, and he knows first-hand how she must feel. He’s been there and done that. And that’s why she’s his number one priority. His purpose in life is to protect her and keep her in a healthy lifestyle within a blessed working environment and a loving family. Quite literally, all he wants is to make sure that she’s happy, and he’s active and vocal about it. He’s also an unapologetic and unabashed feminist, so he completely approves of her doing anything for a living — she doesn’t need to live her life like an ordinary woman and whatever she wants for herself is fine, as long as it’s not too dangerous.

Apparently, his personality is one of the book aspects that Ishidate believed to be “too orthodox”. He depicts Gil the way you’d expect any male creator to depict a man — a brooding martyr figure who only has a heart of gold in fleeting moments that get replayed again and again in flashbacks to serve as justification for Violet’s undying love. He makes very little strides and there’s a lot of flawed reasoning behind his affection that makes it oddly disconnected, which is the fact that said affection is barely ever there. Gil hardly treats Violet like a person, let alone an equal. Violet is ready to give her life for him anytime, and as we see in the last battle at Intense, he’s ready to cling onto that to save his own life. Ishidate doesn’t shy away from making very evident that he thinks it’s okay for Gil to do only the minimum to earn Violet’s respect and trust, like it’s a given and all he’s required in order to earn her love is to exist. This is very visible in scenes like the one where they first met. Gil seems to shield Violet from the abuse of his brother, but shows next to no distress or even interest over it as he doesn’t even question where she came from or why Dietfried was treating her that way. There’s also the scene where he takes her to one of his family’s residences, and she has his jacket on, just like in the novel… yet he’s letting her walk barefoot in the snow without giving a single flying fuck. He then leaves her side as soon as he instructs the maid what to do with her, not looking back. I also hate that scene where he gets back home and she bumps into him and falls on her butt. He just stares at her and makes no effort to help her back up. But the one I hate the most is that festival scene where he nearly thanks Violet for fighting so well in battle. I mean, she’s killing people for him. She, a literal child, is in the frontlines of a long-lasting war, risking her life and committing mass murder for his sake. That’s literally nothing to be grateful for. Especially not when he’s supposed to love her. And I despise that he only stopped himself from finishing the phrase because he noticed the bruises on her.

Another major defect of the anime was changing Gil’s backstory. Anime!Gil was, by the looks of it, just a rich kid who enlisted simply because that’s the family tradition. And if you take away Gil’s backstory, you take away the viewers’ reason to empathize with him. Why? Because that means he’s morphed into someone who can make choices. Erase any factor that binds Gil to doing what his family and his superiors make him do, and what you have is a grown man with his free will intact. And he uses none of it to help Violet. Anime!Gil was always given the opportunity to say no. He could’ve said no to Dietfried and sent Violet straight to the Evergardens, he could’ve said no to his superior officer and not taken her into the military, or he could’ve at least said no to assigning her to the men’s troops. He didn’t because there would be no story otherwise. Novel!Gil is always attempting to save Violet from the war and from herself, while anime!Gil’s actions beg to differ. And so, anime!Violet’s obsession with Gil stems from the fact that he was the first to treat her remotely like a human being and that, for a long time, he was all she had. None of that fate thing, because it’s also “too orthodox”. But without the fate element and without Gil having no control whatsoever over how he feels about Violet, he’s straight-up a pedophile. If he feels regular romantic love for Violet, who is in her mid-teens, that’s pedophilia right there. This one is my biggest beef with anime!Gil, and I don’t take criticism for it.

Now Violet. Not to be rude, but I see so many people talk about how interesting her anime counterpart is, yet I rarely ever see anyone going in-depth on it. It’s like the way the fans talks about the show. Literally every single person who comments that they liked it always says the exact same thing: “I cried during every episode”. I sort of feel like most of them are just reproducing what they see other people say out there, which is probably what got them interested in watching it in the first place. I don’t mean this with ill-intent; it’s just seriously the impression I get from looking at the tag. I’ve accompanied it since the novel came out all the way back in 2015, and when the show was running, believe it or not, I didn’t really see much of those comments. It started becoming a habit to say it after episode 10, which seems to be the highest-rating episode (the irony being that it was the closest the anime ever got to the novels). Hence why it feels to me like some people just say it on automatic, and I get the same vibe from the fans of anime!Violet.

