#hence: me working on this and posting it at a stupid time rather than going to bed

[carriagelamp]

How is it that February felt so long, but March and April flew by? I didn't read as much as I would have liked this month because work was picking up and keeping me busy, but I found some very pleasant, comforting books which was exactly what I needed

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

Alison Bechdel is obviously a name I’ve known for years, and I’ve been aware of Dykes to Watch Out For as well since it’s something of a cornerstone for queer lit, but it’s not something I’ve ever sought out beyond the occasional panel passed around on Tumblr. I read Fun Home last month though, and in doing so I found out that my library also had the completed collection of comics so I finally checked it out!

Dykes to Watch Out For is a weekly “gag-a-day” comic strip that ran from the early 80s to the early 00s that follows the lives of lesbians/queer women who all move in similar circles (are generally part of the same friendship group, to varying degrees). It was an excellent read, because Bechdel is able to really capture how diverse queer women are. There are different personalities, body types, ethnicities, political beliefs, sexualities, ages, families… and through all these different types of character you get to see politics and society of the day critiqued in real time while still having things to laugh about. (And man I really did laugh a lot, I didn't realise how much I'd been missing gag-a-day style comics until this moment)

It was honestly one of the most self-affirming works I’ve read in… I don’t know, years. I honestly can’t say the last time I felt so *seen* in any one work before. There was something so wholly reassuring about reading it, and I highly recommend it to any queer person (or anyone who just enjoyed political satire newspaper comics). That being said, I did ’t find that I enjoyed the first two-thirds more than the last third… the last third got more into family, pregnancy, and divorce drama which isn’t really my thing. It also became… perhaps a bit more cynical and a little less optimistic? But it still had funny or insightful moments, and the first two-thirds were so outstanding that I didn’t regret reading it for a moment.

Everything Is Tuberculosis

Man, this seemed like the book that everyone was hyped for this year, so I decided to give it a try too — I was looking for a new nonfiction to read after all — but… nah. Could not get into it. After a bit I just gave up. I realise that I’m the anomaly here, I couldn’t even tell you why I didn’t hit for me… the narration? subject matter? not in the right headspace? the stars didn’t align? Who knows.

The Guy She Was Interest In Wasn’t A Guy At All v1

Another comic I’ve seen bandied about on tumblr for a while and finally decided to read — and it was delightful! The art style with its green accent colour was so enticing, it made it an absolute treat to read, and the story was adorable, I'm already excited to get my hands on book 2 (as if my brother, who finished reading this, looked at me, and informed me that I *would* be buying the next book) I love mistaken identity stories, and watching how the characters’ relationship grew both in school and at the record store was fun.

The comic follows Aya, a highschool girl who develops a crush on the cool guy working at the local CD store, where they connect over similar music tastes — tastes which Aya feels are not shared among her usual school friends and which she’s used to keeping very private. However she has no idea that the “cool guy” she has a crush on is in fact the shy female classmate in her class.

Home: A Memoir of My Early Years

A memoir of Julie Andrews' early life pre-Hollywood success. I got the audiobook of this to have something to listen to at bedtime, and it served its purpose admirably. I didn’t find it a terribly exciting read, the anecdotes somewhat rambling and not always very cohesive, but it was all interesting enough to keep me going and there was an undeniable comfort to it which really helped me unwind and drift off in the evenings — and hey, if nothing else I got to listen to Julie Andrews in my ear as I fell asleep every night which is a win! I may listen to the next volume the follows the Hollywood years after I finish one or two of my current audiobooks.

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles

A children’s librarian recommended this to me as one of her favourite children’s novels (and is the reason I went on to read Home, Julie Andrews connection!) and now having read it I completely agree with her! I actually had to immediately go out and by my own copy after reading it...

There was something terribly nostalgic about it despite my never having read it before, it makes you feel like you're seven years old again in the middle of the summer. The visual descriptions and pure whimsy of the book made it a treat to read, and it went at a leisurely pace that reminded me of classic children’s tales, like Alice in Wonderland or Phantom Tollbooth or Charlotte’s Web. While it had an adventure and surprises and some tension, it was never in a rush and never sacrificed its prose or childhood gentleness by rushing through the narration.

The story follows three children who meet a professor who claims that he knows how to enter a semi-imaginary world where the last of the really great Whangdoodles rules over a vast land of other strange, whimsical creatures. The children befriend the professor and work with him until all four of them are able to enter Whangdoodleland.

The Magic Fish

A beautifully made graphic novel that tells the story of teenaged boy Tiến through the framing device of fairy tales. The story explores his Vietnamese family learning English through shared stories and finding ways to connect to a new culture, one that Tiến is fully immersed in, without losing the culture they left, as well as Tiến’s sexuality and his struggles to find a way to come out to his parents. It's all interspersed with fairytales that highlight what the family is going through in their own ways and provide starting points of connection and communication. It was a lovely read.

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultvation (MDZS) v4

Continuing my reread of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation through the fan-audiobooks made by @redoftheturks. Book 4 was an especially nice one to revisit after the intensity of Book 3's backstory — and also because I’m pretty sure I read this one very quickly when I had it the first time around so it was nice to take it a bit slower this time around;;; I loved the return to the Burial Mounds and seeing the Juniors all jump up to defend Wei Wuxian when it was clear that he was being set up to take a fall, and the commentary on how fickle reputation and society's favour can be that comes about from it. Just an excellent bit of storytelling! Plus I love Jiang Cheng and all the angst related to that... everything, so can't help but love his return ( •̀ ᴗ •́ )

And as usual I can’t recommend this fan-audiobook enough! Redoftheturk’s handles it so well, the reading manages to make the dramatic moments in this book feel tense and stressful, and then can totally swing around and elevate the comedy bits in the next breath! Considering how much these books oscillate between between tones, it’s honestly impressive how seamlessly Redoftheturk’s reading is able to flow between them and never make it feel jarring. It’s all very natural and lots of fun. I’ve already started relistening to Book 5.

Three Bags Full

Probably my favourite book from this month? Three Bags Full is a murder mystery that takes place in Ireland and is about the death of a shepherd. He’s found in his own field with a spade through his chest. Obviously, this is of interest and concern to all the people from the local village (for quite a variety of reasons) but the chief investigators? His flock of sheep.

They’re appalled by the death of their shepherd (that’s wolf behaviour!) and they’re determined to figure out what happened (otherwise who knows who’s doing this, it’s like having a wolf in sheep’s clothing in your midst!). This author does a great job of portraying the sheep's viewpoint and how they both do and don’t relate to the world of humans. Each sheep has its own personality and its own strengths, and they work together as only a flock can in order to slowly unravel the secrets of the humans that surround them. Since things aren’t always straightforward to a pack of sheep, it means that as the reader you really do need to pay attention to the strange little details that come up and how they’re mentioned, because things that seem unfamiliar or unimportant to the sheep could end up being very relevant to a human trying to solve the mystery. 

Highly recommend if you enjoy a “cosy” murder mystery. (Although if you've heard anyone try to distill this down to just a comedy, ignore them. It's definitely comedic at times, but there's way more happening in here that "just comedy", everything with Gabriel's flock? *chefs kiss*)

My Dress-Up Darling v11, 12, 13

I have to say, Books 11 and 12 were… fine. And I can’t say much beyond that. I read them, I liked them well enough, I don’t remember much about what happened in them. Book 13 though? Oh ho ho, now we’re talking. Gojo getting more and more obsessed with this story and character? Marin failing to understand what’s really going on with him? People seeing and really being blown away by both of their hard work? Them going accidentally viral? Oh my god, there are going to be so many fallouts from this volume and I cannot wait. How Gojo’s mental health doing? With he and Marin get back on the same page? Will Marin admit her feelings? What’s going to happen with people going insane over the cosplay???? Ah!!! (and also this was just such a pretty volume, the pictures of the new creepy angel cosplay were something else, I couldn’t look away!)

Doctor Who: The Resurrection Casket

Another Doctor Who novel, I will often grab one of these if I’m feeling a bit stressed or if I have a lot of driving to do, and I met both of those criteria recently — I drove down to the States for a weekend and holy shit guys, don’t think I’ll be doing that again in a hurry. It’s getting really unnerving to cross the border.

Anyway, this is one of the better Doctor Who novels I’ve read in a while. It was a sci-fi, space-faring retelling of Treasure Island with the 10th Doctor and Rose, and I think they did it quite well. I enjoyed the new characters they introduced and it never felt like they overshadowed the Doctor or companion, I liked trying to figure out all the reference (when I finally clued in to who Long John Silver was…), and the adventure was an enjoyable romp the whole way through with lots of creativity. As far as Doctor Who novels go, this is one I would recommend.

[morialoe17]

Me rambling on where the hell this novel is going (NOVEL SPOILERS up until chapter 206)

I'll be trying to make sense of all the theories I've seen into this post, and if you're still here to read, I'm about to kill your braincells with this stupid yapping LMAO

TLDR; I was sleep deprived and ended up getting delusional about KSE's identity, Hoisa, along with each factions stances, plus headcanons about the potential following arcs

Let's start with our Hoisa; with the recent chapters, we now know that he isn't human for sure. Things to note about him is that his manner of speaking is same as that of the store clerk from ch1, uses honorifics towards Soleum that implies his impression of him as someone of the same position or higher, and the he and other Daydream executives can't really use a wish ticket--which brings me to the thought that all Daydream executives may not be human, or at least a complete one.

J3 told Soleum that the Cheerful Research Institute(iirc the name; same facility name as old Daydream and the one that made the Happy Fantasyland Theme Park), was actually just under the current Daydream Co. Ltd., part of the same hallway the two passed through when searching traces of Lee Byeongjin. He also mentioned how the time zone(?) changes the further floors you progress to. Needless to say that is suspicious. In addition to that, some readers speculated that old Daydream was actually involved in 'summoning' darknesses, with how a lot of the ones they could access were quite foreign(Tuesday Quiz Show, etc.). Because of that, I got the idea that maybe: old Daydream was trying to perfect the wish ticket through experimenting, something happened which involved summoning darknesses, certain things went wrong because of the involvement of some of these darknesses, which led to the rebranding of Daydream.

Considering that is the case, I was thinking that maybe, the darknesses that were mainly involved in this 'summoning' thing and the rebranding are the current executives of Daydream, which includes Hoisa(not exactly him, but whatever it is that he is tied to).

Since his first introduction, I've thought of Hoisa as something like a 'personified manifestation of the Fox Counseling Room'. But rather than a singular entity, I have this nagging feeling that he's more of 'a part of a collective consciousness' kind of darkness, but one that doesn't exactly share memories, but only feelings and instinct. In which we go back to ch1 store clerk and the summoning thing of Cheerful Research Institute, as well as the goal of current Daydream; Dark Exploration Records has an apocalypse ending, which is mainly why Soleum want to go home as soon as possible. Luminous Church believes in 'Ireum', who knows the 'truth of the world' and is most likely closely involved in the world's ending. And then there's Daydream that possibly summons beings into DER. WHAT IF, store clerk was also a part of the 'collective consciousness' darkness Hoisa is a part of(hence the similar manner of speaking), transported Soleum into DER(as per the will of darkness under Daydream, explaining why Hoisa was barely aware of him until later on), because the Darkness executives of Daydream who took over after the rebrand actually ARE the ones that want to cause the apocalypse ending through summoning darkness into the world?? That's why Hoisa doesn't like the Bureau???

