#hard to define a hyperfixation to other people. but THIS certainly is one

[parakeetpark]

I'm so obsessed with Midnight Mass, somehow we've only been watching an episode a day, and today finished ep3. But I cannot stop thinking about it so I'm just rewatching the first episode right now, it's so much fun

It's great when you find a new fiction hyperfixation to sink your teeth into, I haven't had this in a while!

Usually I don't get into tv shows, I'll rewatch things but probably the last new series I watched was one of Mike Flanagan's earlier things like 3 years ago. Something about his stuff just works well for me. I've not found another horror series maker I've enjoyed (would love recommendations btw bc I'm so hesitant to start series, it's a commitment y'know)

But for now I'm gonna rewatch the first three eps probably, or as much as I can until we watch ep4 tomorrow >:)

[copperbadge]

I have a specific mental definition of hyperfixation under which I do not fall, but I'm beginning to realize that definition is inaccurately narrow //

What is your definition for it? (Totally understand that what you define is not indicative of much beyond your own thoughts on it, but I thought it was interesting as I just had a discussion with some friends on hyperfixations and it turns out we all have very different definitions for it!)

So, I'm just gonna put a warning right here for ableism, though I'm going to try to handle this as gracefully as possible. 

Let's start with the fact that I was raised with an autistic younger sibling in a time, the 80s and 90s, when autism was not well understood and often blamed on the parents -- my mother was accused of being an unloving "fridge mommy" and causing my brother's neurodivergence. She didn't buy into that knockout combo of ableism and misogyny, but those were the times. My brother was placed in special education quite young (later he was "mainstreamed") which certainly was overall helpful to him, but my childhood encounters with neurodivergence, both in his classmates and the way adults handled them, were not positive and could be quite frightening.

My understanding of autism and of the cultural ableism around it has expanded greatly, but there's no broad-band inoculation against being a dumb shit about things, and I still find lingering traces of my combative relationship to neurodivergence at times -- my view of hyperfixation being one of them.

Up until a very short time ago, probably not more than a couple of years, I was under the impression that hyperfixation was by definition detrimental -- that it was a collection of behaviors that were involuntary but also harmful to the person engaging in them, preventing people from getting or holding jobs and forming positive social relationships. If it wasn't harmful, it wasn't hyperfixation, in other words -- just bog-standard obsession, something most people have for one thing or another, to one degree or another.

To my mind, hyperfixation was an all-consuming top priority where you learned everything about whatever it was you were into, prioritized it above "healthy" behaviors like work and socialization, and involuntarily infodumped on anyone you encountered. Being fair to me, my brother's hyperfixations were deeply harmful not only to him but to his family and our social contacts, and that was the example that I had. Once my brother and I parted ways, I just really didn't think about it much.

I have a negative image of hyperfixation as someone intensely and obliviously monologuing at me at length about something I have no interest in and didn't ask about. When someone says hyperfixation, what I hear is still “narcissistic disinterest in other people”. Which is obviously incorrect, but that was my experience of it for my whole childhood. I've encountered it as an adult, too, but generally simply nodded through it, because I did have the understanding that it's often not voluntary. Because I don't talk about fandom outside of fandom, I don't infodump unless explicitly invited by someone I trust and often check in to make sure I'm not dominating the conversation if I do, and I generally stick to one aspect of an obsession (avoiding tie-in media, interviews, commentaries, etc) I never thought of what I did as hyperfixation. My hyperfixations were secret and stifled and thus not hyperfixations. 

But that betrays an incomplete view of hyperfixation (and more broadly, neurodivergence in general), a narrow view of it as something "autistic" rather than something that happens across neurodivergences, and an ableist understanding of "appropriate" behavior. Part of reconciling my identity with the concept of neurodivergence is acknowledging that behaviors I found angering and frightening in others as a child are behaviors that I have. I may express them differently but that doesn't mean I don't do them. Which is hard, because I lost friends due to my brother's behavior, back when we were kids. If I'm like him, am I going to lose my friends? Will people feel the same kind of incoherent rage at me that I felt at him when we were children, because all the attention was always on him? 

