#and that DOES make us responsible to them and accountable to them in certain ways

[whentherewerebicycles]

@justinelark ok i don't have one clear, consistent take but i am just starting to collect some thoughts as we work through badging conversations at our institution.

first and foremost i think it is hard to have meaningful conversations about badging when people use the term to mean so many different things... even within our institution there are probably at least five competing definitions of what a badge or a microcredential is, maybe more. i think that if an institution is going to use them they should have an institution-level definition of what a badge is/means and clear criteria that people have to meet in order for their badge to be considered an official recognition of something within the institution.

relatedly it is not at ALL clear to me how badges are perceived outside the institution and i worry that we are just encouraging students to collect like, essentially meaningless girl/boy scout patches and sew them onto their linkedin profiles in hopes that this will help them get a job. but like how do different industries understand badges?? how do we know that a badge actually qualifies the student to do whatever it claims to certify? i just have questions!! and i think that most people who are using badges, at least here, do not have clear answers.

to me the main benefit of a badge or a microcredential is that it can make visible a pathway that might otherwise not have been visible or obvious to a student. for instance our institution is exploring offering badges that are tied to very specific entry-level careers in a very specific part of the tech industry. so a student might be like 'oh i didn't even know [insert job title] was a thing, and i would've had no idea how to prepare for that career. but now, because of this badging program, i see that i need to take these classes, pursue these experiences, and talk about my experiences in these ways to make myself more competitive for this specific job.' i think that is super useful! but that to me is more like, a pre-professional pathway that just happens to have a badge attached at the end. like the badge isn't the point, the point is helping students see and start down the pathway, and the badge is just the way you get their attention. so idk. there are probably other ways to do that.

to me the main DRAWBACK of a badge or microcredential is that i think (??) we have reasonably good scientific evidence (??) that 'you get a gold star for doing XYZ!' approach to teaching actually kills intrinsic motivation and makes people less curious, less observant, less motivated to go above and beyond, etc. idk this is the part that i feel most strongly about on an emotional level but also find most challenging to articulate. like in college i figured out around sophomore year that i wanted to get a phd in a humanities field and become a faculty member. but i had absolutely no idea how you did that. and i think if someone had been like "oh there's a badge for that. you need to do XYZ things and then you will earn the Aspiring PhD badge and that will make you more competitive for grad school" i would've just done those things. and it might not have occurred to me to do a bunch of other random, exploratory things i did in college - a mix of professional opportunities and purely 'i'm fascinated by this, i want to think about this idea and read everything i can about it' activities i engaged in on my own - that i think actually prepared me for thriving in grad school and pursuing a career in higher ed much more than taking a What To Expect In Grad School course might've been. i would have ALSO benefited from taking a course like that, fwiw! but i think that if everyone in my life told me there was an extremely clear path to my goal and a very clear checklist of things i had to do in order to earn a little credential that would make me more competitive for that goal, i probably would have seen those other activities i engaged in as like, not relevant, or not worth pursuing if i had to sacrifice time i could've spent on Items on the Checklist, or whatever.

so idk. i think this is all tied to larger fears i have about the career readiness arms race higher ed is involved in right now... like we want to funnel kids onto Career-Connected Pathways so early on (in our institution we obsessively target first-year students!!), so we can prove to them and everyone else that your higher education is worth it because it made you competitive for a very specific job in an industry that you learned about within like six months of arriving in college (because you were obsessively targeted by Career Services and all these other units lol). and we want to make everything Worth It so every activity has to be evaluated in terms of how it will directly lead to a career outcome, and every activity you engage in has to be part of a Pathway or a Credential that awards you a gold star which you can put on your LinkedIn profile at the end, and blah blah blah. i get that it is a privilege to get to experience college as a purely exploratory time where you get to try on different things and discover different pathways and pursue random interests. and i DO think that we need to be thinking carefully about whether higher education in its present form is preparing students for the world they will encounter beyond it. but i actually think, like, given the pace of technological change, most of the jobs we are preparing students for now will probably not exist in five or ten years. i worry that badging (as it employed by some people, in some places) may encourage increasingly rigid thinking about what the purpose of higher education is and how that education prepares us to succeed/thrive in life after formal education, in a time when we most need flexibility and adaptability and a willingness to explore/discover/not follow rigidly charted pathways. i guess i would boil all of this down to something like: badging seems to message to students that adult life - in and out of the workplace - is going to be about checking items and experiences off a clearly defined checklist that someone else provides for you. and my experience is that adult life is nothing like that at all. and the qualities i value most in myself are my flexibility, my curiosity, the delight i take in exploratory thinking, and my firm belief that pursuing a seemingly unrelated or unproductive detour is often what most enriches the project or work or pursuit i am engaged in, even if it seems at first like a distraction.

i have so many thoughts about "badges" and other forms of microcredentialing in higher ed. consider this a placeholder for a post on a subject no one cares about lol

[tastesousweet]

⭒ crush

| hamzahthefantastic x youtuber!reader au

summary: hamzah has a crush that is extremely obvious to everyone except you ... somehow?! (both written & smau!!!)

a/n: happy new years!!!!!!

— march 2024

hamzah is hungry beyond belief.

martin's already assured him both over facetime and text that he's on his way with their full course meal of chinese takeout— currently sat in the basket of martin's rented bike, jostling up and down with every bump of the toronto pavement without a doubt. yet his stomach is still throwing a tantrum, depraved of any nutrients while his brain repeats in a neanderthal-like manner "food. coming. soon." in hopes of reducing the pressure within his poor stomach.

he opens instagram, needing some sort of an escape, because naturally a little doom-scrolling will ease his (dramatic but still very real) pain. somehow, among the ridiculous animal reels and comedic twitch clips on his explore feed, he stumbles upon a reel from you. a girl with a different quality and charm to your face and character than anything he's seen in other content creators.

not only does your bubbly yet elegant voice keep him watching but the subject matter is rather fitting— you're cooking a homemade chicken pot pie for the first time. in the video you talk about how often your mother would prepare it growing up and now it's become a popular craving for you. hamzah watches intently as if he were ready to get up and make his own pot pie alongside you.

"hey! the hell are you smiling at?" martin's voice is breathy due to his trek to and from the chinese restaurant. he walks into the living room holding a crinkly plastic bag reading: "thank you! have a nice day!" with that big, yellow smiley face in between.

"huh? nothin'." hamzah dismisses and adjusts himself on the couch, "come on, 'm starving!" he reaches his hand out to take the food from martin before patting the seat next to him.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

— june 2024

"so when are you gonna come see us?"

it was a surprise to see hamzah follow you on instagram a few months ago. you'd heard his name thrown around in certain spaces of the internet but never really indulged in any of his content.

his instagram had the format of a shitposting ten-year-old but it only made you curious about the humorous twenty-something. eventually you'd watched a youtube video of his; completely laughing your ass off and finding your eyes chasing after hamzah whenever he was in even the tiniest of frames.

it was never a serious crush by any means, just a nice piece of secret eye-candy who also happened to have a great personality and an enviously good work ethic (the effort martin and hamzah put into their videos was astonishing to you).

so you were quite nervous to be the first to dm him, in hopes of a friendship or a least a quick exchange of "hey." it was only right — you two had been liking each other's poss and stories a consistent amount.

the mellow first exchange between the two of you in april blossomed into you both constantly talking in your free time; your friendship quickly to developed a flirty back-and-forth dynamic that sometimes borders on way more than platonic. eventually martin was added to your consistent facetime calls and you’ve even let them convince you to create a discord account to play minecraft and grand theft auto online with them.

and now you’re lying on your leather couch with both of their faces displayed in your laptop’s screen, eager to hear your response.

“i don’t know…” you play with a loose end of the sweater you’re wearing, “what would we even do?”

they both stay quiet for a moment before hamzah laughs, “why are you acting like you don’t wanna say yes right now?”

a smile slowly grows on your face “okay… gimme a second,” you begin to google flight information to and from toronto.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

— september 2024

yourusername

Liked by clairedrake, hamzahthefantastic, and others

yourusername Y’all didn’t tell me they get wild in the 6 , Omg??!! Highly requested video out neow <3

View all comments

chaserutherford 🍽️8️⃣ • ♥︎ by author

yourusername I rlly do miss u already 😖😖😖😖

ynfan01 ohhhh this was so necessary thank u mother☺️!! • ♥︎ by author

yourusername Mhm!!! Olivia Wilde head nod 💞💞

slushieeee333 y/n: slurping pasta , hamzah the whole time: 😊👀😍😊

thatmartinkid hey look ma i made it!!! 🫵😂 • ♥︎ by author

ynsnumberone THE FLIRTING WENT CRAZYYYYY

slushedyn her and hamzah are obsessed with each other i fear

thatslushykid COME BACK 2 TORONTO ASAP I NEED MORE COLLABS RN!!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

hamzahluver45 ok but like it’s so obvious that her trying to flirt was just irritating them the whole time !! Like girl ..💀💀

hamzahthefantastic Posting our dms is already one thing , but TAGGING ME is actually crazy 🤔🤔 • ♥︎ by author

yourusername R u mad @ me Bby???? 😕

hamzahthefantastic BruhLmaooooooooooo

freakzahfan that's one too many "o"s just say u wanna kiss her my boy

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

“oh!” you accidentally trip over yourself while walking backwards and stumble into hamzah, who was standing in front of the unfamiliar grocery store, watching you prepare to give an intro. “jesus,” martin laughs under his breath from behind the camera. he lowers the camera, showing his feet but still picking up his voice in the mic, “you good?!”

the clip cuts to you stood upright again, "i'm in the six!!!" you exclaim loudly, raising your arms above your head. "and i'm here with slushy noobz to add to my series where other creators "teach me" their specialty. you tug at hamzah's arm and pull him into the frame with you, "hamzah tell them what you and martin are gonna teach me," you look up a him while still holding onto his arm. you interrupt him before he even begins to speak, "oh yeah! martin is also here by the way!" you point and martin flips the camera to himself. "they're just leaving me out it's fine, i know i'm out already, just vote just vote," he references with a sigh before turning it back to you and hamzah. "don't start! chase is on his way to come and film for us-" "listen! this is our plan-- we're gonna teach you how to mukbang; everyone knows we're very qualified in this field and know everything there is to know about the subject, so, uhh, yeah we're kinda experts. i dont know, would you say that, martin?" hamzah rambles. "yeah, i think that's a good way to describe us" "perfect! then you're teachin' me how to kiss next, right?" you ask. hamzah goes from looking at you attentively (hanging onto your every word) to a face deadpanned as he glances over to martin trying not to smile.

the video cuts to a clip with the three of you, finally, all in one shot now that chase is behind the camera. you pull a cart out from its slot and push yourself on it before standing both feet on top of the tiny foot bar, gliding through the automatic doors.

next, a clip of martin speaking to the camera while you and hamzah look through different pasta sauces together, "okay we didn't really explain this well but essentially we're all going to cook a nice dish and then eat it together in front of you guys. isn't that cute?" "yeah, can't wait for us to mukbang together" hamzah speaks. martin turns back to the camera with a smirk, "i bet you wish you were mukbanging with us huh, chase?" "no. and you just made that word up." martin's face falls.

the entire grocery shopping trip is filmed with little moments like hamzah mispronouncing a few brand names, martin talking to strangers about which pasta noodle to try, and you randomly walking off into estranged aisles "just to see if things are really different here"

now, you're all back at martin's home; you read aloud the recipe and hamzah is stood practically on top of you as he also looks down at the phone, all while martin lays ingredients out of the counter. "okay simple enough," hamzah says. "yeah, and you're still gonna make me do all of the work anyway," martin huffs sarcastically. you giggle a bit, "martin the most you'll have to do is boil water, i'll force him to do the rest." "huh???!! who??" hamzah questions, his smiley face “accidentally” leaning far too close to yours. "you, duh!" you laugh and turn away to look for a large pot.

throughout the cooking process you slowly stop helping; talking to mandy while you two eat chips and salsa while leaning on the counter or petting the pets instead of doing any of the tasks given to you from the self-proclaimed chefs.

