#also please do not start discourse on this post

[lesbian-honey-lemon]

I think some of you guys in the autism community are.. a little ignorant on what it’s like to be unmasked.

Disclaimer: This is not coming from an autistic who used to mask and has since stopped masking. I have never been able to mask effectively. I have never been able to force eye contact, not stim, not speak in monotone, push through sensory issues, or fake empathy (sometimes I actually feel it, but when I can’t feel it, I can’t fake it). I’m still very low support needs, but what struggles I do have, I cannot mask them. I don’t speak for medium and high support needs autistics because their struggles with not being able to mask are much worse and also very different than mine. A low masking LSN like myself will have very different problems than a low masking MSN or HSN.

Not being able to mask has not been a good thing in my life. Not masking does not make your life easier. It just gives you different challenges. I’ve been bullied, I’ve had people I thought were friends talk shit about me behind my back and take advantage of my inability to tell when someone’s lying, I’ve been alone and without friends most of my life and it’s very hard to maintain the friendships I have now. It will be harder for me to function in college, get into research opportunities, and get internships and jobs later on. The world does not love unmasked autistics. The world especially hates autistics who are incapable of masking in the first place. My existence is not something to be strived for without knowledge of the downsides, I do not and have never had it easier because I’m incapable of masking.

I never had the identity issues of masked autistics. I’ve always been who I am and my autism has always been a visible part of that. I’m incapable of pretending to be anyone else. But I have suffered for not being able to pretend. I can’t do what you can. I can’t pretend to not have autism in order to get through a situation. I can’t shove down those struggles even when it benefits me. Masking is bad, it hurts people, and I understand that. But it’s a thing that some autistic people can do because it’s a safety mechanism. A safety mechanism that a lot of autistic people don’t have. I have the good fortune of being LSN. I don’t have many struggles to mask in the first place. What I have impacts my life heavily, but I am fortunate because I could have it much, much worse. People, especially medium and high support needs people, have been called slurs, infantilized, abused, isolated from the public for not being able to mask. People have been killed for not being able to mask.

Unmask if you want, if it’s safe. I’m not advocating for people to not unmask. It’s a very positive journey for a lot of people if they’re in the right situation where you have support and safety. But please do not treat non-masking as being perfect and freeing. It’s not, not for everyone. I would kill to be able to mask and many other low masking people I know agree with me.

Please, if you’re capable of masking and trying to unmask, remember us who have never been able to mask. Please keep our struggles in mind and advocate with us for acceptance, because once you’re out and visibly autistic/visibly weird/visibly disabled, they will be your struggles too. Especially if you lose your masking capability over time, because I lost what little ability I had to mask over the last few years and I can’t get that back no matter how much I try.

Good luck to everyone unmasking, you’ll need it to deal with the neurotypicals.

[starkid-smosh]

So talking about amanda and angela wanting to kiss with tongue is normal but us saying damien and angela are looking at each other more fondly recently and thinking it's sweet is weird and we're freaks.... interesting.. it's almost like shipping real people isn't actually the problem 🧐🤔

[rat-rosemary]

Just say a post of someone saying "omegas can only eat plain carb heavy foods during heat and alphas need good heavy spicy food and meat" and I need to bash my head in. What happen to sex-ed. You're going to make yourself sick

You are so sensitive during your rut don't eat spicy shit. Alphas AND Omegas need meat and carbs for energy and you need them all to be plain. I swear even if you hate that kinda food normally it's going to feel like heaven during your rut/heat

[purecommemasolitude]

There’ve been criticisms about Darry being too mean or too cruel in the musical, and I get where those people are coming from, but — and speaking as someone who hasn’t seen or listened to it but has listened to the soundtrack and follows the information account like the paper — I think this phenomenon stems from two things

