#you're not those things! you're a person! interesting and complex! just like me! and everyone else!

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

have decided that I will not be reducing people to their current life phase, relationship status, religious affiliation, age, or any other exterior trapping. you are a person. I care about you. that's basically it. this is how I'm going to see the world from now on.

[mad-hunts]

as far as jack could tell, jervis was really out of it; and it made him wonder it was due to something that had happened while he was out with his father, or when they'd gotten here. perhaps both. jack gnawed on his bottom lip, his eyes darting to jervis's hands, which were flexing like he was struggling with something. an eyebrow rose as jack contemplated asking whether he needed some pain medication.

since he didn't receive an answer to his question yet, jack figured he might as well introduce himself. ❝ uhh, well, you don't have to talk to me if you aren't feeling up to it. my sister told me that you fainted in front of her out there — so, i understand if you're still feeling sick. my name is jack, ❞ he scratched at the back of his neck as he continued to observe jervis. whenever the man tried to get up, jack approached him and was about to caution jervis that maybe he shouldn't by lightly touching his shoulder.

but he remembered matilda telling him something about the other really not liking to be touched, so he merely was going to verbally tell him. up until jervis laid back down himself, anyhow. jack couldn't hold himself back from frowning at his poor present state before venturing out of the room with a 'i'll be right back.' and indeed he had been, with two different vials, alongside a few syringes to inject into that IV bag: should jervis want to be medicated. jack figured it'd be easier to just do that rather than forcing him to swallow anything.

he placed those also on the table before tilting his head at the quote jervis had said until it clicked a few seconds later, ❝ that's a quote from through the looking glass, isn't it? and one that the red queen said in the story if i remember correctly. she was basically teaching alice that staying in the same place is falling behind, right? ❞ jack squinted his eyes at that before a thought came to mind. a soft snort left him, but one that was done of an innocent sort of amusement rather than malice. ❝ that is a kind of roundabout way of talking about survival of the fittest. but hey, lewis carroll was all about the whimsy of things, i guess. and its no big deal. ❞

jack pretended not to see the tears that the other shed for jervis's own sake. the blood on his lips was something he couldn't ignore, no matter how hard he tried, though. jack grabbed a washcloth from his pack and held it out towards's jervis's hand. once it was out of his hand was when jack set down that teacup, the slightly too long stripped pants he wore swaying across the ground. ❝ mm, you and dad were both asleep for nearly four hours. sure — i don't think that's silly at all. i keep something on me all the time from when my brother, julien, was still around. ❞ the bracelet he showed the other on his right wrist then seemed to be made up entirely of tiny conch shells.

julien was a big fan of the sea, which jack thought made his death all the more crushing. after seeing the state that the stuffed animal was in, he figured that that bunny must've been really loved; though it didn't really matter by whom it was. the end result was the same, as love changes you. jack knew this well as he'd never wanted anything more than to be embraced by the warmth of it.

he quickly shook that thought off, only to grab the two vials he got from the fridge once more. ❝ eh... the four hours actually went by rather fast. ❞ jack cleared his throat then, ❝ you know, i couldn't help but notice that you aren't looking so hot still, and so i grabbed some meds for you. but i won't force you to take them. i have a pain reliever as well as something that relieves vertigo. are either, or both of these, something you want? ❞

Eigengrau.

A faint hum buzzed in his ears; his mouth was so dry it felt like he’d swallowed a wad of wool.

The thin sheet beneath him brushed his fingertips as Jervis flexed his hands, cracking his eyes open a sliver. The room tilted, everything blurring at the edges. Ah… so he had fainted. Just as he’d suspected. No glasses, then.

"Hey. Ahh, you're awake… That's awesome. How are you feeling?"

The new voice was barely a whisper, young and uncertain—belonging to a boy, maybe sixteen or eighteen by the timber. Was this another of Barton's assistants, a friend of Matilda’s, or perhaps her brother? Jervis couldn’t quite remember; hadn't Barton mentioned something about having more than one child?

He winced, his body feeling heavy, leaden; aching everywhere. Slowly, he exhaled and tried to push himself upright—tried being the keyword. The effort brought only a wave of vertigo, dizzying and blue-hot, making his vision swim.

… ohh, god…

He swallowed thickly, curling into himself. Something wasn’t right. His glasses and gloves weren’t the only thing missing. He was in his socks, jeans, and a now damp charcoal t-shirt, his body slick with cold sweat. His graying auburn curls clung to his neck in tangled ropes. His boots were beside the cot, his messenger bag on a desk across the room. His overcoat and maroon button-down were draped over a chair.

A flicker of discomfort in his right arm. Burning. Tugging.

Jervis glanced down at the source: a plastic tube. A peripheral IV catheter.

"Ah, you know... 'It takes all the running you can do, to stay in the same place,'" he muttered, his voice clipped and hollow; Bermudian accent casual, almost detached. He turned his eyes to the boy; offered him a faint, strained smile. "Keeps things interesting, I suppose... but I appreciate your concern, lad."

He lifted his fingers to his cheek, feeling the moisture trickle down—salt on his lips. Tears, sharp and stinging. Jervis flinched and quickly scrubbed them away with the heels of his hands.

Cold metal pressed into his spine, tight around his neck—the chain with his and Sylvie’s wedding rings twisted against his skin. He must’ve been thrashing in his sleep. There was blood on his lips.

"Forgive me…" His vision swam as he watched the boy set a teacup on the small table beside the cot, just within view. "But I'm afraid I've rather lost my sense of time. How long has it been since I…?" He paused, his voice barely steady. "... if... if you don’t mind, could you please reach into my coat pocket? You'll find a small cuddly toy. A rabbit..." He rubbed his mouth, lowered his eyes. "It sounds foolish, I know... but it... it was my daughter's, you see..."

The boy nodded, moving quickly to retrieve the toy from Jervis’ coat pocket, and placed it on the table beside the teacup. The bunny was missing one of its button eyes, its white fur faded and matted. A pink satin ribbon around its neck was frayed and tattered.

“Thank you,” Jervis said hoarsely. “I must have been out of it for quite a while.”

[reallyromealone]

May I request Leona K. x male reader? Reader is like Isabella Madrigal from Encanto. He is florokinetic, is beautiful and graceful in every way, and has a sass streak. Maybe just enemies to lovers? Thank you, and take your time!

Title: careful it's carnivorous

Pairing: Leona kingscholar x reader

Fandom: twisted wonderland

Warnings:

Notes:

☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️🐟☁️

Flowers.

Everywhere.

God Leona hated spring, it was when his least favorite classmate was fully... Himself.

Everyone knew (name), his floral magic was like nothing anyone had seen before and annoyingly perfect as he provided professor Crewel a flower he needed through magic.

"We will be pairing our all in groups of two, the names for each group are on the chart by the door" Crewel said simply as the class ended, each student going to check theit name on the list before leaving "oh you have to be kidding" (name) grumbled as he looked at the chart, his name was right beside the most insufferable person at this schools, Leona Kingscholar. "You better pull your weight!" (Name) seethed and Leona rolled his eyes "why don't you stop telling me what to do?" He drawled out with a catty smile, (name) fuming before storming off.

Leona grumbled as he walked into the greenhouse, (name) already gone to work at collecting things "couldn't you just magic the supplies? Or is your magic just good for making flowers" Leona said mockingly and (name) rolled his eyes "it would be unfair of us to do that, I'm not gonna cheat my way through this" now it was Leona's turn to roll his eyes as he looked at (name) "what are we even doing?"

"Luck potion" an extremely difficult potion, one mistake and they wouldn't even remotely have time to make a new one with its fermenting process.

"You think we can handle that?"

"If you stop lazing around, we absolutely could" (name) was self-assured, as always and Leona scoffed at him "god you're insufferable"

"I can't, I'm sorry" (name) said over the phone, it was known in the Pomefiore dorm that (name) had a complex relationship with his family, especially his grandmother who treated him like a trophy of sorts "I-im sorry, I have too many commitments here"

Another engagement offer.

He wasn't some bargaining chip.

After phone calls, he often found himself sitting in the greenhouse alone, frustration and hurt seeped through him as he let his composure slip, god he was just so done.

Being the eldest of seven, the responsibilities fell on him aways and he knew he made his grandma upset when he chose night ravens college over royal swords academy but he did it because he wanted this school, it had what he wanted.

Leona sighed as he walked through the halls of the academy, doing the patrols before bed when he saw a familiar figure walk towards the greenhouse "oh?" Well tonight was sure interesting to say the least, after all... "Wow, the perfect one breaking a rule? Isn't this funny" (name) turned to see Leona smirk down at him "just... Shut up" (name) whispered as he stood up "you can be cocky and shit but just... Shut up for once" (name) whispered as vines grew around the garden "can't you just leave me alone for once?"

"Wow, wheres the bite you usually have? Come on, pretty boy" Leona taunted and (name) felt his patience wear thin "can you just fuck off!" He yelled as cacti grew around them, the two stunned "you can grow those?"

"Apparently I can" (name)s grandmother always told him he could only grow flowers... "So why are you out here, little Mr. Perfect?" (Name)s mood shifted as he glared at him "oh shut up, you lazy ass!" He spat back and Leona grinned, there was the snarky flower boy he knew and hated "god you can't shit your trap! God if you could use that energy for being a shit maybe use it for our project!"

"And maybe you could stop being so annoying for once and I would actually want to do it!"

"Asshole!"

"Priss!"

And somehow, (name)s foul mood about his grandmother was gone as the two argued down the ball and a tiny cactus with two flowers on it sat in the greenhouse.

The following day, Leona grumbled as he felt vines grab his ankle "hurry up before I drag you!" (Name) said as he strutted down the hall, looking flawless as Leona glared but followed, other students admiring (name) as he passed and bloomed flower crowns on each of their heads.

"(Name)" malleus said softly, staring down (name) as he and Ace were leaving the lab "Malleus" (name) said coldly, leaning back when malleus got closer "absolutely not, we are not doing this again" (name) glared and waved a bunch of flowers at his face as he and Leona went into the lab, locking the door behind them "I know he's insufferable but what was that about?" Leona stretched and (name) rolled his eyes, taking out their supplies from the small lockers they reserved.

"My grandmother tried to have me engaged to him, malleus was all for it but I said no because god if I have to hear about gargoyles one more time..."

"He never shuts up about them, also how is it I manage to show up to things before him!" Leona fired back as they started the project, both talking heatedly about the fae prince.

It was the first time they agreed on something.

After that, their conversations were less hostile and Leona actually found himself enjoying (name)s company.

(Name) walked into the greenhouse later in the afternoon and saw Leona sleeping in a sun beam, rolling his eyes at this (name) grabbed a notebook he forgotten and went to walk out but before he did... "He's sleeping, he won't know" and like that a leaf grew right where the sun was hitting his eyes.

Only Leona was awake and was smirking as (name) clicked the door shut.

After that, working with (name) was far more tolerable, the two actually not going at each other much to everyones surprise and when something strange happens... Rumors start.

