#And sorry to all of those who I had an ongoing RP with before

[radiovisual]

are you going to come back?

((I keep telling myself im going to, but im not sure. Im especially unhappy with how this blog was written and how it looks at the moment, bc theres a lot of things id Want to change before getting back into rp here, but I have no energy or motivation to do so 😔 my art block from last year is Still ongoing, im still deeply fixated on other fandoms, and VERY recently I had an epiphany of some kind and haven't been able to stop paying attention to the news, bc anxieties about what's happening in Gaza/the West Bank, Sudan, and Chile, and not to mention this next American presidential election, have me reassessing my priorities in life, ykwim?))

((Im still around technically, i wont be deleting this blog or anything, im just in kind of a tough spot, mentally+emotionally+physically, and that makes it hard to get reinvested in something like this.))

((There's also the factor of... feeling rather restricted in this community. It's not any particular person or group of ppls fault, people are entitled to feel however they want around fictional subjects and themes, but i know that the types of things that i like to write and rp are dark and mature, and this fandom [despite the Nature of the show itself and the topics it covers] tends to attract a lot of very aggressive, very judgemental people -- as im sure youre all aware 😂 i found some friends here, but even still, a lot of the time i know i Can't get into the kind of stuff i ACTUALLY want to write, because most of the ppl in this community would [at least, way back when,] assume that That kind of writing means I'm a bad, dangerous person who wants to engage with those themes in real life 🙃. Which isn't to say anyone is Wrong for avoiding me if darker themes trigger them, by all means PLEASE block me for your sanity if thats what you have to do!! but when most all of those Exact Themes are LITERALLY, graphically present in the show, now, it's like. Idk man whats going on! Why are you here! if sexually abusive relationships bother these fans so much, then Why are they in THIS fandom of all places instead of somewhere tangibly Safer for their sanity, yk???))

(( i don't know. Maybe im just a brat, but ive always felt a little put out by the Hazbin community online. Its extremely self policing and isolating trying to find people i can feel comfortable talk to about my ideas, so ive kind of... given up and moved on, found a nice group of Freaks to be perverted about the Avatar sequel instead lmao))

((So... idk. I guess we'll see. But im very sorry it may have been wishful thinking when i said id come back. I really, truly meant it at the time -- things just changed 💔, both in me And in the community. And maybe theyll change again, idk!but i Do know there's people in this overarching Hazbin Tumblr RP community who don't like me very much (which is Okay), and I don't want to force myself to walk on eggshells anymore -- so I'm won't💪😎))

((I adored my time here while i was active, whuch it why i wont delete it -- i go back to re read threads all the time! -- but unless there's a group of sexual weirdos developing that i could fall in with AND I can find a way to balance this with the rest of my life, im still gonna be on this indefinite hiatus 💀👍 sorry))

((Btw -- Palestinians are in desperate need of e-SIMs to keep in touch with their loved ones and to organize humanitarian aid within the Gaza strip itself -- if any of you have a few spare dollars, please consider getting involved. I know the news is very quiet rn, especially if you're in America like me, but let me make this very clear; We are. kind of sort of Already IN World War Three. Russia and China and the global south are finally starting to hold the west accountable and the west is failing a shitting its pants about it Spectacularly. The world order is literally shifting. There's not one, but SEVERAL major international conflicts brewing right now, as America is sliding into fascism at break neck speed bc Genocide Joe is finally realizing he's probably not going to get re-elected [on account of all the genocide] on TOP of finally seeing the tangible effects of climate change. South America and Australia are on FIRE. Like NEVER before.))

((Never Again is Now. We could be going over the temperature "tipping point" of the planet BY 2030. now is NOT the time to be wallowing in escapism, no matter how much we desperately need/want it. If there is EVER a time to get involved with the real world and to take a step back from the internet and high stress fandom bullshit, it is NOW. No matter what Side of these issues you stand on, EVERYONE needs to be voting, everyone needs to be paying attention.))

(( if you can't afford esims [no shame, i often can't either, money is tight everywhere], then at the very least get This website open in your tabs. It generates revenue with free Daily clicks, the proceeds of which are all sent to UN organizations -- particularly UNRWA, which is VITAL to maintain not only getting aid INTO Gaza, but also retaining Palestinians legal right to return to their land -- without UNRWA, Isreal can begin to LEGALLY, haphazardly "deport" Palestinians, which would take YEARS to reverse through future court proceedings. Do your part, it only takes a few seconds a day 💪🌱))

((Alright, thats all! Sorry if you wanted a short sweet answer, but ive actually been ruminating on all of this, so thank you for this ask, for giving me a chance to talk about it all. Im happy to see this community thriving in the wake of Season 1, even if im not joining in myself -- you all keep up the great work, and keep having fun with it ❤ let it empower you to explore the value of Charlie's message and think of ways to impliment it in your daily life And on the world at large‼))

[mossyinkynebulous]

I'm sorry, I was just looking over the Watty's stuff and like wtf.

Disclaimer: I've been on Wattpad since 2015, so like 9 years now (makes me feel old) and never once participated in their awards competition, the Watty's. Wasn't there to win awards, was there to win hearts. (even if I update as slow as molasses) Anyways gonna ramble under cut

So, Wattpad. Ya know, that site that's known for fanfiction. That site that was built up by fanfiction. That site that has decided that fanfiction is no longer acceptable to be submitted to the Watty's... Oh ya didn't know that. Yeah, apparently this is the second year that they haven't allowed fanfiction to be submitted. Was skimming comments and supposedly to staff, most stories on Wattpad are original works. Which I feel they're about as original as a fanfic work when I'm pretty sure a good section of that is built up by werewolf fics that almost always read about the same and are as predictable as can be after you read like 3 of 'em, but oh no most of the works are og. Sure copyright is an issue, but ya wanna know something? Fanfic writers usually don't want money or anything for what they've written, they just want their work to be acknowledged and appreciated. So like, idk, there could just be no prize besides like a hey this work won the fanfic category congrats to it.

Two more qualms about the Watty's: poetry and short story collections aren't eligible either. Why? No reason in particular given. Guess is that 500 word minimum per "chapter" that amounts to 50,000 words is just /too hard to judge\. As someone who has managed to acquire honorable mention and have a poem I wrote published in a book of poems by others, I find this disheartening that this website that encourages creativity is removing two forms that many people work extremely hard to do. Do they realize how hard it is to write a series of poems? Do they realize how hard it is to tell a full story in only a few words, much less multiple? Do they realize how disheartening it is to be reading over the guidelines thinking hey I may be able to actually enter this year only to read at the end that the genre you write isn't accepted?

I knew I couldn't enter regardless of the genre limitations. For completed works, it's had to have had its first chapter published after January of 2022, and all of mine that are completed were years before that. For ongoing works, you have to have had updated once a week for 8 of the 10 weeks prior to entering and I update like once every 3-6 months if lucky.

Another complaint about Wattpad I have is that they took away my dm's. Unhinged, I know, but I actually used them occasionally. Like if I wanted to have a conversation with someone instead of in the comments section of a story we could just dm on the same site and not have to worry about putting a social media or contact to where anyone could just come dm you and you have no idea why. I enjoyed reading over past rp I did with someone back in like 2016 because we fell out of touch and it was the only rp I did with someone that wasn't pencil and paper being passed back and forth in someone's room, that happened like twice btw.

Wattpad has slowly become a site that I don't know anymore. It's become a place where I've stayed only out of nostalgia (and I'm used to its formatting). A place where a part of me grew up at and called home. A place that is now a shell of the home that it used to be. It saddens me to see it slowly deteriorate from what it used to be. No one I know uses it anymore, and those that I mention that I still do almost always ask why, why haven't I moved to AO3 or another site, or are surprised that it's still being used anymore. Wattpad was there for me when I started to slip. It was there for me when I was at my lowest. It was my escape...but I don't think it can be anymore. I'll try to finish the ongoing fic I have there and uphold the promise I made with myself, but after that I don't think I'll use it anymore. Not after all of these changes that keep happening and honestly, saying goodbye to it is like saying goodbye to a long time friend.

[hirvitank]

First line meme

I was tagged by @onewhoturns ❤️

Rules: List the first lines of the last ten (10) stories you published. Look to see any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any. Then tag some friends.

I’ll tell you what patterns I notice, it’s the pattern of me hardly ever finishing my WIPs okayyyy. Still this is fun even though I was barely able to collect 10 stories. Wish I was self-aware enough to understand what I was doing, still thanks so much for tagging me because this is really interesting.

1. Downpour, TLoK, TahnoxKorra (My first online fic, it’s old don’t judge)

The wind beat down on her sun-kissed skin as she roughly made her way through the languidly moving crowd, absentmindedly she noted the way the signboards of various shops and restaurants creaked, swinging melodiously due to the ongoing tempest.

2. Waste, Dishonored, EmilyxThe Outsider

The transience of all things worldly and other had been a constant given during my life, and long reign after that; it shouldn’t have been a surprise when my debt was due.

3. Stay, Dishonored, EmilyxThe Outsider

He’d appeared again, as he often had these past months.

4. Hubris and Nemesis, RP, Dishonored, EmilyxThe Outsider (I’m adding my first part for this too because I love this RP and it should definitely be finished sometime!!!!)

He stirred within the darkness, shifted his stiff joints, ancient muscles, rattling bones - his body hissed with every small movement, like a pit of snakes.

5. Dishonored 2 but better, RP, Dishonored, EmilyxThe Outsider (adding this too because damn @iron-moon I’m sorry I left you hanging I love this ugh let’s finish it)

It had happened again. Though, in all fairness, Emily knew to consider herself lucky; last time an empress had been overthrown, the matter had been settled with an assassin’s blade through the gut.

6. Stuck inside the Outsider, now what?, Dishonored, EmilyxThe Outsider (crackfic out of control)

The first of many things Emily noticed upon waking, were the strange—and entirely out of place—creaks and groans of aged woodwork, interrupted by a series of industrial huffs and puffs.

7. Chickenfic, Dishonored (also pure crack which I’ve never finished or posted—probably for the best since everyone’s a chicken)

Emily strolls at her leisure, pecking at the surrounding shrubbery; she has no particular taste for it, but still insists on doing so only to watch it break.

8. Creosote, Naruto, GaaraxSakura

Alone, Sakura watches the scene before her, the evening air pricking her skin.

9. Creosote chapter 69, Naruto, GaaraxSakura (more crack nobody asked for)

She checks herself in the mirror, fusses over her hair, tilts her head as she scrutinises her features.

10. Walk with me, Naruto, GaaraxSakura (unpublished work I might never finish or publish but started for the fun of it)

Reflecting back, Sakura isn’t sure when it started.

I’m tagging those who write stories……. @iron-moon @silurisanguine ! @artabria !? @rosy-under-your-bed ? @chizuisaforeignperson ? I don’t have lotsa writey writey friends. @shambhalala !? Whoever writes do this I’m looking at you

[carlyraejcpsen]

alright, i’ve tried to keep quiet because i truly believe in karma and wanted this rp to close through the admin’s own actions and not give them any opportunities to blame it on me instead. it also felt like beating a dead horse, because i was sure they’d close the rp after losing a huge proportion of their active members and the majority of their diversity. however, after seeing multiple people sharing their experiences today, they are still posting promo posts and starting their event. so yeah, here’s my experience with @thevillagerp​​

NOTE: i no longer have screenshots from my conversations with the admins, as i blocked them when i left the rp for the sake of my own mental health, but i did save the text in my drafts, so the messages below are copy pasted. i have not edited them in any way. They also deleted my original anonymous messages off of their blog.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: racism, very vague allusions to homophobia and transphobia

so i was a member of this roleplay for around two months. during my time there, it was startlingly obvious that white fcs were preferred and prioritised, both from the fact that they got more plots and interactions in general and from the fact that admins never promoted diversity on the main. even now, they repeatedly say they “would still love to receive some more male and non-binary apps” while ignoring that they currently have a ratio of 8 fcs of colour to 24 white fcs. their diversity rules at the time were that 1/3 of a mun’s characters had to be played by an fcoc. so people could easily just play one or two white characters.

a while ago, i sent an anonymous message to the main asking if they had considered perhaps changing this rule to be 2/3 characters instead of 1/3, since there were so few muses of colour in the roleplay (as i said before, they’ve since deleted this from their blog so i cannot provide a screenshot). they responded that they had been thinking of upping the character limit to four instead of three, with a rule that 2/4 must be played by an fcoc. i gave them the benefit of the doubt and the time to enact this change, but nothing happened.

so a few weeks later, i sent them this message on anonymous:

I was wondering if you had thought any more about the diversity rules here? I know you said before that you were considering increasing the character limit, but I noticed that hasn’t happened and I wanted to know if that was a change we’re going to see or if you would consider changing the rules in another way? I’m really disheartened by the lack of diversity in the roleplay

at the time there were 18 characters of colour out of a total of over 60. they responded (again, i’m sorry i don’t have the actual wording since they’ve deleted the messages) that they had thought about it and decided against upping the character limit, but instead would be having a weekly “poc acceptance day,” where they would only be accepting apps with fcs of colour. they also said they were doing this “now that the waitlist was mostly cleared,” which meant that the rp was mostly at capacity anyway, so they needed to look more at how to encourage their existing members to promote diversity, since there weren’t spaces open for new people to bring them in.

i responded with another anon expressing my disappointment and pointing out that they had done more to prevent having too many celebrity characters than too few muses of colour, as at the time they had a ban on celebrity muses. i wouldn’t usually suggest a ban on certain fcs, but as it was something they had done for celebrity characters, then i supposed it was a reasonable option.

they didn’t even respond to this message and instead posted on the main asking me to come off anon to discuss it. so i did, and i sent them the following dm:

i didn’t want to come off anon because i honestly feel really ostracised in this group and didn’t want to make it worse, but i don’t want to drop this issue and you aren’t comfortable addressing it publicly so here we are i guess. like i said in my previous message, i really don’t see how a “poc acceptance day” is going to make anywhere near enough of a difference. people will just wait for the opportunity to play their white characters. there are only 18 characters of colour in a roleplay with over 60 characters. that’s less than a third, which is obviously concerning. what’s even more concerning for me is that these characters are more often than not overlooked. i am often ghosted when plotting, or people don’t even reach out at all when i like plotting calls or intro posts. and then i have to watch characters like leo almost exclusively interact with white women (i’m sure that’s not the only example, but it is the first that comes to mind as he is one of the more active characters).

so this issue goes so much deeper than there just not being adequate representation in the rp. i really tried to help, i suggested making it a rule that 2/3 characters need to be poc in my original ask and you mentioned upping the character limit in response. i was worried that my concerns were being brushed aside, but i waited a while to give you the benefit of the doubt and the space to discuss the issue. so you can understand why it was really upsetting today to learn that the one thing you suggested was dropped and instead replaced with something that is barely scratching the surface of the problem. and i don’t know if it was your intention, but by saying that you were waiting for the waitlist to clear, it comes across as not wanting to receive any backlash from people who would want to join with only white characters. and even if people did want to join with faceclaims of colour, they can’t because the waitlist is cleared. like i suggested, you could change the rules so that 2 out of 3 characters must be people of colour. or, as was your proposed idea, up the character limit to four. you could also put a temporary ban on white faceclaims until the ratio evens out. as i mentioned, it’s really distressing that this was something you were willing to do for celebrity characters, but not to aid diversity.

i also just want to make it clear that these have been the only anons i’ve sent, i know you’ve been getting other ones, but those weren’t from me!!