First, on the side of the discussers, a lack of exposure to the musical as an actual piece of material instead of (occasionally very out of context) lines or screenshots. Obviously seeing the musical, even if one lived in New York, would be expensive as all get out, and even audios and boots are pretty hard to find for this show, but there are many details and contexts that change how lines on the page should be interpreted that simply cannot be gleaned through, well, lines on the page. As someone who has dabbled in acting & directing, and has spent time analyzing play texts in depth, delivery and direction can change everything. The entire sentiment of a line can be the opposite of what you’d expect if you took the line at face value, and unless that’s explicit in the stage directions, it can go unrealized if one is merely reading the script (which, as an aside, is exactly why I find analyzing play excerpts tricky — because without a performance or direction, scripts are often so ambiguous and versatile that they could go any way). And honestly, despite also being someone who unfortunately does not benefit from first hand knowledge of the musical, I feel like this is very evident in discussion of Darry in the show. For example, none of his lines in, say, Runs in the Family (Reprise) should be taken at face value, because if you’ve even listened to the song you can tell he’s completely spiralling and hitting a breaking point. This is a state that, historically, causes people to say things they’d never believe in real life. We’re not meant to believe Darry would ever walk out on his brothers, we’re meant to hear him talk about it and understand how deep of a breakdown he is having. As a less obvious example, from what people online have said, Darry spends the last twenty or so minutes of the musical in tears. Again, the things he says here aren’t necessarily the things he believes, or things that he’s expressing coolly or off-handedly because they line up 1:1 with his worldview, they’re things he says when he’s desperate and struggling and has no idea what the correct path is when his brother & responsibility has effectively been comatose since the deaths

Which brings me to my next point!

One of the most known things about the musical, even to people who aren’t very familiar with it, is that it goes more in-depth on Darry’s trials and tribulations, so to speak. He gets one solo at status quo, another (mostly) solo when he gets his breakdown, and a (mostly) duet in his own self-described darkest hour during Pony’s absence. All three of these songs go into detail about what his life is like and how much he’s been struggling, and even songs that aren’t about him emphasize this feature of his more than in the book: his description by Ponyboy in Tulsa ’67 & Great Expectations reminding the audience of his life’s path, his verse in GGAH making it clear that his life is a very different one with arguably more severe burdens compared to the other boys. Other than the three most important characters of the original narrative, he is now undoubtedly the most important and developed character — which makes sense in a musical format, because with the story of The Outsiders it would’ve been pretty much impossible to do a true ensemble cast other than the main three while doing any of them justice, especially if they’d kept Steve as a principle (rip king). But I digress. In my opinion, being clearer on Darry’s hardships actually gives the musical space to show him as saying crueller things, to have him make more mistakes and mess up worse. In the book, we’re clearly meant to sympathize with him by the end, but we only get Ponyboy’s infamously flawed and unreliable narration as the lense through which to view him. As such, if we went too hard into Darry messing up, while 3/4 of the book have Ponyboy going “yeah Darry’s a rock and doesn’t love me or anyone”, he ultimately would’ve come across a lot worse and a lot harder to “redeem” in the eyes of the reader (personally I never disliked him, but I’ve seen enough accounts of people who hated him on their first go at the story to know it is not an uncommon sentiment). He already slaps his brother and argues with him all the time; it would’ve been even more legwork to make him liked if he’d also been saying harsher things and making more mistakes. In the musical, however, we get that objective perspective that’s missing in the book. Ponyboy’s not narrating to us the lyrics of Throwing in the Towel, he’s not even present for the events of Throwing in the Towel! It’s a lot easier to understand and forgive mistakes if one is familiar with the psyche behind those mistakes, and the musical delivers that psyche to us at every turn. Because the audience understands Darry Curtis and how hard it is for him to hold on, the audience also has more understanding and forgiveness for when he’s spiralling. It’s also just a more specific proof of his plight — three songs with first-hand, emotionally explicit lyrics penetrate the uninvested understanding a lot easier than a second-party description of circumstances. Due to its nature and promotion of Darry’s importance, the musical simply gets more freedom to show an arguably more realistic version of him.

Also, I do believe that Darry in the musical is just that much closer to the edge than he is in the book, which is a valid character choice in an inherently emotional and transformative medium such as the musical adaptation 🤷🏻‍♀️

[mulletmitsuya]

guys real question, what did you think of the tokrev ending? i'm low-key begging for opinions rn🙏. also, what ship do you hate that everyone loves and what ship do you love that everyone hates? you can answer both or one of these questions.