"this is literally your video! what the hell y/n?!" martin whines when he finds you and mandy making a tiktok in his "man cave" together after you'd told them you were going to the bathroom, "seriously mandy?" all of the audio can be heard from the mics on your clothing. "where was she?" hamzah says monotonous as he scrolls on his phone. "making freaking tiktoks with mandy of course!" you giggle as you walk into the kitchen behind him, "what? the food is practically done, we're just waiting on garlic bread!" you shrug and hamzah immediately turns at the sound of your voice. "well, you gonna at least show us?" hamzah asks casually placing his hands on the counter around you, trapping you in the space between him and the marble surface. "yeah," you tilt your head so you can look at his face as you make fun of his not-so-friendly gesture, "you wanna keep breathing down my neck like that while i show you?" he laughs and moves away to cover up the embarrassment of being called out. "stop!" you laugh and bring him back into frame forcing him and martin to watch you and mandy dance on your phone screen.

the four of you sit on the carpet with plates full of chicken alfredo and pieces of garlic bread laid out on martin’s coffee table. you all talk about your experience in toronto so far, how you and hamzah first met, … et cetera.

martin attempts to teach you canadian slang: “keener is big here.” “actually? what the hell does that even mean?” “it’s kinda like a try hard— people will call you a keener if you’re doing too much, basically.” “wait tell me more!” “i mean things like buddy is way too common here. some random old guys will call me that and it always throws me off??” “yeah they always say it so demeaning,” hamzah laughs. “do you guys actually say ‘eh?’ all the time? i feel like i haven’t noticed it a lot.” you ask genuinely. “i won't lie.. i say it more often than i like to admit!” mandy says. you’ve noticed that no matter if you’re the one speaking or not hamzah’s eyes keep glancing and sometimes full on staring at you (he really doesn’t mean to but he thinks he’s finally processing that you’re actually here with them after months of wanting this) you're flattered nonetheless.

at some point hamzah and martin recreate a scene in lady and the tramp, successfully slurping at the same noodle until hamzah retreats and martin sighs at his lack of commiting to the bit. you laugh along before asking hamzah’s to share a noodle with you with a smile slapped over your face, “me next?” he fights off any blushing with a roll of his eyes and his response of, “yeah? ask me again in a sec.”

after you’ve all finished eating, you complete the video with a big smile and a promise of more collaborations in the future.

ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅

•••

[helslastangel]

RANDOM ASTRO OBSERVATIONS #10

Nobody's safe. That's it. That's the disclaimer.

Libra Jupiter in 11th house can indicate having many opportunities in life that come through friendships and connections with others. People with this placement can often get very far in life simply because they talked to the right people at the right times. This is especially true if they also have Libra in their big 3 or Libra mercury.

Capricorn suns with Sagittarius mercury are surprisingly chill compared to the usual stoic reputation of Capricorn and energetic rep that Sagittarius has. My favorite friends and colleagues have this combination of placements and they are quite easy to get along with and fun to be around.

Very much like Virgo suns with Libra mercury, they can appear quiet and reserved at first, but become lively and chatty once they know you and have decided they like you. However unlike Virgo sun/Libra mercury people (who usually censor their words/tone and think out loud or form their opinions by talking through them first), not only are they a lot blunter (or straightforward, when older), they are more sure about where they stand, or certain of what they want to say on a topic before they say it.

Libra Mercury in the 11th house can have a lot of friends or just make and keep acquaintances very easily. These are the people who always "know a guy" or can say "my homegirl does that!" almost no matter what problem or need you have. They just know someone who can fix it. They are popular people, or at least seem that way to others.

They can sometimes appear to have a much larger network of friends and connections than they do, which is why many of them tend to either keep their friend/friend groups separate or may prefer to maintain superficial/lightweight connections with others over deeper and more intimate connections that would reveal more.

Capricorn Venus in 8th house people can go through a lot of one-sided relationships before landing the right person. They are probably the most caring and attentive of all the Venus sigs, but from my observations they are taken advantage of a lot and often treated very poorly by the majority of their partners.

My childhood friend has this placement (as well as a few of my relatives) and for over a decade I watched her pour so much love and care into men who ended up treating her like an afterthought. I never understood why, as she was very much what you'd think most males would consider wifey material.

She cooked, baked, was organized, and very clean. Motherly instincts intact, had a good job in healthcare and her own place. Knew how to kick back and have fun but could also be appropriately authoritative in the sense of managing a household. Like you could just tell she would be a firm yet loving mother, or even if she did not have kids, you could tell she would be the kind of wife where the husband could hand her his entire paycheck if he wanted and not have to worry for a second that she would blow it on anything foolish. Very capable and responsible woman. I used to get so angry at the way men would come into her life and enjoy all the things she would do for them, including having her manage their money. It was a bit surprising for me how quickly and easily men would put their finances in her hands, only for them to abruptly leave - usually for a woman who was chaotic and stressful too. I did not understand it then, and despite hearing all the talk about how men go for who they are passionate about even if they are the least productive, responsible, or capable person ever, I still don't get it now.

Capricorn in the 8th house can lead to a lot of situations where the native ends up handling other people's money because people can sense their stable energy and innate responsibility. But it can lead to the person feeling like they are nothing but a personal assistant or sentient savings account to others, and over time they can become (100% understandably) bitter if they do not meet someone genuine and kind in time to avoid this.

Aquarius in 6th house can have unusual or eccentric daily routines, or little quirks in the way they go about day to day tasks and responsibilities. I knew someone with this placement who could only brush his teeth in the morning and shower at night. He couldn't really bring himself to do it the other way around and would simply not do the thing at all that day if something disrupted that routine. He also had a job where his # of hours was consistent but his actual shift times weren't and he liked it that way "for the variety." He hated the thought of a schedule where he would have to arrive and leave at the same time every day.

Cancer Lilith in 1st house women can often run into situations where men string them along for a very, very long time. These men sense the stereotypical "nurturing/motherly" essence of Cancer but Cancer Lilith women display a unique twist on this essence where it is very clear to onlookers that her individuality and sense of self cannot be watered down or blended out into others.

Cancer Lilith 1H (and to a lesser extent Taurus Lilith 1H) women are the type who can have a husband, kids, work and manage the home without losing a single ounce of who they always were.

From my observations, they usually don't experience the fate many women meet, where they wake up one day and realize that they haven't even heard their first name in weeks because they're only remembered and referred to in terms of who they are to someone else ("Mom," "John's girlfriend," "Mr. Jones' wife").

Unfortunately, this rubs some men the wrong way, who will then subconsciously try to hang on to the parts of the Cancer Lilith women they like, while searching for other women who don't trigger their fear of women who retain their personality after marriage/children.

Gemini Sun Virgo Rising people can appear put-together and organized in public but could have very messy rooms or just have trouble keeping things in order at home.

People with Pisces in their 7th house might feel torn between going after people they are genuinely attracted to and people they perceive to be a better match, for whatever reason. They could also end up confusing the sense of security they feel with someone for love, or feeling more secure with someone than they should because of love.

Gemini Mars in 10th house does not mind going out of their comfort zone to further their career. They may even set aside their own values and morals if they believe that doing something will produce a good return on their investment (of time, effort, money, etc.).

Taurus Mercury in 9th house enjoys talking to people from other cultures about the foods they eat and what their daily routines and special/holiday ritual are like. They enjoy learning about other cultures on a more down-to-earth level, so they might be less interested in other philosophies and more into sensory differences.

Cancer Moon in 11th house identifies VERY strongly with their friend group and can become depressed or ill if there is too much discord between themselves and their friends, or between their friends with each other. They do not take kindly to any kind of abandonment from friends, real or imagined. If they decide you have left them or betrayed them one too many times, they will simply never speak to you again.

Virgo Mars people can be extremely picky when it comes to partners. One of my childhood friends has this placement and despite being a Sagittarius Sun & Mercury (along with having Venus in 9H), she barely has a romantic interest in anyone. She's not aromantic or asexual; she just gets the ick so easily that it is difficult for her to like anyone enough to date them for long. She didn't go into detail most of the time. She was the furthest from the kiss-and-tell kind of person, she would barely tell anyone even the name or age of anyone she was interested in, much less give details about her specific icks.

I tend to attract Virgo Mars people platonically and romantically quite often though, so I have other examples of the same trait.

My ex-husband is a Virgo sun with Virgo Mars and Leo Venus and the smallest things would throw him off. Like if I made scrambled eggs and all the pieces weren't perfectly yellow (if any got slightly browned, he would consider the entire pot as "burnt" and would ruin his day). If I did laundry and did not strictly separate the colors (I will wash black, dark grey, and bold colors clothes together. He will separate them all. I will wash off-white and very light grey or beige with white clothes. He would look at me crazy and ask me to just do a different household chore and leave the laundry to him. Hea

He also apparently got the ick from my frugality? Lol. I had cheap sneakers and dollar-store headphones when we first got together. A few weeks later he asked where I was and I told him I was at the mall with a friend. He showed up and wordlessly gave me brand-new Samsung Galaxy earbuds before driving home lmao. Then a couple weeks after that he bought me new AirMaxes and made it a point to tell me that my existing sneakers were so cheap. And that he got good ones for me in a style that "makes your feet look smaller." I guess my foot size was not to his liking. Lol. I'm almost 6 feet tall and wear size 9.5/10 women's shoes (for males reading this, that is around 8/8.5 in your sizes, so don't start, pls

A previous ex of mine (Cancer Sun) also had Virgo Mars (and Venus) but he had the opposite ick - he didn't like that I always wore nice jeans and blouses even if we were only going to Walmart or his friends' houses. Apparently, it was "off-putting" for him that I was "too fancy, never just dress down and look comfortable, even in the house." I was like... but I am comfortable? And he would be like, "Nah you're so fancy all the time, it's kinda weird, like do you even own any sweatpants? Your hair is never messy? It's like you're never just relaxed."

Um, as a Scorpio Venus/Jupiter, Libra Mercury person, messy hair will never be in the same room as comfortable for me but we are broken up for a reason, LOL.

Yeah Virgo Mars are just really, really picky. Idk how else to put it. They might be bothered by very different things, but they're all bothered in general! Love 'em regardless, they're also attentive and will know what you like and also what you need.

Leo Mars in 2nd house can have a hard time feeling satisfied with what they own or with their level of skill in certain areas. They don't usually express envy outwardly though. They will happily gas up their friends and colleagues, but implode on themselves in private.

They can have frequent pity parties or episodes of extreme self-loathing that only their closest friends or partners ever witness. It can be difficult to pull them out of these moods as they tend to feel like they either don't have enough or are not enough in some way.

Aquarius Eros men and masculine people are often attracted to women and feminine people with strong or eccentric personalities. They lust after the kinds of people who didn't even bother rocking the boat and jumped out to swim upstream and chill somewhere else.

However, unless they have Juno in Aquarius, Aquarius 7H or some other placements that support long-term relationships/marriages/longevity with unusual people or non-traditional elements, they eventually abandon such love interests for someone who fits better into societal expectations. Ask me how I know. :(

[gb-patch]

GB Patch Games: Sensitivity Reader Update

Okay, well I am able to make another statement before Rose does. I can now explain much more easily why I didn’t fire Rose. There’s been new developments with the leakers. The people behind this have doxed Rose’s discord account (please don’t go looking for it) and also shared a screenshot of an email that was sent to my support address months ago. They believe that incriminates us somehow, but really all it’s done is shown in broad daylight what they were doing and why I was defending Rose so much. If I had brought up that email as a connection to this myself people understandably would’ve thought I was making a conspiracy.

However, it is out now. Here is the story- a few months ago someone who wanted to remain anonymous sent me an email with a screenshot where Rose called me a cracker. And I told them I appreciated the concern but it’s alright, was there evidence of Rose being unkind to players? They had nothing. No response.

As an aside, yes, I have been aware for a long time that Rose uses crude language when talking about me. That doesn’t mean I’ve hidden how evil they were from players. It means I’m allowed to choose what I’m comfortable with. That original “reveal” didn’t shock or upset me in any way. Our Life is a sensitive, wholesome game, but I’m a full-grown adult. I’m not innocent or pure. The game I released before OL is XOXO Blood Droplets. Something I wrote and released to the public is full of crude jokes, curse words, and violence. It’s cartoonish and comical, but edgy. Rose themselves likes to BS with bad words and I’m not accepting abuse because I think getting called a pussy is funny. I know Rose doesn’t hate me or wish me any harm. Rose also isn’t causing “discourse” for me and my games on purpose, they were joking that bringing up serious topics is “discourse” to some people. Ironically, the leakers who did this are trying to make some “discourse” on purpose.

Regardless, I initially thought that email was from someone earnestly worried for me and that they moved on when it was clear I was fine. But that’s not what happened. Them and at least one other person have been waiting for months to bring this up again. They went through almost a year’s worth of Rose’s private posts to collect as many unflattering screenshots as they could, and then they didn’t send them to me. They posted them publicly. I had a suspicion from the get go that it was the same person/people from before who couldn’t prove anything to me in private. And if true, how horrible is it that a bunch of the comments they shared were crude language towards me, something they already knew I’d brush off as nothing. They decided for me that it was wrong and they wanted the rest of the players to do the same. Or even less charitably, those extra posts were simply there to make Rose look as bad and untrustworthy as possible and they didn’t care that I was comfortable with it. I could not explain everything we were thinking/feeling at first, but behind the scenes we were discussing how this was personally motivated and not a knee-jerk act without forethought. And we do know for certain at least the main people involved now, and they do have personal issues with Rose.

