i spent quite a bit of time thinking, considering my options and wondering if i should even respond to the 'apology' to begin with, but i feel like i've been here before, in this exact same position (i didn't respond to his original 'apology' because it felt off how he omitted the fact that he pretended to be the victim for a whole week, but even then i decided to not say anything and just let the dust settle and give him a chance to learn and do better) and doing nothing eventually just caused more harm. even if i can't reach the other side and find common understanding, i wanted to at least express what's been on my mind for such a long time.
i always try to approach people and situations with understanding and try to assume ignorance instead of malice when someone says or does something i consider questionable or wrong. but i also know we all have our limits. we are all human. and you can't take the heart out of the equation.
one thing in this 'apology' that really stood out to me was this:
how is it not malice to completely disregard another creator, hell, another person and their wishes and feelings when they have made it very clear that your actions are causing them harm?
how is it not malice to outright lie and misrepresent other people and situations in order to portray yourself in a better light?
how is it not malice to disrespect the people you've stolen from and then, after they (by your own words!) rightfully address it and try to bring your actions to light, you then turn around and vilify them to your friends and followers? portray them as bullies and gatekeepers?
all while repeating again and again how the whole experience made you stop creating? as if your actions didn't force people out of this space, this fandom? have you ever sat down to think how the person that made you a 40 minute video tutorial on gif making, the person that taught you so much, no longer makes anything at all because you turned your back on her and copied her sets? kept doing it after she blocked you? after she made text posts expressing how upsetting your behaviour was? you didn't care and kept doing it anyway. even saying things like 'i always credit where credit is due' in response to copying numerous sets from @minthara, down to the caption without ever crediting her.
and if that wasn't enough harm, you then took it a notch further and straight up lied to the people around you, trying to vilify petra and i by saying how the whole thing should've been dealt with in private. how is it not malice to omit the fact that I DID, in fact, reach out to you privately. that i did it in a civil manner. that i tried to explain to you how your actions were wrong and were rightfully upsetting other creators. how you ignored everything i've said and when i expressed that your response (or lack of it) made me uncomfortable and that because of it i couldn't give you permission to 'recreate' (copy) my work, you then insulted me and told me that it didn't matter what i wanted? that you would do as you please and there was nothing i could do about it? how you then immediately blocked me so i couldn't even respond? how is that not malice?
and then this was from your apology back in march:
and you insist that after this 'apology' you've learnt and were never doing anything wrong again and yet you are saying the same thing again in your new 'apology'. how after the march events you went to @galedekarios anyway, asking for permission, didn't wait for her response and posted your copy of her set anyway. which just makes me think that you've never learnt. it just makes it seem that asking people for permission never stemmed from a place of respect and understanding, but from the need to cover your ass in case someone brings the fact that you're still copying up. which someone did, apparently.
at the end of the day, this is my opinion and i might be wrong, but following all of your words and actions, it just seems like you chose notes and attention instead of people. that you kept lying and misrepresenting things and throwing us under the bus for your own gain. and that you only stopped because enough people eventually found out, not because you suddenly felt remorse. and this 'apology' was just another 'ask for permission from a creator', all just for optics. you couldn't even bother to unblock us before posting the 'apology' which just shows how little you were actually thinking about any of us.
Lady Bone Demon: "Do not lament your fate child, you can rest knowing you served your purpose—destiny has found you."
(2x10 This is the End!)
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Lady Bone Demon: "A reminder: it seems you can not be trusted to willingly follow the path of destiny. But know this: If you betray me again—one misstep, one failure in any way—I will erase the very memory of you."
(3x04 The Winning Side)
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Tang: "You're wrong. I know I'm not a strong as they are. I may still be searching for my purpose—but what I do know, is that doing it alone is not the path I'm destined to take. Deep in my heart, I know my place is alongside my friends."
(3x08 Benched)
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Lady Bone Demon: "I sent you a task—you were to retrieve the Monkie King and his protégé, yet you refused the path of destiny and so there will be pain."
(3x08 Benched)
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Tang: "STOP! It was me! I mean, yeah, Macaque forced me to do it and I am definitely starting to have second thoughts on the whole thing now but- I don't know how and I don't know why, I just felt like I had to. Like it was...destiny!"
Lady Bone Demon Voice Over: "Destiny can not be undone Sun Wukong."
(3x10 The Samadhi Fire)
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Lady Bone Demon: "No matter what you do, you cannot change the path of destiny."
MK: "I don't know if this all happened because it was destined to, but I have to believe that I found the staff so I could use it for good."
[...]
"If you really believed that destiny can't be changed, you wouldn't be using every ounce of power you have to keep him contained!"
(3x14 Destiny Fulfilled)
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Lady Bone Demon: “Know this, monkey, you and I are not so different. We both fight for what we think is right—that pursuit only leads to one thing."
MK: "Hmmhm. To destiny, right?"
Lady Bone Demon: "No. To pain."
(3x14 Destiny Fulfilled)
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MK: "I can't believe that worked!"
Tang: "Eh, if that was destined to go wrong, then it would have!"
(4x03 The Great Tang Man)
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Tang: "If your bonds of friendships our strong, then you will always find your way back to one another!"
(4x04 Pig Napped!)