[malachitezmeyka]

Ah yes, Magnificent Century, or as I like to call it – “Why the fuck are the most likely Ukrainian girl and the Crimean Tatar woman speaking Russian to each other, what were the writers smoking???”

[sparklepool101]

the worst part about entering into a fandom where you know there's a really weird/gross ship that's super popular is that often times you don't know the tags or words to mute and you have to just scroll the fandom tag until you come across said ship

[twinklingwatermellon]

I don’t know what it is about the Jane Austen adaptations I’ve seen recently, but they just have so much trouble sticking the landing.

[natsmagi]

I'm a fandom old, so I'd also say there's a strand of entitlement that's always been around fandom, but it's so much more normal now (for both artists and writers) since fandom's become less of a haven for weirdos and more mainstream. Fan writers and artists create FOR FREE and share with us, so complaining or being an arsehole about it is frankly shit.

YEAH....... ive been in online fandoms for like a decade now myself so 😭

if i were to guess id say its probably because nowadays people grow up online and have their whole identities and social circles online too, and its usually very young people who act this entitled towards creatives. it seems a majority of them believe that what you consume and how you consume it reflects your character because theyve made what they consume such a heavy feature of their identity but thats just. not true? you cannot get an accurate understanding of another person based solely off you stalking their page. it sucks too because young people tend to be more reactionary and react based off emotion so their judgement will be even further clouded. not to mention since theyre so judgmental of anyone who disagrees with this they end up forming an echo chamber which just. oh man.

alot of the arguments i see can basically be reduced to "this makes me uncomfortable so that means its immoral and should be eradicated" and thats just. a Really bad mindset to have..... if you cant handle certain things youre much better off muting/blocking and curating your online experience appropriately. this isnt the real world after all, our creative art and writing does not involve reality, its often an escape from it. it is not us creatives responsibility to ensure your online experience is full of sunshine and rainbows. most you can criticize us for is if we tagged the posts appropriately. and then making sure those tags are muted is YOUR responsibility. please take care of yourselves. we dont want you hurting, but we are our own individuals with our own life stories and we should be allowed to express those

the internet will never be a safe haven for everyone. what you may deem immoral might be another persons way of expressing emotions that are killing them inside, and i think thats the beauty of art. it is a purely subjective medium that can mean something completely different depending on the person viewing it. like fuck man theres so many things i find deeply upsetting so i just do my best in blocking it out of my sight. am i still gonna stumble upon those upsetting things in the wild? of COURSE i am, especially since some of what i find upsetting may not be that big of a deal to a majority of the population, and thats unfortunately the reality we have to live with. all we can really do is ask those close to us to be mindful and choose who we engage with carefully

[theindefinitearticle]

Can't stop thinking about a Halloween episode where buttons visits and they summon Izzy's ghost but he's just like "ghosts can see backwards and forwards through all of time and space, so can you fuck off please I'm watching the football."

[ablednt]

A little girl just fucking died and half you fuckers are still acting like this is some political discourse and going on about hamas fuck you I've actually had enough

[sonicpridecorner]

Hello everyone! Welcome to the Sonic Pride Corner!🌈✨

We're very excited to announce the Sonic Pride Corner project, a blog run by queer Sonic the Hedgehog fans with the purpose of celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community within the StH fandom!

We are making this post not only to announce our presence as a blog, but also to announce that we will be opening Sonic character Pride Month requests on the 29th of May, 2025! You will be able to request whatever StH characters you want, with one or more LGBTQIA+ headcanon(s) of your choice, and our team of over 20 mods will make it reality! (Through our art, of course.) More info as well as request/blog rules have been provided under the cut! For those of you interested in participating in the project with your own art and/or writing, we will also be running a Sonic Pride Week event taking place from June 23rd through June 27th! Keep an eye on our blog for updates on this, as we will be making a separate post with information on it! Edit: You can now find the post with more info here!

Our Sonic Pride Month Requests

Information

Our inbox is currently open for blog and event related questions ONLY. Requests will open on May 29th, 2025. Any request sent before this date will be deleted. Additionally, requests will close on June 23rd, 2025.