"Apparently, you and I are engaged because you blackmailed my family" (name) teased as he looked over the sleeping hybrid "really? I heard we had a passionate makeout session after you confessed to me with a bouquet of roses" Leona said back and the two chuckled at the nonsense that their classmates came up with as they focused on their work-- well (name) did, Leona relaxed in the corner.

Then his phone went off.

Again

And again

"Hello grandma, yes I did hear--- well I am not interested in him! So I'm not marrying him! I don't care if he's a good connection!" (Name) angrily hung up And Leona raised an eyebrow "she sounds like a bitch" Leona said simply and (name) sighed "she isn't the best" (name) mumbled "she wants me to marry someone so she can get up in the social latter... But I would rather eat glass then be with the people she offered me to"

"Who would you want?"

"Someone who isn't pretentious, not going to put me in a box and doesn't make me act perfect"

"Act?"

"You think I want to be like this? Perfect? Unable to make a mistake?"

He just wanted to garden.

And that is when Leona fell.

(Name) was awkward after the project finished, looking over at Leona who was about to fall asleep but took notice of (name)s slight deflation "come on rabbit food" Leona grumbled as he dragged a confused (name) "where are we going?"

"Don't worry about it princess" (name) looked offended at the nickname, he was a prince at least!

And that's when it happened, in a forgotten corner of the school.

A kiss.

"Still think you're an ass"

[theyapper0]

THE HEAVEN CAST!!!!! WHOOOOOOO!!!!!

So first off, we got a redesign for the Exorcist Angel armor. I wanted to keep the colors light so they stand out when in Hell. I was also hugely inspired by Crusades armor, since the Crusades fought for religious territory, I thought taking inspo from there made sense.

Then we have Lute, Emily, Sera and Adam's designs. I'll explain it all under the cut if you're interested!!!

LUTE!!!!!!!!!! Sorry guys but she's basically a different character with the same name at this point

So I think that Lute was like a mentor figure to Vaggie, she was the closest thing Vaggie had to a (sorta) mom but it's defiantly like a student-master relationship.

I think that Vaggie trusted and cared for Lute deeply, she devoted all her time and energy into training in order to make not only Heaven better, but to make Lute proud. Lute was a HUGE driving force Vaggie's martyr complex.

But they were close!!!! The care wasn't just once sided, I think Lute did love Vaggie. I think they both care for each other SO much, that's why it will hurt SO MUCH when it's LUTE as the one to de-wing and banish Vaggie. She LOVED her, she TRUSTED HER!!!!!

Trust that I will be delving deeper into this in the future ✊✊✊

So Emily and Sera's designs and roles in the story are pretty much the same, I liked them in canon! They were fun and offered an interesting addition to the show!!!!

The main thing I chose to change was basically their hair and skin color tbh. I understand what the show was TRYING to do, w the fact that they're supposed to be black (and apparently those are supposed to be dreads in Sera????) but.......... It wasn't good.

With their canon skin color, I know a lot of angels have gray skin but to me, it looked like the designers didn't know whether to make Sera and Emily (especially Sera) gray or flesh colored, which then resulted in them trying to meet it in the middle and left us with this,,,, really ashy looking black skin in some shots which I didn't like.

I decided to just make them a darker gray so they can both be seen as black and also keep consistent with angels having gray skin :)

ALSO THAT ONE DOODLE WITH EMILY LOOKING AT CHAGGIE, I PROMISEEEEEE THAT SHE DOESN'T LIKE EITHER OF THEM LIKE THAT, I JUST DID IT TO BE FUNNY!!!!!!!!!!!!

(I think the ship is cute but personally, it's not for me ^^)

And finally..... ADAM!!!!!!!!!!!

So like Lute, Adam is basically a completely different character with that same name just slapped on.

I REALLY didn't like him in the show to be honest. I think we was an enjoyable character at times but he's totally like my second to last fav character (with my LEAST favorite being Lucifer LOL). I think it was an interesting take on Adam definitely!! To see him so cocky and full of himself bc of his title but....... It was just very...... Viziepop with the whole "original dick" thing......

Adam is the literal FATHER of humanity!!!? He is EVERYONE'S FATHER!!!!!! I don't understand the point of making him mean aside from the fact that he's supposed to be an opposing force in the show, but even then, just because he's the opposing force, doesn't mean he's gotta be a huge jerk!!!!!

I think it could be more interesting and add more nuisance to the story is Adam WAS this sweet, caring guy who, like the protagonists, is only doing what he thinks is right!

I'll delve more into Adam in my next post BUT everything he does is out of his trust in God and the Seraphims, he trusts them wholeheartedly and despite the fact that the Sinners of Hell were once his children too, he does what he must because his flaw isn't that he's egotistical or an asshole, it's that he cares and trusts with his entire being.

He's also best friends with Kris Kringle

[the-crow-binary]

Trans headcanons: when people ridicule the thing they think they support

So I'm tired. Let's have a talk.

Let's start with the very concept of headcanons, before I get to the infuriating part: A headcanon is, by definition, an idea that has never been confirmed as being actual canon. It's people imagining things about the characters they like, taking advantage of the fact the media they're in never depicted certain things, certain moments of the characters' life, to fill the gaps. A headcanon that make sense, and isn't there to just make the character your OC, takes into account what the actual canon has already shown, such as the character's personnality or goals. (I'm taking characters as example here but headcanon can be about the media's universe as a whole, too)

For example: In Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, and it's mangas, we never saw the life Hector and Isaac lead in the Castle between the moment Hector arrives (Isaac being already there) and the moment he runs away. It's a perfect opportunity to have fun and imagine what happened all those years! So, by taking into account what official products gave us, such as Isaac and Hector's personnalities (before and after the curse took ahold of them), how they interact together, and their common roles and duties under Dracula's reign, we can easily headcanon that they used to be friends and respected each other, before it slowly gets crushed by Isaac's obvious inferiority complex and jealousy in regards of Hector's power and relationship with Dracula.

That's a headcanon. A thing that can differ from one person to another, as interpretation can also vary, just like the plots we like to see. But let me tell you something absolutely crucial this headcanon does that make it a valid one: it doesn't contradict canon material.

That's a thing I feel like tends to be forgotten by many claiming their takes on characters as "headcanon". It stops being a "headcanon" and start being a "i'm twisting this character into my OC" when you start making shit up that not only does not fit the Character, but also contradicts directly what has been shown about said Character, just because you're a certain way or like certain things. That's not a headcanon. That's fanfiction. Not one that will interest those who actually like the canon and doesn't like when people change things about it instead of just adding to it, but if you're having fun, go for it! Just own up to the fact that you're deforming a pre-existent character, lol.

Now that... that is still pretty harmless. Sure it's annoying to see someone take your Blorbo and make it do things it would never do and call it a "headcanon", but it's just that. Annoying. But then...

Have you ever come across, in your favorite medias, male characters who look are act just a bit feminine? Or female characters who might be a little rough, angry, or muscular? And then you go look for content of them, and are met with "that character is trans" headcanons? Chances are, if you're very active in fandoms, you have. Maybe some of you cringe because there's something wrong going on there and you're not sure what, and you're afraid you're just being transphobic even though you support transfolks and maybe are one yourself... at least it was my case at first lol. But not to worry! There's a very good explanations to your cringiness! And it's that: Lots of those headcanons are straight up awful in their logic and an insult to every genders involved! :)

Let's take the Netflixvania version of Hector as an example. He's the perfect target for those kind of headcanons, because he's a pretty boy! He's (a bit) feminine! So of course, just from that, you'll have people claiming he MUST be a trans woman. An awful take to call "headcanon", because it's very surface-level, gleefully ignores that everyone everywhere have both feminine and masculine sides to them (and the fact Castlevania is originally a JAPANESE product, have you ever seen ACTUAL anime? Pretty boys and boys who look like girls be everywhere in this media), some men being more feminine while some women can be more masculine, and literally goes back to gender-conforming logic. Something the very concept of transgenderism actually fights against. I mean sure, you have trans women trying to be as feminine as they can, and trans men as masculine as they can, for reasons that might differ from one person to another. But there's also those who don't. Those who simply exist, feeling secure enough in their gender that they don't care how masculine or feminine others percieve them to be. And what about the very cis people who don't conform to what others say they should look like, according to their genitalia?

Headcanoning a character as trans because of the way they look only is great !... To perpetuate gender-conforming mindset and clichés, and be uncomfortably close to transphobic logic (the "we can always tell" crowd who'll think a cis woman is a man because her body, that she has never altered in any way and is only the result of her genetics, is a bit too masculine, for example :) ). So what else you can use to headcanon a character as trans without it leaving a sour taste in other people's mouths?

Their personnality? Well, yes... but also no. It all depends on how you turn it. And in case of N!Hector? Oh boy! ^^

Hector is kind and compassionate... mostly with animals lol, and the devils he creates. He is gentle, can be vulnerable. He doesn't want humanity gone, but he wants them to be kept under control, because on one hand, he doesn't like them because Trauma, and on the other, he's not a bad guy at heart. He is naive, dare I say, emotionally, physically and mentally weak, wich causes him to be compared to a child by actual characters in the show, and a dumbass by the fandom. ^^ And ALSO causes him to get tricked, beaten and abused by vampires (wich makes the fandom call him even MORE of a dumbass for, and side with his abusers because "haha hot women vampire go brr"). Overall, even if he's trying to be tough here and there, and opposes some (futile) resistance sometimes (never going as far as it should've because of Peak Writing), he quickly goes back to being, well, soft (wich is NOT a bad thing in itself btw).

Now there's nothing wrong when you look at his personnality alone, and ignore literally everything else such as the way he was treated by the narrative, the characters, and the fandom itself. But look at this... and tell me it feels trans woman-coded.

Headcanoning Hector as a trans woman boils down to say "i think women are soft, naive, stupid, weak, kind and compassionnate, and men cannot be". It's already a very vomit-inducing take insulting both genders, but then you take into accounts what actually happens to Hector: him being tricked, used, abused, beaten, dehumanized by every character he interacts with and never taken seriously, even by the man who hired him as one of his GENERAL. Oh, and treated like a literal pet, too! Called as such by Lenore herself! And it gets worse. Because the narrative itself sees nothing wrong with that (exactly because he's a man :)). Just... why would you see a man being treated like a pet, not human and not even an adult, and think "ah, yes. A woman." ?? I'm sorry but I can't, in good faith, approve of that. What kind of vision does it mean you have of women and trans women?

So not only headcanoning N!Hector as a trans woman is an insult to women and tells more about how YOU view them than anything else (consciously or not), but it also serves to completely rip Hector off of his masculinity and insult men as well. As if a man couldn't suffer the way he did. As if a man could not be kind or naive without being compared to a child. As if a man had to have short hair or beard or drink beer or whatever you think a man is supposed to be like and how a woman is supposed to be like.

Oh, and special shoutout to that one tumblr user I will not name that literally said "how can you not headcanon Hector as a trans girl. She's literally a doggirl ok"! It's is the most awful take I have EVER seen and I want to throw up all over your blog! Literally, how dumb does one have to be to see a gentle, pretty man being treated like a dog for kinky points and go "not only is this a girl, that's also a doggo! Woof woof!" I swear to God.

