#i do not think a single one of my ocs is cishet

[theneighborhoodwatch]

cobbling together old discord rambles about julie and frank to make sense in a single text post because i feel like hurting someone today:

something i rotate a lot is the Dramatic Irony of a friendship deteriorating as a result of external forces trying to push them together when they were ALREADY close but not in the way that those forces intended - trying to make every interaction between them something that it isn't. i've made jokes along the lines of “genderfucking my ocs by telling them they have to be cishet” before but like. genuinely i do think there’s potential for there to be an element of one or both finally being pushed by this predicament to Deliberately seek out things they are not “supposed” to have, whether that be new relationships or new forms of self expression or just things we have no way of predicting yet.

and the real tragedy there is that if any of the characters involved had it their way, then it's likely that these things wouldn’t be coming into conflict with each other at all, bc yes they are different things, but they are all equally genuine. i know some people have talked about the idea julie turning against frank bc she does actually have feelings for him, but my own personal disinterest in this interpretation aside, i think there’s a lot more Dramatic Mileage to be found in “this person is my best friend so i only want good things for them -> free will and love are generally good things -> i find out i exist to limit their free will and/or ability to find love with other people -> Oh god. there's no way i can be included among 'good things' then. oh god. oh god." or "this person is my best friend so i only want good things for them -> free will and love are generally good things -> i find out they exist to limit my free will and/or ability to find love with other people -> Hey Dude? What The Fuck. I Have Only Ever Wanted Good Things For You.” or even both of those at the same time.

i wonder, which would feel worse: telling someone in a fit of anger against the circumstances that led you two here (circumstances are harder to hurt than people) that they ruined your life just by existing, and then having them try to turn that back on you? or having them agree with you? to find yourself burdened with the task of trying to cut them loose from you and risking your own safety in the process, or to find that they've taken matters into their own hands before you could make that decision?

[diezmil10000]

2023 art summary + thoughts on my own art progress under the cut!!

(template by HedgeCatDragonix on deviantart)

so i've been doing this for 10 years :P

i'm not posting these pics in high quality, they're somewhere on the internet if you want to scavange for a bit. i didn't start taking art seriously until late 2015 and i honestly don't like looking back at old drawings. i still like my 2022 art summary but it wasn't until this year that i'm proud of all my finished artworks.

my art journey is complicated. i'm not one of those artists who can say they've been drawing for all their lifes. i used to trace pokémon in my school agendas but that was it. around 2013, a couple of friends invited me to their Skype server where we used to draw each other's ocs and make art memes and stuff - it was fun and cringe in the most positive way i can say it :] i didn't know shit about art and i took pride in drawing on MS Paint with a mouse just because it was hard.

(all of my drawings until may 2018 were made with a mouse)

when i was 15 yo i got into Love Live! and i decided to get better at art because i didn't want lesbian fanart to be made only by creepy cishet men. at some point i watched this video from Sycra and it rewired my brain. i understood that i needed to actually practise and understand what i was doing, and that i wasn't going to improve just by observing. its follow-up video also helped me a lot, i remember watching it on the day it was posted jskhfdjdfd.

and so fast forward until 2021 approx. i spent all of those years practising drawing in my traditional sketchbooks, so my improvement was steady. the only problem, and in retrospective i see it as a Big Problem, is that i was grinding mindlessly. by that i mean that i copied artists i liked and i drew again and again stuff i was bad at, but i didn't think too deeply about it or analysed my own art to look for faster ways to improve it. i also don't take feedback well so i didn't ask for it either, which further slowed down my progress.

on top of it, that just made me better at drawing, not at illustration. i firmly believe that a good drawing is hard to ruin but i could have made my illustrations way more interesting if i had started going wild with colors and effects way earlier. i don't exactly regret my choices because at the end of the day it's just my hobby, and i've been praised for drawing a lot and for challenging myself to practise drawing traditionally, so i want this to be read as introspection rather than complaints!!

the reason why 2021 was a big change in my art is because in november i did this monstrosity:

i got an Android tablet to be able to draw in class and took the challenge alongside my friend Nico, who also did their own Huevember. hola si estás leyendo esto Nico, aunque lo dudo :) i can't say that any of the drawings made me better at anatomy, or composition, or colors. i can't say that they solidified my knowledge, either. but they planted a seed in my brain that would fully bloom in late 2022, which is the seed of hating the finished result of some pieces so much that i forced myself to improve.

everyone has their own motivation to get better at art and i've always thought that mine was a healthy one (i want to draw more lesbians, that's all). however, i've had a very solid 2023 and now i don't cringe at any of my pieces, plus i can notice any mistakes they have without wanting to delete them from existence - and i could only get there because at the end of 2022 i told myself i wouldn't make any more ugly illustrations. like, period. i didn't want to get anxious every time i had to look back on my own art.

i also learned that no ammount of compliments from others would magically make me like a piece i see as mid at best. of course, i appreciate every single nice comment i get (genuinely, i get very happy knowing that other people love my work), but gratitude doesn't fix a skill issue.

so, late 2022, many things happened. first i got cancelled on twitter over a drawing of my beloved mizuki from project sekai (this info will be relevant later). then i spent a whole month doing this other monstrosity that is to this day the best thing i've ever done. i haven't peaked it (yet):

this comic actually made me improve and solidify my skills. it wasn't a class assignment, or a collaboration, or anything more than a headcanon i shared with a friend - it was pure brainrot over Revue Starlight and it made me put all my cunt into it. this was also the point at which i started filling in blacks with the bucket tool instead of picking a very dark color, which is a big part of my current style :3

the thing about people cancelling me is that i had to distance myself from fandoms and eventually change accunts, which also affected how i perceived my own art. even if i draw for myself, at the end of the day i still draw characters that are loved by many people, so i disabled comments and stopped interacting with other artists of my fandom circles. that led me to go on hiatus at the start of 2023, knowing that it was time for a fresh start (my art accounts were 5 years old anyway).

that period of time made me think a lot about my finished pieces. since i wouldn't post them until i had a new account, i would stare at them for longer than ever or make small changes even if days had already passed. letting my mind rest from illustrations i had been working on and knowing i could change them whenever i wanted was a big step forward.

i realised that for the past years i had been in a hurry to post my drawings as soon as i was done with them instead of appreciating them. that was a turning point for my mindset. this was also past the time i decided to stop making ugly art, but i hadn't really taken any measures to get better. so i changed the wording of the challenge: i can make ugly art but i can't post it if i don't like it.

it doesn't sound epic, but for some reason it worked. every time i was in the middle of making a drawing that looked kind of ugly, i changed it until it looked right. not perfect, but good enough to avoid cringing in the future. some times i had to redraw it from scratch with a more interesting pose. some times i needed to add a background or a graphic element to make the characters pop. and somewhere on that period, i went wild with colors and effects, and a lot of times that saved a piece that would otherwise be boring.

i have to thank Revolutionary Girl Utena and Revue Starlight for making me experiment a lot during my hiatus. both pieces of media, one being the daugher of the other, give artists so many visual metaphors and interesting topics to work with. the revstar brainrot had been there since the junnana comic, but rgu was something i had been meaning to rewatch for a couple of years and it hit me like a fucking train. it also made me create one of the comics i'm the most proud about:

then i got into homestuck and my art got. well. stuck!! >D< but it was okay because i wasn't making ugly drawings anymore. i was putting into practise a lot of things i had been learning or experimenting with, especially regarding colors and character interactions. and the yuri was delicious hmmmmmmm.

the rest of 2023 was very linear in terms of art but not so much in terms of fandoms (?). which is fine, honestly, but i was also glad to get back into Fire Emblem: Three Houses in late that year because when i first got into it in 2019 i didn't have the skill to draw everything i wanted to draw. and i still haven't drawn all the yuri scenarios that i've been cooking in my mind, but i have until forever to do it!!

so for 2024 i want to study some stuff i feel i'm still lacking in. i think i've always had a good eye for composition, but i've never actually pushed it in my finished illustrations - they depend a lot on the poses because i've always been prioritising drawing over everything else. that needs to change this year.

i also want to get better at drawing characters from extreme angles. i've always felt like my poses are a bit flat and i think i can study photos taken with wide angle lenses to improve at that.

and of course i still want to draw faster, which is something i've always struggled with. i think i have a good rhythm of "producing" art (excuse me for the poor wording), but i'm still too slow for the kind of artstyle i want to achieve, which includes having a looser lineart and less details in irrelevant areas of the drawings. i think that overdoing the lineart actually hurts my illustrations, because everything ends up pulling the viewer's attention with the same energy. i also think messy artstyles are neat.

i promise i'm not crazy and i don't hate what i do. in fact, it's precisely because this year i managed to make some pieces with that kind of feel that i know where i want to aim. special mention to the junnana comic because i haven't been able to replicate that lineart ever since.

examples:

as for the stuff i like about my current artstyle, i definitely want to keep the way i color!! and by that i mean the method i have for applying filters that make my colors pop. i could maybe play more with textures too.

i also like the way i depict intimacy, and people have praised it too. thank you for noticing. it's the yearning that's doing it, not me. but i don't think i'll ever change the content (?) of my art, i eat breathe and speak in yuri. if anything, there are still some ways of conveying feelings that i haven't been able to draw because i lack the skill to do so, but i'll keep trying ;)

i honestly didn't expect this post to be this long. i've been writing for hours now and i'm not sure my thoughts are coherent for anyone that isn't me. i also can't grasp the idea that some people know me from fanart i did in 2016 while others started following me last month, time is wild and it's an extra dimension of complexity that i don't know how to account for when i write stuff like this.

but again, as i do with art, i've written this for myself. it's been nice to put my thoughts in order. i think i've only talked about art in depth with like 5 people and it's always been in casual conversation. no creo que estéis leyendo pero Nahia y Henar os amo y he aprendido mucho de vosotras.

thank you for reading until the end if you have. i hope you have not only a nice day but a nice year. let's meet again in the future.