But then, why was Soleum chosen? Was it because he won that roulette that's why he got chosen to be summoned? We know nothing yet. The guy doesn't even tell us about his life in his original world unless it's related to DER. Plus, there's the mysterious points in his abilities such as his unexplained strength(this could just be the work of adrenaline lmao). But to me, Hoisa et. al. feels like a neutral entity. Personally think that his contribution to the Sekwang Technical High School exploration record, and possibly his other works too, made the store clerk choose him; and him winning the jackpot really was just a coincidence. Kinda like, "Oh, you're a perfect fit! Okay, I'll send you right away!" Then bam, Soleum was now in the Daydream new employee orientation lol.

But with ch206 another question arises, will the wish ticket work?? It may or may not. In the Mansion arc, Soleum had to have Go Yeongeun hold the candle instead because the item didn't work on him as a 'being from another realm'. Another instance of something implying that something might be wrong with Soleum was what Baek Saheon saw through the eye he gave him. The novel does demonstrate quite often Kim Soleum being seen as a darkness/contaminated, so much so it feels like a foreshadowing being rubbed to my face lol. Still, do I think he's human? Yes, but not quite. I'd say that his state of existence is a human, but the world considers him as an anomaly because of his origin. He's not supposed to be in that world. He shouldn't exist in it, so anything relating to his origin(family) was wiped clean. Connections to his past peers were maintained, but since Soleum doesn't talk about them, we don't know for sure if those people even remember him(Imagine if he turns out some kind of false memory for them...). WHAT IF, because of Soleum's nature as an anomaly to DER, he became something akin to a darkness?? Imagine a skinwalker but it keeps his existential state the same as his current appearance? Like, just our regular Soleum > human; Solnyang, Special Security Team Soleum, his contaminated versions > darkness/ghost story. However, his existence in DER is inherently anomalous, so it's most likely gonna result to the wish ticket not working. With this said though, it might explain the way Hoisa addresses Soleum--he could feel that they were quite similar.

And then the Luminous Church.

Ireum-nim, Ireum-nim, Ireum-nim, Ireum-nim, Ireum-nim, Ireum-nimIreum-nimIreum-nimIreum-nim

THIS THING, WHATEVER OR WHOEVER THIS IS

4TH WALL-BREAKING BEING THAT KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT DER--That DER is a collection of ghost stories in the form of exploration records(this is speculative)

Copy-pasting from a previous post I made:

Another thing is that apparently, some Korean readers were already theorizing something along the lines of how significant names are in the story. During the roulette scene, KSE was asked for his name; use of own names in darknesses is also not recommended; and then the cult faction, where they worship something called 'Ireum'(Name). From how things were unfolding, it seemed that this Ireum is real and knows that truth of the world--being a collective horror story of multiple contributors, and that it attracts people to be a part of that world, thus KSE's situation. In addition to that, believers of Ireum that want to be liberated from the truth of the world are basically wanting to be chosen, equating to being named in the Records. I don't know if I was able to explain it well, but that's the gist of it.

One thought I have about this is that on the case of the Luminous Church, I think their goals coincide with Daydream on a certain level but might never see eye to eye. Both 'summons', but their purposes were different.

I'd guess that those that was chosen by Ireum were transferred through possession(in complete parallel with their identities from wherever they came from), and those that were transferred by Daydream were mainly darknesses. Something must have overlapped somewhere, causing Soleum's irregular state. I have a feeling that Choi is in a similar case for some reason because of that one theory where a Choi's past identity as Daydream employee 'Lee Kangheon' using his wish ticket to erase his existence in the company for having known too much...

Did this make sense? No, cuz my head hurts now, so I'll stop yapping here lmao

[misterbenzadrine]

♡ day 9: chozen toguchi ♡

i love him in tkk 2 BUT he's so cutie in cobra kai, and i stand by that !!

lowkey i don't really have much of a justification for why i like him, but we'll see if i can yap a bit

so obviously in tkk 2 he's STUPID HOT, it's so unfair honestly. like he's an asshole, of course, but he's still the man ever

so it's been a bit since i watched tkk 2, but i do remember he's lowkey kinda funny (again, he's a bully but he makes me giggle almost as much as johnny) and the end fight where he's willing to die after losing to daniel is so important to me !

i think some fans take this as a point of concern in younger chozen's mentality, and i definitely agree, but i also think it's more just his dedication to his culture and his skills. he knows you have to uphold your honor and all that, and when he loses to this scrawny little dork from new jersey in america, yeah, he'd rather die than face that disappointment and embarrassment.

but daniel takes mercy on him and i actually love that they include that kumiko helped him work through his issues and become the more down-to-earth chozen we know in cobra kai.

his chaotic and comedic personality that mirrors johnny and his more focused and thoughtful personality that mirrors daniel i think is the perfect bridge between the two homosexuals senseis. it not only makes it easier for johnny and daniel to find that middle ground but also helps the dynamic between them and their students. whereas some of the kids started under johnny and the others with daniel, all of them are new to chozen and are simultaneously thrown off and more balanced with him (thinking of the egg challenge in s5)

i think the writers are also trying to fill more of the mr miyagi hole with chozen, since there are times where he acts more like a guide for daniel as if he isn't the same age and just as clueless, but i think he's a fantastic character on his own and, again, his silly and comforting nature, although played for comedic relief, really is a morale boost to johnny/daniel and the kids, especially in moments like s6 pt2 where everyone's tense and fighting each other

found this on pinterest, this is so funny what

all in all, i really like chozen as a sensei and, i know he's probably going to go back to okinawa in the finale but, i think he'd make a fantastic solo/duo sensei to take over miyagi do when daniel retires from karate after the all valley/sekai taikai/whatever the hell pt 3 is setting up

he seems to know how to connect with the students (both in and outside of training), he's a fantastic fighter (with excellent skills in weapons which would be so cool to see him train some of the students for the skills competition at the all valley), and he's just as, if not, more trained in the miyagi-do okinawan style of karate than daniel

anyways it would not be a misterbenzadrine post without at least a few

!! headcanons !!

lowkey i just have ONE hc but it's like MULTIPLE little things

his favorite student is hawk (demetri is somewhere in the mix purely by association) and he's secretly distraught when he graduates and moves away (he doesn't tell anyone but daniel catches him staring a little too long at a stock photo of a hawk on a semi-truck while they're driving down the freeway one day)

in s5, around the egg challenge training, chozen off-handedly mentioned to hawk that he believed he was a really good fighter, evidenced by his all-valley trophy, but he still seemed off-balance and needed to focus if he wanted to take cobra kai down. hawk, working on opening up to people who aren't demetri, unintentionally explained everything that was stressing him out and why he was off-balance. chozen didn't really know how to take it but explained how hawk's feelings were similar to chozen's after he lost the fight with daniel. the two bonded over being ex-bullies and chozen kept more of an eye on hawk after that to guide him toward a more balanced mindset (hence why he's his favorite)

hawk's favorite sensei is chozen and after graduating, he finds excuses to come back to the dojo just to see him and catch up

while mindlessly chatting with hawk and demetri one day after training, demetri mentions the binary bros video, hawk rolls his eyes but chozen is confused until demetri pulls out his phone, where the video is instantly queued up and plays it for chozen (chozen gets a lot of joy out of this video and starts solely referring to them, as a duo, as the binary bros) (both and hawk and demetri like it so they never ask him to stop)

(i just really like chozen-hawk as a dynamic, i wish we got more content of them together)

in conclusion, uhhhhh he's a little evil in the movie but also the most wholesome character in the show, okie bye

[orchideous-nox]

What are some of your favourite Dorcas headcanons???

I am developing my Dorcas headcanons as we speak, so bear with me!

I think Dorcas is such a London girlie, however, I don't think she's always been a London girlie. I hc that she grew up with Barty in Liverpool but when she was 12 her family moved down to London which is where she really found herself. They stayed close though because they were at Hogwarts together. I think Dorcas was an only child so Barty was the closest she had to a sibling, and the same for Barty.

I've mentioned that everyone thinks Dorcas hates them, I think she has a serious case of RBF and talks very monotone, so people thing she's just really fed up or bored of them. She likes her quiet when she's studying so takes herself away from the Slytherin common room when she's doing homework and sometimes Regulus joins her. However, she is just as capable of being a menace and joining in with shenanigans because she grew up with Barty. When she meets Marlene, however, and the boys start showing signs of joining the DE's, she distances herself from that stuff, hence why she ends up in the Order.

I think because of the time and the zeitgeist of the UK during the Marauder's era, it's impossible to ignore things like racism, and especially because I can vibe with the hc that Dorcas is trans, I think she struggles a lot with her identity, especially her blackness. The first time she goes to Marlene's dorm to hang out, Mary is there. At first they clash, Mary is very vocal about disliking Slytherins and she's passionate and excitable (the opposite of Dorcas, who is very calm and level-headed) and when she warms up to Dorcas, she can be physical (I will save more Mary headcanons for another time) with her friends and Dorcas doesn't know how to feel about this. Dorcas has always shown affection through words and other actions, but she warms up to Mary and they find solace in their friendship.

DORLENE!! I think Marlene brings out confidence in Dorcas. Whilst she is used to the big personality of Barty, Marlene is different because they leave room for Dorcas rather than taking front and centre. Marlene and Dorcas have a quiet but strong love. She tones Marlene down and Marlene hypes her up so I think they're a really good balance. I spoke a little about how they got together here in my Marlene headcanons!!

In a modern setting, I said Dorcas would be an it-girl and I stand by that. She's still very reserved but Marlene (who takes all her pictures for the gram) hypes her up and takes all the attention. Marls will shout something really stupid before taking the photo so people aren't looking as much as Dorcas, and also because it makes her laugh. Dorcas would love Rina Sawayama which I said in my other headcanons post here and I think her go-to karaoke song would be That Don't Impress Me Much by Shania Twain. That is her ANTHEM.

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to work on my Dorcas headcanons!! < 3

[hanasnx]

some updates while i’m here. i miss you! whether you’re a casual enjoyer of my blog & i see you in my notes, or my mutuals, or my followers, i’ve been thinking of you :) rare vulnerable moment i do cherish this blog and all your well wishes. thank you very much. i was right, typing is a huge strain and taking a break has been very good for my hands, so i’m going to keep at it.

some things:

don’t be afraid to keep sending me asks! they’re a great joy to me, i love seeing a notif in the inbox. i’ve gotten a fair few already that i’m excited to respond to when i can come back.

i did post a fred weasley drabble and not that i have to explain myself but i wanted to say i’ve been watching the harry potter movies. i’ve never seen them in their entirety, and the earlier ones have always been christmas movies in my house so to speak so i figured id give them a fair shot. i did read the books, and i’ve seen bits and pieces of the movies (hence my interest in fred weasley when i was a tween, but seeing him again made me wanna write for him for the first time in years)

also! a very kind anon told me earlier that my response to someone wrongfully making an ai chat bot of my content was an overreaction. it was “not that deep,” i believe was the colloquial term used. so the inherent content theft of ai invading free creative spaces is solved everyone! well done! very special thanks to the anon that let me know i was overreacting towards something i am passionate about and had a strong feeling towards! wow :) i never would’ve seen it like that. genuinely i am sorry anon that you’re ugly irl and your mommy doesn’t love you, which is why you feel like you can’t have a backbone over certain things. maybe you should stop consuming the free content creators provide on tumblr because you feel so secure in criticizing the selfless service <3 it’s giving: “im an old bigot that thinks ppl must be talentless and stupid when they work at mcdonald’s, but i’m still going to eat the food from there.” you’ve been blocked btw so you’re not offended by my use of free will when making free content on the internet for your grubby little hands to get a hold of and your smooth brain to criticize my right to share my personal opinions.

