#also i mean loved in like a general sense here like platonic romantic its all up to interpretation

[incorrectskyrimquotes]

Martin and the Hero of Kvatch dearly loved each other.

Akatosh and Sheogorath, on the other hand,

[fools-ramblings-and-whatnot]

further thoughts for the twst kiss au:

kisses on the shoulder/back as a silent comfort sort of thing, maybe the meaning varies slightly based on the exact location, like on the spine maybe as a "I'm sorry for your loss", closer to the shoulder is "I'm here for you" sort of thing, like it's all generally the same the location just changes slightly based on the context of what the person is being comforted about, maybe a "You'll be okay" on the shoulder blades, a "cry if you need to" elsewhere.

Quick pecks on the chest/collarbone area as a more hyping up sort of support, like a "You got this! You'll win for sure" type of thing, usually done before a competition/match. It's not necessarily a good luck thing, more of just encouragement.

Speaking of good luck, maybe a kiss on the temple/side of the head?

A kiss on the brow as a way of saying "stop worring/thinking so hard, you'll get wrinkles"? (I feel like yuu would do this to a lot of twst characters (cough cough oblotters) without thinking about it)

A kiss over the heart as a very close I love you that's platonic in contrast to the lips one, though it can be used romantically it's more common with family/very close friends. Maybe it's longer/location is slightly different if romantic?

A kiss on the pulse point/wrist to wish for good health? It can be used as a greeting, but it's mire commonly used in events like birthdays or holidays, like a "wishing you well" in a card, or when people are actively sick/have health concerns. Maybe also one of the kisses it's most common to go "pass this along for me" with, like if you hear your classmates mom is sick you go oh :( give her a kiss on the wrist for me.

Maybe a peck on the arm as a way of saying "slow down", less in a literal sense, more that they're breing impulsive/getting caught up in what they're doing without thinking about it? (Yuu would do this a lot to the first years lol, but also probably to anyone else being impulsive, probably kalim now that i think about it)

I kind of want there to be a kiss somewhere that's a gentle way of saying "you're being an idiot/you're a moron" but I'm running out of ideas. Maybe on the chin or cheekbone?

Sorry for the long ramble lol, just some ideas I'm putting on the table if they work for you :)

Thank you for sharing! You gave lots of ideas and I am in awe of all of them, I do admit will likely choose some.

Chest kisses I think, are a bit intimate for casual encouragement- So it's more like "You have my heart", and are done by couples exclusively. The border is the clavicle area down to the broader part of the chest.

Couples are careful on their kiss placements as any higher than the clavicle means they are trying to break up with their partner (as Neck means I wanna fight you/I am Threatening You)

Note the difference with Lips kiss- "I love you/I confess my love", which also exclusively for couples but is rather a statement of affection.

The chest kisses are very very INTIMATE. Like more on "eternal love" rather than just "I love you". Its more of "I'm gonna spend my life forever with you."

Which is also different from the nape kiss "I trust you with my life", which can be platonic or romantic, depending if it's lingering and who you are talking to

To sum Lip and Chest Kisses are exclusively ROMANTIC.

The temples- You're an idiot/You're ridiculous/ think smarter/Make better decisions

There's already an I am worried for you "Forehead kiss" which can also be translated as "get well soon" depending on what's happening. So instead of the temple being Goodluck it can be "You're an idiot", as the temple is near the brain.

*Shoulder kiss- Rather than condolences or an apology let's make it an encouragement instead! (Because people lean on shoulders) Encouragement or cheering in general. It's like saying you've got my support!

In certain circumstances, especially if done during a situation it can also be " I know its hard, but you'll move past this".

The Each kiss placement has its own meaning, however, depending on the context of the situation, the kiss meaning can be slightly change. Quick pecks in general are more casual Lingering ones means conveying a deeper stronger feeling. (From "nice to meet you" to "I am so happy to meet you". and depending also with the current ambiance may even be "I am so happy I met you, my love". Other Examples: A quick peck on the neck means "I will hurt you if you don't stop", but a lingering one can mean "After this kiss, expect that I will hurt you", then immediately punching the opponent's face. A kiss on the forehead before the exams "I worry you will fail", A kiss on the forehead when the other is sick "I worry and hope you will get well soon" A kiss on the eyelids is "Good night", a lingering kiss is "Goodnight and sleep tight,", if the person is someone you like it becomes "Sweet dreams (intimate)"

Therefore to understand Yuu's kiss language its a combination of

Kiss placement+ length of time+ environment/ambiance+ who you are talking to= Interpretation

This is why, despite the cheat sheet, the Twst!Boys still get confused.

Asks are OPEN To find other related posts in my blog, the tag is #TwstKissAU

[silly-lil-scribbles]

Introduction post!!

freeeeeeee

status: *HIGH PITCHED BEEPING*

current chance of a response if you dm me*: 78%

* does not apply to mousie cuz its my emotional support friend

- My name is Finn! You can also call me scribbles, soup, or really any dumb nickname will do. it/he <3

woah look at that.. its me.. on another website!! slight flash warning for spacehey btw ^^

if you havent read this in a while, i would suggest reading again cuz i update it a lot <3

- im oriented aroace! and graysexual (i think? idk man i just work here.)

- im boyflux but also im just a creechur

- I MADE A JAIL ACCOUNT SO IF IM JAILED I MIGHT BE OVER THERE ‼️ @soup-has-been-imprisoned-noooooo

- I post about the magnus archives/protocol and my chem frequently, though I also just reblog a ton of random shit. may be nsfw but never anything explicit. Also I forget to tag for spoilers a lot so just know that there are magpod spoilers in general on my blog.

- Music artists I like: Cavetown, MCR, Mother Mother, Lemon Demon, Will Wood, Dazey and the Scouts, FOB, Nova Twins, p!atd, Noahfinnce, qbomb, Gum Disease, Sparkbird, Mischief Brew, Poppy, Be Your Own Pet, Pierce the Veil, Chloe moriondo, Faetooth, IDKHOW, the mechs, rabbitology, madalyn mei, scene queen, MARINA, she/her/hers, femtanyl, leathermouth, baby queen, pansy division, the spook school, specimen, egg, the crane wives, and of monsters and men

- Shows/Podcasts/Other Media that I like! DANGER DAYSS, Malevolent, The Magnus Archives, Stranger Things, Welcome to Nightvale (though I haven’t finished it yet), the Osemanverse, Nimona, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls, ATLA, LOK, It, Hilda, Camp Here and There, Radio Rental, warrior cats, the silt verses,,,, there’s probably more but my memory is shit

- my blog is super messy so all of my art is under the tag #scribbles draws a thing and my original text posts (not the short personal ones typically, just the one i actually want people to see) are under #scribbles says shit.

- my body hates me very much (probably fibromyalgia but like doctors suck so undiagnosed)

- surprise, my brain also hates me very much! And yes also undiagnosed!

- tone tags are appreciated <3

boundaries n stuff:

- not ok with sexual or romantic comments

- platonic flirting is ok if we’re moots

- sex averse, feelings on romance fluctuate a lot but usually indifferent

continued:

- my feeling are really fucking wonky so 80% of the time i dont/barely feel emotions. please be patient and if i sound like i dont mean what im saying, i promise you that i do. but since i know how i would feel if i could, but i still cant feel anything, im trying my best to react accordingly so it may seem like its not genuine but it is. like. imagine youre writing. youre writing your characters reactions to everything, despite not actually being able to feel it. but since you know your character, you can judge hiw they feel in the situation you make them react accordingly even though you arent actually experiencing it yourself. now replace the character with you, thats kinda how i feel. sorry i know that probably didnt make sense but trying my best here lol

- i have a tmagp fic i just starting writing! If you wanna know more, posts related to that are under #electric desires have unraveled all my wires :(

- I have 4 cats and a dog, also a gecko

- i have a queerplatonic partner!! hes awesome and swaggy and writes so much. so. much writing. wow. not saying wow in a bad way im just genuinely impressed. chou if ur reading this i love you <3

- i also have a lovely best friend named zero whos super fun and cool and pathetic /vpos. my favorite excitable soggy cardboard box ilysm <3

- coyotekin therian !!

- My favorite colors are purple, cyan, neon green, and red

- I love interacting with mutuals and getting asks! plspls send me random shit in asks im begging

- I’m creating an animated series called Catlantis (still in progress)

- I have a love hate relationship with writing but i do it anyways so oh well

- Frogs.

other tags i use a lot are:

#soup poorly draws gay people out of obligation; my series of promised dyhard drawings.

#soup gets pathetic abouut friendship; me when im a sappy bitch about my friends or partner

#objectives list; save file for when i say im gonna do something so i dont forget about it

#catlantis save; hoarding info for catlantis

#insomnia induced rambles; i cant sleep and im making it your problem

#our lady of sorrows; not the song, my mcr inspired goddess i made up for my dnd character to worship

#scribbles asks; asks

#info save; good to know

#scribbles liveblogging tmagp; exactly what it sounds like

#art save; resources for doing art

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[adonisbeloveds]

Do you accept orders from Yandere wally? If yes, you could do wally with the reader, where the reader rejects wally's dating request. The reader only sees Wally as a friend, and the reader is also determined to get out of Welcome Home and back into his real world.

Yandere Wally Darling with a male reader

-Reader: He/him + Masc implied -He/him for Wally

Requested: No/Yes

Warnings: General yandere stuff, kidnapping, angst, one swear word Disclamer: Characters personality, looks, ect may be different from canon due to either hc or author has just forgotten.

A/N: I LOVE yandere Wally! As soon as I saw this request I was just so happy and ready to write it! Its also platonic bc I can't write romance and feel kinda uncomfy doing so yeah I hope thast okay. Also! on the Welcome Home with a child whos like nanno/tomie I changed Julie and Sallys pronouns as soon as I found out their canon genders! After writing notes: omg I had SO much fun writing this thank you so much for requesting this! Yandere Wally is my 2nd/3rd fav (tied with OG Wally) and RF Wally is my fav so if anyone wants to request RF Wally i'll be waiting >:)

^ Made by me

-🍎🔪 One moment you were just watching Welcome Home and the next you where in Welcome Home, now just like any sane person you started to freak out when all of a sudden you heard a familiar voice. -🍎🔪 You quickly turned around to see the short, blue spiral haired puppet staring at you with the biggest smile on his face, he offered you his hand and somehow pulled you up from the ground and intruduced himself as Wally Darling, even though you knew that you played along. -🍎🔪 After Wally intruduced you to all the neighbours and Home he brought you inside Home saying that you can stay with him and Home while they your.....house....would be getting built..... -🍎🔪 Lets just say even though you loved Welcome Home you did not want to stay here forever I mean, you have a family! a life! but right now you have no idea of getting back home so you just agreed to stay with Wally until your house gets built. A lot of time went past, you stayed with Wally even though you were meant to have a house but you never questioned that, your main focus was getting out of this place but that was way harder than you thought, with Wally never leaving your side and always seeming to be staring at you until one day. You were just sitting inside Home on the couch when wally came up to you smiling with a small tint of blush? you smiled at him "hey Wally! whats up?" he looked up and smiled at you "hello neighbour! I have something to tell you" you looked confused while staring down at him and nodded telling him to continue "well neighbour, I have had this growing feeling ever sense we met! and I just wanted to say, I love you and I want you to be my boyfriend" you froze, confused and concerned I mean, you never saw Wally in a romantic way and was never one for romantic relationships, you swallowed and sighed looking down at him "i'm really sorry Wally but I don't see you in a romantic way, I also never wanted to be in a romantic relationship" you said feeling guilty at the hurt look on his face but it soon turned happy "oh! thats okay dear! we can be in a platonic relationship" you shook your head and started to get up "neighbour? were are you going?" Wallys panicked voice asked "I'm sorry Wally but I need to find a way to leave" After you said the word leave everything went silent, than "leave? leave?! no no no no neighbour! darling! you can't leave! your meant to stay here with me! with Home! with everyone! what do you mean leave?!" Wally erupted into panic and anger, why would you leave him? wasn't he nice enough? good enough? no....no you were NOT leaving him "Home....lock the door" you froze as the door slammed shut, as soon as the shock left you ran to the door and tried to open it but it didn't budge "Home? Home open the door please....Wally what the fuck is going on" you screamed turning around to see him infront of you, you backed up as far as you could from him "darling please, I can't let you leave me, i'm sorry for this darling, I hope you could forgive me" Wally smiled while staring at you when everything went black. You slowly woke up confused when you remembered what just happened, you tried to more but your arms were tied down with black vines? you didn't know what they were but at that moment you didn't care, all you cared about was leaving this place and running as far as you could from this neighbourhood. But than you heard him "your awake! I hope Home didn't hit you too hard on the head dear! but its okay now, your here with me forever."

