#i simply do not make fandom friends i only make friends because were trans and sexy

[joesalw]

All of Taylor's albums were tailored to the most popular aesthetic at the time. She didn't make shit popular, she just adapted. Especially when she made the transition into pop music.

True. She's currently jumping fences with rep as well. Making it out to be a goth punk moment and using trendy words like 'female rage'. The album has the most romantic songs she's ever written. C'mon now. The whole record is electropop with some R&B elements thrown into the mix.

She portrays 'Lover' as her social justice warrior era. 'If I was a man, then I'd be the man'. Yeah, we've seen it Taylor. Miss 'me becoming a billionaire is good for the world because I'm a woman'. She makes herself out to be this 'feminist girl's girl' when in reality it couldn't be further from the truth. She's not a feminist and she doesn't want to be the woman that's advocating for women's rights and leads the path for the future generation of women. She wants to be the man at the top. Her motto is literally 'gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss, greenhouse gases'.

Another thing is her queer allyship. She's mentioned it when and only when it was profitable to her. During her tour she hadn't said a thing when the number of states signed anti-trans bills and the state of Tennessee where she says she lives *according to her own documentary* banned drag. I don't think she said anything about the anti-abortion legislation either. Her activist era started and ended in 2019.

Don't get me started on her position regarding the BLM movement. She only posted something because her own fans started calling her out and then declared that she's 'ferociously anti-racist'. She positioned herself as an advocate *by herself* and then immediately dipped when it stopped being as profitable. If you don't want to be dragged for your silence about social and political crises, don't proclaim yourself as an activist. Simple as that.

I've also seen the video on Youtube about TS being a narcissist (someone posted it on your blog earlier I think). And the guy in the video brought up her guitar teacher. So I looked him up and found an article where he talks about his experience with the Swifts which he got sued for later. According to the man, Taylor's mother was interested in him teaching her daughter how to play country music and was just a stage mom in general. And TS says that she'd been begging her parents to allow her learn how to play guitar and that she's self-taught. She wants her success story to be a rags to riches so bad I can't even.

She's a woman with an extremely fragile ego where millions of people could be praising her and a single negative comment would set her off. She can't handle any form of criticism, break ups or inconveniences like a grown woman simply because she doesn't have enough emotional intelligence to do so. Her being surrounded by yes men also doesn't help the situation. If i were her, I'd rather invest in a good therapist rather than 2 PJs. She drowns herself in work and relationships so she doesn't have time to go inwards and sit with her thoughts.

I kinda feel bad for her, honestly. She's been in the industry since she was 15 and her success was almost immediate. She doesn't know what the world's like because she's been sheltered her whole life and then had other people do things for her. I don't think she has many real friends as well. By real I mean people who aren't afraid to tell you the truth and are able to call you out in your face. Instead she has a bunch of people who appease her afraid of pissing her off and ending up on her bad side and as a result her vanity grows and she completely loses any sort of perspective whether in her friendships, romantic relationships or maybe even her own family.

I also wonder what she thinks about her fandom pirating her concert film instead of paying to rent it. I sort of hope that her fans are starting to wake up to her conning schemes. I mean, you've already made a shit ton of money from the theatre release, why charging 20$ more to RENT IT?Not even buy it. Or is it another narrative about how 'no one can own my work but me'?

This woman sells well but her cultural impact is almost nonexistent. She hadn't done any good for the world causes or inspired several generations of performers like Michael Jackson has with his philanthropic endeavors and incredible performing skills. The artists like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, Justin Timberlake (bleh) and The Weeknd were hugely influenced by MJ. These artist create their own unique legacy and impact on their communities. Especially the ladies. Gaga's been an avid LGBT+ advocate since the beginning of her career and created a foundation that focuses on issues like self-confidence, well-being, anti-bullying, mentoring and career development. She also participated in anti HIV and AIDS campaigns, spoke against immigration laws in the US, contributed to 2011's earthquake and tsunami relief campaign in Japan. Beyoncé's a huge advocate for the black community and black women especially which always finds its way in her work and visual art in particular. She's been platforming black culture and history for her whole career (2016 Superbowl and Coachella performance are the brightest examples of black american culture and releasing her Lion King album to showcase African artists' excellence). She also has a foundation where she provides black youth scholarships, clean water for communities abroad and housing to families in need in her home state.

What exactly makes Taylor Swift's cultural impact? Thousands of tons CO2 emissions? Music labels putting a clause in the contract so the artists can't re-record their material for 10 years now instead of 5? Making several versions of the same CD or vinyl so the sales are bigger? Mind you, that's all excessive plastic and paper. Some countries and US states are banning gas stoves. Her position regarding artists being paid during the early days of streaming (when the platforms were launching with a free period tial) was right but no one really benefited from it but her. She was shitting on Apple Music, then they offered her money, filmed an ad and released her 1989 Tour DVD exclusively on their platform. She shat on Spotify, then when LWYMMD came out, she was all over their biggest playlists all of a sudden and recorded Spotify Singles later on. Spotify's always promoted her every release like a motherfucker shoving her in every corner of the platform. Especially for the past 3 years. She doesn't have any memorable outfits or unique style to be called a fashion icon either. She's not a trailblazer she thinks she is. She is only popular because a lot of people *mostly ww* who peaked in high school see themselves in her. She's average in everything she does, her writing topes are also the same (only now she started using compound or uncommonly used words to mask it) but she's extremely commercially successful so that those people can see themselves in her. She doesn't have unique music style or chameleon-like discography like Gaga, Bey, MJ, Madonna, Shakira, Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus or Nelly Furtado. She doesn't have a unique singing voice like Bjork, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Janis Joplin, MJ or Bob Dylan. She's no instrument prodigy either. And swifties say that 'Michael couldn't play any instruments'. Well, he was an exceptional beatboxer. She can strum 4 guitar chords and play basic piano, that's it. She doesn't have an outstanding dancing and/or vocal skill.

What is she gonna be remembered for? Her numerous relationships with famous men? While that might be misogynistic or sexist to some degree, she's the one who makes her relationships the centre of her music and public persona and brings them up even 10 years after they ended. Her public feuds with men and women that she can't get over years after? This woman is certainly can hold a grudge and is extremely vindictive. The leader of a parasocial cult that blindly defends her bigotry? I believe so. I don't think I've ever seen a fandom as toxic and as hive-minded as swifties. And again, it's Taylor's own creation. She's the one that constantly says 'look closely for the easter eggs' in her content making her fans theorize on every aspect of her life, or 'if you're very loyal I might invite you to MY HOUSE and you can listen to the new album early, we'll take pics and I'll bake you some cookies'. Of course they'll follow your any order. I'm glad I escaped.

Oof, I'll stop here. That's a very long one already

sorry hehe

.

[punkeropercyjackson]

I'm ride or die for Huntlow shippers not because i'm also one but because they're the only niggas in the Toh fandom who always have and had common sense and basic decency.Y'all like acting like the Hunter overexposure was just a him thing but if you interact with Hunter stans on a regular basis it's easy to realize he had barely anything to do with it and that it was the weirdass subset that's supremely desperate to make Edshit(Ed*ric)relevant when he simply is not,least of all to Hunter.Most Hunter stans either like him and Willow equally or have Willow as their number one fave and the small part that dosen't makes solo content of her anyway and their Hunter content is usually adding on to his rep with stuff like the chronic pain and trans hcs and you can't convince me without solid evidence that Huntlow didn't popularize blasian Willow because we all know Hunter loves black women from infinity to infinityyyyyyyyy just like Amity

Also i've yet to meet a Gustholomule,i.e the ACTUAL teen mlm rep of the show,shipper who don't adore him and his found brothers/Team Dad and Baby of the friend group dynamic with Gus and Gus' with Willow only she's the Team Mom and combined with how they're not the ones ragging on poor Dana for getting her beloved show she worked her ass off nonstop to get made only for it to get cancelled because 'her rep wasn't good enough' as if her trying to jam as much in possible wasn't THE REASON FOR SAID CANCELLATION,i will not hear a even a WHISPER against 'Huntlosers'.Lack of self-awareness ass nickname for a series about super lame people according to society being the real cool and badass ones

Are the toxic Huntlow shippers that bully other Toh fans in the room with us right now?Yeah,didn't think so.Be nice to Huntlow shippers or i'm gonna fucking killa you attack with a fucking rock,we've earned it and you were never told you were getting anything BUT Huntlow.Sucks 2 Suck,long live transmasc4transfem love!!!

[simplepotatofarmer]

Hi! Sorry if this is a bit deep and ramble-y but it’s just something that’s been on my mind. Have you ever doubted defending dream?

Sometimes I feel like I’m wrong for feeling bad for him. I feel like I get where some ppl are coming from when they say why they hate him but then am horrified by what they do with that hatred.

I keep telling myself that it’s normal to feel empathy for someone that you could see was facing a lot of shit. I felt bad for him in April, but also felt bad for feeling bad because everyone was saying how he was a horrible person who deserved horrible things. Looking back, and reading some ppls reflections on it, it’s much more obvious how April specifically was just an obscene hate campaign, but even then I have moments of doubt just because of how universal the idea of dream always being in the wrong seems to be, especially in this community.

Even with the most recent incident, where I did step away for a while, I felt bad for him and his friends for the things their fans were doing. But then I also felt bad for feeling bad because so many ppl on here say that the extreme means are necessary.

Even though I am more of a causal fan, I don’t want to live in an echo chamber and I think the ppl in the fandom who I do follow (like you) are pretty rational about everything. I’ve tried following other ppl but there’s just this everpresent hatred of him that I don’t like seeing everyday on my dash. But I again feel wrong for feeling that way. It’s all just frustrating.

i was going to sleep but this is actually a really important ask, in my humble opinion.

the short answer is no.

the long answer is absolutely not, i've never regretted defending him over the things i have defended him over because even if he was a terrible person and not like, a dude none of us know personally who is not perfect and makes mistakes and is sometimes a fucking idiot, those would still be things i would defend him for.

defending someone against absolutely vile queerphobia is never something i'd regret because it's quite simply just the right thing to do. erasing someone's identity because you don't like them is wrong, point blank. blair white or caitlynn jenner are no less deserving of respect as trans women than any other woman.

defending dream against ableism is always gonna be the right thing because you don't have to be a good person to deserve not to be treated awfully due to your neurodivergence.

and like, there's been things i've defended dream on where i don't completely agree with him. i think he's been a little baby sometimes when it comes to mcc but when people were saying shit like he was '''manipulating''' us and noxcrew because he said he didn't want to play in mcc if he had to play buildmart, yeah i'm going to point out that's a batshit take. someone venting and being frustrated isn't manipulation, he was just throwing a tantrum. touch grass yada yada.

and when it comes to my belief that people can be racist in the past and change, that still applies! i still think dream actively tried to be better! he grew up in a bigoted environment, is open about his racist past (and fucking uses the word racist/bigoted, thank god) and is actively working to be better.

that's always going to be true and frankly, i think it's not only weird but extremely telling that a LOT of white people who had formerly defended him suddenly switched up. it just shows that it was never about the harm done and poc but whether or not you liked some white boy.

but i digress.

the thing is, anon, i get why you feel this way. this fandom and online culture as a whole lately is wrought with the belief that consumption of media is a reflection of your morals. that consuming the right media and being a fan of the right sort of person is akin to activism.

it's not. it doesn't fucking matter. there's no righteousness in hating dream. you can certainly be valid in hating him! there's a lot of reasons to dislike him or hate him or feel he shouldn't have a platform. i might not agree with it all but i can see it.

the problem is.... i see why you feel like this and that is genuinely so sad and messed up because how did we get to the point where queerphobia or ableism or body shaming is totally okay as long as it's a certain group and to where people doubt themselves when they think it's wrong! it is wrong but i completely understand why anyone would second guess themselves.

as it stands right now, i don't regret it because i feel it's right. i'm always going to feel it's right.

if something comes out tomorrow and it turns out that it really is more than some instagram dms and the questionable choice of giving out his private snapchat, then i won't be defending him.

but i still wouldn't regret any of my past defense because my defense isn't conditional, my belief that people can grow isn't conditional, and my opinion on things like fandom's queerphobia and misuse of terms like 'grooming' would still stand.

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Clowning Around

Fandom: Helluva Boss Summary: Blitz lost quite a bit in a fire that he accidentally caused. Thankfully, nothing truly lasts forever and he has a chance to grow. Warnings: Trans male pregnancy, mentions of homelessness, graphic depictions of violence, and canon-typical child abuse Word Count: 8,953 Ship(s): FizzaRolli/Blitzo/Stolas Goetia/Asmodeus

Archive link!

