#and creating a huge essay in response that no one wants to read and pushing back projects i -do- really want to work on in the process

[cavemanyaxye]

Pollan’s essay is as much about the problem of problem-solving as it is a proposal for dealing with climate change. What do we do with the feeling that as individuals there is little we can do to influence really big issues such as homelessness, hunger, war, or climate change? Who wants to be just a drop in the bucket? Explore this dilemma by having a conversation in writing with an imaginary companion on a big issue you care about. First explain in writing what problem you think needs to be solved and why. (You might want to write about your potential research topic, if you want.) And then respond to your companion’s first question: You don’t think you could ever really do anything about it, do you? Carry on the conversation with your skeptical companion as long as you can.

We do as individuals like pollan said question if our little contributions to the solution can influence big issues that are above us. We also look for people higher than us like the government to figure it out and rely on wishful things then commitment to change.

I believe world hunger needs to be solved. There are many reasons for people to be hungry and may not have resources to make food. Feeding the less fortunate that have no choice to go starve when aid can be given.

1- companion

2- me

1 You don’t think you could ever really do anything about it, do you?

2 I don't really know if i can make a huge impact by myself but with helping hands of others i can help provide for people need food

1 It feels hopeless seeing my friends and family starve maybe god gave up on us

2 don't look down on yourself there's gonna be salvation and food soon i heard aid is being brought from all over the world to help save us

1 no way how much longer, eating rotten bread isn't what i need more of i already feeling sick but i got no choice.

2 No, good bread, water and rice is being brought don't give up just a little bit longer and hold on to the hope.

1 I trust you I'll try to hold off a little longer but my stomach has other plans.

Test your understanding of Pollan’s argument. After reading “Why Bother?” Compose a fast paragraph that summarizes how Pollan answers his own question: Why bother? What is the core reason and what are other compelling reasons?

Pollan answers his own questions with others' answers and conveys the reason why the reader should bother being given a chance to help climate change even if you feel like your little role wont make an impact you can live like the world is doing the same. The argument used is not telling but persuading in a down to earth relatable feeling of caring and bothering with making a change to your lifestyle even one step at a time. The core reason is we should act because personal changes break helplessness and create a sense of hope and shows that if you can make slight changes can influence others, shifting people's values and showing leaders people care. It's also another compelling reason like morally we should be responsible for living by our values.

Use both the “believing game” and “doubting game” to evaluate this claim from Wendell Berry and from Pollan: “the deep problem standing behind all of the other problems of industrial civilization is ‘specialization,’…the disease of the modern character." What will help us become healthier as a society?

What could help is instead of believing in people with the problem of specialization that can cause disconnect from nature and responsibility expecting people to do certain things instead of branching out and the disease of modern character being people not doing things to help because they don't know how to is what makes it a disease growing to others till nobody does anything. Truly rebuilding and pushing small ways to slow down climate change and find healthier ways to make society better like making your own garden or walking and biking could make a little difference but with enough people it can become a trend that improves the future of society.

Take a look at the Persuasive Research Proposal Assignment. What can we learn from Pollan's essay about our own upcoming assignment? (Note that there is no first person allowed in our essay, which must be fully objective.) Will you make sure to clearly define the problem and provide essential details about how your solution will address the problem you are writing about?

I will take the small little addition like giving others perspectives that are credible and include people's names when using their words and smoothly go through my essay and give citations of what others said. Not putting my opinion in a way to make it too easy to guess what my arguments are like in the Pollan essay, making sure to not allow any information to above anyones head and making sure my essay has good flow and makes sense to make the reader care about the problem.

Write a proposal—just around a page--to help resolve a problem that you care about. State how the problem impacts the reader and why the reader should care. Then, describe the solution and how it will make the work a better place. Make sure your proposal does the following:

Addresses a problem that is of consequence and of a manageable scale, including the problem’s causes and effects.

Provides evidence for the seriousness of the problem and for ways to solve it, justifying these solutions over alternatives. You can draw on your own experience but try to find one source that helps a reader understand the issue.

Is appropriate in both form and content to your purpose and audience.

Includes one graphic .

Homelessness impacts everyone by straining public resources like healthcare emergency services and law enforcement. It affects communities all across America and overall lowers the quality of life. People should care because homelessness could be your next bad year that can make you end up on the streets like the people you see on your way to work. A Lot of people didn't choose to be homeless but unfortunate events lead them to be on the streets. It could be a multiple of things like drug addiction, being out of work or even being kicked from home at a young age with no reliance on anyone to help. Social inequality and broken systems make us belittle and ignore it, allowing the problem to flourish and grow. There is multiple reasons why people avoid shelters that many say is the best opinion for the homeless but these reasons highlight how solutions come with cons like how in (alicia bones) article she talks about how “Two of the most common conditions that might dissuade a person from using a shelter are: Too few beds: Unhoused individuals or families are turned away due to lack of space. Locational challenges: Shelters may be located far away from services or in areas without public transportation.” she even speaks out about how theft is common and sexual assault with being near by people in a confind space this creates scenarios that arent suitable for people looking for somewhere to lay their head and take their chances outside. The solution to this problem of homelessness isn't to put money into these shelters but to invest in creating permanent residences to people who want to get off the streets and make a change from wherever they are coming from because like is easy for people who aren't living the life on the street but to ignore the growing problem isn't what is needed also making food drives in the communities to give what you have can make a impact and small impacts add up to large ones.

https://mrsc.org/stay-informed/mrsc-insight/february-2024/best-practices-shelters-part-one#:~:text=Two%20of%20the%20most%20common,in%20areas%20without%20public%20transportation.

[marshmallowgoop]

Hi, Goop! I just came across your Wolf Children post about Yuki's development throughout Wolf Children. Her personality change rubbed me the wrong way too, especially when you consider there was an easy solution. If none of Yuki’s classmates shared her interests, why didn’t she try to make friends with other kids who did? She couldn’t have been the only girl in her school to like snakes and bones. If she was, then couldn’t she just hang out with the boys instead? That's what I did in school

[In reference to this post.]

Hi!

Yeah. I’m coming at it from a western perspective, and that’s all I can really speak to, but it just strikes me as an enforcement of strict gender roles. Yuki’s tomboyishness is almost presented as something childish that she has to “grow out of” in order to become a mature woman, and it... rubs me the wrong way.

[Image description: An anonymous ask message that reads, “Hey! I just found this blog after I finished kill la kill on netflix. 6 years late to the party, I know. I have a quick question, apologies if it's been answered before. Is there any reason/significance behind Ryuko carrying a guitar case? And why do they call it a guitar case, it looks like a regular box? Does Ryuko actually play guitar?” End image description.]

6 years late to answering this message....

Unfortunately, I can’t think of any statements or design notes concerning Ryuko’s guitar case. I like to headcanon that Ryuko plays guitar, and that’s where the case came from, but I don’t believe there’s anything in canon/canon materials to back that up.

That said, there’s an interesting piece of concept art for what I think is the case in The Art of KLK Vol 2, which depicts a dog and puppies inside?

[Image description: Part of a page from The Art of KLK Vol 2, image courtesy of h0saki. At the top, there’s a sketch of the outside of Ryuko’s guitar case. Below, there’s a sketch of the inside of the case, which holds her Scissor Blade among other hard-to-define items. At the bottom, there’s a sketch of a box with a dog nursing four puppies inside. The page also includes sticker designs for the stickers that Ryuko places on the case (a “JK” sticker where the “J” resembles a sock and what looks to be a triangle-shaped badge of some sort), as well as a sketch of Ryuko’s red glove. End image description.]

I’m not quite sure what’s up with that! But it’s sadly all I got on the subject.

[Image description: An anonymous ask message that reads, “so I've been curating a Ryuketsu playlist on Spotify... and I feel you should know that a song by Ruben Studdard called "Wear Me" is a thing that exists and it's perfect. the lyrics and everything just... yes.” End image description.]

I actually wrote a thing that talked about this song (and other similar songs) a few years back!

To quote:

So I admit this isn’t something I ever really thought about before falling in love with Kill la Kill, but the concept of “wearing” someone being utilized in a romantic or sexual fashion is actually… not that unfounded.

SNSD’s song “Back Hug” takes a sugary-sweet approach to the idea. Like clothes, the singer expresses that a certain someone is comfortable to be around and that she wants to “wear” them and be with them all the time. Ruben Studdard takes a flirtier, more sensual angle in his song “Wear Me,” with a chorus that includes “Girl take me home and/Take it off just to put me on” and verses about, well, being clothes pressed up against a woman’s body. Boom! Bap! Pow!’s “Suit” takes a creepier view, repeating the lines “You’re so cute I wanna wear you like a suit/I think you’d look pretty good on me,” with additional lines of “you got the stuff to get me hot” and “I want to drape you across my shoulders/want you close to the bone.”

[Image descriptions: Three anonymous ask messages. The first reads, “I hope you're doing well, goop! miss you!” The second reads, “Hi Goop! Do you still write and analyze stuff yourself? I check in every other day too see if you posted something new because I always loved reading your posts. ☺️ No pressure though, I'm just wondering! Greetings to you and have a nice day! ❤️” The third reads, “You haven't posted in awhile (on Twitter or here), you okay?” End image descriptions.]

I’m trying to get okay-er. Thank you for checking in, and for being so interested in my stuff, second anon! I’m really touched! 😭

To tell the truth, I kind of gave up on writing in 2020. I don’t think I’ve written a real analysis in about a year.

I’m dipping my toes back into it. I have some planned stuff—if nothing else, I’ve saved a load of screenshots and even edited a video that I intend to pair with an analysis. But it’s been so long that I’ll probably be rusty! 😅

We’ll see what the future holds. But regardless of what happens, thank you for your messages <3

[Image description: An ask message from @lucyoftheabyss48 that reads, “You should watch Deca-dence! Honestly I think it goes right where BNA went wrong. I think you might enjoy it a lot!” End image description.]

I’ll add it to my list of things to check out! Thank you for the rec!

[Image description: An anonymous ask message that reads, “Do you find it lot a Little odd that Yoh Yoshinari didn't a Post BNA Finale interview or AMA?” End image description.]

I haven’t really kept up with BNA content since I finished watching the show, but with everything that happened in 2020 (and is still happening in 2021), I sadly think it’s understandable if there haven’t been many interviews about the series.

[undertale-data]

[Image Description: An Undertale chat box that has “WHY FANS LOVE UNDERTALE” at its center. Next to it are a line chart and an Egg from the Dating Hub on its left, and a CRIME measurer (also from the Dating Hub) on its right. End I.D.]

[Image Description: a pie chart titled, “LEVEL OF LOVE FOR UNDERTALE.” The textbox on the top right reads, “On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the least and 10 being the highest, how much do fans enjoy Undertale?” From the top going clockwise, 12 or 0% chose 5 and below; 23 or 1% chose 6; 98, or 4%, chose 7; 325, or 12%, chose 8; 529, or 20%, chose 9; and 1664, or 63%, chose 10. End I.D.]

It’s clear from all of the data analyzed so far that fans who took the time to answer our survey love Undertale. It is unlikely that they would have taken the time to answer so many questions if they had not, and even less likely that they would have come across our survey in the first place. Naturally, it comes as no surprise that 63% of our responders gave their love for Undertale a score of ten out of ten. 95% gave their love for Undertale a score of eight or higher, and only 12 responders responded with five or below, a number so small that their responses had to be lumped together to be visible on the pie chart. Of those, only 3 responders gave their love for Undertale a score of 1, and based on those responders’ other answers, it is likely that they were only intending to troll. We are very fortunate that the vast majority of responders took the survey seriously, enough so that responses like this are barely a blip in the data.

Now, for our final analysis post of the event, we will delve into the reasons that fans love Undertale so dearly.

(Essay and highlights under the cut.)

There have been countless essays on the impact that Undertale has had on people’s lives. I can hardly add more on the subject than what has already been said, but I hope this summary can provide a brief overview of what stood out among the over two thousand answers given in response to this survey. That said, due to the sheer volume of answers, I could not read every single one in depth—however, I did skim all of them, and some that stood out or were representative of several responses have been highlighted below. If you would like to see what every fan who consented to share their response had to say, you may view the full list of responses here. Note that these responses have not been edited in any way. This document may take a long time to load, as it is over 100 pages long.

(Warnings for mentions of suicidal thoughts in the following essay.)

Several responders loved the theme of choices mattering in Undertale. Whether people played the pacifist, merciless, or neutral routes, they enjoyed how the game reacted to their actions. For some, it even made them consider their own morality. One touching response explained the impact that the theme of mercy made on them. “I realized that Mercy isn't something that's given to those who deserve it. Flowey didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it myself. Shoot, we ALL need Mercy in our lives.” Many fans left similar comments about how the themes of Undertale made them better people.

Undertale changed how its fans treat others, and it also changed how fans treat themselves. The theme of staying determined and the messages of hope in the game were a light to a very large portion of fans. I cannot list all of the fans who said that Undertale helped them out of a dark place, or that they would not be alive if not for Undertale. “DETERMINATION became a metaphor for not killing myself at a really rough time in my life and I’ll always cherish that. Undertale isn’t afraid to go to really dark places but at the same time holds on so tight to its hope.”

Undertale brought fans together in unexpected ways. Some said they met friends or significant others through the fandom. “I wouldn't have met my now husband without Undertale,” one fan said. A different fan who is non-native English speaking mentioned that the game and the fan community helped them to learn English.

It would be impossible to discuss Undertale without mentioning the fan community. Whether for good or bad, many responders mentioned the fandom in their responses. Overall the feelings towards the fandom seem positive, though many made references to “toxic” parts of the fandom without specifying which parts they consider toxic. Others rejected the idea of toxicity in fandom. One response said: “[SLAMS FIST ON DESK] I KNOW MOST PEOPLE SAY THE FANDOM IS TOXIC AND CRINGE OR WHATEVER BUT OH MY GOD. The Undertale fandom, both the UTMV and the actual UT fandom, has been so much fun to be a part of. I've met countless friends because of our shared interest in something related to the game! The art people create can be breathtaking and so inspirational, and the fanfics are so so good!! I've seen people write incredible things for this fandom and it's what made me continue writing!”

One thing that makes the Undertale fandom unique is the way it embraces various AUs. Some fans are tired of AU content, but the majority of responses show a love for the creativity behind AUs. “Roll your eyes at the 50th AU Sans all you want, it's encouraging people to step outside the boundaries of fanart and pushing people to make their own ideas! I mean, hell, it was how I gained the confidence to start making my own original content.” The lack of a judgemental atmosphere seems present in the AU community, according to the responses we saw. There is an interesting balance between AU and canon (sometimes referred to as “classic”) content that another responder pointed out: “The fandom helped keep the game alive all these years, with all of its AUs. Although personally, I always enjoyed AUs that kept characters as close to the classic material as possible (dancetale, outertale) I do appreciate the creativity of the fandom. They almost created entirely new stories with new characters of their own! If it weren't for those people, the Undertale fandom would have probably not been as active as it is now. I do feel like we're getting a resurgence of classic content now too! (In 2021)”

Regardless of the many AUs the fandom has created over the years, the original game of Undertale still feels like home for many fans. They wished they could reclaim the feeling of playing the game again for the first time, but even though we can’t reset time in real life, there is still a special feeling for fans each time they play Undertale. One fan said, “Even the best fics I've read can't capture that feeling of nostalgia/almost-"coming home" that comes with hearing the music and talking to the characters.” This feeling is one that can be cherished time and time again. In the words of another responder: “It always feels welcoming like home or like comfort food that I never grow tired of no matter how many times I go to it.” Others pointed out the strength of the found family trope in Undertale, which likely contributes to this feeling of “home” as well.

As mentioned briefly earlier, the music is part of what makes Undertale feel like home for fans. Even when responses focused on other aspects of the game, many would throw in a comment about the soundtrack at the end. One comment focused on the music said “IT'S SO GOOD like I will literally go through the entire thing over and over and not be bored with it. It makes my monkey brain so happy you have no idea.” Like with the game itself, the music has incredible replay value, an amazing feat considering most of the tracks use the same few motifs. “I think what I like the most about Undertale is how the music attaches you to the story,” another responder said. “They're simple melodies that stick with you throughout the whole game, and they can remind you of both good and bad times.”

If the music sticks with fans in their hearts, then the game’s lore sticks with fans in their minds. Even six years after the release of Undertale, fans are still creating new theories and digging up new secrets. The way the game breaks the fourth wall in particular intrigued many fans and has stuck out through all these years. The awareness that the game shows for the RPG genre makes it memorable. The game plays with the player’s expectations and turns them on their heads, all while reminding the player that they’re in a game. There are few other games that do this on such a large scale, so it’s no surprise that fans cite this as one of their favorite things about Undertale.

Lastly, the LGBT+ representation in Undertale has been a huge draw for fans. Especially in 2015, the sheer volume of non-cishet characters was unprecedented, as one fan pointed out: “It's practically unheard of to see so MANY from just one source, especially during its heyday in 2015-16. Hell, you can't even GET the true pacifist ending without helping two gay couples hook up. It's really nice to see all of them being accepted for who they are and not judged for their sexuality or gender, at least in-canon.” The LGBT+ cast including Frisk, Chara, Napstablook, Monster Kid, Mettaton, Alphys, and Undyne each connected with fans in unique ways. It’s clear how important this is from responses such as: “There are canon nonbinary characters 🥺. i have never seen representation of myself before.” “It made me gay and trans so thanks for that.”

Once again I am overwhelmed with just how much there is to say about Undertale. One responder really understood when they compared Undertale to an iceberg, explaining that there are so many layers to the game that there is something for everyone: “everyone can find something to enjoy in the lore/game regardless of what kind of fan they are! Being able to appeal to various types of fans—from simple happy shipper people to deep dive lorediggers—is the mark of the coolest games!” I would have to agree with them.

It’s been six years, and despite everything, it’s still you. Thank you for reading, participating in this survey, and above all, staying determined.

Highlights:

DETERMINATION became a metaphor for not killing myself at a really rough time in my life and I’ll always cherish that. Undertale isn’t afraid to go to really dark places but at the same time holds on so tight to its hope.