Sigh... so, yeah. This far, I have yet to see anyone headcanoning Hector as a trans woman and not making me want to throw up in my mouth, considering how the character is. But there's one more thing! The narrative.

The narrative can also be used for headcanons, and often is. "What is this character and their story about?" "How is the [media] portraying them?". "How are we supposedd to feel about the character/story/actions?" In N!Hector's case, despite him having potential... the narrative is just humiliating him through and through. He gets tricked by everyone, mocked for his harmless personnality, his mistreatment happens out of pure sadism and to elevate the Girlbosses, and he gets used for horny points. He is just a victim durîg the whole show, and when you THINK he's FINALLY going to do something... nope! He vaguely help bring back the Big Bad Guy (wich ends up being useless i swear to god N!Hector's life is joke lmao killme) while falling for his abuser! Getting back at her by protecting her, I guess! ^^

So what was his character and story about? A misunderstood man... who exist only to be used and tossed around and never get justice nor is allowed to fight back. You can't even say he's a plot device because the plot itself mocks him and could have worked well, if not better without him. (Isaac going after Carmilla directly instead of going after Hector and choosing last minute to kill Carmilla while he's at it would have made a little more sense, though he still would have went after the wrong people, but that's another story) Definitely the kind of character I love to see having his masculinity revoked and called a woman! Not insulting at all!

See, it is very difficult to headcanon a character as trans... especially when you don't think about it through. Wich people like that one user calling Hector a "doggirl" did (that was a whole other level of victim blaming holy shit. Shows once again how men's and males' trauma and suffering are not taken seriously enough). What is happening to Hector here happens to many other characters in other medias, and to stay in Netflixvania, it is happening with Alucard as well. Because people are cowards and won't headcanon the big grumpy hairy guy as a trans woman, they have to headcanon the gender-nonconforming character and, by doing so, actually gender-conform him ❤️ (i mean it as a half-joke. you do you, but I think this is a clear proof of how the gender norms have a big place in your mind)

I think I would have less problems with lots of these if they weren't called "headcanons". Let's be honest, many will think of a character as trans because THEY'RE trans and it's their blorbo, and MAYBE think of justifying it further afterward. That's not how HCs work, you're just projecting. And you know what? It's fine! It's not a bad thing in itself! Make a pre-existent character trans if it's fun for you! If it makes you feel better! I mean I'm worried of N!Hector is the one you relate to the most. But it doesn't matter if others don't like it, because it's a content made for you, by you! But don't call it a "headcanon" (or claim it as canon directly, wut) and try to justify it when there's nothing in canon even slightly hinting at it being potentially true, or working, or making sense for the character. Don't call it "headcanon" when you're literally genderbending a character. Please. Think things through.

Also, remember when I talked about a proper headcanon does not contradict actual canon? Well. The male character you call a trans woman going by "he/him" the whole time kinda contradicts your idea. It's as if you "headcanoned" a character who has been seen only being attracted to the opposite gender and in love with someone of the opposite gender as being gay. Sure, you can say that's a closeted trans character... but then you better have solid reasoning for thinking that, once again. Or, you know, you could assume that you genderbend the character for fun (and i don't mean "turn it into a cis character of the opposite gender", i mean keep them trans, but don't pretend to base your vision mostly on canon). Would be less insulting than saying "this weak pretty man is actually a woman because he's weak and pretty, canon told me". I prefer someone who owns up to the fact they don't care about canon and just want to have fun rather than someone who implies they care about canon by using "headcanon" and then give poor and insulting arguments.

I get that lots of people with these headcanons don't have bad intentions and don't realize how fucked up their reasoning (or the simple fact of calling N!Hector a damn DOGGIRL- sorry i'll never recover from that) is, but still. As much as I respect everyone's right to do whatever they want with characters in their own little corner, caring about nothing but having fun, I've been needing to vent about this issue for a while now. Being an ally or a trans person yourself doesn't prevent you from spreading stereotypes, I'm afraid.

This problem of "i'm using poor and stereotyped arguments that is more insulting than anything to justify my idea" could apply to autism headcanons too, btw. And probably other things as well. Just. Please. Think about what you're writing. Think before you talk.

[laciere]

Bo Ruberg: We Know The Devil is, as you say, about women who love other women, yet you've written online about being "against representation" in video games. What does that mean and how do you reconcile those approaches? Aevee Bee: That article was a little manifesto. When I say that I'm "against representation," I mean that representation can't just be a list of identity categories. It's not really representation unless you're creating complexity; without complexity, characters feel insincere and incomplete. The dumbed-down version of a queer person, or the queer person that never expresses their sexuality--these characters don't actually require you to empathize with queer people, because these characters have no sexuality. When you erase that, you erase their anchor, their passion, their frustrations, or their flaws even, especially their flaws. You're not doing empathy work if you're not engaging with these things, because these are the stumbling blocks for empathy. Sometimes people are like, "I like gay people who don't act gay." You know? Those are the people you're catering to when you make those sorts of characters. Identity is so important to talk about, yet it can be so limiting. I've been having a lot of discussions with queer activists and queer scholars about this desire to all call ourselves "queer," like we're this amorphous blob. That can actually be incredibly unhelpful because it doesn't acknowledge the very real differences that often exist between queer people. Our experiences are specific to our lives. Focusing only on identity, especially identity without experience, reduces everyone to an abstraction. Ruberg: Given how much you value the specifics of individual queer experience, how would you describe the complexities, as you call them, of your own queer identity? Bee: Being a woman is really important to me. Transness is also really important to me. In terms of sexuality, I tend to talk about how sexuality is practiced and understood rather than talking about specific attractions. What's the point of trying to say, "Oh, I have this very specific sexual identity" when sexuality is really hard to separate from gender identity and expression? Sexuality is more complicated than we often give it credit for. For example, I'm less interested in saying "I identify as bisexual," than I am in thinking about the ways that I love women and the ways that I love men and how those are unfortunately incredibly different because of all these social pressures, my own histories, and my internalized baggage. How do we navigate that together with another person? What does a relationship with someone like me look like? it's one thing to be like, "We have this list of labels," but we have so few models for what those labels are supposed to look like.

"Aevee Bee: On Designing for Queer Players and Remaking Autobiographical Truth", in The Queer Games Avant-Garde: How LGBTQ Game Makers are Reimagining The Medium of Video Games (2020, Duke University Press)

[kerubimcrepin]

Liveblog - Dofus, livre 1 : Julith [PART 23]

I think after this it's kinda natural that Joris will never ever put his trust into anyone that isn't Kerubim or Atcham ever again.

I am once again asking why Kerubim has these books and what was he doing at devil's sacrament.

He's never beating those necromancy allegations.

There's a canonical name for the evil-ass looking huppermages.

Once again, this is Them in Dofus 2 when they reveal to Joris that they framed Julith or something. (source: my beautiful mind)

The Dessous comic implies that Marline bought this stuff from Kerubim which is so funny. It's beautiful how little of a shit the man gives for the safety of others.

I may not like Khan in his present form, as a macho gobbowler, but I like the idea of him. Joris, and his little "ghnhnn I have to do what's right, I have sacrifice my happinesss for other people" complex needs someone like that in his life who will buy him alcohol and help him run away from home when he's 14-16.

I'm sure if given another movie, or a show, Ankama's plan would have been to make Khan more likeable. He seems like a ride-or-die friend.

A scene ago he was in Julith's arms. So, she found it important to get him into the arms of this dofus-powered doll. Personally, I like to think that he started thrashing and maybe even bit her.

What did she lie about though? Liking him? Not wanting the Dofus? Being a competent person and not a fuck-up? (I love Bakara and say all of this with affection)

Once again, I empathize, that Julith was gloating about this to Bakara. That she doesn't really care about Joris (and by extension, Joris's feelings.)

She is killing a thousand people, who did nothing to her. These are civilians who came to watch a sports match. How many mothers are here with their sons and daughters who just wanted to look at their idols? If Joris never had Grougalorasalar's soul, if he and Kerubim never learned of her plan, THEY would have been among these viewers.

Julith is a very interesting character because she's ruthless, she has no morals, absolutely no understanding or compassion for others, — even Bakara or her own son, — and yet she is driven by love almost entirely. And that's her one redeeming quality.

But also — does it really change things, when you're driven by love to kill a thousand innocent people? To ruin your son's life? Because it doesn't really change much, to me...

I think there's a tragedy in that. She does love the idea of Joris. She loves what she sees of him, his voice, his face, and eyes. If she learned more about him, she'd probably love the parts he didn't show too. She'd love to see how he grew up.

She'd love how committed he is to those he loves. She'd love his ruthless march towards what he thinks is right that will allow him to close his eyes as he does unforgivable things. The only thing she would dislike is his loyalty to Bonta.

But the reverse will never be true. Joris can become a warmonger, a dictator, and a war criminal, but he would loathe to place his needs above those of others. He wouldn't do horrible things if he didn't think it was for the greater good of mankind.

As a 600yo man, Joris has lived through two apocalypses, — and yet people like Nox and Julith will lose 1-4 loved ones and go insane, killing people. I doubt he feels much for her, except for disgust.

Their friendship is so important to me. But also, somewhere out there, Tatak is crying.

I think one of the great tragedies of Joris's character is that he is doomed to break his own moral code, slowly but surely.

One must imagine Joris Jurgen living happily with the blood of innocents on his hands, because the alternative is more haunting.

One of her main issues is that she projects the actions of a few onto literally everyone in Bonta. Which is a very crazy fucking reach.

But I understand how she arrived at this reach to begin with: I don't think she was ever happy, before Jahash, and when she finally was happy, for once in her entire life, they took even that away from her.

You wanna know who else in this scene is going to have only 2 people who give meaning to his life? Jo—— [I am forcefully restrained by the police]

I just really like pointing out the similarities between Joris and Julith, — and the way these similarities underline their differences.

Once again: she doesn't give a shit about anyone's opinion. She is betting everything onto a nebulous future where Joris and Jahash and Bakara forgive and forget everything she did, and they live as a happy Fambly (in Brakmar, because that's a GOOD city and they will LOVE to move there, after being no longer welcome in Bonta due to the 1000 dead people.)

(Guy whose very emotional and Julith and Joris voice) guys I think she's starting to realize that their familial relationship is going to be unfixable.

Joris and everyone present here are quite aware that stopping this will kill one of them.

They are also very aware that one dead person is better than a thousand.

[thebadjoe]

BAD JOE'S DRDT CH.2 CRIME SOLVING THEORY PART 6

Wow! It's been a long while, but it's finally here! DRDT Chapter 2 is back with part 2 starting since more than a week ago!

...Oh? What's that? There's some reveals that is damaging my theory and I should get to fixing? Awwww, man.... what a drag.... I am so doomed... nanchatte!

Anyways, hi! It's me, the dude who makes-overly-complex-and-ridiculously-long-theories-in-the-hopes-of-trying-to-solve-the-murder-case-that-not-many-people-agree-with-for-more-reasons-than-my-theory's-word-count. (Okay, the last part about the reasons is probably not true... yet!)

I am back yet again with some more updates regarding my theory.

