#instead of. yknow. interacting with people like an actual human being

[zan0tix]

Any general thoughts on/relating to the Brobot?

Have my half awake scrawlings...

I really love the brobot!!!! People really misconstrue it and also leave it out in a lot of dirkjake talk? Its a big player in not only how dirk expresses his affection/desire towards jake but also in their multi year spanning unspoken game of gay chicken 😭😭(all of dirks splinters are but Not about them rn)

It was sent yknow under the pretense that jake loves wrestling and wished so bad to have somebody he could wrestle with. But at the same time it protects jake from the horrors of hellmurder island (seen before they strife), pushing jake into the Damsel in distress role he wasnt expecting to play even before all the shit in the game, with Dirk being his hero.

Jake says he keeps it on a high difficulty because apparently in the Novice mode he says their interactions become "too tender" and doesnt want to elaborate, Friendly reminder! His convo with jane on the SAME DAY dirk pulled off that big romantic overture and the kiss happens and him and dirk begin "dating".. is the same day he asked jane if it didnt make him weird for wanting to date dirk. And he also says hed joke around with dirk about how theyd soo make a great couple if dirk were a girl haha.

I imagine the brobot and well. Getting physical like that with a robot that supposedly looks like dirk probably gave jake his internal gay awakening at 13 but he just never wanted to actually confront it and instead just wanted to brush past everything 😭😭 (See: every single time sexuality or romance comes up in relation to jake he is literally always thinking about dirk somehow and he never directly talks about his attraction to men or how that reflects/contradicts on his self image of the Movie Star Hero guy)

and jake doesnt actually hate the thing either, he tells jane he thinks it genuinely did improve his fighting capabilities (Which we see it did in collide! he beat basically the whole felt with guns and fisticuffs alone, no hope powers.) Which serves as a pretty evident parallel to dave who also is good at fighting, even if he doesnt want to be. (see dirk + dave convo)

This one comes from hussies authors notes in the aradiabot and equius scene (which equius imagery being invoked with dirk. something i could totally rant about another time haha) but yeah. Jake was being selfish asshat in that log forcing jane into a corner and wringing what he wanted to hear out of her, and also not giving a shit about the brobot (Which served as his protector and only other semblance of human connection since he was 13 and was a BIRTHDAY GIFT FROM DIRK) KILLING ITSELF? But hes so preoccupied talking about dirk. THE REAL DIRK. And immediately after jake loses the dirk splinter that protected him, HE (AND DIRK) CREATE A NEW ONE FOR HIMSELF USING THEIR COMBINED POWERS/?

Hussie is lying.. somebody Does care about dirks feelings. a whole lot to the point they activate their powers unwittingly Because of it. and its jake. but jake just cant admit that himself. (He cannot admit his real feelings until given permission to, dirk would have to concede the game of gay chicken first using his words and not just actions)

ANYWAY. hussie is so right its so easy to get sidetracked times one million talking about this comic. BUT AHH!! BROBOT. his existence.. tragic.. Jakes really smart in knowing that all of dirks splinters enlighten aspects of himself he doesnt oft share, and the brobot served as another dirk action on the pile of dirk actions he engineers to signify his deep immense care for jake, where he lets these grand gestures and implications sit out in the open without ever actually saying what they mean and where his feelings lay.

EVEN IF ITS SUPER OBVIOUS. The d man cant use his big boy words to actually describe his feelings despite how much a yaps! so jake doesnt know if hes even allowed to say anything about his own. Fellas: Is it gay if you labour for supposedly an extended period of time to create a custom robot in your own image to ship in pieces to your best bro guy crush who is HUNDREDS OF YEARS IN THE PAST because you cant be there yourself?

I think this hal message says enough about how bad dirk wished he could visit jake 💀💀

[collidescopeeyes]

Random Relationship Headcanons: Yone

- The man needs a hug honestly. His entire existence for the last few years has pretty much consisted of slaying demons, he could use a break.

- He's not dead. He's not undead. He's not really alive either. He doesn't really understand the nature of his continued existence, but whatever odd limbo state he’s in has some drawbacks. For one, he can't eat or sleep anymore–demons feed off of negative emotions, and while Yone draws his strength from the azakana he seals instead, human food tastes like ash to him. For another, the mask literally doesn't come off. He can still feel it when you touch it, but it's sort of like you can feel something touching your nail plate–there’s no actual nerves there but still a sense of pressure. He can change clothes, but he doesn't really bother since whenever he ‘dies’ (he can't die–like a demon, he just reforms after a time) he comes back looking the exact same.

- He's not very overt about it, but he's intensely protective of you. Like any inkling that a situation might be unsafe and he's by your side, hands on hilts, ready to throw down. Despite this, does his best to allow you independence and privacy, but he Will stress if you insist on going somewhere alone.

- Very grounded and honest, with himself and with you. He has a kind of inner clarity that makes it easy for him to know what he's thinking and feeling, and he thinks communication is important (especially after…yknow.) The mask grants him the ability to see negative emotions as an azakana would, so he's always very keyed into your mood. He won't pry if you're not ready to talk, but he hates seeing you feeling down and if there's anything he can do to cheer you up or ease your mind he'll bend over backwards to do it. That being said, he comes from a high-context culture where symbolic gestures like gifting someone a certain kind of tree seed is a form of clear admonishment, so his idea of being direct and communicative might not always line up with yours–still, he does his best and he's very level-headed, so miscommunications are usually swiftly cleared up.

- Eldest child syndrome, but like dialed up to 10 because he practically raised Yasuo and Yasuo was a little shit. If you're doing something he thinks is a bad idea you will be hearing about it, at length and in detail. Master of the ‘I’m not mad, just disappointed’ face. Constantly fusses over your well-being but won't take his own advice, like he’ll use his whole liminal mortality thing as an excuse but he sucked at it when he was alive too. Holds himself to higher standards than literally anyone else. Getting him to relax is an undertaking, but he's infinitely better at taking care of someone else than himself, so if you phrase it like he's helping you you can maneuver him into doing basically anything. In a roundabout way it is true though–it will make you feel better if he takes a nice trip to the hot springs with you instead of practicing sword forms he could do in his sleep.

- He generally is very reserved in demeanor, partially due to the whole mask thing and partially due to just being a stoic person in general. His tone gives it away though–when he's speaking to literally anyone else his voice is neutral to the point of coldness, but when he talks to or about you his tone is so warm it's obvious he adores you.

- He has little to no romantic experience, his priorities in life were always to his brother and his order; somehow manages to say the most romantic shit you've ever heard despite that, just by being very sincere about his feelings.

- The culture he was raised in was pretty reserved and since he came back he hasn't had much in the way of interactions with people who aren't shit scared of him and/or trying to kill him, which combined with the point above is all to say he's touch starved AF and has no idea how to deal with it. Like so much as holding your hand instantly captures all of his attention, he can't help it, you're just so soft and warm and he can't help but want to get closer–but he's also holding himself back, and you can practically see the internal struggle.