[djpachipikachu]

do graves!leosagi ever get tired of their friends/family labelling them?? like maybe leo’s bros make fun of him for having a “boyfriend” and he gets like rightfully irritated by that ?

its Kinda amusing bc eventually leo’s family at least straight up thinks theyre just really good pals and its like wow ! friendship ! in a more oblivious sense like they just kinda shrug and go oh yeah usagi’s here again whatever

originally mikey was insanely insanely suspicious of usagi and what his relationship was with leo (“hes literally just a friend” “YOU MEAN A BOY-FRIEND. AND U NEVER TOLD US.” “what am i supposed 2 say do i update u guys every time i make a friend” “If I See This Fuckinf Rabbit Sleeping In Your Bed Again I’m Telling Dad” “WE WERE HAVING A SLEEPOVER”) (mikey was mainly shocked bc leo invited a friend to sleepover who they didnt know And leo didnt tell anyone there was an extra mouth to feed for brekkie) but once everything was smoothed over usagi just became another regular, similar to how april is

leo himself tells raph that its a little more than that but only raph rly knows it and hes always had a hunch about them so it didnt change much in how the brotjers saw the two

usagi’s family on the other hand is definitely more “Boyfriend? boyfriend? boyfriend? crush? romance?” kitsune teases usagi about how dramatically romantic it must be to fall for a guy he hated in the beginning and usagi is like . so filled with Eugh. This Is Not Romantic. ick feeling that it causes him to be more in denial at how close he’s gotten with leo (in the beginning at least , later on kitsune still teases him but he’s more at ease with how him and leo are, so he always jusy goes “ew no im not kissing him dates r gross” but over time she toned it down to more “ooh is someone missing a certain kappa?” kinda teasing rather than “whens the wedding/has your first kiss happened yet lmao/etc” kinda teasing)

hana calls leo his boyfriend like all the time and like . usagi doesnt rly correct her bc she’s 8 and he doesnt know how to explain that they “arent Really boyfriends sure they do things that couples would do sometimes but its platonic and well you dont rly know what platonic means uh”

so she gets a pass on all her “IS THAT YOUR BOYFRIEND” comments since usagi is just like “yeagh its leo u wanna say hi”

auntie notices how leo visits a lot and she kinda just is like “okay ur like my kid now. lol.” she thinks they are just best friends bc usagi said they are and who is she to think otherwise, she kinda just absorbs leo (and later on the hamatos) as her own family and doesnt question their relatiomship much

chizu and gen tend to stay out of usagi’s personal business like that But gen did think that leo was a girl for a good while before he was ever introduced to him . and he was like “usagi if you wanna pick up the ladies u need like. do better. than this” “what. What” “like take a shower man” trying to give him flirting/relationship advice without actually knowing leo at all and also assuming usagi is straight

all in all its never really serious if people call them boyfriends or just best friends bc they dont really care to correct anyone it only matters if its like “so did you hit the [insert romantic relationship milestone] phase yet haha” bc that gets tiring to hear constantly

mainly all their family is just like “oh okay” at their relationship since i dont Really want to make the hardships of being aroace or being queer a big point since we already struggle enough with that irl ! a few details here and there about how their unlabelled status confuses some people but generally just a “we’ve seen weirder shit who cares” kinda energy to it

i love rambling . Thank you for the wuestion ily /p

[meangirlsautism]

do you have any headcanons for any ships ?? id love to hear them mean girls is like my new obsession

HEHEHE YES!!!!!!!!!!

im just kidding im like the worst person to ask this BUUUUUT i shall conjure something up.. jsut for you... ALSO NEW MEAN GIRLS FAN YAAAY

going throuhg my notes, i made a lil ship headcanons thing on my notes app in april 2020. and all i got around to making was stuff for karen/cady. completely random but ! better than head being completely empty. so i shall reference some of that and make other stuff up on the spot (for that and other pairings). enjoy!

also im like.. super unfamiliar w/ how romantic relationships Are and how human beings function in general so like.. youre fully allowed to view these however you want (platonic, romantic, etc), i just enjoy dynamics and character interactions. i know you specifically asked for ships but ! my lil headcanons will def be more vague, if that makes sense, sorry abt that! still, hope these suffice! if you ever wanted to ask for SPECIFIC pairings too just hmu or send an ask or smth :] (as a disclaimer, im not referencing a specific MG here, im more familiar w/ slash enjoy the musical the most but ! interpret them as any version i suppose)

karen/cady

not really a headcanon but the whole like "i like cady, she's nice to me." i eat that shit up. i love them and their relationship, in like, all adaptations

and specifically for the 2024 movie.. the way karen is the only person to text cady during her suspension... and how she reassures her that thyere still friends.. (similar to the bway version)... UGH!!!!!! love that so much

actually, we should be more insane for cady / the other plastics. both romantically and platonically

anyway, on to the actual hcs

karen rly likes to fidget w/ something so cady always gives her like hand or hair to play with

karen LOOVES cady's freckles. def loves to count / trace them

karen is def a tad confused as to why cady is so patient w/ her, so nice to her, etc. since i feel she's been often ... dismissed her whole life. and treated Not Great due to how she functions

that doesn't rly matter to cady. she constantly reassures karen and is there for her and reminds her that she's more than other people's opinions of her, more than her intelligence, etc. and cady never gets tired of it

cady always listens to whatever karen has to say, even if it's the tiniest, most ridiculous thing

cady helps her w/ school stuff

karen def sits + listens to cady infodump abt the wildlife she observed / learned abt in africa

i can see karen enjoying nature and whatnot. she doesn't necessarily "understand" the science aspect behind it all btu she enjoys it bc :) hehe. animals.

i can see her getting good at like.. identifying species and stuff bc of cady though

karen prob enjoys physical touch and stuff. i dont think cady is opposed to it but she's not like ... used to it much

or i suppose, used to giving it much? she's cool w/ receiving it, and as ive mentioned earlier, karen def likes to be feeling / playing w/ something. its like a fidget / stim for her

anyway autism🤝autism

gretchen/cady

ALSO autism🤝autism

they def love infodumping to each other... abt what exactly? yes

not too sure abt gretchen,still have to come up w/ special interests and whatnot fo rher but. cady its def like. math. and biology and zoology and shit

gretchen has sort of been told and taught that her input isnt needed or appreciated, so near the beginning of w/e relationship they have, she often kept to herself and didn't ramble as much

cady ofc noticed this, and tried her best to like.. encourage gretchen and whatnot

but, at the same time, she understood why she wouldnt open up RIGHT away yk. she understood that these things take time

once again, cady often reassures her, abt different things than w/ karen ofc but, its still reassurance

gretchen obv becomes like .. SUPER attached to ppl who pay attention to her and whatnot. even if the overall situation is shitty

at some point, she probably just thought she didn't deserve anything more. that what she got was the best she was going to get. and so, she felt she couldn't leave and find something better for herself

anyway. of course in canon (esp in the bway version) cady also wasnt the greatest / most understanding towards gretchen blah blah. whatever .

deep down we KNOW that cady is a kind and caring and nice person. she just wants to be well liked

whatever!!!!! cady shows gretchen what love and care TRULY feels like . and i think after some time the codependency on gretchen's end lessens a bit. esp after she realizes that . oh... this is what ive always deserved. and needed. and she understands that she's not expendable, that cady DOESN'T actually secretly hate her. that cady WON'T just throw her away if the opportunity comes

i think gretchen would chill out a bit if she's just shown true love and compassion im serious. and maybe some medication would help too

gretchen def likes / wants cady to be touching her at like.. all times. hand holding mostly, but stuff along the lines of that

gretchen is like .. weird w/ touch i think. considers it sacred, and yet craves it sooo bad

she probably only rly allows it w/ ppl she REALLY trusts . despite being very touch starved

both sooooo awkward lbr

ESP w/ deeper relationships

cady is just.. obv was homeschooled for most of her life. gretchen is just a ball of anxiety

also, based on gretchen's past experiences, her relationships (both romantic and platonic) havent been ........ the greatest, as ive talked abt before, and so she finally finds someone who like.. she's comfortable with? who she knows will Love her? she's extra awkward fr

doesn't want to mess up, lose them, etc etc

regina/cady

a loooong time ago i think, i saw a headcanon talking abt how regina has freckles. but she just covers them up

and i LOOOOVE that thought soooo mcuh

eventually wrote a little messy thing for it

but anyway. cady finds this out eventually and she is so :D

bc i see cady as having a ton of freckles too and yeah

but yeah. cady finds this out and is SO happy bc regina's sort of look like hers and ough

cady likes to compare them to like.. constellations and stars and shit. esp when regina complains abt them / is openly negative abt them

regina doesn't necessarily like her freckles bc its an imperfection in her eyes i suppose

but cady absolutely changes her mind on them

in fact, i bet they start reminding her of cady

she goes about it so nonchalantly but, some days she "forgets" to put on makeup . not just for cady or anything, nooo way

which is saying something for regina bc you just knoooow she barely leaves the house without applying SOMETHING

(i dont have freckles myself so sorry if this sounds ignorant or smth!)

cady is ..... very awkward . i think . esp w/ relationships, ANY relationship at that

regina should know this (she doesn't)

she lowkey expects these special things and whatnot from cady and cady is just :)?

bc she does NOT know what the hell is going on

most times, anyway. i t hink she sort of picks up on shit as she goes through school but like..

that's cause she purposely observes other ppl / couples / friends to see what they do . and then she basically adopts that shit

i started making these and i didnt evne like.. have a set timeline in mind for them. bc realistically a lot of these relationships would not last in canon / post canon. or form at all lbr. but lets pretend. i guess most of these follow canon / is canon compliant. w/ some wishful thinking / AUs. ...IF THAT MAKES SENSE

janis/gretchen

dont rly think theyd be toooo good for each other but. honestly who else here really is LOL most if not all the characters would have a loooot to do introspective wise before actually getting into any relationship BUT . for these few minutes . let us pretend

assuming we're talking abt them in a canon compliant world, they'd..... def have a lot to unpack together. from regina alone esp

i think they'd be able to help each other out w/ that sort of thing

ESP w/ the trauma they got from regina

it just affected them both in veeeery different ways

janis' turned into anger. where gretchen's turned into anxiety

they both realistically would NOT be ready for a romantic relationship, as i mentioned previously

and even something non romantic? i dont think theyd ever be able to form a normal relationship of ANY kind ever again

BUT. but. maybe they see themself in the other . maybe they want to help try and fix the other . bc maybe then it will help fix themself

hopefully that makes sense idk im just saying shit atp

most relationships where the ppl involved r incredibly similar dont end up working but like ..

janis and gretchen arent necessarily similar. they just have similar experiences. which could easily strengthen their relationship

they're fucked up in the same way.. you feel me

ANYWAY

i wrote this idea thing awhile back and its like.. gretchen cutting her hair short and janis seeing this and going ... hm. bc she senses the repressed homosexual or whatever. and she confronts her about it blah blah

anywho. i see gretchen as a lesbian. unsure atm whether shes like.. aware of it or not. ANYway, as we all know, janis is a Professional Lesbian or whatever, so i think janis like... helps her w/ that sort of stuff?

uhhhmmm oh right the hair. i totally see gretchen fucking w/ her hair following the canon events. and ofc i also see janis as someone who has messed w/ her hair a TON...