( for context, they were receiving anons from someone else claiming that they felt left out in the rp ).

i had hoped that coming off anon would show them that this was a very real issue which was affecting their members, as well as giving them a space to discuss it privately instead of on the main. they responded with:

Hi Em, thank you for coming forward. We really, really appreciate it and we understand it’s not an easy thing to do. We also appreciate you flying the flag for diversity so strongly. We can always strive to be better, we are on the same page with you here.

Let us just explain our decision making. Firstly, just to address the waitlist, that was certainly not at all our intention when we brought it up. It was a logistical decision with 5+ applicants having already waited a week for acceptance and aware of their position on a waitlist.

When we decided against upping the character limit (and therefore the 2/4 POC character rule), we thought a POC acceptance day could be a good alternative course of action. In our eyes, this was something that would probably bring more POC characters to the group than the 2/4 rule because we knew there weren’t going to be many muns taking up an additional fourth character. This was a rule we’ve seen other groups enjoy success from so we wanted to try it out here. Plus, we think a day that explicitly highlights diversity every week would bring the message to the forefront of everyone’s minds. As we said, we’re going to monitor this over the next couple of weeks to see if it brings any improvement because we’d really like to have it as an ongoing rule.

The non-POC ban is actually a measure we’ve spoken about too and we are considering putting one in place should this fail. Thank you for raising your concerns, know that we’ve taken them very seriously and we hope that you’ll trust our judgement in trying this rule out first to see where it leads.

first of all, i don’t think i even have to mention the wording of “flying the flag for diversity.” but the real crux of the issue here is that they supposedly wanted me to come off anon to discuss the issue, but instead just explained their idea further and didn’t take anything i said on board. they didn’t even say a single word about how i told them i felt ostracised and regularly got ignored. i knew from speaking to other muns in the rp who played muses of colour (and just from looking at the dash) that they felt the same way too, but of course was only speaking from my own experience.

i thought long and hard about how to respond to this, as i was so disheartened by their unwillingness to listen to their members and the fact that they didn’t care that i felt left out. it felt like they had asked me to come off anon just so they knew who was messaging them and therefore put a target on my back, so honestly the thought of being on the dash or talking to the admins made me incredibly anxious. before i had a chance, however, they responded again with:

Hi hun, we’ve continued discussing this issue over the last couple of days and we wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to put in place a non-POC ban instead. Thank you again for holding a mirror up to the group. We do hope that this will recorrect the balance.

so i waited to see how things would play out. they posted about this new ban here and pinned the post to the top of the main:

[ IMAGE ID: a screenshot from thevillagehq of an admin update, which reads: in the interest of keeping the village a diverse space, we are currently only accepting applications for POCs. please note that any apps or reserves submitted to us for faceclaims that are not POCs will be deleted. we will lift this rule once we see fit.

thank you for your understanding and your efforts in making this group a brighter, more inclusive and diverse place for all. /END ID ]

this rule remained in place for around two weeks, during which time they made almost no effort to promote it. the above post was pinned to the main page, but that was the only mention of the ban anywhere on their page, they didn’t update the rules page or even put a note on the application page about it. during this two week period, the admins posted 10 promo posts, none of which suggested fcs or even mentioned the ban or diversity at all. the ban was then lifted suddenly when the pinned post was removed and the admins just went back to accepting apps with white fcs. the ratio had only evened out in those two weeks (from 18 out of 65 to 24/50) because of people going inactive or leaving, and there was nothing put into place to continue to promote diversity after the lift of the ban. in the three days after the ban was lifted, the admins posted over 10 promo posts, the same amount they had posted during the entirety of the ban. it was clear that they had no intention of actually making changes in their rp and had only done so because i refused to drop the issue.

again, i thought a lot about what i wanted to message them. i knew at this point that they didn’t want to make any real changes, but i still felt like i had to make it clear to them how disappointing their actions were. once again, i was messaged before i even had a chance, this time for bubbling.

as you can see in the above correspondence, i had told the admins point blank that i felt left out and ignored in the rp because of the characters i played (aubrey plaza, mj rodriguez and keiynan lonsdale fcs. all of my characters were queer and used either she/they or they/them pronouns). as a general rule, the only people who wanted to write with me and have interesting plots with me were people who played other muses of colour. the rp had a rule that you must reply to 3+ muns on every character, which i had been doing. i had only been back from my hiatus for a few days at this point and had responded to 6 different open starters the day prior. their message to me read:

Hi hun. There’s something we wanted to address to you directly. It’s been expressed to us by multiple members during these last few weeks that they have felt excluded by your character within the group, especially when it comes to the friend bubble that has formed between Mars, Bowie, Luvena, Asher and others. 

While we encourage the development of friendships and trust that this isn’t intentional, we have a zero tolerance for bubble roleplaying at The Village. We are aware that our three mun activity rules have been met by all parties involved, however, bubbling is usually a little more nuanced than that and it seems it has unfortunately begun to create a bit of a divide within the group. 

We have already issued individual warnings to a few people within the bubble, however with multiple members still expressing their concerns to us, we decided it would be better to address the group as a whole. We hope that by pointing this out to you, you will try and branch out to your fellow members a little more from now on - and try and be a little more inclusive when it comes to everyone else in the group. 

We take such matters very seriously as admins, and while we hope it won’t have to come to this, there will be consequential steps taken should we not see any changes in your interactions in the weeks to come.

as you can imagine, i was incredibly upset to receive this message after already telling them i didn’t get plots from many of their members and they had done nothing. even people who i had previously messaged continued to only write with the same few white characters. i don’t deny that we definitely had a friendship group between our characters, but there were multiple people in that roleplay, including the admins, who only cared about ship plots or plots with the same few muns. me and other people who received the same message had all previously told the admins that people aren’t plotting with us and gotten ignored, so receiving this message made it clear that they neither cared about us nor wanted us in their rp. and so i responded as below:

yeah i literally told you i felt left out because there are multiple people only writing with white characters and you never addressed it, so this message is honestly insulting. i have reached out to almost every new member, responded to multiple open starters and have tried to plot with as many people as possible. like i told you, i am often left on read or people don’t even message me at all. if people do message me, i am usually expected to put in all of the effort and if people aren’t interested in actually developing plots with me then i am obviously not going to force my characters on them. all of my characters are queer, non binary people of colour and the harsh truth of this roleplay is that people don’t care about them. i even wrote out a whole list of 20 detailed suggested connections in an attempt to get more plots and nothing came from that either. i’ve even gotten anonymous hate saying that offering to explain my characters’ pronouns was “patronising,” which i didn’t feel like i could approach you about because, when i told you about how i’m feeling excluded, you didn’t care.

so if i only have actual plots with the people who actually care about my characters, i make no apologies. i also don’t even have threads with half of the characters you named, asher being the only one, and have literally only just come off hiatus. so please explain how i am bubbling, because this really just feels targeted at this point.

you’ve made it endlessly clear that this rp isn’t a safe space for people who want to play diverse characters. the main was practically silent while you had a ban on white faceclaims, which you never actively promoted, and then you dropped that suddenly without putting anything else in place. you also deleted my initial anonymous messages asking about diversity as if you were trying to hide that there was ever an issue. you turned anonymous messages off, so that no one can safely criticise you. because i did that off anon and ever since it has felt like there is a massive target on my back. my characters have been “accidentally” on the activity checks multiple times despite me being on hiatus (people get a notification that they were tagged even if you remove their name from the list btw). plus when i asked for an extension on my hiatus, you said that you would allow it “just this once” which now makes me feel like i can’t come to you if i’m busy. right now, for example, i am in the middle of moving house, but i’m also stressed about trying to stay active because you have made yourselves completely unapproachable.

the ratio only evened out slightly because members left. then suddenly after the ban you’re posting multiple promo posts a day??? you couldn’t get more obvious. i came to you about diversity in good faith, hoping that it was something you were unaware of, but you have made it abundantly clear that you actively do not want to promote diversity in your roleplay, we are just here to be witnesses to your ship. there are multiple members who are actually bubbling who have been brought to your attention, but nothing has been done. leo continues to only write with the same three white and white passing characters. charlotte pretty much only appears to write with leo and post a vague “message me for plots” post that wasn’t even tagged. both of you only put effort into your ship threads with each other and the occasional text threads. even with something like group events: while i’ve been here, there’s been a pride event that neither of your characters were even in new york for (an event where i was the only one reaching out and posting multiple starters, by the way); there was no event last month, and this month all you’re talking about is this housewarming party.

i’m really disheartened that it’s come to this, but i can’t be here anymore. please post unfollows for all my characters. you’ve said multiple times that we should trust you as admins, but this message shows again that i simply can’t do that. from the disregard of trigger warnings, to the way you treated being held accountable for the lack of diversity, to how you respond to people asking for hiatuses, this isn’t a safe space. even if i stayed, the target you have placed on me is making it insufferable to just write my characters in peace.

the other muns who received the same bubbling message (copy pasted btw, we all got the same one word for word) all responded with their own concerns and criticisms in responses of a similar length to mine. none of us received a reply, our unfollows were just posted the next day without any further responses from the admins. a few of the other members who had written and plotted with us chose to leave as well, which the admins wrote off as us just dragging them with us as opposed to them being able to make their own decisions and being aware of the situation (which was incredibly obvious. no promotion of a white fc ban, suddenly being active on the main once they try to stealthily drop the ban, then the majority of their muses of colour leaving???)

i haven’t paid the rp much attention since i left, as i mentioned above i blocked the main and the majority of the members just for my own mental health. but from a quick scroll through today i can see that the only change in diversity rules is that now instead of your third character having to be a poc, it is now your second. however, you still only have to have 1 character out of 3 have a fc of colour. so very little has been done, but of course i’m not surprised in the slightist.

these admins don’t want diversity in their roleplay. if you play any character who isn’t a rich, white, cishet neurotypical, please avoid it at all costs. it’s not in any way a safe environment.

[englacial]

A Warm Goodbye or A Message for the Future

I haven’t been active here in more than a year which is mostly by accident but also quite purposeful. I had intended to remain in the RP community but as is evident by my many returns, disappearances, and moments of unreliability, this is a chapter of my life that has come to an end. I say this with an abundance of love for what writing here has given me and also with renewed knowledge of what that progression has looked like for me. This community has been amazing and it has also been devastating for me at times. I have also played a role in that devastation and wasn’t always the best version of myself (and I’m still not). 

COVID certainly threw my life into turmoil and unearthed a lot.

In December of last year I went through a mental health crisis that landed me in patient for a brief period and also lead me to the deepest and most accurate understanding of my mental health I’ve ever contended with. Through the process of finding a new therapist experienced with dissociative disorders, I was diagnosed with DID and my whole life suddenly made sense. 

The ups and downs, the identity confusion, the loss of time and deep misunderstandings of situations I was faced with suddenly made sense in their entirety. Many gaps have been filled simply by working on this in therapy and it has forced me to reflect on my time in the RP community and how I’ve interacted with fellow writers, both good and bad. It’s also made it incredibly difficult to let go of this account and writing because for me, it was often the only opportunity I had to express myself as me. Roleplaying was an excuse to be a different person, an easy cover for what was actually occurring in our life. I haven’t always known how to do that nor did I fully grasp why OCs felt more like me than me (surprise! they’re me). There were times when my self-expression was really self-injurious and that is painful but necessary for me to realize and acknowledge. Trauma changes the ecosystem of the human body in upsetting and ugly ways. More than anything, I was escaping the recognition that in refusing to heal, I was often doing harm to myself and others.

Fundamentally, I was seeking human connection where I had been denied it and we were playing out parts and trauma we were forced to keep hidden. For me, DID is about multiple traumas I have faced and the way my body chose to cope with it. It means a lot for what my childhood looked like and the incredible survival tools necessary for me to grow into an adult.

