#I think it mostly stems from me wanting to make sure I understand the question and answer properly

[goo34ter]

As I dive deeper and deeper into the Jaivik lore and shipping of arcane, I realize I simply cannot hold my thoughts in any longer. pt2

This contrast is what balances them so greatly, while Viktor is the voice of reason Jayce is there to provide words of the heart. In season two we can see that even in Jayces absence Viktor gets caught up in his mind and applies to much reason to the world (though im sure the Hex core/ anomaly had a part in this too) wich is what leads him to dreeming his own imperfection just that, imperfections, something to be fixed and perfected rather than something that makes him him, and helled lead him to success. When jayce goes through the anomaly and essentially goes apeshit, I think one of the reasons is because Viktors ability to apply reason and make him stop, think, and asses isn't present, leading him to be consumed by his emotions because there is no regulator. 

This immense co- dependency is mostly likely stemmed from the vast amount of time they have spent together through development of Hextech. Why do they need to exercise these weaker parts of themselves if the other is able to take them over when needed. They play into eachothers strong suits. If you've ever met someone whose able to do that math to your music , or art to your ideas you know how quickly a bond can form even if its not inherently romantic. You are able to work seamlessly because you possess abilities that work well with each other but also because you know where the other lacks and know how frustrating it can be to get your visions int fruition because of those lacks. I Have had had a bond similar in the way that is so much more familial, they are usually a one time thing never really recreatable, not only because its a product of years of development but because of an inherent awareness of the other. When I lost this relationship there was genuinely a part of me that felt missing, wich is why i understand how devastated both Viktor andJayce became in the absence of one another. There's no one to connect with, no one to share revelations or hear your though and answer your questions, to question you, to push your limits to just understand you for you.

This is where I think things get murky, because unless you've truly had a similar relationship that Viktor and Jayce have it could be hard to understand the level of care they have for one another without it being romantic at all. When you are able to form a bond like this, its a product of years of dedication, and development. A slow but steady exposure into eachothers lives. This alone is extremely intimate, which is why their relationship can be seen as both romantic and brotherly love.

Their romantic love can be seen through small acts of “devotions”, like jayce signaling to viktor he doesn't have to get up when they are facing the council, or Viktor allowing Jayce to support him with a hand on his back when walking off the bridge, even after saying people from the undercity are dangerous. These are all a lot more personal and intimate actions that stem from years spent together. Small things that don't seem like alot but to each other mean a lot more, because they understand each other and see each other. Knows what the other needs to keep moving forward because that is what they themselves want to do, move forward.

I think there may have been a point however, between victor's death and his resuscitation where Jayce began to place more importance on their relationship, deeming it something beyond that of just brothers. In the first episode (i think) of season two Jayce is literally cradling viktor’s cane like a sad victorian widow. And although I too would be devastated if i lost the only person who so passionately shared my dream i think the time jayce had simply to think about viktor and look at him, brought him to develop their relationship beyond just that of brothers. Hes using Viktors notes to brink him back to life, everything hes using is reminding him of the person hes trying to save, at what point does his desperation to save a friend become devotion? Although initially Jayce goes to Mell for his worries about viktor health he later brings himself to viktor, sleeping and spending almost all his time in the lab while viktor is comatosed, Mell has to bring herself to Jayce, because he's no longer seeking her out.

[steveharrington]

can you elaborate on how fanon nancy is different from canon nancy?

yes <3 when i made that post i was mostly referring to how often i see people seeming to write nancy as like the voice of reason within the group or even the one who provides comfort and stability to others and i just personally don’t think that fits her at all. i think that dilutes what makes nancy so interesting, honestly!! 1. she is not very reasonable and 2. she has trouble expressing herself in a way that other people understand.

1. nancy’s defining character trait imo is her passion. in seasons 1 and 2 she literally v physically cannot accept just allowing barb’s death to be uninvestigated and subsequently covered up, even when steve tries to reason that going along with the cover up is the safest option that ensures no one gets hurt. nancy still can’t allow that to happen and moves forward with her plan to bring barb’s death to light despite it being dangerous and potentially hopeless because she’s acting on her instincts and her love for barb, not on the safest option. in season 3, again, jonathan tries to reason with her and persuade her not to investigate the rats any further for fear of losing their jobs, but in nancy’s mind it’s worth the risk. now im not saying nancy is dumb, because shes canonically extremely smart and even when she does take risks, they’re calculated and planned. but it kinda grinds my gears when people depict her as this levelheaded by-the-books kind of person when she has demonstrated multiple times that she will simply do whatever the fuck she wants, if she feels it’s justified

2. this one moreso, i feel like nancy has fallen victim to that trend of having characters talk like they’re 10 years into therapy. i see this a lot in ship-related content for her, whether it’s jancy or ronance or stoncy, etc. people will often have her make these declarations of love very outright and talk through whatever issues she’s having with someone, which is so….. she doesn’t do that 😭 she historically struggles to bridge the gap between someone else’s position and her own, and it clearly frustrates her. case in point, she isn’t honest with steve until she’s drunk! then afterwards she still struggles to communicate, to the point that in the alleyway scene steve just fully walks away after she fails to respond at all to his questions. with jonathan she’s the same way—their big car argument is clearly frustrating to her and ends with her simply saying “you don’t know what it’s like” after jonathan gives a multi-point argument explaining his point of view. even at the very end of s4, the most recent scene we have of her, there’s so much that isn’t being said between her and jonathan. they’re not being forthcoming with each other. even with robin, she can’t express why robin’s presence is clearly bothering her in s4, even after robin openly gives her the chance to be honest and says “please tell me if im coming off badly”. there’s an enduring lack of communication in nancy’s relationships, and that makes total sense because she doesn’t have a good example of a healthy relationship in her own home. her parents just leave the dinner table when they’re upset with each other. so it blows my mind seeing depictions of her where she’s like “guys our feelings are all valid <3” like she would nottttt say that omg. she may Think it, and Want to express it, but i think it’s a disservice to what makes nancy interesting to just skip 5 years in her emotional development and suddenly have her acting as this mother-figure of the group who addresses everyone’s feelings concisely and plays it safe.

i think it’s a liiiittle bit stemming from misogyny. the “mom friend” trope is kinda pushed on her automatically, even amidst mom steve jokes, because she’s a girl in the group so she MUST attend to everyone’s feelings and make sure all the kids have snacks or whatever. it just does not reflect the more interesting and unique character we see on screen

[stemmmm]

Stem's Thoughts on Harvest Moon 64

(that other title's too long so i'm cutting it down now)

Harvest Moon 64 opens on a scene of your character walking around the street, speaking to everyone in the village who’s come to the event. You quickly piece together that this event in question is actually your grandfather’s funeral, the same grandfather who’s farm you’re about to take over. This little scene beautifully sets up both the tone of the game, and immediately shows the player that this iteration is far more focused on the story and characters. HM64 tells a story about the lives of many people in a small, dying town. It is a story about life, and it is a story about death.

A short disclaimer before we dig in: I played this game before the idea to write these essays cropped up, and have not replayed it since then, so this will be mostly vibes. I will try to do my research to make sure I’m not straight up lying though. (Also all of the images in this one are from google because I don't have a means of getting images from my N64 other than photographing the tv screen and I'm not doing that.)

What’s new!

HM64, also called Harvest Moon 2 by HMGB2 and nothing else I’ve ever seen, is the direct sequel to HM SNES. It’s not a sequel in the usual way sequels are, where you’re continuing where you left off with the same character, but in that every main character is the descendant of their equivalent in the previous game. It’s not important to the story, in fact if you don’t already know this, you probably wouldn’t notice anything past some similarities. I played this game before I tried out SNES and it still took me a minute, plus having it directly pointed out to me to get it. Maybe I’m oblivious, who knows. 