NOOOOO!!! NOT AGAIN!!! PLEASE, I DON'T WANNA READ ANOTHER GODDAMN DICTIONARY LENGTH OF A THEORY POST!!!!

Woah! Calm down, imaginary self that is under the impression that some people were way too overwhelmed by my latest part of the theory post! You have nothing to worry about!

It would be silly of me to rewrite all of it again with some small changes. I will of course link up my part 5 later as source of reference, but really, all I'm gonna be doing here today is point out the newest problems with my theory ever since episode 12 and 13 and give my personal thoughts on those.

Also, to make sure that people hasn't forgotten what I've been all about since the beginning, I will do a short recap of my theory, displaying only what's most relevant to the murder case.

Besides, ain't no way I'm writing something this long ever again (except for maybe trying to solve the future chapters, but that's a matter for the far future).

With that said, I feel obliged to point out that this is spoilers for the fangan Danganronpa Despair Time Chapter 2, up until episode 13.

With that out of the way, let's get to it!

Hey look! I still remember how to use that show more button again, hurray! (I'm really sorry again to @1moreff-creator and everyone else who's been reading my very first posts last year that didn't have a show more button)

So, first things first, I'd like to apologize in advance because as amazing the episode 12 and 13 were, I will not be doing a reaction post of said episodes. I think I'm just too lazy to actually display my whole stream of consciousness through two whole videos and I think it is safe to say that practically all of us had a very similar reaction to those episodes.

What was the common reaction, you may ask? Well, it's simple, really... it went something like... OMG, THIS IS SO FUCKING HYPE! OMG!!! THAT WAS SO INSANE!!! THE DRAMA!!! DAVID BEING DAVID!!! THE LEVI REVEAL!!! THE FLASHBACK PART 2 SCENE!!! OMG, WHAT IS EDEN DOING?!! AREI IS HOLDING DAVID'S HANDS?! WE'RE FINALLY TALKING ABOUT THE MURDER METHODS?!?! OMG, SO GOOD!!!

...right? Yeah! I thought so! :D

Although I may not be showing proper and precise reactions to these episodes, if you're interested, I'd definitly recommend reading @venus-is-thinking 's, reactions on episode 12 and episode 13, @1moreff-creator 's reactions on episode 12 and episode 13 and @accirax 's reactions on episode 12 and episode 13. They're pretty good reads (and no, I'm not just saying this because they all believe that Eden is the culprit, I swear!).

And for those who are totally blind or new to my shenanigans, yes, I do believe that Eden is the culprit behind this murder case.

There is indeed a few problems that arose ever since the latest episodes, so to make sure that everyone is up to speed with what I'm gonna be talking about, I'm now going to be doing a short recap of the events, according to me.

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THE RECAP

DAY 1 : The day where everyone receives their mixed up secrets and explore the second floor. DAY 2 : The day where the attempted murder on Ace happened. DAY 3 : The day where Whit suggests David to chill for the evening in the relaxation room. DAY 4 : The day (morning) of the body discovery announcement.

Ever since Arei bullied Eden who then cried and exited the playground on DAY 2, that was what triggered Eden to decide to commit murder for the sake of escaping this hellish killing game. Knowing that her secret is that she kissed a girl, I deduced that she's probably trying to escape because she misses her beloved dearly.

So while she was off screen during most of that day, she spent time making plans for the murder set up and narrative, which is why she decided to share Arturo's secret (as seen in the flashback).

During the evening of DAY 2, Ace was working out in the gym, then he hears a conversation happening between David and Arei in the relax room. The conversation that Ace was quietly listening to did not happen in the evening of DAY 3, but rather the evening of DAY 2. Ace lied about when he was listening to that conversation.

At some point during the conversation or perhaps even after the conversation, Eden sneaks up on Ace and knocks him out with the turpentine that anyone could've gotten access to that day. Ace is Eden's chosen murder victim.

Sometime later, Eden eitheir used a letter or called out Arei's name to lure her into the playground or somewhere close to knock her unconscious with that very same turpentine. She then moves Arei's body into the relaxation room to lock her up inside because of the specific nighttime rules regarding that room.

Eden also brought old spares of clothing to cover Arei's body to make sure she doesn't get stained with starch from the water misting formula from the relaxation room.

During the night of DAY 2, she prepares the murder mechanism in the gym with some needed tools from the storage room and some wire that she took out from possibly a grandfather clock that she may have in her dorm. I deduced it as such because of Whit's description of everyone's dorms being suited to their needs.

I also deduced that there is actually a switch to turn on and off the fans, which is important since the attempted murder involved the fans. As Eden finished setting it up, as she was about to clear up with evidence, she heard someone using the elevator.

She hid in the dress up room, then Nico enters the second floor, looking for Ace to kill him. As Nico explores the gym, Teruko shortly enters the elevator to get to the second floor as well.

Teruko, looking for her spares, runs into Eden, who was hidden in the dress up room. After some talk, they heard a loud noise coming from the gym, which they both take a look inside.

Upon seeing this mess of a crime, Eden realised that her murder plan failed and that she needs to come up with a plan B really quick. So while she is taking time to "process this emotionally", Teruko was investigating.

Eden finally comes up with a plan B and figured that she needed to get her hands on the roll of tape ASAP. She managed to do so with a sleight of hand when Ace "suddenly wakes up", knocking Eden out of the way, distracting Teruko in the process.

Later that night, Eden proceeds with her plan B by making a murder mechanism in the playground. She also took the rope from the storage room. Once it's all properly set up, all's left was waiting for the relaxation to unlock at 8:00 AM on DAY 3.

In the morning of DAY 3, she retrieves Arei's unconscious body and proceeds with murdering Arei. Then, she proceeds to conceal the body somewhat behind the curtains in the relaxation room. She also grabs her glove, her monopad and the necessary materials in the dress up room for the next step of her plan.

She spends the rest of the morning to prepare her disguise trick. Then during lunchtime, Eden spends a short amount of time disguised as Arei to hide the actual time of death.

Once lunchtime is over, she returns to eitheir her or Arei's dorm to remove the disguise, spend time cleaning up, relax, power nap, etc. Then, during the evening of DAY 3, she spends time with Hu to fabricate her perfect alibi.

Later that evening, David explores the relaxation room. That's when he notices something wrong with the room and becomes the first person to discover Arei's dead body.

For some personal reasons, David brings the body back into the playground and hangs it by the swingset. Eitheir he or Eden (earlier in the morning) balls up the clothes and hides it in the closet of the dress-up room. Then, in the morning of DAY 4, David grabs everyone's attention to the fact that Arei is missing right before the secrets reveal. Then fast forward a bit, then we get the BDA of Arei

--------------------------------------------------------------------

And there ya go, that's my recap regarding how I believe the murder case happened. Pretty short, eh?

HELL NO!!! THAT WAS STILL PRETTY LONG!!! AHHHHH!!!!

Eh... I guess I couldn't really make it that shorter, my bad! If I tried to make it any shorter than that, it would've been extremely confusing.

Ah! Speaking of which, if you're confused in the sense that it feels like none of this should work at all, and there's a lot of contradictions and whatnot, then I would heavily recommend reading my actual theory post. I am not going to spend time refuting with people in the comments about points I've already pointed out in my previous post.

However, if there are things that are unclear to you, things that you do not understand and want to know what I'm talking about, please, feel free to ask away! I will help in any way I can.

With that out the way, I guess I can now start with pointing out the pr-

HAH! THERE IS A MAJOR ISSUE WITH YOUR THEORY!!! BASED ON EPISODE 12, THE MURDER COULD'VE ONLY HAPPENED IN THE MORNING OF DAY 4 BECAUSE OF THE BODY SWING! YOU'RE DONE FOR!

Ah... yeah... that! Of course! That's not a problem!

!!!

Let's talk about it first, shall we? :D

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AREI'S BODY SWING : CONFIRMED TIME OF DEATH???

I'd like to come clean with something, everyone. Ever since I came up with the theory that murder happened at a totally unexpected time, there was something that was constantly bothering me.

That's right, I was very well aware of the body swing happening during the BDA ever since the beginning.

HUH?! Then all this time, you wrote all of this despite knowing that?!

Correct! I'm really sorry about that, but please, understand that I had a very good reason for it. For you see... everytime I saw it, I was often under the impression that this was simply an eerie effect / animation, to give a more dramatic intensity towards the BDA, without meaning anything. I legit thought it could be a thing, I swear!

But despite all that... I couldn't help but feel uneasy about it. Deep down, I felt like that maybe there was an actual meaning to it, maybe it was an actual clue that I shouldn't disregard. But I figured that because of my theory beliefs, then it would be rather unlikely that it would be used as evidence.

But alas, I was wrong about that. The body swing plays a very important rule in determining what happened in this murder case. I cannot deny that fact, especially since Teruko brought it up, plain as day. Despite it seeming like it damages my theory, I'm thankful that the dev finally cleared that little doubt I had since then.

Then you admit it, the murder actually happened in the mor-

Oh, not so fast! Let's not jump to conclusions just yet, alright? Arei's body swinging by the swing set doesn't quite exactly prove that the murder occured during the morning of DAY 4. The body swing only proves that someone messed with the body by the swingset.

W-What?! That doesn't make sense! The murder clearly happened in the morning of DAY 4!

Nuh-uh, not quite. You believe it clearly happened in the morning because that's what the cast concluded on top of Charles pointing out that the culprit could've clearly fake the time of death by saving the fishes for later.

But unless we have decisive evidence that the murder happened in the morning, we can't be 100% sure that the murder happened in the morning of DAY 4.

From the looks of it, you just seem very desperate, if you ask me.

At first, when episode 12 released, I kind of was... up until I figured out a fairly logical solution to it. That's right! I have a way to explain who made the body swing and why.

You're not going to suggest that David did all of what he supposedly did in the evening of DAY 3, but instead in the morning of DAY 4, right?!

Nope! Not at all. Disregarding the facts that it wouldn't really make sense and that he'd have to move the body out of the relax room anyways before nighttime (because of the water misting rules), David actually has an alibi in the morning of DAY 4.

(As does Veronika too as she was with them in the cafeteria)

With all of these reasons mentioned above, as much as I initially wanted to make it somehow possible that David came back to the crime scene to mess with the body somehow, it just isn't possible.

So instead, someone else did it.

Then out with it already, you staller! Who is it?!

There is only one possible candidate that would make the most sense in that scenario : Eden. Eden is the person who messed with Arei's body in the morning of DAY 4.

WHHAAAAT?!?! WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?! THAT'S SO RISKY!

That's what I initially thought at first, not gonna lie. But then... something hit me : Eden doesn't have an alibi for the morning of DAY 4 eitheir.

I thought that there would be absolutely no need for Eden to come back to the crime scene a certain short amount of time before the BDA, so instead, I needed to reverse my way of thinking.

What could she possibly aim to do that would prompt her to come back to the crime scene last minute?

Considering the facts (based on my theory, mind you) that she killed Arei in the morning of DAY 3, hid the body somewhere in the relaxation room, built up an evening to night alibi with Hu and that David was the first person to discover it during the evening, there is a simple explanation behind it.