I think the coolest thing was having the opportunity to watch the AU community grow from its bare roots. It's nearly insane how big and complex it's gotten, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Roll your eyes at the 50th AU Sans all you want, it's encouraging people to step outside the boundaries of fanart and pushing people to make their own ideas! I mean, hell, it was how I gained the confidence to start making my own original content.

i love how the lgbt rep is so naturalized... there are just gay people! and its nobodys business!

The music is my go to answer, but what I really really REALLY love is how the minor characters have so much personality to them when you talk to them. They aren't incredibly important to the overall story, but they're all so likeable and diverse that you just can't help but like them immediately!

I think it was the first videogame I have played that broke the fourth wall that much. Of course there has been other videogames that broke it but just for one or two tongue-in-cheek jokes. The guilt of killing mama goat was also something intense as well that I appreciated as an experience and that I didn't think a videogame could cause on someone.

I love how no character can be seen as completely bad! Everyone builds up Asgore as some horrible villain, but he turns out to be a 'fuzzy pushover' who's broken and just wants his family back by the time you meet him. Then you think Flowey's an irredeemable killer who engineered the suffering of the monsters across many timelines, and he is... but he also used to be the kind and beloved Prince Asriel Dreemurr, traumatized by his death and subsequent rebirth, projecting his best friend onto you.

The fact that choices matter in the game. Your first playthrough and getting the golden ending for the first time. I can never replicate those feelings again, wish I could erase my memories and replay the game from the start.

I wouldn't have met my now husband without Undertale.

(Toxic parts of the fandom aside) The community is possibly one of the kindest I've ever met. Cringe culture is completely dead, and I feel like I can be myself. I felt a very close connection to many of the characters, and I loved consuming content about them when I was in a rough patch in my life.

just everything, the whole game has just impacted my life so much. i know it sounds really lame, but when the game first came out, i would purposely put my hands in my pockets and sway slightly, like sans' idle animation. of course i dont do that anymore haha, but undertale still really impacts me to this day, and i wouldnt have it any other way :)

it made me gay and trans so thanks for that

I realized that Mercy isn't something that's given to those who deserve it. Flowey didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it myself. Shoot, we ALL need Mercy in our lives.

The thing I love most about Undertale is no matter how many times I play or watch a playthrough it always makes me genuinely happy. It always feels welcoming like home or like comfort food that I never grow tired of no matter how many times I go to it. Toriel still makes me feel all warm and cozy in her home, the Skelebros always make me laugh, and I still cry on the inside watching Frisk comforting Asriel. And on the flip side the No Mercy run still invokes the negative emotions in me as well. In short Undertale just feels like a second home to me and I always wish I could stay.

The reader inserts are my favorite way to decompress after a hard day

I think Undertale helped me discover my love for 8-bit games, and made me realize how IMPORTANT music is in video games.

the worldbuilding and character design are my favorite parts of the main game apart from the music! I’m also a huge fan of the random AU music- not for like underswap or underfell i like the stuff where someone makes a megalovania for a random au where gru from despicable me replaces sans as the character. i think its funny

Just... the vibe, honestly? Even the best fics I've read can't capture that feeling of nostalgia/almost-"coming home" that comes with hearing the music and talking to the characters.

there are canon nonbinary characters 🥺. i have never seen representation of myself before.

[SLAMS FIST ON DESK] I KNOW MOST PEOPLE SAY THE FANDOM IS TOXIC AND CRINGE OR WHATEVER BUT OH MY GOD. The Undertale fandom, both the UTMV and the actual UT fandom, has been so much fun to be a part of. I've met countless friends because of our shared interest in something related to the game! The art people create can be breathtaking and so inspirational, and the fanfics are so so good!! I've seen people write incredible things for this fandom and it's what made me continue writing!

There's a scene where Frisk (the player) is going towards what is presumably going to be their death. They will fight Asgore and he will use their human soul to break the barrier and free his people. The music, despite the player's impending doom, is... triumphant. You are not the triumphant one here, and yet, the score invites you to experience the monsters' joy and happiness as they tell you the tale of their subjugation. The monsters are going to be free. This is their victory, but they don't hate you or want you to die. They're just... happy. That scene has always struck me very deeply. I feel it represents the best parts of Undertale.

I loved how well thought out the Geno route was. It really made me feel like I was doing something horrible, and the characters were very obviously reacting to dire circumstances.

I dunno? I like Undertale for it's characters, story, music, secrets and many more. I am not good with Headcanons but I also like the neutral endings and how different they can depending on who you spare and kill

I was very bad at english before, i thought i couldn't progress because i was very shy and not confident. But my sibling and i wanted to have the best experience with this game so we wanted to play it in english. It's this game and the fandom which helped me to make huge progress in english !

THE SOUNDTRACK. IT'S SO GOOD like I will literally go through the entire thing over and over and not be bored with it. It makes my monkey brain so happy you have no idea.

to avoid writing an essay i will say one word. Mettaton

It is like Toby specifically made the games to fit the iceberg meme and it's awesome, everyone can find something to enjoy in the lore/game regardless of what kind of fan they are! Being able to appeal to various types of fans - from simple happy shipper people to deep dive lorediggers is the mark of the coolest games!

I love almost everything about Undertale as a game on its own. The music, the art and especially the characters and how they interact. They made me feel at home. Undertale means a huge amount to me. (I even got a tattoo of the castle when you and MK walk together!) The fandom helped keep the game alive all these years, with all of its AUs. Although personally, I always enjoyed AUs that kept characters as close to the classic material as possible (dancetale, outertale) I do appreciate the creativity of the fandom. They almost created entirely new stories with new characters of their own! If it weren't for those people, the Undertake fandom would have probably not been as active as it is now. I do feel like we're getting a resurgence of classic content now too! (In 2021)

the mystery. toby fox refused to give answers to anything and i think thats very sexy of him.

I just feel guilty for liking it so much when I'm in my 30's. But I recently got diagnosed with ASD, so I guess it explains things a bit. Many ppl consider Papyrus to be neurodivergent, and some adult fans are too, so seeing that makes me feel a bit better.

i think about "Despite everything, it's still you" everyday of my life.

I like how it's just as funny as it can be serious. All routes are this way. I laughed as much as I cried when I played the Pacifist route and then once I opened the game again and Flowey was telling me to let them be happy, I immediately turned off the game. I somehow felt bad.

The Found Family Trope

The True Pacifist Ending is just...man. And the fanworks about saving everyone even when the game doesn't let you? MANNNNNN

I think what I like the most about Undertale is how the music attaches you to the story. They're simple melodies that stick with you throughout the whole game, and they can remind you of both good and bad times.

there's honestly a LOT to love about this game, but i think one of my favorite things about it is just how many lgbt+ characters there are??? i can think of alphys, undyne, frisk, chara, mettaton, napstablook, monster kid, asgore, mad mew mew, the dress lion, the royal guards, and arguably even papyrus off of the top of my head, but im sure i'm forgetting a few from just undertale alone (there's even MORE in deltarune)!! it's practically unheard of to see so MANY from just one source, especially during its heyday in 2015-16. hell, you can't even GET the true pacifist ending without helping two gay couples hook up. it's really nice to see all of them being accepted for who they are and not judged for their sexuality or gender, at least in-canon.

[Image description: A wordcloud in the shape of the capitalized word UNDERTALE. The text is white on a black background, and uses the font found in the game. Some of the most visible words are: Game, Love, Music, Life, AU, Store, Friend, and Feel, which represent the most common words in the essays people wrote about their love for the game. End of ID]

[potteresque-ire]

Hi! I have been reading your posts and responses to anonymous and I am inclined to comment on your broadly realistic views and detailed analystic answers and let us not forget your ability to be warm in putting forward your opinions. I am truly a huge fan. Thank you for being a station for various answer seekers.

If you have time and patience, please elaborate on the situation GG is still facing post 227. Recently I read various comments insinuating GG copied DD for Douyin night which is absurd but the implication that only one party is still being targeted unnecessarily raise hackles of a lot of solo fans. And I, under any circumstances, DO NOT believe the involvement of the other party. Firm believer of BJYXSZD.

My point is what is being done to stop these antis from targeting GG. Since one of the motive to target GG is to severe the relationship of GG and DD, IMO at least. Does constant attack (external stimulus) on GG (belittling him by comparing him to DD) may have the possibility to effect their relationship (internal reaction)? Objectively yes, but given your perception of their relationship, what is your opinion in this matter, however subjective it may be?

Moreover, how much extreme and sometimes irrational analysis done by bjyx community can lead to harm to both of them especially GG?

Also, I have seen DD being the captain of BJYX in various circumstances but also throwing off people from their old predicted/maintened theories especially in case of Kadians. I am not sure how much to trust these 'candies' since he has a reputation of not giving a f*** of others opinion. So why would he post GG related or non-related content with same kadians. I mean if he posts private content with GG related kadian then why post promotional content with GG related kadian. Does it imply that kadians are related to GG or not or he doesn't care and we are thinking too much. I am not sure what I am writing now, maybe multitude of thoughts poring out here. I am extremely sorry for that.

I do not know whether people believe or not but 1st post by GG yesterday had initials YB in the circle. Not at all explicit, and depends on believers but I felt like he was just trolling BJYX, it may be good naturedly but after his promotional brand picture of shrimp in bunny's hand. I do not know I just felt, dissappointed/bitter/unsure about all of this. I think it is normal to feel this way from time to time even for SZD because along with emotional investment we have rational perspective which is necessary to scrutinize evidence(maybe) from time to time.

I whole heartedly apologize for writing an essay length ask, this is the reason I wanted your patience 😅.

If any other blogger wants to add or comment on this please feel free to do so. Your suggestions are highly welcomed. 🙏

Hello Anon!

I take it that your questions about safety are concerned about the behaviour of c-solos and c-turtles? International fans aren’t likely to put Gg and Dd at any risk. That said, however, frequent fighting among i-fans would likely drain Gg and Dd’s international fanbase, as many fans do not enjoy being a combative atmosphere (I, for one, will run away as quickly as a turtle can run!). Lost i-fans can’t be easily replenished, whether they’re turtles or solos ~ The Untamed, as a foreign language show so beloved that fans are willing to scale tall language and cultural barriers to understand it, isn’t something that comes around often. (stanning Gg and/or Dd does take a lot of work!)

About the arguments. I probably only know about a fraction of them since I do not interact directly with fans outside Tumblr . As far as I can tell, however, recent arguments among c-solos and c-turtles have been ordinary fights, and also, fairly “bi-directional” between the solos (ie. I don’t think Gg or Dd has been relatively exempt from attacks compared to each other). 

These arguments can be heated and some of the attacks may sound vicious, but there’s nothing much to worry about from a safety angle, as they haven’t caught the attention of those outside the fan circles.

The theorising by turtles are also not inherently dangerous. c-turtles have mostly been careful about keeping their discussions among themselves. The only risk it may lead to in the future, that I can think of right now, is the associated YiZhan content on China-based websites (ex. Bilibili, Douyin), which has become fairly plentiful. YiZhan candies used to be relatively obscure given the guidelines of CP fans to keep them among themselves (they call this practice 圈地自萌, literally, drawing a circle on the ground and have fun in it by oneself). These days, however, anyone who’s curious can get a good sense of YiZhan’s story by browsing Bilibili. 

This probably contributes to the continued growth of the turtle population; however, some of this content is created by non-turtles who seek viewership and have little concern over Gg and Dd’s safety. They are the ones who re-upload the BTS, for example, despite the repeated pleas and warnings by the “站姐”s—the superfans who take/purchase these videos—as well as the turtles to not do that. If these content creators go overboard, there’s a possibility that YiZhan content may get caught in the government’s “Eradicating Pornography and Illegal Publications”（掃黃打非) movement. The movement originated in the mid 2000s, and its recent waves have been used as pretext to remove LGBT+ and BL content on line (I will eventually set up a post re: those events). Just last month (2020 Dec), Bilibili has been explicitly named by the government for hosting questionable materials, which means it’s already under scrutiny. Sweeps performed on an entire website are usually broad-based enough that no specific individuals are targeted; however, the government also encourages, with financial incentives, the reporting of specific content and has set up a dedicated website for doing so. While all YiZhan content has no direct relation to Gg and Dd, removal of such content may cause an over-reaction from fans, which can, in turn, lead to accusations of poor fan management by Gg and Dd. Most people will also assume the YiZhan content to be created by turtles.

(Another example of how an alleged turtle mis-step can get the YiZhan fandoms and Gg and Dd tied to the 掃黃打非 movement: a few days ago, a Weibo post showed a photo of a hardcover version of an explicit BJYX fanfic, reportedly sold for profit, and GG haters were calling for an arrest for “illegal publication.” So far, there’s minimal noise on the issue, so it isn’t something to worry about. It can also be fake news, which is so bountiful on the platform and on every aspect of daily life that most die a very peaceful, very well-deserved death.).

Whether fan arguments / theories may affect Gg and Dd’s relationship (assuming they’re in a relationship) … my guess is, not much. Gg and Dd are busy people, unlikely to closely follow their fans’ discussions. Again, I expect effects to be felt only if the arguments get out of hand ~ as in, if they begin to involve the public and/or the government.

As for the question about what is being done to stop Gg being targeted: fan wars are incredibly common in China (as in everywhere else), and Gg and Dd’s aren’t special in that sense ~ it’s just that as turtles, we know about those surrounding Gg and Dd and they feel significant to us. No individuals can stop a fan war ~ all we can do is to not join these wars ourselves.

Personally, I think the international fan base of Gg and Dd, as solos and cpfs, have more chance to achieve peace than its Chinese counterparts — if they choose to want that. Popularity in China is not only quantified (which is likely true everywhere, by marketing departments), but very visibly so. Sales numbers, votes, traffic attributed to each idol are frequently released to the public, possibly to foster competition among fans and drive these numbers further upward. c-turtles’ demonstrated strong performance in pushing these metrics has made them a target to those who wish to have usurp their consumer power. They, therefore, have good reasons to be wary of anyone who try to sway them from their “turtle-ship”, whether to turn them into solos or to lure them into an entirely different fandom. The swaying messages are also not always obvious, not always a direct “your cp suck”.  They can be subtle, many even come from netizens who appear to be fellow turtles, who may say “oh, maybe we (turtles) are wrong” or “we have to be realistic; Gg and Dd will never look at each other publicly again”—messages that cast doubt and sink morale in a fandom that’s already running an uphill battle. Remember: traditionally, CP fandoms are not expected or welcomed to last, and solos have been happy to (correctly) point out that the BTS, the origin of the most solid “evidences” of BJYXSZD, are getting older by the day. c-turtles can’t expect anyone else to help defend their ship if something happens, given CP fandoms’ lack of respectability, given YiZhan being a real person M/M pairing that is often frowned upon. So it’s understandable, to me at least, why c-turtles are on guard, and occasionally, clash with those who they feel may be trying to take away what they love.

i-turtles, I feel, don’t have that many reasons to fight. We don’t really have other fandoms (for example, the up and coming danmeis—the adapted BL dramas) vying for our attention (and wallets). No one can put an expiration date on the YiZhan communities except ourselves.

Another way to see this is: we—as in, the combined Gg + Dd international fanbase, the solos + CPFs—are lucky in a way the fans in Gg and Dd’s home country are not. Collectively, we’re much further removed from the pressure to perform as fans, which is immense in China with their fan circle culture and fan economy. i-shrimps and i-motorcycles ~ some of you are reading this, I think? (hello!) ~ here are my humble thoughts: the solo/turtle ratio of Gg and Dd’s international fans doesn’t make much of an impact on Gg and Dd’s star status, on the popularity metrics that matter. Our spending power is limited outside China’s borders, and while Gg and Dd likely love us equally as fans, our adoration for them doesn’t really matter much, if at all, to the production/media/commercial companies that control the trajectories of their careers. 

Along this line, the turtles’ “double loyalty” doesn’t have much of an ill effect, because there are few popularity contests here that mean much; few times (if any) when the turtles must face the dilemma of whether to vote for Gg or Dd because only a single vote is allowed; few situations where they have only x amount of dollars and must split it equally between Gg or Dd’s endorsements. There’s also much less cause to worry that i-turtles may draw the attention, or ire of the Chinese government ~ the whole international fanbase is too far away, too spread out to destabilise the regime in any way.

What the turtles do have in common with you, the solos, is their knowledge, their love for Gg/Dd. Knowledge, in particular. The people who know about Gg/Dd are still far and in between—at where I am, at least, and my guess is, it’s likely true for many of you too. Think of the turtles as people who you can talk to about your favourite star in places where few people know about him, can help promote The Untamed  far and wide—many people still haven’t heard of the show, and they deserve to.

For the turtles ~ no one can take away our turtle-ship identity, as long as we don’t give it away. No one can report on the our communities to the government and get them dissolved. Our votes, our spending habits are no one else’s business but ours here.

So, Anon, here’s what I think, and these are all very personal opinions, very personal decisions on how to navigate fandom …

I truly hope that we, as the international fanbase, can try to use this luck that we have. Make our communities not mere copies of their (combative) Chinese counterparts but something different, something with our own flavour, something with more peace and less fighting.

Specifically, I see little cause to try to persuade/dissuade anyone to be a solo/turtle. I find them… not the best use of time. Why? Because frankly, neither solos nor turtles have a better grasp of who Gg and Dd are. Neither solos nor turtles have a truly good grasp of who Gg and Dd are. These discussions are therefore bound to end up with more ill will than conclusions, since both sides are short of facts.

We’re all short of facts as audiences, who’ve all only seen a tiny sliver of who Gg and Dd are as human beings.

I don’t mean Gg and Dd’s star image is fake ~ it’s just that, their star image is their “work face”, and even I, a lowly turtle, must act somewhat differently in my own office. It’s part of being professional.

Gg and Dd’s star image are their professional face, and no professionals worth a salt truly ignore other’s opinions, especially when the profession is being an entertainer whose job is to face and hold the attention of the public. 

This is true for Gg; this is true for Dd.

