#you think yelling at a Demisexual for being a part of the community is a good Idea? EW! No one wants you here. shut the fuck up and go away

[blablablayup]

About me?

Mostly radfem aligned / Dworkinist.

Was part of the trans community for maybe around a decade. Tried desperately to fight the misogyny from within. Have now given up.

Very sensitive currently due to my experiences in the trans community combined with medical trauma I’m dealing with so please be nice to me. I may be full of rage but I’m also a little guy.

I lean mostly trans-exclusionary these days but don’t have issues with other people holding out hope for the trans community to get less awful to women. Happy to respect your pronouns and identities and be pals as long as you’re cool with me being fed up with the trans community.

I am trying to be chill these days and maintain solidarity and friendships despite ideological differences. Still be raging out sometimes though. Just depends.

Controversial amongst the radfems:

-My special interests include makeup. Love it. I have tags like “anti beauty” filtered so if you’re using those I won’t see any of your makeup criticism and thus won’t yell at you if it’s shitty.

-I’m ace and 100% inclusionist. A lot of radfems spew entirely inaccurate bigoted nonsense about us and it’s not ok. I shouldn’t have to endure vile bullshit about my sexuality to be part of a community of women who want to fight misogyny. And I do mean 100% inclusionist. I’m an ace who likes to have sex (i.e., to have people sexually pleasure me; I am NOT referring to intercourse) because I have a high libido, regardless of attraction - we’re real and valid. Demisexuals (which I’m not personally) are also real and valid. I added “exclusionist” to my filtered tags so you can use that if you want to be an ass about asexuality and still be pals.

-Policing individual women’s choices and mocking them over it is misogyny. It’s one thing to talk about fucked up expectations placed on women; it’s another thing entirely to make an individual woman your punching bag because you think the clothes she wears are too sexy or whatever the fuck. Miss me with that shit.

Welp that’s pretty much it for now!

[misha-moose-dean-burger-lover]

Closets & Wendy’s.

“Last day of Pride!”

Dean projects himself onto Cas’s bed, ending up sprawled on his front, with an arm slung over Cas’s lap.

On receiving no more greeting than Cas’s hand landing in his hair and starting to card through it, he lifts his face from the comforter, props himself up on his elbows - chin tucked in a palm - and stares at his boyfriend.

Cas looks upset.

The corners of his lips tilt passively downwards, eyebrows carrying most of the weight of his frown.

“Cas?” Dean asks, neutrally - already regretting his overhyped entrance.

“I’m sorry- I don't feel -”

Words fade out, and Cas pauses. Then he turns to actually look at Dean, the sadness seeped into his eyes, and Dean doesn’t waste a moment getting up, knee-waddling over into Cas’s space and pulling him close.

Cas comes easily, planting his head on Dean’s shoulder, and exhaling a tired breath when Dean runs a hand over his back.

“What are you feeling?” Dean asks, after a beat, now trying to soothe Cas’s tense shoulders, rubbing gently over the cotton. Cas leans into his touch.

About three years of therapy, and nearly six years of being roommates - undergrads, and then actual friggin’ grad school - with Cas, basically Dean’s personal mascot for healthy communication, has led him to definitely know that it’s always a better alternative to talk about what you are going through, instead of what you aren’t.

(Or, you know, what you think you should be, just because your dumb, insensitive boyfriend who’s been obsessed with Pride since finally coming out and-slash-or best-friending up with Charlie Bradbury, is. And rather loudly, at that, because Dean Winchester’s a goddamn idiot.)

“Disappointment.” Cas says, morosely, but almost as soon as he hears his own words, he rephrases. “Uh. I’m the disappointment.”

“Well, did you secretly sneak out and mark yourself absent for the entire semester in all your 4.0 GPA classes when I wasn’t looking?”

“Dean.”

“Fine, 3.7.” Dean throws back. “Big friggin’ deal, nerd.” Cas lets out a huff of breath which almost resembles a chuckle, and Dean squeezes his arm around Cas. “You know that would’ve totally been a four if I’d been less distracting.”

“Interesting.” Cas corrects.

“Hot.” Dean throws back, just because he knows it’ll make Cas crinkle into one of his fond ‘what-do-I-do-with-you’ smiles. It does. 

“Perfect.” And Cas throws in a sigh, as if to solidify his point, and leans in to nuzzle Dean’s neck in a way so intensely Cas, that if anyone else had ever tried it, he’d either end up being tickled to death, or running the hell out of dodge. 

“We’re on you right now, Cheesy McCheesington.” Dean smiles back, and goes on. 

He’s not willing to let Cas close up into a ball of repressed emotions with happy only on the outside. That’s way more Dean’s thing - or rather, used to be. He knows he’s bettered his coping mechanisms. Mostly because every part of his life involves Cas now, and anything with Cas is good. 

They’ve grown a lot together - grown through a lot as well, and this is how they’ve done it. By talking through, the Castiel way. It still throws Dean off sometimes, how far they’ve gotten.

So when Cas whines in protest into Dean’s shirt, he knows exactly how to turn it into a side-hug. One of those, where they end up staring at each other from a three-inch distance.

Staring hard, Dean says it. “You’re the farthest thing from a disappointment, Cas. To anyone.”

The lecturers all adored him, their friends made it a point to keep proclaiming their affection out loud (thank god for Charlie Bradbury and co.), and Dean doesn’t think he could be more proud of Cas if he tried. 

He was a goddamn wonder.

He’d gone from a lanky, private-schooled, what’s-a-Star-War schmuck to one of Dean’s favorite people in the world. He was hilarious, and a genius, and kind. He’d grown into his shoulders, and into a stubbly kind of an age, and into this awesome, intelligent, pancake-making man of Dean’s dreams, and into his bee obsessions and organizational neatness - and complete, total perfection. 

(Dean needs him, appreciates him, and (not that subtly - to his credit), loves him in a forever sort of way.)

But before Dean’s properly began to remind Cas of any of it, he’s interrupted. 

“I’m disappointing me, Dean.”

There’s resignation in his tone, and evidence in every word he says. 

“June’s over. Again. And for all the marching with painted cheeks and the megaphones? For all the parades, and the celebrations of our identities, the togetherness, the being proud of being ourselves?” Cas lets out, bitterly, and Dean realizes he knows where Cas is going with this. “And I still haven’t come out to my family.”

Dean waits, sure that Cas isn’t finished. 

“How have I not done it yet?” Cas hisses, and it almost startles him - he’s swapped the upset for angry. It’s rarer. “I’ve known since I was a teenager - and we’ll have been together for five years in three months, Dean, and I just - I cannot believe I still can’t do it.”

He sounds helpless, and Dean wants to jump in, but he needs Cas to get the words out first. 

“What’s the matter with me? Am I not brave enough, or strong enough - or am I still hanging onto the hope that they’ll suddenly become better human beings and not disown me when I tell them?” Cas scoffs. 

He’s pissed at himself. 

“Maybe I still lack, as you say, free will.”

Dean has to step in at that. “That was six years ago, and you know I wouldn’t say it now.”

“Why not?” Cas challenges. “I couldn’t tell them then, either. I clearly haven’t changed.”

“Other things, Cas.” Dean says, and grits his teeth. This isn’t supposed to be them yelling. Cas is frustrated, and Dean’s listening - he can’t be frustrated back at him for the way he expresses it. “Other things have changed.”

Cas gives him a look, but Dean holds his end of it until it crumbles. Cas changes his offense. Mellows down - probably when he sees Dean’s restraint. “This is important to me. I want to do it. Then why can’t I tell them?”

He’s asking himself, but he’s also asking the only person who knows him as well as he knows himself, yet he’s also not asking at all - simultaneously, it’s also rhetorical.

Dean licks his lips. 

“Whatever be the answer to that, Cas, first things first. This doesn’t imply you’re not proud enough.” 

Cas looks away.

“Or, for that matter, not panromantic or demisexual enough.” 

Sigh. Shuffle, shift. And then he looks back up at Dean. The tears weren’t there before. “How do you know, Dean?”

“‘Cause I know this doesn’t decide that.”

“Why not?” Cas says, quietly.

“‘Cause,” He repeats. “How queer you are isn’t measured on a scale of how soon you come out once you know.” He pauses, judges the air. “It usually isn’t measured at all, unless we’re talking about a magical thing known as the Kinsey Scale.”

He judged right. 

Cas coughs, and it’s definitely to disguise a reluctant snicker.

“And you know, even if it were measured on the weird first thing,” Dean adds, serious again. “There’d totally be a different clause, and a separate key, mind you, for the people with douchebag families.”

“They prefer conservative, I think.” Cas says, smally, after an entire minute, as if he’d actually been rerunning Dean’s speech in his head for that long.

Dean shrugs.

Cas almost smiles. He’s calmed down.

“The strange thing is that it makes no sense.” He begins, heavy, albeit less severe on himself. “I’m twenty six. We co-own this apartment, and we pay our bills. We’re completely independent.” It never stops sounding surreal. That’s for another time. “Mother calls me on third Sundays, Gabriel sends Christmas cards. Other than that, I only spend Thanksgiving lunches with them, each year more horrible than the last. I know I wouldn’t miss any of them, nor regret being written out of the will. Or have my Novak cemetery spot passed onto Michael’s oldest. Or the gardener.” 

Dean snorts at that. The Novaks are truly something else. 

“There is no reason I can’t just come out. I just -” Cas cuts into his own sentence with a sigh, one signifying that he’s finally done speaking, and he reclaims Dean’s shoulder once more.

What’s important right now, is to make him feel better. A resolution to this isn’t within grasp at the moment, and Cas sounds drained. Dean - well, he does what he does best. He segues. 

“Wait.” Cas lifts his head. “You didn’t actually say you’re not out, did you?”

Cas squints at him.

“Dude. Being out doesn’t just mean telling your family. And getting subjected to toxicity and trauma, by means of it.” Dean points out, earnest. By that logic, courtesy of a long-dead mom, and a relatively-shorter-dead dad, he’s in the closet as well. “Hell, you put your hand in my back pocket at KFC, yesterday.”

“Oh.” Cas blinks. 

Dean grins, and Cas’s surprise makes it easy to do so. “You bet my publicly grabbed ass, it counts.”

Cas knows it counts. He knows everything that counts. But he indulges himself, and he indulges Dean - his bad mood slowly dissipating. “What else?” 

“You kissed me at Wendy’s last week.” Dean informs him, eyebrows raised. “Held my hand for a really long time in a Starbucks queue on Saturday. Oh, and all the gay bars count, buddy. Especially the bits where we grind on the dance floor, and then I blow you in the stall.” 

Cas opens his mouth to protest that has only happened once, but Dean meets his eyes with a pointed look. He’s got to bring it up.

“Every time I’ve ever taken you to a steak joint counts too. ‘Cause trust me, those are always dates, whether you know it or not.”

“Long drives are a date to you.” Cas deadpans. 

“Yeah, and Baby will never say you’re not out.” Dean throws back, and Cas actually makes it to a smile this time. Dean’s left feeling accomplished. (And sort of dazed, because it’s going to take a lot more than six years for him to get used to Cas being so easily beautiful, and being it right next to him.)

“You said you loved me for the first time at the Roadhouse.” Cas says.

Dean blushes. 

“And then you ran away before I could react, got really drunk and karaoke’d I’m Too Sexy on the stage, and passed out on my lap right as I tried to say it back to you.”

This is definitely not his favorite story, but it always lights Cas up, and that’s all that matters, really - so he rolls his eyes half-heartedly and Cas smiles wider.

Silence prevails for a moment.

“Look.” Dean ends up being the one to break it. Cas listens, hanging onto each word. “You’re the only one who knows why you can’t do it, okay? My best guess would be an internalized decision to avoid conflict. Maybe you call your old therapist tomorrow - like, I dunno, a cameo from Castiel, unresolved coming-out issues sorta thing. Of course, we can talk about it too. Get six cheeseburgers and twelve beers, and figure things out on your own. But it’s up to you.” Cas exhales into a little smile. “All I know is, it doesn’t matter to anyone that you haven’t told your family, if it doesn’t matter to you. 

Cas nods, a couple of times, and there’s the barest hint of tears again, but this time doesn’t make Dean want to punch God. 

It makes him want to hug Cas, so he goes for it. 

“Even if you were in the closet, Cas? I’d say the same.” Dean adds, as an afterthought, about a minute into a hug which doesn’t seem to be nearing an end. Not really. No one minds, so there’s that. “This community, this month - everything about Pride is about all of us, and if Charlie’s ever called me handmaiden, trust me she’s said this a million times. It means everyone. Includes people in the closet, every bit as those who’re out.”

Cas hums in agreement, and tilts his head against Dean’s.

“In any case,” Dean teases. “Your family’s over in Illinois, anyways. Here, where it counts? You’re as out as you can be.”

“I could kiss you in more Wendy’s.” Cas contemplates, because he’s awesome like that.

“What has Burger King ever done to you?”

Dean listens to him considering it with a thoughtful note, and mutters a “Dork.” It helps keep him grounded for he feels like he’s floating right now - ‘cause there’s something about the way Cas holds onto him. Tighter.

Like somehow, even after all this time, they managed to fall a little more in love today. 

And somehow, they’ll keep doing it forever.

[sazandorable]

things I wanna see in ace fanworks!

It’s Ace Week!

And there’s huge variety among the aspec community (spectrum! that’s what it means!), so here’s a post about a variety of things I’d love to see more in fanworks involving asexual characters!

(I’m especially thinking of Jon from The Magnus Archives and Zolf from Rusty Quill Gaming, but this should easily apply across fandoms!)

I’ll try not to repeat it every line but: blanket disclaimer that this is very much a “what I feel, what I want, me, personally” post. Others (including other asexual people) might feel differently, and that’s perfectly okay. That’s kind of the point of this post! This is absolutely not a “here’s the one correct way to write all ace characters that all ace people will enjoy and agree with” Rules post — on the contrary, this is partly in reaction to seeing other people say that they dislike seeing, or don’t dare create, things that I, personally… desperately want to see, actually.

CW: this post will contain references to many common sources of trauma for asexual people, such as aphobia, partner abuse and rape, as well as sex (in general and sometimes in specifics) and asexual people having sex.

So! I, personally, love and would love to see more...

Fanworks by all sorts of asexual creators

No matter what your specific experience is, it is important, and your getting to create and share art about it is important, and you deserve to get that, and there are people interested in seeing it. And the same is true for all the other aces with different experiences, too.

Variety! Room for all of us! Share your experience happily, and let other aces happily share theirs!

Fanworks by allosexual creators

I’m so happy you’re interested in asexuality and in depicting it! I do want my experience to be normalised and seen as a normal thing that anyone can find interesting and relatable, even allosexual people. If you don’t mean to be an asshole about it, if you’re generally interested in exploring asexuality and you’re doing it from the heart, thinking of asexual people as people — then I want to see it, and I want you to be able to give a try to creating or consuming whatever you want, and I do not want you to be attacked for doing it.

Of course, you might still unwittingly fuck up, and people might still get hurt, and truly hurtful things should still be pointed out in order to be improved on; but I want us as a community to help creators up instead of shouting down, and I hope you continue putting thought into creating fanworks involving ace characters.

Keep reading for some tips and suggestions of things to think about, to keep in mind and to look into to improve your representing of us and our experience of it!

Extremely specific, different, kinda weird, niche, Problematic™ content, from creators of any identity (including questioning!), who are wary about sharing it because they think that there’s no audience for it, or that they’re not allowed, or that it’s a bad and evil way to represent asexuality

I want to see that, I’d be thrilled if you did it, I hope you do it, and I want a fandom environment in which you can do that safely because you deserve to. Of course, make sure to provide good tagging and CW!

Awareness that asexuality is a wide varying spectrum of experiences and there is no One Correct or More Valid Way to depict it

Awareness that even people with the same identity, label and life experiences might want to create or consume different things

Permission for everyone to create whatever they like, so long as it’s just done earnestly

No shaming, gatekeeping, accusations of fetishising, etc.

There are newbie writers who will never learn if they’re scared away from trying; there are people who haven’t yet figured out that they are in fact ace and never will if they’re not allowed to explore it safely; there are ace people who consume ace content to feel good about themselves; there are ace people who create ace fic in order to explore complicated, hard, unpleasant experiences and feelings; there are ace people whose experiences do not match stereotypical narratives I’ve most seen brandished around, and those people are just as ace and just as allowed to create and consume whatever they want; I do not want to foster a fandom environment in which people must out themselves and offer up their experience to scrutiny in order to be “allowed” to write certain topics; etc., etc.

Over the past two years, I’ve regularly seen a lot of yelling along the lines of “this work includes x and not x because this character is ace!” or “this fic I just read is the only valid ace fic” or “oh my god everyone look at this, this is the perfect ace fic”. A lot of it comes from a place of defensiveness and/or pride, ace people happy and proud to share something that was, finally, pinning down their experience. That’s awesome! ... For them. There are plenty of other asexual people who don’t relate to or enjoy those narratives — in fact, all the ones I’m thinking of squicked me hard, despite being made by ace creators and accurate to (an) ace experience, and I would be really unhappy if all ace fanworks was like those. Meanwhile, plenty of stuff I enjoy gets accusations of being fetishising.

So it would do a world of wonder for me and my experience of ace fanworks if those things could be internalised by the fandom as a whole!

Clear distinction between “being asexual” and “not interested in sex”, ”sex-repulsed” or “not having sex”

Those can and often do overlap, but the word “asexual” just means “experiencing little or no sexual attraction”!

In fanworks about an ace character, the two are generally linked and the reason a character doesn’t want to have sex tends to be that they’re ace, but the shorthand and immediate assumption that “being ace” automatically and always means “never having sex” or “hating the concept of sex” always feels a little weird to me.

This goes both ways — even if your aspec character is very sexually active and enjoys it, or if they’re demisexual and currently experiencing attraction to their partner, etc. — they’re still a person who experiences little to no sexual attraction in their daily life, they’re still aspec in a way that can be depicted and that I can be made to feel.

On AO3, widespread use of the tag “Canon Asexual Character”…

There are different views on the “correct” way to use that tag, in part because… what's the point of it? Should we use it in every single fic in which the Archivist appears, because he happens to be ace in the canon, even if it doesn’t come up in the fic?

IMO, it is helpful — it indicates to me that the author wrote their story with that character’s asexuality in mind, and it informed their writing of that character. Personally, I use it on fics where it feels “relevant” even if it doesn’t come up, such as a fic from Martin’s POV about Jon not being very touchy-feely (even though it doesn’t specify that that is because Jon is ace), but not a fic from Jon’s POV in which they’re happily living together but it’s not about the physical specifics of their relationship (even though in my head that relationship is non-sexual, but I could have written this specific fic the exact same way if Jon wasn’t ace).

The use or non-use of the tag can also simply help distinguish fanworks that were created and posted before that revelation, and did not depict that character as ace because the creator genuinely wasn’t aware of it.