When I first started roleplaying on tumblr I was just 13 years old. I’m now 24 and have so much still to learn. I knew I was different growing up. I knew I had experienced pain. I knew I had difficulties expressing myself. I didn’t know I had DID or why there was so much confusion crowding my experiences online and in, truly, the only space I was able to fall into away from the ongoing turmoil in my life. I went by many different names, played many different characters, and made many different friends but this was difficult and I was not always kind. Frequently there were dissociative barriers that presented as amnesia and compartmentalized selves that in DID are called alters. The consistency with which I was forgetting myself, my actions, and people I’d met was a major detriment and it also enabled adults in the community to take advantage of and use me. The RP community was the stage for which many people with more life experience than myself, hurt me as a child. As I remained in the community, I began growing into a very dysfunctional adult and a part of that was to hide from my past in the community and parts of myself I didn’t recognize or accept as being me (collective). It is very difficult to contend with actions you don’t remember and I was not ready to take accountability for what I did as a scared and hurt child and what I was running from as an equally scared and hurt adult.

Mental health has always been important to me. I have talked at length about being a survivor of CSA, trafficking, and other forms of abuse and neglect. I have talked about my struggles with PTSD and depression. Despite this I was still not healing. Acknowledgement of mental health only does so much if the process of actually healing is not accessible to you.

My biggest takeaway from the long term, trauma informed therapy I have started is that I really didn’t know what healing looked like until I not only had an accurate assessment of what the problem was but accepted it and stopped hiding from it. This is difficult with DID. It is designed to operate in the background. Not knowing precisely your own experience, not having all of your memories is a way to conceal pain, not confront it. Working with myself as a system has been the most fundamental building block in actually healing, in actually accepting my trauma, in accepting how my trauma lead me to being dysfunctional in my relationships and in how I interacted with the people I cared about. Before I started doing this, it was easy to distance myself from my own actions. I did not remember them, I believed it was another person (because often it was, though this does not distance the actions from myself), and I thought I could just move away from it because it was not representative of me. That’s just not true. System accountability demands that I confront in myself the ways that not holding myself accountable lead to harm caused. In the RP community, I have been antagonistic of others. I have concealed my identity when confronted with actions of my past that I did not remember. As a child I lied about my age to the appeasement of adults in my circle at the time who were grooming me and as a result people connected to me were hurt when I moved away from them as someone else entirely. So much happened in this community and with people I met that it was foundational in how I learned to cope (for better or worse) and how I carried myself going forward. The accounts I had here were more real than life to me. That for me was a dysfunction. I was hurt as much as I caused hurt and this carried over when people recognized me but I didn’t recognize them or I was pressed for information and suddenly realized I was multiple people. It happened so many times here that I don’t blame anyone for feeling distanced from me, hating me, feeling hurt by me. My sense of self was fragmented and so was my sense of my actions. As it comes together more clearly, I understand now that as much as I have faced harassment in this community and my share of hatred and vitriol, I contributed to it as well.

In order to truly say goodbye, I feel I must also directly hold myself accountable for harm caused by my actions while I shared space here.

I made friends who were hurt in the crossfire of my search for self, whose trust I broke and whose boundaries I did not respect. I don’t think I can ever directly apologize to these people for what transpired between us but I do understand with specificity what actions of mine lead to the dissolution of our friendship and the hurt that they felt as a result. Those things weren’t ok. Being aware of the circumstances that lead to them does not excuse them and I am sorry. For many years I was a steamroller of uncertainty and of cyclical harm.

What I want and what I want for others is happiness.

Happiness to me is getting to experience the full breadth of human emotion while living under a stable community that is providing all of the basic necessities such as food, water, shelter, and materials to create goods and explore creative talents while simultaneously getting to share all of these things with everyone else inside the system. Being connected to others while having your needs met, is the only form of life that makes sense and for two full decades of my life, I did not have this. Many others don’t either.

Systematic abuse and denial of resources is something that follows people within their muscle memory patterns, nervous system, and within neurological pathways inside of their brain. People with dissociative amnesia are often among the most exploited because they were never given the tools to continue to build memory recall. When they are given all of these tools, we find that overtime they will continue to get better at recalling their lives and experiences, people they have met, and food they have eaten, joys they’ve shared. The brain is a muscle that retains everything that happens to it. It is incredibly absorbent and elastic. If something happens to it, it will remember. For people who have been systematically harmed, especially over extended periods of time, this can cause extremely difficult issues with memory recall. Eventually, these memories can return but it means removing people from systems of harm not by force but by replacing them with healthy and bustling systems that can offer them the love, tools, support, and nourishment for their body that they need.

Systemic malnourishment especially through resource denial under capitalism is a major contributor to this problem. Chronic dehydration’s link to memory problems, to name one example, is well documented. The issue with this even when people have access to all of that information is that they don’t have the reflexive memory abilities to continue to nourish themselves and be well. More and more these people and communities impacted by this kind of harm will seek refuge in accessibility (positive). If the tools are right in front of them surrounded by a multitude of people and supportive communities, they will have a much easier time remembering. Grounding is incredibly important even once outside of a system of harm because recall ability is a learned skill. People who have experienced repeated and/or prolonged abuse and harm (including systematic abuse like racism, homophobia, transphobia, et al.) have a much more difficult time learning and retaining this ability which contributes to the formation of dissociative disorders like DID.

The memories are still there, but it’s extremely difficult to begin to unravel that mystery when they are among the most likely to forget to remember. Recollecting memories is not only difficult for them, it is something their body has reflexively protected them against so that they can continue to survive in ongoing systems of harm.

When they continue to reproduce systems of harm, it is because they have been systematically gatekept from their needs and the healthy communities that can meet those needs from birth.

In order to help people suffering from dissociative barriers in terms of DID/OSDD, it is of utmost importance to continue to care for them as a collective so that they can then go on to care for themselves and give back to communities that they may have unknowingly harmed (this includes caring for yourself). It’s important to look inside of these communities and the conditions they’ve been living in with love and support. Sometimes the conditions are bad because they are incapable of caring for themselves after previous caretakers have abandoned them. 

Many people with dissociative disorders come from families who were absent for the majority of their lives even if they were living under the same roof. Sometimes these families will have noticed their child’s behavior, questioned where it came from and then find the answers are unexpected and daunting to take on. When faced with the question of whether or not their own child is safe to continue loving as a result, they will often continue to recreate systems of harm or are told by healthcare professionals to do things with their children that are not healthy for them which can on its own become traumatic.

The environments that dissociative disorders result from are very difficult to navigate. If you suspect you or someone you know is dealing with a dissociative disorder, it is important to keep in mind the circumstances endured that might have contributed. 

We cannot always be the protectors, we cannot always shield people from harm, we cannot always stop them from causing harm themselves, but an increased awareness and understanding looking in can help considerably. 

People with dissociative disorders are at high risk of being repeatedly groomed and harmed because of the nature of the disorders. They deserve the protection and security to fully form and emote as a human being without being harmed again, and when they themselves cause harm it is important to understand why this is happening and it is necessary when they realize that something is harmful that those behaviors and beliefs are replaced with new ones that are healthy, constructive, and more reflective of what they want. With dissociative and amnesiac barriers, this can become complicated but it is mandatory for system growth and healing.

Preventing harm starts in recognizing where it lives inside of ourselves.

To finish this post, I would like to share some poems that myself and others in my system wrote regarding our experience with DID:

Each time it happened I became another person But they always found me I tried my best to explain I’m still me but I need to be safe And no one listened I tried to show don’t tell I tried to scream it out loud Then I tried to forget it completely They always found me The caretaker inside of me was a flame I was forced to keep lit Sometimes kindness could not touch his flame The child hungered for a hand to hold but was held back from exploration No one told me I was we I had to dissect myself over and over in a lab that I created Now that I love myself Who is here to rejoice? -Beck

In my dreams I see a giant machine That I pilot I step inside my circuits Firing As a connection blooms to life I feel each part creak and crack As they move away and step forward The joints protest with disuse but Life bursts to turn on Twinkling lights of Motherboard parts that Illuminate metal I become like the moving backdrop to the stars a Galaxy swirling into A robot

Suddenly I feel afraid Am I just stitched together scraps that someone rescued from the crash? Am I the real deal? Or are my thoughts Synthetic projections onto a reality of my past that I’m just parts and not You Not Whole But wait I love the parts I Love the robot I see them woven together like A junkyard dragon that Soars overhead as a beacon of glittering silver held together by Intricate threads closer to a Kite Than heavy metal Something else entirely The machine cannot be confined to this earth It transcends infinitely It is life sometimes more than living -Aspen

I remember when I was small and I was running Through flowers Through mazes I remember when I was small and my palms would catch hold of blades of grass to brace my fall I remember being so small the ground would swallow me up Puddles like looking glasses That I dip into and Sink down to the bottom The boats crossing overhead While I swim I remember when the world was small and I was big Looking down at towns moving below Hiding in the ceiling as The room moves -Hannah

I have danced on the graves of relationships cast aside Pretending they were temples and not places of pain I am not the same ghost who haunts there Though some would see it in my face and hear it in my Disembodied voice Telling them I’m So over it... While the tears still sting I don’t visit their headstones anymore but the remnants of offerings I’ve made with Sweat/Blood Still linger like the bitter taste of Wine sipped in your honor or that I pour out at the soil marking where you left or where we stumbled A place you tried to bury me, too I don’t leave you to rest in peace I leave so I can -Jana

I see the revolving door of Our mind Many stepping in to walk through Sometimes more than one and It’s great I talk to them They’re my friends They go to work They wave and smile at me But I don’t step on Something inside of me holds me in place Afraid of the Spinning wheel Often I step on and just get Spun right out or I say the wrong things on the other side I don’t have the best reputation Some would say “She lies,” or “She’s so aggressive!” They see my teeth bared in anger and My arms folded over my chest to Conceal the soft spot under my armor where a spear might pierce They see me like a beast whose eyes glow red They do not know that the Wolf isn’t just a part of me and that I’m the monster they’ve seen There are others who have set fire to my path Concealing the tracks that reveal Villages I’ve been to Living peacefully before the Wolf leaps out and disrupts them Many people got too close or They hurt too personally and I took the blame for the abandonment and pain looking at a legacy where A scared kid devastated other scared kids I cleaned up after them and I Built my defenses to Hide them

She is like the Moon A part of her is always hidden

I bound these words into myself like A spirit possessed to make everyone else the Ghost So many people caught in the crossfire of Escaping abuse All of it is ugly I was built to chase things off The Wolf Creeping around the concrete walls as The Woman in the Maze Defending its center with Medusa’s untrained gaze A specter of someone loved and Incapable of telling them while Slipping further and further away from material safety The hurt doesn’t excuse the hurt Every move I make opens Old wounds that others have healed or forgotten but I’m still carrying If the women I’ve loved were all one person they too would Be like the moon Parts hidden or Omitted Because it’s easy to forget how They hurt me because I was a girl who loved girls -Jana

Some have said I was the first to look out over the edge and into the expanse of unknowns below without fear And I ache when they’re not right Being unafraid of dying is different than being unafraid of Death I know I’ve imagined myself there Not even as a last resort Thinking maybe this will be fun to try I’ve seen myself with my toes curling over ledges for purchase Tightrope walking the line between here and jumping Romanticizing the strength it would take to Let myself fall or Climb down the rope To meet Death again Her face kind enough for me to feel regret for a split second before Rebirth I’m not afraid of Death But the truth is I was never gazing over a ledge more than The bowl of the toilet Vomiting Closer to death on the bathroom floor Naked and feeble Than I was in imagined leaps of faith See, I still fear dying and no... I wouldn’t be the first Even in our family Death has our list pulled up and Our numbers on speed dial I think she’s watched me on my hands and knees mopping up blood and just Tapped her watch “Are we done with this? I have somewhere to be.” But that voice wasn’t her nor the tapping it was A mother sick of waiting for me to get ready for school or a counselor unflinching when I say I’ve watched friends die Until eventually there was just never enough time for dying and though I visited the ledge frequently in my mind and explored the chasm down in search I forgot about my body Nothing left to harm if I am In between here and there Then it just became what sacrifices I could make How I could fantasize about martyrdom and Sail forward into the pitch As someone else’s hero when Still I was just Killing myself What an unexpected turn for The Hero and yet I see it all the time These visions of divine masculinity Achilles in Hades All point towards her again Death’s hands firmly grasping his as he Dies for his friends like a valiant flame extinguished and Everyone weeps His devastation saving them... That was what I stacked myself up against Thinking the only service I could give to those I love was My life in its entirety Which is why I’m not The Hero I’m the Leader, the Counselor, the Friend, the Lover I’m pulling myself away from steps taken towards a drop because Unity is not forged by Taking a leave of absence but by Seeing pain in others and Not thinking you have to live for them Only wanting to survive with them Envisioning futures where you thrive with or without them knowing that The way you believed solidarity was Shared suffering and not Shared community in times of suffering Was a cowardice you will live to outgrow Now strength looks like pulling weeds for a garden Packing up boxes Reminding yourself to stretch or Focusing on your breathing as it guides you down into A hollow part of your body An energy tightening there and fanning out slowly as Intention Replacing the visions of a ledge with Floating Swimming out into a peaceful place inside of you and Breathing in again Calm and of course I wouldn’t deceive you The ledge is still a place I go to and Look down like scrying into Death’s vastness and I cry too It was never funny It was never beautiful Those are lies told to me and you The bones on the bathroom floor were me and even when I rattled No one answered -Tristan

When we love we love together I have never been a singular Inside me there are waves rippling on the shore Formative memories distorted and abstracted with each crash of foam against ground up trash I hear a knocking on the wall of our beach house as if a ghost hides inside When things happen I don’t understand I ask about the real children in the closets like me that I can’t touch Are they scared inside too? I see your eyes go glossy when you remember yours I want to ask about what about where and whom I want to know you’re like me I’m sorry I didn’t know that it was painful -Tristan

I want to tell you that you don’t have to be afraid But there are places you are no longer allowed This is so I can heal and not because I am protecting you I want to show my thoughtfulness The things I see in you The joy That joy hibernates inside me too The winter brings us closer together Generational trauma sprawled on a frigid map yet so cramped for a bedroom that gives me glimpses of the past Sitting cross legged on green carpet while I play games I pretend are me All my heroes have no gender No voice No face Please see me It is the greatest love I’ve ever known -Beck

I want all of our friends old and new to know: we are safe, loved, and cared for. Thank you for the memories and the systems of love you introduced to our life. We love and thank you. You met us without knowing and we felt seen here and this helped us to accept ourselves as a system. -Tristan (yes, really)

[starsmuserainbow]

Hmm, okay uh, I have no idea what I’m doing here but I feel like everyone needs positivity and so here’s a post where I’ll try to give just that.