I’ll just be blunt here: the main difference between anime!Violet and canon!Violet is that canon!Violet was made to be liked by girls and women, and anime!Violet was made to be liked by men. I have already said this before, but Violet is the very definition of independent professional woman in the novel. She’s educated, confident, strong, reliable, altruistic and overall well-versed in at least a little bit of everything. Half of it is due to luck and half of it is her own merits, but all in all, she was created not just to be relatable but also a character that people could look up to. Meanwhile, anime!Violet was clearly made to be waifubait.

I can’t really stress how little thought was actually put into her portrayal and development. We never truly see her internalizing the lessons that she supposedly learns in each of the self-contained episodes. We only ever witness her displaying sudden significant hints of emotion at convenient times, paired to her either repeating what she was told earlier by one of the characters or taking an extremely obvious conclusion to a question that was already half-answered by someone else. Because of this, Violet’s growth process has an unsteady pacing in the anime and mostly feels disjointed. In comparison, novel!Violet is usually not the point of view — she’s often in the role of observer, and we notice through the solutions she comes up with for her clients’ issues that she does have a very humane connection with them. We also notice through the clients’ opinions on Violet that she shows subtle changes at certain specific points, such as smiling just a little when she manages to not only accomplish her duties but also help solve their problems. This makes her more real and believable because, unlike the anime, it presents no abrupt alteration to the essence of her person. She’s growing in her own way, but it’s still easy to tell. It’s also very clever to have Violet be disliked or misunderstood by her clients at first because she’s so aloof and apathetic-looking, but then she grows on them after they actually understand her, and the readers can absorb that from them. I’ve seen many people complain that they can’t really empathize with anime!Violet, but in the novel, the author takes care not to let this happen, and it really doesn’t.

What upsets me the most is that anime!Violet is overly infantilized. We all know that director Ishidate loves her like a father loves a daughter; it’s been said by himself and his colleagues quite a lot. That’s cute and all, but it made her depiction extremely shallow. The biggest problem was making her 14 in the anime. I still struggle to understand what would’ve been so bad with keeping her as a 17-year-old. Sum that up with removing many of her merits and adding forceful childish traits, such as being okay with changing clothes anywhere in front of anyone or pouting when she’s frustrated, and you have the perfect recipe of what waifu junkies like to be spoon-fed with. In my opinion, anime!Violet was a downgraded tragic heroine played in a cheap and boring way to attract tearjerker lovers.

I hope this has covered enough of my take on the matter. ✌️

[allieinarden]

I've already sent this ask to apenitentialprayer, but I figured it would be worth a shot to ask you this too.I was never one to idolize people, but I would obsess over things. Growing up I was often ashamed for obsessing over this show or that movie or this book or that character, to what seemed to be an unhealthy degree. I also had maladaptive daydreaming, possibly still do to a lesser degree, which only exacerbated things. I often thought of this as sinful, and would often pray to God to take.

To take away my obsessive tendencies. Sometimes I would give up to God a particular object of interest, only to pick it up again. Then I became part of online communties and noticed that just about everyone I knew had similar tendencies, which we all seem to call hyperfixations nowadays, and I stopped believing that my own interests and hyperfixations were inherently sinful. But every now and then I get this nagging feeling that I’m doing something wrong. Is this really a sinful thing?

Or is this a form of scrupulosity? Sorry for this bizarre ask.

I actually don’t think this is bizarre at all, it’s something I contemplate a lot. I am a notorious hyperfixater. Like you I’ve pretty much concluded that it’s just the way I’m wired. (Sorry, friends and family.)

The thing is, rightly or wrongly, most of us spend a lot of time thinking about stuff that isn’t strictly the most important thing in our lives. Actively trying not to think about something is the surest way to think about it, and putting pressure on yourself to avoid something that probably is a form of escapism for you is inevitably going to make you escape more and harder to avoid that stress. It’s highly important to live a life that is centered on God, but fortunately the fact that this is even a concern for you indicates that your priorities are solid. I’m hardly the expert on this matter but I have a few tips:

Pray, even if briefly, when you think about praying. Talk to God when it comes to mind to do so. When you’re really focused in on something it’s very easy to say, “Well, I’ll say a more committed kind of prayer later when my focus changes,” and I hope you do do that. But contact with God is not, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the reward you get for being in the ideal state in which to contact God: it is the only thing that can get you to that point. In a difficulty like this, God should be your first line of inquiry. He’s not the audience for a finished performance, He’s the director trying to help you get it right. I hope that makes some sense. Introduce Him into your normal day immediately, don’t try to fix your day and then let Him into it. 