Gameplay-wise, this iteration is home of a few series firsts: For one, your house can be upgraded to have a kitchen! You can't cook though, only collect recipes. You can also get a greenhouse where you can grow crops year-round. Sheep are introduced as barn animals that produce wool. You receive a fishing rod you can use whenever you want, but as far as I understand, the timing is nigh impossible unless you’re playing on a CRT (I am not, and never managed to catch a single fish). There’s a mine you can access in winter for something to do while you can’t grow crops (there are fall crops, but not winter) where you can find about two key items and garbage otherwise. Tool upgrades are no longer done by magic, but by leveling them up through use! Which I think is very neat and feels very natural, like you’ve just become more proficient with them as a farmer through practice. Characters can now come to visit you on the farm at random times, for either special story events or just to say hi! Your farmer can get sick from working too hard in bad weather, just like your animals, and there’s now medicine for that, just like your animals. And there’s inventory menus that I'll discuss at better length later.

What’s the same is… Most things in a basic sense. You’re on a farm with a dog, planting crops, raising livestock. You can make friends with folks in town by talking to them and giving them gifts. The livestock mechanics, as far as I could see and as far as I’ve been able to understand from online forums, are exactly the same as they were in SNES, the exception being there’s no wild beasts that can kill your animals but they’ll still get sick if they aren’t fenced overnight– and they’re not going to eat any grass unless they’re out overnight anyways.

As for your farm, you’re set up with the usual: a small house, a barn, coop, and fodder silo, a wood bin to store debris cleared off your farm, and a big messy field that you have to clean up before you can properly use it. It starts with three new additions though; a doghouse, a bowl that you can feed your dog with by putting edible items in there, and a mailbox that you’ll occasionally receive letters and notices in! They’re small additions, but very, very charming. The one thing that’s been removed is the toolshed, now replaced by a tiny toolbox by your house.

The world outside your farm is like an enhanced version of the SNES map. Imagine the town and forest now have one or two extra sections tacked onto them, one in the town for some extra housing, and a couple in the forest to let you explore the mountain more and get you deeper into the woods. The mountain still has a cave in it (this time with Harvest Sprites, who have been removed from your farm) and a summit you can climb to for certain events, but it has been upgraded with little wild animals that wander around and can be picked up and shown to people for a few friendship points, if they like the animal. (This applies to your dog too, there’s a well known exploit to max out Karen’s friendship in one day by repeatedly showing it to her in the bar where time is stopped.) The crossroads zone is also expanded by having three new areas you can travel to– the ranch that you buy animals at, a vineyard that’s more of a story-area, and a beach that mostly comes into play for a couple of summer festivals! 

On the visual side, this game is the series’ first venture into the new frontier of 3d graphics… kind of. The artstyle is made of isometric 3D models that are rendered into flat sprites and then projected onto the TV as if that’s not what’s happening. The game even lets you turn your farm around in 3D to face different directions, but it’s locked to only let you play in specific angles. Changing the direction made me forget where everything was and get lost on my own tiny farm, so I never touched that mechanic.

Due to the dramatic artstyle shift– not only being in 3D but also presented at a 45 degree angle, the game becomes a fair bit harder to play than either of its 2D predecessors. The controls are just a little clunky, and the bizarre shape of the N64 controller really doesn’t help. This makes the tedium of farming a little irritating to do, since it requires pretty precise inputs done over and over for every extra thing you’re trying to grow. Fortunately, you're not on the hook to ship everything before 5PM comes around like in SNES, so you get to move a little bit slower. The fickle farming experience also gets a little help from the new inventory menu that can be accessed anywhere and any time. It has multiple inventory slots for both tools and items, each type having a dedicated section so there’s no need to prioritize carrying tools versus turnips. Unfortunately, this actually ends up being a little more cumbersome than useful, as the menu takes a little longer than is comfortable to open and is pretty clunky to use. I mostly avoided it unless I was bringing gifts to people. But the addition of an inventory opens up the opportunity for something else which defines this entire game...

Key items– a set of unique, unsellable items –are most frequently found in random, secret places around the farm and town, and they give you a reason to scour every inch of the place. They can also be given to you by NPCs when you gain relationships with them, which is convenient because their entire purpose is to help you get even better relationships with each of them, and maybe even unlock little stories with characters. For example, there’s a music box you can dig up in your field that can be given to any of the girls for a decently sized relationship bump. There’s also an old weathervane in the shape of a chicken that you can find in the little mine. If you give it to Rick, he’ll tell you that it was a precious thing that belonged to his grandmother as a cute scene to deepen the town’s lore and connect it to the first game. Key items quickly become the most important and sought after things in the game because they act as a vessel to deliver that which the game is all about: stories.

Lots of people in a little town

The narrative premise is exceedingly simple: you need to fix up your grandfather’s ruined farm and make a new life for yourself in this town within a certain amount of time, just like its predecessors. Except, this game is a lot bigger than either of them, and it didn’t fill all the extra space with new things to grow on your farm. In my entry on the SNES game, I mentioned that the introspective style of writing turned the repetitive farming gameplay into something more like meditation on things going on in the town. This game takes that idea and runs with it! The town in this game may only be slightly bigger than it was before, but it has a lot more people in it, and every single one of them has a lot more to say, more to do, more festivals to go to, and more story events to take part in. There's even a new photo album that fills in with images for reaching special events or succeeding at certain festivals! Your given goal may be to successfully revitalize your farm, but that rapidly stops being the reason why you want to play. Farming is only a means to further the narrative of the town.

Story events are no longer a reward for reaching the highest heart level with a girl, but instead something that happens naturally in the world as you make better friends with people, or if you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. The world doesn’t only consist of you living it and things happening to you. Instead, you end up being a fly on the wall to other people’s conversations and life events, and you get to see how those events change the people around you. People will begin to say different things, go different places, live different lives without your input at all– often much better lives, as everyone in the town is pretty deeply troubled, whether they seem like it or not.

There’s an added depth, too. While the characters in this series have always been defined by their conflicts (in the first game, every big cutscene with each girl was exclusively about their major life conflicts), this game takes it further in multiple ways. Characters have conflicts with their families: you as the player have a conflict with your parents who can take you home if you fail to farm well, Lillia and Basil have conflict over their marriage and the fact that Basil leaves for half the year, and Karen’s family situation is…. A lot. Then, there are characters at conflict with things much more nebulous, like the Mayor who tells you that the town is going to die out but he can’t find any way to save it, or like the young boy Kent who wants to be a farmer just like you, but through a series of events is forced to learn that life isn’t so simple, people can’t just do whatever they would like, and it takes very hard work to get to do the things you dream of. And then there are conflicts that aren’t even necessarily conflicts unless they run into your long-term plans.

Instead of only having a bunch of girls in town who exist only as your prospective marriage candidates, there are also five boys in the town who will marry those girls instead of you, if given the chance. Like in SNES, there are 5 levels of hearts that the girls can have for you. Unlike SNES, each one of these hearts has a corresponding event you can have with the girl where there’s a chance of her liking you more afterwards, if you say the right things. In addition to that though, there are just as many events coming from the other side of the story, rival events that trigger if you happen to be good friends with the boys.

My favorite story by far is that of Harris the mailman who falls in love with the librarian, Maria, from just seeing her handwriting on the outside of all the letters that she would write. I frequently saw him in the bar at the end of the day and he would tell me the woes of his love, saying that he just needed to work up the courage to finally speak to her. Then one day, I happened to be outside of the library when he and Maria met face to face and she handed over a letter addressed to him. No longer did he sit in the bar forlorn every night, instead all he would do was excitedly tell me about Maria, and then when I visited the library, Maria would tell me about Harris!

While I’m on the subject of these characters, I think it’s worth going in a little more depth on who these people are past the grandchildren of the characters from the last game. See, you may be familiar with names like Karen and Kai and Gray, etc., etc. from a little recently remade game called Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, which is a modern version of Friends of Mineral Town on the GameBoy Advance, which is a port of Back to Nature on the PlayStation. These are not those characters. At all. While the basic elements of these characters are intact– Popuri is cute and childish, Ann is a workaholic, Maria is shy and a little oblivious –nothing else is the same. They all work different jobs and marry different people than they are paired with in later entries, and in my humble opinion, it all works WAY better in this game, probably because of the fact that these characters were designed for this specific context!