First off, happy holidays and a good end of the year to everyone who reads this, I am glad that you’re here watching my blog and perhaps even interacting with me! Thank you for everything, whether that is a simple follow or an occasional (perhaps anon) ask, or actual interactions!

Next, I want to say that everyone that I’m seeing on my dash is absolutely amazing and I admire so many of you and am happy whenever I see you around! I am most likely very happy to have you around, especially if we’re mutuals and interacting with one another. I would probably love to talk with each of you more, but I’m just really bad at smalltalk or anything like that so with most people, I simply default to only messaging them (= you) when there’s something as a reason to do so. Sorry for that!

This goes out to everyone reading this: You’re awesome, I’m honored to have you here and interested in my blog, and I hope that your days or weeks or months will be great because you surely deserve it!

And then, I’ll now follow with a kind-of list mentioning a few people that I want to say more to. Which might sound repetitive because I suck at words in these regards, but yeah. Under a cut for length.

If you see this post and weren’t tagged, please don’t be sad or think I don’t value you being around! I can’t tag everyone, and I don’t have the best mind for things like coming up with someone that I forgot in the moments of writing this.

To not start off with the same names all the time, I wrote down the URLs I wanted to include and randomized the order. So don’t think anything by if you’re first or 5th or last on this list! And once more, I’m bad at words, so I’m sorry if this isn’t sounding too great or like it’s similar for each one.

I told myself to not include anyone that isn’t active-ish at the moment, but I made some exceptions to that because I felt that said person needed to be on my list.

@rogueprinceconsort ~ (I read the post you did recently more or less saying you’re leaving, but I wrote this before that post and it would have felt wrong to erase it from here only because of you leaving!) I enjoy our interactions a lot! They feel like they actually develop a story, which I can’t say for ALL my interactions but definitely for each one that we have going! Which is really cool! You’re one of the only few people where I have the chance to play around with different verses too (well, or at least one different verse, since our other two ongoing interactions are in the mainverses of my muses, but still), and you’re one of the few giving one of my OC-sideblogs a chance as well, and, just, I really am so thankful for it and happy to have you as a mutual!

@untouchable-lightning ~ You aren’t here at the moment, so let me just start this by saying that I hope that things will get better for you again soon! It’s a lot of fun to interact with you and I think you’re a good writer and I’m very happy for our interactions! They are always fun! I did not often yet get the chance to do this other RP-style that I do (the ‘choose-your-option’ one) and you are one of those that allowed me to play through it, and you also interact/ed with my sideblogs too, so a big thank you for that! Our threads also often last nicely long, which is absolutely amazing since it’s a big rarity these days, too. You’re great, and I’m happy that we’re mutuals and interaction-partners!

@miasmarp ~ We’re more or less only starting out interacting and talking and anything basically, but I felt like I just absolutely had to include you because I HAVE A CHANCE TO PLAY ONE OF MY OTHER (non-blog-having, not even an info page or anything outside of one or two ooc posts about them) OCS with you and that’s just like the first time at all (not counting if I do include them as minor appearances in other things, though even there it has only happened one single time so far iirc), and that is just so much fun and just thank you! You’re really cool and I’m happy that we’re mutuals!

@karaoftomorrow (or @yourfavoritesidekick if you’d prefer I tag your main) ~ It’s so wonderful to write with you! It feels like we’re developing stuff in our things really well, and I really like to read what appears from you on my dash! Talking with you is very nice too, and I’m always really happy whenever I see you in my notifications or IMs or wherever! I’m very glad to have you as mutual and am really happy about any and all of our interactions!

@skymade / @siriseen or maybe I should tag one of your other blogs instead but those are the first two I usually think of and I don’t wanna tag more than two blogs for one person xD ~ Sooooooooo awesome! You have so many characters, which all are wonderful as far as I can tell, and I love our interactions so much! I’m always really looking forward to the next reply I get from one of our things, and talking to you is always a delight and I’m so so happy that we somehow found each other! Or well, I guess you found me because if I remember right you followed me first, but yes! Thank you for writing with pretty much all of my characters, you’re very cool, I absolutely love the connections our muses get (especially those where they know one another at a younger time and then ‘now’ meet again too - how cool is that?) and it’s always a joy to see you on my dash!

@azarathian ~ We haven’t really done or spoken that much together yet (or at least I assume we didn’t? There was your old blog but I don’t think we really spoke there, much less did threads or the likes? Sorry if I’m wrong though xD), but I’m so very glad we started! I admire your writing and the thoughts you put into Raven and I think you’re great! Our threads are incredibly entertaining and it’s so awesome to put more story into the situations of or between the episodes of the cartoon, and yes, I’m just very very thankful that we got together somehow and I’m excited for how our threads - and potential future ones - will develop!

@nvertoolate or if I should tag your currently more active sideblog @bloomingtalent ~ It is so absolutely amazing that one of my first mutuals, friends, or however I should call it, still is active on here as well! With most people on here, it’s sadly the case that they’re gone again sooner than later, so it’s especially great that we are still both here! I think I’ve said multiple times before that I don’t think I would even have stayed on tumblr if you hadn’t been around and interacting with me so I won’t go into detail about that yet again, but, yes, I absolutely love our interactions when we do them, and while I don’t know much about Naruto so we don’t really interact that much on your sideblog, I’m still so very happy to have you around and as my mutual! I’m so thankful for you and that we got to interact - and still do! Thank you!

@sewn-cutie ~ Our interactions are always so wonderfully adorable and cute! I love the connection between Starfire and Clementine, and it’s a lot of fun to write any of our things! I’m very happy when I hear from you in an OOC-y way too, like when you reply to one of my posts or in the IMs or whereever! I’m absolutely convinced that you are a great person, and I am delighted that we are mutuals and can interact so nicely!

@legaxies ~ I wasn’t sure if maybe I shouldn’t include you since from how much I can tell it seems you are at the moment more focused onto that theme-sideblog you have and I told myself to not include those that aren’t really active at the moment - but I felt like I had to! I wanted to say that I’m really happy for the things we started, and that I have a lot of fun talking to you when we do! I’m very much enjoying the potential relationships we have started on, and I look forward to hopefully continuing them in some way eventually! (This of course is not meant as pushing you to work on replies or whatever, please don’t understand me wrong here; I just mean this in a way of, if we do get to continue it - if not that’s totally fine too!) You’re doing great with any of your characters (as much as I can judge with not that much knowledge), and I’m happy that we’re mutuals! It’s a joy to interact with you, so, thank you!

@featherchan ~ You’re interacting with me, or did in the past, on pretty much all my muses (I think not on Starlight? But outside of that on all I think), and that means a lot to me! We have some really cool plots going, and you joined in on that event-au-thing I did all that time back too, so that’s very great, and I wanted to say thanks! Our interactions are always fun and I’m happy to write with and talk to you!

@thedoctornumber11 ~ Throughout my time being here, you’re pretty much the only one of the world of Doctor Who that I got interactions going with (I think there was someone on Wildfire once too, but not for very long iirc), and I really enjoy that! I wanted to include you here too because I wanted to say that I’m very very grateful for the nice words or explanations you sometimes throw onto my posts, and for the things you send in to me, and yes just for all of it! Thank you!

@flashgotthis ~ I love our things so much! All the interactions that we did so far were really really really cool, still are, and they often last really long too, and it’s just absolutely wonderful! You’re also one of those that aren’t only talented writers, but also really great artists, and I admire that skill so much! I’m delighted that we are mutuals and interaction-partners, and I look forward to what’s still to come! You’re amazing!

@graceful-cure-swan / @rosecoloredmuses (mostly tagging your sideblog as well to give it, like, some sort of indirect promoing here) ~ You are great! I feel so bad for all the many things you sent me whereas I barely ever send you (or anyone else, for that matter) anything at all, but, I’m also really grateful that you do it, so - thank you! I’m enjoying our interactions very much, I think that both Tsubasa and your other characters are done really well (even if I don’t know that much about each of them or can compare them to their canon versions much), and you’re a lot of fun to interact with! You also give my sideblogs and OCs a chance too, which means very much to me too, so yeah, I’m very grateful to have you as my mutual!

@eterniita ~ We’ve been interacting throughout a few of your blogs already, and I enjoy our interactions! I think you put a lot of love and thought into your characters, and they are great, and our threads are a lot of fun! I haven’t yet checked out your remade blog of your canons again, but I intend to and most likely follow you there again, too! I hope we will still get to more wonderful interactions!

@merveiilles​ ~ I’m so happy that we’re interacting! I love our threads a lot and I’m enjoying every reply that I get or write! You have a lot of characters and it’s really impressive that you do them (as far as I can tell/know them) so well! Your art, that you occasionally post, is also really really amazing and it’s very wonderful that you are so talented! I am very thankful for the nice words that you put onto my posts every now and then, and I am delighted by the threads and connections we are having between our muses!

@symbioteburnout​ ~ I don’t feel like I can say very much here (yet), but I wanted to include you too! I enjoy the things that we got going so far, and going from what I see from you about her I think Andi is a interesting character! It’s always wonderful to me, when people put the effort into characters who might not get as much time to shine in canon as others. Thanks for replying to my opens every now and then, and just in general for being my mutual and interacting with me!

@titansandothersrp​ / @robynrpmain (Now I’m getting frustrated at tumblr again for not letting me tag your main) ~ You are really cool! You’re a great artist, I love to see your work, and our threads are very entertaining! I feel like you’re doing very well in giving the characters you play as more story, more... I don’t know the right word here. Just, that you make them ‘more’, and that’s a really awesome thing. And yeah, like said, you also do art which I think looks really good, and I just absolutely admire people who can do art so well. Thanks for being mutuals and interacting with me!

---

So, and as a nice little bit of words at the end, I guess~ I’m very honored by anyone of you who’s actually interested in me and my writing, I’m thankful and glad to have you around, and I’m looking forward to more amazing things to come in the future with all of you!

[calamitousrpgarchive]

Hi. This could be a long shot but I used to rp on jcink and I left it almost a year ago to take a break as I found the communities very toxic. I miss my characters and I forgot you there were rp communities on tumblr! I have never rp'd on tumblr before and I'm not sure how it works, as in where is the actual place where written character posts are or where members chat? I'm a newbie to tumblr rp and would love to join. I would appreciate some advice on how to start! xx

Hey there! Thank for for taking the time to reach out to us, we’re more than happy to try our best and give you to tumblr RP rundown! Sorry to hear you had a poor experience elsewhere - rest assured, if you want to be part of Crooked, we don’t bite! (We even have Game Nights !)

A summary of what I’ll try cover: 

Your blog is where you post as your muse/character per se, you can reblog musings and anything you like about your character(s) on here for the group to see. 

Your replies/roleplay interactions are also on here where you can post responses to open starters and engage in all that’s happening! (If you don’t use discord - we use it as our OOC platform, your OOC communications will go on your blog(s) too!)

So, to begin, the way the process of on the dash RP-ing works is generally: You create a tumblr account separate to your personal/main. You can use a little trick in the sign-up process to avoid creating new emails and losing track. For example: 

MyEmailAddress@gmail.com can be used for your personal tumblr escapades! And then, for an RP one, you can use the same email, but format it like this: MyEmailAddress+Character@gmail.com. (It still goes to your same inbox, but it allows you to have multiple accounts - if you’re using them for different groups.)

I already feel like I might have lost you a little here - so, let me continue off this topic... we can always help you set-up later! 

Once you have a tumblr account, you can then decide if you want to keep it organised in the sense of individual character blogs or if you want to compile multiple characters onto one blog; then use the tumblr tagging system to make it clear which you’re using if you have gathered a few muses! We have a mixture in the group who use Mumu blogs (multi-muse) and those who use individuals - it’s purely personal preference! Despite using a Mumu myself here in Crooked, I generally prefer individuals because it makes it a little easier to keep up with the replies I may owe! 

Alrighty, so there’s that ramble added... It’s honestly much simpler to navigate than I may be making it out to be - my apologies! Essentially, you reblog interactions at your pace and create new ones for those to engage in and your threads are you ongoing interactions. If you would like some examples, I’ll list the admin blogs below so if you wanted to have a quick scroll for examples of how we kind of interact - there’s not really a right or wrong way! 

@crxxkedevil , @twistedxpromises & @eternallyxcrooked 

These listed above are all mumu blogs - so we have multiple characters we have compiled into a single blog, whereas we have members that have a main blog and then add side blogs for each picked up OC character. But you should be able to see the method of roleplay in each of these. There is also no rule on length or tense you write in ... you’ll see some variation, I’m sure. As long as it’s understandable and we can gauge interactions, you’re on for a win! Hurrah! 

I feel like that’s the getting started basics kind of covered? Everyone has their own tumblr tagging system on their posts to be able to retrieve former interactions and such. 