because the internet is the way it is, getting “hate” online has never really bothered me since i’ve always been a person with a large enough platform for years. it’s very easy for me to ignore and block and never answer whoever has decided to send some worthless hate message. which is probably why i almost never get hate anymore but it does happen occasionally. this was different since it wasn’t an attack on me per se, more so someone trying to admonish me for having a fair reaction towards something offensive. so i’m here to tell you it’s alright to treat strangers on the internet as strangers. you’re allowed to reinforce boundaries. you’re allowed to tell people you do not appreciate their actions towards you, and don’t leave room for argument. i am a very direct person, which means i told that person firmly that they needed to delete that ai chat bot they made of my au without my consent. and i did it without remorse. and i was told “it wasn’t that deep.” well it was. and it is. it is that deep because it’s deep to me, and i know it’s something that happens to others and it is that deep to them too. so what’s the problem in it being that deep? there is none :) let things be deep. be sincere. it is very important.

also if you make ai chat bots without creator’s consent when using their content you’re a piece of shit and doing a disservice to the very person you’re trying to exalt. take a step back and reevaluate how ai harms your interests rather than progresses them as well as the creators you claim your respect and cherish. you’re a victim of propaganda, my friend! and i prolly wouldn’t have made this post if anon hadn’t said anything. so maybe they should’ve kept their mouth shut since they didn’t wanna see shit like this so bad lmfao

now that that’s out of the way, i am sending wet fat sloppy kisses to everyone’s lips tell me when you receive them

[conkreetmonkey]

Why I was banned from r/curatedtumblr: a very belated explanation/apology post

Before migrating here from Reddit, I used to be a regular participant in r/tumblr as a commenter, then r/curatedtumblr when r/tumblr became unusably bloated with repost bots, and the useless mods did nothing because Reddit's leadership system is dumb and broken. Hence the name, curated tumblr; an r/tumblr replacement that was actually moderated. All of the regulars, including me, migrated there, and now r/tumblr is like 90% karma-farming bots endlessly upvoting each other, presumably so the accounts can later be sold for advertising or political astroturfing purposes. Happens all the time.

I explain this because it's important to understand that a) I was a part of the community for quite a while, and b) r/curatedtumblr was heavily moderated, so as to avoid the mistakes of its predecessor. Fine and dandy.

I was a high schooler at the time, terminally online and working a shitty fast food job to save up for the PC I'm typing this on. Thus, I'd spend the days endlessly interacting with the people on r/curatedtumblr, and the evenings working at a Taco Bell, unable to use my phone until breaktime.

One day, I forget the exact context, but the subject of r/FDS came up, which for those of you who are unaware is a hive of femcels. Named as an acronym for Female Dating Strategy, the sub was infamously sexist towards men, going on about things like "high/low value males" and how men below 6' were inhuman scum and basically doing everything incels do but with the gender roles flipped. And just like incels, everyone there was unaware the real reason The sub featured a nauseating glittery pink colour scheme a la Claire's, and everybody there talked like a popular high school girl in a Nickelodeon movie, all "yaaaaaass queen" "you go girl!" and shit like that.

So this sub comes up, and if memory serves we were shitting on it, or at least I was? Again, the context has been lost to memory, and since the sitewide search tools you used to be able to use to find multiple year old comments have all kicked the bucket, and the Reddit UI for finding old content is stupid and requires you to trudge through the entire histroy of a user chronologically until you find what you're looking for with no option to jump to the desired time period, I'm probably never going to be able to find it. I was making fun of the kind of shit they said on that sub, and I said something like "yass kween dump his low-value ass he only makes 800k a year ur worth more gurl," and then went to work.

Now, I didn't know it at the time, but as I worked, somebody saw the comment and thought I was mocking AAVE. They accused me of being a "4 Chan Nazi." Things kind of snowballed from there. Now, and this is embarassing and I've been hesitant to admit to it, but I'm here to explain and apologize, so:

when I was in high school, I did not know what AAVE meant.

I took offense to being accused of being a Nazi, and I forget what my reply was, but it was snarky towards the accuser, which made me look like a POS. Since I did not know what AAVE was, I did not refute the claim that I was making fun of it, and this made me look really, really bad to anybody who did.

I was then banned for this alleged racism. I looked up what AAVE was, realized I totally did look like a racist in that situation, but rather than fight the allegations, me, being an anxious teenager, instead eternally procrastinated on doing so, afraid of further anger directed at me.

It was a dumb choice to make, because now I'm afraid anybody on here from r/curatedtumblr who remembers those days might still think of me as "that guy who turned racist out of nowhere and then ran off." It's been eating at me for years, so I've decided it's time to rip the bandaid off and finally clear the air. I should have done this a very long time ago.

tl;dr, I made a string of bad decisions that made me look like a racist piece of shit. I could have easily undid this by immediately explaining the situation, but being an anxious, then-internet-inexperienced kid at the time, the sudden social rejection scared me, and I hid from the problem.

I'm sorry. It was a bad move. I never intended to mock AAVE, nor appear as if I was doing so. It's a valid English dialect, it's culturally important, and I respect it and those who speak in it. I apologize to anybody I may have offended by accidentally appearing to imply otherwise.

I hope anybody from those days who still remembers me can find it in their hearts to forgive me. Or they can choose not to, as is their right. I'm not here to beg for forgiveness, I'm here to finally explain things and put them to rest. This is what happened, I am sorry, and I hope you also see it as a poorly-handled misunderstanding and nothing more. I just needed to finally move on from this.

[gibbearish]

side note but i find it so fascinating that you feel ok being condescending and acting like i'm being the weird one for specifying between two different religions (whose differing practices mean that my point applies differently to them because They Are Different Religions) rather than just throwing them into one box based on my own personal experiences.

them coming from the same roots does not mean theyre the same religion, as exemplified by the Landslide of notes on this post from catholics going "wait but isnt baptism only done on infants". they have different practices and beliefs, and i find it interesting youre trying to spin me recognizing that as "haha stupid dumb american thinking stupid dumb american things" rather than like. realizing maybe that would mean your thoughts on the religions in this area are less informed than mine?

there are times when you can lump together the xtian religions (hence Why That Term Exists), but when i'm speaking about the specific practices of one specific xtian branch, it does in fact merit specifying because They Are Not All The Same, and it's a lot easier to have conversations when everyone understands where youre coming from. what makes conversations a lot HARDER is when uninvolved parties barge in to talk over us and offer unwanted opinions that say actually we don't know anything about how our own religions work and we're silly for bothering to differentiate in the first place.

tldr: youre being an asshole. maybe next time someone is talking about something they clearly have had a lot of personal involvement with and specify something that you think is unnecessary, ask yourself if it actually is as unnecessary as you think, or if there could just be a reason for doing so you might not be aware of because It Is Not Your Conversation. that way youll avoid looking like an uninformed asshole if it turns out there was a good reason. and even if there wasnt, you still won't have been an asshole for no reason! wins all around.

kids who werent raised christian being like "lol baptising children is whack if they tried to do that to me i would start doing things to make it look like i was possessed" no you would not. you would bask in the pride and approval coming from the adults around you and you would quietly wait your turn because you were told from birth that sinning sends you to hell and baptism is The Promise that youre dedicating your life to jesus that youve had hyped up for years and watched other people be fawned over as they cry happy tears about it and you do NOT want to fuck up your One Big True Promise To Love Jesus Forever So You Don't Get Tortured For Eternity when you are literally 8 years old. im begging yall to remember its a thousand times easier to see the church's bullshit for what it is when you're not actively in the church. eight year old you is not thinking about trying to fight back against an oppressive religious group indoctrinating children because You Are The Children Being Indoctrinated. stop acting like you would've magically known better if it were you.

[spacetimeodysseyofjane]

From the Vault: 27 May 2020

I dont have the energy to talk to people, hence, the multiple posts. It's kinda dumb sharing stuff here instead of having a smart convo with real people. But this is me, I dont like discussing about my emotions. I'd rather talk to myself or throw out these thoughts to this senseless void called Tumblr hahaha! stupid, right?

Anyway, since my brain is a mess lately, I'm journaling again. I'm not writing for the longest time coz I'm lazy and my hands easily get tired! hahaha lazy btch :D I visited my old journal entries, and I found this! It was already 2 months of lockdown when I wrote this. I cried when I read this again, and I'm crying while typing this. I was so lost during that time that almost everyday of my life, I'm wishing to die. I didnt have any plans of hurting myself but I just dont care about living anymore.

I was so so so sad because I felt so alone. It felt like everyone doesnt care about me, even my family. They were so caught up with their own problems, they have forgotten about me. No one asked me if I was doing fine, I had to go through everything alone. They didnt know that I was about to lose my job, they didnt know that I was losing my sanity. I never asked for their help, I dont want to be a burden to them. I had to hold the fort because I needed to. I know they love me but during that time, they are all focused on more pressing matters and I understand that. I had to be strong for myself because thats how it is.

I dont have any grudges in my heart because it's also my choice not to ask for their help. I’m not trying to invalidate my feelings, but they are facing more difficulties than I am. I just dont want to add more trouble. I always tell myself that the only person that I can depend on is me. It's sad that this is the mindset that I have but it has its perks! lol. For starters, I am not causing inconveniences to them! lol! I love them to bits that why I just kept it to myself. If I can do it, then I'll do it. And I did it!

One thing that kept me going during those times is Caleb. He is the light of my life. I believed in miracles again because of him. He inspired me to be better and to appreciate the little things. I learned to be grateful. I started working on myself because when he grows up, I want to be someone he can run to if he needs help. I dont want him to experience what I went through. I want a better future and environment for him. And I vow to do that as long as I live.

[mdhwrites]

The Forbidden Stacks of the library in TOH puts me in throes. The books inside aren't even preserved if a zombie mouse can have a full-on buffet with them (going slightly off the rails "echo mouse" is a stupid name for something that doesn't absorb sound, I refuse to call it that). What's the point? What other history is lost because you'll let zombie-mice into the section versus employees/volunteers that aren't just gonna float around for the sake of being spooky? Why are they even forbidden when the section is smack-dab in the middle of the library and access-cards are evidently universal, you're just working off an honor system that people won't abuse accessibility? I guess that explains the zombie-mice. Or was it just more important for the writers to have a quick set-up for Lumity no matter how horribly applied the rules are?

The Forbidden Stacks could EASILY be improved if the writers had Amity work the section as a kind of promotion since she already has access, I could see a full burst of character development if her role was to ensure no one gets access to Philip's journal by orders of Belos himself, make her question why the journal itself is forbidden and if blindly following Belos' regime is worth being left in the dark. It would as be GREAT Lumity fuel if both sides had to choose between pleasing the other or preserving their own goals.

Now I've put myself in throes on how quickly all that could be adjusted. A devil's advocate should have been hired for the writing team LMAO.

So the forbidden section of a library in most fantasy media is a pretty common trope. Harry Potter wasn't the first to have something like it and The Owl House won't be the last. But... Well, I actually never gave it that much thought because it very much so does the job of the trope, give characters a place they're not supposed to with clear intentions on forbidden knowledge, but... I think this post very easily explains why the vibe of The Owl House is wrong for a fantasy show. I talked about this in general as of late but let's interrogate your complaints. Not to say your complaints aren't valid but it's the sort of thing that as a content creator is important to do. When someone tells you they'd rather have seen X thing be done in Y way, what are they really asking for? Tears of the Kingdom's fuse mechanic is a great showing of this as it fixed the breakable weapons for a lot of people while still allowing weaponry and the like to be a reward for exploration and combat, something that just removing the system would have lost. Instead, they made it so you can personalize your arsenal and it's MUCH harder to end a fight with simply a worse inventory than when you began (amongst a BILLION other great things about the fuse mechanic).