Arei's BDA was meant to be triggered much earlier than the morning of DAY 4. The original intent behind this whole scheme was to have the BDA trigger during the evening of DAY 3.

That doesn't make sense!

No, that's wrong! It does make a whole lot of sense. Think about it. Let's say you were a participant in this killing game and were in David's shoes during the evening of DAY 3... you come across a dead body in the relaxation, what would you do?

!!!

That's right, you wouldn't just mess with the body and move it somewhere else, now would you? Aside from freaking out, the most natural and human thing to do would be to gather help.

If it were anyone else than David who discovered the body in that exact scenario, they would cry out for help, tell everyone that they found Arei dead inside the relaxation room, which would then result in a body discovery announcement.

But what if the person who found the body were to personally ask for Hu's and Eden's help, wouldn't that ruin her plan since it wouldn't trigger the BDA?

There's an easy solution to that. Eden could've simply decided to find more people to share the news to meet up with the corpse. This wouldn't ruin her plan in the slightest.

Quite the opposite, actually. If the body were to be discovered and trigger the BDA during the evening, it would solidify her air tight alibi even further as she wouldn't have any possible timeframe to commit murder in the evening as she was spending time with her friend Hu.

Ugh, so what? It didn't really happen anyways because of David being David! That doesn't change anything!

Actually, it does change things considerably. If you put yourself in the culprit's perspective where the whole intent was to have the body discovery happen in the evening of DAY 3 and that during the whole night, nothing happened, you would certainly find that very strange.

The culprit would be clearly confused, yet really curious to find out what even happened.

Couldn't she have taken a look much later during the night?

Perhaps, but she figured it would've been pointless. The reason why is that if she thought that nobody found the body, then the body would've still remained hidden in the relaxation room which would then be currently locked away because of the water misting.

So instead of checking it out during the late night of DAY 3, Eden decided to investigate during the very early morning of DAY 4, sometime past 7:30 AM.

But the relaxation room is still locked up until 8:00 AM! Why not wait until then?

It's simple! She just wanted to be there a little bit in advance to make sure she can enter the room as early as possible. And so... while she is waiting for the relaxation room to unlock, she probably figured that she should take a look around the other rooms, why not?

And thus, that leads to Eden finding the body being hung by the swingset, alongside fishes scattered around the floor for some reason.

To reconfirm, I still believe that David is the first person who discovered Arei's dead body in the relaxation room and that he's responsible for hanging her body alongside placing those fishes by the playground.

Okay, Eden discovers that the body has been moved to the playground? What now? Everything's already in place, so what could she possibly do with the dead body?

Well, since the BDA was not triggered on the evening of DAY 3, she figured that she may as well put Arei's monopad back into the corpse's pockets.

But what about her missing glove? Why didn't she return that as well if she wanted to return her monopad?

That's a good point, that's for sure. But there are two easy fixes to this counter argument. First one being that she simply forgot about the gloves. No one's really perfect, after all. She was so concerned about the body not being discovered yet that this completly slipped her mind.

The second fix would be that it would've been way too risky to try to retrieve the glove. Maybe initially, Eden, after she removed her disguise, she placed the clothes and the glove back into Arei's dorm. So if she wanted to retrieve the glove, she'd have to return to Arei's room, unlocking it with a monopad that isn't her own.

Would she really risk that again after making this much progress without getting caught so far? Like imagine if she tried to take that risk one last time only to get caught, that would be quite the devastating result, wouldn't it?

Ok, fine. Nevermind the gloves. Is that all she did?

Pretty much, yeah. She returned the monopad back into her pockets, which moved the body somewhat.

...

Well, it's also possible that she tripped and moved the body even more by accident. Or perhaps she felt like she was in such a hurry to avoid getting found out that she accidently bumped into Arei's dead body.

...Are you kidding me? There's no way that's gonna be enough to move the body for this long!

Well... maybe her being there at exactly 7:30 AM is not the exact time. She could've been there a couple minutes before 8:00 AM, which could make this possible.

But that's ridiculous! There's no way Eden is strong enough to make the body swing that way. To make the body swing for a good amount of time, she'd need more than just accidently bumping into the body! It needs considerable force.

And I'll stop you there. If you've read my last theory post, you should know by now that I'm a firm believer that because it's a work of fiction, anything that seems unlikely can become possible.

The main thing we should take from Arei's body swinging during the BDA is that at some point in time during the morning, someone messed with the body, proving that someone was there during the morning of DAY 4.

And there you go, that's my whole explanation as to how Arei's body was swinging during the BDA that doesn't necessarily mean that the murder occured during that exact morning.

If you're not quite convinced yet, there is a certain part of my theory that begins to make a lot more logical sense with this solution in mind. Take a look at this!

Thanks to the solution I suggested, these two lines become a lot more fitting to my updated theory. Here's why!

If Eden were to explore and find the body hanging by the swing set during the morning of DAY 4, she would know that at least 1 person found the body, but not who exactly.

Because of Whit's silly comment, Eden immediatly thought of the body in the playground and jumped to the worst conclusion : Whit is the person who found the body first.

So if they were to open the door to the playground, the BDA would not trigger since Eden is the culprit. So in a moment of panic, Eden uttered : "Teruko, wait--".

It is still pretty much the same as what I had in mind according to the previous part of my theory post, except that it works a whole lot better now that Eden personally saw the actual state of the dead body in the morning of DAY 4.

So there you have it. This seemingly major problem for my theory actually turned out to be very beneficial for my theory after all! Ah, the joys of making logical sounding deductions! My theory should be saf-

HAH! YOU THINK YOUR THEORY IS SAFE FROM HARM YET?! WRONG!!!! IN EPISODE 13, THEY ACTUALLY SHOWED HOW THE MURDER MECHANISM WORKED! NOT ONLY IS EDEN TOO WEAK TO OPERATE IT, BUT THEY PUT FISH WATER INSIDE THOSE JUGS! SINCE THEY REVEALED THAT MURDER METHOD, IT HAS TO BE THE SOLUTION. YOUR THEORY IS RUINED! GOOD DAY SIR!

Oh, you mean this?

Oh no, this murder mechanism is different from mine and this one requires a certain amount of strength that Eden possibly doesn't have! And the fishes! Since they brought it up, then there's no way my theory can work! Whatever shall I do??? It's joever.... just kidding!

I don't mean to alarm you guys, but the current proposed murder mechanism idea actually has flaws. Let's talk some more about the murder mechanism in the playground, shall we? :)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

TERUKO'S CURRENT MURDER MECHANISM IDEA : RIGHT OR WRONG???

Before I get into it, I'd like to remind everyone that just because we've been shown how the murder may have been done for the first time means that's how it actually happened. Let's not forget that they spent so much time arguing and discussing about the secrets that they barely ever talked about the murder case in itself.

So if anything, episode 13 is practically just them beginning their actual work! Mistakes are bound to happen. We shouldn't jump to conclusions just yet. Besides, there is actually a problem with this murder mechanism.

I'll present it to you in pictures to show you what I'm talking about.

The taped up wrists. This was practically the decisive proof that this wasn't a suicide nor could it have been an assisted suicide. So now that they've introduced a murder mechanism in an actual episode... what's actually the point of the taped wrists in that scenario?

If the culprit used exactly this kind of murder mechanism, then there would be absolutely no need to tape up her wrists together.

Maybe it was to stop Arei from trying to struggle?

Nope. If that was the case, we would've seen much more signs of struggle coming from Arei. There may be scuffs on the ground, but there's absolutely no other form of injury on Arei aside from her broken neck.

Well, I saw a theory where the accomplice was Levi and he could've easily overpower her!

(I believe that was something that @1moreff-creator theorized, if I recall? At least, that was the theory pre part 2)

It used to be borderline possible, but not this time anymore! Thanks to the first two episodes of part 2 of chapter 2, it seems extremely unlikely that Levi wanted to work with the culprit as an accomplice.

Not only because of what we find out regarding his secret, what kind of character he is, but also because of something he said in episode 12.

I don't know about you, but this doesn't look like something an accomplice would say at all, right? If the culprit was someone who didn't have an alibi in the evening, it would be a different story, but the most fitting theory for having Levi work as an accomplice is to work for Eden, who happens to have an alibi in the evening as you already know.

So since we gotta take Levi out of the equation, then we don't really have much other possible candidates who could've easily overpower Arei to the point where taping up her wrists would've helped better on that regard.

Therefore, the most logical solution would be that Arei was knocked unconscious with the turpentine. But since that's the most likely scenario, then what's up with the taped wrists?

If the taped wrists weren't used to prevent any remote chance for Arei to try to get out of this situation, then it must've been used as part of the murder mechanism.

But since the murder mechanism as shown by Teruko doesn't explain the taped up wrists whatsoever, then this becomes a discrepancy. Therefore, that can't be quite the correct answer to solving the how this murder mechanism works.

And since this murder mechanism idea is flawed, it also means that there's no guarantee that the jugs contained fish water inside, they could've simply gathered water somewhere else or perhaps there jugs were already filled with clean water to begin with.

Because this murder mechanism idea is flawed, there's no guarantee that the culprit used this method which required some unknown amount of strength, but an amount of strength regardless (unless the author wants to pass it off as anyone could've done it since it's easier to do it by spinning it, I'm not sure).

Because of that flaw, my theory isn't affected by the murder mechanism idea that Teruko suggested since there is no guarantee that this is the correct answer.

So yeah, there's no problem whatsoever! Also, as far as I'm aware, since the release of the latest episodes, I have a very logically sound reason to explain the taped up wrists as shown in part 5 of my theory.

To give you a small reminder, it was for something like this!

(Whole murder mechanism not properly shown in the drawing because I'm lazy as heck, but just take a close attention to the arms)

By having Arei's arms go between the pillars of the seasaw, you can make it so that she can't get out of it by taping her wrists together, which plays an important role in the murder mechanism. Not going to elaborate further, if you want to know more, you gotta read the big post right there!

And there you have it! Those were the two main concerns that could've negatively affect my theory, but fortunately for me, it doesn't. In fact, it supports it even more than before.

Especially regarding the David / Arei conversation flashback (shown from David's memory's perspective). This conversation told us a lot more between these two, do you know what that means?

That's right! It means that Ace is full of shit! There's no way he didn't hear anything else. The only way he could've not hear anything else is if he gets snuck up from behind and gets knocked out with the turpentine, but it could've easily simply been Ace witholding that information to make David look more suspicious.

Therefore, if he lied about this, he could've also easily lied about when he actually overheard that conversation for his own selfish gains!

There's also a few couple other points that could further support my theory, but I don't feel like going over every single little detail as of now. I mainly wanted to solve these two issues and nothing else.

So, DRDTers, I need to ask you the following : Do you still believe that I am delusional with this overly complex theory of mine? :)

Thanks for reading another one of my big posts, as usual!

Edit : Go read the finale of my theory next, it's worth it!

[tozettastone]

Hm, let me reword; are there characters from the series you love to write but have a comparatively different level of interest in how they're actually portrayed in the source material? I.e. the akatuski who were both introduced and killed early tend to be more of an echo of a character than something that reads as a person

Oh yeah, I see! Thank you for rephrasing this. Okay.

