#is the general opinion aligned with mine or totally different?

[billpottsismygf]

73 Yards

I have slightly mixed feelings on this one, but what it did well it did brilliantly. The episode was beautifully shot with a fantastically creepy atmosphere throughout. The Welsh landscape, the close shots, the out of focus semper distans, the mystery of what was being said. Millie Gibson's performance throughout was stellar and this is the most invested I've felt in her character so far. I did miss Ncuti's presence somewhat, but it says a lot that she was able to carry the episode on her own and I do love when the format gets shaken up occasionally and we get a Doctor-lite episode.

I loved Kate's brief appearance and the way it sold the fact that this was a very serious situation. You think UNIT might be able to help here, but Ruby is once again left alone. The themes of abandonment in this one were incredibly potent and really tie into the themes of the series. Unsurprisingly, one of the most effective and upsetting parts of the episode was Ruby's mum also being affected by the mysterious woman. Her anguished screams for her mum were really quite harrowing, as was that awful comment about her birth mother not wanting her.

It also got far darker than I would expect in a Doctor Who episode. The far-right politician and the threat of nuclear war was plenty, but what was done to Marti was absolutely chilling, as was Ruby's apology for not doing anything. It gets away with it because it's all through implication, but that almost makes it more hard hitting. You don't always need to see the monster in action to know what it's doing. It also reminds me of my much younger self not picking up on the Master beating Lucy Saxon until I was a teenager.

The way time began to speed along was actually quite shocking to begin with - I actually gasped when we saw the 25th birthday cards - and it kept bringing to mind various other episodes where companions have been abandoned either in the real world or another timeline/reality, especially things like The Girl Who Waited, Turn Left, Forest of the Dead, The Lie of the Land, World Enough and Time etc. That things get undone at the end was again a little reminiscent of a few of them, but this is also where we come to my criticisms of the episode, because - while I loved the experience of watching it - the ending feels tacked on in a way that is very unsatisfying.

There were a number of things that just never get explained. For a minor example, why did the Doctor disappear? Disturbing the fairy circle released Mad Jack (I'll come onto him) and also made the Doctor disappear? And also made the TARDIS lock in a way that couldn't be opened with Ruby's key? I'm not as bothered by this as the below, but it feels messy and like an attempt to do a Turn Left without an actual reason for the Doctor to be gone.

A bigger gripe is Ruby being the following lady. That on its own would have been fine, but that combined with other elements just frustrates me. Mainly, if the following lady was Ruby, what is it she says to get people to run away? I don't mind things being left to the imagination - for instance, I quite like that we don't get an explanation for why she has to be 73 yards away; I can infer that that's got something to do with the fairy circle - but it appears that whatever she says specifically makes people think there's something horrifying about Ruby.

What could Old Ruby possibly say to that end and why would she? And why would the same thing make a Prime Minister resign? If we had never found out who she was, I would have been perfectly happy to infer that she was a force of some kind that drives people mad, but it's Ruby! Knowing who she is but not what she does or how or why she does it is the worst way round. I want to know neither or both, or possibly the latter but not the former, but this way round just frustrates me.

On that note, the friend I was watching with pointed out that, as she was dying, elderly Ruby had very short hair and suddenly has long hair when she becomes the semper distans lady. A small detail, perhaps, but one that further muddles the conclusion. Why did her hair change? Where did the coat come from? It's a different actress as well and, even at that distance, you can kind of tell. Did Old Ruby just end up embodying an existing spirit to do with the fairy circle? If so, I would have liked that to be a lot clearer. If not, why does she look so different?

Okay, so, Mad Jack. Who or what is Mad Jack? Is he a spirit of some kind that possesses Roger ap Gwilliam? Was he always Roger ap Gwilliam? Does Roger ap Gwilliam exist without him? If Roger ap Gwilliam does not exist without Mad Jack, how come the Doctor still mentions him? If Roger ap Gwilliam does exist without Mad Jack, what is changed by the Doctor stepping on the fairy circle?

In the version of the timeline we end up on (where the Doctor doesn't step in the fairy circle but Roger ap Gwilliam is still mentioned by him as a dangerous Prime Minister), here are a few possibilities and why they don't work for me:

Does he still become Prime Minister and get taken down another way? Perhaps, but it's not like Turn Left where we know the problems would have been stopped by the Doctor (who's not here). Without Ruby's infiltration and semper distans lady, what stops him? And why was that not able to stop him in the timeline we witnessed?

Is he less dangerous? The second time around of the opening conversation we don't get the line about the brink of nuclear war, though only because Ruby interrupts him to point out the woman, but maybe we can infer that this time he's a dangerous Prime Minister but not that dangerous? That seems quite weak and unclear, though, and seems to disregard the horror of the Marti stuff.