Social media accounts are also part of Gg and Dd’s professional face ~ whatever is posted on there will be scrutinised by millions of fans, and they know that. The posts do provide some insights about Gg an Dd’s personalities, but they can’t be expected to show a complete picture. No parts of these posts, therefore, whether it’s the content or the kadians, are sufficient evidences for / against any aspect of their personal lives (especially as private an aspect as their romantic lives). Anon, you mentioned promotional marketing materials, and here’s my understanding of them ~ ambassadors such as Gg and Dd have minimal control over their design. The shrimp-holding bunny you’re referring to, for example, is very likely provided by the company.

However, may I also add this? Please try to not think of the shrimps / motorcycles as enemies of the turtles. Millions of people are behind each of these labels, and true for any group of this size, a fraction of its members are bound to be annoying. A small fraction may be awful, even. But they don’t represent the entire group. The shrimps are not only Gg’s fans, many of them have supported him longer than any turtle (since turtle-ship can’t be older than 2018); they’re also the reasons why Gg is in the industry ~ they voted for him in X-Fire. Likewise, a subset of motorcycles have been with Dd since UNIQ; they were there when the Korean ban effectively dissolved his group; they stuck with him when he was attacked for taking on the role of LWJ.

We’re all Gg and Dd’s fans, if you ask people outside the fandom. Remember: few outside China understand why heated arguments can occur between a bunch of shrimps, turtles and motorbikes. (It sounds a bit kafkaesque, just typing it out.)

It’s important not to lose sight too, that Gg and Dd’s social media accounts, where many new candies are found, primarily function as bridges of communication between them and their fans. These accounts do have different degrees of “professionalism” ~ Weibo and the official accounts being more formal, and Oasis, Douyin being more laid back and intimate; still, they all serve similar purposes. They’re not candy generators, or a script Gg and Dd have an obligation to follow to confirm / refute BJYXSZD.

Also: these accounts are accessible and watched by the public, not all of whom are friendly to Gg and Dd.

Re: Gg’s drawing on Oasis. He used the account as it’s intended for—to interact with his fans (the caption of the first draft was an unspoken invitation to shower him with ideas) and maybe, to show off a little (it was a very nice piece of artwork ~ a comment that I, sadly, haven’t seen much of). I doubt he posted his drawing because he wanted fans to carpet-search for traces of Dd in it (even though he probably expected that would happen); I very much doubt he posted his drawing because he wanted his fans to fight over scratch marks or black dots.  

If these fights keep happening, I can imagine a possible outcome. He’ll stop showing us his drawings. His social media accounts will become less and less personal, as they already have.

I’ll share with you my thoughts about candies too, while I’m at it. These are probably not-so-popular opinions, so please take them all with a grain of salt.(Salted caramels? 😊 )

I haven’t looked at why candies are called candies, but I find the name appropriate for how I think of them ~ candies are 1) neither evidences or truth, 2) sweet, 3) treats (non-essential, not like the main course).

The first point is, perhaps, the one I try the hardest to keep in mind. There are posts out there claiming the candies as made-beliefs—generated from edited pictures or videos, exaggerated translations, and their interpretations forced by “guidances” in the annotations/narration. There are also posts claiming that turtles are deceivers, or have been deceived by brainwashers who maliciously created these make-beliefs. A turtle may assume these posts are all lies, all made by antis. 

But, speaking turtle-to-turtle, I’d venture to say this … there’s some truth in the *first* statement. Many candies do, indeed, taste different if their taster returns to the original source—not necessarily unsweet, but less sweet. Candies, remember, are generated by fans like you and I. Same for c-candies ~ they aren’t endorsed by Gg and Dd, aren’t necessarily closer to the truth just because of the relative proximity of their birthplaces to their leads. 

Candy generation is The Tradition of CP fandoms. It’s a celebrated skill, and who doesn’t want to generate a candy that will be talked about, that will be part of the BJYX canon, for as long as the fandom lasts? Some fans are, therefore, also more … efficient in the “marketing” of the candies they generated — in persuading others that their candies are evidences, the truth. “Guidance” photos and videos (which pinpoint the place to watch, sometimes with appropriate sound effects for emphasis) have come about that way, and because they’re easy to digest—especially where language barriers exist—they end up spreading to i-fandoms.

These photos and videos may look more professional / trustworthy, but they often have an additional layer of subjectivity ~ on top of the already subjective opinion of what makes a candy. Translations (of BTS, fake rumours house content etc) also introduce a subjective element. Word choices can significant modify the tone of a conversation; speakers of different Chinese dialects may also have different interpretations of the same phrases. Example: I, as a non Chongqing/Sichuanese speaker, can guess the literal meaning of the “puppy” term Gg used for Dd — 狗崽崽 (gou zai zai) — but I also had to rely on others to tell me how endearing the term is; me being a Chinese speaker actually doesn’t make my interpretation any more valid, or authoritative, in this scenario, because my dialect doesn’t use this term at all. 

It doesn’t mean the people who’ve put in the work have any less-than-good intent; the vast majority of them come from a place of deep love. It’s just that we all carry our own perspectives, and as fans, our strong emotions in our fanworks.

This is why candies are often insufficient as good “points” for arguments, why they fail to convince non-believers, sometimes to the disappointment of some turtles. As evidences, they aren’t objective enough; they’re also often touch upon the assumption that’s mark the fundamental difference between solo and cp fans — the assumption that Gg and Dd are (not) together. Take, for example, this segment from a (polite) ask I got from an anon solo:

All the matching clothes, jewelry, shoes etc. Stopped being valid candy when I realized that the brands have popular stars "endorse" their products. The lightning pendant? Other actors have also worn it. Does that mean they are in a 3-way with (Gg) and (Dd)? Probs not.

Solo anon was correct! Brands have star endorsers, and other entertainers have, indeed, worn the same lightning pendant. The implied argument is also valid: people who don’t care about, don’t even know about each other can wear the same things. Most of us do that on a daily basis with our mass-produced garments.

However, a counterargument can also be made to the statement above, and easily: even the most precious, most beautiful wedding rings (say, from Tiffany!) are not exclusive to the first RL couple who bought them. It doesn’t mean the first RL couple is sleeping with all the couples who bought the same rings afterwards, doesn’t mean those rings aren’t significant to every one of these couples as romantic mementos. More often than not, couples wear matching things not because these things are exclusive to them—because how often can one find things that only exist as a single pair in this world? They wear matching things because they want to see something on themselves that remind them of their significant other and so, as long as the things aren’t so prevalent that everyone is wearing them, they can already serve their purpose.

But you see, Anon, that arguing over this would’ve been a waste of time? Because the solo came in with the assumption that Gg and Dd were not a couple, and the counterargument was made with the assumption that they were. The pendants alone are insufficient to prove either side correct or wrong. No one knows why those pendants ended up on Gg and Dd’s necks, except Gg and Dd and their teams. If I were to argue with anon solo, we can go on and on and on until we’re both left with bitter tastes in our mouths and WWX-red in our eyes, and forget the one thing that really matters: we’re both Gg’s fans.

(We could’ve spent the time talking about how that scene in The Wolf with Ji Chong throwing Zai Xing in the water is ❤️.) (I can’t believe the script waited 30+ episodes to do it. 😂)

This leads to my second point, Anon. Candies are meant to be sweet, and they’re meant to be sweet for you. In Chinese, a term for an expert candy person is a 嗑學家 (the candy-eating in CP fandoms is called 嗑糖 (ketang) ～ with 嗑 ke denoting a specific form of eating that requires breaking something open first with teeth—such as watermelon seeds; a 嗑學家 is a 嗑 (ke)-ologist). A 嗑學家 isn’t someone who can recall the longest list of candies, or spread the most candies around, or convince the most people that the CP behind the candies is real; they are those who can find their own candies in a source material, and be overjoyed by the sweetness of their discoveries without outside help. To me, at least, this term encapsulates the subjective nature of candies ~ what’s right for you may not be right for me and vice versa, and that’s perfectly all right. In other words, there are many candies out there but you’re not required to believe in all of them; instead, you’re free to choose candies to your own liking, compose your own version of the BJYX canon that you love, that you find sweet.

Wait, but you may say. Doesn’t that make my canon fantasy? Yes and no, because candies are based on real events. They’re interpretations, which sit somewhere between reality and fantasy. They’re like … opinion shows on news channels.

But what if I need to convince people of my canon —

Your “opposition”’s canon is as fantastical, and as real as yours — maybe it isn’t, but neither of you have a way to prove it one way or another.

Wouldn’t solos call me delulu, or clowns?

Maybe. But one step outside the fandom, and all of us fans—solo and cpfs—are delulu, clowns.

(That’s why while I’ve used the cpn label, I haven’t called myself delulu, or a clown. Anyone who thinks I have the truth about the love story about a pair of idol I haven’t met from thousands of miles away … the joke’s probably on them, don’t you think?)

Of course and again, Anon, this is only my take! I like candies precisely because I like to watch the real-time generation of candies, which ones different people claim as their own, which candies fall away and which stick around in the fandom over time. As a fic writer, this ship has gifted me with a treasure trove of information ~ what do people think of as romantic gestures, as give-away signs of love? The fun/amazing part of BJYX is that candies are available for so many different answers to these questions. Some people think of longing gazes and sweet smiles; some think of touches that can’t be helped (the many, many, many “fights”); some think of service (buying foods, designing clothes); some think of caring about the other’s well-being (throat candies and dumplings + noodles + crackers); some think of being The Other’s One and Only Exception (Dd being so talkative around Gg, Gg being so … fussy around Dd); some think of expressions through the arts (songs, drawings, dances); some think of grand gestures (the wave heart in the ocean); some think of matching clothes and symbolic accessories (rings); some think of birthdays and anniversaries (314, 622, the first snow); some think of sharing life’s hassles and small tidbits (fake rumour house); some think of … just looking VERY good together. Etc etc.

Some think of a subset of these, some think of all of these…

(Personally, I’m a very picky candy eater. I know about many of them, but only a small fraction impresses on me.)

(Still, I love watching candies. I love watching the joy of people sweetened by them ~ or, when c-turtles exclaim kswl! — the short form of ke si wo le! 嗑死我了! I “ke”ed so much I’m dying!)

This gets to 3), Anon, and I apologise to you too, for answering your not-essay-at-all with an essay! Candies are, to me, treats, and I don’t expect them to come at any frequencies higher than treats do. The reason isn’t because I don’t like candies ~ I enjoy watching them, as I said, even if I don’t eat many of them; the reason is because I don’t expect anyone’s romantic love to leave a trace in everything they do. For example, if I truly find myself in a SZD/SJD discussion re: Gg’s drawing, I’d say the lack of Dd in Gg’s self-portrait doesn’t really mean much. Even if Gg and Dd were head-over-heels in love with one another, Gg doesn’t have to put Dd in everything he touches. Likewise, Dd doesn’t have to present a consistent, or decipherable story with his kadians. This is true for the real-life couples around us too, isn’t it? They don’t perform every single act in life leaving a noticeable trace of their significant other. And the misunderstanding that couples do that — that their romantic lives take over who they are as individuals — IMO, partially explains why people who choose to not to date or marry, people who’re aro-aces, often have a difficult time convincing others that they’re complete humans. Romantic love is, of course, very, very important and can be life altering, but it also isn’t everything about a person ~ especially not if a person who has a career as exciting as Gg’s and Dd’s. Gg and Dd who also have friends, family, (many) talents and interests …

(And lots of ugly icons on their cell phones. Yes, I’m talking about you, Gg. That long-armed Pepe from your 2018 snowless Beijing post will give me nightmares…)

[freebooter4ever]

i’ve seen the discussion going back and forth on boundaries and sexual objectification, and i don’t have much to add to the conversation other than to say everyone is allowed to determine their OWN ‘lines’ and just because we don’t vocalize them doesn’t make them any less valid. but here’s the limits i set for my blog if anyone feels it is important for them to know (<3):

personally I consider ‘characters’ fair game for anything goes, with ‘public personas’ a little more iffy. ‘RPF’ isn’t new - it just takes on a new more accessible/visible form nowadays. i remember reading my first fic about a ‘real person’ back in my LOTR fandom days - it was a story in first person perspective about the main character meeting orlando bloom on a plane before he was ‘famous’. like a lot of these types of stories, it wasnt so much about the person as it was about the meet cute. the actor was just a convenient placeholder with a handsome face and some personality quirks thrown in to make the romance/dialogue more specific. i personally dont read much xReader fic nowadays, but mostly only cause i’m an old fart who can’t relate to the ‘you’ format. i miss the good old days when people actually created OC’s and then inserted them into things LOL. but also LOL if you think i’ve gone an entire year of quarantine without some imagined personal fantasies of joe mazzello (or steve aoki in the years before)(ramilicious can attest to this. she can also attest to most of these fantasies ending in friendship rather than anything explicit cause that’s just how i roll these days lol). the line i draw is i would never post these types of fics in a place where the subject could accidentally find them - you have to go looking for this stuff on tumblr, most fics are given explicit ratings and under read-mores. with the blacklist tags it’s pretty easy to filter things out. its even easier to add filters to ao3 searches. i am NOT going to do something like message steve aoki and say ‘yeah i watched that movie Ibiza like five times, here is my 1k fic where you’re the dj and i’m the one night stand’. but obviously people still enjoy imagining scenarios like these otherwise movies like Ibiza wouldn’t exist?

for art, i consider anything already on display up for grabs, we all know a certain person’s ass is all over the place...all you have to do is google ‘need for speed’ and rami’s name. HOWEVER, in the case of actors i personally would not draw anything more explicit than what’s already there. i’m not gonna draw full frontal nudity for rami (unless he gifts us with it in a movie, i suppose) or anyone. this is 100% a personal choice for me. 

i was a sophomore or junior in college when i volunteered as a figure drawing monitor where i’d time the nude model’s poses and help them set up the stage and lighting and such. there was this one guy in his mid forties probably, a regular who came every week, and i always thought of him fondly till one day (the day after i ran into my Hot Programming TA during dinner and later sent him an email begging him to go on a date with me because i was desperate for kissing experience)(and Hot Programming TA emailed me back within minutes saying yes) this artist guy who i saw all the time and thought i knew fairly well, decided to draw me instead of the model. which would have been fine except he drew me naked. i was NOT naked at the time, i was wearing a shirt, and a bra, and a full prairie skirt with alternating calico and floral patterns. he drew what he imagined was underneath all that. he came up to me after the figure drawing session and showed me his drawings and told me i had been ‘glowing’ and my response was to laugh it off awkwardly and get the hell out of there as soon as i gave the model their pay check. but inwardly i was thinking a) i was NOT glowing for this creepy man twice my age and b) i did NOT give him consent to sexualize my body under my clothes and then SHOW me that objectification. i never said anything to him or anything else, i continued to be the monitor, and i continued to field off creepy advances from him including multiple job offers, but when i finally realized i could just...stop..and i passed the student volunteer monitor job on to my friend naeem, i also realized that what that older male artist did was NOT ok in my book. and it was probably not something he would do while naeem was monitoring.

nowadays im working in an industry that regularly objectifies female bodies. in the past year alone i have had to deal with requests to make breasts bigger, i have been given character rigs that in addition to the usual elbow, knee, and spine joints also have ‘nipple’ joints but ONLY for the women (to make them jiggle for animation), every time i send out a female pose i get it back with notes that push it further into the sexy type of body language reserved for women (twist the spine more! sway the back more! give it ‘energy!’), i have been told to erase wrinkles and fat and pores but ONLY for the women (men you ADD pores bc realism! and manliness!) and this is all me working for a company that is actually fairly progressive in terms of sexism compared to OTHER studios.

like it or not, sexual objectification is a huge part of specifically women’s lives and how we react to that is our business. for me, turning the tables and putting men on display feels like fair’s fair. i cant stop the men from doing it, so if i want to enjoy sexualizing male bodies, damn it im gonna! like dang it, boy do i want to send steve aoki a thank you note every time he posts a video of himself doing those ice baths during the sunset golden hour bc holy shit gorgeous or working out in his gym wearing VERY little clothes, but i dont because i know what its like when someone imposes their personal fantasies on the subject. or, god, there was that time i had to unfollow nicole’s insta for a while bc i had a very explicit dream about her and realized, shit, i need to take a break and get my emotions under control before i can refollow. and god some of the stuff i see dudes sending her during her live videos on mental illness/meditation is TOTALLY gross and not something they should be confronting her with. and she’s not even ‘famous’ famous. or how some fans send their idols explicit direct messages without consent. THAT feels inappropriate to me.

a part of me feels like i shouldn’t have to defend this. men don’t. they’re even encouraged in mass media to sexualize women. but i also recognize the importance of talking about consent. the importance of recognizing that a celebrity deserves to have their boundaries respected. these are my lines in fandom. other people have different lines they won’t cross, and that’s okay to me. i block or blacklist any blogs or tags i think go over the top.

heck, even in fandom-only spaces i still try to keep my own more sexual fantasies off this blog and only in private messages with my friends and mutuals, and i feel like that might come across as unintentionally prudish or judgmental sometimes. i’m not ‘horny on main’ very often. but like...every time i reblog that particular ‘washing machine’ gif of joe mazzello am i thinking about him naked and thinking about how he’s got very loooooong feet, and ‘gee i wonder if that means /other/ things are Too Big for my tastes’ but also ‘gosh wouldnt that make a pretty picture to draw’???? hell yeah.

i dont know who is gonna actually read this essay but yolo i guess :)

[thewhitefluffyhat]

No, Alina Isn’t Crazy

Let me explain...

When Alina was first introduced, I thought she was the character that made the least sense as an actual person rather than as a trope-y “mad artist” archetype.  But after the reveal of her backstory, I find her personality and motivations do make sense, especially when you consider the events of Alina’s Magical Girl Story from her perspective.  

Indeed, since that story’s release on JP, she’s quickly risen to become my favorite new character from Magia Record.  Hence why I’m posting this today - it’s another semi-Magia Rapport related post, haha.  Alina is definitely my favorite of the Forest element characters, and perhaps this essay will show a little of why that is.

Provocative title and Magia Rapport aside, though, what’s actually below the "Keep reading” is a close read analysis essay, specifically focused on Alina’s MGS.  (A lot of Holy Alina’s MGS serves to confirm and reinforce little points scattered throughout this too, but this post was long enough without it!)