You will be able to request any Sonic the Hedgehog character(s) you'd like, along with one or more LGBTQIA+ headcanons you'd like to see them drawn with! You may also request ships for us to draw, but please specify that you want them to be depicted as a ship (you may also specify romantic or QPR if you'd like) and make sure to include LGBTQIA+ headcanons for any characters involved!

Examples of requests we'd be happy to draw:

"Can you draw Sonic with a trans flag scarf and an aroace pin?"

"Could you please draw Amy in lesbian flag colors?"

"May I see Knuckles x Shadow, with them holding a bi flag together?"

Once we start receiving requests, we will be working on them on a First Come, First Serve basis-- however, every mod's workflow is different, and some asks may end up getting answered faster than others purely because of this. That being said, the earlier you send your request in, the more likely we will be able to make art for it!

Due to the FCFS nature of this event, we ask that you limit your requests to only one or two to let other people have a fair chance at their requests being drawn, and only make another request when your initial requests have been answered.

While we are accepting requests before Pride Month begins, we will not actually be answering them until June 1st. Along those lines, although we are closing our requests on June 23rd, we will continue to answer requests until the end of the month (provided that we still have requests to draw by that time). Please keep this in mind!

Blog Rules

This is not a space for discourse, politics, competition or bigotry, nor do we condone the harassment of any individual for any reason.

We do not accept nor condone sexual, proship or explicit requests. You will be ignored.

We have the right to refuse any ask for any reason. You are not guaranteed a reply. Please be considerate as we all have our own lives and this is purely a passion project.

This blog is meant to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ Sonic community first and foremost, and while ships are allowed, they are not the focus of our project. We'd be very grateful to receive requests that are not of that nature.

Please do not request OC / AU related content.

Please do not spam the inbox nor ask for anything overly complicated. Do not ask for revisions on drawn requests either.

Do not request a specific mod draw for your request, nor state whom you do not wish to answer. You may ask for mods directly if it is normal conversation/questions. Additionally, do not ask us invasive questions.

We are more than happy to answer any questions you may have and promote your work if it is within our guidelines. However, we do not accept post submissions or images for safety reasons, so please either tag us or link the desired post.

All posts are organized by the tagging system. Please do not feel discouraged if you see someone already asked for something, a different mod might be excited to draw that too!

You can also find these rules on our pinned post.

dividers via cafekitsune

[nicodiangeloing]

i think bianca di angelo would be so furious that they lost nico after she died. that he was able to just run away and get manipulated. (i know they looked for him, but *still*.) even though she was promised the camp would be a safe and accepting place for him. and dont get me started on how mad she’d be that the 7 (except hazel, of course, my angel) hesitated to save nico from that jar.

by the way this is NOT percy hate my boy didn’t do shit, can we please take it up with the literal adults who shouldve been looking out for all three of them. im not exactly sure where people got the percy discourse in the reblogs sighhhh i am percy jackson defender #1. also this post has to be the one where my words are twisted the most. she would not be mad at percy. or even zoe. she’d be mad at the authority figures who let nico run away and get manipulated and forced percy to tell nico she was dead in the first place. and on the jar, was hazel not frustrated? feeling a little betrayed, protective? no matter the reasoning or intention behind the suspicions jason and leo had, his birth sister who was with him his entire life WOULD be atleast frustrated they doubt him😭i know i would, as an older sister. stop twisting my words and using this post to dump your reasons for hating bianca pls

[andivmg]

My experience with Luke (Punz)

CW: toxic relationship, racism, dubious consent

I know in the past i said that i would no longer speak about him publicly, and when talking about my experiences with abuse and emotional mistreatment i begged to keep it anonymous but after reflecting on this for a week and seeing so many incredibly smart and strong women tell their stories. they have given me the strength to say his name.

this is really scary to talk about because of the copious levels of harassment i have received from his fans in the past so if this spreads or gets out of hand i will simply log off.

If you read my last post, i nicknamed him 1.