… but also more detail than that, for instance: tagging the “shade of ace” the character is written as

A few examples:

#aroace Jon

#demisexual biromantic Jon

#greysexual nonbinary Jon

#sexually active kinky asexual Jon

#sex-positive low-libido Jon

#touch-averse Jon

#sex-uninterested ace demiromo Jon in happy QPR with Martin

#sex-repulsed sub Jon gets creative

#aspec Jon experiences sexual attraction for the first time and it’s for freaking Elias of all people oh God oh no

etc., etc.

Those are VERY different things! There’s some I’d be delighted to read, some I’m not interested in, and some that would actively squick me personally for personal reasons but I can think of some friends of mine that would be super happy to see it.

If you don’t know or aren’t sure of the exact terms, or if you wrote a relatively broad scenario and want to let people project any labels on it, you can also just describe what the situation is or how you depicted your character relating to things. That’s still very helpful. For instance:

#Jon doesn’t like kissing but cuddles good

#the struggle of NOT liking touching but craving intimacy

#Jon and Tim pointing at each other like spiderman meme, same hat?? how??

#Daisy and Basira have no idea how to explain their relationship and it’s none of your business

#Zolf is just tired and wants people to stop prying into his love life

etc., etc.

More awareness that there’s plenty of stuff about the ace experience that, while very common, can be squicky or even traumatic, and more tagging/warning about that

Here’s some other things that are common to the ace experience and commonly depicted in fanworks involving ace characters, and that can be genuinely upsetting and potentially triggering and traumatic, whether or not an ace person has encountered it in their own life (lots of CWs in this list, obviously):

encountering aphobia, even clueless and well-meaning

having internalised aphobia, aphobic thoughts, self-hatred, feeling broken or strange

social pressure to have sex or relationships, people being invasive or judgy about others’ love life, feeling disconnected from allo people

trying things out just to see

having sex

enjoying sex

forcing themself to have sex

referring to past sexual experiences as something that they didn’t enjoy

being emotionally pressured into having sex

wanting to please their partner despite not desiring sex

feeling an obligation to satisfy their partner

the prospect of romantic rejection for their asexuality

the idea that they must earn love

the idea that getting their boundaries respected is something exceptional and rare and an incredible sacrifice from their partner

being sexualised by someone else or the object of someone’s fantasies

wanting sex or experiencing sexual attraction for the first time

etc., etc.

Two concepts here that are both simultaneously true: 1) those are indeed very common to the real life experience of ace people, 2) it is possible to depict the ace experience without tackling any of that.

Of course, you can have all that! You can create content about that! That’s very relatable for a lot of people, and that last one, for instance, can in fact be an accurate and important depiction of demisexuality. But it’s also not a given that a fictional work about asexuality will/should depict it, and not a given that all ace people looking for ace content will want to see any item from that list. So please, give content warnings for all that, too.

It would be a tremendous help in curating and improving my experience if this could become a widespread habit — I have lost count of the amount of fics tagged as fluffy that I had to backbutton out because they suddenly threw in something really depressing that I, personally, didn’t want to see happen to a character I project on (while other readers found catharsis, validation and kinship in seeing their experience represented accurately!).

If it does come up, tags about what comes up

Beyond the content warnings for clearly traumatic stuff, is there “#Discussion of asexuality”? Is it “#Coming out as asexual”, or “#Jon discovers the existence of asexuality”? Is there “#Acephobia” (“#Accidental”? “#Casual”? “#Internalised”?)? Is there “#Explanation of asexuality to a clueless partner”, or “#Jon’s partner tells him about asexuality”? Is there “#Relationship negotiation”?

Since, again, not all aces have the same experience, odds are that some people will JUMP happily on content depicting a specific experience which they relate to... and inversely: again, there’s some of that which I personally do not relate to and actively do not want to read.

Detailed tagging is a huge help for me to figure out if a fic about asexuality is going to squick me and make me sad for the evening because ah I am weird after all even amongst my brethren, or if it’s going to be, finally, my heart’s desire, what I’ve been craving for, and make my entire week. (Sidenote, thanks to good tagging I did find the perfect QPR fic I’d been yearning to read last week and I’m still thinking about it right now and so, so, so happy.)

Making it clear when an ace character is going to be having sex — beyond just the ship tag and rating

Reminder that a fic rating alone does not necessarily mean sex! A fic tagged just “#JonMartin” and rated Explicit could have them in a relationship and then an explicitly detailed scene in which Jon dies a excruciatingly gruesome death, or a graphic scene of Martin having some solo fun, or even another character, or a sex scene between another tagged ship.

With smut involving an ace character as with everything else, there are lots of us that do want to see it (for a wide variety of reasons), and obviously there are lots of us that desperately want to avoid it (but might be in the Explicit tag looking for smut involving other ships, or horror or whump content, etc.) — please help us know whether to click or not click!

The normalisation of not expecting/forcing anyone to do things they don’t actively want to do

There’s a relatively common thing in heartwarming ace fic where the ace character is surprised that their allo partner is fine with dating without having sex and the partner goes, “I love you, of course I’m fine with that” and the ace character is all oh, oh, oh I am loved and respected, did not expect that. Or an allo character saying “That’s fine, I don’t make you do anything you don’t want to do,” or “I don’t want to do anything unless you’re into it!”

And I see how it sounds nice and romantic. It probably is to many people. But it can also be extremely sinister and anxiety-inducing in its implications: what if the partner didn’t love the ace character quite that much? What did the ace character expect? If this is amazing and rare, then what was the baseline expectation? If this ace character has dated before, what were their past relationships like, for this to be surprising?

I end up running into it more in fluffy fanworks about asexuality than in fanworks that aren’t. Again — you can absolutely do that, but please tag/warn for it; even if it’s just in passing, in fluff fic it’s really not something I expect from the genre. Even though I might sometimes be specifically in the mood to read an exploration of that, in dark fic or in hurt/comfort fic!

And now for more specific stuff I wanna see in stories:

This last bit is intended as both an encouragement for people who want to create these things and think there’s no audience (there is!!), and as a box of ideas for people who have no idea how to depict the asexuality of characters but want to :3 Again, this is not in any way a statement that these are The Only Correct Way, or even things that all aspec people want to see, nor is it a diss at people who create, consume or want the exact opposite of these things — for that matter, some of the items on this list are mutually exclusive. It’s just my own tastes and literally just stuff I personally would love to see (more).

Ace character being single, happy to be single, and happily ace

Asexuality being written in but a complete non-issue, not discussed, not brought up, not even to reassure the ace character that It Is Fine

Ace character being flippant and snarky about their asexuality, making jokes and memes about it

Ace character not caring about other people’s perception of them at all

Ace character feeling only pride and happiness and comfort about that label

More than one ace character! Extra love for them having some similarities and also some differences!

Intersectionality: ace character being also aro, trans, nonbinary, bi or pan, polyamorous, kinky, a drag queen, a dom or sub, neurodivergent, disabled, non-white, … ; asexuality being just one part of their identity

Asexuality being queer and belonging to the LGBT+ community in itself; a character being cis, aro or heteroromantic, and ace, and “counting” as “queer enough”

Flirty ace character

Confident, self-comfortable ace character

Ace character considering their specific experience to be perfectly normal and not unique, if not typical

Ace character enjoying something that is commonly considered to be sexy or sexual, but it isn’t for them — such as wearing makeup or lingerie, going clubbing, pole-dancing, massages…

Ace character happily dating someone who is not aspec

I like the thought that it’s possible! I personally like this more than I like fanworks about two aspec people dating. I like it when the ace character is happy to adapt to their allo partner’s requirements and I like it when the allo character is happy to adapt to their ace partner’s requirements and I like it when there are things that just do not match perfectly and that doesn’t put an end to the relationship.

Ace character having a lot of experience dating

Partner(s) already knowing about asexuality and not needing to have it explained to them

Partners just being like “*shrug* okay”, without making it a big deal that they’re “giving up” sexual intercourse

Ace character crushing and getting flustered over physical but non-sexual aspects of their love interest’s looks

Big strong hands, nice jaw, strong nose, long eyelashes, lovely profile, silky hair, lovely eye-colour, delicate wrists, muscles, long legs, collar bone, shoulder blades, squishy stomach, peek of bellybutton, freckles, moles, scars, …

Ace character daydreaming about their love interest in ways that involve zero physical attraction, thoughts about how pretty or handsome they are, or desire to touch them

Jon pining for Martin and just wanting to talk with him, have tea with him, hang out with him… not seeing how Tim is good-looking but being attracted to his humour and nerdiness… missing his relationship with Georgie because it felt nice to cook together and share clothes and watch the telly together… Zolf missing Hamid’s fiery passion or Wilde’s awful puns… being attracted to Cel’s liveliness and inventiveness… being charmed by Azu’s emotional intelligence or her unwavering certainty in her faith…

Smut involving an ace character

No shaming of fellow real living people about that

Not going to go into it again because plenty of us have been talking about that in this fandom for two years now — bottom line is there do exist plenty of asexual people that 1) do have sex IRL, 2) do want to consume smut, can we please, as a community, move past the “this is not smut because this character is ace!” passive-aggressive attacks already. (“I depict this character as not having sex because he’s ace and I’m ace and it makes me happy” is fine! Just don’t imply that that’s the only way to be ace and that other people are wrong to want something else.)

Ace character enjoying sex

Ace character being completely neutral about having or not having sex

Ace character disliking sex in the same way they dislike, idk, coffee. No, absolutely not, thank you, no concession, not for me, but also it’s nothing traumatic or moral or uncomfortable.

Sex being just a thing, not a big deal, having or not having it not being all that important

Ace character enjoying the concept of sex, abstractly. Ace character consuming porn, writing porn, being fine discussing sex with friends, having a dirty mind — just not wanting to be involved in it

Ace character having fantasies that disturb them

Ace character feeling arousal and being just *shrug* about it, not particularly disgusted, just uninterested

Arousal, libido, or masturbation as something different and separate from sexual attraction and desire to sleep with someone or to be touched

Ace character being kinky af

Ace character having multiple partners and different sorts of relationships with each!

Open relationships

Non-sexual romantic relationships

Queerplatonic relationships

COMMITTED!!! NON-SEXUAL AND NON-ROMANTIC!!! PARTNERSHIPS!!! AAAAAA [sobbing emoji]

Non-sexual physical intimacy

Hand-holding! Playing footsie! Cuddles! Hugging! Kissing! Super heavy making out and getting aroused but no sex! Sharing a bed! Lying on top of each other! Bathing or showering together! Giving each other a haircut or a shave! Massages! Non-sexual nudity!

Non-physical intimacy

Committed couple having separate beds/rooms! Getting married! Being in love and not kissing or touching! Loving long-distance relationships! QPR! Affection and closeness expressed through speech, gifts, services, time, shared activities — wearing each other’s clothes, cooking together, long emotional conversations, trust and secrets, love letters, post-it notes, “thought of you” gifts, celebrating anniversaries with a candle-lit dinner, co-parenting...!

Sexual situations with no touching

(CW bit detailed:)

Sexting, cybersex, phone sex, dirty talking, reading or watching porn (alone or together), consensual voyeurism like watching their partner masturbate or have sex with someone else, kink using toys and accessories or scenes but with no actual touching, …

Romanticised consent and boundaries

An asexual character being super firm about what they do not want and their allo partner being thrilled about that trust and communication!! An allosexual partner trusting their asexual partner about what they want without infantilising them or doubting their capacity to establish their boundaries! “Wait, you always say you don’t like [x]?” “Yes, but I feel like it right now, as I assumed would be pretty clear from the fact that I am doing [x] right now :w” “Hey, just checking, sue me :w” “Yes, thank you :w”

Specific boundaries

Cheek kisses but no lip kisses, no PDA, not having sex where they’re also going to sleep, needing a shower immediately after sex, lights off only, …

(CW more detailed:)

… not caring about feeling or seeing their partner’s hard-on but not wanting to do anything about it, penetration but no oral, bottoming but not topping, giving a blowjob but not having their head held, being fine with extreme acts but not liking fluids, pet names but no dirty talk, dirty talk but no pet names, happy to pleasure their partner but not wanting to be touched, not wanting to come, being only into sex as part of extreme kink but not interested in vanilla sex, …

Shifting boundaries and consent

Ace character likes kissing or cuddles but only on their terms — they will come give their partner a kiss sometimes but bristle at being touched. Today is not a kissing day. Today this ace character is a bit down and would like a lot of physical affection and cuddling. Certain areas are off-limits for touching because this ace character is sensitive on their thighs, ticklish in their ribs, self-conscious about their scars. This ace character considers their chest non-sexual so that’s fine but do not pat their butt.

Today, exceptionally, this ace character is horny and feels like banging. Ace character feels like banging sometimes but is not in the mood right now, bye. Ace character feels like banging from eight to nine pm every second Thursday of the month, catch it or miss it. Couple shares a shower every morning and it’s never meant to be a sexual thing, but today the ace one is getting aroused and hey, you know what, they’d like to get off right now. This massage is fantastic but it’s getting overwhelming, so they ask to stop (but it was great!). Ace character is intrigued about this particular scenario/position/kink and wants to try it out, they do, it’s perfectly nice, but hmm, once was enough, they’re not interested in doing it again. Ace character sexts their partner all day but by the time their partner has got home, undressed and prepared and pulled out the strap, they’ve lost interest.

♠♥ Thank you for reading all this! Hope this inspires people so I get more stuff that makes me happy! ♥♠

[green-ball-of-trash]

Roman in The Closet by Himself!! Part 1

word count: 2202

ship: Prinxiety, Background Logicality, Background Remile, vaguely mention Demus.

part1/part2/part3/part4/?

WARNINGS: self deprecation, depression, repression, non-censored cursing, the word wh*re is used and it not censored, lgbtq+phobia is mentioned in this chapter but not directed at any of the characters.    

summary: Roman has a rough journey with his sexuality, and his crush on a certain little emo~ 

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   Roman had always been enraptured with the concept of love. He could remember watching Disney movies when he was younger, where the prince rescues the princess and they both live happily ever after. 

    Although, he was never really focused on the princess of the story but more so on they heroic prince. He always thought that Prince Phillip was so much more interesting than Arora, but his little child mind couldn’t understand nor explain why that was. 

   Until he was ten years old~

  He had been looking at Disney videos on his ipad, when he discovered a peculiar video with a rainbow flag in the thumbnail. He thought that all the colors on the flag looked pretty, so he decided to click on it. 

   He heard phrases in the video that he had never heard before, such as; gay, trans, homosexaul, bisexual, pansexual, and so many more and he had absolutely no idea what they meant. Even though he had no clue, he watched the entire video. After the video was over, he got out his red notebook with Disney stickers plastered haphazardly all over the front and back cover. 

  He decided to rewatch the video again and write down any words that he didn’t understand, and look them up after he was finished. Logan is gonna be so proud of me, he had said to himself thinking of his quiet nerdy best friend. 

  He spent the entire day learning things like pride, non-bianary, gender fluid, and more. He felt like he had opened his eyes to a completely new world and he was so excited about it. He had no idea there were so many different types of amazing people. He was so… Excited! 

  His parents were busy with work downstairs, and his brother was over at a friends house so he took it upon himself to spend his entire day learning and watching videos on this community of people. It was impossible to learn everything in a day, but he was determined to try. 

  He listened to and read people’s stories on the internet, and he would be lying if he said he didn’t cry. Why were people so mean to them? He had asked himself, why are there so many mean people in the world? They were just being themselves, why couldn’t people just be proud of them? What Roman didn’t know at the time, is that he would have a few stories of his own like that in the future. 

  A few weeks later, he was on the swings with his best friend Logan. Swinging back and forth with the breeze as they talked about anything and everything, non-sense and Disney, jokes and laughter, serious topics and funny stories, until Roman decided to bring up some of the stuff he had learned to his friend. He kicked his legs back and forth carelessly as he spoke, “hey, Lo?” Logan had looked at him, as Logan wasn’t swinging nearly as much as Roman was but more just drifting to and fro with the wind as he talked with his flamboyant best friend, “yeah Ro?”

Roman grinned for a minute before speaking, “have you heard of LGBTQ+?”

Logan had nodded at his question, “yeah, my dads talk about it all the time.” He said in a nonchalant manner. Roman groaned, frustrated “AWWW, I thought I learned about something that you didn’t..” Roman stopped his swinging, skidding his bright red shoes across the ground to stop himself.

 Logan chuckled and pushes up his glasses, “sorry Ro, but I know everything.” 

  Roman stared at Logan throwing his hands about as he spoke, “that's not fair.” he said the last word dragging it out like it was the end of the world. 

  Roman had met Logan’s dads before, yet he never knew what LQBTQ+ meant and he didn’t know that a lot of people thought it was a bad thing. He thought it was awesome that Logan’s dads loved each other, even before he knew that they loved each other if that made any sense. To Roman it made complete sense in his ten year old mind.

  Roman then got an idea, “Hey Logan, there was some things I didn’t understand when I was lookin’ up stuff about it. Do you think you could answer some of my questions?”

Logan looked a little excited to teach Roman, and they spent the rest of the time on the swings not swinging but talking. Talking about something that would be very important to them one day. 

  7 years later~ 

  Roman was seventeen, and he was the most popular kid in his highschool, everyone had taken a liking to his outgoing nature. His best friends Logan, Patton, and Virgil were popular right along with him. There was only one thing that bothered Roman, his sexuality. He was terrified, from the bottom of his heart he was terrified because ne knew that he was not straight in any sense of the term. He was as curved as a rollercoaster and the ride made him feel woozy and nauseous.

     He knew that the vast majority of his school would hate him for being the way he was, so you know what he did? Like the scared little closeted boy he was he ran into the deepest corner of that closet and hid like a little toddler in hide and seek, only he wasn’t a toddler and this wasn’t hide and seek, this was hide for your life. At least that was what it had felt like to him. 

  He knew that his friend would accept him, since Patton had come out to them in freshman year as Pan to him, Logan, and Virgil, it had lead to Logan coming out to them as gay demisexual, and then a year later in there sophmore Virgil coming out to them as gay. They promised to support each other and never ever tell anyone else. It was like their own little pride group, only Roman was an ally… Or so the others had thought.

       Roman knew that they would accept him. Of all people who knew that he could come out to them, and it was okay. But his heart leapt up into his throat and his knees buckled and the mere thought of it. He could just imagine their judgemental glances, thinking he was only saying it because he wanted to feel included, “you’re not really gay.” He would imagine them saying, “are you doing this for attention?” “if you were gay then why have you been telling us about all your straight crushes for years?” He had made up crushes to stay in the closet “you’re so dramatic! Just shut up and we can forget you even tried to pull off this whole charade.” 

   I part of him knew they would never do that, but it was a very small part of him, it was like a tiny ball of light shining in the darkness of self deprecation that he had created within himself. He pretended to be so confident, he was a great actor ‘but that was the only thing he was great at’ He would say to himself like a father scolding a child for doing something wrong, only the child was priding within himself and the father was a cold old man with no joy and wanted his son to live a dry cold life never thinking higher than an inch of himself. 