Does the timeline only change after the Doctor's comments about him being a dangerous Prime Minister? He does say that before stepping (or not stepping) in the fairy circle both times. I might be happy to assume that Roger ap Gwilliam never comes to power after that diverging moment has passed, except that things have already changed before the Doctor mentions him because Ruby says she's been to Wales three times. Maybe they've changed a bit but not enough until the moment she stops him from stepping on it, but that is not at all clear.

If it's any of these (or none of them), that's really confusing! It's just so messy and unclear. It would have been a simple fix, too! Keep everything the same and just add in a line as they're walking away at the end along the lines of "thank goodness he never got into power; people never found him that convincing". That would have clarified a) things have changed since a few seconds ago b) that Mad Jack is what allowed him to get to power and c) in this timeline, that won't happen and Ruby won't need to stop him.

Despite all my complaints, I did really love watching this episode. It's just so carelessly wrapped up, as if they didn't think about the implications of the otherwise very well told story. I'll be interested to rewatch it and see if my complaints bother me more or less on second viewing. I really want to love this episode because there were so many fantastic elements, but it just makes all the inconsistencies and loose threads and muddled logic particularly frustrating because they were only another draft or two away from being solved.

Misc small things

No theme tune! I feel robbed! Maybe it was meant to be part of the vibe that we're not in the usual timeline, but come on. It could easily have been slotted in when she left the TARDIS the first time or before she got to the pub!

Other episodes I thought of: Extremis with warning other versions of yourself; The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood with waving at future versions of yourself that disappear when things change; Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS with weird timelines and future selves and things being undone; Last Christmas with the companion becoming elderly; Turn Left for the vibes of "there's something on your back"; Under the Lake/Before the Flood with a silent message, since it looked like the woman was trying to sign things to Ruby; and The Sound of Drums/Last of the Timelords with the triple whammy of the companion having to 1) set off on their own to 2) take down a prime minister and 3) have time reverse.

It's also got a good old bootsrap paradox in it, which doesn't bother me in the way of the above complaints, but for the sake of completionism: How was Ruby warned about the future when that future hasn't happened? Would have loved Twelve to briefly pop his head in and explain it for us.

It's interesting that the snow stopped throughout this version of her life. It also seemed to snow while she was on her way to the pub.

Kate's comment about how "this timeline might be suspended along your event" was interesting and I wonder if it connects with the snow stopping.

For the first time I actually recognised Susan Twist when she appeared, but I'm not sure I would have done without Ruby realising she recognised her. I liked that! It felt very Boom Town and recognising Bad Wolf coming up again.

There was a little cameo from Mrs Flood.

[wordsandrobots]

Iron-Blooded Oprhans: Urdr Hunt - Episode 15: Brothers' Ship [Part 1]

Trafalgar Log's latest set of fansubs for the Urdr Hunt are up and this installment sees us whisked back to Earth for a Zan Clan family reunion, Wistario going into the mining business, and Berose fervently wishing the job market was more in her favour.

Before we get to that, I need to note my continuing discomfort with the artistic choices made regarding the Zan brothers and now their father. I'd welcome the opinion of somebody actually qualified to have one - particularly in relation to other depictions of African Americans in recent Japanese animation - but from the perspective of a white Englishman well-aware this is far from the worst example of racism in anime you could pick, the exaggeration and colouring decisions nevertheless feel extremely yikes.

Rightly or wrongly, nothing about the writing itself has struck me as egregiously othering. Rome and Aiko are rich, blundering bullies, but they're still presented as people, with this episode unpacking their motivation and adding a little more depth to Aiko in particular. I'd feel differently if they were the only black/non-Japanese characters in Iron-Blooded Orphans, but this is not at all the case.

IBO's art direction, however, makes a lot of its shady underworld types into grotesques. The anime's style is generally fairly unflattering, with few characters being overtly pretty (Shino has his jug-handle ears; Akihiro, his resting thundercloud face; Chad clearly needs to eat more; and while I notice someone has been turning the bishie dial up on his recent art, Eugene is generally more sour-looking in the show itself; etc). But then there are the likes of Orcus, the Brewers and even Jasley, who stand out for ugliness that takes on cartoonish proportions. Mix that with explicitly racialised features and the results aren't great, particularly when the detail level drops during the actual animation.

It's frustrating in light of, for example, Gundam:Narrative being actively edited for things like this in its English release, G-Witch not having the problem to begin with, and IBO's own manga spin-off presenting a comparable example of character design that *isn't* as heavily exaggerated. (This last being the reason I wanted to draw attention to this link with alignment - Jizil Jizin [Gundam names, my gods] is an honourable and upstanding man, in contrast to the Zans.)

Anyway. Didn't feel I could write this episode up without addressing that. Now on to the plot.