Which is ludicrious on the face of it. My anger with my brother is multifaceted and can’t be boiled down to simply “he infodumped at me and I wasn’t allowed to tell him to stop”. My friends are good people. If they suddenly stopped being friends because I have ADHD then they weren't friends to start with.  

But it's one of those things I'm wrestling with -- the idea that I have hyperfixations and that it's also okay that I do. 

[olderthannetfic]

Toaru: How To Research Past Fandoms

Sorry, I’m splitting this off because that reblog chain is so long.

We were talking about RRyaoi, a Ranma 1/2 mailing list that was deleted when Yahoo Groups ended.

@rainydaysandhappydays wrote:

Is this what happened to the Toaru franchise? I’m only 22 so I was only like 5 or so when it came out in the early 2000s. So I’m not sure about what happened during its time on the internet. All I know was that I only recently found out about it and got really excited to engage in this wonderful expansive world, but when I looked it up there was like nothing about it. There were like only a couple of dozen fics I found about the two main male leads that I could have sworn would have been the top ship. (Thoma x Accelerator) And so I got really sad that I assumed it was a long dead fandom. So I stopped trying to get into this world that I was really excited to see bc I knew that I would probably hyperfixate on it and I didn’t want to make myself suffer by not having a community, even dead, to turn to.

It would make a lot more sense if everything was deleted before I found it. And that is absolutely terrible. All of that hard work and love was destroyed years ago and kids(including myself) nowadays will never get to have the pleasure of engaging with the old fandoms. Or the fandoms that got a new update years later bc everything from old was deleted.

At the very least(and to be very frank AO3 does far far more) AO3 will keep the history of the fans. And will allow people to engage in fandoms and worlds that they never knew of before. Even if something is dozens of years old and everyone from a certain age or group seems to know about it, us younger people will always still be able to find it in different ways in different times. And it’s a shame that a lot of younger people can’t have any of the history from before AO3 because it was deleted by people that didn’t like something or another. And there are a lot of young people like me, that either stopped engaging in something I know I would love because I didn’t want to be alone in a fandom that was desolated by any or all purges or just straight up don’t start looking at that because they don’t have the knowledge or context to engage anymore. As most of it is lost and gone.

(Talking about Toaru if there is still a fandom for it I would love to know. I wanna enjoy this series! Please send me in the right direction!)

Short answer: No. Almost certainly not.

Long answer: I’ll walk you through my attempt to find Toaru fandom, explain how I’d go about it, and list anything I find.

I remember seeing this set of names around and being vaguely confused about how the various Toaru... things were related, so I know there was some kind of fandom, but the first thing we want to do for this kind of search is to define very precisely what the canon is, when it made it to English, and what kind of fandom we’re looking for. (Unless, of course, you’re looking for fandom in other languages.)

That previous discussion was about Yahoo Groups. It’s true that Y!G only got deleted a couple of years ago, and parts of it were highly active in the mid-00s, but mailing lists were really this absolute fandom stronghold from like 1998 to like 2003 and then started declining rapidly. So exactly when in the 00s we expect the Toaru franchise to have gotten big matters a lot.

I know if you’re younger, it’s a long, undifferentiated blob of The Past, but the early 00s were a period of very rapid change online. It was more similar to Tumblr right after the porn ban than... like... 2014 where the Tumblry parts of fandom were happily ensconced here, had been here several years, and were staying several more, or the later 00s on LJ, which were another relatively long period of fandom staying put on a website.

The second thing to keep in mind is that almost nothing generates a huge fic fandom. Modest, yes, but it’s very, very rare to have one of those ginormous fandoms. So when we go looking for potentially “lost” fandom, we also want to see if we can make a realistic estimate of how well-known the thing was and what kind of fans it might have attracted. That’s far from foolproof, but it can help when you’re wondering if you just missed something or if it was never big at all.