Introduction

The theme of Alina’s own art might be “Alina’s beauty” and “life, death, and emotion/decay.”  But I would argue that the theme of her MGS as a when taken as a short story is “voyeurism and objectification at the cost of self-identity.”  Specifically, how Alina’s actions and personality are the logical conclusion to that concept taken to an extreme.

There’s one important truth to Alina’s world, and that is the idea that Alina’s art IS Alina.  We see it at the start – when she says her art is what she enjoys and what she grasps with her own hands.  We see it at the end – with her realization that her art’s theme is “Alina’s beauty.”

And at the end of the day, what MGS Alina most seems to want is to be left alone to do art, to be herself.  But who is Alina?

Alina the Teen Prodigy

Unfortunately for Alina, her fame gets in the way of figuring that out.  Such is the life of a teen prodigy.  As perhaps can be expected, constantly parading children under a spotlight is a great recipe for turning out extremely high-strung kids with very warped self-esteem.

(See also: Nemu, but especially Touka.)

The exchange regarding the award here is a good illustration of that mindset.  It might initially seem contradictory for Alina to work desperately hard to win an award that she later doesn’t want and claims she wasn’t aiming to win.  But once being “gifted” becomes central to your identity, winning an award doesn’t feel good anymore.  It feels more like running in place, just the bare minimum expected of you to maintain your identity as a genius.  And Alina’s perfectionism means she can’t not hold herself to that standard.

Indeed, Alina is already showing signs that she’s struggling under the pressure and overexposure.  Normally, Alina seems to love talking about art and her own works (as long as it isn’t about herself, anyway).  Arguing with her teacher and running away are far more of a bother and interfere with her ability to get back to painting far more than a quick meeting would have been.  Yet she curses at her teacher, bolts, and skips school rather than have to deal with the consequences of her fame again.

She’s irrationally lashing out, asserting her boundaries in whatever way she can. And with the way the characters react, this doesn’t even seem like the first time it’s happened, either...

Which suggests Alina’s problems with her fame also aren’t new.  When we first meet her, Alina is already a lot closer to a breakdown than she appears on the surface.

Having natural talent from an early age, Alina probably hasn’t learned how to deal with failure without spiraling into a full blown identity crisis.  As a perfectionist, she’s also hypersensitive to even the slightest mistake.  And given that she’s been famous for a few years at this point, her acting out is practically expected.

Just given the setting that she’s a well-known child prodigy, it’s not surprising that Alina has all these traits.

Alina’s Adults Are Useless

What is a bit disturbing, though, is that adults around Alina aren’t any help in protecting her from her fame.

Indeed, from what we see, the pattern is the opposite - over and over, the supposedly “responsible” adults in Alina’s life say her visibility matters more than her consent.  Her teacher pressures her into competitions she dislikes and then gets on her case when she pushes back.  Her parents put up her whole life story, including photos of her as a kid, without Alina’s approval or even permission. 

Jumping ahead, I think it’s rather telling that Alina manages to destroy all her art, commit suicide, and get rescued by a third party – and none of these adults even visit her.  A popular theory is that Alina’s parents are travelling in a different country.  But - did no one tell them?  Did they not care?  As it is, anything Alina does – even blatant red flags like destroying a classroom and her own art – is treated as just another work of artistic genius, to be advertised and exhibited.  

(Because apparently nothing says High Art like creep shots of a teenage girl having a mental breakdown.)

Of course, Alina isn’t being neglected or abused like Sana or Yuma.  Not even close.  But she’s not in a great situation either.  She doesn’t really have anyone she can turn to in a crisis.  The adults in her life mostly use her for their own ends, reinforcing that her worth is in her fame as an artist, not her value as a person.

Alina’s Peers Aren’t Much Better

Then, on a more subtle level, there are Alina’s peers.  Whenever she’s mentioned by people her own age, she’s either the subject of scary rumors or glowing admiration.  Other kids know her as a celebrity name to be idolized or feared, not a person.  

Before becoming a magical girl, the only person who actually makes an effort to befriend Alina is Karin.  But even she is initially caught up in the aura of Alina’s fame and contributes to the swirl of gossip around her.

The result is a situation where everyone around Alina has their own opinion on who she is.  No one seems to care or leave space for who Alina wants herself to be.  And Alina, not having a social life to fall back on, is increasingly left with “genius artist” as the only means she has to interact with the world.  It’s a self-reinforcing spiral.

The Critic’s Letter

First, what it’s not: this isn’t about Alina getting a bad review and not being able to handle criticism of her work.  She’s already won the competition.  And Alina is perfectionistic to unhealthy levels - she’s already her own worst critic.

Rather, the letter’s insinuations are both subtler and crueler.  As Alina says, the critic isn’t concerned with her artwork - he’s commenting on Alina as a person.   Thus, the critic’s words are the same pattern as before, now crystallized into its sharpest and purest form.

Alina’s internal sense of identity is precariously fragile.  Meanwhile, Alina’s external identity is being used as a canvas for other people’s desires.  Even though all Alina really wants is to create art for her own sake, other people obsess over and dump their own meaning (or lack of meaning) onto her works.

Once again, Alina’s art is conflated with Alina herself.  The person is being evaluated as a piece of art.

As if that wasn’t enough, the letter’s final insinuation that Alina is losing her brilliance is a triple threat.  If she can’t create great art, Alina loses the activity she enjoys most. She also loses the one thing she knows other people value her for.  And worst of all, she loses the only touchpoint she has for her sense of self.

Cue existential crisis.  Alina’s life is Alina’s art.  Alina’s art is Alina life.   Without one, she doesn’t have any concept of the other.  

And in the light of all this, her suicide makes perfect sense. 

Alina’s Suicide

Welcome to the literal and figurative objectification of Alina.  Literal, in that she’s turning into a corpse.  Figurative in that by putting her body up for display, she’s allowing people to voyeuristically consume it –  an idea further reinforced by the “Kusouzu / Nine Phases” reference in the title implying a tinge of sexual objectification as well. 

Now that she’s destroyed all of her previous works, the only thing Alina leaves her audience to look at is Alina herself.  Filming her body as it turns from a person into a dead object was simply the logical conclusion to a life of being displayed, objectified, and overwritten by others’ perceptions.  

But how does Alina feel about this ending?

The day of her suicide, Alina rushes around in a kind of manic euphoria.  This isn’t especially odd.  After all, it’s not uncommon for a suicidal person to outwardly appear happier before they make an attempt, as finally having a concrete plan of action can feel like a huge relief.  

Dying means a solution to Alina’s worries about her talent fading.  Dying also means an end to all the pressure, all the constant struggle of performing to ever-heightening expectations.  Alina can simply abandon the cases and tools once she’s done with them - no need to stress about the future when she won’t have one.

Alina’s farewell, though, betrays darker emotions.  It’s simultaneously deeply spiteful - “this is what you all wanted from me, are you happy now?” - yet also an admission of utter defeat.  Alina is giving up her very humanity and selfhood to be evaluated as whatever her audience wants.

Throughout the story, everyone keeps telling Alina that her art is intoxicating, pulling the viewer into it… but the reality is the exact opposite.  Alina’s art was just something Alina made for herself, and any intoxicating meaning was something the viewer injected into it.  

And thus, Alina’s revelation.  Alina’s theme is “Alina’s beauty” – both a rejection and an embrace of that objectification.  Now, Alina has declared that her art loudly and unabashedly about herself, viewer projection be damned.  And yet, at the same time, since “Alina” is what viewers are obsessed with seeing, then Alina will give them exactly what they want…

An Artistic Failure?

So then why does Alina consider her final art to be a failure?  It fits well within the theme of “Alina’s beauty.”   Indeed, her later works like “Humanity’s Implicit Reward” and even her swimsuit are arguably just softer variations of the “Alina’s body as forbidden yet alluring object for the viewer to consume” idea that is present here.

This suicide also seems to fit into the “life and death” motifs she has.  It’s a twisted kind of resurrection - effectively, she’s killing herself as a human in order to live on eternally as a memorable piece of art.

Alina plans her final work directly because she thinks she’s dying as a creator.  Rather than face her brilliance fading, she chooses to defy it by going out in a blaze of glory.  And when put that way, it’s an exciting and fitting conclusion.  

There’s just one little problem with that narrative...

While drifting between life and death, Alina realizes the critic was wrong.  She had a theme all along.  Alina’s brilliance wasn’t fading.

And thus, since she wasn’t a “dying artist,” her “going out in a blaze of glory” no longer holds any profound meaning.  She’s just a silly teenager who got too worked up over a harsh letter.

The overall concept behind Alina’s last work wasn’t the issue.  The failure was in the timing and execution, killing herself before such a thing had meaning and in a way such that her body would be found.

And so, I don’t think Alina has learned her lesson here.  I don’t think Karin’s words have gotten through to her yet.  If she concludes at a later point that her talent is truly is fading or that she’s lost her theme, I’d fully expect her to pull another suicidal stunt again.

Conclusion

So the good news: Alina lived!  She’ll have plenty more chances to create art and figure herself out!

But the bad news: Alina’s revelation implies she’s now even more reliant on her identity as a genius artist.  

And thus, like so many other characters, the end to Alina’s MGS isn’t really an ending. She hasn’t solved the problem at the heart of the crisis that led to her wish.  Becoming a magical girl and discovering witches does nothing to stop Alina from falling into another identity spiral, nor has she left her suicidal tendencies behind.

Alina found her theme, but she still hasn’t found herself.

Misc Details

Some other neat miscellaneous details that fit with this interpretation:

I’m glad the English translation keeps at least a little of the quirky way Alina refers to herself.  (That being said, in Japanese, it’s even more exaggerated - she doesn’t use normal first person pronouns at all, only using “Alina.” )

Because on the one hand, this is an obvious hint at her extreme narcissism: Alina’s sentences frequently emphasize her name.

On the other hand, it’s a great subtle detail to return to the theme of objectification.  To put it another way, Alina refers to herself in third-person.  That is, even when Alina is speaking about herself, she reflexively frames it from the point of view of another person.  Because Alina is constantly having other people’s perspectives forced onto her!

Also, it turns out the pattern of others projecting onto Alina is present in her witch as well!  “Old Dorothy” is a historical figure whose diaries have been analyzed by multiple different researchers.  Some of them came to the conclusion that Dorothy was definitely a witch, others came to the conclusion she was definitely a normal, upstanding member of her community.  The researchers got completely opposite results from the same exact diaries.  So therefore - did they truly care about learning what Dorothy was really like?  Or were they just out to prove their own theories?

(Two years in, Old Dorothy is even more fitting of a name.  Doroinu basically predicted the entire fan response to Alina.  Some people see her as an evil (w)itch, some people see her as a sympathetic figure - all from looking at the same text.

We’re even starting to see the “two sides” of Alina come up in the Main Story, with Karin’s subplot in Arc 2.)

Meanwhile, Old Dorothy’s form - a “paint tube” - carries both this “paint over with your perceptions” meaning while also suggesting the same story as Alina’s final piece in miniature.  

Unlike Izabel, Alina’s witch form isn’t that of an artist.  Because when Alina hits her lowest point of despair, she no longer considers herself to be an artist.  She believes the only value she has left is to become literal materials to create art.  

In other words, Old Dorothy is Alina turning herself into art again.  It’s just rainbow paint this time instead of red.

Last but not least: yes, I am absolutely aware of the irony of this essay.   Here I am rambling about how Alina’s story is all about her struggle to be herself while everyone seems determined to erase her in favor of their own projections – and yet  a good chunk of this interpretation is probably my projecting on her.   Whoops!

Still, even if you disagree with it, I hope this essay was interesting and maybe made you question some of your assumptions about Alina.  

Thanks for reading!

[landsoflightanddark]

Why I think Game 4 might bring back the open world

I miss writing long posts about my thoughts on the games.  When someone on  a Team Ico Discord I’m on (not to imply I spend a lot of my time on Team Ico Discords, I don’t, the ones I am on are pretty barren and I have no idea if there are big ones out there) said they hoped Ueda would make another game similar to Shadow of the Colossus, I wrote a response about why I think the next game might bring back an open world.  I planned to copy and paste that response here, but when I did I realized I wanted to expand it into more of a full-on essay.

The question of “why do I think Game 4 might bring back an open world?” made me start thinking about the way I think about these games, and Ueda, and all media, and how that differs from others. Whenever I’m a fan of something I always try to think about why the creative decisions in it have been made.  I always try to think from the perspective of the creator, which is something that I see a lot of people not doing, especially in works full of mystery like these games.  As you might think from reading that, I tend to come off as being against the idea of the ”death of the author” when discussing stuff.  Even though I totally understand where people come from with that, and that a work can mean different things to different people, I think the author’s intent and who they are should at least be considered more than it tends to be these days.  You often hear it said that when you create something, you’re doing it for you, and because you want others to understand you, and that your work is a reflection of yourself.  These kinds of things are said to people who want to create, but when we’re looking at things other people have made, suddenly people forget this and say you can just think whatever you want about a work.  It’s odd.

A large part of my refutation of the popular theories that “darken up” the games - That Ico and Yorda die and the beach is the afterlife, or that Wander is presented as a villainous character and Mono becomes the Queen from Ico - is the simple truth that anyone who plays these games can see that Ueda cares about his characters and has never visibly killed any of the main characters in the games, and the truth that the final shots of all three games are decidedly optimistic.  

Like I said, I don’t see this type of reasoning talked about much in discussions about these games.  I think people don’t like straightforward answers that aren’t theories or inferences deduced from something in the game world itself.  They like the mystery of the games (as do I) and they don’t want to lessen it.  They don’t want to hear that maybe not that much thought was put into what the purpose of the colossi’s home areas are beyond making something that looked cool and worked for what they wanted to do with the fight.  They don’t want to hear that maybe the Ico ring in 13′s desert is just there as a reference more than a connection, similar to the barrel added by Bluepoint in the remake.  Now, I don’t KNOW these things, and am not even fully committed to thinking them, but I just think that a lot of Team Ico fans don’t like hearing that these things are even possibilities, period, despite Ueda having said that the main reason there are so many ruins in his games is for gameplay purposes.  Now, Ueda always talks about things MUCH more from a gameplay/technical perspective than he does from a story one, despite the stories in his games being so emotional.  Whether he’s trying to downplay the importance of his stories, or visual storytelling in the worlds of his games for some reason (humility and an unwillingness to appear arrogant, maybe), we don’t know.  We can only go by what he has said.

So my reasoning for why I think there’s a big chance the next game will have an open world is derived from things he’s said about the way he makes games, but also from looking at the actual games themselves as creative works that are influenced by the ones that came before them - so there is some theorizing here, but it’s theorizing about how Ueda works as a dev, instead of about something in the game’s world.

So, that’s why I think what I think, but what the heck is it that I actually think?  I think it would make more sense for game 4 to be more similar to Shadow than The Last Guardian was, because over the course of these three games we’ve seen that each game iterates on the one before it, it takes what that game did and changes it.  Shadow took Ico’s basic gameplay and put it in an open-world action game, having you climb on moving creatures instead of static architecture.  TLG took the character crawling around on a giant creature and then put it back into an Ico-like linear adventure, with the creature now acting as your AI companion (that specifically was because of the unexpectedly strong response to Agro in Shadow).  There’s a pretty clear thread throughout the three games, where Ueda looks at the game before it and thinks how can he and the team do new things with what they’ve already done.

And there’s a great rationale for believing this will continue in game 4, because one of the first things we learned about it is that there will be another giant creature in it!  At least one, some kind of pig-like ogre.  In the 2018 new year’s card we saw it sleeping near a girl sitting on a platform.  So what’s the easiest, most logical way to think Gen Design might change TLG’s dynamic of having a game about the relationship between a child and a giant creature?  I think bringing back the open world is the clearest choice.  Whatever kind of gameplay they end up going with - still playing as a kid but with the ogre pursuing you (I would love to see an openly antagonistic creature play a bigger role in an Ueda game), playing as the ogre, switching between both - another open world would allow them to break the game up like they did in Shadow, or do sections that are very different from each other in the way they look and work, or allow the player to do the levels of the game in an order they choose - There are many things they could do to make the game feel like an evolution on the others.

Another reason I think they’ll do this is because Ueda has said several times that he’s always limited by the technology of the console when he makes his games.  It’s the reason both Ico and TLG started development on one console and ended it on another.  It’s presumably the reason why Shadow abandoned the original multiplayer idea, and part of why there are many cut colossi in that game (though I still believe the main reason for that is simply that the 16 we got were the most fun and unique).  I think in one of the GenDesign interviews he even used console limitations as a reason why there aren’t NPCs in his games.  He’s always trying to push these consoles to their limits.  But I think the PS5 - or let’s say any modern platform considering this game will most likely be on other platforms - may finally be powerful enough to match up to Ueda’s imagination.  We know there are robots in this game, something not seen in any of Ueda’s games before.  Robots that, going by the other teaser art we’ve seen of the robot arm, seem incredibly detailed and complex.  If Ueda feels that modern platforms are powerful enough to bring something like that to life (the PS4 probably was good enough, but TLG did not start development there.  If it had then maybe he would have put the robots in it), a large game world makes sense to go along with that.  A world with structures and set-pieces even bigger than the colossi, or the falling towers in the Nest. Or maybe he won’t do that.  My starting point for this was the fact that I WANT to see an open world in the next game, and I think my rationale is pretty convincing and that it’s a likely thing, but he could end up making another linear adventure, which would probably be great as well.  Or we could get a huge open world with tons going on and NPCs, totally different from what we had in Shadow.  It could go either way.  I just don’t think we should assume that Ueda is fully content keeping his games in the areas (of aesthetic and gameplay) that he’s kept them in, but whether he changes things in a big way or not, he’s made three great games and I’m more sure that Game 4 will be another classic than I am of anything else I’ve written here.