Well, characters like Kakuzu and Hidan (and actually a lot of the cast) are very flat¹ characters in canon. They are also very often flat characters in fanfiction, even when they are major characters — Kakuzu is the money guy, Hidan is the religion weirdo (often referred to as "the miser" and "the zealot," haha) and rarely is this expanded upon.

I write a bit about characters who are like this, and one of the things I like about it is the process of extrapolating a rounder character from the few characteristics of a one-dimensional villain, without just losing all of their villainy. They should still be bad guys. I like to write bad guys.

But, it's also hard for a character to be only a terrible horrible villain when you think a bit more about what they're like in their interpersonal relationships, what they care about, what their preferences are, and just... in regular situations. That's why my Kakuzu and Hidan tags on this blog (...and my kakuhida and hidakaku tags, too, which are interchangeable but somehow never consistent) are full of random comments about this kind of characterisation exercise.

I usually do this extrapolation by looking at characters' attitudes and behaviours in canon, inferring their motives, and then thinking about how those motives might be expanded on so they can be expressed in the broader setting! I have mixed success — sometimes people don't like my characterisation and, much more importantly, sometimes I look back on my characterisation and don't like it either (as one of my recent Deidara posts attests 💀).

In that vein, sometimes I do make villain characters like these seem a lot nicer than they are in canon, just by virtue of writing scenes where they, like, have to have a normal conversation...? But if you're trying to take a flat canon character and reverse engineer it into a rounder one, you have to kinda accept that they will be less, like, unalloyed one-note violence and evil, I guess. Like, at some point they are just going to have to eat lunch without having a little massacre first.

So... That's the comments I have about that process.

I think there are a lot of characters like this in Naruto because a lot of the broad cast can have pretty flat characters. I feel this way about everyone from Orochimaru to Tobirama to Hidan, hahaha. So I wouldn't necessarily single anyone out. I guess the least flat characters I write about would include characters like Sakura, who exhibit a more complex mix of personality traits, motives, desires, preferences, feelings, etc., in canon.

---

One footnote:

1. A quick comment on flatness vs roundness, for anyone who hasn't heard those terms used like this before. Characters, settings, "plot" events, and so on, are all elements of a story. A character is the element that delivers the impression of a "person" to the reader/viewer. They are usually successful to a greater or lesser degree.

One way of thinking about characters is that they can fall on a spectrum between "flat" and "round." When one calls a character "flat," it means that they don't have the depth of personality that makes them very good at being a "person." They are usually one-note and simple. "Round," characters, by contrast, are usually a bit deeper. They usually have complex motives and desires and give a more complete impression of personhood to the audience.

This doesn't mean flat characters are bad characters, it just means that they serve a purpose that doesn't require lingering over the complex mix of characteristics that depicting personhood might otherwise require.

[mauesartetc]

What's your favorite art, writing, and character design advice?

I don't know about "favorite" necessarily, but "blew my mind when I learned this and changed how I do things"? Yeah, I have a few tidbits. You may be aware of these already, but I hope someone out there finds them just as impactful as I have.

The first one comes from art school, circa 2009. Core shadows, everybody!

This is the idea that shadows are darker and sharper the closer they are to the light source, and become more diffuse the farther away they are.

Later, CG Cookie introduced me to the concept of color shifting, which involves color skewing more toward yellow the closer it is to the light source, and more toward blue in the shaded areas. This makes the color look more vibrant and dimensional than it would if the artist simply used lighter and darker shades of the same hue.

Another technique I like using is Griz and Norm's "floating hands":

I could've gleaned this next one from a couple different places but I've modified it to better reflect how the upper arm is slightly longer than the forearm (in fact if you've been following for a bit, you've seen me use it before).

James Gurney's book Color and Light has a wealth of great painting tips, but here's one that stood out: The concept of color zones in the face.

According to Gurney, the reason these zones take on this appearance has to do with how close the veins and capillaries are to the skin, as well as how tiny chin hairs can catch the light. Just an interesting trick to keep in mind the next time you're painting a portrait of a light-skinned person.

One character design tip that's always stuck with me is that the bottom half of the character should look like the top half. If you repeat elements such as colors, shapes, and patterns, your design will look more cohesive.

I think of it like one of those cylinders with rotating segments I used to play with as a kid: You can tell which body parts belong to whom even without the background colors.

As far as writing, I don't remember who I heard this from (some Pixar person; Brad Bird or Pete Docter, maybe?) but the basic idea is: Every character is the hero of their own story. No one wakes up in the morning wondering how they're going to do evil that day. Everyone believes they are in the right, even those the narrative categorizes as villains.

This really shifted my perspective and made me want to treat all my characters with equal measures of empathy. Thus I began my approach to character development as a psychologist might analyze clients, asking how a character would justify their actions rather than projecting my own moral judgements onto them. If you can look at a character as objectively as possible, it's easy to unlock the complexities within them.

Anyway, I hope all this was useful. The trip down memory lane was fun, at least! If this post helped anyone discover a new technique, feel free to leave a tip, and I'll see you in the next one!

[queer-ragnelle]

Hi! I was wondering if you had any advice on how to craft a well-written, compelling Arthurian OC that isn't obnoxious or out of place but is still unique. I recognize the difficulty in doing so with so many different source texts (I'm most familiar with Le Morte, so that's usually my go-to) and the vast list of already existing characters. I'm just curious about your thoughts on the matter, since you're an author and also very knowledgeable about Arthuriana 💖

Hello there!

This is a tough question to answer! I think it's important to note that everyone will have a different opinion on this, but that shouldn't alter you writing your story how you want to. Some think adding any characters at all is too big of a change, while others write a full cast of original characters and then Merlin shows up randomly and makes the story "Arthurian."

I'm going to say something controversial.

Every Arthurian character is an OC.

Even King Arthur himself is an OC.

I'm going to elaborate on this quite a bit, as it's very important to me. But the TL;DR is that reading more will definitely help you conceptualize the boundaries of what's possible. Le Morte d'Arthur is a great start, but there's so much out there, both medieval and modern, that'll undoubtedly aid in your Arthuriana writing journey! :^)

While I do say things like "I love Arthurian OCs" as a means to convey that I view everyone's new creations as valid and interesting, I actually don't believe in a strong differentiation between Chretien de Troyes' Sir Lancelot or Marie of France's Sir Lanval and what you or I are writing today. We're participating in a tradition which can, at times, necessitate the creation of a new character or repurposing of an existing one. I think as soon as you create a character for your Arthurian story, they're an Arthurian character. Some refer to Lancelot or Galahad as "French OCs" or call Knight of the Cart or the Vulgate "fanfiction" as a means to degrade it's validity. Some seem to have an arbitrary timeline on which the full body of Arthurian works is measured, and the more recently something was written, the less authentic it becomes. I think they're wrong. I believe that whether or not we enjoy an installment in the ever expanding Arthurian tradition is irrelevant; it's all equally entitled to a measure of respect, even the new characters. No character or story is lesser than another by virtue of its age or language of origin or target audience or medium. I disdain the excess of scrutiny put upon certain arbitrary groupings of Arthurian tradition. Each story is full of original characters and building on the foundations of what came before. That's the nature of creative influence. Whether or not Arthur was a real person at some point in history is moot. The guy in the Mabinogion or the Vulgate or Le Morte d'Arthur or BBC Merlin is a character. He's a tool to tell a story. Such as your creation will be! Your brand new Arthurian character stands equally with all the rest who preceded them. :^)

Now, it can be helpful to distinguish between a medieval character and a modern one, sure, as they may represent different things depending on what point in history (or part of the world) they were created in. But Arthuriana isn't a franchise one must obtain express permission to contribute to, and it doesn't have a "canon," so therefore differentiating a character as "other" can be counter productive when developing a story. I don't believe Sir Robin from Monty Python and The Holy Grail (1975) or Brian from The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1956-1957) are any less valuable as characters, even if they do draw on traits of existing Arthurian motifs in order to commentate on them or otherwise expand. In fact I think they're great characters and serve their narrative roles beautifully. One simple and one complex. I recommend watching those to see how it's done well and that may help you develop your own characters. But I'll delve into it a bit here to illustrate what I mean.

Sir Robin carries the coat of arms of a chicken, he's a cowardly knight followed around by a troupe of musicians that sing songs about all of his exploits. That is, the things he's run away from. Rather than use an existing Arthurian character and degrading them, Monty Python developed Sir Robin in order to tell their joke.

The flipside is Brian, a bona fide kitchen boy, who attaches himself to Sir Lancelot and desires to squire for him. Brian's narrative purpose is to deconstruct the nobility in a way that Gareth Beaumains, whom Brian is plainly inspired by, could not. Brian begins as a true serf forced to endear himself to Sir Lancelot to elevate his station. Merlin forges papers of nobility to convince King Arthur that Brian is worthy of this privilege. Even after that, Brian must face the brutality of his fellows while living in the barracks with them, as they don't take kindly to a "smelly kitchen boy" in their midst, plotting to get Brian to incriminate himself as a thief and get evicted from Camelot by Sir Kay. This role is incongruous with Gareth as Sir Gawain's brother, who was always noble, always a prince, and merely cloaked himself in the guise of poverty to prove a point. Gareth could return to the comforts of wealth whenever it suited him and his reason for going stealth was to intentionally distance himself from that privilege. The character Brian exists in order to commentate on the injustice of the upper class's oppression and dehumanization of the lower class in a way Gareth, or even Tor, could not, as they are of noble blood, even if it came by way of reveal. That's why Brian is a great addition to the Arthurian tradition.

Really, it comes down to treating the creation of your new Arthurian character like you would developing one for any other work, one entirely separate from the tradition. If they're a good character, they're a good character! Try not to get hung up too much on whether or not they're going to mesh well with the rest of the cast. For centuries, writers have transformed historical figures into Arthurian characters. (See: King Mark of Kernow better known as the Cuckhold King from the Prose Tristan, Owain mab Urien better known as Sir Yvain from Knight of the Lion by Chretien de Troyes, Saint Derfel better known as Derfel Gadarn from The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell, etc.)

Speaking of Prose Tristan, would anyone consider Sir Dinadan an OC? Or Sir Palomides? They're characters added to a story drawing from a much, much older tradition, and I think they enrich the story. I feel likewise about the many Perceval Continuations, including the German Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach, which adds a half brother named Sir Feirefiz, or names Chretien's anonymous haughty maiden Orgeluse. What about Sir Aglovale's son Moriaen in the Dutch tradition? Amurfina in German Diu Krone by Heinrich von dem Türlin? Morgan le Fay's daughter Puzella Gaia in Italian La Tavola Ritonda? Not to mention the countless Middle English additions. The Green Knight and his wife? Dame Ragnelle and Sir Gromer? Or how about everyone's favorite Savage Damsel, Lynette of Castle Perilous? Is she not a late-era addition to the tradition courtesy of the man, the myth, the legend, Sir Thomas Malory himself? And then here comes Tennyson, who read Le Morte d'Arthur, and got to the end of dear Gareth Beaumains' story and had the same reaction we all did: "What the hell? He marries her sister?" And then he went about changing that in Idylls of the King. Speaking of Lynette, what's up with her niece Laurel? She's just a name on a page, the vast majority of retellings choose to ignore her, even if they do keep Lynette and Lyonesse. Laurel can scarcely be called a character, after all. She doesn't even have dialogue. So as I've gone out of my way to make her a prominent, fully developed character, with her own culture and back story and motivations, does that make her an OC of mine? And Henry Newbolt who included Laurel in his play Mordred: A Tragedy. And Sarah Zettel, who wrote from Laurel's point of view in Camelot's Blood. We did all the work, but we threw an Arthurian name on the character, so therefore, she isn't ours? But if we changed her name, she would be? Who gets to decide?