[irkimatsu]

I don't think I made a single OC during my time in Matsu fandom, but Hazbin's gotten my furry wheels spinning, god damn you. I'm gonna ramble under the cut to try to get my thoughts straight.

-Almaz (Nina Sinclair), squirrel, non-binary. An 80's one-hit-wonder who died in their 30's after self-destructing and overdosing on drugs, is in love with Husk. I've posted plenty about them before.

-Richard Brenning (hell name still undecided), white rabbit, died in his 50's, pansexual male. An 80's star like Almaz, but unlike Mazzie he got more than fifteen minutes of fame as a singer, reality star, and general tabloid menace. The "controversies and scandals" section of his Wikipedia page is longer than Mazzie's entire page. Absolutely covered in sparkles. I know his outfit includes a sparkly purple vest with nothing underneath, and I keep wanting to give him a hat, but Husk already has a top hat so I don't know what to do there just yet. An egotistical little shitheel at first, possibly an Overlord? Almaz looks up to him but he's a bit insensitive about the whole "one-hit-wonder who self-destructed, don't they all" thing. He'll chill out with some character development and eventually settle down with Angel Dust therefore freeing Husk for Almaz to pursue

-Clara? Originally made her to fill a request but I think I'm keeping her. Still need a last name for her, she keeps her birth name in hell. A small black bear, looks more like a teddy bear than a wild animal. Mainly dresses in floral print. Grew up with Alastor and knows he enjoys hunting, but is willfully ignoring the nastier aspects of her "big brother in spirit" in an attempt to preserve her happy childhood memories of him. Was born after Alastor but also died later than he did, in her 60's, I think? If that request stays canon to my OC's then she has a thing for Husk, but Husk is immediately bitter of her connection with Alastor, so that's not going anywhere. Still no idea what landed her in hell. Is "willful ignorance of the fact that your best friend is a serial killer" a sin?

And Husk's family, all of whom I still need to name:

-Husk's ex-wife was a black woman who lived in the middle of nowhere with nothing but her dreams. She moved to a rapidly growing Las Vegas in the 30's to chase those dreams, and started singing songs she wrote in the same bar where Husk would play saxophone with various bands. The two hit it off beautifully and had a wonderful marriage, with Husk spoiling her with gifts and trips and encouraging her singing and poetry... until everything fell apart because Husk just couldn't get his addictions under control, no matter how hard he tried. It's not his fault, exactly... it just sucks for everyone involved. Don't know what would have landed her in Hell, but I do want her to see Husk again so they can try to get some closure. ...and the pronoun use here is a bit strange because I think she'd realize she's transmasc while in hell? I want something where Husk's spouse thought they were a cishet woman in life, but due to Husk's own experience with the Las Vegas queer scene he always had his doubts about that... but he couldn't risk outing himself, so he never said anything while they were alive. They'll meet again, Husk will take their new gender identity in stride and finally get to come out to them as pansexual, maybe they'll try to rekindle their romance but the spark is fully dead on the spouse's side, Husk desperately needs this closure before he can pursue anyone else. He doesn't expect his spouse to forgive him, he just wants them to understand he never wanted to hurt his family...

-Husk's older daughters, twin girls. Still highly undeveloped, except that they stay close for their whole lives and Husk utterly spoiled them as much as he could while he was still able to see them. Husk has participated in princess teddy bear tea parties, I will die on that hill. They were preteens/early teens when their parents divorced, and a year or two after that their mother stopped letting Husk see them because he's a drunk deadbeat piece of shit. I'm so sorry, Husk. They started families of their own, Husk has grandkids, but he has no idea because his daughters never tried to re-establish contact with him in adulthood. They have their fond memories of him, but also some really shitty ones, especially after an event I'll be talking about in a moment. It's complicated.

-Husk's younger daughter, who I want to flesh out for one horrible reason... the idea of Husk losing his daughter in an accident, blaming himself for it for the rest of his life regardless of what he could have done to save her, and sinking further than ever into the addictions that would ruin his marriage in short order. I'm so sorry for doing this to you, everyone who's involved. She's in Heaven now, and if Husk ever ascends there will be tearful reunions god damn it please

I haven't decided on species for Husk's family, but none of them are cats; the cat thing is specific to him for his manner of life and death, figuratively drowning in alcohol before literally drowning in a lake. Cats hate water, after all. The others don't have that connection to cats. I'll figure them out eventually.

[erigold13261]

🌻, 🌈 and 🌌 for the OC ask game 👀? (i dunno if some were already asnwered btw)

"🌻 Do any of them hide dark secrets under a cheerful veneer?"

Hmm... I don't actually think so!

Pretty much all of my OCs that have potentially dark secrets either don't keep them a secret (or are very casual about it) or aren't hiding them behind cheerfulness and instead of gloomy.

I would say the closest thing to that would be Synthia, but he doesn't hide the neglect and abuse he gets from his mom. He's very casual about it because he dissociates her hate for him which is why he's always very happy.

Oh! I think technically Carna tries to hide faer kleptomania through cheerful attitudes, but that is more like playful lying from being raised in a rich and spoiled environment (the second time being raised since the first time was in a dysfunctional house with an abusive mother and neglectful father). Though that isn't really a dark secret, so doesn't really count.

I guess technically Ilia hides his past by being happy, but it's not like he is actively hiding it. He's more of a lying through omission kind of person. So if you don't ask the right questions, you aren't getting the full story from him (which is why the curses think he's a human when they first meet him).

The only other OC I can think of would be a much older OC named Emi that I haven't drawn in a while. She wears a mask with a permanent smile on it and has a pretty cheerful attitude as she hunts down humans to collect their teeth and eat their faces.

I haven't thought of her much in a while, but she isn't really hiding her past/dark secrets. Though, since I am thinking of her again, I can make her into an entity and she definitely would be a character who hides her actions behind friendliness! Very much looking like she is a perfectly friendly entity on the outside but a human hunter in reality.

"🌈 Which ones are The LGBTQ+?"

I mean... I better question would be which one is NOT queer lol!

Pretty much all of my OCs are some flavor of queer. Mainly asexual, aromantic, or aroace. I also tend to have a lot of lesbians or wlw as well as trans or nonbinary OCs.

The ones who are cishet are Sharon, Matvey, Martha, Aria probably, Nuru, Sarabi, Joust experimented a bit but is cishet. Quida is cishet, so is Noa and Asa. Honestly Asa might be something, but for now he is cishet. I think that's all but I'm sure I'm forgetting someone.

A lot more cishet OCs than I remember lol! But otherwise, pretty much all my other OCs are somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum!

"🌌 Do your OCs inhabit a shared universe?"

Yes and no!

I compartmentalize my OCs depending on where they are from. So a JJK OC would be in JJK while an NSR OC is only in NSR.

However, because I made the Eriverse, technically all my OCs can now live in a single universe! Even single fandom universes like JJK can be connected to the Eriverse through Ilia now! Meaning that event though they aren't in a shared universe, they share a multiverse through Ilia's powers.

And speaking of multiverses, I have a LOT of NSR AUs that I basically turned into OCs in my head as they are so far removed from the base NSR premise. Though these are in a different multiverse compared to the one connected to the Eriverse. If that makes sense lol.

So yea, yes and no. It depends really. For the most part, if I want them to be connected then they can be in the same universe. If not then they aren't. Really depends on what I want to do in the moment.

[opinated-user]

For anyone else on Earth, looking at art drawn by TWO artists who used CSEM as references (including one who hurt her own son), having massive porn accounts full of the most realistic shota and loli on the face of this planet, misgendering every trans and nonbinary person she encounters, calling queer people cishet if she doesn't like them, hating a Jewish nonbinary cartoon creator and likening her to a Nazi, overlooking antisemitism in Harley Quinn, writing a black OC whose mom is a slave trader who goes on to wed a trafficking victim of her mother's and completely control her life/use her as childcare and ship repair, making the Tooncritic situation worse allowing an actual pedophile to walk free, having her Gardevoir OC violate a human child, writing incest and murder and pedophilia and rape, coercing people into sexual art and acts they were uncomfortable with, stealing art, stealing jokes, having her audience dogpile people, accusing her audience and haters alike of wanting to fuck or rape her, flashing children suddenly on stream, and lying chronically about everything from catching covid 3 times to her race to faking entire people would be enough to get her deplatformed.

I've seen people get deplatformed for any single one of these things.

Why the fuck does Lily glide by without any lengthy comprehensive video or massive Lily exposed video essay? Why is it always, at most, a video that goes over one thing she did or one person she hurt? Why does no one ever talk about the people whose existence she faked or the porn accounts or the racefaking or any other number of things she's done?

Maybe if someone did a cold, calm TRO style video about all the shit Lily's done with all the receipts we'd get somewhere. But instead videos are made about, at most, two things she's done, without the piles of evidence for all the other things, and then everyone argues about a word possibly being misused as if that's going to help things.