[cosmictulips]

hi i’m BM💗 (19) and i’m a sagittarius whose favorite color is pink, and likes to eat hot cheetos! i’m inquiring about NP🧜🏾‍♀️ (19) whose a pisces. so NP and I met at work where we instantly became best friends. i ended up liking NP and I told her after it became really bad for my health. we established that she didn’t feel the same and we remained friends. She ended up going to the Navy but we kept in contact, sending letters back and forth and then ft calls when she was able to. i made her do majority of the reaching out at this point because i used to always be the first and i couldn’t read her to know if she would do the same for me. in August of last year i got tired of feeling like i was the one doing the labor for the friendship and after the smallest disagreement i told her to have a good life without me. i reaches back out in september to rekindle because i missed her and i told her so, but after a failed plan of going out i decided that i felt i was forcing her to care and love me, when it was known on my part. i stopped communicating with her first and she reached out again on my birthday but kept it short and almost rude. i told her happy new year and even wished her a good deployment. i still think about her quite often, because this person was my best friend and is someone i can’t choose to love, i just do. i honestly just want to know if the love is reciprocated and if we have a chance of reuniting once she’s back from deployment? my favorite animals are dolphins 🐬 and cats 🐈. THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME AND ENERGY❗️(i left a tip but idk if i properly put my name and initials)

HELLOOOOOOO your daily dose of tarot -and an essay lol-  has arrived =D Before we get into it, I would like to preface this with any wondering eyes that this is actually a very good example of my readings lol.   Anyway,  a disclaimer:  the future is always changing, nothing is ever set in stone. I give you one possiblitiy of countless others.  I try to pick up as many as I can but ultimately since this does deal with other people,  I can only give to you what the cards want me to see. if some of this seems open ended it is because the other person, or people involved have not decided fully what they want to do.  If you do not like what the cards say you literally can and should change the outcome. With that being said, lets get to it ;)  if you have any other questions for me -especially regarding pendulum- please feel free to let me know.  You did tip as well so if there’s any other forms of uh divination you would like me to use please let me know.  Otherwise I have stuck to the big three ;) Pendulum, Tarot, Oracle.  okay, let’s get into it lol  oh, also, if you want an actual pdf of this, I will gladly give it to you lol

I got your tip and don't worry about tipping more lol. I do not do this for the tips,  but merely to help =)  I only started the tipping thing because in depth readings take a lot out of me and so yea, that's why it's only like three dollars lol also before we get really into it some notes:  I noticed this reading has a lot of love energy in it.  whether it is self love, platonic love, or romantic love, it does not matter to me.  I am a firm believer love conquers all things and I truly believe that with a bit of it, you two can get back to being friends again or move on to something better.  a LOT of your oracles mention love.  take how it resonates to you,  but I firmly believe a lot of it is platonic and self love.  there’s also a huge theme of something ending.  it could be the relationship with her and you two departing but I’m feeling it’s the relationship as you know it.  I think you two will become stronger together and fight through this. 

anyway

The Energy between the two of you: three and ten of wands, six of swords, Eight of wands, High Priestess with the Tower as the overall energy. (also King of pentacles, 6 of pentacles, hanged man, chariot, queen of wands, ace of pentacles, 2 of cups)

Ace of cups, seven of pentacles, Judgement, the Hermit, three of pentacles, Queen of Cups also flew out. 

So let's begin with the wands.  We have Three, Eight and Ten of Wands.   The wands tell a story about hard work and perseverance.  here with the three of wands and eight of wands,  it tells me that your pisces here is probably under a lot of stress.  and ... I think this goes for you as well.  I feel it definitely around the work and home life here.  NP is very focused on their goals,  and with the ten of wands,  they are carrying a lot of responsibility on their shoulders.  they see this as a good thing though.  something they want.  they had to work hard to get where they are and they love having it.  but much like burdens it's tiresome and I'm sure they're just stressed out and want a break.

We should then go over to the swords here.  because we have the six of swords.  the six of swords is probably the biggest indicator of how they're feeling about everything in regards to what you have told me.  this is the card of moving on.  I see that they are trying to push what has happened past them.  and I see with the Ace of Cups that there is going to be something new for the both of you coming down the road. we  We can also see this with the Seven of Pentacles.  the seven of pentacles is all about working and putting effort into things.  in this case, relationships.  there's going to be a change in the relationship. this can mean one of two things though.  One, you both go your separate ways and you both work on yourselves,  or two,  you both come back to each other and work in a new, healed relationship.

so then, we have a ton of Major Arcana lol.  We have the Hermit, Judgement and the High Priestess.  we also have the queen of cups so don't let me forget about that.

so here's what I'm thinking lol. I think you two are going to end up reflecting each other.  I have some other cards, and if you notice, there's also the queen of wands.  I think NP  is going to form into this queen of wands, and you are going to step into the queen of cups here. because I see this journey.  this could also be reversed because you're a fire sign and she's water but like roll with me here.  one of you is going to become more introspective.  the Hermit is all about searching for inner truth and guidance.  Judgement and the High Priestess is all about awakenings and trusting the inner guidance that you have.  someone, is going to be stepping into their power and presenting themselves as the queen of cups. and I think that's going to help your situation a lot.

So then we have the overall energy.   We have the Tower.  this tells me that you two are probably going to come to a head when you two finally get to sit down and talk about this.  if both sides are willing.  I don't know why but Im hearing that maybe a third party is going to be involved with you hashing it out.  and they could represent the tower energy but I think they're going to embody the King of Pentacles.  this could also be the situation you two come together.  something logical with both of yalls heads on straight.

we have the 6 of pentacles here too with the ace of pentacles so something new is coming for the both of you.  one that is both generous and one that brings you both in a union that you two can work together -see the 2 of cups there as well ;) -  with the hanged man and the chariot with the queen of wands, I'm thinking this is going to get a little... spicy lol

Like, I think you two are going to be a little rough around the edges at first.  which is fair I mean, you both were kind of on different wave lengths and shit happened ya know? it's okay to be riled up and hurt over the past.  but luckily this isn't going to be ending in a way that you both are hurt and sore about.  this is going to be a mutual ending.  something you both can agree on.

so now, I'm going to get into more of the oracle stuff and pendulums.  I have a few questions set up but if you have any that you would like answered, feel free to let me know =)

Pendulum:

Is there a chance that you two will come back together?

yes -oh okay so I saw the wheel of fortune when I got this answer. this tells me that you two will be able to end the cycle of this situation and be able to move on into something more beautiful.

Will there be a third person involved to help?

yes

Is it someone you both know?

yes

Is there a chance for building a stronger connection?

yes. and a key message I got for this is to have patience, take some time to rest and “is it worth the fighting?’  which Im assuming is going to be when you two try to sort it out lol

Will the Pisces reach out first?

yes

Is it wise to make the first move now?

no.  considering the top one here is a yes, I think it’s best to sit back and let this happen. 

Oracle Advice

Your feelings are real and are worth exploring

Trust--- this situation is requiring to have faith.

transformation occurs through acceptance.  Once you accept the current situation, it will automatically transform

Getting to know each other.  Reveal yourselves to each other, it helps to deepen the bond. 

Transformation:  your relationship with one another is about to deepen. love conquers and transforms all things.

Power--- You instinctively know what is right for you and you have the power to say no or to walk away at any time

someone has deeper feelings for you than they are letting on.

Friendship--- nurture the bonds of friendship within your relationship and your love life will dramatically improve.

The most unlikely friendships can form; like variegated lichens on hard rock, they create a tight bond. 

Don’t make decisions based on guilt or what you think you should do, for it is only in being true to yourself that you can be true to others. 

Breathe -- break from beneath the waters surface and soar up beyond the turquoise sea

Meditate- make some quiet time in the still air Travel -- seeing the surface of the ocean is not the same as driving deep to see the coral

Voyage --- set sail on a new course

Resilient --- stay as strong as evergreen trees

Let Go -- enjoy the pulsing light of the firefly but don’t hold on too tight

Idyll Hours ---  take some time out to lie on the emerald grass. 

Growth -- the tallest oak tree once started as a seedling. don’t be afraid to start something new. 

Prosperity lies ahead 

getting clear on what you value most will help you find peace

Don’t let your past hold you back

release the past

just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should

Step out of your comfort zone

time to stop obsessing over someone or something. 

stand on your own two feet

balance spirituality and practicality

follow your intuition, it won’t let you down

The end of a tough cycle approaches

stop fearing the worst

A firey climax approaches

being assertive is good-- just don’t push it on to anyone. 

I hope this helps if you need anything, like I said let me know. if you have any follow up questions I will be happppyyy to answer them. =)

[hqprotectionsquad]

Sunlight (Kunimi x Reader)

Title: Sunlight Ship: Kunimi x Reader Word Count: 1,568 Summary: Kunimi takes you home after he is dragged on a double date with Oikawa and his crush.  A/N: cross posted from my Wattpad!

Kunimi leans into the desk chair, scanning the classroom. Deep breath in, deep breath out. No need for anyone to see that he is having an internal breakdown. His face is stone-cold, with his eyes as dull as usual, but his head is clattered with memories and thoughts, and most importantly, a realization that shook his form in the first place: he developed feelings for you.

For him, this is huge. He hasn't had a crush since junior high, and even then, he found the idea of a prospering relationship too much to handle. Now, while his perspective toward romance has matured, he wants his feelings to be like milk, spoiled once exposed to the elements. He just needs a few reasons to create a barrier between his brain and his heart. Maybe you have a bad habit of dog-earring your pages or you chew too loud or you tend to speak on the sarcastic side. Something. Anything.

Volleyball practice arrives and Kunimi pinpoints the original source of the "problem," as he wants to call this thing that's taken over his mind. This man with perfectly styled hair is ultimately the reason why you and your best friend even come to the volleyball games and while it isn't as hard to talk to Ritsuko, you are a little more difficult, only because Kunimi can't look at you in the eyes. Oikawa approaches Kunimi at the end of practice, glowing and glistening instead of appearing sweaty like everyone else. "Kunimi-chan, will you be meeting up with me, (L/N)-chan, and Ri-chan after we finish here today? I could use a friend to help me seal the deal with Ri-chan and she'll only come if (L/N)-chan comes."

Kunimi slings the towel around the crook of his elbow but all he really wants to do with the sweat-sopped thing is throw it into Oikawa's face. Is he really indirectly pushing the limits to his brain? Oikawa wouldn't know anything about it but Kunimi has nothing to do today and his mom is always nagging him to spend time with his friends instead of reading inside or peppering a volleyball by himself. Kunimi replies coolly, "Sure. What are we doing?"

"Cafe study date, of course!" Oikawa sips from his water bottle, but the corner of his lips form a grin. "I hope we do more talking than studying but you never know. Ri-chan and (Y/N)-chan are so studious sometimes."

"I see." Kunimi nods and gathers his things. "I'll meet you in twenty."

"Okay!" Oikawa's thumb and index finger meet to make a circle. "Say hi to them if you see them before I do! They'll be stopping by the gym. See you!"

Once Kunimi gets into the shower, he does everything he can to prevent himself from banging his head against the tiled wall. The water from the shower head rolls onto his body, then off into the drain. Why did he even agree to this? He is just going to shut off, like the robot everyone says he is. This is a mistake.

"Do you understand what they're talking about?" You lean over to whisper in Kunimi's ear. He shakes his head with a frown in response.

Across the table, your best friend and Oikawa are discussing what seems to be school but also flirting with every other word. You didn't think that was possible up until that moment. Ri-chan always goes for the studious kind, which is kind of the reason why you were so skeptical when she asked you to accompany her to this study session. Oikawa never struck you as the smart guy, but here you were, proven wrong, apparently. Kunimi, on the other hand, is quiet, but it appears that he cares a lot about his grades because he actually is studying for an exam he has next week, according to him.

"What are you working on?" You nudge Kunimi's elbow with yours and at first, it looks like he's about to lash out at you. You scoot into the back of your chair, folding your arms. He doesn't seem invested in his work and he sets his pencil to the side.

"A math assignment." His voice is everything but a murmur. "What are you working on, (L/N)-chan?" Your name doesn't roll off as easy as you thought it would, and you can't help but to wonder if his would sound weird in your mouth too.

"An essay for Japanese literature. I don't really understand it though." Your lips form a thin line before you force yourself to take a sip from your latte. If you were going to spend nearly 600 yen on a drink, you needed to finish it.

"I see." Kunimi nodded and looked outside the window, no longer paying attention to you. You know that he's not an outgoing person, but with Ri-chan and Oikawa doing all sorts of things across the table, you wish you had a more receptive person to the left of you.

Ri-chan pushes herself out of the table with her eyes wide open. "Ah! I need to go pick up Haru-kun!" Her brother, only five, gets picked up. You remember meeting him for the first time and you understand why Ri-chan goes out of her way for her sibling. He is one of the shiest things on this earth.

"Let me come with you, Ri-chan! So that you won't have to go alone." Oikawa suggests with his million-yen smile and she graciously accepts.

"I apologize, Kunimi-san and (Y/N)," Ri-chan's words come out fast and muddled. They bow to the both of you before taking their leave. The bell at the top of the door resounds in your ears over and over. Did that just really happen? You ask yourself. You glance over to Kunimi's expression and it seems that he reacted similarly.

"Er, I suppose I should take you home then." Kunimi offers after noticing your cup drew empty a while ago.

"Yeah, there isn't much point to staying after they've left anyway." You shrug, placing your notebook and pencils back into your school bag. After zipping up and thanking the server for the food and beverages, you motion for him to lead the way out.

He does and he barely looks at you before heading off into a direction. "Kunimi, my house is the other way," you pant after needing to run after him. He isn't necessarily fast, but he is persistent.

"Oh. Okay." To you, it looks like Kunimi is one to only work, but you know from watching him over the year you've known of him that he doesn't even work sometimes. What is the turmoil behind his eyes? What is he thinking about?

This time, you lead the way but you make sure you stand next to him. Now that you're side by side, you need to roll your eyes up to your eyebrows to properly have a look at him. Soft threads of hair, a fit and capable body, but saddest of all, his eyes evoke stirring into your heart. When was the last time someone really got to know him?

"Kunimi-san, if you don't mind me asking," you begin as your scenery changes from the hustle of the city center to the suburbs where most people live. "Do you have friends from outside of the volleyball team?"

"Not really," he replies.

"Why not?"

"I don't go out of my way to make new friends." It is simple and the truth, but it stings your eyes.

"Right." You nod, pushing down the stone in your throat. "Have you ever wanted to become friends with other people?"

"I guess," he mutters as you turn a corner and he follows suit, shoving his hands in his front pockets. "It doesn't really matter to me whether or not I have friends."

"Isn't it a little lonely though?" You prod more, seeing if he'll say anything or do anything. You can't really imagine yourself going further out of your current friend group either, but your group is diverse in all the activities you do. No one person shares all the same ones, which makes conversations exciting.

"Sometimes."

His words trail into a deafening silence. You walk for what you believe is hours and you continue toward your home. The next time he looks at you is when you arrive at the gate of your family home. It is modest, but it is perfect for a family like yours.

"Thank you for bringing me home." You smile as you fish for your keys in your bag, holding out the strap with one hand.

"You're welcome, (L/N)-san." His grin is a ghost, only seen for a second, but you catch it.

"You have a nice smile," you comment softly and shake your head. He isn't looking for new friends, you remind yourself. Your voice raises in dynamics when you say, "So! How far away do you live from here?"

"Maybe...20 minutes." He scratches his head with one of his fingers.

"You should've told me! Your house is far from here!" You go as far as slapping him lightly on the arm, but he doesn't really react.

"It's okay. I wanted to." His small smile returns. The sun streams through the tree on the sidewalk and when it hits Kunimi, it washes over his features with a soft glow. No longer does he look dull, he shines brighter than ever.

[brightblueinky]

Long winded ramblings about a Bronycon video

So I’ve seen some hubbub about a YouTube essay going over the history of the Brony fandom up until the last Bronycon. (You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fVOF2PiHnc ) I just got around to watching it today and I was...somewhat confused by some of the stronger negative takes I was seeing floating around Twitter, and I’ve been in a “fandom discourse” mood lately so, hey, I thought...why not talk about it. The first part of this was originally going to be a Twitter thread until I realized Twitter wasn’t going to let me keep going on the thread so I gave up and decided to put it here instead (lol) so it’s probably going to be a bit choppy since I was trying to keep it readable for that format.