All of the Arthurian characters belong to all of us. That's the beauty of writing in a long-standing tradition, which exists apart from all other forms of writing. We have complete creative liberty to do what we want and refer to it how we want and no person or corporation or anyone can dictate otherwise. The intellectual property of Arthuriana belongs to the people. So invent a brand new wife for Gawain, and well, you're only the millionth author to do it! Just make sure she's an interesting character and that's literally the only requirement. Can't wait to meet her. (And all others you create!)

Have a great day!

[cringefaecompilation]

i saw in one of your posts that you said it's becoming obvious Orym self-harms, and i was just curious if you could elaborate on that? in now way saying you're wrong btw, because it's entirely possible i'm not far enough in the campaign to notice yet depending on how yk obvious it is. he's one of my favourites this campaign and so that's interesting to me! thanks :)

i have many thoughts about this subject (obvious cw for self harming/suicide talk under tag)

so how about that "inability to see yourself as anything other than a soldier" thing he's got going on? the only person that's been able to talk him down from it was dorian... while he was trying to use the sword that killed him (and laudna and fearne) to try and end ludinus da'leth himself and the resulting fallout from that kind of reset his brain back into "defend everyone else, fuck my feelings" mode. also something something exposure therapy doesn't work all the time for everyone and orym proved it lmao

and it got way worse with melora choosing him as a champion and kinda stringing him along because his pure hate for ludinus and desire to make sure he can't hurt anyone has made him put all his eggs into the gods' basket (if ludinus says they are all 100% bad, clearly then they're all 100% good) and she very much knows that

asides from those, overexercising and eschewing sleep are very common forms of self-harm that are kinda played for jokes with orym? let's not even get started with his deal with morri and how every time he's spoken to will he's flip-flopped on whether or not he's "making it back home" or reuniting with him soon.

it'd be easy to write him off as having a savior complex but fuck, with how much he's shown to be so violently anti-anybody else going through pain (and apologizing for making them feel like he made them do it or they had to do it) then immediately forcing himself into shitty situations because he's convinced he deserves it for "letting" his loved ones die... woof

so you know it kinda makes me wanna eat glass when people talk about how great it is that orym is keyleth's or melora's specialest little princess or how brave he is for constantly throwing himself into death with the only pushback being "oh no, he can't kiss a cute boy if he dies!"

[daistea]

thrun is not the submissive one. He might bottom here and there, but that's a position, not a role. I also don't like this shit because I see it with basically every character I like. They're a bit feminine. Okay, sure. But then every edge on them is sanded off until they're disgusting smooth. It's like this gross contradiction of excess fragility. It skeeves me the hell out because it takes a lot of the cool traits and feminizes them totally and basically says "Hey! Being feminine isn't cool or complex or edgy. It's soft." Like. Hey. Hey. That is so fucked? Do you not realize that?

Feminization literally so often takes away what is so interesting and meaningful to a character for the sake of shipping and I've been dealing with it since L fucking Lawliet. And I'm tired. I don't care. Make the guy the bottom if you want. But when people get rid of traits and characterization and change the guy to do it, it's like... ???? I don't know.

Maybe just do it because you want to instead of making it some gender thing? It's weird when people go "femme = bottom". You are remaking gender roles! At that point, I dunno, why are we not writing straight sex?

And honestly, I have lots of thoughts about sexuality and dominance and I think there are so many interesting ways to play it out other than physical strength, which, by the way, if you're going off of that, it's Mithrun!

There's coercion. There's mental dominance. There are so many interesting ways to be dominated beyond pure strength that it seems silly that conquest would come down to only that. You've got this guy, knife-sharp, which is to say smart, and incredibly blunt. He's ruthless, relentless, single-minded. And you're making him the fucking submissive? Like. Okay. Sure. Maybe sometimes. But I also think he's impatient, actually. I think you push him too much when he wants and he decides it's his turn now, and God help you.

There are so many interesting ways to explore the dynamic and the feelings and him as a person. He's a stubborn menace. And it's so neat to make the dom a brat, too! Ugh. The bicker. The banter.

I agree with all u said, here’s a Yeah

I know a lot of it is just societal. We’re trained to assign roles, and when we do that our brains go okay here are the traits associated with those roles :)

I feel like a lot of modern fandom should’ve moved on from that by now, though?? And with dunmeshi especially, you’ve got bearded manly-looking men who cook and garden and sympathize/care for everyone he meets— traditionally feminine traits. You’ve got dwarf women who are stronger than the main character— Namari. Youve got a whole race of characters who look and dress generally feminine, but the main elf is ruthless, he disregards others’ feelings and lives, he’s blunt, he kills people and he does it in a skirt LOL

(I know it’s not technically a skirt but the concept remains ✌️)

Mithrun’s traits are traditionally associated with masculinity. (Women are like that too, though, and actually I want to see more women written like that!) Anyway, despite that, he still gestures in a feminine way sometimes. He’s like if a man and a woman had a baby. Mithrun isn’t necessarily defined by specific roles, which is a consequence of his backstory. That’s how he’s written. He has the capacity to both submit and to dominate— which uh, most real people do, I think. To an extent. I don’t mean sexually, I mean in a relationship. Most emotionally developed people sometimes submit, sometimes grow more dominant, depending on the situation. But what do I know? The world constantly surprises and corrects me.

If ya wanna make Mithrun the bottom in physical moments, go for it. But just because that is considered a traditionally feminine role does not mean he has to be feminine. His characterization/personality does not have to morph and change to fit what sex position you want him in.

Anyway sorry for the rambling, what I’m trying to say is that dungeon meshi has nuanced characters. And I feel like assigning gender roles + the traditional traits of those roles to these characters erases the many dimensions they were written with.

On a physical note, I believe it also subconsciously stems from who’s smaller— another societal norm. I like a good size difference, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think size necessarily equals role. Just bc Mithrun is shorter and can be easily manhandled does not mean he’s an uwu sub softboy who needs coddling. (I think for him, specifically, it also plays into how his disabilities are subconsciously viewed. But that’s a whole other can of worms to snack on.)

If you insist on giving roles, I think it’s actually more fun to give the little guy the more dominant role!

And I do understand why some people gravitate towards dom/sub top/bottom roles. There’s nothing wrong with that. All I would like to see is some brain power behind the characterization and portrayal.

There’s a lot I can but will not say about shipping in fandom. I adore shipping, don’t get me wrong, but I’m just very funny about Mithrun.

In the end, creativity is about fulfillment and joy and expression! If you wanna use these characters to portray your fantasy/tastes then go ahead. But if you want to portray them in canon-accurate ways, with real relationship dynamics, then all I recommend is to not put as much importance/significance into roles. Look at the characters on their own. Canon is your reference, not fanon.

eepy

[polyamorousmood]

How do you deal with insecurity in a polyam relationship?

I've been in a poly V before, with my girlfriend at the time, and her other partner; but I honestly wasn't really invested in the relationship so I wasn't bothered.

I feel like,, if I have a partner and we either a) accept another and form a triad or b) I end up with a metamour again, I would end up worrying that my parner(s) would leave me to simply be together.

(For context, I have AvPD so like... abandonment is a complex of mine and I'm working on it but I'm still so insecure a lot of the time.)

So.. yeah. I've seen you address jealousy/envy, and I know I'd probably deal with a bit of that (in the sense that 'oh, b gets to spend time with c while I'm at work, I'm envious' kind of way) but I know that insecurity would be the thing that would bother me the most

Polysecure by Jessica Fern is generally considered a holy text 🛐of polyamory and this exact question in particular. I haven't read it personally (yet. Its on my list my list is just long 😅) So if you haven't given that a go yet, everyone I know who has read it, has recommended at least sections of it. I know it talks about attachment styles and how to handle those, which might be helpful if you have avoidant personality disorder.

The other thing, of course, is consider bringing this up with a therapist, because I am not one. And this seems like a touchy enough topic that everything I say here is pulled from my experience and should be taken as "ideas to think about🤔" and not "clinical advise that will Fix It🪄" As per usual, LOTS to go over here. So. read more.

P.S. after typing up everything, I realized this post I wrote to help a supportive partner address insecurity might also be helpful for you, and even has a worksheet! Its probably better formatted too. So.. maybe I wasted my typing here 😓. C'est la vie.

Firstly, you never said you identify as polyamorous. So if you're not... you could just date monogamously 🤷 as much as I love 💟polyamory and would like it if the whole world loved it too, if that's gonna be too big a thing for you, there's no reason you have to bother at all.

If you are going to date polyamorously for whatever reason, BEFORE you introduce another person to the mix, have a regular, set time you and your partner spend apart. It sounds counter-intuitive, but maintaining your own social life and identity outside your partner is huge. Do this especially when you're super invested and want to spend every second with your partner. That's honestly true whether you're poly or not, but in this specific case. I think a lot of the fear is bolstered by the idea that without you there, your partner is just spending that time loving the other person. And maybe they'd like to do that more blah blah blah. But this proves that's not the case: when you're not there, you partner is getting drinks with the girls, or building model ships, or any other numerous things they like independent of you. And it also means you're not just pining over your partner when you're gone, you have other shit to do too. And you'll come to look forward to your two hours a week at the coffee shop (or whatever). You will learn reasonable time apart does not equal less romantic interest.

And then, on the flip side of that, set regular protected time with your partner. Not to say never ever will something come up that interrupts that. Emergencies arise🚨, or the time may have to be renegotiated later, etc etc. But having the confidence that no matter what, you'll have a movie date every week, or that Tuesday night is Romance Night, or whatever you decide on, can make it easier. It can help prevent you feeling taken for granted, and can naturally curb NRE with other people if that starts getting unruly. If your partner starts wanting to cut into this time for not-important-shit, tell them you're not okay with that, or -- and only if truly it feels okay to you -- at least get them to make the time up the next day. And you, of course, need to treat it as special too. Make the time important, fulfilling, and intimate. It can be any activity, as long as its bonding time -- quality time, in the truest sense of the word.