A beneficial program (I’d recommended getting.) is a free add-on for google chrome browsers called XKit as it offers the ability to edit posts once they’ve been posted and you can reblog just the newest interaction instead of swarming the dash with previous/repeat engagements. Honestly, if you haven’t realised I’m Queen of the Rambles - you... do now... but truly, we’re all friendly and willing to help you every step of the way! You’ll pick it up in no time, I’m sure! A lot of information and step-by-steps are covered in sections of the Main blog that might give you some insights beyond my explanations! 

As for discord, this is the OOC platform we use for out of character interactions and general day-to-day conversations. (Also, game nights... and lots of other chaos.) It’s also free and is available on both mobile & desktop. There’s no obligation to be part of the server there - but you’re more than welcome to get to know your fellow members and RP-ers! Helps with plotting threads and interactions too.

As a last addition: we’ve broken down the process a little on the Navigation page (Mobile Navigation, here.) so you’re able to look at things pre-application and then post-application to try encourage an ease of access for all. Hopefully by looking at some blog examples of ours and having a meander through the CrookedSoulsRPG main blog that you should find some helpful resources. We also have a resources blog, here if you want to look at gifs and icons... especially if you’re potentially not used to using gifs/icons/gif icons in your interactions, we try to where we can and there’s many faces for inspiration if you haven’t acquired an arsenal of faces yet! 

Thank you again for sending this in! I hope that this somewhat helped you in your starting up process? If you need clarification on more, you’re more than welcome to hit us with all the messages you like, or if you want to pop in an application if you think you’e got the ropes and an idea of what muses/characters you wanna throw into the Crooked world. A quick read down our guidelines to check they’re all good for you and you’re away! 

We’re more than happy to continue helping you through the process in any way we can - we’re all very welcoming! Please, don’t be shy! Believe me, we’re all been there before, we all start somewhere! 

[briannaswriter]

I was told I should take the high road. I should just accept that Hillary refuses to speak with me again. I shouldn’t expect answers from someone who won’t give them - has never given them. At the same time, I don’t feel like I can genuinely let this go without talking about it in a format that isn’t DMs.

This is really long, sorry? But I wanted to get all of it out because I want to be free of it, I don’t want it to keep being an ache in my heart whenever I think about it. 

tl;dr at the end. Feel free to reply, idc, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.  

I met Hillary in a group called @/heroesrpg in about 2012. While I was there, I operated under two pseudonyms: Miranda/Isa and Bea. The why for that is a long story. I have nothing negative to say about Hillary here! She was a great friend who taught me a lot about writing and challenged me to become a better writer. I don’t think I would have gotten this far without writing with her. When I left heroes in about 2013, we didn’t keep in touch. I didn’t really stay in the RP world so I didn’t pay attention to it.

In 2014, I was invited to join Ashbourne at her behest. I don’t recall the specifics of how I found it, I think it was simply me reaching out to her again and finding out she was in a group which she invited me to join, too. I ended up playing a woman named Nadeya Khan who was in a ship with her that was later discarded. Later I picked up Shiloh Morgan, the best friend of her character, Adam, and later Mira Lowell, the elder sister of her character Meyer.

I won’t lie, these dynamics were a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing them.

I was upset that my ship with Nadeya and Adam was discarded (I have a distaste for Adam and the FC Ben/edict Cumberba/tch now, I’m petty, sue me), but I think it was more sucky when all threads with them trickled to a halt. To me, it felt like my character was no longer important because it wasn’t a ship, even if a friendship dynamic would have been just as interesting. I ignored this feeling.

I was sad to leave the group, but I was uncomfortable with an interaction from another player and feeling pushed aside in favor of other ships so I made the decision to leave.

I did keep in touch with Hillary, or I attempted to, but once we were no longer in a group together, we just sorta drifted. We didn’t talk for the longest time here and I forgot her url for a long time. Frankly, I’m not sure how I found it again!

We started interacting again in about September 2018 when I think I reached out to her. This eventually ended with the creation of @lethe-rpg where we could write about old time favorite characters - and we wrote so much in Lethe’s run. Everything from romances, to long-lost parent, to siblings, to best friends, to unrequited loves. We wrote nearly twenty characters each and over ten ships in the time Lethe ran from September/October 2018 to June 2020 when it closed. Or, I should say, we wrote all of these things in theory and a lot of it happened behind the scenes in DM’s between us. When we did write things, they would frequently reach only a reply or two before we had to move onto the next one because she didn’t want to finish the one before. I’ll fully admit that I found this frustrating after a while - but I found it difficult to say no to her about anything, or to speak out against her.

Not only was she my friend, but I very much looked up to her. I considered her a mentor as much as a friend, and her approval meant a lot to me. It meant agreeing with dynamics I didn’t enjoy

pushing for a ship between my character Wesley and ANY of hers. Even if it was already mentioned to her that I had an ongoing connection with another character. If I tried to make this dynamic a friendly connection instead, it was promptly dropped altogether.

trying to get a ship between Gemma and Nate when I mentioned point blank that I didn’t want a pre-planned romantic thing with him after his other one failed.

the fact that Gemma and Lily didn’t get like any interactions completed together until I relented a little on Gemma/Nate. Any mention of them was largely forgotten. Half the time, Lily was treated like a child who hadn’t experienced any pain. Not just from Gemma, but from Gabe and from Hillary herself, who seemed to think that my young FC meant nothing compared to the history I had written for this character. Lily in general was ignored until she brought Lachlan along and prodded him into a ship with Lily. Do you know how many starters I wrote on Lily that were ignored?

the fact that Pat/Kate were the oldest ship in the group but they had like one completed thread the entire time lol.

the fact that Odette/Kate were the oldest family dynamic in the group who had like three NOTES between them.

the fact that Odette/Orion became a ship later who were just... never written. I can be honest now, I found them boring and I’m wondering if she felt the same, or if the lack of writing made me dislike them. Either way, Orion became a drain on my Odette muse, just as the lack of Kate/Odette was.

most stuff with Odette makes me sad. I feel like I had really good connections for her that... didn’t work out, and maybe I took to long to address it.

Mira/Andreas is a dynamic I blame myself on. I did feel sorta like I wasn’t getting anything written with her old ship, and I think me and the mun were drained on it, so while Mira was on hiatus and the mun for her last ship, Clark, was debating letting him go/killing him off, I didn’t mind discussing a new ship. I wanted this ship to be a slow burn, I wanted proper closer on the last one because it was a good ship and the mun is a good friend. This was handled with so little tact on her part, we were instantly hitting ship dynamics from the beginning and I found it callous. I dragged out replies just to avoid it. A shame, because I loved the dynamic, but the way it was handled put a bad taste in my mouth

she wanted an August/Delilah ship? Which I didn’t really want, but she’s really good at convincing you bit by bit that it’s a great idea. When I finally jumped onto this ship and flung myself into it, we got like two notes into it and nothing. Are you seeing the theme yet?

I got nothing against Arthur/Cora because I loved writing them, the only thing I did dislike is how rushed they were and how little I got to explore some of the Riverborn aspects of Arthur’s story with Cora. Also a pregnancy happened hella fast.

But I did have something against the Meadowes dynamic altogether: we had so many pieces of it to use that were never written. I failed sometimes on my part, but a lot of it was Hillary getting easily distracted by something else. Cora/Faolan were rarely written beyond the first reply to a thread. Gabe/Faolan were often two notes in and done. Faolan/Alistair lasted a bit longer, I was impressed. Gemma/Lily was mentioned above, but I’ll also mention how often she tried to take pieces of Faolan’s history and twist it to be her character’s pain without any consideration to previously discussed lore or connections. It wasn’t even about a connection anymore - it was about making her character the focal point. Look at how the Daniel Bisset, Aurelie, and Gabe things turned out: half of the plots were twisted to benefit Gabe’s momentum in the story, and the pieces of angst that should rightly lingered on Aurelie were shifted to the side. I didn’t even write that ship, and sometimes looking at them made me feel like a discarded sweater, but they were cute. Anyhow, this is long, moving on.

Faolan/Saby. I literally almost forgot about them, but like... Legit, I’m glad this ship ended because Saby was wholly too dependent on Faolan’s feelings for her, which he couldn’t even acknowledge because he was still in love with his two centuries deceased wife. Was this handled gracefully, did we get to slow-burn some of their stuff in writing? Sometimes. But again, they weren’t really written, and the ship was pushed and pushed, even when I wasn’t really interested in writing it because I didn’t want a ship for him yet.

Aliza/Tien was twisted out of me piece by piece, prodding at the parts of the Aliza/James connection I found uncomfortable (like the murder, like how difficult it was to plot after a point) until Tien seemed like the best answer. This was late enough into Lethe that I woke up enough to cut the ship off and drop the dynamic. In hindsight, I regret letting this even get so far.

Jonas. Just... most of the things written with him lol because he was constantly pushed onto my characters and others. Jo was hinted as a thing, Wesley was hinted as a thing, I think Nate was at one time. It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that she wanted a ship and that dynamics outside of that were largely ignored.

Do you know what it was like to put your heart into a character / story that was ignored ENTIRELY because she didn’t ship with them? Do you know what its like to be excited about a friendship or sibling or parental dynamic that... stopped getting written because your friend only wrote the character for a ship and the next shiny thing attracted her attention and instead of letting the character go, she made you think the next reply was right around the corner? Do you know how many threads we wrote that didn’t go anywhere, and how thrilled I was to write them still because I thought each time it would be different?

TL;DR: if it wasn’t a ship dynamic, it wasn’t written. If it was a ship dynamic, it was sometimes written. If you weren’t doing any of those things, you were ignored.

TL;DR 2: Do not misread this, please. I understand that RL comes first, I understand that dynamics change, that you’re allowed to change your mind. But do you realize how often I was strung along, or how often I was shoved aside? How hard it was to keep a character going sometimes because their big connection was only important for about a week?

and biting my tongue when my own feelings were callously ignored

when we wrote a ship between Selene/Gabe which was later discarded for a ship with Aurelie which had a much better chemistry, but was handled with little tact for my own feelings as I received constant updates on how their ship progressed, and also how the friendship we developed between Selene and Gabe was just dropped altogether - as it was with Adam/Nadeya so many years ago - instead of revamped to fit a changed dynamic as we discussed ooc.

when I would message her and be ignored unless it was about one of our ships

like the fact that I became an admin in Lethe to help her out and eventually the burdens of handling it were on my shoulders. I don’t mind this, but when it came to asking her for help on simple matters (sending me the psd for banners when I switched computers and no longer had it, posting a bio, skimming a post so I could verify it was okay to post, plotting out future events, posting unfollows/follows for people) or asking if she could write something from an admin post, getting a “sure! I’ll do that later!” and then finding out it wasn’t done for a week until I sucked it up and did it myself. We addressed this eventually, but Lethe ended shortly afterwards. 

So. That’s how the last two years have gone, and lord knows how much I’ve forgotten. Hillary and I wrote so much over the last two years, and we definitely grew close. I thought we were beyond just writing friends, that we might have been real friends (after all, we sent christmas/birthday gifts to each other. Hell, I still use the mouse pad she gave me).

I ignored the way she ignored me if we weren’t writing something interesting. I ignored the way she didn’t care about my characters even passively until I shipped with her in some form. I ignored how it felt when entire sections of a back and forth DM was ignored if she didn’t care about the character. I ignored how she refused to write with other people because she disliked their FC, or she didn’t want to write with the mun, or she found the character boring. Half the time, she found a character boring because she didn’t bother learning about them, and the moment she did read about them, they were intriguing. I ignored how she belittled my other ships with other players because “oh I don’t think they click” or “imo that one is boring” or tried to poach those characters to one of her ships. I ignored how she made me feel like a part-time friend sometimes and her best friend other times. 

I ignored the way she didn’t help with admin problems even when she knew admin duties were taking a toll on me as people demanded more and more from me. Not even when we discussed ways to handle things on both our parts to make it easier and promptly ignored them the first chance she got.

She made me feel so important when we would headcanon things. It felt like my characters were important, and that I was a good writer with clever ideas and intriguing characters, and that writing her was reaching a pinnacle that others couldn’t reach. She never said this, I’ll give her credit for that, but I have to admit, I felt like my characters didn’t work out unless I had a connection with her.

The last few months were eye opening. I had already spent the last year frustrating from her lack of leadership as an admin, and anger for the way she ignored people’s feelings even when it was pointed out and gave the bare minimum when interacting with other people, and sadness for the fun dynamics we had discussed but never wrote beyond the posted biography. When Lethe ended, I was ready to let it go and move on, I said my peace about my admin things and letting the characters go meant a fresh start. To me, we were friends REGARDLESS OF BEING IN A GROUP TOGETHER OR WRITING TOGETHER. You don’t talk about ooc things and ic things as much as we did only to stop talking the instant you’re done writing together, right?

Wrong. She didn’t even help us close the group that she created, or helped us discuss things with members who weren’t sure what was happening. I gave her time, just short messages about random things because I wanted her to know that I didn’t hold Lethe’s end against her, that we were friends anyway. Those messages were ignored. I gave her more time and then after nearly a month or maybe two, I finally messaged her on tumblr with a brief snippet on how thankful I was to know her because she helped me as a writer, and apologized if I implied Lethe ending was her fault (which I still agree that it wasn’t entirely, it was a situation handled callously and frankly I still think people should have considered that Hillary was barely 3% of the admin team at the time since Ally and I were shouldering the burdens of everything else). I mentioned how I felt like our friendship was being ignored because we weren’t writing together, and how I had thought after nearly two years of talking that we were friends enough to chat once in a while at least, but if we are only RP friends, let me know so at least I don’t have to fucking think about it.

Do you think that got a response?

It didn’t. She didn’t log into discord to chat about it or something else, she didn’t respond to the message, nothing. She quietly unfollowed me and then blocked me. She unfriended me on facebook, I feel like that’s answer enough.