So first of all, my background, so I can be completely honest about where I'm coming from and try not to portray what I'm saying as like...an end-all-be-all take here, because I don't wanna do that. I was never really an MLP fan. I watched the first season of FiM and really enjoyed it, but I didn't really engage with the fandom because by that point I'd gotten to where I didn't spend much time in huge fandoms. So I can't come at this from the perspective of an MLP fan. When I’m addressing the fandom here, I’m coming at it as an outsider in the sense that I am not a MLP fan/brony. What I AM going to do is come at this from the perspective of something of a "native" to fandom. I've always been a geek. I've engaged in online fandom in some form or another since I was about 8, which was in the mid 90s. I've been around the fandom block. Actually, I can even say that I used to lurk on 4chan a lot and I saw a lot of the early Brony discussions there. I also watch @JennyENicholson's videos, and yeah, there's been times where I've been bugged because we had a disagreement of opinions and felt like it was a little harsh. She's got a dry sense of humor and sometimes it's hard to read when she's joking and when she's being genuine. So like, I wasn't surprised when I saw some hubbub from some people online about her doing the video about Bronies. Not at all. But I gotta say...I am really surprised by some of the more INTENSE takes on the video after watching it?? The LARGE majority of the video is @JennyENicholson covering this fandom from an INSIDER'S perspective. She was an MLP fan before FiM, she was active enough in the fandom to be a BNF. A huge, huge amount of the video is positive and nostalgic. In fact I now wish I HAD been in the fandom! It seems like it was a lot of fun! The only thing I felt was maybe harsh in the video is I think she gave the impression that being "furry" is exclusively a sex thing, but by the end she talks about furries being a community that's a very inclusive, kind community with a lot of queer people, so even then I think if you're really paying attention to the whole video you're not going to come away with the idea that the furry community is bad. Just maybe could've had more nuance earlier in the video?  So from glancing through mentions of her in a Twitter search (which is definitely not going to be a perfect sample) from what I can tell there's like two things that people seem to be upset about with the video: 1, the idea that the fandom is "dead" and 2...just...Body Pillows. So let's talk about the dead fandom thing first. As I mention, I have been in fandom a long, long time. Although I (usually) shy away from big active fandoms now, I started off in bigger ones--Sonic, Pokemon, Digimon, LOTR, etc. The two fandoms I currently care about the most, though, are definitely fandoms that tend to be called "dead" and were never HUGE to begin with (Princess Tutu and Chrono Crusade). I think I can count on my hands the number of ppl who actively discuss or create fanwork for CC.   So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I've been on both sides of the coin here. And let me reassure Bronies: "Dead", while maybe too strong of a label for what it actually means, does not have to be a negative thing and you don't need to defend your fandom from it, IMO. I think the "dead" label simply means that interest in the fandom has cooled, the number of active participants is significantly down from the heydays of the fandom, etc. And I don't think that's an unfair label for brony fandom from what I know.   If there was a large scale replacement for Bronycon then maybe it'd be unfair, but...yeah, if you're losing your large hubs for the fandom community, if the flow of fanwork and discussion has slowed, I think "dead", as it's used, isn't an unfair label.   But again, I don't think this is a bad thing! I'd imagine that even the current state of the brony fandom is larger and more active than the Princess Tutu fandom at its greatest heights. It's a pretty relative term. It doesn't mean nobody cares, or that you can't still enjoy it! All the "dead" label really means is acknowledging the change in a fandom. It's not a bad thing. I might be 1 of ~30 writers for Chrono Crusade on AO3 but I still have fun writing fic and I still get hits and occasional positive comments. It's not bad. Just different. Okay so now let's talk about the body pillow thing and oh man, is this going to be a minefield, lol. Let's first talk about my personal lens I'm going to come at here... I've created NSFW fanwork. Some of it taboo. I'm also (somewhat) a part of the "proship" discourse on Twitter which is basically a community of people that push back against another community of "anti"-shippers who feel that some ships are problematic (because of character age, power dynamics, etc) and shouldn't be shipped. (I think that simplifies a lot of the discussion on both sides but it’ll do for the purpose of what I’m getting at here, I think.) At its worse this debate has lead death threats and suicide attempts. I have seen people get treated abusively for fanwork (sometimes NSFW but not always). (And I also want to add that while I think the major component of the pro-ship discussions on Twitter are anti-harassment, there’s been some ‘edgy’ types who think that it’s fun to harass antis with NSFW fanwork and the like and I want to make it clear that is ALSO ABUSIVE AND NOT OKAY.) Basically, I want to say I'm sympathetic to a knee jerk defensive reaction over NSFW fanart. Okay? I can get why people might want to push against criticism of stuff they enjoy/create, and that there’s an element of possibly being harassed for fanwork you create. But the thing is, I don't think this is really the attitude Jenny is taking in the video. She lightly mocks NSFW stuff and body pillows, but often describes it as "harmless" and "fine". The only time she's critical of it is when she notes that sometimes body pillows with suggestive poses could be on display at conventions where young kids were present--at a con celebrating a show MEANT for young kids--and that probably shouldn't have been allowed. She's not saying you can't buy a body pillow, or create one. She didn't even say that while discussing body pillows of characters who were 10! She expressed personal discomfort, but the only restriction she really suggested was "keep this out of the sight of minors." And I don't know why that would be a controversial take. I read lemons when I was younger so I'm not going to sit here and act like it's going to completely ruin kids lives or anything. But I ALSO think it's appropriate to have boundaries for sexual materials for kids (or anyone who doesn't want to engage for whatever reason). I want my stuff to be clearly labeled as NSFW, with tags being clear about the content, so people know what they're getting into. I’ve grown to care about this even more as I’ve gotten older. I don’t really want to know about minors reading my nsfw fanfic or anything. I’m not going to, like, parent them and shame them if they do, but I don’t want to engage with it, I want my stuff to be labeled, and I am DEFINITELY not going to put it on public display at a place where I know kids are allowed, ESPECIALLY not when it’s work based on stuff MEANT for children! I mean, I grew up in a fundamentalist Evangelical household and I will rant at you for hours about how damaging I feel that environment was, and that I don’t think kids and teens should be completely shielded from sex, etc. But that doesn’t mean that having boundaries in place is a bad idea, especially when minors are involved. I also think that boundaries are good just for the sake of consent, too? I’m not saying that someone accidentally seeing suggestive art is the same as them being raped, please don’t conflate it like that, but if people don’t want to see it for whatever reason they should be given the opportunity to make that choice as much as possible. The stuff that Jenny mentioned brony conventions would do (requiring stuff to be sold under the table, or having late night hours for the dealer’s room where 18+ merch could be displayed and sold) seem like really good policies and pretty similar to what I’ve seen at anime conventions I’ve attended (although occasionally some stuff that was maybe a biiit more suggestive than I’d be comfortable displaying in public...but hey, my local con allows kids but also makes it clear in their rules that it’s mostly geared for 13+ attendees and that it’s up to parents to decide what’s appropriate for their kids, and I think that’s fair). And yeah, I know, nothing that Jenny showed in the video being displayed at Bronycon was 100% explicit, just suggestive. She notes this in the video herself, saying that yeah, it doesn’t show genitalia, etc...and as I’m writing this I think I’ve maybe rambled too much about NSFW fanart when most of the stuff we’re talking about here is more “suggestive” than straight-up porn, since that’s probably muddying the waters a bit. But I gotta, gotta, GOTTA address the sentiment I saw multiple times on Twitter in response to her video: “Dakimakura/body pillows aren’t sexual and to say that is orientalist.” I...what? What the fuck? Okay, again, I’m going to make it perfectly clear what my background is here so that I’m not claiming to have some expertise that I don’t have: I am white. I am VERY white. My parents did the DNA test thing and the most “exotic” thing that came up is that my dad is 3% Spanish. Not latin american, I mean from Spain spanish. I am sooooo fucking white. I’ve studied a LITTLE of Japanese culture in college classes but that wasn’t even my field of study (Communication major on a Broadcasing track, minor in Theatre) so I’m not going to tell you I’m an expert on Japanese culture. I’m just a weeby geek that grew up in anime fandoms and never really stopped consuming Japanese pop culture. I have a very limited experience with Japanese culture. I am NOT an expert on what is and isn’t orientalist. I know I’m really hammering in this point here but I think it’s really, really important that I make it clear that I shouldn’t be used as an expert on this subject. But what I DO have a background in is someone who has engaged in Western fandom of stuff from Japan from a young age, I did spend a lot of time on 4chan, this is NOT the first time that I’ve seen some form of an “this isn’t sexual at all and you’re just a PERVERT” discussion about fanservice and...okay first of all, I highly doubt anyone saying this is any more qualified to define what is and isn’t orientalist than I am. I think this is bullshit and it feels like an attempt to make your opinions more legitimate by implying people that disagree with you are some form of bigot. (And look, I was a sheltered, insecure, stuck-up teenager in fandom, part of the reason I feel like I can recognize this is I totally pulled the same shit. I am not going to act like I have never tried to pull this and that I’m a pure innocent woke intellectual who’s never said something foolish, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let it slide, either.)

While writing this I googled ‘dakimakura’ to make sure I was spelling it right and noticed that Wikipedia does note that the origins of this style of pillow are sometimes used by Japanese kids as something like a security blanket, which I’m guessing is where the justification for the argument is coming from, but let’s be intellectually honest here--body pillow covers being sold at a convention aren’t primarily meant to be a security blanket for kids. And, okay, maybe you have a body pillow cover with a character on it that isn’t exactly in a sexual pose, just laying fully clothed on what looks like a bedsheet background. But I don’t think it’s an unfair argument to say that even THEN it implies a sort of intimacy, right, possibly a desire for a romantic attachment? Like, sharing a bed with someone doesn’t have to be sexual or romantic, I used to share a bed with my brother in hotel rooms when we were kids, but I’m also not going to share a bed with my brother and then hug him closely to my body no matter how he’s posed or what he’s wearing??? And look, maybe a body pillow isn’t ALWAYS sexual but to say it’s NOT sexual, which kinda implies NEVER, is so disingenuous. The top result I got when I searched for “anime body pillow” is a shop that includes categories like “18+ body pillow” and “sexy body pillow” and also SELLS FAKE BREAST INSERTS FOR SOME OF THE PILLOWS SO YOU CAN SQUEEZE THEIR BOOBS (obviously, NSFW link: https://www.dakimakura.us/ ) Like, COME ON, I don’t think it’s orientalist to say that something is sexual when Japanese people are actually selling body pillows they label as 18+. The second result even has a second for pillows you can insert sex toys into. And yeah I saw the guy saying “masturbation isn’t sex!” and sir at BEST you have a very narrow and incorrect definition of sex as simply being intercourse and, again, at worst you’re just being straight up dishonest. In fact, I’ll straight up call myself out for this. There’s a fanart body pillow of a fictional character I’ve considered buying several times! (Not porn but still probably NSFW link: https://www.etsy.com/listing/701912275/dakimakura-hypnosismic-doppo?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=hypnosis+mic&ref=sr_gallery-1-4&organic_search_click=1 ) Is this porn? No. You can’t see much. But on one side of the pillow he’s got his shirt untucked, you can see a bit of his stomach, and his fly is undone and you can see the band of his underwear peeking out. This is sexual. I’m not wanting it to like, get off on it, exactly...honestly it’s maybe a bit ironic, and a lot of wanting a body pillow in general is I like sleeping hugging onto something but I have a different sleep schedule from my husband I find him too big to hold all night and too warm in the summer anyway. But I’m not going to tell you that me wanting this PARTICULAR pillow case isn’t at all sexual, I know what I’m doing, I like the character and think the drawing is hot. I’m not saying don’t buy body pillows, okay? I’m not saying don’t sell them. I don’t think Jenny is either (she literally OWNS ONE that she shows in the video!!!). But don’t act like there isn’t ever anything sexual about it existing to try to defend their existence, okay? You don’t need to be a fucking coward about it, and you especially don’t need to say it’s racist if people call out something as being suggestive when, well, it fucking is. And I think it’s totally 100% reasonable for someone to say “hey I don’t think it’s a good idea to display suggestive art around kids, especially if it’s depicting young characters.” TL;DR -- Chill, guys. CHILL. Your fandom is getting smaller and the term people use for this is “dead” but that’s not a bad thing, you’ve still got the fandom, you can still enjoy it, there’s definitely no need to take personal offense over it. And enjoy your body pillows, but don’t be disingenuous about the fact that they can be suggestive and try to act like anyone that calls it such is racist, that is such bullshit. Like what you like, other people’s opinions of it is not automatically a personal attack on you, there’s no need to jump to being defensive every time someone says something vaguely negative about it. Chill, fandom friends. Fandom ain’t bad but it also doesn’t need to be the center of your identity and you don’t need to lash out against people for daring to have opinions about a thing you like. You especially don’t need to act like other people are perverts for noting something being suggestive. Chiiiiiiiiiill.

[kaitlyn-imagines]

Hey! Greetings from another blog! If it’s fine, I’d like to request a matchup? I’m a 4’11 straight female, Scorpio. My skin color changes from tan to slightly fair depending on the season, I have medium length black hair and brown eyes. I speak 3 languages, like to mix music, as well as write fanfics, songs, and essays. I’m competitive and playful which sometimes leads me to making rash decisions but I know my boundaries. I love music, dramas, milktea, and trying new things,, tysm lovely!

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Hello hello! Always happy to meet another blog ;) I hope you enjoy your half-year late match up haha, sorry! And niiiice I’m also a scorpio ;)

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I pair you with... Mezo Shoji!

- This sweet man gets along with everyone, so its pretty easy for the two of you to meet and be friendly with one another

- I think though, because he likes you so much, that he’d be a little hesitant to make a move—what if he’s over thinking it? He knows you can be playful so he doesn’t want to make you uncomfortable by misreading the relationship

- But eventually you drop a few obvious hints and he’ll politely ask you out when he’s sure you’re interested

- He’s not huge on materialistic things, so he thinks your ability to create non-materialistic art is soooo cool

- Mixing music and writing songs? He’s hooked. You can see and create beauty from nothing and he finds it so enchanting

- Omg if you ever wrote a fanfic about him and he found it??? He’d get so flustered reading it? But not gonna lie, if you were unaware he saw it, you BETTER BELIEVE that he’s recreating the scenario to mess with you. Internally you’d be like “omg I totally wrote this exact scenario what are the ODDS” and itd be like the twilight zone, meanwhile he’s smirking because he can see you visibly stumped

- Talk to him in another language and he’ll get a little heated. He doesn’t show it, but whisper something foreign in his ear and he’s all butterflies inside, your voice is so nice. This also becomes ammo for you to use later to mess with him

- He’s pretty level-headed and mature, even if he’s emotional, so I think you two would be pretty responsible together. You both know your own boundaries, so in turn you’d be good at knowing each other’s as well. If something ever becomes too much for you tho and you push yourself too far, he’ll help bring you back down.

- He’s the type of guy who’ll pick up a milktea for you on the way to a study date. You can text him asking for one and he’ll make the small detour! Though half the time you dont even have to ask, he’ll just bring one for you as a surprise because he knows you like them :)

- If you’re in a playful mood it tends to put him in one too. This dude has 6 arms. He WILL tickle you with all of them—RUN.

- You’re laugh-screaming like “SHOJI YOU PLAY TOO MUCH” and he’s like “ope, aight” and doesnt stop until you’re begging

- Also this dude towers over you so take advantage of that—lots of cuddles, hugs, tiptoe kisses!!! Especially cuddles tho, this man is a god-tier cuddler

[applewoodprincess]

Curious Cat: describing SVT personalities

J: kind and selfless to a fault, willing to sacrifice himself if it means letting the ppl he cares about flourish. he's very shy, yet at the same time, very easily excitable. he's a child at heart, but he'll only open up to ppl he is closed to. he clings to his members, seeking affection, playing pranks on them as a way to show his affection toward them. childish & clingy, but incredibly intelligent and clever. he's faced a lot of hardships, but the fact that he always holds a positive attitude is amazing. he's not greedy nor takes things for granted, he knows how to appreciate what he has, but constantly aims to ameliorate himself. he forces himself to be confident bc it helps him believe in himself in order to keep going. he's very humble about himself, but will throw a parade for his members. non-huihuis often see him as a weirdo, but i see it as him finally being comfortable enough to show us his lovable and eccentric quirks. overall, junnie is an adorable and sweet kid, who loves his members and triggers people's motherly instincts 😆 (god, i love him so much)

HS: spazzy but intense. we all know how he gets when he's excited and having fun lol. he's among the moodmakers, the one always ready to cheer you on and offer to help you. he is very kind and generous, and yes, spazzy lol. on the flip side, when it comes time to work, he is INTENSE. he's hard on himself AND his members. he knows when to stop goofing and get serious. he may be a little clueless when it comes to most things, but he's far from dumb. super passionate and determined.

WW: the hot nerd jk 😂 idk how it's possible for someone to be such a perfect blend of: confidence, intelligence, kindness, and playfulness. (not to say that the others are shallow FAR FROM IT), but wonu is just so deep? in everything he does, he puts in so much thought, carefully choosing his words and actions. he's the cool kid that gets cooler as you spend time with him. he tends to be on the quieter side (when not having fun with the rest of them), but he knows how to take charge and be assertive when he needs to. the way he cares for his members isn't obvious as some others, but it's there, subtle yet significant. something else i really appreciate from him is the amount of thoughtfulness he puts into something he knows is important--not necessarily for himself, but for others. like how he took the time to learn flower language bc fans gave him flowers, or how he continuously wore the bracelet that jun's mom gave 96z. and his determination and sheer willpower. god, that clip from HTR. he was ready to collapse, yet didn't allow himself to. the fact he was able to push forward and finish the show speaks volumes of his sense of responsibility and determination. *sigh* jeon wonu, you are the perfect man

WZ: tough marshmallow lol. bc he's strict, but also super soft and sweet! haha. if WW comes across as closed off at first sight, then WZ is basically a hermit lol. he's very shy, but he's grown to be confident and proud of what he's accomplished. of course there are still fears and worries, but he's by no means hesitant or indecisive when it comes to what he wants from his music. passionate and serious, but still sweet and caring. a man of few words, but many melodies and poems~

T8: very goal-orientated and ambitious. a realistic, but still able to dream and create beautiful art pieces that require imagination. a romantic. kind and sweet, but not overtly emotional. down to earth and practical. (the same can be said for wonhoon too but) not someone to condone BS lol. protective of his members. won't hesitate to snap back if there is injustice or unfairness. despite the serious attitude, a real loving kid.

MG: mr. perfect, with a slice of clumsiness jk 😂 a soft boy. the kind of friend you can count on. reliable and pleasant, friendly, outgoing. can get huffy at times, but it never lasts long. emotional. he just has A LOT of feels all the time about a lot of things. despite being pretty much perfect, he still strives to better himself, never letting his achievements get to his head. his clumsiness isn't limited to breaking/dropping things. some of the things he says sometimes does come across as a little tactless, but it's never with bad intentions. he's an all around GOOD BOY. very soft and gentle.

DK: the kindest soul~ most ppl see him as a little ditzy, and he does tend to be clueless and silly, but he has such a big heart. and a very good moodmaker! it's not for nothing that he's our sunshine! hahah. but he's so hardworking, too. and also super emotional. if MG channels his emotions through speeches and writing, then DK just lets his emotions flow out haha. it's raw and honest. not one to pretend or put on airs. what you see is what you get. an honest and kind boy :D

SK: sassy lol. he is such a delight tbh. one of the brightest spots in the universe. not only is he smart, he quick on his feet and can turn any situation around. sure, he nags and sasses his members, but he loves them so much??? also king at reading the mood in a room. king of entertainment. king of moodmakers. he can be loud and confident and funny and lead an entire show. but on the other hand, he is very sensitive and ALSO emotional. yes, he cries a lot lol, but he's also more likely to lash out when he's mad (which is actually hilarious to see ngl). among svt, he probably takes care of their image as idols the most lol.