A/N: So this hasn't had any editing because it's for a mutual of mine (@lovely-number-7)and I wanted to get it out as quickly as possible! It's based off an idea that we both had and built on together. I've only ever seen Helluva Boss so if I've gotten some lore wrong, please be patient with me. I hope you all enjoy! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Blitzo blinked hard several times as his vision once again swam in front of him. While he had adjusted to that happening while he was performing, stuffed into a tent under massively hot lights and surrounded by flaming Hellbeasts, it was odd to have it happen when he was inside of his caravan. He rolled it off his shoulders as just another thing that his body was doing while it adjusted to his new condition. He had more important things that he had to focus on for the time being.

If his father was asked, then the thing that he should have been focusing on was his act. He hadn’t been able to perform as well as he had been a few months before and even then his performance was mediocre at best. He had never been the most talented when it came to the tight rope and he sucked at the swings, so he had been relegated to a clown. His ability to manipulate the crowd into laughing at his incompetence and warming them up for his best friend, FizzaRolli, had been regressing. He knew that it was because his focus was always on the other clown, just barely backstage and out of his reach, instead of on the task at hand.

Hopefully he would be able to sort out some of those issues soon. For now, though, he was focusing on a task that was something other than what his father wanted him to do. Cash was preoccupied with the new act that Barbie was working out with some of the other aerialists involving the lyra hoop anyway. That meant that Blitzo finally had some time where he could stop being the bad kid simply because he was being ignored.

The demon let a little giggle pass through his lips as he signed his name on the bottom of the paper that was laying on the ground of his family’s caravan. They rarely slept in the bunks any longer, not since they had traveled away from the snowy mountaintops and down to the sweltering deserts of Wrath. They were going to be heading towards the edges of the cities in Greed soon, which meant that they would be stay in city motels or camped out in parking lots.

While he sometimes missed being able to lay next to his mother in his parent’s bunk when she was feeling well enough to have her children next to her, he was glad that they only really used the caravan for storage any more. He shared a tent with Fizz and Barbie, which meant that there was a lot more time to get up to the teenage shenanigans that had been plaguing them for a while. He hoped that neither of them would mind having to make room for another addition, at least until they could get Barbie into her own tent.

He tucked the letter into the envelope that he had stolen out of one of the patron’s purses and then sealed it. After a moment, he wrote down a note trying to scare everyone else away from opening it and reading the contents. The only person that knew what was written after the love confession was an old crone three towns and nine shows back, so Blitzo was determined to make sure that Fizz was the first to know outside of that.

He slipped from the stuffy caravan down onto the packed ground of the campsite behind the circus. He could see the massive big top wavering in the desert breeze as it rolled over the sand traps, heading toward the tiny town. Blitzo kept one of his hands on the doorway that led back into the structure as he took in what the camp looked like.

He was hoping that this was the last time he would have to look on it as a single boy, that the next time that he set eyes on all of the tents he would be completely changed. It made a giddy fluttering erupt in the base of his stomach and rush through his throat. 

Unable to keep the energy centered in one place for much longer, he jumped down from the caravan step onto the packed earth. He paused for only a moment, gazing at the small amount of green grass and wildflowers that had managed to sprout up amidst the harsh conditions. It was only because the seeds had been dropped, likely from their own hellbeasts, right next to the water pump.

A giddy idea sprang into the young imp’s head as he rushed over to the pump and then plucked one of the flowers up. Since it could only grow in a very small spot and the conditions surrounding it were still so hostile it was nothing like the flowers that he had been thinking of getting for Fizz in his dreams. It was small and weepy, already drooping as Blitzo held it up into the air so that he could see it properly.

Tilting his head up towards the sun made his headache come back just as fiercely as it had that morning when he had stood up too fast. He quickly placed his hand down on the top of the water pump and bit back the bile that was threatening to spew out through his mouth. He had gotten very good at that, ever since he had started feeling nauseous when he would lay down to go to sleep.

He had always heard his mother refer to her pregnancy sickness as morning sickness, usually when she was talking to one of the other circus workers or some of the doctors that would come to see her. The pregnancy had been what had taken her health into such a nosedive, causing her to be weak enough that she couldn’t perform any longer. Blitzo had no idea why the nausea and vomiting that came with pregnancy was called morning sickness, he had never actually been sick in the morning unless someone had decided to eat salted fish during that time.

Instead, he always felt himself becoming devastatingly ill towards the night time. The sun would go down and he would finally stop bouncing around for the first time since he had woken. He would go back to the tent with Fizz and Barb, lay down and wait just long rough for them to either sneak out to their other friends or to fall asleep before he left. There was a patch of sand behind one of the straggly trees on the edge of their camp that had been watered by his stomach bile and dinner for the better part of the last few weeks.

Sometimes he also ended up feeling ill during the middle of the day when he reacted to something too emphatically. He had lucked out when it had come to the shows, despite the bouncing and jumping that he did when he was performing. He had never gotten sick when he was out in front of the crowd and was able to lie to his father when he got caught heaving something up backstage. A lot of the other imps that were performing with them drank profusely, so as long as he carried a flask of water on hand and sipped from it then he could just pretend that he had fucked up and had too much to drink before the show.

The nausea passed after a couple of seconds of breathing through his nose, and he was better off for it. He was standing in the fresh air of the camp instead of being in one of the stuffy tents or wagons, which always helped him. He wished that they still traveled with a doctor and there was a way for him to ask if this was normal.

The only person that he knew that had a child and would be willing to talk to him was his mother. He turned his head away from where he had been staring at the main tent, the place where he needed to be going, and to where she would be during the middle of the day. Carefully, he tucked the letter and the flower away in his waistband and then walked over to the side of the wagon.

“Mom?” he asked.

“Hello, little one,” she smiled as she saw him. She tilted her head back so that her predominantly black horns were resting on the back of her chair. Barb was sitting in front of her, turned to the side so that she could lay her head on her mother’s lap. 

When his twin heard the sound of his voice, she tilted her head so that she was looking at him and her chin was resting on their mother’s thighs. “Back off, this is my time with mom,” she hissed, including flicking her tongue at Blitzo.

“She can come and join us if she wants,” their mother corrected. She had always been the level-headed and purposeful of his parents. It was a shame that her pregnancy had damaged her badly enough that she couldn’t be there to assist their father in the running of the circus. If she had been, then they probably would have been in their hay day instead of struggling the way that they were now.

Blitzo kicked at the ground as he bit the insides of his cheeks. He wanted to correct her about the pronouns that she had used, but he also knew that his mother struggled to remember anything nowadays. So instead, he just leaned down and kissed next to the brand on her forehead, “I was just gonna head over to Fizz’s party. I’ll tell him happy birthday from the both of you.”

Barbie turned her head away from him and let their mother resume carding her hair back to where it belonged. It hurt to know that his sister was so easy to dismiss him, but he knew that he would do the same if he had the chance to be with their mother like that.

He turned on his heal and walked towards the tent, feeling his mother wave him off as he went. He really did want to ask her advice for the pregnancy, because he was scared. He had only found out a couple of months ago and it already felt like it was tearing him apart. He had heard his father scream about what they had done to their mother when she was pregnant with them and while he would never want to abort his child, as sentimental and attached as he was already, he didn’t want that to happen to him.

By the time that he had reached his destination, the thoughts had already flown from his mind. He could hear the sounds of the party inside, wafting through the opening of the tent and into the deserted grounds around them. It was their last day in this part of Wrath, so they had already performed their last show and would pack up the following morning. They had been able to use the entirety of the big top tent to their own devices, which meant that they were blasting Fizz’s favorite music by Mammon and laughing amongst each other.

He stepped through the first flap of the tent and then headed towards the ring where the main part of the party was being held. The air was just as stuffy as it had been in the back of the caravan, which made him waver slightly. He reached the second flap, which would let him join the rest of the party and the celebration.

When he got there, however, he was overwhelmed by how bad he felt. He grasped at the cloth that made up the tent to try and steady himself, placing the hand that was holding the letter and flower out to the side. The last thing that he was able to register was his palm meetings something soft and grainy, like frosting, before he tumbled down to the ground.

---

The first thing that Blitzo was aware of when he woke was how painfully hot he was. That wasn’t exactly a rarity since he had gotten pregnant, his entire body temperature had risen significantly. He wasn’t able to sleep inside of a tent on most days and blankets were never over the majority of his body, lest he spend the entire night vomiting instead of just part of it.

This heat felt different than the heat that plagued him when he was trying to sleep or go about his everyday life.

Instead of radiating from the base of his gut and through his limbs, it was licking at his skin as it tried to get closer to him. He could feel the way that it was heating up his body the way that the sun did after a long day in the shade, but a thousand times faster. It made him uncomfortable enough that he had to rouse despite the inviting way that sleep was still pulling at him.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and then gasped at what he saw. Bright green flames were jumping from the edge of one canvas panel to another, eating through the support beams that were meant to keep the tent upright. He must have knocked something over when he passed out that resulted in the entire place going up in flames.

He could hear the hellbeasts, locked up in their pens on the other side of the big top, crying out. There was a massive crash before the sound of beating hooves and paws echoed through the space above the sound of crackling of the fire. There was screaming coming from the other workers, shrieking as they tried to beat out the fire on their clothing and find their loved ones.

That reminded Blitzo of what he had been doing when he originally entered into the tent. He rolled over slowly enough that he wouldn’t make himself sick and then hoisted himself to his feet. The smoke from the fire immediately infiltrated his lungs and filled his sinuses with the acrid smell of death. He brought his shirt over his nose as he waved futility in front of his face, trying to make his way through the mess without hurting himself or his unborn child.

He stumbled forward awkwardly, tripping down so that he could see underneath one of the curtains. The box of fireworks that they hadn’t been able to use the night before because of the high winds was somehow still in tact, but it wasn’t going to be for long with the rate that the fire was spreading.

He picked himself back up and then heaved to the side, spewing bile and smoke from his throat onto the ground. He couldn’t even bring himself to care about who saw him or what they thought about the mess that he had made. There was something far more important in the forefront fo his brain and it was the safety of the people that he loved.

“Fizz?” he called as he ventured further into the tent. 

He had just passed into the massive ring in the center of the tent where the party had been held before he had messed everything up. Fizz was screaming as the fire licked at him, trying to beat it out as the other imps had been doing. It was entirely purposeless because his other hand was already engulfed in the green fire, which only helped in spreading it.

“I’m going to get help!” Blitzo tried to scream over the sound of the tent collapsing in around him. He had turned around just in time for Fizz to notice him, he could hear his friend calling out for him. He knew that he couldn’t be in the fire for an extended amount of time, not without hurting the baby that was steadily growing in his womb. Fizz was in a lot of trouble though, and was going to need someone that actually knew first aid to be able to help him.

He rushed through the burning canvas and support structures as he tried to find anyone that was willing to help him. They were all already busy, trying to coral the hellbeasts back where they went or drag their partners and friends out of harm’s way. Blitzo couldn’t do that, not with the way that his eye was aching from the damage it had sustained before he had woken and the aching across his shoulders.

“Help!” he shouted as he stumbled across a group of people that was only standing there and watching the flames crawl higher and higher. It was the last thing that he could do before blackness began to dance at the edges of his vision again and he passed out.

---

---

Blitz’s life had already turned into an absolute shitshow before he had wound up running into the person that he used to be in love with. 

He could have said that about a lot of people and it would have been true to some extent for all of them. Verosika hadn’t been good to him but she was lovely in so many other ways that it had left him feeling validated. Striker was just some quick fuck so that he could feel steady in himself during a tumultuous time. The weird shark demon was someone that he wanted to forget, which meant it would have been an outward lie. Stolas and he had a very complicated relationship, one that reminded him so much of his time before the accident that he wasn’t sure he wanted to define it as love, yet.

The one person that had broken his heart more than anyone else was the one that he also tried to force from his mind the most. Fizz had been the first love that he ever had, the one that came to him in his dreams when he was having a hard time, and the one that still got him to cry to that day.

Just as it had every time he had run into one of Fizzarolli’s mechanical jesters when he was working his various odd jobs, their interaction went poorly. He was mostly trying to get out of the situation that he had once again found himself in, but Fizz seemed intent on reading him the riot act. He had to rebuttal some of the things that the other imp said lest he let his reputation get tarnished by someone else. That was his job and his job alone, after all.

That was when things went even further south. They ended up getting kidnapped and locked into the same cell, which meant that there was very little space for either of them to get away. Fizz didn’t seem to be handling the kidnapping very well. Despite the snappish remarks and quips that he was still making, he was fidgeting in his bindings and wiggling almost incessantly.

Blitz tried to ignore him for the most part as he figured out how to get out. He had another obligation that he had to attend to and if he didn’t make it then it could mean something very bad for him. His life had been enough of a shit show recently that he didn’t want to push his luck when it came to his relationship with his daughter, either of them.

He managed to get their bindings undone after wiggling his knife out of his sleeve for the better part of five minutes, of which his mouth spent the entire time arguing with Fizz. Once they were both free of the rope and tape, they managed to get out of the cage in a spectacular failure of a plan that still worked. It felt almost like the exact definition of Blitz’s entire life, he planned something and it went wrong but got half of the desired effect in the end.

