#and like... you don't even have to be disabled to use those features on *your* device...

[uncanny-tranny]

Definitely don't knock your device's accessibility options. I was looking through my phone's accessibility settings last night, and wow, it feels like technology has really advanced since I first got a smartphone.

I've even found a setting that raises certain sounds I apparently have trouble hearing, and it feels like I'm experiencing the music I love with a completely different perspective. It's honestly wild because my first smartphone had like... mono audio, and that was as close as you could get to accessibility

[cripplecharacters]

Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1

[large text: Disabilities that You Should Consider Representing in Your Writing More… part 1]

While all disabilities are underrepresented in basically all sorts of media, it’s hard to not notice the trend in what disabilities make up the majority of representation. It’s especially visible when having a blog like this, where we can see what disabilities writers even consider including in their writing, and which ones never come up.

One in four people are disabled. With eight billion people alive it means there’s a lot of disabled people, and a lot of reasons why they are disabled in the first place - but this diversity is rarely represented, even on this blog, and anyone who has been following for a while has probably noticed that fact.

To be blunt: there are disabilities other than “amputee” and “invisibly disabled mobility aid user”. Does that mean that it’s wrong to write either of those? No, and we don’t want to imply that it is. Does it mean that either of these have a lot of good representation? Absolutely not, half of all the amputee characters out there are written by people who don't seem to be even aware they're writing a disabled character. Does it mean that when you are deciding on what to give your character, you should think beyond (or along! people can be, and often are, multiply disabled!) just those two? Absolutely. Disability is a spectrum with thousands of things in it.

This is, simply, a list of common disabilities. This is just a few of them, as this is part one of presumably many (or, at least three as of right now). By “common” we rather arbitrarily decided on “~1% or more” - so at least 1 in 100 people has the disabilities below, which is a lot. Featuring!: links that you should click, sources of the % that are mostly just medical reports and might be hard to read, and quick, very non-exhaustive explanations to give you a basic idea of what these are. 

Intellectual disability (about 1.5%) Intellectual disability is a condition we have written about at length before. It’s a developmental disability that affects things such as conceptualization, language, problem-solving, or social and self-care skills. ID can exist on its own or be a part of another condition, like Down Syndrome, Congenital Iodine Deficiency, or Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. This post covers a lot of basic information that you might need. We have an intellectual disability tag that you can look through!

Cancer survivors (5.4% in the US, about 0.55% worldwide) A cancer survivor is a pretty self-explanatory term. There is a lot of types of cancer and some of them are very common while others are very rare, which makes this a very diverse category. Cancers also have different survival rates. While not every survivor will have disabling symptoms, they definitely happen. Most of the long-term side effects are related to chemotherapy, radiation, and other medication, especially if they happened in children. They can include all sorts of organ damage, osteoporosis, cognitive problems, sensory disabilities, infertility, and increased rate of other cancers. Other effects include removal of the affected area, such as an eye, a spleen, breasts, or the thyroid gland, each of which will have different outcomes. Cancer, and cancer treatments, can also result in PTSD.

Diabetes (about 8.5%, ~95% of that are type 2) Diabetes is a group of endocrine conditions that cause hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) for various reasons depending on the type. The vast majority of people have type 2 diabetes, which can cause fatigue, poor healing, or feeling thirsty or hungry. A diabetic person will use insulin when needed to help manage their blood sugar levels. There are many complications related to diabetes, from neuropathy, to retinopathy, and chronic kidney disease, and there's a lot of disabilities that coexist with diabetes in general! You might want to check out the #how to write type 1 diabetes tag by @type1diabetesinfandom!

Disabling vision loss (about 7.5%) Blindness and low vision are a spectrum, ranging from total blindness (around 10% of legally blind people) to mild visual impairment. Blindness can be caused by countless things, but cataracts, refractive errors, and glaucoma are the most common. While cataracts cause the person to have a clouded pupil (not the whole eye!) blind eyes usually look average, with strabismus or nystagmus being exceptions to that fairly often (but not always). Trauma isn't a common cause of blindness, and accidents are overrepresented in fiction. A blind person can use a white cane, a guide dog or horse, or both. Assistive solutions are important here, such as Braille, screenreaders, or magnifying glasses. We have a blindness tag that you can look through, and you might want to check out @blindbeta and @mimzy-writing-online.

Psoriasis (about 2-4%) Psoriasis is a chronic skin condition with multiple subtypes; it can cause intense itching, pain, and general discomfort, and often carries social stigma. It’s an autoimmune and non-contagious disability that affects the skin cells, resulting in raised patches of flaky skin covered with scales. It often (30%) leads to a related condition, psoriatic arthritis, which causes joint pain, tenderness, and fatigue, among other things.

Stroke survivors (0.5-1%) A stroke survivor is a person who has survived any kind of stroke (ischemic, hemorrhagic, etc.). While the specific symptoms often depend on the exact location on where the stroke happened, signs such as hemiplegia, slurred speech, vision problems, and cognitive changes are common in most survivors to some degree. When someone has a stroke as a baby, or before they are born, it can result in cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and other disabilities. We have a brain injury tag that you can look through!

Noonan Syndrome (about 0.1-1% - mild is 1%, severe 0.1%) Noonan Syndrome is a disability that is almost never mentioned in any context, but certainly not around the topic of writing disabled characters. It’s a congenital condition that can cause cardiomyopathy, chronic joint pain, hypermobility, short stature, facial differences such as ptosis, autism, and various lymphatic problems among other things. Some people with Noonan Syndrome might use mobility aids to help with their joint pain.

Hyperthyroidism (about 1.2%) Hyperthyroidism is a condition of the endocrine system caused by hormone overproduction that affects metabolism. It often results in irritability, weight loss, heat intolerance, tremors, mood swings, or insomnia. Undertreated hyperthyroidism has a rare, but extremely dangerous side effect associated with it called a thyroid storm, which can be fatal if untreated.

Hypothyroidism (>5%) Hypothyroidism is an endocrine condition just as hyperthyroidism is, and it causes somewhat opposite symptoms. Due to not producing enough thyroid hormones, it often causes fatigue, depression, hair loss, weight gain, and a frequent feeling of being cold. It’s often comorbid with other autoimmune disabilities, e.g. vitiligo, chronic autoimmune gastritis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Extreme hypothyroidism can also be potentially fatal because of a condition known as Myxedema coma (or “crisis”), which is also rare.

Deafblindness (about 0.2-2%) Being DeafBlind is often considered to be an extremely rare disability, but that’s not really the case. DeafBlindness on its own isn’t a diagnosis - it can be caused by a wide range of things, with CHARGE syndrome (congenital), Usher syndrome (born deaf, becomes blind later in life), congenital rubella, and age-related deafness and blindness being some of the most common reasons. DeafBlindness is a wide spectrum, the vast majority of DeafBlind people aren’t fully blind and deaf, and they can use various ways of communication. Some of these could be sign language (tactile or not), protactile, the deafblind manual, oral speech (aided by hearing aids or not), the Lorm alphabet, and more. You can learn more about assistive devices here! Despite what various media like to tell you, being DeafBlind isn’t a death sentence, and the DeafBlind community and culture are alive and thriving - especially since the start of the protactile movement. We have a DeafBlindness tag that you can look through!

It’s probably worth mentioning that we have received little to no asks in general for almost all the disabilities above, and it’s certainly not due to what mods answer for. Our best guess is that writers don’t realize how many options they have and just end up going for the same things over and over.

Only representing “cool” disabilities that are “not too much while having a particular look/aura/drama associated” isn’t what you should aim for. Disabled people just exist, and all of us deserve to be represented, including those whose disabilities aren’t your typical “cool design” or “character inspo”, and literally all of us deserve to have good, informed representation. Sometimes we are just regular people, with disabilities that are “boring” or “too much”, and don’t make for useful plot points.

mod Sasza (with huge thank you to mod Sparrow, Rot, and Virus for their contributions with research)

[alllgator-blood]

I don't usually do anything for pride month cause I'm fruity every day of the year, but ahhh let's just say this year it felt especially important. Hope everyone is doing safe and that your ally friends/family members are giving you all their worldly possessions + sacrificing heretics in your name! I actually drew a very similar picture last year but didn't end up finishing it, some of the flags were definitely different though. NARINDER HAD THE EVIL AUTISM FLAG FOR SOME REASON. Shamura was the only one I finished so I'll just drop them off here:

Wow look at them go, rejecting humanity and encompassing cosmic knowledge and ceaseless war rather than masculinity or femininity....what an icon

Over the year that I've been in this fandom, I've had a lot of thoughts about Shamura's gender that I'll dump here, I WILL SAY it gets more ranty than I've ever gotten on this blog + talks about the fandom itself, so I hid it under the cut. But I feel like I've been pretty tame on this blog so far and because it's pride month, I have the legal right to make ONE rant about a queer fictional character's perception by the fandom

My weak enby heart still has a fucking death grip on shamura that hasn't been loosened in over a year at this point. They're not the best nonbinary representation in media but they're MY FAVORITE and that's all that matters. I can't stress how awesome it felt playing an actually cool, fun game a couple years ago and seeing that the Wisest, Most Powerful Eldritch Beast in all the land was a disabled nonbinary person. And it goes completely without question, it's like yeah that's shamura and *they're* going to traumadump on you and mind control your followers to rebel against you. Don't even worry about it bro

Being like....nonbinary and disabled and native and butch and yadda yadda, I swear to god I just got used to having no media/characters I could relate to. I didn't even think about how bad it felt until I'd stumble into the odd comic or indie game that had a Diverse Cast that MAY feature someone like me, but generally those types of things don't really *do* much with those characters. Not to be like THEY JUST WANT BROWNIE POINTS but...uhhh.........is it so bad to say that sometimes it does feel that way lmao, I won't play your game or read your comic if I feel like you see me as a checkbox to tick rather than a person with a fundamentally different experience.

I'll take this time to say it is kind of disheartening to see the fandom's treatment of shamura's gender sometimes, as someone who uses exclusively they/them. I've got a thick fucking skin, I've publicly acknolwedged I was genderless since before the nonbinary flag was even made, I've had a lot of time to roll with the punches that inevitably come from being trans. But literally one of the first comments I ever got about my shamura headcanons (when I still posted on reddit like a year ago) was that they didn't like that I made them AFAB and said "why can't they just be completely genderless". Like...making the TRANS character TRANSITION at some point was a bad thing? I wasn't saying "they're a girl in my drawings lol" and I even explained that I made them AFAB so I could connect with them better but. Ough

I s2g just mentioning this character brings up arguments, same with the lamb to a lesser extent, but DO NOT look at the reply chains on the youtube uploads of ANY of shamura's songs. It's always that someone calls them a him or her, someone corrects them, someone crucifies that person for being the Woke Police, blah blah blah IT'S AWFUL. It's funny in a way that the mere presence of a nonbinary person is enough to start a small war, but it also feels dehumanizing to know that my gender just cannot respectfully be talked about the same way binary genders can.

While I'm still talking about this, I don't hold it against people who played the game in other languages and call shamura "he" or w/e because from their perspective, the character is male. I've not changed my perspective of the character because I found out they're male in other releases, so I can readily accept that those folks won't either. But it feels....gross to see people who played it in english who just picked whatever binary gender they wanted shamura to be and went with that. Literally every single character with a confirmed gender is male except like, Heket + Forneus + Monch, so to take the ONE undebatably nonbinary character and decide they're not good enough the way they are is....ough. "It's my headcanon" bro that's erASURE IDK HOW ELSE TO TELL YOU. The people doing it probably literally do not comprehend what it's like to never see themself in the media they consume so I don't hate them or anything, but it took me like two decades to find a character whose gender feels like mine. It's lonely out here man

There's something to be said about me talking about that while making my kallamar nonbinary, but I'll just say this: there are so, so many male characters out there. If there was a crowd of millions of characters and ONE GUY vanished, you wouldn't be able to tell. But if there was like...a broom closet with like 9 they/thems, you'd fuckin notice if one was gone. AND I DO. Nonbinary representation isn't good enough rn to be taking the very few they/them characters out there and being like "nope my headcanon is that you're just some guy/chick", especially when sooo many people do it. Me taking one sopping wet man out of that crowd and being like "you can still be a sopping wet man, but sometimes you're a girlfail and sometimes your gender is squid" isn't the same I don't feel, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. I can't stop anyone from making shamura binary, we're all just random internet artists and do as we please, but I'm still allowed to judge from afar. I've definitely had people judge my headcanons from afar lmao

edit: I walked away and had to run back because I need reiterate, if you give Shamura features that are seen as "binary" but keep them nonbinary I think it's cool and based, especially if you are also nonbinary and just want to connect with the character more. "Gendered features" or w/e that are on a nonbinary person don't detract from their nonbinary-ness and we don't owe anyone perfect androgyny. I have boobs and an hourglass shape but also a lot of body hair + mustache and a good amount of muscle mass, doesn't mean I'm more girly or manly.

Okay end of rant, I had to get that off my chest for like EVER tbh. I really really hate discourse or drama or w/e but this is a topic that does mean a lot to me, so I made an exception this one time to make my opinion known.

[cy-cyborg]

The Jaws Effect and what it means for media representation

The Jaws Effect is the name of a phenomenon that described the panic and fear that sprang up around sharks, fuelled by Steven Spielberg's movie, Jaws. While the fear of sharks and other marine predators had always been a thing, Jaws launched the fear of sharks, and Great White Sharks in particular, to new (and mostly unfounded) heights. Most people will never encounter a real-life shark and so their only knowledge about the creatures come from movies and other forms of entertainment. Entertainment that largely portrayed them as mindless, unfeeling killing machines. After Jaws, sharks became a staple in the creature-feature genre of movies, which only perpetuated the idea of sharks as dangerous monsters even further, reigniting and reconfirming the beliefs the public held about them in the process. These ideas about sharks are, of course, not true, but the misconception and fear has had a real, observable impacts on shark populations, shark conservation efforts and even laws and legislations surrounding sharks and shark conservation around the world.