If I had any money to my name I would buy equipment and make a documentary length video on everything she has done. Instead I have to sit here as a Jewish CSA victim knowing she can endorse Nazis and support an artist who assaulted a two year old and know that at most those things will get 4-10 reblogs on tumblr rather than her getting dragged and deplatformed away from minors she can hurt.

I'm so tired. I'm so fucking tired. The fact that not one person even seems to care enough to try to cover even a fraction of her shit is exhausting. It takes me right back to childhood and being told what my abuser did wasn't serious because she's a girl and girls aren't bad like boys are.

Can someone please hold this woman to account? The evidence is all over the place. The job is halfway done for you. Someone, anyone, please do something significant to deplatform her.

At this rate the only way she'll be deplatformed is if she abuses a child herself, and only if it's in a way the authorities bother to give a shit about. Again: I am so tired. No one gives a damn about people like me, either in the sense of giving a damn about CSA survivors or Jewish people. No one cares. No one has ever cared. I wish I'd died when I was a kid and my abuser used to choke me, I really do.

making the Tooncritic situation worse allowing an actual pedophile to walk free

(i have to clarify that i was wrong about that. on this post segasister is kind enough to explain better the situation. LO actually had nothing to do with the investigation one way or another. she did took advantage of it and made it seem like she was the hero when that wasn't true, but she didn't made it worse either like i assumed so.) anon, please don't think of it that way. i know it's disheartening and dissapointing that all of this doesn't recieve as much attention as we'd all like, but at least is recieving some attention now. it was a lot worse just a few years back. things are changing slowly but they're doing it and for the better. LO might never get the TRO's style documentary that other figures got, but she's slowly fading into irrelevancy and that is what matters because it means less people she can hurt. i'm so sorry for everything that has happened to you. if LO and the discourse around her makes you feel that way, i recommend taking a break, find your support system and try to forget about this for a while. your wellbeing and mental health is more important that LO and anything she could do or say.

[cryptid-s-wips]

Fun Fact Fsaturday

Yes, I know it's supposed to be Friday, but it is not Friday, so it's now Fsaturday. For the sake of alliteration.

Thank you to the wonderful @memento-morri-writes for the tag!

Rules: Share some fun facts about your OCs, WIPs, writing process, or really anything writing-related

A lot of my OCs (especially main characters) from some of my older projects started out very similar to me and slowly grew apart until they became nothing like me.

(It also helped that I did the Trans (TM) thing and then all my female MCs became automatically no longer reflections of me.)

H2H is my oldest (and longest-running) WIP at about three years old, and I've been developing the world for a lot longer than I've been writing or even had a story thought up.

I'm a frequent lucid dreamer and have been since I was little so I actually tend to use my dreams as inspiration/time to develop and think up new ideas for stories and plots. I always like to have something nearby where I can write down my ideas when I wake up. (Extra fun fact! Both WtRL and MBP both started out as dreams)

I also love drawing and one of my favorite subjects is my OCs. One of my favorite things to do is go back to see my old drawings and redraw them months later to see how they've changed. A lot has changed with the designs of a few of them, especially Rowan's design.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I have made a single cishet (or even het) major in any of my WIPs. Gays (actually mostly bisexuals) for the win.

I always want to come up with what kind of music my characters like to listen to but often struggle to actually name any artists or songs. Except for Remiel. He listens to Weezer.

Tagging (no pressure!) @the-orangeauthor, @yejiwritesthings, @rodentwrites, @awhisperinthenight, and anyone else who'd like to do it!

[benryphobic]

tell me ur thoughts on... Darnry

DARNEY MY BELARNREY......HELL YES

💐 Who tends to worry the most?

Darnold. He has anxiety! He's very uncomfortable with sudden change, too, so anything extreme happening out of his schedule makes him freak out

💋 Who is the most physically affectionate?

Benry. he gives his *friends* kisses, man. he would give Darnold so much physical affection it would be annoying (sometimes)

⛈ Do they enjoy dancing?

They do! Darnold dances like an old man, just kinda swaying side to side, while benry dances like a teenage girl. they have really different tastes in music, but can come together with dancing to r&b!

🌹⛈Who has the most nightmares and how do they deal with them?

Darnold has the most nightmares. Mostly about being terrified and trapped. Benry helps him by just kinda playing games with him, cos neither of them are too good at talking about feelings

🌺 Do they go to sleep at the same time as each other?

They do initially, bc Benry just. never slept. he doesn't need to. But then Benry started to appreciate the fine art of being able to cuddle and doze with a comfy body in his arms

⚡ What are their nicknames for each other?

I can't really think of anything but benry probably calls him like. D. Arnold. as a bit. otherwise i can't see them using any nicknames

🍃 What do they do when the other is stressed?

play video games....if that doesn't work, then they just talk about nothing. if it gets really bad, benry uses sweet voice for him, but thats not super often. darnold helps benry by just being his friend (homosexual)

🌻 How do they spend time if the other is gone?

Darnold does his science shit, goes back to school to become a professor, plays video games etc etc. benry plays video games, listens to music, probably makes his own music, talks to his friends, etc

🎮 Do they have a favourite video game they enjoy playing together?

team fortress 2.....they both go medic and do this

💍 Would they ever get married?

probably! no big wedding or anything, but they would get a little dressed up

✨ Who proposes?

benry! he does it very casually but very heartfelt

👑 Who is the meme lover?

darnold laughs at minion memes and cat memes. benry does not go on the internet.

📚 Who likes to read?

Darnold! he's fascinated with his field of study, but also in a lot of different things. he reads a lot to calm down and as a hobby

🎩 Who bothers the other person while the other person reads?

haha benry. if benry needs attention (which is often) he'll bother darnold like an immature child.

🌼 How do their personalities complement each other?

i think both are very matter of fact while saying the craziest shit. the difference is you can kinda tell when benry is joking (unless youre gordon) , while you cannot tell at All when Darnold is. Plus i kinda see them both as quiet people, maybe ambiverts at most, so they just kinda chill most of the time. theyre absurd in different ways, and its great :)

🔥 Who will punch someone out if they are rude to their partner?

neither? i think benry would shoot someone just for picking their nose

💀 What would they dress up as, for Halloween?

oooohghuhghhhhh the cheesiest costumes ever. the first year theyre dating they go as a medic and solider duo, but years after theyd do like. cishet costumes bc they both think its funny (harley quinn and joker, Frankenstein and the bride of frakenstein, jack and sally, etc) they still really like dressing up as video game characters tho, so they do that too to mix it up

🌈 What are their favourite colours?

darnold likes green! benry........does not have a favorite

🌹 Who is the hopeless romantic?

Neither! Darnold is a man of science, a man of work. he was very happy being single, benry just kinda added a new dynamic in his life that he very much enjoyed. benry is just....not a romantic. if he has a crush on someone he's like "well.....lol" and usually pursues like a 5 year old

🎭 Who is the dramatic one?

benry. he sounds like he's eternally pouting

🎈 Who makes jokes during inappropriate times?

benry, duh. hes kind of a dick. darnold cannot take him to funerals

💝 What do they love about each other the most?

the sick gamer strats. idk this is a weird question cos when u love someone, i feel like u love....all of them? or at least a lot of them. theres not really a favorite trait. they just go "yo this is nice as fuck" when u spend time with each other and like. cuddle.

👓 Who googles everything?

darnold uses Google as a research engine for his work and hobbies

🌙 How do they comfort each other when they are helpless to do anything about the situation?

they r there for each other. if its truly helpless, i think that's enough.

🍂 What is an inside joke they have?

pyro airpoof.....whether or not Darnolds potions are g fuel bc Powerade is kinda close to Gatorade

💟 What do you think makes them perfect for one another?

i dont think theyre perfect for one another! benrys an annoying jackass, Darnold is a nice man. but i think if benry got a huge loser crush, hed feel the need not to pull on darnolds metaphorical pigtails. its respect

🌷 Are you nervous to talk about your OTP? Why?

kinda nervous! but only bc i have trouble thinking about their dynamic. my favorite genre of romance is just.....dudes that hang out and kiss. i also don't want it to sound like knock off frenrey. Darnold is the only one who seemed a little annoyed by benry too, in a very different, polite way, but i find it difficult to differentiate the dynamic. Darnold is a little bit of a straight man to the straight man. not to say he isnt absurd. but id find it reallt funny for benry to do some crazy shit and Darnold to go "uhm. ok."

Is your OTP Oc x Canon?

hmm difficult question. hlvrai characterization in general is making an oc and hoping it adheres to Canon. just by shipping darnold and benry im basically making some sort of oc x oc for myself, since their characterizations don't imply theyd ever end up in a romantic relationship

🎵 What's a song (or songs) that remind you of your OTP?

i need more songs for my darnrey playlist 😩😩😩😩

[iholli]

I took down the previous post because it shouldn't be directed at a single piece of media when every fandom is guilty. That and it wasn't worded well.

The point is, not everything has to be about romantic relationships. No, I don't give a damn if you want to ship characters (as long as it's not harmful obviously), that's not the fucking point.

Fandom spaces have been completely consumed by shipping, specifically LGBT+ shipping. And it's boring. It's so boring to go into a tag and it's all ships and ship wars and it's boring. Fandom used to be about theories and fanfics and ocs AND shipping. Am I really the only one who feels like there's nothing but romantic visions now? I want to go into a tag for theories and fanart. And YES, shipping is FINE. But there's so much else to talk about besides who's sleeping with who (and seriously, that's all the ship wars are).