Step 1A: What and when was canon?

I’m starting on Wikipedia just to give myself a general overview of this media franchise. Toaru [whatever] aka A Certain Scientific/Magical/etc. [whatever] is a series of light novels plus adaptations.

Light Novels:

2004-2010

2011-2019

2020-

Manga:

2007- [Dengeki Daioh magazine]

2013

Anime:

S1: Oct  2008-Mar 2009

S2: Oct 2010-Apr 2011

S3: Oct 2018-Apr 2019

There’s some other media, but those are the basics.

My big observation here is that this is based on light novels (not a prescription for a huge fandom), but it does have an anime. English-language fic fandom tends to form first and primarily around the anime version of things. Also, there is no way this is an early 00s fandom if the light novels only started in 2004 and adaptations started in 2007/8.

Step 1B: English?

The next thing we need to know is if and when they made it to English. In 2021, there are simultaneous releases. The further back you go, the more only anime (and not the manga or the light novel) will ever have been translated and the more translation could lag years or even decades behind when something came out in Japan.

According to Wikipedia, Funimation released an English dub of the first season in 2012. The novel translations are 2014-now. The manga translation is 2015-now.

So it’s fairly available in English, and the English-speaking fandom era it would be from is the mid 2010s, some fifteen years after the type of canon I’d expect to be big on Yahoo Groups.

That doesn’t mean there’s no fandom, but we won’t be searching dead Y!G for it, which is a good thing.

Step 1C: Size Estimate

What generates a huge English-language fic fandom varies, but the prototypical type is Naruto. It starts as a single-author manga in Weekly Shounen Jump specifically. (Maybe other Jump titles or Shounen Sunday. There’s quite a short list of magazines that generate the majority of the really big fandoms.) It gets a massive anime adaptation with a couple hundred episodes, and seasons air each year without long breaks. English translations are swift and plentiful. (Back in ye olden days, fan translations were a bigger factor, but that’s not so true once we get into the 21stC.)

The Toaru franchise is based on light novels (bad). The manga ran in a mag not known for producing this type of fandom (bad). The anime has way fewer episodes and had long breaks (bad). OTOH, English translations are available (good), the franchise is ongoing rather than over (very good), and some translations are very recent. That last factor means a fandom could still grow if it hasn’t already.

I’d estimate this would have a small to medium-size fic fandom rather than a huge one, and that we’d be looking for traces of it on sites popular in the last 5 years.

Step 2A: Where was anime fanfic ~2012-2017?

The English dub of S1 of the anime was 2012. That was just when anime fandoms were switching from predominantly using FFN to AO3 being more popular. My guess would be that we’re looking at a post-switch fandom, but it is anime, so FFN might still be an important player for the het and gen side of things. (I know you care about m/m, but still...)

Basically, we’re looking at an era when AO3, FFN, and Wattpad will have been the big players. Perhaps Quizilla (RIP) or Quotev? We might find some fandom on Reddit, though probably not the part of the fandom you want, and we might find some on Tumblr if we knew where to look.

We’re not looking for a mid-00s anime archive like MediaMiner. (I’d keep that one in mind for porn of series like Inuyasha: things that are older and where the porn lovers got chased off of FFN in 2002 by the porn ban.) We’re also probably not looking for individual hard-coded personal archives or Usenet, which would be more 90s.

This is good news because we’re probably not looking at a situation where everything has been purged. Wattpad is going through some purges currently though, and nobody has a size estimate on those, but I’m not hearing too much screaming. FFN’s last really major purge was 2012.

Step 2B: Let’s go look!

I’ve been doing some google searches, and I’m turning up listings for doujinshi, pinterest pins, etc. I found an Amino post from 2018. Clearly, somebody ships these two.

One thing I’m noticing is that I see a lot of “Touma” and Accelerator, not “Thoma”. I’m also seeing some “To Aru” instead of “Toaru”. Choice of romanization can be a big issue in searching at times, so we’ll keep an eye out for that.