Ok but Cy, this is a blog about disability and disabled representation, what do sharks have to do with anything you talk about? Well, Because The Jaws Effect is just one of many examples that shows how massive of an impact representation in the media can have, for better or for worse, especially when talking about subjects the public generally knows very little about.

This conversation is not unique to disability representation, nearly every person I've seen who's talked about how to write and design characters from any minority brings it up eventually, but the media we consume, the movies we watch, the books we read can all have big impacts on people's perceptions on those topics. When talking about disability specifically, it's an unfortunate reality that not many people know all that much about us, and so, much like sharks, for many, their only real exposure to disabled people is through the media they consume.

If you don't know anyone in a wheelchair, and your only knowledge of life as a wheelchair user comes from books and movies like Me Before You, of course you're going to (spoiler) come away thinking that life in a wheelchair is horrible and death is better than living like that. If you don't know any DID Systems and your only exposure to a condition like that is through movies like Split (and honestly, a number of other horror movies and crime shows) of course you'll think people with DID are unstable monsters who could become violent any moment. If your only exposure to autistic people is Music, then it's not shocking that you might think Autistic people are "trapped in their own minds," completely unaware of the world around them and lacking any kind of agency. As much as I'd like to be able to say these are "just movies" or "just books," and that if we don't like them, we can just not watch them, they all had an impact on the real world and real people's perceptions of the disabilities they depicted, as do the many, many smaller examples of bad representation.

This is why I personally spend so much time focused on the portrayal of disability in the media, why so much of my content is focused on creating resources for creators to represent us better, and why I think writers, artists and other types of creators should care about the representation they include.

Unfortunately, people believing misinformation and stereotypes, while annoying, isn't the worst of the impacts bad rep can have. If a stereotype is prevalent enough, and enough people believe it, it can both put us in harms way and cause us to loose access to things we desperately need and things designed to help us. One really common example of this is when movies and TV shows show a character getting up out of their wheelchair, and use this as proof that the person is faking being disabled. However, in reality, there are many disabilities that might mean someone has to use a wheelchair, even if they can still walk a little bit or stand up. The stereotype of someone standing up from their chair being a fake, especially when it's reinforced over and over again in the media, leads non-disabled people to believe that anyone who stands up from their wheelchair is faking, and results in a lot of real disabled people being harassed and denied things like access to disabled parking, toilets and other accessible spaces. There were even a few cases of people reporting those they see get out of their wheelchairs to Centrelink (The Australian "welfare" department, for those not familiar) as frauds, and while these investigations don't usually go far before someone realises what's happened, it has, on occasion, resulted in people loosing the income they depend on to survive, even temporarily.

But the impact of representation, of course, can go both ways.

I was in high school when the first How To Train Your Dragon movie came out, and at the time, I didn't really like people being able to see that I was a leg amputee because I was sick of kids in particular staring, pointing at me, asking their parents "what's wrong with them?" or asking me directly, "what's wrong with your legs?". I wore long skirts and big, bulky tracksuit pants to keep my legs covered, something that became dangerous in the hot Australian summer, but I didn't care.

But the impact of How to Train Your Dragon came in two ways. The first, was that it was one of the first times I'd seen an amputee (or rather, multiple amputees) who didn't keep their prosthetics covered or hidden, and it gave me the little boost in confidence I needed to do that myself and wear clothing that was more comfortable and functional. And second, the comments from children changed, albeit slightly, but enough that it was noticeable. The questions and comments went from "what's wrong with you?" to "oh cool, your legs are like Hiccup's!" I even had one little girl ask me once if I had a pet night fury. They went from being scared of me and my legs, or at the very least concerned for me, to genuinely curious and impressed. While reactions like that did become less and less common over time, they didn't fully go away either. Even today, I occasionally get young kids asking me why I have legs like hiccup. A friend of mine who was born with one arm shorter than the other and without fingers on that side had a similar experience with the movie Finding Nemo. Her disability was a bit more complex than what I described here, and she always found it hard to explain "what happened" to small children, however, after Finding Nemo came out, she was able to simply tell kids "this is my lucky fin, like what nemo has!" and that was enough to take her from someone "scary" to these kids to someone like their favourite characters.

Of course, it's much easier to see the impact positive representation can have on people's perceptions when we're talking about kids media, but it's not exclusive to it either.

When it comes to a minority like the disabled community who are so thoroughly misunderstood by the wider public, misinformation can and does spread easily. What people see and read in the media they consume plays a big roll in how people perceive the real people attached to the stereotypes. We often hear people say "Fiction imitates life" but the reverse can and often is also true, life can imitate and be influenced by fiction, and those of us creating should be mindful of this, especially when we're talking about a group of vulnerable people.

[Thumbnail ID: An illustration of a Great White Shark swimming near the rocky bottom of the ocean, surrounded by silver fish. In the bottom left corner of the image is "The Jaws Effect and what it means for media representation" in big, white bubble text. /End ID]

[yourfaveisintersex]

asking from a place of humility and genuinely wanting to know better/more, what does better care for intersex people look like? what actionable items can those of us who aren’t as directly affected by medical intersexism push for to increase quality of life for intersex people? if i were to have a child who came out intersex, are there safety plans i could put in place with our birth care team to prevent my baby from suffering genital mutilation? i don’t want my allyship to start and stop with “ur valid uwu,” i want to really meaningfully help intersex people, and i just feel lost on where to even start. i have really mild PCOS and aside from having more masculine features and some pain from cysts i otherwise function as a perisex person, but i want to do more to help.

(i also don’t mean to act like you the operator of this blog specifically have all the answers, i’m very open to hearing the opinions of other people, you just came across as knowledgeable and i thought you might possibly have some insight.)

Hoohkay this is gonna be a long one, especially because I asked for some help from InterACT's Discord server InterSpace to make a comprehensive answer! I'm also going to tag @interactyouth and @dhddmods as recommended by 'em for you to possibly check out, the first being... well. Duh. It's THE intersex youth advocacy group in the US of A, and the latter because I was told they're really passionate about ending all forms of IGM— and doing general activism. Hope y'all don't mind!!

Here's some more InterACT specific resources before I start getting into the meat & potatoes under a cut, to fill this out a little and make sure in case I miss anything, you might find it in any of these links.

Advocating Health Equity for Intersex Individuals by the HHS (link), hosted by InterACT as Trump's administration has removed it from the HHS's website

The Fight Must Include Intersex Rights brochure (link)

Know Your Rights: A Guide For Parents (link)

InterACT Legislative Toolkit (link) — In regards to legislation, InterACT recommends you work with an organization instead of doing so independently, as they've been doing it longer knowing the right arguments, and you can get the right context and support from an organization.

Obligatory "PLEASE add onto this post if you have something you want to share" especially because anon invites others' opinions, and I do too because I'm not a monolith nor do I know everything.

Claps my hands together, alright! Now that those have been dumped, let's get into a more personal answer, what I would say.

BODILY AUTONOMY! A LOOOOOOT OF ADVOCACY FOR BODILY AUTONOMY!! Would probably be my first point. It's something that's often ignored or disrespected in intersex populations, whether that be IGM as mentioned, but also just being able to choose what treatment you do or don't get. This should not only be applied to intersex people too, as this overlaps with those who are disabled and or have chronic illnesses (or anyone else who deserves a say in their medical treatment, which might as well be everybody!), especially when less-educated people believe most if not all intersex variations are disorders, and "disorders need to be fixed".

And in lieu of that bodily autonomy bit and choosing your treatment, I have a personal note that I believe people should be able to choose their hormones— both transgender and intersex people, or hell people not of either group and just want a different hormonal profile for whatever reasons. It's depressing that people assigned female are forced on estrogenizing treatments and assigned males forced on androgenizing treatments even if it makes them feel physically miserable, with no choice unless you do some finaggling about it or you go through the rigamarole of gender-affirming HRT treatment, IF that's even possible in your locale! I vividly always recall an intersex person on here, dabwax, how she was rejected on testosterone BY A NON-BINARY DOCTOR because she identifies as a cisgender woman, and had to struggle to get postmenopausal testosterone medicine. That's not okay, and shouldn't happen to anyone!

As another point to help, DO NOT SHUT UP ABOUT INTERSEX EXISTENCE!! We are often pathologized as mentioned above, as being disordered, broken, in need of "fixing" (which just means looking as perisex as possible). Or people spreading falsehoods on what intersex is. Learn what common misconceptions and stereotypes are and challenge them! Challenge the use of the H-slur and fu-slur, challenge the "um actually intersex people prefer DSD and are still male or female" TERF brainrot! Be loud and be an asshole about your advocacy and make people aware WE EXIST! (and you exist too. you'd be welcome into the InterSpace server for your PCOS as a variation (yes, even if its mild) and they could help you more with advocacy if you'd like 🫶 I link the discord server in my FAQpost!)

The more people know about intersex existence in its truth the more people who can fight for our rights, to not have our bodily autonomy violated as patients, to challenge false assumptions about others' bodies, to have more people realize they may fall under the catagory of intersex (because a lot of intersex people don't know it, even if they have a diagnosis, due to the pathologizing of intersexuality as a "problem needing to be fixed" and the sheer erasure of it), to BELIEVE OUR VOICES AND OUR EXPERIENCES AND NOT DISMISS US!! which is honestly another point to be brought up because oh my god perisex people erase and dismiss us so fucking much it's Unreaaalll you correct someone about their intersexism and they get mad at you like YOU'RE the unreasonable one. Like stop using AGAB as progressive versions of male or female. Stop that. Annoys the shit out of me AGAB doesn't inherently imply someone's body parts or life experiences I keep correcting people on it and they get pissy at me if I keep seeing people do that I'm gonna go crazy insane PLEASE call more people out on these misconceptions and not let people brush off intersex folks as an afterthought pleaseplease please

[anim-ttrpgs]

Welcome to tumblr page of The Agency of Narrative Intrigue and Mystery (A.N.I.M.)!

We are a small independent team of LGBT and disabled individuals who make innovative and well-polished tabletop roleplaying games that have a lot to say, best known for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

Combined, our team has over 20 years of experience.

Continue reading for more information about us, our games, and more!

Our Games

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a groundbreaking TTRPG that revolutionizes mystery investigation of all kinds!

Leave behind the days of "We walk into the room and roll Investigate." Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy is a TTRPG all about investigation, and its purpose-driven mechanics let players take initiative, use their characters' unique strengths to find clues, and deduce conclusions themselves. We post about it in-depth a lot, so check out our blog for more info, or just read it yourself! Payment is optional!

We plan to support Eureka for many years to come through supplements and adventure modules. It comes with a short adventure module made specifically for teaching you, your players, and their characters the ropes, but you can also find the first set of higher-stakes adventures right here!

The Eye of Neptune and FORIVA: The Angel Game

Two adventure modules for use with Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy!

Eureka: The Fanservice Files

A mini-expansion originally intended to just be an April Fools thing, but then turned into a real expansion! This features several new character Traits and powers!

Eureka: The XXX-Files

Another mini-expansion, featuring several new character Traits and optional rules!

"Eureka: Cold Open"

Not actually a game, rather a short-story set in the world of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG

An asymmetric comedy game of drama and drow. Players either take the role of a brutal mistress whom everything she says goes, whether she understands what she’s talking about or not, and whose position of dominance is maintained by the respect of her peers, respect that hinges on how brutal and controlling she is to her subordinates; or an array of pathetic servants who are helpless without their mistress’s “leadership,” (and maybe even be more so with it).

Edge Hedge Arena

This goofy omage to the Sonic the Hedgehog fanbase of the 2000s and 2010s is more of a party game than a conventional TTRPG, but that’s just means it’s fast to play and play again. The game will pair you with a real Sonic OC, so you can stat them out and battle them against others in the ultimate blood sport.

Our Mission Statements

1. To provide a source of income for those of our team who cannot support themselves by any regular means through disability.

To this end, we ask for your support as fans, if you want us to be able to continue to create more of the work you love. We put our games up in beta for feedback and extra publicity/support while we work diligently on finishing them, and as a completely independent and unsponsored studio, we are entirely dependent on word-of-mouth from fans like you to bring our projects in front of new eyes and keep us afloat through sales and patreon subscriptions.

What you can do to ensure that we can support ourselves and continue operations:

Follow us on tumblr and bluesky

Reblogging/retweeting/whatever our posts on these sites, even if you don't have many followers, makes a huge difference and is actually how we get most of our new fans and patreon subscribers.

Talk about us!

Play our games, tell your friends about them, make posts about your adventures or characters from our games, make homebrew stuff, etc. Like with the social media posts, this is the only way the word gets out about who we are and what we do! Without word-of-mouth, we're dead in the water.

Subscribe to our Patreon!

You get monthly rewards such as Eureka updates, adventure modules, short stories, previews of new games, etc. It also gets you into our patron-exclusive discord server!

Buy, or just download, our games on Itch.io

Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy

Eureka Adventure Modules Vol. 1

Edge Hedge Arena

Money helps a lot, but even just downloading them for free gives us a boost in the algorithm and gets more eyes on us!

Donate on Ko-fi How this helps is pretty obvious.

Buy our snoop merchandise

We only get a small cut of this, but the stuff is pretty cool, and they're good conversation starters!