Also, if you still believe that they just wanted to help the game at any length because Rose is that huge of a risk, showing that email and framing something innocuous about me (not fainting at the word “cracker” and politely being open to more proof) as serious “evidence of wrongdoing” at GB Patch Games makes me believe they want to smear Rose so bad they’ll try to turn players against me as well. Plus, the post is framed as “this email was anonymously sent to me”, but we know from account details that the people who could’ve gotten those screenshots of the discord and email are the same people who sent that email and started this situation, which is embarrassing. I’ve confirmed the screenshots shared in the email to me and the original public post came from the same private, “venting-safe” discord server. There’s very few people in there. We know it’s still you and not a separate source. I can’t prove they think I’m stupid or in their way, but I can’t see how anything they’re doing is trying to be beneficial to the creation of OL: NF. They told me in the email they’d give me more evidence if I requested it and I was ready to know, but instead they went silent for months and then did this.

I want it to be clear that this doesn’t mean players can’t wonder if Rose has enough experience to be a sensitivity reader right now, or to worry they’re so invested in the game that it’s going to effect how objective they are with their feedback, or to say that Rose is flawless and has never done anything hurtful. However, I hope you can understand why I was on Rose’s side and couldn’t just fire them over this. It felt so incredibly unfair. If another person tries to get their way by doing this in the future, I will not hail them as a hero and immediately fire at the target. And I don't tolerate any racial harassment of any kind to anyone on my team.

If those people want to continue to share Rose’s private posts in retaliation, you can fuck off. If you somehow reveal now that Rose is secretly a murderer, I’m not gonna apologize and say I was so wrong about you. If you had tons of evidence of Rose being horrible to players, you should’ve sent it all to me and with full context to begin with in the email like you offered to do. I just don’t understand.

Any players who like to see someone’s least flattering points portrayed in the worst possible way and continue flocking to the leaks as fandom drama, I don’t want you in this fandom. I don’t want you to enjoy my games.

Anyone who has been truly hurt by this and are left confused and angry, I do completely understand that. I didn’t know how to handle this, and it made a lot of people not know how to keep trusting me. I am still looking into getting a community manager to help me better communicate with players, especially when something serious happens. And I’ll always be around for you to reach out to if you have doubts about anything.

[hollowed-theory-hall]

What does the sorting hat consider to put someone in a house? Like we know it considers their wish but what else? Some theories say that it puts them according to what they value, like Hermione valued bravery more than intelligence and hence gryffindor.

What's your take on it?

I think it's a combination of a few things. It's your traits, values, aspirations, wants (but not in the way most think), and motivations. It's kind of all mixed up together into a sorting.

Like, I think house sorting is just a more complex decision than just traits, so everyone has at least some attributes that fit other houses.

Because of that, usually when I sort characters from other media, I say shit like "Gryffindor with Hufflepuff tendencies" for characters who are Gryffindors, but have certain Hufflepuff traits and behaviors. Or I say "Slytherin with Ravenclaw as the runner-up" for characters who are Slytherins but could also fit in Ravenclaw, and there is one specific character aspect that gives Slytherin the edge.

As I mentioned, I think the sorting hat takes a lot of things into account together, and since we're not a magical sentient hat, I have a small list of the sort of questions I usually ask to get to what I believe a character's core characteristics and values are — and therefore, the sorting the hat would give them.

We'll use the Golden Trio for this example as while they're all Gryffindors, they are not Gryffindors for the same reasons.

Now, traits, are something situational. The same person could behave very differently under different circumstances. Becouse of that, I don't find looking at a list of traits useful to get the actual core traits of a character (which I think is one of the things that goes into sorting). So, instead, I ask questions about character traits under specific circumstances. I find these sorts of questions help get down to the core traits and values that make a character better.

(Also, there are certain traits that fit more than one house. Like determination, which is both Slytherin and Gryffindor, depending on context. Or loyalty, which is both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, depending on context (but can also be Slytherin under some circomstances). Or cleverness, which is both Ravenclaw and Slytherin, depending on context. It's all about how the trait is applied in a given situation, hence why I like my method of thinking about sorting)

1. Problem Solving - what is the go-to method of said character to solve problems in a situation that isn't a life-and-death threat. Both without a time limit and on a time crunch.

And we'll look at our trio:

Harry's go-to is lying and cunning. He lies to Peeves when he catches him he lies to McGonagall when she catches him, he tricks Ron into thinking he drank Felix Felicis, etc. Harry is very cunning and when he needs to problem solve when the threat of death isn't looming over him, even under a time crunch. Harry's response when standing up to defend his friends from Malfoy, is usually all witty remarks and sassy comebacks. When Umbridge forces him to use a blood quill, Harry is too prideful (and spitefull) to show her pain, because that would be losing and her getting what she wants, so he responds by acting indifferent. So for this category, Harry gets two points for Slytherin.

Hermione is interesting in the problem-solving category, when she has time, she likes to plan ahead and research. When Buckpeak is put on trial or she decides she wants to free House Elves, her first stop is the library for research. Hermione comes up with clever magical solutions she researches and then executes like with the D.A. coins and D.A. names scroll jinx. Or she plans schemes of blackmail ahead of time. All this gives a point to Ravenclaw. Her tendency towards blackmail and cheating though, should be noted as a Slytherin point.

However, we see Hermione problem-solving in another way. The Rita Skeeter example. While Rita's threat isn't life-and-death and therefore counted in this category, Hermione had to act on a time crunch. Harry, when put on a time limit, still solves problems with cunning, but Hermione, on a time limit, can't do her usual planning and research, there's no time. So when Hermione needs to solve something fast, she becomes reckless, impulsive, and tends to take big risks. Capturing Rita in a jar is an example of Hermione seeing a chance to deal with Rita and impulsively taking it without thinking ahead much. So Hermione also gets a point to Gryffindor in this category.

Ron's problem-solving methods, when he offers them, are efficient and pragmatic. He's a chess player, and if he has a moment to consider it, he'd come up with a practical, effective, and not necessarily moral solution giving Ron a point toward Slytherin.

Ron also gets a point toward Gryffindor in this category though. The reason is that he often doesn't offer cunning solutions but instead acts immediately without thinking, especially when it comes to defending people he cares about (even when the threat isn't life-threatening). So, while he has the capacity for cunning, he more often than not, doesn't employ it, especially under a time crunch.

2. Problem-solving under threat of death - when the situation gets really dangerous, how do they deal with it?

Luckily, we get plenty of examples with our trio:

Harry here gets points for two houses like Hermione in the last section. In the DoM and even in the Graveyard, Harry is always trying to plan. Trying to find a clever way to get out and to escape. He keeps Lucius talking in the ministry to buy him time to think of a plan. All in all, very Slytherin of him.

But Harry has another thing he does under immense threat, and that's stand up and fight. His resilience is one of his most defining character traits. His ability to stand after being tortured and shout at the Dark Lord that he will not bow. Yes, there's some Slytherin pride there, but it is an act of courage, which gives him a point towards Gryffindor.

Hermione is simpler in this category. When shit is dangerous, she gets brave and impulsive. In OotP, when Umbridge is about to torture Harry, Hermione leads her to Gwamp. It wasn't because she knew what she was doing. She didn't plan it through at all. She just wanted to make sure Harry won't get hurt. She set Snape's robes on fire in first year for the same reason. It was the first thing that came to her mind. Hence, why she gets Gryffindor in this category.

Ron, is also a Gryffindor when shit hits the fan. He is ready to throw himself in front of Bellatrix and Aragog if it means saving Hermione. He stands up on a broken leg to face who he thinks is a crazy murderer who's after Harry. Ron is incredibly brave and impulsive when in danger, giving a point to Gryffindor.

3. What they aspire for - what do they want to accomplish for themselves. Be I an ambition towards a job or something they want to just be better at.

Harry's aspirations are very simple. He wants to be normal, well-liked, but not important. And hopefully, live to adulthood. He wants to be just Harry. He wants to have friends and be safe - all very much Hufflepuff aspirations. He doesn't seek glory the way of a Gryffindor or a Slytherin, so he's getting this point to Hufflepuff.

Hermione's aspirations are more glory-seeking. She wants to be the best at things. She wants to be known as the smartest in the room. Even when it comes to freeing house elves, yes, she feels compassion for them, but she also wants everyone to know she's compassionate. Which pushes her towards Gryffindor and Slytherin. I see her as more of a Gryffindor in this category due to her aspirations being two-fold and motivated by both glory and righteousness.

Ron is a Slytherin when it comes to personal aspirations. He wants personal success and personal glory without any of the righteous veneers Hermione has. He wants to carve a place for himself to feel special and unique and better. We see this in the mirror of Erised in 1st year and in his fits of jealousy throughout the books.

4. Motivations - why do they do the things they do? What gets them up in the morning?

Harry does things out of a sense of duty and responsibility. He saves people because he feels responsible for it. He feels that if he doesn't do it, no one else will. This sense of duty and responsibility is a chivalrous trait and places Harry solidly in Gryffindor for this category.

Hermione does things due to her strong sense of justice. Hermione likes it when things are right and just. This pushes her to either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. In Hermione’s case, though, I'd say it's more a Gryffindor's sense of righteousness and justice rather than a Hufflepuff one due to her not being necessarily interested in "fairness". (She does cheat quite a bit if it's towards a goal she thinks is just. Even if it's just getting Ron on the Quidditch team).

Ron does things out of a sense of loyalty. He isn't going to help someone he doesn't care about, but for the people he does care for, he'd move heaven and earth. This, to me, gives him a point towards Slytherin. Becouse this kind of loyalty that is selective and very unconcerned for people outside the group he's loyal to, is a Slytherin kind of loyalty.

5. Defining trait - if you need to choose one trait to define them, what would it be?

Harry - Resilience. His force of will, ability to survive, and strength to keep going are Harry's most defining traits. This is a Gryffindor trait, giving the lion's house another point.

Hermione - Determination. Hermione does what she thinks is best to achieve her goals. If she needed to study, she'd study, she'd act, she'd do it. But she won't do anything. Hermione, as I mentioned, has a strong sense of justice, and while she can be very feral, I can't see her being willing to kill if there's another way. She is very convinced of her morals, which pushes this determination towards a point for Gryffindor and not Slytherin.

Ron - Loyalty. Ron’s motivations are usually ones of loyalty. His most defining moments are standing up for his friends, and defending Harry, Hermione, and his family to his dying breath if he has to. which is a point for either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. Since Ron's sort of loyalty is, as I said, one that often manifests in protectiveness and disregard for his own safety, I'll give this point to Gryffindor.

6. Valued trait - if they had to pick their favorite trait about themselves, what would they pick?

Harry doesn't really have a favorite trait of his that is his. This is the kid that when Barty/Moody asked him what his strengths are, he said he didn't have any. Harry is way too humble. He has no idea how special, talented, and capable he actually is. This tendency to undersell himself and underestimate himself is one I associate with Hufflepuff.

Hermione, I think, appreciates her bravery more than her intelligence. Yes, she's smart, and she's good at memorizing books, but it isn't what she values most about herself. She doesn't really see it as something noteworthy the way characters in Ravenclaw (like Terry Boot) see it. So, she gets another point to Gryffindor.

Ron, like Harry, has a lot of insecurities (many unwarranted). But Ron does know he has strengths. He knows he's good at chess. He knows he's good at strategy even if he thinks very lowly of himself in other aspects. Which gives him another Slytherin point.

7. Values - what traits do they completely despise in others? What traits do they appreciate in others?

Harry despises authority figures. He chafes under people, telling him what to do. He hates going by the book. He hates bullies who lord themselves over others because they think they're better or know better, and figures like Fudge, Umbridge, and Scrimgoure are just bullies to him. This gives him a point toward Gryffindor.

He appreciates a lot of traits in others, actually. But I'll say he appreciates honesty and friendship more than other things. Someone willing to stand in his corner is what Harry wants the most. So, this gives him another point for Hufflepuff.

Hermione despises unjust people. People who abuse their power, people who are cruel for no reason. People who tell lies for their own personal gain. Which gives a point toward Gryffindor.

In terms of what she appreciates, she appreciates intelligence and competence in authority figures, such as Dumbledore or Lupin. But she also really looks up to Harry's courage, intuition, and righteousness and often sees that as more important. So I give her a point toward Gryffindor.

Ron hates stuck-ups and pretentiousness. We see it a lot, both with Percy, and Hermione in first year. One of the things that makes him like Harry instantly on the train is seeing this super famous, rich kid, who is completely down to earth and normal. This gives Ron a point toward Hufflepuff.

In terms of what he appreciates in others, Ron is repeatedly impressed with Hermione's intelligence and tendency to plan ahead, more than she is for sure. But I think Ron appreciates Hermione's impulsive acts of bravery more. I think Ron really does appreciate bravery, courage, and risk-taking. So I'd give him one point to Ravenclaw and one point to Gryffindor.

8. And finally, which house do they want?

Now, I actually have a bit of an uncommon idea of how this question works. You see, I don't think the hat always listens to what a student wants. I think what a student thinks they want and why just says a lot about their values. In Harry's case, it illustrated that his values align with Gryffindor, but it isn't always the case, and I don't think every student gets what they want in terms of sorting. (Case and point, Neville, who was scared of Gryffindor's reputation and asked not to be there and still got Gryffindor).