So what are the complaints here? A lot of them are what most would consider nitpicks. A story is allowed contrivances so as to FUNCTION and that's where suspension of disbelief comes into play. Something about the forbidden section broke your suspension of disbelief though. What was it?

Well, looking at them, my personal conclusion would be simple: It doesn't feel forbidden. It has a huge ass door that dominates one of the libraries walls, it comes across from how it looks to be SEVERAL times larger than the base library seeing as the base library only has like two floors, and yeah, it's not exactly hard to reach. Lumity go in in BROAD DAYLIGHT. There are also no traps, no detection systems, or... Anything to stop someone who has slipped inside from doing as they please, including animals. Like... While Amity is being scolded, is there just NOTHING watching the forbidden knowledge and only a weak magical lock? That doesn't really give the feeling of it being forbidden, does it?

And this isn't a new problem for The Owl House. They'll present a fantasy trope and then so half ass it that it barely feels like the trope. In fact, just tropes in general, hence the common complaint that Lumity is NOT enemies to lovers despite the setup because they spend almost no time being enemies. That's discarded for what is necessary for the plot point of Lumity.

But some people might yell at me about the Shortening, despite this being S2A which probably got minimal changes due to how production works, so could this have been done better without significant time changes?

...Yes. By making them physically act like they're in a place they're not supposed to be. You don't even really have to change the substance of what the two are talking about (which is hardly about the forbidden section). The two spend almost all their time there just laying or standing around. They effectively seem to be just in a library with bad lighting judging by their actions, posture, etc. like that, not helped by the two mostly focusing on each other than anything to do with the library. This de-emphasizes the library and the danger which is VERY common in The Owl House and is part of why it's such a shit adventure show.

Tweak their tones of voice so that they sound more like they're trying not to focus on how they're breaking the rules. Make their conversation travel while Amity points at places on the floor or the wall and both respectively either avoid or seek out those places. You don't even need to really up the animation here except for having them move at all because you don't need to show the magic traps and the like so long as you get the vibe right.

Better yet, this movement could also allow for more environmental storytelling and foreshadowing. They could pass by archived creatures, kept their for study and school project purposes but too dangerous to have just anyone interacting with, and one cage is broken open. Or the lid is slipped off and a sleeping echo mouse is sleeping within it. That way, the mouse didn't just slip in, it probably broke out recently and you just have to suspend disbelief that it chose the journal for its first meal.

This isn't even only doable in animation. You could do this in writing and have their actions and the background be the flavor that's helping punctuate and break up the conversation. In writing though, that WOULD add time and admittedly part of what gives my stuff a more brisk feeling is that unless it's important, I let the background be filled in with a mood and by the reader much more than vivid description. TOH IS animated though so having the backgrounds and the like help with the storytelling, or even just the movements of the characters, is part of how you tell a story in animation.

And yes, animation is expensive. My counterpoint to that is The Ghost and Molly McGee exists and its animation very commonly blows TOH out of the water with how expressive, dynamic, bizarre and HOW MUCH OF IT there is except for TOH's big ticket fights. I cannot believe that they could not do a simple walking sequence with scrolling backgrounds instead of more anime inspired "Okay, stop, freeze, talk, go," moments, especially in order to actually sell the fact that they're in a fantasy story.

There are other, smaller things like making it a smaller, metal door that requires multiple keys to be opened that are kept in the office that Amity normally would need to check out but isn't so that Luz isn't known to go back there. Admittedly, you could also actually make the librarian scary and rude. Make him more serious as to explain why Amity didn't just talk to the librarian because I've talked before about how it trying to be 'clever' (with the same joke its done how many times even by then of "Oh, you're such a fool to think it was actually dangerous or spooky") kind of makes the episode make no sense in retrospect.

And, most importantly, none of these changes would require a lot of time in the episode. Maybe a little more, just to have Amity have a line about a pressure plate or the like, but not much. The real difference is partially the difference between Amphibia and The Owl House because when the sleepover episode happens, the ghosts aren't the only reason that the place feels forbidden. It feels forgotten and creepy and they walk and talk to help show this in the posture the characters, the tones of voice they have, stuff like that. Amphibia enjoys its genre and concepts though while The Owl House CONSTANTLY feels like it would really rather just be a slice of life school series and so doesn't care about the fantasy or adventure elements.

And, well, Looking Glass Ruins is a good episode to highlight that. They murder illusion magic, they make glyphs EXTREMELY OP in it in ways that make no sense and make you wonder why the whole cast isn't adopting them, magical amplification should still ABSOLUTELY affect illusion magic so as to make it bigger or more believable, etc. like that even if it doesn't have a physical effect, etc. like that. But instead, the magic is warped and twisted and simply used for a trope that probably could have been done without the magic.

But like making the forbidden section incredibly boring and mostly just a background more than anything else and an excuse to get Amity in trouble... It all just feels like justification to make the concept they wanted without having to put in the effort.

Without caring. And an audience can feel when a writer doesn't care about something.

[write-ur-wrongs]

The Death of Me

Pairing: Geralt x reader

Word count: almost 4K - big whoops!

A/N: This was totally meant to be a drabble / blurb, but the story got away from me! A huge thanks to the sweet anon who submitted this prompt - I was beyond inspired and chuckled warmly throughout the entire writing process. This baby isn’t proofread so thread lightly!! I sincerely hope y’all enjoy this one :’) 

Prompt:  Heya! I saw your post about wanting to practice writing short stories so I have a small prompt for Geralt! What about: the reader and Geralt have always had a difficult relationship, always running into each other at the most inconvenient moments and hence disliking each other. However, while Geralt is passing through a village the reader comes barging into his room bloody and near death, only getting a chance to say “I didn’t know where else to go” before collapsing. I would be honoured if the idea inspired you :3

____________________________________________________

You’d never considered yourself unlucky but lately life had a funny way of throwing you for a loop, or rather, throwing you to the wolves. One wolf, actually. A damn, irritating, and arrogant white wolf.

At first, it was all business. You’d arrive in a village itching for a contract, only to find that a “legendary witcher” had already come through and taken care of every monster within a two-days ride. Furious, hungry, and broke, you set out determined to get as far as you could and as quickly as possible. Your determination got you far enough that you’d managed a full three months of contract work, but not far enough it seemed.

You’d been on your way to collect payment from your latest contractor when you’d heard the buzz on the street; a witcher had come through asking about work, and had been told to wait and see as someone else (a woman! A human woman!) had already committed to the case. Apparently, he was either incensed or bemused at the idea – the brute was very hard to read, so say the town gossips – but it didn’t matter to you. You beat him to it and now you get to eat. When you finally met with the contractor to collect your coin, you couldn’t help but swell with pride as they thanked you, eyes wide, for taking care of a monster no human ought to be able to handle. You could have sworn your pride had given you wings as you floated out of the inn.

That is, until you heard them mumble under their breath, “Thank Gods that lass was able to handle it! Had it been the witcher, I would have had to pay triple!”

“Thank heavens for cheap labour!” whispered their partner, raising their glass to cheers their big victory.

Suddenly whatever weightlessness you felt transferred onto your coin purse. Biting hard on your cheek you pushed up your chin, determined to remain dignified. But then you saw him.

Impossibly broad chested, rippling muscles evident beneath his leather armour, with golden eyes that reflected back to you with a cruel playful nature that made bile rise in the back of your throat. He held your gaze and raised his own tankard to you as you walked past him. His deep voice rumbled through you as you pushed the door open.

“Cheers to cheap labour,” you heard him say, and swore you could hear the smirk on his full lips.

Groaning furiously, you pushed the door so hard it swung back and slammed shut behind you with such force a flock of birds took off somewhere in town. Undeterred, you stomped off towards your horse and set off at a gallop.

I’m going to make sure I never cross his fucking path ever again, you thought searingly.

You were wrong it turned out, but how were you supposed to know that?

You’d gone years without actually seeing him again, but that didn’t mean you were free of him. You’d alternated winning and losing contracts to each other, and the pressure of beating him to the next one stressed you so fiercely you developed ulcers. That alone would have been enough to push you to murder had you not heard from another witcher that their brother, the great white wolf, was losing sleep trying to keep up with you. Knowledge of this fact spurred you on; after all, if you couldn’t beat him, it’s best to be even, no?

The next time fate brought you two together, though, you could not have been farther from on top. What made matters worse, is that you weren’t even in battle when your paths crossed. Your literal paths just simply… crossed.

You’d been riding east for many days and just as many nights. You were tired, sore, and somehow still soaked to the bone despite the fact that the rain had stopped at least a day ago. You were so tired, your muscles seemed heavy in your limbs, and you had to keep blinking hard to bring the spinning world around you back to its axis. As you rode through an intersection on the trail, the sun peaked out from behind the thick curtain of clouds just long enough to pull you fully into sleep, and right off your still-moving-horse’s saddle.  

You honestly didn’t remember falling asleep, or off the saddle. You also had no memory of the moment another traveler, who was riding towards the intersection on the other trail, leapt off his mare just as you started your descent and caught you before you could split your skull open on one of the many rocks sprinkled throughout the street. You had no memory of the way he’d pulled you off the path, leading both horses behind him as he’d carried you over his shoulder. Zero recollection of him laying you down on a bed grass, tying your horse to a nearby tree, lighting you a campfire, or filling your pack with some bread and meat.

What you did remember, was the arrogant look on his face when you finally woke up. The condescending tone he took as he reminded you that you were ‘only human’ and had to take care of yourself accordingly was also seared into the annals of your memory.

You hated that he’d saved you almost as much as you hated the fact that you’d been asleep around him. Completely vulnerable for God knows how long and he’d been there to witness it all. Whenever the memory of the look on his face or the way he’d crossed his arms and tilted his stupid head as he condescended your humanity came to you, you couldn’t help but cringe even months after the fact.

***

Your saving grace came a full six months after your damned damsel in distress moment on the trail.

Well fed, well worked, and well travelled, you were taking your time enjoying the market in your town of the week. The work you did wasn’t glamourous, but it did allow you the means to afford a few luxuries every now and then. This time, it just so happened that your coin could buy you the sweetest gift of all: revenge.

The market was busy as ever, you could barely hear yourself think over the cacophony of voices and animal bleats bouncing around the square. Had it been anyone else, the conversation would have been lost among the noise around you, but when that voice came rumbling through the mess of shrieks and shouts, you couldn’t help but seek out the source. You didn’t know why you cared or why you were so surprised to find that the voice’s owner was none other than the White Wolf himself.

“You good?” you asked, making sure to tilt your head, hands on your hips, the same way he’d done the last time you’d met.

“Fine.” He practically barked, not even turning his head fully to address you directly.

The merchant, none-too-concerned with your arrival on the scene, continued as if uninterrupted. “I’m sorry Mr. Witcher, sir, but I can’t go any lower. This is the best I can offer.”

“I can’t pay that much,” he grumbled, hands closed into tight fists.

“I’m sorry-”

“Is this enough?” you interjected, knowingly offering forward far too many ducats.

“Y-yes!” breathed the merchant, looking quizzically at Geralt before picking three coins from your open palm, “thank you, madam...”

“Y/N,” you introduced yourself with a warm smile and a nod.

“Y/N!” Geralt hissed, at the same time, reaching out to push away your hand a fraction too late; the vendor was paid, and you’d won this round.

“What is it, Witcher?” you teased, as the vendor took his sword back for repairs, “been on vacation? Why so skint?”

“Been low on work lately,” he replied coolly, cat-like eyes boring into yours, “not as many contracts as there use to be.”