“Princey? You okay there?...” he hadn’t noticed that he had started to zone out with another one of his spirals into the dark clouded space that was his mind. ‘No’ he said to himself and only himself. Virgil would think he was such an attention seeking whore if he ever told him anything that went on in his head, “I’m fit as a fiddle Hottopic, sorry I zoned out, I was just thinking about Valerie. Her hair looked so pretty today.” He said with a smile that didn’t seem to reach his eyes. Valerie was amazing, she was really fun to hang out with and yes her hair actually did look pretty today but to Roman he felt nothing but platonic love for her. And when he would pretend to have a crush on her, especially to one of his best friends….. He felt as though someone was stabbing a knife into his heart, his weak little heart that throbbed at anything and everything. He was so weak he would tell himself. His heart was a bruised and pin pricked as a baby rabbit that got into a fight with a porcupine, and oh how his heart loved to jump and do summersaults like the little rabbit it was in the presence of the emo sitting next to him.   

  But the thing was it hurt so so much worse when he lied to Virgil. Virgil was so caring, he was kind to all of them, and he loved hanging out with him. Virgil was just so funny, and cute, and smart, and handsome, and- he stopped his thoughts, halting them and pushing them as far back into his mind as they would go. It was getting a lot harder to get rid of them lately. Virgil got a sad sort of look in his eyes but Roman didn’t notice, he was to busy gay panicing. “Thats sweet Roman. You two would be cute together ...” Virgil trailed off, sort of spacing out himself as Roman had just a few moments ago. 

  Roman clapped his hands together and stood up with a plastered smile on his face, startling Virgil almost knocking him off the bench that they had been sitting on. They were at the park, just talking. Roman turned toward Virgil and uttered a quick apology before spilling his idea to his monochromatic friend, “We should go get ice cream!!” Virgil chuckled at Roman’s excitement, and blushed under his porcelain foundation, “sure thing, if you promise to stop yelling” Virgil pulled on his hoodie strings, “people are starting to stare.” he said the last part with breathless sort of panicked whisper only loud enough just for Roman to catch it. 

   They spent the rest of the day just walking around town, laughing and enjoying the company of one another. Roman’s little heart jumped into his throat everytime he heard that beautiful laugh of Virgil’s, it was like looking at the sky and letting the sun hit your face. You can’t open your eyes and look directly at it though, because you might go blind at its unending beauty. Even if Virgil didn’t think so, he was the sun, the moon, the stars, and the clouds all bundled up in one amazing person and oh how he shined. 

     He was always there when you needed him and he was the most hard working person Roman knew, even if Virgil ran into days where he couldn’t even speak because of his anxiety disorder Roman thought he was so strong to have even got out of bed on those days. And he made sure to tell Virgil how strong he was everyday, and if Virgil couldn’t find his voice that day. Roman would speak for him to faceless strangers at school who wanted to speak with Virgil, although Logan and Patton would do that as well, it seemed to have affected Virgil more when Roman did it. It made Virgil feel warm and gooey on the inside, feelings that someone with a hard emo persona like his should never let themselves have but he had them and he loved how they made him feel. But he could never feel that about Roman, because Roman would never feel that way about him and that wasn’t something that he could change and that was just the way the world had to fuck him over.

  The universe had made a little emo gay boy who was obsessed with My Chemical Romance and black eyeshadow, fall in love with his straight best friend. What a painful story trope. Only his best friend wasn’t actually straight, a fact that he was oblivious to, and this wasn’t a cheesy romance story this was their lives. Virgil looked down at hits ice cream, enjoying the treat quietly as he listened to Roman gush and rant about Hamilton or whatever musical he had decided to talk about. 

They had arrived at Virgil’s house and said their goodbyes, with halfwitted insults with no venom in the words. It was their usual routine and they were both content with the way their relationship was. But they were just content, both of them wanted more but they would never admit that to themselves or each other. Roman walked home, with everything swirling around in his head and he laughed with a sort of dark emptiness. What a day.

To be continued~ 

OH MY GOSH THIS WAS SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE!!! Idk how much fun it was to read or how many people will actually read it, but I hope at least a few people enjoy it. this first part was out earlier than I had expected! When I get the next part out then I will link it on this part and tag anyone who wants to know when it comes out. I hope you enjoyed~ my friend that pitched me some ideas: @akane-mukami she is amazing and beautiful please go show her some love!

taglist:

@mostpeopleannoyne 

@www-dot-ohshit-dot-com 

@icequeenoriginal

@espepspes 

@rats-this-username-is-taken

Green~~

[afoolforatook]

A RWBY V7 Ep12 rant.....When I say this is long..... Legit was fucking 37 pages double spaced at one point. Sorry....

Before this gets started I want to warn you, this is long (even longer than I thought it’d be going in). It’s probably too long ... actually it is definitely too long but if I agonize over editing it down again and again I won’t get it up before the finale. It’s probably repetitive at times, and most certainly not anything I’ll be showing off as an example of my top essay writing. And I want to be able to say that the length pays off because I have some grand hopeful insight at the end. I want to say I know things will be okay. But the fact that I can’t is exactly why I’m writing this, and why it’s so long. So if you need this to have a hopeful ending, I’m sorry, I don’t have one for you currently. I want to, so badly. But to me false hope would be even worse.  So if you can’t handle another long post that doesn’t end with a way to fix things, it’s okay, take care of yourself. But maybe the most hopeful thing I can tell you, and tell you up front, is that you aren’t alone in your pain. 

I want to preface this all with one more thing: I don’t hate CRWBY. I respect them, support them. I’ve wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt as much as I could.  That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize them or expect more from them or just be plain angry with them. I can be vocal about all of that without harassing them, without hating them. I don’t think they’re just plain evil or homophobic. I still want to believe that they can do things that will allow me to trust them again. Maybe it’s naive, but I want to, at the very least, still have hope that this wasn’t malicious, just very poorly conceived and executed. 

And I know that other people who are hurting like me are lashing out towards CRWBY. And while I don’t at all condone that kind of reaction, I can understand it to an extent. Because I’m very, very hurt and angry and it would be so easy to let loose and say all the awful stuff I want to in my anger. To yell and call people out and not care how I come across. It would definitely be a lot easier than spending all week writing this long thing and agonizing over making it perfect. There is nothing wrong with venting and being raw and open and angry, but just as we want CRWBY to be aware that their actions can truly hurt people, we need to be conscious of the fact that so can ours.  Many people are very hurt right now. And whether or not you think it was queerbaiting/BYG or not, or even whether or not you just think it was bad writing, no one has the right to invalidate the people who are hurting right now, many of whom are queer people dealing with personal traumas and mental illness. 

The few people who are attacking CRWBY and other fans (and there is a difference between being angry and vocal about that anger and just attacking them) do not invalidate the hurt people are feeling. If you are hurt or angry you have every right to be. You have every right to stop watching the show or leave the fandom, or communicate your hurt to CRWBY. But communicate means just that; communicate. Talk. You can be as angry as you are, you don’t have to temper your pain to be more tolerable to the people who caused that pain. But there is a difference between being harsh and honest about how hurt you are, and harassing real people. And I won’t say “harassing real people over a fictional character/show” because I know it’s more complicated than that. My hurt this past week isn’t over a fictional character or a ship. It’s about me and what I’ve been through and the fact that the very thing that gave me strength in hard times was turned into something that confirmed my biggest fears and hurt me immensely. 

The world always gets so sentimental when we see things about fictional stories giving people some comfort, and we celebrate that. But as soon as people say they can be hurt just as much by media, we lash out, say they’re overreacting, that they’re just getting upset over fictional characters. But you can’t have it both ways. We can’t want fiction to be important and inspiring to people and then belittle people who are negatively impacted by the same material, especially when often that vulnerability comes from a history of trauma and/or being neurodivergent. I am extremely hurt. I feel betrayed and abandoned and angry. And it will take time for me to process all of that and move past it. But I can be all of those things without attacking CRWBY or the people who might disagree with me. 

To me, this isn’t about disagreeing. We can argue forever about whether or not this was queerbaiting or bury your gays or poor writing (and I honestly at this moment don’t even know what I think about all of that because I’m not in that headspace currently) but the fact is that there are many, many people who feel it was, and who are hurting because of that, and whether you believe it was or not does not give you the right to invalidate the real pain that they are feeling.  Who is right is less important than the fact that people, people who were already vulnerable, have been hurt. So, please. Respect each other. Respect those who are hurting. Respect those who aren’t and don’t understand, and respect CRWBY. You can still be angry and speak out without attacking others. 

With that said, to fully understand why this has affected me so much, and why it’s going to take a long time for me to get back to where I was, regardless of how the volume ends, there are things you need to know about my history. It’s a lot of background and this is already going to be a longer post than I’d really like, but it’s important to understanding why RWBY is so important to me, and thus able to have such a negative effect on me. So please, bear with me. Also, fair warning, though at this point it’s probably obvious, but my story isn’t happy. I still haven’t found my own positive ending to it. If it’s too much for you to read right now, please, like I said before, take care of yourself. 

I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Farley. I’m 24, nonbinary (they/them), biromantic, demisexual. I have MDD, GAD, ADHD, Panic Disorder, OCD, Comorbid PTSD, and am trying to get an official autism diagnosis. I’m a full on alphabet soup. I struggle with imposter syndrome, intrusive thoughts, self-isolation, dermatillomania, and multiple trauma related phobias. My queer and neurodivergent identities are huge parts of my life and I try to be as open as possible about them, in the hopes of helping end the stigma around them. One of the main ways I cope with my mental health issues on a day to day basis is through hyperfixations. While it might not technically be the healthiest method, it’s what I’ve found to work for me when I’m in a really bad place and unable to practice more active coping skills. Through stories and characters that I relate to, I can separate my problems from myself a little and both escape from them for a while when needed, and view them a little more clearly from a new perspective.  

That’s some important info about me, but what really matters here is the past five years of my life and the trauma within them. 

In October of 2015, a few months into my sophomore year of college, I went into a deep depression, mostly brought on by multiple family deaths and stresses over the past summer that I had not properly had time to process and recover from. I quit my job as an RA and withdrew from school and moved back home with my parents.  While this was the right decision at the time, it wasn’t easy. I left a very close group of friends at school, and didn’t really have a strong support system at home aside from my parents. My friends from high school had all gone off to college themselves, and the few that still lived in town were often busy with work or school. And because I have an intense fear of driving and needed time to get myself in a better place before starting a job, I ended up spending most of my time home alone. I became more and more isolated, to the point of verging on agoraphobic, and my parents and I started thinking about ways I could basically get my life started again. 

 But isolation messes with your head, and makes you want to just isolate more and more. In mid February of 2016 I started to really work on being social again. Mostly because I started talking to my best friend from high school, Emma, regularly again. She knew I was struggling, and while I’ve always had a hard time keeping in touch with people, Emma has always been the person I never felt self conscious about going to. We talked everyday. After high school, Emma’s mom and younger brother had moved to Ohio (I live in NC) and Emma had gone to school in Oregon. Her father lives in Germany. So between visiting her family in Ohio and Germany she didn’t have a lot of time during breaks to come back to NC to visit friends. Since we graduated I’d only seen her once for about 12 hours during that awful summer. But now we were skyping and chatting everyday. And slowly I started to be less and less scared of being more social. I wanted to hang out with friends. I was excited about going back to school in the fall. 

Something important to understand about me and Emma is how close we’ve always been. We’d been best friends since 8th grade. We told each other we were soulmates, soulfriends, when we were 15. Nearly everyone in our small high school thought we were dating at one time or another. I always knew I loved her. I was fine with our relationship being “only” platonic. Because platonic wasn’t “only”. It was absolutely perfect. It was having her as one of the most important people in my life, and me in hers, and that’s all I wanted. But I also knew that if she ever wanted to try a romantic relationship, I’d be open. 

Around the time I left school Emma had been going through a lot herself. She was finally getting help for her own mental health issues and she was, for the first time, really thinking about her identity and sexuality. On May 4th 2016 she texted me like always, but this time she was nervous. She wanted to tell me something. She said she was still confused about her sexuality and didn’t know where she fell. But when she tried to think of being with someone, the only person she pictured was me. And I told her basically what I just told you. So we started talking about testing out us being a couple. She had already been planning to come to NC to visit after she went to Ohio later that month for her brother’s high school graduation. And my parents were going on a two week vacation around that time as well. So we decided that she would come and stay with me for two weeks. We would keep this to ourselves until then, so that we could see if this was really the best thing for us. And if so, then we’d tell people. We’d always talked about living together after school, but now we wanted to see exactly what we wanted our relationship to be. She bought a bus ticket for May 26th and would stay through June 10th or so, which would mean she’d be there for her 20th birthday on June 5th. We talked everyday about our plans for her visit. How excited we were, how we could cook dinner together and dance around the house in our underwear, and just get to be Us again. We talked to friends, planning to visit friends from high school and maybe even my friends from college.

On May 18th I texted Emma around 11 pm. I hadn’t heard from her all day which was unusual but she was in Ohio celebrating her mom’s birthday and getting ready for her brother’s graduation that weekend, so she was probably just busy. We’d told each other goodnight every night for months at that point. So I told her I loved her and was so excited to see her in just over a week.

The next morning it was a bit odd that she still hadn’t texted me back but again, I just assumed she was busy with family. And then the mail came, and the last part of a birthday present I was making for her arrived. So I got to work, giddy. 

Around 2 pm my other best friend from high school, Juli, called me. For some reason I decided I’d just call her back later, I was too engrossed in making Emma’s present. About 20 minutes later I heard a knock on my door and turned to see my parents standing in the doorway to my room. I vividly remember spinning around happily and saying “Hey! Everything okay?” even as I noticed the tears on my dad’s face and how pale my mom was. My stomach knotted and I stood as my mom said “N-no. Honey…..” and walked towards me. I took a deep breath, preparing myself for her to say that a grandparent or aunt or uncle had died. But as she got closer and put a shaking hand on my shoulder, I got a little more confused, a different kind of scared. One of my cousins? One of my baby cousins?  

Nothing could have prepared me for her telling me that there’d been an accident in Ohio. That Emma, and her mom, and her brother, and her aunt had been in a crash…. And that all four of them had been killed on impact. The only thing I remember about the rest of the night is the pain of continuously screaming, punching the wall until my dad stopped me, and calling my friends from college, trying to have someone to talk to, someone who I could call who wouldn’t also be mourning. I couldn’t handle my own grief, let alone anyone else’s at that moment. 

There’s a lot more to that story. There’s the memorial service in Ohio and meeting her dad and stepmom for the first time. There’s the service we put together at our high school and seeing our friend group all together again, except not. There’s the panic attacks every time I saw a garbage truck, or my parents drove off to work. 

But most importantly for what you need to know right now, is my sliding back into isolation. I barely ever saw my friends from home and every time I did for the next two years it had something to do with mourning Emma. I saw my college friends a few times; them coming to visit or me taking a bus to stay the weekend. But eventually they went back to school and I stayed at home. I drifted away from high school friends because I didn’t know how to handle being with them when everything we did together reminded me of what I’d lost. I didn’t know how to talk to them because I needed their support but knew I didn’t have it in me to be supportive of them, and that wasn’t fair. I drifted away from my college friends for the same reasons, and even more so as the group dynamic that I had left slowly changed and faded until I didn’t know who was talking to who anymore and I again felt bad for dumping my shit on them when I couldn’t do the same. I began to think that all I brought to any social interaction was my pain and hopelessness. I would just bring everyone else down. They shouldn’t have to deal with my pain. So a year after I left school I was even more alone. I’d lost or pushed away all the people in my life that I’d expected to be lifelong friends, family. And I didn’t know how to begin to fix that. I didn’t know if I wanted to. I didn’t know if I deserved to. 

The only reason I was even still alive was because anytime I even got close to thinking about hurting myself, I could just sense Emma glaring at me, yelling at me, telling me that I couldn’t let this stop me from living out all those dreams we’d talked about. And I knew that my life wasn’t just mine anymore, that all those dreams, that bond, the parts of my favorite person that only I knew, would be lost if I died. 

But I didn't have my friends to vent to, and as supportive as my parents were (I’d told them and a few close friends about me and Emma that first terrible week) I needed friends. But I didn’t know how to reconnect and I was too scared to go out and meet new people, especially knowing that at some point I’d have to drop the “dead girlfriend” bomb on them, and who’d want to stick around after that?  So I tried to use media and hyperfixations to pull myself out of spirals, like I always had. But it was hard. Because most of the things that had been comforting before were all things I’d shared with Emma, and so now they were just more reminders of her absence. And even new things I found soon turned rotten because I couldn’t help but think about how I wish I could show it to Emma. Everything that made me happy for even a moment would pretty soon make me sad. 

Eventually I found things that comforted me and helped me be creative again and that led me to starting school again, nearly three years after I’d left, at SCAD.  I loved the classes. I wanted to be there. I’ve always been a fiction writer but now there was so much in my head that I needed to get out, to process, and to share with people, especially people like me dealing with an unimaginable grief. Those past few years had been made even more difficult by the lack of representation I found in grief material. Everything was either about grieving the elderly, not someone who’d barely even gotten to live. Or if it was about someone young it was due to suicide or disease or violence; in other words things that at the very least, left the grieving with some cause to care about, or something to be angry at, some real world outlet. I didn’t have that. I didn’t relate to that. And even harder was finding anything I could relate to that included the complexities that my queer identity put on my grief; there were people I could and couldn’t tell about our relationship. Did I say I lost my best friend or my girlfriend? What if her family didn’t approve and wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t let me have any of her things, wouldn’t want me around? And one of the biggest things I kept thinking those first few months; why had my life become a ‘bury your gays’ soap opera plot line. Was Emma supposed to just be my tragic backstory now? Was I just supposed to use this as angsty fodder for the rest of my life? What about her? What about her dreams, her potential? What about her progress? She’d just gotten to a place where she was accepting herself. Where she was overcoming her mental health issues, where she was proud of who she was. Why was I allowed to keep going and she wasn’t?  I couldn’t find any support for these feelings. Not books or groups or forums. So I decided to make them myself. I started writing and drawing, putting together what I called my Grief Scrapbook. I was working towards the thing that mattered to me more than anything; telling our story. I was getting the chance to create the content I’d so desperately needed. 

But I was still alone, even at school. I was 23 living with mostly 18/19 year olds. And while there wasn’t anything wrong with them, I was struggling with a strong sense of dissociation. Everywhere I looked I saw Emma, forever 19. And there I was, continuing to age and getting further and further away from her. 

My first year at SCAD I made two friends, and while I love them, they didn’t fulfill the hole left by the large close knit groups of friends I’d lost. I tried to get back in touch with my best friend from college, only to find that she was no longer talking to me. And I don’t blame her really. Yes I’d been going through things, but so had she, and I hadn’t been able to be a good friend for her. So if she needed to move on for her own good, no matter how sad that made me, she had every right to do what was best for her, just as I had been trying to do. 