Once they were out of the cage, they devised another plan so that they could get out of the warehouse. It involved Fizz making a fool of himself as he always had while Blitz managed to get around the back. They managed to take out the majority of the goons that Crimson had hired to try and ransom them, resulting on them standing up on the top of a massive shelving unit.

“You always cared what I thought,” Blitz scoffed. It was only half true, like most things in his life. Fizz had only cared what Blitz had to think when they were young teenagers, long before he had won the very first Mammon competition. Once he had won that competition and skyrocketed to fame, he didn’t care about what anyone thought of him. He knew that he was better than Blitz, that he deserved so much more than a low life that wanted to talk about blood and legless horses and pirates nonstop to try and rekindle what they had when they were kids.

Fizz laughed as he turned around and examined his hand, the one that had been whirring and stretching far above what was normal. Blitz knew that he had been given prosthetics to help him with what the fire had left him with, so that he could still perform and function as a person. “After what you did to me?” he asked as he turned just so that their eyes could meet over his shoulder.

“I didn’t do anything! It was an accident,” he snapped. He hadn’t told anyone what had happened that night, he had never had the chance to. His father had known that he knocked the cake out of the other circus workers hands, setting the canvas ablaze and then eventually lighting off the fireworks that he hadn’t stored properly because he was so tired. In Cash’s eyes, it had been his fault and it had been treated as such since that night.

“An accident? Are you kidding me?” Fizz nearly screamed. The bells on the bottom of his hat jangled as he moved, which was so comforting that it made Blitz feel like he was shaking apart. “You’ve always had it out for me because people liked me better. You wanted me gone because you were jealous. Just wanting the spotlight! I looked up to you, I thought you were my best friend. You ruined my life!”

He was approaching Blitz with both of his hands balled up into fists at his side. For a moment, he looked just as Cash had so many times throughout Blitz’s childhood. “And then you just left me. I lost so much because of you. And you selfish piece of shit, you didn’t even care!”

Blitz had turned around so that the tears streaking down his face weren’t visible to the other imp. He couldn’t face this, not when all of the memories of what had happened that night and the days following were rushing back to him all at once. That last sentence wormed its way into his mind until the words he had wanted to say for years finally burst out of him. “I did care! It was an accident, it was!”

Before he could say anything else, Fizz grabbed his shoulders and ducked them down into the boxes on the second of the warehouse shelves, so that they were surrounded by boxes. Several gunshots went off above them, but it was easy for Blitz to ignore them in his new line of work. 

He couldn’t stop the words now that they were coming, “Okay, you’re right! It was all my fault, it was. Okay, I should have done more to help! I was trying. There was so much going on. I was trying to get help, Fizz. I’m sorry, it was all my fault.”

“Glad you can admit it. Do you want a medal?” Fizz snarled.

Blitz could almost feel the pain on his eye and in his belly as he spoke to the other imp, as the words continued pouring from him like a leaky faucet. “Look, I’m sorry Fizz. I am so sorry that you got so hurt. And I am sorry for what you lost, and I-I know I can never make that right. But you have no idea what I lost in that fire.”

The memories felt like a searing, burning force in the back of his mind. The gun in his hand barely even registered as one of his hands moved to his stomach. He had never forgiven himself for what had happened, what he might have had if he had just taken his mother’s advice and listened to his body for once. He had been too greedy, wanted too much and then had lost everything but one tiny speck from it. “I mean, it’s all my fault. I would hate me too.” 

And he did, he hated himself enough for everyone that had gotten hurt or died in that accident and then some.

They didn’t get to continue their conversation because the thugs had found them again. He took care of them with the efficiency and blase attitude that he had done his job with for months now. It was technically personal, but he felt so hollow and out of sorts that he couldn’t bring himself to care much anymore.

They skipped over some of the boxes now that they were reminded that they were trying to escape. “So why didn’t you try to tell me any of this? Or come see me?” Fizz asked. “Even once would have been fine!”

“I tried. You were all I had left, Fizz, at least for the first while. But they told me that you didn’t want to see me,” he got a little snarky at the end. He didn’t really blame Fizz for not wanting to see him anymore, but at the time it had felt like a massive breach of their friendship. Fizz was responsible for the pregnancy as much as Blitz was, and he was the only person that could even potentially support him not that Barbie refused to talk to him and Tilla had passed.

“I never told them that!”

“Bullshit,” Blitz snarled. All of the talking about what had happened back then were bringing back the memories and feelings of that time. It was hard to keep his attitude in check when he felt like he had all those years ago, seventeen and recovering from his own burns while pregnant. “You didn’t?”

“No! And no one told me you came,” Fizz said.

They both suddenly realized what had happened, nodding in understanding. That was when more goons found them and they began to talk while they were fighting. It was odd to be with someone from the circus in that sense, instead of a farmer like Millie or a mafia member like Moxxie.

“Misunderstanding or no, it’s kind of hard to forgive you. It’s been fifteen years and that’s so much time. But I guess you didn’t really ruin my life.”

Blitz felt like he wanted to choke on air when he heard that. The explosion had completely ruined his life, even if his baby was the shining light in all of it that had stopped him from putting the business end of a gun against the roof of his mouth. “You’re telling me getting blown up didn’t ruin your life?”

“It was painful, and challenging,” Fizz conceded. “And you know, fuck you still. But it’s not like I’m broken. And I have someone who understands me. My life has actually been pretty great.”

“Yeah, that’s lovely,” Blitz said sourly. He knew that it was his fault that Fizz had been disfigured and disabled, but there was still some resentment brewing in him. He had to fight tooth, nail, and tail to get out of the hellhole being raised in the circus had left him in. Fizz had always gotten everything just handed to him, even when he messed up.

They finished worming their way out of the container that they had been held captive in. They were able to hotwire one of the old cars in the junkyard, but that was when Striker managed to snag Fizz. Blitz acted as quickly as he could to cause an explosion that would get the bounty hunter off of his friend without damaging Fizz. After performing some tricks that he thought he had long since forgotten, they found themselves safe on the top of a long beam. Fizz yelled at him for blowing him up again, which Blitz knew that he deserved.

---

The trek to get out of Greed felt like it took forever. They had to find where the junkyard was in proximity to where they had been before and then get back to there first. Once they had, Blitz offered Fizz a ride since the other imp had been brought there by a car that he would have to call for. Neither of them had their phones any more so that wasn’t really an option.

Much to his surprise, Fizz actually accepted the offer and then crawled into his van. They sped down the freeway to the elevators as fast as the other cars would allow. Somehow, the drive was so much more relaxed and pleasant than the one with Stolas a few weeks ago had been. Blitz assumed that part of that was because they had made up instead of having a fight, but he was also half hoping that it was because they actually had some kind of relationship waiting for them in the future.

“You can turn here,” Fizz said, pointing to the long driveway they had just passed. 

Blitz made a sharp turn and then came to an abrupt stop when they reached two pillars that held a gate. Fizz rolled down the window and then leaned so far out of it that Blitz was worried he was going to end up on the ground. He watched in fascination as his childhood best friend typed in a very long code and then the doors of the gate swung open.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said that you lived here,” Blitz wondered at the massive palace. He had been all over Stolas’ place, in every single nook and cranny both when he was an adult and when he was a child. It felt like nothing more than a tent in the back  of a caravan compared to what Asmodeous had been able to make for himself.

“Did you really think that I was lying? You saw Ozzie and I the other night at the club,” Fizz laughed.

It was a good sound, but it did terrible things to Blitz. Not only did he have to remember the night where he basically broke it off with his sort-of boyfriend and then scarred his eldest daughter by making her see him worse off than he had been since he had adopted her, he also felt the feelings from before the accident returning to him. His stomach erupted in a knot of butterflies that flooded throughout his system and left him feeling more elated and calm than any sedative had ever managed.

He drove down the long driveway to where it stopped at the front of the house. “Hey, Fizz?” he asked.

The other imp paused, his good arm resting on the door and his head tilted back so that he was looking at Blitz over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“I know I’m not really in a position to be asking you for favors, but would you mind pointing me towards a phone that I can use? I have to call someone before I get back to Pride and I want to do it as soon as possible,” Blitz explained. He didn’t feel like he could venture up the truth behind the words, the real reason that he was so anxious to be calling the mystery person he had just referenced.

Fizz stared at him for a long minute before he nodded his head. “You can come inside, but just long enough to call someone. I’ve mostly forgiven you but I don’t want to hang out with you just yet,” he explained.

That was better than anything that Blitz had thought he was going to get. After everything that had happened between the two of them, both everything that Fizz did and didn’t know about, he had never expected any kind of reconciliation between the two of them. He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, even though that was a stupid metaphor because horses did need their mouths examined fairly often, so he turned off the van.

He followed Fizz inside the huge mansion, standing a couple paces behind him. It didn’t feel right to walk beside him after all he had done, especially when the secret he was still keeping sat so heavily in his chest. The halls were vaulted and painted blue, with elaborate portraits of people that Blitz couldn’t put the name to when his mind was already so full of other things.

The thoughts in his mind had grown so loud, in fact, that he wasn’t even able to make out the sound of other voices down the hall until they were yelling. Fizz rushed past him and launched himself at Ozzie, who was standing next to someone that looked a little too familiar.

“Blitzy?” Stolas asked, bringing one of his taloned hands up to his beak as it opened in shock.

On any other day, during any other occasion, Blitz would have been able to keep the grudge that he had formed when he realized that Stolas would never actually love him and was embarrassed to be around him when they were in public. He had been dragged through the mud and lit on fire today, though, so he let it immediately drop.

He rushed over to the owl as fast as his damaged body would take him. He had grabbed the wire too hard earlier and his ankle was still kicking him for it, made worse by the fact that he was no longer seventeen and was extremely out of practice. As soon as he reached Stolas, he threw his arms around the owl and buried his face into the exposed feathers near his neck. “I’m sorry for being such an ass. I can’t be alone anymore, I can’t.”

“Oh, darling,” Stolas whispered as he immediately moved to holding his smaller lover. He set his chin down between the imp’s horns as he continued. “You know as well as I do that those girls of yours would never let you be alone. You don’t need me for that.”

“I do, I do,” he sniffled. He then shook his head and took a small step back, landing on the ground with a soft thump. “Speaking of the girls, do you know where they are?”

“Well, it’s still Saturday so I assume that Loona has taken them out shopping,” Stolas explained as he looked through his pockets for his phone.

“No, Kaly had practice today. She’s got that big performance coming up next week and her coach is pushing her,” Blitz narrowed his eyes as the reminder of what his daughter had been like when he had picked her up from acrobatics the week before making him angry.

“We’ve discussed this as well. Kalypso is her own person, she’s almost an adult, and if she isn’t okay with something then she will tell you. Only then can you handle the situation like you want to,” Stolas said. He handed the phone over to Blitz without another word, though.

The imp didn’t even think twice before he scrolled down to Kalypso’s number in the text options and clicked call. He had the phone up to his ear in seconds as he begged for her to pick up. There was no logical reason that she wouldn’t, even if Loona had picked her up from practice early so they could spend some time together. He had a stressful day and he was just worried, however.

“Put it on speaker, I want to say hello to her too,” Stolas said, gently poking Blitz’s shoulder to get his attention.

While Stolas and Blitz had their on-again-off-again relationship, the kids had also developed an attachment to the opposite parent. Via liked Blitz because he knew how to talk to her like an adult instead of babying her, which was something they needed in the midst of her parents divorce. Kalypso liked Stolas because he was so passionate about everything in his and her life, which Blitz unfortunately never had the time to be. They had ended up co parenting even though they weren’t technically romantically together for a good portion of the time prior.

He tilted the phone away from his face and then put it on speaker just as soon as the voice on the other end answered. “Stolas? Why are you calling me today?”

Blitz felt almost like he was going to start crying again when he heard the voice of his lovely, sweet daughter ring through the other side of the phone. “Kaly, baby, where are you?” he asked, ignoring the fact that Stolas had just opened his mouth to say something.

“Papa, I’m at practice. I told you that I was going to be here all day, unless Aunt Barbie came to pick me up,” she explained.

He felt his mouth tip down in a frown almost instinctively when he heard his sister’s name. There was a time where they were as close as two people could get, but that had long since passed. The death of their mother had driven Barb to a lot of very bad places, to the point where she had spent several years in rehab trying to turn her life around. Even once she had and Blitz found her again, she still hated his guts for an accident that was entirely his fault. She was doing better now, and was actively trying to be a good aunt to his kids.

“I had a rough day, I guess I forgot that practice was going that late. Do you think you could ask Loonie to pick you up? I might be a little late getting home,” Blitz explained. He hated having to say that, getting to see his daughter perform the tail end of her routine or whatever trick she was currently working to perfect had always been his favorite part of the weekends. There would be other times for that, though, he knew that in his heart after all the years they had been together.