Gratitude! This is huge. Anytime you enjoy something that is not sinful you are appreciating something that is either a part of God’s creation or a product, even if a necessarily imperfect one, of what Tolkien called “subcreation” and regarded as a divine gift. Don’t think of recreation as necessarily divorced from adoration. If you feel a worshipful impulse direct it where it is due. Thank God for other people’s abilities and imaginations. I’m serious, I can’t think of anything too trivial for gratitude to apply to. If it’s good enough to spend time with it’s good enough to be grateful for. I see nothing wrong with, or even terribly silly in, thanking God for the Pokémon anime. Or in saying a prayer for the brave souls who broke their arms off animating it back when everything was painted on cels.

Instead of considering how to take stuff out of your life, think about what good habits you can add into your life. If you have dead time (or even guilty procrastination time) you’re going to default to what makes you most immediately comfortable unless you have other things to apply to. So make a spiritual reading list and then have the books on hand. Or make it your goal to read scripture or say a certain prayer at least once a day, and then have the means to do that (Bible, rosary) in your bag or in your line of vision. Or schedule those things if you’re the type of person who’s good at handling time in that way (I want to simultaneously highly recommend this strategy and beg you for help in implementing it myself). Do not beat yourself up if you miss a day, I’m serious. I absolutely forbid it. That is the FASTEST way to default back to what makes you most immediately comfortable and never attempt a positive addition again. 

Following from that last thing, and this is advice not only to hyperfixaters but to all the scrupulous straight from the scrupulous trenches: any time you’re reasonably sure you’re not sinning but you’re looking to become more actively spiritual, remember that you’re not looking to make a bad thing good, you’re looking to make a good thing great. An all-or-nothing mentality fuels scrupulosity by making you feel like you committed a sin by, for instance, spending time going on a Wikipedia spiral or wondering where the plot of a TV show is going to go that you intended to spend in prayer—when actually you didn’t sin, you just didn’t do the ideal thing. If that distinction is clear and obvious to you, congratulations, you are probably not scrupulous. Striving to do better is not the same as being in a condition of sin, just as striving to lose some weight is not the same as being unattractive, or striving to wash your hands more thoroughly is not the same as being a Coronavirus superspreader. (As I intend to show through these examples, the scrupulous mentality can and does apply to more than just spirituality, which is how you can tell it’s not really a spiritual impulse.) Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from every single tree in Eden EXCEPT for that one tree. Probably some of the fruit was much more nutritious than others, but only one was forbidden. Once you’ve ruled out sin, you have a lot of freedom regarding what you may do with your time—and that’s why it’s an excellent thing to devote time to worshipping God, just as it’s an excellent thing to donate your own money, although you could spend it on yourself without any fear of committing a crime. Don’t act out of shame or fear of feeling guilty, but out of a joyful desire to honor God and to put more good in the world. 

In conclusion, I want to issue a quick caution about the concept of “maladaptive daydreaming”: excessive daydreaming is definitely an unhealthy impulse, and often an unhealthy coping mechanism, but I’m inclined to think that it’s fairly common and only rarely pathological (meaning a 24/7 crippling, unceasing affair). I say this because imaginative thinking, even of a frequent and distracting sort, can and does serve a good and useful purpose, and I don’t think people should feel ashamed of it or assume that it all must necessarily stem from poor trauma management. Rather they should prayerfully consider what good may be gained by it, as well as what good may be found outside of it.