I’m now in my second year at SCAD and recently started hanging out with a new group. And they’re great and I’m slowly feeling more confident and secure around them, but I still struggle. I still miss the relationships I held so dear, the relationships I let dissolve. I still worry I’ll never have that kind of connection with people again, and that if I do somehow manage to find it, I’ll mess it up again.  Some days are particularly rough, when I sit with my thoughts too long, or see something that reminds me of any one of the many people I miss, and I ache for the happiness I had. And it’s those moments when I turn to hyperfixations (I do promise this is getting to RWBY). 

This past February the final How To Train Your Dragon movie came out. The HTTYD franchise holds a very dear place in my heart, as it was my main hyperfixation during high school, and something I shared with Emma and other friends. The second film came out the day of my graduation. It was the last movie Emma and I saw together before she moved to Ohio and then went to school in Oregon. It was the last movie we saw together at all. I knew it was going to be very emotional for me to see the final movie, alone now. But I had to see it opening night. And (spoilers for The Hidden World I guess) the movie ended up being about the reality of having to let go of the important people from your childhood as you grow up. About dealing with the fact that sometimes the people you expected to always be a part of your life, aren’t. I loved the movie, but it destroyed me. A few months later I had to get through May, the 3rd anniversary, away from home for the first time. And it was extremely difficult. I’d had to take a break from HTTYD and process things. 

So my main hyperfixations weren’t helping me get through a really difficult time. But around the time HTTYD 3 came out I happened to get back into RWBY. I’d watched the first season or so when it first came out, but then had just kind of forgotten about it. And so, in the absence of HTTYD, I got caught up. And I can’t say there weren’t things that hurt, that made me have to take a moment and collect myself.  Watching the end of volume three, watching Pyrrha and Jaune finally kiss, and then watch their relationship die with her before they even had a chance to be together, hit way too close to home. Logically I should have projected on Jaune more than I did but I think I couldn’t, because it wasn’t just similar, it felt like I was literally watching the worst moment of my life play out. He was too much like me to handle. But there was Qrow. And at first I just kind of latched onto him because I liked him. I like his characterization, his design, and I was a fan of V*c ( I hate to even mention him here for fear of causing a totally different discourse, but Emma and I were big fans of his and high school and met him and when everything happened with him it was just another thing that felt like a good memory of Emma had been tainted.)  

And so I was watching while the last half of volume six was airing. And I was watching Qrow slip further and further into his depression. I watched as he felt betrayed by Oz after grieving him and then getting him back. I thought more about how he’d basically lost his sister, about how he’d grieved for Summer (regardless of whether it was platonic or romantic), how he lost hope in having strong relationships ever again. How he felt cursed and how he pushed people away to protect them and himself from more pain. I saw how the Apathy affected him and how close he was to giving in before Ruby and Weiss snapped him out of it. I saw him struggle to get himself back together for Ruby and the rest of the kids, but not know how. I saw every single fear I’d struggled with those past few years in him. I related to Qrow more than I’d ever expected to. And so my hyperfixation on RWBY grew. His addiction was my isolation. His insecurities of hurting others and thus pushing them away was my fear that for the rest of my life, I would be alone because I was always going to be too broken to be worthy of friends and love. 

And then everything happened with V*c and for a bit everything hurt again and I had to get away from RWBY and the toxicity within parts of the fandom. And when I was able to come back I was excited but worried. I hoped that Qrow would continue to develop, continue to progress alongside me, that I would like his new actor enough to finish healing the sting I’d felt over V*c.  I just wanted Qrow back, I wanted this character to be there to help me again.

Because Qrow Branwen gave me hope. He gave me hope that I could get better. He gave me hope that even with my insecurities and trauma, something I’ll never be fully free from, I can deserve people who care about me, and that there are actually people who will care about me. He gave me hope that good things can still happen to broken people. And not just people who were once broken and have healed, but people who are still figuring out how to heal, who know they will never fully heal, but also know they still are worthy of support and care. And then volume 7 started and I got more than I’d ever dreamed. 

There was the hug with Ironwood. And even though I shipped Ironqrow, the idea of there being a romantic aspect to that hug wasn’t what made it important. It was the fact that we got Qrow connecting with an old ally (and an adult), finding that he even still had an old ally. That despite everything that had happened with Oz and Lionheart, despite all the trust he’d had broken, maybe he wasn’t actually alone yet. And then we got Clover. I’ll admit I was wary of him at first. I was worried about the traitor theories, the death theories, and then the theories that he’d negatively affect Qrow, making him feel worse about his semblance. But then he grew on me so quickly. Because he smiled at Qrow. He got him to talk about himself, called him out when he was putting himself down, told him how well he was doing. And while it’s wasn’t because of Clover, he was sober, and Clover had to at the very least help him stay that way. Qrow was hunching less when he walked, opening up, being more vulnerable and social. He was smiling, laughing, making jokes. He had a steady partner that he trusted and worked well with, likely for the first time since team STRQ. And yes, I shipped them, but honestly while I would have still been disappointed if it was never canon, given how blatant it really seemed like it could be, it would ultimately have been okay. Because again, it was less about Qrow finding love and more about him finding support.   And then I saw Qrow and Clover and Robyn team up, and whether it was canon or just fandom I felt represented. Not just in the way I had with Qrow about my mental health, but as a queer person struggling with complicated grief; the exact thing I had never been able to find and had taken upon myself to create for others. I saw Qrow being loved (again, whether platonic or romantic isn’t as important) and healing. Even if Fairgame never actually happened, I could still see them as queer characters helping each other process trauma. And maybe I set myself up in a bubble part of the fandom that fully convinced me that Fairgame was possible, but at the very least I truly, undoubtedly thought that Clover would side with Qrow. 

And as I watched episode 12, I could feel my stomach sinking. Okay Clover didn’t side with Qrow at first, but maybe he’ll come around. Okay maybe he won’t come around, but maybe he’ll take Qrow in and they’ll have time to talk, maybe even with Ironwood. But then Clover abandons the ship, abandons Qrow and I was scrambling even more for hope that things would be okay.  Maybe he’s trying to get away to diffuse things. But then “Never pegged you for the manipulative type” the first sign of Qrow doubting their entire relationship, of feeling betrayed again. And then Clover calls Qrow cynical? Maybe I’m forgetting something, cause I haven’t gone back and analyzed every scene with them, but I can’t remember Qrow ever being cynical around Clover this volume that we’ve seen. Self-deprecating yes, but this is legitimately the happiest and most secure we’ve ever seen Qrow. But okay maybe they’ll reason and Clover will come around. But then “We don’t have to fight, friend.” and it’s friend not Qrow. And then “You don’t know my friends. That’s how it always goes.” and I broke. I almost stopped there, a part of me wishes I had. Because it was already so broken, this thing that had even in the past few weeks, been a main pillar of hope for me. But maybe they’ll come together to fight Tyrian. And then Qrow goes after Tyrian and Clover keeps attacking Qrow. Well maybe he’s really trying to protect him, or has some plan. But then they continue to fight each other. And they don’t have even a moment of “who’s the bigger threat here? Us or the serial killer?” And then Qrow works with Tyrian?! Tyrian the serial killer? Tyrian the unstable maniac? Tyrian who tried to take Ruby? Tyrian who nearly killed Qrow? Tyrian who fucking worships Salem, who Qrow has spent most of his life fighting, has lost Summer to, and countless other traumas? (and I get the possible reasons, realizing that Clover won’t lay off of him so Tyrian is his best bet and then he can take care of Tyrian, but I still don’t like it. But this isn’t even about whether or not I think it’s good writing or characterization and it’s too long already to get into that.) And then Tyrian and Qrow fight so well together and I honestly felt sick. We haven’t seen Qrow work that well with anyone. Not RWBY, not Ironwood, not Clover.  And now we see it with fucking Tyrian? And maybe it’s a stretch but it honestly felt like another nail in the “Qrow attracts bad” coffin that is his insecurities. Qrow and Tyrian fight nearly perfectly together and it felt so damn wrong. Clover’s wrong here, Qrow’s wrong here, and it all feels so very very wrong based on the entire progression of their relationship throughout the volume. And then Qrow takes down Clover’s aura and I’m just empty.  There’s no hint of him trying to just beat Clover and not kill him. He has no reason to think that Tyrian won’t actually go for the kill during this fight. But they continue to have these snippets of “We don’t have to fight” or “I want to trust you” while showing no signs of holding back and still caring about the other’s well being. And then Qrow’s voice breaking during “Why couldn’t you just do the right thing…”. We’ve literally never seen Qrow this emotionally compromised, let alone during a fight. He’s crumbling because he finally had someone who made him think he could get better, that he could have close relationships, that he could be good for the people around him. And now he’s losing it. 

I was broken here, I was already spiraling. I knew Clover would get hit. I knew I would be struggling to deal with this episode because I had so fully expected a different course. But I thought there could still be hope. There had to still be hope. CRWBY wouldn’t give us all that development, wouldn’t show Qrow finally happy without leaving some hope for things turning around in the finale. He’d get hit by Tyrian’s stinger and Qrow would have to work to save him and they’d work things out. But then “I trust James with my life… and I wanted to trust you.” And I’m sobbing. Because I get it, Clover’s loyal, but when Qrow’s face hardens I know what he’s thinking. What he’s trying not to think but it’s so hard to fight: “Maybe it is me. Maybe I can’t be trusted. Maybe I’ve ruined things again”. Even though he knows what James is doing is wrong. But he trusted James, he trusted Clover. And he thought they trusted, cared for him. And now they’ve both turned against him and no matter how much he knows he’s doing the right thing, he can’t help but worry that he’s still the thing broken here, that he still messed up somewhere and ruined the relationships he needed so much. I was breaking more and more as I watched this source of my own hope lose all hope. 

And then Harbinger. The weapon Qrow built himself. That he modeled after his hero. The literal extension of his soul. And only moments before, Qrow destroyed the one thing that might have protected Clover. Clover’s emblem falls. Tyrian with “Like you killed Clover”. And yeah yeah Qrow being framed is heartbreaking. But it’s more that he’ll believe it. He did. He fucked everything up again. He tried so hard to do the right thing and still managed to hurt the person he cared about. And if Clover, the foil to his bad luck, could be destroyed by his semblance, how does anyone else stand a chance? And then blaming James. Swearing to make him pay (I honestly don’t remember if he says make him pay or kill him but I physically can’t rewatch that scene to see which it was). And yes he blames James. He hates James. It was the last straw breaking on someone he wanted to trust so much, wanted to have as a friend. But he still blames himself. He still knows he’s cursed and all the progress he’d made with Clover’s help is ripped away. 

And then “Good luck”. I’ve seen people saying it’s sweet, that it’s a moment of reconciliation, of Clover showing he still cares. And I don’t necessarily disagree. But I hate it. Because Qrow won’t take it that way. It’s just another reminder that good luck is out of his reach. And then the goddamn sky and the bi flag colors. And then we see Qrow cry for the first time. And then…. The scream…. I literally nearly vomited and that was the thing that sent me over the edge into full blown panic attack. Because I know that fucking scream. I know how it feels. I hear it ringing in my ears, I feel my throat getting raw. I could hear and see and feel myself in the same position. The nightmare I’d fought off for years; kneeling over Emma’s body and there being nothing I can do but scream and scream as the last of the hope I was clutching to faded with her… with Clover’s eyes.

It wasn’t that Clover died. It wasn’t that my ship won’t happen. It was how traumatizing it was. It was that Harbinger was now defiled. It was that Qrow set it up to happen. It was the sky. It was seeing the light go out of Clover’s eyes. It was Qrow’s scream. We’ve never seen a death like this on RWBY before. Yes we watched Pyrrha’s death. But there was no blood. We didn’t see her bleed out. We didn’t see the exact moment the light left her eyes. We saw Adam stabbed and some bleeding and then hitting the rocks, but we weren’t right there, seeing the exact moment of his death close up. If Clover had been stung by Tyrian and died I’d be upset still, and many of the issues I have would still be relevant. But using Harbinger like that, playing directly into Qrow’s own insecurities like that, after having him do things that felt extremely out of character in order to set things up for Tyrian to kill Clover like that and blame Qrow? It felt vile. 

It didn’t just feel like bad writing or different narrative choices. Hell, it didn’t even just feel OOC. It felt malicious. It felt like twisting established plot and characterisation completely in order to make it fit some tragic climax that was only chosen because it would have the biggest emotional impact, not because it was the best way to continue the plot. And they can’t say that they didn’t expect people to be so attached to Clover. Because if they didn’t expect that to be so emotional for viewers, then why do it like that in the first place? Why put in the climatic cinematic shot that mirrors when Yang lost her arm? Why have Qrow screaming over Clover’s body be the final shot?  If Clover was never meant to have significance to both Qrow and fans, why make his death so painful? They can’t say that they didn’t know fans would get so invested at the same time that they say that it was necessary to make it that traumatic. It’s not that you can’t kill off beloved characters, no matter how long they’ve been in the show. But if you do, it’s got to feel important, it’s got to feel necessary, and it’s got to make sense for those characters, or else it just feels like you’re playing with peoples’ emotions for no reason other than shock factor. 

I’ve seen a bunch of theories and discourse. Arguments over whether or not it’s queerbaiting or bury your gays. Over whether or not it’s bad writing or out of character. And I’m sure I’ll eventually have a stronger, more thought out opinion on that, but right now I can’t even get there. 

I’ve seen theories as to why CRWBY did this, why it’s important to the plot. And maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’ll be just as surprised in a good way next week as I was in a traumatic way this week. But it will take a lot, and I will still need time to recover and dig myself back out of my own intrusive thoughts that saw this episode and rejoiced because “See!? See, good things can’t happen! You’ll always lose whatever good you find. You’ll always ruin whatever good you find.” And none of the theories I’ve seen make that better. Maybe they’ll bring Clover back with the Staff of Creation or some other method: doesn’t matter, the damage is still done. Qrow still is betrayed and traumatized. And even if Clover came back and Ironwood realized he was wrong and stopped, even if everything went back to exactly what it was, Qrow still would have lost all the progress he made this season. Because even if everything was fixed, Qrow would still have to fight down the newly boosted fear that everything will fall apart again. And similarly even if I come back to RWBY and things are good, I will still have a hard time trusting the show, and will still have to climb my way out of a hole I had just gotten out of, except this time I won’t have the comfort of RWBY to help me. 

Or maybe Clover won’t come back and Qrow will relapse and try to kill Ironwood and lose his mind like the scarecrow he is. And what will that do but reinforce the fear and idea that “broken” people can’t escape their vices? That they’ll always come back to pain. Yes, it’s important to show that people can relapse and still get better, that relapse doesn’t mean all hope is lost. But there’s a difference between a relapse and new trauma that directly undercuts all the progress you’ve made. That’s not inspirational, it’s exhausting. Yes, you can come back again, but what about the next time and the next and the next? When will you just get to be secure in your happiness without worrying that at any moment you’ll thrown back to square one?

If it turns out there’s some great plot point this creates, some big revelation that fixes things, I still think it wasn’t done properly. Fine, have that, have that pain. But don’t end on that and leave people for a week. It’s not about it being a cliffhanger. It’s about people who are traumatized being abandoned. (Again, I’m not even getting into how, if this did happen, how episode 12 would still feel off from a characterization standpoint and whether or not it was poor writing. It’s an analysis I can’t currently do.)

And maybe my least favorite theory and the one that I might see as most likely; that Qrow won’t relapse. That he won’t completely lose it and instead Clover’s death and influence will be what keeps him going. Because yeah, that sounds great, that sounds heroic and strong and like the progress that came from knowing Clover did make a difference. But it feels wrong in this instance. Qrow’s had that. He’s had loss that hurt him but he kept going to finish something or honor them. He kept going after Summer died. He kept going for Ruby and Yang and Tai. If he didn’t have that, why would he have kept going when things were so bad? But Qrow doesn’t need that again. He doesn’t need another pain to spur him on. He needs support. He needs proof that his hard work, his struggle, has been worth it and that he still has allies. And not just the kids. Because as much as he respects them, as much as he believes in them and their abilities as hunters, he’s still protective of them, they still aren’t on an equal level. He still feels responsible for them. And that’s good for him, but he needs adults too. He needs people who aren’t his responsibility. He needs adults who can call him out on his shit. He needs adults he can lean on, who can take care of him. And now who does he have? Summer is gone. Raven is gone. Tai is back at home. Oz is gone. Lionheart betrayed him. James has now betrayed him. Winter has sided with James and might not be alive much longer? Robyn is there, but also hurt, and we haven’t seen anything to suggest that they are particularly close. And now Clover is dead. Clover, the only person we have ever seen Qrow let his guard down around like we did this season.

And it’s not that the “Staying alive for the person you’ve lost” is a bad plot line, and if I’d trust any show to do it I would’ve thought it’d be RWBY. But I can tell you from fucking experience, forcing yourself to keep going in honor of someone? Yeah, it might keep you alive. It might give you meaning and even lead you to do great things. But when it’s just you and your head? When you’re alone because you’ve lost everyone who kept you going and now you have to keep going without them, for them? It fucking sucks. It’s not poetic. It’s not this heroic strength that lifts you up. It’s a crushing weight of fear that you will fail again, that you’re the only one who can carry this burden, but this time you’ll let down the person most important to you.  And then not only will you have fucked up your life but you’d have made their suffering and loss meaningless. 

And I can see why CRWBY might take this route, what their message might be, and maybe for them and for some people it’s good, but personally it’s crushing. Because it can be a good thing to have the desire to honor someone spur you on, that’s literally why we still have RWBY. But if that’s the only thing you have? It’s toxic. You have to have other support and motivations of your own to keep you going without becoming hollow inside. And right now, Qrow doesn’t have that. Right now, if Qrow uses this to push him forward, it’s not recovery, it’s not avoiding a relapse; it’s falling into a new, much harder to spot, addiction.

Yes, shitty things happen regardless of whether or not you’ve recovered from previous shitty things. Yes, life isn’t fair and sometimes it feels like you just get hit down over and over. And yes, people die in war and it’s ruthless and unfair. But RWBY is still a show. It’s still a show about hope. It’s still fiction, an escape from the cruelty of reality. And to me there were multiple other options for the plot to create conflict and sacrifice without doing it in a way that seems so needlessly cruel.  

This is complicated and layered and I think there have been mistakes made on multiple sides, and in the end, we still don’t know what CRWBY has planned and how things will go from here and why they chose this. Because everything has a meaning in RWBY. At least I want to believe that. But right now it’s very hard to think that all the meaning that was what made this my favorite volume, was anything more than a trap to make the end that much more painful. And that hurts. I want to believe that’s not the case. But it’s very, very hard. And like I said before, even if they pull it off amazingly and everything makes sense after next week, damage has still been done. No matter what happens, there were ways things could have been handled either throughout the volume or in this episode that, while still having emotional significance and sacrifice, could have been less traumatizing to a large portion of the fandom who supports CRWBY specifically because they trust them not to do something like that to them. 

