#on identity

[holdingcaulfields]

on identity

ojibwe / noah kahan / richard siken / unknown / elliott smith / oamisoa / cameron awkward-rich

[hopelessvalentines]

+ i want to kick and scream for you to hear me. i want you to be as pathetic for me as i am for you

@endlessnamelesseternity

[llovelymoonn]

fawzul himaya hareed (@milodrama) reimagining shame, on writing and being seen (link to substack) \\ @allsadnshit \\ alyse leah angélique des francs on lirr train \\ sam sax xenotransplantation (via @cloudswamp) \\ liana finck

kofi

[jooniely]

On mickey and nasha

[wensvol]

when can i say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?

c. t. salazar / nosugarallspicenothingnice on pinterest / sierra demulder / naomi shibab nye

[webweabings]

JUST TELL ME WHO THE HELL AM I

Unknown; // Mohit. K.Misra; // “Who Am I?”, by Alastair Reid; // “A Dolls Heart” (2022), by NepetaLeijon27; // “Pieces on the Ground”, by Marianne Boruch; // Talismanist Giebra; // “Identity crisis”, by mini_daikon; // Lara Notsil in “Solo Command” (1999), from the novel series “X-Wing series” .

[a-study-in-bullshit]

the people that knew you before (what do they see)

[dread-full]

Hwang In-ho & Identity / Cynthia Cruz, 'Dark Register'

[bidoofenergy]

call me back

bidoofenergy | @screenshotsofdespair (x) | "The Glass Essay" - Anne Carson | Rhoda Alex | "Beneath the Strangeness of It" - Lisa Wright | screenshotsofdespair | "Saudade" - Michael Spence | @secondimpact (x) | @pansylair (x) | "Look over Yonder" - Sanaa Gateja | "Beautiful Short Loser" - Ocean Vuong | Tanuj Dargan | Carolyn Huu (tiktok) | My Way - Young the Giant | "namaskaram" - bidoofenergy

[kuugou]

ON REGAINING FREEDOM AND LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON AGAIN

euphoria (2019—) // far too young to die, panic! at the disco // unknown // getting older, billie eilish // “spring”, wound is the origin of wonder, maya c. popa // unknown // iain thomas // american teenager, ethel cain // musafa m. // unknown

[hopelessvalentines]

@cowboyvamplikeme @oldgodssuggestion

[llovelymoonn]

clarice lispector why this world: a biography of clarice lispector \\ fernando pessoa i have more souls than one: i see boats moving (tr. jonathan griffin)

kofi

[bookishblogging]

[musings-from-earth]

The world can have Popeye's and Mardi Gras, my favorite things about my culture are sacred and hidden in the almost incomprehensible scribbles of my grandmother's journals.

It's the Frenchisms behind the tongue, drowned in generations of pidgin English that we'd dress up around white folk before it was commodified into internet speech. Their parents called it ebonics, now they call it self expression.

It's river baptisms and Bayou prayers. It's skirted in linen and tignoned in plaid. It's the gifts I keep concealed, it's what was not lost in translation between papers and ports. Our grandfathers buried it in cane fields and deep in salt mines so that we wouldn't forget.

It's dressed up on Sundays, beneath billowing church hats. It's in the kitchen, and the bedroom, tossed to and fro when I'm on my way. It's wrapped up in the way we move. I can't tell you everything. You wouldn't understand, though it's plainly stated. Some things are for us.

[dual-domination]

I was reading the most recent chapter of In endless mist and rain, and I reread the tags for possible updates, but so far Weilanxie doesn't appear listed as a relationship, just its three side/inner ships. Avid fan here, I'll continue following the fic regardless of how the ships form or break up, but out of curiosity: does the lack of the Weilanxie tag indicate that there won't be a polyamorous relationship between them? Because despite the most recent events, I don't think this configures a love triangle in any way and the fic doesn't have the tag either. Can you talk a little about what to expect from the ships?

Even though the answer doesn't contain explicit spoilers, some parts are plot revelations in some way, so long text under the cut.

This is actually a very complicated question. Does this fic have polyamorous relationship? Off screen, if you count V shaped Xiao Hua/Hei Xiazi/Zhang Qiling, yet it’s only hinted that Xiao Hua is part of this relationship somehow/more than a friend, than yes - off screen because Xiao Hua doesn’t appear in any scene along with Xiazi and Xiaoge so far and as both Xiazi and Xiaoge are my characters, I’m not planning on having any scene like that, so it’s more a ‘their relationship may or may not be polyamorous/probably is platonic’ - is left for the reader’s taste and interpretation. Why am I including them in the answer of an ask about Weilanxie? Because Idk if having or not polyamory in a fic in general is the issue here or not.