FFN shows Toaru fandoms Toaru Majutsu no Index/とある魔術の禁書目録 and A Certain Scientific Railgun/とある科学の超電磁砲. The first of those shows 1.4K stories, which sounds about right for a minor series from after FFN’s heyday. I wouldn’t expect to find much satisfying m/m, but you can always look.

AO3 is easier. The ship tag appears to be Accelerator/Kamijou Touma. There are 121 works.

Now, Wattpad, my most loathed... The first thing we do is search their names and find at least a couple of works that seem to be the right thing. Then we check those works to see what fans are calling the ship. Those are the tags/descriptions we need to search the hot mess that is Wattpad. I’m finding basically zero, though I suppose that isn’t a shock since most fanfic sites aren’t great for m/m. The extreme m/m-heaviness is an AO3 thing.

The next thing we’re going to do is look at the main AO3 fandom tag this ship is found in, which is Toaru Majutsu no Index | A Certain Magical Index. We’re going to look at the category sidebar:

F/F (180)

F/M (169)

Gen (166)

M/M (143)

Multi (39)

Other (27)

Well... that’s not exactly the typical AO3 distribution! Accelerator/Kamijou Touma is the top ship, but it looks to me like this fandom just isn’t as m/m-centric as some on AO3.

On Reddit, I’m seeing r/railgun/, which has like 8.3k members. For comparison, r/Naruto has 842k and r/Onepiece has 886k. Not that reddit popularity and m/m shipping popularity go together. They don’t. But this helps give a sense of whether there’s a huge fandom of some kind out there.

Step 3: Summing Up

What I think we’re seeing here is a fandom that had some activity around the time the first two seasons of anime came out and maybe another burst in 2019 after the third. It’s not unknown in English, but it was way after the era when we were excited about the few anime we could get and well into an era when it had tons of competition. People are seeing the same ship potential you did, but it’s just not popular enough in English to have gained critical mass for a thriving fic fandom.

I would not expect this to be the victim of deletions. I just don’t think it was ever big.

Any fans out there? Thoughts? Have I missed something big?

[lookbluesoup]

Hey Wyn! I Just read all of your Blue Soup series! I love it all!!! Every word of it is fantastic! I've been wanting to start writing Fanfiction for Fallout for a long time, but I've always been intimidated by the prospect of writing already-established characters and "ruining them" (especially characters like Piper, Preston and Nick, who I plan to make main characters in my story). Do you have any advice on dealing with this?

Hi Anon! Thanks so much for your kind words! ;w; I’m certainly no expert and know this fear personally, but I’ll ramble here about my process and how I try to think about things. Hopefully it can encourage you, too! :D I’ll add the disclaimer that this is what works for me, and what works for me might not work for others, that’s ok! 

First off - writing is for fun. Wanting to do justice to the characters and capture their essence is a great goal, and also a learning process. You don’t have to do it perfectly, nor should you try. Perfection implies there’s nothing more to learn or grow over, which is one, unachievable, and two, the death of innovation. Just do the best you can with what you know, and let your passion for the characters guide the process. And be gentle with yourself. 

Our own experiences and preferences will effect how we write these characters, what traits of theirs stand out to us, how we define their shape, at least in small ways, and that’s not inherently bad. Just like many different artists can draw a character in 100 different styles and that character is still recognizable and familiar (and enjoyable!), writers can emphasize 100 different facets of that character, too. If you’re putting your heart into it, you won’t ruin them. Saw a beautiful LotR post the other day about that, talking about how the movies are different from the books, but the love for the story and characters shows because the people who made those movies were passionate about it, and they’re worthy adaptations of the stories’ spirit. It’s the same for fanfiction.