In the end I’m hurt because right now it feels like the entirety of this volume was just a build up for the shock value of tearing Qrow down again. And I’m just tired of it. I’m biased I know, and maybe for some people it’s an important narrative. But to me it just feels like angst just for the sake of being cruel to a character who can’t catch a break. Since Emma’s death I understandably haven’t been a big fan of really angsty fanfiction. At first seeing fics where a character lost their partner made me irrationally angry. Because why can’t good things happen in fictional worlds? Why do characters I care about have to suffer like I do just for the sake of being angsty? Why would someone do that to a character they love? Why inflict that absolute agony onto a character when you could just, let them be happy? Yes conflict and sacrifice are crucial to good storytelling, but you still have to leave a character some hope, or else what’s the point of just watching them linger in misery? This kind of pain isn’t just a plot point that gets addressed for one or two episodes and then is fully dealt with. It’s a part of who you are now and will be for the rest of your life. 

I’ve been sad over shows before. I’ve thought plot lines were bad and like I’d lost a character that deserved better. But I’ve never had something take me from a (relatively) stable mindset to a truly frightening spiral like I’ve been in this week. If this had happened when I was younger (granted if it had happened before Emma’s death it wouldn’t have had the same meaning), if it had been during that first year? It really might have been a breaking point for me. The final straw. The only reason I’m able to know that as truly devastating as this has been for me this week, I’m not in actual danger of getting to a critically low space, is because I’ve learned how to deal with those low places these past four years. I’m still in a dangerous headspace but I know how to handle it.  I know to reach out, to vent, to ask friends to keep an eye on me, to keep an eye out for critical signs that I’m getting worse and I need more professional help. But if I’d had this trauma as a teen and saw this, or if I’d seen it before I’d built up this method of keeping myself safe even when in the worst headspaces?  I don’t know that I would have been able to deal with it. 

There’s a loud part of my head that is berating me for letting this affect me so much. For letting a show and fictional characters be the catalyst for me having to actively ask my friends to keep sharp instruments away from me for the first time in years. I’ll have a moment of clarity of “It’s not that bad, you’ll get past it” before being swallowed back up by the hopelessness. I have moments of “How could you let a fictional character’s death put you in this place, but not Emma? How is he more important?” 

But it’s not about RWBY or Clover or Qrow. It’s about my brain, and how I as a neurodivergent person deal with things. It’s about this how thing that I use to filter parts of my life through so that I can handle them in more reasonable chunks, is now a trigger itself. I currently don’t have any other hyperfixations, which means every time I have a moment of silence, or start to get feeling down again, my brain goes to RWBY, because usually that’s how I pull myself out. But that just reminds me of the loss RWBY currently represents. Not just the trauma this has brought up, but the fact that I’ve lost this source of comfort. And then I’m left scrambling for anything as I spiral further and further. I’m at the point where unless I am having constant outside stimulus to keep my brain occupied I go right back into a nosedive. And there’s nothing I can do on my own to stop it. So I just have to ride it out, fight back dozens of overwhelming intrusive thoughts, and try to think that I won’t always be this miserable, even though the current thing that was helping me believe that has just shown me the opposite is true. 

And no, creators can’t be held responsible for the mental states of fans of their work. But when things are done that directly hurt so many people, that even if not intended to, feel so calculated and malicious, they have to acknowledge the part they played in that trauma. 

The point of whether there was queer baiting/byg, and mlm representation and how its handled, is very important, but it is also something I just can’t even begin to look at right now from an analytical viewpoint. I can’t begin to come at this from an activist place right now. And I know there are plenty of other people who can speak on it better than I could currently.  My queer identity is largely wrapped up in my grief and how it affects me, but that also means that when I’m spiraling, it is very hard to focus and make good points about things that are not issues I’ve directly experienced. The only reason I can write this at all is because these are really just emotions I’ve dealt with for years that were dragged back up.

RWBY has always been about finding hope when it feels impossible. But this feels like it’s becoming “keep finding new hope but know you’ll lose it too and have to start over”.

RWBY has been what gave me hope that even when bad thing after bad thing happened, there was a reason to keep going, that eventually something good would come your way and you don’t have to live in fear of losing it. That you can still be broken and be worthy of good things. But this episode ripped that all away and told me that sometimes a person is never meant to be happy no matter how hard they try. 

A big reason I have clung to RWBY so much, and admired CRWBY so much, and in turn been so forgiving of plotlines or details that I maybe wasn’t the biggest fan of, was because I see myself in them. They lost Monty so suddenly and tragically and I understand that as much as anyone who isn’t them can. I understand the drive of keeping the show going. When I’m working on my own writing and art about my story and my loss, they are a huge inspiration to me to keep going even when it feels impossible. I can barely listen to Indomitable because, much like Jaune losing Pyrrha, it is uncanny how close to home it hits. They have been through more than we as fans can or should ever expect to know. Because even as someone very open about their grief, who wants to get rid of the stigma of expressing grief, I know that everyone deserves to keep as much of their grief and pain private as they need. And I can't even begin to imagine how hard it is to work on a show that is literally a feat of love and honor to a person you’ve lost, and then have people attack it and you, and make huge accusations, even try to use your loved one’s memory against you. It’s my biggest fear in creating something so incredibly personal but so important. 

And I know that everyone handles grief differently, and no matter how many people you have to support you it can be an extremely isolating thing. I know that no one has the right to tell someone else they are grieving wrong, and I would never dare do that to them. Because I know that the ways I grieve and the things that piss me off about grief and people’s reactions to it, will not line up with everyone else’s, and that’s okay. So the exact things that hurt me so much may be the things that CRWBY find cathartic. 

But I still think it’s important to talk about something that hurts you. To help people understand a facet of grief that might not be what they’ve experienced. Because even people who want to help, who want to provide representation to those hurting, can never please everyone, and even can even hurt people. I want to trust CRWBY. I want to believe they care about the queer community (even if they don’t always succeed in providing good representation), I want to believe they wouldn’t purposefully try to hurt queer fans with queerbaiting or byg. I want to believe they don’t actually hate mlm. 

Narrative is complicated and sometimes things are done that will unknowingly cause harm, or that were topics that the writers didn’t understand enough to properly execute. Things that may seem so obvious to the people who were hurt could truly be things that hadn’t occurred to the writers. And that’s not to excuse those writers from acknowledging their mistake, but to give them a chance to learn and improve. I think a great example is The Adventure Zone (slight spoilers ahead), and how Griffin McElroy handled the fans’ reaction after Sloane and Hurley died in Petals to the Metal. He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone but he made a decision that was very upsetting for many people and that wasn’t okay. But he listened and apologized and from there on not only tried to provide better representation, but asked about how he could do so, consulted the people he was trying to represent in order to do everything he could to not cause that kind of pain again. Creators are human and deserve second chances, as long as they show they are actively trying to improve.

Things will be learning experiences, but the people who are hurt in those learning experiences, and who are often the ones hurt in such things over and over, are still allowed to be hurt and upset. Intent is not effect. And for creators who want to be inclusive and supportive, it is their responsibility to accept criticism and work to avoid making the same mistakes. Like I said at the start of this, criticism is not harassment and harassment helps no one. Be as angry as you are, be as open as you need, but cruelty to people who are honestly trying to do good but will still make human mistakes just creates more pain and conflict. You don’t have to like it or forgive it but you can’t invalidate the people who are hurt, who do. 

I love RWBY. I want to love CRWBY. I want to keep watching. I want to keep supporting and trusting them. And maybe I’m letting a show have too much influence over me. Maybe it’s unhealthy to project so much on a character. Maybe things will prove to be necessary to tell the story they want to tell. But speaking as a neurodivergent, traumatized, grieving, queer person, I still feel betrayed and hurt by something that I trusted enough to be vulnerable about and I don’t want to sugarcoat or hide that. 

I can’t say I hate CRWBY or I’ve lost all hope in or respect for them, because I’ve related to them so much and know how complicated things like this can be. And because I don’t think I personally can write someone off while still in such an emotionally raw space. I’ll have to take some time to see if I’m able to watch the finale this weekend, but I will most likely watch it, if not just a bit later than I usually would. And RWBY has thrown big surprises at us before, and I can’t know what will happen in the finale and how it will feed into or try to heal some of the pain we’re feeling. But regardless of what the narrative intent is in Clover’s death, it needs to be acknowledged that episode 12 alone, ending on such an intense scene that wouldn’t be resolved for at least a week, hurt people. And CRWBY needs to acknowledge and take responsibility for it. I can’t say that I’m the most up to date on social media and what each person involved with volume 7 has said in the past few months. But I know that numerous official twitter accounts posted things that led people to put more credibility in Fairgame, myself included. And that even after seeing how big the ship had gotten, and knowing what the outcome was, some of CRWBY continued to seemingly feed into the excitement, even teasing about how hard episode 12 would hit us. 

That’s honestly one of the reasons I think this feels not just like bad writing or something, but betrayal. Of course RT can’t control everything everyone involved with RWBY posts, but for a company that has tried to seem so supportive of lgbt and mentally ill fans, they should have, at the very least, not have fed the flame and given people hope and supposed credibility that they knew would crumble after this episode. It feels like, even if they hadn’t intended this entire plot point to come across the way it has, they saw us going down this path and egged us on for added shock factor. 

And even if somehow the finale fixes everything, it doesn’t undo that hurt. It makes me think of the trailers for Insatiable when it first came out. How toxic and fat shaming they seemed and how people reacted poorly to it, but then all the people involved responded with how positive the show was, and that people shouldn’t judge it before they saw it. Or those “joke” videos or posts of kids coming out and the parents getting angry but then it’s about some stupid other thing. It’s meant to trigger a very sensitive issue, that people who have gone through traumas related to those issues are all too familiar with seeing over and over. So why would they have faith that this wasn’t just another one of those times when everything they see points to the opposite? Why trigger people who have already been hurt, for the sake of shock factor? It’s poor and callous writing. 

And that’s what this feels like. It feels like we were exploited in order to make this hurt more. And maybe that was a very unfortunate accident. But CRWBY still needs to acknowledge that they made mistakes, and do what they can to prove to the fans that they still deserve our trust. And that’s not going to be an easy one and done thing. For some it may never be enough, and that is completely valid. 

Of course everyone has different histories and issues that can lead them to be drawn to a certain show or character. And creators can’t ever know for sure that they won’t bring up painful things for any of their fans, and often trying to do so can make the content and message suffer. But even though everyone might not have a story that is as “obviously” traumatic as mine, might not have things they so directly relate to in Qrow and in Clover’s death,  they’re all still valid in the pain they’re feeling. One of my least favorite things about living with grief is people thinking that their traumas and struggles aren’t as big or important as my own. 

This week I’ve told people how hard a time I’m having, and why. And the people who know my backstory understood. The people who didn’t know though, brushed it off as crazy fangirl, tumblr discourse drivel. Even to my face after I told them how much I was hurting, they would groan about people getting so obsessed with fictional characters. You shouldn’t have to know why something negatively affects someone the way it does in order to respect the fact that it does. And I’m not more valid in my pain than people with “smaller” reasons. The fact is that a lot of people are hurting. A lot of queer and mentally ill people are reliving trauma. And like me, many of these people trusted CRWBY to be supportive, to be a comfort in a world where it’s hard to find sometimes. And that makes it hurt all the more.

I wasn’t in the fandom when Monty died, so I don’t know a lot about how CRWBY handled it, what they said publicly, what inevitable fandom discourse there was about how to navigate things. The only reason I bring him up at all, (because I’ve seen people mention him in discourse posts before and it’s usually hurtful and out of line and I truly hate it) is because he, and how CRWBY continues to honor him by keeping his creation going, is a huge part of why I feel so attached to it. My creative focus is on talking about Emma, about honoring her, telling her story, about sharing my grief with people. And while it’s extremely important to me, it’s also terrifying to think about people one day saying I let her down, or that because I made certain decisions I ruined the work or anything like that. And whether or not I am currently happy with every member of CRWBY doesn’t affect the fact that I will always keep in mind that RWBY is something directly tied to someone they’ve lost and it can be extremely difficult to have that kind of work criticized and not get defensive or angry (that’s not to say we can’t criticize things that are made in honor of someone, but that we need to remember there are still people dealing with grief on the other end of what we say). They’ll react poorly to certain things, they’ll say the wrong things, they’ll but heads with opinionated fans. And that’s not to excuse them for that, or to say we shouldn’t hold them accountable and communicate our problems with them and expect them to learn from past mistakes. But they aren’t faceless monsters in some big corporation who just make this for the money. They have real emotional investment in their work and I honestly believe they are well intentioned and want to support lgbt and mentally ill fans. But good intentions don’t ensure there won’t be negative impact, and if they truly want to keep, or regain fans’ trust and support they need to show they understand that. 

It may be naive and there may be things I don’t know that might have changed my view but until now, even with some writing choices I didn’t love, I've really liked CRWBY and trusted them. I personally can’t say I hate them and write them off right now. I understand if you can, if this was the last straw or just proving your view, and that’s all valid. But I want to, as much as possible, believe that they’re well intentioned. RWBY is far from perfect. CRWBY is far from perfect. But that’s ok. As long as there’s effort to improve and acknowledge mistakes and try to make amends

It’s possible that things I’ve said here may anger some people, and unfortunately, as much as I tried to avoid it, may hurt CRWBY. Because as hurt and angry with them as I might be right now, I don’t want to hate them or hurt them.  I’m human as well, and I’m very passionate about this and have a very personal attachment to it. So I acknowledge that it is totally possible that I have said something here that I could have handled better. If so, please, let me know. Constructively. If you need to, privately. Don’t attack me for it. I know when a conversation is toxic to me and I will not put myself in that position and will block people. But I want to be open to criticism, just as I want CRWBY to be. I want to know what I did wrong and how I can work to do better in the future. There are also certain things that I firmly believe that I know not everyone will like. And that’s okay. I have my own ways of dealing with grief and pain that will inevitably conflict with others. In those cases, while I won’t apologize for being honest about how I feel, I will understand and listen to how I may have hurt you. Different opinions and ways of coping will always be a part of grief conversations and it is less about making others agree with you and more about giving people a place to express their pain. 

This is ridiculously, stupidly, long and honestly I’m not sure there’s a clear point and if you read through it all the way, you’re a saint. But I just needed to get this out, and I hope that maybe, somehow, through the ranting, it might help someone feel less alone in their pain, or feel validated. I started writing this on Sunday and wanted to post it before the finale. It’s now Friday and who knows if there’s really any point to posting it now, but still. 

I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I don’t know how I will handle it. I’ve seen discourse that made me anxious all over again all week. I’ve seen jokes or edits or trolls that made me sick. But there are people out here for you. There are people to talk to who will just listen. You aren’t alone. And while I can’t promise you that everything will be okay, I can promise you that there will be people here to help you get through it. There are ways to get through it. They’re not always fun or ideal, but they’re there. And eventually you’ll be able to feel okay again. The pain might not be gone for good, but you’ll have good moments again. You’ll learn how to create good moments. I still want to believe that “broken” people can be happy again, even though the world may try to show me otherwise over and over. It’s not easy, and sometimes I honestly just don’t see how it can possibly be true. But I keep trying to get back to those good places and appreciate them, for as long as I can. 

[lumilasi]

Redesigned his timeskip look a bit as I didn’t like the original hair, and added an image of his new back tattoo. (The old one was kind of a mess and ugly bleh)

The incidents talked about here are both stuff brought up in the fic he first appeared in. (Reanimate) 

Rest of the bio below:

Age: 23

Sexuality: Biromantic demisexual

RYUU’S QUIRK EXPLAINED

Quirk name: Crystallization

BASICS

Ryuu’s Crystallization power allows him to turn the things he touches into ice-like crystalline substance, that evaporates overtime like dry ice. It never melts into liquid. In truth, his quirk isn’t a typical “freezing” quirk, given he doesn’t actually ‘freeze’ anything even if it looks like it. He turns things themselves into this supposed “ice.” Meaning he changes the very molecular structure of the object he’s touching from whatever it is into his “ice” crystals. His ice by default is much denser and stronger than normal ice, although he can keep some of the original properties of whatever he crystallizes if he wishes so, so it can even be made stretchy and flexible.

 A side effect caused by his parental heritage creating his current quirk has caused his body to be denser in a sense, making him much faster and stronger than average fit person or an average pro hero.

QUIRK WEAKNESSES

The power tends to have backlash towards him, that usually manifests in his own skin starting to turn icy and potentially leave him with frostbites; it also can cause his mind to slow down and hibernate in a way, making him sluggish and sleepy, both usually happen due to overuse of his power. 

He’s almost constantly risking going into overdrive because of how much energy his body is capable of storing. In fact, that build up of energy can then burst out without his control and crystallize anything around him without his consent, even his companions if they don’t manage to block it. (In a sense, he has the opposite problem of Kain; Kain has too little energy to use, Ryuu has too much)

Ryuu’s quirk has a few different types of “crystalization” he uses: Object I Vapor/particle I Lethal

OBJECT CRYSTALLIZATION

Basically turns anything he touches into this ice-like substance, speed depends on the size of the object. He can choose if he just wants to turn the thing into pure, rigid and cold crystal, or if he’ll let it keep some of the original properties like the flexibility of canvas or strength of steel, or even the original temperature of the object. Bigger targets take longer to crystallize naturally.

If he doesn’t manage to crystallize the object all the way through, it’ll return back to its original state eventually, completely unharmed. 

VAPOR/PARTICLE CRYSTALLIZATION

Allows him to crystallize any vapors/dust/particles in the air basically and turn them into his preferred ice-spear weapons. He can even create large domes or walls fairly quickly in ideal conditions, such as high humidity, snowfalls, pollution in cities, even just dust blowing in deserts to name a few.

LETHAL CRYSTALLIZATION

Infection: Basically he can kill you fairly quickly and painfully by turning your body into crystals. This happens by “infecting” his target with crystallization by poking them with his icicles or any sharp object he has crystallized, making the effect spread across their body fairly quickly. He’s naturally immune to this aspect of his own quirk, so he can’t turn himself into a crystal like this.

If the spread is stopped on time, the crystal particles eventually evaporate and leave the target unharmed. This is usually done by blocking the blood flow to the injected area, or in severe cases cutting off the limb. Ryuu can also decide consciously when infecting people if he wants it to be lethal or not.

PERSONALITY SUMMARY

Ryuu is blunt, straightforward young man with a temper, who doesn’t always think before he acts/says something. He’s not the smartest pea in the pod, more used to relying on his instincts and gut feeling than brains. 

As a villain, he naturally has a violent streak to his personality, and enjoys torturing people he has personal beef with in very brutal manner. He’s not as unreasonable of a maniac as the media and law-enforcement likes to portray him as however; Ryuu generally doesn’t attack people for no reason. (The reasons can be petty, but usually the level of violence inflicted does correlate to how badly you pissed him off; stealing shit from him isn’t gonna warrant a death sentence, hurting his peers will)

He’s a very loyal companion to anybody who’s earned his respect and trust, but not the type to blindly follow you. He’ll only give his trust to those who allow him to call them out if they do something he’s not comfortable with. He is able to sympathize with people to an extent, especially if they’ve had similar experiences in childhood, such as terrible parenting and bullying/being blamed for things you didn’t do/fear over your power you can’t help having. How far this sympathy extends does depend on if he likes you personally, or not. It’s generally not a “get away with any bullshit” card with him.