As an example, Popuri’s exasperated mother, Lillia, runs the flower shop and Popuri was named by her father, Basil, who loves plants. She’s childish and sweet and loves flowers, but can also be a complete brat. She eventually marries Gray, Ann’s brother, who lives on the ranch run by his father, Doug, who struggles to understand his children. Gray is an angry young man who seems to have a particular dislike for you, but you don’t learn why until you discover he was a promising young jockey until he got a bad injury and had to give up the sport.

Am I gushing a bit and letting the game design part fall to the wayside? Sure probably, but I can only gush because the game does a brilliant job of making a cast of characters who, while simple on their own, have interconnected lives that come together to give every one of them so much more depth than they would have otherwise. It all builds a narrative, and while narrative design is definitely something different than game design on its own, this game is far more about the narrative so it’s impossible to not focus on.

The problems

The trouble with these events is that I nearly missed the chance to see that letter be exchanged. You have some control over the progression of the events, because you have to be decent friends with the boys in order for them to trigger at all, but unlike the girls who have a handy visual signal of how much they like you, the boys have no such thing, so you can’t really know if a new event is ready to fire off. There’s no way of knowing where or when they’ll happen either unless you look it up, and even then you have to get lucky because sometimes they just don’t trigger when you want them to. I had a lovely moment in my game where I managed to accidentally catch a cold from working too hard in the snow and lost a day to being bedridden, followed by the New Years celebration which takes a day away from you, then followed by Kai and Karen’s wedding– something that I had missed multiple events for and therefore had no idea was coming, which also took a day from me. After that three day chain of no work, I think I was extremely lucky my animals didn’t get sick and die. 

This chain of events led directly to me never speaking to Gray again, even though he was the boy I was most interested in, because I wanted to marry Popuri and there was too much risk of him getting to her before I could. The reason why I didn’t go into more detail about the relationship between those two when I was talking about them earlier is because I straight up don’t know it, I couldn’t risk giving them a chance to get together.

The thing is, even if I hadn’t forced Gray and Popuri’s cutscenes to stop, I still wouldn’t actually know what their relationship is like, because I have not beaten this game. I know what the ending entails and I can reasonably expect I probably would not have gotten an excellent one, but I’m sure it still would have been fine. I stopped playing the game entirely before I even managed to get married. Why? Because I couldn’t get any of Popuri’s heart events to trigger. I had her hearts maxed out and had a blue feather ready to go in my pocket, so I could turn on the game and marry her right away anytime I wanted to. But I wanted to trigger the little events, even if they’re just a couple seconds of some pixels talking to me on a screen. They’re cute. And it made me sad that I couldn’t see them for some imperceptible reason. So I stopped playing and didn’t pick the game back up.

I don’t remember how close I was to the end of the game, I know I was at least in year 2, but I don’t even remember how much longer the game is after that. Probably a good amount. I had definitely gotten most of the events you could get at this point, since multiple other characters had gotten married, and the farming wasn’t something I really enjoyed so I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little bored by this point, but I wasn’t frustrated with the general mechanics of the game. The days were long enough, but not too long, that I had just enough time to go anywhere I wanted and do what I needed before night came. I could still talk to characters and go to festivals and play minigames. But I didn’t want to, because the game wasn’t doing what it seemed like it was supposed to for some arbitrary reason and that frustrated me enough to make me stop. When the fun of a game is found more in experiencing special events rather than anything else, the player feels cheated out of their good time when those events are too hard to find or can be missed outright, and that’s exactly what I experienced.

Parting Thoughts

The ending, according to what I've read, is very similar to the SNES endings, in that you’ll get different results based on all of the different things you’ve done. Whether you’re married, how many crops you shipped, how many animals you have, how well liked you are by the town… I imagine it’s not quite the victory lap that SNES’s ending was with its little cutscenes, since apparently all you get are comments on how well you performed by various people in the town, but it still seems nice and rewarding! At least like more of a reward than whatever the hell GB1 was trying to do. It seems like a perfectly good ending that it would be nice to see myself someday.

Despite all my troubles with this game, I believe HM64 is still the best one out there– at least that I’ve played yet. The events are plentiful and the content is meaty. The repetitive day to day dialogue still has the simple breath of life that SNES did, that manages to make the most out of a small amount. Don’t get me wrong, this game came out in 1999, I’m giving it a lot of praise but the characters still repeat the same line to you every day, and they still freeze in place until you leave the room. It’s revolutionary, but this is comparing it to a game on the literal Super Nintendo. Absolutely pick up this game to try it out, but keep those expectations tempered. That said, I never picked up this game nor knew a thing about it until I was well into my 20’s, but the moment I started playing, it hit me with a wave of nostalgia as if I’d known this game my whole life. At least to me, the look and feel of the game were like coming home to a childhood I never had.

 Will I pick up this game again with the intent to beat it? Maybe! Hard to say for sure when I’m trying to play decades worth of games and write about them at a comprehensive level. What I do know is that this is exactly what I want more farming games to be. It’s a game that has thoughts about life, and about death, both good and bad. And I think this is the perfect context to share those thoughts.

[fairyminnie444]

hello crazy science talk here!

so first i dont have friends who like this type of talk especially including loa and shifting so i never was able to talk about with anyone, another thing is if you’re a person who does not like to think hard i don’t recommend joining this talk.

resume: i am a big nerdy person when it comes to acknowledgment but i have a small preference for stem talks, i studied quantum physics before i discover loa and shifting and because of that i believe in the multiverse and that we’re shifting constantly.

i firmly believe that and theres very low people who thinks like me, me myself never met someone who believe in this; Ive decided to send this ask because im active in the practical loa and i am working on my subconscious, so i was thinking about some problems and questiones myself why people take physical abuse more seriously than verbal/mental abuse when they can also cause big damages, but its because the damages are in our mental health which only us can know exactly and people don’t see it so mostly don’t take it seriously or don’t believe it and that’s also a reason why so many people priorize so much the 3D, i ended up thinking about how much consciousness of the world we actually have, and also how little we are confident about ourselves because of how we validate so much the 3D, i caught myself plenty of times with the doubt that something was A but now im seeing B and end up conforming that it was always B i just thought it was A before because i got confused when i probably manifested B, this situation also known as the mandela effect; So i never really understood loa too much like i said im practicing and have difficulties sometimes, and i also dont know why i manifested B when i was so sure it was A and now that it manifested in 3D why am i getting confused

You’re not wrong at all for questioning these things—actually, that’s what helps you understand and master this better.

I'll share my thoughts on your ask and hope it helps in some way.

1. About why people take physical abuse more seriously than mental or verbal abuse:

It’s because physical wounds are visible—people can see the damage, so they treat it as “real” pain. But mental or emotional wounds are invisible. Only the person who feels it truly knows the damage. And since most people are focused only on the 3D world (what they can see, touch, and measure), they tend to minimize or ignore what they can’t physically observe. That’s why emotional and mental pain often gets dismissed or not taken as seriously.

But in reality, both can leave deep scars. Sometimes mental/emotional abuse can have an even bigger impact because it affects how someone thinks, feels, and sees themselves—and that can last a lifetime if not healed.

And this connects to how people rely too much on the 3D. If they can’t see it, they don’t believe it. It’s a lack of awareness about how powerful consciousness and the inner world truly are.

2. About your A and B situation and the Mandela Effect:

When you shift your state of consciousness (even if you don’t notice), you move into a different version of reality. “A” existed in one state, and “B” exists in the new one you shifted to. Your brain tries to make sense of it, but you’re literally shifting realities. That’s why things can feel confusing or different—because they are.

3. Why did you manifest B if you were so sure about A?

You always manifest from the state you are in, not necessarily what you want. Sometimes, without realizing it, you accept B as true in your thoughts or feelings, and that’s what brings B into your reality. It’s all about what you assume and feel as your current truth.

4. And about the difficulty with LOA sometimes:

That’s okay! It’s part of the process. You’re already doing amazing by being aware and questioning things. Keep focusing on the state you want to live in. You don’t have to figure it all out mentally—just be the version of you who already has what you want.