Invader Zim was fun because we bonded over ZaDr, but we talked about so much else. Theories about Irkens, how time works in that universe, discussing the Membrane family dynamic (or lack thereof, and how that affects the kids), making ocs and discussing where they would fit in...of course there was a ton of ZaDr too but that wasn't the entire fandom.

Now I try to look at other things I enjoy and it's just...all shipping. Hazbin isn't quite so bad because there's so much to theorize about the universe but there's still a lot of shipping stuff. Helluva is...worse. I see very little besides ships anymore. Marvel...yikes. I want to look at Loki content and I get blasted with ship stuff. Again, if that's your thing, that's fine. But it's not mine and I want to read theories, not a constant stream of shipping stuff.

And it's worse in spaces that don't have confirmed LGBT+ characters. Stories that have nothing to do with romance, characters with zero romantic subplots, everything gets steamrolled by ships. And everyone says "well it's because there's no LGBT+ representation" that isn't TRUE anymore. There is so much actual, confirmed, POSITIVE LGBT+ rep now. The Owl House, Adventure Time, She-Ra (NOT c*tradora), Kipo...

Yet I watch fandoms time and time again not only ignore healthy relationships (or non Canon ships), but even go so far as to pair up characters who would be incredibly toxic together for the sake of it being gay. AND shove it down everyone's throats. And if it bothers you or you disagree with it you hate gays and don't think LGBT+ rep should exist. (I'm seeing this happen especially with bi characters. Y'all disgust me.)

Seriously? How are you guys any better than the cishets? Forcing it on everyone? Getting angry at people who don't agree exactly? Demanding more rep to the point of harassing and sending death threats to content creators? It's like you got recognition and now you'll burn the world if everything isn't all about you immediately. LIKE CISHETS HAVE DONE FOR LITERALLY EVER. Why are you stooping to their level?

Fandom isn't fun anymore because of this shit. I'm tired. I want to enjoy my fandoms in peace. I love ships too but I don't want it in my face ALL the fucking time. There is so, so much else to talk about.

Most importantly, not everything has to be about romance. Again, y'all sound like cishets. People can be just friends. People who aren't related can be like family. Not. Everything. Has. To. Be. Romantic. Let people be just friends. Please.

[cinematicnomad]

Possible controversial opinion time - I can't help but see parallels between Buddie and Destiel. The writers spent 11 years showing how much Dean and Cas meant to each other, and yet it culminated in whatever that abomination of an ending was. I'm still so disappointed and hurt. I feel Buddie is headed that direction. I just don't think the show will ever follow through. It's hard to stay invested when I'm pretty sure I'll just end up sad again.

prefacing this with my usual i'm-a-pessimist-at-heart-and-won't-believe-buddie-will-go-canon-until-it's-happening-on-the-screen-right-in-front-of-my-face:

as much as i love destiel (and oh man, anon, i FUCKING love destiel), i don't think these ships, or shows, or dynamics, are comparable. bear with me for a minute as i provide some really necessary context that i think people tend to forget when making these comparisons:

supernatural was a bush-era (white, straight, cishet) male power fantasy tv show. like, not even the tail-end of the bush presidency, it started airing in 2005 right around the start of bush's second term. we were pretty firmly in the middle of the bush presidency. queer characters on tv were few and far between (usually relegated to one off guest stars or premium networks like showtime or hbo etc etc), gay marriage wasn't even legal yet, don't-ask-don't-tell was emblematic of the ~*coexist*~ ideology, and in the realm of tv even if they weren't overtly homophobic or anti-gay, they were culturally complacent. tv writers felt v comfortable making derogatory comments about queer people just for the ~*laughs*~ (please go back and rewatch gilmore girls and just....wait for the homophobic jokes to pour in, bc holy shit, there are a lot of them) and supernatural fell in line with that pretty squarely (haha everyone thinks sam and dean are gay, the motel owners are always offering them a single queen bed, dean's totally compensating for ~*something*~, isn't it funny).

and supernatural, despite growing and evolving over 15 years, really did hold on to that demographic. supernatural was one of those random shows that appealed to both democratic and republican viewers, and the network, the producers, the showrunners, the writers, WHATEVER, were not going to alienate their conservative audience. because: money.

9-1-1 just?? isn't comparable. the show started airing in 2018 and despite all the terrible things in the world, there HAS been progress in society and we can see that reflected in the show. we have several named main and regular queer characters on this show, who have plots and storylines that aren't just about their sexuality, who aren't used for the very-special-after-school-episode, but exist as fully rounded characters. hen is a main character and has been since e1 and we've gotten such beautiful storylines about her relationship with karen and their family and it is a jOY to watch on my screen compared to the types of (v limited) representation i saw as a teen in the mid-00s.

i mean...i think there are arguments to be made that bisexual representation still has far to go, and i have serious doubts that a ry*n m*rphy project will be the place to see any of that happen (he's biphobic af and i'm not talking about "oh there were some questionable plots in glee"), not to mention i still think that show creators have an easier time getting greenlit when pitching defined characters as queer from the outset compared to arguing for a character who was envisioned as straight-presenting at the start be allowed to evolve/grow/discover themselves through the course of the show (off the top of my head, characters who started out straight and came out several seasons after the fact...callie on grey's, willow on buffy, and marissa on the oc?). like i agree with you there! again, i'm a pessimist, so like i'm not telling you to be more positive or whatever?

but i just think that arguments that destiel and buddie are going to follow the same path lack a lot of nuance and tend to overlook some really important distinctions between both shows and the world writ large, and??

speaking of ship dynamics on their own, i'd just point to the fact that supernatural, for all that i loved about it, genuinely seemed to want to constantly run away from dean and castiel's dynamic? they spent entire seasons coming up with contrived ways to keep the two characters separate or to force them at odds with each other. like, ACTIVELY wrote plots and character arcs that undermined dean and castiel's bond at every turn bc the show didn't or couldn't address how much they mattered to each other. they'd give you like...breadcrumbs and then try to pretend like none of it mattered. (also this is when i plug that if you're not already you should 110% be watching bob weiss's destiel deep dive series on youtube)

on the other hand, whether or not buddie goes canonically romantic (which again! i doubt will happen!), 9-1-1 HAS canonically made their bond central to both characters and has repeatedly underscored just how much they matter to each other and just how involved they are in each other's lives. like, whether or not you think the writers will ever let them confess their romantic love for each other, the show DOES routinely center plots for both characters on their relationship with each other and repeatedly goes back to the same well to define just how much they matter to each other. s4 literally ended with eddie revealing that he made buck christopher's legal guardian like....they are doing the opposite of supernatural tbh.

this ran away from me so i'm just gonna publish this ask as is sorry

✨sleepover weekend✨

[thechangeling]

Ok lil spam but i love hearing about ocs

1,12,19,25,40,46,44,

Thanks so much for the ask Zia! Sorry this took so long to answer.

1. Who was your first OC?

I think my first OC was Janessa. I just remember thinking about how I wanted Kit to have a bestie and I was watching a lot of trans creaters for the first time (I orginally told myself it was for educational purposes lol) and I had the idea to make her a trans girl and then everything just sparked from there.

12. Who is an oc that isn't yours but you really like a lot?

Ummm *frantically tries to remember the names of other people's ocs* I really like your autistic character in particular. I think her name is Neirne? Sorry I'm crap at remembering names. But I really like her.

19. Introduce an OC that means a lot to you and explain why.

Ok well technically they all mean a lot to me, but I wanna talk about Gianna in particular here. Gianna Blackthorn-Rosales is the eldest daughter of Kierarktina and an absolute mess (affectionate).

My girl has bipolar disorder and a lot of trauma. Being the eldest daughter of such an iconic well known and importent trio as well as being the one mentally ill child out of all the nt kids Kierarktina have has not served her well at all. She's Kieran and Cristina's biological daughter, half fae and half shadowhunter.

She is a very loving and passionate person and she loves music, but she can also be quite temperamental and chaotic. She's a literally similar to Alyssa but more raw? I guess would be the right word? Mostly she just wants to be safe and loved and to not feel so alone or like a burden. I'm not exactly sure what her enneagram is yet.

She means a lot to me because I am also that mentally ill bitch that feels like a burden to their family. ✌

25. The OC that resembles you the most? Probably Alyssa or my version of Lizzie. Although I am not as brave or chaotic as either of them.

40. Any fond memories linked to your characters?

I used to take a lot of inspiration for Alyssa and Ty's relationship from my relationship with my ex. We've always had a muddled line blurring complicated very autistic relationship built on a foundation of "I just need you". We haven't talked in awhile bit we're still friends (I think 😳) and I care about and miss them a lot.

A lot of Alyssa's lines to Ty are things they said to me, especially the jokes and the majority of the fic Enough is based on a real conversation we had. There's a lot of pain associated with their friendship for me because there's a lot of pain surrounding my relationship with my ex, but also a lot of love and joy. And fundamentally Ty and Alyssa is just me bottling love between two autistic people.

Because I can almost never seem to hold onto it in real life. And when I do I always tell myself itself only a matter if time before I screw it up.

But anyways enough trauma dumping lol.

44. What's something that you like about your OCs in general?

I honestly don't think I have a single cishet OC and that's very iconic of me I think.

46. Do people ever accuse you of treating your OCs badly?

Actually surprisingly enough, no. I have gotten multiple "Alyssa go to therapy" comments, which I agree with. But no one has accused me of torturing my OCs. Yet.

[archangelbelletti]

So your mc is a straight fighter girl?