Harry asked not to be in Slytherin, he didn't ask to be in Gryffindor. He asked not to be in Slytherin because all he knew of the house was that it was the house of Voldemort and dark wizards and bullies like Draco. Harry's choice of not Slytherin was Harry desperately not wanting to think of himself as evil. It's not what the house stands for, but that's what Harry's request was about. Him asking: "not Slytherin" for the reasons he did, is Harry asking: "let me be good enough". This pushes him towards either Hufflepuff or Gryffindor. Except, a Hufflepuff I think wouldn't have asked in this way, before the hat made any indication toward Slytherin, and therefore it is a point to Gryffindor.

Hermione was told Gryffindor is the best. She comes to Hogwarts thinking Gryffindor is where all the heroes and best wizards are at, and she wants to be that. As I mentioned, Hermione does seek personal glory in the aid of others. She wants to be heroic and brave and a savior. This reasoning to ask for Gryffindor is a Gryffindor reasoning, but it's also a Slytherin one. So I gave her points for both.

Ron's entire immediate family are Gryffindors, and he's desperate to fit in with them and not be lesser. He probably begged the hat to be on Gryffindor. Which, actually, is a Gryffindor move. Again, this desire to be more is one that pushes him towards Gryffindor and Slytherin. But when you add to that him begging (something typical Slytherin pride wouldn't allow), it is a Gryffindor point.

Tallying up the score

Harry: G - 5, S - 4, H - 3, R - 0

Hermione: G - 9, S - 2, H - 0, R - 1

Ron: G - 6, S - 4, H - 1, R - 1

With this, I'd call Harry a "Gryffindor with a Slytherin runner-up", Hermione a "true Gryffindor", and Ron a "Gryffindor with Slytherin tendencies".

What I like about this, is that even though I had very different answers for each and a different amount of points per question depending on multiple variables — they are still all Gryffindors. And I really do consider Hermione the "truest Gryffindor" in the trio, so, it didn't really surprise me.

I will note that sometimes I don't really need all these questions, and sometimes I add more questions if I feel I didn't really get to the bottom of a character, but the above 8 questions usually lead me to when thinking about sorting since they tend to get to a person's house well, I think. Like, these are the sorts of questions I think are better to ask than to just look at a list of traits. I think these questions are closer to what the hat is looking for when it comes to sorting too.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Do you consider Ruggie to be a vice housewarden? Personally, I do but I wanted to know what you thought!

Personally, I don't consider Ruggie to be a vice dorm leader. (Ruggie doesn't view himself as a vice dorm leader or even as Savanaclaw's second-in-command either! He just refers to Leona as the boss and everyone else, including himself, as a grunt.)

I understand why some people do see Ruggie as a vice dorm leader though. After all, the guy's often seen supporting Leona in various ways. In Jack's Dorm Uniform vignettes, Jack states that "[Ruggie helps] the housewarden/dorm leader with everything, above board or below. So [Ruggie's] basically our number two."

And indeed, it is true!! Ruggie does a TON for Leona. This includes, but is not limited to: doing role call for their group (Vargas Camp) doing his laundry (Ruggie Labwear vignettes), repairing his clothes (Leona School Uniform vignette), fetching his food (Jamil School Uniform vignette, book 2), shopping for his new outfits + accessories (Vargas Camp), serving as his spy (Beans Day, but there are many other instances, like Blazing Jewel), and (of course) waking him up and reminding him to turn in his assignments for class (too frequent to name specific instances).

It's also very telling that Leona willingly relinquishes control and oversight of Savanaclaw--his dorm, essentially his kingdom--to Ruggie right before the Ferrymen haul Leona off. He trusts Ruggie enough to "be in charge of Savanaclaw 'til [he gets] back", which is very similar to how dorm leaders sometimes have vice dorm leaders fill in for them in their absence--something which occurs quite often with Malleus and Lilia, as Lilia often subs in for Malleus at ceremonies and meetings.

There was even a mistranslation in Jack's Beans Camo vignettes in which Azul mistakes Ruggie as Savanaclaw's dorm leader. In the original JP text, Azul says, “同じ寮の後輩でしょう”, which more closely translates to “he’s (Jack’s) an underclassman/junior in your (Ruggie’s) dorm!” He uses 後輩 here, which is kouhai, NOT 寮長 (ryocho), which is dorm leader/dormitory manager.

Now, the reason why I don't personally view Ruggie as a vice dorm leader is that while he does do a lot for Leona, these are not really... dorm leader-esque responsibilities??? They're more like regular occurrences or chores, so Ruggie comes off less as someone of close standing to Leona and more like he's just an errand boy. None of the actual vice dorm leaders tend to their dorm leaders this closely (with the exception of Jamil, on account of being Kalim's actual servant).

Vice dorm leaders have certain other duties that they fulfill. For example, they stand in for dorm leaders when they cannot attend important functions (like ceremonies or meetings, as I said before). They also assist with important dorm-related decisions, like picking out their Halloween costume each year and granting permissions to loan out parts of their dormitory for events. (For more information on the powers and responsibilities of dorm leaders and vice dorm leaders, see this post!)

Thing is, I never see Ruggie doing any of those things. It's always Leona and Leona alone attending meetings and making big decisions, even though he theoretically could sit out and let Ruggie handle it while he naps. Perhaps this is because Leona is arrogant and wants to project the image of him and ONLY him being in charge, but the fact remains that Ruggie isn't really depicted doing vice dorm leader-level work, just everyday menial labor. Leona trusting Ruggie with Savanaclaw in book 6 is an exception and not the rule. He's still supporting and helping out Leona, of course--it's just not in the same way that a vice dorm leader would. And Leona still puts a lot of his trust in Ruggie; that strong bond can still exist, even without the formalized relationship of a dorm leader and vice dorm leader.

[north-kieren]

What are some safety precautions you recommend scripting for mha drs? or anything you recommend scripting for mha/any dr in general

Us this was the first shifting question I've gotten on this account (I do not use Tumblr like I should.)

Anyway!!! Safety is sooo important for any Dr of yours! Mha specifically is a reality where you'll likely end up encountering some choppy waters more than often (cough villainy cough) or just be a part of/witness some gnarly shit.

Obviously, you probably know this which is why you're asking what are some things to script to make your shift a bit more comfortable in terms of safety. I think you all know that I'm definitely not the safestttt person in my Dr, getting into fights and leaving the country, doing shit that a kid still in first year highschool shouldn't. However! That just means I know PERSONALLY (oh no🙁) what things you should avoid and WHY.

1. I wanna say that whatever your Dr is like, vs. how YOU want to experience it? These safety precautions could differ. So, take these a sort through them as you think about your Dr with these in mind and take what you deem useful, and leave the rest.

2. If you're a pro hero/ teacher at UA. Mainly class 1A, but this goes for all classes. You absolutely will have to take responsibility when it's time to look after your kids. This goes for any situation, INCLUDING being an actual teacher you guys. Don't slack off when teaching these kids just because nothing life threatening and attention capturing is happening at that moment. What would happen if there were to be an emergency and your kids wouldn't know what to do because you lacked the sense to build a bond with those kids to know how they'd react to a situation like that? Or them not knowing how to proceed and possibly hurting themselves or others in the process, INCLUDING YOU!!! whatever class u teach or look after, please keep in mind that these are real children, there to learn from YOU.

3. Student at UA! You're probably well aware about your activity with quirks during the school days and with each other throughout the years. Class 1A,1B, General Studies, no matter. You'll probably end up doing SOMETHING that revolves around quirk usage or something of the sort. This is dangerous how? Itself isn't dangerous no, but sometimes (especially since all of y'all's Drs are so personal and unique = unpredictable) you will likely know personally that the metahuman society is

I N T E N S E. UA does an OUTSTANDING job at giving the students (and teachers. Rip aizawa's elbow.) a taste of that intensity. And get this!!! That's only a small bit of the ONE category (hero life) OUT OF HUNDREDS!!! ISN'T THAT HILARIOUS 😂😂🥲🥲. When I say intense, I don't mean like fighting for ur life everyday (except for the times that u do, indeed fight for ur life 🌚) I mean it in a sense that you'll face certain things in your Dr that you would've never given thought towards before. You'll experience life there and deal with society's mess just like you do in your Cr. SO ! The safety precaution I think you should keep in mind is to just be prepared. Script that before anything super big/impactful happens - you're given time and resources to properly address the upcoming issues that way you have everything you might need to make it out as unscathed as possible. Whatever form that may take, both physical and mental.

4. Be prepared to have a life outside of your class (assuming again that you're a student at UA). Take me for example, 99% of my content/storytime and main shifting experiences shared are almost ALWAYS outside of UA workings and my relationship with my friends and family. If you're not a student, STILL. Specifically for people who intend to be independent or even a part of something big like a villain organization for example. Anything really, you will need to understand that you have your own life to pay attention to-take care of.

5. Your actions/decisions hold value. They WILL have consequences you guys. This is the reality pretty much everywhere, you make a choice and things happen because of that choice. This isn't bad, nor is it good - it's just the way things work. You script that your body doesn't react to poisonous quirks? Cool. Expect some kind of condition or something SPECIFIC that allows this to happen. You choose to become a teacher? Amazing! Now you have the responsibility of teaching and guiding your children. You're a villain? Fine! You will learn fairly quickly what a villain's life would look like and learn to accept it (or decide it's not for you, of course that's always a possibility). This could go on forever, the point is that you will always find that there are things that you probably didn't account for while shifting to a place such as MHA, and that's OK! just keep it in mind is all, this helps with keeping your Dr on a realistic and very real place in your mind.

This is wayyyyy too long whoops. Anyway!!! I'll be posting my Tik Toks on here starting today, probably later so sorry for the incoming spam🥲.

[shadow-redferne]

Proship vs Anti Discourse is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

(PT: Proship vs Anti Discourse is Why We Can't Have Nice Things) (Trigger warning: This post discusses multiple sensitive topics, including abuse, bullying, bigotry and suicide. Reader discretion *heavily* advised)

I've finally gotten around to this post and I'll admit I can already smell the hostility. Just some disclaimers: This post isn't me commenting on the morality of certain media or ships, nor is it me commenting on whether or not fiction affects reality. This is only to talk about the damage this kind of discourse has done to fandom. I am going to warn you: This is *not* a post full of kindness. I am not going to be nice. This post is going to be a bit mean. No. Very mean. Sorry about that. So, TL;DR: Both sides have a harassment problem, and neither side wants to address the issues their communities have, leading to fandom becoming an unsafe environment. So uh, I don't think I need to write a witty introduction here. The current state of fandom is rancid. Harassment has become a giant fucking problem lately. So what's the problem? The problem lies in one thing: 'Proship' vs 'Antiship' discourse.

"Shadow, what the fuck do those words mean?" Proship used to mean that you supported all ships, all forms of fiction, and that you were against harassing anyone who was involved in fandom, as well as against censorship. 'Anti', or 'antiship', meant that you were against some forms of fiction and shipping, mainly ones involving minors or incest. Now you might've noticed that I used the phrase "used to" and the word "meant". That's because both terms kinda got new definitions and became buzzwords, with proship turning into a synonym for 'problematic shipper' (the term 'darkship' eventually came around to distinguish the two apart from my understanding, but uh...as you can see it hasn't helped much!). On top of that, people use the word 'proship' as a verb or type of content rather than an actual stance (ie. 'proshipping', 'proship content', 'proship artstyle', you get the idea). However that's not the main point here. Let's cut to the chase now; both sides fucking hate each other; we'll make that clear, with both sides throwing vile accusations towards one another. However, the more I looked into the swamp, the more distrust I gained for both sides. Something was bothering me, but what? I tried to do a survey; two of them in fact, to see which side was more hostile. Unfortunately, neither survey gave me a lot of useful results, considering I got very little responses from the anti side (So uh, thanks for nothing on that end guys. /nm). The written responses did give one common theme: Fandom has a problem. A problem with harassment, bullying, creeps and bigotry. The antis are particularly horrible when it comes to this. I'm going to start this off by saying that I actually used to consider myself an 'anti' due to my discomfort with noncon and incest. And unfortunately, I was pretty fucking hostile to others (although I never sent death threats, fuck anyone who does that shit). I eventually stopped associating with the 'anti' side when I saw how rampant the ableism was- more on that later. 'Antis' have caused severe harm to fandom, and I don't really understand how anyone can deny that. However, I am pretty fucking tired of everyone pretending that the 'proship' side is the good side. I know the 'proship' side isn't going to like hearing this, but it needs to be said: You guys are *just* as guilty as 'antis' when it comes to being toxic. And I'm not saying that because of the pro-incest stuff or the minor/adult pairings. I'm saying that many 'proshippers' are way too comfortable with being creepy towards others, and the community that claims to be 'anti-harassment'... isn't all that anti-harassment! Here are just some of the written responses I got from the survey:

Here's one alibi from an anonymous user who submitted to the @selfship-confession-box account (pls let me know if you dont want to be tagged)

Another anon that was submitted to the @proship-anti-discussion account

Lastly, here's some of the replies and reblogs to a post talking about an 'ex-proshipper' that left the community due to negative experiences (the OP of said post and the 'ex proshipper' in question did eventually apologize to each other, so I'll cut both of them some slack. I'm only showing the responses because holy fuck are they rancid).