I’ve known her at least eight years and while some of those times were brief, the last two years were most certainly not. And not only does it make me angry that I’ll never know whether she just dislikes me, or whether I made her uncomfortable, or what, I’m also just... really upset that I lost an eight year friendship. There’s only one person I know longer than her and I had hoped that, if not real friends, then we would still be able to meet up in another group together someday. Now it’ll never happen again, and it devastates me. I can count my friends on one hand and I thought, you know, that she was one of them. It feels like a physical blow whenever something comes up on the dash that involves her. I feel so stupid for thinking we were friends when she showed me her priorities in Ashbourne, when she showed me in little pieces here and there throughout Lethe. I feel stupid for writing this entire thing and crying about it. I feel stupid for assuming.

And I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that’ll let me say goodbye to it because I do need to let it go, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose my ability to write because she’s been such a big part of the writing journey for me.

So here it is. Eight years of friendship summed up in however long this is and here I am, trying to let go - and still a little part of me hopes she’ll see it and reach out about something, anything. And a bigger part that’s angry and doesn’t want to talk to her ever again because I don’t want to do this another time.

tl;dr:

I miss my friend Hillary, but also she’s kind of a shitty friend who only seems to care about people when they are writing with her and I’m an idiot for thinking anything else when I’ve had eight years to learn it. Likely if she did find this post, it’ll be misinterpreted in every way until I’m not only an idiot, but also I’m a bully who didn’t give her time and space, who pushed things on her she didn’t want, who she pitied. Because it just occurred to me now how easily she can warp the truth, how she can prod things bit by bit, until it fits just how she wants things to look that’ll benefit her the most. I love my friend, but I’m done. No matter how much I miss her, I deserve more than to be the butt of whatever joke she wants to say to make this sound cool.

[bullflight]

((I’ve been quiet...))

((There really is no one singular reason I ended up making this sort of ‘update’ post. I know I’ve been really inactive here and elsewhere. I’m mostly to blame for it, my in real life troubles only now, after nearly eight months, finally looking to be easing up.

But here’s the thing: for the most part, my social network here on tumblr has completely rotted away. I’ve been with Bull for 7 years. A lot of the people I’ve befriended, roleplayed with, and even had relationships with... a lot of those people are gone. Some have left Homestuck behind, on neutral and negative terms. Others have stopped roleplay as a hobby. I’ve had a small handful of falling-outs. Hell, I’ve been blatantly ghosted by people I had sincere feelings and connections with.

I get it. Life happens. It hurts like a motherfucker, but it happens. I wouldn’t be here 7 years later with a smut-centric literary exploration of transhumanism and self-worth in the face of trauma and mental illness. [That makes Bull and what I write sound so much cooler and more legit than it is. Sue me.]

But I keep coming back. This is the place I found my real life BF. This is the place I actually began promoting myself as a writer, an artist, and networking with people. I, despite all the setbacks with his timeline and with roleplay partners, and with my life happening outside of here, I like Bull. He means a hell of a lot to me. I have a few planned projects for outside of the roleplay, homestuck universe with him for the future. 

That hasn’t made tumblr and existing here any easier. 

People I liked and admired change, negatively, and reveal themselves to be awful people. This happens a lot more often than you’d think. Drama exists on a cycle, once every few months or years cropping up and culling a sizable portions of present muns and muses. The homestuck fandom, hell the actual content for that matter, are going through a, decidedly twitter-based, reckoning. And you know what else?

People talk shit. People always have. There’s a fair few number of muns and muses who refuse to engage with Bull or me, ic or ooc on any level because of shit that happened six to seven years ago. I had multiple other muns, underage and aware I don’t engage with underage folk, lie to me and solicit me and Bull for nsfw content, in rp and to a certain extent in out of character discussions. I have had most of those people come forward after the fact, apologize, and we both proceed to move on. I started in this fandom and in this scene when I was 19/20. I get it. Shit happens. 

I use Bull to explore a variety of topics. I used to use Bull, and to a certain extent still do, to hone my skills in writing erotica. I’m sure there’s people who associate with me now who don’t know that I’ve been a professional author [and bad as fuck about progressing with it] for several years now. This hobby? Roleplay? It’s both an escape and a method of developing my skills.

And I’ve had multiple people lie to me, engage in darker themes, in erotic content, in discussions about the troublesome and problematic content in the canon proper, and then turn around and call me out, whisper amongst their circles behind my back, and have permanently color a sizable portion of this community’s opinion of me. 

Recently? Besides being ghosted left and right? I’ve been kicked out of friends’ servers because there were people there who were ‘uncomfortable’ with me and with Bull because of shit that happened more than half a decade ago and they’re too chickenshit to talk to me in person about it. There’s people who go around and discuss roleplay, ongoing and not yet resolved, that I do in private with them and it invariably goes around that I and my muse are horrendous awful people and I need to be shunned. 

I’m not here much anymore.

The fact of the matter is that this is not a ‘tumblr’ or a ‘roleplay community’ problem. This is a social media problem. Twitter for homestuck? An absolute dumpster fire. I’m there. I see it. It’s not too different from the shit I saw here in 2013 and 2014. 

There’s people who come into communities, plant a flag, and then burn and pillage the land before making a big show of leaving to go do it elsewhere. There are muns and muses who were driven into toxic corners by other people in this community and had nowhere left to go creatively. There are people, like myself, who lose chances at engaging in a hobby because of little whisperings behind the scenes. 

I’ve lost a lot of people close to my heart. I’ve lost a lot of people I considered good friends. I know that I am not blameless in all of those situations. I am a different person online than I am in real life, someone who is openly affectionate, sexual and flirtatious as a means of connecting with people, and someone who catches and keeps feelings too damned easy for my own good. I know I’ve had times, even if I am only aware of it in hindsight, wherein I crossed someone’s boundaries. But I apologize. I try to do better. I have good days and bad days and weeks where I go back to bad habits and bad mindsets, but I’m not an outwardly malicious or aggressive person.

And yet... within the confines of this roleplay community, this fandom, and social media in general...

You find out real quick if you’re not churning out content, whether it be art or writing or roleplay or cute selfies or callouts or engagement in performative drama... if you’re not making things for people to consume, they’re going to find you boring. They’re going to lose interest. You’re going to go from someone overwhelmed with DMs and Skype and Discord messages on a daily basis cause you were ‘popular’ to someone who cant even maintain a friendship with someone you admire and adore because they have people talking shit in their ears when you’re not around. 

I’m genuinely sorry to anyone and everyone who’s ever been at the receiving end of anything from my erratic, anxious, and depressed behavior. Every day I’m actively trying to be better about containing that shit and not letting it pilot my life and my relationships.

There’s no means to make people, roleplay partners and art friends and accounts you talked to a handful of times through fanmail [god I am dating myself now] to just reappear out of the ether. Sometimes people vanish. Sometimes people go away and you’ll never hear from them again. I get it. I’ve been on the internet since 2002. Before social media that was just a reality. I know it is. But I have tried, nonetheless, to keep in touch, to keep a foothold in this community, to be active, to be engaging, to be... something.

Yet, regardless of trying, eventually you start feeling like something went sour when two dozen people ghost you over the course of a year. When people with no relation to each other left and right just go ‘poof’ and stop replying, stop updating, stop existing. And you feel displaced. They’ve moved on to other things. You feel like you’re boring. Like you’re a one trick pony. That the craze for Daft Punk ended years ago and your gay robo-fuck isnt en vogue anymore and no one wants you around. And no matter how much Bull means to me, no matter how much I put into him, there is inevitably going to be drama, there is going to be people trying to push me and him out.

And for all purposes? It looks like they’ll get what they want eventually.

I exist on discord. 

Pretty much that’s it. 

I’m still working on commissions I’ve owed for an embarrassingly long time. I’ll start posting art again some day. And maybe I’ll be better about keeping in touch. Maybe not. Sometimes you just need to accept defeat. 

I’ll be around.))

[gutsymmetry]

some elaboration on aspects of the timeline:

regina’s relationships: yes, she fucked both jefferson and maleficent, no she did not fuck graham (storybrooke yes, enchanted forest no). i see her relationship with jefferson in particular as mostly being about her being like, okay, sex, how do i do it? how do i use my body for my own pleasure? can i use HIM for my pleasure? and just a form of experimentation outside her marriage. she was never interested in an ongoing affair with him and they did not have a romantic relationship. maleficent, by contrast, she could have had a romantic relationship with, but neither was in an emotional position to give that to the other--especially at that time in their lives they simply weren’t loving people. they always referred to each other as friends, even best or only friends, but it’s been peppered with sexual encounters and occasional deeper experiences of feelings which neither have addressed. regina’s final betrayal was obviously a major damper on their potential romantic spark.

tinkerbell and the soulmate storyline: stupid. sorry, the whole soulmate thing was stupid, i don’t want it, i’m not going near it. i’m happy to work out a different version of events if anyone on earth rps tink anymore, but otherwise, no. garbage. in the garbage. i’m happy to mine events around their relationship for Regina Material™, in terms of writing analysis of her character, as here, but i don’t consider the events themselves to be canon. this is also why the backstory with marian isn’t included anywhere, and is related to the below discussion of the events of “mother,” 4x21.

“mother”: even before this episode aired it was my headcanon that regina couldn’t have biological children, so in some ways, it works for me, but in many others it doesn’t. first of all it’s hooked onto the stupid soulmate storyline, so that has to go into the trash. second of all, centering regina’s fears and anxieties around childbearing at this point in her life, when she is the evil queen and has the most control over her own body and fertility, just makes no sense. cora is her abuser, yes, and she fears falling back under her influence, but she’s already sent cora to wonderland once--she can do it again! hence why cora does not try to physically hurt her this time around, because she knows she can’t get away with it. it makes more sense to me to place these events during regina’s marriage to leopold, when she is actually at risk of becoming pregnant against her will--but if the writers had done this they couldn’t milk their stupid soulmate storyline, nor could they get away from the basic fact that leopold was regina’s rapist, which they never, ever wanted to admit. so i’m doing it for them. dumbasses.

stuff i left out: dude there is literally so fucking much i left out. first of all, all the episodes where regina acts like an idiot brat who can’t figure out why people hate her, or where she wantonly just massacres people: those are in the garbage. there’s also stuff that just like... has no stakes, like “sisters,” where she apparently met zelena as a child and then both of them had their memory wiped. what was the point? that contributed NOTHING to the plotline or their characters. garbage. there’s also a bunch of stuff that just has no general bearing on regina’s actual character, like the events of “ariel” or whatever, and maybe i’m not actually putting them in the garbage but i also don’t care about them.

[baidar-oroq]

29-Paternal

(The Azim Steppe, the Sea of Blades, before the 4.4 MSQ.)

And it had started so well, Y’shtola thought. 

It had been a simple notion, one she had proposed to Baidar while she was researching aether in the region of Doma; go to the Steppe and visit, if they could find them, his family. Surely, she thought, his family would want to hear from their son, who had returned from afar to do nothing less than win the Nadaam and lead the Xaela into battle to liberate Doma. He had rarely spoken of his family, though she gathered that part of the reason he had left the Steppe was because he did not get along with his parents, but surely it could not be that bad? 

She quickly found out just how wrong she was. 

There had been the good fortune of encountering Kage’s tribe, his family, in Reunion, where Baidar had promised to take word to Kage that he was welcome to return. That had made Baidar happy enough that he had been in a good mood as they’d ridden the Steppe on a mare lent to them by the Malaguld, though she noticed that his mood darkened more the closer they came to where the Oroq should be at this time of year, and by the time they’d picked up the trail of the Oroq, he was quiet. She wondered if convincing him to return was a mistake, but the die was cast, and they’d have to see this through to the finish. 

She had borne the looks of the outriders of the Oroq that they finally encountered with good grace; she was, after all, an outlander in a land where fellow tribes were viewed with suspicion. That she was with Baidar should have helped, but she could tell that something was off with how the outriders greeted him, a sense of reserve that, again, made her feel she had made a mistake convincing him to return. 

Her worries briefly evaporated when an Oroq rode up on a stallion, whooping happily, and dismounting with grace to land next to Baidar. He’d wrapped up Baidar in a bear hug and shouted with delight “Baidar! Welcome back, my brother!” 

“Jagadai,” Baidar had grunted “those are my ribs, I kind of need those!”

“You’ll recover.” He had set Baidar down and regarded her with a smile that was so much like Baidar’s that she knew the two were related. “I see you brought company, Baidar.”

“Ahh. Yeah. Right. This is Y’shtola Rhul of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn, she’s, ahh…”

“Based on how much you’re blushing, Baidar, I can figure it out.” Jagadai had bowed deeply to her. “I am Jagadai son of Bujir, war leader of the Oroq. This blushing fool’s brother.” 

“He has told me of you, Jagadai.” she replied, trying not to smile at Baidar’s discomfort. “And yes, I am his lover.”

Baidar had turned deeply red as Jagadai had laughed, then had grown more serious. “You should have sent word ahead, brother, so we could have given you a welcome worthy of the khagan.”

Baidar had frowned, and Y’shtola had silenced him with a hand on his arm, since he was doubtlessly about to ask why Jagadai had called him that. To Baidar, his victory in the Nadaam had been for the Mol, and one of them was the khagan or khatun. He never seemed to understand how extraordinary he was as a Warrior of Light, she thought. “It is fine. This is purely a personal visit, after all,” she told Jagadai.

Jagadai had nodded, and ordered one of the outriders ahead to inform the tribe that Baidar had returned. He gave a Baidar a look and then said something in Xaelic, but Baidar shook his head. “Speak in common, please. I have no secrets with Y’shtola.”

“Ahh. Yes.” He climbed on his stallion and indicated that they should follow him. Baidar had helped Y’shtola onto the mare and then joined her with an ease that reminded her that he had spent a lot of his life on horseback. He rode up beside Jagadai who had sighed, then said “You know our parents will not take this well.”