Then avoid writing that she...

Falls in love with an ugly monster

Why do so many movies in which a human falls in love with a monster it's always a straight girl who has a crush on a male monster (Beauty and the beast, The shape of water, etc)?

This narrative reinforces the idea that women have to be pretty but men ... don't, and this wrong for many reasons: 1) men end up feeling bad for wanting to be pretty and take care of their looks, 2) people will think that being pretty is mandatory for girls, 3) a man is ENTITLED to be with a girl and demand she take care of her appearance while he doesn't do the bare minimum.

Of course these stories are not the source of all evil, but you can see patriarchal culture filtering through these stories!

With that being said, you can still write a story where a beautiful girl falls in love with a male monster if: the monster learns how to be softer, take care of themself, take care of her without being possessive or violent.

Never cries...

Not expressing emotion and being dramatic at it will make your character look like they're pretending to be someone else in a way that's pretty unbelievable.

Instead of making her stoic and self-destructive, try making her explore a path of self-improvement by recognizing that not expressing her feelings makes her feel worse!

... or cries way too much

She's a fighter, right? She can't cry when she bruises her elbows or when her boyfriend acts mad, lmao! If she has guts, she will keep having them even during an argument.

Impulsively does something that f*cks up their plan

Apart from the fact that plans that get f*cked up by mindless ocs is just lazy writing in my opinion, let's talk about girls being portrayed as impulsive.

It's an old stereotype of women: the crazy girl, the one who can't think straight under pressure, the woman who can't handle fighting or ruling because she will lose her temper.

Try writing something fresh: she keeps her head, she helps her comrades focus, she plans everything in detail.

Her plans can fail, but only if she's outsmarted by a much more clever villain *winks*.

Is a hero just because everybody else isn't able to do basic things

Being the only fighter in the village when they're starving while her family does nothing but criticize her doesn't make her a hero, sadly.

The definition would be martyr, in my opinion, because she's literally putting herself in terrible danger (to provide food for her family, protect them, or save them).

Try writing her being supported, opening up about her struggles, if you want to rewrite Katniss, Fayre, or Mare Barrow.

Instead, if you want her to be a real hero, she could be elevated from a group of already excellent fighters because she's actually stronger and more skilled than the others!

Swears like a sailor to establish dominance

We get it, she's Not Like Other Girls. Okay.

But 1) other girls are perfectly fine being who they are, 2) this feels pretty fake, a play put on just to intimidate others or to fascinate someone (even if I don't know who besides the mc's love interest in Nevernight would be fascinated by profanity).

I remember not being able to finish Nevernight because of how many times I eyerolled during a single line by the mc (whose name I can't remember).

Your mc can be strong and independent without aggressively swearing!

Nb: I'm totally okay with ocs swearing in books, but everything has to be done with a sense of measure! Swearing a little is okay, using a string of obscenities that would make an assassin blush is just ew to me :/

Has a tiny appetite (even though she fights all day)

This is just pure physics, come on. How? Just... how? She HAS to be hungry! Let he feast with food, have a healthy relationship with it, eat lots and lots of whatever she likes best.

Enough with portraying skinny cishet girls who skip meals when they're a little stressed as okay. It's not!

(Of course this doesn't apply to ocs who have ED!!)

Always has to be saved by Big Beautiful Cishet Male OC

While they are BOTH powerful people, somehow she's always in danger and he has to save her, she's the one who gets caught, who has nightmares of the past and needs reassurance, who is scarred, and (fucking hel!), she's the one who gets sexually ass*ulted, but ... do not fear! Brave Cishet Male is here to save!

Please, don't. If your oc is a heroine, let her fight WITH him. Let her save him, instead. Let her win the battle and the war, conquer the castle, sign the peace treaties, shake hands with rulers, discuss war with powerful people. Let her do whatever he does, too.

Is said to be powerful, actually does nothing but fall

So your mc is a soldier, a thief, the best of her platoon. But somehow she always trips on her feet, she gets caught, she can't escape, she's always out of breath, and people have to save her.

If you say an oc is powerful, show it!

When I read Dance of Thieves, I noticed the author saying many times that the mc was skilled, but her skills where shown only in little things: juggling, stealing oranges, stealing small objects. She was said being a strong fighter, but she isn't, is she? If she is, why does she always lose?

Her strength lies in being sarcastic (but not when she has to fight for herself)

She has a quick tongue when she's with her friends or minor enemies, but when she should talk herself out of a life or death situation she just ... loses her quirk, or it becomes stupid.

Why? Why doesn't this character think of something clever to say to distract the enemy's attention, to buy herself more time, to make them reveal their plan to her? Why doesn't she trick them into saying vital things that will destroy them?

All of this, remember, while staying intelligent, clever. Stop making her judge the enemy's appearance, insulting their group/family/nationality, telling them they're going to lose, making jokes that will make them angrier or trigger them into hurting her! This shit is just dumb, come on.

The world is oversaturated with sarcastic ocs, make some sarcastic, okay, but also clever!

[pigspeetsandhooflikefeets]

Hey. I don’t like posting this because I like to be a positive person and this is a really cool and positive fandom, but I need to say please avoid melodicalmusic on DeviantArt/doggiebeats on Quotev. Initially I thought it was just someone who was missing the point, but they are far worse and actively harmful. (notes under cut)

melodicalmusic/doggiebeats is the author and illustrator of an au fic named “Velo Life”. At first glance it is harmless, the art is fine. The story revolves around a mask named Pap (a papillon dog) doing things, being an assistant to the monarchy, and dating Fox. Sometimes other masks get chapters, but the overall focus is on her oc, which is fine, as ocs can be good. The problem isn’t conception, it’s execution.

Transphobia: Melodic decided to cast Leopard as a non-binary intersex character. It was a fair design choice, other than the fact she referred to them as a “pseudo-h*rmaphodite”, which is medically outdated, as well as the inclusion of ‘pseudo’ is more offensive than the slur alone. Leopard has biological cubs, despite most intersex (obviously not all) being infertile or unable to carry children showing a lack of research on the topic, as well as it being a very dysphoric situation for many trans and intersex people.

Leopard was referred to as a “quing”, combination “queen” and “king”. Now. Mull over it. Okay stop mulling, because she had every inch to just use “Monarch”, such as “Monarch Leopard”, as well as titles like “Their/Your Majesty”, which works for both kings and queens, so it should have been suitable for Leopard.

Unprompted, she backpedaled saying “But I wanted Leopard in my AU to be a actual female. Cause I think it's for the best. Everyone kinda hated Leopard, but I love everything she does. No not Transgender, just really a female.”. Besides the fact she took it in her own hands to decide that a mask played by Seal was ‘now a cis woman’, she implies that trans women are not women, calling cis women ‘really a female’.

In her fic, the only other trans character is Egg, who is exceptionally ambiguous to being trans, not specifying if Egg is NB, FTM, or if he as well was going to be intersex. She dedicates a chapter to pride month, yet a lot of the focus is on the cishet masks (Pap (her oc), Frog, and Fox), as well as a concerning ship of T-Rex and Poodle, as everyone knows that T-Rex is somewhat coded to be a child, since Jojo was only 16 when she performed. Despite claiming to respect trans people, she only had two trans characters, and decided that one of them wouldn’t be trans anymore because “I admired the high-pitch voice that was fitted for the Leopard, it just suits SO well. Even if the show kept going, I always hear the digital high vocals.”. Call me crazy, but that’s not a reason to make a man a cis woman.

As a trans man, Leopard was disgustingly handled in the show with the panel first week, accusing Seal of ‘tricking’ them for wearing drag and acting feminine (not acting like a woman, acting feminine), and I hoped it wouldn’t leech into the fandom. Clearly I was wrong.

Homophobia: Where to start with this. As stated, she changed Leopard from a NB intersex character (in her original canon) to a cis woman. In the fic, Leopard is married to Nick. I don’t need to tell you that she made Nick x Leopard into a straight ship. She made the only gay ship tease in the show into a straight ship. I wish it ended here.

Somali, an oc, has potential. Not here, but he has it. Somali is gay. If you think I’m undermining his character, that is his character. Somali likes magic and theater, and is very flamboyant. He is a gay walking stereotype. In his description, it is stated, “The story is that he turnout Gay, Of course Pappy was Supportive, but she knew it wasn't fair, especially through everything she's involved.” If you need me to translate: Somali broke up with Pap after realizing he was gay. Pap saw that as unfair, and that she was a victim of being lead on because he found out he was gay. Yes, Pap is making Somali being gay and dealing with his internalized homophobia… about herself. She goes to the point of calling him her nemesis. Which is a... toxic way to refer to someone who broke up with you on clean terms.

Somali eventually teams up with Rottweiler, Pap’s brother (who abuses her, despite it being out of character in every means) and is. Evil, and he hates Pap now apparently. We can’t go a minute without the gay oc being evil huh. Somali being gay doesn’t add to the story, it just suggests the only reason he stopped dating her was that he was gay (which is bad and offensive in Pap’s eyes) because he is not shown to fall for Rottweiler, or have any crushes on other male masks. His homosexuality is an accessory tag, and it’s really not a good one when he is the only gay character with a lot of lines.

