#because these people are so supportive of every single artist on there and so aware of their responsibility as well

[all-chickens-are-trans]

my friends, do you have an apple tv + account and now that ted lasso is over, you don't know what to do with it? do you, like me, yearn to be a cowboy, but every time you stare at your gay cowboycore playlist, you don't know what to put on it? are you in love with orville peck? do you want to be?

my friends, do I have the show for you. go watch My Kind Of Country. It's got everything: country singers from india, mexico, south africa, the congo. black country singers. artists who combine country with their heritage and music from their homes. gays and theys. a pretty Indian guy sings a cover of Bad Guy so masterfully you'll forget who billie eilish even is. there's a moment of immense personal growth where two hippie women convince a guy to take his shoes off. Reese Witherspoon is there. honestly go watch this thing

[mdzsartreblogs]

Recognizing AI Generated Images, Danmei Edition

Heyo, @unforth here! I run some danmei art blogs (@mdzsartreblogs, @tgcfartreblogs, @svsssartreblogs, @zhenhunartreblogs, @erhaartreblogs, @dmbjartreblogs, @tykartreblogs, and @cnovelartreblogs) which means I see a LOT of danmei art, and I go through the main fandom tags more-or-less every day.

Today, for the first time, I spotted someone posting AI-generated images (I refuse to call them AI "art" - and to be clear, that's correct of me, because at least in the US it literally LEGALLY isn't art) without any label indicating they were AI generated. I am not necessarily against the existence of AI-generated images (though really...considering all the legal issues and the risks of misuse, I'm basically against them); I think they potentially have uses in certain contexts (such as for making references) and I also think that regardless of our opinions, we're stuck with them, but they're also clearly not art and I don't reblog them to the art side blogs.

The images I spotted today had multiple "tells," but they were still accumulating notes, and I thought it might be a good moment to step back and point out some of the more obvious tells because my sense is that a LOT of people are against AI-generated images being treated as art, and that these people wouldn't want to support an AI-generator user who tried to foist off their work as actual artwork, but that people don't actually necessarily know how to IDENTIFY those works and therefore can inadvertently reblog works that they'd never support if they were correctly identified. (Similar to how the person who reposts and says "credit to the artist" is an asshole but they're not the same as someone who reposts without any credit at all and goes out of their way to make it look like they ARE the artist when they're not).

Toward that end, I've downloaded all the images I spotted on this person's account and I'm going to use them to highlight the things that led me to think they were AI art - they posted a total of 5 images to a few major danmei tags the last couple days, and several other images not to specific fandoms (I examined 8 images total). The first couple I was suspicious, but it wasn't til this morning that I spotted one so obvious that it couldn't be anything BUT AI art. I am NOT going to name the person who did this. The purpose of this post is purely educational. I have no interest whatsoever in bullying one rando. Please don't try to identify them; who they are is genuinely irrelevant, what matters is learning how to recognize AI art in general and not spreading it around, just like the goal of education about reposting is to help make sure that people who repost don't get notes on their theft, to help people recognize the signs so that the incentive to be dishonest about this stuff is removed.

But first: Why is treating AI-generated images as art bad?

I'm no expert and this won't be exhaustive, but I do think it's important to first discuss why this matters.

On the surface, it's PERHAPS harmless for someone to post AI-generated images provided that the image is clearly labeled as AI-generated. I say "perhaps" because in the end, as far as I'm aware, there isn't a single AI-generation engine that's built on legally-sourced artwork. Every AI (again, to the best of my knowledge) has been trained using copyrighted images usually without the permission of the artists. Indeed, this is the source of multiple current lawsuits. (and another)

But putting that aside (as if it can be put aside that AI image generators are literally unethically built), it's still problematic to support the images being treated as art. Artists spend thousands of hours learning their craft, honing it, sharing their creations, building their audiences. This is what they sell when they offer commissions, prints, etc. This can never be replicated by a computer, and to treat an AI-generated image as in any way equivalent is honestly rude, inappropriate, disgusting imo. This isn't "harmless"; supporting AI image creation engines is damaging to real people and their actual livelihoods. Like, the images might be beautiful, but they're not art. I'm honestly dreading someone managing to convince fandom that their AI-generated works are actual art, and then cashing in on commissions, prints, etc., because people can't be fussed to learn the difference. We really can't let this happen, guys. Fanartists are one of the most vibrant, important, prominent groups in all our fandoms, and we have to support them and do our part to protect them.

As if those two points aren't enough, there's already growing evidence that AI-generated works are being used to further propagandists. There are false images circulating of violence at protests, deep-fakes of various kinds that are helping the worst elements of society to push their horrid agendas. As long as that's a facet of AI-generated works, they'll always be dangerous.

I could go on, but really this isn't the main point of my post and I don't want to get bogged down. Other people have said more eloquently than I why AI-generated images are bad. Read those. (I tried to find a good one to link but sadly failed; if anyone knows a good post, feel free to send it and I'll add the link to the post).

Basically: I think a legally trained AI-image generator that had built-in clear watermarks could be a fun toy for people who want reference images or just to play with making pseudo-art. But...that's not what we have, and what we do have is built on theft and supports dystopia so, uh. Yeah fuck AI-generated images.

How to recognize AI-Generated Images Made in an Eastern Danmei Art Style

NOTE: I LEARNED ALL THE BASIC ON SPOTTING AI-GENERATED IMAGES FROM THIS POST. I'll own I still kinda had the wool over my eyes until I read that post - I knew AI stuff was out there but I hadn't really looked closely enough to have my eyes open for specific signs. Reading that entire post taught me a lot, and what I learned is the foundation of this post.

This post shouldn't be treated as a universal guide. I'm specifically looking at the tells on the kind of art that people in danmei fandoms often see coming from Weibo and other Chinese, Japanese, and Korean platforms, works made by real artists. For example, the work of Foxking (狐狸大王a), kokirapsd, and Changyang (who is an official artist for MDZS, TGCF, and other danmei works). This work shares a smooth use of color, an aim toward a certain flavor of realism, an ethereal quality to the lighting, and many other features. (Disclaimer: I am not an artist. Putting things in arty terms is really not my forte. Sorry.)

So, that's what these AI-generated images are emulating. And on the surface, they look good! Like...

...that's uncontestably a pretty picture (the white box is covering the "artist's" watermark.) And on a glance, it doesn't necessarily scream "AI generated"! But the devil is in the details, and the details are what this post is about. And that picture? Is definitely AI generated.

This post is based on 8 works I grabbed from a single person's account, all posted as their own work and watermarked as such. Some of the things that are giveaways only really show when looking at multiple pieces. I'm gonna start with those, and then I'll highlight some of the specifics I spotted that caused me to go from "suspicious" to "oh yeah no these are definitely not art."

Sign 1: all the images are the exact same size. I mean, to the pixel: 512 x 682 pixels (or 682 x 512, depending on landscape or portrait orientation). This makes zero sense. Why would an artist trim all their pieces to that size? It's not the ideal Tumblr display size (that's 500 x 750 pixels). If you check any actual artist's page and look at the full-size of several of their images, they'll all be different sizes as they trimmed, refined, and otherwise targeted around their original canvas size to get the results they wanted.

Sign 2: pixelated. At the shrunken size displayed on, say, a mobile Tumblr feed, the image looks fine, but even just opening the full size upload, the whole thing is pixelated. Now, this is probably the least useful sign; a lot of artists reduce the resolution/dpi/etc. on their uploaded works so that people don't steal them. But, taken in conjunction with everything else, it's definitely a sign.

Those are the two most obvious overall things - the things I didn't notice until I looked at all the uploads. The specifics are really what tells, though. Which leads to...

Sign 3: the overall work appears to have a very high degree of polish, as if it were made by an artist who really really knows what they're doing, but on inspection - sometimes even on really, REALLY cursory inspect - the details make zero sense and reflect the kinds of mistakes that a real artist would never make.

So, here's the image that I saw that "gave it away" to me, and caused me to re-examine the images that had first struck me as off but that I hadn't been able to immediately put my finger on the problem. I've circled some of the spots that are flagrant.

Do you see yet? Yes? Awesome, you're getting it. No? Okay, let's go point by point, with close ups.

Sign 4: HANDS. Hands are currently AI's biggest weakness, though they've been getting better quickly and honestly that's terrifying. But whatever AI generated this picture clearly doesn't get hands yet, because that hand is truly an eldritch horror. Look at this thing:

It has two palms. It has seven fingers. It's basically two hands overlaid over each other, except one of those hands only has four fingers and the other has three. Seeing this hand was how I went from "umm...maybe they're fake? Maybe they're not???" to "oh god why is ANYONE reblogging this when it's this obvious?" WATCH THE HANDS. (Go back up to that first one posted and look at the hand, you'll see. Or just look right below at this crop.) Here's some other hands:

Sign 5: Hair and shadows. Once I started inspecting these images, the shadows of the hair on the face was one of the things that was most consistently fucked up across all the uploaded pictures. Take a look:

There's shadows of tendrils on the forehead, but there's no corresponding hair that could possibly have made those shadows. Likewise there's a whole bunch of shadows on the cheeks. Where are those coming from? There's no possible source in the rest of the image. Here's some other hair with unrelated wonky shadows:

Sign 6: Decorative motifs that are really just meaningless squiggles. Like, artists, especially those who make fanart, put actual thought into what the small motifs are on their works. Like, in TGCF, an artist will often use a butterfly motif or a flower petal motif to reflect things about the characters. An AI, though, can only approximate a pattern and it can't imbue those with meanings. So you end up with this:

What is that? It's nothing, that's what. It's a bunch of squiggles. Here's some other meaningless squiggle motifs (and a more zoomed-in version of the one just above):

Sign 7: closely related to meaningless squiggle motifs is motifs that DO look like something, but aren't followed through in any way that makes sense. For example, an outer garment where the motifs on the left and the right shoulder/chest are completely different, or a piece of cloth that's supposed to be all one piece but that that has different patterns on different sections of it. Both of these happen in the example piece, see?

The first images on the top left is the left and right shoulder side by side. The right side has a scalloped edge; the left doesn't. Likewise, in the right top picture, you can see the two under-robe lapels; one has a gold decoration and the other doesn't. And then the third/bottom image shows three sections of the veil. One (on the left) has that kind of blue arcy decoration, which doesn't follow the folds of the cloth very well and looks weird and appears at one point to be OVER the hair instead of behind it. The second, on top of the bottom images, shows a similar motif, except now it's gold, and it looks more like a hair decoration than like part of the veil. The third is also part of the same veil but it has no decorations at all. Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever. Why would any artist intentionally do it that way? Or, more specifically, why would any artist who has this apparent level of technical skill ever make a mistake like this?

They wouldn't.

Some more nonsensical patterns, bad mirrors, etc. (I often put left/right shoulders side by side so that it'd be clearer, sorry if it's weird):

Sign 8: bizarre architecture, weird furniture, etc. Most of the images I'm examining for this post have only partial backgrounds, so it's hard to really focus on this, but it's something that the post I linked (this one) talks about a lot. So, like, an artist will put actual thought into how their construction works, but an AI won't because an AI can't. There's no background in my main example image, but take a look at this from another of my images:

On a glance it's beautiful. On a few seconds actually staring it's just fucking bizarre. The part of the ceiling on the right appears to be domed maybe? But then there's a hard angle, then another. The windows on the right have lots of panes, but then the one on the middle-left is just a single panel, and the ones on the far left have a complete different pane model. Meanwhile, also on the left side at the middle, there's that dark gray...something...with an arch that mimics the background arches except it goes no where, connects to nothing, and has no apparent relationship to anything else going on architecturally. And, while the ceiling curves, the back wall is straight AND shows more arches in the background even though the ceiling looks to end. And yes, some of this is possible architecture, but taken as a whole, it's just gibberish. Why would anyone who paints THAT WELL paint a building to look like THAT? They wouldn't. It's nonsense. It's the art equivalent of word salad. When we look at a sentence and it's like "dog makes a rhythmical salad to betray on the frame time plot" it almost resembles something that might mean something but it's clearly nonsense. This background is that sentence, as art.

Sign 9: all kinds of little things that make zero sense. In the example image, I circled where a section of the hair goes BELOW the inner robe. That's not impossible but it just makes zero sense. As with many of these, it's the kind of thing that taken alone, I'd probably just think "well, that was A Choice," but combined with all the other weird things it stands out as another sign that something here is really, really off. Here's a collection of similar "wtf?" moments I spotted across the images I looked at (I'm worried I'm gonna hit the Tumblr image cap, hence throwing these all in one, lol.)

You have to remember that an actual artist will do things for a reason. And we, as viewers, are so used to viewing art with that in mind that we often fill in reasons even when there aren't. Like, in the image just about this, I said, "what the heck are these flowers growing on?" And honestly, I COULD come up with explanations. But that doesn't mean it actually makes sense, and there's no REASON for it whatsoever. The theoretical same flowers are, in a different shot, growing unsupported! So...what gives??? The answer is nothing gives. Because these pieces are nothing. The AI has no reason, it's just tossing in random aesthetic pieces together in a mishmash, and the person who generated them is just re-generating and refining until they get something that looks "close enough" to what they wanted. It never was supposed to make sense, so of course it doesn't.

In conclusion...

After years of effort, artists have gotten across to most of fandom that reposts are bad, and helped us learn strategies for helping us recognize reposts, and given us an idea of what to do when we find one.

Fandom is just at the beginning of this process as it applies to AI-generated images. There's a LOT of education that has to be done - about why AI-generated images are bad (the unethical training using copyrighted images without permission is, imo, critical to understanding this), and about how to spot them, and then finally about what to do when you DO find them.