VN: (anyone who comes to me with "VN stoner" comments will get smacked). he is a sweet and caring kid, mischievous at times, but doesn't have a bad bone in his entire body. yes, he's spacey, but he is true to himself and what he wants. he doesn't bend for trends or anybody's opinion, and i honestly find that admirable. even more so than josh, he is very mellow. he is much more of the listening type, but afterward, he will talk and give you his honest opinions. he doesn't mince words. very honest and true. also great supporter, even when he doesn't quite understand lol. while he seems pretty mature, the fact that he's still much a baby when it comes to everyday life is really cute.

DN: a very mature and independent young man. in a way, i think he's quite similar to Hao, with how he is very ambitious and strives to do/learn more and more, to hone in his skills. very passionate, too. he is very responsible and capable of taking the lead, which he does when it comes to dancing (only second to HS). he acts like a hyung lol (and you can see it pretty clearly in the way he and jun interact). i think he has an easier time being the maknae nowadays lol. a reliable young man full of passion!

oh, man. this is a huge essay �� i'm sorry it's so long! and i'm probably forgetting a bunch of details for each member, so pls don't get mad at me 🙏😭 these are just my own personal thoughts about each of them, even if they're lacking. all in all, we are very lucky to have 13 wonderful, kind, and talented young men.

ahhh thank you, my dear! please take care and stay safe, too! hopefully this is satisfactory 😅

(i should have ch. 17 out in a few days. thank you for the wait!) xoxoxo

[harryfreakinstyles2]

Torn (Part 3) H.S.

I roll over in bed forcing my eyes open. My head a dull ache as I look at the light shining through my curtains. I am assuming it is well past noon based on the amount of times I snoozed my alarm but I am too scared to look at my phone to check the time as the memories from last night come back to me. I climb out of bed and head for the kitchen leaving my phone on my nightstand.

I settle on a peanut butter sandwich after spending fifteen minutes going through the fridge then the cabinets then the fridge again. I really need to go grocery shopping this weekend. I wander into the living room finding a comfortable spot on the couch as I start scrolling through Netflix when I hear Julie's bedroom door open. She enters the living room looking better than I honestly expected her to. There is a huge smile plastered on her face as she takes a seat facing me on the opposite end of the couch. I know exactly where the conversation is going to go and as much as I want to know what is happening with her and Harry, I also don't.

"So how late did you end up getting back home last night?" I try to say as casually as possible avoiding the inevitable topic.

"Actually not that late. Harry wasn't feeling well so he left like thirty minutes after you did and then I came home soon after that." She says matching my casual tone.

Julie has always been this way. She likes to bring up a topic she wants to talk about but makes the other person ask her all the questions. She makes you pry the information out of her even though she wants to give it to you anyway. It always felt like a power move but I never cared and rarely noticed, until now I guess. I try not to read into her mention of Harry leaving early as I continue our conversation.

"So who is Harry exactly? And why have you never mentioned him to me before?" I question her playfully.

"He's no one really. I mean not yet. I met him a few weeks ago and we have hung out a few times when I have been out with friends." Julie responds like it's not important. But she forgets that I have known her since we were eight years old and I can read her from a mile away. It's important.

"Oh well, he seems nice." I say not very convincingly.

I know she was expecting more from me. A comment on how gorgeous he is or his British accent but she lets the topic go and we continue gossiping and laughing for a bit about last night and our drunk friends. But I feel uncomfortable around her like I did something wrong or I am hiding something. I keep telling myself I didn't really do anything wrong. But I feel guilty anyway.

I am slightly relieved that Julie and Harry barely know each other. But less relieved because of the smile on her face when she mentioned his name.

"Dang, what time is it? I really should go work on this essay for a bit." I lie to her so I have an excuse to leave the apartment for a few hours hoping it will help clear my head.

I leave Julie on the couch and rush into my room to change into a hoodie and a pair of yoga pants. Then I quickly throw my laptop, books, and phone into my backpack. I head back into the living room but the couch is empty. I make my way towards the kitchen and still no sight of her so I assume she went back to her room.

"Bye Jules! I'm headed to the coffee shop! I'll be back in a few hours! Call if you need anything!" I yell as I grab my keys off the counter and rush out the door before I hear a response.

There is almost no traffic out to my surprise since it is the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday and I make it to the coffee shop where I work in under ten minutes. I go inside happy when I notice my favorite table in the corner near the window is empty and drop my stuff. After ordering my usual iced coffee I sit back down at the table and start unloading my backpack. I reach for my phone and realize I haven't checked it all day. The screen lights up revealing a few unread messages one from Julie responding to my message from last night. And two from Harry.

Harry: "I'm sorry if I overstepped" he sent thirty minutes after his last message last night.

Harry: "Can I see you again?" He sent an hour ago.

I sigh closing my eyes after reading the messages. I wish I didn't feel guilty about being happy that he wants to see me again. I know he is not dating Julie after our talk this morning. But her smile when she talked about him this morning flashes in my head and I know she wishes they were. I sigh again knowing what I need to do even though it's the last thing I want to do.

Me: "That's not a good idea. I think it's best we stay away from each other."  I read the message again. It's short and to the point. Still wishing I could tell him I would love to see him again, I send the message.

I try to focus on the essay I am working on for next weeks assignment but I keep checking my phone and hoping for a response. Finally I feel my phone vibrate on the table and I pause for a minute scared to read the message.

Harry: "Why? Did I do something?"

I sigh aggravated at the situation and wishing things were different. I can't help myself as I quickly type out a response.

Me: "No, it is not you. Just trust me. It's complicated. It's easier to just leave it alone." I send before I think too much.

Harry: "What are you talking about? Can you just meet up with me and we can talk? I don't understand what the problem is."  he sends back automatically.

I can't help but wonder why he does not see the problem. He knows Julie is my best friend she said it last night. He honestly can not expect me to spend time with him when he has a thing with her.

Me: "I'm sorry Harry. I really don't want to create any problems." I send then set my phone back on the table.

I lean back in my chair and close my eyes realizing that hurt more than I thought it would. Why did he have to meet her first. Why do I feel this weird pull towards him of all people. He is nothing like my last boyfriend. Granted that was senior year of high school which is almost four years ago now but they are polar opposites. My mind flashes to Harry with his tattoos and black T-shirt and matching black skinny jeans. Despite his rough exterior all I can focus on was how warm his smile was and the way his green eyes are burned into my memory.

An hour passes and I haven't received a response. I look out the window and the clouds have moved in signaling a storm is sure to arrive soon. I have written exactly one paragraph and downed my entire iced coffee. Feeling defeated and pathetic I lay my head against the table and sigh while trying again to rid my mind of thoughts of him. Accepting the fact that I will not be getting much work done today I start packing up my things when in the corner of my eye I notice someone approaching my table. I look up, my blue eyes feeling like they are deceiving me as I take in his messy brown curls pushed back from his forehead and green eyes that have been stuck in my head for the last 24 hours. He looks effortlessly beautiful wearing the same tight black jeans from last night and a white Rolling Stones t shirt. I tug at my hoodie now very aware of how awful I must look. I glance at the tattoos covering his arm trying to make out each one now that I can see them in the light. I know I am staring but I can't get myself to look away.

"Hey," He says his deep voice breaking me out of my trance.

"What are you doing here?" Is all I can say in response as my eyes meet his.

"Julie told me you were here and coffee sounded good," He says casually shrugging his shoulders smiling at me while sitting down in the seat across from me.

His presence makes my pulse start to race and he is even more gorgeous than I remember as I stare at the dimple that forms when he smiles. I am trying to wrap my head around the fact that he is even here sitting across from me right now.

"You asked Julie where I was!?!?" I say finally in disbelief.

"No!" He laughs at my reaction. "She invited me over saying she was home alone because you left to come here to study."

"So you came here?" I question him confused at the idea that he would rather come here to see me than be at the apartment alone with Julie.

"Yes, I came here. Does that surprise you? I told you I wanted to talk." He says honestly, and I am even more confused than before. His humor is gone and he is eyeing me looking confused at my reaction.

"I just don't understand why you would come here instead of going to see Julie," I say while staring at my laced fingers resting on the table.

"Julie and I are not together. Never were. I made that clear to her last night. She didn't tell you?" He states leaning forward to draw my attention away from my fingers and back to him.

I can smell his cologne again the same as last night and my heart starts to race when I look up and his face is much too close to mine. My eyes trace the perfect outline of his lips as he speaks again.

"That's why you won't talk to me right? Because of Julie." He asks at just above a whisper like he is trying to lure me closer to him.

"She likes you. She won't admit it but I know she does. Just because you ended it, it doesn't change that. Which means I can't talk to you." I state sounding more confident than I am as his eyes stare directly into mine.

"But I don't want her like that. She knows that. So what is the problem with us getting to know each other?" He questions me and his playful tone from last night is back and a giant smirk is on his lips. His smirk makes me tingle but I am worried that with a face like his and his charming sarcasm he has a long line of girls falling a his feet.

"Because she had you first. She liked you first. You are hers in a way. I can't do that to her. It doesn't matter that you do not want her. She wants you, and she is my best friend. I can't," I say trying to keep my distance without much luck. There is something about him that makes me feel like I have known him forever. I am never this open with people especially people I just met but I can't help it with him.

"She doesn't own me, Allie. Besides she is your best friend that means she should want you to be happy. You want to get to know me as much as I want to get to know you I can feel it." He says with such confidence it terrifies me that he might be able to see right through me. I can't get myself to answer him because I am too afraid of what might slip out. He is still leaning towards me eyes searching mine. "She would understand right?" He says finally realizing I am not going to respond.

"Understand!?" I laugh ignoring his completely accurate observation of my sudden need to be near him. "You don't know Julie," I state.

Harry doesn't respond he just leans back in his chair with a somewhat confused and defeated look on his face. He is staring at his hands and playing with the rings on his fingers and I take the opportunity to memorize him sitting across from me with a slight crease in his forehead as he thinks. I fight the urge to ask him a million questions. I want to know everything about him. I hate the idea of never being able to speak to him again, of not being around him. I sigh louder than I intended to drawing Harry's attention back to me. He looks at me with a small smile like he just came up with the best idea.

"Well, we can be friends then at least right?" He says like it is an easy solution to the problem.

I can't help but smile back at his boyish charm. Even worse I can't resist agreeing when he is looking at me like that.

"Okay. Friends." I say knowing this is a bad idea but the idea of not knowing him is even worse.

[codenamesazanka]

I think i fell into the trap of villains being more interesting than the heroes in bnha. I find tomura more entertaining. The kids in 1-a aside from bakugou and maybe todoroki are too nice? What are they’re flaws?

Hiya! Thanks for this cool question! I’m sorry, but you’ll be getting a looong essay from me! 

And yeah, same!! Though I don’t think its that the UA kids are boing/too nice/flawed. When I first started watching MHA, I was on the lookout for a favorite character to stan. Uraraka, Iida, Eraserhead, even Snipe(???)… I actually didn’t care for Shigaraki Tomura at first, tho I did like his creepy vibe. When I finally did take notice, it was a delight trying to figure him out because he’s so contradictory and still mysterious. Making sense of it all/using all of the pieces to discover a characterization that made sense, was just fun and rewarding. 

IDK exactly what changed to make me like him, but I think it was that I got interested in the worldbuilding, how exactly quirks and heroes and villains exist. Villains are a really cool perspective to look at the society from, and who better to use as an example than hand man? 

…Which is also the main flaw I perceive about MHA. 

(Everything here is my opinion! I’m a huge sci-fi/fantasy fan so that’s the angle I’m most interested in, and also I read the non-villain arcs like once and that information has largely been crowded out by the ever-expanding and all-consuming thoughts of the League of Villains, so I will get somethings wrong)

IMO, Worldbuilding is a bit weird, in that it’s not enough to establish the norms - which is hard enough - but often you must also establish the taboos. Figuring out how things function includes examining the dysfunctions. Sometimes you create a world only to tear it down. 

But that’s the heart of speculative fiction - imagining different ways of living, different ways the world could be, taking aspects from our world and dissecting it. “Fantasy — the fantastic, the imagination that I love so dearly and that I’ve used to try to construct my own work — is everything that helps to expose more clearly and more powerfully the reality that surrounds us,” Julio Cortazár said. The classic sci-fi stories of exploration and invasion, othering, transhumanism - all are already issues irl: colonialism, discrimination, disability. The lives and conflicts in those stories can exist because of the lives and conflicts of real people as sources to build upon. 

@dabistits​ has said this much more eloquently and comprehensively than I ever could, so go read her meta!!

It’s obvious Horikoshi has put a lot of thought into figuring out his world, with all sorts of details to flesh it out - he writes into it issues like the accommodation of bodies that deviate from the supposed norm; what if people had innate differences, some of which are seen as dangerous; discrimination; self-determination and the right to bear arms affecting the social contract. You can say, ‘Nal, you’re looking too deep into this, it’s a comic for 8-year-olds’, and it’s true! But the first words the begin the story are ‘People are not born equal’; I’m taking it as invitation to examine that. 

So we have a world with its many dysfunctions and flawed systems. Everything that happens hinges pretty much on quirks. I think a great way to explore that is using plot and characterization. It’s not characters being plopped into the world; the world produces the characters. Development occurs as a response to trying to live under these conditions, trying to grow and push the boundaries, or accept and pass it on. 

But I feel like Horikoshi haven’t done this with the UA kids? 

These students are in the contained environment of school and not really interacting with the people they are to protect and serve, and their goal is to get stronger and more powerful but that’s kinda indistinguishable from any other shonen manga and not Hero-specific. Instead of just ‘use my quirk to punch a bad guy and save the day’, I wanna see situations where the kids learn that they cannot use physical methods, I wanna see the moral dilemma of arresting a person who punched out someone discriminating against them, I wanna see them having to accept failure and death as part of the job, dealing with the compassion fatigue. The Hero-specific things. Also, we don’t get to enter the headspace and background of the rest of Class 1A. It’s not the kid’s flaws. 

So the questions Horikoshi brings up about society isn’t actually usually answered by the heroes (some of the exceptions are, as you point out, anon, Todoroki and Bakugou). They’re answered and navigated by the Villains. The Villains are the ‘failed’ products of the world, their grief and discontent is due to being unable to function in this specific society. Their motivations are specific to Hero-society and quirks. And I love that! I love that we get a better sense of the setting and society through their stories - Twice is the one who gets to show us the effect of All Might’s retirement, Spinner introduced us to mutant discrimination, Detnerat gave us some important info about the economy and quirk-usage rights. 

The Heroes don’t get that? Not really? At the beginning of the manga, we do, though! Todoroki and his family, Shinsou and his quirk, Tenya and his brother. But after that, iirc, an issue is brought up, then usually quickly resolved. Kouta hates heroes? Midoriya becomes his hero and Kouta has a change of heart. The media rightfully rips into UA for the camp fiasco and the public agrees? The AFO and All Might fight overshadows that. Aoyama and Midoriya share a moment over quirk-incompatibility, but nothing more than that. 

It’s not that I just side with the Villains completely. I love Vigilantes, and I love the characters that try to do good. Vigilantes explores the dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies. Doing good despite breaking the rules; the desire to use your quirk but having to suppress this innate part of yourself; questioning the Hero system but keeping the ideals.

Koichi, the main character, is very sweet, ‘too nice’ as you might describe, very mild-mannered, his adventures limited mostly to the streets of his neighborhood. He is not flashy like Shigaraki, but I like him a lot. His growth is in response to him learning to be a citizen of his world - what it means to do good, having to interact with the community and its people, finding a niche to make use of his quirk. Making a lasting effect on the every day of the streets. The ‘trigger drug’ storyline works really well because it’s both giving us some insights about how official investigation works and the legal definition of ‘Villain’ (Tsukauchi), the use of social media and Pop’s influence to detect the villains, the biological mechanism of quirks and things people use to enhance it, along with Knuckleduster’s history and developing the relationship between the vigilante trio. 

So yeah! I feel like the full potential of the story Horikoshi wants to tell - this world that’s still dealing with the consequences of quirks appearing, the law enforcement system that arose from having to govern millions of individual with a million different abilities and needs, all of who has to learn how ‘great power comes with great responsibilities�� applies to them, and villain created by these circumstances, who is fated to be in a century-old battle that came to be because of the advent of the extraordinary, a wild fantastical full circle - hasn’t been shown through the UA kids and heroes. Instead, it comes across better from the Villains, and that’s why imo I find them more interesting. 

[lostincalum]

Lay by Me- Michael Clifford

A/N: this is based off of a song which gets played in the story, it is called Lay by Me and is by an artist called Ruben i love it, and i hope you will too. 

TW: nahh, kinda for anxiety?? idk

Word count: 2265

For the longest time you had gone without having much of a safe haven. All you did was go to college, do your homework and then go to sleep. Sometimes not in that order, but are you really in college if it doesn’t fuck up your sleep schedule? And you would love to say that that’s all you needed, and that you felt comfortable doing things that way. But to be honest, you didn’t feel like that’s all you needed. Because most of the time, you were really lonely. You needed someone to understand you. Yet you kept sinking deeper into the depression that was growing in your chest.

And then you met Michael, with the big hoodies and glasses. He was sat next to you, one empty seat over, in your english literature lecture, with a beanie on his head and a hand constantly pushing up his glasses as they slid down his nose. What you did notice, was that he kept, not so discreetly, trying to peek over at the notebook you had lying on the tiny table. Without thinking too much, you closed it and slid it down into your little backpack. Afraid that he would see what words were written on the pages. However you glanced over at him, only to be met with pink tinted cheeks and clear green eyes.

“Sorry”

The whisper was soft, barely audible over the profesor talking and the music in the single earbud you had in. Instead of answering vocally, you put on a weak smile and shook your head. Saying it was alright without actually saying it. The funny part was that he seemed to understand. Thinking that was all, you focused your attention back at the professor, who was talking about Frank O’Hara’s poetry.

Until you noticed that Michael had started pushing his things in your direction, before he actually slid his way into the seat beside yours. Now, it wasn’t that you didn’t like the guy, he was actually one of the few people that participated in lectures, and the way he used words always seemed to astound you. However you always got a little nervous when people you didn’t really know closed in on you. And you could feel your leg bouncing, as well as the vague scent of his cologne.You didn’t dare look at him, in fear of him seeing you as flustered as you felt.