i think she helps gretchen experiment w/ that. her style too

sort of related.. but janis also def helps gretchen in managing and dealing w/ her anger and shit

bc janis sees that its THERE. its just buried deeeep within her

and gretchen helps janis deal w/ her more ...... softer? emotions

as seen in the musical... janis is NOT afraid to physically express her love. which seems super unlike her and her demeanor, i love it

and once again, gretchen is like ..... she needs this shit or else she will DIE (and yet touch lowkey makes her uncomfortable, depending on her mood and the time)

and so.. perfect pairing. janis isnt afraid to offer her touch.(?) and always provides it when gretchen asks for it (she asks a lot)

regina/gretchen

once again, realistically, this would not happen. esp in a canon world . even if everyone "got better"

however, i loved these 2 for whatever reason when i was younger LMAO

i had a bunch of little things written down for them in my notes but . i do not feel like going through them rn unfortunately. may revisit this at some other point. in order to see exactly what younger me thought of them

unlike gretchen w/ cady... iiii dont think gretchen's clingy-ness / codependency would get much better w/ regina

unless regina like . rly changes herself. if they BOTH rly change themselves

i think they'd both view each other as how they were in the past . regina would see gretchen as this clingy pushover and gretchen would see regina as this passive aggressive ruler . and REALISTICALLY i think they would prevent them from pursuing anything big, ykwim?

like. gretchen still admired regina and she lowkey HATED herself for that but its like.. as ive talked abt previously, shes probably not gonna get anything better yk? so she stayed w/ regina

ANYWAY. ENOUHG OF THAT SORRY

honestly? in an "everything is perfect and happy" world , i think theyd both be clingy af LOL

regina would, like, never admit but like.. shes super clingy

i think their relationships w/ touch are very ... unique

ive talked abt gretchen a bunch w/ touch and shit but regina... i dont know

she's def okay w/ it .. in terms of being on the receiving end but .. im not sure if she rly provides it much

shes def shit at recognizing and managing her emotions.. esp the more positive ones.. so i think she like. i think shes weird w/ providing affection

and i suppose receiving it too sometimes, esp if its from someone she REALLY likes

but yeah.. they're both weird w/ touch IDK hopefully this makes sense!!!!

i think gretchen is very patient w/ regina... and regina tries to be w/ gretchen, but fails most times (she's trying)

regina finds it like. embarrassing to ask for stuff (ESP affection) but.. she does learn that it is Okay eventually

and gretchen, unfortunately, is very awkward when it comes to this shit!

ESP since its w/ REGINA GEORGE

so she lowkey like.. freaks out when first asked to do ANYTHING towards her

regina tries her best to calm her down but shes shit at emotions and . yeah .

(its ok they got throuhg it) (i think)

gretchen/karen

won't lie rn. dont rly care for them much. def prefer other non romantic relationships for them

buuuut since im doing stuff for NOT just romantic relationships... i shall say a few things

as ive talked abt in previous gretchen pairings / duos... she just needs someone who'll love and appreciate her for who she is

and i dont doubt that karen would provide. she def would

they def have an interesting and fun bond, esp throughout the whole regina thing, throughout their friendship w/ regina as a whole, etc

anywho. krystina alabado once put on her story abt this like.. cactus that was in the dressing room she shared w/ kate rockwell. turns out it was fake. and kate watered it for a full 2 years

anyway thats a total gretchen and karen situation LOL

(gretchen acts liike she wasn't watering it too. she absolutely was)

karen and gretchen def buy a bunch of lil succulents and take care of them together

gretchen def feels super comfortable w/ karen, more comfortable than w/ most people

so that sort of made like .. getting a deeper relationship w/ her a lot easier

once again, gretchen is fs a lot more awkward when they take things farther in regards to their relationship

and karen has NO idea what the hell gretchen is on about

but she tries to remain as comfortable and supportive as possible

gretchen touch starved... karen touch provider... its perfect

gretchen def isnt afraid to ask for stuff from karen. she has to be a lot more precise and direct but . yeah

okay.. sorry that most of these aren't "shippy" but. hopefully theyre okay! i left out a few potential pairings bc i either 1. dont care for them much or 2. dont have much to say. HOWEVER if you still want to hear abt one i did not talk abt here, just lmk :3 i will come up w/ something.. thank u for sending this in :D

[suffarustuffaru]

so @alderamiin said subaru for the ask…. yes your ask was the one i deleted on accident whoops 😭😭 BUT HERE WE GO I MADE SURE TO REMEMBER TO DO YOURS WKDNDN (and i LOVE subaru fr i simply could not skip over him also) (pls expect my usual chaotic rambling im so sorry i really am overusing the caps button 😳😭😭)

Sexuality Headcanon: bisexual 👍 subaru being somewhere on the ace spectrum isnt a super strong headcanon of mine compared to the bisexual hc but i am still fond of it <33 bc i do tend to just hc him as bisexual but i suppose i could kind of see it <33 :DD !!

Gender Headcanon: subaru is literally, as we’ve all discussed, like EVERY letter of lgbtq+ i swear. like natsumi EXPLICITLY being stated to be his ideal self….. what cisgender boy has his ideal version of himself be a woman…. come on….. and hes been like. dressing and trying to pass as a girl for his crossdressing pre-isekai too. like subarus Practiced A Lot at this. subaru clearly enjoys doing this and he was crushed when he couldnt pass bc of his voice pre-isekai :(( AND LIKE subaru and his complex relationship to masculinity and feeling insecure in his own skin like……………… and then natsumi being his ideal self…… natsumi being the Heroine……….. and its like. subaru clearly has a case of “do i want to be them or be With Them” when it comes to men hes attracted to (most notably julius.) so like. it could apply to women too. like. and then the way subaru reacts to felix’s presentation too………. i just think it says a lot. i dont care what tappei says but he wrote all this shit in the text fr!!! and also in general. natsuki subaru being a gender neutral name…. same with natsumi schwartz… so yes genderqueer subaru for the win. i personally hc subaru as genderfluid or bigender!! and also like. subaru being Very LGBTQ+ is so in line with rezero’s themes of self love and self improvement and self discovery and Identity. i think it hits so much harder if subaru Is lgbtq+ versus if he was just insecure straight cis man. like no wonder subaru was struggling Even More. hes so so far in the closet and struggling with like the internal homophobia and shit fr :(((

that and 1. subaru being lgbt is such a great subversion of what you would think when you first meet his character. and also a subversion of ur typical isekai protag which ADDS to rezeros subversion of isekai in general and 2. i love making Certain People mad with these hcs. like its so supported by the text the only thing missing is explicit confirmation. which. i have my doubts with tappei on that but iirc he DID say he nearly wrote a lust if with the guys…. tappei. come on. you already explicitly said that natsumi is subarus ideal self.

A ship I have with said character: im very open to most subaru ships!!! i just love a lot of them—reinsuba, ottosuba, emisuba, remsuba, julisuba… i just like how each kind of dynamic with subaru has so much range like even in just main route alone?? and then you factor in the ifs and it gets So Interesting. theres so much history with each pairing and so much to explore, whether its platonic or romantic. and subaru has a LOT of love in his heart.

i just like each pairing for different reasons hah—like ok ive talked a lot about reinsuba and emisuba already in other asks so. i DO like remsuba okay. not in the sense that i want it to be the endgame ship in main route bc thats very much not happening and i would prefer The Most Detailed emisuba development of all time. which would be more thematically relevant <3 but i DO ADORE remsubas relationship in general. like its so so complicated??? like. yeah theres the conflict in arc 2. theres the conflict in arc 7 with her waking up and being different and being so mean to him about natsumi :((( theres her “youre my hero” versus “youre not a hero” WHICH. URHGHF ITS SO GOOD….. and like yeah remsuba really do be. iffy. in terms of how healthy it is. but its so complicated bc you also have rem being like—she was like the first person, narratively, to be willing to DIE to save subaru the exact way he does for other people (including rem). and then the famous from zero scene in season one which is a MASTERPIECE but i hate how people fixate on “i love emilia” LIKE REM IS HAPPY FOR SUBARU. SHE IS HAPPY AS LONG AS HE IS. EVEN IF HE DOESNT LIKE HER BACK. but also he did like her back romantically for a time. and also of course rem had her fixation on subaru :(( subaru had his own obsession for emilia while rem had hers for subaru pre-being gluttonyed?? :(( yeah like. remsuba being so complicated is so interesting to me. like she and subaru are very passionate people yes. but also they do need to learn to tone it down sometimes you know? REM ESPECIALLY TOO BECAUSE EVEN AFTER SHE STOPS BEING MURDERY TOWARDS HIM… FOR EXAMPLE IN SEASON ONE SHE WOULD CANONICALLY GO TO HIS ROOM IN THE MORNING AND WAIT FOR HIM TO WAKE UP…. like she'd just sit there at his bedside and Stare at him... like girl chill a bit its okay T^T i havent read sloth if. but it seems like they learned to mellow out and have a happy life T^T apart from. a shit ton of people dying in the background and also subaru dying of old age and resetting back to arc 3. i am interested to see if we’ll get further remsuba closure in arc 8 yes. but also im bonking subaru on the head in arc 7 for saying even REM TORTURING HIM was a fond memory. pls let this be addressed again later i swear sodndn.

ok also julisuba and ottosuba. i am no expert on julisuba but on the other hand i have analyzed Too Much Ottosuba so perhaps i am an expert there wodndn. but YEAH i love those ships. they have so much history and moments between them and they are. definitely the more Explicit evidence of subaru being bi (between subarus Interest in julius and reid calling julisuba boyfriends and SUBARUS INTEREST IN JULIUS... vs ottosuba repeatedly being like “omg do you Like Like me?” “NO I DONT SHUT UP” and also their continued divorce arc dynamics yep). but also i will say i really like ottosuba because specifically they are the subaru pairing where theyre like. Very Much Closer To Being Equals. if theyre not already equals in something. like in terms of power levels and intellect and their very loving families and previous inability to fit in or be believed by people and also their status in the narrative as Being Just A Guy in comparison to everyone else. and yet ottosuba are the MOST important members to their camp for their jobs—subaru keeps everyone alive, and otto handles All the politics, which we see over and over again. they are literally THE power duo. otto is so so important too as the second person to die FOR subaru the same way subarus died for others. like the paralleling of otto pushing subaru out of the way when the white whale drove otto insane (and later otto tried to go back for subaru once he regained his senses ;-;;;) versus otto pushing subaru out of the way so he didnt get killed by garf ;-;;;;;. and otto being the second person after rem to also give subaru an EXTREMELY IMPORTANT speech to him (otto-rem parallels...???) <33 except ottosuba also foil a lot bc of their Different Morals. but theyre both stubborn as hell and have a tendency to go off and do shit they think is best without telling anyone bc theyre too deadset (hah) on what THEY think. (OTTO. SPENDING A WHOLE YEAR SECRETLY GETTING THE BOOK OF WISDOM AND HAVING IT RESTORED?? HELLO???) anyway yeah ill stop right here bc i have So Much ottosuba posts on this damn blog wkdndn but i really do think the appeal of ottosuba is that they Are on a more even playing ground. and their morality flipflops sometimes. ottos issues are just more lowkey than subarus widndnd. i am. however. nervous about all the ottosuba and vincent-chisha parallels in arc 8 bc………. possible otto perma death on the horizon??? 😭😭😭😭 itd CRUSH subaru.

also of course the similar flavors of julisuba and ottosuba….. u can have ur tsundere x tsundere ships in TWO DIFFERENT FONTS. anyway ill become a julius lore expert someday i promise.

A BROTP I have with said character: BROTP ottosuba and ramsuba are so so funny and great wofndn but special shoutout to garf and subaru in particular!!! i think its interesting how far their relationship has come bc they had a VERY rough start and its like. 1. im sure garf would immediately regret going into a rage and killing a shit ton of people in that One Failed Loop and 2. we learn garf is a traumatized fourteen year old whos been trying so hard to take care of the demihumans inside sanctuary while his sister and mom left him, one way or another, and hes very afraid of the outside world. and its like YEAH now your behavior makes sense. and its so good to see garfs growth and also his growth in his relationship with subaru (and otto) bc he looks up to subaru sm!!! subaru helped garf so much T^T theyre brothers guys 😭😭 i think its so adorable and so sweet. ill defend garf all day everyday. garf 🤝 subaru with their DAMN hero complexes while otto tries to keep them both on a leash so they dont do stupid shit. subaru IS a good role model for garf though ill say that. subaru tries so hard to be a good role model wkdndn. and yes i always laugh when garf teases subaru for drawing doodles and writing encouraging things for emilia in the temple.