[thedeviljudges]

Do you care about losing followers? Sometimes it bothers me and I know it shouldn't. I recently fell out of love with a fandom I've been in for the past 2 years and now have 0 interest in it anymore. I've gained followers recently because of old posts that still circulate. I know you changed fandoms/interests in the past year, how did you deal with people unfollowing you (if they did)?

hi, babe!! this is a really good question!! kind of a long answer, but i do have a lot of thoughts about it just given that transition i’ve had over the past few months, so forgive the length, but i hope this helps!!!

i think there’s that initial sadness because when you’re in a fandom for so long, and you’re surrounded by a group of people—even if you don’t talk to one another, but you’re used to seeing their user everyday or you were mutuals—it’s weird to move on from that. there’s a nostalgic sense to it, kinda like a grief period because well, it’s been that way for ages, right?

but truthfully, when i think about it, i don’t feel super upset, moreso if it’s people that i didn’t talk to as much. and the reason why is simply because i’ve had mutuals in the past change fandoms, and their content didn’t cater to what i wanted to see, so i unfollowed. other times people have changed, and i chose to stick around because they’d become multifandom—it was/is all really dependent on how much the blog changed.

so with that said, i cannot expect people to stay when my interest changes. do i miss seeing them go? absolutely because regardless of whether we talked or not, like i said above, they were still a constant and very familiar. i don’t fault people for leaving, just the same as i don’t fault people for changing fandoms. i think sometimes we feel a little affronted when someone leaves because it seems so sudden, and it’s like... how could they do that? but genuinely, i think it’s a gradual process that interest is lost slowly, and because the way that social media works, we only see the surface level change. (how insta really markets the ‘good’ in ppls life, but you aren’t seeing what reality actually is.. kinda like that).

i know for sure i’ve lost followers. i don’t check my mutuals, and i don’t check to see who is still with me or not. i mean, i get a sense of who is here and who isn’t if i see a notif from the url that they’ve reblogged something recent, but truth be told, checking any of the follower/following tabs has always given me anxiety for years, so i just don’t look. i don’t bother. if i lose a mutual, for example, but i’m still following them, then i really don’t care. their content still appeals to me, just maybe not the other way around, and that’s okay.

it’s funny too because i still gain 1D followers from all of my old posts, and i’m like oh nooo, oh no oh no, you’re gonna see real quick that while i’m still into 1D, it’s not my main content. and then i feel really bad, lmao.

i think the worst part of the entire process is a two-fold thing. you do lose anons (if you were ever lucky enough to get them in the first place!! i’m amazed at how many anons some ppl get cuz i’m like wow, that’s so cute and nice of them!! i don’t mean that sarcastically either. i genuinely mean that esp bc many are really grateful for it).

secondarily, you’re losing people that you’ve spoken with/shared a common interest with and now you’re basically starting over in a new fandom where everyone is already in a clique and you’re the outsider. like, i’ve been in a different place fandom-wise for a few months now but literally i’ve only talked to one other person, lmao. despite my gifs and content, i get to watch everyone else be friends and sit on the sidelines.

part of me feels like... ok maybe i should’ve stayed and tried to feign interest just to keep people around so i’m not stuck in this limbo situation that i’m in right now, but you also can’t feel guilty for finding a new interest and something that makes you happy. for some, new people are going to come out of the new fandom you’re in, and you’ll find a place. it might take ages (or it may not even happen which is where i’m currently at mentally fjaldkjf), but don’t focus on follow count!!!

truly focus on your own experience here. afterall, it is your blog. it’s the content you get to see every day. it’s logging in and seeing things that make you happy. it’s following new people that you may not know, and may not talk to, but at least you’re involved in something that keeps you motivated. and don’t feel guilty about it. don’t feel guilty or sad about people not being into what you’re into. that’s not a personal attack on you whatsoever!!! interests don’t always align and that’s okay. and the best part here is that if there are mutuals or follows that you do want to keep around, you may not follow each other anymore, but that doesn’t mean you can’t message them!!

(also i don’t want to say follow count is necessarily irrelevant, but in a lot of ways it is bc i have several thousand followers from throughout the years, and yet... there’s no interaction. so you can have all the followers in the world, but if they aren’t active, it doesn’t matter).

i don’t know if this is helpful, babe. but i hope in some ways that it is!!! it can be super discouraging to see numbers of any kind drop just bc we’re humans and we’re dumb and emphasis the most weird things, but genuinely don’t let it discourage you from moving on, especially for the sake of your mental health and wellness. numbers don’t matter because interactions do. kinda like quality over quantity. i know me saying all of this is much easier said than done, but i do really hope that it’s not something that continues to eat at you. you deserve not to feel stress over this!!!