Every. Character. That. Is. LGBT. Is. A. Token. Ice Cream and T-Rex are the closest ones to not be tokens, as Ice Cream has a job at a diner and T-Rex gets lines, but T-Rex is only used for exposition, and again, a child shipped with an adult mask. Peacock’s and Rabbit’s role outside of the first chapter is to have a rocky relationship, being forced to rekindle their relationship after Pap tells them to do so for a love festival. Several of the female masks are bisexual or lesbians, but they add so little to the plot, that I don’t even remember which ships are which. Every [since Leopard used to not be but is now] main character is heterosexual and cis (Pap, Fox, Leopard, Kitty, Frog, Turtle, Rottweiler) which doesn’t imply that she actually is that pro LGBT. Drawings of hers for Ice Cream and Egg are captioned “Just something Gay for you guys to see~” (fetishizing much?).

Ableism: One of the ocs in the fic is a Red Panda, who is related to Panda (don’t be confused, animal wise they are not closely related at all). In the fic, Red Panda suffers from PTSD due to an accident which caused her to be disabled in the leg, who uses a single-leg-crutch to walk. The physical disability is handled well enough, not being a hindrance or made fun of, but her personality is the worst. Red Panda is a cowardly and sniveling child, scared of her own shadow and completely incompetent. Her PTSD is very thinly written, not giving her any specific triggers or reasons for anxiety. If her PTSD was presented with her being afraid of entering a vehicle or certain smells that would relate to the accident (rubber, smoke, leather), it would make sense, but Red Panda is scared of everything. On a dare, Frog tells Kitty to impersonate a mask. Kitty impersonates Red Panda, making fun of her cowardice, which can be an actual attack on people who have PTSD (like myself), Kitty justifies herself, saying she couldn’t think of anyone else, Red Panda immediately accepting it. Being a minor character, there is no time for her to develop, and the Red Panda we were presented with is already a mess.

In the same chapter that Red Panda is introduced, Axolotl (mentioned a lot later) dares Fox to remove his prosthetic arm. I don’t need to need prosthesis to know that asking someone to take their ARM OFF is unfunny and uncalled for. Pap, Fox’s girlfriend, decided to take the time and kissed the welt, commenting that it “looked interesting”. Don’t- don’t do that. Don’t kiss people’s scars or cuts or welts or anything related to their disability, especially without permission. Axolotl was being ablest to Fox and somehow Fox didn’t know better and forgot to tell her she was acting uncivilized, despite being one of the smartest masks in the canon.

Condoning Incest: One of the ocs in the fic is an Axolotl. The axolotl is Frog’s biological sister, Frog having Turtle as his adopted brother, which in fic Turtle is stated to have been adopted in Frog’s family for over 15 years. In the axolotl’s description, it is stated “Though Axolotl is a relative of him, She deeply has a crush on him. Which maybe weird but hey, Turtle's Adopted. So not a big deal”. No, it’s not ‘ok’ because Turtle is adopted, especially since they’ve been related 15 years. It’s not like Frog and Turtle are ‘close enough to be brothers’, they are related by law. Axolotl is presented to quirkily force a kiss on Turtle in one chapter, which she is not punished or condoned for 1. Sexually harassing him 2. Committing incest and putting it on his conscience, OTHER than her getting salmonella, which all characters who kiss Turtle are prone to getting (Ice Cream in chapter was stated to have fallen sick after kissing him). Axolotl is treated completely fine and Turtle has her in his band, regardless of the fact she is predatory towards him. Additionally, Axolotl is treated as a babysitter towards all of the children on the island, despite, again, sexually harassing someone she is related to, which people saw happen.

Incest is a harmful thing that can cause people to self-deprecate themselves or worse. It’s not a quirky “ha ha, they kissed, so funny!” because Axolotl DOES want to prey on Turtle. She DOES want to be with him. She didn’t CARE about his feelings, in the moment or after. It wasn’t a cute kiss on the cheek, and it wasn’t funny.

Fetishization of Japan: Pap is a weeeeeb. Pap is stated to be Japanese (her last name being Akita) which is confusing on account of the fact Rottweiler and her family are not shown to be Japanese? Anyways, Pap uses broken Japanese, completely unsparingly, and just says it in a way she expects everyone to understand her. It’s not Engrish, she speaks English well enough, she just adds it in sentences, and Melodic doesn’t even offer translations at the end of chapters. Phrases used are arbitrary, one some reason ending with “translator”. Entire sentences can be in Japanese, making the story hard to follow. If this fetishization of the language was limited to Pap, it’d be more tolerable, but other masks, ones who have no reason to know Japanese, use it as well, equally poorly.

Xenophobia: Some reason the USA and UK masks are all good guys (other than Rottweiler) but the German masks live in a ‘badlands’. German Monster teams up with Rottweiler and is his girlfriend, while German Dragon sexually assaults Kitty when they go through the badlands. There is no rhyme or reason why they are the scapegoated ‘evil’ series, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Inability to handle criticism: I tried. I tried my absolute best to tell her that what she was writing was harmful and past borderline offensive. I told her that Somali was a gay stereotype and very poorly presented, not getting a personality out of ‘likes singing’ (which all masks do…) and ‘is evil gay’. She didn’t care. We told her she was using slurs and that turning a mask played by Seal into a cis woman was offensive and transphobic (as well as Leopard already poorly being handled). She didn’t care.

In fact she more than didn’t care. She called us insensitive and whiny. Quote from her, "Now, I been feeling upset about some Haters/Karens harassing me on my AU ideas. And yes that's dumb.” Karens. You know, the stereotypical older women who hate the gays and trans people and bully people doing their jobs? Karens? Yeah, no. A Karen would be against any characters being trans or gay, insisting the show is for families, not telling them to stop using literal slurs (which have been outdated over 20 years) and to actually write gay characters. She genuinely acts like she can do no wrong and that everyone that doesn’t fawn over her is bad. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing and the lack of grammar, this is about how she is unapologetically offensive and writing triggering content for the sake of being ‘quirky’.

I’m not saying “go rally against her” or “dox her” or “flame her story”, I’m suggesting please don’t give her attention. She’s clearly a child, and she’s not willing to change. All we can do is limit how much attention she gets until she grows up.

[aromoji]

FAQ

(Pwease no rebloggy, this is subject to change)

[Insert any invasive question about my ethnicity]

I’m Ghanaian American. My parents were born in Ghana and I was born here. For some reason both black Africans and black Americans seem to have a problem with that. I will not elaborate on this.

I sent you an ask and you never answered it!

It’s likely that

I never got it

You were blocked 

I’ve already answered this

It’s a random positivity ask (which I appreciate but not sure how to respond to those)

You were rude in your ask and I didn’t feel like answering

I forgot until it was too late, which happens when my inbox gets a lot of asks at a time.

You sent it to the wrong blog (I.e, sending asks about my ocs to this blog instead of @ochood )

Non is just a prefix, black people don’t have a monopoly on the term! I suppose you think nonbinary people are racist huh?

This person explains it better than I can. Plus we’re talking about marginalized groups here. Black people are a marginalized group. Binary people as a whole are not so the term nonbinary isn’t appropriative at all. Also shut up, racist.

Follow up: If we can’t use non-[marginalized group], what can we use instead?

There are other words to describe the people you’re talking about

non-transfem- TME

non-lgbt- cishet, or people who aren’t lgbt

non trans - cis

etc

Black people don’t have a monopoly on the acronym nb! I’ll call myself nb if I want to!

I’m always gonna mean nonblack when I use the acronym nb. Die mad about it.

Hey, the op is [insert post] is [someone on my dni]!

I usually double check myself, just to be sure. If the person’s url is uncensored I’m not going to post the ask

Have you heard about [someone who is mutuals with someone who is mutuals with someone I’m loosely connected with]?

Most likely, no. And unless they’re an immediate danger to someone or they’ve got my name in their mouth, I don’t care.

Are you an anti?

Yes. Here’s why

Please don’t send asks about this

Are you an inclusionist/exclusionist?

Yes and no. I do think aces + aros are lgbt but they still should have spaces outside of the lgbt community because they have issues that both overlap with the lgbt community but are also different as well. Idk wtf is going on with the inclus community, but exclus are nonetheless insufferable, I’ve never met a single ‘respectful’ exclusionist who doesn’t thinks unironically calling themselves an aphobe is a personality trait or doesn’t reblog from people who feel that way. As someone who’s definetly not cishet in any sense of the word, I don’t believe the acecourse is about the “cishet aces and aros” like they claim.

Also as an addendum: I don’t like being called queer nor do I agree with calling people who do not reclaim the term as such, but that doesn’t mean people who are comfortable with the label shouldnt be allowed to reclaim it for themselves and take pride in it. Unironically calling yourself a queerphobe is cringe bro, and calling people “kweers” is disrespectful to asian queer people who use it as a personal identity

I’m also pro-pansexuality, no I don’t think pan people oppress or harm me as a bi (and trans) person. Yes, they should check their transphobia, but that is the case for people of any orientation.

Please don’t send asks about this. I am not a discourse blog, and I’m trying to stay as far away from any lgbt related discourse as possible, but I want to makae my stances clear for anyone that wants to follow me and must know before doing so. 

Do you need dysphoria to be trans?

No. Next question. 

Please don’t send asks about this

Are you pro/anti mogai?

I dont personally engage with the mogai community (and I’m pretty sure a lot of the identies people make fun of are literal trolls. Come on, no one’s actually calling themselves audiosexual...right?) but people who use mogai as an insult or run flop accounts  are cringe.

Please don’t send asks about this

Why do you continue to use the ace flag even though known homophobe David Jay made it?

He didn’t. It was created by a user named standup on the AVEN website, who has no connection to David Jay himself. A lot of aces don’t even know who the fuck this person is anyways.