With reposts, we know "tell original artist, DCMA takedowns, etc." That's not the same with these AI-images. There's no original owner. There's no owner at all - in the US, at least, they literally cannot be copyrighted. Which is why I'm not even worrying about "credit" on this post - there's nothing stolen, cause there's nothing made. So what should you do?

Nothing. The answer is, just as the creator has essentially done nothing, you should also do nothing. Don't engage. Don't reblog. Don't commission the creator or buy their art prints. If they do it persistently and it bothers you, block them. If you see one you really like, and decide to reblog it, fine, go for it, but mark it clearly - put in the ACTUAL COMMENTS (not just in the tags!) that it's AI art, and that you thought it was pretty anyway. But honestly, it'd be better to not engage, especially since as this grows it's inevitable that some actual artists are going to start getting accused of posting AI-generated images by over-zealous people. Everyone who gets a shadow wrong isn't posting AI-generated images. A lot of these details are insanely difficult to get correct, and lots of even very skilled, accomplished artists, if you go over their work with a magnifying glass you're going to find at least some of these things, some weirdnesses that make no sense, some shadows that are off, some fingers that are just ugh (really, getting hands wrong is so relatable. hands are the fucking worst). It's not about "this is bad art/not art because the hand is wrong," it's specifically about the ways that it's wrong, the way a computer randomly throws pieces together versus how actual people make actual mistakes. It's all of the little signs taken as a whole to say "no one who could produce a piece that, on the surface, looks this nice, could possibly make THIS MANY small 'mistakes.'"

The absolute best thing you can do if you see AI-generated images being treated as real art is just nothing. Support actual artists you love, and don't spread the fakes.

Thanks for your time, everyone. Good luck avoiding AI-generated pieces in the future, please signal boost this, and feel free to get in touch if you think I can help you with anything related to this.

[thatfeelinwhenyou]

i didn't want to bring this up on my page because i didn't want the negativity to affect my readers who are just here to have a good time. but awareness needs to be spread.

admist the chaos of sasaengs not knowing how to respect enhypen's space, i would like to reiterate that enhypen is not my, yours, or anybody's plaything. the audacity of some fans to think that sitting beside them on the plane, or calling them repeatedly over and over again at 2am will magically make them fall in love with you is crazy. get a grip. the boys are already enduring so so so much, heck we all know they have nothing but genuine love and respect for their fans. the least we can do as fans is to respect their basic human rights.

it irks me to my core to see every single fancall/fansign interaction to be along the lines of pretending they're your boyfriend. fym you want them to praise you like a dog? what good did you do anyway? have some fucking respect, not only for them but yourself. the lack of appreciation for enhypen as artists is unfathomable. its always about how handsome or boyfriend material they are but never how talented and amazing these seven boys are at what they do. it just never ceases to surprise me when people don’t talk about their artistry and stage presence. it's to the point other fandoms know them as the "fan service group". fuck. these boys are more than your vampire boyfriend… yes i write AUs but i don’t expect myself to be dating any of them?? if anyone doesn't agree with this (for some unworldly reason), feel free to unfollow me.

if you have time, i urge yall to go on the X. there's a bunch of xhs and weibo accounts that you can report for appalling sasaeng behaviour towards enhypen. enhypen support is also mass emailing belift to get their shit together, pls pls pls do so too if you're capable!

[next-station-willde-central]

Something about Nine makes me sad and happy at the same time - he's an artist; he did his own grafittis, to be exact, and that's yet another thing that differentiates him from Tails, that, as I'm aware, isn't really skilled in spraypainting

"Wait, Wild, aren't you just projecting headcanons onto your favourite character?" - nope. The proof is in his original New Yoke base:

"Oh, but it's just the creators 'prolly drawing him and placing it as a treat" - then how, in-universe, did it appear there? And why is it a drawing of Nine specifically (notice he's shown in his hoodie and off-coloured), alongside a gun (?) and, I assume, some spray tests, just like people test brushes and paints? No one else had access to his base other than Nine himself, and knowing how distrustful he is, he would not let some random street artist barge into his lair and do his portrait on the wall.

What further supports this theory is the fact he has the same drawings in the Grim... which, again, could not be accessed by anyone other than him (by the way, it seems like all the paintings were made on a movable board that Nine must've carried all the way from New Yoke, which still, why would you move THOSE DRAWINGS in particular if you weren't the author that's, I'd even say, proud of them?).

Annndddd let's also not forget the board has a drawing of a gun, like aformentioned - the same one he used to scan Sonic... is that a coincidence? I really, really don't think so.

On the ending note(s), can we talk about how he even picks colors and how he portrays himself? Because in the drawing of himself, he seems sharper and more vibrant (f.e.: his fur is phosphorescent lime-yellow, or his muzzle is literally cyan), with a bitching expression ever more amplified by the shadows around his face and a black hoodie, like he even WANTS to be viewed, even in his private home, in interior no one should even see, in a simple spray doodle, as someone dangerous, someone you would never want to cross paths with, someone shady and a little bit of not obvious (that part refers to the absolutely eyesore colours he used; unless Nine is just colorblind and doesn't know how that drawing appears to most people, buut that's more of a big speculation-theory territory that we do not get into in this post).

Second ending, it also further proves that Nine is not really Tails - sure, in the New Yoke universe he does fill the niche of being Miles Prower, same as Mangey does in Boscage Maze and Sails in No Place, but in this equation Nine =/= Tails (and some, like me, would say Nine > Tails, but we call those horrid phases opinions and we keep them under our pillows /lh). They share the basics - being super-intelligent, young foxes skilled in mechanics, inventors bullied for their two tails that overcame hardships due to their determination - but aside from that? The skeleton is identical, but everything else that's bulit upon it is completely different - this is why they aren't really the same person. Tails is a prodigy kid and a hero, accompanied by friends and a team ready to help him, and Nine is an isolated and ostracized anarchist basement dweller driven by anxiety and childhood trauma that also happens to be an artist. And a hacker. And a suprisingly good fighter. And-

And a person with his own identity - imagine stripping away his every single original trait and comparing him to a random kid that's also a "better", more successful version of him that actually won in the end.

A kid that's super great, but can the kid do those amazing grafittis like him? Nah. 1:0 for Nine, losahs' /j

--

tldr; Nine can actually spraypaint and he's good at it, as seen in his New Yoke lab/in Grim - the way he does it kind of tells his personality and thoughts; also further proves Tails and Nine are two different people and that Nine is just occupying Tails' "niche" in his Shatterverse, not directly being him

[bettsfic]

I have a fear of including things I like in my stories. For example: Female rage, romance, etc… because I feel that makes me inflexible and a less talented writer. I’ve always felt like “real” writers can write in any genre and don’t have the same elements in every one of their novels. The idea of writing what you love is a beautiful thing but for me I worry that in writing what I love, I may not get to the level that I want to be at as a writer. I guess I equate enjoying writing and being free with it to = not being worthy. And being complex in ways that I may not necessarily love and is challenging = good work from me.

is it possible that some of your apprehension toward writing what you love has to do with fear of vulnerability? writing what you love exposes you. it feels like walking around naked. it allows people to perceive you, and conversely, it allows people to misperceive you. both of those things are terrifying. it's much more comfortable to catch a wide, distant net of an aesthetic. that way, it doesn't matter what a reader thinks of it; you don't care that much about it anyway, right?

it's interesting that you say "real" writers can write in any genre. i'm looking at my bookshelf right now and there's not a single author on it that goes beyond their established genre, or even writes particularly varying stories with an ensemble of complex characters. go to the bibliography of any prolific author and see how wide their variation is. sometimes you'll see writers write in short form and long form. occasionally a writer will write children's literature and adult literature. there are writers who live in the venn diagram overlap of genres but don't tend to stray in either direction. sometimes screenwriters become novelists and vice versa. but otherwise, it's impractical to write so widely, so consistently. your agent and editors will all have their niche and it will be difficult for them to represent you and support your work if you have three sci fi bestsellers and all of a sudden you want to write some subsubsubgenre of true crime.

every artist has two things: their medium and their subject. instead of thinking of "things you love" think of them as your subjects, in the way a painter's subject can be nature, or a poet's subject can be grief. unless you're only writing for money, you have no choice but to write your subjects. even if you try not to, they'll bleed into your work. here's an example: one time in workshop my good buddy Chris said to me, "you write a lot about class." to which i thought, i love you Chris but this is porn. but he was right. all my characters have a conflict with money. often they're blue collar workers or don't have a job at all. most of my characters don't even go to college. after he said that, i started to lean into it and become more aware of it. the more aware of it i became, the more strongly i felt about it. you can go through my AO3 and scroll through my fics and see how important money is in them. and if it's not money, it's the military. and if it's not the military, it's some other loss of bodily autonomy at the hands of a greater institution.

think outside of writing. chefs have types of food they prefer to cook. scholars have their fields. athletes have their sport. musicians have their instrument. the more you zero in on something, the better you become at it. as a writer, the more you write your subject, the better you'll become at depicting it.

your subjects may grow and change over time. they may not. you may have some subjects you wear out, and you may have others that you sew into everything you write. you may have repetitions of images, characters, resolutions, and conflicts. it's good to experiment and move beyond your comfort zone sometimes, but you have to find comfort in your comfort zone first. and you do that by embracing your subjects.

[eekonis]

What shelby went through is horrible. There's no other way to say it. She deserves the world for speaking her truth and through that, raising awareness in others who are going through similar situations. It's a very black and white situation and i do not get how anyone could defend her abuser with the knowledge of the horrible things he did.

I'm shocked that a person i felt i could trust to be a somewhat honest representation of themselves, turned out to be the exact opposite. I feel so betrayed for investing a majority of my time and artistic energy for the last 3 years into her abuser. I pour my blood, sweat and tears are into my fanarts and evolved so much since i started watching dsmp. I'll keep the past fanarts up because they show my artistic journey inside of a wonderful community of other highly talented creative people.

However, i won't draw any more art involving Wilbur. Every video of him feels like i'm being lied to my face. All of it a fascade. There was a trust once, which he betrayed in every single one of us, that in my eyes can never be restored.

Lets support shelby, thank you and goodnight.

[intersectionalpraxis]

from a feminist perspective, what do you think when isnotreal women post garbage like this? https://www.tumblr.com/anneemay/736470687414386688

and also about how taylor swift has been silent on everything but last night I saw a tweet that she was seen going to one of ramy youssef's shows and all proceeds would go to gaza humanitarian relief? a bunch of isnotreal girls were freaking out and saying things like 'I don't see it!' and 'she's hopefully just pro-peace and not against us!' and 'some people are pro-isnotreal but just feel bad for palestine'. I would think as the time person of the year (lol the gazan journalists and doctors deserve it) with a lot of influence, she should speak up? when she told everyone to vote, there was a huge surge in voter registration. not to give her more power than she has because she obviously can't influence policy but if she were to join the ceasefire demands, it would bring out even more support and put more pressure. idk! just wanted to hear your thoughts on these topics if you have the bandwidth to do so!

I really do not know how much more depraved settlers can get, and I'm continually reminded it get can get lower and lower each time I see something like this:

From slut shaming a Palestinian women when an IOF soldier found her lingerie in her OWN fucking room that they were raiding, to an IOF soldier happily destroying a small stationery shop, to another IOF scum stealing a Palestinian woman's silver necklace he looted (a necklace that was supposed to be worn on her wedding day, but she was killed in an attack) in order to give it to his own girlfriend...

I just... the layers of indoctrination here is incredibly evident (I actually intend to post something about this in the near future) as one element, because you cannot do something or say something like this without being void of humanity -and also, without being so deeply ingrained in this notion that Palestinian people are not human beings -and that by degrading, humiliating, and dehumanizing them in ways like this will somehow justify the violence, terror, and genocide the IOF is committing... it's just so wild to me.

Because the IOF is continuing to commit heinous war crimes, crimes against humanity, and has and will continue to disproportionately commit sexual violence against Palestinian women and young boys, and it is absolutely inhumane and despicable -and the fact that this person thinks the IOF has a 'good' reputation -is absolutely next level shamelessness. My stance has and always will be if you're a 'feminist' who supports the IOF, you're not a feminist -you're a genocidal apologist like the rest of those sympathetic to IOF crimes.

As for Taylor Swift, like her fellow celebrities -and every single one of them that signed that document in support of the IOF, including those who have been and remain silent -they are all complicit. A part from saying celebrity culture needs to be dismantled and diminished because why -like why are these people put on pedestals is one thing, but also -if you have to do go through mental gymnastics to defend that silence or complicity (like fans of Selena Gomez did), I need people to critically reflect A LOT more. And that if your fan base is more concerned about your 'side' rather than a ceasefire... then I think the people who need to be calling this out especially are Swifties themselves -and to acknowledge that this is an issue. Just like how Taylor Swift for YEARS made bank fully well knowing white supremacists LOVED her -and only being more 'socially aware' when she could monetize it has also never sat well with me.

There are SO many voices encouraging people to vote, to get involved in their communities and to raise awareness about social issues (a lot of whom are Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists and creators -so many of which get backlash a lot more than their white colleagues do), so even with her platform, I think she's always going to be motivated by what will make her money and will appease the people she works for (which, I want to assume as pro-IOF).