[scriptstructure]

Hello! My novel is a sci-fi/mystery/adventure story, so I'm trying to pack detail into an action-oriented plot. I've rewritten my first chapter at least 5 times now, cause I feel like it's just an info dump to set the story up instead of a slow release of relevant info. But I don't really know how to do that "gracefully", per-se, in addition to the other plot stuff going on. Tips on how to do this? And is one of these pacing strategies better than the other (info dump vs. slower)? Thank you! :D

I think that [THIS POST] about introducing details via action is going to be a big help to you.

Now, I do want to take a moment to talk about why exposition dumps are generally discouraged, because I think that when you understand the reasoning behind a lot of generalised creative advice, you’ll be able to see how and why it might be useful to you and also when and where it might be good for you to disregard that advice if you want to or if you think it will have good effect.

Most of the time, we avoid exposition dumping because, while it might seem like it’s a good way to quickly get the setting and premise on the table and understood, it usually does the opposite. A lot of times exposition dumps (the Bog of Exposition, if you will), make the description and scene setting feel much slower to the reader, as there’s no action to propel them through it.

Rather than having a character experiencing the setting, and interacting with it, the reader is presented with a static scene, or a list of descriptive elements for something that they aren’t yet invested in caring about. Starting off with an exposition dump can mean that you’re not getting out of the gate with a lot of readers because it means that you’re requiring them to invest time to get through something that they’re not yet sure they even want.

By giving setting and descriptive information through action packed passages feels slower when you’re writing it because it takes longer. It’s more difficult to get the balance between description and action, to manage to hash out how the character observes the world and how it changes around them as they experience it, but for the reader it means that absorbing that worldbuilding and setting and description is much more natural and seamless, because it’s being delivered via an active agent that they can become invested in.

As well, when exposition is delivered via action, it is easier to remember. If something important happens and the reader learns a new fact about the world of the story through that event, it’s going to be a lot more memorable than if they read one fact among many in an exposition dump. When you pair action and exposition, you’re less likely to have readers having to flick back to the beginning fifteen chapters in when something you’ve established becomes relevant again.

Nathaniel Hawthorne said “Easy reading is damned hard writing” and to my experience this can be very true. 

It’s easier to write your exposition all in one big neat package, but especially at the beginning of the story, the reader often isn’t committed enough to work through it. I’m sure you’ve often read that the beginning of the story should ‘hook’ the reader, which is a difficult thing to manage as well, and which is rarely explained.

Essentially you want to make the beginning of the story do a few things: Introduce characters that the reader will be interested in seeing more about, set up a world that makes sense, and raise questions that the reader will want to find out the answer to.

Now, the opening action of the story doesn’t need to be on a level with the main action of the narrative. You can have an ‘entry’ conflict to introduce things, and to establish the world, etc. Let’s look at a couple of examples of an initial conflict that illustrates much about the world of the story, but which is connected tangentially to the main body of the narrative.

The opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone introduces the Dursleys, and uses them as a vehicle to emphasise the strangeness of the elements of the wizarding world that are then introduced. The story of how Harry gets to the Dursley’s house and the events of that night certainly are connected with the main plot of the series, but they also provide a very small-scale conflict that contains enough action and raises enough questions to lead the reader into the rest of it.

The opening of The Fellowship of the Ring begins with the preparations for Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday. Obviously the One Ring being part of his possessions and it being passed on as a part of the celebration is connected to the events of the rest of the series, but the birthday party preparations also give the reader the time and action to become familiar with the Shire as a setting, with the habits of hobbits, and with the idea of wizards, dwarfs, elves, and all the rest of it. 

So, generally, exposition dumps slow down the pace of the action, and can discourage readers who just want to move on to the juicy bits. By eliminating the Bog of Exposition, in favour of a action-with-exposition approach, we can break down worldbuilding and set-up into easily absorbed bites. It’s like grating vegetables into a spaghetti sauce so that fussy eaters won’t notice they’re there -- still get the vitamins, but don’t have to worry about the taste or texture of the big chunks!

I hope that helps!

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Hi there, your friendly blogger Mason here!

At the moment I’m fundraising to cover the costs of my gender confirmation surgery, if you’re able to donate, please click [HERE] to give me a helping hand!

If you’re not able to donate, I would be really grateful if you would reblog [THIS POST] so that more people will be able to see the fundraiser.

Thank you for reading, and thank you all for being so kind!