Edit: I no longer identify as ace but this still stands.

Please don’t send asks about this.

Do you know who [x person/group/thing] is?

Most likely no. Not to sound like a hipster but I dont usually keep up to date with trends. If I do hear about something, it’s most likely from twitter or instagram.

Is x AAVE?

I have a tag dedicated to what is and is not aave.I know some things overlap with southern culture but others are specifically for black people. No, I can’t tell you how to stop using AAVE.

Hey, I can’t see your blog or reblog your posts!

You were blocked. And now you’re block evading. I don’t remeber why I specifically blocked a user, but it’s most likely because you’re on my dni.

But I’m not on your dni?

You probably said or did something annoying then. Lol.  Or you’ve added a stupid comment to someone else’s posts and I don’t want that nonsense on mine, so I blocked preemptively.

There’s the occasionaly chance while I was blocking people on a spree in the notes of a bad post you may have gotten caught in the fray, and if so, I apologize.

However, there’s also a chance you also blocked me on @mojiis and yet continued to interact here. So I blocked back.

Can you tag x?

I have a list of things I usually tag because they come up on this blog a lot.  I cannot do catch all tags, as I have way too many followers for that. The closest thing to that is the “ask to tag” tag when there’s something potentially triggering but I’m not sure what it is. Everything is tagged as “x tw”. If something is extremely triggering, I’ll tag it as “major tw”

Do you tag slurs?

I’ve decided in order to be fair I’m tagging any possible lgbt related slur as the letter itself. Hopefully those who dont want to see it will have it black listed and I wont offend the people who reclaim it. I don’t tag the n word, as I reclaim that one. I always tag the r slur

Can I message you about something/someone?

Unless you’re a mutual, most likely no. My DMs are only open to mutuals. 

Do you want to be mutuals?

 I don’t usually follow back people who follow me, especially if you’re under 17. I’m sure you’re a nice person, but don’t post about things I’m interested in.

Can you give me advice on x?

Most likely not, because I’m not an expert or an advice blog. I’ll try, but dont take my word for it. I’m also tme, ablebodied, not jewish, singlet, etc, so I’m not able to accurately answer questions about transmisogyny,  (physical?) ableism, antisemeitsm, “sycourse”, etc. 

I might be able to give advice on school related stuff, but remember that students are not a monolith, and what worked for me may not work for someone else.

What’s your main blog?

If you know, you know.

Why do you continuously move mains/change urls/update themes?

I’m inconsitent. Plus someone is stalking me.

Can I tag you in posts I think I’d like?

Of course!

[the-resurrection-3d]

Flame emoji fiction is reality

 Honestly I’ve been kinda waiting for someone to ask me this considering how big this whole shipping discourse is, but I think I’ve been saved by the fact that most of the EW fandom has already written off fanfic as degenerate shit not worth bothering with.

Fiction influences reality, yes, and I do think authors need to be cognizant of and take responsibility for the kind of messages their art sends out, but it’s not 1:1 and a lot of the “anti” rhetoric implicitly or explicitly shifts blame from the perpetrator of a crime onto the tools they used to commit it. Abusers will use whatever tools are at their disposable to manipulate their victim(s) – regardless of whether the art in question explicitly validates them or not. 

Also - and this is my main problem - unless I know a particular “anti” well, they’re lying if they say they distinguish between art that “romanticizes” something and art that merely contains said something. Plenty of their callouts are filled with nothing but decontextualized pearl-clutching over someone’s fic or OC having X/Y/Z thing, rather than evaluating the actual context and execution of said thing. So someone’s OC has a rape fetish……okay? Are we meant to root for this OC, despise them, pity them, what? There’s a big difference between making a pedophile the villain and making them the unequivocal hero. 

Furthermore, a lot of art is way messier than these little black and white, good or bad boxes. My favorite example of this will probably always be Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Anderson intended the book to romanticize eating disorders, and in fact the narrative goes out of its way to show the damage EDs do to the self, the body, the family, ending with the narrator beginning to recover. 

However, I think the actual prose style ends up feeding into the prevailing cultural narrative that eating disorders (on white cishet girls obviously) are poetic and beautiful in their tragedy. The prose style is far more poetic and “artsy” than anything I’ve seen Anderson do before or since (though admittedly I’ve not read every single thing she’s ever published), and the book does not examine how the language one uses to discuss one’s own mental illness can feed into and help perpetuate  it.  Lia’s ED is the result of a dysfunctional inner narrative, quite literally on a word-by-word level – but the book never gets that far. 

There are other issues with the book, too, but I think you get what I mean. 

Don’t get me wrong, I definitely still think pornography is the orphan little sister of the arts and all that, but if your barometer for what constitutes “romanticizing” something is merely the presence or absence of orgasms, you’re not thinking as critically as you say do you. 

[janiedean]

Since we're in topic, do you have some advices for writers? Where do you begin when you write original stories and characters? The plot, the concept, the description of characters?

spewell considering that you’re talking to ‘oh hey I have the original idea that might work but I’ve been figuring it out for a whole year and a half’ take them with the necessary skepticism but since I did come up with some decent ocs in fic apparently my advice is probably not entirely shitty lol so with the premise that writing is Not A Science and other than reading a lot no advice is 100% foulproof especially if it doesn’t work for you...

I’d start with the concept, ie: what do you want your story to be about or what message do you want it to be about or what do you want to do with it. do you want to scare people? do you want to make people happy with quality entertainment but without writing a Serious Novel? do you want to write a sad thing to make a point? like, you need to know where you’re going with it in general;

when you have your concept, whichever it is - for one, without going in-depth let’s just say that my original novel concept that I’ve been trying to figure out for good is ‘blade runner meets high fidelity’ (don’t worry IT MAKES SENSE) -, you need to work at once both on main setting and protagonist. I mean, idk let’s just discuss a thing I wanted to write last year when I was thinking of sending original writing to this scifi anthology and then never managed because time and drama and real life happened and I couldn’t commit to it;

so, the theme of that anthology was ‘alternate peace’ ie write a short story where a situation that in history ended up in a fight/war/bloodbath is solved peacefully and write the alternate universe coming from it. so: I had to come up with the idea first because otherwise I wouldn’t have known where to start, then the worldbuilding, then the characters - ngl I think that if you have the worldbuild the characters come a lot easier but that’s me. so: I was like ‘what if I wrote something where the ludlow massacre never happens?’ (the ludlow massacre was tldr a strike in colorado which ended up with the strikers being mass killed by the national guard and in turned caused enough scandal to get unions/unionized labor a lot of traction in the US at least until maccarthysm.) then I didn’t, but in order I went like:a) if what happened is that it had repercussions on the history of unionized work in the US, if I did it so that the workers accepted a plea or smth and the rockfellers won without no one dying, those repercussions would Not Have Happened, nor it’d have created all the left-leaning literature/politics/thinking that came out of it, john reed wouldn’t have written about it etc, so I had elaborated an entire situation post-wwii where unions had all died long before, people were pretty much without any single social lifesaver and could get fired at will and it was basically dystopian hell with mccarthy being president or smth;b) at that point I was like, who do I put in this, and at that point I didn’t manage to go much forward but I had a feeling I should have some young person who was born after the not-massacre who had no idea of what went on talking to an older one that had actually been there and wished they hadn’t taken the deal;c) young dude would have been more or less cynical/not really much of a politics person, old dude would have been old school leftist who still wishes there could have been a better world and wishes the new generation would put two and two together and talk to their elders;d) young dude wouldn’t have known how to read/write because he wouldn’t have needed it for factory work, old dude would have etc;at that point I could have probably gone and gave them families (or not), or a friend (or not), and my general idea was having them discuss politics for the main part of the story, then old guy dies or smth like that and young guy actually gets the message and idk I basically wanted you to read it and feel like I felt when I listened to the ghost of tom joad, that was the general idea;that said, the characters were the last part i came up with because I needed the worldbuilding to know what character I wanted in it, which is why I’d say worldbuld first if you’re writing that kinda thing ie scifi, alternate history etc;

now, obv. if you’re writing the coffee shop au just in novel format or if you’re writing something lighter where the setting doesn’t matter, you need good characters first. I mean, if you write the coffee shop setting just to have a good love story you might want people to pick yours and not the umpteenth version of it with the same dynamic (same with the YAs with the sixteen year-old girl who thinks she’s ugly falling for the hot dude with abs and a bad attitude), so in that case I’d go for the characters. for one, if I had to write a YA, I’d make it with a girl who is actually ugly and has hobbies other than just reading and maybe plays in the school band or has some peculiar post-school job or idk can repair cars but is not good at everything she does and the guy would be moderately hot though not THE SPIT COPY OF DAMON SALVATORE JUST WITH GREEN EYES, he wouldn’t have a license and he wouldn’t think that it’s sexy to tell your girlfriend that you own her, and while I’m nowhere near interested in writing YAs, that would differentiate it from 99,9% of the YAs around from what I see, and so at that point I’d make sure I got the main two down and then I’d work on the friends and family and make them less stereotypical as possible so my YA is different from everyone else’s YA, and if any of them is a supernatural creature they suck at it and hate having supernatural magic and the likes. I mean, you want your characters to have a personality, but if you have a good worldbuilding behind them it might come after, if you don’t gaf about the worldbuilding and just want the standard setting work on the characters and try to give them depth before you plan anything else;