I know it's kind of hard to believe that it's easy and simple, but the sooner you accept it the easier it will be. The hard part is finding the LOA/shifting. And you've already been through it.

[lovelessrage]

Hi! I've been trying to educate myself on various aro and ace experiences and concepts, and I find your blog really helpful with that. However, I have a question about lovelessness that I wonder if you could help me with?

While reading a post about lovelessness that seemed influential (https://aroworlds.com/2019/07/16/i-am-not-voldemort-an-essay-on-love-and-amatonormativity/) I started thinking about families and the responsibilities of parents. I know someone (not aro or ace) who has struggled a lot in their adult life because their parents showed little emotion/tried to repress bad emotions to protect their children, and who never told their children that they loved them. This person feels unworthy of love today and has been going to therapy for years to try to manage it. Obviously it's very complicated and no one can know for certain where this person's issues stem from, but I was just curious to hear about a loveless person's opinion on this topic.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, do you think loveless parents have a responsibility to show their children love / tell them that they are loved even if they (the parent) does not actually experience love?

Would be very grateful for a response and I hope this does not come across as rude 🙏

Well, I think, at least in my personal opinion, there's many ways to show affection to children beyond saying "love". The thing is, children learn what you teach them. If you teach them love as the final frontier, the wholeness of your care, and then take it from them, they'll notice its absence. So, you... don't base your child's worth on love! You base it on something else.

If you tell a child you care for them, you want the best for them, you are proud of them, etc. from an early age, they can still feel cared for without "love" needing to be said. You can show affection in a lot of ways! You just need to show your child those ways and establish early that you still care, even if you don't use the same language other parents might use. Kids can recognise when they were raised differently, so a parent should be ready to have conversations about why they're different from their peers. It can be a good way to introduce your child to the fact it's okay to be different than people around them, and that they don't need to be exactly like every other family.

The main holding point is the expectation that someone would teach their child that love is absolute and then refuse to give it to them; this just isn't realistic. Any loveless parent who wants healthy kids isn't going to enforce love normativity just to dissapoint their children by not being able to give it. How someone cares for their child varies, and it's a conversation you can have properly when they're old enough to understand. But, in the meantime, there's many, many ways to have a child feel safe and secure without saying "I love you". It's about building their confidence and support network, not establishing love as the most important thing in the world so you can tell your toddler they can't have it. THAT'S how you screw up a baby. When they're older and can understand more complex concepts, you can talk about the word "love" as a family and what it means to you and your child. It'll depend on each and every person what comes of that, but regardless, it's important to reaffirm love isn't necessary for that child to be an important part of your life.

They have an obligation to show their child they are wanted, they are welcome, they are safe with you, and they are cared for; this doesn't necessitate love. All it takes are dedicated parents willing to put in the work required for raising a baby, and make sure their child knows they mean the world to them without using the word "love".

[Plus, from personal experience as someone who did get told I was loved by my family? It didn't help me out. At all. Mostly because the word meant nothing when they did not back it up with anything. Love only means as much as you put into it.]

[scary-friend]

Hi Scary!! I saw your post about questioning being a lesbian and just wanted to add to the other asks/anons to say that if calling yourself a lesbian feels good, you can do that, even if you're not 100% sure!!

For me, as a trauma survivor, it was complicated to understand my sexuality, and although I identify as a lesbian now I recognise that my understanding could change in the future. But I love being a lesbian, I love identifying that way, it feels like freedom! If it feels like that for you too, you can just be a lesbian.

It's also okay to like male characters and even daydream about them, and still be a lesbian. For me, my attraction to men has mostly been about admiring the way they perform masculinity, wanting to embody some part of that myself. But also, fantasy isn't necessarily reality. You can want things in fantasy that you don't want in reality.

It's okay, you're beautiful and valid, I'm metaphorically handing you a lesbian identity keycard if you want it!!!! You're welcome to talk to me about it anytime, too <3 (sorry for the long high energy ask lol, I am having a weird day).

This is very beautiful thank you so much, having so much support and kind messages has really helped me figure everything out.

I do find that the label fits perfectly, and it helps me feel more at home in my body if that makes sense?

like that was something I was missing for a long time, I think it stems from social pressures, feeling like I have to end up with a man. But for me, I’ve always loved women. And finally being able to understand that about myself and except that makes me really happy.

I really appreciate your kindness and support. It’s helped me so much. ❤️

you’re so wonderful and I’m so happy you’re my friend, thank you

[unidentifiedau]

hello!! i just wanted to pop in and say that your writing has a lot of potential :)

admittedly, the whole concept felt a bit out of left field at first -- changing the fallen humans order (admittedly, there is no canon order, just a couple of highly popularized ideas), having a child wake back up headless, etc. it took a little digging to realize that the premise of the au is based on a character of the same name from a musical. just curious -- how much of this au will make sense without the context of the musical? what's your intended fallen human order? will the other fallen humans be relevant to the story? will frisk be relevant to the story? will the monsters and locations present in the story be the same as undertale, given that this takes place prior?

sorry for so many questions haha 😅 i'm a sucker for brainstorming aus and this is such a neat concept. i've spotted a handful of undertale yellow (very good fangame) fics playing around with the whole revived human concept, but for the most part, none have gone with the gorish route of the actual consequences of being dead. it's enriching seeing a unique idea :3

Tysm for the kind words!! Ok, let me see if I can answer all the questions:3

I’m hoping for this AU to make sense without full context of the Ride the cyclone musical. Because I know how tedious it can be searching for an external source that needs to be there in order for the plot to make sense. However, the only thing in common those 2 things have is the “Girl who lost her head and uses a toy head as a replacement” I just really like the concept, haha! I’m also planning that my Jane Doe will be its own separated thing, they will be similar, sure, but her personality and possibly her way of thinking will be different. I’ve been trying to write more “morally grey” characters, even if it’s just a light grey-!! I just think that just makes them more real. Also, this whole thing stemmed because of my fixations of RTC and Undertale, and I didn’t want people to think I was blantly copying it. Hence why i usually say it’s inspired by it. Their personality’s might be a bit similar, but since there’s only one chapter out, things will eventually become more fluid.

The intended order hasn’t been changed besides Jane taking place of Clovers/Yellow Kids spot and vice versa. I just think for time, this will make it the easiest. Since everyone just says it’s been a “while” and I can hopefully work with the concept of time, which I should!

The other fallen Children aren’t going to be relevant in this story, they’ll probably get mentioned a few times, but not something that will overly haunt the narrative. However, Frisk will make their appearance (eventually)

The locations are mostly the same, albeit a little different and more locations are added for it to make sense and doesn’t feel like your claustrophobic for too long!

And, no the monsters will not be the same as the canon Undertale, I’m not going to say much because of spoilers but Fear is a big factor in the way they act.

TY again for the ask!! Writing has always been something I wanted to persue and your questions are helping me understand this process better:3 I’ve watched a quite a bit of writing tips and such, and hopefully they will come to light, at least in this fic haha! (However, I’m still highly inexperienced-!)

[khaire-traveler]

So, I saw that you had a Norse Pagan side-blog, and I was actually curious about how you worshipped your deities? Like, do you have one altar or do you use multiple?

Also, would you have any advice for people who worship/work with deities who seem different? (For context, I worship Odin, Fenrir, Hermes, Apollo, and Dionysus) Is there a way you’ve found to make sure you’re honoring all deities?

- 🎲

Hey, 🎲! Thank you for the interesting ask! I don't think anyone has actually asked me this before lol.

First and foremost, I consider myself an Omnist, meaning that I believe there is some truth to most religions, and I personally believe that most deities do exist, in their own right. I do tend to focus largely on the Hellenic pantheon, but I like to honor gods from several pantheons every now and again, be it through altar spaces or just by saying a grateful comment aloud. I feel this is an important clarification as it may explain my more open approach to worshipping multiple pantheons.