- Pretty reserved around other people, but really enjoys having you close in private. At the start of your relationship he wasn't really sure how to ask for physical affection so he just kind of hovered until he worked up the courage to ask. As your relationship progresses and he internalizes that yes, you do actually like him and he is in fact allowed to touch you, he gets a lot bolder. Like if you're just sitting next to each other he'll play with your hair or lean against your side or hold your hand and trace patterns on your skin, anything as long as he gets to touch you. Also loves just holding you, something about how you fit in his arms is very soothing to him. He’ll gladly have you sleep in his arms, though he can't sleep himself.

- Blushes easily, but his mask mostly covers it–the side of his face it doesn't, he'll turn away from you or cover with his hand. He makes it look very natural and he didn't have a very expressive face even before the mask so it's hard to notice at first, but once you figure out that's what he's doing it's pretty obvious. If he's very, very flustered, you can see the top of his chest and shoulders turn red. He's actually relatively easy to fluster, but it's kind of hard to tell; he just stops responding, he freezes mid-action and even when he starts moving again it's jerky and far far less graceful than he normally is. If you catch him very, very off guard, it is the one and only time you'll ever catch him stutter.

- Loves it when you play with his hair–he’s kind of not used to it being long, since when he revived he came back as the version of himself in the spirit realm (which is why he looks younger and is stuck in his funeral garb). It's very silky and pleasant to run your hands through, and if he's feeling shameless enough he will literally just put his head in your lap, pick your hand up and put it on his hair. He really shouldn't be able to give you puppy dog eyes when you can only see one of his eyes but he somehow does it.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

yknow its a hard line to dance, but i do love when people make the stans a bit mean at times in fics/art (hard line to dance, because its pretty easy to stray into ‘sounds like author just hates these two’ territory unfortunately)

it seems to me that ford has trouble with communication. he often cant tell when something he says could be hurtful to someone

(i say that because you can tell he really does care about his family and he does to try to make things up to them- ie, comforting dipper after the bill thing, praising mabel and letting her write an entry in the journal after the unicorn thing, actually trying to find ways to mend his relationship with stan in spite of everything)

stan is the type of guy to scare children and laugh about it. there is an entire episode dedicated to this. he nonchalantly insults people, hes unapologetically cocky, and, maybe most interestingly, he also seems to have trouble telling when something he said might have been hurtful

hes kinder towards his family/friends (note: kinder, he is definitely still mean to them at times. see: boss mabel, the bottomless pit, etc.) but he really just does not care at all about upsetting strangers. he delights in making people angry, at least, the facade he puts on does. and of course, this isnt an insult towards him, it…actually kinda makes sense when you think about his past. not that it made him that way necessarily, more that it sort of emphasized those traits i think

in a similar vein, i think at least part of the reason ford has difficulty interacting with people could be because of his time spent in the multiverse. it seems he doesnt really like having to interact with strangers (excluding most anomalies). in fact, the only time you see him doing that (that i can recall) is when hes talking to the government agents. otherwise he just sort of…doesnt acknowledge their existence at all. the only exceptions are the members of the zodiac, and he gets time beforehand to know most of them

anyway- when you take those two people and put them on a boat together, you get a really interesting (platonic) dynamic! these two guys who are aggressively protective over each other and who will both absolutely deck a stranger in the face

imagine a scenario where stans insulting some random stranger and the person throws an insult back just to get knocked out by ford whos absolutely not going to tolerate it (except from stan, who gets the equivalent of a slap on the wrist)

or imagine a scenario where someone notices fords extra fingers and theyre overreacting about them and it gets to be stans turn to fistfight someone

its fun to think about, but hard to pull off. oftentimes you get ‘ford is definitely egocentric and thats it’ instead of ‘ford struggles with communication/general human interaction and especially hates interaction with people he doesnt know’

oftentimes instead of ‘stan is unapologetically mean to a lot of people (and theres a good possibility that being homeless and having to live with filbrick emphasized this)’ you get ‘stan can be mean but hes not as bad as ford and also it doesnt actually count as being mean if its directed at ford’

and, of course, this isnt to say you have to change the way you write them, this is simply me saying i like seeing these two parts of them interacting with each other. and it ended up much longer than intended

if youre like me and youre afraid of depicting them as mean in any way because other people scare you, you dont have to write them that way! you should write your fics for you first and foremost and if you dont want to write them that way, you are in no way obligated to!

anyway- theres a lot more i could say about this subject, but i think this is long enough

(just a small bonus bit to say that living with filbrick + all the bullying he had to go through definitely affected ford just as much as stan. and that neither of their traumas are more important than the other)

[legofemme]

can we know more about lisa

YES FOREVER. A preemptive note that lisas lore is very much a WIP as i have not found the right music to daydream about her to <- only half joking . Putting the Lisa Stuff under a readmore to keep things from getting too terribly long.

THAT BEING SAID . Her Whole Thing is that she used to be human, but cant actually remember anything about being human. She does. However. Know that she should not be a ham and being a ham is weird as fuck and she would like to not be a ham if possible please and thank you.

It doesnt help that her left arm is Blood. It is constantly dripping, but the droplets evaporate into nothingness pretty quickly. Theres no source for it that lisa knows of (shes pretty sure cooked hams dont generate infinite blood, but shes new to this whole thing so whos to say !) and sometimes theres More or Less blood at seemingly random moments. Shes able to shape the blood into a nasty liquid arm that Can pick things up and, much more disturbingly, the blood can dissolve and consume anything that it engulfs. It also sometimes acts on its own. Lisa doesnt know why

Lisa also has the awful awful ability to see a dimension that overlaps the one that shes currently in. This dimension is a lot like the Other World from silent hill in that it overlaps her current dimension for brief intervals and that it changes shape and form depending on who shes around at the time. When shes completely alone, it manifests in flesh and blood. Thankfully its only visual- she isnt Actually taken there- but its still like. Not fun. Obviously. The only person who seems to completely nullify this ability iiisss

Hole in the Wall :) an interdimensional hole who has a mind and a will, and is able to interact with things by forcibly killing and overtaking the bodies of other people and objects. Hole in the Wall is Fully Aware of who and what lisa is, due to it being. Yknow. Interdimensional itself. But it wont tell her for fear of meddling, instead it calls itself her best friend and follows her around. She Hates it. But appreciates its company if only for its ability to turn off the interdimensional sight thing.