2. To fight back against the overwhelming hegemonic monopoly held over the TTRPG artform by Wizards of the Coast. This goes deeper than you think.

We don’t just promote our own games, we promote the games of others, and healthy play habits as well through the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club!

This is a welcoming and diverse space for fans of TTRPGs to discuss and play them. Plenty of different games will be running at any given time, but the main “book club” aspect of it is that people nominate RPGs they’d like to play, then the nominations are voted on regularly. Whatever wins, we all read and play. People are sorted into play groups based on schedule compatibility, so it’s very flexible.

Players are strongly encouraged to buy the RPG themselves to support the authors, but if you cannot for any reason, a PDF will always be provided for you. We have raised hundreds of dollars for indie and small press RPGs this way, and the community just keeps growing! If you’re a TTRPG designer, feel free to come in and nominate your own game!

Contact Us

Come talk to us in the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club or our patreon-exclusive discord server, or send us an email at anim.contactus@gmail.com!

You can also message us on tumblr and bluesky!

[river-taxbird]

Have YOU got an old Windows PC Microsoft has told you can't run Windows 11? It's time to give it a new life!

How to install Windows 11 on unsupported PC Hardware using Rufus. You can also disable some other Windows 11 bullshit like data harvesting and needing a Microsoft account.

It has been in the news a lot lately that Windows 11 isn't allowed to be installed on PCs without certain requirements, including the TPM 2.0, a chip that was only included in PCs made in 2018 or later. This means that once Windows 10 stops receiving security updates, those PCs will not be able to (officially) run a safe, updated version of Windows anymore. This has led to an estimated 240 million PCs bound for the landfill. Thanks Microsoft! I get you don't want to be seen as the insecure one, but creating this much waste can't be the solution.

(I know nerds, Linux is a thing. I love you but we are not having that conversation. If you want to use Linux on an old PC you are already doing it and you don't need to tell me about it. People need Windows for all sorts of reasons that Linux won't cut.)

So lately I have been helping some under privileged teens get set up with PCs. Their school was giving away their old lab computers, and these kids would usually have no chance to afford even a basic computer. They had their hard drives pulled so I have been setting them up with SSDs, but the question was, what to do about the operating system? So I looked into it and I found out there IS actually a way to bypass Microsoft's system requirement and put Windows 11 on PCs as old as 2010.

You will need: Rufus: An open source ISO burning tool.

A Windows 11 ISO: Available from Microsoft.

A USB Flash Drive, at least 16GB.

A working PC to make the ISO, and a PC from 2018 or older you want to install Windows 11 on.

Here is the guide I used, but I will put it in my own words as well.

Download your Windows 11 ISO, and plug in your USB drive. It will be erased, so don't have anything valuable on it. Run Rufus, select your USB drive in the Device window, and select your Windows 11 ISO with the Select button. (There is supposed to be a feature in Rufus to download your ISO but I couldn't get it to work.?

Choose standard windows installation, and follow the screenshot for your settings. Once you are done that, press Start, and then the magic happens. Another window pops up allowing you to remove the system requirements, the need for a microsoft account, and turn off data collecting. Just click the options you want, and press ok to write your iso to a drive.

From there you just need to use the USB drive to install windows. I won't go into details here, but here are some resources if you don't know how to do it.

Boot your PC from a USB Drive

Install Windows 11 from USB Drive

If you had a licensed copy of Windows 10, Windows 11 will already be licensed. If you don't, then perhaps you can use some kind of... Activation Scripts for Microsoft software, that will allow you to activate them. Of course I cannot link such tools here. So there you go, now you can save a PC made from before 2018 from the landfill, and maybe give it to a deserving teen in the process. The more we can extend the lives of technology and keep it out of the trash, the better.

Additional note: This removes the requirement for having 4GB Minimum of RAM, but I think that requirement should honestly be higher. Windows 11 will be unusable slow on any system with below 8GB of RAM. 8GB is the minimum I think you should have before trying this but it still really not enough for modern use outside of light web and office work. I wouldn't recommend trying this on anything with 4GB or less. I am honestly shocked they are still selling brand new Windows 11 PCs with 4GB of ram. If you're not sure how much RAM you have, you can find out in the performance tab of Task Manager in Windows, if you click the More Details icon on the bottom right. If you don't have enough, RAM for old systems is super cheap and widely available so it would definitely be worth upgrading if you have a ram starved machine you'd like to give a new life.

[alessabriel]

Only one doll.

Summary: They found something to hold on to, to love and they won't let go, even if you want to run away from them...you never can (or so they thought).

Cw. Dark content, typical canon violence, gore, mental disorders, suicidal thoughts, dark CaitVi, dark romance (or worse), dead dove, divergence from canon at best.

"You just have to obey, okay? We don't like to hurt you," Caitlyn said in a soft, measured, controlled voice, looking at her with her one uncovered eye and cradling her chin, lifting her up so that their gazes would meet.

The doll can only see that face she loved one day, features that showed pure and sincere love at one time now staining so slowly with profuse, deep and terrifying darkness. Intentions that are not hidden in those eyes I once loved and intentions that intend to leave her disabled, at her mercy, at the mercy of both.

She lives in a hell coated in gold.

Fear begins to rise so fast, as the grip on her chin increases in strength and terror settles under her ribs enlarging until it occupies all available space, pressing her organs outward, pressing against her ribs so hard that they may well break under the weight of the doll's fear of them and it is impossible for her not to shed tears, to tremble when she hears that purposefully heavy gait.

"I-I'll be good, I promise" stammers the doll with pain breathing through her pores, tears pooling in her eyes but refusing to shed them until she feels a finger press against the bullet wound in her leg and the doll stifles a scream, pulling away from the sheriff's hands trying not to go crazy; she had tried to run away and had almost succeeded but a bullet in her thigh had knocked her down "I-I'll be good, I'll be good, I'll be good I swear, I swear, I swear, I swear" the doll recites desperately trying not to throw up, not to look them in the face because that will destroy the only good memories she has of them; Caitlyn and Vi.

But they won't allow her that indulgence.

"Lift your head girl" Vi commands, her voice being soft but there is a steel underneath, a steel that could very well hurt that forces the doll to obey; she sits up lifting her head still on her knees in her room and looking at Vi with her eyes watering with tears "Will you do it again? Use your head silly girl you can't run away, we had already told you"

The doll only feels the bile in her throat, the voice she once adored and the soft eyes she once loved for how sincere they were, right now she wished to tear them out with her own fingers or her own to never see her again. He once loved her voice that whispered love in his ears, that assured him to love her as intensely as he loved the Sheriff, maybe it wasn't true and it was all a lie from both of them.

"We don't want to increase your punishments" she tried, again to sound kind Caitlyn but irony, mockery and sarcasm seeped into her tone.

She understood, and could only grit her teeth, holding back that will go like boiling lava inside her.

"But you're making us be mean to you Is that what you want?" Vi questioned, taking a few steps closer to the sweet doll kneeling on what was once a nice light red carpet and leaned down, staring at her; still everything she loved was still there, a little stained by fear but it didn't matter and she reached out her hand, touching that angelic little face sliding her thumb down her cheek brushing away the tears "Cait and I don't want to be mean to you princess, but you're making it hard for us Running away? You understand we were scared our little love would run away"

«as if they would care, you psycho bitches» thinks the doll but she would rip her skin to shreds before she would speak in front of them, she would rip her vocal cords out if she could so she would never speak to them and never have that pair of deranged women hear her voice again. But he forces himself, he forces himself and at will, with something tucked deep in the back of his mind where they could never touch anything he would always cling to; father and sister. She disconnected, she needed to do it because she could never run away from the damn Kiramman mansion, nor Piltover and she didn't want to endanger who is like an older sister to her, truth be told she was afraid of them and of herself, dad had not raised a weak woman but right now in front of an Enforcer capable of breaking a man's skull with her bare hands and a sheriff that could shoot you even from miles away, her survival instinct came into play.

She would live, and she would mold that damned jail with her bare hands.

"I-I'll be good, sorry for escaping" the doll whispers, her voice trembling before closing her pink iris eyes and shedding tears, beginning to sob for real letting go of the emotional anguish and that tiny part that still contained hope that they would realize what they were doing was so fucking wrong but that hope shattered it and went infinite in tears of faint pink transparency "I-I was afraid and I-I was dumb, sorry, sorry, s-sorry, s-sorry"

It would return that prison of theirs, one way or another.

[italian-lit-tournament]

Italian literature tournament - Third round.

Propaganda in support of the authors is accepted, you can write it both in the tag if reblog the poll (explaining maybe that is propaganda and you want to see posted) or in the comments. Every few days it will be recollected and posted here under the cut.

First, propaganda for Ludovico Ariosto, then for Guido Cavalcanti. The quantity of material will be colossal, so just scroll down for more.

For the Ludovico Ariosto stans:

by @larmegliamori

The opposing party has brought on the big guns, I see: us Ariosto girlies, gays and they must bare our teeth and ambitions.

So, here's my two cent on why you should vote Ludovico Ariosto!

Extreme relatability: Deeply entrenched into the politics of his time (as the firstborn of ten children, of which one was disabled and other five were women), but at the same time just wanting to stay home to live of his poetry? Dare I say iconic. Perfect representation of us literature kids.

He actually managed to marry his muse, Alessandra Benucci, and did it respectfully!

Working various jobs for patron(s) he didn't particularly like? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

Not to mention his most widely known work, the poem "Orlando Furioso" (The rage of Roland), has all the goos stuff us modern audiences would like! It features:

A wide, diverse cast, spanning from Ireland to India, stretching probably to the (by then) newly discovered Americas;

Fantasy elements: faeries, sorcerers, giants, orcs, the first modern iteration of the hippogryph and even a fantastical voyage to the Moon!

Citations and references galore: from Virgil to Ovid, from old chansons de geste to Boccaccio!

Proto-feminism and gender studies: Ariosto's female characters, although often very feminine, are actively involved in their story arcs. The poem also features two warrior women, Bradamante and Marfisa, the former of which is the protagonist of her own subplot. Said subplot heavily relies on gender, may it be appearances or not. And let's not forget the famous tirade at beginning of the fifth canto, where the author berates femicide! If you're willing to open your heart to his writing, Ludovico Ariosto reveals himself to be a compelling, layered, modern author, and yet there's a levity to his writing that works like a balm. Vote for Ludovico Ariosto (even if only for the memes)!

I'd also like to add that Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, in the 70s, got a theatrical AND television adaptation that was too campy for its own good.

It featured, amongst other things:

- 1500s inspired costuming (it sure was... A choice but I'm not complaining)

- Mechanic horses (that literally ran on rails) and hippogryph:

- Olympia of Holland, one of the most tragic characters in all the poem, as a vamp (slay):

(Posing with Orlando/Roland in on the left, with her lover Bireno on the right)

- Astolfo literally ENTERING INTO A HOLE TO GET TO THE MOON:

The television adaptation was partly shot in the famous Baths of Caracalla, in Rome. If you want to witness this masterpiece yourself, it's on YouTube! In two parts.

Remember to always stan Zio Ludo, and vote for him! ✨

Hello everyone! For today's Ariosto Propaganda Piece, I'd like to talk about the Satire.

Those seven pieces written in terzina dantesca (because our boy Ludo knew how to pick his role models) are an interesting insight about early 1500s society and Ariosto's character and private life. They all start from an actual event in his life and enlarge towards society as a whole, often with a critical eye towards it.

The first one, destined to his brother Alessandro and a friend, starts these absolutely iconic lines:

[Quick translation: Ruggiero, if you make me so ungrateful in the eyes of your descendants, and it bears me no advantage to have sung your worth and your mighty deeds, why should I stay here, since I don't know how to cut huns on a fork, nor how to hunt games with hawks or dogs?]

A bit of context: Ariosto's first patron, bishop Ippolito d'Este, had to move from Italy to Hungary and wanted all his court to follow him. Ariosto refused because of health and family matters, and he was threatened with the loss of all the benefits he had previously granted him. Note that Ariosto was basically a kind of personal secretary to Ippolito, carrying out different important missions for him, and even risked his life a couple times to carry them out. So it's understandable he feels disappointed at his patron's reaction... and that's why, in this more "private" writings, he complains with Ippolito's ancestor, the hero Ruggiero he had extensively wrote about in his main poem.

Honestly, a genius move. Not something you see often in poetry, is it? Another reason why you need to vote for this man ;)

For the Guido Cavalcanti stans:

Propaganda in favor of Guido Cavalcanti by @eresia-catara

May I add further propaganda for Guido: He's a noble, he disdains aristocrats, he was Florence's number one Server of Cunt, he was the city's faggot, he was heretical, he went on a random pilgrimage but interrupted it and managed to be buried in a church anyway, he had an archenemy who sent some men to murder him on said pilgrimage, he came back and tried to murder him back in plain daylight, he gave zero fucks about politics, he got exiled because he was considered a menace for the city. He SAW DANTE's poetical talent, encouraged it, shaped it, and through him the whole of italian literature. Think about it. Also they became besties until they evolved to a tormented psychosexual haunting dynamic (see break-up poem) where Dante himself actually exiled him. In the 13th century his poetry anticipates so many of the literary themes of the XXth century, going from fragmentation of the self (his is basically vivisection and dispersion of his parts), to dissociation from one's own mind and body, lack of identity, irony, desecration, his poetry is full of schizophrenic-like hallucinations, reading them is truly a trip, and yet his language is profoundly meoldic and sweet. And there's also gender-fuckery. and theater, of course, because his poems develop like a scene from a theater (adding layers to the dissociation). So really he has it all guys.