The worry dripped off Kalypso’s voice as she asked, “A hard day? Are you okay? Did you get hurt again?”

Stolas’ hand dropped down to the spot on his hip, the one that gave him fits whenever he pushed himself too hard. It was as endearing as it was annoying, so Blitz did his best to simply brush it off. “I got kidnapped, met up with an old friend, and then blew up a junkyard.”

“An old friend?” Kalypso asked. “Most of your old friends don’t like you very much, Papa. Maybe I should ask Loona to come pick me up now so that we can check on you together.”

“It’s quite alright, little one. I’m with him and I don’t plan on letting him out of my sight until I get him back into your responsible care,” Stolas said. He was so good at soothing the worries of their children, even Loona.

“Hi Stolas! If he ends up falling asleep on you, make sure he takes out his contact. I hafta get back to practice now. Love you both,” she chirped.

“Love you too, impling,” Stolas smiled warmly. Despite the fact that they hadn’t been together for very long, it was true that they loved their children with their entire hearts, even if they had only met them a short time ago.

“Love you, Kaly. Be good and don’t let anybody push you around,” Blitz said before the phonecall ended.

He tilted his head to the side and saw that both Fizz and Ozzie were staring at him. He looked towards Stolas, who was already in the middle of texting Via about what had happened and if she would be okay with him staying out late for Blitz, then back to them. “What?” he asked.

“You have kids?” Fizz demanded. He clambered down from where he had been held in the Sin’s arms and then made his way over to Blitz. “That’s kind of an important thing to tell me! Is it with him?”

He wanted to laugh at that. He wanted to lean into Fizz’s face and cackle like some kind of deranged human serial killer. Instead, he opted for giggling and trying to stifle it with both of his hands. When he only got further weird looks he finally explained himself, “If you only knew the amount of times I tried to tell you that I had kids before I finally gave up!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Fizz asked, folding one arm over himself because the other still wasn’t working.

Blitz sighed and rubbed his forehead with one of his hands. The secret was eating him alive, especially since he had finally explained half of what had happened in the tent to his previously best friend. If he was going to be airing his dirty laundry and forgiving past grudges, then he might as well just do them all in the same day. “We should go sit down, this is going to take a long while to explain.”

---

About an hour had passed since they had shown up to Ozzie’s place. Stolas had the resident doctor come and check Blitz out to make sure that everything that was broken would eventually heal. Ozzie replaced the damaged parts of Fizz’s prosthetics and clothing. Eventually, the four of them were seated on two couches in what looked to be a formal sitting room meant for guests of far higher standing than any of them.

Of course, now that they had moved rooms and the conversation felt more like something that was actually going to happen as opposed to the abstract concept of yelling at each other in the hallway, Blitz felt almost like he was going to die. He knew what it was like to be close to death, everyone that worked in the field that he did was well aware of what that feeling was, and the panic coursing through his system currently was reminding him very heavily of that.

The world resettled and comfort rushed through him when he felt Stolas’ soft, feathered arm brush up behind him. It was a strange, grounding presence and very welcome given everything else that was going on.

“So what did you mean, earlier?” Fizz asked. He picked up the steaming mug of tea that had been placed in front of him on the table and then took a long drink from it.

“I guess I should start form the beginning? There have been enough misunderstandings about the fire already, we don’t need more,” Blitz reasoned. He felt Stolas give him a gentle squeeze on the shoulder to let him know that he was doing the right thing. He was glad that his sort of-boyfriend was there to support him through this, he was absolutely certain he couldn’t do it on his own.

The others waited for him, which he took as his cue to start talking. He always took silence as an opportunity to fill, anyway. “On Fizz’s seventeenth birthday, I was planning on giving him a letter that would disclose two things. One, I was in love with him. Two, I was pregnant.”

Given that it was a massive bombshell to drop on its own, he let the sentences settle in the room. Ozzie’s fire had sparked a deeper blue color and the faces within it were just as shocked as his own. Fizzarolli was the one that was handling it the least well, his eyes massive as he sat straight up and then fell back into the couch. “Fucking shitballs,” Fizz breathed. “You were in love with me? I thought that you were jealous!”

Blitz shrugged awkwardly, “Two things can be true at the same time. I was jealous, especially because everyone loved you and you treated them all the same. I wanted one thing to be mine, truly mine. It just happened that you were that one thing.”

“What else happened?” Fizz asked once he had recovered.

“Pregnancy and I didn’t get along super well. I’m guessing I was dehydrated or anemic or something, I never did get it sorted out. I was super woozy when I came into the tent at your party to give you the letter and I ended up passing out. I guess I hit the cake on the way down because when I woke up, the whole thing was up in green flames. I tried to find you but I also knew that if I stayed in there, something could go really wrong with the babies,” he explained.

Fizz continued to listen. His eyes were tilted down towards the swirling liquid in his mug, like it was going to tell him something in loose tea leaves. Blitz remembered when his mother was well enough to perform those readings for people, taking far too much money for far too little.

He sighed and brushed a hand over the side of his face. “You and a couple of the other people got to go to the hospital, Dad allowed that, but the rest of us had to go to Urgent Care. They patched up my eye, but I still can’t see out of it for the most part. They also did an ultrasound and found out I was having twins,” he pulled the little picture out of his wallet. He had carried it with him since it had first printed from the machine, it was his most cherished item.

Carefully, the other imp took the picture and stared at it. Unless someone said where the things were, it was nearly impossible to tell what was baby and what was Blitz. Fizz was still handling the entire thing like it was precious, though, which Blitz chose to take as a good sign.

Eventually the paper got handed back to him and he continued his story. “Dad kicked me out of the circus for blowing you up, which is totally fair. I fucked everything up and got Mom killed. I really hurt Barbie too, she resorted to some pretty shit stuff that got her sent to rehab. She’s doing better now, though, even if she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

“Where did you go?” Fizz asked. His brows were knitted in concern, similar to how he used to look whenever his fans were being too much back when they were teens.

“I went to Imp City. I stayed at a homeless shelter for pregnant people. I was there for a while, until the bleeding started. They assumed that I had a total miscarriage and then kicked me out, but it was just a partial one. I had to stay on the streets for a while after that, but then I got a job and I was able to find the shittiest apartment you have ever fucking seen,” he laughed until he noticed that no one else seemed as amused by that fact as he did. He then cleared his throat and said, “I delivered at home, couldn’t afford a hospital delivery with the Urgent Care back in Greed still trying to track me down. I named her Kalypso because I wanted her to have some tie back to the circus that wasn’t this fucking brand.”

When he mentioned that, Stolas squeezed his hip a bit tighter, as if to reassure him that he wasn’t there anymore. It was definitely something that was needed. Bringing up all he had gone through was like reliving it all at once.

“I think Kalypso is a good name,” Fizz said, like it was the only thing that he could muster while he was swimming in the depths of what the other man had just spilled in front of him. “Can I- can I meet her?”

“Course you can, she’s half you,” Blitzo took another sip of his drink. “In fact, if I hadn’t had to squeeze her out in the shittiest bathroom on earth then I would have been convinced that you had figured out cloning for another one of your stupid pranks.”

“My pranks aren’t stupid!” Fizz gasped, faking offense.

“They’re a little stupid, Froggy,” Ozzie laughed.

“I’m being attacked in my own home,” the jester wailed as he pretended to melt back onto the couch.

They were all laughing then, the heaviness of what had just been revealed lifting slightly. Blitz was able to tell the others more of what Kalypso had been like when she was growing up, which included some of the shitty spots he had gotten them wrapped up on. He was half certain that he had seen Ozzie on his phone, furiously emailing someone, when he got to the part about Verosika and her unhealthy habits around children. Blitz’s favorite part to talk about was Loona, and how being an older sister to someone she wouldn’t get separated from really helped her come out of her shell. She also took on that role with Via, after Blitz and Stolas had gotten into their weird half-relationship. He shared the good, the bad, the ugly, and the beautiful. He was glad he had paid for extra cloud storage when it came to showing pictures of his babies off to the group as well.

---

---

Blitz turned to the left and then back to the right before he tugged his shirt a little bit lower. It was impossible to miss the way that the cotton was pulling taut over his belly, even though he had only just reached twelve weeks. It was going to be impossible to hide this pregnancy the way that he had hidden his one with Kalypso. He hoped that Stolas and Ozzie were ready to keep him and Fizz safe from all of the batshit paparazzi that was going to be after them when the news finally broke.

He turned and grabbed the bag that he was going to be bringing to work. Now that it was confirmed that his chances of miscarriage had dropped significantly, they had decided that it was finally time to tell Millie and Moxxie why the polycule had been acting so strange. Fizz and Blitz were able to keep the secret relatively well since they had done that quite a lot back when they were kids, but the royals were overbearingly protective of their pregnant imp and it was beginning to raise eyebrows in their friends and family.

Not only were they going to finally tell Blitz’s coworkers and closest friends, but they were going to ask the duo to be the Hellparents, they already were for the rest of their other kids. It would be nice to formally ask them like the tradition begged for, though.

With the bag over his shoulder and his clothing as fussed with as it would get, he left the bedroom and entered into the chaos of the living room. Loona had been tasked with taking her sisters to school, which meant that she was leaning against the kitchen island while watching it all unfold. Ozzie was trying to help Kalypso get her tie straight so that she wouldn’t be dress coded again in that tight-ass private school that she went to with Via. Octavia herself was scrambling to get her bag packed, which was extra important now that she was a senior and making the direct transition into university.

“Hey Blitzy,” Fizz giggled from behind him. Two robotic arms wound their way around the other imp’s belly, hands resting directly on the tall crest. Their children knew that they were getting siblings, it would have been impossible to hide it from them with how bad Blitz’s morning sickness and exhaustion was every time he conceived. “You ready for work today?”

“If Stolas will let me out of the house,” he grumbled.

“What was that?” the offending bird demon asked from the depths of their bedroom.

“Nothing, birdy babe!” Ozzie shouted before either imp had the chance to start another play-fight. Even after just a year of being together with each other they had already learned what made the others tick, and when it was time to avoid that. He stood and kissed them both when he saw the twin pouts that they were sporting, much to the chagrin of their children.

That was when Loona spilled coffee down the front of her chest due to a text that Beelzebub, or maybe Tex if the flush near her ears was any indication, had sent her. It spurred on a panic from the younger too as she walked to her room so that she could get changed. If she ended up spending longer than five minutes picking out another top then there was a very high likelihood of them being late.

Blitz smiled as he watched his partners rush to try and soothe worries and solve problems. Years ago, he had been a single dad of two while working with chronic pain and an ache in his heart that had never left. Now he was expecting twins and more loved than he thought he ever deserved to be. It was clear based on the three men that had picked him and their children that he was loved that much and more.

[georges-chambers]

1, 3, 9 and 19 for the ships ask game?

Thank you so much, there took so long to answer but I'm hoping so very much that you will enjoy reading through them. I very much enjoyed answering them, and of course enjoyed the simple fact that you wanted to know, <3

1. "What was the first fandom where you developed a ship?'

Unfortunately, a rather complicated question because I wouldn't reveal the first 'fandoms' I was interested in that I considered fandoms unless under threat of death or harm to a loved one, But the first I would say I made anything that could have been considered content for which i actually published in any way would have been skekUng and skekSil from The Dark Crystal because it was a bit of an odd Pandemic era for me when I made my Ao3 account for that.

3. "What ship are you currently obsessed with and why?"

Giving you the 2 I'm currently obsessed with, one from The Terror and one from Moby Dick. For the Terror, I've recently started getting more into Bridglar again, because literally what is there that they don't have? Bridgens is simply one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen, I love the idea that Peglar would just fucking climb him like rigging, there was so, so much tenderness and love There despite everything. Every scene between them feels like a loving knife twisting into me and I love it. They're done in ways in the show that I can see as extremely plausible for the time and place. I also love the ideas of either or both of them being trans or asexual because of how that would be Another way in which their very self and nature is hidden from the world and most of the people they know but they can tenderly reveal that with each other and love yet another part of each other. Bridgens last scene only pains me even more with every rewatch and makes me want to rewatch it even more to experience the pain anew. As for the Moby Dick ship I'm currently obsessed with and why: Captains Peleg and Bildad have only become more of a thing to me, personally, in my mind, upon rereading it. In my heart, those are 2 men who are both from Nantucket but very different kinds of people in it who have actually known each other since the start of their careers in whaling when they were in their teens or twenties at some point in the 1790's or 1800's, and, Bildad being as pious as he is and Peleg being Significantly Less So. Like by the time they're shown in Moby Dick, they're in their 60's and have retired from whaling to become ship owners, and even Then they're both. The ways they are. Bickering with each other the ways they do about A Lot. And Ishmael brings up how both were or seem to have been notoriously aggressive first mates to work under. So for just a moment I'd like to think about how it must've been to have been one of the harpooneers or boatsteerers working under them and having to deal with 2 younger mates Peleg and Bildad who are somehow managing to continue and escalate their arguments throughout the entire whale hunt with 5 different kinds of tension between them the whole time. As inseparable as they seem as ship owners, I can imagine their early days on the Pequod were the same, but the implications or direct statements that they were on board with Ahab, having been friends of his, also kind of haunts me. At one time, would he have been the one who'd break up their endless bickering? When the Pequod left them for the final time and Bildad had to be cut off by Peleg from a very long goodbye, was he also saying that tearfully to the man they once knew to be their good friend for decades? I just find them infesting my brain like those wood-eating ship worms. Honestly kind of hate it.