SO . Lisa is just a very sad very anxious ham, who used to be a human (despite having no memories), has a weird blood arm that Eats People, and can see into a hell dimension unwillingly . And her only friend is what is essentially a living space gloryhole. Tadaaa

Some lisas and a hitw for reading all this ♥️ yaaayy

[a-court-of-moonlight-and-ire]

So because of my hentel mealth i havent really been able to read or do creative stuff so Ive just been spending most of my time properly synching up the subtitles i have for various takarazuka Elisabeth productions and idk how coherent this is gonna be bc I dont know how much of an overlap there is between people who like to complain about sjm books and euromusical fans, but I cant stop comparing Death and Rhysand and getting even more pissed off about Rhysand

like, listen, both of these guys are weirdo freaks who feel entitled to and are oddly possessive of a young vulnerable woman but the thing about Death is that hes like that because hes meant to be like, a metaphor for what its like to have suicidal thoughts and for what its like to live in ~turbulant times~ so hes kinda alluring but also very scary and in the original austrian production hes just fuckinh flingin people around, but Rhys is not a metaphor or a personification of a concept, hes just a guy. Not just that but hes meant to be like, the better guy. thats wild right. Rhysand, the guy who endangered Feyre for no fucking reason with the weaver stunt he pulled and whos forced her to lie to and steal from a potential political ally whos been nothing but kind to both of them, is the better one. and im making a point here to only mention the acomaf crimes Ive witnessed so far, obviously hes done and will do a lot worse

And you wanna know what the worst part is? Its what it always comes down to and its what I always complain about, he doesnt even serve cunt. And that truly is the worst thing about Rhysand for me because I am a very shallow person, if he wore black lipstick, if he wore clothes that glitter, if he dressed like some kinda dracula instead of just wearing plain black leather most of the time, not only would I not care about the actually shitty things he did, I would not care about him being pathetic and annoying, which, him being annoying is worse to me than any of the shitty things he did btw because hes not even interesting or endearing while hes doing those things yknow what I mean

like idk, im working on the 1996 star troupe production where Deathbis played by Asaji Saki and she does a really good job playing this inhuman weirdo experiencing regular sincere human emotions for the first and being made vulnerable by that experience, its genuinely pretty cute. theres this scene where he briefly interacts with rudolf, elisabeths child son, and then it transitions into a different scene and a bunch of recurring adult characters run onstage and Death trips one of them up to make rudolf laugh and its just cute and genuine yknoe. Whenever Rhys has a quote unquote vulnerable moment thats supposed to humanize him (that isnt just him being a horndog) it just feels so fake me, like when he talked to Feyre about Tarquin being easy to love and being noble because he had it easy while Rhysands been suffering or whatever i was just like, buddy youre doing that to yourself, if you wanted equality for the lower fae in the night court you couldve already done that in the 500 years youve been on the throne literally no one is stopping you

[baticeer-sims]

I'd like to hear your soap box about romantic standards! I use ACR at the moment but reading that "unpopular opinions" post got me curious about other options 👀

Hiya! Thanks for asking. I absolutely love Romantic Standards, I could NOT play without it these days. I used to use ACR in the past though, so I tried to make a balanced list of the pros and cons for me. But then it got REALLY LOOOONG because I'm a wordy person sorry, so it's under a cut.

The quick TLDR of it is - I feel like ACR creates romantic chaos that's often unpleasant/nonsensical to me, while I feel like RS creates romantic drama that makes sense and also allows for a lot of variety in how different sims will feel about their relationships.

By the way, I use Midgethetree's edited version of RS because it's modular (you can pick which parts you want) and the documentation is way easier to understand lol. If you have any trouble with mod conflicts or with getting RS set up the way you like, feel free to ask me about it and I can help you out with what exact files you need.

The full soapbox under the cut!!

One thing I want to say is I think a lot of people have been playing with ACR for so long that they don't know what their game will be like without it? And they underestimate how much autonomous romantic interaction will still happen between sims. A key here is that sims can't autonomously interact romantically unless they have compatible gender preferences, and townies or CAS sims always start with 0 preference, so a vanilla hood without ACR will feel low on the random flirtations unless you use something like the Sim Blender (or similar) to randomize everyone's gender preferences! (And ACR gives out random gender preferences automatically, so you might install ACR, see a lot of people interacting romantically for the first time, and assume you can't get that without ACR when all you needed was the gender preference setting, yknow?) But I can assure you that with ACR removed, my sims are definitely still getting into plenty of unexpected romantic entanglements and exciting drama.

To my mind, these are the biggest features of Romantic Standards that I just can't get with ACR:

Random chance of crush/love status: I could never play without this now. As you probably already know, normally two sims automatically get a crush or love when they interact romantically with 70+ shortterm or longterm relationship respectively. It's kinda predictable and boring to me. RS, specifically the "slower feelings" file, makes it so that crush/love flags are added randomly with the chance being based on the sims' chemistry with each other. This also allows for some amazing Drama Potential where you could have 2 sims interacting and one is completely in love with the other but the other has no feelings for them at all! It's otherwise impossible to do that. This makes crush/love flags actually feel meaningful to me, like they represent real human feelings, instead of just being able to know that if I decide one day to smooch my best friend they're guaranteed to fall in love with me.

Simple jealousy system that makes sense: I could never get my head around ACR's jealousy system to make it work the way I wanted. I felt like sims would have their token values changed even when I set them to be static, and stuff like that, and it just was so complicated to figure out what values I wanted... OTOH, this is how jealousy works in Romantic Standards: If a sim is in love or in a committed relationship (steady/engaged/married), and they see their love/partner interact with someone else romantically, they get mad about it! Unless you put a "no jealousy" trait in their inventory (then they won't get jealous over anyone) OR if they also have crush/love flags for that 3rd sim (this, allows for you to have polyamorous relationships). I find that easy to understand and to work well for a majority of situations. There's also an option where they won't get jealous over love, only committed relationships -- but I prefer the also-in-love version because it combines really well with the previous point about crush/love being randomized! You can frequently get situations where A is in love with B but B only has a crush, so B will be willingly flirting with other people and A might get their heart broken over it because they thought this was serious... It really generates a lot of interesting storylines.

Sims don't cheat on their partners if I don't want them to: I know ACR is supposed to have settings that will make sims stay faithful, but I was unable to get it to work consistently, and I feel like I've often heard other people say things too like "I didn't want this sim to cheat but 🤷 ACR just did that". With RS, if a sim is in a committed relationship they can never do autonomous romantic interactions with someone else unless 1) they're Romance aspiration or 2) they already have crush/love for that other sim. You can of course still direct sims to cheat if you think it makes sense, but I don't have to worry about anyone's marriage falling apart if I want them to stay together. (Also, you can override this for specific sims by giving romance sims a "hopeless romantic" trait, or non-romance sims a "commitment issues" trait.)

Midge's version of RS is modular so almost all of the stuff I listed above is separate if you only want part of it.

On the other hand! Here are the things that ACR does that I've missed or that you might miss:

Autonomous woohoo and try for baby: Your sims won't woohoo on their own anymore. I found that I didn't really mind this? The woohoo timer in ACR feels kind of mechanical to me, and a lot of times they'd be starting to do it in situations that were really inappropriate (like other people are in the room and they're stripping naked on the sofa at 9am). And I don't mind the lack of try for baby either because I prefer to decide when my sims have a baby based on if they roll a want for it, or if it just happens from risky woohoo. I've noticed that simler90's original version of RS has an optional plugin that allows for autonomous woohoo but I don't know if it works with Midge's edited RS. I haven't tried it yet bc I don't mind not having auto woohoo. If anyone has, let me know.