He’s not gonna care about your sob story if you go and harm an innocent animal, for example. 

BACKGROUND STORY

Ryuu’s original parents (Toushou) left him in foster care for Katagiri family, as they felt dealing with a child while also attending to the cause of Meta Liberation Army would become too difficult for them. Ryuu grew up pretty much knowing nothing of his parents, as his foster family did not bother telling him anything about them; Katagiris were convinced the parents would not come back anyway since they’d pretty much given the child away because he was “an obstacle” for their cause.

After Ryuu’s quirk manifested, it began to cause a lot of trouble as he couldn’t really control it so well, and the poorer rural area he lived in did not exactly have the equipment to deal with a situation where a child’s power is so volatile it can severely harm someone (turn people into ice statues, not freeze them with a coat of ice, but their flesh, bones, blood, all that itself turned to ice-like substance)

As a result, Ryuu was pretty much shunned by the community, and he was lonely for the most part as people were too afraid to play with him or even talk to him; he ended up getting bullied a lot because he was too scared to lash back at anyone in fear of hurting them.

Then a strange, ginger child suddenly showed up one day after he’d ran into the woods to prevent another burst of ice from escaping his body. (Ryuu had fits often where his power would just lash out and freeze everything around him instantly)

Ryuu made friends with the strange kid, a boy named Kain, who eventually helped him to master his power better. He also learns from his new friend that he’s being held in a secret facility, where his dad uses his quirk to “help” people as he puts it, though it’s pretty clear it’s something shadier.

Kain almost never shows his face to the villagers themselves, usually showing up only when Ryuu is alone somewhere, stating that if he shows himself, his dad will find out and make it impossible for Kain to get out and come see his friend.

As Ryuu grows, he starts slowly to get back at the people who bully him, thanks to Kain’s encouragement to not be afraid of his own power, as that’s what causes him to not be able to control it.

As a teen, Ryuu gets into fights and trouble a lot, often being yelled at or otherwise punished by the Katagiris. He doesn’t really care at this point, having long since stopped finding anything they say important. In turn, the family has started to slightly fear him for a whole new reasons.

Then, Kain suddenly stops appearing for weeks. It gets to the point Ryuu goes to seek out the place his friend said the base was, but finds nothing.

Meanwhile, some of the villagers had started to think that enough was enough, that Ryuu was becoming too dangerous for them to have around, and thus the village’s council had arranged a meeting to discuss what to do with the “disturbed foster-child.” Some of these villagers sneak after the boy secretly at night, deciding to take matters into their own hands before the town-council could actually make a decision.

They attempt to attack and kill him in the forest, but Ryuu lashes back, killing all of them instead. Now, sunken into bitter anger and dozen of chaotic emotions, he heads back to the village and destroys his foster-home, injuring the Katagiris severely, and he also attacks and kills most members of the village council, before running away.

During his run however, Kain reaches out to him, telling him to stay strong and keep going as he’d eventually come back, once he would find a way to get rid of his father. Ryuu decides to cling to this hope that maybe one day, his friend would return and prove he was real.

During his wait, Ryuu runs into a girl called Ezuko, who was somewhat falsely accused of murder (It was accidental) and she was never given a chance to explain her side of the story. Sympathizing with her due to his childhood of people making assumptions instead of hearing him out, he helps her out by bringing her to Giran, a man who generally helped out people like her who were down on their luck, including people who got thrown into the underworld without really meaning to do so. He hangs around her for a while, but eventually leaves figuring his constant presence could be bad for her, given how high his villain rank was becoming.

After reuniting with his childhood friend, and spending years travelling into alternate worlds with Kain in-between stopping by the small home of Kain’s childhood babysitter who’d allowed them to use her small village home as their sanctuary, he eventually ends up reuniting with Ezuko after asking Giran for a small favor, not knowing she still worked for him. This reunion was awkward at first as it takes him a moment to remember who the hell she was. Ultimately, he was glad to see she was okay, and they accept her into their weird secret family, with Ryuu eventually realizing that he perhaps was developing more feelings for her than just friendship.

(Wasabi and his mum Kei of course tease him about it, stating that he had a type, given Ezuko is another smart black-and-red wearing redhead in his life that he was fond of)

Few more extra details;

- Ryuu’s name translates roughly to “honorable/dutiful dragon of the lagoon,” and he has a dragon tattoo on his back. 

- He and Kain share the same blood type

- His original surname Toushou ,translates to Frostbite. He is using his original surname’s English translation as his villain name on purpose as a “fuck you” to his parents. Katagiri was the surname of the orphanage keepers, and him using their surname as a known villain is another “fuck you” towards them.

- Ryuu is pretty immune to seduction tactics because he tend to require a strong emotional connection first before being attracted to anyone. He will legit just stare dully at you if you try to flirt with him, and depending on the situation, might just skewer you with one of his spears, or “freeze” (crystallize technically) you to death because you’re being annoying.

- He’s not attracted to Kain/have a crush on him despite what some may think; their relationship is purely platonic and familial almost. This becomes even clearer once Ezuko drops back into his life, as he develops pretty clear feelings towards her. 

- Ryuu actually still has slight bit of morality left, and Kain tends to let him choose what to do in certain situations, especially if he notices Ryuu is not comfortable with what they’re doing

- he tends to come off as childish a lot due to his tendency to not focus on the here and now so much and basically doing his own thing constantly

- Kain has taught Ryuu bit of English and French, but while Ryuu is pretty fluent in former, he only remembers insults and curse-words from the latter.

- Ryuu has been characterized as an avid animal-lover by the law enforcement due to his tendency to be behind cases that involve punishing animal abusers. While he tends to be nicer to animals by default than humans, he is not as strict about it as this label combined with him being a criminal makes people think; he still eats meat for example. 

- In truth his tendency to aid animals comes from his habit of wanting to aid those who can’t help/protect themselves, thanks to how he didn’t really get much support and help as a child apart from Kain. This means he is likely to help out a kid in need, such as how he’s bonded with a boy named Wasabi Saname, becoming a bit of a big brother figure to him. 

Blank template for this

Bio sheet base (C) yourultraarchive

Oc (C) Me

[occasional-darksides-doodles]

Hells Cross Academy: Sanders sides AU

Hells Cross Academy is a school for the supernatural to go, whether it be demons, demigods, wolves, woodnyphs, elf's, or the undead, if your supernatural that's your one stop shop for education.

The giant castle is on the end of Hells Cross Valley, Connected to Cross Counter City. The school receives a significant amount of funding every year, and will continue to get more with the increasing halfling population.

In Hells Cross we have many classes such as potion making, magic, dark arts, science, arts, theater, computing, game design, English, Japanese, draconic, demonic, elvish, lycancy study, and may other wonderful programs.

Students from all around the globe and in the globe travel to the school for top notch education.

Our dorms are always in pristine conditions for both teachers and students to use! Dorms can hold up to 9 in a small community housing like room, as each room is about the size of a 4 bedroom apartment, and sharing is recommended by staff so the children may make friends with each other.

The communal dorm housing room has 2 bathrooms, 1 open space kitchen, 1 living area, 4 bedrooms with 2 inbuilt study areas and large walk in robes, and a storage room for those who may need it, such as witches and sorcerers.

Hells Cross Academy has a relaxed uniform policy while on school grounds, but the uniform is recommend for those who may be taking the built in train system to Cross Counter City or Hells Cross Valley.

Potion material collection is between 5-9 pm, those who wish to go at a custom time or early morning please speak with madam dragon witch, as she will accompany a small group out. Those who sneak out past curfew (half an hour past midnight) will be punished and put under house arrest.

The cafeteria is open from 4 am till 10 minutes before curfew, and custom orders are open. Please use your student allowance to buy food, and if you are having trouble please speak to some of our staff.

Your student allowance is 2000 a month, which is used for everything, from food to clothes to travel to replacing broken supplies. Students in the technology, fashion, theater, arts, music, and outer knowledge language departments shall be granted and extra 1000 if needed. Please use your allowance wisely.

If you run out of money there are many jobs you can get at Cross Counter City and you will be granted extra help for being a student at Hells Cross Academy.

If you have any remaining questions about your time here at our school please contact principal Thomas J. Sanders or Madam Draconia Wither (Dragon Witch). Thank you for your time and enjoy your education at Hells Cross Academy.

Orientation is mandatory and in 5 days (Monday).

- Principal Thomas J. Sanders & Vice principal Tallen Kat

Characters

Virgil Blackwitch

She is the so called "Princess of Hells Cross High", a genderfluid shape shifter who loves causing mischief and slacking off. She changes his gender whenever they feel like it. Child of the queen of Hell, Lucifer. There father is a shape shifter so he is a half shape shifter. He always wears his crown due to missing home, but plays it off as showing off his power. After an encounter with Roman prince (see below) Virgil tends to stay far away from him. (I'll be drawing him when he feels like a boy as well don't worry)

Age: 16

Gender: genderfluid

Sexually: questioning

Team: Aspect

Likes: friends, spiders, mischief, hot coco.

Dislikes: Prince Pain! Studying, getting in trouble or caught causing trouble.

Proficiencies: most magic (black specifically), potion making, shape shifting, witch craft.

Familiar: spider named Charles.

Weapon: grim reaper scythe (a gift from his mother).

Patton heart

Patton heart is the son of the grim reaper and is half human half reaper. He is best friends with Virgil and Logan. He puts on a nonthreatening appearance so people won't be so afraid of him. He is next in line in his family to be the grim reaper even though he doesn't want to, and is trying to make friends and enjoy life while he's here. He and Virgil have known each other since they where kids and there family is very close, they are best friends and Patton has a crush on Virgil. (normally wears a white hooded cape with a heart on the back, also he's covered in freckles but the app doesn't have a freckle option)

Age: 16

Gender: male

Sexually: panromantic ace

Team: Aspect

Likes: helping people, colorful band aids, Virgil, friends

Dislikes: mean people, accidentally hurting people, spiders

Proficiencies: hand to hand combat, black, magic, social skills, most languages, animal communication

Familiar: a cat named purrline, a little ghost who's watching over Patton (sent by his father)

Weapon: family scythe, has a needle in his backpack he also uses.

Roman prince

Roman is a celestial demi-god, his father is a half human half witch, while his mother is a celestial goddess. He came to the school on his parents request, and wants to marry Virgil, whom he believes is the person he's destined to marry from a prophecy he was told as a child. The prophecy in question was one where a heroic demi god born from the celestial goddess would join the sky's above and the depths below by defeating the evil prince born from the queen of hell with love, joining the two kingdoms in a peace treaty. He's very certain that Virgil is the one from the prophecy (and totally not because Virgil is super cute or anything nahhh). Hes very heroic and strong headed so he tends to act before thinking (ie. Proposing to Virgil in the middle of the hallway). He and the dragon witch do not get along to a point where its almost comical to watch them argue. His halo is actually a color humans and non celestial beings can't comprehend, thus it looks blue in the day and yellow at night, and it always glows. He wears his hair in a high bun (his hair goes a little past his shoulders when down).

Age: 17

Gender: bigender (agender and male)

Sexually: questioning

Team: Aspect

Likes: Virgil ♡, astrology, acting, singing, friends

Dislikes: being ignored, violence, spiders, the Dragon Witch!

Proficiencies: hand to hand combat, mele and sword fighting, white and light magic, astrology, all languages, most creative classes and skills.

Familiar: poko the pup (he changes from household pet to ferocious monster when need be)

Weapon: hero's sword (it's a regular sword he's had since he was a kid)

Logan Crofter

Logan Crofter is half woodnymph half wearwolf (part witch). his mother is a woodnymph and his father is a half-witch infected with lycanthropy. nobody knew logans father had lycanthropy, not even Logan's father, and they didn't find out until Logan's mother was already pregnant. Logan didnt show signs of lycanthropy until age 12, when he grew ears and a tail over the course of a week. he has a crush on patton. Flowers grow from his hair and tail when he's emotional. He covers the scratch marks on his cheeks with bandaids Patton gives him. He hates most magic and supernatural courses. He sticks around his roommates because there the only people he really knows. He's anti social and has autism (aspergers).

Age: 15 (3 months off becoming 16)

Gender: questioning (thinking demi boy or trigender)

Sexually: homoromantic demisexual

Team: Aspect

likes: science, astronomy, plants, reading, Patton, some potion making.

Dislikes: loud noise, weed killer, cages, full moons, magic class

Proficiencies: english, maths, computing, literacy, gardening, animal communication, animal handling, beast training, witch craft.

Familiar: none

Weapon: his claws, plant life, or offensive magic (witch craft)

Dolion Viper

Dolion Viper is the son of Dolos, his mother is a naga. He likes the others a lot. He doesn't like to mention the fact he's a demigod since he doesn't want people to be scared of him. He's not very social and sticks to the others. Most people call him Deceit since nobody but the group knows his real name. He tends to let his pet python penny rest around his shoulders when he goes out and is very rarely seen without her. He has a slight lisp when pronouncing the letter S, and gets embarrassed by it. His snake tail moves to convey how he's feeling, and he can use it like an extra arm. He has pointed elf like ears but he tends to wear a cat ear shaped beanie to hide them. He has a crush on everyone in the group and struggles to hide it, half of them know already. He wears his hair in a little pony tail.

Age: 17

Gender: gender fluid

Sexually: gay

Team: Esper (later moved to Aspect)

Likes: snakes, nature, painting, acting, friends, the others ♡

Dislikes: rude people, stereotypes, maths, cold weather

Proficiencies: animal handling, animal communication, beast training, dark arts, black magic, most creative classes and skills.

Familar: fox named Vixen, a 1'5 ft python named penny.

Weapon: multiple magical scissors, his tome.

Remy Paralax

Remy Paralax is a half alicorn sandman. He likes manipulating peoples dreams and causing mischif. he can use magic from his horn and can manipulate/sit and sleep on clouds. he doesnt like when people pull on his tail or hair (especially his ponytail) and will try to smack you. His stomach, legs (knee's down), and random patches around his body are a soft lavender. He tends to hang out in the city more then on the school grounds, and despite never going through his school allowance, works at a coffee shop called madam espresso, he gets paid in free coffee. He likes Virgil's attitude and tends to hang around him. Alot of people refer to Remy as Virgil's lacky, despite Virgil absolutely despising that term since Remy is one of his best friends. He's pretty efficient with a bat and has a nasty hit if he manages to hit you, most of the time he'll knock your head off.

Age: 17

Gender: trigender (male, female, agender)

Sexually: pan

Team: currently waiting to be assigned one

Likes: coffee, starbucks, sleeping, dreams, mischif

Dislikes: being woken up, daylight, yelling, spicy things

Proficiencies: physical combat, hand to hand combat, mele combat, baseball, white magic, weather patterns, cooking, drawing, animal handling, animal communication, beast taming.

Familiar: enchanti the giant rabbit (sent by his mother to keep him out of trouble)

Weapon: baseball bat

Emilie Pacini

Emilie Pacini is a unrestable spirit currently possesing a life sized doll. they love femmine clothing and lean more to the femminie side of the gender spectrum. Emilie isnt much of a fighter and as such only has magic to defend herself. he can posses other people with consent. He is on a waiting list to get a human body of a recently deceased, but its difficult because he's so young. He still ages (like all permanent spirits) and constantly has to modify the doll whenever he feels like she's supposed to grow, cut hair, adjust weight ect. But because of the limitations of the doll they can't be there actual weight, which tends to depress him slightly. She's training to become a nurse and knows a phenomenal amount of healing, calming, soothing, sleeping, ect. Magic, but knows very little combat magic. Absolutely hates people making fun of his appearance.

Age: 15 (16 in 1 month)

Gender: genderfluid (feels bigender male and female most of the time)

Sexuality: demisexual

Team: Esper (later moved to Aspect)

Likes: soft toys, disney, cartoons, puppets, friends

Dislikes: fire, sharp objects, salt, holy water, yelling

Proficiencies: white magic, healing magic, calming magic, music, woodwork/doll crafting, craft in general, medicine, psychology, biology, science, potion/medicine making.

Familiar: none

Weapon: none, uses magic to defend herself

[one-of-the-birds]

My Sexuality?

This is a post I’ve been planning for a while now. Yes, I did wait to post it because this is Pride month, but also because I think I have finally been able to write down all my thoughts and actually have them make some sense. Below may contain triggers for others because I will talk about a not so positive family reaction as well as a small bit about my rape story. If these are triggers to you please know this is the only warning. I won’t be mad or judge you if you can’t read this. I understand.

So here goes nothing I guess...

I guess my journey started out in Middle School. That's when a lot of my friends started to finally notice the opposite sex... yet I found myself attracted to both? I thought there was something wrong with me. Mainly because I was raised in a Christian household and was told from a young age that it’s Adam/Eve and nothing else. I remember asking my mother about it and she told me that I was "overthinking" things and that I should just focus on school and nothing else.

 In my 7th grade year I became very close friends with an 8th grade girl. We had gym class together. I don't know why I asked her - probably because she was older and therefore knew the answer - about if it was normal to like both a boy and a girl. She laughed and told me that she prefers girls over guys and that it was perfectly normal to like both or one over the other.

I'm going to skip ahead a few years to my freshman year of high school. At this point I knew I like both boys and girls, so I called myself bisexual. Those I spent time with both in and out of school were either gay or bisexual themselves so a part of me also called myself bisexual because I wanted to fit in. I still hadn’t gotten the strength to tell my parents. I wanted to so badly because I saw how warm and friendly they (mostly my mother here my father wasn’t really okay but knew better than to say anything) to my friends who came out to them in tears over the fact that their parents reacted violently. My mother held several meetings for “concerned” parents to help them understand that yes, their child may love someone of the same sex but they are still your child. She would give my friends the love and support that their parents didn’t… Yet I had this sinking feeling in my gut that it just wouldn’t go as smoothly for me (and oh boy was I right. My parents are still in denial over the fact that I’m not straight. They will check in every now and then to see if I am done with “this foolishness about being gay”. They’ve been asking me this for eight years or so and my answer is still that I shit rainbows).

I was asked to join the LGBT club by the president who was one of my friends and I actually ended up being the historian for the group for a year which was cool... Anyway, I learned about so many other forms of sexuality and that there was even different types of romances!?!? My mind was blown to pieces.

Some of the older members who were confident in their sexualities where kind enough (and patient enough) to sit down and talk to me and the other younglings about how to know what/who you are. I remember being horrified over an answer that was given by one of the older members about how to know if you are straight or gay or bi or whatever. It went something around the lines of "imagine who you would want to fuck or make out with for seven minutes if you were locked in a closet together during 'seven minutes of heaven' or any other game like that. If it’s a guy and you are a guy well looks like you might be gay." The thing that horrified me the most was the idea of kissing someone I had no connection to! Someone I didn't know well enough! The idea literally made me sick. Yet when I closed my eyes to imagine who would be in there with me… it kept changing between both a girl and a guy. So that just reinforced the idea that I was bisexual.