It’s personally more fun for me to think about the writing process like I’m exploring a character rather than making a statement about a character, which are two very distinct mindsets for me. Exploring is fun, engaging, its ok to change your mind and edit or alter your story as you get new information. It’s like a puzzle, thinking through a character’s motivation, finding ways to incorporate that into a story. Making a statement is more 'fixed’, and implies pushing a narrative as the correct one, which adds a lot of pressure. Personally? I don’t like pressure hahaha 

Still - it’s hard not to feel obligated to do something to a certain standard for one reason or another. My anxiety likes to tell me lots of little lies, and it can be very convincing. When it strikes, working through my nerves is often harder than actually writing LOL

When I first started writing Fallout fanfic, I didn’t post it anywhere. That took a LOT of the pressure off, knowing that none of this needed to, or was even intended to be, shared with others who might judge. These stories were just between me and the characters. It was safe. I could work at my own pace and enjoy the process in my little tide pool. Since deciding to share them, I’ve been really grateful for the support readers have given! It feels good, I’m glad I found the courage to post them.

As for working out that puzzle of what seems most likely for a character, how to capture the heart of them, I love voice lines! Codex entries! Compilations! The best way to get to know a character is to spend time with them. I take Piper everywhere with me, I want to know what she thinks about everything, her character really struck a chord with me and, well, cue hyperfixation hahaha I use the Windows 10 Game Bar to record audio clips and have a massive archive of her voice lines. Flipping through these is a useful tool for me to get back into her “pattern” of speaking. All the Companions have distinct voices and tendencies, which is another neat aspect to writing them. I feel more confident knowing I had access to the source material. Also I just. Like listening to her voice sometimes. Shhh

Other great resources for this are the wiki (which has text files of most, if not all, each character’s dialogue lines and conversation trees) and youtube companion reaction comps - this SOUNDS like a lot of work. But for me at least I love it, it doesn’t feel like work because I’ll be excited looking for specific lines a la “how does she talk when she’s angry”, “what does she have to say about mirelurks”, you don’t have to keep everything about each character in your head memorized - these audio and text files are great archives to find what’s relevant to a scene quickly.

When I got into Fallout, I also got interested in 1950s movies, music, and even radio shows like Johnny Dollar and Green Hornet. This gave me context around the characters, too. For example, Piper’s kickass reporter vibes throw back to a lot of old sleuthing reporter tropes, and interpreting her actions through some of those filters felt more authentic to me than applying her behavior to a modern day setting or my own inclinations. I guess along with that I’d also say, take notes! Have an observation? Write it down in a notes file, or a google doc, somewhere you can sync between your devices and add to whenever you think about it. What stuff sticks out to you as important or defining for these characters, what trends do you notice? If you have bullet points written down, these also make great quick references. Here’s a few screenshots from the terror that is my notes docs:

You can see they’re just short notes or scribbled down thoughts that I can quickly reference if I’m wondering how she might act in a certain scene at a certain time! For me getting into a character’s headspace is often more of a feeling than any kind of scientific research, having easy access to these pointers helps put me in the right state of mind to jump into the creative pool and swim around and get soaked in - character goo - okay bad metaphor. Anyway,

None of these are rules that you have to follow or things that you have to do to get the characters “right”, they’re just potential tools that can help you find information to build off of, and hopefully feel more confident. Maybe something else is more useful to you with organizing or keeping your head clear for writing, it’s cool to experiment and find out what works for you!

[dansiere]

—    BASICS.

▸     IS    YOUR    MUSE    TALL    /    SHORT    /    AVERAGE ? Pearl stands at 5′10″ (178 cm) which renders her rather tall whenever compared to most women/humans in general. However, compared to most Gems she seems of average height. After all, she is easily dwarfed by Gems that stand higher in Homeworld’s hierarchy such as quartzes, jaspers, agates, bismuth, or, most strikingly diamonds. There are some exceptions, however. Pearl (i.e) towers over most peridots, lapis, sapphires, larimar and rubies. 

▸      ARE    THEY    OKAY    WITH    THEIR    HEIGHT ? She is not necessarily bothered by it but isn’t too fond of it either. Pearl is rather self-conscious about her appearance, given how much of it is linked to her status as former servant. The underlying discomfort notwithstanding; similar to her age, her height is but a number to her. 