The thing is, Ariosto feels very contemporary but Guido is the og relativist and unreliable narrator. His poetry offers NO truth whatsoever you only have a sequence of schizophrenic hallucinations and what he describes only seems like it's real but who knows, the narrator is dead, how can he even speak or if he's alive he's not because he has dissociated himself from his body and is only coldly contemplating his own murder. He's not reliable because he has lost his reason, his soul has crubled into pieces and each piece has fled his body. Also he hears voices, and feels a sadistic presence in his mind in the form of a woman watching him die. This man was too ahead of his time, he was too dramatic, too eccentric, but also too acute and sensible, he must have looked deranged and we love him for it. and deserves to be voted!

Guido Cavalcanti propaganda by @girldante

GUIDO CAVALCANTI PROPAGANDA ABBIAMO:

LA DISSOCIAZIONE SCHIZOFRENICA:

IL COMICO, IL SIMPATICO BURLONE, IL MEMATORE ANTE LITTERAM:

IL MACABRO, IL GORE, I SINTOMI™

IL BREAKUP TOSSICO PASSIVO AGGRESSIVO CON DANTE

in conclusione

you can find my old propaganda here, but listen, while i do respect zio ludo's rizz, a vote for guido cavalcanti is a vote for gender roles reversal, death-life liminality, medieval atheism, antisocial freaks obsessed with philosphy who imagine their pens are talking to people about their owner's suffering (what is wrong with him), eye carving enjoyers (what the FUCK is wrong with him), sons who are sacrifical lambs, people who have long swinging necks like geese (allegedly???), and gay breakups involving dante alighieri. and also, well, I don't recall ariosto wearing a miku binder. twice.

in conclusion

Guido Cavalcanti propaganda by @apis-vergilii

Here’s my Guido propaganda: @girldante and @eresia-catara have already covered the poetry reasons, and I’m here to get metatextual about the whole thing.

Simply put, this is the Weird Niche Hellsite, and Guido is the Weird Niche Hellcandidate.

We live in an era of the cynical enshittification of the internet. In a sickened sea of dying social platforms, AI slop, and every last pixel being for sale, THIS is still the webbed site where a bunch of strangers can rediscover a lesser-known medieval poet in all his angsty, gothy glory, abandon all pretense of ironic detachment or mature indifference and go absolutely apeshit over his life and work, breathlessly and deliriously creating everything from exhaustively researched essays with footnotes, to anime fan art and inexplicable photoshops. This is the place where Goncharov happened. This is the place where we stole the president’s shoelaces. This is the place where a heretical medieval Tuscan stilnovista got himself a full-on Fandom, and we are all so much the better/worse for it.

So vote for the spirit of the old internet in all its dorky glory. Vote for the joy of learning things for fun and not for school. Vote for the bizarre Florentine emo goth. A vote for Guido Cavalcanti…is a vote for all of us.

if all else fails to convince you, well, i don't recall ariosto having an historical fantasy saga centered around him where he gains clairvoyance and gets increasingly more and more manipulated by the manifestation of his generational trauma. also he gets out of his body to have epic fights with spiritual creatures.

this should be a testimony to how his cuntserving echoed through time

Propaganda by @girldante and @eresia-catara that I guess should be read together:

well. seeing as we're on topic. Was Ariosto ever described as having

les bras d'Hercule avec des mains de nymphe by a 19th century french story? It is not made up guys, he served androgynous cunt so hard it didn't go unnoticed. Guido simply suggests fluidity.

Like. Arms like Hercules and hands like a nymph.

And Lorenzo il Magnifico also Fangirled over him in a letter to the Federico of Aragon

he (Lorenzo il Magnifico!!) was simply begging him to read his poems, and that's because they are absolutely eatable in all their irreverent, elegant, goth glory.

Finally, Boccaccio wrote about him in his Decameron (VI,9) and, truly, can you say no to him:

this little ballerina? look at how sad he looks!

would you look at that! Guido Cavalcanti propaganda is publicly sponsored by thee Lorenzo De' Medici himself!!!

as for the last bit, Boccaccio's novella from Decameron, where Guido calls out a bunch of idiots through a riddle that said idiots will take a bunch of time to understand and then proceeds to abandon them jumping over a grave, was cited by thee Italo Calvino in his Lezioni Americane as an example of his conception of lightness, as in the ability to lift oneself over the heaviness of the world.

In conclusion: Guido Cavalcanti is literally your fave's fave.

[hotwaterandmilk]

On accepting the usefulness of digital manga and light novels in the English language fandom from a disability perspective

This is an expansion of a thought that gripped me on Bsky earlier today. I will state outright these are just my personal musings as someone with disability trapped in a capitalist hellscape, not my ideal as a reader or member of society. Hopefully that makes sense.

I will always advocate for physical media. As you can likely tell from the content of this Tumblr, my media collection is my absolute pride and joy. However, as someone living with disability, I have to acknowledge that digital media options have made my life easier in some ways. While I generally prefer to purchase physical copies of books or discs, I’ve found myself increasingly turning to digital formats when I want to read manga or novels as they offer a better reading experience for my specific disabilities.

One issue that has really stood out to me lately is the trend among English-language publishers to release more 3-in-1 or other larger-format/omnibus manga volumes. These editions are generally more cost effective than single volume releases and help improve access to out-of-print (OOP) titles, but they can also present real accessibility challenges. A good example for me personally is Red River from Viz Media, a beloved series that’s been OOP physically for years but is now available again in 3-in-1 volumes. While this is great news for many fans, I personally can’t manage reading these print editions due to their size and weight. Thankfully, I already own the original single volumes but for those who don't have that privilege this is where digital options make a real difference.

I can load a title onto a lightweight reading device and still enjoy that “book in hand” feeling. Or I can use a screen reader on a larger device for even better accessibility. Of course, not all digital options are created equal, their usefulness depends on the decisions made by publishers and platforms regarding formatting, pricing, and features. For example, Amazon’s recent removal of the “Download & Transfer via USB” option on Kindle highlights how little control consumers actually have over the digital media they purchase. You're often locked into a single platform, with no simple or affordable way to move your purchases elsewhere. There are digital rights restrictions, not everything is available everywhere and prices can vary significantly even when a book is offered in your territory vs. the one next door.

Unlike a physical book that sits on your shelf, digital books are only available at the discretion of platforms or rights-holders, much like how streaming services control access to video or music compared to owning a Blu-ray or vinyl record. And when digital becomes the only option for certain titles deemed unworthy of a print release for whatever reason, it understandably alienates many readers. The English-language market has shown its love for physical media time and time again: series without a print option have a limited reach with these consumers. This is why terms like “digital jail” have become common, though I’m not a fan of that phrase myself. While digital-only releases can restrict access in some ways, they also provide opportunities for access in other ways, especially for readers with disabilities or those outside North America who face high costs and logistical hurdles when trying to import print editions.

If we must continue to live under capitalism (and I long for the day when we do not) then digital and print access for media must both be available wherever possible. I feel particularly when used in conjunction with print there are significant positives to having digital formats available for manga and light novels in English for those living with disability (based on my personal experience and those of my peers). Digital access also supports language diversity and enables the important work of archivists who strive to preserve media from official platforms for future generations. Anyone who has ever attempted to scan a book for archival purposes knows that starting from a digital file is far more efficient and accessible.

In this sense, I’m coming to terms with being an advocate for physical media who also recognises the advantages digital formats can offer. At the same time, I’m not naive about the limitations of digital book sales. While digital formats meet many of my specific needs, they don't meet them all and they won’t suit everyone. There are also serious limitations with how these materials are delivered through digital platforms that must be addressed moving forward.

[cryoculus]

— TRACK 02: ALL YOURS ⟢

the last thing you expect for mydei to do is ask you to help write a song. it could have been out of pity, or a means to distract, but little do you know, those fragmented lyrics will pull you so much closer into each others' orbit.

★ featuring; mydei x f!reader

★ word count; 7.4k words

★ tags; rock band au, found family, hostile acquaintances to friends to lovers, grief/mourning, angst, slow burn, eventual smut

★ notes; i'm cross-posting chapters gradually so i don't end up clogging the tags with my updates LOL 😭 also, i bulldozed through the 3.3 trailblazer quest and was royally pissed off by those 10-second cutscenes lmfao!!!! but i liked the story anyway so here's chapter 2~

★ header art cr; sarhiyu on x & ig

TRACKLIST ✧ READ ON AO3

@TheFlamechasers [📸 Photo Post] “First live charity set with our newest member, #DIANA. Let’s hear it for the cause and the chaos. 🔥” → 🧡 132,940 likes | 💬 View all 9,021 comments

@stagebattles [🎥 Clip: Diana’s solo, crowd screaming in the background] “One show in and she’s already melting faces. Flamechasers just hit reset.” → 🔁 18.2k shares | 💬 “did NOT expect that tone shift. she’s got teeth.”

@lionmouth17 [Tweet] “did she really play Nightingale Static like THAT?? this is why we stan musicians who feel the music.” → 9.2k likes | 2.4k reposts | #Flamechasers #DIANA

@heph_saves_hearts [Fan edit clip of old Hephaestion solos vs. Diana’s live set] 🎧 “i miss him.” 💬 Comments are disabled.

@flamechasers_confessions Anonymous post “I saw Diana once at a show before she joined the band. She was front row, crying during ‘Firestarter.’ I swear it was her.” → 614 likes | 109 comments | 🧊 tagged: “unconfirmed,” “fan theory”

@ cipher [Instagram Story] 🎤🎸 “Our newbie killed it! Whole band was lit tonight. 🔥 #Flamechasers”

@GarmentmakerCH [Photo Post] Image: Diana, still in stagewear, clutching a bouquet Caption: “Operational success.” → 🧡 49.1k likes | 💬 “why do you talk like a cryptid and also make me cry”

Life hasn’t slowed down. If anything, it’s moving faster than ever.

Hyacine keeps your inbox clogged with 4K Ultra HD fancams of every angle of your debut, each one timestamped and over-captioned like she’s running PR. Her support warms your heart, really. But while you do your best to hold on to your tradition of monthly coffee shop catch-ups, even that’s starting to lose its place in your tightly packed schedule. 

Rehearsals blur into fittings, fittings into interviews, interviews into frantic note-taking at midnight when a new riff won’t leave your head.

You should be too busy to feel anything.

And for a while, you are. 

Cipher’s energy barrels through every room, impossible to dodge and secretly comforting. Phainon never forgets your drink order, not even once. Castorice taught you a new tuning last week and gave you a fist bump that landed like quiet approval. Even Anaxa has stopped scowling every time you walk through the door—mostly.

And Mydei… is still Mydei. Distant and watchful, but the silence between you is thinner now. Less like a wall, more like a pause.

It feels like the kind of chaos you used to dream about.

Until it doesn’t.

You only meant to stop by the practice room to pack up your gear, maybe tighten a string or two. Ten minutes. Fifteen, max. Rehearsals finished up late, and you’d rather head back to your apartment before you get caught in the evening rush hour. 

But time slows differently in the quiet.

The rest of the studio is dim, lit only by the soft amber spill from a hallway bulb. Your amp is still warm. The hum of cables left half-wound coils at your feet. Outside, someone laughs, distant and muffled. Inside, it’s just you.

And the space where Erin should be.

Where she would’ve sent a dumb sticker just to make you smile, ask how your songwriting is coming along and offering her own input. She’d probably request a selfie in your stage jacket, too, before cheering you on with You did it. You’re really doing it!

The silence settles too heavily on your shoulders. You sit down, but it doesn’t help.

Your fingers find the pick hanging from your necklace out of habit, but they don’t move. You hold it like a lifeline. Like maybe, if you sit here long enough, your sister will walk through the door. Crack a joke. Roll her eyes. Hug you hard.

But she doesn’t. She never will. 

The ache swells slowly and surely as it drags the air from your chest. Your throat tightens. And then, before you can stop it, the tears come—hot and thick and aching. You don’t sob right away. It’s quieter than that. Breath catching, shoulders curling inward, the sound of something unraveling from the inside out.

You don’t hear the door at first. How the hinges creak softly, and how the air shifts just a bit. You’re too deep in the grief that still curls tightly around your ribs. Your guitar pick is still clenched around your fingers like it’s the only thing keeping you tethered to the ground.

Then—

“…Hm? You’re still here.”

For a second, your heart stutters like maybe you imagined it. But you know that voice, even clipped short like that.

Shit. 

You don’t want to look. You really don’t.

But your head turns anyway like it’s not entirely yours.

Mydei’s standing in the doorway, half-shadowed by the hall light behind him. His blonde hair’s still damp from today’s rehearsal—fiery tresses flattened by sweat and motion, and just a little frizzed at the edges. His jacket’s unzipped, slouched carelessly off one shoulder, like he left in a rush and didn’t bother to fix it.

But it’s his face that lands the hardest.

His usual mask of cool, unreadable nonchalance is gone. There’s no aloof arch to his brow, no smug curve to his mouth. Golden eyes catch on yours, and you expect them to flick away like they always do. But strange enough, they stay.

He looks stunned.

As if he wasn’t prepared to see you like this. Red-eyed and trembling and small in a room that was never meant to feel so empty. He says your name—the real one—like it might be enough to ground you or himself. Maybe it’s the only thing he has to offer.

You scrub at your face, clinging to the hope that if you wipe fast enough, you can pull yourself back together before Mydei speaks again.

But you can still feel him looking.

You sit up straighter. You don’t offer an explanation, and you sure as hell don’t ask for comfort. 

“I’m fine,” you say with more bite than intended. You don’t meet his eyes.

He doesn’t call you out on it.