9. "What drew you to your favorite ship?"

This is a very hard one because I fins it very hard to pick a favorite ship at all but I'll go with one I can't imagine Not shipping: Jopzier. And as for what draws me to them, what couldn't? Jopson would kill and die for Crozier and always would have I am sure of this, and in return, Crozier would care for Jopson the way so many people have not, in ways he's needed yet never had, and given to him ceaselessly. He did, actually. And one could argue Jopson almost very much did kill for Crozier. I love the way they love so much and I think the things Jopson should have been able to do with that old man would violate all Tumblr guidelines in description alone.

19. "What ship or ships do you absolutely cannot stand?"

This is also hard because I feel like I both always support people enjoying whatever ships they may and I actually find it hard to not see Some good things about most pairings. That being said, though, I will only say that there is a particular ship in Doctor Who, particularly in post-2005 Doctor Who, that is Very popular, and well. Fairly canon founded. And I understand why people ship it. I do understand. But without saying which characters are involved, I feel like the show, when developing this companion's relationship with the Doctor, eventually started slowly whittling her whole character itself down to her relationship with the Doctor. This definitely isn't relegated to her in particular but it does make that ship specifically almost impossible for me to enjoy and I definitely can't understand why its so incredibly popular, but its so popular I'd feel like a very mean hater to actually say which companion it is.

[starry-eyed-fag]

Sorry fellow petekey shipper here but I am curious about how anti petekey shipping is rooted in ableism and transphobia? (Obviously you don't need to answer if you don't want to but I am curious, I'm also not super involved in the fandom so that might be why)

I've received two asks about this same thing with very similar wording so I'll just answer this one, hope other anon isn't too offended lol. I've spoken a bit about this before, but I'm too lazy to go find the post, and I have free time. The transphobic and ableist roots of the vocal group of anti-Petekeys that exist (and other anti-RPF people that go to a very far extreme in general) are very different so I'll address both of those separately.

(Also there will be very brief mentions of SA in my answer, addressing a common anti-RPF argument.) (Also also I'm not a Petekey shipper to clarify but I do welcome them on my blog.) (Also also also there is a TLDR at the end but please don't raise your pitchforks until you've read the whole post.) (Also also also also it's okay if you disagree with me, we can still be friends as long as you're civil.)

I also want to provide a disclaimer: it is okay to dislike any ship (or even RPF in general) for any reason. I'm not trying to claim that it's inherently transphobic and/or ableist to dislike or be personally uncomfortable with RPF. The problem comes in when people use their personal dislike of RPF and extend that to harassing RPF readers and writers (who I will henceforth call RPF enjoyers so I don't have to write that out) and trying to demonize us.

Part One: The Ableism

Many people who hate RPF to the extent that they shame RPF enjoyers do so because of ableism. In the process, they demonize us neurodivergent folk, whether we are RPF enjoyers or not. Often they will say "please just be normal about [person]" or "you're so obsessed and parasocial" when someone's just writing fic or making jokes about the ship being real.

Parasocial relationships, while real, are often used as leverage to further ostracize and discriminate against neurodivergent people, especially autistic people like myself. In RPF discourse, often visibly autistic people are accused of "breaking [person]'s boundaries" or, in some cases, even having our hyperfixations or special interests be compared to literal sexual assault.

As an actual survivor of SA, comparing a neurodivergent person's mostly harmless interests to SA is not only extremely disrespectful but also ableist. Often it is more visibly autistic or higher support needs autistic people that get this argument used against us, but any autistic or neurodivergent person can be targeted.

All of this is very weird and suspicious. Often, more moderate Petekey antis will say things like "you can ship Petekey, just be normal about it". This basically translates to "you can ship Petekey as long as you're a neurotypical". And this proves that a lot of what people are calling "just respect people's boundaries!!!!" is just ableism covered up with therapy speak and progressive language.

Part Two: The Transphobia

There is a lot to get into with the transphobia of the FOB fandom, and if I were to talk about this fandom's transphobia and all of my thoughts on it we would be here for several hours and a few hundred thousand words, but I do want to state a few facts to get us on the same page.

Trans people are targeted, harassed, and called out in this fandom far more often than cis people are.

Trans people in general society are often viewed as predators simply for existing, and when this intersects with a mental disorder or neurodivergence, we are even more likely to be ostracized or called out for things that really aren't that big a deal.

Our sexualities are seen as inherently predatory, no matter whether we're straight, gay, bi, or any other thing. In the eyes of society, there is no "good" sexuality that you can be when you are trans in the same way that you can be straight when you are cis.

When we are called out or targeted, we face the consequences of that worse than cis people do.

Many of these forms of discrimination are passive and not done on purpose, but good intentions aren't enough. Harm is still done to trans people while cis people look the other way.

So, how does all of this tie into Petekey?

WELL

Have you ever been on the Petekey side of Tumblr? Of course you have, you're a Petekey shipper. You may not have counted how many trans people you saw there, but you definitely noticed us. We were there. While we are about 1% of the general population, I would estimate that we are about 50%-70% of Petekey (and general bandom RPF) Tumblr.

All of this being said, the counter argument from the antis would be "we're not doing this because you're trans, it's because you're shitty and do [x thing they claim RPF is]". Unfortunately for them, this is no excuse to use transphobic stereotypes in order to "call us out" for the horrible crime of... writing fiction. And isn't it suspicious how these people very rarely come after m/f ships (exclusing x reader, because that's attacked a lot)?

HMMMMMMMMM

Trans people expressing our sexualities through this community, this ship, this form of media, are demonized and called predators. We are compared to people who commit SA, and legitimate abusers, for writing fiction. We are harassed and called out for being RPF enjoyers far more than cis people are.

Addressing the Bad Ones

Before an angry anon comes into my inbox talking about this, yes, I am aware that some Petekey shippers are racist, and I don't support that at all. Racists aren't welcome on my blog. Because I am white, I don't really have much to say about the vocal minority of Petekey shippers who are racist, but I do think that they are a problem and that it's important for the Petekey community to fight racism alongside the rest of the FOB fandom.

For those unaware, it has been brought to many in this fandom's attention that it is racist to reduce every FOB song written by a black man, Pete Wentz, to be about one white man, Mikey Way. This is indeed very racist. I don't know what the consensus among black fans is about how far you have to go about overanalyzing FOB songs in that perspective before it becomes racist, but I have never once seen a black fan, even one that doesn't personally like RPF, claim that it's racist to ship Petekey at all.

This vocal minority of racists is absolutely no excuse to harass anyone, especially those belonging to other minority groups that already have hate and harassment targeted at them for the most minor fuck-ups. Your (justified) anger with a few racists isn't an excuse to be ableist and transphobic because transphobia and ableism, even towards bad people, harms all trans and ND/disabled people who aren't racist.

I also want to state again that if this is your reason for disliking or being uncomfortable with Petekey in general, that is entirely valid! It's your job to curate your own online experiences and I have no interest in policing what you do with your own blog. Please just don't harass enjoyers of RPF or use transphobic and ableist language or stereotypes in your discourse.

This goes both ways. Even if you are an RPF enjoyer you should familiarize yourself with all types of bigotry to avoid accidentally repeating it, and if you do fuck up, own up to it, apologize, and don't do it again.

Conclusion/TLDR

Dislike of or personal discomfort with RPF is totally fine and normal, and so is thinking that RPF is bad, as long as you recognize that the negative aspects of RPF are a symptom, not the main problem here. The main problem is the commodification of human beings under capitalism.

However, RPF has been very important to queer and trans culture, especially bandom RPF in the 2000s. There is a vocal group of people who believe that writing RPF is literally the same as SA or that it is justified to harass RPF enjoyers. Neither of those beliefs are okay and they are rooted in ableism and transphobia for reasons I stated above.

Some Petekey shippers are racist, and unironically claiming that every FOB song is about Mikey is racist because you are reducing a black man to his feelings for a white person. This is still no excuse to go after the non-racist Petekey shippers.

I don't think that everyone who hates RPF to that extreme is trying to be ableist or transphobic, but the more you look at it, the more it becomes increasingly clear where their rhetoric comes from. This is still where they are getting their rhetoric from. They've likely internalized a lot of radfem and/or TEHM talking points as well, which is what I've seen for a lot of these types of people.

Also, mutuals: none of this is directed at you! If you were that anti-RPF to the point I would consider you transphobic or ableist, I wouldn have probably blocked you by now.

Also also, if I got something wrong, especially about the racism, feel free to correct me! I'm always open to good faith disagreement.

Also also also, I'm going to reblog this on my discourse sideblog because this post is more on the discoursey side.

[olderthannetfic]

RE enjoying HP content: Personally I don't give two shits about HP, but I'll admit, I have a hard time justifying the "Don't engage in HP fandom!" stance. Not giving the creator money and only pirating stuff from the franchise, fine, makes sense. But the argument that people shouldn't even engage in fandom feels strange, because I can't really separate it from the age-old "You shouldn't participate in X fandom because one of the people involved in it is a rapist/wifebeater/union-buster/was abusive towards their actors/[insert long list of other ways people can be shitty]". Is the singular focus on JKR due to her disproportionate impact and celebrity status? The reach of her platform? Even there, I hardly doubt that she is unique in her evil, there are doubtless many others who don't get the same publicity due to not being involved in something central to the pop culture background for so many Westerners.

I can see three arguments for not participating in fandom: One, to punish, and the other, to reduce impact. First argument has the consistency issues I highlighted above, the second one I COULD see, but at the same time, don't we as fans tend to overstate our own importance? (In censorship discussions we frequently discuss that fanfiction has very little power to normalize anything and is ultimately a drop in the bucket.) HP gave rise to a massive mount of licensed spinoff content from videogames to multiple blockbuster movies, including a new franchise that collects millions at the box office each time. In light of the overwhelming marketing and reach, it's hard to see how some people making fanart on Tumblr or whatever matters, and as much as I side-eye HP fans, I find it very hard to actually judge them for the extremely bland crime of not wanting to sacrifice a source of entertainment for some abstract moral good.

The third argument for abstaining from HP fandom is to make nonbinary people feel safer (both people in your circle and strangers coming across your content), but this feels really circumstantial. Abandoning the HP fandom to take a stand with trans people is a nice gesture, but ultimately it's just a gesture, and one that doesn't actually mean anything outside of very specific circumstances. Someone NOT being an HP fan doesn't mean they can't be a transphobe, and someone being an HP fan doesn't have to mean they're anything worse than maybe a little bit selfish/unwilling to sacrifice a source of entertainment and comfort for the sake of other people. This kind of selfishness may be something to judge, but it's also extremely mundane and common, and hardly more offensive than, say, refusing to put content or trigger warning tags on your blog because it's your blog and you just can't be bothered.

To conclude, I personally share the distaste for HP content but I'm not convinced I'm actually being rational in it. At the same time, I'm very much a person driven by hyperfixations, and the fact that I dodged a bullet in not caring about HP is just sheer dumb luck. I do have a lot of sympathy for people obsessed with HP and drawing joy from it, because god knows I can't imagine myself simply forcing myself to stop caring about the thing that's held my imagination in a vice grip for the past few years and inspired me to create so many things. I have a lot of nb friends, so I like to think that if I were interested in HP, I'd be able to choose their sense of security over my hyperfixation. But that's a much more personal argument that can't really be generalised to fandom as a whole...

End ramble. Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear your thoughts.

--

My argument about fandom participation is that you, the fan, have limited time and brainspace.

If you want to support some other less known creator, put your time and emotions towards that. Don't carve out 50% of your free time for HP or Supernatural or whatever canon we're mad at today.

"I'm not paying them" is a weak argument when you put that much of yourself towards having whatever thing as a lifestyle. "I read the occasional fic. You're making too much of it" is a reasonable argument in my book.

Of course, if people don't care, they don't care, but I keep seeing people who are like "I would leave [bad large fandom] if only I could find the same experience in another". But they don't go build that world they want to see, so it continues to not exist.