And even if she was supportive [like morally knows what the IOF is doing is criminal, violent, and unethical] but is not vocal about it, I think it's important we stop putting our energies into getting celebrities and influencers like her to talk about this (especially given her track record). Generally speaking, I would prefer to elevate Palestinian voices and activists like so many have already (like Hind, Motaz, Muhammad, Bisan, Plestia, and many more) than people like her. I do understand why people with millions of 'followers,' are powerful -they are (like Kehlani for instance -and I love this woman with my whole heart because she has been very open about supporting Palestine); but the one's who aren't transparent -they are also millionaires/billionaires who have social and financial capital in ways that are beyond excessive and I do not believe any one of them will speak on Historic Palestine if they haven't from the start or haven't already and addressed the reasons as to why, especially given the US's position -which is that the IOF has a right to 'defend itself.'

So I say support the artists and people who have been aligned with Palestine since the beginning, and to be wary of the people who have remained silent -and to boycott and call out the people who are complicit in this genocide. I know that this was an incredibly long response, but at the heart of it -I don't like or trust Taylor Swift. And I am amazed every single time I see her fans run to her defense (I know there are exceptions, which I respect), but at the end of the day she's a celebrity/an entertainer, and she will capitalize and monetize on 'feminist' or 'social justice' issues when it can be sanitized and watered down in a way that is not 'too political,' but makes a statement -so that it can still sell records and sell out stadiums.

I posted a video recently where a creator on tiktok called Taylor Swift out and The Times, if I can link it here I will as well.

Thank you so much for your questions, and if you have any remaining feedback or insights, please do not hesitate to send another message.

[kanmom51]

This is not written to or about you. In your mind's voice please read it as I am speaking to and about the people who have written some excited rants. I like your site a lot and like your perspectives on JiKook topics. I am hoping, if nothing else, it might inspire a conversation for you. I wasn't sure where to share it since I am new to Tumblr and really don't plan to be a big poster.

================The thoughts==============

Some 'fans' and foes are losing their minds over Jimin participating in a song as a feature artist that has multiple performers, one of whom has - according to the conversations - done horrible things and has a bad reputation. However, many of these same people were not as concerned about Jungkook who performed in Qatar that has huge human rights violations and controversies. Qatar has been doing this for much longer and harming many more groups of people. The information is easy to research. Yet these same people and others have no problem supporting a KPop industry that exploits underage people with excessive work and sexual behavior. The very industry they support has had its own sexual abuse scandals and unfortunate suicide incidents, but yet they are now out of sorts about supporting Jimin with this song. I'm not in any way defending the rapper, if the information is confirmed to be true, and I am not saying it wouldn't be wise for Jimin to be aware of who he is working with, but he likely recorded a song in an isolated studio and didn't even meet the performers he was singing with. He would not work in this industry if he based his choices on only working with saintly people who never did wrong things or only behaved in ways that were perfect. As an aside, I don't know the personal behaviors of any of the other people on the song. I just don't understand the hypocrisy and the emotional tantrums people are having without thinking through information, much less looking at their own lives to see if they would have trouble being held to the same standards they hold BTS, but apparently Jimin in particular, to. If you are not who I am referring to with the descriptions above, feel free to disregard these thoughts. No need to be offended if you are not anyone referenced here.

Thanks for your time, Kanmom51. Keep up the good work.

I'm actually with you on this one @jimin-bangtan .

The hypocrisy in this fandom hits me every single time.

Let's start With Kodak Black why don't we?

Born 1997, now 25 yo man. Not without controversy around him, he has been involved in several illegalities in the past.

I will say this and be loud and clear: KB is NOT a nice person.

He's been involved in drug and illegal arms offenses and beyond the charges I will talk about below, the reason people are up in arms about the collab, he has been said to get rough with women. In my books he's a douche, and if he ever raises his hand at a woman he needs to pay the price for it. Period.

But the main issue that has people upset about is his rape charges. people screaming about how can JM be collaborating with a rapist.

So, let's make one thing clear here.

KB IS NOT A CONVICTED RAPIST.

Plain and simple.

Well not so simple, because the legal system (law) and justice are two different things, at times intertwine and at times travel on parallel lines that never meet.

It actually goes both ways - people that literally get away with murder on the one hand and innocent people that have their lives ruined by wrongfully charged or convicted on the other.

But the legal system, as flawed as it is, is what we have.

Why this long winded explanation?

Well because KB was accused he raped a high school student in Feb 2016. He was charged for it in October 2017.

But 5 years later the prosecution reached a plea deal with him, the sex offenses were dropped (not even being accused of statutory rape, which is having consensual sex with a minor) and he was convicted of assault and battery and received a suspended sentence and probation.

I know this feels a little technical, but it is super important to make these distinctions. He was accused of rape but not convicted of it.

It is what it is.

He is a douche but he is not a convicted sex offender douche.

And if we are already talking about douches and problematic musicians, it's funny how everyone seems to wake up with these complaints and criticism when it involves JM.

Why is that? I ask myself.

Where were those people when Hobi was collabing with Crush? Where were they when BTS collabed with Snoop Dogg? Do I even bring up all the scandals he was involved in?

The above mentioned is merely an example of some of Snoop Dogg's issues.

Nothing, silence, you could hear a pin fall. Well, actually, not really. Because of all of the cheers and screams of joy that were heard when that collab was announced. Funny. Or not really.

And let's think about the examples in this ask why don't we?

JK doing the song for the Qatar games, well that didn't go without scrutiny. There were voices of criticism sounded, but those voices pretty much died down and at the end of the day, the song and JK as well, received the full support from the fandom.

And the K-pop industry?

"Yet these same people and others have no problem supporting a KPop industry that exploits underage people with excessive work and sexual behavior. The very industry they support has had its own sexual abuse scandals and unfortunate suicide incidents, but yet they are now out of sorts about supporting Jimin with this song."

Say it louder for the people in the back!!!

YG just announced their new girl group. Guess how old the youngest member is?

13 yo.

13

As much as that is a favourite Jikook number, it sure isn't an appropriate age for a child to debut with a girl group in an industry that sexualises young girls the way it does. And it's not that the others are much older either.

Cookie someone?

So yeah, we all need to be conscious of our choices. Who we listen to, where our money goes, who and what we support. And it's ok to criticise our faves, I'd even go as far as to say it's our duty to do so. But a. it's a case to case basis, meaning circumstances matter (which means what the level of involvement is with that person, for example); and b. let's not be hypocrites here. Let's not have double standards. If we feel it's wrong to collab with a problematic rapper, that standard applies not only to JM but to every other member of the band and the band as a whole.

Period.

[nyaagolor]

Pride Month Headcanons

It's about time I organized these. Under the readmore bc I have a lot to say

- Salvatore and his wife are bi4bi. More accurately, his wife is bi and Salvatore isn’t putting a label on it because while he thinks he’s bisexual his only real world experiences with men are a single makeout session in a Lumiose club during a language immersion trip and lingering too long on some Instagram models’ posts about their abs. If you ask him about it he will not say he��s bisexual bc doesn't need anyone other than his wife, but he’s pretty sure he’s bi in his heart

- Hassel and Brassius have been together for almost 30 years but aren’t officially married. For a variety of reasons, mostly centering around Hassel’s family being a possible threat to Brassius’ safety, they decided to just keep it on the DL. They live together and are for all intents and purposes married, but never actually signed the paperwork. When people ask, especially strangers, they refer to each other as artistic partners or close friends, but anyone who knows them well is well aware they’re husbands. Most people assume they got officially married, and when the school finds out they beg the two to have a ceremony, even if they don’t sign the paperwork. Tbh I could prolly make a whole post on just them (and prolly will)

- Dendra is a lesbian, she‘s had a crush on Tulip for YEARS. Despite her usual extroverted and confident attitude she never confessed and has no idea if Tulip likes women, nevermind if she reciprocates Dendra's feelings. Tulip figured out Dendra is a lesbian but never realized her crush. Somehow.

- Eri and Carmen are girlfriends. The rest of Team Star admins took a LONG time to come around to this, since they think Eri forgave Carmen too fast and were worried Carmen was trying to take advantage of Eri again. They got over it though, and she’s been invited to their hangouts ever since

- Penny is trans I’ve talked about this like 26 times and have zero intention of stopping. She transitioned a lot over her suspension in Galar and has the most supportive family and friend group imaginable. Her body image is extremely fragile but that’s honestly just anxiety from general past bullying, and her new friends have helped immensely in that regard

- Sada and Turo are bi4bi this is a hill I will die on

- Iono is super tight lipped about her sexuality because of idol streaming stuff. Unlike most, she actually likes to keep people guessing, it’s like a game to her

- Every pride, Larry wears a rainbow tie. No one has ever been able to figure out if he’s LGBT or an ally or what. Rika’s running theory is that his Staraptor is gay and he’s trying to be supportive

- Geeta is a career focused person and never took the time to think about her sexuality. If you ask her about it, she won’t have a good answer and you might just make her short-circuit. I think kissing her would make her explode

- Ryme is aroace. I have nothing to say abt that specifically other than aroace people are the coolest and so is she

- Rika is Butch. She got top surgery and everyone is gay for her, myself included. However she has negative game. Pickup game pathetic. Cringefail, even

- Raifort is a lesbian but is only into really toxic women specifically. Genuinely just the worst taste imaginable. She is always complaining about how much she dislikes men as romantic partners and then is actively running towards red flags like she’s playing flag football

- Jacq is non-binary but is a little worried to ask if he can get his pronouns updated on the academy registrar. He’s sure it’ll be fine, but he’s perpetually stressed out and a liiiiil scared of Clavell. He/they enby king with enough anxiety to put anyone else in the hospital

- The academy is the most accepting place in the world. The GSA (which Hassel runs) is one of the most popular clubs, and cishet students and teachers will often sit in just to learn or support their peers. They go HARD in June, and are the official runners of the Mezagoza Pride Parade ever year

- A big part of the reason people feel so safe in the academy is bc there’s a ton of GNC people, both LGBT and not. Saguaro comes to mind, and is someone that a ton of students look up to. He’s cishet but could prolly crumble the gender binary in one hand. He would too

- [gestures vaguely at Clavell] he got smth going on. Idk what I haven’t thought abt it but something

[astranva]

what do you think y/ns reaction to hearing the fans sing back the words to matilda would be like?🥺

Matilda Fan Project

Word Count: 1.1k

Category: Angst-ish, flufffff

Warning: Matilda lmfao

Summary: In which a fan project to show support for Y/N after Matilda happens during One Night Only in NYC.

i actually thought about that yesterday before sleeping 

.. 

Matilda was the anthem for family issues of all kinds. 

The moment everyone heard it, clear words accompanied by the soft music and Harry’s gentle voice, thousands and thousands of people could relate to it. 

But it was the realization that Harry wrote it for you that made fans even more emotional. You were a private person. Fans hardly knew much about your life and background except for the occasional Instagram posts you post, and many respected that you were not from the entertainment industry and so, it was why they felt like they could, to a level, relate to you.

The fandom was quick and clever, and TikTok and big Harry Instagram accounts had quite the reach. 

“THOSE GOING TO ONO!!!! FAN PROJECT IDEA!!!! since Matilda is about Y/N, get a sign and write “Y/N, YOU CAN LET IT GO” or “Y/N, WE LOVE YOU” or literally anything supportive and raise them up when Harry stars Matilda. Y/N has helped Harry and us in so many ways and deserves this more than anything. SPREAD THIS AROUND!!!” was the message that thousands of people shared around on every possible platform.

You were aware of the fans’ massive presence on social media, but not enough to have the algorithm deliver their fan project to you, especially when you hadn’t been on your phone for that much as you had instead celebrated Harry in more ways than virtual. 

“I don’t think they’ll know the words,” Harry said as he got ready go on stage, looking at you with a bashful smile. 

You rolled your eyes, “Not sure if you’re underestimating your fans or yourself,” you said, “And I mean,” you made a face, “You do know there was a leak so some definitely know the words,” you joked.

“Don’t remind me,” he chuckled. 

You smiled, caressing his face in your hands as you inched closer to him, letting him wrap his arms around your waist, smiling at you. “I’m really proud of you.”

Harry hummed, bashful as he leaned closer, grazing your lips with his, “I’m proud of you, too.”

“Stop it,” you whined a little, giggling, “I’m sharing my feelings right now.”

He almost melted–as he always felt whenever you expressed your feelings, though he would rather keep that to himself. 

“You’re an amazing artist, H. This is your baby you released, and I’ve seen the amount of work and dedication you put into it,” you said, “Thank you for letting me experience that with you.”

Harry took a breath in, closing his eyes as he brought you in for a hug, nuzzling his face in your neck. 

“I love you, yeah?” You said gently, giving his head a scratch. 

He nodded, pulling away to look at you, “I love you,” he repeated, “I wouldn’t have done it without you. This is yours as much as it’s mine.”

You pouted slightly before pressing your lips against his, a moment before he was announced to go on stage. 

Watching Harry live was always an indescribable experience. Not just for the fans who didn’t know him personally, but to you, too; someone who has seen him in all lights, who danced around with, who grieved with, and who loved him on his worst and best days. It was always a unique experience even if you knew every single song like it was your name.

You stood with Jeff and all your close friends in the VIP section, looking up at your boyfriend with nothing but admiration in the room full of those who understood you.

“The next song we’re gonna play for you is called Matilda,” he announced right before everyone screamed and cheered. “I guess it was written for a person–for my person,” he pointed at himself as he looked across the arena, “That I felt like needed to hear something,” he said.

Tears were already rolling down your cheeks and you put no effort into stopping because you knew that it was this very song that would trigger the waterworks. 

You were unaware of all the white signs being raised up in the air. Your hands were clutched together against your heart, eyes set on Harry only. 