Instead, there’s a beat of silence, then the sound of heavy combat boots shifting against the floor. He glances over his shoulder at one of the cluttered work tables against the far wall—half-covered in scribbled lyrics and old water bottles.

“…Wanna help me write something?” Mydei asks quietly. “Could use another brain for this one. If you’re up for it.”

The question lingers in the air like he’s offering you a cup of tea instead of an outstretched hand. The shift is so gentle that it takes you a moment to register it. You’d braced yourself for indifference. Maybe a clipped nod before he turned and left. 

But this? This quiet pivot, a small gesture toward something normal and shared—it unsettles you in a different way. 

You risk a glance at him. Mydei’s already walking toward the table, grabbing a pen, and dragging over a chair with one foot like he’s not waiting for your answer.

Like he just assumes you’ll come.

And maybe that’s what does it.

You stand slowly, the heaviness in your limbs not quite gone, but a little easier to carry now. The space between you stretches but doesn’t pull apart. You cross it quietly, your steps careful as if the floor might shift underfoot if you make a single misstep.

The pen moves in his hand, tracing idle loops into the margin of the page. Not really in a rush. He allows the moment to breathe.

But the first lines don’t come easy. Mydei starts one, scratches it out, then hesitates. His gaze constantly flickers toward the corner of the page, where a few lines already sit—half-finished, older ink, not his handwriting.

“These lyrics have been sitting like this for a while now,” he says quietly, as if he noticed where you’re looking. “Felt wrong to just leave them this way.”

The strokes are unfamiliar, but the rhythm is there, off-kilter and aching, like someone left mid-thought. You want to ask whose writing it originally was, but you hold your tongue.

Something tells you it’s better not to ask.

He tries again, careful and deliberate with a softer furrow in his brow. The silence doesn't feel as sharp anymore. It rings more warm and worn at the edges, like an old sweatshirt you haven’t had the heart to throw out.

Mydei taps the pen once, twice, then gives you a sidelong glance.

“Is this too vague?” he asks, and nudges the page a little closer in your direction.

You hesitate. The instinct is to deflect—to say it’s fine and stay in your lane—surfaces in your chest. But his tone isn’t guarded. There’s no challenge in it, only a quiet question, maybe even a thread of trust. So, you lean in, eyes scanning the scribbled lines.

“Maybe,” you murmur, voice still hoarse around the edges. “The image is strong, but it feels…detached. Like it’s circling something it doesn’t want to say.”

He hums low in his throat. Then he tries again, crossing out half a line and rewriting it beneath in smaller, tighter script.

“Better?”

You nod. Less hesitant, more curious.

Just like that, it becomes something else, less about grief and the sharp edges still catching in your chest. More about rhythm, phrasing, and two people hunched over a messy page trying to make sense of feelings without naming them outright. You offer a few lines. Mydei adjusts them without comment, or sometimes just nods, tapping his pen as he reads them back. A small, quiet rhythm begins to settle between you—call and response, edit and listen, breathe and try again.

And in the space where your sorrow had curled in tight and silent, something else begins to take its place.

Not peace. Not yet.

But maybe some sort of reprieve.

It’s a windless afternoon. The kind where the sky is washed-out blue, thin clouds stretched like gauze, and the world feels hushed, like it knows not to speak too loudly.

You don’t come here often.

Not exactly out of guilt, or avoidance. The thought of having to tread the winding paths is just difficult on most days. Like turning the knob on a door that’s never stopped creaking, no matter how many times you oil the hinges.

But today, you seem to tolerate the noise a lot more than usual. 

Hyacine walks beside you with her hands tucked deep into her coat sleeves. She doesn’t say much, just matches your pace with the kind of quiet only someone who’s seen you at your worst knows how to keep. You’re grateful for it. Words feel too loud today.

The cemetery gates groan. Grass crunches under your shoes, soft and brittle from the cold. You know exactly where to turn, even if you haven’t been here since the leaves were green.

Erin’s headstone is simple. All that’s there are her name, the dates, and a single line you still can’t read out loud without your throat closing up.

Bright enough for both of us.

The flowers in your hand are plain and store-bought, wrapped in thin paper. You crouch slowly, knees a little stiff as you brush away a few windblown twigs before laying the bouquet down. The pick at your neck presses warm against your skin where it always sits, strung on that old chain. You catch yourself holding it, rubbing over the faded swirl. You don’t even realize you're doing it until Hyacine speaks.

“You doing okay?”

You nod. Or maybe you shake your head. It’s somewhere in between.

“I didn’t think I could do it,” you murmur. “Join the band. Stand on that stage. It felt wrong. Like I was taking something I didn’t earn.”

She doesn’t rush you, shifting closer to let you know she’s there to listen.

“But… The other night, I stayed late at the studio and Mydei showed up. We ended up working on some lyrics together.” You pause. “It didn’t really fix anything, but it kind of made the air feel lighter. I’m not sure how. Or why.”

You glance at the headstone again, heart squeezing as you picture Erin nodding along to what you’re saying. “I think you'd laugh if you saw us. Me acting like I know what I’m doing. Him pretending he doesn’t care. It’s stupid. But it’s something.”

Hyacine smiles gently. “She’d be proud.”

Your throat tightens, but the tears don’t come this time. You simply press your palm flat to the stone for a moment—steadying, not letting go—and then slowly rise. You’ll be back to tell Erin more stories. When you’re ready.

But for now, you turn toward the path again, the pick resting safely over your heart.

The label’s meeting room is too bright.

Fluorescent lights hum softly overhead, sterile and clinical, bouncing light off a polished table that’s longer than most stages you’ve seen. You’re seated near one end, far enough from the center to feel peripheral, but close enough to know you can’t tune out.

Castorice sits to your left, sketching little spirals in the corner of her notepad like she’s done this a thousand times. Phainon’s on your right with his legs crossed at the ankle and a look on his face that says meetings are just another gig with worse acoustics. Cipher’s across from you, half-asleep behind her sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Mydei is situated somewhere farther down, arms folded with that casualness that always seems to come natural to him. You think he’s distracted, half-absorbed in whatever’s glowing on his phone screen until his amber-eyed gaze catches yours. The eye contact startles you, but you hold your ground, giving a small nod in acknowledgement. 

He nods back. 

You’ve never stepped foot in this room before. But after the glowing response to the last show, the label’s CEO, Caenis, called for a mandatory team huddle. Team, of course, being loosely defined because: 1) Anaxa is nowhere in sight, and 2) Aglaea and Tribbios weren’t invited. In fact, they were explicitly told to stay out of it.

Cipher mentioned once that Caenis might have some long-buried beef with the band’s management. At the time, you filed it under company rumors. But now? It’s starting to feel a little too plausible.

Then the door opens.

Caenis enters like she owns the air you all breathe, wrapped in a white suit with gold accents that look less like fashion and more like ceremonial armor.  Her assistant—an automaton named Lygus—trails behind with a tablet and an efficient silence that somehow amplifies hers.

“So,” Caenis begins, noting how the team is lacking one member. “Where’s Anaxagoras?”

Phainon raises his hand lowly. “We haven’t heard from him all morning. He wasn’t answering our calls.”

That earns a pause. “Okay. We’ll proceed anyway. Let’s talk about the Renascentia performance.”

Lygus taps something on his tablet. A screen lights up at the end of the room, projecting a slow loop of stills from the charity show—sweaty hair, bright lights, screaming crowds.

And there you are. Caught mid-riff, stage jacket thrown back, eyes fierce. Diana. 

Caenis doesn’t comment on the image. She gestures toward it with a nod instead.

“The numbers speak for themselves. Donations spiked. Engagement tripled. Public sentiment’s high. Press is calling it a comeback tour waiting to happen.” She glances at Lygus, who pulls up a calendar as well as a projected map that’s already making your head spin with one glance.

Then: “We agree.”

Your stomach flips. You hear a stream of murmurs from your bandmates, but you can’t make out what they’re saying through the roar of your pulse. 

“We’re prepping for a ten-city run by the first quarter of the following year. Local venues first, then we’ll scale up depending on performance metrics.” She turns back toward the table with a sharp grin—like she’s already projected the profit margins and filed them away. “You’ll have support staff. Stylists. Full PR scaffolding. Any questions?”

None of you answer, as if the news is taking its sweet time to settle. 

Unfortunately, Caenis isn’t a fan of idle silence and immediately levels a perfectly manicured finger at you. “Diana, questions?”

You jolt a little at the sound of your name—stage name, technically, but the way Caenis says it leaves no room for distinction. Every gaze at the table shifts your way. You clear your throat, sit a touch straighter.

“None at the moment,” you manage, voice steadier than you feel. “I'm just...looking forward to everything, I guess.”

You risk a glance down the table.

Mydei doesn’t say anything, but his brow lifts. A flicker of amusement, or maybe approval. It’s hard to tell with him.

Caenis seems satisfied. She nods once and moves on. “Good. Phainon, I want you working closely with Lygus on wardrobe scheduling. Cipher, you’re liaising with the media arm on socials. I don’t want another hashtag mishap this time.”

Cipher snorts but doesn’t argue. Phainon salutes, casually earnest.

Her gaze shifts smoothly across the table. “Castorice, you’ll be looped in with the audio techs and logistics—set maintenance, pedal configurations, all of it. I want clean transitions this time. No surprises.”

Castorice blinks once, then gives a polite, “Understood,” like she’d already prepared for this exact assignment.

“And Mydei…” Her voice pauses here, ever so slightly. “You’re still overseeing final track selections. Diana’s assisting, yes?”

You blink.

“She is,” Mydei answers. 

Just two words. Flat and unfussy. But your ears burn anyway.

Caenis’s eyes flick to you. “Then I expect both of you to have the first phase of the setlist locked in by next month. We’re tight on turnarounds. The second phase can wait after you've all discussed the next album with our producers, but do work on it ASAP.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you murmur.

The rest of the meeting devolves into logistics—tour graphics, merchandising approvals, the usual swarm of numbers and timeframes. You try to keep up, taking a few notes out of habit, but your brain’s still hooked on what Mydei just said.

She is.

Like it’s that simple. Like it’s so obvious.

The impulse to hit him flares up, but you tuck it neatly behind your teeth.

The hallway outside the meeting room feels colder somehow, or maybe it’s just the adrenaline crash setting in. Still, you fall into an easy rhythm. Down one elevator. Past some unfamiliar cubicles. Toward the wing of the building that actually feels like it belongs to all of you.

The studio.

Cipher’s the first to punch in the access code. “Bet Aglaea’s fuming,” she mutters, almost cheerfully.

“She was already fuming before we left,” Phainon adds dryly. “Which means we’re walking into something that’s probably evolved.”

The moment you step inside, you catch the sharp sound of Aglaea’s voice—even muffled behind the closed soundproof door to the main room, it cuts through.

“—again! Do they think I’m just here to hold everyone’s coats?!”

Tribbios’s voice follows in gentle, practiced tones. “It’s not personal, Aggy. You know how Caenis is. You know how these meetings go.”

“That’s the problem. They always go like this.”

You exchange a glance with Castorice, who simply nods, then quietly nudge the door open.

Aglaea’s pacing. Blazer off, hair a little more frazzled than usual. She stops mid-step when she sees all of you. Tribbios waves at you with a smile though her eyes are a touch tired. “Hey, good timing. I think I just barely talked her out of emailing Caenis an itemized list of all the things we’re excluded from.”

Phainon sighs. “We’ve got a tour coming,” he announces like he’s reporting the weather. “Ten cities. Local start. No breathing room. Highly hinted that Caenis is expecting a setlist with songs that haven’t even been written yet.”

“She’s already assigned everyone homework,” Cipher adds, dropping into one of the beanbags. “I get to babysit the hashtag situation. Again.”

Tribbios perks up. “Already? That was fast.”

“It’s Caenis,” Mydei says, settling onto the edge of the low couch. “Fast is slow by her standards.”

Aglaea clicks her tongue. “And she didn’t think it was worth telling the management team?” 

“She thinks of you as management-adjacent,” Cipher offers with mock wisdom. “Somewhere between ‘essential personnel’ and ‘miscellaneous staff.’”

Aglaea looks like she might actually throw a clipboard, and you’re not sure whether you should look away or take cover. “That...witch. She can’t keep icing us out of the strategy loop just because I questioned her about rerouting funds during the last tour—”

“Breathe. Please breathe,” Tribbios pleads, placing a calming hand on her arm. 

Castorice, always the mediator, pipes in softly. “You’re not wrong, Aglaea. But we’ve got the details now. Let’s just work with what we have, okay?”

Despite looking like a ticking time bomb personified, she takes a deep breath to loosen the nerves. Once your manager’s got her wits about her, the room hums with overlapping chatter—discussions of setlists, scheduling conflicts, wardrobe speculations, and whether anyone actually knows where half the venues are.

You’re just starting to feel like this might finally settle into something normal when the door opens again.

Anaxa steps in, three hours late, coffee in hand and not a hint of repentance on his face.

“Did I miss roll call?”

Aglaea glares at him like she’s about to combust. “Nice of you to show up.”

He arches a brow before settling on the sofa next to Phainon. “Sorry. Some of us had a rather…demanding night.”

Aglaea doesn’t respond. She just stares at Anaxa like she’s calculating the precise velocity required to launch a pen through his skull. Before you can think about what his words could possibly mean, Tribbios steers everyone back on track.

“Can we move on, please? We've got lots of ground to cover.”

Cipher snickers under her breath but quickly quiets when Castorice elbows her in the ribs. Phainon flips the page in his notebook like it’s just another day in paradise.

“According to the schedule that witch...I mean, Director Caenis handed out,” Aglaea starts, finally back in her element. “We have a week until the first official planning session for the new album. Which means we need everyone clear on deliverables, expectations, and actual attendance.”