Take time to get to know yourself, and share it with your partner. What do you consider to be sacred between you and your partner? Are you okay with your meta and your partner having sacred things -- what type of things? Do you feel better knowing the details of your partner's other relationships, or will that make you more jealous? (I like knowing more, because the thought of my partner having this secret life without me makes me more insecure, but other people are very reasonably of the opinion that hearing that their partner had so much fun without them is a bummer.) How much about you are you okay with your partner dilvulging to your meta(s)? Go through this on as many things as you can think of. Now, what you're comfortable with is not the only factor here; you and your partner will probably both have to make some concessions to reach something workable, but I've found that process, with a good partner, to be more securing in and of itself. You both are working together towards a common understanding. Its generally good practice to avoid hard-and-fast rules here, when possible. For example, "I'm only okay with you dating others if you're home by 11🕚 every night" makes some sense, but if taken literally means if your partner gets a flat on the way home, or has to deal with your meta's mental breakdown, or even just wants to see a movie that won't finish until 11:05 -- that's a betrayal. Perhaps even just asking for a one-time allowance is a betrayal. Instead, work for understandings or guidelines. Maybe the similar understanding in this example is "its hard for me to sleep alone, so I'd like you to generally be home by 11:00, and notify me as soon as possible if that's not going to happen" and then when they bring up wanting to stay out late one night for something, you can ask if its possible for them to do it on a night you don't have to work in the morning (maybe they can, maybe they can't, the point here is that its a dialogue, see below). There will be some trial and error here, so be prepared for that and stick it out.

Don't take every problem as a sign things are doomed, or your partner is divesting, or your partner isn't worth your investment. There will be times when someone is actually abusive, or there will be irreconcilable differences. I'm not talking about those. I'm talking about "My partner is late for the second time this week, they're pulling away from me, this is the beginning of the end"-type shit. No it ain't. A good exercise for this is to explicitly outline your worst-case scenario💣, followed by a best case-scenario🌈, and then a few most likely cases⬜. So from our example above, worst case is that they're pulling away (so you have to pull away faster so you "win" and avoid pain), best case-scenario is that they're late because they're buying you a gift on their way home, and most likely scenario is that traffic's worse than they planned or they ran into someone at the gas station and stopped to talk for a bit or whatever.

Figure out how to self-soothe. Make a stache of nice things your partner has done for you that you can check on your own to remind yourself you're important to them. Reframe some of your jealous worries. Remind yourself of things you're looking forward to with your partner. Make a vent journal. Whatever clicks to you.

And as always, 🗣️talk to your partner. Productively talk to your partner.🗣️ Talk to your partner as much as possible about how things make you feel, and make sure they're doing the same. I talk more about how to talk through problems here, and its worth the read imho (even though its equally long). But for now, know that forming this habit on its own is functionally indistinguishable from being securely attached. As long as the communication is you and your partner vs the problem (and not, for example, your insecurity vs your partner's willingness to compromise), this will be good for the relationship, and you will feel better for doing it. But to form that habit, you have to do it with everything, not just Big Problems. You have to tell your partner sincerely how much you appreciate stuff they're getting right, you have to tell them about small problems that you can handle on your own, you have to tell them about things you're not sure how you feel about yet.

[lucyfrostblade]

Hi! Just saw your reblog and I'm so interested in your thoughts on Fig and Kipperlilly being similar, and was wondering if you'd share?

Yes! i am always down to talk about my two favorite fantasy high characters but before we get into it, some assumptions I have made about FHJY that aren't explicit in the text but I won't necessarily be justifying here:

(under the cut)

Kipperlilly was in some form or another manipulated by porter

Kipperlilly truly cared about Lucy, and to a lesser extent the rest of her party

The biggest and most obvious similarity between the two is the anger they feel. When we first see Fig she's a deeply angry kid. She hates her mom for hiding the truth of her parentage and for wrecking their family the way she did. And while she forgives Gilear much faster than Sandra Lynn, she also starts off incredibly angry at him.

Her anger is very justified, and it's centered around the ways the adults in her life mistreated her. Sandra Lynn by hiding the fundamental truth of who she is from her for so long, and Gilear by, before the start of the series, saying that she isn't a Faeth anymore.

Our introduction to Fig is her taking that anger out on both Sandra Lynn and Gilear, and she does almost immediately see the error of her treating at least Gilear the way she does.

Brennan: You see a little tear forms in his eye and you see he says, Gilear: I know that I said some hurtful things when I first found out. Fig: Yeah, you said, “You're no longer a Faeth,” and guess what, I'm not. I'm just Fig now. Gilear: Fig, I'm sitting here with beans on my shirt. Fig: I know, I saw you ate one on the ride here. Gilear: I was hungry, all right? I've put on some weight. You ever heard of a fat elf? You ever heard of it? I've never seen a fat elf in my life and I'm here with a bad comb over and beans on my shirt. Fig: Okay, fine. Gilear: And I'm reaching out to you. Fig: I'm sorry, Gilear, I'm sorry that I got angry at you. You're just some random man, I shouldn't be mean to you.

But for almost the entire season, Fig does not forgive Sandra Lynn. She's still so angry with her that she struggles to see Sandra Lynn as a complex person right up until episode 15 "Family Fires", is unsure as to whether or not Sandra Lynn is a good person worthy of saving:

Emily: Because I am undecided on my mom. Because at first, I felt like I, oh maybe she's a good person, but now I maybe feel like she's part of this ruby plot. Brennan: Go ahead and give me an insight check. Emily: (rolls) 14. (emotional acoustic guitar music) Brennan: (sighs) Your mom has never lived up to the standard you put on her of making your life good and perfect. She never was able to protect you from all harm and suffering in the world. And maybe that's not fair. And she's probably just a person, and those photos make it look like-- Emily: She's a complex person. She's allowed to be. Brennan: Yup.

So anger, and in particular the ways it can make someone lash out, is something that Fig is intimately aware of, something that she has had to fight to control herself. The difference is that the adults in her life helped her, they supported her. Gilear, Sandra Lynn, and Gorthalax all gave her the space she needed to be angry but also helped her move past that.

Kipperlilly didn't have that. To our knowledge she only had Jawbone, someone who only knew her through Aguefort and evidently did not know how to help her in the ways she needed.

There's also the matter of Porter who, in the third episode "After the Afterlife" singles Fig out when she audits barbarian class:

Porter: Let's see what everyone else in the class, [players laugh] what do other people, what do other people kind of think? Like young lady, what do you think about rage? Fig: What do I think about rage? Porter: What do you think about it? Fig: [sighs] Well, I kind of think it's inevitable, 'cause, I mean, like, people really let you down left and right. Porter: Yeah! Fig: So you're always gonna feel rage. It's just a matter of whether or not you use it productively or just whether or not you control it or it controls you. Brennan: A small tear forms in the corner of his eye. Porter: That's exactly right. That is exactly right. That is amazing.

He sees something in her. Porter sees the rage within her, and he encourages it. But more than that, Fig's perspective that "you control [rage] or it controls you" highlights another contrast between Fig and Kipperlilly. Fig learns to control her rage, while Kipperlilly literally gives control up to the shatterstar. But they still have that same rage, just on the opposite ends of expressing it.

We also know that Fig cares deeply about her friends, and that prior to the start of the series, her former friends abandoned her when she started to grow horns. She was alone when she came to Aguefort. She was isolated from her peers and from her family. She found the Bad Kids, and she is utterly devoted to her friends. She'll do anything for them.

But Kipperlilly? Brennan said in an interview with Caitlin Tyrrell that the Rat Grinders didn't know each other before forming the party. We don't know how the party formed really, but we know that she picked out the name the High 5 Heroes.

I think the High-Five Heroes part of it is sweet, but there's actually something even a little bit sinister to it to me, of being like, "We're the High-Five Heroes." And you're like, "You've pitched a name; we all just met. We don't have anything going yet." ( source )

He calls it sinister that she insisted on the name, but I can't see it as anything other than said. It speaks to me of a kid so desperate for friendship that she's willing to force inside jokes for just a hint of that. She doesn't want to be alone, and Fig might've put up a better act, but she didn't want to be alone at the start of Freshman Year either.

The difference is who they found. Fig got the Bad Kids, people who love and care about her. She had support from her friends and from her family. Kipperlilly was emotionally in a very similar state as Fig but with none of that support, and even had people who either couldn't support her (Jawbone) or wanted to encourage this isolation and rage (Porter).

Kipperlilly is Fig if the first day of school went different, if she ended up with people who didn't understand her like the Bad Kids did and if she couldn't get the support she needed from the adults in her life.

[bungone]

Actually no im not done because I know it gets talked about a lot but Lolita is such an interesting piece of media; not just the book itself but people's attitudes towards it.

like, first off, there's the actual author (nabokov) who goes out of his way to talk about how childish, mokeyish, immature and whatnot Dolores is in the most unnappealing possible ways, and then specifically said that he didnt want the kind of cover that every single fucking published edition of Lolita has?? With girls who are either being sexualized or very obviously having "a good time" which is absolutely not what Dolores was doing in the book?? I really, really, don't think anyone who designs these covers has even opened the first page because what. the. fuck.

It's so obvious that my man Humbert Humbert is an unreliable narrator, but gee, I guess we learned to take everything we read at face value, and also everything that comes from a protagonist's mouth as the "correct" way of viewing things, both in the book and in real life?

And even then, maybe, just MAYBE I can excuse the people who talk about how the book is fucked up because it's "glorifying pedophillia".

Maybe they had a really shitty english teacher. At the very least, they're reading it and understanding that the actions of Humbert Humbert aren't okay? They got to the halfway point. Maybe their education sytem failed them.

Maybe they had a really shitty high school english teacher that never taught them the skills necessary to understand this kind of writing. Maybe they're just dense, that's who they are as a person, and it would take someone going out of their way to point it out for them to consider the possibility.

But then there's the fucking apologists?? Like, putting aside the whole Dolores being 12 (which, yeah, is akin to putting aside the whole book, but bear with me for a second), Humbert Humbert not only kidnaps her (illegal), lies to her for a long time about her mother (not illegal but generally shitty), but is implied to have committed murder (illegal, not sure if implied is the right word here because it absolutely happened and everyone knows it), and sexually abuses Dolores (very illegal). These are crimes. He is a criminal. Say what you want about the justice system these are crimes that absolutely should be crimes.

He's clearly not an upstanding citizen, and I fail to understand how some people look at all his behavior and go "oh yes, the the man who killed a woman and kidnapped a 12 year old girl is just misunderstood, and he did those things for true love" like fuck no.

I like Lolita. It's an objectively good book. The quality of writing (high quality, I mean, I normally hate first-person writing but I actually liked Lolita), it's a great psychological horror piece that doesn't rely on things like shock value and overused tropes. The characters are all multi-dimensional and frankly, act realistically. But that's all it is. A psychological HORROR piece. It's not romantic. If anything, it's meant to make you sympathize with Humbert, and then you're supposed to take a step back and be like, "Wait. Why am I sympathizing with him? I'm not a pedophile." Because yeah, he's a complex character but that only goes to make him realistic in terms of the kind of pedos that exist in real life.

Pedophiles are people too. Mentally ill people, really, really shitty people who need serious help, but reducing them to "not human" only makes them an "other", which makes you forget that on the outside, they look like normal people. That have friends and family and go to school or have jobs and order coffe and read in libraries and yeah, maybe you sat next to one of them an entire year in organic chemistry. They're not weird stalkers that hang out in bushes in parks. Some of them, maybe, but not all. Nowhere near all.

man that derailed fast.