A NOTP I have with said character: okay so. maybe i will spill some tea here. hah so i went over in ram’s ask how i think ramsuba in wrath if is actually super interesting widndns but otherwise ramsuba to me is bland. which. i also just feel like subaru/crusch and subaru/ana and subaru/priscilla are also bland. like. i dont think theyll ever feel interesting to me akdndn. like theres not. as much to work off of imo. like i just dont think theyre a good match romantically at all. like At All. priscilla especially LMAO…. and im tired of people reducing women in the story to just boobs and being fucked by subaru 😭😭😭 like i dont have anything against those subaru ships, my biggest notp is just seeing a bunch of characters be butchered just to have subaru have sex with various women. 😭😭 obviously not everyone in the fandom does that but i see this happens the most with priscilla fr. pls. shes more than just boobs :(((

anyway. my other notp is like. echidna/subaru but like. i feel similarly to ram/roswaal on this where its like. theres a potential there to show a nuanced complex toxic relationship bc THAT IS what echidna/subaru are. even more so in greed if. like theyve spent an UNGODLY amount of time together like their relationship is so fucked. like god the amount of details that were added to their dynamic in the greed if ln makes me go INSANE….. like you know how echidna said that subaru could use her body with this contract?? what she ALSO really meant was HEY SUBARU YOU CAN KILL ME IF YOU WANT. ILL JUST COME BACK BC WE ALWAYS MEET IN A DREAM WORLD AND THERES NO CONSEQUENCES BUT ITLL FEEL REAL TO YOU. LIKE HOLY FUCK FR 😭😭 and like in generally reading through greed if ln is a Trip alright. like “no yeah duh of course it is, suffaru, its GREED IF” but LISTEN……. echidna being subarus weird mother figure and then like. idk there are obvious implications i feel from like the body fluid tea and then echidna being like “you can use my body” and then theres a moment where she puts his hand on her chest and yeah its to feel her heart but LIKE…. SOMETHING ABOUT THAT SCENE FELT LIKE. SOMETHING. TO ME. AND THEN SHES SO OBSESSED WITH HIM AND HES DEPENDENT ON HER LIKE JESUS ITS A MESS. ITS LIKE HOW SHE WAS WITH OG ROSWAAL. GOD. *puts my head in my hands*

anyway my real notp is like. depicting echidna/subaru like it is a Healthy Thing like no it is not 😭😭😭😭 it never was healthy and it literally never will be unless ur changing echidnas character drastically. if ur gonna show off echidna/subaru then they are gonna be SO RANCID in like every way possible there is no other correct way to write them. she is terrible for him. she literally saw him and went “i can make him worse” and then it happened. bc greed if subaru is a Terrible Person. like. its not even a question. the biggest example i can think of rn other than obvious Rbd use is KEEPING MEILI. A CHILD. HOSTAGE AND LOCKED UP IN ORDER TO USE ELSA. HER OLDER SISTER FIGURE. JEEZ. my biggest notp of all time is treating unhealthy relationships as if they Arent unhealthy.

MY OTHER BIGGEST NOTP OF ALL TIME FOR ANYTHING IS SHIPPING A CHILD AND AN OLDER PERSON TOGETHER. subaru/petra SHOULD BE AN OBVIOUS NOTP BUT SURE DOESNT FEEL LIKE IT SOMETIMES….. guys she is a child. come on. hes seventeen and shes TWELVE. GUYS…. and then theres tappei making iirc an ACTUAL petra if????? and idk what the content in petra if is exactly but i worry given tappeis track record with the child characters sometimes 😭😭 AND THEN PETRA BEING IN LUST IF. TAPPEI…… N-NOTHING HAPPENS, RIGHT? *EXPLODES WITH RAGE*. even if petra and subaru get together later when theyre Older Adults in some AU or something its like. subaru knew her when she was a young child. and she had a crush on him then. um. personally idk if im fully comfortable with that hah T^T

A random headcanon: GONNA TALK ABOUT WRATH IF. anyway so the wrath if divergence point is that subaru gets beatrice to teleport him away and ram chases him down, ram tries to strangle him to death but fails, he smashes her head with a rock. yes. BUT OKAY when u watch the anime. beatrice comes for his aid AFTER subaru gets to the cliff and tries to psych himself up to like. jump off to save rem and stuff. THEREFORE wrath if subaru still considered trying to rbd via jumping off that cliff. he just decided not to and agreed to have beatrice teleport him away. this is something not many people seem to mention or maybe even notice (??) but I THINK ABOUT IT A LOT…. :((

General Opinion over said character: i LOVE SUBARU WITH MY WHOLE BEING. he is my absolute favorite anime character of all time. his character arc is so chaotic and complicated and i think the way he Does like still struggle with the same Inner Conflicts is so so much more realistic. recovery and self improvement are NOT linear and he shows that perfectly. and i hate how much people misread subaru T^T the whole chadbaru trend in fandom of how he should get harems or how he should leave everyone or be terrible to emilia for *insert a long list of Terrible reasons here* is so. like did we all read and watch the same damn story or what hah. the whole point of rezero is LOVE ITSELF….. and subaru ultimately has a lot of love for so many people around him. though of course i do worry for how rbd reveal is going to be handled, and im not entirely sure how to feel about subarus arc 7 development atm. rbd reveal is gonna have catastrophic consequences for Everyone. like everyone hes ever been close to finding out hes died a shit ton of times to save him?? that so many of them have like. maimed and killed him or at least Tried To Do That? like HOW are we gonna get a happy ending out of all of this—hows tappei gonna handle this?? 😭😭 i worry sometimes that when rbd reveal happens it wont be nuanced or itll gloss over certain things or it just. wont be so satisfying. bc u have arc 7 subaru out here with SUICIDE PILLS……. ARC 7 SUBARU IN REPEATED INSANE DEATH LOOPS AS A CHILD….. how are we gonna come back from this?? 😭😭 i have my doubts sometimes but tappei loves insane character development for subaru so i suppose i will hope. i just wish for all the trauma to be seen and addressed akdndn and the fact that rbd is so. complicated. it makes subaru and his relationships with everyone else so complicated. and rbd is inherently unfair in a lot of ways to both subaru and everyone hes close to. i cant wait for more subaru development but i also think after arc 8 he NEEDS a break or like otherwise, personally i think subarus gonna snap for good and not be able to return from it 😭😭 or ill just have to suspend my uhh disbelief. i suppose. but yes i do love subaru a lot!!! his hair is a Pain in the ass to draw but ill endure the pain just for him. <33

but regarding all of subarus loved ones maiming and killing him a lot—i think its fascinating how the if routes prove he is JUST as capable of ruining all their lives. like i feel like people forget that sometimes in favor of woaaah cool what if routes where subaru becomes “badass”…. but LIKE…. hes SO SO CAPABLE of so much destruction. he is choice itself. he is capable of changing the entire world and everyone around him. he is capable of causing the deaths and trauma for SO MANY PEOPLE… and like i think rezero itself and subarus relationships are like an extreme version of hedgehog’s dilemma, u know? like u get close to people to love and be loved, but ur also very vulnerable to getting hurt. and rezero is About love. and part of close relationships are that ur so close u Can be hurt. maybe you Will be hurt. but u will also Love….. unless ur one of the ifbarus then fuck u for making the wrong decisions ig wodndndn. im telling u guys that subaru is LITERALLY an eldritch being at this rate. todd is so right.

and. okay one last thing im gonna be real for a second. im a little eh on subaru being a child, honestly. like i DO like the trope of turning characters back into their child selves in order to explore their psychology that way!! but like. idk i feel like the childbaru arc is kinda too similar to the whole amnesiabaru arc in arc 6. it feels Extraneous. it doesnt feel different enough for me personally. (emphasis on personally. this is all my opinion hah.) and then he is STILL A CHILD IN ARC 8 EVEN THOUGH THE OTHER PEOPLE THAT GOT TURNED INTO KIDS ARE NOW BACK TO NORMAL…… LIKE…. im sorry but the childbaru has overstayed its welcome by the time we get to arc 8 imo 😭😭

[what-do-1000-swords-look-like]

*logs in and sees even more anti-destiel posts*

Must be a day ending in Y.

Here's the thing: ship what you want, don't ship, whatever. That's your right. You also can have opinions on said ships or not shipping something. But for the love of God, can we please stop misrepresenting supposed facts and outright lying? Just because you don't want to acknowledge something present in the show? Or because one of you is super obsessed with Jensen while at the same time hating him because he married someone else and didn't come to sweep you off of your feet because you're his supposed soulmate? (which btw, while very weird in general, what does that even have to do with destiel? why are you even weighing in when it's clear that you're only saying what YOU believe while trying to speak for him as if you two are a single unit? It's creepy and makes no sense. Keep your obsession in check, please)

Alright, let's get started:

1) Jensen's actual words:

Firstly, if you're going to quote someone and state their opinion on the matter as FACT, let's not only get the source right but also list it so people can see what the person had to say for themselves so they can not only get the actual facts but come to their own conclusions (critical thinking, remember?). It's literally a link you can put into the post from YouTube, it's not rocket science last I checked.

29:35 is where it starts

A woman asks when did Jensen know about Cas' "romantic, deep love" for Dean before 15x18. Meaning when he did know bts as an actor.

Jensen's answer: "I don't think Dean ever really knew until the very end there." -- not only does he not answer the question in its original form (and hey, it's a con, it's loud, tons of people there waiting for his answer, he probably wasn't prepared for this question, etc - so I get it, I'm not criticizing him, I'm just stating facts), he responds initially for Dean, not himself.

But in this initial answer, he even acknowledges what the woman just said. "Romantic, deep love" -> "I don't think Dean ever really knew until the very end there." LITERALLY RIGHT THERE - Dean didn't know it until it was said

No matter what comes after this from him, Jared, or even what Jensen has said at cons afterwards, his answer literally confirms what she just said, and that answer is what popped first into his mind.

Then, prepare to have your mind blown antis, he confirms it AGAIN: "In fact, I know he didn't, because I didn't play that." -> he played Dean as not knowing about Cas' "romantic, deep love"

Only then does he start to delve into talking about the term romantic with Jared interrupting. But he confirmed it TWICE with his own words. That doesn't nullify his opinion or his perspective on the relationship, but it does confirm that was the intention of the scene.

And again, the question was about when they knew bts about Cas' "romantic, deep love" for Dean, not what Dean felt, not what type of love Jensen considers it to be (or Jared), not whether romance was meant to be in the show or not. Through his own words, he confirms it. Twice. (watch it again)

2) Types of love:

I can't believe this is even a point some people have tried to make in attempting to invalidate the scene from 15x18 but it's 2023 and here we are.

Philia love is platonic/friendly love. (click on the links - since it was mentioned that Cas only has angelic/heavenly/brotherly love for Dean and Castiel's angel character is loosely based on Christian traditions, I chose the same Christian perspective in these links) Storge love is the love of family or brotherly love.

Agape love is NOT brotherly love. (if you're going to use these terms and claim you're an expert, perhaps learn what they mean first?) Agape love is a God-like love of humans, completely unfathomable.

All of this is easily searchable. Google is your friend.

Now agape is the closest to what Jensen says later in that panel (though it changes to philia mixed with storge in a later con) though he did not use that specific term. However:

The scene was written and performed with romantic intentions from Castiel's side. This is confirmed time and time again.

And since a lot of anti-Destielers tend to be anti Misha as well (and accuse him of placating, lying, and being downright manipulative when it comes to this topic), here are some other confirmations:

The script is available online (again, Google is your friend) and you can read it for yourself. Robert Berens, the screenwriter, wrote the script (and it was greenlit by Andrew Dabb, the showrunner, and kept in the episode with the network, Singer, and WB giving it the green light after reviewing it before it aired) with Castiel's confessing his romantic love for Dean. It's right there.