Can't woohoo on the sofa and can't woohoo in one menu-click: My god it's so much easier to be able to click "casual...woohoo" than relax on bed, ask other sim to join, wait for them to get there, cuddle, then woohoo. Something to note is that there is a "stripped down" version of ACR which only retains the Casual Woohoo interactions and was made to be compatible with Romantic Standards. However in my experience (and that of a few other people I've talked to) the jealousy aspect of this so-called compatibility... still doesn't quite work correctly? So the "casual woohoo" option, if you have stripped-ACR, I think it will still go off of ACR-jealousy (which is impossible for me to understand lol), instead of RS-jealousy like everything else in the game? It can definitely cause situations with jealousy reactions that aren't working how they're supposed to. So um... the crazy thing that I do, personally, is keep that stripped down ACR in my game but with all the autonomy completely disabled in global overrides, at which point it is doing literally nothing other than letting me tell them to casual woohoo if I want them to woohoo on the sofa. And I just make sure to never use that option in a situation where jealousy is a possible concern, in order to avoid the issue where it doesn't work correctly. It's kind of overly complicated a thing to do just to get sofa woohoo but I'm just saying it's an option 😂

No autonomous First Kiss: This is it! The one thing I truly do miss from ACR and would really love if someone made a mod for it one day! I love when my sims do stuff autonomously and surprise me. But First Kiss is a non-autonomous action, and what's more, sims can't roll the want to "Kiss so-and-so" if they haven't already had a first kiss, so I find it kind of hard to decide when my sims will have their first kiss. I'm always like, why can't you do it for me!

The other major difference is that the "Casual" romantic interactions from ACR have lower thresholds for acceptance than the default Maxis interactions. I personally don't see this as a positive because... well... I've been playing this game for so long, I kind of know how to get sims together at this point, I really don't need to make it even easier 😅 I'd rather have RS making it a little harder for sims to fall in love. I use a lot of other mods for other aspects of the game that make it harder overall because it's more fun for me.

Also! So, I was going to give you a list of other romance-related mods that I use in my game along with RS, but then I realized I could be lazy and just give you a link to my friend @alice-in-strangetown's mods list, because she & I have pretty similar taste in how we like romance to work in this game and I use basically all the same romance mods as her :P because I started using RS after finding out about it from watching her TS2 livestreams.

If you want to try RS on a neighborhood that has ACR but you're not sure if you'd like the playstyle, I recommend temporarily replacing it with the "stripped down" ACR version (and disabling autonomy), because that way your sims will keep their ACR tokens if you decide you don't like RS and want to switch back to using ACR. Of course, it's technically possible to have both of them at the same time, but the key thing about ACR is that all of the "Casual" interactions in it are completely separate from the vanilla maxis interactions so mods that affect default maxis interactions or maxis jealousy (like RS does) won't interface with ACR interactions and vice versa.

I hope all of this was helpful, and that maybe it convinced you to give Romantic Standards a try! Like I said, if you need any help getting it set up I can give you advice or a more detailed guide on how to install it (I think the documentation's pretty straightforward tho).

[hostilemuppet]

Hello, long time regem follower here, I was wondering: Since the non-human characters change their appearances when they go to the overworld, do they also use nicknames or can they just say "Hi, I'm Zircon" and everyone else is cool with it? If they use nicknames, what are they?

it depends on the character! both in terms of their personality (would they care enough to come up with a fake name to hide their real identity?) and whether their real name could pass as a human name

i think zircon still goes by zircon. it feels like itd be a name a cool faux-punk artsy chick would pick for herself, and thats the vibe she wants, she WANTS men to think she can be their manic pixie dream girl so she can pick them off easier

sunstone, she cant exactly go by sunstone if she wants to make it big online and not be laughed off as a run-of-the-mill weirdo, so she instead goes by sunny. moonstone doesnt have a "name"; he tells every girl he pursues a different name, and when sunny mentions her manager she only calls him "luna"

amber is already a human name so theyd have no problems there. aquamarine REALLY wouldnt care but i think amber and maybe cinnabar would get worried about it, so maybe they call her "marina", which she thinks is dumb. cinnabar could probably get away with being called "cinna", or maybe cindy

jade, again is already a name

sapphire i think would go by ms sapphire, with it being her surname. she would not answer when asked for her given name

bloodstone is tricky, bc she doesnt really... interact often with any humans other than isaac, but isaac would still need a name to tell people about his girlfriend, and bloodstone isnt exactly a rock you can easily get a name out of. im thinking something super on-the-nose goth, preferably vampiric sounding bc. yknow. bloodstone and isaac are vampire themed. id want it to be very thematically sound even if it wouldnt be used as much as some of the others, bc shes a very theatrical character! maybe "ambrosia" bc of her goals of immortality. itd also be really funny to just call her shiela though, since she is "australian"

alexandrite can just go by alex / alexandra, except i think the russian version of it is aleksandra? and shes "russian", so maybe itd be cute to have her spell it aleksandra

kyanite wouldnt have to worry about a name bc she already looks fucking weird enough on her own, same with corvid. dragons breath opal is already mostly just called "opal" anyway

rhodizite, they have a stage name, they are rocky rhod. serpentine and obsidian also probably have stage names but i dont know yet. maybe they can also be ice cream flavours or other desserts that reference their actual rocks

ruby and jasper are already human names. pyrite doesnt even bother with a human form (he is never shown wit it ever, he will remain the shlubby little critter forever) so he also wouldnt bother with a name, except for how the humans who discuss the rumours of him in hushed rumours know him only as "fool's gold"

the tourmalines would still just call themselves the names the nicknames they use back home: cherry banana and kiwi. maybe banana goes only by "nana"

and finally, 2ircon goes by bunny, which is the nickname isaac gave her bc he felt bad calling her numbers

[edge-oftheworld]

“yknow as a fandom I think we could do a better job of appreciating Sierra Deaton”

No just have less appreciating Sierra cause she’s been anti-black, a creep towards fans, invalidated a 5sos fan’s mental health because they’re a fan, trauma dumped on young fans and overshared, slut shamed Ashton, and so on and so forth

hey anon!! Thanks for this concise little list. But seriously, thanks for making me think and pull together a bunch of ideas in my head; I hope in this essay really you can see some of my thought process. I can’t imagine how hard it’d be to be reaching out with something really hard and expect compassion and get a negative interaction instead—if that was you or whoever it is I hope they’re doing better and finding community and people who care. And I don’t want to pretend she’s perfect or has done everything right, we know that’s not how it is, Sierra knows that, Luke knows that, so does, idk, God.

and I’ll admit I’m a bit old fashioned when it comes to cancelling people and I do like to try and see the good in people where possible—sometimes imo it’s the only way to get any positive change. to look beyond the superficial where someone might lash out—is it in malice, or fear, a momentary impulse they might regret later or maybe realise for some reason were pushed to a point where they couldn’t manage anything better. I know I’ve been to that point and I know how I spiral if I don’t know how to forgive myself. I also know this is a fandom where shit gets real and we’re young and hurting and sometimes that just makes us defenceless against our idols and those around them being human, and the shitty side of human we all have potential to become too. And we live in an era of systemic racism and lack of access to mental health services which both causes and exacerbates so many issues that, was the world not so anti-black; had every mentally ill child and youth a support network in real life (instead of the way many of us often spend years only ever feeling seen by the songs we listen to, 5sos songs easily filling in that need)—we might be a little more able to be like ‘wtf that’s not cool but that’s a her problem’ and move on. and can I say we do deserve a world that doesn’t discriminate. And in order to get what we deserve we have to make it. and in order to make it we have to learn how to do better and let people learn to do better—these people aren’t going anywhere. somehow bad people have to turn into good people and yes in order to do that they have to be made accountable. Repentance is truly a beautiful thing; it’s also something that can’t happen when we feel scared and in our survival brain. When we feel like that we tend to easily get into us vs them and dig deeper into our (often wrong) convictions and that’s actually an evolutionary response to when we have to fight against predators; we don’t have time to think ‘but what if they’re actually in the right’ when we’re fighting for our lives.