That last part hangs in the air like smoke.

Mydei cuts through the silence with a raise of his hand. “I’ve actually started writing something.”

“Since when did you start early?” Cipher asks, narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

His gaze shifts briefly before jamming a thumb in your direction. “Since she started helping.”

Every head turns to you.

You manage a thin smile, but your stomach ties itself into knots.

You weren’t expecting him to mention that night—when he’d shown up unannounced, finding you in a moment when grief felt inescapable. When the rest of the band had already gone and it had just been the two of you, creating something quiet and strange and new. You thought it would stay there.

You look down, muttering, “It wasn’t a big deal.” 

But no one really buys that. Especially with how Mydei treated you during the first few weeks since you joined. Not Cipher, who’s already wearing that grin again. Or Aglaea, who’s giving Mydei a slow, narrowed look that could mean a dozen things.

All this time, you thought things would be easier once the ghost of Hephaestion's presence has all but dissipated, but you're not enjoying...whatever this is any better. 

“That's great,” Tribbios replies—either oblivious to the shift in the room or choosing to ignore it. “Let’s flag that for review in the draft session.”

The conversation moves on. Your face still burns.

And the memory refuses to let you go.

r/TheFlamechasers u/bandforbrainz

Diana vs Hephaestion—When Will It End? Her debut was a hit, but I’m seeing so many fans still comparing Diana to Hephaestion. She played her heart out, and it’s clear that she syncs up well with the band. Why can’t y’all just let her be?

⬆️ 635  ⬇️ 45  💬 137 

 

hephforever • 2h WAKE UP! Diana’s not bad, but there’s no replacing Hephaestion. The band isn’t the same without him. Period.

AnalWithAnaxa • 2h Honestly, it’s so weird that people won't let go of him. He's the one who left without a word, why’s the new girl getting all the heat?

bandforbrainz • 2h ^^ so true, user AnalWithAnaxa

justagrrl • 15m sorry, i’m a new fan. but do we really have no clue why heph just packed up and left?

AnalWithAnaxa • 5m all you’ll dig up here are rumors. the most popular being: he and mydei broke up 🤣

myphaestion • 3m Why call it a rumor if it’s true? 

bandforbrainz • 3m @Admin the rabid shippers are here, pls help

myphaestion • 1m KYS 🖕

 

This thread has been locked by the moderators.

You start to suspect that something’s amiss during your first brainstorming session.

The main studio has been converted into songwriting HQ for a better part of the week. Someone brought snacks, someone else forgot cables, and everyone’s half-tuned and vaguely alert, notebooks and stray riffs scattered across the floor. The label’s producers gave you all creative liberty for the next album, and everyone is, miraculously, locked in. 

You’re perched on the sofa, trying to find the words that go with a chord Anaxa dropped earlier, when you hear them.

“…it’s not like he wanted to leave,” Castorice says softly. “He just—he couldn’t stay.”

Cipher hums. “Yeah, but it was Aglaea who—”

Their voices dip lower.

You weren’t trying to eavesdrop, but they’re just behind you, and there’s no mistaking what you hear:

Hephaestion.

The name itself no longer makes your chest tight with an emotion you can’t name. Several months in, and you’ve more or less found your footing as part of The Flamechasers. Caenis wasn’t lying when she said that public reception of you as the new lead guitarist was mostly positive. But hearing his name again, so casually thrown into a conversation, catches you off guard.

It’s the first time you’ve realized that your bandmates have never mentioned him to your face. Not once.

You know it’s not your place to ask. The label made it clear from the start: the matter was buried, swept away as quickly as possible, and that seemed to be the same story for everyone in the band. But from the way Cipher and Castorice spoke, it made you think that they’re in the know.

About what really pushed Hephaestion to leave.

Part of you thinks, if you were the same person you were a year ago, you’d already be down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. You would scour old interviews, dive into every scrap of gossip and half-whispered rumor you could find. But now that you’re literally sitting in the same room as the people who once called Hephaestion their brother, you learn that some truths don’t come so easily.

You contemplate about asking. Just a casual curiosity. 

But you never do. 

As the seasons change, the silence around Hephaestion’s name grows deeper. No one speaks of him again, and you’ve mastered the art of pretending you never overheard. You smile for every camera, nail each rehearsal like it’s second nature, and pretend everything is perfectly in place—even when all you want to do is scream.

You think you’re fooling everyone. The band, the fans, the media, everyone who expects nothing less than the polished version of Diana. The confident guitarist who’s got it all together, who fits in seamlessly with The Flamechasers like she’s expected to. 

But one quiet evening, something disrupts the rhythm you’ve so carefully rehearsed.

Mydei finds you again when you least expect him. 

You know he has a habit of staying late at the studio, hovering by the mixers, fine-tuning vocals, obsessing over the way sound meets silence. But the tracklist for the new album was finalized days ago. There’s nothing left to fix. No reason for him to be here this late.

Yet, here he is. 

“You up for a few drinks?” Mydei asks, his voice more casual than you’re used to. “There’s a place nearby. Still open.”

“…Now?”

He shrugs, hands in his pockets, as if he hasn’t just disrupted your entire idea of how tonight would go. “Unless you’ve got a better offer. You don’t strike me as someone with cable TV and a bedtime.”

Hesitation shadows your face. “But why me?”

Mydei glances around the empty studio hallway. “Do you see anyone else here?” Then he turns, keys jingling loosely from his finger. “C’mon. I’ll even drive you back. If anything bad happens, Aglaea will personally make sure I die a slow and painful death.”

You’re not afraid—just mildly weirded out. This isn’t the Mydei you’re used to. Sure, things between you have warmed with time, but he’s never been the type to invite people out on a whim. That’s more Cipher’s territory, or even Castorice on a good day. Mydei is more reserved. More deliberate. Yet, here he is, tossing you an offer like it means nothing.

Except it doesn’t feel like nothing.

It feels like déjà vu.

Like the night he found you unraveling in the studio months ago, when instead of pressing or prying, he’d asked if you wanted to help him write something.

You’d thought it was his way of distracting you.

Now, you can’t help but wonder: is that what this is, too?

You sigh, grabbing your jacket off the back of the chair. “You better not make me pay.”

His mouth twitches, almost a smile. “Fine. Just for tonight though.”

You follow him out into the night, the soft hum of the city settling into your bones like a lullaby you hadn’t realized you missed. A dimly lit bar is tucked between a bookstore and a laundromat, the kind of place you’d never look twice at during the day.

Inside, the lights are low, the music soft, and the bartender doesn’t bother carding you when Mydei raises two fingers in a silent order. You settle into a booth near the back while he disappears to grab your drinks, and for a few moments, you're alone again—with your thoughts, your doubts, your heartbeat loud in your ears.

What is this, really?

When Mydei returns and slides a glass toward you, he doesn’t say anything right away. Just sits across from you like he’s been doing it for years, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“So,” he finally says, raising his glass in a lazy toast. “Here’s to the biggest PR gamble of the year. New album and the tour reveal, both dropping at 7 PM tomorrow. Genius or disaster?”

You snort, clinking your glass to his. “Definitely a disaster.”

He grins, eyes crinkling slightly, and your heart stutters just a bit at the sight of it.

You sip your drink, letting the warmth crawl through your chest. For the first time in a while, you see Mydei, not as the cool, distant frontman, but as someone off-center. A little tired, but a little more human.

And then he says it—casually, but not without weight:

“Remember that song we wrote together a few months back? The one that didn’t make the final cut?”

Your fingers still around your glass.

“Yeah,” you say. “I remember.”

Mydei swirls his drink lazily, gaze fixed on the ice clinking against the glass. “I tried to make it work. We all did. The lyrics were solid—hell, the producers begged me to keep it. But every version we laid down? I don’t know. I just…couldn’t feel it.”

You blink. “You?”

He nods, face unreadable again. “It didn’t groove right. Not with me, anyway. Maybe it was the arrangement. Or maybe it just wasn’t meant for me to sing.” Then, softer, almost like an afterthought: “I’m sorry. I know you put your heart into that one. I meant to bring it up earlier, but couldn’t find the right timing.”

You can tell this wasn’t easy for Mydei to say. He doesn’t apologize often, if at all. You take a sip, the bite of the drink grounding you, so when you answer, your voice is steady.

“Then maybe I’ll cook something up myself.”

That gets his attention. His eyes flick to yours, a hint of surprise breaking through the usual calm.

“I mean, if it’s not working for you, doesn’t mean it can’t work for me.” You lean back, tapping your glass. “The lyrics are already written, so I’ll just tweak the rest. Who knows? Maybe it’ll finally groove with someone.”

A beat passes before Mydei laughs, quiet and genuine. “You’re serious.”

“Dead serious.”

“Then here’s to that.” He lifts his glass again, this time in a real toast. “Make it all yours.”

You will. Even if it’s the last thing you did. 

The rest of the night slips past before you know it. Mydei is surprisingly more amicable when he’s got a few glasses in, but he maintains the distance that’s typically there. Not that you mind.

After an hour of exchanging stories and nursing drinks, Mydei pulls up just outside your apartment. You unbuckle your seatbelt, hand already on the door handle, when he says:

“Wait.”

You pause, turning toward him.

He reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out something folded and worn. The corners are already creased, but most of it remains intact.

When Mydei hands it to you, you recognize it instantly: the original lyric sheet. The one the two of you scribbled on months ago, passing it back and forth between verses. Your handwriting all looped and anxious. His, sharp and decisive. Ink smudges where the ideas came too fast to be neat. Even the few lines that some stranger before him wrote still linger in the corner. 

You hadn’t even realized it still existed.

“I almost threw it out,” he admits. “Didn’t see the point in keeping something we weren’t going to use.”

You look down at it, then back at him.

“But you didn’t,” you say.

He shrugs. “It just felt wrong.”

Your fingers tighten slightly around the paper. It smells faintly of his car—coffee, freshener, something electric. A memory, or maybe even a beginning.

“Thanks,” you murmur.

“Don’t let it collect dust,” Mydei replies, his tousled, golden hair catching in the reflection of his headlights. “Do something with it.”

You nod and slip out of the car as his gaze weighs on your shoulders. Mydei doesn’t linger any longer, and speeds back into the empty streets without another word. Even so, the cold brushes your skin like a reset, and you’ve never been more determined for a do-over.

The first show of the tour is nothing short of a triumph.

Okhema turns out in droves—old fans, new fans, the curious, the skeptics—and they roar. From the first chord to the final chorus, it’s electricity. You’re so in the zone, it barely registers when the spotlight hits your face just right, or when Castorice drags out a solo longer than usual just so you can go feral on the outro. Even Mydei, usually cool and clipped offstage, breaks character to grin between verses.

It’s one of those shows where everything clicks. No missed cues, no out-of-sync harmonies. Just rhythm, sweat, and fire.

And you? You burn the brightest.

Afterward, the crew buzzes with high-fives and hoarse laughter. Tribbios starts talking about press clippings before the amps are even unplugged. Phainon calls the entire night “a cleanse.” Cipher insists on a group selfie and, for once, Anaxa doesn’t protest. Even Aglaea allows herself a single relieved nod before getting on the phone with someone probably much more powerful than anyone in this room.

Someone suggests an after-party. Everyone’s already halfway out the door.

Well, everyone except you.

“Not coming?” Castorice asks, already halfway into her glittery jacket.

You shake your head. “I’ve got something I need to work on.”

There’s a general chorus of lame, and booo, and we’re telling the fans you ditched us to do taxes. You flip them off with a smile, which just makes Cipher blow you a kiss in return. But as the group files out, you catch Mydei watching you, recognition simmering in his eyes at some sort of shared secret.

He doesn’t say anything, but he spares you a barely perceptible nod.

You nod back.

When you get home, your apartment smells faintly of sweat and stale confetti. You kick your shoes off at the door, hang your jacket on the back of the nearest chair, and make a beeline for your bedroom-slash-studio. The walls still hum with adrenaline. Your ears are ringing a little, but your fingers feel ready.

You slide the lyric sheet out of its folder, smoothing out the creases with a gentle hand. Mydei’s voice lingers in your head, that clipped softness: “Do something with it.”

You plug in your audio interface, boot up your laptop, and open a new session.

The first thirty minutes are great. You mess around with tempo changes, layer a synth you think is moody but not too moody, and even hum a few melody lines that feel promising. There’s a spark. It’s there.

But then it slips.

Nothing fits.

Everything you lay down fights with itself—either too loud or too hollow. It’s like trying to rebuild a house with someone else’s blueprints and none of the original bricks. You get what Mydei meant now. There’s something evasive about the song. Something emotional that doesn’t translate on command.

But you’re not giving up.

You loop the chorus section. You tweak the pre-chorus. You try a half-tempo bridge and hate it. You drink three cups of water and one of bad espresso. You mutter, “What are you even supposed to be?” to your screen at least five times, and it still doesn't feel right. 

You try again, but your hand slips off the mouse. The screen blurs a little. For a moment, you consider closing your eyes. Only for a few minutes. 

But when you open them again, you’re slumped against your desk, the lyric sheet crumpled beneath your cheek, faintly damp with drool.

The screen of your laptop glows in front of you, frozen on a blank measure.

You rub your eyes, annoyed. With the arrangement, with the interface, with yourself. The melody slips every time you think you’ve got it. The lyrics feel empty even if they felt alive when you wrote them. You’re chasing ghosts in someone else’s song, and none of them are showing their faces.

You stare at the interface until your eyes sting.

Then you grab your phone.