I do worship multiple pantheons but have been less involved with the Norse than I used to be. In the past, when I was more actively worshipping deities from both pantheons (now I feel that I mostly honor Norse deities; for me, honoring a deity is like a step below worship but still revering them, if that makes sense), I would specifically keep altars from separate pantheons at a distance from each other as a way to respect that they stem from separate cultures and backgrounds. I have the luxury of being able to keep separate altars for all of my deities, not just ones from different pantheons, so usually, I would keep Loki and Sigyn's shared altar in a different location than the other Hellenic altars, as an example. Personally, I believe that if you're unable to separate them due to your living circumstances, the gods - from any pantheon - will likely understand and not be upset about it. Sometimes we just can't find a way to keep them separated or individual, and that's honestly ok. Hell, they were syncretized all the time in the past, so they honestly have probably shared altars with other pantheons before, if I had to guess.

-

When it comes to worshipping/working with deities who seem different, I suppose it depends on what you mean by "seem different". Is it that they're from different pantheons and cultural backgrounds, or do you mean a stark contrast in their personalities?

If you mean the first question, I would say the best thing you can do is research the deities you're worshipping in a historical context first then try and see how modern worshippers might go about honoring them. I would especially do this with the Norse deities because it tends to be difficult to find information on some of them, unfortunately. The Hellenic deities are much easier to find information on, especially when it comes to historical worship. If you don't want to get too in-depth or it's difficult for you to find good resources or whatever your reason may be, I suggest starting with the basic myths of the deities you're involved with then just doing some very basic research on the ancient cultures these deities came from. What were some strong values of the Norse people? What were some strong values of the Greek people? How did the Norse view XYZ issue? How did the Greeks view XYZ issue? That sort of thing. It will help you IMMENSELY in understanding the mythology of these deities as well as their roots. The biggest thing that you need to understand and acknowledge is that these deities come from very different cultures, and with that, their pantheons may view certain things differently from each other. Take the knowledge that you obtain, and apply it to your worship however you see fit; mostly, I would use this knowledge to strengthen your understanding of the gods and their cultures, especially the differences between their cultures.

For an example of how the Norse and Hellenic cultures differed, within the Norse pantheon, oaths are an extremely sacred thing. Being an oath-breaker is genuinely one of the worst possible things you could ever be - or at least, that's how the Norse people viewed the issue. Within the Hellenic pantheon, the closest comparison would be when the Hellenic gods, in myths, would "swear on the River Styx". If they broke a promise after doing so, it would come with massive consequences for them, however, within the Hellenic culture, there wasn't much emphasis on being a "promise-breaker". Swearing on the Styx was a sacred thing to do, yes, but in general, it wasn't held to the same standard as the Norse. There may be similarities between the two cultures, but they are still different, and what this information alone tells you is that the Norse gods will most likely take an oath VERY seriously, whereas the Hellenic gods might prefer more of a promise ("swearing on the Styx" was mostly used in the context of promising to do or give something for or to someone) of something than an explicit oath.

-

If you mean the second question, you would treat them as you would treat anyone you value in your life that have very different personalities: with respect and care. Dionysus may be extremely different from Fenrir, but that doesn't mean you have to become a completely different person with Fenrir than you are with Dionysus. You will have different relationships with them, sure, but above all, you should always feel comfortable being yourself with any deity. If you don't, then there's something wrong with that relationship, in some way. How you treat your deities and how you choose to interact with them is ultimately up to you; I can't - and won't - tell you what is and isn't right for you. I will say that I tend to be very casual with my deities, so oftentimes, I am the most comfortable when I am just myself with them. Some people prefer to be very formal, even getting dressed nicely in order to communicate with them, but honestly, that's not a style of worship I personally enjoy. Do whatever works best for you; there is no right or wrong answer.

-

I hope that this answers your questions well! If you need clarification on anything or have more questions, please feel free to send another ask. I'm happy to help however I can. Take care, and have a good night/day! 🧡☺️

[doodle-pops]

hi mina!

so weird question that’s been on my mind; you know back in like the 50’s an such people would get upset at people for marrying people that were like black/irish/etc or on the occasion for a different religion that wasn’t christian/catholic/etc & so on??

do you think the elves have the same kinda prejudice but instead for different races like an elf marrying a dwarf ( or a hobbit/etc ) do you think they’d be met with the same kind of disgust/hatred as the outdated views of the 50’s an so on?

( also i hope you know what i mean by this & that i don’t mean it in a bad way, it’s the only comparison i could think of dhhdbd. also i hope you’re doing ok 💖 )

Firstly, I'm doing very good!! My brain is doing woozy and trying to make me create a bunch of unnecessary WIPs at a time when I don't want to 😅. I hope I answered this to your liking, I felt like my brain wasn't cooperating.

I can see prejudice occurring with the dwarves (not sure about the hobbits, they're too cute to be disliked). It primarily stemmed from the elves' superciliousness towards the dwarves' appearance, not regarding it as fair while dwarves found elves too sparkly for their beauty standards. Most of the elves mingled with their own kin while harbouring friendships with other races was acceptable. Falling in love was rare (like once every age).

I don't see hate or anyone being shunned, but disapproval would arise from immediate family members and anyone closely related. First-age elves would be disturbed/baffled by the union since they were writing the first batch of history and discovering what they considered acceptable. Frankly, they probably didn't want a union with races who weren't fair enough and could ruin the beauty of their bloodline lol. Being friends with dwarves/hobbits was the limit the relationship could go. Humans were surprisingly the only suitable race to wed apart from their own; we actually made the cut and not by much 🙂. (the ainur excluded since elves wouldn't have an issue being with a deity)

A major reason why elves didn't look for companionship outside their own race was to avoid the long-term suffering. They didn't want that loneliness after their mortal lover had passed on. To mingle with agony until the end of Arda (this was discussed in Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth).

However, if this union were to successfully occur, it would be a never-ending talk. I'm convinced that elves adored gossiping, so that couple would be the talk of the age(s). Their curiosity would spike; mostly wanting to understand how their marriage worked, the dynamics, and how they fell in love and overcome the boundaries. I can't say if it would encourage other pairings to arise though. I've never heard of elves being disowned for their choice of lover, so I'd like to assume the same for dwarves/hobbits. The family might still be reluctant, finding it difficult to comprehend their family member's choice while respectful to the spouse.

This all boils down to the personality of the elves because some would be conforming while others aren't.

[marbles-for-breakfast]

Okay, after looking it up some more, I found a definition of what transautistic means!

“It refers to someone who want to acquire autism/a form of autism. it can also be used to describe someone who feels they should acquire autism. Transautistic people are not necessarily allistics they can be autistic individuals who want another form of autism.” - Transautism Carrd

Now my question is how does one go about doing that? Like, what would the process be? Secondly, what is meant by “another form of autism”? Does it mean having more/different autistic traits than you had originally? And last, why do you want autism? I’m not one of those “no one would ever choose to be disabled” kinds of people, because I would not choose to be neurotypical if given a choice. I wouldn’t be me anymore. But I don’t understand why someone who doesn’t have a disability (and yes, autism is a disability) would want to acquire one. I’m not trying to gotcha anybody. These are all genuine questions.

Also I still think transautistic is a sub-optimal way to describe this due to the reasons I described here.

Oh, yeah, and I still can’t figure out what “cisautistic” means. I saw someone say it refers to people who don’t want autism or another form of autism, but if that’s true, what am I and most other autistic people? Why would “cisautistic” refer to allistic people?

Whatever. I think these terms were a bad, confusing idea. Do whatever you want as long as you’re not being ableist ig, but why are we co-opting terms from the trans community that don’t actually make sense in this context? Legitimately I don’t care what you do if you’re not hurting ppl. I’m sure once I find an answer to these questions (which I think mostly stem from my linguistics interest), I will forget about transautistic ppl entirely. I certainly don’t think this is a big enough group of ppl to be worth hating on, especially when there’s so many other real threats to autistic people.

[thegreatwicked]

Letting Stories Go

I wanna talk about something that I've been wrestling with for a long while that I'm a little at odds about. So, back in 2012, I started writing a story in the Assassins Creed fandom, I've been a fan of the games for a very long time, and while I love the world within the Animus, the game itself has really become a shadow of itself after the third game. That's where this story took place in AC3 the game with Connor Kenway and taking place during the American Revolution.