My sophomore year was rough for several different reasons. The main reason was my depression peaked and I had to be hospitalized… I won’t get into that mess of a story here though. The summer before my sophomore year started I entered into my first true relationship. I won’t give his real name, so for now on we will refer to him as X, mainly because I can’t even look at his real name without feeling sick even after all these years…  Anyway X acted like the perfect first time boyfriend. He was a year older than me (so my sophomore year was his junior year) and was part of one of the many friend groups I often visited. All summer X was a gentleman. He would come over and we would simply talk or watch TV or go out to the movies. The most “sexual” was a few make out sessions that he would end because he didn’t want to “rush me”. How sweet, right? Well fast forward to when school finally started back up again. Gone was the sweet boy who would talk to me for hours and hours about his hopes and dreams for the future and what was left was this distrustful guy who I began to fear. He would get so jealous if I spent time with anyone but him. If I ate lunch with another group of friends he would yell at me after school about abandoning him… He accused me a few times of cheating as well if I hugged one of my guy friends. (Which in all honestly was ironic as fuck because he was apparently fucking his ex the whole time we were “together”.) If I tried to walk away when he got into one of his moods he would grab my arm so hard that it would bruise. I would often have to wear long sleeves or a jacket to hide the bruises on my arms that fit his hand perfectly…

It was November when he raped me. He came over to my house one weekend without telling me before hand and asked if I would take a walk with him. That he wanted to talk to me. Of course I was an idiot and agreed to leave with him… He started off with how sorry he was for how he had been treating me. He fed me lie after lie about how he would change and be a better boyfriend to me and I was stupid enough to fall for each one. By this point we were at “our spot” which to be honest wasn’t much of anything. It was the underside of a bridge, which sloped down into the creek by my house. It was private yet still open to the public. I always felt safe there… I could be “alone” without truly being alone… or so I thought…

It was at that spot where he forced himself on me. He kept telling me that this was what couples who are in love do. That it was my role as his girlfriend to do it with him. He was rough and I bled so much….

After that I didn’t want a male to touch me again. We of course broke up and after that I couldn’t find it in myself to date another guy. I entered into my first relationship with a girl not too long after my attack. She became more like my protector as I tried to pull myself together rather than that of a girlfriend. The rest of my sophomore year happened and it was a hot mess.

The last two years of high school was a mix between several bad relationships between several different people (and genders). While the LGBT club was shut down after my sophomore year (what can I say, I went to school in Texas), I continued to research about different sexualities because despite what everyone kept telling me I just didn’t feel connected to the label of Bisexual. It just didn’t feel like it was me? That is when I stumbled upon Pansexuality…. However the definition I stumbled upon was wrong in a few ways. Yes, it said that I didn’t care what gender my partner was (which is generally the definition) BUT it also went on to say that those who were Pan needed an emotional connection in order to find someone attractive (which is very incorrect).

I stuck with that definition for several years after I found it. It just made sense to me. I didn’t care if I was with a guy or girl or non- binary person but rather that we had this strong connection.

I will admit I feel like a complete idiot for actually telling others that…. Please don’t hate me. Once I learned the truth I quickly did my best to correct my mistakes…

Anyway here I am at 23.

Just a few months ago I reblogged a post that went into detail about Asexuals and all those that fall under that category. Of course I read it and proceeded to research the hell out of all the different types of sexualities that are under the Asexual umbrella. One stood out the most to me though: Demisexual.

Demisexual - "a person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone."

I couldn’t believe that there was actually a sexuality that could put into words how I felt!!  I have been unable to feel any sort of sexual attraction to anyone unless I knew them, truly knew them, for years and years and I always thought I was broken that I wasn’t doing things right… that I was somehow broken…

I know I’m not Pansexual. That title just doesn’t fit me anymore. I am however Panromantic. I know that. But am I Demisexual? I honestly have no flipping clue…. I might be?

Do I really need to give myself a label though?

I know I’m not fully straight (despite the hate mail I get telling me I must be because my fiancé is a cis male and therefore I am not part of the community. Honestly do you people have nothing better to do than to send hate mail to others? Like I’m never going to publish your hate. I just delete any message I get that is hateful).

I’m leaning towards the tile of being Panromantic Demisexual.

So yeah. This was long-winded and if you actually read all of this I’m impressed. If you happen to be Demisexual as well please feel free to message me. I’d love to know more people who consider themselves Demi. I have questions and would like someone to talk to about all of this.

[apocvlypsed]

( snoop dogg vc ) greetings loved ones, let’s take a journey! 

it’s linc comin’ atchu with my third, the one & only, the precious, the marshmellow cute fellow, casey bouchard !  below you shall find a brief backstory, an array of headcanons, & some general suggestions for all ur plotting needs .

tyler young — oh, have you met casey bouchard? he is a nineteen year old cis male that is feeling apprehensive about the planet’s imminent doom. a film student, this virgo is known around town as the raconteur, because he is introspective & altruistic, as well as escapist & frangible. hopefully, case will survive.

overview/backstory blurb thing :

he’s the son of hawley’s mayor, it’s casual?? he’s v supportive of both his mothers, but like... also really doesn’t enjoy small town living? he’s a city boi so... having his mother literally up and move them to this middle-of-nowhere place in pennsylvania for love... he supported it out of necessity but? would much rather be back in nyc with his boyz?

ya boy’s originally from brooklyn, nyc born and raised! his father was kinda... never in the picture? ( translation: as soon as raising an infant got difficult, he peaced tf out and refuses to pay child support. mainly bc like... he disappeared. yup. nice guy. )  anyway! in response to this, his mother joined an online support group for single mothers -- just a chatroom where they could all kind of talk and relate to one another about the aches & pains of raising children on their own? well. on this forum, sharon friedman happened to receive a direct message from anna bouchard, and so it all began...

after years of talking with anna on the phone and over skype, casey was finally like, “ma, you gotta just meet her.” so when he was 15, he practically forced his mom to rent a car and they made a road trip out to hawley, pa to meet this woman that had so clearly captured his mother’s heart. he was like: yes ok, good !!  good! because casey believes in love and fate and red strings. what he wasn’t really counting on was... staying... in hawley... sharon couldn’t bring herself to leave hawley after their visit. casey couldn’t bring himself to deny his mother a chance at love and happiness after being so alone. who was he to say no to that? so he wasn’t the asshole he could have been -- he could have thrown a fit about their home, his school, his bae, his life back in nyc. but instead, he suggested that they move there, filled out the transfer papers for hawley high himself. and so he entered a new world as a sophomore, completely and utterly overwhelmed by the newfound quiet, slowness. he dealt. joined the photography club, became chief photographer and editor for the yearbook. to everyone else, he was thriving. and like... yes ok, maybe he was, but there was this part of him that still... longed for new york. the place that held his heart.

in his junior year of high school, anna announced her campaign for mayor !!  so naturally, casey was RIGHT THERE supporting the love of his mother’s life. printing flyers, handing out cute buttons and cupcakes at school. bc he loves his mother and his mother loves anna, so it just... made sense. but he... at this point he really missed the city; he was looking at nyu and columbia as options for post-secondary school. that is, until anna won the election and moved on from board of education to freakin’ mayor !

but what no one told him was how being the mayor’s son would affect him. when anna and his mother married, he kindly chose to keep his mother’s surname, friedman. but with a mayor in the family? it would seem suspicious to have a child with a mismatched surname. anna’s pr people basically coerced him into taking on her surname, bouchard. and y’know, it was the right thing to do. but it felt a lot like a sell-out.

being the mayor’s son also meant being in photos instead of taking them. which was..... not his forte? still isn’t. he’ll go through it for his mom, but casey thrives behind the scenes. he enjoys letting other people shine, paying witness to that.

he’s a film student now! studying in hawley because.... he couldn’t bring himself to abandon his mother, or to even approach her with pamphlets of city schools. she was so happy here, and he knew that giving her a reason to think he wasn’t... it would make her feel guilty. so ( another sell-out! ) he agreed to go to community college here. in his free time, he makes short films much like what mikey murphy makes on youtube . they’re never longer than 10 minutes -- they don’t have to be. they’re poignant. true. he’s got a way with the camera, a way with voiceovers and words and angles. all the fluff and frills aren’t necessary.

alright so... here’s the kicker. casey is a truthful person. he wears his heart on his sleeve. but lately he’s been made aware of some... i n f o r m a t i o n ... that could ruin the entire town and their relationship to their mayor, and his family. here’s the rundown:

he’s not a snoop. nope. but being the son of the mayor’s wife the mayor’s son involves helping out every so often. fielding, phone calls, organizing files, pr meetings... deleting emails.

so he stumbled upon an email thread detailing arrangements and transfers of large funds. for a bunker. for food. blankets. supplies. underground. using taxpayer money.

in a panic, he forwarded the emails to his personal email before deleting them off of anna’s computer.

why did he save them? why... why does he need them? because... they’re safe with him? or maybe they’re collateral? not that he.... he doesn’t need collateral, right? because the bunker helps him. ensures his survival, too. but here he is... carrying around this lethal information, not knowing what to do about it. wanting to tell those he’s close to, but he can’t because his mother loves anna and if he hurts anna, he hurts her, and himself. it’s... a predicament.

an array of headcanons! :

raisinets are casey’s weakness. if you wanna win him over, grab him a box. he will fall in love.

demisexual as fuck !!!  not the hookup type, but... let’s just say, it has happened before. takes a lot of alcohol. but he’s been there.

he adores old films. he SPRINTS to the little local theater when they have special features of anything vintage and cheesy. or even films like “back to the future” or “breakfast at tiffany’s”. he buys like 12 boxes of candy every time because he’s hella indecisive, swears he’ll decide when he sits down and then just... makes no decision and eats all of them. he unironically replaces his soda straw with a twizzler because.... it just Makes Sense, ok?

he’s got this wide-eyed attitude about the world. no way, you found half-priced avocados at rite aid? just... genuinely in this world because he adores it. the little things give him this breathless sense of joy. “i found a penny in the parking lot today!” he’ll chirp with pride to a room full of other film students that don’t give a shit. because... the unexpected tiny treasures are what make hawley worth staying. if he didn’t have those, he would have run back to nyc years ago.

casey wants so badly to believe there’s something greater about life. that it’s not some fragile wilting leaf to be tossed to the wind. he wants to fight for something and his way of doing that is easy smiles and a soft gaze.

he smells like cinnamon spice, vanilla, with subtle hints of amber, musk, and cedar. just like... how you might imagine a cool autumn day, with a gentle breeze. that’s really his disposition, too. that soft gust of wind that caresses your skin, ruffles your hair, makes you close your eyes and breathe in deeper.

he has a brooklyn accent and idk that’s just really important to me.

“one day” by kodaline is a Mood.

his personality/presence is a lot like “my favourite story” by jack in water? just... so lovely and quiet and soft.

he listens to vinyl bc his moms got him a player for hanukkah one year (lol they’re kinda in a great financial situation now that anna’s providing). so he’ll just lie down and stare at the ceiling and listen to the temptations and the beatles and belle & sebastien, lightly tapping his toes together, circling his feet. the simple things.

he gets quiet when he gets angry. as in, if you yell at him, he will lower his voice to a whisper so you have no choice but to lower yours and listen. he learned that from his mother and the countless arguments she got in with their landlord in brooklyn. it’s kind of a power move.

really allergic to cats and dogs! he gets the sniffles! but does he still always say hi and seek them out?? yes!!

he kind of... he kind of wants to make a film to put in the time capsule. he’s working on it, slowly. a film of hawley. of life before the asteroid. he’s absolutely the type to break out his camera or phone and film his friends without asking. highly sentimental. all the zooms, all the laughs and smiles and eye rolls before they inevitably cover the lens with their hands. he finds beauty in everything. or, rather, everything has the capacity to be beautiful, with some investment in time/angles. he films all those tiny moments, those pointless little dinner dates or hikes in the woods because... if he films his friends, if he films these moments... then they’ll never really die. they’ll exist on an sd card, or icloud, or... somewhere. and then his friends won’t die. his family won’t die. they’ll be there, immortalized on film. so film is... his craft. his passion. but also his way of avoiding the future, evading the bleak limitations of human existence. it’s his way of grappling with the asteroid, denying that big rock any of its power. because casey... he’s got a camera and he’s got time, and no boulder careening toward the planet can rip that away from him. ( it’s flawed logic. he knows. but it’s something. )

connection ideas :

step-brother/sister: they’re anna (the mayor)’s biological child. and i will probably send a wc in for this eventually, but basically they’re the second half of the reason why anna and sharon even met. i imagine things are kinda... interesting... between them and casey? being thrust into a new family, and now a family in the limelight... it’s complicated. they’re probably like, 20-24, a bit older.

friends: people from high school, people from college, etc. casey loves them dearly.

art squad: alright he... just really needs people to cry over great films with, honestly.

love interest: uhm he is so gentle and just... think about the gentle hand touches and linking of pinkies as they stand in the snack line at the theater and just... making fools of themselves ice skating & doing dumb shit? pls?

someone he wrongfully trusted:  aight... this is some angst, y’all. someone who literally crushed him, or... spread a rumor, or something. just completely violated his trust. because casey does not know how to deal with that shit. he’s the type to smile sadly and talk to them, ignoring how his eyes are misting over a bit. “hey, how are you? oh yeah, i’m... good. good, really. you mentioned a while ago you were gonna be doing ___, how’s that?” and he’ll... keep himself in that conversation for as long as they’ll talk. because like... if he angles his perspective just right, he can almost blur out the tension and pretend it’s back to how things used to be.

brotp: okay i need it. taking polaroids and penning dates on them, getting giggly drunk on champagne and watching cheesy rom-coms. just... being dorks. pls & thanks

pictures of you: hear me out. someone who’s been in the background of his life. appears in photos for the hs yearbook, maybe shows up in his films he shoots around town. they’ve never really spoken but casey wants to. it’s just... the whole... introductions thing. “hey, you’re in a lot of my art! accidentally! what’s up?” doesn’t really fly.

people from nyc: idk if your muse was ever in nyc for an extended period of time let’s just.. let’s discuss ;)

neighbor(s): so since the bouchards are quite well off, casey’s got his own ~ luxury apartment ~ to himself, oo la la. but i imagine it’s part of a larger apartment complex, etc.

grocery store buds: “hello, how are you, wanna try to find ripe avocados with me?” becomes a saturday routine. they wait for their deli meat together too. so cute. #truelove. ya never know.

exes: i imagine casey wouldn’t have many of these, since he does have this really romanticized idea of love and carries with him high, virgo standards. but... these would’ve been special connections. and he probably mourns them a lot.

literally anything ever i love plots and we know this

[beaniepatrol]

controversial opinions:

NOTE: EVERYTHING I WILL CONTINUE TO SAY IS LIKELY WRONG, BASED IN NOTHING, POORLY ARTICULATED, AND BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

feminism

i see a lot of posts on here -- and heck, people in general -- saying something along the lines of ‘if you’re not a feminist then you’re apathetic and a really bad person’

this would make me apathetic and a really bad person because...

- i do not see feminism ‘sentiment’ or ‘belief’ or ‘way of thinking’ as others do. from what i know, it’s a movement based on sentiments/beliefs/ways of thinking. it does not own those things.

- as such, by this logic, just because one agrees with the beliefs feminism was supposed to have been founded on doesn’t mean they would be a feminist. 

this would mean that one can choose to call themselves a feminist, and even though i agree with its supposed principles, i cannot identify as one. however, i will support it where i agree with it. it’s a lot easier to think for myself that way.

i cannot articulate why that is right now, though, so please bear with me.

the lgbt+/queer community

just for the record i hate labels but for the sake of making this point i’ll say the label that best fits me is panromantic demisexual

anyway

i understand that since we seem to be a minority and since we face hatred, people want to be a part of a group that celebrates it because it feels validating/reassuring or whatever

i, however, am not one of those people. in fact, i feel like the idea of a community that lumps everyone who isn’t straight together just reinforces heteronormativity. sexuality isn’t about being either ‘straight’ or ‘something else’, so we need to stop treating it as though it is (unless i just live under a rock and that’s not what’s happening idk)

and on top of that, i don’t feel like being around the lgbt+ community as someone struggling with coming to terms with their sexuality or dealing with homophobia helps beyond gaining information about the experiences of others

instead i think that sort of help should be unbiased because like.. often times we assume we’ll be ‘like’ people with a sexuality similar to that of our own but that’s just really shallow. no one has the same experience as another person in that regard and assuming we do has been really harmful for me

another thing: “allies’” support matters more to me than that of people within the lgbt+ community, which we already know will be supportive. that’s not satisfying. seeking support solely within the community is productive when it comes to boosting confidence, but once we don’t need that anymore, it really isn’t productive at all

yet another thing: many of us are not activists, but we like to pretend we are, and it’s not productive. also, some people in the community are just taking pride in the fact that we’re ‘different’ when we’re really not and hypocritically shunning/stereotyping people (it’s unhealthy and doesn’t do anything good...and even if it’s a joke it’s just like...unnecessary and it’s possible we could end up internalizing it and believing in the joke, which is not good). i feel like we’re fighting for the wrong things, or just fighting for the right things in the wrong way. like, what’s our end goal? to get rid of heteronormativity? do we even know? all i know is the way tumblr talks about sexuality disturbs me even when it’s meant to be in a positivity post or whatever. it’s probably just a personal thing but...ugh

sorry my brain is fried and i can’t explain this.

also, i feel like in marriage equality laws or whatever, we should say that any sort of couple of legal age should be able to marry rather than simplifying it and making it about ‘oh gay couples can get married too’? it’s literally implied in the first way of saying it and offers more protections in general? i’m probably just being dumb though

please kill me now i’m terrible and this makes no sense

labels

we don’t need to label anything even when a label perfectly fits us. the idea that we have to have one erases nuance

also, i’ve found that saying “i’m attracted to people regardless of their gender and only feel attracted to people once i’ve gotten close to them” helps people think of me more ‘normally’ and understand me better

than they would if i were to tell them i’m ‘demi-pansexual’

because they’d either need me to explain and then just associate me with that label

or they’d make assumptions about me based on the labels that could be inaccurate

just saying

tumblr activism

making visceral arguments that people unlike us won’t understand and yelling at people/sending them hate for disagreeing with liberal viewpoints does not help either side. it just turns opposition further against you/make them take you less seriously. on top of this, it could make you even more resentful towards them, which isn’t productive either

also, so many people accusing conservatives of being apathetic aren’t even empathetic themselves because they refuse to understand them (or rather they think they do understand them but are actually just making assumptions). there are not a lot of empathic people in the world, unfortunately. am i one of them? probably not, but i do try to understand all sides, which is why i’m saying this in the first place 

in general

i know i’m wrong about all of this and can’t articulate anything and hate confrontation smh i don’t know why i bothered to say it

[communist-cat-girl]

Ok So

im on my shit again cause pragerU is still makin fuckin’ videos time to yell about PragerU - The Least Diverse Place In America

(0:08) They had me in the first quarter, im not gonna lie, i thought this would be some interestin social justice piece and that maybe prageru’s obvious racism and ignorance were instantly solved by this Charlie Kirk guy. I was so wrong.