So yeah. So much for the 'proship' community being "anti-harassment" and inclusive to SA and grooming survivors. Now, to the 'anti' side. I will say, the 'proshippers' got one thing right, and that's the fact that 'antis' very much fucking suck. And remember when I said that 'proshippers' were hypocrites? Well, 'antis' are also that. They talk so much about protecting "sa survivors" and how "proshippers are bigoted". But what do the written responses say about this?

and let's not forget *this*

I also want to bring up this comment about the term 'proship artstyle' that I thought was worth mentioning:

In other words... 'antis' aren't as great to hang around either! Now, there's one particular issue I really want to zero in on, and that's the rampant ableism from both sides. As one of the above written responses say, there is a huge problem of 'antis' and 'proshippers' misusing words like 'psychotic' and 'delusional'. The r-slur is also pretty rampant, I've noticed.

Still don't believe me? Okay. Here's a more recent example from an anonymous 'anti' I came across (ironically enough this came up when I searched "proship ableism". Also. fatphobia too? pick a struggle anon)

And that's not even getting into the amount of 'antis' who weaponize the saying "seek help" or "go to therapy". Now, let's go back to the terms supposed original meanings, particuarly the meaning for 'proshipper'. That term was supposed to mean that you were against censorship and harassing people for fiction and ships, and that you didn't judge people for liking certain ships. Meanwhile, 'antis' were supposedly about wanting to get rid of problematic media that could be harmful to minors and SA survivors. But it's time to be honest: Both sides have lost the plot. How am I supposed to believe either side is "anti-harassment" when neither side knows how to respect boundaries? How am I supposed to believe either side cares about SA survivors when you have both sides constantly speaking over said survivors and also harassing them? How am I supposed to believe either side cares about minors when there's been individuals on both sides, yes, including the so called "antis" that "care so much about protecting children uwu", that were outed as groomers? How am I supposed to believe either side is the good side when you have things like this happening:

The last thing I take issue with? The terms "proship" and "anti" as a whole, as well as every single similar term that's come out of this mess. While I do genuinely believe these terms were probably helpful in the past, it's clear that they're not doing any good whatsoever. Both terms have had their original meanings muddied and twisted to the point where they basically have no meaning at all, and the terms existing have created a massive "us vs them" mentality within fandom. There's also the issue of both sides forcing labels on others. I've seen posts that are all "if you believe x, congrats you're a proshipper!" or "if you believe y, you're an anti!". As well as anyone identifying as 'neutralship' (a label I also used to identify with before I stopped associating with these labels entirely) being called a "closet proshipper" or an "anti in disguise". Personally? If you have to force people to pick a side in order for you to trust them, I don't see why I should trust you. If you have to rely on labels like "proship", "anti", "anti-anti", "anti-harassment", "anti-censorship" to come across as a safe person or a good person, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to see you as a good person. You might be wondering why I included the "anti-harassment" and "anti-censorship" labels in that. Well, I'm going to be honest, and you are welcome to disagree with me on this, but I feel like these terms are so fucking unnecessary. Being "anti-harassment" and "anti-censorship" is the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM, a bare minimum that neither side can truly follow. Also, calling yourself "anti-harassment" doesn't automatically make me believe that. Especially when it's been proven time and time again that 'proshippers', the side believed to be 'anti-harassment', isn't all that 'anti-harassment' at all! Now I know what you're thinking at this point; you're thinking that I condone harassment because I'm going after both sides. You're thinking that I don't give a damn about the death threats that 'antis' have sent. No. No. No. That is not what I'm saying. And honestly, if *that's* the message you're getting, I don't know what to tell you.

So no, I'm not saying harassment is good or okay (and if that's the message you got from reading the above... I genuinely do not know what to tell you). I'm saying that you don't deserve a medal or a cookie for not sending death threats or being against people who send death threats, when it's literally the BARE MINIMUM. The bar is in fucking hell at this point. And as it's been shown, neither "proshippers" nor "antis" are truly anti-harassment. Me not liking 'proshippers' doesn't automatically mean I'm okay with sending them death threats, and me not liking 'antis' doesn't make me okay with abuse. And it sure as fucking hell doesn't mean that I don't care either. Because guess what? I do fucking care. It's why I'm fucking making this post in the first place. I shouldn't have to identify as "proship" or "anti" or any other labels to tell you that I care. Me refusing to use a label doesn't mean I'm apathetic to all the harm that's happened. And I sure as hell am not condoning harassment by refusing to hold hands with individuals who can't even bother to respect each other's boundaries. And honestly? If you interpret "I don't support proshippers *or* antis because they both made fandom toxic and unsafe" as "I condone sending death threats and rape threats", that's kind of on you. Here's a simple message I have for anyone who calls themselves "proship" or "antiship", and I am going to be especially mean here: Stop pretending to brand yourselves as the good guys when all you've done is break boundaries, talk over abuse survivors and marginalized groups. Stop being hypocrites, and actually address the issues within your goddamn communities. And stop downplaying said issues by saying "BUT THIS SIDE IS WORSE!" or "BUT THEY DO IT TOO!". Also, stop forcing people to use your dumb labels. Literally all of this could be fucking solved with using the block buttons or report buttons. There is no reason for this stupid fucking infighting. You don't have to like each other, fuck no, but quit dragging those who aren't involved into your messes and ruining fandom for everyone.

To "antis": Quit pretending to care about SA survivors and minors when you're the ones sending them death threats (And maybe address the fucking groomers within your community too, by the fucking way). To "proshippers": Stop being a dick to people who have had negative experiences with your community, stop ignoring the bigotry and stop letting in predators within your community. Now lastly, I know I said I wasn't going to comment on stances, but I do want to say this because it's also very much fucking bothering me. I hate how this discourse just boils down to either "Fiction DOESN'T affect reality at all, it's 100% okay to support ANY kind of media/ship/pairing no matter how problematic it is, and if you disagree with that you're a fascist!" or "Actually supporting ANY kind of media that's problematic and/or depicts so and so is BAD and if you support that you're a horrible human being! And if you disagree with me you're just as bad!" Have you guys perhaps, I don't know: Considered a fucking middle ground? Have you maybe considered nuanced discussions? How about that? Okay, I'm done being mean. In fact, I actually don't have much else to say so here's a video that talks about it a little more nicer than I do

*Sigh* I'm going to regret posting this, aren't I?

[vellichorom]

Are you aware that Guts / Carnographic is being really gross about you in public?

yeah,

i've been doing everything in my power to try & ignore it but the implications & explicit correlation is making me sick

i blocked guts on everything on the morning of the 30th for my own wellbeing. i was becoming more & more stressed out over his public online activity & opinions, being his friend, & the posts above seemed to paint a particular picture about the way he felt about me / our friendship which sent me over the edge.

for further context; guts & i used to chat over discord, although my messages were infrequent & had a lot of gaps in silence between them; this is a terrible habit i possess - so much that it's listed in my discord bio,

furthermore, it having told me about it's history, i tried my best to understand & be courteous to it about certain opinions & behavior that we didn't agree on.

this is not to paint myself as a patron angel saint, but give further context. i tried to give every benefit of the doubt i could give it, but at some point, it became too much stress on me, so i blocked him.

he hasn't taken it well.

he evades my having blocked his accounts & messages he sent me on @/gutsywutsywow a day or so after, which he did confirm to be his account v

including a fraction of my response which does address the similarities of the characters above v

which proceeds:

since this point, he's been posting endlessly about this " moo " character & his " birdthing " sona, & eluding to or hinting at the fall out between us, as well as trying to excuse it all because he's mentally ill

& recently, he's been trying to paint moo, the evident representative of me, in some accusatory fashion that finally pushed me to say something

at this point, i don't know what to do anymore but to make this public as well & i genuinely hate having to do it, but there's no way in hell i'm risking being bundled with accusations of telling him to hurt himself or taking this shit anymore.

tldr;; @/carnographic/x / @/silliest--billiest / " guts / bill " has been coping since our friendship fell out by drawing a caricature representative of me in increasingly hostile / possessive ways & seems to now be using this caricature to tease at an accusatory, predator narrative, of which i had absolutely no part in doing.

this is the last thing i wanted to make, but now i can't guarantee the safety or preservation of myself or others if i don't. please leave me alone.

[queerly-autistic]

I've been thinking about potential pick-up of Our Flag Means Death by another streamer, and how it all might be tying in with the current BBC release, and I have some thoughts about what might be happening and what we can do to give the show the best chance of being picked up.

I think it's important to start by saying that all the whisperings that I heard over the past few months (including from some people who work at/with the BBC) pointed firmly towards a scheduled March release for Our Flag Means Death on the BBC. Needless to say, this means I was extremely surprised when they suddenly announced it was dropping at the beginning of February. I think it's also clear from everything I've seen that the BBC's marketing/social media plan for the release was not ready for February (there was no trailer, which was odd), which, again, really supports the idea that the show was initially schedule for a March release, not a February release.

I firmly believe the release was brought forward. The question is: why? Is it because they saw how much noise and press the show (and our campaign) was getting, and decided to try and capitalise on it? Or is there something else going on?

On top of that, we now have specific questions about Our Flag Means Death appearing on YouGov UK, including asking whether respondents would watch another series. This doesn't just happen. The charity I work for has commissioned YouGov polling (including some very recently) which I have been tangentially involved with, and so I know that this sort of polling is not easy work, and it's not cheap. Someone has put time AND money into commissioning this polling. This is significant. Someone is not only watching, but they are specifically watching the UK response to the show, and putting questions to the UK audience about it.

I have strong suspicions that a streamer (or several streamers) are interested in picking up the show, and are using the UK release as a live case study (Apple, Amazon and Netflix also have a presence in the UK, so we are a big target audience for them in a way we never were for Max). This could account for both the potential bringing forward of the BBC release (they didn't want to wait until March), and the YouGov polling that's going on (bear in mind, the YouGov questions were specifically as part of a wider survey about streaming services).

And this isn't just a passing interest: working with the BBC to bring forward the release, and investing time and money into YouGov polling? That's a strong interest. That's so interested they've already invested something into it.

Of course, I don't know anything for certain, so take everything with a pinch of salt (it's just a theory...a gay pirates theory...), but I think it's something to consider as a strong possibility.

So what does this mean for us?

It means we need to keep streaming on iPlayer. Watch it as many times as you can. Share it with your friends and family. If you're outside the UK, get yourself a VPN and join the party. Watch the live broadcasts on Monday nights (if you have iPlayer, you can stream the live broadcast - this is what I do because I don't have a TV). Keep tweeting about it (add the #OurFlagBBC hashtag to the existing hashtags we're using). Tag and email the UK media (including TV guides and radio shows) and ask them to talk about the show/our campaign. If you're tagging/emailing Apple, Amazon or Netflix, make sure you mention you're from the UK (and tag their UK specific social media accounts).

According to Parrot Analytics, the demand in the UK for the show is rising - let's keep adding to that!

You can also sign up to YouGov and rate the show (more instructions in the quote retweets of the tweet I linked to earlier), and keep answering questions about TV shows and streaming (and marking Our Flag Means Death as one of your interests) as a way to try and get them to give you the specific questions about the show (these start as a question about streaming and streaming services, which then turn into questions about OFMD, so if you get a survey like that, take it!).

It's also worth considering that if there's any validity to this, then there's a possibility that they might be waiting until after the show has finished airing in the UK (the finale is airing on 25th March) to crunch all the numbers together. This means that if we don't hear anything in the next few weeks, do not despair! We need to buckle in for a long fight, and to keep pushing the show and making noise over the next few weeks and months, especially around the BBC release.

This show is worth the fight. Let's get our damned men back!

[proshippers-against-censorship]

found a LONG post here on tumblr which has nothing to do with pro/anti discourse (inherently) but it talks about how many people who claim they're leftists are still buying into conservative mindsets

A lot of (often young) leftists here seem to oppose conservatism but don’t actually doubt many of the core principles of conservatism. This is especially obvious when looking at tactics or methods

1) Accepting Right wing Framing of Issues

I think censorship might fall into this. The whole "think of the children!" panic and how many conservatives talk about it, it's a complicated issue turned into a simple binary narrative.

So many leftists, rather than challenging the binary just accept it but invert it.

"Actually yeah censorship is really bad but it also like helps children and also gets rid off a lot of illegal material" instead of challenging censorship in itself and admitting that no, even if we censor and ban everything it'll never stop the demand for something, nor does it help children or victims in any way. What people fail to realize is that it's not just art that will be struck down, but any simple discussion of sensitive topics too.

We also have seen this firsthand when SESTA/FOSTA passed, rather than preventing the online exploitation of trafficked persons, these laws have hurt the people they intended to help, pushing sex workers and trafficking victims into more dangerous and exploitative situations.