Hajiroboshi  (Part 1, Part 2)

Departure (Part 1, Part 2)

598 (Part 1, Part 2)

Corridor of Betrayal (Part 1, Part 2)

Holder of the Ring (Part 1, Part 2)  

Unexpected Encounter (Part 1, Part 2)

Venus’ Worth (Part 1, Part 2)

Brothers' Ship (Part 1, Part 2)

We open with Rome Zan phoning his local wholesaler. He and his brother are heading home to visit their ailing father and Rome wants some souvenirs. Hearing it's for Mr Rubian, the saleperson is happy to oblige, offering flowers before Rome insists on fine booze and a selection of luxury food as well.

Aiko Zan is less interested in the prospective gifts than the fact their dad has summoned them out of the blue: that is usually a sign he's pissed-off -- and not, as Rome suggests, that he's getting weaker and wants to see his sons.

Rome waves away the concerns, explaining that that's why he's going to show up with lots of gifts, but Aiko is unconvinced at his older brother's ability to put Rubian in a good mood, muttering that he always tends to make dad angry instead . . .

Of course, he's not brave enough to say this to Rome's face. But he is brave enough to threaten 'Berosuke' -- that is, Berose Kousa, the Zans' Urdr Hunt guide -- against blabbing about the brothers' total failure to make any progress.

Berose -- who is so utterly done with these two -- tries to explain that she hasn't had contact with Rubian since he gave the ring to his sons, which Aiko doesn't believe, though that scarcely matters. Rome is busy convincing himself that this sudden invite means his dad is about to hand full control of the Zan Clan over to him!

Spoilers: nope.

Down on Earth, presumably in the SAU, we arrive at an honest-to-goodness castle, set in beautiful garden grounds and decked out like a palace. In a fittingly richly-decorated room, Rome greets his 'Big Papa' with an enthusiastic hug, which the elderly man returns, greeting Aiko too. But the formalities quickly sour: the bed-ridden crime boss is not happy with Rome's gifts. He has no time for flowers and his doctor has told him to stay away from booze and meat. He called them here to discuss the Urdr Hunt. How's it going?

Rome deflects the question to Aiko who says it's going so well, dad'll laugh his ass off! Which does not sound like the reports Rubian has been getting . . .

We're then introduced to Jabiro, an actually competent member of this crime family (albeit not an actual relation, as far as I can tell). He has been monitoring the brothers in order to make sure the Clan's reputation isn't tarnished by their shenanigans. It's obvious he has a very low opinion of them and the feeling is mutual.

In any case, Rubian concludes over Rome's protestations that the fastest way to get an accurate update is to invite Berose in to join them.

Berose proceeds to drop the brothers straight into the shit: so far, Rome and Aiko have failed to visit any of the four waypoints, instead starting fights with the other participants that they lost and suffered a great deal of damage as a result. She assumes this places them far behind their rivals.

Rubian thanks her for confirming Jabiro's intel and Jabiro himself is ecstatic, seeing this as proof the brothers are unfit to take over leadership. The old man concurs. He thought choosing between his sons by assessing which of them contributed more to the Hunt would force them to grow as leaders, but instead they've wasted time, people and money. If that continues, he'll need to have them eliminated for bringing harm to the Clan.

Jabiro would be only too happy to fulfill that order -- but at the end of the meeting 'Big Papa' relents slightly. Without much time left, he gives Rome and Aiko one last chance to make him proud they are his sons.

As the scene ends, we are informed that from the bottom of her heart, Berose does not care about any of this.

Returning to the battleship, an infuriated Rome wishes his dad would hurry up and die. Perhaps he ought to kill him and take over by force! Aiko cringes at the idea -- Rubian would definitely take Rome out first -- and anyway, surely he doesn't mean that? Rome shouldn't joke about killing their beloved father.

Rome brushes him off, caught up with worry that Jabiro is going to take over the clan in his place if they mess up again. He rounds on Berose, pissed she betrayed them but needing to know how they can win the Hunt.

She sighs over the fact they're only now asking this and explains she doesn't think it's possible when they're so far behind. She drew the short straw to act as their guide, and has given up all hope of them succeeding.

Rome grows angrier yet but Aiko begs him not to actually hit Berose -- what if that gets them disqualified? Berose herself expresses complete indifference to the prospect. Did I mention how few fucks she has left to give?

Thus thwarted, Rome orders his crew to prepare to crush all their rivals. If there's no one else left, surely that means they win? With another sigh, Berose proposes a more efficient method. The mission of the Hunt appears to be to visit each of the waypoints and hit certain goals (gather a prize, confirm you've been there, collect data). There might be a system by which everyone who reaches a waypoint could achieve the same goal. So if the other participants have completed the four already flagged, perhaps the Zan Clan could negotiate with them to share what they've already collected -- or something?