We do have one(1) main character that is, in fact, polyamorous (the label never appears on screen, but the identity is there). One of them is not, like, definitely. We (me and @tazzy-ace) noticed a while ago that this character has the opposite feelings of a polyamorous person, yet he circumstantially finds himself in a very different mindset of a standard (western) monogamous person. I treasure the way I build my characters and I’m not willing to change him, so maybe he’ll end up being the the impeding factor of actual polyamorous relationship happening (or being the endgame here). We don’t have A THING outlined, we write out of vibes, this is how we made this fic work, so we don’t really know the ending of this. We have the goal of bringing a happy ending, and considering that this is a romantic story in the first place, a happy ending includes at least one ship staying together - will this happen? Maybe not, maybe the best ending for them will be to stay all apart (Eh, probably this won’t be the ending skjjsskj this is me being dramatic, but it’d be more likely to happen than the 3 of them ending in a polyamorous relationship). But what about a V shaped one? Not impossible, I’d say, exactly because the characters and the vibes both me and Deputy Chief have when writing new content for this fic is what decides the plot. So I don’t believe we’ll have the Weilanxie and the Happy Ending tags until the day we write the last chapter for real to know.

About the Love Triangle - elements of traditional love triangles such as rivalry, unrequited love and jealousy are not present in the story, we could say that no, it’s not a suitable tag/label. But in the sense that one of the characters will be somehow romantically involved with the two other ones for a while - which doesn't exactly constitute cheating, but I can't explain further without giving spoilers - so yes, somehow you could say that a love triangle exists. 

What to expect from the ships? Each one, you mean? Everything gets much worse before it gets any better, with all of them. With some, things get much worse more than once - we’re working hard to provide more Angst than we already had in this 125k posted.

Weilan and Shenxie share the place under the spotlight when it comes to ‘screentime’ and relationship development (or ruining relationship too kjssjjk). We didn’t make any of the relationships simple and if you thought that romance between one of the Guardian mains + any grave robber from DMBJ is already unlikely to happen/hard to develop with them being their canon selves, for canon reasons, believe me, we made it even harder. You can expect pain and smut. More pain than smut, I’m sorry. (Yet this fic is rated E and properly tagged about its sexual content, there’s not even one sex scene that happens for the sake of smut in itself, all sex is contextual and meaningful, no matter how horny it is, we put extra efforts in the emotional part of this).

Polyamory to be depicted as realistic, is a delicate thing, and as I said above, one of our main characters is not polyamorous, one of them is (and the third one ehh I won’t reveal rn), so you can expect to see both sides of it: someone comfortable about how he feels and how he sees his (supposed/potential) relationships, as well as someone who’s confused, trying his best, but in the end, really uncomfortable about the possibilities. No side/identity is portrayed as being better than the other, or as being more correct than the other. But the ‘polyamory is the solution for love triangles’ is definitely not what we want here. Because polyamory can’t be forced, being polyamorous is NOT a decision (if you’re queer, you know what I mean). At the same time we’ll have the picture of a polyamorous person being happy in a monogamous relationship (or with only one partner, if you prefer), we’ll have someone that doesn’t have as lifegoal a romantic relationship (except if it’s WITH ONE VERY SPECIFIC PERSON). Could he be read as aro? No. (But you can read him like that, if you want). His lack of romantic interest in general is part of his upbringing, the part of his culture that his life is based upon, and some more circumstances, but it’s not an identity. Could he be read as ace? A bit, but not really. Same explanation about the aro identity. We had long discussions about how these labels are useful HERE, but they wouldn’t be the case depending on a person’s culture and upbringing.

So yeah, this character that is not polyamorous won’t be labeled as this or that, he’s just himself, that’s all. I’ll leave to the readers to see what they want to see there in him (and please, don’t try to push on me - an ace and married person - this harmful idea that aro and/or ace people can’t/shouldn’t be in a romantic/sexual relationship).

All that said, this fic is not about polyamory, like some of my other fics and several of Tazzy's other fics. That's not part of the central themes, it's the identity of one of the main characters and may or may not influence (for better or worse) their relationships in the future.