By this point, I hadn't written fanfiction, probably since high school, and with the game's release I was compelled to write a character because, despite the disappointing ending, I really loved the characters in the game. I wrote an OC called Chenoa. She was the love interest of Connor, and I wrote her in about halfway through the game following the events of the game. She was the daughter of an Irish doctor (dad) and an Egyptian Assassin (mom.) She was orphaned at eight after her parent's death and raised by an associate of her mothers an Abenaki elder and thusly raised within the Abenkai community. It's a bit of a cliche but at the time I really loved what I was writing however, here in 2024, looking back at the story I never finished I'm really questioning whether or not I should.

My reasons mostly stem from the fact that I'm not sure it's the 'correct' thing to do. As a writer now, I pour in lots of research into my characters and the worlds they inhabit but back in 2012, that wasn't the case, I made it up to 30-odd chapters and I was pumping the story out as fast as I could type because it was just FLOWING.

Chenoa, is problematic because I did not pour much research into her, I was a different writer back then and the world was a different place with people not yet understanding just how murky the waters could be when it came to writing a character from a culture that wasn't your own. I'm a white woman with no indigenous background, and I was writing about Chenoa who was for all intents and purposes, an Abenaki woman but looking back now, I can see I wasn't being respectful or even devoting the care to writing her the way she should have been given that she was part of a community that I know nothing about. I had every intention of finishing the story now that I've changed as a writer but as I said, looking back at it, it doesn't feel right to do it now and I'm thinking it might be time to let the story go.

I'm sad at this realization because I think as writers we develop connections to our stories, like deep emotional connections and I definitely had one to this story. It was the most popular story I'd ever written with over 30 chapters, 74k words 100 comments, 89 favorites, and 103 follows. At the time it was some of my best writing and people really loved it. I'd wake up to new comments almost daily and people constantly telling me they loved the story and were excited for the next chapter. No story has ever reached this level of interaction/adoration/love, whatever you want to call it and it was one of the times in my life that made me the happiest (at the time.)

I had so much love for this story and the character I'd created but the more I thought about it the more I realized that continuing it didn't feel right. I've grown up and while I still love the story, I don't feel the need to continue it. I've decided to remove it and move on to other things. I've saved a copy of it so that I always have it for whatever reasons but I've also screenshotted the wonderful comments left to me. These comments are what make the fanfiction community so wonderful, guys, you're all amazing, seriously. That we form such great friendships with people we may never meet all because of people who never existed is something that will never cease to astound me.

I just wanted to get this off my chest and tell you guys about a story I began a long time ago and how you don't always have to finish things. Chenoa means 'Dove' and she was a healer like her father, she entered into the world of the Brotherhood and met Connor over chance and misdirection and the two became a team. There was meant to always be push and pull as to whether or not she would stay the path of the healer or take up her mother's crusade and take life instead of sparing it. In the end, her role was to remain a healer and stay by Connor's side, rebuilding the Brotherhood but not taking a direct role.

This feels like a eulogy almost, lol. I just wanted to share something that meant a lot to me. I'm onto working on my other projects including Shadows and Unbreakable Bonds and my army of one-shots. Thanks for listening.

[thatdesklamp]

WAIT OMG-

been reading intrinsic warmth for a WHILE and your writing is top tier!! i always wondered to myself every time i’d read a chapter why the writing just STICKS, yk? i’m a MAJOR book girlie, i read 24/7.

AND THEN IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN I READ ONE OF YOUR TAGS THAT YOU PUT UP ON ONE OF YOUR POSTS WHERE YOU WERE ANSWERING A QUESTION FROM ANOTHER LOVELY READER AND I SEE THAT YOU TOOK AN ENGLISH A LEVEL?

first of all (not 100% sure on this) but i’m pretty sure only british ppl take gcses, a levels, etc. YOU’RE BRITISH?

i feel like i’ve met my other half rn over something so tiny but yeah. IT LITERALLY EXPLAINS WHY YOUR WRITING IS SO GOOD:

i could point out the NUMBER of times i’ve seen juxtaposition, symbolism, foreshadowing in your fic to someone if they’d asked me to point it out for them. at first i thought you might’ve done it unknowingly, and then i decided that nope, bc foreshadowing is such a BIG writing technique that it simply couldn’t have been by accident.

it’s one thing to know about a writing technique and another to actually be able to SUCCESSFULLY incorporate it into your writing. if it isn’t clear enough, i’m saying that you did it AMAZINGLY. you’ve got a natural talent and i’m envioussss (in a supporting way ofc 😭).

you should really look into making your own book, and i think you EXCEL at the supernatural aspect of plot in stories. your writing is so unique and different yet so warm, it reminds me of autumn (my favourite season).

idk how to end such a long message, ultimately i don’t have a reason for typing this up and shit. ik you have tons of people probably saying the same thing and it might just get repetitive for you, but i wouldn’t feel comfortable not being part of said bunch-of-ppl-probably-saying-the-same-thing.

oh! and take your SWEET TIME updating. it’s your story, your fic, your writing. the ONLY thing we readers can give you as a payback and thanks is time, patience, and understanding <3333

RAHHH BRITTANIA 💪💪💪💪

Agh. Yes—I’m British (English to be precise, sweet sweet caroline etc), hence the use of ‘u’s in words like ‘colour’ and ‘humour’, and also why everyone’s parents are their ‘father’ or ‘mother’ and not mum/dad. ‘Mom’ feels too American but ‘mum’ feels too rah engerland, yk? I’ve mentioned previously that I’m looking forward to writing fics where the characters are actually from England and where I’m actually allowed to write them the way I talk, mostly. Good lord am I excited.

And yes lol I took English for an A-Level. Bloody smashed it too, if I get to brag, mwahaha. Didn’t take it any further (I’ve also previously said that I’m a # woman in stem uni student, which is true), but I still write a killer essay imo. Give me 10 minutes to do a refresher on ‘Othello’ (it’s been a while okay) and I can talk for donkeys about his tragic fall and how much of a wanker he is. Which he is! I’m a Desdemona defender for life.

You say ‘natural talent’. PLS. No!! God no. Not at all. I wish—that would’ve made it a lot easier, but whatever I can do rn is down to bloody years of toiling away on my shitty little laptop, I promise. I’ve got another anon ask that asked about some writing tips so I’ll do the bulk of them there but my number 1 will always and forever be to practise. Whatever skill I have now has been earned over the many years. You don’t even want to see some of the stuff that will never grace my ao3 page (atla had me in a chokehold through covid and I have never been the same).

But you are genuinely so complimentary: this is so so lovely of you. Thank you?? It’s really weird being someone who writes and also someone who enjoys analysing literature; you’re right, half of the ‘techniques’ are intentional (the number of times I’ve flicked through some chapters’ drafts and thought, ‘fucks sake none of this makes sense, I need to add some decent foreshadowing or none of this will make sense in two chapters’), but also so much of my writing is just thinking, ‘hmm, this doesn’t really feel right. No no, I don’t like the vibe of this. I want this to feel more GRAAHHH and less lalalala. Lemme change this up a bit’. Whether that leads to the whole, short sentences->speeds up the pace of the reader when reading the section->increased tension, mimics actual fight encounter, etc etc (all the stuff you blag on about in eng lit), then maybe that counts as intentional? And maybe not.

Making my own book? That’s lovely of you to say but I also really don’t have any ideas for anything non-fanfic’y! Lol. I love a good bit of canon compliance, that’s my issue. That being said—hey, another eng a level reference—I’ve made multiple references here to being the world’s #1 ‘Atonement’ hater. Unfortunately, it also lives damn rent free in my head and I’ve got the bare bones of a WW2-era, perhaps epistolary, longform fic buzzing around. (Fandom: Marauders. I’m a disgrace but here we go). I’ve written nothing for it and maybe I never will, but that’s one of the only things I can see as being more standalone from original canon. Anyway: it’s the fanfic life for me. Ali Hazelwood’s life is but a distant dream.