“What have they taken well, when I did it?” Baidar had asked. She again regretted her choice to convince him to come, but they had to see it through. 

Their arrival at the camp had been better than expected. A great many Xaela, younger males largely, had cheered Baidar’s arrival, though of course she had gained a fair many stares, some of them clearly admiring. Jagadai had led them through the crowds to the largest yurt in the camp, stopping at the entrance. “Wait here,” he had said. “By now he has to know you’re back.”

“One would hope,” Baidar remarked. 

Y’shtola reached over and took his hand in hers. “I...have made a mistake, haven’t I? Convincing you to come see your family.”

Baidar’s grip, given how powerful he was, was gentle. “I did tell you that we didn’t get along, but I agreed to come. It was time to, anyway.”

Jagadai had returned in a few minutes, his expression stern. “You may go in now, but the...outlander, that is to say..”

“He said to leave her out here.” Baidar had shaken his head and stepped towards the tent opening. ‘Not happening. What’s he going to do, disapprove of me more?” Jagadai had briefly grinned at her as they’d entered, and she wondered what the family dynamic here truly was.

It had all gone downhill from there. 

Bujir and Ibakha were sitting on cushions at the rear of the yurt, both wearing expressions of barely veiled contempt, and Y’shtola knew she had indeed made a mistake. They don’t just disapprove of him leaving, she thought. They disapprove of him. They always have.

I am so sorry, Baidar, she thought.

The silence in the yurt grew to last almost half a minute before Baidar cleared his throat and said “Let’s get this over with, shall we?”

“Baidar.” Bujir’s voice was deeper than Baidar’s, gruff and filled with gravel. “You leave the tribe for outlanders. You returned to the Steppe and, if word is true, fought in the Nadaam with the Mol to benefit outsiders. And you returned with an outlander on your arm. What were you expecting of the Oroq?”

“Dunno. “Hi, son. Hear you won the Nadaam. And who is this lovely woman?” 

Bujir’s glare grew, if anything, deeper. “This is the problem, my son. It has always been the problem. You do not know your place in this world. You never have. You want me to be proud of you for giving to the Mol what you did not give to the Oroq?”

Baidar’s shoulders dropped, and he looked at the ground, and in a moment of insight, Y’shtola understood why he’d let her convince him to come visit his family. Whatever the difficulty between them, whatever the problems, Baidar had hoped that he had finally done something worthy of their respect. 

And the hindbound fools had thrown it back in his face.

She stepped up between Baidar and Bujir, her expression one of such contempt that it dwarfed Bujir’s. “He does not know his place? That is your answer to him? Do you even know who your son is?” She pointed at him, anger filling her. “Do you know the place that is his? Your son, you misbegotten fool, is a Warrior of Light and a Scion of the Seventh Dawn. He is a hero. He has fought gods and monsters alike, he has liberated two nations from the Garlean Empire, and he is the victor of the Nadaam. He is your Khagan, the ruler of the Azim Steppe, respected and admired from Eorzea to Kugane.” 

She clenched her hands into fists that she struggled not to use on Bujir’s face as she continued. “He is your son, and the man he is could have benefited the Oroq, but you’ve chosen instead to cast him out and disapprove of him for spurious, ludicrous reasons, I expect. And I honestly don’t wish to know why you treat him like this, because I expect  that the reason is as small and petty as you clearly are. And I don’t expect you to care about what some outlander woman thinks of you, and in all honesty, I do not care for you at all. The only good thing you have ever done is give the world Baidar Oroq. That will be all you will ever be remembered for, Bujir of the Oroq. You gave the world a hero.” She turned on her heel and stormed out of the yurt. “You will never deserve him. Ever.”

She stood at the edge of the camp, looking upward into the night time sky at stars that she could not see anymore as the sun set, fury still filling her. For a time, she heard Baidar and Jagadai speaking, the two having left the yurt nearly on her heels, but they’d spoken Xaelic and she’d lost the thread quickly. She looked up into the sky, acknowledging that a lot of her fury was at herself. She had made a mistake, and had hurt Baidar, and it stung, being wrong that way. 

Presently, Y’shtola heard footsteps behind her, and Baidar was there, wrapping his arms around her. She leaned back against him and said “I owe you an apology.”

“No you don’t,” he told her, bending down to kiss her cheek. “I didn’t have to come. I could have told you more of how much my parents disapprove of me. I could have said no. But, I suppose…”

“You hoped.” She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “You hoped they would be better. That they could see who you are now and accept you.”

He nodded. “I hoped they would. I didn’t expect it, but, you know. Hope is the most important thing there is. Hope makes us better than they are.”

Y’shtola smiled. “You are a good man, Baidar. A better man than your father will ever be.”

Baidar nodded. “I figured that out a long time ago, Y’shtola. A very long time ago.”

(This writing takes place after some RP writing I did back in Stormblood with my partner, where Baidar and Y’shtola met some of Kage’s family. The conversation that Jagadai and Baidar have behind Y’shtola towards the end is another piece I wrote, which I will post once I fix it up to match the ongoing continuity of Baidar’s Steppe stories as posted here.)

[jack-o-chica-multiverse]

Since it’s been a while since I’ve posted this, here’s a little introduction and PSA for Jack-O’s blog:

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Just to get this front-and-center, I want nothing to do with maps, LBGTQIA-phobes, transmeds, exclusionists, terfs, racists, and anyone who is even complacent with pedophilia or incest.  If you fall within any of those categories, don’t interact with my blog.  And hey, do yourself a solid and learn about why those leanings not only hurt you and the people around you, but society as a whole.   Hate and abuse are not welcome here.      

Also no shipping/romantic rp’s with Jack-O, please.  She’s got a lot of love in her charred little heart, but it’s all platonic.  And it’s going to stay that way.

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Multi-fandom and OC friendly! Seriously, OC’s are amazing and I love having Jack-O meet them!    

Mostly long-ish form rp’s/replies.  I ramble a lot … in case you couldn’t tell from this post, heh.  Sorry.  I do try to tag longer threads with #long post once they take a couple swipes to scroll through.

I’m prone to fewer/slower replies, especially during weekdays.  Fyi, mun lives in the Pacific Time Zone, and is more likely to be active in the evening.

This blog can tread some pretty dark/angsty/violent/emotional ground and I’m fine with that … but I know not everyone is.  I try to tag the big triggers, but if there is ever anything anyone wants me to tag - no matter if it’s a trigger or squick or whatever - please let me know.

And since we’re here: please, if you feel like you need to unfollow for any reason, you do you boo!  That’s not just for subject matter but also because I’m an adult mun and I know that’s something that not everyone’s cool with. Your well-being will always be more important than following me - or anyone, for that matter! You are the curator of your Tumblr experience and if I can help you keep it safe by tagging or just not being part of it, that’s totally ok!

🎃

Jack-O: she/her. Was human and female-presenting back in ye olden days (aside from that – up to interpretation). Besides her murder she doesn’t really remember her life, but she does get the faintest sensations of déjà vu that call back to who she once was.  

Mun: she/her (but I’m comfortable with nb adjectives like they, too).  Ace panro and more-or-less cis (I think?).  Adult.  Absolute nerd with too many hobbies and never enough time.  RP-main is @Malady-red-rp (’Malady’), non-RP-main is @Inga-DON-Studio.    

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Jack-O is based on the non-canon Halloween-y version of Nightmare Chica from FNAF4: The Halloween Update with … a lot of creative license thrown in.

Basic backstory below if you want to read it (it’s sort of ramble-y - eventually I’ll try to simplify it but hopefully it does the job for now):

Essentially, she’s a several-hundred-year-old dream-demon (aka a Nightmare in her universe) who took the shape of her prey’s greatest terrors and fed on their fear via relentless, ongoing ‘hunts’ in the mindscape and in waking nightmares.  She would usually be freed from her chosen form once her prey’s mind was too shattered-apart from the constant assault to maintain a singular, cohesive personification of their fears, but on that last hunt … the situation never reached that conclusion. Thus, she’s stuck in the form that The Crying Child’s mind created for her before his death as a result of complications from The Bite of ’83 and his weakened state from the Nightmares’ attacks.  Some things went down with the other Halloween Nightmares that night, resulting in her complete abandonment of the hunt and what it was to be a Nightmare (the birb done woke).  Thirty years of coming to grips with all the evil she had done over the centuries and one hell of a massive guilt complex, she wants –more than anything- to try to put some good back into the world, even if she knows it will never balance out what she has taken from it.  

She awoke to October’s calling on Oct. 1st, 2018 to find herself in a multiverse of sorts- and just kind of rolled with it.   There were plenty of familiar faces – and many, many new ones – and she quickly embraced the chance at a new start, silently promising to try to stand up against the literal and metaphorical representations of what she once was.  As she made friends who have become the truest sense of a found family, she has become fiercely protective of the people she cares about … even if sometimes she’s a little lost on how to really help them.  Hey, just cuz she’s a few hundred years old doesn’t mean that there isn’t still plenty left for her to learn - and she knows it.

I do reference back to some past events (like Ink Stains) and she mentions other muses on occasion – some no longer active around here but remembered as cherished friends who left a lasting, important impact on her.  No, you’re not expected to know about them.  It’s just an important little part of who she is- that she doesn’t let go of things easily now that she has people and memories worth holding onto…

(The Ink Stains event was a biggie because she was one of the corrupted, and for the first time it forced her unwillingly back into something like the Nightmare she once was.  It also cemented in her mind how important the people in her afterlife are to her, and how much she needs them.  So, mentions of ink and corruption still find their way into conversations fairly often.)

[captainderyn]

2019 Writer’s Round Up

Thank you for the tag @elveny!! 

I’ll admit 2019 has been...a very rocky year and I feel like my writing production has reflected that. But I’m very harsh on myself so let’s see if that’s actually as true as I think :’) 

Tagging forth @lumielles @inquisitorhotpants @greyias and anyone else who would like! 

--

Word Count 

Overall this year I wrote 266,375 words in total. Let’s break that down shall we?

On From the Ashes I wrote 62,168 words in actual content and 2,089 words in discarded or not yet used content 

On an RP working with @berriku (which...more on that later c:) we wrote 125,270 words between our main story and offshoots. I’m not sure how much of that was me, so it’s all lumped into one. 

For Moments In Time, my first foray into LOTRO, I wrote 22,261 words over the month of October. On a smaller set of Wulfwryn and Raenor specific prompts I have written 1,276 words. On an upcoming fic for them I have 1,174 words so far.

During my first set of commissions ever, I had the privelidge to write 6,041 words for people <3

And finally, on other varied prompt/fic word I wrote 46,096 words. 

Number of Smut Scenes: 

A whopping...0 lmao xD I have considered writing several, come close to writing several, have one in the works, but have yet to actually write any. 

New Things I Tried:

-Commissions! I tried my hand at writing commissions this year and it has been so worth it! I never thought I’d have the confidence to advertise myself that way and I am so glad that I did and that there was actually interest for them~

-New Fandoms--I ventured (back) into LOTRO and began writing in it for the first time. This alongside having some writing ideas for Check, Please! and technically foraying briefly back into Percy Jackson just for fun, I have really expanded what I’m comfortable and happy writing in. 

-New writing challenges: I participated for the first time in the WIP Project and Fictober, which I had never done before. Both times were a good way to get into a writing routine. 

Favourite thing I wrote this year

Moments In Time, my fictober compilation from this year is probably one of my favorite things that I have written aside from various prompt fills that I really do love. 

Favourite fic I read this year

Oh gosh this is really hard...I’ve read so many great fics. If I’ve kudos’d or reblogged your work, I guarantee I love it. 

@elveny‘s Spark of Hope series of works has been one of my favorites that I have picked up this year. It’s just masterfully written and has made me fall for a Solavellan pairing in a way that I didn’t expect! I can’t wait to see where it goes in 2020

@lumielles’ Rising Son. I know that you know that I absolute love Idan with all of my heart. I would die for my most favorite JediDad. But Rising Son frames his story from the beginning and makes you fall in love with the whole cast of characters that Lu writes in such a beautiful way. You get hooked to Idan’s story and the story of Ysia before him and Lu’s writing between characters just flows so naturally. 

@elveny and @kunstpause‘s The Hands of Fate Are Your Own. I don’t have enough room to say all that I would like to about this fic. The time and love that they put into this work is so clear in their writing which makes it an absolute joy to read and makes you fall in love with all the characters and the pairings. 2020 is going to bring more amazing chapters, I just know it. 

Writing goals for 2020

1.Finish From the Ashes: This fic has put me through hell and back but I so badly want to finish Baraneth and Alistair’s story in the way that it deserves. Perhaps even continue their story into what happens after the beginning of DAI. But this fic has given me too much to just bail out on it now. 

2. Work more on a project with Ien and Evvie that @berriku and I have been planning: We really want to share Ien and Evvie’s story with all of you guys, and I hope to really buckle down on outlining for it and possibly start writing it. 

3. Write and finish my own original short story: I have had an idea for the last few months and with a spring semester course setting me up perfectly to do some world building with it, I would love to actually produce something that is 100% original. 

4. Worldbuild and work some more with @delavairess and I’s original idea: the whole concept that we’re building is absolutely awesome and I am so excited to start focusing on it more. Especially the OT3 that we are building with that story. 

I have so many other ideas that I want to work on, such as planning an LOTR fic revolving around Wulfwryn and Raenor’s daughter and Eldarion. I also really want to write more content for those people I hc with. That really fell by the wayside this year and I’m sorry to all who I headcanon with for not giving our characters the love that they deserve. But those 4 goals are my main ones and I’m going to try and stick to them. 