“What is–” Harry paused, eyes going over the signs before his hands were on his face, throwing his head back in overwhelming emotions.

“Y/N,” Jeff called your name, eyes wide as he pointed at the big screen that zoomed in on a few fans.

Y/N, YOU CAN LET IT GO.

WE ARE A FAMILY THAT LOVES YOU, Y/N.

Y/N, YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE SORRY

Your hands were on your cheeks, full-on sobbing as you watched the camera move to show more signs of support.

Jeff wrapped an arm around you, a supportive smile on his face as he, too, looked at the screen.

Your eyes moved to Harry, seeing his own on you with a hand clutched to his heart before he raised his other hand to wipe his eyes, a small airy giggle leaving his lips against the mic.

You put your head in your hands for a second, taking a deep breath before looking back up and turning around to the fans, putting your hands against your heart as you looked at a few different faces of screaming fans. “I love you,” you mouthed, “I love you. Thank you.” 

You shook your head in disbelief, finally allowing yourself to sit down on the floor as you were overwhelmed with the thousands of rushing feeling coursing through. 

“I’m honored,” Harry spoke into the mic, looking around, “To have you in my life,” the entire arena shook with screams as he, with tearful eyes, looked around, reading the many signs, “Thank you for loudly loving the person I love–I admire,” he corrected himself, speaking along the screams, “Y/N,” he addressed you, looking down at you with a soft smile as you tearfully looked up at him, “This is for you. It always is,” Harry said, “And if there’s anyone in the audience tonight that feels like this applies to them,” he looked around again, “It does. This is for you as well. This is Matilda.”

You couldn’t sing along. 

The moment Harry began singing Matilda live and the moment the fans started screaming the lyrics back at him was a moment that would forever be engraved in your mind. Your back was leaning against the partition, eyes closed as you allowed every lyric to get soaked and absorbed. 

Liked by harrystyles and other

yourinstagram i started a family who will always show me love because of you. i love you. and i love every single one of you. i haven’t been able to stop crying. thank you.

View all 19,937 comments

harrystyles Strongest person I know. I love you. 

[comradekatara]

if this comes off as a really weird and pretentious ask please just delete it but since iirc you've been in this fandom since 2019 or before 2019 i need to know . how do you deal with such in bad faith takes ??? i scroll & move on & filter tags as much as i can but it's astounding how anybody from any corner of this fandom will have piss poor takes whether they support canon or fanon

lmao not a bad question at all. some background context feels necessary: i’ve been very into atla since i was a kid, and before i used this blog i talked about it (and lok, because korrasami melted my brain) a lot on my primary blogs. in november 2018 i convinced my friend to start watching atla, and she got extremely into it. we talked about atla every day for months. eventually, my friend started this blog in summer of 2019 to talk about atla and invited me to join. it was mostly a repository for our inside jokes and for me to post the fanart i had been drawing on my phone. it was really just a space for our circle of mutuals to have some laffs.

the atla fandom was very small at the time so we were really one of the only blogs actively talking about the show. by complete accident, however, some of our posts got popular, and we accrued quite a bit of a following. we didn’t really know what to do with all the attention (some of it extremely negative and unhinged at that), and it would only get worse after “the atla renaissance.” we got more followers than we knew what to do with, at which we considered just abandoning the blog. my friend did, and handed over the reins to me.

for her, atla was a recent interest that had soured after the fandom became too much to handle, but for me it was an interest that had endured since childhood, and i found that despite all the negative attention, i still really enjoyed having a space where i could unpack my feelings towards this thing that felt like such a significant cultural touchstone, feelings towards characters i had been so deeply moved by for so long, and i enjoyed making art on a consistent basis for an actively receptive audience who praised my skills as an (extremely amateur) artist.

i’ve been drawing atla characters for a very long time, long before i had this blog, but it feels like the incentive to draw for an audience is what motivated me to improve my art over the years, so that’s genuinely been a really nice thing. and i enjoy analyzing art, literature, and media, so trying to pick apart one single text (or multiple connected texts if you wanna bring in lok, the comics, and the novels) for so long is very fun for me.

however, as much as i’ve tried to avoid engaging with bad faith takes, i am nonetheless aware that there is a not insignificant contingent of the fandom who viscerally hate my guts for whatever reason. it’s definitely less prevalent in my daily life now that the fandom is less active (cannot begin to emphasize enough how much the atlassaince ruined my life), but at the time a lot of people wanted to make their hatred of this blog known, loudly. which, especially when you’re in the middle of a lockdown and you cannot leave your room for fear of possibly dying, is not a great feeling.

that’s not really what you’re asking, but since i have had to deal with “bad faith takes” in the most personal possible way, my advice would simply be to try to shut it out. i follow maybe two or three atla blogs, and they are blogs that do not interact with the larger fandom. i do not seek out what other blogs have to say, and confine my scope to my friends and responding to my inbox.

for some reason, atla does seem to be a bad opinions factory, but actively seeking out those opinions is simply not conducive to one’s mental health or a productive use of time, which is why i keep to myself and try to mind my own business. i cannot control how i am perceived, which i am viscerally reminded of every time i see someone reblog an older post from this blog that i didn’t even make (and sometimes straight up do not agree with), but i try to remind myself that this literally has no bearing on my material existence whatsoever, and bad posts aren’t real they can’t hurt you <3

[tryslora]

Support your favorite creative(s) this season!

So, it’s the holiday season (for values of holiday which can be anything you care to celebrate during the winter months) and you would like to support your favorite creative(s). What are some good ways to do that?

Tell the world about them

If someone is a favorite of yours, there’s a good chance that you know someone else who will enjoy their work. Signal boost the creative’s posts. Create your own post with links to their work. Showcase some of your favorite pieces of theirs with a snippet and a link to the original. Talk about why you love the work (trust me, your favorite creative will love to hear this just as much as your friends will appreciate finding out about something new).

Important side note which I know you know but it bears repeating: please reblog and link to your favorite creative’s posts; do not repost their material. Reposting might sound like a great way to show off what the creative does, but it doesn’t help anyone find them. Please be considerate.

Post reviews of their work

Instructions for this depends on what type of creative you are following. If they are a writer, leave a review on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, B&N, whatever platform you choose. Positive reviews are how writers get discovered.

If your creative is an artist and has a platform where they offer commissions, leave a review there if appropriate. Give them five stars. Help your creative climb the ranks from unknown to well-reviewed!

Follow them on social media

If your creative has a list of social media accounts, follow them! This gives you a better chance to help signal boost their cool stuff (as well as hearing about it when they post!). It also gives you a chance to interact, and to see what they’re like when they aren’t creating. If you like their creations, you might have other things in common. 

Does your creative have a newsletter? Subscribe! You can even forward copies to your friends if there’s something really cool you want to share. A Patreon? Check to see if they have free material posted. Many Patreons allow people to follow at a free level, and while there might be paywall-locked material, there might be unlocked material as well.

Social media is wide and varied these days, with everything from Bluesky and Mastodon, to old-school Facebook pages, to even older-school platforms like Dreamwidth. Don’t forget the little known Pillowfort, or the highly fannish Tumblr. Even better, be aware that your creative may present different faces in different spaces. They are just as human as the rest of us!

Talk to them

I’m serious! Being a creative is like shouting into the abyss… if the abyss happens to shout back, that’s emotional food that can sustain a creative for days. Most creatives have several places where they can be found, either for private communication (check to see if they accept messages/DMs/emails first, please) or for public conversation (social media can be wonderful!). 

Create a transformative work

This won’t work for all creatives. BUT. If your creative is a writer, I would place a bet that they would LOVE fanart of their work. Or maybe that’s just me.

Buy their stuff

Yes, this one requires money, and I am well aware that most of us don’t have the budget for monetary support. And that’s fine! As shown above, there are so many other ways to support your creative and help them grow. But if you do have the budget, picking up copies of their work means you can get great gifts for your friends (and help spread the word!). And if you’re up for it, monthly support via Patreon, or random tips are always nice and appreciated things.

Ask them what will help

In the end, every creative has their own list of things that will help them most, and almost every single one would be happy to tell anyone what would help Right Now.

I’m putting this next bit behind a cut/read-more/clicky-link — whatever is appropriate to the platform you’re reading this on. Because this is the personal bit where I add links to the places you can find me. 

And if you are a creative and you are reblogging this on a platform which allows reblogs, please add your own list of helpful information. If it’s a place with comments, please comment! I want to help by giving other creatives a way to get information out.

Where can you find me…?

TrisLawrence.com is my professional website, with blog posts, upcoming appearances, and links to where to find my Stuff.

I post blog entries on Tumblr, Pillowfort, and Dreamwidth (which mirrors on Livejournal and Insanejournal).

I babble randomly on Bluesky and Mastodon. While I exist on Twi-X, I no longer post there.

I have a professional Facebook page. I have an Instagram. I have a TikTok that I am trying to learn how to use.

I am also active in several Discord communities, if you happen to find me there.

Want to support me? -- Patreon | Ko-Fi | Reblog & Comment

Want to hear more from me? — Join my mailing list

[w98pops]

Still cant believe a fucking terf is in fallout fandom intecacting with trans creators and drawing her ugly stereotypical twink transmasc character. You should be ashamed

What is even happening to my inbox anymore. Idk if it's the same person that asked about Sharky or not, but it really makes me uncomfortable.

I don't know where the TERF stuff even come from, but I'm very open with my political views and yeah, I was a radfem in 2019 or something. I also was a very vulnerable sad russian teenager. I know not a lot of people on tumblr aware of all the intricacies of russian internet scene, but I assume you, anon, have some knowledge, because you called me a TERF in the first place.

There's an internet phenomenon called "alt-right pipeline" and I fell in the simular thing called "TERF pipeline". This shit is inevitable for every single afab person that speaks russian. It's a really big thing. I don't say it's an excuse to be a bigot, but I was 12 when i first touched the internet. I was insecure, very fucking poor and spiteful. Also I had and (still have) some hormone problems and was generally a pretty ugly girl so coped with it by drawing ponies and hating on elusive and mysterious "men in skirts" these smart twitter girlies always talked about.

To be perfectly honest, I genuinely don't understand what russian TERFs are fighting for or against, I was in this shit for solid few years and still have no idea. I mean, now it's illegal to be transgender in Russia (a real law), but it wasn't a win for these angry teenage girls, it was a win for genocidal bigoted russian government, the same one that legalized domestic violence (also a law. its officially not a real crime in this country). I went off the topic and started ranting about my frustrations with the government again FUCK 😭

I tried to say that russian internet is genuinely a fucked up place, but I lived in the middle of Siberia in a village, ideologically only had my orthodox grandma, racist older brother and TERFs on the internet. I only started to learn english a few years ago, so i didn't have enough options before that. Or, to better words, didn't have enough knowledge to be a better person.

I'm really really and sincerely fucking sorry for that. Like, truly. It was really fucked up and I'm ashamed of stuff I said and supported blindly. I now have resources and have some media literacy in my disposal and basic understanding of english to educate myself about the topics I'm talking about. I'm trying my hardest to show support and love to all my queer friends and mutuals, and as an artist I do all I can to be inclusive, not because I feel the need to, but because I want to.

I have no right to speak about trans people and their issues and I won't. I don't know if Sharky is as bad as anon described, because I'm biased (this is my character after all) and not educated enough to acknowledge all the stereotypes associated with transmasculinity. I would really enjoy to hear opinions of my fellow transmen. To address some of my choices regarding his design and writing:

- He wears pink, because it's a quirky color that doesn't show up much in Fallout. Never meant to de-masculate him or to ridicule him. It's my favorite color, after red and brown, which are the primary colors of Wendy.

- He has a silly personality and a carefree attitude because 1) I'm projecting and 2) Wendy needed a character to balance out her awkward and moody autism

- He's a girl's boy and has wives. I didn't have the reason to make him not like girls. I wanted him to be an example of positive masculinity and solidarity. He is a straight dude who loves women. Not just sexually attracted to them or sees them as pets. They are his partners. With their own personalities and lives. Also I wanted to make a full circle 😭😭😭 I'm asexual and bi-romantic. I like boys, girls, all between and beyond boys and girls and don't really think sex is a big thing for me. Aletus likes boys, Sharky likes girls and Wendy likes when there's no sex. Pretty simple, I think.

Hope this explains why Sharky is the way he is. Would still really appreciate an opinion from a trans person. Or any kind of feedback really, because I've been feeling really fucking bad lately and can't objectively reflect on my choices. Also more questions about my OCs are very much welcome. There's a lot of stuff that made me feel like I've been misiforming people, including this anonymous message, and I will specify anything you want to know. Thank you all a lot.

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Birdsong: Hard Sell

Fandom: Grishaverse: Shadow and Bone, Six of Crows, and The Grisha Trilogy Summary: Every other time in her life, when she got everything she thought she wanted, the rug had been pulled out from beneath her feet. What was stopping this from being any different? Warnings: Depression, self-destructive behaviors, mentions of grooming, fatphobia, body dysmorphia, and anxiety Word Count: 11,988 Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Matthias Helvar/Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa/Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck

Archive link!

A/N: We've reached the last fic in this series! I may return to it one day but I don't have any plans to do so. I really like the way that it turned out here with the focus on Nina from each of the partners and then herself. I hope that you guys have enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, it means a lot to me as the first SaB fic that I wrote. Thank you all so much for reading! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone &lt;3

Birdsong:

Hard Sell

A Grishaverse Fanfiction

A Nina Zenik/Matthias Helvar/Kaz Brekker/Wylan Van Eck/Jesper Fahey/Inej Ghafa Fanfiction

By Sissytobitch10seconds

Tour was both everything that she had ever hoped it was and the hardest thing that she had ever done.