figure out where do you want your story to go before writing it - ie: the only reason I haven’t written the original yet is that idk what kind of spin I want the ending to have and I’m not 100% convinced so I’m not doing it yet, but if you don’t have the backbone of it planned then you’re going to lose steam or the plot will fuck you over (in my experience). like, try to have at least clear what happens in the main arc so that you know how to get from beginning to ending without needing to figure shit out as you go along, then you start, and if you change your mind while you do go with it, but try to start it knowing where you’re headed because it makes it easier imvho;

if you go for complicated shit like time travel figure that shit out before you start writing it including every possible repercussion because you’ll hate yourself if you don’t;

don’t try to re-do what others did obviously. I mean, if I wanted to write rep for non standard attractive cishet women I would not try to re-write brienne of tarth just changing the hair color. I would try to take the same tropes he’s using, change the setting and go with it, but it shows if you read a book and your character is the exact same as your favorite writer’s. like, if you read ian tregillis’s milkweed tryptich it’s going to be obvious that one of the main characters is the same tropes as jaime but that guy has enough personality differences and an enough different background and circumstances of upbringing that while you can see it has the same basics (generally nice guy forced to do horrid things who wants to redeem himself, live without his overbearing sister who wants to control him and has a generally straight moral compass), you don’t think ‘oh ian tregillis who is grrm’s friend has copied from him and put jaime lannister in a wwii alternate history trilogy’. like, we all have our tropes and our favorite writers and it’s good to take inspiration and homage them, but try to give your spin on those tropes you’re using, because otherwise it’ll just look lazy;

do whatever the fuck you want with your plot. don’t think about what others would want to read - it’s your story and you should tell it the way you want to. then please listen to criticism and find people who’ll provide it for you without tearing down your work but telling you what works and what doesn’t, but like... if you want to touch some themes or write characters from a different background or whatever do it;

also, do your research. I mean, I could have written the ludlow massacre story because:a) I read all of john reed’s articles pertaining to that specific happening and those articles include interviews with the people who were there, a description of who they were, an extremely detailed reconstruction of the facts and so on;b) there’s folk songs, two novels and one opera on ludlow not including history books, so it’s not only easily readable upon, but you also can see the impact it had in media/the american culture.so, even if I’m not american, having read all of that, I could have probably gone for it and done a decent job, find someone with a history degree to veto it and go for it. but like, again, unless you’re writing the coffee shop au or the ya or the kind of novel that does not require an established setting or you are making the entire worldbuilding up from scratch with no influences from the real world, you can’t not do at least some basic research. and when reading something, it does show if the author has at least done basic research or if they’re winging it. then they might be good enough that you don’t care they’re winging it, but still, research XD because research also gives you a lot more ideas that you might not have taken previously into account and might save you a plot detail or so;

I also would advice not to write what you know - because that’s easy and it doesn’t let you go out of your comfort zone and at some point what you know will finish -, but: write something you know. as in, my blade runner + high fidelity au should be scifi and touch stuff idk shit about, but since it’s a high fidelity au half of it is supposed to be set in a (pseudo) record shop and the protagonist miiiiiight have a thing or a hundred for springsteen. now: who has spent half of her life in record shops and is into bruce? yes, me. now, the character in question has zero in common with yours truly except for that, but let me tell you that if there is one thing I know how to write that you can’t convince me I couldn’t write is someone into springsteen who hangs around record shops. I know my people and I know why someone would be into springsteen. like, when making up characters and you want to make them relatable or you want to relate to them more, give them one thing you can relate to even if it’s dumb - idk you like strawberries? that character also likes strawberries and so on - because that will get you closer to them and your reader will feel it. it’s a thing I do with fanfic all the time - like if I have to try and write someone IC I try to relate to one thing they have if I can, because that makes the characters more relatable and it’s easier. ie when I was like ‘how do I crack the jaime pov’ the answer was ‘ALL THE BAD SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR YOU DO ALL THE TIME GO DOWN ON IT’ bc that’s what I relate to jaime for and so on. idk that is a thing that’s always helped me when coming up with any character so I guess it might be useful advice? *shrug*

(obv: if you’re writing a 100% bad guy that you don’t empathize with then you don’t have to, I mean grrm did say he had to take a shower after writing chapters from A Certain POV because it’s horrible being in their head so like.... you can feel disgust at what you’re writing esp. if it’s the POV of a terrible person, but That Character resonated with people and felt relatable to some of them because to them they had... RELATABLE moments/humane moments too so if you’re writing bad guys but try to not make them cardboard cuts/TOO HORRIBLE it will make them stronger as *bad guys*. mvho.)

but mostly: read a lot of stuff, try to put your spin on things and don’t gaf about what people think until you finished it. then you can worry about concrit xD

[nightcoremoon]

"Don't tell the stories of minorities if you're not a part of them" okay I guess

"Don't write soft effeminate trans men if you're a cis man" I mean you have a point there

"Don't write butch masculine trans women if you're a cis man" well yeah it could end badly if you do it wrong but

"Don't write academically inclined asian kids with a rough relationship with their parents" oh so now that race is a part of this if I disagree I'm a racist so yeah don't ever write characters parts of demographics you're not a part of even if you take precautions in order to not have an offensively godawful portrayal because it will always be harmful and problematic. got it. don't bother with diversity ever. in fact don't even write anything. give up on your dreams because it's bad to not write minorities so no matter what you do fuck you and eat a dick.

look I get the whole "don't be a bigoted fuck and stereotype demographics of people" thing. I've read way too much shitty f/f fic written by cishet men who have never spoken to a woman much less fucked one. but like. what the fuck. I've read some really good f/f fic written by cishet men. in fact I read one that had three f/f ships, two f/f/f ships replete with some serious discussion on polyamory, an f/f/m ship, and two m/f ships with all the same levels of quality, and the dude who wrote it is the most cishet human on the planet probably. he also wrote a lot of other fics with f/f ships that were also really good. I mean to be fair the fandom has like 600 female characters compared to like a dozen men but still. he shouldn't be dragged down into the filth and muck just because a lot of cishet white men are fucking idiots and bad writers.

the problem here seems to be that bad writing done by people in the same demographics isn't blatantly offensive, it's just bland garbage. if it's inaccurate or stereotypical portrayals of parts of demographics that are regularly victimized by antirerepredentation, then it's bland garbage and also racist or queerphobic or ableist or whatever. if men weren't allowed to write women because women are disenfranchised compared to men, there would never be any fucking women in media considering media is wrongfully dominated by men because sexism in every industry imaginable. granted women have always been at the forefront, pioneering literally every genre of every medium known, but like. middle easterners, africans, east asians, latin americans, and brown skinned people all over the world invented culture, but that doesn't negate the effects of colonialism (thanks for nothing you asshole british fucks). queer history has been erased countless times but we've been behind a lot of revolutions in history. neurodivergent people as well.

to avoid going on tangents, I totally understand the point being made in the first passages. it's usually a bad thing when cishet white men try to write characters who are not cishet white men. it's usually horribly racist, queerphobic, misogynist, ableist, culturally intolerant, and oh yeah TERRIBLE. but only some of it is done so on purpose. some of them aren't bad people, just bad writers, and literally don't understand other human's perspectives on life.

on the other hand it makes sense being tired of white people writting the same cookie cutter carbon copy stereotype everyone has seen a million times before. and there is the whole "you don't have to portray diversity as long as you fight to make way for authors belonging to underrepresented groups to forge their own creations" aspect, but like. I feel like it's up to people part of majorities to do more than that.

personally, I won't say that I'm a master at all foreign cultures or experiences. I know jack shit and fuck all about islam and hinduism. lesbian [as opposed to just bi/wlw] system of attraction eludes me. I'll never understand what it's like to grow up asian-american or black or latinx. I'm not even sure how a brain without depression and anxiety or autism ever thinks about things. but if I only ever wrote about depressed white bisexual christians, that would be pretty boring and... shit. you know, like most YA novels that are written nowadays. not to toot my own horn here but I wouldn't say that I'm a bad writer. I'm not the best and I wouldn't go so far as to say excellent or amazing but I'm pretty good. okay at least. a little put off by how simplistic and dry and boring as fuck at things that are way too fucking popular for what they are but whatever.

I'm also kind of okay at knowing what's bigoted and what's not. so I'd like to think that when I write about an irish-catholic punk bassist, a gay latina drummer with a degree in electrical engineering, a canadian guitarist, and a korean-american lesbian buddhist who discovered grunge through a google search on western concepts of nirvana, or a black trans man allied with a scottish bisexual, a chinese princess, and a token straight white dude to take down an imperial totalitarian state, or a pawtucket woman smuggling potential rape victims out of 18 century massachusetts, or a japanese time traveling assassin from 1940s america and the russian teenager he saved from sex traffickers joining forces with a bisexual muslim woman to fight french bioterrorists, or a small army of a dozen bulletproof brown skinned lesbians who set off to kill god's evil twin, I'd like to think I'm not being a racist asshole, being a dumb white girl, throwing a bunch of violent stereotypes at a dartboard for the sake of exploitation and fetishism, and just writing characters who I feel have interesting and probably not very often seen in media backgrounds in situations that are usually dominated by boring cishet white people.

but, you know... I'm not trustworthy because I have a character that follows a trope every now and then. guess I'll just throw away all of my notes on every single thing I'm working on and only write the characters that match me perfectly.

wow, this leftover mayonnaise stain sure does seem like it's fun to read.

holy shit literally the only oc I have that's left over is a dead elf... and she's fucking cis.

the end I guess