If it's not romantic, then why can't Dean "recriprocate"? Why is he shocked at the "declaration from his best friend"? Why is it Cas' "hidden truth"? If it's just platonic from Cas' side or familial or even a God-like love of a human then why all of these factors mentioned in the script to help guide Jensen and Misha in performing the scene? You know why. And one of these antis is the supposed acting expert in the fandom? Puhlease.

How's that for "script analysis"?

Not to mention, since it's clear these same antis don't know a thing about writing and how it actually works, why was this scene a part of Castiel's arc that connects back to his arc in season 15?

3:49 - "I know who you love"

Yep, they weren't planning the confession back then, but when the showrunner and the writing team did start planning the end of the character's journey going into season 15, this ties up Castiel's arc neatly and it's perfect foreshadowing. Right down to The Empty's involvement. And they tied it up this way why? To make sense with events that came before it so a visible narrative is present for this character's journey as well as showing his development. (that's literally writing 101 btw)

There's a shit ton more I could throw into this post but I think I've made my point. So the next time antis decide to sit there and scold people who ship/celebrate Destiel and tell them that they don't understand "script analysis" like you do or how dare they twist Castiel's love for Dean into something it's not because you're playing megaphone-turned-into-a-wannabe-parrot for Jensen (aka your point of unhealthy fixation) because Castiel only meant it as an angel, perhaps don't. Or at least look up the facts first before you spout off any of that nonsense. You've had no problem saying Jensen needs to take an acting lesson or two because he's basic and dilutes his characters while also having one note acting, so maybe you should take a writing lesson or two. 🤷‍♂️ Seems fair.

Think whatever you want about Dean and how he regards Castiel's romantic confession, or how Jensen sees it, or whatever you need to tell yourself since it was left ambiguous, but don't you dare sit there and tell people they're wrong for reading Castiel's love the way it was written, performed, and intended to be perceived -> romantic. Or imply that they lack a basic understanding of love, condescend to them to have to explain it to them as if they're idiots, and falsely accuse them of maliciously twisting your fantasy beloved's Jensen's words. Especially when it's very easily proven that the only ones in the wrong here are you, and this is very clearly a "you" issue.

It happened.

It was romantic.

Get over it.

[muninnhuginn]

Ask game: The Locked Tomb

thanks for asking and sorry in advance. this is so 'it depends' >_<

my favorite female character

Gonna be pretty boring with this one but Harrow. She's got some many layers of denial going on there (okay tbf so do a lot of the characters but shh) but she knows what she's good at and her particular mix of pride and bluffing is so fun. and it's neat how her psychosis interacts with those traits (thinking specifically of her interactions with Ortus in htn in terms of using him as a measure of what's real whilst not letting on to anyone else her 'weakness')

my favorite male character

Palamedes. I will admit there are probably more layers to John Gaius than Pal overall in terms of the whole... dubious ethics in STEM deal, but personality-wise I definitely prefer Pal to John

my favorite book/season/etc

Harrow the Ninth. I like the unreality vibes and non-linear timeline. It reminds me of fic in a good way. The sense of humour in htn also leans the closest to my own sense of humour (aka, whenever it highlights the absurdity of situations) though I will admit the memes take a knock to my personal rating. Harrow narration and humour also focuses a lot more on what interests me personally than Gideon or Nona. (Also, nothing else has been able to replicate the rush I got in htn when we got [redacted] POV. And that could only be pulled off by holding off for so long)

my favorite ship

Locked Tomb has a specific blend of the platonic and romantic which makes it kinda hard to choose any one as a ship more than a dynamic to study? Like, Griddlehark I probably like more as a concept than what's on paper. Ianthe/Harrow is intriguing but ultimately not endgame for either party and both of them are well aware of that. G1deon/Wake/Pyrrha is almost entirely told in implications, same with Mercymorn/John/Augustus (we do get to see more of them in action but we're missing so much about their past it's like looking at an incomplete jigsaw puzzle). Then there's whatever's going on with devotion and miscommunication with both campal and the tridentarii where they're so codependent but have such wildly different approaches (and in the case of the tridentarii, they're working at complete cross purposes with each other without even seeming to realise it)

uhhh tldr; I'm not sure I can decide on a favourite dynamic never mind a favourite ship. I'm partial to the 'playing house' 'family' in nona though because it never could have lasted. it may not have been 'real', but they scraped out some brief happiness for themselves in the time they had

a character I’d die defending

uh, none of them. I can like them all plenty, but their flaws are generally what make them interesting and I'm not connected enough to the fandom to have been subject to all the worst takes yet

a character I just can’t sympathize with

John Gaius. I can understand theoretically how he was essentially radicalised and has had millennia to convince himself his self-justification and recollection of events places him "in the right". And it's clear that the amount of effort he puts into convincing himself and everyone else that he was right means that he recognises on some level just how much he chose to destroy in the pursuit of what he'd call "saving people". But at the same time, I don't ever see him showing any form of repentance. And, like, I know characters don't *need* redemption arcs etc etc, but like. He's had his descent arc now. It's done. I'm about as sympathetic to him as Yagami Light.

a character I grew to love

I can't choose here. The thing with this series is in the first book I didn't truly feel like I "knew" the characters beyond Gideon and somewhat Harrow. But then htn and ntn both returned to characters and provided so much more context to them that I know that whenever I get around to my reread gtn alone is going to kill me with its implications. Will give shout-outs to both Ianthe and Camilla though

my anti otp

More trainwreck fascination here, but John/Alecto is very... in a series of incredibly unhealthy relationships these two give the impression they're heads and shoulders above the rest in toxicity (which is saying something considering the dios apates). I want to know more.

[aangussca]

Gallery visit: AGNSW - Louise Bourgeois exhibition (17.1.24)

Context: This exhibition centres around Louise Bourgeois' practice (thematic/conceptual and artmaking) and how it was influenced by the events, psychological states, and emotional extremes of her life:

Tragedy, grief and sorrow

Anxiety and fear

Rage and hostility

Peace and comfort

Love (familial, platonic and romantic/sexual)

Bourgeois' works shift between multiple forms (biomorphic, abstract, surreal, etc.) and multiple materials. Yet the themes explored draw from experiences, emotions and anxieties that others can relate to.

(Small content warning for the following: themes of sexuality (either implied or discussed - nothing explicit), and discussions/depictions of grief and psychological/emotional vulnerability that may hit too close to home for some.)

My Reflection:

I thoroughly enjoyed this exhibition for multiple reasons (only the primary key ones are below):

How the exhibition was organised thematically into 'Day' and 'Night' to represent two extremes that exist separately yet are interconnected: the conscious and the unconscious, order and chaos, love and anger, comfort and fear, day and night. 'Day' itself is split into 9 areas, each detailing parts of her life with accompanying artworks. I thought, while walking through the exhibition, that was a clever way of guiding the audience through both Bourgeois' life and the two different states ('Day' and 'Night').

The inclusion of hidden quotes attributed to Bourgeois on the walls of the 'Day' part of the exhibition. They fit the themes in each of the nine sections and I believe they would make thoughtful prompts for my own artworks.

I particularly loved how some of Bourgeois' works merged biological forms and abstract imagery. For example, Torso, Self-portrait (1963-1964), The Destruction of the Father (1974), Nature Study (1986) and À l'infini (2008-2009).

There was also the use of colours and abstract imagery used to convey multiple levels of meaning, as well as provoke the audience to connect their own emotions and experiences with them. For example, Repairs in the Sky (1999), Sublimation (2002), Heart (2004), and The Waiting Hours (2007)

Overall, this was a fantastic exhibition that I believe will serve as inspiration for any future projects.

Interesting things to note

Maman (1999, bronze, stainless steel and marble sculpture)

Description: "It's here. Or should we say she is here. Maman, by Louise Bourgeois. One of the past century's greatest sculptures by one of its greatest artists. Take a moment to size up Maman. Walk around her. Feel her height, her grandeur. And think, as you stand underneath her, of the history of monumental sculpture. Of the tonnes of bronze poured across the centuries to make sculptures of heroic figures. Soldiers, generals, presidents, victors, athletes, horsemen. But not many women, and not many mothers. Which is why Bourgeois's Maman is not just arresting but pivotal.

For here is a sculpture, nine metres high, a creature so large it is architecture, which is also a homage to Bourgeois' mother and mothers more broadly, as fearsome and mighty presences. 'Maman' means mother but more precisely 'mummy'. It's a child's word, it's intimate, affectionate. And this childlike intimacy only heightens our sense of the fantastical size and potency of this spider. It seems battle-ready with its limbs of bronze and its cage-like abdomen loaded with eggs. Who wouldn't want Maman as their protector? Who wouldn't fear to provoke or disobey her? We all become children again, don't we, when we feel our smallness below this sculpture. And we remember, too, the enormity of the feelings we projected on those who raised and controlled us: love, reverence, devotion, respect, but also fear, frustration, fury and wild need. In this sense Maman, for all her height and weight, is a psychological entity. Looming over us physically, she also takes up residence in our memories and our minds. And like the monstrous creatures in fairy tales and myths, she instills an awestruck humility. It's useful to be reminded that, from a certain perspective, we humans look as small as insects.

Spiders always relate in Bourgeois's art to her mother Joséphine, a tapestry restorer. Like Joséphine, spiders are patient and constructive, they have a talent for weaving and repairing. As she works precisely to build her web, the spider is also an artist. Drawing materials out of her own body, she creates geometry, shelter and order. And she stakes her claim here, in front of the male artists' names on our building for female and maternal creative powers."

Below are some of the hidden wall quotes I found in the 'Day' section of the exhibition, which may prove to be very interesting prompts for my future artworks:

Sweden-based American musician Kali Malone was commissioned by the AGNSW to create six different songs (using organ instruments from different locations in Sweden) responding to Bourgeois' work - my thoughts on this can be seen in my reflection above:

The Spear: https://pwa.agnsw.artpro.io/catalog-object/86525de5-c3a6-46c2-84e6-2b83b9cea495

The Spiral: https://pwa.agnsw.artpro.io/catalog-object/afa919a5-37e9-46d3-8846-916cf0ee15a1

The Spider: https://pwa.agnsw.artpro.io/catalog-object/4882c7a0-17ee-4f36-b2e8-9f85a014d316

The Ladder: https://pwa.agnsw.artpro.io/catalog-object/1ae778c9-f4d4-4dc7-8a7d-8eeb26f9202b

The Wheel: https://pwa.agnsw.artpro.io/catalog-object/39e8bac0-a0e0-48b6-864f-10e652e5ad5c

The Field: https://pwa.agnsw.artpro.io/catalog-object/f2961ab9-45b5-4314-8617-a4acf50c55e3

Part 1: DAY

"Night and day. Two times, two states, two conditions in opposition. But bound together, impossible to separate, each unthinkable without the other. When two things are like night and day, they could not be more different. When someone works night and day, they do so incessantly. Louise Bourgeois (France/USA 1911-2010) is an artist of night and day in both senses. She is, first, an artist of extremes and conflicting impulses - a fearless explorer of the mystery and complexity of our relations with ourselves and others. Love and rage, conscious and unconscious, order and chaos, trust and abandonment. Traversing these polarities, she made art of strange beauty and piercing emotional power. Bourgeois is also an artist of night and day in her determination and persistence. Every day and many nights of her long career, she searched for emotional truth and self-knowledge. She made, destroyed, repaired, made again. She was the question she sought to answer. This exhibition reveals the days and nights of Bourgeois's art in two very different spaces. Here in Day', a thematic seven-decade survey unfolds, revealing conscious shifts and preoccupations. Downstairs in 'Night' in the Tank, artworks from many periods inhabit a darkened landscape of the unconscious. Journey between these two levels and discover the intensity of Bourgeois' unending search." - AGNSW description

Section 1: My Own Voice Wakes Me Up

"A body arches up from a bed. A blue sky beckons through a broken window. And on the facing wall, a young woman with blue eyes looks on with anxious intelligence.

These are three very different artworks from three moments spanning Louise Bourgeois's extraordinary career. But within each, there's a shared psychological tension - a pressure that generates questions. What is making the body rise like that? What kind of world is seen through the window? And what does the woman see in herself (or us) that makes her self-portrait so pensive? The title of this exhibition is itself a question, which loops around on itself. First posed by the artist in her 1995 diary, it also appears within a major sculpture downstairs in the Tank.