Nina had dreamed about being a big enough artist to go out and do tours since she had decided that she wanted to be a performer. When the manager of Shadow and Bone brought it up, agreeing to do it was a no-brainer for her. Alina was the only one that had gone on tour before, with Nikolai doing a mini set back when he was performing as Sturmhond, and she had been a bit more wary of the whole thing. It had been a decision that they had decided coincided perfectly with the official release of their first album, so they took it. They were doing a single show in every city that they went to with a couple of days resting in some of the bigger places. Nina knew that the open days were going to get filled with shows as time went on and there was proof for the demand of them, she was well aware of how that worked.

Shadow and Bone was growing vastly in popularity the longer that they continued to produce music. Even in just the year that she had been together with her partners, which was six months after the band had reformed, they had already exploded in the number of streams that their songs had on Spotify. They were finally in a place where they were getting enough money from the Shadow and Bone merch and album purchases that they could support themselves. Alina was the one that needed that the most, since Kirigan had taken most of the money that she had made under the stage name The Sun Summoner. Zoya came after her when it came to being supported by the band, since the money that she got from being a touring drummer was only so good. Nikolai had never been hurting for money with how wealthy his family was. Nina was still getting quite a bit of money from her Heartrender music, too.

They were apparently also getting a lot more popular because of the imploding that The Fold was doing. More and more artists were following in Alina and Nina’s footsteps as they revealed the shady and shitty business practices that they had. The public opinion of the recording studio was plummeting, which meant that more people were reaching out to Shadow and Bone since one of their singers had been the face of the company for a while.

While they were on tour, a couple of the days that had been free on their schedule were instead taken up with interviews. Alina was the one that was focused on during them, but Nina and Zoya were also asked a couple of questions about everything that they had gone through. Nina released what she was comfortable with and kept quiet about what she wasn’t. That had gotten her quite a lot of flak from unhappy studios that hadn’t gotten the massive scoop that they were hoping for. The fans on the internet backed her up, as did her partners and bandmates, but it was beginning to wear her down.

She had always struggled with feeling like she was doing the right thing and being signed under Kirigan had only worsened that. During the harder days, the words that her mother had said would intermingle with his until she felt like a shell of herself.

“You’ll never be ladylike if you do that. You need to be more graceful. Cut down on your portions so that your future husband will actually want you. No wonder your father didn’t fight that hard in the custody battle if this is how you’re going to act.” Her mother.

“Just trust me, why are you so difficult? Calm down and actually listen for once. You’re just not as talented, it’s something you’re going to have to accept. Maybe if you were prettier then you would be selling better.” Kirigan.

She knew that Alina had it worse. She had been raised in the same kind of strict environment as Nina, which is where they had met. She had the worst of the abuse since she had also been in a romantic relationship with the horrible narcissist stealing their money from them as young teenagers. The words still ate Nina from the inside out, turning all-consuming and threatening to never leave.

She was aware that they would eventually leave, they always did. Regardless of what life threw at her, she was always there to take the next step forward and keep living. She wasn’t going to let something like her own depression and anxiety keep her from living the dreams that she had before they set in. She knew that she was going to struggle on the tour since things in the band were still a little rocky and the manager was going to be pushing them as hard as he could to get as much money as they could out of it.

They played sold-out show after sold-out show. They met with countless fans and spent hours talking to them when they tried to get food. They had even had to take off late one morning because someone had found their tour bus and wanted to get a picture.

Despite the constant go-go-go nature of the tour lifestyle that she now found herself in, there were still good moments. She woke up every morning to a picture of her partners, Inej sending her own separate one, letting them know that they missed her. She got near constant updates about what they were doing, like their group chat had become their polycule’s own specific social media. She knew that the certain set of vibrations in her pocket would mean that her partners were checking in with her, which always filled her up with so much love she felt as though she might burst.

Nina also lived for being able to play the music live. She could only imagine how intense it would be if she had brought some of her more scream-adjacent songs from her Heartrender discography instead of the more chill music that Shadow and Bone produced. She lived for the sound of the fans cheering back at her and the bass reverberating through the stage as it traveled through the speakers. Her favorite part was when everyone heard their favorite song and began to cheer even louder than they had been before. 

Their biggest show was in the capitol, which was also where they  had been doing a bunch of interviews with famous celebrities for late night talk shows. It was exhausting and so rewarding to finally step onto the tour bus so they could be taken to the next place that they needed to be.

Currently, she had performed her last show and was sitting in the hotel room that reminded her that she was a hop, skip, and jump away from her home with her partners. That idea had been thrilling up to a point, until she realized that she was going to be getting home at just the wrong time. Inej wouldn’t be back until the next day from her own set of shows. Matthias and Jesper would be doing their own respective jobs at the theater, with the former moving around sets and fixing broken props while the latter acted the main roll. Wylan had just had to travel out of the state so that he could attend a conference with other scientists as his study was coming to a close. Kaz would be opening the bar and it was one of the more important nights where he couldn't just step out unless there was an emergency.

Arguably, it was probably better for her to have a night alone in her apartment before she swamped herself with even more interaction. It would give her tired body a chance to actually rest and recuperate like she desperately needed, but she didn’t want it. She only ever really felt safe and warm when she was wrapped up in the arms of one of her partners. Even if Kaz was still feeling cuddled out like he had mentioned in the group chat that morning, being next to him or even in the same room as him made her soul feel like it was finally at rest.

Guilt sprang up in her stomach at the thought. She was the one that had decided that she was going to go on the tour and now she was complaining that even more people couldn’t warp their lives around her own wants in her schedule.

She missed them so aggressively that her brain couldn’t help but mention how much they didn’t. Logically, she knew that those things had to be wrong. They had enough partners with each other that if they really didn’t want her then they would have told her before they got to the point in their relationship that they had. Then again, her mind chimed in helpfully to remind her, they had another girlfriend in the chat that they were likely corresponding with over her.

Nina had been so worn down because of the travel that she hadn’t been able to reply consistently to them. She had instead had to give them a barrage of things and reactions to what they had done when she finally got a break for the night. Even then, she usually fell asleep on her bunk on the bus before they got the chance to reply back to her.

She had been the absolute worst for the last month that she had been touring. She knew that they deserved better than her, and she could see what the better example of her was. Genya had always been a complicated person to get to know but she was quite literally everything that Nina wasn’t.

She had been signed with Kirigan before Nina and Alina had the chance. She was quiet, demure, and beautiful beyond all belief. She found time to call her finance every night before she turned in to bed and each morning when she woke up. She was careful of how much she ate and every action that she made while she moved. Nikolai had always been somewhat ambivalent towards her, but Zoya and Alina were thick as thieves with her. It was difficult for Nina to watch, but she forced herself to do so anyway. 

Sitting on the floor of her hotel room by herself, in the dark, her mind really came to life. It began to take apart every single text that she had received that was less than glowing, every single comment and message that she had gotten from fans and interviewers alike, and every action of her bandmates. Her mind rifled through the memories of the past month to remind her of all the bad things that had happened, every action that meant she was unwanted or causing problems in some way.

She had been trying to sleep for the duration of the night and gave up somewhere around three in the morning. She would be able to sleep a little bit on the bus as it brought them back to where they had started. The motion always lulled her into a fugue state anyway, which would work in tandem with her depressive episode. 

Nina slipped off of the bed and then dressed in one of Matthias’ shirts that had gotten mixed in with the things in her bag when she was packing. She was wearing the ring that Jesper had given her for their six month anniversary on a chain around her neck, right next to the locket that Inej had gifted her containing a picture of all their partners together. She had a sweatshirt from Wylan that she draped over her shoulders to keep her back warm while she worked. Kaz was the only person that she didn’t have something of, which had been eating at her during their month of separation as well.

She set her phone down on the desk in front of her and then turned on the desk light. It illuminated her in soft yellow light, but wasn’t bright enough that it might shine through the window and let other people know that she was awake. She had become a bit paranoid about some of their fans finding out where she was and coming to her hotel room, likely because of some of the stories Genya had been telling during their trip.

The mirror in front of the desk stared back at her as soon as she turned on the light. Her hair was a little messy, the curls shoved back into the ponytail that she had managed to find at the bottom of her toiletries bag after her post-show shower. A couple of them had already escaped and were falling down into her eyes and across her cheeks. She could see every tiny imperfection of her skin, including the blackhead that had formed next to her nose and the line of zits on her hairline. The discoloration of the freckles on the bridge of her nose was upsetting when it wasn’t being hidden by the makeup that was packed away in her suitcase. She had dark bags under her eyes from her struggles to sleep on the bus consistently.

Still, she had to do something or she was going to lose her mind from stress and the voices in the back of her mind. She plugged in her phone and then got it propped up so that it was filming her entire upper half. She grabbed her guitar and situated it in her lap before she flicked to Instagram and went live. Most of her fans lived in the same country as her since her music hadn’t quite gone international even when she had been making a few covers of traditionally Slavic songs to honor her mother. She wasn’t expecting her fans to be up or willing to jump on a live with her at that time. She also usually announced that she was going to go live an hour before she did, which was also going to decrease the number pretty significantly.

She leaned back in the desk chair, looking up at the ceiling of the hotel. She could already see the number beginning to climb until it hovered around a hundred. She gave her usually, dorky little wave to her phone as she said, “Hey everyone! I know that I haven’t been as active as usual, but tour ended up being a lot busier than I thought it was going to be. I hope you’re all having a wonderful night.”

A small smile crossed her face as she saw the messages already streaming in. Most of them were saying hi back to her, or reassuring her that it was okay that she hadn’t been as active. One asked her which city she was in now, which was a question that she could actually answer. She liked being able to interact with her fans on a much smaller scale than usual, it felt almost like returning to when she and Alina were dumb sixteen-year-olds making music on their bedroom floors.

“Where’s Alina? She’s in the other room sleeping right now, probably,” Nina forced herself to laugh. It was getting really old to be pushed to the side for her friend, especially when she was the one that put the most effort into the songwriting and sung most of their album. “What did you guys think of the album? Should I play you something from that or would you prefer something new?”

She was plucking at the strings of her guitar as she carefully turned the pegs back and forth. She was worried that after having to tune her instrument to so many different songs that the strings were finally going to snap, which would result in her being instrument-less until Jesper could take her to the store to buy some more. She winced as she remembered her partner, her mind reminding her time and time again that he had been happier without her. She brought a raincloud with her that ruined and soured the lives that she touched.

She looked down at the chat and forced another smile as she saw that they were all cheering for something new. “I’ve been working on this song for a while, actually, so I’m kind of excited to share it with you all. Zoya has been helping me with it and it sounds much better with her, but you’ll have to settle for now.”

Nina took a deep breath as she found her fingering on the guitar neck and began to sing, “I'm trying to make something of myself. My better days, I go buy the hard sell. But I feel like I'm working with barbed wire and moth wings 'cause I can't really get a hold of many things. I'm one deep breath away from a breakdown. My nerves are wrecked and coming unwound. The world is hostile and I'm fragile and I need someone to kiss the cuts and tell me to keep trying. Is it me? Is it really just me? Does everybody have it together or are we all pretending? Is it me? Is it really just me? Holding it together with one loose string that I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop pulling. I rip myself apart at the seams. I find one weak spot and start unraveling, hoping I can find a better me. A fresh new start buried under me. Is it me? Is it really just me? Does everybody have it together or are we all pretending? Is it me? Is it really just me? Holding it together with one loose string that I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop pulling. Can we stop pretending now? Can we stop pretending now? Can we all admit that we don't have it figured out? Can we stop pretending now? Can we stop pretending now? Can we all admit that we don't have it figured out? Is it me? Is it really just me? Does everybody have it together or are we all pretending? Is it me? Is it really just me? Holding it together with one loose string that I can't stop, I can't stop, I can't stop pulling, I can't stop pulling, I can't stop pulling.”

At some point during the song, she had started crying. She barely even noticed the hot tears streaking down her face and onto her chin as she sang until she was pulled out of it. Her eyes had been clamped shut as she remembered each lyric that followed the one coming from her mouth. Her heart ached in her chest and her throat felt raw when she had finally stopped. 

Her stomach dropped dramatically when she realized that she had started crying. She sniffled and wiped the tears away as quickly as she could. Nina forced another smile onto her face like she had been doing the entire day as she said, “Sorry for that, you guys. I didn’t mean to get all sentimental on you. I’ve had a really long couple of weeks, believe it or not.”

The chat had calmed down slightly but she was still getting a flood of little heart emojis. As soon as the apology had left her lips, people began to rave about her song and a couple even commented that they wished they had been there to hear the whole thing. “I think that I can chat for a while longer, but I don’t think that I should play any more music. I don’t want to wake up Nikolai, you would not believe how grumpy he is until he gets his coffee,” Nina said. She placed her head on her hand and tried not to look at the face that was reflected back at her. She usually felt so confident in her own body, but she had gotten so many comments about it from the stage crews that had helped the band and the interviewers that it was in the forefront of her mind.

She answered a few more questions until her phone started to get really hot from charging while she was live-streaming. She waved goodbye to all of her fans and then ended it so that she could collapse back into her bed. 

The smell of Wylan and Matthias wrapped around her in a way that should have just been comforting, but instead made her heart ache even more than it had before. She felt like a pit was opening up inside of her and the only thing that she could get out of it were the horrible things that her mother and Kirigan had said to her. It was sucking all of the energy, the love, the joy that she should have been feeling out of her and replacing it with self-hatred and pain.