2) The desire for everything bad to be traced back to a single unified source

a core part of rightist thought process is an embrace of intellectual simplicity and rejection of complexity. They like nice, simple narratives with clear bad guys (for example anyone who thinks people should be allowed to have creative freedom which idk antis somehow equate to being a pedophile?) and good guys and where they don’t have to imagine things in a more nuanced or complicated manner.

3) Utter lack of Nuance

you notice that they tend towards dramatic demonization. Anybody in their circle is good, and those that aren’t are pure evil. because again… complex thinking is literally antithetical to right wing thinking.

This could look like something like this: “oh i morally agree with this movie therefore it is good” or the inverse which is just the most simplistic way you can possibly view art

4) Embrace of Conspiracy Theories, Pseudo History, Pseudo Science etc

I think that one is a bit obvious too. The Right thrives on conspiracy theories, because again…facts don’t care about feelings. They always go to extremes where they just make up problems (like how all proshippers are pedophiles), or use scientific language to sound smart but in reality sounds more like "video games cause violence!"

Also seen a lot of antis claim the word "proship" was invented AFTER anti-shippers which... no? "Proship" was a response to the growing harassment in fandoms, and self named anti shippers came FIRST.

This goes from annoying to outright sinister when you take into account that some of them are willing to serve as apologists for certain horrific regimes (for example, antis celebrated Giorgia Meloni's approach towards "eradicating" pedophiles, ignoring the fact that she's a national conservative, that she opposes abortion and laws that recognize same-sex marriage. She's not after "pedophiles", she's after LGBTQ+ people)

5) Mob tactic

they deliberately artificially create mobs for the purpose of mass harassment. Antis and Gamergate are a lot more similar than they think

6) Not Checking Sources

Their "sources" either come from other tumblr posts, carrds or news report webistes which comment on statistics and what's happening but aren't really a good source or representation of their belief (that fiction always affects people's reality, and always in the same way). So instead of double checking... they love spreading utter bullshit, like screenshotting a google result and claiming it as "source"

7) They like fetishizing violence

I really don't like that word but man, antis love violence. They love it so much they talk in detail about it and think it comes without consequences. I'm not just talking about "regular" death threats but whole paragraphs about various ways to torture people

8) Dehumanization. 

The Right is basically evil, and the Republican are a death cult at this point, but even so quite a few elements of the left are just a bit too gleeful. 

And the thing about that militant mindset is that while it might be directed against bad people at first, it quickly can get corrupted.

Take RadFems for example, a group which is a great example of anti intellectualism, militancy and violence from the start.  It was this “with us or against us attitude” that lead many of them to go on to become TERFs because just hating (cis) men was no longer one of their priorities. 

There's a person on twt who keeps a whole gallery of antis who either sound the same as terfs or become terfs later on. I mean, most antis are exclus anyway, basically terfs lite

.

[dolphin-diaries]

How To Prevent Detransition In Five Simple Steps (Part 1)

Originally published on Dolphin Diaries.

What do you think of when you hear ‘detransitioner’?

The Right, likely. Grift and pantomime for clout, such as that of a certain doll or the world’s most Korean and Christian man. Coercion; forced detransition.

What do you think of, say, when you consider willing and genuine detransition? If you could look at Chloe Cole past her rhetoric, her ideological allegiance, her utter lack of compassion for those outside of it—what do you see?

Is it regret? Self-hatred? Pity, maybe? A correction of a shameful (stupid, even) mistake? A bizarre decision you struggle to imagine yourself—or anyone—making? A web of uncanny, discomfiting choices, written in flesh?

Maybe, if you’re trans yourself, you might also see your own fears. Not necessarily forced detransition—that wouldn’t make you like her. No, maybe you look at your past doubts and wonder if you could’ve been her, under different circumstances. Or maybe, it’s merely the thought of something that brought you great joy���your transition, the alteration of your body, your freedom—being broken, hated, turned inside-out. Like a shredded garment.

Perhaps you’re just unnerved to see it undone.

Detransition, in the eyes of the masses, is an undoing. That implies discontent, and since this discontent is over transition—something not only voluntary but often hard-won—it also implies that transition itself was a mistake. Seemingly, a preventable one.

And so there is only one conclusion: detransitioners must be prevented. I must be prevented. I am a stain on the medical, social, and queer establishments that have created me, whether you look at it from the Right or the Left. The ‘reverse’ dysphoria I feel is, by all accounts, utterly preventable. Naturally, then, we must attempt to prevent it.

The belief about detransitioners is that they need medical gatekeeping to prevent them from having transitioned—a more robust system of checks that would’ve helped them realise they were never trans. Or perhaps, that they need the topic of transness altogether excised from the zeitgeist. For instance, a known detrans grifter Maia Poet tweeted she is retrospectively grateful to her parents for having hyper-surveilled her after she came out as trans. She still socially transitioned and continued to identify as trans for twelve years afterwards, so it can’t have helped in the way she wanted, but she’s still grateful for, uh. Something. Whatever it is that was accomplished, which, it seems, was not a lot.

Well, no one was expecting cutting social commentary or lucid solutions from Ms. Israeli Sellout Poet, so never mind her. Let us put the grift aside.

That is the knee-jerk response, isn’t it? Make fun of the loud and stupid and obviously wrong ones?

That has its place, but let me assure you, detransitioners exist outside of TV and Twitter. Most are disinterested in sharing a pedestal with Maia or Chloe, regardless of what they believe. Let us even put myself aside as a singular subject. Let us examine what is normally either cynically weaponised by the Right, or else timidly swept under the rug. Because if you allow the idea that willing detransitioners truly exist—and they do, I assure you; if I turned my screen off, I’d be looking at one—then you must also allow the possibility of, well…

Transition regret.

Allow yourself compassion for a detransitioner—a random, regular person—that is staring at rock bottom and finding that their transition took them there. If I were them, I’d surely ask what could’ve been done to prevent that. What could’ve been done so that I never existed such as I am.

A very rock-bottom kind of question, I know. But the only way out is through.

So what is the most effective way to prevent detransition? What has been done to that end? How is transition handled, and what does that mean for detransition?

1. The Doctor Will See You Now

Over the past few months, I’ve spent a good chunk of my god-given procrastination allowance on scrolling online detrans communities that explicitly ban transphobia. You may call that biased, but I’ve found that detrans spaces which make no such explicit attempts are swiftly overrun by Gender Criticals. Not even detrans ones; the topic is hot-button and embarrassing enough to encourage unmitigated manipulation of the audience. It’s a bit like browsing spaces for discussion of cosmetic surgery. When an issue is too unseemly to be spoken of in polite society, the snake oil salesman can peddle whatever the hell he wants. By contrast, trans-positive detrans spaces tend to be smaller, less fraught, and more diverse in issues discussed and feelings expressed.

(To be clear, I will not quote anyone here. While their accounts were told neither in privacy nor in confidence, online messages in small communities carry a presumption of anonymity and non-disclosure, which I intend to maintain.)

Indeed, a sizeable number of even explicitly trans-positive detransitioners express some desire for a prior intervention. A therapist or psychiatrist that would’ve entertained alternatives, or questioned why their patient wanted to transition. It’s not uncommon, when queried by people unsure of surgery or HRT, for such detransitioners to advise waiting until total certainty is achieved. Unlike GCs, though, they often lament the lack of medical professionals that will neither attempt to do conversion therapy nor consider detransition an untouchable topic.

(As I’ve alluded to before, it is difficult enough in many places to find a therapist that even knows Trans 101. ‘Advanced stuff,’ like detransition, is beyond contemplation. It’s not that skilled-enough professionals don’t exist, but that there is no resource for finding them.)

There is a common denominator among such detrans people. They are often—though not always—young transitioners, having done so either in high school or shortly after. They’re usually from countries that have an informed consent model of transition care. Under this model, a doctor does not diagnose with gender dysphoria—or indeed anything at all—but merely provides assistance in alteration of sexual characteristics. That’s the idea, anyway; reality varies and often does not quite match that ideal, but by and large, the doctor’s job is then mainly to explain what the patient is signing up for. What intervention or investigation exists, if any, is minimal or perfunctory.

From a purely technical perspective, these detransitioners are asking for something that wasn’t this doctor’s job to do. But it is a fairly heartless argument to make. “Well, if your dysphoria wasn’t actually dysphoria, you should’ve gone to a therapist instead!”—rather silly, isn’t it? Easily refuted with: “If I knew then what was wrong with me, I wouldn’t be here.” And anyway, just because that is how the system works does not necessarily mean that is how it should work.

There is a wrinkle here, though. Informed consent may be the norm in, say, the USA—for now, anyway—but it is not worldwide. In most places you ought to receive a gender dysphoria (or transsexualism, if the updated DSM is yet to be adopted) diagnosis before access to medical transition is permitted. So how does the diagnostic model hold up when it comes to detransition?

2. Hoops and Hoops and Hoops

As I mentioned in my first essay, I am a young-ish transitioner from a country that very much does not practice informed consent. I started transitioning medically at 19, which is young for an adult transitioner but post-pubertal nonetheless. However, transitioning in adolescence would’ve been functionally impossible for me. Even if my parents were supportive and I somehow found a doctor to prescribe me blockers/hormones—the latter of which is monumentally unlikely, as it was illegal—it would still basically mean social death. So, in effect, I transitioned as young as was humanly possible.

The procedure to acquire legal access to hormone replacement therapy was pretty antiquated during my time. Internment in a psychiatric ward, a prior real-life test, the nine yards. (For the unaware, a ‘real-life test’ is a requirement to have lived as your desired gender for several years prior to any medical transition.) I was diagnosed rather thoroughly both for presence of gender dysphoria and an absence of alternative explanations, such as schizophrenia, BPD, autism, and, put colloquially, mummy or daddy issues—having a ‘broken family’ was a strike against the transsexualism diagnosis. Anxiety or depression was also a no-no. Under this particular model, literally any other condition is a contradiction to transsexualism. You are to be deeply distressed about your genitals and assigned gender stereotype, and absolutely nothing else at all.

Because yes, naturally the pathologisation of gender entails reliance on stereotype and archetype. What makes a man or a woman, after all? When the goal is to have transsexualism as the last possible resort, it’s not enough to merely wish for a different set of genitals or breasts or to describe oneself as a man or woman—gender must be dissected. And that dissection, inevitably, leads to ‘bitches be crazy.’ Man like car, woman like kitchen. Man fucks woman, subject verb object. Et cetera.

Of course, declaring any ‘irregular’ thoughts about gender to be the sole purview of a perfect and utterly healthy citizen, is just cruel. Gender conformity is a violently enforced social protocol. Therefore people that run up against it—trans or not—are highly likely to be made maladjusted. To deny them care on that basis alone is inhumane. If you are found too ‘wrong’ to be transsexual, you will then be told to go treat whatever is wrong with you—your symptom, not your cause. Gender will not be entertained.

Now, that the psychiatric treatment of gender dysphoria is inhumane, dated, and deliberately difficult and arcane, is not news. It is designed to prevent transition first and foremost and also secondly and thirdly, and only lastly to enable it. Some young people in the US may feel enough distance from such treatment as to not understand what it truly entails. To some it is buried history. Most, though, even when unaware of what such procedures are or were, understand they are/were bad. Nebulously bad or specifically bad (mostly the former), but bad nonetheless.

So here’s the first question: does this work? Does this ensure those that truly need transition can do it, and none that don’t, can’t?

I can obviously just point to myself and be done with it, but one person can be anything from an anomaly to a fun fact, just not a tendency. So let’s work through this.

Obviously such procedures do not prevent all transition. Do they reduce the number of transitioners? It is impossible to count for sure, but certainly such procedures generally exist in societies that are not amenable to trans people, and therefore some plainly do not survive long enough to try. It does not matter whether they would’ve eventually detransitioned or not; severe psychiatric procedure does not coexist with widely available, comprehensive therapy. It does not matter because no one will ever find out.

What of those that do survive, though? One extreme conclusion to make is, if you can survive without something, you do not need it. I’m not particularly interested in a survival-only existence as I do not live in a cave and hunt mammoth. (And even prehistoric people made jewellery and painted cave walls with art, so clearly they cared about things beyond sheer necessity, too.) So that aside, how do the lives of those that actually engage with the procedure pan out?

Naturally, one of the results of such procedures is the delaying of access. Some things, like hormones, you can get on the sly, but surgeries you simply cannot receive without either the doctor’s permission or a great—and I do mean great—deal of money. The procedure is designed to take several years before any access can be granted at all, assuming you go through it swiftly and successfully. The more stringent the procedure, the fewer doctors can do it; a degree of waiting is involved even before it begins. In my country’s case in particular, transition is fully paid for by the patient—there is neither state nor insurance coverage, at all, for anything. Even doctor visits in government-sponsored institutions are de facto paid because you need to grease some palms for someone to bother. No, there’s no suing the doctor that won’t treat you without the agreed-upon bribe; you can’t afford it and you won’t win. Therefore there’s also risk of further depression and suicide as great financial burden falls on people that, as a rule, have below-average funds, poor employability, and no family support. But assuming you soldier through, the overall result is a transition timeline that spans about a decade or two. The bulk of social transition will happen in the first five years, whereas surgical interventions, due to cost and laborious approval processes, fall on the last years.