“Well, I’ll be,” you said, cocking your head to the side and pursing your lips in mock contemplation, “I can’t imagine why that’d be the case! Seems I keep running into monsters to kill.”

“Mmhm.” He hummed, narrowing his eyes at you.

Refusing to let him have the last word, you quickly turned on your heels and high-tailed it out of the market, shouting over your shoulder to the blacksmith to give any change back to Geralt before disappearing back into the crowd.

***

Being even should have brought peace between the two of you but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Your last interaction only fanned the flames of your rivalry. As the months turned to years without coming upon each other again, you still found yourself filled with unreasonable anger whenever you saw a mop of white hair cross you on your travels.

And not that you’d know it, but it turned out that Geralt wasn’t faring any better; finding himself frustrated and acting recklessly whenever he’d come upon anything that reminded him of you.

You were both completely obsessed with one another. Thoughts of the other constantly on the mind. Whether in waking or in dreams, you were both equally afflicted by an intense need to outperform, out run, and also, inexplicably, to impress the other.  

*

It was that need to impress each other that led you to accept a contract you should have never even considered taking. You honestly wouldn’t have even considered it had the circumstances been any different but you’d been hearing about this monster for weeks on your travels. Tales of the mighty griffin tearing people to shreds had been circulating far and wide on this side of the Yaruga, and honestly, with every retelling you’d expected to hear that a witcher had handled it, but that never happened. You’d somehow managed to arrive at the village at the source of these stories before him and had an opportunity to literally rob him of this victory.

Granted, you were the only one who’d been attributing him with this win, but that didn’t matter, not to you. The only thing you cared about when accepting this particular contract was the knowledge that by taking it, you were preventing him from having it, and that was more than enough.

The shock on the villagers faces when they saw you accept the contract only added to your already inflated confidence. The sheer size of the griffin’s wingspan humbled you a little, though, and whatever grand illusions of an easy victory you’d carried into the forest were squashed along with a couple rib bones only moments after engaging the beast. In short, you were fucked.

Some might say that coming out of it alive was enough of a win. Those people would be morons, you thought as you stumbled clumsily back towards the lights of the village, clutching your split abdomen with both hands and blinking back blood dripping from your forehead. Every step you took came with the stabbing pain of additional tearing around your wound. You could barely think, your ears were blocked and caked with dried blood and dirt, your tears stung as they fell across the gashes on your cheeks, and every breath in felt like it could be your last. You’d never admit this out loud, but a part of you wished the creature had finished the job.

Perhaps the only saving grace here was that in your condition, you couldn’t hear the villagers as they pointed and gossiped. You didn’t hear the “told you so’s” or the lewd shouts coming from the drunk men as you stumbled into the tavern. You could barely hear the disappointment in the inn owner’s voice as they reprimanded you for accepting a contract, they knew you couldn’t complete. Rolling your eyes, you pushed your way towards the stairs as quickly as possible – which, as it turned out, was not so quick, praying that someone would call you a healer.

“… and to think a witcher arrived only hours after she went off to kill herself! Tsk-tsk!”

You stopped dead in your tracks, drops of blood falling across your brow as you interrupted the momentum you’d been building. “W-what?” you croaked, turning towards them as much as possible to make sure you’d hear them correctly.

“Yeah! And not just any witcher, lass, the Butcher of Blaviken no less! Checked in with us just as you head out. Had you waited half a day you could have saved yourself a world of – ‘ey! Now where’s she off to?”

As you registered this news, something inside you snapped. Before you knew what was happening, you’d made your way upstairs and started pushing your full weight onto every door you passed. The great White Wolf, the Butcher of Blaviken, was certainly arrogant enough to leave his door unlocked. You might have been wrong about the griffin, but you’d be damned if you were wrong about this.

Fortunate or not, you weren’t wrong about this. As you pushed your shoulder against the last door with whatever strength you had left, the door swung open with very little resistance. The heavy wooden door slammed loudly against the wall at the exact moment that your limp body crashed onto the floor.

“WHAT the fuck!” Geralt howled, leaping off the bed and onto his feet. His wild eyes assessed the situation in an instant, and he bound to you in barely two strides. “What the fuck did you do? What happened?” he asked as he flipped you over, so gently you were sure you’d already passed out and were now dreaming. Or maybe the blood loss was finally catching up to you and you were full-on hallucinating.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” you breathed, barely above a whisper, before losing consciousness in his arms.

*

Regaining consciousness was a slow, painful process. You’d come in and out of it a handful of times throughout the night, and flashes of what you’d seen before you lost it were coming to you in an almost dreamlike haze; terrifying images of the furious griffin, its blood-soaked talon shining in the setting sun as it reared back to strike you again, and warmer visions of Geralt, shirtless, running towards you with – could it be? – genuine concern in his eyes.

Now as the rising sun cast its glow across the room, you squinted painfully against the light. Your head felt as though it was full of cotton; heavy, and scratchy, and unnatural on top of your shoulders. Hesitantly, you ran your tongue over your teeth and were equal parts relieved to find them all there and disgusted at the acrid, mineral taste the blood left behind. Blinking slowly, you tried to bring up your hand to rub at your eyes, but stopped short as you felt the large bandage draped across your forehead.

Slowly, you started to register the other bandages, on your arms, your cheek, across your abdomen. Your eyes grew wide as you finally registered the man facing away from you in the far corner of the room. Geralt’s broad strong back was hunched away from you as he rifled through herbs and small glass vials looking for something. Inexplicably, you found yourself disappointed to see he’d put his thick black tunic back on. Horrified by that realization, you literally gagged, startling Geralt and pulling his attention squarely onto you.

His big dumb beautiful face was all hard lines as he looked you over, stern eyes flashing to meet yours before dropping back down to the vial in his hands. You couldn’t help be notice the way the muscles in in jaw rippled and tensed as he sighed. He was oozing disappointment and anger, and that infuriated you.

“Am I dead?” you ask, squinting at him a little theatrically as you squirmed and winced in your bed.

“No.” he practically growled, his body tense as he made his way towards you slowly.

“Oh,” you breathed, bringing your eyes up to his before adding, “this isn’t hell?”

To your immense satisfaction, his stern eyes widened into shock, but then something unrecognizable flashed across his features – wait, was he hurt?

“Why, because I’m here?” he shouted, as if in confirmation of your hunch, and slammed the damp cloth he’d been holding back into the basin.

“No, jackass,” you retorted, pleased that despite the position you were in, you still had some semblance of an upper-hand, “because a griffin fucking fileted me like a fish and some poor drunk is probably downstairs slipping in a pool of my blood right now.”

You’d kind of hoped that he’d laugh, or at least have a comeback geared up for you, but Geralt just stood there staring at you, his mouth in a tight line, nostrils flaring.

Uncomfortable by the intensity of his stare and the silence accompanying it, you decide to continue to poke the bear.

“Come on, what’s with the face, Geralt? Pissed I’m still alive? You know you could have just closed the door over my body, let nature finish the bloody job.”

“Fuck, no! Y/n!” he screamed, startling you out of the attitude you’d put on, “I’m pissed because you’re an impossibly difficult woman hellbent on killing herself! I’m pissed because you don’t seem to fucking care about what happens to you! You can’t keep doing this Y/N! Because one of these days you’re going to get hurt and you’ll be too far away from me and I won’t be able to fucking save you, again! I am pissed because I am losing my mind spending every god-awful day wondering if you’ve gone and gotten yourself killed! Fucking hell, woman! If you didn’t find me – I-if I wasn’t here, with these herbs – Damnit Y/N!”

You just sat there, mouth opening and closing like a fish. You couldn’t believe it. You didn’t know what to say. This man, your nemesis, was in front of you pacing back and forth, breathing heavily, looking like a maniac. His nostrils were flaring more than the monster that almost killed you just yesterday. Part of you wanted to correct him and demand he never address you as ‘woman’ again, but his wild earnest eyes kept you quiet. My god… was he crying?

Before you could say anything, Geralt sighed gruffly, ran his large hand over his face and stormed out, mumbling something about needing to get you more water.

Left alone with your thoughts, you couldn’t stop yourself from spiralling. You’d expected him to be angry – hell, you wanted him to be angry! You’d humiliated yourself twice over, enraging him would ease the blow – but this was… different. He seemed genuinely concerned about you. And what was with his whole speech? He spent every day thinking about you? Worrying about you? There’s no way.

Sure, you thought about him daily, but that was out of spite! You hated the man! Why else would your heart race whenever you thought you spotted him in a crowd? Why else would you actively seek out the most dangerous contracts? What, like you were hoping these contracts would draw him out, and therefore, closer to you? As if!

Your ridiculous inner monologue was interrupted by Geralt’s return. The horrible brute knocked gently on the door before stepping inside, and your heart had the audacity to skip a beat.

Oh, you thought, fuck.

“I need to change the dressing on your wounds,” he grumbled, not meeting your eyes. You nodded wordlessly as he settled onto the chair next to you. You watched him work in silence, praying he would attribute your insane heartrate and flushed skin to a pain response from his work.

“Geralt?” you tried, chewing nervously on your cheek, as was just finished up with the last of your dressing.

“Hm?” he hummed, keeping his eyes cast down as he fussed with the bandage on the gash across your abdomen.

“Thank you… for saving me.”

He finally brought his gaze up to meet yours, but said nothing in return. He merely grunted in acknowledgment. You didn’t know why, but his silence in combination with his inscrutable gaze encouraged you to keep talking.

“I honestly only took this contract because I didn’t want you to have it,” you admitted bashfully.

“What the fuck? No one was taking it because they weren’t paying nearly enough! Hell, and you’re just a human,” he fumed, throwing up air-quotes as he said it, “so what – they offered you a third of nothing?”

Laughing lightly, you shoved him with your elbow, “they offered me three whole ducats!”

“Oh, wow,” he laughed, low and rumbling, “so a big pay day for you, eh?”

“Shut up,” you gasped as pain rippled through you with each peal of laughter, “knowing I could screw you over was payment enough!”

“Well congratulations are in order, you did manage to screw someone over,” he chided.

“Me,” you stated dryly, gesturing widely at your busted up body.

“You,” he echoed with a sigh that seemed to deflate him.

He suddenly looked so small, sitting there next to you. You watched him as clenched and unclenched his jaw, rubbing his large hands up and down his thighs – was he anxious? You mind raced as you felt his eyes travel slowly up your body. You held your breath as he worked up the nerve to finally bring his eyes up to yours.

The moment his eyes landed on yours, something shifted. Whatever had been lodged uncomfortably between the two of you all these years had finally clicked into place. This change, albeit small, was palpable. His eyes dropped to your lips and lingered there. He was looking at you like he’d never seen you before. Like he was afraid he might never see you again.

Without speaking, Geralt inched himself closer to you and reached a tender hand to tuck your hair behind your ears before cradling your face.

“You’re not allowed to die, do you hear me?” he whispered, gently stroking your cheek with his thumb.

You gave him a quick nod and brought your hand up to his, nuzzling into the warmth of his palm before giving his hand a quick kiss.

“I need to hear you say it,” he begged, bringing himself even closer to you.

“I do,” you breathed, trying to sit up to bring your face closer to his. “I’m not going to die, not on your watch, but I’m also not quitting.”

“Y/N –”

“No! If I quit, you’d get lazy. Who’d push you? What would be your driving force?”

“Wow,” he scoffed, looking at you incredulously but fondly, “you’re so fucking arrogant.”

“And yet…” you said, quirking a brow flirtatiously as you pulled him closer by the collar.

“… and yet?” he murmured, letting himself be pulled closer to you. His eyes half-closed and his lips slightly parted.