She stripped off the jacket and the shirt, placing them tenderly and carefully down onto the bed. She put on the shirt that she was going to be wearing during transit that day and then carefully folded the two garments. She removed the chain with the ring and the locket, even though it felt like she was losing a hand as she did so. She placed it carefully down in the center of the shirt and then layered the hoodie over the top of it. She carefully placed them both down in the suitcase lid and zipped it closed so that it would be safe when it was being moved around but also inaccessible to her.

Nina went to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror, watching the imperfections of her face crease and move as she tilted her head this way and that. She poked and prodded at the places of her body she didn’t like, the fat rolls on her back and the plumpness of her stomach.

Voices in the back of her mind reminded her of everything she wasn’t. Alina was able to eat anything she wanted and maintained the stick-figure thin outline. Genya took time out of her day instead of focusing on something silly so that she could actually take care of her skin. Zoya had curly hair that she could actually contain and a youthful face. Nikolai never had to worry about what he looked like because he was never subjected to the harsh beauty standards that she, as a woman, had to endure every day since she became a teenager.

By the time that the voices had taken over her mind, she was crying again. Her face was tilted down towards the sink as she tried to stifle the sobs. They threatened to break through the air around her, to make her pain more real. She shouldn’t have been having that pain at all, she reminded herself. This is exactly what she had done when she was signed under Kirigan and it had made her life in the music industry so much harder until she had Alina by her side. The guilt over the resentment her friend coming out and being believed instead of her was going to consume Nina. It was already trying.

She forced down the emotion and decided that she was going to effect as few lives as possible. She pulled out her makeup and covered up all of the imperfections that she hated. A simple smokey eye with catwing eyeliner, like she had done for every day when she was on tour during the time that she wasn’t performing. Her favorite color of strawberry lipstick went on her lips, plumpening them enough that she was more appealing and less pouty.

Nina then shoved everything into her toiletries kit and put that in her suitcase as well. Her bag was packed other than her book, laptop, phone, and its charger. 

Remembering the device that lay on the hotel desk reminded her of the next step in her plan. She sat back down in the chair that she had been in before and opened up the texting app. It had brought her so much light and life to see each text as it rolled in while she was being whisked from place to place, but she wasn’t sure the same could be said for her partners. On the off chance that they did love her and they weren’t doing it out of some kind of strange obligation, she knew how much it had to be tearing them up to have her away from them. She had seen how much Matthias and Jesper both pouted when Inej was gone. Having two girlfriends without either of them being in reach had to be torture, she knew that it was for her. So she was going to end that pain for them.

It would hurt for a while to do it this way, but they would have each other to use to recover and then they would be fine. She wouldn’t drag them down and she wouldn’t ruin their lives like she had every other partner, friend, and parent that she had ever known. 

She opened up the app and voiced the message as she wrote it, “Hey, sorry for the late text. I just wanted to let you all know that this last year has been the absolute best in my life and I adore you all very much. But I think that it’s time we finally admit that you’d all be happier without me. You’ve done nothing to persuade me of this, you’ve all been absolutely wonderful and the problem could never be with you. It’s just with me, the problem is always with me. I hope that you can help each other through any pain that might come from this break up. Know that I did and do truly love you, I’m doing this to help you live better lives.”

She left the chat and then abandoned her phone on the table. She tilted her head up and blinked furiously to try and keep the tears from running down her face again. She had enough time to redo her makeup if she did cry again, but it felt like giving into the part of herself that she was furiously trying to keep behind lock and key. 

Nina marched to her bed and grabbed her laptop. She sat with the duvet discarded off to the side, only using the top sheet to keep herself warm since the other blanket reminded her too much of her now ex-girlfriend. She plugged in her headphones and pulled up her favorite comfort show so that she could forget all of the pain that was plaguing her life until she had to get up in the morning.

---

She went through breakfast without eating anything despite the waffle maker almost screaming her name. Nothing could be louder than the voice of Kirigan right behind her eyes, reminding her that if her body was more desirable then she wouldn’t struggle so much to get the same amount of fame as Alina. Being around her bandmates and manager felt like torture but she stuck through it, smiling pleasantly when Genya said good morning to her despite her wanting to scream and sob.

They were finally back on the bus and she had an excuse to be relatively alone. She was sitting in one of the little booths, the one that had the table where a few of them had taken to eating at, and stared out the window. Her headphones were on and plugged into the phone that she had turned off, playing nothing into her head but being a relatively effective deterrent. She had to prove to herself and the glimmering hope in her breast that her bandmates were fine without her. She couldn’t leave them because it would be more of a hassle to replace her than to put up with her curse, but they didn’t need her as a friend.

She was doing fine, ignoring her feelings and passing the time with her own thoughts and song lyrics, until Nikolai slid into the seat across from her. He grabbed her phone and unplugged her headphones from the jack to get her to pay attention to him, which was actually one of his favorite things to do when he felt he wasn’t getting enough stimulus from the others.

“What?” she asked, immediately regretting it when she realized how snappish the words had been when they came out of her mouth.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“Why do you always assume that I’ve done something?” she asked, snatching her phone back.

He was staring down at the device like it was going to blow up in his hand since it hadn’t immediately turned on when he took it from her like it always did. She removed her headphones so that they were around her neck and then plugged the jack back in while waiting for him to finally explain himself. Nikolai shook his head to rid the thoughts he had been focused on, much like a dog. “Tolya said that Jesper has been freaking out since early this morning. I assume that since he was one of your boys, you had something to do with it.”

Her heart ached in her chest, spreading pain throughout the rest of her body. The skin on her arms and over her chest felt like it was peeling away from her in the desperation for her soul to be pressed back into her body. She felt unlike herself, moments away from screaming or crying. She couldn’t figure out which one was right but she knew that the emotions brewing in her gut had to go somewhere.

Nina shoved it down immediately. She was going to remove herself from everyone’s lives, that had been her plan. She couldn’t allow herself to explode and to hurt others when they had been nothing but tolerant of her. Her hurt was for her to deal with alone, as she always had.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” she lied through gritted teeth. “I’m guessing that Inej came back early or something.”

“I don’t think so,” Nikolai shook his head. “From what Tolya was complaining about nothing that Jesper was doing was particularly… exciting.”

“All you said was that he was freaking out,” Nina replied, a little bit annoyed at the whole situation. She didn’t want him prying into the very tender wound that was her recent breakup. 

Every time she thought about the fact that she was never going to see those people again, she felt as though she was going to die on the spot. Her mind kept informing her that she would never have Matthias’ arms around her or hear Wylan practicing the piano while he composed something new, or listen to Kaz argue with Jesper over something unimportant, or smell Inej’s body wash when they were hiding in her loft bed, or dance in the living room with Jesper after everyone else had gone to bed ever again. It felt raw and painful in a way that none of her other breakups had felt. There was no relief at having to fake the love any longer, to pretend that she was comfortable going on expensive dates or getting pricey gifts. She only felt the pain that came with knowing that a part of her life that she had really enjoyed was over.

“Nina, what’s the matter?” Nikolai asked. He folded his hands in front of him and leaned forward so that he was a bit closer than before. He was acting like that was going to make it easier for them to hide what they were talking about, to give them some modicum of privacy when they hadn’t had that since they had stepped onto the godforsaken bus.

“Nothing is the matter,” she said, which even she could tell sounded like a lie. There was a waver in her throat and her makeup had already been destroyed around her waterline. The fact that she had tucked herself away in the booth instead of lounging out over the couch while chatting with Alina and Zoya was a big show of that.

He reached across the table and took her hand in his, holding it like he had when they had first decided to make the band. Everything was making her lust after a time that she could no longer ever have, one that had passed her by and compounded new trauma in the forefront of her mind. “We’ve been friends for years, that excuse really isn’t going to work on me,” he assured her. “You can just tell me what’s wrong. I’m not going to judge you and I want to be here for you.”

She carefully took her hand back from him and then began to fiddle with the edge of her phone case. It was one that Wylan had ordered for her after she kept complaining about how terrifying it was to think about all the cracks she could get while performing with it even just in her pocket. It was a construction grade case that was still sleek and had now been decorated with a sticker from her own favorite band. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now.”

Nikolai sat back in his chair, looking over her with those critical eyes that made her feel bare. She didn’t like people examining her that closely, especially when she already felt as self-conscious as she did. “How about I give you another hour on the bus and then we’ll talk again, okay?”

“Okay,” she finally relented. She had enough wear in her soul already from not being able to sleep the night before and all the crying that she couldn’t keep fighting him. Her only hope at the moment was that he would forget before the time came and she’d be able to avoid it regardless. 

He dislodged himself from the booth and walked over to another part of the bus so that he could join in the conversation that Zoya and Alina were having. Nina grabbed her phone and headphones, balling them both up in her hand so that they were constricting around her neck any longer, and then removed herself from the booth as well. She walked back to the bunk that she had been using and collapsed into it. She dropped her headphones and phone next to her, useless since the device was turned off and the headphone trick hadn’t even worked. 

She turned her head away from the curtain that was only half drawn to cover herself as she pretended to nap and looked over everything. She had taped several polaroids of herself and her partners to the walls to keep herself happy when she was missing her partners. She missed them even more than she had when she was traveling, now knowing that she had resigned herself to not be able to see them when she got back. She was so dreadfully alone and it was all her own doing, even if it had been for the protection of the people that she loved.

---

An hour of driving passed by before someone came to rouse her from the nap she had dozed off into. She had still been aware of where she was in her bunk and what was happening around it, so all it took was their hand on her ankle for her to startle awake “Is everything okay?” she asked nervously as she pulled back the curtain so that the other was revealed.

“I came to ask you the same question,” Alina replied. “Do you wanna cuddle and talk about it?”

That was something that they had done often when they were teenagers in high school. They would go to one of their houses, usually Alina’s because her foster mother was almost always at work, and cuddle underneath the blankets. They would hold each other while the other blubbered about boys, girls, breakups, heartache, and all the other shitty things that came with learning how to be a human in the world. It was cathartic and something that had brought them together even more than their shared Catholic school trauma had.

“I don’t know,” she shook her head, which brought her attention to the fact that even more of her untamable curls had escaped the confines of her ponytail.

Alina pouted a little bit. “I think that it would maybe make you feel better.”

“What do you know about it?” she asked, her mouth flickering down into a frown. The idea that Nikolai had brought her problems to the attention of all the others in the band made the guilt inside of her stomach grow even wider. She felt like she was drowning in her emotions, being pulled into the ocean of sadness and pain by a riptide that she had no hope of escaping.

“Nikolai mentioned that Tolya wouldn’t shut up about Jesper not being able to shut up,” she explained. “And I noticed that you didn’t come out when we stopped for lunch.”

“I’m not hungry,” Nina lied. She had been starving and they were getting fast food at her favorite place. The sensitivity around how much she ate was still there in full-force, overwhelming and gnawing at her body.

“You didn’t eat anything at breakfast either,” Alina noted. Her brows furrowed together as she poked her best friend further into the bunk. She climbed in so that they were laying side by side, tilted so that their fronts were facing each other so that they could both fit in the tiny space. “Nina, what’s going on?”

She closed her eyes as she tried to keep the emotions locked where they belonged, deep inside of her heart in the place that only her ex-partners had ever been able to reach. She took a deep breath as she answered, “It’s not a big deal, I’m just having a bad day.”

Nina could almost hear Alina’s frown as she said, “I think that’s actually a monumental big deal.”

“And why is that?”

“Because you’re my best friend and you were there for all of my bad days. You’ve also been going through it recently,” she replied immediately. Alina reached down and grasped Nina’s hand, so hard that the other woman could feel the scar along in her palm. “You were there for me when I finally ended things with Kirigan and through the whole process of trying to reach out to Mal again. The least I can do is support you when you’re having a bad brain day.”

Nina whimpered as she snuggled closer to Alina. Her arms wrapped around the other girl’s hips and her face was lost in the space of her collarbone, hiding away from the world. Alina responded by completing the hug, weaving her arms behind Nina’s back. It didn’t feel as good as when Matthias and Inej did it, or the rare moments that she got to cuddle Jesper for longer than five minutes, but it was better than nothing. It soothed the touch starved ache burning under her skin by micrometers.

She waited for a while, threading her fingers through her childhood friend’s hair for a while before asked again, “What’s going on?”

“I broke up with them, Alina,” she finally admitted. Saying it out loud made the entire thing feel more real. That was why she had verbalized the text as she was sending it, to try and cement it in her head that what she was doing was the right thing in the long run. Finally admitting that she had broken it off with the healthiest relationship she had ever had in her entire life made everything come crashing down around her. “I’m so fucking selfish. All I can think about is how much I hate my face and my body and being second to you even though we make the music together and I just… they deserve so much better than me.”

“What?” Alina asked, pulling back. She sat up so fast and so suddenly that she hit her head on the top of the bunk and immediately winced, being forced back down while cradling the back of her skull. “Come on, we’re going to go talk with the others about this,” she insisted.

They both slipped out of the bunk so that they were standing. Nina was crying so hard that her makeup was already streaking off, she could feel the heat of her tears beginning to seep down to her skin. She wasn’t able to stop the sobs as they bubbled out of that black abyss in her gut, forcing their way through her throat. 

Alina grabbed her hand and nearly dragged her to the main living area where everyone else was sitting. She stopped on the way to grab a packet of makeup wipes and a box of tissues. She dumped them both down on the coffee table in front of the couch in the living room area of the tour bus before she pushed Nina down onto the seat beside Nikolai and Zoya. Both of their aforementioned band partners balked when they saw the state that the woman was in.