In posing questions, Bourgeois's art pointedly asks us to respond and connect. She once remarked that she felt lonely when her viewers did not react. If this does not touch you, I have failed.'"

Self-Portrait (c. 1939, gouache on cardboard)

Description: "This small painting speaks volumes. It is an early self-portrait by an artist whose seven-decade career has been described as an act of self-portraiture. Bourgeois is in her late twenties, a watchful and hypersensitive presence. Her mother Joséphine had died seven years earlier, having being nursed by Bourgeois through a long illness. Soon after, Bourgeois ceased her studies in mathematics and dedicated herself to art. By the time of this work, Bourgeois was living in New York with her husband, art historian Robert Goldwater. They met in Bourgeois's small art gallery in Paris in 1938 and married three weeks later. Bourgeois felt lifelong guilt about leaving her siblings and father Louis behind. The 'runaway girl' regards herself here with apprehension and determination. By 1940, the world was at war. By 1941, Bourgeois had three sons. Reconciling motherhood with being an artist was one of the challenges to come. Nonetheless, she wrote at the time with a note of conviction: 'Set out with something to say and not the vague desire to say something!'"

My Blue Sky (1989-2022, gouache, watercolour, ink, pencil and coloured pencil on paper mounted to wood and glass window frame)

Arched Figure (1993 (cast 2010), bronze sculpture on fabric and wooden table)

Section 2: One and Others

"Some stand alone and watch. Others cluster tentatively. Some carry packages or precious egg-like cargo. Some are pierced, and some look sharp enough to pierce us.

The sculptures in this room are from a series called the Personages. They were first shown in 1949 and 1950 in New York in Louise Bourgeois's earliest exhibitions of sculptures. They manifest one of her lifelong preoccupations - the tension between 'one and others'.

Bourgeois was in her late thirties, with three young sons, when she made these works. She carved them on the rooftop of the family's apartment building in Manhattan, in a room in their home, and at their country house in Easton, Connecticut. A decade earlier and newly wedded, she left France for New York to be with her husband, art historian Robert Goldwater. Creating this family of figures was a way of conjuring badly missed presences from her past.

Slender and precarious, the Personages evoke states of fragility, defensiveness, instability. Their placement in relation to each other is essential to their effect. Installing the sculptures directly in the floor rather than on pedestals, Bourgeois created a psychological space through which viewers could move, as if at a strange social gathering."

He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947, illustration series of 9 engravings with letterpress text)

Description: "Buildings as beings. Emotional architecture. Bourgeois's gift for imbuing objects with psychological potential is richly evident in this early illustrated book. Watchtowers, platforms, buildings and ladders become actors in a theatre of relationships. The forms derive in part from Bourgeois' love of New York and its 'clear-cut' buildings. But the short texts that accompany the images spin this work away from the familiar. In succinct sentences and a detached voice recalling children's stories, Bourgeois offers vignettes that range from the arresting and the absurd to the tragic. A devoted mother is ignored by her son. A girl tries to hide sugar by burying it. A man laughs so much he loses his head. Abandonment and a failure or inability to communicate emerge as preoccupying themes."

Personages Sculptural series (1946-1955) (from left to right): The Winged Figure (1948, painted bronze and stainless steel), Observer (1947-1949, bronze, stainless steel and black patina), Quarantia (1949, bronze and stainless steel)

Untitled (Broom Woman) (1997, steel, steel welds, wood broom head and fabric)

Description: "Evocations of women have a special place among Bourgeois's Personages. Needle Woman, Woman in the Shape of a Shuttle and Woman with Packages are among those in this room. The first two allude to the sewing and weaving performed by the women in her parents' tapestry restoration business, which was overseen by her mother. Of the third work, Bourgeois said: 'A woman who carries packages is responsible for what she carries and they are very fragile … Yes, it is a fear of not being a good mother.!'

Untitled (Broom Woman) was made 50 years later. It is the first in a series of 'intruder' works that interrupt the chronological flow of Bourgeois's art through this gallery, revealing how she returned to key forms and problems across the seven decades of her career. Broom Woman balances on one battered foot in a garment once worn by the artist. It is an object of strange power and sympathy - a psychic scarecrow and a herald of endurance."

Section 3: Lairs and Labyrinths

"The 1950s and early 1960s were a period of retreat, self-examination and re-emergence for Bourgeois. When her father Louis died unexpectedly in 1951, she mourned the loss of this beloved yet vexing figure and fell into a debilitating depression. She sought to regain her equilibrium by entering psychoanalysis.

For eleven years, Bourgeois's art-making was curtailed and she had no solo exhibitions of new work. Instead, she channelled her energies into her analysis, which continued into the mid-1980s, and into writings that reveal her unsparing search for self-knowledge (some of these are projected downstairs). In one page of writing from the late 1950s, Bourgeois declared her failure to fulfil conventional roles as a wife and mother, but affirmed in the last line, I have not failed as a truth seeker.' Yet this seemingly unproductive period in her art-making was also a time of preparation. Her intense self-examination fed the creation, in the 1960s, of experimental objects like those seen at right - forms that seem to have been birthed or excavated, like thoughts in psychoanalysis, from a deep place within the body and the mind."

Anti-clockwise from top and then left to right (first row): Torso, Self-Portrait (1963-1964 (cast 1999), painted bronze) - left in second row, Labyrinthine Tower (1962 (cast 2003), bronze), Le regard (1963, latex over fabric), Unconscious Landscape (1967-1968 (cast 2010), bronze with black and polished patina) - right in second row, Lair (1962 (cast 2004), painted bronze), Le Trani Episode (1971, plaster and latex), End of Softness (1967 (cast 1999), bronze with gold patina)

Description: "Forms soften, spread and slumber. Lairs entice while also threatening to entrap. An eye is also a mouth is also an orifice. These are works that evoke how the body feels, as critic Lucy Lippard said, 'from the inside out'. Not widely known in the art world of the 1960s, Bourgeois later celebrated her 'great luck' in being 'left to work by myself for about fifteen years. I did not consider that I was ignored. I considered that I was being blessed by privacy.' Working in her basement studio, often with non-traditional materials such as latex and resin, Bourgeois created a family of objects that moves strangely and unpredictably between soft and hard, male and female, aggressive and introspective. Bourgeois returns to these tensions and the forms that carry them again and again across the years (some recur in the Tank downstairs). Artists 'repeat themselves', she said, 'because they have no access to a cure.'"

Left: Untitled (circa 1970, paint on board)

Right: Topiary IV (1999, bronze, steel, beads, fabric and wood)

Fée Couturière (1963 (cast 2010), painted bronze)

Description: "In 1964, Bourgeois included Fée couturière in her first solo exhibition of new work since 1953. The title refers to the nests of the 'fauvette couturière' or tailorbird, which are constructed from scavenged organic and household materials and stitched together using spider webs. By suspending the sculpture, Bourgeois charged it with ambiguity and potential movement. A hanging sculpture also offered a retreat for the imagination. Look across the room at the much later work Topiary IV and you will see the form again in miniature."

[unsociableandtaciturnbarbie]

This week's find is an edit of 2007 Northanger Abbey movie to the song Seven by Taylor Swift. The TikTok shows different clips of Catherine, Henry Tilney, and General Tilney as the lyrics run along the bottom of the screen in a stylized white font. Edits, generally, can be a range of things, but in my research are typically videos in which footage from a movie, TV show, or celebrity is cropped and rearranged to align with a chosen song. Taylor Swift songs themselves are becoming increasingly popular in mainstream media, but have been popular for quite a while in the #booktok and fandom scene on TikTok and Youtube. This song in particular, Seven, can be found in edits for everything from Harry Potter to Five Nights at Freddy’s. Typically, it is used to highlight an unhappy home life with the phrase “your house is haunted” and an escape from that home life with another character in a platonic or romantic relationship with the phrase “I think you should come live with me”. 

For Northanger Abbey in particular, I think this song was an interesting choice. With the first line, “I think your house is haunted,” over a clip where Catherine is talking to Henry Tilney followed by a clip of Catherine walking through what I assume is Northanger Abbey (side note: I have not watched the movie, but I did some IMDB sleuthing), it sets up Henry as the “your” in this song and thus the idea of Henry Tilney’s house being haunted. This brings us back to the idea we discussed in class of Jane Austen flipping the tone of the novel from a story about a naive girl on vacation to one of a gothic novel as Catherine arrives at Northanger Abbey. Northanger Abbey is described in a large amount of detail as Catherine tours it, but also in how Catherine sees it at night and daydreams about it. Northanger Abbey, in this way, builds up to this sort of scary haunted house in the mind of Catherine. Following this line is, “your dad is always mad and that must be why,” with a clip of General Tilney storming around a corner. In most edits, the creators use mad in a sense that I usually think of it, as being angry, which I think applies to how the General looks in the scene. However, while I was considering this edit, it seems like maybe there’s a double meaning here. As Catherine builds up this haunted house in her mind, she becomes convinced that General Tilney murdered his wife. She starts to obsess over all of his actions, turning what could be construed as pretty typical behaviors to evidence that he must be coping with murdering his wife. Mad, aside from meaning angry, can also mean crazy, something that could probably be used to describe someone who’s murdered his wife. I don’t often think about this meaning of the word “mad” but I think it’s a really interesting application here, whether the creator meant to use it in both of its meanings or not. After this is the line, “I think you should come live with me.” This follows with more scenes of Catherine and Henry Tilney together (side note 2: my best guess based on the emotions of the recurring scene shown of Catherine and Henry talking is that it is when Catherine tells Henry she thinks his father murdered his mother, I could be very off here because I haven’t finished the book, but I wanted to put an official guess out there for when I do watch the movie). As I have not finished the book, I can only really hazard a guess based on previous edits I’ve watched, but I think the general meaning of the rest of the video is to (hopefully) convey how Catherine and Henry find happiness in being together despite the sort of haunted sadness permeating Henry Tilney’s home.

And for some added enjoyment, here is some other Northanger Abbey media I found that made me giggle and I would analyze given more time:

[inun4ki]

死/// GUIDELINES.

✾ Mun

hello.!! call me taro. my pronouns are they/them, and i am 21+. i've been roleplaying off and on for many years. my waking life is busy, so i won't always be here. i have 5 pets (no cat-dog fights in this house) and a big family. i prefer writing original characters to canon characters. i live in ye olde us of a. there are two things in this world i can't live without: green tea, hot cheetos, and emotionally wrecked men. oh, and i'm nerdy as hell. if you have any questions or just wanna chat/plot, i'm always open.!!

✾ Blog

Content.

i don’t shy away from disturbing/gory/traumatic topics. i don’t see it as a moral failure to write it. however, i won’t write: minor/adult, graphic noncon, and incest outside of backstories and such. 

all triggering content will be tagged as ’____ /’, and erotic content will be tagged as ‘nsft /’. 

needless to say, this is a 18+ only blog. i will not interact with anyone under the age of 18, 21+ preferably.

the themes i will explore on this blog include suicidal ideation, murder, mass murder, multiple forms of abuse, mental health, personal growth, sacrifice, guilt, death, loss, toxic relationships, and more.

Posting.

all interactions are mutuals only.

i will take my time for serious threads. it may take me a few weeks from time to time to reply to a thread or answer an ask. 

i tend towards multi-para, but will do one-liners or simpler, shorter threads. 

i regularly delete my OOC posts. 

i tend toward inbox memes, so you may see more of those than other things. it's really just because i like to write drabbles most of the time.

Communication.

i’m just a little bit on the awkward & shy side and may have a hard time reaching out for plotting. what i do to mitigate this is generally interact with posts and send in icebreaker asks.

i’ll also reblog plenty of memes, post starter & inbox calls, and my interest check so that there’re always opportunities to get things going.

i love love love to talk about mashing our muses together, so even though it can be hard for me at first, i’m always down to chat

if there's an occasion i don't respond to a message, it's usually because i've fallen asleep, got hella distracted, forgot, am hyperfocused on replies, having health problems, etc. it's never deliberate. please feel free to nudge me.