So aside from everything i said there, there were a lot of things i didn’t include because they would’ve made it obvious that it was him and it could potentially backfire on me so, i’m very afraid to post this. but i’m going to do it scared anyway, because it’s not fair that he gets to just go and live his life worry-free as if he didn’t practically ruin mine.

Because I already made a very lengthy post about him, i won’t include everything i said last time to avoid being redundant but if i repeat myself, please bear with me.

In our year long relationship i had to endure emotional neglect, gaslighting, verbal abuse, one instance where there was dubious consent, and much more.

Starting off at the beginning of our relationship, that’s when i was getting copious amounts of hate and harassment from his fan base (warranted or not), he decided that our relationship must be kept private. he said it was to “protect” me from his fanbase when in reality it was to protect himself. it was so he wouldn’t get all the backlash i was getting. this is funny because one of the things i got called out for was saying the B slur (derogatory term used against mexicans/latinos). I won’t get into the nuances of if i could say it or not as a puertorican because that’s discourse that does not pertain to this specific situation. But you know who definitely can’t say it? A white boy from Massachusetts. When i was getting cancelled for this and getting thousands of tweets calling me names, he decided that was the perfect time to say “I mean you are a b***** aren’t you? my little b*****.” Now, he said this completely unprompted. I was in the process of writing my apology and he just said that. I tell you this because i immediately shut him down and told him that there was no universe in which it was okay for him to say that word and especially not one where he could just call me that. While i was reprimanding him, he was smiling and laughing. he apparently found it amusing to call me a slur. regardless, he gave me a half-assed apology and said he wouldn’t do it again. and he didn’t. but this wasn’t the only time he was weirdly racist to me. this was my first time being in an interracial relationship so i was led to believe that this was normal by all the white people around me at the time. But, sometimes my spanish accent would come out and he would make fun of me and the way i pronounced some words. He also refused to visit me in Puerto Rico when i lived there or come meet my family when i really wanted him to because he “didn’t like the heat” or “it’s dangerous there isn’t it?”. Once, while we were watching season 2 of Bridgerton, he implied that the Sharma sisters were “too dark” for him to be attracted to them. This hurt me because they are brown skinned girls. I am a brown skinned girl. Then this, combined with the fact that he told me once he wasn’t attracted to me made me feel like my skin color was unattractive. These are only a few examples i can think of at the moment, but i’m sure there were more. Our relationship ended in 2022 so some of my memory is a bit hazy. But, I do remember feeling inferior to him throughout the relationship because he was white and I was not. I chalk that up to all the micro aggressions i had to deal with because i had never felt that way around white people before.

Another thing i had to endure was him constantly making me feel like he was embarrassed to be with me. Because i was cancelled, he didn’t want to associate with me too much. He did defend me on multiple occasions, I’ll give him that. But, he only did it because his name was getting dragged in the mud along with mine. Excusing my actions made him look better for being around me. In reality he didn’t really care. Because he was such a big content creator and someone i looked up to professionally, I took his advice as law. He told me to tone down my personality, to keep a low profile, to change things about myself to be more palatable to his audience. The same audience that spoke about me like “The pussy can’t be that good punz please stop defending her”. So i changed a lot of things about myself and my content to better suit what his audience liked. He made me feel like if his audience liked me, he would be public about our relationship and stop hiding it. He told me the reason why he wanted to keep our relationship a secret was because he didn’t want to get hate for it. But this wasn’t true. On my 20th birthday he went to Las Vegas for a twitch rivals event. That night i asked to facetime him to say goodnight and he refused because he was at a hotel room with his friends and he didn’t want them to know that we were together. It was as if my mere presence or the utterance of my name was a source of embarrassment for him. And he didn’t let me forget it. It wasn’t just a public thing at that point. He didn’t want people to know we were together, period. This was devastating to me because I would talk to all my friends about him. I was so proud to be with him and I was just one more problem to him. He made me feel so small and insignificant just because his fans didn’t like me.