 

Me: Ci

Me: Please tell me you're up 

Cipher: duh

Cipher: i’m still in full concert eyeliner and fear no sleep

Me: ??? It's 9 AM

Cipher: so what? 

Me: At least wash your makeup off 😭

Cipher: are u rly texting me just to tell me off 

Me: No

Me: I'm working on a project Mydei handed over

Me: He already warned me that it was difficult

Me: And now it’s been kicking my ass for WEEKS

Cipher: ohhh? is this the one that didn't make the new album 

Me: Yeah, I'm starting to suspect the lyrics are cursed or something

Cipher: no, sweetie. mydei was just being an idiot and gave up on it too early

Cipher: getting ultra-stumped just means you're halfway there

Me: Halfway to setting my laptop on fire?

Cipher: 🔥🔥🔥 creative process 🔥🔥🔥

Cipher: want me to swing by tomorrow? bring snacks? my expertise as the band's synthesizer?

Me: Yeah that would be great

Me: But I need sleep, so do you

Cipher: true

Cipher: i was trying to get aglaea drunk but got my ass handed to me

Cipher: my vision's still spinning, kinda

Me: Good night, Ci 

Cipher: gn, newbie 🖤

On the promised day, you and Cipher work until something cracks.

It’s not polished. It’s not clean. But it moves—twitching and alive in a way that’s too raw to be careful with. Cipher high-fives you so hard it stings, then collapses backwards onto your floor, laughing breathlessly.

“Okay,” she groans. “I’m done. I’m fried. I’m leaving before I fall in love with a chorus we’ll regret in the morning.”

You snort. “Coward.”

She flips you off from the floor, then drags herself up, throws her jacket on backwards, and stumbles out of your apartment with little ceremony.

You're left in the glow of it. Still wired, and riding the high of something shaped like success. You bounce the track—just a rough cut for now. No title yet, so you type something dumb just to save it quick.

You mean to drop it in your local drafts, but in your sleep-deprived fog, you drag it into the band’s shared cloud instead. You don’t even notice. You’re already shutting your laptop without closing the audio interface. Still buzzing. Still hearing the bones of what you and Cipher made echoing in your skull.

You fall asleep face-first into a pillow with your hoodie still on.

Mydei’s at the studio on a designated day-off.

Not for the sake of productivity, exactly. He just doesn’t sleep much during tour season, and the first show’s adrenaline has yet to leave his system. 

His body’s still buzzing from the gig, but not in a good way. It feels more like residual static. Too many people, too much light, and not enough room in his head. So he took a long stroll from his place until he ended up here. Only the soft hum of the monitors and the familiar chill of over-air-conditioned space offer him company. 

Mydei boots up the console in the producers’ lounge, lets muscle memory guide him. He doesn’t think about it much. Just dragging folders, opening sessions, looking for last show’s harmony stems that Tribbios insisted were “absolutely perfect, don’t lose them.”

He scrolls.

Pauses.

Then, near the top of the shared cloud, Mydei spots a file he doesn’t recognize.

It could be Cipher’s. The title’s chaotic enough to fit her. But it could also be some half-finished garbage file Anaxa dumped in as a joke. He did once upload a mix that was just thirty seconds of dolphin noises over a kick drum. Maybe it’s corrupted. The name doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

But the timestamp stops him from dragging it to the trash bin. Just a few hours ago...

He should be organizing. Or doing literally anything else.

However, curiosity wins, and he plays it anyway.

At first, it’s all wrong. The levels are a mess, the bass clipping, one vocal harmony accidentally doubled and panned entirely left for no reason. It sounds like it was exported in a panic and bounced through a trash compactor.

But then—there.

That melody. His melody. Or at least, it used to be.

Now it’s got teeth. Rougher, louder. It doesn’t tiptoe around its own structure anymore, it kicks straight through the drywall and rebuilds itself mid-bar. Someone dragged this once-desolate song somewhere new, bent it at the joints until it stopped pleading and started fighting.

It’s not just rearranged.

It’s claimed.

The old bones are still there, buried under snarling guitar overlays, flickers of digital grit, and a deliberately broken drum loop that shouldn’t work, but somehow does. At the midpoint, there’s a climb—a sudden rise like a held breath—that breaks into a guitar line so fast and furious it leaves him blinking.

And he knows that hand.

Knows the impulse behind it. That frantic precision. That particular way of saying I’m not sorry with every note.

Yours. 

Mydei leans back, a soft, involuntary laugh escaping before he can stop it. He runs the track again. Eyes closed this time.

Because it isn’t his song anymore. It’s all yours now, stubborn and spit-shined and loud in all the ways he never let it be. And he likes it. More than he thought he would. More than he probably should.

The file ends. The room falls quiet.

He doesn’t move, he simply sits there—slack-jawed and blinking like he’s been hit by a hurricane. The glow of the screen still frames the filename in the corner:

workign title.mp3

God, what a disaster.

Wrong format. No stems, no session file. Just a lumpy, flattened brick of noise. He can’t solo the layers or trace the guitar back to its source. Can’t reverse-engineer the chaos.

All he has is the wreckage, and somehow, it’s perfect.

The quality got decompressed. The reverb's unhinged. The bassline tried to kill itself twice.

But it’s you.

Every note is stained with your persistence, your teeth-gritted drive, your weird timing and weirder decisions. The melody clawed its way out of his hands and into yours, and now it sounds like something that actually wants to live.

Mydei catches himself grinning.

Like a damn idiot.

Then he opens a new folder, drags the file in, and labels it:

workign title (DO NOT DELETE).wav

TRACKLIST ✧ READ ON AO3

© cryoculus | kaientai ✧ all rights reserved. do not repost or translate my work on other platforms.

[okkotsuus]

"TUNNEL VISION" ー kenyu yukimiya 🪽

features: kenyu yukimiya

contents: angst. possible spoilers for nel. mentions of disabilities. mentions of self-destructive behavior. portrayals of christianity. struggles with faith. there's some comfort because i'm merciful. fem!reader because i don't feel like editing this </3. 1k words.

notes: for my lovely alice ( @cheralith ), inspired by till forever falls apart by ashe and FINNEAS

yukimiya kenyu has always been the kind of man that never stops, not until he gets what he wants. he has been like this since he was young, when all he had wanted was the new anpanman figure.

eventually, he had set his sights on bigger and brighter dreams: being top of his class, learning his favorite song on piano, winning a world cup.

what he never knew was that one day, all those big and beautiful goals of his that he had dedicated everything for: those visions and dreams he spent every fibre of his being pursuing, were things he would never be able to actually see.

because he was going blind.

slowly.

day by day.

all those little things he took for granted growing up suddenly fall crashing down upon him. if only, all those foolish things he had prayed for had been for this. if only god could hear him now, crying like when he was brought into this world. if only he had never been allowed to dream: to have gotten a taste for satisfaction.

his doctor tells him that it is unlikely he will ever be able to go pro. because with every minute he spends on the field, his eyes are irreparably damaged.

optic neuropathy is a condition characterized by damage to the optic nerve. in his case, it is due to restricted blood flow: something that is only exacerbated by strenuous physical activities.

activities like soccer.

when his body is fatigued, the blood flow to his optic nerve is unable to properly pass through to supply oxygen to his eyes. this leads to black spots in his vision during these times. often, the vision is most affected in the peripherals: one of the most critical spots of vision for anyone playing a sport like soccer.

it is a degenerative condition, accompanied by symptoms like nausea and headaches (which is caused by the combination of the restricted blood flow and his brain trying to cope with his obscured vision).

should yukimiya have given up on his dream then, he likely would never have run the risk of going fully blind: at least not until he was much older than he is now.

but kenyu has never known when to stop, even if it was for his own good.

he had always been the type to work himself to exhaustion, even when exhaustion just meant falling asleep at his desk. but, now, exhaustion meant eventual and permanent blindness. sooner than later.

for him, losing everything just to taste his dream was better than never having known.

that's what he had thought for a long time.

he was simply fighting a clock, to win a world cup before his vision goes fully black. it's all he has wanted for a long while now.

it's something he finds rattled the second he meets you.

everything around him freezes for just a moment, the world seems a hell of a lot brighter than it had been for the last year. he thinks, for just a moment, the angel he prayed for has descended down from heaven to bless him.

and with the sound of his heart pounding in his ears, his sight clouding around the edges: as if forcing his focus to you. for just a moment, he finds himself cursing what he can't see, the beauty that is being hidden from him. he finds himself wishing he had chosen to preserve his sight, selfishly.

"yukimiya, correct? my name is y/n, and i'll be your manager while you're here with training with us." wow, you even sound like an angel.

then it all rushes back to him: he's in the second phase of the blue lock project, meeting the team he has chosen to better himself with. he is here to pursue his dream, he doesn't have the time to sit here and blush over some girl.

but you're not just some girl; no, you're so, so much more. so, he finds himself discarding the training regiment he had been doing to approach.

your hand extends with a bottle, the bastard munchen insignia on the side: almost mocking him. he finds himself taking it with a small thanks, regulating his breathing and sippling a gulp as those voids in his vision begin to clear up.

kenyu knows it isn't true, but he has the fleeting thought that it clears because of you. "yes, thank you, miss y/n," he speaks, voice honey sweet as it had always been.

you smile and he swears that the clouds parted to let the sun grace him. "it is my pleasure, and just y/n is fine: we are the same age, after all."

that hits him as he finds himself thinking so annoyingly like the teenage boy he is. but he doesn't stop himself from indulging the thought of you, just this once

yukimiya allows the fantasy of taking you out, pinkies locked while you drag him to whatever sweet street vendor you set your pretty eyes on. he enables himself to imagine the thought of putting a ring on your finger, to watch miniature versions of himself running around your legs.

as he finds himself pondering whether your children would have his eyes or yours, he freezes.

this is something he will never be able to see without imagining it. yukimiya kenyu will never be able to actually see you in a wedding dress. and that rattles him somewhere deep in his core.

for a long time, all his sights had ever been focused on was the soccer ball he can dribble from one end of the field to the other: all on his own.

but, now, he finds himself wanting to be able to see you watching him from the sidelines.

and he never will.

because kenyu cannot see in his peripheral, no matter how bright you shine.

he finds himself cursing god for the fist time in his life.

⚜️ ㅤ okkotsuus ㅤ 25

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I’m working on an original character project that I want to include a lot of casual representation in (“casual” meaning that the characters don’t need a justification for being disabled/fat/POC/etc, they just are because people can and do exist that way in reality!)

I was wondering if you had any suggestions for finding resources for drawing facial differences(and maybe other visible disabilities), especially in a cartoony style. I’ve looked through the Facial Equality Week tag but would like to see more examples, and since my art is so… goofy, for lack of a better word, I would love any help I can get in integrating differences without being offensive or upsetting.

Sorry if this is a bother, and thank you for all that you do!

Hey!

I'm not aware of any guides for drawing facial differences specifically (or at least, good ones. There's 1 billion tutorials telling you that scars are just a Singular Line, always, but that's not... correct), but perhaps someone in the notes could help out?

For my own advice, you could check out this old post I made. Because you mentioned your art being cartoony, I would specifically urge you to not overexaggerate facial differences the way they often are. A prime example would be how a lot of cartoons portray strabismus;

It's just a funny gag to them rather than, IDK, how some of us look like. Not to mention that one of these is also a mockery of intellectually/developmentally disabled people with "Derp" in the name, but that's beside the point here.

It's the whole "the character is crazy/stupid/wild/whatever and that's why they have it" that's the problem with how it's often shown. You can also see it in how characters who don't even normally have it will be shown with it for a scene where they're saying something nonsensical, etc.

Another example that's nowhere near as rampant is the split-face thing with various facial differences being used. Mostly vitiligo but sometimes also facial palsy. I'm talking about this weirdly perfectly halved face that looks extremely different on each side, often used to imply that a character is two-faced but mostly just signals that the author doesn't know how vitiligo looks like.

[note: vitiligo also shows up on lighter skin. I wanted to make sure it's visible here for tutorial clarity purposes.]

This one is just weird because it straight up doesn't look like that. I have no idea where it came from, but it should go back there. Facial palsy doesn't make someone look like the antique comedy/tragedy theater mask.

Unless I'm forgetting some other annoying cartoon trope, these would be the big ones that you should stay away from.

Outside of that, it's really on a case by case basis on how a specific FD should be drawn because they're so different. A birthmark can just be a differently colored patch of skin, but a craniofacial difference would require some more changes to be included. Alopecia is well, lack of hair, and can be done very easily but ectrodactyly can be more complicated to show properly because of the limitations of a cartoony artstyle when it comes to hands. And while I do think it would be great to see more of those facial differences that tend to not be included in art at all, there's nothing wrong with deciding to go for the things you can represent more faithfully, especially if you're just starting.

I will say that if you're making an honest attempt at being respectful and trying to get it right, most of us will still be excited to see your work. Even if it's not perfect or has some inaccuracies. I will take a "'yeah more or less' correct with a happy, human character" over a "Very Technically correct but tagged as #tw burns and with blood splattered on them" any day.

Lastly, I wanted to share some art featuring characters with facial differences (and other visible disabilities) that are done in a cartoony, or at least somewhat simplistic artstyles (I'm using both terms very widely here) - maybe it will give you some ideas.

Man with Treacher Collins syndrome (also one of the first pieces online where I saw a character with an FD portrayed in such a lovely way. A fav of mine.) Girl with Pfeiffer syndrome Too many characters to count Woman with burns Woman with a limb difference Multiple characters again Animation featuring people with Down syndrome [youtube] Multiple characters, including a girl with neurofibromatosis, a burn survivor, a girl with a cleft lip and another with TCS [twitter]

If you have a more specific art question ("how do I draw a person with XYZ facial difference?") you can send me an ask on @saszor. I prefer to stick to the writing theme on this blog but would still like to help if you need it.