Shipping. 

i love to ship, honestly. i am always down. if you think our muses would mesh well, by all means - please come yell at me! i probably ship it already anyway.

communication but mostly chemistry are needed for romantic shipping, as kaede is a bit of a pain when it comes to this - he’s only easy sometimes, and really the only way for him to 'love' your muse would be if they're just as obsessed with him as he is them.

there are a couple of things i do not consider shipping right off the bat. flirting isn't shipping. hell, i don't even think our muses boning a couple times is shipping. i don't consider it a ship unless we talk about it, basically.

toxic ships are super welcome! 

i do not ship minor/adult, except platonically as mentor-student or family.

every ship is in its own universe, disconnected from all others, and i do not treat any one ship as more important than another.

Verses. 

this blog is multiverse (working on the page), though jujutsu kaisen will be the primary.

i’m happily oc, crossover, au, and canon friendly, so if you want to do things in a different verse, i’ll make one if i don’t have one already! 

Godmodding. 

so long as we talk about it before hand or it advances the thread, i don’t particularly care about godmodding or powerplaying. it just has to make sense for our plot.  

kaede is strong, but there are others who are stronger - and crueler - and i won’t ignore that if the power scale is such. your muse can overpower mine? dope, they should, actually! besides, he’s a dex build. he’ll put up a good fight, but he’ll probably lose.

Drama/News/Triggers.

i block tags/posts.

if there’s something i don’t want to see, i will simply not see it, no matter what it is, be it the news, internet beef, or things that make me feel like ass for one reason or another. i don’t engage with any of that stuff; i have a personal blog for that sorta thing.

also, i do not have any written triggers & no tumblr post is going to send me down a spiral. i’ve been through a lot, but i’m a ‘power through it’ type, so even if i do see something, it’s ultimately whatever.

Kaede.

this is a small disclaimer.

i’m not caught up to the manga by any means, so there may be some things i don’t know or will get wrong - please let me know if something doesn’t gel quite right. 

please note that i put him together carefully so he wouldn’t interfere much with jjk’s main plot, though i’d be happy to plot something out. 

as kaede will ever be a work in progress, his about page is subject to change. all abilities and techniques are accumulative and an attempt at originality

i will apologize in advance for kaede being a complete brat at times, as he is a bit emotionally stunted and struggles particularly hard with forming solid relationships, be they platonic or otherwise. there's a lot of fear there for him.

Inunaki.

you’ll see mentioned in a few places something called ‘the inunaki incident’. it’s about the mid-point of kaede’s personal storyline, and is a hefty bit of mixed character development i’m saving for a later date - fair warning: i’m a big fan of tragedies. i do have a posted timeline for his life (mostly just summaries), and i will be going over parts of it in the future. ultimately, the plan is to answer the questions: do i have the strength to keep going anyway? is my sacrifice worth the consequence? was this unavoidable, or could i have done something to change it? how much guilt and responsibility can one person assume before it utterly destroys them? i have fun seeing how many different ways i can answer them. 

Credits.

i like to draw, sometimes a lot - but i am notoriously horrendous with most poses, so i end up using/relying on references - which i very ardently do not claim as my own. some poses i reference belong to kate-fox on dA, however i also use personal photographic references (pictures i’ve taken myself), anime/video game screenshots, and, on occasion, porn, as i cannot draw the human body or faces from memory (combined visual processing + memory issue). where i can afford it, however, i do commission artists instead - in fact, i much prefer it. all graphics were arranged by myself; likewise, kaede’s faceclaim belongs strictly to mangaka yanase seno. i also have commissioned art of him done by @okaerin, which serves as my current dash icon! icon borders by @paletterph

[lyriclorelei]

Trope Game

Tagged by @seiya-starsniper, I've had wine let's go!

Rules: How much do these tropes affect your decision to click on a fic?

-10 -> very dissuaded

0 - don't care either way

+10 -> very enticed

nope -> if it's a hard no and you'd never click on a fic with that tag or or you even have the tag blocked or you'd insta click out of the fic if it wasn't tagged

Bonus points for explaining the rating and whether it's conditional.

Age gap: -8

If it's just an age gap then, sure, but it does tend to be paired with other power dynamics that I steer away from (esp. teacher/student).

Codependency: +5

This depends on the paring for me, but... I do like pairing where it's common, so.

Obsession/Possessiveness, jealousy: nope

No thank you, jealousy pops up too much in real life, I don't want it in fiction.

Opposites (grumpy/sunshine etc): +10

Hell yeah.

Enemies to lovers, Enemies with benefits: +8

Not my go to, but good fun much of the time.

Friends with benefits: 0

Eh. I might just be too ace for this one.

Sex to feelings: 0

Don't seek it out, don't avoid it.

Fake dating/relationship: +8

I do want it to be paired with mutual pining or slow burn or similar things, but I do like it.

Friends to lovers: -3

I get very protective over some pairings as strictly platonic/friendship. Like, I don't care if other people ship them as romantic/sexual, but I'm very protective of friendship as a lovely means unto its own end, but I do love romantic pairings where they are also best friends so!

Found Family: +10

I do love a whole group of friends, though I don't like when people need to prescribe specific family relationships onto the group??

Hurt/Comfort: 0

This one I need in a longer fic, if it's a oneshot and it's only hurt/comfort then I usually don't click, but if it's a part of a large whole then sure.

Love Triangle: -20

If it's an OT3, love it, if it's some weird jealousy love angle then then absolutely not.

Poly, open relationships: 0

Poly sure, good stuff, open relationships, there'd better be a ton of communication. I realize I'm drawing a strange line here, but it makes sense in my head.

Mistaken/hidden identity: 0

Really depends on how it's happening? Don't have strong feelings.

Monsterfucking: 0

Not my thing, but I do love monsters in general.

Pregnancy: -10

Kidfic sure, but people write pregnancy weirdly on the whole, so no.

Second Chance: -5

Eh, I've enjoyed some, but it really depends on the specifics.

Slowburn: +10

Hell yeah, especially with mutual pining, love when it's requited but they don't think it is.

Soulmates: +20

Please send me all the soulmate fic you encounter. I will buy you a drink if you find me a good published romance of soulmate AU.

Tagging anyone that feels inclined.

[thebibliosphere]

So I'm currently unemployed because I got fired for taking too much sick leave (it was legally sketchy blah blah blah but in the end I just can't work and take care of myself and investigate my mystery health problems at the same time). So I've been spending more time writing!

I really admire your writing and loved Hunger Pangs. I'm looking forward to the poly elements developing and I'm wondering if you have any advice for writing about poly. I've made one of my projects a snarky take on "write what you know" ... Apparently what I know is southern gothic meets Pacific northwest gothic, chronic illness pandemic surrealism, and falling back-asswards into threesomes.

I know this is a very open-ended question and I don't expect an answer, I'm just curious about it if you have the energy. As a writer, trying to write honestly / realistically about polyamory/enm, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what's different about portraying monogamy or nonmonogamy in books, romance or erotica or otherwise.

I'm trying to read examples but it's hard to find examples that fit the niche I'm looking at. Excuse me if this question is nonsense, it's the cluster headaches.

I'm sorry to hear you've been dealing with all that and solidarity on the cluster headaches. But I'm glad you're finding an outlet through writing! And I hope you're happy with an open-ended ramble in response because oh boy, there's a lot I could talk about and I could probably do a better job of answering this sort of thing with more specific questions, but let's see where we end up.

There's definitely a big difference between writing polyamory/ENM (ethical non-monogamy) and what people often expect from monogamous love stories.

Just even from a purely sales and marketing standpoint, the moment you write anything polyamorous (or even just straight up LGBTQIA+ without the ENM) you're going to get considered closer to being erotica/obscene than hetero romances. It's an unfair bias, but it's one that exists in our society. But also the Amazon algorithm and their shitty, shitty human censors. Especially the ones that work the weekends. (Talking to you, Carlos 🖕.)

So not only do you start out hyper-aware that you're writing something that is highly stigmatized or fetishized (at least I'm hyper-aware) but that you are also writing for a niche market that is starving for positive content because the content that exists is either limited, not what they want, or is problematic in some fashion i.e. highly stigmatized or fetishy. And even then, the wants, desires, and expectations of the community you're writing for are complex and wildly varied and hard to fit into an easy formula.

When writing monogamous love stories, there is a set expectation that’s really hard to fuck up once you know it. X person meets Y. Attraction happens, followed by some sort of minor conflict/resolution. Other plot may happen. A greater catalyst involving personal growth for both parties (hopefully) happens. Follow the equation to its ultimate resolution and achieve Happily Ever After. 

But writing ENM is... a lot more difficult, if only because of the pure scope of possibilities. You could try to follow the same equation and shove three (or more) people into it, but it rarely works well. Usually because if you’re doing it right, you won’t have enough room in a single character arc to allow for enough growth, and if ENM requires anything in abundance, it’s room to grow.

And this post is huge so I’m going to put the rest under a cut :)

There's also a common refrain in certain online polyam/ENM circles that triads and throuples are overrepresented in media and they may be right to some extent. Personally, I believe the issue isn't that triads and throuples are overrepresented, but that there is such minuscule positive rep of ethical non-monogamy in general, that the few tiny instances we have of triads in media make it seem like it's "everywhere" when in actuality, it's still quite rare and the media we do have often veers into Unicorn Hunter fetish porn. Which is its own problematic thing. And just to be clear, I’m not including this part to dissuade you from writing "falling back-asswards into threesomes." If anything, I need more of it and would hook it directly into my brain if I could. I'm just throwing it out there into the void in the hope that someone will take the thought and run with it, lol.

I’d love to see more polyfidelitous rep in fiction, just as much as I’d like to see more relationship anarchy too. More diversity in fiction is always good.

Another thing that differs in writing ENM romance vs conventional monogamy is the feeling like you need to justify yourself. There's a lot of pressure to be as healthy and non-problematic as possible because you are being held to a higher standard of criticism. Both from people from without the ENM communities, and from the people within. Granted, some people don't give a shit and just want to read some fantastic porn (valid) but there are those who will cheerfully read Fifty Shades of Bullshit and call it "spicy" and "romantic," then turn around and call the most tooth-rottingly-sweet-fluff about a queer platonic polycule heresy. That's just the way the world works.

(Pro-tip for author life in general: never read your own reviews; that way madness lies. I glimpsed one the other day that tagged Hunger Pangs as “ethical cheating” and just about had an aneurism.)

And while that feeling of needing to justify yourself comes from a valid place of being excluded from the table of socially accepted norms, it can also be to the detriment of both the story and the subject matter at hand. I've seen some authors bend so far over backward to avoid being problematic in their portrayal of ENM, they end up being problematic for entirely different reasons. Usually because they give such a skewed, rose-tinted perspective of how things work, it ends up coming off as well... a bit culty and obnoxious tbh.

“Look how enlightened we are, freed from the trappings of monogamy and jealousy! We’re all so honest and perfect and happy!”

Yeah, uhu, sure Jan. Except here’s the thing, not all jealousy is bad. How you act on it can be, but jealousy itself is an important tool in the junk drawer that is the range of human emotion. It can clue us in to when we’re feeling sad or neglected, which in turn means we should figure out why we’re feeling those things. Sometimes it’s because brains are just like that and anxiety is a thing. Other times it’s because our needs are actually being neglected and we are in an unhealthy situation we need to remedy. You gotta put the work in to figure it out. Which is the same as any style of relationship, whether it’s mono, polyam or whatever flavor of ENM you subscribe to* And sometimes you just gotta be messy, because that’s how humans are. Being afraid to show that mess makes it a dishonest portrayal, and it also robs you of some great cannon fodder for character development.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to my current pet peeve in how certain writers take monogamous ideals and apply them to ENM, sometimes without even realizing it. The “Find the Right Person and Settle Down” trope.

Often, in this case, ENM or polyamory is treated as a phase. Something you mature out of with age or until you meet “The One(tm).” This is, of course, an attempt to follow the mono style formula expected in most romances. And while it might appeal to many readers, it’s uh, actually quite insulting. 

To give an example, I am currently seeing this a lot in the Witcher fandom. 