[silly-little-soul]

Best of Men - Kaz Brekker

A/N - It's currently 8am, I spent the past hours writing this because sleep is overrated, I think it turned out quite well considering this is my first time writing for Kaz

A/N 2 – a week later now, I'm so sorry for the wait I decided to make it longer after all and then some stuff happened, nothing bad just time consuming I hope you enjoy anyways!

Also I'm still working on making a better post format I apologize

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fandom: Six of Crows

Format: oneshot

Type: comfort

Relationship: Kaz Brekker x Reader (romantic, established relationship)

Reader info: trans ftm, implied crow

Summary: Kaz comforting a trans-masc reader who feels dysphoric

Warnings: established relationship, gender dysphoria, mention of unintended misgendering, Kaz almost kills sb for like 0.5 seconds, emotionally dense Kaz, slightly OOC soft!Kaz, actually atp might as well just say Kaz in general is his own warning /hj

Proofread: Yes!

Word count: 1165

Requested: @alex-kazbrekkersimp

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  To say it was a bad day was an understatement. It was one of the days everything felt wrong, even more so than most days, and the nagging inside your own head just wouldn't seem to stop. You were familiar with these days of course but it didn't exactly make them easier. And just when you thought you managed to tuck the feeling away rater well you were tasked to show around some new Dregs who right of the bat made you feel even worse when by addressing you with feminine titles. You knew they had no ill intention but in your current state that was barely doing anything about the waves of dysphoria crashing down on you. After a moment you couldn't take it anymore. You didn't have the energy to correct them and risk conflict so you simply turned and left for your room without another word.

So here you are now, sitting on your bed with your head between your knees. You're sure Kaz will be rather upset at you for simply leaving the new Dregs but at least Jesper agreed to taking care of them when you ran into him on your way to your room meaning they wouldn't be unattended. You don't really have the mind to care about that currently anyways.

A knock snaps you back to reality. The door opens and you don't need to lift your head to know it's Kaz, the sound of his cane against the floor giving him away easily. “Y/N.” It comes out much harsher than intended and he winces at the “I know I shouldn't have left” you mumble quietly. „Y/N“. He tries again, his voice much softer this time, a tone he rarely uses (and if he does it's with you, always with you). You shake your head, refusing to look up at him.

With a sigh he sits on the bed next to you, he makes sure to keep a small distance so he doesn't risk you touching each other accidentally but the proximity itself is a sign of trust, something reserved for you and the crows, only the people he deems save. There's a minute of silence between the two of you before Kaz comes to the conclusion you won't be addressing the problem on your own accord. “Jesper made me aware of a.... situation.” You don't reply but the sniffle coming from where your head is still tugged away from view makes his grip on his cane tighten.

When Jesper told him about what happened he was about ready to go straight to the Dregs responsible and demonstrate to them why people feared Dirtyhands but he was stopped by Inej who suggested it'd perhaps be better to check up on you first, saying she'd handle them (though her definition of handling the situation was much calmer and more reasonable that Kaz's). Though reluctantly he ended up listening to his friends, not keen on breaking his promise of always being there shall you need him.

“Love.” The use of the pet name made you look up finally. Seeing the glossiness of your eyes he stretches out his hand, deciding last second to lay it right next to yours instead of risking trying to put it on top. “I won't say I know how you're feeling as I know I never will but please be aware that whenever you need me I'm right there by your side..” He looks down at your almost touching hands for a moment, trying to find more he could say to comfort you. To his relief though you speak up this time. “Sometimes it.... it just feels like no matter how hard I try I can't seem to be enough of a man.” You cure yourself silently for the way your voice cracks at the end of your sentence, pushing your head back in its old position. Meanwhile Kaz could swear he can feel something chipping away at his heart with how sure you sound of something that is not only hurting you but blatantly false.

“I might not know how you're feeling.... but I know there's voices.” He let's his gloved hand hover above yours, hoping his words are ones good enough. “Voices inside your head and heart, voices that seem to come from everywhere and sometimes even the voices of other people. They're telling you lies and things you don't deserve.” He finally seems to have won the battle he silently had with himself as he let's his hand rest on yours lightly. “Listen to mine instead.”

You look up fully this time to see Kaz already looking at you, eyes filled with rare emotion. “You are without question the most handsome man I've ever laid my eyes upon. Absolutely dashing, stronger than anyone I've ever known, so stunningly brave. I know many men who think of themselves as powerful, strong, the best and I can guarantee you none of them stand a chance against you. You think you need to 'try' as to be a man but you are already more man than they will ever be. You're man at heart, something I believe most of them do not possess in the first place.” Relief washes over him when you puff out a small laugh at his joke. He lifts his hand from yours again, his gaze however stays fixated on you.

You take a few seconds to take in what just happened, Kaz's words having been uncharacteristically sweet, almost shockingly so. A warmth spreads inside both your chest and cheek. While you're still processing his words Kaz gets up from your bed, returning moments later with a tissue and the glass of water you had left on the little table in your room this morning, both of which you gratefully accept.

“I don't give a damn about who or what you were said to be much over a decade ago. I care about the beautiful, perfect man you grew up to be that I have the privilege of getting to spend my life with. No matter what anyone says. You'll always be you, the most incredible man to exist. Inej, Jesper, Nina, Matthias, Wylan, all of them would never see you as anything less, they all love you.” He lifts his hand again, resting it on your cheek carefully. “I love you.” It's barely above a whisper, the words still hard for him to get out even after all this time but the faint smile on your face shows him you heard him fine as he removes his hand again. “I know I don't say it as much as you deserve but I'm so very lucky to have you by my side. The best of boyfriends and best of men.”

Kaz Brekker wasn't one to let his affection show often but if it meant he could have the man he loved smile at him as strikingly as you did right now maybe he'd consider doing it more often.

<3

[sharpth1ng]

I believe it is Michael Angelo who's said, "I saw the angel in the marble and carved till I set him free" You saw the devil in the Scream and wrote until you set the world ablaze, the world in it's entirety on fire with your brilliance. I say this because Debaser itself should be considered a work of art. (Both the Cis AND the Trans version! They're incredibly well executed!!)

Your work is a spider i'd love to keep as a pet, it's always a joy to read, and I find myself often caught in it's proverbial web whenever I commute to work, it's just, phenomenal!!!

I've never been a huge fan of the slashers genre, not for a lack of interest but simply because I was never motivated enough to do so, I only happened upon Debaser from a friend of a friend and let me say what a blessing that rec was because my goodness is your written word an eighth world wonder! It actually inspired me to give the Scream series a shot and the characters both on screen and from your fanfic were cut from the same cloth!!

You captured their personalities perfectly, in fact I found myself almost anticipating the movie to just have a scene of Stu and Billy slamming it down big style in the middle of a party city, clean up on aisle 69 indeed! (Then again both the kitchen AND the cornering Randy scenes were stock-filled with enough sexual tension to make a courtesan flush)

This was much longer then I anticipated, but I wrote this out with the intent to thank you so much for sharing such a gorgeous slice of happiness!! May your winters be warm and your pillows stay cold! (Unless you like warmer pillows, in which case I hope they stay hot?)

Thank you! ^^

Yo. I am B L U S H I N G?????

seriously thank you this is so deeply flattering and such a lovely comment godamn I am humbled 😭 the fact that you came to my fic not even from the fandom and also compared my work to a spider? My dude I don’t even know how to express how crazy awesome it feels to hear that.

(And LMAO yeah they should be slamming it down big style in party city, fucking absolutely.)

GAH. Anyways thank you so much, it’s incredible to receive comments like this, they give me so much writing energy. THANK YOU SO I SINCERELY MUCH.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the fic!

[alexissara]

Private Consumption

When we talk about media we don't want to support, often it is said to just go pirate it, buy it second hand, borrow it, buy then return it, to engage it. It removes the money from companies and maybe makes them a little mad, plus we still get to engage media we were excited about. It feels like it's a total win, to not give money to something and get to enjoy it despite it's whatever the reason you wanted to boycott it. However, I want to talk about some of the ways us consuming something for free still can end up supporting these pieces of art we don't want to end up supporting.

This feels particular important in the wake of bird apps every day cis person says they should be valorized for wanting to buy the game and loved by trans and Jewish people. Instead of engaging that discourse [quickly, you are a bad person if you play it, I'll block you].

Sharing

The first way simply playing a game supports it is sharing. When you share content you create a sense of community between other players which increases the likelihood of the art becoming more important to you and these people. This is only furthered by the fact that it is free marketing for these companies. Every time you post something, someone with no context into why you may be against something might see the screen shot, the panel, the little thing on your discord that says what your playing, the clip, the game, and think "Ohhh this looks cool and this person looks cool and seems to be enjoying".

Even reviewing something critically at least says "this is something worthy of conversation." So many pieces of art come out with basically no review, no press, nothing. Instead the art is treated as worthy of discussion, worthy of engagement. Even a "I have to see how bad this game is myself" can push people to enage art.

Fandom

In this modern era, companies are in the business of IP, they are in the business of attention. A bunch of people buying something second hand, pirating it might mean it's a perfect time to make a show, make a webseries, a podcast, etc. It says "This IP is still relevant". The success of art is not based purely on the money but fanfictions created, merch sold, advertisers they could sell to and sponsors. It's you attention, your fan art, you and I's passion that they want. They want us to see a little scarf of the IP and go "It's like when i was a kid or like my friends have" or whatever the fuck and spend money. The most valuable thing for them is the brand staying alive. They can tank a loss on a movie or a game or a comic. They can tank a few of them. So long as they think there is juice in the thing they are making the funko pop deals, the posters, the stuff won't stop.

Toxic

There is value in shared hate of something vile. Making something toxic for people, brands, etc to engage with means it will hurt the above fandom stuff. If you make it when anyone engages the IP they have to turn off comments or whatever then you lessened the desirability of the IP. Subway isn't going to do a deal with the IP if they know they'll get way more hate mail and people boycotting over it. Successfully making something seen as not worth the effort crashes the IP's ability to make money and market.

Time

I saved the most important part for last and that is that your time, yes your time, is the most important thing you have. You get 24 hours a day, of those hours you likely only get so precious few that aren't split between food, work, taking care of your body, and sleep. There is no way to regain time, every second you spend is spent forever.

This matter a lot in this context because the time you spend engaging in art could be spent on other art. If you are boycotting something for being antisemitic then you can go engage art from Jewish people instead. This can go for whatever reason your boycotting, like if you don't like the DLC practice of a video game, you could play an indie game that doesn't have that practice.

It's is/almost is 2023 now and the reality is every day there is so many movies, so many games, so many comics, so many mangas, so many tv shows and more all coming out every single day. It is simply impossible to engage a fraction of a fraction of new "content" coming out. With our global connection we have access to art from every piece of the world with works getting translated to every language, with the collective power of the human artistic drive we have a overwhelming amount of entrainment on our hands.

Why then spend it playing, reading, watching, something you hate? Something that offends your senses, hurts others, funds something terrible, why spend that time doing it? Your time matters, you matter, why not expand your horizons, dive into the deep sea of artistic possibility and find glorious new art that matters to you and speaks to you.

[katyspersonal]

Let me get this straight.

You were accused of several phobias based off of defense of a trans person that genuinely needed support? I just caught up on the posts and the responses and it looks like that person held some very problematic (cliche right-wing bs) beliefs but I can tell you didn’t support those beliefs per se. You wanted to prevent a trans person from being attacked during a bad spot in their life. You also didn’t mind sharing their fandom posts and being their friend because you knew that what they really needed was someone to help them. And it looks like they’re gone now?? Un-fucking-believable.

Now all of your mutuals are getting anonymously targeted by the same person that called you out? I am just a lurking witness but this person attacking you is the latent tr*nsphobe. They bullied and isolated someone for trying to help a struggling trans person. That is vile and I hope they rot in hell. Disgusting pos. Weaponizing tr*nsphobia is the number one no-no in fandom spaces and it’s a dead giveaway for who really care and who doesn’t. Helping a trans person through shit even when they are sharing harmful rhetoric takes balls. Good for you.

Gosh... This is always a heavy topic to talk about for me, especially when you put it THIS plainly. I think this is the most direct way to summarise the situation I've seen yet from a person that's not close to me (it is a compliment).

I must specify though - the "trans person" identified as trans man for about 13 years but since then revoked the term and now prefers to simply be described as GNC. In the end, he doesn't find the label he feels truly comfortable with, but this is still a person that is female in documents but male in fact and this IS an important bit in the whole story. Some people might argue that no matter what, but anyone not identifying with assigned gender counts as trans, that I get, but he has strong reservations and negative experience with the community that he shared multiple times - something the bully stalker you're referring to chose to ignore.

I think feeling identically homeless is an awful thing - he cannot line with the cis heteros (you can't just will yourself to identify as a straight girl when you are a gay man lol), but queer community has become ridiculously toxic with infights, imposing stereotypes on each other, ruining each others' spaces, cancelling each other over thoughts 'out of line', claims that someone's different experience harms the rest of the demographics upon being spoken of and god knows what else. You could figure that even in his younger years, he was excluded from his own identity and grossly bullied and misgendered because of the notion of "you do not belong in the queer community / you are not a REAL trans person if you support the [insert an opinion that has nothing to do with being trans]".