This can be seen as a boon to detransitioners. Delay in access means more time to change your mind, hypothetically. The fact that surgeries are generally impossible until many years in transition means—hypothetically—there’s less chance you’ll end up with changes that cannot be reversed or amended without further surgical intervention, or at all.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous essay, I do believe such calculus to be heavily hindsight-skewed, favouring present lack of regret and dysphoria over past misery and the humiliation of the psychiatric grinder. It’s a little like getting hit with a hammer to the head and then falling madly in love with the doctor treating you. Sure, in hindsight it softens the blow of the head trauma, but you still wouldn’t recommend anyone walk around with a sticker on their back saying ‘Hit Me.’

I can understand, however, how a detrans person who never went through any of that, now deep in dysphoria blues, could find such an argument empty air. Infuriating, even. Perhaps they’d even say they’d gladly be a bit miserable for a couple years so long as they didn’t have to deal with all this now. Grass, greener, et cetera. So let us say this really is a possible advantage of the procedure—

If it actually makes you less likely to go through with transition once you begin the procedure and uncover doubts creeping in.

Does it?

3. A Patient Is A Person

There’s an elephant in the room, though not many notice it. To a cis person it may well be invisible. You might’ve spotted it when I first flippantly described the procedure I went through and mentioned a real-life test. Most people cannot be reliably and consistently integrated into society as the ‘opposite’ gender until they have some kind of physical intervention. Especially not in places that are highly transphobic, where being visibly trans is either not an option or a very dangerous one. But clearly, people do pass this ‘real-life test’ somehow. Is it really only the most androgynous among us that are allowed to transition under such procedure?

Well, no. Although doctors will be more charitable if you already seem like a ‘lost cause’ to your birth sex. Nothing wasted and so on. But like I said, you can always get hormones on the sly. It’s not even hard or prohibitively expensive.

That’s not the only issue with the procedure. How do you reconcile putting all this time and money into a (marginalised) diagnosis with (often precarious) employment? Why are trans patients supposed to have a singular script for their lives and genders, whereas cis people are permitted variance?

In the end, how do you prove to someone else that transition is right for you? Is it really all the silly quizzes and the identically heart-wrenching stories? Eh. Not exactly. In my experience, the doctor makes half their mind up the moment they look at you. And most every patient seems like a regular cis person—a fertile woman, a boy that can be made a man—and so the knee-jerk response is to help you stay that way, no matter how you feel. So there are two options: memorise a rote script of suffering and hope for the best, or, much more reliably and painlessly—

Already look like a transsexual.

Put plainly, the current diagnostic model of transition only works when you’re already transitioning. To access transition you must’ve already done so. Yes, we all simply pretend. Yes, people just memorise whether they’re supposed to like cars or kitchens and how they should describe their sex lives. Of course they do. People seeking transition are human.

You can wag your finger however much you want and insist that people must follow protocol, and whatever happens as a result of disobedience is their own damn fault. The empirical fact is, protocol as written is un-follow-able. Because it is un-follow-able, no one actually follows it.

The result of a system whose first and foremost purpose is to make as few people transition as possible, is very simple: everyone lies. No one trusts doctors. No one in their right mind would go to a doctor that controls their legal gender marker based on the patient’s tales of masturbation, and then bare their true gender feelings with an expectation of help. Even the doctors themselves do not care how you really feel or whether you’re lying. They know the system is faulty, they know none of this is human or nice, but they also don’t understand why anyone would transition and they don’t care to. They have a hundred more patients, a thousand more protocols that are also neither human nor nice. This is psychiatry, and you are an annoying and rare brand of crazy, one that’s both utterly perverse and—they know—not actually crazy, not hallucinating or threatening suicide (and if you do: you can’t, remember?). What you’re doing is wasting a bed and their time. So all they want is their bribe, maybe a dissertation subject, and for you to cooperate and be gone.

What actually decides access to transition? A little bit of luck, a little bit of social acceptance in one’s immediate social circles, but chief among all: money.

If we must prevent the possibility of detransition at all cost, surely financial disincentive still works? Not the way you’d want it to. The only thing cost barriers ensure is that the rich can do whatever they want on a whim, and the poor can’t have even that which they desperately need. That is the only social balance money can buy.

And what decides eventual detransition?

The truth is, at least for me, it wasn’t regret. I’ve lived a long while in trans circles shaped by such transmedicalism. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:

Transition regret was everywhere.

It is not at all unique to detransitioners. Certainly wasn’t in my circles. Many trans people who were also my contemporaries and fellow countrypersons had something or other they regretted about their transition. Some had even found the whole process extremely traumatic. They regretted not allowing themselves any femininity/masculinity that ‘contravened’ their desired gender. They got haircuts, clothes, friends, surgeries—anything related to gender, which is everything—only and solely because of the need to transition under very strict guidelines. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not. We lie to the doctors, yes, but that does not mean we are untouched by the transition procedure at our heart. The procedure is long and complex, and thus at a certain point, it occupies a lot of your attention and time. You live and breathe the sex questionnaires and psych visits whether you want to or not. And, as I’ve established, no one in the whole hospital cares how you truly feel about your gender—so for a while, you may stop caring too. It’s a matter of survival. Not just in the sense of access to transition, but in the very banal calculus of things that will and won’t get you beat up in an alley. At some point it’s only human to mentally check out.

In other words, everyone was fucking miserable. Trans, detrans—everyone.

People transition because they want to. Because everyone wishes to be an architect of their own fate and body, insofar as they can, and for some that involves choosing which way their body grows and ages. How it occupies the mould of sex. And when barriers are put between you and your agency, what follows is not obedience. You are human; you are not an algorithmic machine; you do not simply obey, you choose. So what do most people choose when they want something very badly and are told they cannot have it? They resist, of course. Resist, lie, scheme. And resistance to stringent protocol takes a lot out of you.

If doubt starts whispering in your head and you’re not listening, will you even hear it?

Put plainly, there’s no space for gender feelings in survival mode. What the diagnostic procedure causes is precisely that. It does not matter whether one’s need to transition is caused by some sort of True Transsexualism or trauma or misogyny or self-delusion or a secret millionth thing. You want it, and there’s no resource, no space, and no help for you to dissect that need. No time, either, because everything costs years—be it in money, in waiting, or your own life. You have an acute need and a difficult path to it. That is all.

And when all is said and done, and now you want to detransition? You’ve spent years to transition in the first place. You’ve invested great effort and great money, even if you’re not yet ‘done.’ You’ve likely lost family members and friends. Sunk cost is a hell of a weight, and sunk cost is precisely what the diagnostic model—a prevention model—engineers in spades.

4. A Dream of Utopia

So the informed consent model has no oversight, and the diagnostic model is a horrible grinder. Informed consent seems to be the patented harm reduction choice of the two. But surely those are not the only things that can exist? Surely we can dream of more than just ‘less harm’? Can there not be some sort of prior screening by an actually humane doctor who understands both trans and detrans needs? No quizzes about masturbation or kitchens or cars or whether you demanded to be called ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ at age four—just a robust way to determine whether you actually have gender dysphoria or not?

Let us say it is possible. When detrans people ask for qualified, humane, non-transphobic aid in helping them through their feelings on sex/gender, they are not asking for the impossible. Their need is one that must be answered in a just and caring world; it is already being answered for trans people, so why should the detrans be any different? And from there, you might think, it follows that it’s possible to attempt a system whose aim is some reasonably brief and minimally invasive pre-screening, which would filter out would-be detransitioners and enable trans people to pursue their transitions.

It is possible to attempt that. But.

All systems of restriction and access have a problem: there’s a power dynamic at play. Transition is often a pretty acute need. Doctors can make mistakes, they’re only human. Who is to decide what is real gender dysphoria? What if the doctors are not so humane? What if they enjoy holding power more than they enjoy helping? ‘Just don’t hire them’ isn’t really an answer—if we knew how ‘not to hire bad people,’ we’d have already colonised Pluto.

That doesn’t mean no system of restriction has its place. Access to weapons has similar problems, but most people would agree it’s probably not right for them to know nuclear codes anyway. Obviously no one worth listening to would compare detransition to guns or nukes, but let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that the possibility of detransition is so utterly undesirable that, if a prevention system could exist, it must.

The question remains: what makes gender dysphoria real?

The answer is very simple. Ultimately, it will always only be real because you said so. Because the patient said so—not the doctor.

If you’re a medical professional, you know how much of your diagnostic work relies on patient testimony. How you must at times cajole them into being honest, or to decode what exactly ‘bubbling pain in the liver’ means. Those unfamiliar with the medical world often imagine there’s always some kind of screening that can determine with certainty if the patient is lying or misguided or unsure. And yes, even if John insists he never put that Christmas ornament up his arse, the X-Ray will show it one way or another. But in many cases, it’s not that simple, and patient testimony is crucial.

When it comes to psychology and psychiatry, this issue could not be more acute. Often there is nothing else to go on at all. That doesn’t mean therapists are just useless soundboxes—but neither are there Top 10 Signs My Patient Is Actually A Narcissist. Nor are there actually body language experts that will totally tell you you’re being delusional; peddlers of simple and exact solutions are, as a rule, charlatans.

In short, therapists and psychiatrists are not mind readers. They are only analysing what you are saying about your own mind, and what you’re doing about it. They can aid you in interpreting yourself, but at the end of the day, you’re still the one doing it.

And here’s the kicker: no single issue faced by detransitioners is something trans people do not experience. Some detrans people first transition as a form of self-harm after sexual assault; but childhood sexual trauma is common among trans people who are happy in their transitions, too. Many detrans women felt pushed out of their gender by internalised misogyny and the impossibility of envisioning happy lives as women; but all those that are brought up or grow up as girls experience misogyny, including trans men and trans women. Detrans people often cite only wanting to transition after they learn of the possibility of transition and not from early childhood, as if that is evidence—but many trans people do not seek transition until they learn of its existence, too.

Trans people doubt their transitions all the time. Feel unhappy with their transitions, at least sometimes. And they self-harm via detransition too—a lot. The idea that none of this happens, or only happens very rarely, is a fiction recited for the sake of self-defence and attaining civil rights in a hostile world. Spending any time in trans spaces will tell you the truth is much more nuanced. And even so, even still, only some of those people detransition. And only some of those do so completely of their own free will, and not out of despair or a successful right-wing pipeline.

For every seemingly telltale sign of future detransition, there are numerous counterexamples. In fact a trans person can have all those signs at once, and nonetheless remain trans. Diagnostic criteria for a condition requires a list of symptoms, and if no number of those can be definitive? That means there can be no diagnosis. No (medical) condition.

In other words, resources, attention, and qualified aid can all accommodate detrans people exactly as it does trans people. Procedure cannot. Just like it can’t satisfactorily accommodate trans people. It is a dead end to treat the matter of gender as if it is a disorder, an ailment of the individual, rather than an exercise of agency against a society which enforces sex/gender.

Additionally, I have so far spoken in extremes. Real and not-real trans people; detransitioners that utterly regret their transition and wish it never happened. It was necessary for the argument. But many detransitioners do not have such black-and-white feelings about their past. Some are nonbinary and unhappy with either ‘man’ or ‘woman’; some do not maintain that their gender dysphoria wasn’t actually real; some even reject the label ‘detrans’ on principle, even though they have verifiably detransitioned. I have not mentioned any such case because I wished to argue that even the most ‘textbook,’ most acutely regretful case of detransition has little to gain and much to lose in a gatekeeping-first transition system. However, I must also point out that the ‘textbook case’ is the only case that can envision any gain at all. It isn’t real, but it’s a lovely mirage. To the rest of us, there isn’t even that.

5. I Have Bad News—Or Do I?

Yes, what I am saying is that detransition is inevitable. I’m saying its negatives can be curtailed by therapeutic and medical care that accommodates for detrans people—as much is true for trans people—but, regardless of how preventable detransition may seem, there is no way to simply solve it. Detransition can only be vanished by going back in time and making medicine freeze at the turn of the twentieth century, before such things as exogenous hormones were invented. Even a full ban on transition would be just a costly inconvenience, but ultimately not a magic bullet. People do banned things because they want to all the damn time. Oh, and I guess we’d also have to sterilise every single female horse.

So does that mean detransitioners are necessary collateral damage?

Only if you think detransition is inherently, inevitably, invariably undesirable and bad.

When you discover you want to detransition, it can be hard to accept for a myriad of reasons. Sunk cost, fear of ostracisation, shame, or even because you have no idea what detransition can look like and you don’t know what to do. And then there’s dysphoria and dealing with the wider society’s disgust and I-told-you-so’s. Some amount of what one might call a ‘bad time’ is unavoidable.