He would berate me a lot. Not just due to getting heat online, although he did do that a lot. But in general whenever we would get into an argument or a disagreement he would always call me names like annoying or weird or stupid. He would raise his voice at me if i did something he didn’t like and call me an idiot. And that really hurt, i felt like i couldn’t bring up anything or do anything without getting insulted. If I hadn’t seen him in a few days because he was too busy streaming and i asked to hang out he would call me needy, clingy, and annoying. Granted, he might not have been wrong, but that is not something you say to someone you claim to love. He also insulted me when i was in depressive episodes. I have BPD and at the time i was not being treated properly for it. So, I was all over the place emotionally and he was what i clung to for validation, reassurance, and love. I talked to him when we first started dating about my disorder and told him that if it seemed like something he couldn’t handle that he could opt out of the relationship. I guess he didn’t think it was that bad or something idk because whenever i had really bad depressive episodes, he would tell me I was too sad to hang out with. He said that my sadness was a burden to him. Which would be fair. But, once my mother had a conversation with him about me. She told him that i am someone who needs a lot of love and caring. She said that if he wasn’t willing to put in that kind of effort into a relationship to just leave me alone. He reassured her that he would be there for me no matter what. He told my mother that he would protect me and my heart. He did not. He took all the warnings I gave him and ignored them and then made me feel like I was the problem. And even worse, he would say that i was pretending to be sad to get his attention when he would neglect for days at a time.

There were also some smaller things like the fact that he made me feel really guilty whenever he would spend money on me. Also, he would be really mean about my eating habits. For context, i used to suffer from an eating disorder. I was anorexic and had a really unhealthy relationship with food during high school and my first year of uni. This relationship began when i was recovering from my ED. For me, eating was really hard. So i had certain comfort foods that, while sometimes unhealthy, at least it was something to eat when i didn’t feel like eating anything. He knew this. Yet, whenever i would crave some of these foods he would call me fat. Constantly told me I’d gain weight from eating all that junk food. Saying that to someone with an eating disorder is crazy. Other smaller things were that whenever I would post tiktoks where i was lip syncing or just looking good he would yell at me and say i was looking for attention. Same with Instagram or Twitter whenever i would post photos where I looked hot. He never planned out a single date for us. I would beg him to get me flowers and he did maybe once but i’ll get into that in a bit. He would make fun of me in front of his friends to make himself look better. He let his friends say really degrading things about me in his presence. For example, once when i was showering, i overheard him on a discord call with George and Sapnap and i heard George say “if you don’t go in the shower and have sex with Andi, i will”. Once, when i was really struggling with my legs (for those of you who don’t know, i have arthritis and it’s very painful. at the time i wasn’t diagnosed but i was in a lot of pain) I literally could not walk. I had to beg him to take me to the ER because i didn’t know what was wrong with me. He didn’t want to take me but eventually i convinced him, and while we were there all he did was complain about how long it was taking and that he would have rather been at home streaming. Whenever I would talk about my interests that i was excited about like shows or books he would be incredibly uninterested and say that those things were stupid and he didn’t want to hear about them. I know all of these seem very silly or superficial but cumulatively it was awful.

Now for arguably the most serious thing i’m going to talk about. I want to preface this by saying i am just telling my side of what happened. You can come to your own conclusions about this.

On April 25, 2022 it was our one year anniversary, and i had made a dinner reservation for us. I expected him to plan something throughout the day for us to do. He told me he was going to spend the whole day playing Valorant so I got upset and cancelled the reservation. After a very heated argument, we calmed down and i asked him to come over. He came over about an hour later with flowers and drinks (I was 20 at the time so I couldn’t buy the drinks myself). He brought Smirnoffs and Trulys. For context, I am a lightweight. I always have been. I literally get tipsy on half a cocktail. And that day, I hadn’t eaten anything because i was in distress over our argument. So we get to talking and drinking. I blacked out after my second Smirnoff. Apparently I drank 3 but I genuinely cannot remember anything after finishing the second one. The next morning i woke up naked in my bed. I woke him up and asked him “Luke, why am I naked?” and he said “Because you didn’t want to put your clothes back on.” When I clarified to him that that was not what I meant, he got defensive and said that he didn’t realize how drunk I was. He proceeded to tell me that I initiated sex with him and that i was very enthusiastic about it. He said he didn’t know i could black out on three smirnoffs. He made fun of me for being a lightweight and continued to make light of the situation. Then he mentioned that i fell off the bed at some point in the night and that it was funny how drunk I was. I then questioned him. Because if he thought that me tripping and falling off the bed because i was so drunk was funny, how did he not know that i was too drunk? He responded by saying that i fell off the bed only after we were done. That day I broke up with him. I’m still really confused about what happened that night. I don’t remember anything and all I have to go on is what he said to me. We were in a relationship at the time and he says he didn’t know how drunk I was so I’m not sure what to call what happened. A while after that day, his friend that hmu while we were broken up and I started talking again and i confided in him about that night. He told me to be careful saying things like that because they could get me into trouble. I spoke to some of our other friends about it and they told me it was no big deal and that it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know how drunk I really was. Because I don’t remember, I have been led to believe that this is not a serious matter. You can think what you want, come to whatever conclusions you want. That is just my side of the story.