“You love me.”

“I love you.”

And then he kissed you. His mouth claimed yours urgently but his hands were ever gentle, ghosting over your bandages and caressing your skin with a feather-light tenderness that would have brought you to your knees had you not already been bedridden. Any hesitation or doubt melted away under the heat of his touch as all those years of tension sprung apart catastrophically. The knot you had carried in your stomach unfurled into flittering fireflies, their heat traveling up your stomach to your chest as his hands worked their way into your hair.

You didn’t know when they’d fallen, but you let out a shaky laugh as Geralt kissed away the tears on your cheeks, his thumb swiping at the tears his soft lips failed to catch. Breathing heavily, he rested his forehead against yours; his hands cupping your face as yours captured his.

Gods – this man was going to be the death of you.  

[softxsuki]

Hey, I'm the one who tried to send in an urgent ask. It's really nothing it's just that I've had some issues for a year and it really affected everything from my mental health to my studies and social life. I was recovering well for the past month but unfortunately last week I came to know that i had not cleared any of my entrance exams and hence i can't go to college. Can I have some headcanons with Mitsuya convincing the reader to try again? I hope it's not a bother, thank you so much.

Mitsuya with Reader Who Wants to Give Up

Pairing: Mitsuya x Gn!Reader

Warnings: mentions of poor mental health, wanting to give up, failing important exams

Genre: Comfort

Post-Type: Headcanons

Word Count: 810

Summary: In which Mitsuya finds out that you failed your College Entrance Exams and tries persuading you to try again until you pass!

[A/N: Hey nonnie <3 I know how discouraging it is to fail, but please know that just because you didn't pass these exams now, doesn't mean you yourself are a failure. Exams are stupid, they pretty much test how well you can memorize information rather than test how qualifying or intelligent you are. Take your time to feel whatever you feel as it's important to let all your emotions out, so if you're feeling sad or frustrated, let it all out don't hold back. But once you have, please try again! I'm sorry you had to go through this especially as you were trying to heal from the state your mental health was in not long ago. but I'm praying things get better for you. In the meantime Mitsuya and I are rooting for you to push forwards and try again :). Hope you enjoy these headcanons <3]

Mitsuya:

Failing is always hard and very discouraging on an individual

So when you failed your entrance exams, you became very discouraged to try again, wanting to just accept the fact that you couldn’t go to College anymore

Mitsuya noticed your change in demeanor straight away

He knew the struggles you had in the past with your mental health and how big of a toll it had on your studies and social life

He saw how hard you worked to get yourself out of that pit that held you down, and he was there with you if ever you needed him

But you still weren’t able to prepare enough, after all the damage to your academic life had been done, to successfully pass your entrance exams

Having just recovered, not clearing your exams really took a heavy toll on you and instead of being more optimistic and hoping to try again, you shut everyone out and completely gave up

Mitsuya couldn’t just stand by and watch this happen of course, so he’d sit and have a conversation with you once you’ve had your chance to sulk a bit

He knows how hard of a worker you are and he doesn’t want you to give up on your future just like that, he wants you to fight

You’ve been fighting your mental health for a few months now, but he wants you to continue fighting

You’re extremely strong mentally, to be able to go through what you went through and still sit down for such big exams, so he wants you to give it another shot after having more time to prepare without all the extra pressures of your mental health holding you back

“I know it’s discouraging to fail, and you might not feel like it’s worth it to try again. Perhaps you think you’ll just fail again which will make you feel even worse, or you don’t want to put in the effort again, but I know you Y/N. I know how intelligent and driven you are. Don’t let this little dip in the road throw you off balance. I know if you try again you can pass with flying colors. I’ll even be there to help you out with your studying if you want me to, just please don’t give up yet.”

He’s very desperate to not have you give up, because he knows once you do, you’ll go down that long spiral into your own head again and your mental health will deteriorate once more, he didn’t want you to go through that again after how hard you worked to heal

But Mitsuya is patient–he’s willing to give you your space to think it over, but he will encourage you everyday to try again, and to keep trying until you pass

He’s a firm believer of perfect timing so he’d probably try and convince you that you didn’t pass this time for a reason

“Maybe it just wasn’t your time to pass these exams. Maybe in a year's time when you do pass you’ll be in classes with a new friend who will change your life for the better. If you were to have passed now, you would never have gotten the chance to meet them!”

“Yeah, but you don’t know that,” you reply

“Yeah, well you don’t either. It’s still possible,” he insists

Mitsuya is very persistent and he will go to all lengths to persuade you into trying again; he might even get a little annoying about it, but it’ll all be worth it when you do try again

Aside from his persistence though, he is your biggest support system after you fail your exams, he’s very understand and encouraging; the last thing he’d ever want to do is make you feel worse about it

I don’t picture Mitsuya as a very cuddly guy, but as he’s speaking to you, I imagine him throwing an arm around your shoulder and having you lean against his shoulder as he plays with your fingers with his free hand, speaking to you in a soft, reassuring voice sorry I had to add this, but I didn’t know where so APOLOGIES if this comes out very randomly ENAKNFE

If you do decide to try again, he’d be with you every step of the way; from studying together, to looking over your practice exams, and to eventually giving you a ride to the testing site, he’s your biggest cheerleader

Even if you do try again and still don’t pass, he’ll still encourage you to try again, NO QUITTERS IN THIS HOUSEHOLD, he knows you're better than that

When you do pass though, get ready for a huge celebration from him–anything you want, he’d get it for you, so look forward to that!

You got this, he knows you do, so have a little faith in yourself too. Never give up.

REQUESTS ARE OPEN :D

Posted: 10/13/2022

[riverisnotsafe]

Mine.

PAIRING: F!Servant!Reader x Naoya Zenin

WARNINGS: NAOYA ZENIN. Naoya smut. NSFW, Minors DNI. | If you're into any of these: possessive Naoya, breeding kink (?), mentions of overstimulation, jealous Naoya.

A/N: You can call me Noct or River. I’m still fairly new to how tumblr works and how writers and bloggers (?) write their imagines/fics so I do apologize in advance if my writing is not to your liking. I will also post on AO3 under sunflowerpsycho. I'm still trying to improve^^ This was self-indulgent and not edited so pretty all over the place and might be unclear in some parts, sorry bout that.

The reader lowkey a pick me but depends on how you view her, either she's a pick me or she just acts the way she acts to accustom and stroke the lil bitches ego.

“A-ah! Naoya-sama!” you moan his name as he shoots his load deep in you. A few moments of bliss and you were ready to clean yourself. Naoya never liked staying in bed long after sex. He finds it disgusting. All the fluids of sweat, semen and love juices mixed together made his skin crawl. “Oi woman, where are you going?” You haven’t even gotten up but Naoya had you strongly wrapped in his embrace. His cock still deep within you, as if acting as a plug. “I’m gonna wash myself..? You don’t like being dirty like this...usually?” the last bit came out as a question when Naoya buried his head deep into the crevice of your neck. “Ah, I’ll let it pass today. Just stay here. My cum is gonna leak out if you move.” he tried to shove himself deeper, earning an unexpected moan from you. “L-leak out???” Does Naoya have a breeding kink? Is he trying to keep his cum in you???? “N-naoya-sama...are you trying to breed me?” at the mention of breed, you could feel his dick twitch in your core. “Shut up woman.” Ah...so he is and he’s embarrassed to admit. “I feel honoured if that’s what you’re trying to do...” another twitch.

Under that tough misogynistic act, this man is just a boy who thrives on praise, he probably was deprived of any in his childhood, hence the superiority complex. But with you, he’s quite honest. The body doesn’t lie. You were just another servant. He probably paid and slept with many so you never thought of it as anything special. Besides, after all of this dirty work, both of you end up going your separate ways. A servant and the young master. That’s all it is. That is until one of the maids tried stealing from the family, unfortunately from Naoya and he didn’t take it too lightly. A woman and a thief, absolutely the worst. Ever since that, he appointed you as his personal maid, to ensure that only one person will serve him. Only one will enter and exit his quarters. Only one will serve his meals. Only one will tend to him. Only one will follow him around the house. Only one will keep him company when needed. Why did he choose you? Honestly you had no idea. Out of all the servants, clearly you were the least appealing, especially for a man of Naoya’s caliber.

You could never rival the looks of any of the other girls. You were chubby. Your thighs a bit too thick. Your cheeks were puffy. You had no thigh gap. Curves? Well, they weren’t hour-glass curves so you were bedrock bottom ranked. And when it came to family, you were a nobody. All the other servants have been serving the Zenin clan for generations. You were just a nobody who was pulled into the servant life to pay off your parent’s debt. What luck. It took him time though, to make you tend to him sexually. He might have a big ego and any woman would sleep with him but deep down he knew it was only for money and his looks, which he prided on. The sex was always bland. He could care less about the women’s pleasures, he would ejaculate outside, toss them money and demand them to immediately leave. He found them disgusting. Weren’t you just the same?

He had a great face, an even better body and all the riches you could’ve dreamt of, so why has he not tossed you out yet. He for sure can suspect that you’re just the same as all those women, plus, you were even lower, a nobody. Yet, here he is, deep inside you. This has been..about the sixth time you and Naoya have had intercourse. The first three times was when you were just a normal servant. Coincidentally he always found you and forced you to pleasure him. The pay was good so you never complained. After becoming his personal maid, it took a few months to make you fulfil his sexual needs, which is rather strange. A man like knows nothing of consent. He’s a tyrant. What he wants, he can get and he will. So why did he take months to make you fuck him when it was so easy before becoming his personal servant. Who knows? Maybe it was his underlying insecurities asking him to be sure.

“Naoya-sama...may I turn to look at you?” he grunts. “I’ll be sure to avoid any leakage” he nods. You slowly turn your body, still impaled on him. It was a different kind of pleasure but you withheld your moans. Your face are so close. This moment is intimate, for you and him. Almost unreal. He’s gorgeous. That red tint of blush and sex afterglow just added more to his beauty. “Naoya-sama. May I speak more than usual?” “Only because you asked for permission. Proceed.” he avoided looking into your eyes. A shy one. “I appreciate my master’s kindness. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Naoya-sama...please be honest with me. Are you trying to impregnate me? Why? I’m just a lowly servant. I could never be perfect to bear your children, or be a concubine. I have no value. You are too kind. We should stop. I will remove myself now. Thank you for your time master.” You slowly push yourself off him. He grabs your arm harshly, definitely bruising it.

“You said no leakage. And how dare you speak to your master so insolently? How dare you question what holds value to me or not. You are a lowly servant. You’re a filthy no-name bitch. You live to lick my shoes and pick up money I throw on the ground. You are not going anywhere. You are staying on this bed with me in you. You have to be reminded who your master is.” Oooh, you definitely pissed him off. You winced at his words. They were normal, he always told you where your place is so it wasn’t a surprise. “You stupid woman. Now it’s out. You moved and now it’s out.” he sounds disappointed. He was whining like a child. “Naoya-sama!” he plunged into you hard. “Yes, scream my name you stupid bitch.” He went faster and faster. “Don’t cum inside...I’m not worthy master” “Shut your mouth. Worthy? No woman is worthy of me. Selfish. All they care about are themselves. Such an inferior gender thinking what they know is worthy? I decide. I decide your worth.” He changed positions. He pressed both your legs close to your chest. A mating press. He was so deep. The squelching of his previous load acting as lubricant was erotic.