But anyway! Thank you again for your lovely words. The next IW chapter will take a very long time, I have to be frank, so thank you for the reassurance that that’s not absolutely disgraceful lmao T_T Thanks again!! <3

[nightstar1231]

To the anon who asked me about Zatavia...

Tumblr ate my response when I tried to save it as a draft. So I'm just going to write it out as a post. Forgive me!

Question: With the 25th anniversary of The Kingdom coming up, do you have any Zatavia headcanons?

The answer: I sure do!

There's not a ton about them in Kingdom Come or The Kingdom, but the little bits we get help fill in the gaps, and it's always fun to just run with it. So, my Zatavia headcanons:

They were only acquaintances until after the Battle at the Gulag. The Kingdom Come novelization mentions Avia being stood up for a date right around the time she joins Superman's team, so she's single at that point. Sometime in the 2-3 years after Kingdom Come, they meet and start dating.

Where did they meet? On a team! Offspring's plan in his issue of The Kingdom is to get his old team (consisting of Avia, Zatara, Star-Spangled Kid, and Stripesy) back together. They must have started the team up after the Gulag and broken up at some point. (It's implied they weren't a great team.)

Zatara is flamboyant and full of himself. He likes to deliberately annoy people and he's mentioned to be infuriating by several characters. (Oddly enough, he has positive interactions with Batman and tries to talk to Luthor at one point, so this could just be toward people his age. I like to think that most of it is bravado that doesn't hold up to people who are actually competent.) Avia on the other hand is pretty well-adjusted. She's grounded and noble (with a bit of her mom's temper thrown in for fun), and seems to have a lot of respect, both from heroes her age and heroes of the older generation. Somehow, the pairing works.

Avia also thought that Zat was a jerk when she first met him. He showed her his sweet side later on. He may be an ass, but he's her ass.

Zat constantly begged Avia to go to one of his shows. She finally did, and he dedicated an escape act to her. (She saw through it. Her dad is the world's greatest escape artist, after all. Still, A for effort.) They went out for drinks and dinner after and that was their first date.

Zatara gets much, much more comfortable poking fun at people when he has a beautiful, buff, gigantic girlfriend who will defend him. He's honestly a bit of a coward. Misdirecting that energy toward Avia would be a very unwise move on his part.

She can pick him up and do whatever she wants with him. And she does. A lot.

Avia can understand everything he says backwards. A lot of the time, she's the only one who can understand what he's saying.

They like to tinker with Apokoliptian tech and magic combos. Scott actually loves to talk shop with Zat, too. Barda will walk in and find all three of them brainstorming sometimes.

Mar'i was utterly flabbergasted when Avia told her she was dating Zat. Eventually, she warms up to him. She helps cover for him when he gets into trouble with Avia. They can both relate to making decisions that Avia doesn't approve of.

The first few double dates with Mar'i and Ibn are some of the most awkward hours of any of their lives. The problems stem from the men, mostly. Ibn is stuck up and closed off to everyone but Mar'i, and Zatara is annoying to everyone but Avia. Time wears them down, and eventually they come to be comfortable with each other. (At least as comfortable as a half-Tamaranean princess, an Apokoliptian warrior goddess, a chaotic-neutral son of the bat, and a showboating sorcerer/stage magician can ever hope to be.)

[morethanthatfic]

Hello, I’m watching the show for the first time and I have some questions if you don’t mind.

When Jim talked with Michael he implied that Karen was a rebound and he also admitted to her that he still had feelings for Pam, so why later on did he turn Pam down and kept being with Karen? What if Pam didn’t leave that note?

Also, why didn’t he do anything when he learned she was single? I understand she rejected him but basically she couldn’t get with him because of Roy but she did have feelings (as she said when she confessed what happened that night) and that’s why she kissed him back and told him she really wanted to do it too, so with no Roy in the way it would have brought me a little bit of hope (or that might just be my delusional tendencies lol).

Lucky you getting to watch the show for the first time!

I'll start with your 2nd question: why didn't Jim do anything when he learned Pam was single? Pam's response to his confession was not that she didn't return his feelings, it was that she *couldn't* at that moment. So why not just call when he finds out she's broken it off? Well, besides the fact that we wouldn't have much S3 plot if that happened, we need to look at Jim's point of view. He was absolutely devastated by casino night. In his words, he put it all on the line (twice) and got rejected (twice). He was not about to do that again, any initiation was going to have to come from Pam. Which I would say the hotter debate in the fandom is why didn't Pam reach out to him, and that's a little more difficult to answer but I think it was a combo of denial that Jim played a major role in her calling off her wedding and also some guilt because she knew she broke Jim's heart.

So now to the first question, why did Jim continue on with Karen even after Pam's beach speech? It stems from casino night. He told Pam he loved her mostly in urgency but also because he was pretty sure she had feelings for him too. So when his confession was met with "your friendship means so much to me", it made him doubt his instincts with Pam. (to be clear he put Pam in a difficult spot and expecting her to say she returned his feelings in that moment was not very reasonable of him, but as I said before love is not known for making us logical!)

His actions and reactions to Pam in S3 make much more sense if you imagine he was always thinking Pam wanted friendship only. He didn't really want that, not because he didn't value Pam's friendship but because most any interaction reminded him he was still very much in love with her and it caused him heartache. On top of that, he was trying to have a relationship with Karen. The result was him being emotionally walled off from both women.

Fast forward to Pam's beach speech. It started off very honest and direct: she called off her wedding because of Jim, she was going through the motions with Roy but Jim made her realize she wanted, needed, deserved more, and she missed Jim desperately. But when she got to "and now you're with someone else", she tripped up. She seemed to realize this was a very public confession in front of a crowd that included Jim's girlfriend. So she tempered her speech with a finishing plea for Jim and her to be friends again. It was still a sincere plea, she loved him and missed him so much she needed something with him. If that was friendship only she would learn to be okay with that.

Jim seemed to hear Pam clearly, his stunned face at the end of Beach Games seemed to say “Wow, she does love me back, she wants to be more too.” But a week later in The Job episode, while his interactions with Pam were definitely more friendly, he was still with Karen and still serious about getting the New York job. It’s hard to say what happened but I imagine his doubt of his Pam instincts kicked back in when thinking about her speech, that he focused too much on the parts where she emphasized missing his friendship (and Karen probably played some part, since corporate job was a chance for her to get Jim away from Scranton and Pam, so her resolved to make it work was as strong as ever).

It took the one-two punch of Jim finding Pam's note in his expense reports and David Wallace asking where Jim sees himself in 10 years to make how Jim truly felt and what he really wanted come into focus: he wanted a future with Pam, and he finally realized Pam wanted that too.

Now what would have happened if Pam didn't leave that note? Thankfully, we'll never know, but if we want to speculate I would point two things. First: the job Jim was going for entailed visiting the branches often. Second: it did not take much for Jim to start falling back into Pam, remember how their brief interactions pranking Andy in The Return made Jim completely spiral? A solo Jim visiting Scranton with a now more confident and honest Pam sitting behind the desk? Might take more time but I think the result is inevitable.

[fearowkenya]

Ocean Wave, Part 2: A Winding Current

“I was curious.” Dracmon fidgets idly with the little golden loop near the spike on his right wing. “Somethin’ about you drew me in… and I couldn’t walk away. When we fought together, it felt right. More right than anything I’ve ever, ever felt. And now… I just want to be with you.” Dracmon wasn't always by Kaito's side. Which begs the question: part 1 - footprints in the sand Who was he, before the arrival of his other half? part 2 - a winding current And what was he doing, on that fateful day?

Part 2 covers the moment that Dracmon and Kaito met for the first time. once again, tumblr dot shit hides posts with external links in tags, so the ao3 link is in the source.

EDIT: fixed formatting on ao3 - indentation on mobile should look better now. extended authors notes under cut!