I want to add that I’m not proud of how I acted after the relationship ended. I felt really angry at all the shit he put me through and I guess a part of me wanted him to hurt even a quarter of how I did. So I started talking to his friend and got involved with him. This backfired on me because his friend ended up really hurting me too so ig i got my karma. But the thing that hurt the most is that because of what I did, some of our friends took his side in the break up. I was told that I did something terrible by getting involved with his friend that he was already insecure about and that he didn’t deserve that. These are the same friends who were witness to the dumpster fire of a relationship we had and all the things he did to me. They turned their backs on me because of this one thing I did. But stood by and watched as he treated me like garbage for over a year.

I will conclude this by saying that while this relationship has been “over and done with” for almost two years now, I carry a lot of trauma from it still. I still talk about him in therapy and have had to put in a lot of work to heal from what he did and i still cannot say that i am okay. I am very blessed to now have a patient and understanding partner who has helped me heal from that trauma and i just want to quickly thank him for that. Nobody deserves to go through what I did. While yes, it was a toxic relationship, and I had a part in that, it does not excuse all the awful things he said and did to me. This is my truth, thank you for taking the time to read it.

[ranboolivesaysstuff]

IMPORTANT POST PLEASE READ

Im gonna be honest and open for a sec, and please do not take this as "oh I HATE my community or I dont like the people who watch me" but honestly as of late (and I did highlight this during the mcc bit), ive felt like I havent been able to really be in my own community simply because of the constant way that "discourse" is handled. Making vague posts and not really tackling issues in a good way, all that is going to do is just show people a big "THIS COMMUNITY BAD" sign and not actually help anything within the community, all its going to do is have the good and potentially good people leave or not join in the first place. The way that discourse is treated that ive seen has been the main reason why I have started to try to distance myself, which has been the most heartbreaking thing I have had to do. I want problems to be solved in a mature, civil way, with either a dm or a reply, not an entire vague thing that only says "bad things are happening" and doesnt elaborate on anything or barely elaboratesa and only gives people on both the inside and outside a bad sign of what the community is. Making posts whenever something happens being like "here we go again" is only going to highlight the wrong things, and actually DOESNT help the issue at all! The problems should be discussed directly with the people who are doing said problems FIRST! Bring attention to behaviors and things that arent good DIRECTLY! And also, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO!!! It is not your duty as a viewer or fan of me to be involved in any of this if you do not want to! Just enjoy the content and make silly posts! As someone who constantly tried to fix and get into every problem as it was happening, it took a huge toll on my mental health, and I want you guys to just be able to enjoy the content without having to worry about what you say about it! Be constructive! Dont make posts again just being like "wow this community is so bad" because that doesnt solve literally anything! If you have enough passion to make the posts saying "wow this community is bad" then only post about that, you are only spreading that negative message, and not uplifting anything of actual value! And if the person you are trying to help is not willing or not listening, BLOCK! MUTE! DONT BRING MORE ATTENTION TO THE PERSON IF THEY ARE NOT BEING A GOOD PART OF THE COMMUNITY!!!! I know I say that if I see problems I will call them out, but I shouldnt have to babysit every single time a thing happens within the community as that just isnt a healthy way for a creator or a community to be handled. This does not mean that I do not care about the issues or dont want them fixed, rather it shouldnt take me having to make some grand statement every single time something happens it should take only your own self reflection and self awareness. And to add onto this, make sure that every once in a while no matter who you are you think and have that self reflection, you should be open to being willing to learn and grow as a person! And again, I do NOT want anyone taking this as "Wow this community is terrible" but rather that we just have things that need to be fixed and changed and THAT IS OKAY! I do not hate the community, I care so much about it that I want it to be a silly place for my content again! I want it to be the reason why people get into what I do because of it again! And I want to be able to just have fun and relax without having to worry about how every single thing that I may say could have someone stirring things up that simply dont help or solve anything! Take care of yourselves. And this isnt coming from a place of "I hate the community as a whole" but rather again I want to be able to exist and make content that we can all enjoy without having to worry about walking on eggshells around me or around eachother! At the end of the day im just a fella that wants to make silly videos for you all, and you are people who enjoy said videos. Nothing more. Nothing less.