This is absolute fucking HELL from the sound of it, and I can't imagine LIVING it. You are so RIGHT for calling Alfred-chan (aka Clod Frollo, aka Slander Man) a latent transphobe. That they absolutely ARE. They do not see trans people (binary, nonbinary, generally GNC, whatever) as PEOPLE, as human beings with their own lives, history, opinions and differences. They see them as ideological soldiers in the "war" against them nasty white cissie hets and they are the EXACT garbage type that will exclude someone from their own gender/sexuality if they fail to match the checklist of strictly western libertarian opinions. They believe that to be trans or gay/lesbian is to have only certain beliefs on everything else that is not relevant. If not seeing trans people as people is not REAL transphobia, then I don't know what is.

From how you're talking you must be familiar with the cases of imposing very suffocating and concrete opinions and behaviour standards on a person for them to not be bullied as "not real" or "not proper" queer person. Some trans/GNC people will be conservative, some will be Christian, some will say 'instead of making 60 abortions just exercise protected sex already because abortion is a murder'. Because they're people, they come to different conclusions in this life, and no one should be put under obligation to assume only certain values to simply have their identity acknowledged.

ALSO from how you're talking you must be familiar with the situation of abusing the sympathy pool for selfish goals. This is exactly how #metoo got a dirty name. Alfred-chan used a very painful, vulnerable topic (transphobia) to fabricate lies and manipulate narrative with the goal of removing the bitch they disliked (yours truly) from the fandom. In general they are ridiculously nasty towards anyone that speaks against them trying to bully certain group of fans - people that clarify nuances on G3hrman as a character, insist that Maria is not "canonically a masculine lesbian" but instead is up to interpretation (that she is) or simply like G3hrmaria ship. They are terminally unable to see people (or fictional characters) outside of stereotypes and cannot acknowledge variety of identities and experiences. Yeah, I was proclaimed a witch to burn over the awful sin of trying to listen and help someone instead of throwing them away like a trash, but even before that they had quite a beef against me; they joined the fandom, lured some audience with cute mari4deline art and then decided to divide us into "normal fans" and "nasty misogynist lesbophobes without media literacy" just after the disco horse in the fandom started to die down. And I said NO YOU DON'T. Still, when they cannot harass people over reblogging a meme from me, they harass them for having an opinion on Maria that isn't 100% like their.

They do not care about trans PEOPLE, they care about trans 'identities'. These are different things. They appreciate diversity of flags and labels, but not diversity of experiences, opinions and backgrounds. And if you do not fit - you are a broken gear in the machine, you are not a proper 'soldier', and you must be thrown away. And if someone picks you up? They are the evil one, if not MORE evil. Kindness, patience and understanding are the bad things, but violence, cruelty and exclusion are what makes you trustworthy and good by their logic! True face of the fighters for "acceptance and kindness" as you can see! Fuck the Golden Ord- errrr I mean fuck this hypocritical corrupted witch-hunting nonsense.

----------------------------------------

I'd also not say that his rhetorics were "harmful". Again, Alfred-chan likes to twist what someone says to benefit their witch-hunter narrative. You can explain yourself with maximal logic, nuance and clarity, only for that person to ignore absolutely everything you said except for ONE thing they COULD twist against you, base everything around that thing and then play a victim. If you had the misfortune of knowing a 'narcissistic abusive mother' - the type of manipulation is shockingly similar. He was always ready to explain things properly but witch-hunters are not interested in removing the conflict - they are interested in removing YOU.

I also believe that free speech reveals the opinions, not creates them. Basically, opinions do not cause harm - PEOPLE do. If all it took someone to support this or that right-wing opinion is to read a post from a stranger online? Congratulations, a person found their tribe. It is GOOD if everything is revealed and everyone takes their place, it is GOOD if groups define their territories so you know where they are,. If many people believe in a "bad thing" - this means that many people ARE bad, and dividing and silencing them won't change the truth, only conceal it until it inevitably breaks through. Scaring people never changes their hearts, only makes them strike HARDER when they're ready to do so. Like what in the Brador people try to say with hating the truth revealed SO much? sdfjhdshghds

Me and him argue quite often, but when you befriend someone, it is a very bad thing to argue with them publicly. It borders the level of abusing a friend. If you have a friend that consistently shames you on public - this is not a good friend, and you should inform them that you are not their means of looking virtuous before some strangers/guests. On the brighter note - yes, the person is gone from Tumblr, but he is living his better life now. He got a therapist, he goes outside more often, he found a new passion that gave him sense of purpose, overall his life is getting better.. and he is happy that I get to be a part of it!

[curmoritor]

@beloven, @vengier, @lightsmartyr, & @daemonry; sent all the questions! So time to answer them all.

What made you pick up this character?

Good question! I truly don't remember when or why I picked up Owen exactly. I just know that one day I did and ever since then I've never been the same. I originally got into this series and wrote Shylock, then Snow, and then Owen! I don't remember why I picked up Owen. I just know he is my little bonbon now.

2. How did you get into this franchise/fandom? That would be because of @beloven and an old friend of mine! They were into it and my group of friends go into it briefly before falling out of it because we still had other interests at the time, but after we fell out of those interests, we fell back into mahoyaku. Sapph was into it far more then I was at first, but I slowly inched my way into it and now I'm trapped.

3. What’s the best thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.? God, I wouldn't even know what to pick because there are so many good things about it. I love so many things about Mahoyaku because it has amazing writing in almost every possible way. Though, I think my favorite generalized thing to think of is just how detailed the magic system inside of mahoyaku is! It's so unique and wonderful.

4. What’s the worst thing about the show/series/books/comics/etc.? Honest to god, I don't know. I like to many things about it to even think of something I don't like. Maybe just how slow it updates because getting one main story chapter a month is kiiiiiiiilling me

5. What’s the best thing about the fandom? There are a lot of things! Though I would say the fact that the fandom is SUPER orginized!! Having a whole resource doc, public discord and lots of discussions on the lore and characters!

6. What’s the worst thing about the fandom? the fandoms hyperfixation on specifically ships that I really do not like. It's just a personal thing though!

7. What’s the best thing about the canon you are writing? The fact that all wizards are yandere coded. I love this so much. Funky obsessive wizards.

8. What’s the worst thing about the canon you are writing? Personally, and it's deeply petty and not that big of a deal, the fact that Owen being so weird and different from other wizard not being really examined enough!! like!! what do you mean he can't die!! why are NO OTHER WIZARDS trying to get this ability? why can he talk to animals? this is something ONLY HE CAN DO!! and no one cares?? What about the fact he gains his magic from hate and chaos rather then love and happiness!! why is this something just glossed over!!! i want to know more!!!!!!!!!!

9. Have you tweaked the character from canon? If so, what did you tweak? Only a little bit. I made him 5'8 instead of 5'10. I also made him trans because transgenderification beam goes brrr.

10. Would you say that your portrayal is canon divergent or not?  absolutely, I think all portrayals are inherently canon divergent because we aren't the original writers so we're bound to get things wrong! but if you are trying to stick to canon good for you! I am slightly canon divergent only in making Owen far nicer then he is canonically because otherwise he'd be near impossible to interact with.

11. Are there some things you dislike about how the show/series/etc. portray the character you have picked up? If so, what? Nope! I love how the game portrays him and think he is absolutely perfect and has never done anything wrong (incredibly biased)

12. What would you say is the most unique trait about your character? The fact that he simply can't die. In canon he is literally the only person who can do that, beside that, it's the fact he can speak to and understand animals. This is also a trait exclusively restricted to him.

13. Are there any other characters from the franchise you’d like to play? Hell yea, I write several other mahoyaku characters! They are all on my multimuse though.

14. Are there some characters from the franchise you can’t stand?  Not really, I pretty much like all of them at this point! I used to not like Shino or Nero much but the new main story updates really changed my opinions on both of them so I love everyone.

15. What are your thoughts on the canon ships for the character, if any? While there is no technical canon romance, there are two sets of characters I would say are 100% in love. That being Shylock and Murr and Cain and Owen. I personally don't have strong opinions on Shymurr at all, but Caiowen is my favorite ship ever. I am insane about them and I think that there is just so much about them that makes me want to scream. Wizards in love are insane and very normal. Owen loves Cain in a unusual way but he does love him. Owen sees himself as a monster that is meant to be killed by the knights that he loves so very much, so he attacks and provokes Cain all the time to try and get him to attack and kill him, yet he also wants Cain to save him and make him feel loved, as shown with how little owen acts. Owen is just simply not capable of showing such feelings because of... a lot of reasons. From him being Northern to him being deeply traumatized.

16. What is your personal ship bias for your canon character? CaiOwen.

17. Are there any ships you can’t stand, why? ShinoHeath. I just personally don't vibe much.

18. How long have you been writing the character? about a year and a half? maybe longer.

19. Should people get into the franchise your writing from, yes or no? Absolutely. Please I fucking BEG you to get into mahoyaku. It's so good, you don't know what you are missing out on.

20. If you could sum up your character with one sentence, what would it be? Traumatized Disney princess that is also a wizard.

21. Which song do you feel describes your character the most and why? Pass because I'm bad at music.

[missbaphomet]

I thought that because it seemed like your intentions were in the right place we'd be able to have a civilized conversation. Your bad faith readings of my words, clear disregard for common tone indicators, your assumptions that you know more about me than I do, inconsistencies, and refusal to treat anyone you even remotely disagree with with respect have proven me wrong. I've learned everything I know from my irl trans friends and they helped me find my identity. I only joined this platform in any seriousness about a month ago. I hope for your own sake that you're able to leave the tumblr exclusionist echo chamber someday, because your years on the platform have clearly taken a toll on your empathy and critical thinking skills.

One last question, what is it that you're so afraid of that you cling to a false gender binary with such desperation?

I have not read your words in bad faith, I read the words you put to the digital page. It just so happens that I disagree with you. That's not bad faith. The fact I even graced your anons with a genuine response is as good faith as it gets, especially since the easy answer would have been to simply block you. I gave a genuine response of my opinions and posted it so that you and others could genuinely understand my views. This is as good faith as a response can get.

You literally didn't use any tone indicators??? What are you talking about.

Its not that I know more than you, it's that my standard of evidence is "there is evidence at all" while yours is apparently "words feel good". This is a consistent theme across a lot of my "does x exist" beliefs. I don't believe in a God, for example, because there is no evidence. I don't believe in nonbinary because there is no third gender. This is a pretty consistent thing, and it even has a word: skepticism

What inconsistencies? If there were any genuine inconsistencies that were made, I genuinely would like to know because this is how one refines their argument for the future such that it becomes clearer. However if you mean "you say you support trans people but I personally don't like that you adhere to the belief that being trans is a medical issue requiring diagnosis, the treatment for which is transition" then that's not an inconsistency. In fact, that statement in particular is a fundamental part of why these beliefs are held. So if you're actually serious about there being a legitimate inconsistency or else are confused about something I said, maybe you should ask for clarification instead of closing off further discussion and acting holier-than-thou because someone disagrees with you on the internet.

If you "learned this" from your irl trans friends then it sounds like maybe they have the brain rot too. And if you've only been active a month, that timeline lends into the Twitter migration. I'm not saying you are from Twitter, because I don't know, but I am saying the timeline works out and that Twitter today is what Tumblr was in 2014, and that's not a good thing.

I love when people imply exclusionism is some kind of echo chamber because I have found the most diverse range of opinions in any community outside of Fandom *within battleaxe bisexual and exclusionist circles*. I don't think you understand what an echo chamber is, because the mogai community literally is one. They preach radical acceptance without criticism or critical thought. Exclusionism asks people to analyze *why radical acceptance is bad* and how doing such hurts your community. Radical acceptance and mogai is the gateway by which things like pedophiles and zoophiles try to integrate, and by Mogai's own ideals, *they should be able to*. Meanwhile, exclusionism circles look at this and get pissed off. It's exclusionists on the front line against this. It's exclusionists who ask other to examine their bias or x-phobias. It's exclusionists that are the ones making sure that the LGBT community is for LGBT people. Like it or not, we're a pretty vital part of the LGBT ecosystem because we're the ones who keep out people who have no business in our spaces. Tbh we're a keystone species that keeps everything in check so that the community doesn't fucking destroy itself. And this isn't even an exaggeration, I've just made the metaphor blatantly obvious.