It didn’t get any better when he leaned his leg just a smidge to the side so his knee was touching yours. Without even thinking much about it you stopped bouncing your leg. You didn’t think much of it until you realised you weren’t that anxious anymore. This time you dared look over at him, and what you saw made you bite your lip to stop yourself from smiling. He was sitting there, taking notes on his computer, with his tongue sticking out just a little bit in concentration. And from the little huffs that escaped him with every notification that kept ticking in on the side of his screen, you could tell he was annoyed.

You would never admit it, but maybe you pressed your leg a little harder into his, to try and calm him down. The worst part about it was that it seemed to work, because he turned off the notifications from the group chat on facebook, and continued with his notes. It made your stomach churn in the most pleasant way.

When the lecture ended you started packing up your things. Sliding your laptop and notebook into the backpack, you stood up to leave, just as Michael turned to look at you.

“Hey, I was just kinda wondering, would you like to study together sometime?”

The question came as quite a shock and you didn’t really know how to answer, causing you to stand there without answering for a couple of seconds without saying anything.

“I mean, only if you want to, I get it if you’re busy.”

Again he looked at you with those clear green eyes and flushed cheeks. His right hand went up to his face to push up his glasses, showing of his sweater paws.

“Uhh, Yeah no, I’m not busy, actually I’m free the rest of the day.”

It truly was meant as a statement, but came out as more of a question. Suddenly you felt as if you had been too eager when saying you could do it right now. It turned out to be alright though. Because you swore, Michael’s face lit up, like you just told him you had free chocolate.

“Okay! yeah, I can do now, you wanna sit in the Starbucks on campus?”

Michael asked as both of you started heading for the door, where your professor was standing, impatiently waiting for the two of you to get out. You gave her an apologetic smile as you exited the lecture hall.

When you got to the Starbucks, Michael told you to find a table while he got a coffee. So you picked a window table and while waiting for him, you pulled out your notebook, and started scribbling little things you had on your mind down. Yet you were careful, keeping it hidden behind your laptop as you wrote.

“So, how is the assignment in English lit going?”

You lifted your head up as Michael sat down in front of you, giving him a gentle smile, which he returned, while you slipped the notebook back down in your backpack.

“It’s going okay I guess, kinda struggling with the conclusion though.”

It was a spur of the moment decision, letting him into your world like that. And to most people, it wasn’t a lot. But to you, it felt like baring your soul, because your writing was such a big part of you. And Michael is the most honest person you’ve ever met, so perhaps you decided to give some of that honesty back.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve written a lot of conclusions, but this one, it kinda feels different? I can’t quite get the words right, you know?”

He looks at you, like, really looks at you and smiles. The soft smile adorning his lips and eyes, makes you melt just a little bit, with how it reaches his entire face, not just the lips.

“Well, what I usually do is, I take a break, and then read all the arguments I’ve made, and see what kind of vibe it gives off. Then you write the conclusion with that kinda vibe in mind?”

Right then, you swear, that was a defining moment, because even though you had been in college and school for a while, no one had taught you how to deal with things like that.

------

You could swear, nothing made you more frustrated than being behind and stuck on an essay, that was due the next day. Usually you loved the library, it was quiet and as close to a safe haven as you could get. But now, nothing made you feel okay. You had taken a walk around the shelves, tried downing a cup of coffee, but those things only made you anxious. And when the first tear rolled down you cheek, you didn’t know how to stop it. All you could think of was how you were gonna get a bad grade on the essay. After that first thought it seemed like all of the things you had been holding at bay seemed to tumble through your brain.

The section of the library you were in was thankfully empty, until another person entered. Quickly you started packing up your stuff, trying to get away before you could be a bother to anyone. Until a hand, almost covered by a sleeve, stopped you from picking up the last book. You sniffled as you looked at the hand, then the arm. By then you recognized the sweater paw on your arm.

“You okay?”

His voice was gruff, and if you were on the phone with him, you would have mistaken it for a cold, but looking at his red eyes and splotchy cheeks, you knew it wasn’t.

“Are you?”

Michael looked taken aback. Like he hadn’t considered that you might ask, so he sits down on a chair, looking down at his hands on the table. His fingers keep fiddling with the ends of his sleeves.

“Michael?”

You ask carefully, as you sit down next to him, drying your tears with your own sleeves. Trying to collect yourself.

“Can I hold your hand, is that alright?”

All he did was nod, so carefully you put your hand over his.

“You know, nobody really asks me that anymore, it’s like they are afraid I’ll answer honestly.”

To be honest what he said, kind of shocked you. Never would you have imagined that the boy sitting next to you in English would be so similar to yourself.

“I know the feeling, it sucks”

He nodded quietly, then he looked up at you, before he turned around and started digging around in his backpack for something. When he came up again, he had a notebook in his hand. It was bound in brown leather and had a couple of strings keeping the torn spine together. Carefully he undwindeled the strings and leafed through the pages. When he came to the page he was looking for, he carefully slid the book over to you.

I know the places you go to hide I've been in all those rooms I know what that's like Staring at paint as you watch it dry But don’t forget your room is right next to mine

“I’m really sorry, I saw what was written on one of the pages in your notebook, but I really saw myself in the things you wrote, and this is kind of written as an ode to that?”

Michael looked at you with the most vulnerable, honest eyes you had ever seen. He kept fiddling with the sleeves of his sweater, and even bit his lip in the most adorable way. However, you didn’t want his snooping to go by unnoticed.

“You’re majoring in music performance right?”

To say he looked bewildered was an understatement, he only nodded in response to your question.

“So, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this is a song, right?”

Again, all he did was nod, so you proceeded to your question.

“Play it for me?”

And when you watched the warm smile that spread over his face.

“Yeah! of course, it’s just, is it okay if we do it now?”

-------

Michael opened the door to the huge studio the music majors had at their disposal. However, that didn’t mean that they were not taken. And sure enough, there was a girl sitting at the soundtech table as you entered. The light was on low, creating a cozy, comfortable vibe in the room.

“Hey, Sham! you wanna help me record this song? I wanna try doing it in one take.”

The girl turned around in the office chair as Michael spoke. Her kind eyes smiled up at you, as she pulled one of the headphones away from her ear. You envied her for the way she pulled off the short hair.

“Sure, Mikey! Which song?”

It looked like he hesitated for a couple of seconds, peeking down at you for comfort.  

“Uhhm, I was thinking of trying Lay by Me, with just the grand piano.”

You noticed her getting ready by dialing all the buttons to the right place, and flipping on some switches. You stood there and watched with amazement as she fiddled with the buttons to get to the right setting. A second door opened and Michael called out your name to get your attention, yet holding out a hand to beckon you forward with a soft gesture.

He led you into the recording room, which looked more like a band room to you. Even though there currently was a grand piano in the middle of the room, a lot of guitars and basses were hung up on the walls along with a couple of drum sets along the edges of the room. A mic stand with an extended arm hung over the piano.

Now, graceful wasn’t a word you would use to describe Michael, but he looked at home as he moved to sit down on the bench with familiarity.

“Okay, whenever you are ready Mikey.”

Sham said over the speakers, her voice the only sound in the room. Carefully you walked over to the bench and sat down beside him, before he started playing.

When he did start playing, his fingers danced delicately over the black and ivory keys, then he started singing the most gentle lyrics you had heard.

He finished with the loveliest notes and then let the melodies from the piano die out. Quietly you dried the two tears that had dripped from your eyes, and leaned onto his shoulder.

“That was beautiful, you have an amazing voice and the playing, the entire thing, I love it.”

Michael leaned his head down on top of yours and asked a question.

“Would you like to go on a date?”

You chuckled as you looked at his hand playing with your fingers. For once feeling quite content and happy.

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Okay, Cliffo, now that you’ve got the girl, get out, others need to use the studio too.”

An adorable giggle followed, from Sham sitting in the booth behind you. You turned and saw her sitting there smiling fondly.

[coldtomyflash]

Weird question, and it's perfectly okay if "I don't know" is your answer: How did you manage to do grad school AND finish writing so many good fics? I'm writing the lit review for my dissertation right now, and I want to finish several WIPs I have (if nothing else, just to prove to myself that I can), but it just feels like I can barely do either, much less both. Any advice at all?

Ah, no worries! It’s not that odd a question. Actually, someone’s asked me before ^^;  My reply to them at the time was here. No need to read it, but it’s some context? 

My reply now that my head is in a healthier place is... long and winding and not actually full of that much advice but eh, I rambled as I do. If you just want the advice, scroll all the way down and it’s there. 

For starters, I’m not a normal comparison point. This isn’t to pat myself on the back, but for a variety of reasons, writing is something that comes really naturally to me. I’ll detail those reasons, but before I get into that, the point I’m illustrating here is that... sometimes I think people compare themselves to how much I wrote and what else I accomplished in that time and think “hey cool - that is a function human! Why can’t I do that?” And the answer is short answer is that my brain is programmed for pretty much one thing, and that thing is writing writing, and holy crap I was the opposite of a functional human when writing that much and that quickly.

The long answer is - 

I’ve been making up stories literally as long as I can remember. I spent my childhood consuming stories. I taught myself to read and was during school I was consistently reading about 8 grade levels above my reading level, and loved learning about narrative structure. I annoyed the shit out of my older brother by reading the same book series as he read, but guessing plot points that were going to happen either in that book or else 2-3 books out. he didn’t get how I would just know and I’d be like “it’s obvious - that’s where the story has to go!” Because I was imagining it in my head - what i would do with it, where it would go, where it had to go. Closing the page mid0chapter and imagining the next-scene, and then picking back up to see how right or wrong I was.

And I had a best friend for most of my childhood through to early adulthood with whom I made stories. Every weekend, creating narratives together, not writing them down but basically roleplaying them by talking them out (voices and all, it was a heck of a lot of fun, as much as it made me pretty much the nerdiest teen in existence). We tried to write a novel when we were 12, got about 7 chapters in. We had a lot of starts and stops on other stories too.

Which isn’t said to stroke my own ego, it’s said to highlight that I have a metric fuckton of explicit and implicit practice at storytelling. It was and sort of is my “whole life”. I also had teachers that helped me develop storytelling skills, and was really freaking lucky to go to a school with an AP program for English that seriously stretched my ability to write fast. We had to write an essay every single class, during class, and have it finished by the end of class (or in less time if we had lecture stuff to go over too) in my last year of high school. The essays could be creative response (i.e., short stories). I wrote a short story almost every week in the space of an hour when I was 17. By the time I got to the end of year final and actually got to use a computer and type that shit instead of hand-cramping halfway through, I somehow managed to write the two-essay final in the allotted 3 hours and, i shit you not, had a wordcount of 6000 words. 

That’s still my record. It was probably a dumpster fire but I got 100% probably for sheer volume.

Anyway that was over a decade ago, but the whole reason this life story is pertinent is because - 

I have practice. The only way to improve at anything, to get faster at it, for it to ease, is to practice. Practice at storytelling, practice at having to set a scene using just words sitting in my BFF’s room and trying to describe the image I had in my head for how I wanted her to see the scene as it was playing out. Practice at writing fast and getting feedback on how to write. Practice implicitly at trying to imagine what routes stories can take. Practice taking stories apart and piecing them back together, in my head, all the time.

So that’s part of it. 

The other part, and this is what I said in my previous post, was depression. I was seriously fucking burnt out and depressed when I started writing coldflash fic, and grad school took a huge toll on my mental health. It’s easier to write when you’re doing it to procrastinate working on your dissertation, and easier to keep writing when you get positive feedback and it feeds those lovely dopamine gremlins in your brain who aren’t getting any positive validation from grad school because holy damn that shit is hard.

I had no balance in my life for a long time. It wasn’t good. I went to counselling. I got more balance. Fic slowed down. Still finished, but not 120k words in 3 months (that was the pace when I started fic writing...jfc I don’t know how I managed.) Life got harder. Fic was now harder to write. I got more counselling. Fic was easier to write. I moved around the world. Fic got harder to write. I started anti-depressants. Narratives now seem to be flowing again. 

Regardless of the state of my mental health though, I’ve never written as much as quickly as I did during the middle of grad school. And I think that’s because I was very narratively pent up when I started writing fic. I had been so busy and pushing myself so damn hard in grad school that I didn’t make almost any time for stories, for fic, for imagining my own stories. I was suppressing that side of myself in the service of Focus. So when I burnt out, my narrative side rebounded and said “fuck that noise, I still exist, and we’re making space for me”. It took over. I came literally a hair’s breadth from quitting my PhD post candidacy. Idk what type of program you’re in, but business schools in North America? It’s a 5 year PhD typically, and I was at the end of year 3 and eyeing the door.

Anyway - I say all that because - 

I am not a good example and you should not do what I did. Finishing that many long WIPs that quickly wasn’t healthy, and was only possible because I didn’t do much else at the time, and had a lifetime of practice and a narrative rebound to make it even possible. 

But - 

My actual advice?

1) Practice. Practice. Practice. 

Not all at once, but everything counts. Daydreaming counts. Watching shows and thinking of how they could be improved counts. Talking out story ideas with friends counts. Just make it fun. Practice is something we think of as arduous and annoying. Learning new words is practice. Meeting new people and considering their traits is practice. Everything can be practice for writing. All the research you do can be practice for writing. (Random note: a childhood coping mechanism for anxiety that I had was to narrate what I was doing to myself in my head in the 3rd person. Like telling a story of myself walking to gym class in my own head. That was also practice.)

2) Have fun with it! 

Don’t making writing an obligation. Then it’s another thing on the list of things you avoid. Finishing stories often feels like an obligation. I’m going through this right now with Needs Must. It can be hard to complete a WIP because you start to have internal anxieties about disappointing readers, not living up to expectations, exhaustion from that narrative, distraction / temporary loss of interest (which is normal! and not actually a bad thing!). All of that then makes you feel guilty, which makes it impossible to get into a creative space to write. You can’t work on the thing you’re avoiding.

3) It’s okay to give your WIPs breathing space. 

When you hit a wall, you may need to set it aside and read it again in a month with fresh eyes. You may need to treat your story like someone else’s story. That’s, again, literally where I’m at right now with Needs Must. I just reread a bunch of it and hadn’t really forgotten the details but once they’re on the page they’re out of my head, and so taking some time before going back to reread it made it easier for me to think of like I think of every other story: “what would I do next with this? Oh that’s a twist, that needs to come back later. There’s a theme here, we’ve seen that three times. What’s the best ending I, as a reader now, can imagine for this?”

If avoidance, guilt, and/or writer’s block aren’t your issue, and it’s literally just down to time management - 

4) Your graduate degree is more important than your WIPs. 

Your WIPs aren’t going anywhere, they don’t have a deadline, and your readers will wait for you, and new ones will find you. Time management is an essential, awful, part of being an academic. 

I get more done, both at work and creatively on fic, when I’m just a bit too busy, but that’s me. Figure out what is optimal for you, and do it. When do you get the most writing done? When you’re relieved? When you’re anxious? Late at night? First thing in the morning? When does it flow? When won’t it ruin your graduate career?

(Seriously I was writing fic at work last week and was kicking myself. I don’t have time for that shit! Set boundaries on your time!)

But full serious here, graduate school is exhausting, and almost inherently de-motivating, and even the best damn students eye the door a lot of the time, even if they do finish. It’s stressful and you feel constantly powerless. It’s a lot to need to cope with. I found writing to be a way to cope. That lit review you’re working on? Yeah, it’s zapping your time and energy. That’s normal (unfortunately). And it’s good to give yourself breaks from that to write. Don’t feel guilty for taking time here and there for yourself - to write, or to not write. To relax, unplug, unwind. To close your eyes and daydream (if you’re me) or have a bubble bath (if you’re my sister), or do whatever helps you honestly, genuinely destress. The best thing you can do for both writing and for graduate school is to take breaks and take time for yourself. There is actual science on the importance of breaks, and academics are fucking notorious for putting too much pressure on themselves to actually relax.

5) If you’re burnt out and/or depressed - seek help! 

Most universities have resources for mental health! Talk to a doctor! Don’t put too much stress and pressure on yourself! Almost half of grad students are mentally ill at some point!

6) Talk out your stories with friends! 

I know I already said this under “practice” but having a fandom friend to bounce ideas with and cheer you on is amazing and essentially. I was in constant contact with Bealeciphers when I started writing, and now I have a different friend who’s helped me the past couple years with writing and developing my stories. Mostly they cheer me on, and when I’m stuck, I tell them where the story is going and what I need help with. But honestly, writing doesn’t need to happen in a vacuum and doesn’t need to be you hunched over a laptop in the dark all alone and staring blankly at a screen (I’m definitely not projecting here, no siree). It’s amazing how motivating it is and how much it can help you stay on track to check in regularly with other writing friends!

7) Pick your battles.

You say you have a... couple(?) of WIPs? How many are you juggling? Is it too many? Do you need to set one (or two??) aside? When my steam was slowly and AATJS and Tumbling Together started to feel like a chore, I set TT aside and took a month break from AATJS then dived right back into AATJS (with the help of the friend mentioned above, cheering me on) because I knew it would be the harder one to finish, and the one that I feared I’d never finish if I put it aside too long. I tackled the biggest hurdle first. If that’s the type of thing for you, I recommend it. Pick the story that’s either the most or least likely to get finished, and focus your energy there.

Another battle-picking thing here? It’s okay to outsource. I’m terrible for not using a proofreader beta. It’s a weird control thing, despite the fact that I love people pointing out typos in my works so I can freaking fix them. The point here is: don’t be like me. If you suck at finding your own typos, use a beta or proofreader. My writer friend who helps me helps when I get stuck. I help them when they need feedback on specific scenes and tones, and I’ve recently discovered they hate editing (I love editing) so this entertains me to no end. Just - you don’t have to do it all yourself. If you feel like you do, see points 5 and 6 again.

Aaaannnddd that’s that. Whew. I just spent... wow, too long on this. I spent as much time on this as I did on my own grad student’s lit review I was providing feedback on today ^^; #whoops