[psychhound]

announcing spiritkeep: a therapeutic ttrpg

howdy all! some big announcements!!!

first, im nearing the end of my master's program, studying rhetoric and writing, games, and educational psychology. im about halfway done with my thesis, and figured it was time to make an announcement …

my thesis, entitled "designing ​spiritkeep​: therapeutically applied RPGs as a discourse community" is … about what it says on the tin :) in it, I look at the practice of TA-RPGs, which are TTRPGs run for the express purpose of inducing therapeutic growth. TA-RPGs are usually run by a clinician, like a therapist or counselor, or a certified therapeutic game master. my thesis is looking at the needs of therapeutic game masters as a community and asking … what do they need from TTRPGs that isn't currently available?

the thesis takes concepts from rhetoric, linguistics, game studies, literature studies, psychology, and more to ask the question … what would a TTRPG specifically designed for therapeutic use look like? i examine concepts like bleed, close to home characters, dramatic rehearsal, performative speech acts, fixed vs growth mindsets, information processing theory, and more. i also look at criteria set forth by current TA-RPG practitioners for what makes a good TA-RPG, and examine five current games against those criteria. then, i put together the research into a foundation for spiritkeep, a dedicated TA-RPG

spiritkeep is designed around the goal of helping teens and adults heal from complex trauma

that said, its perfectly suitable for a homegame as well, as long as everyone is on the same page and approaches it with the mindset of collaborative growth. all in all, it's still going to be a fun game and a good TTRPG!!

in spiritkeep, you play as a smalltown taskforce with the shared goal of restoring your currently struggling community to a thriving state. you go out on missions like finding resources, diplomacy with neighboring cities, researching ecological problems, and more, while you slowly make your town a better place to live. spiritkeep includes collaborative worldbuilding, a large assortment of playbook options like the Wayfarer, the Knight, the Ghost, or the Shepherd (all designed to hit where it hurts, at least a little!), and a brand new system inspired by PBtA, FitD, BOB, WoD, and more. while the game is designed around grappling with identity and learning how to grow, it can also get a bit tactical and crunchy!! the new dice mechanic makes you think on your feet with every roll

this announcement is also to say that i am beginning the initial crowdfunding of the game through itch. right now, im trying to raise funds to pay the fee to my school to make my thesis open access, meaning anyone can read it. then, remaining funds will go towards things like resources, consultants, art for the kickstarter, and everything else i need to get this project off the ground. ideally, ill be able to team with a publisher to cover the logistics of business while i can focus on the game itself. once the game is finished, there will still be plenty of playtesting, consulting, and other work to do. but!!! this post marks my first steps towards what has been my dream for years now

this sale is how im starting the funding process. it includes the zine preview of my thesis, covering my chapter outline and big concepts, and also my first TA-RPG: with breath & sword, a solo game to help players calm down from anxiety. both items have community copies available: please feel free to grab one if you can't contribute !!

questions, comments, or partnership offers can be sent to psychhoundgames @ gmail(.)com

thanks y'all!!! wish me luck!!!! 🥰🥰🥰