and this isn’t the place to psychoanalyse Sierra. I don’t know exactly what goes on in her head, I don’t know if she’s sorry or even remembers these things but I do know the rift between her and fans has been quite heated and even scary at some points over the years. And maybe I have the privilege of never being someone who has been hurt by her to have grace for the fact that ‘gotta be nice to this fan they’re having an experience of a lifetime to be interacting with my partner and I’m gonna give the benefit of the doubt that they’re not one of the individuals in a sea of fans who all look identical to me sending me death threats’ is a hell of a lot to put your brain through every single day. If she (and it’s not if, we know she did) make mistakes. If there was too much trauma to hold and she put it out on the internet to cope in a season of her life. If the insecurity became jealousy of one of the most important people in her s/o’s life which became insults that were thrown around back in high school before everyone realised how uncool they were and tried to stop using them but they were still burned in their brains to come out on impulse (I actually have no idea how that specific event went down, or if there were one or multiple). I hope they sorted that out internally; I don’t know what else I can do but trust that it’s something they’re capable of doing and care for each other enough as a group of friends and songwriters to do.

I wanted to save the lateral racism example for last because I feel like everything above is kind of a metaphor for it, if you follow. I’m coming from a place where I’m southeast asian and part white living in a largely western country, so is Sierra, so I’m automatically going to see her as ‘like me’ (and can I say how rarely I get this kind of representation?) whereas if you’re black, or if you find your experience more relatable to blackness, then you’re going to experience this very differently. I can’t know your experience. I also know that asians can be brutal in this area: it’s the reason my childhood best friend hasn’t told her dad she got engaged to her partner nearly a year ago. Lateral racism isn’t okay. But unfortunately what happens is often when you’re discriminated against in some ways we’re conditioned to take the side of the oppressor against someone who’s discriminated against in other ways. It’s all ‘okay maybe I’m x and I should be y but at least I’m not z’ and again it’s that evolutionary survival instinct to not be at the bottom of the pile; channeled in horrible ways into today’s society. It takes a lot of effort and self awareness to be like ‘we’re united in this experience of being oppressed, together we have the power to make a stand that this is Not Cool’ and most of us fail the first few times. but what’s important is we keep trying. we can all heal together when we do.

so anon I have no idea who you are or your background or how much you’ve had to wrestle with this yourself, if you’ve had to stand up against communities who were hostile, if you’ve had to do this while being discriminated against from outside as well, if you know the experience of not fully being one race but not fully being another etc. and also you’ve got no obligation to like Sierra, this is such unsolicited advice but this whole release period for boy ep I’ve really just been thinking ‘it’s healthy to feel our feelings even when it’s not always pleasant isn’t it’ and wherever that hurt is please love it embrace it bring it into the light whatever you do to realise you’re valuable and you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. even your mistakes and where you’ve hurt people and regret that, you’re gonna grow so much from that and have so many chances to do better. maybe you’re young and you haven’t had the chance to hurt anyone yet. I hope you manage to stay that way but if you do, I hope you can forgive yourself too. I hope you dip your toes in activism for Black Lives Matter, for mental health, for sex positivity, I can see you really value these things and that’s really encouraging to see.

and in the end: sometimes I have to be annoyingly human and come down to the fact that I really enjoy the songs that Sierra writes. I’ve fanned enough about gothic summer on this blog already. I enjoy the things she writes and so I listen to them, and I’m not actively boycotting Sierra specifically, I love the creative outcomes when she works with 5sos as a whole, with Luke, with other artists I love as well. As a result I do care about her as a person, I always do, and hey, I respect her funny little routine donations and the undertones of her UNICEF donation back in October and the random animal sanctuary and the occasional nod to some Australian mental health charity.

I’ve inferred a lot about how much more relaxed and at ease and free to feel things and process life at his own pace Luke seems to be with her than beforehand—and the fan in me who’s so protective of these guys just desperately wants someone to be there for them in ways that really matter and I feel like we have seen that, even despite the often rocky nature of the relationship between Sierra and Luke’s fans. Luke is someone I relate to a lot, and there are some experiences that are really hard to come back from, and I’m really proud of him right now and I do get the impression being with Sierra has really helped him get there. I don’t know for sure, I could be wrong, but I’m always going to be grateful when celebrities get to be human and not have their lives and choices dictated by fans either directly or indirectly. I’ll take the allies I can in my activism and even if there are criticisms around sincerity I do generally see Sierra trying and I want to appreciate that. I don’t want to say she hasn’t hurt anyone ever and I pray for resolution and peace for the fans, for Ashton, for her, for the Black community in general, for everyone who’s been hurt in the wake of colonialism and the generational trauma it breeds. And then I’ll go listen to bloodline and think, maybe in some ways we were born inheriting the sins of our parents before we knew better. But every day I discover ways of choosing better and compassion takes us so far and I hope every day I learn a bit more about how to channel that.

thank you for the ask, it really got me thinking and the opportunity to compile some thoughts I’d had that I didn’t realise formed a neat little mindmap around Sierra as a case study!! Much more fun than regular sociology. And I didn’t even get to delve into the political history of Saigon that I’ve been trying to understand more about!!

[lavenoon]

I have more family dynamic thoughts to tease out! We know a lot about how Sun and Moon work together, how they overlap each other just as often as they work together, and in turn we’ve learnt a lot about how different Eclipse is to the two of them… But what about where one of the other two is an outlier instead?

We know Moon is the introvert between two chatty little extroverts, for example, but are there other examples where Sun or Moon is left as the one who does/thinks/likes A where the other two are B? I love how unique all of them are… but the mental image of the boys being able to mentally shake hands with their little brother and not their other half makes me giggle.