▸      WHAT’S    THEIR    HAIR    LIKE ? Predominantly peach in colour, it can be considered orange from time to time [you may call her a ginger]. It’s relatively short & cut in a pixie cut at the front while styled up in the back. It reaches slightly beneath chin-length when wet but usually keeps its form due to well, Gem magic. Pearl used to wear a messier version of her standard hairstyle in her “youth”; indeed, during the war, she proudly donned a more “wild” look to complement her status as a renegade, whereas her hairstyle during her days spent in servitude featured a ‘rosebud’ kind of cut. Shortly after Rose’s death & Steven’s birth, Pearl eventually donned a very tidy & clean-cut look [for reasons that I will elude on further below]; no hair is allowed to pop out of its place. -- her hair itself is surprisingly soft & fluffy to the touch. 

▸     DO    THEY    SPEND    A    LOT    OF    TIME    ON    THEIR    HAIR     /    GROOMING ? Sadly, yes. She does not need to tend to her form per se but does so anyway in order to keep up a flawless & orderly appearance at any given time. -- however, ever since CYM, Pearl has gradually become more laid-back again & thus donned a messier hairstyle more reminiscent of the one worn during the war.

▸      DOES   YOUR   MUSE   CARE   ABOUT   THEIR   APPEARANCE   /   WHAT    OTHERS    THINK ? Absolutely, yes. While she will never admit it, Pearl is very, very self-conscious out of various reasons (one being her abysmal self-esteem). Never one to bring up physical attributes (why, in theory, she does not necessarily believe that she has much to offer in that regard. Her body is a hardlight projection & she perceives it as such), she is nonetheless hyperaware of what exactly her appearance entails. Pearls are designed to look "pretty” & are EASILY recognized based on their lanky & delicate built (i.e their noses, slim & rather ‘androgynous’ physique, posture, voice, & even more ‘individual’ traits such as hairstyle or the colour of their clothes). Needless to say, the fact that she possesses the physical traits of a pearl will always mark her as something or someone ‘special’ in a negative sense; more an object than a person, to be exact. Due to that, she has been changing her form quite often in the past, always trying her utmost to go against any classically pearl-esque trait.

—    PREFERENCES.

▸     INDOORS    OR    OUTDOORS ?  both ▸     RAIN   OR    SUNSHINE ?  sunshine, though she is fascinated by Earth’s weather in general. ▸     FOREST    OR    BEACH ?  again, both even though she has a preference for the beach due to basically having lived right next to one for approx. 5000 years. ▸     PRECIOUS    METALS  OR    GEMS ?  ... hm. Swords. ▸     FLOWERS    OR    PERFUMES ?  flowers by a long shot. ▸     PERSONALITY  OR    APPEARANCE ? personality; though admittedly, she developed quite the type regarding appearance. It is canon that most of her ‘flings’ resembled Rose.   ▸     BEING    ALONE    OR    BEING    IN    A    CROWD ?  being in a crowd; she feels at unease in both cases but loneliness is something she is absolutely terrified of (she is prone to self-isolation during or after a breakdown, however: partially out of the desire to punish herself); Pearl is someone who needs people around her, preferably two. She may retreat to her room rather often or like to sit outside on her own but she only feels truly at ease whenever Garnet, Rose / Steven & Amethyst are in her proximity. ▸     ORDER    OR    ANARCHY ?  order, without a doubt. Her younger self was certainly more fond of anarchy, however. It is also important to state that she sometimes WISHES she could simply solve her problems in a duel again; after all, to her, as a fan of logic, fighting is less stressful than dealing with her emotions. ▸     PAINFUL    TRUTHS    OR   WHITE    LIES ?  white lies., without a doubt. Pearl is an excellent liar; not necessarily by choice but... well. She is fairly good at twisting words. ▸     SCIENCE    OR    MAGIC ?  science. ▸     PEACE    OR    CONFLICT ?  another quite difficult choice; while she fights for peace, conflict is where she thrives. It is one of those ironic cases in which a person defines or rather defined herself by participating in a war & for Pearl the war was ... well, detrimental to her identity. She romanticizes it to NO END. ▸     NIGHT    OR    DAY ?  both; it does not make much of a difference to her in the end. She might prefer night time simply because she loves to stargaze but well. She is fond of the sun too. ▸     DUSK    OR   DAWN ?  dawn; Pearl loves watching the sun rise. ▸     WARMTH    OR    COLD ?  again, it makes no difference. Pearl cannot feel either. ▸     MANY   ACQUAINTANCES    OR    A    FEW    CLOSE    FRIENDS ?  few close friends; as I stated earlier, she needs people around her because she cannot really be alone. That urge notwithstanding, Pearl is a very introverted person who struggles with social norms; in fact, she often forces herself to socialize to a ridiculous degree. In SU:Future, she is constantly trying to meet new people that are capable of a) giving her the validation she requires, b) still fill the hole that Rose left & c) to distract herself from whatever uncomfortable thoughts are on her mind post-CYM. Her prime focus remains the Crystal Gems, but it is safe to say that she is lowkey trying to emulate an environment she revelled in during war times; she likes to be admired by people since it gives her confidence & stability. -- there is a reason why she calls her human acquaintances “her fanclub”. ▸     READING    OR    PLAYING    A    GAME ?  reading; she loves games that include strategic thinking or logic in general, however. Or anything that allows her to ramble on & on about topics of interest.