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Macaque: "Wukong was on a path of self-destruction, we all were. But when he met the monk, it set him on a different path."
MK: "Ah! The path of the good guy! Making those good life choices?"
also I just think it's really unintentionally cruel to look at armand's life and go, see this piece, which is the only piece where you felt safe and happy and loved even if bad shit was also going on? actually it was rotten to the core and there is no part of your life that was ever safe. and the anger and terror you feel about the entire rest of your life must also be applied here because there was nothing salvageable about this time. which could in fact be a very in character thing for daniel to do lmfao but that's not how I ever really see it presented
More dnd writing because it's all I have but I here's a snippet from a vignette I did of Rook's past (from Zara's POV), because Rook and his mentors never fails to make me sick (/pos).
[transcript under the cut]
Taking a coin out of her pocket, she rolled it across her knuckles, back and forth. It gave her hands something to do, and prevented the urge to bite her nails, something she hadn’t done in years.
Ten minutes passed, then twenty. Zara began to pace as Rook’s breathing grew shakier and the color drained from his skin. Where the hells is Jay? she wondered. The room was so quiet that she could hear every tick of the small clock on her bedside table, and each one echoed in her head. How many ticks does he have left? She didn’t want to think about it.
She’d had crew members die before, of course. You don’t go as many years as a captain as she had and never lose a soul. But all the others who had died had died quickly, in combat. She’d mourned for all of them, even shed tears in private, but there was something different about watching the life drain out of a person right in front of your eyes.
And how could Cole say no to that? Did he trust Kai? He trusted Kai more than he trusted himself. He trusted Kai with his life. If he fell, he knew Kai would be there to catch him.
So, Cole took his shirt off, tossing it on the ground beside him, then moved so his back was to Kai. “Always.”
Nothing happened for a minute. Cole stood there, neck and shoulders aching and twitching. He wondered, briefly, if Kai was just trying to get him shirtless (it wouldn’t be the first time), and really, he was not in the mood for that. Not when his body wanted to hurt him.
But then a pair of warm hands—Kai’s hands, he would recognize those oddly soft callused and scarred palms anywhere—landed on his back.
[or, cole's experiencing a lot of pain thanks tp tourette's and kai gives him a heated massage]
I tend not to look back with regret or wish to do things differently; webcomics are like sharks in that if they stop moving forward they drown. But for Wires Crossed specifically, if for some reason I got to have another crack at it, there is one big change I'd make at the start. I would have Mia apply for a job at the cafe instead of stealing the register.
There's a few reasons for this. The most obvious is that it gives me space to develop the characters and world building more organically. When I started the comic I wasn't 100% sure where the story was headed. I thought I was going to have more time for this stuff, but the plot picked up faster than I expected. It also would have let me set up the themes for the story better. Mia would have worked at the cafe for a couple of weeks, long enough for her to learn all the different tasks she'd be expected to do, long enough to finally earn her first proper paycheck.
i think a lot of people don’t always realize the difference between “this is how i interpret canon” and “this is how i want to write it because that’s what’s fun to me”. a lot of times the latter is all headcanons or AUs are, not an indication of what the writer thinks “is” or “should be” canon
more power to those who are super tuned into actual canon and know these details like the back of their hand, but sometimes people just wanna use a series as a sandbox, not a ruleset. genuinely nothing but respect for people who ARE that knowledgeable, but i and a lot of other people are just here to have fun with characters we enjoy—and want to put them in more accessible settings
every adult around me: you're not old enough to know what's wrong with you, you're fine
me as an adult: i still have all these problems
my doctors after i finally got the opportunity to choose them myself: oh my fucking god why have you never gotten help for all these problems. you should have seen me 10 years ago
you mean in general or the newest layer of dante's inferno that's been forged over the past few days? i assume you mean the latter so tw for csa and rape in general
the tldr is that someone (i assume its 1 person but who knows dont quote me on it) is writing graphic, and theres no other way to describe it other than cp, fics about the characters (mostly tommy but i've also seen buck and chimney) sa'ing the kids on the show like chris who's like 13, and jee who's literally like 3 fucking years old. and they're putting it under the buck/tommy tag on ao3 disguised as normal fics with misleading tags so that people are forced to stumble across it. its thousands of words of graphic cp the likes i've never seen from a fandom before and they seem to be getting their kicks from people being rightly upset about it so now people are filtering out fics uploaded by anonymous ao3 users so they don't accidentally stumble upon explicit csa.
a couple blogs have been popping up here and there taking credit for it and posting shit about how tommy should be gang raped and die of hiv/aids, and how the csa fics aren't csa bcs the kids "enjoy it". 90% of their shit is targeted towards people who like buck/tommy, and the initial blog that took credit and posted this shit said they were doing it to "defend eddie".
people have been too comfortable calling tommy a predator and a groomer for months bcs he's dating buck and i guess this is how its culminated for certain factions of this abyss of a fandom.
No one in Dead Friend Forever is innocent. Absolutely no one. Everyone played a part in Non's disappearance/death. I was really holding out on Jin and Phee, but Jin, my boy, that's not something you do to someone you love. Phee, I get that you are extremely hurt and really really upset, but don't say "Go die".