-🌻 Daye

Last January ask let's go! <3

This would have been fun to do as a Venn Diagram but alas, I am already cozied up so we'll do it without the visualization

Outlier Moon: Definitely the introversion, and also the fact that he doesn't lie about whatever accidents he gets into. Eclipse lies for fun (like Y/N), and Sun lies to protect his pride, and Moon listens to their bullshit and just sighs. Just in general a little more down to earth, so any time Sun and Eclipse are plotting extensive petty revenge for some reason (Sun for the extensive, Eclipse for the petty), Moon is the voice of reason going "hey maybe we could just. yknow, hear me out. ignore all of that actually." Definitely also the guy insisting on good sleep for any humans involved - while both Sun and Eclipse are very much pro-self care, they're much more easily convinced towards "but what if sleep crimes to stay up with you for a bit?" Also most likely to go non-verbal for a bit - ties into the introversion, but is mostly me projecting. Sometimes talking is just too much, and he goes quiet, communicating only through noises or vague gestures while mostly withdrawing

Outlier Sun: Simply not as much into sci-fi. Moon likes novels with that as focus, and Eclipse isn't opposed, so whenever Moon wants to talk about the intricacies of futuristic tech with someone, he doesn't go to "but is there romance?" Sun. Also the most dramatic of the three, and most obviously putting on an act - and somehow, least confident. Despite everything, Sun is deeply insecure about what roles he plays and has to fill, whereas Moon is doing just fine and Eclipse's insecurities mostly relate to his relationship with Sun and Moon. Sun is very hesitant about everything he projects as soon as his scripts aren't enough, and he (oh gods) has to be his genuine self. Moon and Eclipse both help with that as much as they can though! Also the only one I inflicted with "scripts" type of neurodivergency! Needs to follow certain patterns or else he gets nervous/ unsure, while Eclipse and Moon would not really get what he's talking about/ don't think of social interaction like that

Outlier Eclipse: Apart from the obvious? A lot more thinking outside the box. He's fueled by undeniable and experimental confidence, so even when an idea seems crazy he's willing to try it just to know for sure whether it'll work or not, while Sun and Moon like to play it at least somewhat safe. Eclipse isn't scared of set-backs, while Sun and Moon are very much success oriented (despite varying definitions of success). He wants to know what would happen, rather than just what will work! A lot more blunt, too, and definitely least aware of conversational cues. It even takes Sun and Moon a bit to adjust - they're so used to each other, it doesn't occur to them they have to spell certain things out to him! Also the most curious about "human-only" things, like how things would taste and why people eat just for the fun of it, why exactly muscles get sore, or the ways "eyes" developed multiple times in different ways! He wants to know everything, while Sun and Moon are focused more on what is useful to them, and it results in a lot of "useless" trivia from Eclipse

[myfaveisfuckable]

Rants!

Nightmare Polycule: The cirsed creation of like. 4 people on a niche fandom discord. Polycule consisting of pretty much every adult character in the series. It's awful and somehow the best thing ever. The potential for both crack and angst is unmatched. The divorced parents energy is OFF THE CHARTS. Marcia realizes she is a morosexual and has a crisis about it. Gringe confronts his prejudices by falling for a no-good wizard. Jillie Djinn is Marcia's ex and also dead and also GHOSTING ON HER COUCH which makes it very hard to bring her boyfriends over. Marcellus tries to be dramatic about the fleetingness of human life (except his) and gets made fun of until he confronts his trauma instead. Sarah and Mrs Gringe are having tea and getting a break from the drama.

Nokia/Ami: (spoilers for the game) all the fan stuff ive seen for the game is painfully straight unless its focusing on the two ships where one character is canonically gay n in love with the other (protag of the sequel game with his gay bestie i forgot the name of n yuuko/fei) n ami is usually just drawn on her own BUT theres a lot of canon subtext between nokia n ami mostly as a result of not much actually changing based on if u play as a boy or a girl regardless nokia to some extent likes ami she flirts with her talks about their relationship as if theyre already dating theres a scene that parallels a m/f couple in the game that plays exactly the same between ami n nokia with two other characters saying something along the lines of ah young love during a mandatory side quest ami gets offered an implied sex doll that looks exactly like nokia (weird story there the quest ends with it being heavily implied that the people that take the dolls end up having their organs harvested while their minds are stuck in a digital space called eden unaware that theyre not in the real world) n she has to think about it before declining the offer nokia's character arc is working to become a strong leader n reliable friend cause she wants to stand next to ami instead of relying on her theyre childhood friends but forgot about it ok i need to explain a bit more of the story so like as kids ami n nokia along with three other characters met beta testing for eden n one of them ended up getting eden syndrome to make sure theyre all able to leave safely (theres a thing called eaters that if u get eaten by put u in a coma cause theyre storing the contents of ur brain in them) n a guy who wants to use the eaters to get to the next stage of evolution removes their memories of the incident so years later as teenagers ami nokia n arata (one of the childhood friends important to the story but not to the ship) become friends again n reunite on eden where ami ends up getting eden syndrome but in a funky way cause she was logging out as she got eaten so she has a cyber body that over the course of the game deteriorates n at the end of the game ami basically dies right as everything is being fixed all the victims of eden syndrome are no longer comatose but ami is cause yknow kind of deteriorated too much n it happened right in front of nokia's eyes as she reached out for her hand so they could go home together n nokia cries for the only time in the game cause of that but ive genuinely never seen any fan stuff of them interacting so despite them being teased romantically n built up as being really important to eachother theres nothing not even like nokia with takumi (boy protagonist) im submitting it specifically as nokia/ami just cause i like wlw ships more if u want to do it neutrally protag's surname regardless of gender is aiba sorry if this is incoherent its been like 6 months since ive played the game

[underfell-crystal]

Spoilers for the Mario movie under the cut! Here are my thoughts and opinions.

The soundtrack was incredible. One of the first things I noticed. Also, the visuals were SPLENDID. Peach's hair physics blowing in the wind was especially nice. I loved seeing all the wildly fantastical places of the Mushroom Kingdom, Kong Kingdom, and the Darklands. I wonder if we'll see Daisy and explore Sarasaland in the sequel?

What a fucking introduction to the villain of the movie.

Why did the penguins have the star in the first place? How did they keep it for so long? How did Bowser find out about it???

I noticed the old school Donkey Kong game in the diner and was ecstatic about it!

I absolutely love how well they established Mario and Luigi's relationship at the start. The film absolutely needed the time in the human world to get to know the brothers, their dynamic, and their motivations, and it did it WELL.

Mario's hatred of mushrooms and landing in a kingdom full of mushrooms and needing to eat mushrooms to get powerups was honestly super funny.

They used a little too much slow-mo. By the end I didn't really care for it.

The movie did a fantastic job of showing Mario's protectiveness over Luigi, and Luigi willing to go along with Mario through anything (the construction zone, the sewers)

Speaking of Mario, his voice was actually really fitting. Chris Pratt is no Charles Martinet but he had a really good range of emotion when speaking, Mario felt very fleshed out and real.

Also, Charles Martinet's 'WAHOO' during the first scene made me giddy. Also also him shouting 'those are my boys!!' as the Mario Bros' dad was just wonderful.

The mystery behind the previously-blocked off room under the sewers was really intriguing. Why was it boarded up? Did people used to go missing a lot down there and it was never discovered why, with Brooklyn's citizens instead choosing to block it off?

I'm surprised they didn't keep Peach's original story about her being born in the Mushroom Kingdom. I wonder if we'll learn more about her past if a sequel is approved. DID she come from the human world??? Are they gonna pull another lore twist and make her Rosalina's long lost sister???? Who fucking knows!

I was surprised at how much of a girlboss they made Peach but yknow what, I'm not complaining! She was super fun to watch, I liked how she stood up to Bowser despite seeing he had the star and knowing he would be invincible, and I liked how she was still princess-y despite it (lifting her dress when walking up steps, hands clasped in front of her, she just EXUDES elegance.)