“You. Your lewd body. You were always trying to seduce me. Those luscious thighs. These fat breasts. You were made for child-bearing. The look you make when I fuck you. So in awe, eyes rolling back. Ah. Ah. Sometimes you even forgot payment because you rushed to clean yourself. You were the only memorable one. The sounds you make. You’re erotic. No one else can see or hear you except me. Mine. Mine. Mine.” Naoya drilled you senseless. So desperate to hear you. Desperate to look at your expressions. Desperate to conquer you. “N-naoya-sama! Ah! Ah! Naoya-sama!” You had practically lost any sense and all you could feel was his dick fucking you mercilessly. The veins. The length. The girth. He fit like a glove. He had shaped you to be accustomed to him. “When that no-name clan came yesterday for a meeting. I saw your look. You enjoyed how they all looked at you didn’t you? You slut. You’d want them to fuck you like this right? Only I can though. You smiled and served them. Desperate bitch.” The meeting yesterday?

Your mind wandered. Oh yes, a small clan that are partners with the Zenin in business. The heirs were quite good-looking and well-mannered, how could a lady not feel flattered. You can’t remember if you specifically smiled or enjoyed their small talk. Was being polite not a simple necessity a servant should have towards guests? To ensure their master was not seen as tardy. You can’t remember their names or faces. All you remember was Naoya slipping his hand under your garments and fingering you. “You enjoyed people watching right? Especially since they were good-looking. I WAS RIGHT THERE WITH YOU. Disgusting piece of shit.” He got even rougher. You don’t know how many times you’ve orgasmed and how many times Naoya had ejaculated in you but he was still at it. He’s jealous huh.. how strange. A man that could have anything and anyone in the world was strangely possessive of a worthless woman like you. “You can’t show them those expressions. Mine. Your kindness mine. Your sounds. Mine. You’re my servant.” he sounds sad.

Despite being in subspace, you unintentionally reach out to your master and cub his face. “Naoya-sama. I love you.” Those unintentional words made the malicious man slow down his pace. “What did you say?” Is he angry? Oof, all the best dealing with another tantrum. You couldn’t feel anything. Legs sore. Your mind had wandered. The pleasure had made you dumb yet the little consciousness you have for your master remained. “I love you, Naoya.” His cock twitched. “Again” “I love you.” “Again” “I love you, Naoya-sama”. All that repeating made you come to your senses. “I don’t remember the men from yesterday. All I remember were your thick fingers in me. My expressions and mewls were for you. If this body is what you want then I will offer it all to you, my master. Ask, you are my master after all. All of me is yours.” You get up a bit, and stagger, he fucked the life outta ya. “Master, allow me to speak.” a small dumbfounded nod. You slip a hand onto his cheek and kiss him. Both of you never shared a kiss.

It was too intimate for a servant to kiss their master. Only their betrothed would be worthy but you couldn’t help it, you needed to assure this man-child, you were no one else’s. “Master, I-“ “Naoya. When we’re alone call me Naoya.” a small smile crept onto your lips. “Naoya, breed me.” His face was flushed. That’s exactly what he wanted. Through the night, he fucked you in every inch of the room. Both of your fluids and smell, absolutely drenched his quarters. He never once ejaculated outside. Every drip of his semen was in your womb, he wouldn’t even pull out, in fear it would leak. Shower? He fucked you while showering too. His animalistic senses stopped when a knock on the door came.

“Lay down with your back arched. It can’t leak.” He put on a robe and answered. A woman’s voice. “Naoya-sama. Naobito-sama is calling for you.” “Tch. Annoying old man” he slams the door shut. “Oi. Arch even more.” He came back to you. “I’m going to put this in you so you don’t spill.” He was holding, A DILDO? This man has a dildo? “N-naoya-sama, t-thats...” “Some servant I had my way with some time ago left it to fuck with me. I kept it not knowing what it was but now the shape looks like it’d plug you up good.” A servant he had his ways with huh. You were just another one right. He seemed to have noticed your train of thought. “Stupid woman. That servant is long gone. And now. You’re mine. No other stupid bitch except you. Stop thinking nonsense. Maybe I’ll remind you a bit more. That old man can wait.” He unrobed and pounced you. You definitely can’t walk for a few days.

“I’ll plug you up and we’ll go see the old man” he sounds, quite joyful. “If you move and leak, I won’t hesitate to fill you up again.” Ah. He’s definitely Naoya Zenin. “Naoya-sama” you smile. “What? You should be grateful that I’ve allowed you to speak so many times since last night.” You can’t help but giggle. A slight blush forms on Naoya’s face. “How dare you laugh at m-“ you pull him in for a kiss. He reluctantly kissed back. “Naoya-sama, I love you.” you smiled. He thrusted into you without warning. “The old man can definitely wait. You filled with my child is more important.” God knows how many times he’d come in your womb without pulling out, there’s no way you’re not pregnant. “Naoya-sama...let’s stop here...I can’t walk properly if we continue, then a different servant will have to serve you.” He was about to argue but held his tongue. “Fine.” He pulled out and slowly shoved the dildo in. Looks like he’d rather have wobbly-legged you than another servant. You can't help but smile. “Go shower and meet me back here. And clean the room after meeting with the old man. The smell...erotic but dreadful. Wash everything.” “Yes my master.” You hurriedly got clothed and rushed to the servant quarters to clean up. You were happy. What a weirdo.

[thecirculararchive]

Alright. Here’s the essay you wanted. Post explains why I responded to an ask I received that said “I think some Traumagenics are confused Endogenics” with “Same here!”

Let’s start with Context.

That ask was received in a string of anon hate (I deleted the majority, but this one pissed me off more than the rest). It was received due to my stance that we should be acknowledging that some endogenic plurals are traumagenic systems who don’t recall their trauma or are confused. It was received during the time that QueerAutism decided to start spreading more lies about me based on a single screenshot of when I was anti-endo. It was received during the time I was trying to step further away from syscourse, for my health, and focus on being more positive.

It was also the time I was dealing with the hardest part of the year for teachers, running on 2-3 hours of sleep each night. It was the time I was dealing with a death in the family, and a 2 day long memorial for the woman who changed my partner’s life forever, and who gave me a place to stay in her death, which got me out of my parents abusive house. I was also dealing with said abusive parents, and currently trying to work out a week long vacation I’m going on with them, this summer, after I just opened up about being gay and having DID - which went poorly.

Needless to say, I was emotionally drained. I received what was clearly a bait ask. They WANTED me to become a wishy washy asshole, who denied that my stance could go both ways, just so they could hold that up as a shining banner of “proof” that I’m totally an anti-endo guys. I was so royally pissed off when I got that ask. Especially since (as I’ll explain next) I sort of agree with it.

So, rather than respond to a purposeful bait ask with a 20 paragraph response (which you all have now made me do anyways - thanks) I simply replied “same here!” Which, I’ll add, was immensely satisfying. Imagining their face when the “evil sysmed centrist” turned out to be not what they expected? It gave me at least a moment of relief during a remarkably shitty time.

So what did I actually mean?

First off: some Endogenics are Traumagenics. Full stop. There is evidence of people thinking they are endo and it turns out they’re traumagenic. There is precedence. Furthermore, there’s such origins as “dissociagenic” - as in, I formed from dissociation. Which is. A trauma response. Hence, traumagenic. I believe a lot of origin labels inherently are traumagenic, and while I will never call an endogenic plural a traumagenic system against their wishes, I cannot say that I believe you can have trauma responses without trauma.

Let’s read that again. “Endogenics are Traumagenic.” Hey, it’s almost like the labels are fucking stupid. THAT’S where my argument boils down to. I think that there HAVE to be Traumagenics who are actually Endogenic because I think, in some cases, the two are intrinsically tied. Some endogenic plurality is formed through trauma, or formed through trauma responses. If A = B, then logically, B = A.

I also have, and always will, argue for Traumagenic systems to actually look into Endogenic plurality in regards to their own. “But endos hurt me!!!” Bitch, me too, the fuck. But they also helped me, because sometimes, endos aren’t evil!!! Surprise surprise, it’s almost like people are people, and SOME people are assholes. I don’t subscribe to the belief that all endos are assholes. I think analyzing endogenic origins and trying to apply them to yourselves is actually a worthwhile experience. It doesn’t erase what you went through - it just means it’s beneficial to look at things through other perspectives.

Let’s also remark on the fact that endogenic origins account for “alters who formed not due to trauma, but something else.” While I disagree with this in DID/OSDD (alters ALL form from a base trauma, essentially, it’s more nuanced than that but come on, I’m hoping I don’t need to explain every single detail here) I do find it useful for MYSELF to label my alters who didn’t form from a “traumatic event.” I don’t personally call them endogenic, but by endo definitions, they are. By endo definition, some Traumagenics are actually endogenic. And I find looking at my alters who aren’t from a “traumatic event” in my life and delineating that experience has helped me overcome more situations in my life and inform me more about them. Looking at myself through endogenic lenses actually helped me work out a lot of my trauma.

Lastly, on this topic (and here’s the one you’ll actually disagree with): people DO invent trauma for themselves. Reminder: this blog believes in endogenic plurality. I BELIEVE you can have headmates without trauma. And I believe some traumagenic (people who say they have trauma) systems are actually endogenic. I believe some traumagenic systems are not traumagenic, and have instead read into a situation too deeply and it’s not actually trauma. Note: I’m not fakeclaiming anyone here. This is no different than me saying that some endogenic plurals are traumagenic (in denial of trauma), or faking, or experiencing something similar. I believe the same of BOTH sides. I am NEVER going to tell a traumagenic system that they’re faking, or “secretly endo” or that “their trauma wasn’t enough.” All I’m doing is acknowledging that sometimes people are mistaken.

Alright. Now, onto the reason I’m so pissed off.

@oops-all-syscourse. You apparently already had me blocked. But you still saw fit to reblog a bait ask from almost a week ago to let everyone know I was disgusting. Why? Is it because we inherently disagree? Or is it because you believed I was anti-endo when I have been VOCALLY syscourse unaligned? I am vocally a believer in endogenic plurality. I know you disagree. So why did you bother scrolling to find that post? What was the point? Debate??? Or just being a bitch to me?

@ the comments on said post: Based on the speed those came in, you didn’t look any further into the situation than that one post. Did you realize it was a bait ask sent during a string of other anon hate? Did you realize I was at my wits end with syscourse, and was publicly talking about how people need to step away? Did you see my OWN post, explaining that I needed to step back for my own health yesterday? Nope. You just barraged me with comments, DMs, aaand.

@ anon haters. I’m just straight up deleting all of your messages. Fuck you. Since apparently responding to a bait ask at all caused me to get harassed, I’m not responding to you all. Let’s hope NOT responding isn’t going to end up with more harassment, right? Cause that’s what I figured would happen if I didn’t respond to the original bait ask. I figured that anon would go to Rouke and bitch about how I was “clearly dodging the question cause I’m a filthy sysmed.”

I’m tired of people fucking lying about me. I’m tired of getting harassed. I’m tired of trying to go to bed early, only to have a panic attack from spam messages and alerts on my phone because a single person on the internet disagrees with a take that, to me, was VERY OBVIOUSLY not the full story. How about, rather than jump the gun and immediately harass me, you use some critical thinking skills? “Huh. MotCR almost always responds to everything with at least a three paragraph response, unless they’re too drained to respond. Maybe there’s another reason they didn’t respond with a 20 paragraph response to this ask, rather than just them agreeing flat out with it.”

To the long anon I got; I’m not gonna publish everything you said (mostly cause I’m tired and this essay already took a full half hour of my morning, which was NOT time I had available to spend, but was also the only thing that might calm down the anxiety attack that started last night and is still ongoing this morning). I just want to address one concern: I am not going to back down on a stance unless I am given proper evidence/argument for why I should. I haven’t received that in this case, so obviously, I’m not going to roll back my argument here. I used to do that in pro-endo spaces. Nowadays, I’m much more vocal about my beliefs, and I don’t intend to let some asshole anons make me back down.