SO there was a TON of ideas that went into part 2, mostly stemming from, as i've mentioned, me being mad that kaito and dracmon were the only ones not to get a fancy champion evo sequence on-screen. i said in my authors note on ao3 that as i was playing, i just assumed it happened off-screen, but then i asked myself "what if it didnt?" and the answer i came up with was "maybe dracmon could already innately reach champion" and then i worked backwards from there.

next - aesthetic changes to dracmon. i am a HUGE sucker for digimon being matchies with their partner. before dracmon met kaito, i think all of his eyes were red, both the ones on his face and the ones on his hands, and the ones that are green only became that way after meeting kaito and devolving from sangloupmon. it's kind of like in tamers when beelzemon's eyes change colour after he makes amends with his partners. i also made changes to the accessory situation - after meeting kaito, instead of the little chain with the green gem in the middle, dracmon would have piercings on his wingtips that are the same shape and on the same side as kaito's. i have like... a written list of all aesthetic changes across all stages for all the partner digimon at this point (except for renamon and gabumon - still thinking about those ones) so i will accept any invitation to blabber about them! i LOVE that shit, i cannot emphasize that enough!!

formatting this time was a little less intense - i only had one table i needed to work with, and tbh, most of my formatting issues were about indentation. im actually not really a fan of the standard ao3 formatting patterns, where there's double spacing after each paragraph and no indentation. i much much prefer how it is in most novels, where there's no double spacing and every paragraph is indented. i know people tend to be fussy about formatting in fics, and most of the ones ive seen use the double-spacing no-indenting situation. it's understandable, formatting is something i'm fussy about as well, so im trying to strike a balance between the way i like it and the way i've noticed that most others like it.

i like indenting. i use it to like... give a sense of flow to conversations and/or differentiate/shift between spoken word and narration. the vibe im trying to give when i increase indentation from line to line is that the conversation speed is picking up. im not sure how well that was conveyed, but i think it works all right.

once again, like in alligators, i left some deliberate loose ends. the most obvious one is "if that first tether pulling dracmon toward the ocean wasn't kaito, then what was it?" and listen. dont even worry about it (:

as im replaying the game, im noticing some really interesting stuff about the state of the digital world. in like...part 7, i think, there's an optional free time event where you can recruit a tentomon, and it mentions that a lot of other digimon have been behaving aggressively lately. paired with the fog, i think that what's happening is that the shrinking digital world is causing a lot of digimon to have to live in close quarters, and that a lot of them are "young" in the sense that they're still feral and incapable of speech or reason. that, plus the continuous spread of the fog, would make for a really hostile environment for the remaining areas of the world. im quite happy with the theory i've got that digimon might sometimes lose a bit of memory every time they regenerate. if you subscribe to that idea, the unusual aggression among the wild digimon makes a lot of sense - they're all young, they all keep getting exploded and forgetting what's going on, theres this terrifying fucking fog EVERYWHERE, which just feeds back into wild digimon being more on-edge, and therefore more aggressive. thats why tsumemon is a little unsure of hanging out with koromon at first in part 1 - it's a dangerous world for little guys!

this is kinda connected to why i have the digimon half of the cast crossing paths with one another. tsumemon and koromon have met, yeah, (even though they don't remember anymore) but also i think a few of the other characters have met too. i didn't linger on it, but kunemon was in part one of ocean wave , albeit very briefly, trying to warn dracmon about seadramon lol. Now Why Would He Do That? again. don't worry about it (:

and at last - what's next? i mentioned in another text post a few days ago that ideally id like to go back to some shuuji and lopmon stuff. ocean wave set up some context about a couple of things i want to explore about shuuji and lopmon's relationship, as well as some . hmm. alternate events. and what effect those alternate events have on the two of them. "what do you mean" dont worry (: mostly it is just me self-indulgently fixing a few gripes i had with truthful route's part 6. i'd also at some point like to post some doodles of aesthetic changes. i have a few sketched out but they're very messy lol

anyway wow this was a big ol comment post. thanks for reading this far !!

[morgana-ren]

I have sent you a truly embarrassing number of anon asks over the last two months and you have been so creative and kind in every one of your answers. I found your blog and it really means a lot to know that there are other people out there with a similarly f'd up relationship to sex. Makes me feel a bit less like a broken freak. You don't need to respond to this if you don't want to, I just wanted to let you know.

Honestly, I love it. That's the trouble with OCs is there isn't a fandom or like.. somewhere you can turn to when you want to indulge. The entire thing rests on people who know them and are interested in them. If I want to read about Reaver, I can (sorta, anyway, because his fandom is dead and all the stories are mostly long gone) but it's not my Reaver. Ilya and Corvus just have nothing but what me and my friend write. Astarion is currently being dissected by the fandom and it's vastly different than what I'm looking for (even as I love doing that too.)

What I'm saying is I love the questions. It's a lot of fun to think about them and these specific scenarios and I got really lucky that I have people who take an interest. I genuinely want to get to all of the questions at some point, and I'm running through them with love. I genuinely have a lot of fun answering them and I love seeing questions about them. I think it's really cool and fun that people care and enjoy them like we do! It's fantastic to see because sometimes a new hyperfixation or character is a fuckin' lifesaver and I will never turn down making new content when my head isn't working to make it originally.

I've known I was 'busted' since I was really young, and in a way, it's the healthiest thing about me. I've had time to break it down. I recognize where these desires come from, why I feel them, and where they're initially stemming from, and I know it is absolutely not something you put up with irl. I know that me liking people like this isn't some grand statement on me as a whole, but a fantasy that stems out from my experiences. I accept it. I don't feel bad about it or really feel a need to explain it. People can think it's gross or unhealthy or whatever else have you if it makes them feel better, but I am sure of myself and know it doesn't make me a bad person. It just is. It's never something we have to justify. Most people who grill you or are cruel to you have legitimately no idea what they're talking about. I've been a darkfic author for long enough to see the ridiculous fandom wars that arise over dumb shit like this where people sling shit baselessly despite knowing nothing.

I'm not saying that to be mean. I'm saying it because I have seen what people have to say about the matter and like, from a psychological standpoint, they are completely incorrect. I went to school for this. It was my dream career for a long time. Most people just say shit but don't actually understand the processes behind it. They operate on gut instinct and that gut instinct is immediately "Disgust" if they cannot relate. But instead of having compassion and trying to be supportive or trying to understand or just leaving us alone, they lash out because they are physically incapable of putting themselves in our shoes and feel they have 'morality' on their side, and that allows them to act like amoral twats towards other human beings, ironically enough.

It has a way of making us feel broken or bad or just not like a good person. When you're beset on all sides and you know your interests are strange or that something isn't quite healthy, it's easy to fall into that pit. But nothing is ever so simple, especially with the human brain and growing and learning and becoming a person. It hasn't bothered me in a long time and honestly, it is so, so freeing. I'm totally fine with it. I don't feel guilt or shame. It just is. Other people can think it's odd, but I've always been odd. No big shocker there.

Sex is complicated! It can have a remarkable impact on the brain! Humans are fragile while also being incredibly resilient. Sometimes things scar us, and that's okay. Sometimes we develop strange desires. Sometimes we end up with warped ideas. It's normal and okay, and really, there isn't any 100 percent sure fire healthy way to deal with things. For some, it's fantasy. For others, complete abstinence. Some people choose to never unpack it at all. The important thing is knowing your boundaries and the ways you should be treated in real life. Never letting someone hurt you or step on you or disrespect you. Your body and your desires are your own entirely and what others have to say means nothing. They will treat you with respect or you have all rights to completely cut them out and off.

Knowing the difference between fantasy and reality is the biggest thing, and it's a line I see people blurring or incapable of seeing every day and that is legitimately scary. It's important to look at things and understand yourself. Know that it's okay. You're just you, and that's not wrong or broken or disgusting. People have a very hard time understanding other people's perspectives and they really like to make that everyone else's problem. Don't let it get you down.

There's tons of us out there. It isn't nearly as uncommon as they'd have you believe. Hell, it's not even as unhealthy as they'd have you think. It's okay to be okay with it. It's okay to embrace it as long as you are putting boundaries up in your every day life and are good to yourself. That is what is truly important.

Thank you so much and I appreciate every single message you send. I haven't gotten a single inbox I've disliked or didn't find fascinating and they're always a pleasure to answer. Always feel free to send me anything!