—    QUESTIONNAIRE.

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    OF    YOUR    MUSE’S    BAD    HABITS ? She is a nervous wreck; a mess. Pearl’s biggest issue is her inability to let go of the past or deal with her emotions in a healthy way. Her tons of personal growth notwithstanding, she is fond of white lies & emotional self-destruction. While she is usually selfless by nature, most of her rather reckless actions have proven to be quite damaging to those around her (i.e. Garnet, Amethyst, Steven & even herself). Pearl is furthermore emotionally unstable & spins out of control hard & fast, is prone to extreme jealousy, possessiveness & obsession may it be with Rose or details/symmetry, what if’s & cleanliness as such. Pearl is quick to judge, over-protective, terribly patronizing at times (even though she does not mean to be), incredibly controlling & just “does too much” whenever pushed. She is also fond of blaming herself in quite the fatal way & lives “inside her head” way too much. Low-self esteem & lack of confidence leads to her lashing out rather than handling situations in a calm manner; while appearing steady & being quite the strategist, she can turn into a bundle of nerves within a second, usually yielding to hysteria & knee-jerk reactions that do more harm than good. -- she means well & she is a very loving/caring person who has her heart in the right place but sometimes she just... messes up. After all, she never truly had the time to deal with her own myriad of trauma & it shows. 

▸      HAS    YOUR    MUSE    LOST    ANYONE    CLOSE    TO    THEM ?      HOW    HAS    IT    AFFECTED    THEM ? Yes, her partner/lover Rose Quartz. It is a loss that is still haunting her 16 years after the other’s death; needless to say, she did not handle it well at all. While she knew that Rose would die to give birth to Steven (mainly due to her having been told in advance / her suspecting so after Rose fell in love with Greg), Pearl held on to the thought of her ‘changing her mind’ until the very end. When the time came, Pearl utterly collapsed. She spent the first few months in utter self-isolation (either sitting next to Rose’s statue at the fountain or in her room, laying on her back & staring at the wall / ceiling or knees to her chest), barely speaking to anyone; the very mention of Rose or Steven made her burst into tears. It went so far that she... basically tried to shatter herself after around six months. Pearl was, however, stopped by Garnet who showed herl a future in which Steven would come to grow & live alongside them, just how Rose had wanted it to be. Pearl still poofed herself but emerged later with a changed form, apologizing for her behaviour & swearing to never try something that selfish ever again.