Words of Thanks

This year has been so rough between academic changes and personal life struggles and I am so thankful for everyone who has stuck beside me through it. 

@lumielles @ofmistandrain @moonlitalien @skullinacowboyhat @berriku  who have spent so much time headcanoning with me and creating the most beautiful characters together. Not to mention the boundless support on my writing and overall friendship that I am so thankful to have with y’all. I definitely haven’t tagged everyone here, but *blows kisses* y’all know who you are

@anchanted-one and most recently @elveny for all your help with Ashes. This fic definitely wouldn’t have made it as far as it has and all the work that you guys have done with me between beta’ing and ideas has been so, so helpful. 

Everyone who I talk with, who reblogs my things, tags me in memes, sends me asks, and keeps this machine running. I am so thankful for you guys 

And of course @delavairess, my creative partner to the end, my best friend, and my ongoing inspiration <3 I couldn’t do half this creating thing without you. 

Here’s to 2020 guys 

[jasperlion]

Blog Announcement

It's official, I'm only going to focus on ongoing serious threads for now and not take up any new ones. I want to try and complete all of those, then see where I stand afterwards on how I feel about where I go from here. Either take an undefined break or pack up entirely.

While I'm definitely up for shitposting and just having some fun once in a while, I'm at a weird place right now and definitely feel a disconnect between myself and most of the rpc (or, perhaps, it's simply the rpc within itself?), to the point that it feels almost borderline hostile. I'm not sure if it's my own perception, or even if it's true, but I've felt it ever since before I hid in my activity tab before 3h dropped.

... An act that didn't completely keep me from spoilers, since Tumblr is 'functional' and would at times fail to load my activity and redirect me to the homepage. Honestly no one's fault but the website's, really.

In any case, I feel a break might be necessary, and it'll definitely help to further cut down on the threads I pick up to 0 instead of once in a blue moon. Sorry to everyone who wanted to interact or had ideas, I really am, but I don't think I have the energy to muster being a proper RP partner at the moment without first taking care of this brain fuzz and wrapping up everything I can. I still want to write, so I'll use that energy towards my pending threads and some drabble works I had in my pile. I don’t want to leave anyone hanging and I like the threads I have going, so don’t worry about me ‘forcing myself’ or anything!  If we already share our discord, I’m down for doing some sort of rps there, and I will sometimes send out asks for fun, too (however, I will not continue where they left off).

We'll see where it goes. Regardless, it's been a good run, I think.

[ofphcenixes]

( ooc note about why i am the absolute worst ! )

this is such a random note i know, and admittedly i’ve spent the entire day composing this. so if it’s a little disjointed or illogical, i want to apologise in advance ! however i have included this nice gif of luke - it doesn’t have anything to do with the post, just thought it would make it more appealing dkjfgdf. admittedly this is going to be a bit of a Long Boi™, but it is kinda.... relevant if you’ve ever tried to write/plot with me, or are wondering what’s going on with nate. behold, all your answers are below ! i’ll put a tldr at the bottom plus a nifty little vine compilation for anyone that reads this but, please don’t feel pressured to do so ! ya girl is just a Mess dkfjgd. 

the first thing i want to address is the elephant in the room; nathaniel ballantyne. i know a lot of people are curious about his fate, his place in the plot drop, why he vanished so much earlier than everyone else. is he actually guilty ? is he a martyr ? is he a red herring ? well, here’s the tea on mr nathaniel ballantyne: 

he is on indefinite hiatus. 

a lot of people probably wonder why. i will get into the specifics of the why in a little bit (when i said this was a Long Boi i was not kidding lmfao), but basically... he’s a very difficult character to write. i am not a veteran rper, and in all honesty, i can count on my hands the amount of rps i’ve been in. and there are only 5 characters i’ve ever written about and cared enough to remember. one of those is nate. for those of you that know him, he is a strange and eccentric character. entirely up his own ass at times, pretentious as hell. but he, to me, was a character i grew attached to. he was different from people i normally write, and despite how abstract he was, he was.... realistic to me. my deep rooted attachment to him is why it took me so long to see how hard it was for me to write replies with him, to understand the guilt i felt any time i plotted or wrote with him, and the fact he was so mentally taxing it would take five times as much time to write a reply for him than it would any other character. but the sad truth is, even though i only felt guilt related to him, even though i haven’t had muse for him honestly for months now, i kept him. because i love him, even if he isn’t loved by many others. and so part of the reason he is now where he is is the simple fact that i know he didn’t mesh with the group, and that’s okay ! he was a very difficult character to reply to, and now that he is gone, i feel that burden of guilt lifting already.

as for his plot related departure, the truth is i didn’t have the heart to kill him off, hence why he kinda is just out there in a weird in between space dkjfgdf. and ( as i’ll explain below ) if my life ever does even out at any point, i really want to bring him back should there be space for him. so this indefinite hiatus was made for many reasons, and it absolutely broke my heart to have to get to this point. i love nate, and i am going to miss him. and i hope that in due time, i will have the capacity to bring him back soon ! but in case i don’t, i just want everyone to know that i appreciate every second i spent writing with you all on nate, and that the time and effort people poured into him means the world to me. and i’m so, so sorry to the people who are disappointed in me for this, because i know there are probably a few. i have let so many of you down, and honestly this is a burden i am going to carry for a very long time. i am going to message people tomorrow when i am more Coherent so, i promise to do my best to atone for this kgdf.

but to segue into that a little more ( oh look, another elephant in the room ! what is this, dumbo 2: electric boogaloo ), as an admin, i know there are expectations we are supposed to meet. examples we should set. precedents we have to lay down. 

and i know i have disappointed every single one of you in this rp. 

from my slow ( to non-existent ) dash activity, for the anxiety that has left me unable to reply to dms or reply in the main group chat, to even the fear of godmodding in ask memes on a thursday. i know this seems perfectly illogical to most, and again, i completely understand the disappointment that so many of you feel towards me. and it’s that very disappointment which djkgdf ironically has made it harder for me to get on and be the admin that you all deserve. 

the real difficult thing about all of this is, i love veritas. and for those of you who were in veritas 1, would know that this is not who i usually am. this experience is not representative of the person i want to be, nor the rper that i usually present myself as. but as to avoid going into too triggering content and bothering you all with tmi details about my life problems lmfao, please rest assured that these past few months have been. absolutely brutal for me. from almost losing my opa to illness, from ongoing family issues and expectations, being kicked out of home among a list of other shit, my mental health has been as low as gfkdgdf it has ever been in my life tbh, and it’s been the hardest thing in the world to get on. all my attentions with veritas has been in the main, as the main is a very taxing job ( as you know, we are very plot centric ! ) and i would more often than not get so worn out with being an admin, my characters fell by the wayside. not to mention, as sort of dkfgjdf touched on before, i have massive anxiety when it comes to messaging people. why ? i don’t know. especially as i have wanted to plot with all of you extensively and deeply since we opened, and reading every single app made my heart beat a little faster with joy. i am so honoured to be an admin here, and each and every one of you are such an incredible writer and person that i can’t help but feel overwhelmed and guitlty about how much i have let you all down. especially for those who sent me dms that i either forgot about or never replied to because i got so anxious, i feel so guilty every day about it all and i just wish i could go back in time and change it. 

and the reality is, if i wasn’t an admin and co-creator of this group, i probably would have dropped out a long time ago, give the space to someone worthy, and i wouldn’t be filled with so much guilt. but the truth is, i am a selfish person dgdgdf. veritas has been that sort of dkfgjdf good, steady thing in my life that i looked forward to, and i couldn’t bear the thought of losing that. each and every one of you create the fabric that is this amazing atmosphere, and even though i’m less seen and heard compared to most others in this group, being part of veritas gives me a sense of belonging. and in a strange sense, a home. yes, i know i was selfish, and yes, i should have handled things much better than i did. but you all need to know from the bottom of my heart how sorry i am for everything that has transpired. ):

but i think the worst part of it all is that, my beautiful co-admin maaria, and my best friend. among letting you all down, i know i have let her down the most. and i just want to take my soapbox moment for a second here and really put light into how much maaria has done for this group. especially when my own life has been in shambles, and knowing she’s going through her own problems, she always provides for you all. she is always here, always online, always around to make you laugh or smile. she provides for all of us, and is honestly a miracle worker. i don’t think i will ever deserve her forgiveness for everything, but i hope she knows how loved she is, and i hope you all show her your sentiments too ! she is the heart of veritas, and fdjg she means the world to me, and i just really want her to know that.

but that was. a lot of emotions and obviously i haven’t talked about everything in my life ( i do not want to bore you and honestly i don’t wanna make y’all sad dkfjghdkfjgdfgdf ) none of this really means anything if things aren’t going to change. so get ready for some Bullet Point Action because here is my proposal: 

nEw SkElEtOn: although nate is on hiatus and sorta just gonna, float out there in the void of time, and even though i really want to bring him back soon i don’t know if/when i will, i have felt immense guilt for hoarding his spot in this rp for someone who could be more active. hence, a solution: a new skeleton ! as i am not comfortable with nate’s skeleton being open, we have created a new skeleton with connections to all nate’s old connections, which should hit the main very soon ! 

new discord: this is probably unnecessary but dfkgjdfg i have a lot of anxiety about discord. when i get a new message i’m always like ??? AAH A GHOST. idk why. and because of that, i skip a message once, and now there are so many unanswered messages i have a heart attack every time i open my app. so, to prevent that, i am going to make a new discord account ! ( lilacrps #i forgot the number lmao ). i will be adding everyone as Friends and if you’ve ever sent me something i never responded to, or for some odd reason you wanna talk to me, a human mess, please know now that with a fresh slate i will ensure i can reply to you. i am not gonna let my anxiety win this time. 

schedule: part of my issue is that i dfkjgdf always felt pressure to do everything all the time and then when i couldn’t, i fell under pressure. so dkfgjdf i am now having designated plotting and reply days ! so even though i hope to be far more active in both regards, i just need people to understand things won’t be instant, but i am holding myself accountable not only for myself, but for the rp - as that is what an admin should do.

this got super long and i highly doubt anyone is actually gonna read this lmao BUT. the main point is - i love every single one of you all so much, and i can’t apologise enough for how much i have let you all down. i know we all feel it, and i’m more than happy to accept my flaws and how blatant they’ve been in the past few months. so this is my pledge to every single one of you that i promise to do better (and if i don’t, you can kick me out dkjfgdf). 

TLDR: I have been a terrible admin and friend, and I’m here to say sorry. With a new discord and personal plotting schedule, things are going to change. 

If I can’t cure my depression, maybe I can cure yours.

[mythgendered]

this art done by my lovely naem circa 2013 <3

so, uh... hopin’ y’all don’t mind a dash spam too much but, hey, it’s 4/13 and I think I’m allowed to be a little indulgent and nostalgic

it’s been 10 dang whole years of Homestuck, i’ve spent almost seven of those dang years here on tumblr, and most of those dang years were spent on my needlessly convoluted ask blog-turned-fanventure, unstUck/uracilumbrage

i...can’t say in good faith that it’s a good comic -- almost all of it was written as i went, and sometimes i would straight up skip ahead when i got bored, which is hardly good for storytelling! it also doesn’t help that i was writing it as homestuck proper was still ongoing, and i was trying to cut into some Deep Lore shit that hadn’t been fully fleshed out in canon. i got some decent guesses in, though, so i feel pretty good about that!

but yeah, it’s kind of a mess, especially when it starts spilling out into the role play side, which for some reason i wanted to tie into my comic’s canon? oh god, some stuff is straight up Lost now,  due to blogs deleting or changing urls. at least most of the story is coherent!

but i’m rambling, and also dunking on myself. at the end of the day, i can’t say i had anything but the most amount of fun doing this lil fanventure. it’s sloppy, and i spent way too many years on it, and i ultimately never finished it (whoops!), but...it was just so much fun to work on my own little story! doing my own flavor of Homestuck, and letting the cherubs do their thing. and it connected me with so many people!

so many cool peeps and good friends who i still know and love to this day. to say nothing of my lovely girlfriend, who was so wonderful and supportive and gosh i still blush when i remember the lil fan messages she sent before we started talking formally ;u;

and i guess! that’s what i’m here clogging your dash with. not just to  plug my defunct comic -- though if you wanna check it out i’m not gonna say no -- but to just...share my little corner of the Homestuck Experience on this most four of thirteens. back when i was in college, chipping away at panels inbetween role playing with some of the best people i know, listening to all the HS albums and waiting intensely for the next upd8.

(Oh, and rewatching [s] Caliborn: Enter a lot. a lot. you guys have no idea how many times i rewatched and screencapped that flash for panel and/or role play purposes. so many times you guys.)

so much of the good in my life over the past near-decade came about thanks to Homestuck, and i don’t think i can ever fully express how much it means to me. 

i hope you don’t mind me going on about myself for this long! but like i said i’m indulgent and nostalgic rn. when I think back on Peak Homestuck days, this is what i remember: waiting on upd8s in one tab, hammering out my own panels in another, all while meeting and getting to know some truly wonderful people.

happy Homestuck day, y’all. i’m glad we all got to experience this gr8 comic that brought so much love to our hearts <3

(and if you’ll indulge me more, i’m sliding some more out of context panels and rp pics under the read more to complete my nostalgia trip. there’s a lot, and almost all of it is incomprehensible rp jokes! but it’s the stuff that made me smile, and what i think of when i fondly regard my homestuck phase)

thank u for these ash im so so sorry i never actually ended the comic and got to post these kxzhsdghf

(thank u forever nursey i got so much mileage mangling ur gorgeous talksprites)

(thank u forever nursey and ash)

(ily naem)

and if you stuck around, behold: one of my first ever hs fanarts! it hurts to look at!

and if you’re here, thanks much for indulging me, haha. have a good and i love you <3