“You were right, Zoya, she’s not okay,” Alina sighed as she sat down in front of Nina. She held the other woman’s hand again, rubbing her thumb over her knuckles. Another massive wave of grief washed over Nina as she wished that it was Wylan doing that instead.

“We can see that, Alina. And I’m always right,” Zoya said, her chin jutting out with a strike of confidence.

Nikolai waved his hand in between the two of them to get them to shut up before they could start another one of their tedious arguments. “None of that now, we need to focus on Nina.”

“No you don’t,” she sniffled mournfully.

“Of course we do, we’re your friends and we love you,” Zoya informed her, the touch of annoyance that almost always clung to her words somehow gone. She reached over onto the table and handed Nina one of the makeup wipes so that she could get rid of the streaks that were left over after her crying.

She was still sobbing, unable to stop the emotions from bursting forth out of her after what she had admitted to her friend. She still took the offered item and then used it to wipe down her face. When she finished, Alina took it from her and placed the box of tissues directly down into the center of Nina’s lap.

Alina took a deep breath as she finally announced, “Nina is having a bad brain day. She hasn’t eaten anything all day and she broke up with her partners.”

Next to her, Nikolai wrapped an arm around the back of her shoulders to bring her into a hug and winced. “That would explain why Jesper is freaking out.”

“You didn’t think that bit of information was important to bring up to the rest of us?” Zoya asked. She dislodged herself from the couch and walked over to the kitchenette part of the bus. She got out a bottle of water and one of the leftover peanut butter cracker packs that they had. The snacks were rather bare bones at that point in their trip since they were all headed back home. They had just enough that no one would have to get hangry while waiting to pull into town so that they could get something. 

She returned back to the table and handed them both to Nina with a no-nonsense expression painted over her strict features. “Thank you,” she mumbled as she took them both. She opened the water first and sipped on it while she tried to quiet her tears on her own. She swallowed and they were gone, the emotion still hovering just behind her eyes and sitting in a lump in the middle of her chest but not visible to the outside.

“It’s fucking horrifying that you know how to do that,” Nikolai shook his head, his nose wrinkling with his distaste. 

“Catholic school,” Nina and Alina echoed at the same time. That caused a small giggle from the former, which made the latter smile reassuringly.

Zoya kicked the edge of the couch as she sat down to get them both to turn towards her. “Can I ask why you thought that it was a good idea to break up with the rest of your polycule? Things were good with them and you were having a good time.”

“It just…” she shook her head. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

She peaked through the curls now hanging down into her eyes as the other shared a look with each other before they turned properly back to their friend. Alina was the one that restarted the conversation, “Fine. Self destructive break up talk can happen later. Do you think you can talk about some of the other things that you mentioned?”

Nina fidgeted. She tipped her head back and finished half of the water bottle in one go. Zoya nodded at her approvingly and then nudged the crackers with her hand to try and coax her into eating them. Despite not being particularly hungry, her stomach clenching into a knot as she thought about all of the comments that had been made about her, she opened the package and popped one into her mouth.

After she had swallowed it, she said, “I just… the comments that some of the fans were making got to me. The interviewers weren’t much better.”

“It was really fucking frustrating to have to watch them fawn over Alina when you’re the one that got screwed over by the company even harder,” Nikolai nodded reassuringly. “Trust me, Zoya and I were about a second away from pulling you out of the chair and refusing to let them talk to you during that last one.”

“That guy was an ass,” Alina nodded her head in agreement so emphatically that Nina was worried she was going to break her own neck in the process. She then carefully said, “I know that we can’t really do anything to undo the damage that he did to you when it comes to your body, but I promise that you’re beautiful.”

“I can think of something,” Genya said, startling them all. They hadn’t realized that she had walked out of the master bedroom space at the back of the bus. “You know that the only reason he kept me around was because he thought I was beautiful, which is why I was fired pretty quickly after the accident,” she gestured to the patch over her eye where the scars around were just peaking past the fabric.

Nina nodded, guilt gnawing at her insides. She knew that Genya suffered from the same self-conscious and poor body image issues that she did, so it made her envy of the other woman feel all the more intrusive and wrong.

The redhead walked over to the table, sitting down beside Alina. “You are beautiful. Just because you don’t fit the modern day aesthetic of skinny women that somehow have huge boobs doesn’t mean that you’re not. Imagine how many young people out in the audience saw you all dolled up and pretty on the stage and saw themselves. You may not have confidence in your own body, but to them you are the walking embodiment of their own beauty and confidence.”

That did make her feel a little bit better. The reassurance that she was getting from her friends was exactly what she needed. The conversation veered back to the less than favorable things that the interviewers had done when they had the whole band or even the two main singers. Nina finished her water and crackers, cleaning her face of the tears with the tissues in her lap. She ended up falling asleep with her head on Nikolai’s shoulder for the rest of the trip.

---

She felt like walking death as she hauled all of her belongings up the stairs to her apartment. The elevator was still broken, as it had been when she had left a month before. Her phone hung heavy in her pocket, turned all the way off so that she couldn’t get any texts or social media messages that would make her bad day even worse. It was good when it came to her sensitivity around her body and place in the band but bad whenever her mind flitted towards her ex-partners.

She had been wondering if they were trying to reach out to her about everything that had happened or if they had all simply deleted their conversations with her and unfollowed her on social media to be well and truly done with her. Her mind kept creating fake scenarios of them reaching out to her, asking what was wrong, and reassuring her that their lives were richer with her in them.

She couldn’t imagine that was true. They would fight valiantly to try and figure out what the actual reason she had broken up with them was, which is why she had turned her phone off for the duration of the day. 

Nina was beginning to doubt her decision to tell Zoya that she would be fine getting back to her apartment on her own. She kind of wished that she had taken her friend up on the offer of them staying together for a while until the post-breakup blues and depressive spiral was over. She couldn’t rely on other people to help her with everything, especially after what they had done to help her on the bus. So she had politely declined and made her own way back to her home.

She stopped in front of her door, opening it with the keys clutched in her hand. She deposited them next to her phone and wallet in the little bowl on top of the bookshelf beside her door. She slid her suitcase through into her little walkway and then closed the door before she dumped her backpack next to it. She was so tired from the tour overall, but it was only aggravated by her not being able to sleep the night before and the emotional turmoil that she had been suffering with the whole day. The nap that she had taken on the bus had only helped a little.

“Food and unpacking,” she mumbled to herself as she grabbed her bag and officially turned around. A gasp ripped itself from her lips as she saw that there was another figure in her home, sitting in the light of the quickly setting sun. It had been close to eight at night when the bus had finally pulled back into the town and it took another hour for them to get everything loaded off of it and into their own vehicles.

The man that was sitting in her chair was a very familiar face, one that her heart had been yearning after the entire day. His hair was mused like he had been running his hands through it all day, the scar on his lip aggravated and red from chewing on it. His clothes consisted of a pair of slim fitting satiny pants and a disheveled looking white button down. His hands were bare on top of the cane that he was clutching like it was going to run away from him.

“Kaz?” she asked, her brows furrowing together with confusion. “What are you-”

She was barely able to get anything else out before another pair of lips were suddenly on top of her own. Her back hit the door that she had just closed, sending her backpack and suitcase tumbling over. Nina heard the clatter of the cane join the cacophony of noise as he brought both of his hands to her hips to keep her in place. She didn’t push him off or tell him that she didn’t want it because then she would be lying to him, and she couldn’t do that again. Instead she began to cry as she kissed him back. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and threaded through his already destroyed hair, holding his body to her own like he would suddenly disappear.

“What… what was that?” she asked when he finally broke away from her to let her breathe.

“What the fuck did you think that you were doing?” Kaz seethed, pain and anger mixing in eyes in a way that made her stomach flip and her heart flutter. 

She didn’t know what the proper response to that would have been, especially since her own question hadn’t yet been answered. So she just tried a weak, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I can almost guarantee that you do,” Kaz replied, fire and bitterness seeping into every word that he spoke. He took a step back from her so that she could finally free herself from the wall, but he didn’t remove his eyes from her for a moment. It was like he thought that if he looked away, she would vanish back into the nothingness that she had been before. 

Nina shook that thought from her head the second that it crossed into her mind. There was no way that someone could love her that much. “Is this about the text?” she asked, nervously running her fingers along the seam of her pants.

“No, it’s about the fact that Jesper didn’t show up for dinner today, of course it’s about the text!” he shouted. “How did you think that kind of thing was okay to spring on us when none of us were around to talk you out of it?”

She brought her arms around herself so that she was holding in all of the emotion that was threatening to burst forth from her. “I thought that it would be the best way to do it. I know that breaking up over text isn’t something that’s really praised when it comes to judging whether or not an ex has been fair to you but I knew that I couldn’t do it face-to-face.”

Kaz limped past her so that he was sitting on her couch. Silence hung between them for a moment, and she took in her surroundings so that she could look anywhere but at her very upset boyfriend. Her home had pale cream colored walls with a white ceiling, a single black ceiling light hanging from the center. She had a red velvet couch in between two black metal tables, both of which were overflowing with notebooks, lamps, and plants. The entertainment center that held her small collection of DVDs and television matched the coffee table, which had been unintentional but fit the room perfectly. She had a thick black rug underneath it all that she and Wylan had spent almost an hour laying on the first time that they had spent time alone post-relationship. The living room led directly into the kitchen, which was separated from the space with a counter and cabinets.

“Why do you think that was?” Kaz asked when he finally got the energy to speak up again. She could see him charging up the attack like a canon preparing to fire before the words fell from his scarred lips.

“What?” she asked, shifting back and forth to rid herself of the nervous energy building up in her limbs. She had spent too long exerting herself to her limit every night and then cramped in a bus every day to just stand still in front of him.

“Why do you think that it would have been almost impossible to ask us to break up with you if you had been in front of us?” he asked. 

She tilted her head down towards the floor and tried her best not to start crying again. “I said it in the message. I love you all so, so much. It would have torn me apart to see your faces when you realized that this isn’t going to work out for you.”

“You don’t get to decide that for us, Nina!” Kaz shouted, springing from the couch. He winced, obviously having bent his bad knee too quickly, and collapsed back onto the furniture. “We’re the ones that get to make the decision about who is in our life and our relationship. We’re all consenting adults that are within a few years of each other, there’s no power imbalance. There’s no coercion or pressure, consent is explicit in everything that we do and no judgment gets passed when someone has to opt out of an activity. We would have let you know if we didn’t want to date you. You don’t get to fucking decide that for us!”

“You don’t understand!” she screamed, throwing her arms out in a wide gesture to accentuate her point. “I’m fucking cursed! Every time that my life has been this could something has come out of goddamn left field to try and ruin all of it. I could already see it happening when I was on tour and I wanted to save you all from it. You have each other to support you through the initial pain of the breakup, but you’ll be fine once that’s all over. Don’t you see why I can’t be around you? I’m going to hurt you like I did this time and one day it’ll be so big that you’ll start to resent me like everyone always does.”

Kaz slowly pushed himself up from the couch and limped over to her. He placed his ungloved hands on either side of her face and then brought his lips forward so that he was kissing her forehead. She had started crying again, all of the water that Zoya had forced her to drink on the bus now streaming down her face in well-traced rivulets.

She collapsed into him, letting out a wail that shook her entire body. Her face was buried into his neck and her arms were still wrapping around herself to try and get a small amount of extra comfort that way. He was holding her like she was going to disappear, just the way she liked it. It made her feel grounded and stable.

Nina cried and cried until there were no more tears left. She was hiccuping slightly as she pulled back and used the end of her sleeves to mop up the tears still on her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

He was about to say something when his phone went off in his pocket. Unable to contain her own curiosity, she asked, “Who’s that?”

“Backup,” Kaz replied shortly. He was still upset with her but had already mostly forgiven her.

“What, were you going to trap me until I came back to the relationship?” she asked, trying to tease him like she always did before she had done that catastrophically stupid thing. 

“Nina,” he warned, looking towards her. He had pulled his phone out of his pocket and turned it on so that he could see who it was that had texted him, but he immediately shoved it back into the pocket of his pants. Kaz’s dark eyes were shining with a kind of fear that he had only see after he woke up from his infrequent nightmares. That struck something deep inside of her and she immediately decided that she was never going to do something like that ever again, not for as long as she lived.

He stepped forward and placed his hands on either side of her face again. “I-I can’t fucking live without you. Any of you. I’ve lost so many people. I can’t lose you too. You hear me? I don’t care if you have some sort of fucking curse, I’ll handle whatever it throws at us. But I cannot lose you,” he spoke with such sincerity that it almost restarted her tears.

Instead, she flung herself around him so that he was buried into the edge of her body. She kissed his neck and then whispered, like it was a secret for just the two of them despite them still being alone in the apartment, “I’m sorry. I promise that I won’t do it again. Never ever.”

“Good,” Kaz replied. He cleared his throat and turned his face away from her so that she couldn’t see the tears glistening on his dark lashes, though she was able to catch a glimpse regardless. He slumped back onto the couch while sticking his bad leg out in front of him so that he didn’t further irritate the nerve sheaths that had been damaged. “I want you to go and put on the locket and ring that you always wear. If you have any clothing from our boys then you’re to put that on as well. They’re going to be coming over as soon as Matthias and Jesper’s show is over.”

“Don’t they have a cast party tonight?” she asked, already moving to do as he had asked. She felt rubbed raw with all of the emotion that she had just had to endure again, after sitting with the turmoil while trapped with her own mind on a bus for hours. She wanted to see the rest of her partners as soon as she could, to apologize to them as she had done to Kaz, but she wasn’t sure how much more crying she could honestly handle.