Hope this helps,

mod Sasza

Edit: apologies for the lack of alt text on one of the images, it has been fixed.

[theoi-crow]

Tumblr vs Tiktok

For Hellenic Polytheist resources and information:

Please pay attention to where you are getting your information from and what the motives are for those giving it to you, and why. Also, please pay attention to how accessible it is for the platform to give information.

Tumblr:

- This platform makes it very easy to access information in posts via links.

- The people posting won't get much out of sharing information so the ones who share information tend to just do it because they want to, and their information is easy to analyze and determine if it's useful.

- The Format via Reblogs also makes it easy for others to challenge the information on posts who get popular. The button that lets you see the discussion and reblog history also makes it easy to see what previous people have said in case there have been challenges, which is good for those doing their research. You don't want one person to be the only one with that source, and if their information is not very concrete you want others to challenge that.

Setbacks: people who have reading disabilities like dyslexia or are visually impaired might have problems with long posts so getting information via a visual format might be better which is why Tiktok is popular.

Tiktok: is great for entertainment and inspiration but as a tool for information it can be a headache.

- getting links from videos is hard because the poster has to post their sources on the video itself, on the information about the video section or put the sources on a pinned comment which is very limited, so most people have a "trust me bro" attitude when giving information and not adding sources. This also makes it hard to determine which information is good and which isn't.

- challenging misinformation is difficult: You can't always count on stitched videos to challenge misinformation because someone's stitch feature might be disabled and the ones calling out the post might refuse to use OP's name so even when people try to do call out posts for misinformation it'll have a "he said, she said, but I won't say who," game of telephone vibe about it.

- People get paid via engagement so the information will often be hyperbolic and scary. Scare tactics trigger people's survival instincts which will make them more likely to engage in someone sounding the alarm and triggering your fight/flight instincts. Your fear makes them money so the information will be very volatile.

- Short Format for engagement: Even when there is an option for 10 min. videos, a lot of people will still choose to use short videos so you are forced to click on their other videos if you want the rest of the information. This will cause more engagement and thus more money for them. This is also a nightmare when the algorithm suggests part one of a video posted 3 years ago and you have to go looking for part 2, and the person didn't bother to make a playlist.

Video and Audio alternatives: YouTube and podcasts: YouTube videos can be very long in order to fit as much information as possible and often have links and resources added to the information about the video section and there are some podcasts that I've been told are very resourceful (I haven't listened to podcasts myself so please feel free to add suggestions if you have any!)

I'm not trying to discourage people who use Tiktok as a resource, there are some good videos out there, but because of the nature of the app, accessing that information without having people prey on your emotions is hard because you being upset makes them money and that's what bothers me the most about the app.

All I ask is for you to keep these in mind when you do open Tiktok for information. Tiktok is great for funny memes and cool videos but when you bump into a video warning you that "Hera hates devotees who," or "Artemis gets mad when devotees," or "so and so has declared war on Apollo," or "so and so is planning to curse the moon," please remember that it is an app design to rage-farm your attention and turn it into money so posters will say ANYTHING to get views and as people continue to get laid off, the videos will get even more desperate and the rage bait will be even more intense.

The gods are a lot more forgiving and accommodating than people on Tik Tok make them seem.

[arcanefandomweek]

Announcing Arcane Visions!

Taking place during the entire month of October, leading up to the release of Arcane season 2, this event will focus on speculative fanworks and their predictions for our beloved cast of misfits.

Week 1: Revenge - Alliances - Angst Week 2: Discovery - Betrayal - AU Week 3: Invasion - Truth - Fluff Week 4: Invention - Freedom - Last Kiss

Will Ekko and Jinx make up? Is Ambessa invading? Any ideas on Warwick's fate? What are Vi's feelings, putting on an enforcer uniform? All those and more are great questions to answer for this event. We provide some guidance, but you're welcome to pick your own prompts!

You can create a work per week, or one per day if you're insane, or even have a single contribution. You can post a fic's chapters throughout the month, or can cosplay as characters in their new looks... All fan works are welcome, including meta speculation.

We want to help build the hype and reknit the community together!

To participate you can post (from October 1st) on tumblr or twitter using the tag #arcanevisions, and can ping us on tumblr @/arcanefandomweek or twitter @/Arcanefanweek. You can also submit your work to the Arcane Visions collection on AO3, which will open the first day of the event.

Please also check out our Rules and Guidelines under the cut. If you still have questions, check our FAQs or send us an Ask! Don't be shy, and please reblog!

Rules and Guidelines

Fanworks created for this event should be focused on Arcane character(s), and their potential story beyond Arcane 1. You may feature whatever canon character(s) you want, and if inserted judiciously, LoL characters too. While reader inserts and original characters are also allowed, canon Arcane characters should be the focus.

All types of fanworks, including fic, art, moodboards, podfic, playlists, meta, embroidery, and more, are welcome for this event.

NSFW or potentially triggering content, even if canon-typical, must be properly tagged with any applicable content warnings. For the comfort of the mods, please only submit NSFW works if you are 18+.

This event allows all ships and themes so long as everything is appropriately tagged. You will be contacted if your submission is under-tagged. Poorly tagged works will not be reblogged.

ANY use of leaked footage, content, or information will lead to your account being blocked. We do not promote or condone the spreading of spoilers. Please do not base your speculations on leaked information.

Racist, queerphobic, ableist, misogynistic, or otherwise hateful or bigoted behavior or fanworks will not be tolerated. Your work may include aspects of bigotry and oppression so long as they are properly tagged. For example: A fic that features a character facing ableism is allowed with content warnings; a work that includes ableist tropes as part of the narrative or erases a canon disability is not.

If you are submitting visual work, please consider writing an image description!

If you are unable to post on tumblr or twitter, but would like your work cross-posted via our account, please get in touch.

Submitting Posts to AO3, Twitter, and Tumblr

AO3

Please submit your works to the AO3 collection Arcane_Visions. This collection will be opened the day the event starts, and remain open for at least a month after it ends. It will never be hidden, made anonymous, or deleted. If you can't find it in the suggested drop down, enter the name Arcane_Visions manually.

Twitter

If you want us to retweet your posts, @ us (@Arcanefanweek) and use the tag #arcanevisions. If your post includes NSFW or triggering content, a rating or trigger warnings must be included in the post. NSFW material should include the tag #nsfw or #arcanensfw, or you may want to consider adding a sensitive content filter.

Tumblr

If you want us to reblog your posts, use the tag #arcanevisions. Due to Tumblr’s glitches regarding posts with links not showing up in the tag, we also recommend that you @ us (@arcanefandomweek) in the body of your post just to make sure we see it!

If your post includes NSFW or triggering content, a rating or trigger warnings must be included in the body of the post. Any NSFW or triggering material itself must be under a read more cut.

If your post is longer than a few paragraphs, please place the rest of the text under a read more and/or include a link to AO3.

Mods

The event is currently only managed by the blog admin, @space-blue (formerly Blue Daddy's Girl). More mods may be announced closer to the date. If you're interesting in modding for the event, please get in touch.

[wisterianightmare]

Xavier and Chronic Pain

Rated G, 1300 wc, ficlet/meta. Xavier x You, light whump with a hopeful ending.

“I’m feeling good today, so I can stay with you for as long as you want. It… should be fine.” - Xavier, when using the Quality Time "Work" feature. As someone with a chronic illness/disability, this and a couple of other Xavier moments hit differently for me. When compounded, it felt like this.

Xavier doesn't say anything because he doesn't want to worry you. It wouldn't do any good to worry over something that nothing can be done about.

Like any moment in time, the Earth has made its advances. But time being relative means that any current age is a dark age, at least from the perspective of the future. Xavier doesn't feel like he's living in a medieval landscape. Lifespans are longer. Medicines and treatments are rapidly expanding globally, not just in Linkon's sphere of influence. Hell: even though he's in the know and is aware of the horrors on the horizon, EVER is realistically beginning a pursuit into life eternal. Some things, for some people, are heading in a better direction. This is not one of them.

It isn't debilitating, until it is. Xavier hasn't been able to entirely omit his physical needs from all of your interactions, and you've turned it into a cute joke that he's constantly sleepy. He doesn't correct you. You're not wrong, per se. You just don't understand the functional reason why, and Xavier would prefer to keep it that way.

After all, why should he ruin something that you find endearing? Something that you've just accepted as a quirky part of him and tease him about with such love? It's healing for him too, to hear you remark upon his sleepy countenance with such affection - and he needs the healing. Why ruin that with the reality, when it can't be fixed and your ignorance takes some of the edge off of what would otherwise be difficult for you both to acknowledge?

"When I don't feel well, I just take a nap."

"And what about if you still don't feel well after waking up?"

"… then I just sleep for a while longer."

He doesn't tell you it's because that's the only option. He doesn't tell you that while yes, he is human, the closest thing he has to relief from the aches and pains that you can't see is the reprieve of sleep.

An entire lifetime of dedication to the study of the blade. A few more maintinaing that level of skill, while protecting an unknowing, dying world. More Wanderer kills under his belt that would be reasonable across all of those lifetimes, regardless of the fact that a huge portion of time couldn't have possibly been spent hunting them. Xavier is a man who has pushed his body beyond its natural limits so frequently and for so long that it no longer operates within the usual limits of "normal."

And now that he has you he has no intention of losing you.

Anyone can see that Xavier is a dedicated Hunter. He's a gift of a partner and teammate: he's willing to train with you practically whenever, he doesn't shy away from dangerous missions, and he manages dire situations without assuming the role of your superior. He functions with such competence at even the highest level that you don't question the way he is when the danger has dulled. You know him: his seriousness, his high expectations of himself, his desire to be useful. You also see him: his drowsy starry eyes, the incredibly casual personal wardrobe, the constant desire for the worldly comforts he can afford.

But he knows that you don't understand. He's thankful for it.

Xavier who has chronic fatigue, and while he is being honest that sleep does heal him, it doesn’t make him any less exhausted. Sleep for healing serves a different purpose than sleep for sleeping (which is also it's own form of healing he supposes) but the sleep debt he's accrued is not something he'll ever be able to foreclose on.

Xavier whose body aches too much from the relentless training that he spends his free time almost exclusively horizontally. On the couch, in your bed, slumped over his desk when there’s no one of import watching too closely. He isn't going to collapse at work. He's in functional pain, and has learned how to manage it. But that doesn't mean he isn't suffering. Struggling, privately, from time to time.

It’s why he doesn���t cook. It isn’t that he’s incapable, though he’s happy to let you continue this misunderstanding. Cooking requires time spent upright over the stove, and after ten minutes he can feel his back start to seize. He didn’t forget to season the chicken. He ran out of time before having to dump everything into the broiler and crumpling onto the sofa. He didn’t get lazy about the half-prepped side dishes. His brain fog removed the remainder of the task from existence entirely. If he were really being honest (which is still not within his intentions), he'd admit that there are times without you that it genuinely doesn't occur to him to eat. He may even mention it sometime, like a passing joke, and you laugh at the idea of someone who loves food as much as he does forgetting to eat. He smiles, because you're right: it is silly. His body is just too overwhelmed with other signals sometimes that he doesn't feel the hunger take root before he's asleep again. He suggests you go out for a meal after that, and the subject drops.

The clothes are a side effect too. You've commented on how informal he is outside of work, picking at the worn, fraying bits of a sweater that he swears came that way. It's one among many: lots of hoodies, oversized shirts, even duplicates of his favorites. He doesn't tell you that it's because the scratchy material of his uniform is overstimulating. He doesn't mention the neuropathy he's trying to stifle with soft fabrics and loose waistbands. The temperature intolerance that has him wearing layers during the summer and loose fitting tees in the dead of winter because he cannot regulate his own body heat. Sure, him being down to earth plays into it, but it helps that his personality skews unpretentious because you still haven't put two and two together.

He hates the secrets, but he loves you more.

To Xavier, these are minor inconveniences that he has learned how to mitigate with time and his many resources. They are just the reality of his existence, and in part due to choices he feels he made for himself - regardless of whether or not that's actually true. Xavier doesn't regret any of those choices… because to him, those choices led him to you.

But if you were to find out… if you were to see clearly all of his quirks and patterns as coping mechanisms… Well. Then Xavier's pain would become your pain. He knows this all too well.

Xavier isn't going to let that happen, because you're too you. Whip smart, powerful, empathetic, kind. Xavier knows that if you're given the opportunity you will take on his pain and amplify it within yourself - just like your Resonance - and that is the last thing in the world that he wants. He isn't bothered by it: not anymore. It hurts. It effects him. It has its own challenges that never really end up resolved. He's okay with that. Despite chronic, incurable neuromuscular distress, Xavier is the happiest he's ever been. He's the happiest with you.

You're far from a fool, so you piece together some bits on your own. He appreciates how you spoil him, indulge him. You don't need to know the extent of his pain to know that he needs and values rest. That's enough. It's a life he's happy to live, even if some of his limited sunrises with you are missed in favor or being snuggled up together under his incomparably soft blankets. It's a life he loves, with the person he loves, unburdened and loved in return.

The truth would steal that from you. The truth would break your heart.

And Xavier will never willingly break that which is so precious to him. Your heart already has shards of its own.

Thanks so much for reading! Today’s challenge was to write something from start to finish and post it without overthinking. More (and happier) things to come in the future!

Also posted on AO3 as Chapter 2 of:

The Dreamwork Scrapbook

Please show me some love there if you enjoyed!