     Her newfound hope notwithstanding; coercing herself to function normally (after just a year) despite her looming agony put a serious strain on her & most of her already damaged relationships to the other two remaining Crystal Gems. She stopped confiding in Garnet, & her relationship to Amethyst broke apart; she was moody, screamed at the others, ran away, lost focus during missions which eventually endangered the life of her comrades & her own. She got poofed several times & as a consequence took longer to regenerate up until the point were she got more & more lethargic, volatile & eventually depressed with no drive, trying her utmost to function via hyperfixating on Steven. Additionally, she (i.e) developed a neurosis & a serious obsession with cleanliness & details as a consequence, busying herself with her role as Steven’s caretaker & housekeeping duties, with Garnet serving as her rock in her weakest & most volatile moments. -- she eventually managed to make the conscious decision to move on around Steven’s 15th birthday & has been working on herself ever since. Needless to say, it is a slow progress.

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    FOND    MEMORIES    YOUR    MUSE    HAS ?   Most of Pearl’s happy memories pivot around pretty much everything that happened during the Gem War, with a heavy focus on whatever Rose & her did together. -- one of the most striking experiences she told Steven about was the discovery of the Lunar Blossom Grove that ended with her & Rose “dancing all night” in a pause between several battles, or the time she sat on top of a cliff above Strawberry Fields, where Rose & her made the promise to stay on Earth & spend their future together. Other happy memories include heroic battles alongside Garnet & Bismuth, fusions between her & Rose or discovering Earth’s beauty. She has thousands of memories that go into the same direction which she will fondly talk about whenever asked. 

▸     IS    IT    EASY    FOR    YOUR    MUSE    TO    KILL ? Yes. She is a veteran who fought in a thousand-year war for Earth’s independence. She shattered & poofed various Gems; efficient, precise & took no risks. 

▸      WHAT’S    IT    LIKE    WHEN    YOUR    MUSE    BREAKS    DOWN ? Oh, it’s ugly. She gets very emotional (hysterical, almost); a lot of tears, a lot of balled fists & screaming. In the worst cases, she gets aggressive, vocal, & even physical from time to time. She will punch walls, shatter objects, run her hands through her hair. She will lash out, say things that HURT & won’t apologize either. Most part of the time, Pearl runs off whenever it is too much. When alone, she will usually collapse & cry until she can’t no more. After that follows a period of her staying silent for hours. -- sometimes she calms down & pretends nothing ever happened or tries to make up for her actions by doing favours for those she has hurt.

▸      IS    YOUR    MUSE    CAPABLE    OF    TRUSTING    SOMEONE    WITH    THEIR    LIFE ?

Partially yes, partially no. Pearl does not value her life as much as she should. The only person she ever blindly trusted was Rose & even that came around to bite her in the end. She trusts Garnet to always have her back & watch over her, while she herself considers Steven & Amethyst people she ought to protect. -- however, Pearl is the type to willingly throw herself off a cliff almost immediately if it will spare someone she loves from an untimely end.

▸      WHAT’S    YOUR    MUSE    LIKE    WHEN    THEY’RE    IN    LOVE ? Pearl is an extremely romantic person; usually very physical & devoted, she will go miles for her s.o (imagine every romance movie cliche ever & you may get a good idea of how she will behave). Rather old fashioned, she is the kind of person that writes love letters or poetry; the kind that takes her s.o. to secluded places to spend the night with dancing under the stars, bring flowers or wine & simply take the time to make her s.o. feel loved. She is passionate through & through; her love is the yearning kind, extremely loyal, thoughtful, and all-consuming. Why, if Pearl falls for someone, she falls very, very hard.

tagged by : @foxcharmed, expect a letter from my lawyer soon. This meme came for me. tagging :  @reantte, @huntershowl, @kissafist, @ndeavor, @spiraledheart, @spnel, @carvedbones, @handspoken, & @enshijou.