(0:28) Okay because there still totally isnt racism on college campuses or anythin’??? and like a ton of misogyny??? that isnt addressed at all??? ever??? but sure dude okay, lets act like colleges are good and perfect.

(0:46) So this is just ... I mean he sounds like an idiot who did zero research already but here we go. Can’t wait to have a straight white guy tell me about queer acceptance.

(0:59) Umm no not at all, people will still forever be homophobes and transphobes and every other phobe on the block. Also who the fuck signs a consent form for sex? They’re not doing kinky shit they’re caricatures of a man and a woman kissin’. Also seriously dude? Experimenting? This isn’t the fuckin’ 80′s, we know people are gay for sure and that people know full well what the hell they’re doin’. Experimenting is the way straight people have been disenfranchisin’ actual gay feelin’s for ages and this dipshit is perpetuatin’ that while tryna’ claim that these issues are “been there, done that,” as if anythin’ is solved. Fuck you already Charlie you clearly don’t know what the fuck is goin’ on in the world.

(1:04) If I had a dime every time I heard some conservative asshole talk about this in relation to safe spaces alone I think I’d have enough money to pay for my tuition. Barely.

(1:10) Ye, that thing racists, homophobes, and straight up nazis try to say is an issue because of us nasty liberals. I know the phrase and I know you’re boutta’ spew some bullshit about the first amendment, hit me already.

(1:21) ... Have you been to a college campus ever dude? Seriously, this is an honest question. I don’t even think hes been out in the real world if he thinks conservative ideas are radical or that colleges shut down “diversity of thought.” They shutdown bullshit because bullshit questions don’t need to be asked.

If a nazi asks “Why don’t we kill all Jews?” We do not attempt to explain to them the immorality of genocide nor do we explain to them their ignorance for thinkin’ that Jewish people are somehow the issue in their lives instead of their own mediocrity. We ignore them and move on, as we should. Because they’re fuckin’ idiots.

(1:25) You mean society, right? All of society does is indoctrinate you into a specific way of thinkin’. College isn’t special in this, every single region, culture, and subculture, even on accident, will attempt to indoctrinate you to their way of thinkin’, that’s just how it works naturally. We learn and grow from new experiences and interactin’ with different people, it’s an incredibly important part of our growth. College is an incredibly diverse place where we can do that!

(1:36) I don’t know if you know what’s up politically but people on “The Right” like to defund schoolin’ and bash on our teachers for no reason. So yeah ... they’re gonna’ be more left leanin’ considerin’ who their enemy is when it comes to literally makin’ a wage high enough to pay rent and eat food.

(1:46) ‘Cause no conservative signs up ‘cause they know their antiquated ideas will be shutdown in two seconds because colleges are, often, forward thinkin’ institutions that want to include many different people as they possibly can instead of lettin’ some white middle class straight cis asshole tell other people what to do???

I’m not even overeactin’ here, every experience in college i’ve had with a white conservative man who is my superior has been hellish and degradin’, it sucks. You give assholes power and they become bigger assholes, it’s how it works dude.

(1:59) What kind of conspiracy theory bullshit are you talkin’ ‘bout. No one’s paycheck depends on victims ‘xcept ... well no one. Ever. In the history of everthin’.

(2:10) My core being is superficial to you? What the fuck dude? My pride in bein’ an Italian American, Wiccan, liberal, demisexual, polyamorous, transgender woman is important to me, it’s at the very core of who I am, not some superficial mask I put on. What I am is what I fuckin’ am and that shit that makes me a unique individual is important. Fuck you Charlie.

(2:13) What!? What the fuck!?

How is glorfyin’ who someone is at their core superficial and how is it destructive? Who hurt you Charlie? Who told you that positive feedback and kindness and love is harmful?

(2:16) The only thing destroyin’ real learnin’ is a) people bein’ willin’ly ignorant to honest to the gods facts and b) the fact that republicans are defundin’ education like a mother fucker.

(2:25) a) We’ve all learned from Shakespeare dipshit. He was a surprisin’ly forward thinkin’ man for his time period and wrote what is considered to be some of the greatest works of art in the western world. b) Who isn’t readin’ Shakespeare cause he was a white man? I still do, I enjoy his shit. I know plenty of other queer people who enjoy his shit. What are you gettin’ at here?

(2:34) N- ... no it doesn’t dude. I’m literally a queer woman on a college campus. I am accepted into a group despite my transness and ethnic background. Everyone, black, white, asian, and so forth, speak to each other with respect. Genders, while not treated equally by the old, conservative staff, all get to say what they want and are given equal value in conversations. I live in Texas, not a very liberal place, but I still experience more acceptance and confidence than I ever did with even my parents.

This is clearly bullshit right wingers pull to split apart people in the left by claimin’ that our actions somehow divide us even though, if recent protests and counter protests held by the left against the right proves anythin’, its that our differences unify us. Unlike all of you middle class cishet white asshats.

(2:42) No.

Even ignorin’ my experiences, I’ve never heard a single issue with liberals excludin’ other liberals. It’s always conservatives who either exclude or get pissy when their radical ideas get them excluded. Same with radical liberals really.

(3:03) Has it? Also does that matter? The issue is that we have a stupid amount of people in poverty and a stupid small amount of rich people who are stockpilin’ money that is ruinin’ our economy.

Look I actually like capitalism as a concept, I also like communism, and socialism, hell I even like a monarchy or a tribal system where chieftains and elders hold votes. These concepts (both the economic and ideological ones) on paper are all perfect and good and do more harm than good.

The issue is that in practice, here in America, capitalism is ruinin’ lives as we speak and is goin’ to lead to an international crisis sooner than later on both an economic and environmental level. Capitalism, as it stands, is unsustainable, and our stance needs to change.

(3:06) No? When? Can you give me an example because if you mean places like Cuba or China or North Korea or the Soviet Union those were all communist regimes that acted more like dictators than representatives of their people. Real ass communism hasn’t really been done outside of small communes. People are just too power hungry for their own good, the only difference with capitalism is that their avarice is given praise by the masses.

(3:14) Do not act like we alone made some kind’ve ever lastin’ peace. Do not act like we haven’t instigated violence in the Middle East like it’s a fuckin’ game of Hearts of Iron IV. We, as a nation, are warmongers at worst and war profiteers at best.

(3:21) Because as well all know poor people do not commit crimes because they’re poor and aren’t given a way out of their shitty economic situations no no no, they do it because they’re black and play the victim card.

And of course slavery didn’t both ruin the lives of millions of people by makin’ them and their descendants poor and underprivileged, black people are poor because they choose to be violent and lazy. Obviously.

[/Sarcasm]

(3:29) Maybe because they’re wrong when they say this shit and we don’t want old ideas that don’t work or are objectively wrong or based too highly on subjective thought.

(3:37) I think Trae Crowder said it best when talkin’ ‘bout the nazi bullshit in Charolettesville, “They’ve been losin’ battle after battle, fight after fight for 200 years in this country and these are their death rows.”

Your stupid ideas are fallin’ off, the reason you have a voice right now is because you’re gettin’ desperate and so are the old rich assholes who are afraid taxes will empty even 1% of their fuckin’ pockets who give you the money to even exist.

(3:34) And that’s what they do! And we look at what people on the right do and we all cringe because it’s stupid! We’re not all closeted entitled fuckin’ rich kids goin’ to ivy league schools on our parents dime! We know what the real world is and it’s fuckin’ tough and scary and everyone is pitted against us. We know these things. Dumb fuckin’ bitch. I’m seriously tired of this guy right now.

(3:50) ... ... Did this dude not think we know what liberal means?

(4:12) Noble goal, I wish the rest of America would adopt this kind of “Melting Pot” idea, we’d prolly have way less issues honestly.

(4:25) ??? Why are you mad that people are bein’ kind and decent ???

(4:31) Thanks for usin’ actual terms in an attempt to disenfranchise them of any real meanin’. The same shit is happenin’ with the word triggered so y’know, not really a new tactic. Also one that doesn’t work on changin’ minds. This entire channel is an echo chamber I swear.

(4:35) Wow he’s ... stupid huh. The words mean what they mean asshole. Maybe ask one of your queer friends? You’re diverse in thought, right? Oh wait no your diversity of though doesn’t take queerness into account. Because you’re an asshole.

(4:52) ... No.

Like literally no, where do you get this idea from? Other liberals do not think like other liberals, there is infightin’ in EVERY culture, includin’ college campuses you fuckin’ dipshit.

I’m sorry I’m mostly just callin’ him a dumbass cishet white asshole middle class piece of shit but I’m really pissed off with his willful ignorance.

(4:54) No, it’s not. The two things do not compare.

(5:01) You mean what queer, black, and many other disenfranchised people have been doin’ for ages? Okay.

(5:12) No. Shit.

Video over. I want to die. I hate this dude so much.

[whatwouldfrogsdo]

1 in 4 (and maybe more)

Prompt: Gender/Sexuality Headcanons

“This girl said something to me yesterday. And I just… So… That one and four thing about Samwell. It's not true, is it?” Chris stilled. One in four students at Samwell, and maybe more, identify as LGBT. It was why he was here. That couldn’t be what Dex was referring to, could it? “What do you mean?” Holster asked, and his voice was icy, as if his thoughts were in a similar place to Chris's. “I mean… there's twenty-three people on our team, right? So that would be six… gay people. That's not right.” “What's not right about it?” Ransom asked sharply.

 - Fresh, chapter 3

Set during chapter 3 of Fresh, immediately after the conversation at the Haus about Samwell’s 1 in 4 statistic. I’m fairly sure that anything said in that which is important for understanding this is repeated, at least enough for it to be inferred, so it should be okay to read without having read Fresh! Here are the tweets the original conversation was based on.

Content warnings: detailed discussions about sex, and sexuality

AO3

Derek finally caught up to Dex halfway back to their dorm. Dex had left the Haus at the first opportunity he had been given, and Derek had only realized after he had gone, but now he jogged to fall into step with him so that he could say, “That wasn’t cool, bro.”

“I have homework.”

“I don’t mean leaving. All that shit earlier about one and four. It’s so hypocritical.”

Dex span to face him. “ Hypocritical? How did you figure that?”

“‘That makes six gay people on the team and that’s not right’. When you’re…”

“What am I, Nurse?”

“I don’t know. Gay? Bi? You tell me.”

“I can’t be—” Derek cut Dex off with a frustrated noise. Dex held up a hand. “No. Listen to me. I can’t be out, and I don’t want to tell you why. But I wasn’t being hypocritical, and I wasn’t being fucking homophobic. I’m gay. I know that, I can say it to myself, to you if you won’t tell anyone else, but I can’t— I didn’t mean not right as in immoral I meant not right as in— It’s hard for me to understand a world where one in four people could be like that. LGBT or… can I... say queer?”

He looked lost, and Derek sighed. “You can say it if you want to reclaim it. If you were straight you couldn’t. Some people use it as a slur, and some people don’t like it being used about them because of it. I think it makes things easier.”

Dex frowned, but didn’t push the issue. “Before I came here the only gay people I knew were me and the three people I’d been with. The only gay or bi or… or anything as far as I knew.”

“You probably knew others, you just didn’t know that they were.”

“Yeah. But still. I knew four people total, including myself, and now I’m expected to believe that more people than that are on our hockey team?  It just doesn’t sound right. Which I know it’s… hetero… whatever Holster said, but—”

“But now you’re confused. Holster knew about four before he found out about me. Then you make six. Six out of twenty-three that we know about. There's your one in four, and maybe more. A quarter of the people on our team identify as something other than straight or cis and it doesn’t line up with what you thought you knew.”

“And there’s all these terms I’ve never even heard before and I feel— I feel so fucking stupid for not knowing them.”

“Cis is to trans what straight is to gay.”

“So I’m cis?”

“If you’re male, then yes.”

“And you?”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I am.” Dex flashed him a look, and Derek bit his lip as he searched for the best words to explain it. “I’ve met a lot of people who’ve made me think about it. The more I do the more gender just seems meaningless, but I’ve never experienced any sort of dysphoria about it or anything like that. It’s more that the more I think about it, the more stupid labels and the gender binary seem. It never felt real to me, but I don’t think I’m agender either. I’m not sure how people know if they are. For simplicity’s sake, it’s easier to say I think I’m male and stop thinking about it before it gives me a headache. Especially when so many people would just say that I’m just trying to be different and progressive. Maybe… quoigender. If that’s a thing. I know quoisexual is, anyway. But I still don’t like labeling it.”

Dex didn’t say anything until he had swiped them into their building and they were in their room. “You need to give me like a dictionary or something.”

A smile appeared on Derek’s lips. It was good to see Dex trying, even if he only felt comfortable to ask the right questions when it was just the two of them. “I’ll make you one.”

“Hey, did you— Were you kidding? Am I the only person you’ve slept with or—?”

Nursey closed his eyes. He had been hoping Dex had missed that slip up. “Yeah.”

“And you’re… asexual?”

“I don’t know. Yes. No. Not completely. Because I really fucking wanted it with you, and it’s not just when I’m horny or whatever. Or maybe I first noticed it when I was horny, but I am—” He rubbed his face awkwardly.

“You have the hots for me?” Dex supplied. “Because that’s— I mean, I have the hots for you, too.”

Derek let out a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it, yeah. But I don’t normally… have the hots for people. I can count on one hand the ones I have, and I don’t know what it is that determines it because it’s not like demisexuality. Uh, that’s like you only feel sexual attraction when you have an emotional connection with someone. So I guess I’m ace with exceptions? Gray-ace. Or. I don’t know. Does it matter?” He bit his lip. He hoped it didn’t matter, and that Dex was just trying to figure out all the new language he had been trying to absorb since coming to Samwell.

“It does if you regret it. If you feel like I pushed you into it, or- or something.”

Derek shook his head. “I don’t regret it. I just don’t understand why I wanted it. Or why I still sort of want it.”

“I don’t know. It’s weird to think you’d feel that for me of all people. Like you say, we don’t get along. And it’s not like I’m— But I do think— I think if we both wanted to do that again, then there’s no reason why we can’t, but if you’re not really into sex…”

“I’m into it. Just because I don’t feel that attraction usually, doesn’t stop me getting horny. I’m just not into it with as many people, or if I’m not feeling horny anyway. I guess? I don't fucking know. I don't know how to describe it. Are you serious?” He stepped over into Dex’s half of the room, curiously. Dex grabbed his hand and pulled him onto his bed, so that they were sat down.

“No strings.”

Derek thought about it. It was debatable whether he really wanted to start something like this with Dex of all people — someone who had a lot to figure out still in terms of sexuality and who harbored some internalized homophobia and transphobia, no matter how much he denied it. On the other hand, it was so rare for Derek to find anyone who he was attracted to, and his libido had a tendency to go a little haywire when he was taking his meds. A sure way to channel that would be good. “Okay. Except when you say there’s no reason we can’t, Jack would kill us. The team and—”

“Jack’s not gonna know, Derek. Maybe a couple of strings. Nobody finds out. We just have sex, if and when you want to, and we don’t worry about what it means for us because that’s part of our deal. And the other thing is that we talk about shit. We’re going to talk about this loads and loads before we do anything else, okay? It’ll make things easier for the team if we’re not feeling all tense and wanting to yell at each other all the time because of some shitty communication over this. But we don’t tell a soul.”

“You’ve got such a way with words,” Derek told him with a grin. Dex hit him lightly in the arm. Derek grabbed his wrist and pressed his lips against the bone there, eliciting a sigh as Dex collapsed onto his back. Already breathless at the sight of Dex spreading himself out for him, even fully clothed, Derek leaned down to kiss the smirk off his lips, but all too soon there was a hand on his chest, pushing him gently away.

“I want to talk boundaries. I need to know you’ll be able to tell me if you’re ever not feeling it, or if you think this thing for me has gone. I already know that there’s more things you’re uncomfortable with than I am in terms of what I say to you when we’re having sex and… and stuff like that. I think all my lines like that are pretty extreme in comparison, so I wouldn’t expect you to be near crossing them, but I don’t want to risk hurting you because I got carried away.”

Dex’s words had Derek’s eyebrows flying up. He might know more about sexuality and gender, but Dex had been constantly surprising him at how mature he was about sex itself. He had never once questioned it when Derek had told him no, and he had been vigilant from the very first kiss about checking in for consent. More so than Derek himself, who wondered how that hadn’t been a blatant sign that he was much less experienced than Dex. “I want us to be equal. Not necessarily in what you do to me, I’ll do to you, because there’s definitely stuff I’m more comfortable, uh, giving than receiving or vice versa, but I don’t like it when it feels like one of us is getting more dominant than the other. Even if we… do anything after a fight, which honestly I’ve fantasized about so if you’re into that, too, it’ll happen, but it’ll only be good for me if we’re on level ground.”

“Okay. Good. That’s really useful for me to know. I’m not going to lie, I do like it, the whole dom/sub thing but that won’t play into it if you’re not okay with it. Equal’s good, too. And, uh, it’s probably a bit messed up that the fighting is a turn-on, but it is.”

Derek found himself searching Dex’s face for any hint that he was over-compromising, before he mentally berated himself. Both of their tastes were important, but it was more important to respect what someone didn’t want, than to indulge a desire or kink.

“I only want you to touch my hair if I give explicit consent.”

For a moment, Derek thought that Dex was going to ask why, but after a pause he just nodded. “Noted.”

“And that’s unlikely to happen.”

“Okay.”

“I think those are the main things? I’m not into anything weird, though, and there’ll definitely be times I just don’t want to.”

Dex chuckled. “Okay. If we’re not going to do anything crazy, we can probably manage with just asking before we try anything new? I’m happy both top and bottom, so obviously we’ll go for what you’re in the mood for, and I’d never assume consent for anything anyway. If you just want to cuddle, we’ll cuddle; if you want to fuck me into the mattress, you can definitely do that; if you need space, I’ll never push it; and if you want to make out like teenagers, that’s cool, too. One thing I’m still concerned about, though, is that we moved too fast last time. If it was your first time, uh, even then, it’s not supposed to hurt . Okay? If it hurts we need to do more prep, and we need more lube. I need you to tell me if anything doesn’t feel right at any time.”

“I— Oh.” Derek chewed on his lips. “Okay.”

Dex sighed. “I’m sorry. I should have pushed it at the time.”

“I told you I was ready. You didn’t know that I had no experience with it.”

“So? I still should have made sure.”

Derek shrugged, and looked at the pattern on Dex’s bedspread for a moment. “How about you? What are your lines?”

Dex thought about it for a moment before answering. “My main thing is condoms. I don’t care if both of us are definitely clean — either version of clean — it’s still important and not using condoms is like some weird commitment thing that I won’t do with a hook-up, and anyway I guess we’re still going to be able to sleep with other people if we want to, so we should be safe. Plus, the anus has so much bacteria in it. Even if you definitely don’t have an STD—”

Derek couldn’t help it. He burst into laughter. Dex hit him again, whining, “Stop laughing at me,” but his voice was weak and he let Derek lie down to spoon him.