Mario's fight with DK was FANTASTIC. I wish we got to see him with the fire powerup though. Also, him defeating DK with the cat powerup was highly unanticipated, but I really liked how fluid and fast Mario was as the cat, so I can't complain. Also the Tanooki powerup was adorable.

I really liked DK. He was super funny, he was antagonistic to Mario but in a fun way, and I loved the little moments where he softened and put aside the arrogant pushy persona, like when he saved Mario from the blue shell, when he realized Mario saved him from drowning, when they fought side by side to get up to Bowser's ship, and when he (and Peach and Toad) threw himself at Bowser so he would stop focusing on Mario.

Kranky Kong was hilarious and I liked his little scene with DK after he got saved. Go old man go.

Also, the blue shell callback was AWESOME! My jaw literally dropped when I saw the wings and heard the Koopa scream 'blue shell'.

And Rainbow Road!! Wow!! Gorgeous, especially when the shards fell into the water and glowed in the dark. Stunning.

I really wish they did more with Luigi. We got to see a ton of him at the start, then brief scenes of him trapped in the cage, and then the big fight against Bowser at the end. I wanted to see more interactions with him and Bowser, even if it was just Bowser interrogating him about Mario. But they literally spoke once, and consequently him fighting against Bowser with Mario doesn't feel as satisfying or earned as it could have been. (Bowuigi shippers we took an L with this one)

Bowser got TWO chances to sing his love song and frankly it was a fucking banger, this is not up for debate. I want him to sing in the sequel.

Also his attempts at flirting with Kamek dressed as Peach was hilarious.

Peach being 1000% down to stab Bowser when he had the star RIGHT THERE was a Top 10 Girlboss Moment.

Luigi leaping in front of Bowser's beam of fire with only a trash can lid/sewer lid to keep him and his brother from getting burned, then grabbing the star with Mario and beating Bowser's ass was ALSO a Top 10 Girlboss Moment.

I loved how many outfits Peach had. Classic, Fire, Motorcycle, Wedding, and Ice??? We eating good tonight.

The callback to Odyssey with Bowser's marriage outfit, and the boquet of mini Piranha Plants during one of his prep flirting sessions???? DUDE

I wish we got to see the Koopa Kids. Even if it was just Bowser Jr. Which begs the question.... Does Junior exist yet? Is Bowser gonna adopt the Koopa Kids in a future sequel??

Bowser going sicko mode out of jealousy wasn't what I expected going into it, also his dialog when he was trying to kill Mario was a little..... strange??? He kept shouting about how he'd make Mario miserable, just like he is, and I feel like it was sort of out of place during the final battle when he's shown no signs of being miserable (other than being upset Peach doesn't like him and is traveling w Mario) and it's too late for any kind of redemption arc.... so I don't really get why they included it in the final battle. Maybe to show he *can* be good? Maybe it's just me.

I'm surprised the people of Brooklyn weren't horrified by the giant talking ape and short mushroom man or any of the other creatures from another world. They acted like it was normal?? It was a little strange. I'm also a little disappointed there wasn't a scene of Mario Bros' family apologizing for doubting them and making fun of them.

I'm really happy the bros stayed in the Mushroom Kingdom, but....... what did they tell their family???? "Hey you know how we fought a giant turtle and his army. Yeah they're from another world. Yeah we wanna go live there now."

The end credit scene of Yoshi's egg???? Are you kidding me????? I want to see my little boy.

Characters I wanna see/see more of in the sequel: Diddy and Dixie Kong, Daisy, Bowser Jr and the Koopa Kids, different Yoshis, Rosalina and the Lumas, Wario and Waluigi, Pauline (I noticed her on TV when the street was flooded, I was so excited), King Boo, and E. Gadd

Someone come brainrot with me I'm going insane.

[glitchdollmemoria]

yknow on the topic of that it/its post, its really fucking frustrating that i cant usually feel comfortable calling my partner it/its in public when that is a pronoun set it uses. bc i dont want people flipping their shit being like "umm why are you calling your PARTNER an IT dont you LOVE uhh them her him um what other ones have you used again im confused haha help please" YOU IDIOT IM CALLING IT "IT" BECAUSE I LOVE IT!!!!! if you disrespect my wife i will HARM YOU IN SOME WAY

and fucking like. idk. i also use it/its among other pronouns, and i dont even tell people irl most of the time bc i know people tend to react poorly. and im just fucking tired of people using their discomfort to justify ignoring or even insulting aspects of another persons identity. and on the one hand i sorta get if someone has been traumatized by seeing trans people dehumanized by being called "it" or having experienced that dehumanization firsthand. i have literally been called an "it" before i started using these pronouns bc of my androgyny, i fucking used to live in the conservative usamerican south i KNOW this is a way that people dehumanize us.

but theyre still my pronouns. theyre still my partners pronouns. if we are actively saying, "these make us comfortable, these make us happy" then that is NOT the same as some bigot who doesnt see us as people.

and im gonna try to word this next part carefully, bc i dont want to give the impression that i dont care about the trauma that comes with transphobes using it/its to dehumanize us. but at the same time... he/him, she/her, and they/them are all ALSO used to deny us our human autonomy. they are all used to insult and debase us depending on the circumstances. those people who make a point to call trans people by the wrong pronouns? the ones who specifically paint transmascs as Stupid Confused Foolish Women because our ~womanly brains~ are just too small to understand that we arent men, the people who make this point with a firm "she"? the ones who do the same to transfems, painting them as dangerous and aggressive, and misgendering them specifically to make that point? even to some degree the people who dont want to correctly gender any of us because we dont fit their standards for a Real Man or a Real Woman, but they still want to come off as liberal and supportive and progressive and a Good Ally, so they just call us all "they" instead of actually respecting who we are, and insist on still doing this even when explicitly told not to?

all of them weaponize one pronoun or another to cause us harm. all of them use "acceptable" (or at least SOMEWHAT "acceptable" in the case of they/them) pronouns to harm us, to deny us the autonomy to make our own choices about our bodies and lives and existences. it/its is NOT the only one.

i have been hurt by people insistently calling me "she", by people calling others in my community "she", it has been weaponized against me to the extent that im only just beginning to unpack and accept my femininity as a nonbinary person after a decade of knowing i wasnt cis. the weaponization of she/her pronouns has caused lasting psychological effects that have, perhaps permanently, altered the way i view myself and how i interact with the people around me. and NONE OF THAT DAMAGE justifies me telling anyone that im not comfortable using she/her for them, no matter the circumstances, because i dont get to decide what pronouns someone else uses!

again: i know theres still a difference between those examples and it/its. but its not as MUCH of a difference as people act like it is, and its frustrating to have to keep a part of my and my partners identities hidden away just because other people dont find those parts acceptable. its fucking tiring. i want to live as myself - as a person who has reclaimed feelings of inhumanity - and i want my partner to live as itself too. im. tired.