“Making sure that their girlfriend doesn’t break up with them trumps a cast party that they can attend after every show that they perform in,” Kaz replied, giving her a look that told her she should have been able to guess that.

Nina made herself busy to hide the burning on her freckled cheeks. She opened up her suitcase and got out the items she had so carefully put away early that morning. She secured the necklace right where it belonged, hanging over her collarbone. She then shed her travel shirt and put on Matthias’ shirt and Wylan’s hoodie. The rest of the clothing in the suitcase was thrown haphazardly into the washer so that it could be doing something productive. Kaz let her out of his sight long enough for her to also put away her makeup and the suitcase itself. When she came back, she handed Kaz back his cane and sat down on the ground in front of him.

“I really am sorry, you know,” she whispered.

“I could tell from the crying. I never want to see you that upset again,” he informed her as though he was scolding her. She knew how to see through the Kaz-speak well enough to tell that he was actually telling her how much he hated seeing her when she was in pain.

“Were…” she trailed off, burying her face in the soft velvet of the couch. She put her cheek on it instead, looking up at him while resisting the urge to put her head in his lap. “Were the others also upset?”

“Of course they were, Nina,” he replied. His voice was soft instead of gravely and biting like it normally was when they were having their verbal sparring sessions. She felt special to finally be the one that was receiving his tenderness, usually she was on the outside while watching it be given to Inej and Jesper. He continued, which she had not been expecting, “Jesper immediately started trying to find a way that he could track the bus and find a way to drive out to meet you to prove how much he loved you. Inej got a flight back a day early so that she could be here as soon as she possibly could. Wylan is currently driving back from his conference, he told them that he had a family emergency.”

“But he didn’t!” Nina gasped. Wylan took his job very seriously so the idea that he had lied to his associates about what he was doing absolutely flummoxed her.

“Darling, he did,” Kaz reminded her softly. “One of the only two women in his life that he has ever loved outside of a familiar sense threatened to leave him and break his heart. He had to come back to you.”

She sniffled again, but refused to let herself start crying. Kaz scooted over on the couch so that her head was actually pillowed on his thighs. She relaxed as his bare fingers began to card through her dark chocolate curls, an ever-present reminder of how loved she was. Kaz finally concluded, “I’ve never seen Matthias more broken or upset. He was absolutely devastated that he hadn’t proved to you just how adored you were by both him and us. I felt the same way. I had someone else open the Crow Club tonight just to wait for you.”

“I feel really bad for making you all do that. I thought that this would be the easiest way to protect you, to do it when none of you could come after me,” Nina mumbled as she hid her face away in his lap.

Kaz let the silent hang between them for a moment as he continued to weave his fingers through her curls. “I know. You were technically very clever with how you did it. You let your depression trick you into thinking that you didn’t deserve us or that we wouldn’t want you, and then you decided on a plan that would allow us to supposedly be ‘free’ of you with the least amount of chance of us getting to you to convince you to change your mind. What you didn’t account for was how much we loved you and how desperate we are to keep you near us.”

“Did any of you consider that I actually wanted to breakup?” Nina asked, curiosity getting the better of her. The words slipped through her mouth before she even had a chance to think about why that kind of thing might be hurtful to ask.

“No,” he replied immediately. “You made it very clear in the text that you sent that this was a self-destructive behavior and not something that you actually wanted to be happening. If you had sent any other message then there may have been some doubt in my mind, though.”

“You can read me so well,” she murmured. She grabbed his hand with her own and began to toy with the ends of his fingers.

They both sat in silence for a while until there was a knock on her door. Kaz got up, motioning for her to stay on the couch while he limped towards it. He grabbed his cane from where he had left it on the ground and then answered.

Almost as soon as the door opened, two other members of her polycule had piled in. Kaz had stepped to the side to allow them to, though Nina noticed for a moment that he didn’t actually close to the door or move away from it. Her attention was pulled away from him and to her other boyfriends, Matthias and Jesper immediately crowding her vision.

“Min elskede, vær venlig aldrig at skræmme mig sådan igen. Jeg elsker dig mere end hele verden og kan ikke fatte at skulle være uden dig,” Matthias was speaking so quickly that she was only able to catch a couple of the words that he was saying. Nina had always been naturally gifted when it came to languages, so she had been studying the native tongues of some of her partners so that she could speak with them in a language personal to them specifically. She hadn’t gotten far enough in her Danish lessons to be able to tell what he was saying then.

Her mind was racing to try and figure out what he had said so that she could have some tiny hope at translating it when Jesper dragged her out of it. “Did Kaz talk to you?”

“Yeah,” she whispered with a little nod. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t! Don’t fucking apologize to me,” Jesper shook his head. He knelt down on the ground in front of her and took her hand with his own. Matthias had already fallen to his knees in front of Nina like he was worshiping at an alter. In any other situation she would have found it incredibly erotic, but all she could think about was how guilty she was for causing them pain and how much she absolutely adored them with her entire heart.

He took a shaky breath in through his nose as he wrapped both of his calloused hands around hers. He brought it up to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her palm before he cupped his own cheek with her hand. “I love you, Nina. I truly do. I know that I’m not the best at speaking your love language and sometimes I fuck up and I hurt people, but I love you. Please never make me live without you because you think that I don’t want you.”

“I won’t, never ever again,” she shook her head. She took her hand away from Matthias just long enough to cup his other cheek. She kissed the top of Jesper’s forehead, his coiled black hair tickling the edge of her nose. She then pressed her lips to his for a longer time than was absolutely necessary.

She turned to her other boyfriend then and gave him a watery smile. She was determined not to cry no matter how many feelings she had brewing inside of her, deciding that she had reached her limit for tears. “You’re going to have to repeat what you said if you want me to be able to translate it, baby.”

“I love you,” he said, his English rough and heavily accented with emotion. “Jepser said everything else I had wanted to say. Please do not leave us.”

“I’m not going to, I promise,” she whispered. She kissed him as well.

By the time that she had finished soothing the worries that were brewing inside of her two boys, the door shut. She looked up and around Matthias to see Inej and Wylan standing there. They both looked harried and worn out from the traveling and change of plans that they had to do that day, both also carrying bags from their trips. “I’m sorry,” was the only thing that she could get out of her throat.

“I know,” Inej replied. She stalked over to the other woman, Matthias and Jesper moving away from her so that she had the space she needed. “There was a reason that I sent Kaz to talk you down. Draga mea, you are not cursed. You have had bad things happen to you because bad people were trying to hurt you. Now you have us to protect you from both your own mind and the people trying to hurt you. Never throw away your armor because the knife is shining nicely.”

Nina giggled and then nodded. Inej leaned down and kissed her.

“So you’re going to stay with us? We’re not breaking up anymore?” Wylan asked, his shoulders sagging in relief.

“No, I’m sorry. I got too into my own head and then I guess I just couldn’t keep it inside any longer,” Nina shook her head. She stood up and moved away from the three partners crowding the couch as she wrapped herself around Wylan. He buried himself into her body and clung to her to make sure that she was really there in front of him.

She removed her head from his fluffy brown-red hair to look over all of her partners. They had all gone to such great lengths to make sure that she was still together with them and so that she knew that they loved her. She was never going to hurt them like that again, for as long as she lived. 

[punksocks]

Astrology Observations Pt. 4

Only based of my personal experiences, take them with a grain of salt!

Saturn in 5th is interesting. I read somewhere that it means you won’t be creative at all and will always struggle with it, but I have Saturn in the 5th and I’m a full time artist. I’ve been drawing since I could hold a pencil. Saturn has required a lot of persistence and patience to learn artistic disciplines. If you have the desire to creatively express, you have to accept that it won’t click instantly. But when it does the levels of relief and knowing that wash over you are amazing and the creativity you bring to the table will match no other. That’s what Saturn is, it teaches difficult lessons that are hard to get through but you’re definitely a master of your craft in a new way with every hill you climb.

Capricorn moons will probably be raised by their grandparents or by older relatives. At the very least they will have a deep impact on your life.

I’ve noticed that many other earth moons (Capricorns and Virgos especially) I meet will often have other mothers. Maternal figures that are aunts or grandparents, even outside of their family. A figure from a different culture background or country that will be very kind and nurturing to you in ways you didn’t realize you needed and may help you advance in your life/career as well. This seems common with Scorpio moons in my experience as well.

For moon signs/aspects with harder experiences with their family (I’d say Capricorn, Aquarius, Virgo, Scorpio, maybe Aries/Pluto and Saturn conjunct, square, or in opposition to their moon) they often grow up becoming instinctively callous toward emotional distance and lack of support at home but they meet figures in their lives that are incredibly kind and sincere to help them find emotional solace throughout their lives. Those moon signs grow up tough and have to work backwards to find ways to be open and kind and emotionally in tuned throughout their lives.

Sagittarius and Pisces and other moon signs that can grow up a bit naive often have to do the work of learning how to grow a sense of awareness around keeping themselves grounded and handling bad influences without becoming cold and callous as they age, in contrast.

I think there’s so much caution around Aries moons because Aries is a very youthful sign. The balance between keeping themselves youthful and vigorous but also not falling into immaturity can be very hard for Aries placements in general. Between Aries sun, moon, and rising, I think Aries suns have the easiest time course correcting in this way. Aries risings often charge into a lot of situations full force and can learn to this less over time. Aries moon take any challenge or any talk of change and compromise so much more personally, they tend to be more immature and find ways to prove themselves right throughout their lives. When people say Aries moons are selfish, it points to this tendency to make matters all about their emotions and no one else’s.

No placement is a bad placement all natal placements are just about learning how to use your energy less single mindedly and learning how to adapt to the challenge at hand while using your skills to bring in a new perspective.

[nyoomerr]

tagged for the 'fic writer interview' by @mikkeneko! thanks for thinking of me, hopefully i have something interesting to share in it 🙈

Fic Writer Interview

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

21! the bingplush fic this last week finally pushed me over the edge of the page limit, i no longer have only a single page of fic!!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

440,163

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

every time i post a fic i hope to somehow oust 'to love another' from that #1 spot... every time i know it'll never happen :'D

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

every one i get, for the most part! i never want to take for granted the people who support me, and making sure i actually sit down and take the time and effort to respond to comments is, i've found, the best way for me to do that.

that being said, there are exceptions. i generally don't respond to criticism, general negativity, comments that don't really seem to be... about the fic, or comments that have a grammar correction and nothing else 😅

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

'raised by winter winds' or 'you don't need poltergeists for sidekicks' - both have bittersweet endings, which is the closest i'll ever get to an unhappy end, LOL.

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

discounting the short fics i've done that are just slice of life / domestic bliss for bingqiu, probably 'shallow water weather.' as happy an ending as any of my stuff, but with none of the angst to get there 😂

7. Do you write crossovers?

nope, and generally don't plan to. even the AUs i do, i prefer to put them in a generic or original world than the world of another story.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

oh sure, law of large numbers and all that. the truly nasty hate, i just delete. generally i'd prefer to just ignore it, honestly, because i think deleting a comment is also a form of engagement with the hate that i don't necessarily want to give to the person who left it, but...

based on past experience, leaving the comment up and unanswered seems to invite other readers to engage with the hate in whatever way /they/ choose, and i really don't want to accidentally be the facilitator of a conflict :'D

9. Do you write smut?

nope, and i've learned to put that disclaimer in the notes of longfic i write 😅

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

ehhh not in this fandom (that i'm aware of), but i have had a translator go rogue - which is why i currently only allow translations of my fics to be posted on ao3 only.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

several times, + some podfics! outside of the odd occurrence mentioned above, they've all been wonderful opportunities. i have massive respect for everyone who spends time making fics more accessible to others!

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no, and i feel like i'd be too picky to do so 😅 collabs in other ways - minibangs with artists, inspiration train games, etc - are all fun though, and i enjoy them!

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

whichever version of bingqiu/binggeyuan ends up with lbh at his soggiest and most pathetic

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

i have a post canon bingliushen fic that's been sitting in my WIPs for... over two years? i like the idea of it a lot and think parts of it would be very fun!

unfortunately, though, i like bingliushen because i like bingqiu and i like liushen and i think that sqq has two hands. this does not lend itself well to writing fic where bingliushen get together, since every time i try to work on this WIP the focus keeps turning to trying to get lbh and lqg to coexist well enough to allow bingliushen... and sadly i'm just not really into bingliu :')

15. What are your writing strengths?

i think i do humor and dialogue well enough! it always makes me happy to hear that my fic made someone laugh :>

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

although i think i'm alright at writing angst, i do think i have a tendency to resolve it too quickly/easily. i personally really do not enjoy fics where angst gets dragged on for awhile, and i know that this preference affects the pacing of my own angst in a way that perhaps puts me too far on the other side of the spectrum, lmao.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

i'm not sure what this is actually referring to, honestly 😅 i guess i use italics for that...?

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

attack on titan (please forgive me for my crimes)

19. What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

although i do have that aforementioned WIP, i really do want to actually finish a bingliushen fic... maybe i just need to give up and write a sqq harem fic like the old fandom days 😂

20. What's your favorite fic you've written?

generally, whatever fic i wrote 2-3 fics ago 😂 i tend to be offput by my most recent work, so work that i've had some space from but is still recent enough to reflect my current preferences and skills is what i always consider my favorite. right now, either rent a bingge or the sy!shixiong au!

and that's all the questions! i won't tag anyone 'cuz i'm a bit shy about that sort of thing, so anyone who wants to do it can take this as your invitation to do so!