Lastly: if you don’t agree with this? Then fucking block me, or engage in civil debate. I’m not going to reply to people who just insult me or are pissy about it. I’m not wasting my time anymore.

I’m trying to take care of myself and spend less time in pointless arguments. I suggest everyone else also step back and consider how much time they spend in syscourse. Are YOU taking care of yourselves?

[qqueenofhades]

Have you read Ian Mortimer's book about Henry V?

I have not, both because it isn't my primary field of interest and because Mortimer is one of the historians, in my opinion, that has to be approached with a heaping handful of salt. I have enjoyed some of his work before and found it to be genuinely useful: i.e. The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, which is a clever way to do social history and answer some of the questions that laypeople often have about what the past was "really" like, though you have to remember that his interpretation is still subjective and I wish that he would have been more transparent about how he used and selected sources. Still, it's a book that I can generally recommend at least as a starting point and a place to branch off into other work, and it's definitely accessible to someone without specialist training.

The main problem with Mortimer and his crowd, as detailed in this recent ask, is that they are extremely wedded to particular historical theories -- in this case, their insistence that Edward II of England was not killed in 1327, as commonly believed, but escaped and lived in exile abroad until sometime in the 1340s. They correctly point to some amount of documentary evidence that at least raises the possibility that this was indeed what happened, but then they go whole-hog on insisting that THIS WAS DEFINITELY THE ANSWER, and anyone who disagrees or even just doesn't instantly buy their brilliance is either stupid or a participant in Big Academia (tm) conspiracy to keep the conventional wisdom from being substantively challenged.

This, if you look at the profession of history in general, and especially what is going on right now, is obviously nonsensical. Mortimer had an article published in the prestigious English Historical Review journal which discussed the possibility of Edward II's survival; it's not as if there's some big organized conspiracy to prevent this fourteenth-century event from being re-examined. That is literally what happens in history all the time. As I said in that other post, if lots of other historians have examined the same evidence and the best they can do is "maybe, but we don't actually know for sure," that is actually a GOOD thing, and reflective of the self-criticism and evidential lacunae that are naturally built into the practice of academic, especially premodern, history. We have to be able to admit when we don't know things or when the record is confusing, contradictory, or incomplete, rather than insisting that THIS IS OBVIOUSLY WHAT IT MEANS.

Anyway, all this means that if you just go on insisting that you're right and nobody else has anything valid to offer, that is not going to make you very popular, and doesn't signify that you're very interested in contributing to the overall field, rather than your own ego. It's also doubly ridiculous to me to insist that we DEFINITELY KNOW the truth, considering the nature and the biases of premodern evidence, and the way we always have to be careful about drawing sweeping or generalized conclusions even for well-documented events. The historian's entire practice is going "well maybe, but what about this?" or otherwise picking out exceptions and nuance and showing what we can and can't know, so this just... doesn't work with that. Hence, Mortimer is on my list of people who need to be read with caution, and with an eye to how I can independently corroborate (or indeed, challenge) his analysis. Nobody in this field is so smart that their word alone should stand as ultimate proof, and there are, alas, plenty of (often male) historians who just don't get that.

[littleapocalypsekitten]

So, I just had someone review some dumb crossover fanfiction I did... oh, probably 10 years ago or so just to inform me that they thought that my fic was “too edgy” and “seemed to be edgy just for the sake of being edgy and it rubbed them the wrong way.”  And...that’s all they said.  They were the same person who’d given another review consisting only of “Wut?”   I replied “Then stop reading it.”   (I didn’t see what chapter they’d gotten up to, I think it was a review on one of the mid-chapters).   I mean, it’s not like there aren’t other Super Smash Bros. / Hunger Games crossovers out there - and, well, if you’re going into a Super Smash Bros. / Hunger Games crossover you ought to know what you’re getting into.  It’s going to be much less like canon Smash Bros. and much more... cracky bullshit.  (Even if the fic is on the more dramatic end of cracky bullshit).    Well, now I know why whenever people comment on fics anymore, especially old ones, it tends to be generally positive / that people don’t do flames anymore because I think most people realize that fanfic authors just laugh at those. Oh, trying to hurt my fee-fees by telling me that I’m “too edgy” on a decade old fic?  I mean, this is just a hobby to us, we aren’t getting paid for it, most of us don’t even have betas / editors, it’s a thing we do for our own entertainment and (hopefully) the entertainment of others. (I actually remember telling myself “I can’t believe I’m writing this” when I wrote the damn thing.  I then proceeded later to write a Super Smash Bros. zombie apocalypse story that’s EVEN WORSE with the overwrought drama and stupid, stupid horror).  Crit is good if fics are recent / current and authors will generally take criticism on those but... something that was posted over 5 years ago?   It’s like... there is a difference.  I was reading a Trigun / Trigun Stampede fic recently.  It’s new / ongoing and I liked the idea of the fic, the premise had me hooked, but something in the first chapter bothered me as out of character.  It was something that I thought the author could make work - and they explained in a reply that it tied into plans of theirs and they needed something to happen for plot-reasons, but I pointed out how it struck me the wrong way just a little bit and how the plot-necessary thing could have happened in a different way, but said that I didn’t want to tell them how to write their fic and was waiting to see what they were going to do with it, that how they did things was genuinely interesting and morally complex and I wanted to see how it played out.   They up and said “No! Your idea is better! I’ll rewrite that bit in the chapter!”  And they did.  This was a conversation on a current / on-going fic and wasn’t me dismissing the fic entirely, just a friendly concrit (I wasn’t even expecting a change, it’s just...apparently, I helped)?     But... you know, if it had been a 10 year old some odd thing that the author was long finished with / had long abandoned, there would have been no point.  I would have been left to see what the author had done with it after the fact rather than real time and if I didn’t like the entire thing, I would have clicked away and not bothered reading it - and not bothered an author who had moved on, a decade hence.  I really think that certain...dudes?  Just like to discover things years after they’re posted and send little zings to authors who are long de-attached from things just to puff themselves up?  I don’t know.   

[tartartagliaboo]

lmao since the original poster blocked me for saying they were wrong and told me to either put up or shut up here is me debunking their original points as well as the people that reblogged but please feel free to correct me with canon proof so i can correct myself and for some reason my reblogs aren’t working rn i’ll just post it normally.

1. i don’t disagree but she had the character development that was meant for her. in the og series she felt like she was weak and powerless cos she was hence why she started her apprenticeship with tsunade not to become a stronger konuichi cos her team already had two strong shinobi but to help in other ways. her being the teams healer has saved her teams so much. even with her not being the most skilled in ninjutsu or dojutsu she is in the top 3 strongest taijutsu to ever be in the show. it is acknowledged by hashirama that she is stronger than tsunade during the war arc.

2. she has self control. the show is a japanese show so it portrays japanese comedy. slap stick comedy isn’t popular in countries out of asia and tbh i don’t rlly find it funny but it’s common for the hot headed character to hit the one brain celled character in asian media because the people the show was originally targeted for find it funny.

3. again with the same thing above.

4. what she says is incredibly insensitive but part of what she says is true. he did grow up selfish and let’s not forget he did tie up sasuke so he could appear as him and kiss sakura while sakura thinks sasuke is trying to kiss her.

5. she was rude as a child…cos she didn’t have her character development.

6. she never once said he had to love her back but in the manga and the books the implications of him liking her back were strong until he was emotionally stunted and didnt think of anything but revenge

7. again she was rude as hell as a child but by the time we got to the chunin exam she started to care more and more for him ie when she cheered for him during the fights

8. i wasn’t able to find any proof of this but what i did find was that it was a multi frame and it’s supposed to have individual pictures together. and the photo was so sarada could find the photo and move the plot along

9. … just cos she loves him doesn’t mean she should know every single minuscule detail about him

10. she definitely did but sasuke never opened up. she was a child when sasuke left. she never once thought him doing it to hurt her and if she did i want proof cos i wasn’t able to find it.

11. i think your just repeating the same stuff at this point lmao

12. ^^

13. not a valid point but an opinion

14. … this just feels like a reach lmao. just cos she doesn’t reach out on screen or anything doesn’t mean she never did lmao and if she specificallly said “i don’t ever want anyone to ever help me raise my daughter” and outwardly only rejected help thej i’ll believe this lmao.

15. again an opinion and not a valid point but a valid opinion cos your allowed to have your own opinion

16. i missed a point and idr which one it is so please point it out.

@bluewind1246

17. her false confession was a poor execution of trying to save naruto because sai’s way of wording why naruto was still chasing sasuke wasn’t why naruto was actually trying to chase after sasuke. sakura did it out of a place of love but she could have done it in a less shitty was. and besides naruto isn’t stupid. he knew that her confession was fake and her confession has absolutely nothing to do with hinata. even if she was going behind her back she would have rather be hated than know that her feelings for her ex team mate is the reason why her friend dies.

18. her friendship with ino was never broken. it was tense since they both liked the same guy but they have always been friends that never spoke nicely to each other. they also reconcile and become closer than before when they were children

@narhinafan

19. her training was focused around medical ninjutsu and taijutsu. she is the strongest in those fields as it is acknowledged throughout the show even though her medical ninjutsu is what’s mostly shown throughout shippuden.

20. lmao yea cos she has a crush on him?? and not naruto??

21. … like 60% of this show is plot armour this is a reach lmao

22. no this is false. sakura has impeccable chakra control. this is first mentioned when team 7 was climbing trees with kakashi during the og series. this chakra control is what tsunade was looking for when she was teaching sakura to be a healer at her caliber. ino is from a well known clan and is great at ninjutsu but she lacked the chakra control that tsunade was looking for in a student to pass her ways down. this proves vigilant when sakura masters tsunades hundred healings that only tsunade has mastered

23. i’ll be honest i don’t rlly remember the war arc beyond sasuke saying he wanted to become hokage so i’ll be back to this point

@helly-watermelonsmellinfellon

24. asian humor works differently from different countries. and she and ino have had competition in almost everything just like sasuke and naruto except the main things they compete over on screen have been boys. that scene wasn’t meant to be serious. cos it’s a comedy.

25. she knew that she might die when she went to fight sasuke. she wasn’t confident in her abilities cos again her main thing is healing and taijutsu. she may be good at getting out of dojutsu spells but that’s as far as she can go in dojutsu. she knew that her team would stop her and she willingly went on that suicide mission in hopes of hopefully doing some damage at least. and besides that scene wasn’t just her fighting but also plot so sasuke and naruto meet.

26. she wasn’t sitting on her ass. she’s a medical ninja. she was leading the hospital while the lost combat ninjas were fighting the people that were attacking. and ofc she was crying. her land just got destroyed, her teacher was dying, she only had very little chakra and it wasn’t her fight. she’s only seen crying at that one part. when she goes down to heal hinata when naruto and pain leave the main city to do their fight scene she’s seen fairly calm.

everyone is opinionated and valid for having their own opinions. but remember making stuff up or twisting a narrative to fit your opinion is totally not swag. you can hate a character just cos. i hate characters just cos and that’s valid but i’m not gonna make stuff up ya know. and i acknowledge that sakura isn’t a perfect character cos she does make mistakes and as an apologist sometimes it’s difficult to defend her but while she makes mistakes she does do other good things. she isn’t the strongest character in the show so she can’t do stuff that even naruto or sasuke can’t do and how she was written could be so much better but shonen animes from when naruto came out don’t always have the best written women.