But why? What makes wanting to detransition—not resigning to it; wanting it—bad? What makes it socially reviled and pitiable? What makes going through it feel so difficult? How is the shame of detransition engineered—and what for?

See you in Part 2.

[bioethicists]

Do you have any thoughts on the idea of enablers? I'm struggling to find anything online analyzing the idea, rather than just chastising people for like, giving an alcoholic loved one money.

i do! i wrote a course paper about it once lol. gonna bullet point my thoughts for ease

first of all, i want to both point out that the concepts of enabling/codependency are deeply shitty + originate from toxic, abstinence-only spaces-- that being said, there is absolutely a painful dynamic that can crop up in relationships with ppl who are chaotically using which sometimes takes the form of: giving more than you can/want to give without receiving anything in return, burning yourself out trying to 'save' someone, breaking your own boundaries for another person, doing whatever another person asks without question even when doing that thing makes you feel bad, + more

personally i believe that codependency + by extension, "enabling", has caught on due to the total lack of infrastructure or public resources for ppl in chaotic use, alongside prohibition which tells us that all 'illicit' drug use is inherently bad. obsession with individual responsibility ensures that we treat ppl in chaotic use as irresponsible (but perhaps Sick, Helpless) ppl who need to Choose to Get Better (which will happen if they Hit Rock Bottom). except rock bottom doesn't usually produce healing + with today's toxic drug supply, they're liable to fucking die on the way down.

as someone who has loved + does love many ppl who use drugs to various degrees of danger + someone who absolutely fit(s) the definition of a "codependent" or "enabler" in many ways (sometimes proudly, sometimes in ways i want to change): what matters is, are you breaking your own boundaries for this person? are you giving them things then resenting them when they don't receive them in the way you expected (e.g paying for rehab, then they leave)? are you refusing to hold them accountable for mistreating you bcuz they 'can't help it' or 'that's not them; it's the drugs'? are you expending massive amounts of resources you don't have on someone who doesn't want those resources? are you acquiescing to every request for resources, even when those requests are clearly shortsighted or unfair? do you have a vision of how your loved one Should live + are you harming yourself trying to actualize it?

some examples of boundaries i have which help with this, some of which might be considered enabling lol: i won't give money if i expect it back; if i give you money, i've already accepted i may never see it again. i won't use a substance with someone if they have a recent history of using it chaotically. i won't offer a substance to someone much younger than me if i know that it isn't already part of their regular substance patterns. i probably won't offer a substance with high dependency potential to someone if i know that it isn't already part of their regular substance patterns. i will make requests for my loved ones to be a certain level of sober at certain key moments (e.g driving me somewhere, an event, to be emotionally present with me).

there are a lot more + i have a lot more to say abt this + have been considering writing an essay abt this actually but i hope this helps!

[knockknockitsnickels]

hello. just wanted to tell you that you and @the-shifting-long's posts calling out the slay the princess fandom misogyny are very very appreciated. I won't deny that I feel more than slightly called out, and I won't attempt to refute your points here (even though I'm kinda inclined to). but seriously, thank you.

all that aside, does it count when you remind people how accountable the voices are when it comes to their own actions affecting the princess? e.g. nightmare isn't right in the actions she chooses to take, but paranoid started it by abandoning her etc.

I apologize for taking so long to respond, I wanted to answer as best as I could. This is a little complicated, and I'm sorry if I'm not fully understanding your point here. I'd say it's important to acknowledge that the Players'/Voices' actions do affect the Princess. Since you chose the example of Nightmare: I've seen a fair amount of analysis of her route which focuses exclusively on the Voices as victims of her, without ever exploring her character and why she acts the way she does. I think examining the way the Player's treatment of the Princess informs her behavior is a good first step to recognizing that she's a complex character instead of ignoring/villainizing her the way I was complaining about in the original post.

However, somewhat unrelated to the topic, I do also take a bit of issue with the example chosen here. I think some analyses of the Voices confuse Player action with Voice action. While characters like Paranoid and Cold may use first-person pronouns when referring to an action the Player did in a previous chapter, that's because they're considered a part of the Player, not because they're the ones who were responsible for said action. (Ex: If I choose to stab the Princess, that's my decision, not Cold's).

I think part of why this is important to recognize is that the reason the Voices assume the Player took a certain action may not reflect why they did so. For example: Say in chapter 1, I don't want to hurt the Princess, but I end up on the Witch route because I'm forced to stab her by the Narrator. I don't think I can analyze Opportunist solely with the mindset of "He was forced to stab the Princess and doesn't actually want to hurt her", because there are all sorts of paths which lead to getting him (and also his dialogue doesn't reflect this at all). I do think the personalities of the Voices are informed by the choices the Player makes, and this can make for some interesting analyses, however I think discussing them as though they're solely responsible for them gets a bit dicey.

[xparalynx]

Some anti-abuse paraphilia flags

!!tw: mention of abuse!! cw: mention of pedophilia and similar paraphilias

Beforehand I'll say the obvious: children can't consent and therefore the antt-abuse stance doesn't allow adults to engage with children in a sexual context.

As someone who experienced sexual abuse as a child, I know first-hand the trauma that such experiences can cause. My own experience, while not as extreme as others, left me traumatised and I am still effected today. It’s because of this that I feel so strongly about creating a space where we can address sensitive topics with both empathy and responsibility.

We should create the understanding that some attractions or feelings, such as those involving minors, can be incredibly difficult to process for those who experience them, especially with many people calling them monsters or predators for just experiencing attraction can lead to serious mental health issues including depression or even suicide. But just as we work to create support systems for those struggling with mental health issues, it’s crucial that we also address these feelings in a safe, healthy, and non-abusive way.

I do not condone harmful actions. Children must be protected, and abuse of any kind is unacceptable. That said, I believe that simply having these attractions does not make someone inherently evil or a monster, but rather a person who needs help, understanding, healing, and clear boundaries. People can be struggling with feelings they have no control over, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore the fact that acting on those feelings can easily cause harm.

Obviously people are individuals and in that not all people have the same struggles, experiences and thoughts meaning that while some people attracted to minors might

As I explained in a different post I'd like to propose the term minophilia instead of MAP since MAP seems like it want's to take the paraphilia name away from paraphilias related to minors but instead of doing that we should destigmatise and educate about paraphilias. Often Pedophilias is used is often used as a catch-all for attraction to minors, but technically, it refers only to prepubescent children. Other terms like Infantophilia (attraction towards babies), nepiophilia (attraction towards toddlers), hebephilia (attraction to early pubescent minors) and ephebophilia (attraction to mid-to-late adolescents) exist, but there isn't a widely used neutral term to describe all paraphilias related to minors where the term minophilia would be aplied.

I created the following flags and this conversation to highlight that we can acknowledge the complexities of these feelings without enabling harm. This is about showing care for those who are struggling, giving visibility to those who are the most stigmatised and demonised, while still maintaining clear boundaries to protect children and ensure responsibility. I hope these flags can serve as a symbol of ethical accountability, where people can express themselves responsibly without fear of stigma, while also emphasizing that harmful and abusive actions are never okay.

What is going on in one's mind, what fantasies they have, etc. is up to them alone. Having certain attractions or fantasies itself is not harmful. Acting on one's attraction through fiction or roleplay with consenting adults is not harmful. Fantasies should not be policed, what matters is how people act on their fantasies.

I also created the auto- versions which means being aroused by imagining oneself as a minor rather than being attracted to minors (one can be both tho). I myself am a autminophile as a result of my trauma from sexual abuse as a child. Since that can be a result of trauma I included trauma recovery in the meaning of the autominophilia flag. All other flags have the same meaining as the umbrella terms anti-abuse minophilia and anti-abuse autominophilia.

anti-abuse minophilia

anti-abuse autominophilia

anti-abuse infantophilia

anti-abuse autoinfantophilia

anti-abuse nepiophilia

anti-abuse autonepiophilia

anti-abuse pedophilia

anti-abuse autopedophilia

anti-abuse hebephilia

anti-abuse autohebephilia

anti-abuse ephebophilia

anti-abuse autoephebophilia

Note: Ephebophilia doesn't necessarily fall under the minophilia umbrella but it can be under it.

This is not radqueer.

To learn about my stance on the radqueer community click here.

[angelwinkteruhashi]

Hello there~!

:｡･:*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆｡･:*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆:

I'm Kokomi, It's a pleasure to meet all of you! I had heard this app was great for photography, so I decided to make an account! I hope I can get along with you all („• ᴗ •„)!

I'd love to get to know you all, so if you ever want to talk to me, please feel free to send in an ask! I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions (≧◡≦)!

:｡･:*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆｡･:*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆:

I don't have much to share, but here's a photo of the wonderful dessert I had today at Café Mami!

The Strawberries and Blueberries paired nicely with the Syrup they used, and the Pancakes themselves were thin, yet fluffy! If you're ever in Hidari Wakibara, I completely recommend stopping by~!

:｡･:*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆｡･:*:･ﾟ’★,｡･:*:･ﾟ’☆:

I can't wait to meet all of you~!

((OOC + Rules below the cut))

Howdy, I'm Gray (he/they)! I'll Try to keep this short since I don't like going out-of-character on rp blogs-

This is a Canon-Accurate (as much as I can be) blog for Teruhashi! It's also a bit of an excuse to get me better at writing her lol ^^'

Basic Rundown:

• This is a sideblog, I follow from @twosidedcherrytrees!

• I RP with anyone, even multiple blogs of the same Muse or someone from a completely different franchise! Just be sure to send me a DM beforehand if I havent reached out to you first lol-

• When I'm talking Out of Character, I'll do so like ((this))!

• Despite Teruhashi being from a show about Psychic abilities and reading people's mind, I don't write her inner thoughts as I view this as how she would interact with Tumblr if she was actually a real person. The only exception to this is if our RP involves talking and writing in 3rd person.

• Any Important tags will be featured in my blog's search function until I make a post specifically for tags (which will probably take a minute but I will keep you updated on when I do!)

• Any and all art I use are either free to use, from an anime, or is drawn by me! I have a strong stance against the use of AI and art theft, so if I ever make a mistake and post art that's either AI or made for noncommercial use, please don't hesitate to let me know!

Rules:

• Just as a warning- Teruhashi does have an older brother who is, in the show, romantically interested in her. She does not feel the same way in canon, nor does she here. Whenever anything related to that comes up, which I will only bring up if the person I'm RPing with does, I will be sure to tag appropriately. Please do not hesitate to block me if this makes you uncomfortable, as I completely understand why it would.

• I try my best to keep Teruhashi as accurate as possible, but I'm but a man and am likely going to make mistakes! In cases like that uh. Avert your eyes if I change entire points of posts cuz I made an oopsy lmao- I will just roll with it if I make a mistake like that during an active RP though, so don't worry about me changing my wording or even entire sentence mid-response!

• No NSFW at all, please! I'm an adult, but my Muse isn't. So nothing sexual. Flirting is okay but I should make it known that my current goal for Teruhashi is for her to realize she's Aroace and then come out as such.

• Any type of Homophobia, Transphobia, Ableism or Racism is not allowed here. If you're any of those, do not interact with me, thank you.

• Don't spam the same question over and over please! I appreciate your excitement but after a certain point it just seems draining for both parties lol

• Don't send any asks trying to push your own headcanons onto Teruhashi! You can definitely ask if she does something, and a solid 7/10 times I'll just incorporate it into my headcanons for her and go with it, but I'd prefer if they were not told to me like I have to follow them

• Magic Anons are allowed, but try to keep them from being too complicated! I don't typically do magic anons, so also be sure to tell me if I'm doing it wrong lmao

• You don't have to follow any specific plot-point that's currently going on in Teruhashi's blog! Any story beats with different Muns/Groups will be tagged as something different. As of now the only rp tag im using for that is #PK Academy AU , but if you don't want to follow those plot points let me know, and I'll use a different tag to differentiate the uh... timelines? Ig? The different RP plots

• If we're RPing together, I'd prefer if your character didn't somehow know everything there is to know about Teruhashi. Unless your character can actively read her mind, or has another canon reason for why they'd know her inner thoughts and feelings besides what she shows outwardly, please don't god-mod it (T v T). If your character does have a reason to know, please DM me to tell me!

• The previous rule does not apply to her immense beauty as honestly that doesn't seem fun to write or rp. Ignore that ability all you want lmao, honestly she needs people who won't see her for nothing but her looks.

• I'll try to match both how much you write and which way you RP. For instance, if you typically write in 3rd person and go a more general RP, I'll do the same! If you RP like your muse is a real user talking to someone on Tumblr, I'll do the same, too! Just be sure to let me know before-hand, either via DM or just starting the interaction lmao

Final notes:

I'm happy to be here and meet you all! I'm pretty new to the general ask blog etiquette, I've only really been on Pokéblr before, so let me know if I do anything rude on accident! With that, I hope we can all get along, and thank you for reading!