[worldwake]

what did glumshoe do? serious question ive been off tumblr for a while but i know that used to be like, a popular blog

They're still active on a different blog although they're not as popular anymore, I don't want to share that blog since they've made it pretty clear that they don't want to associate with their old brand anymore but they still leave reblogs on and interact a Lot for someone who supposedly doesn't want interaction or attention lmfao

Idk about anything else they've done, but their whole lanternfly thing left a bad taste in my mouth. They advocated for an inhumane way to kill them and when they were educated by people actually in the field of entomology that what they were doing was inhumane they doubled down and tripled down and turned off reblogs and threw a huge fucking fit about it like they were being attacked instead of, yknow, being politely informed and given alternate humane methods to kill invasive lanternflies. It felt mega hypocritical and oversensitive.

[citromello]

In response to the following posts:

--

Hope this doesn't derail (if it does please tell me I'll delete it) but on top of that this person is also being very stupid about society and feminism. "men are not permitted to talk about their problems" and "men expect emotional labour from women instead of going to therapy" are in fact the exact same problem??? The problem is that society/the patriarchy tells men that they need to ahow strength etc and not talk about their feelings especially with other men or strangers. But since men are yknow, humans, this isn't really sustainable or possible so this burden gets privately put onto the few women they are close with, since women are expected to be helpful and nurturing. The solution to both of these things is to be open and honest about your feelings with all the people around you, and also foster an environment where men are not punished for doing this and taking it seriously. Like even if you only care about women, allowing men to be more public with problems does in fact solve the first problem this person mentioned, its almost like sexism is a complex network of human interactions or something. (to tie this back to trans people this person is calling trans people out on having uuuuuuh correct and helpful opinions about feminism? Oh no how dare you) -- not derailing at all, that’s literally the crux of the issue. ppl will acknowledge that the patriarchy expects men to be hyperindividualistic, stoic, emotionless machines, and acknowledge that that’s bad and toxic, but when men actually express how that toxicity makes them feel, people will turn right around and reinforce the idea that men must deal with their problems only on a private, individual basis, which is literally what the patriarchy tells men they need to do. trans men and mascs aren’t the only ppl talking abt this, bell hooks has written extremely eloquently about this as well.

--

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree with you on many of your points: that men are unskilled at talking about feelings can be blamed on a culture that makes it so men didn't get as many opportunities to practice this skill, that being angry at men about it doesn't help the broader issue, and that how "this burden gets privately put onto the few women they are close with" is a difficult situation.

But, I think helping someone with a deeply personal issue that they are unskilled at handling is an act of love, and not an easy one. It's hard and awkward and often painful and aspirational. As a result, it makes sense to lean on people who are both more skilled than you at processing feelings and who care about you. It also makes sense to lean on someone who does this as a profession (therapists).

Leaning on random acquaintances, often other women, to help you process deep personal emotions, does not feel like it's the solution. It feels like a wrong-place-wrong-time mistake. I am happy and honored to sit with men close to me as they work through their struggles. I am less happy to do it with people I know only in passing.

This is one of the first date patterns I used to get. I meet up with a guy for the first time, we haven't talked much before. After like 10 minutes of small talk, he swings the conversation onto his unrelenting sense of alienation and loneliness, or some other difficulty. I think it's actually the correct move to resist turning the conversation into a sympathy and support session. Sometimes conversations are supposed to be something else.

Even if swinging to oversharing after a lifetime of undersharing is a very understandable mistake, I think that there is room to acknowledge that neither of these are good long term patterns. Finding the middle ground is not a problem exclusive to men, even if as a whole they might be worse at it. Everyone struggles with it sometimes. There is plenty of space between "no one else cares about your feelings" and "your feelings are everyone's problem". It's important to see that instead of "that's too much" and "that's too little" being conflicting advice, its advice that is working together to point to a middle ground.

[thingwerething]

sometimes i doubt im autistic. and then i remember that when i was in first grade i would stand by myself during recess and count by 3s because i found that Fun and Enriching

[crispyartmoment]

DMC OC WEEK: Day 5

mori (again) because azrael doesn’t technically have any weapons of his own. who knows, might make a part 2 with him

Weapon(s)

Mori has 2 main weapons he uses. One being his tantōs he made himself and his revolver.

his revolver (named Raijin) is like. it’s not particularly special? it’s like… yknow, your standard Able-To-Kill-A-Demon gun. he doesn’t need bullets for it either. charge shots maybe? who knows. he does do the thing where you just manifest bullets in there because ammo is for losers

next up would be the two tantōs he has— they’re made from his old Durandal— he made them while being away from RedGrave after the whole “almost disemboweled” thing happened; he did it mostly by himself, getting help with the actual crafting from one of the many people he met during his travels. the tantōs have something similar to the combustion engine of his old sword, albeit smaller and made to work properly in a much smaller blade. its kind of like the high frequency blades from MGR:R (mgs in general but shhh)— instead of just combusting, the blades move at very high vibrating frequencies. they also have a small clip on the bottom of both the handles, which ill explain further with the next weapon

polearm — the pole arm is created by mori clipping the tantōs together at the bases and revving the handles, which makes the handles extend into the polearm. this spring-like mechanism comes in handy when he jams them into something’s mouth and extends the handle. its also just cool. it does the same things as the tantōs separately, but also the handle is surprisingly sturdy. he can also break it in half for two little spear things. its less effective then the pole arm or the tantōs so he doesn’t do it much though.

not ALL of his weapons have names, mostly because i couldn’t think of one. he does have 1 other weapon but he doesn’t have it yet — and that weapon is a tachi

i forgot his tachi LMAOOO

the tachi, which is named Watatsumi (after the dragon in Japanese mythology), is basically the devil-arm Mori inherited from his demonic parent (fun fact about that fella, literally did not give them a gender so refer to them however ); the Watatsumi is a watered down version of the Kuzuryū. it holds similar abilities to the Kuzuryū, mostly in the electricity/lightning bit. im not ENTIRELY sure on what the Kuzuryū can do ngl? 😭 like somethin… somethin weather related probably.

also it has a dragon in it. might name it Rōnin

it does give him tattoos and there is a specific design but i have barely conceptualized it yet

Abilities

aside from the standard self-healing thing, mori can’t actually do much. probably because he’s barely interacted with the demonic half of himself like. at all.

he’s able to sense other demons, hybrids, and humans — though he can only do it when they’re decently close to him (obviously he looks at a riot he’s gonna know it’s a riot but i mean with demons like Trish)

the gun thing. infinite bullet.

Job/Work

Mori works as a devil hunter, though he has dabbled in working as a mechanic from time to time. Before rejoining Dante at Devil May Cry, he just went around on his bike helping people out. He never stayed in one place too long and was essentially homeless.

DT Transformation

I’m gonna be real— have not designed this yet. I do have a vague idea of it though. Mori gets considerably taller (probably 6’6 or 6’7) and gains more draconic looking attributes similar to Rōnin. Horn’s, scales, talons, teeth, tail, it’s a whole thing. he also gets his cool sword when he does it for the first time.

Unusual Outfit

Mori owns a lot of weird clothes. He thrifts a lot. An “unusual” outfit would be him wearing anything that wasn’t his copious amount of leather clothing. So like… 70s-80s era fashion. Or a Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts no in between you cannot win with this man.

Hobbies/Activities

Aside from aforementioned mechanical work, Mori can play both guitar and drums. He enjoys reading (like a nerd) and doesn’t have many hobbies aside from that. He’s able to occupy himself pretty easily.