My empathy and critical thinking are fine, thanks for asking. I left them plenty of water, a little treat, and some extra enrichment. Critical thinking isn't happy I have to trim her nails soon but I will give her peanut butter and she'll be ok

The gender binary isn't false because sex is binary. Show me a magical third chromosome unique to only nonbinaries and we'll talk. Until you turn up with that evidence of a Z chromosome, this topic can be pretty safely dismissed. That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

[pokenoire]

I mainly wanted to say that your tumblr blog is like a breath of fresh air as someone who saw a lot of the pokemon character shipping wars when I first got into the fandom around 2015. I'm also an amourshipper, it was my first ship and the way I got into fandom, but I genuinely love seeing other ships also get love, multishipping is so fun and just freeing, like why choose when you can just enjoy both!

Also do you had any amourshipping headcanons?

I've been in this fandom on YouTube and on Deviantart since 2007, I thought it was so peaceful compared to the current shipping fights, Of course I was a person who rarely looked at ship comments, since I wasn't interested. I have had contact with many if not multi-shippers, they were respectful and seemed to make fanart of everything (Poke, Advanced, Pearl, Negai...even Amourshipping and Yumeshippers or Canon X OC), I think it helped me to be neutral in that sense...

Oh I just love them so much, I have so many different headcanons I consider them as multi verses (UAs) both what I wrote in 2013-2018 and what I did in this fandom in 2019-2023.

Well, let's take it one step at a time. In 2013, I started watching XY and joined the fandom on Deepy. I watched absolutely everything other than AMVs...uh I looked at FanFiction FF net (I used page translation to read on my first phone) and saw that there were many other different things, I chose some ships to write about... specifically (Amourshipping/Mirroramourshipping) being the main ones from my pre-teen era the second one I chose to write about was, Palleshipping (I thought I had to have a separate account for everything so... I kind of did something like "I was a Palleshipper") which wasn't very cool, but I apologize because I was a kid and didn't know that, I didn't need to go THAT FAR, and could have posted this on my main (2014-2015) I started reading Shinsato, before I saw some things but...it was just hitting some random site lol, I just ignored it. Sapphirepearlshipping IS THE NEXT WHO I CHOOSE WRITE 😭🩷🤎🧡🥰

But reading it all and rewatching it I know I'm neutral to the palettes on screen. I also got to write Gary X Serena lol I just didn't see it happening in the show but it was fun to make this conflict of feelings so you could say it's my fanon (this was probably the beginning of my bi Ash Ketchum headcanon)

When I was younger I didn't know about the things that PokémonRangerboyguy did, but...I remember watching his own videos with Fancyfashionshipping (Dawn X Serena with Lost in you style) so it began + my wlw Serena agenda and Dawn lesbian even more deeply (despite knowing Sana x Serena and Miette X Serena...I was more neutral towards them too and saw them as friends/BFF)

I admit that in my new rewatch... I was more in favor of Serena X Aria imo...

Now, let's go to part 2, wlw SatoSere this is something that I simply, ONLY found out about entering the miraculous fandom, they usually have a VERY strong headcanon wlw ship or mlm ship or male/fem genderswap...male Marinette/ trans Marinette/ transfem Adrien/ fem Adrien Agreste etc. I just took this and did the same for SatoSere (I already wrote Adrien X Marin and Marinette X Adrianne (which helped me to do Amourdreamshipping) crosdessering Ash in fem Ash slash SatoSere...many things I couldn't finish or start in 2016-2017 because at the time I didn't have time (in high school I tried teacher training and it took up all my time 😭🫠 so I deleted all the stories I was working on)

Now, the third part is that I REALLY LIKED MIRRIOR ASH HE SO CUTE AND HOLY SHIT IT TOOK MY MIND ✨⭐ I DID SO MUCH THINGS WITH HIM THAT I CAN'T SAY one blog without becoming bigger than it already is 😭 but one universe in particular is that he is AUTISTIC (before I was diagnosed with autism) so this is my favorite. ❤️🫠

Ok sorry I talk too much...

Male Serena my BELEVOLED I never had a chance to write Male/Boy Serena because I NEVER COULD COME UP WITH A GOOD NAME FOR HIM Ç.Ç

[phoenixfangs]

>:3c fandom askies for aa, depending on your Mood

Salty: 1, 8, 10, 25

Neutral: 16

Posi: 17, 18

JAJAJAJAJAJAJA pepper coming in clutch as always, and u KNOW im gonna do all of them, mood be damned. going under a readmore because i rambled!!

the character everyone gets wrong

maybe its a boring answer but phoenix. good god do people just Not understand him. i think the fact weve seen him in so many forms (feenie, trilogy, 7yg, aa5/6) makes it hard for people to get a pin on him, but thats the thing: u cant really get a pin on someone like that. too often i see stuff where, well into his thirties and having gotten his badge back, people portray him as just as outwardly emotional (and sometimes emotionally volatile...) as he was when he was dating dahlia, and Thats Simply Not The Case, especially after how guarded and jaded he became during aa4. hes SUCH a complicated character i cant even go into specifics and try to give other examples, because they each require paragraphs of their own explaining context and nuance in what goes through his head. i dont know how else to go on, just know that i am the only person who is correct about phoenix wright, and if anyone requires consultations for fic or art, my fee is steep but fair

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

all of them. no im kidding, uhhhhh hm. i guess that klavier and apollo Immediately knew they liked each other/were attracted to each other and spent any time pining for the others affection during aa4. i like klapollo as a ship, i just dont think klav teasing apollo with flirtation when they first meet means he was Seriously Flirting with apollo, i think its possible there was a base physical attraction but he was mostly just trying to get apollos goat for fun since he was a rookie attorney. and because of that, what reason does apollo have to be drawn to klavier? apollo isnt some stock tsundere, i think he probably was really annoyed by klavier and Didnt Like Him All That Much at first. plus, with aa4s story being what it is, i just dont think any romantic feelings are on either of their minds until well after the last case. with their ship, i like to imagine they start as professional adversaries (not rivals in the sense phoenix and miles are rivals, its a different vibe), then become friends, THEN graduate to exploring other feelings

10. worst part of fanon

all of it. no im kidding, the worst part of fanon is how rigidly people expect u to obey it. if u dont portray miles as a gay trans man, people look at u weird, for example. which isnt to say that its Bad to follow that fanon, obviously i also think hes gay (i dont personally headcanon him as trans though) but just that it is fanon. until we get concrete proof in a game or anime or what have u of miles demonstrating or naming his sexuality/gender expression, it is just as perfectly valid to portray him as a cishet man as it is to portray him as a gay trans man, even if i personally think its weird and impossible to imagine him with a girlfriend or something. its fine to have different interpretations of whatever; its Not fine to get mad at somebody because theyre not following fanon that u personally ascribe to

25. common fandom complaint that ur sick of hearing

'i dont read wlw content because its all the same :( why are all the mean lesbians getting so mad that my mlm ship is just better :( its not my fault those stupid broads arent written as well as my spicy yaoi :( what do u mean one half of my mlm ship is a lamp ur just being mean to a mlm because ur bitter that ur stupid bitches arent written as well as my mlm gay disaster babies :( stop bullying me for no reason u crazy psycho cunt this is why nobody gives a shit enough about ur dumbass wlw ship to make anything for it :('

obviously nothing wrong with mlm ships, i have been known to enjoy many mlm ships! but when a wlw (particularly a lesbian...) complains about the disproportionate amount of mlm fan content between characters who literally never spoke, stood next to each other once, or where one of them is literally Not A Character (clay terran is a prop i am not wrong about that), its SO FRUSTRATING to see the response be someone taking it as a personal attack and throwing the blame back out at wlw for not just shutting up and dealing with it. that post that showed among us had significantly more mlm fics over wlw fics on ao3 when Those Stupid Creatures Dont Even Have Gender/Character applies to like literally every other fandom

16. u cant understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc.)

any situation in which phoenix depends on miles for money during 7yg. similarly, royalty/medieval au where phoenix is some kind of servant to prince miles, and yes being a knight counts as being a servant in my mind. these two things feel wayyyyy imbalanced to me but in fanworks theyre portrayed as like necessary and appreciated by phoenix (in the money situation) or really romantic (in the royalty/medieval situation). idk, to me, phoenix would rather saw off his own arm and eat it than accept money, especially from miles, during 7yg, and if he did accept it it would only be because miles says 'let me do this for trucy then if ur gonna be so stubborn about it' and he Begrudgingly Agrees; with phoenix being miless knight, it just feels too much like people seeing phoenixs one-sided devotion to miles in aa1 and going 'this is normal and desirable behavior', and idk how to tell people this but phoenixs savior complex over miles is Not Good fjkdsjlfslak like it worked out for them but i dont think phoenixs behavior towards miles in aa1 especially is indicative of a well adjusted, emotionally stable person, and that hardly ever gets talked about its just 'wee wah hes soooo in luuuuurve isnt that romantic'

17. there should be more of this type of fic/art

siblingsssss there are so many good sibling pairs/groups in aa. also wlw ship stuff In General because there is never enough in any fandom. also also (because i love to kick the hornets nest) more fic where the intention is to Tell An Actual Story With The Characters instead of projecting the authors trauma and/or kinks and/or personality onto the characters where it doesnt fit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

18. its absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

idk if krisnix counts as slept on because ive only been in the fandom for a couple years, i know things were different like 10-15 years ago and maybe it was more popular then, but. krisnix. jfkdsjfls. there is soooooooo much narrative drama u can cook up with these two, so many scenarios and angles, and uve got 7 whole years to fill!! and u can be as serious and somber as u want, going into mental health and toxic relationships and what it means to spend so much of ur life with someone who is so bad for u but letting go isnt easy because thats years of ur life with that person ur being asked to let go of, OR u can be silly and say that kristoph is christian grays lawyersona, because come on i dare anyone to try and tell me kristoph Isnt Also the worlds worst dom

[swimmingclassicrockpizzawombat]

Rant about cancel culture ig:

*sigh* do I even have "permission" to enjoy the Beetlejuice musical or any of it's media at all, even it's by myself anymore?

Or am I too "horrible" of a person and unworthy to do that too?

Bc how dare I "fetishize" the actor getting hurt according to people... even though I never even did that?

"people like you are not welcome in the fandom" "we don't want scum like you here"

I suppose I'm the only person ever in this universe that has ever made a mistake then, and that already means I'm all this "horrible" things ig.

I congratulate everyone on never messing up then! Clearly I'm too flawed for that.

After all, the way cancel culture works is, you make one mistake and that's considered your "mask" falling off for a second, so that second of your entire life is finally showing everyone your "true self", your "true colors". This is who you really are, it's not the action that was bad, it's that YOU as a person are the definition of bad and evil and the scum of the earth. And whatever you did suddenly gets blown out of proportion and people are ready to jump at you.

A tiny mistake defines you as a person, and sometimes even your entire life sometimes. It's not uncommon to hear of people who got cancelled, particularly who are already part of marginalized groups or don't have platforms as big as other MORE problematic people who can't get cancelled, and had their community turn on them, to eventually go on to end their lives.

Only to be remembered for the one mistake they made and even then be hated by large masses of people, to have people saying they deserved it and scum like that don't deserve to live, being pleased with themselves bc they led someone to take their life.

(which one could argue it's ultimately the person's decision to do it in the end, but how much is it really when they are already marginalizing by society, and later turned from their communities? When they even loose their jobs over it and can't find another one? When the people who probably say that are also the ones who doxed them, threatened them and told them to kill themselves?)

Everyone enjoys a spectacle. Seeing someone go down. It makes you feel powerful. There might be a lot of problems in your life, and you might be feeling helpless over something, why can't we stop politicians from taking away our rights after all? people like JK Rowling from harrasing trans people on Twitter? But this is something you have control over! And that feels good. You have the power to go kick this other less powerful someone down even if they were already on the ground and that feels like at least you are doing something. Because it's someone everyone has as a collective decided is bad. And bad people don't deserve mercy, don't deserve forgiveness even if they apologize, bad people ARE bad. They are probably trying to manipulate you with that apology. Bad people can't apologize genuinely. Period.

NGL I didn't have getting cancelled and loosing the one community I had amongst all the shit I'm going through irl over some mistake in my cards for the start of this year.

And I think the worst part is not the harrasment itself, or even knowing you made a mistake, it's the sense of betrayal. Of people turning against you, including people you don't even know and who don't even know you deciding you are the new bad guy of the day, you deserve to be put in the same category as other cancelled people such as sexual predators and homophobes (even if you yourself have been a victim of said crimes).

People deciding you're not worthy of being treated like a person simply for the thrill of it.

Of course, when I came out of the closet all my closest friends dumped me and blocked me, and I was also bullied all throughout school for being too different (I later learnt I'm also neurodivergent!), don't get me started with my own family disowning me and always ganging up on me over the dumbest shit...

So I'm pretty familiar with the feeling, but Ig that doesn't mean it stings any less.

To paraphrase Lindsay Ellis, people tell you that you need to either grow a thicker skin (and learn to take the harrasment) or leave, and I don't have the strength anymore to do the first one so I will do the latter.