Fanon Netflix!Jaskier is everyone's favorite ethical slut until he meets Geralt then woops, wouldn’t you know, he just needed to find The One(tm). Suddenly, all his other sexual and romantic exploits or attractions mean nothing to him. Let's watch as he throws away a core aspect of his personality in favor of a man. 

Yeah... that sure showed those societal norms... 

If I were being generous, I’d say it’s a poor attempt at showing New Relationship Euphoria and how wrapped up people can become in new relationships. But honestly, it’s monogamous bias eking its way in to validate how special and unique the relationship is. Because sometimes people really can’t think of any other way to show how important and valid a relationship is without defining it in terms of exclusivity. Which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ENM works for a lot of people and invalidates a lot of loving, serious and long-term relationships.

This is not to say that some polyam/poly-leaning people can't be happy in monogamous relationships! I am! (I consider myself ambiamorous. I'm happy with either monogamy or polyamory, it really just depends on the relationship(s) I’m in.) But I also don't regard my relationship with a mono partner as "settling down" or "growing up." It's just a choice I made to be with a person I love, and it's a valid one. Just like choosing to never close yourself off to multiple relationships is valid. And I wish more people realized that, or rather, I wish the people writing these things knew that :P

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled enough. I hope this collection of incoherent thoughts actually makes some sense and might be useful. 

----

*A good resource book that doesn't pull any punches in this regard is Polysecure by Jessica Fern. It's a wonderfully insightful read that explores the messier side of consensual non-monogamy, especially with how it can be affected by trauma or inter-relationship conflicts. But it also shows how to take better steps toward healthy, ethical non-monogamy (a far better job than More Than Two**) and conflict resolution, making it a valuable resource both for someone who is a part of this relationship style***, but also for writers on the outside looking in who might have a very simple or misguided idea of what conflict within polyam/ENM relationships might look like, vs traditional monogamous ones.

** The author of More Than Two has been accused of multiple accounts of abuse within the polyamorous community, with many of his coauthors having spoken out about the gaslighting and emotional and psychological damage they experienced while in a relationship with him. A lot of their stories are documented here: https://www.itrippedonthepolystair.com/ (warning: it is not light material and deals with issues of abuse, gaslighting, and a whole other plethora of Yikes.) While some people still find More Than Two helpful reading, there are now, thankfully, much, much better resources out there.

*** Some people consider polyam/ENM to be part of their identity or orientation, while others view it as a relationship style.It largely depends on the individual. 

[three--rings]

Word of Honor: Watch It Already

Yeah it’s time to do a rec post for real.  Because seriously, y’all, join me.

NOTE: All gifs in this post were made by @jingyans​, who very graciously allowed me to use them.  Please do not repost and go see her blog for all the gorgeousness!

What is it?

Word of Honor/ Shan He Ling/ 山河令 is a Chinese drama series with 36 episodes currently in the process of airing.  It is based on a danmei/BL webnovel by Priest called 天涯客/ Tian Ye Ke/ Faraway Wanderers.  (Which I have not yet read, so everything in this post will be based solely on the show as aired up to ep 11.)

It’s set in Fantasy Ancient China, much like previous popular series The Untamed and is part of the same general genre. 

What’s it about?

Okay.  So Zhou Zishu was the leader of the Window of Heaven/Tian Chuang, an organization of spies and assassins who worked for a prince.

He saw basically everyone he cared about/his entire sect killed for the organization, and he decides he wants out, but there’s no leaving alive.  He essentially manages to find a loophole by using a cruel fantasy method to basically slow poison himself, guaranteeing his death in three years.  But he’s free. 

Cut to six months later, when he’s living his best life being completely drunk in a gutter, disguised with a fake tan, terrible beard and general squalor.  He draws the attention of a mysterious gentleman, our love interest Wen Kexing.

Wen Kexing completely fixates on Zhou Zishu (or Zhou Xu, as he introduces himself), declaring him incredibly beautiful, despite his rough state, and starts a bit of light stalking.

These two have a lot of humorous bantering around, before eventually stumbling into the plot in the form of a young teen boy who is the only surviving member of his brutally murdered clan.  They are tasked with taking him to someone trustworthy and thus the two equally mysterious warriors now have an adopted son together. 

That’s the basic set-up, and the show is pretty much evenly split between really adorable flirting, wacky hijinks, and operatic political drama plot.  All of these typically involve fight scene choreography.  Though, to be fair, I’ve seen less than a third of the show at this point, though I have something of a feel for what is coming from people watching it without English subs.

So...about that romance?

Look, there’s no beating around the bush here, I really can’t imagine being into this show if you’re not into the idea of a prominent romance between two male characters.  The novel, being danmei, is blatantly a queer romance, but this is China, which means censorship. 

**And I’m only saying this because this is tumblr, and no one cares what we think here, but, look, it’s a freaking miracle this show passed censorship because it is NOT subtle at all in its gayness.  The plot...really doesn’t make sense without a romantic aspect, and it’s really hard to miss.  It’s so blatant, that it’s hard to watch without remarking on it, which means a lot of people are afraid of the show being pulled or edited by the government before it’s done airing.  There’s precedence for that happening.  Seemingly even the makers are concerned, hence them releasing 9 episodes a week, up from the original 4.  So please, if you do watch it, don’t go yelling in the comments or on twitter or wherever about how it’s showing up the Chinese government’s censorship or whatever because that’s putting people’s careers in real danger, not to mention harming the show.**

ANYWAY.  The romance involves a HUGE amount of flirting, mostly initially from WKX to ZZS, but fairly soon they start throwing around the word “zhiji” aka “soulmate” to describe what they mean to each other.  If this seems very blatantly romantic, it IS, but it can also describe a platonic connection, which is how they manage to get away with this.  Still, it’s swoon-worthy honestly.  The mood for me is a very good period romance, because I’m wildly flailing about their sleeves touching or hands brushing over here, so if that’s your jam, please join us.

I’m going to get into slightly more spoilers under a cut, because I think it’s very fun to watch the show without knowing ANYTHING about it, but if you need further convincing/specifics please follow me.

The show also seems to involve a lot of alternating fluff and angst, which, let’s be honest here, is kinda what we like right?  It seems like they don’t want to keep us in pain for more than an episode or so without some resolution, but then new pain happens again.  These two break up and get back together a lot, is what I’m saying. 

Why should I watch it?

Like most good danmei, the show balances deep romance with interesting and exciting plot, but the characters are the real stand-outs here.  Both male leads are older than your average drama protagonists, somewhere close to 30.  And they are both essentially villains.  Not just characters with dark pasts, but really the bad guys of other people’s stories.  The novel is actually a sequel to a totally different romance, and at least ZZS was an antagonist in that story. 

(Above: Evil is a good look on Wen Kexing.)

But here we have two very morally dubious characters: one who has given up that life and one who is still actively causing harm, and the story is about how they connect and change as a result.  (Again, I’m drawing slightly on what others have said of where the story is going and also just making assumptions.) 

If you have a moral problem with loving and shipping dark characters, this isn’t the show for you, no matter how cute it may appear.  This isn’t a “pure” couple, no matter how little on-screen sexuality we will get.  But if you love exploring morality and complicated characters who don’t always make the right choices, like I do, this is Your Thing.

Thankfully, the scriptwriter has come out and said there will be a happy ending for the main couple, at least.  So there’s that to hold on to as we face the angst and pain that is inevitably coming.  (From the novel I hear, yes, there’s some serious suffering in store.) A lot of us thought the show looked light and fun and now...we’re gonna be in pain.  So consider this fair warning as well. 

There’s also a cast of very easy to like side characters, in particular the “kids” A-Xiang (WKX’s servant) and Cheng Ling, the boy they rescue.  There’s also a colorful cast of villains that have huge amounts of style if nothing else. 

Downsides?

So the show was made on a VERY limited budget.  Overall I think they did a fantastic job.  But the seams DO show from time to time.  There’s not a lot of CGI (which is a good thing imo) but sometimes there are very obvious places they didn’t have the resources they needed, like crowd scenes made of the same 4 actors cut and pasted again and again, lol.  However, I think they did a great job on the costumes for the most part, and the sets look nice. 

There’s also been some criticism for the makeup which ZZS wears in eps 2-5, his disguise.  He’s meant according to the novel to look totally different and ugly.  But in reality he has a tan, some small scars, a painted on beard, and is dirty and disheveled.  Making his skin darker and calling that “ugly” is an unfortunate trope. I think the criticism is valid to an extent, but I hope it won’t destroy anyone’s enjoyment of the show. The makeup is gone forever midway through ep 6. 

Where can I watch it?

I’m going to assume most people reading this will be looking for a version subbed in English.  That is available on Youtube on the Youku official channel.  As of this typing, they have released 11 episodes with subs.  There are no fansubs otherwise available.  The Chinese language release is somewhere around ep 20-something? That is available through the Youku website. I believe their release schedule has the last episode coming out around March 23, but we’ll be weeks behind for the English version.  (Pardon the lack of a direct link to YT, but just search Word of Honor and you’ll find it.  If I have links tumblr will disappear my post.)

So please, come join us in this hell.  It’s been a while since a ship hit me so incredibly quickly and a lot of people have the same feeling, it seems.  Give it a few episodes, and see if you’re not WILDLY in love by episode six.  (Before that I was in like.  After episode six I wrote emergency fanfic.) (Episode six pictured below.)

[grewlikefancyflowers]

Hi, I hope you're having a lovely day/evening!

So, I know you're critical of MDZS adaptations, so this is why I'm coming to you as someone who just finished CQL.

 

I don't understand why people claim that CQL “missed the point” of MDZS or failed to adapt its central themes. I think CQL does a good job of getting addressing themes, such as status and social power infomring actions, public opinion and its changeability as well as how collectice narratives and opinions related to a person become more real and tangible than who the person actually is.

CQL is doing something different with its own story and as a result, it handles wangxian differently as well. It has a different dynamic, different circumstances, and a different narrative. If it doesn't make sense because the CQL adaptation removed an element from the story, maybe consider that (xyz) isn't actually meant to be their mindset at all? Just because they don’t have the same motivations towards each other as in the novel doesn’t mean those motivations don’t make sense within the world of CQL. The circumstances are so different from MDZS in places that if you’re only looking at CQL through that lens, then of course it’s going to look like a pale and nonsensical imitation! 

just a preface i don't care about cql enough to deliver any sort of meaningful analysis on it, if that's what you're interested in ouyangzizhensdad has made some good posts abt it.

preamble out the way, i watched cql first before i knew anything about mdzs, and i thought it was bad as i watched it back then too. so it's not as if i'm just biased against it as a novel main. anyway, i think its generally fine to analyse an adaption independently of it's source material, but the problem with cql is that it's nonsensical without mdzs, but it's also nonsensical with mdzs.

some examples, wx's relationship (even when looked at platonically) makes no sense at all in cql. one minute they don't even seem to like each other and the next they're calling each other soulmates, despite never seeming to actually trust or understand each other. when i watched cql's version of phoenix mountain i thought what?? they're supposed to be friends now ?? at the time i assumed it must have just been censorship issues but it turns out cql's writers were just incompetent. it was the same with that part in the cloud recesses arc when lwj and wwx end up tied together with the forehead ribbon—they could have used that to imply that wx's relationship is romantic while still getting around censorship, but their relationship didn't change after that. there's so many moments like that in cql that feel like should be meaningful to wx's relationship but end up having no impact on them or the story. it's all just meaningless queerbait.

also, the acting is terrible. i had to pause to laugh at moments that are supposed to be emotional because they were acted so bad (when wwx is thrown into the burial mound, jyl's death).

that aside, cql doesn't adapt the themes of mdzs well at all. which i spoke about here. one of the most important themes in mdzs is how authoritarianism and social hierarchy are inherently corrupt, honestly the final message cql delivers is the exact opposite of that. eg cqlji becomes chief cultivator and also what the fuck is up with that 'you're not qualified to speak to me' line.

so basically, cql did not successfully adapt mdzs—not the story, characters or themes. neither can it hold itself up as an individual work. it's just bad—the costume design is bad, the pacing is bad, the story doesn't make sense, the lore doesn't make sense, the characters have no consistent traits and are for the most part extremely unlikeable. it's just bad and that's all there really is to say on the matter.