Predictably, Rome and Aiko immediately decide to take the data by force. But who to rob? They don't want to mess with the Omden Colony Company and one of the crew has found out that the Rakou Pirates are linked to Teiwaz -- definitely a no-no. With Foundling now under the Pirates' protection and the Zans apparently not being aware of Mendou yet, the choice is obvious: the brat in the three-horned mobile suit!

Pause because apparently we have character limits on 'blocks' now. Take a break! Have a drink! Revel in the fact that the IBO Moon Steel manga now has its own website! Now back to the story.

Over at Radonitsa Colony (an indeterminate time later; I assume the Zans were travelling to and fro over the couple of weeks established as passing in the last episode), Wistario himself is inspecting a refitted hangar aboard the Erda II. They'll now be able to carry both Hajiroboshi and Asmodey inside the ship, which Range in particular is happy about.

Katya hurries up with a basket full of cloth -- she's decided to make curtains for the windows inside the ship, putting her sowing skills to use. Although, she's disappointed with the fabric selection on offer in the colony. Don't they have fashionable shops here?

Demner admits it's a results of the limited supplies Radonitsa receives. They barely have what it takes to get by. Katya points out they'll need to improve that if they want to encourage visitors and sets herself up as an advisor on the kinds of goods to sell. Range is taken aback by her leaping straight to planning tourist tat -- shouldn't that wait until they've founded their country? But Katya is firm: there's so much to do, they *have* to start planning ahead. And off she goes to get started on those curtains.

The others reflect on her improved mood, with Korunaru concluding she must have sorted out her feelings before asking to be allowed to help Katya out.

Wistario, Demner and Range head back to the Afam Equipment office, where they find Sprah in the middle of a crisis. Mobius Metals have suspended deliveries of colony repair supplies on account of their entire mining workforce quitting to go find better-paid work further out in the Earth-sphere colonies. While I obviously salute miners seeking greater remuneration, this puts our Wiz in a bit of a bind, since without those metals, Afam Equipment can't keep Radonitsa in working order.

Never one to shirk his duties as an upbeat teen anime protagonist, Wistario decides the best course is to fly out to an asteroid with the mobile suits, mine the ore themselves (scab) and return it to Mobius for processing. If nothing else, it will be a great way to test the upgraded ship while they wait for the next waypoint announcement.

Impressed as usual with his charge taking the initiative, Demner starts to offer him a misuzu candy -- only to be beaten to the punch by Sprah! So many spoiled brats in this game, my word . . .

Might as well start doing segment breaks more generally then. Please stop me if I start doing custom line breaks ala my fanfic. Or, you know, don't. I'm sure I'll end up writing about these guys eventually.

The Zans are back in the Venus-sphere and they pick up the Erda II as it heads off to do some blackleg mining. Rome immediately orders his (I remind you: human debris-piloted) mobile suits to smash the Afam crew to bits in an all-out attack. Aiko reminds him the aim this time is to steal the Hunt data and totally crushing them would therefore probably not be a good idea. Rome counters that he only means to destroy the mobile suits; they'll take over the ship afterwards.

Quite correctly, Aiko points out that they've failed multiple times to best Wistario and Range. He calls on the crew to support coming up with a better plan, which gets a couple of tepid positive responses, to Rome's extreme displeasure. He accuses Aiko of being a coward, telling him not to worry. Rome's taken care of everything so far. Better to let him keep handling things, right?

This proves to be Aiko's breaking point. He insists they need to do things right this time. Because, he adds tearfully, Dad said he was proud of them!

Berose reminds the audience that this is not exactly what Rubian said, but Aiko warms to his theme, saying they have to win the Urdr Hunt to make their father happy (which, to be fair to him, does indicate he's got the gist of his situation even if the details haven't quite landed, and he certainly has a better grasp on what will make Rubian happy than Rome does).

Aiko proposes dividing their forces, with one half creating a diversion to draw the Gundams out before the other surrounds them for the kill. Rome stands fast though. Why should the mighty Zan Clan need to plan against such a tiny organisation? His dad always made the Clan bigger by attacking their enemies head-on. That's how Rome -- the Clan does things and anyone who has a problem with it can step forward now!

With the crew cowed and the ship arriving at the asteroid, he orders the first and second squads out, with two more and a chastened Aiko on standby . . .

The Edra II quickly detects the approaching Gildas and we're treated to a new launch sequence centred around the extended mobile suit bay, which can now deploy both Hajiroboshi and Asmoday at the same time. It's cute and provides a clear idea of how the cockpits work, even if the bay itself is literally just a big box bolted on to the back of the ship.

Range is still wearing his poncho over his normal-suit, by the way. Love a man who commits to the bit.

Anyway, the Gundams unceremoniously wipe the floor with the Zan Clan forces because of course they do. Rome actually appears to attempt a variation of Aiko's suggestion here, allowing the first wave to engage the enemy then sending the third and fourth squads to surround them, but it's to no avail. Frustrated, Rome orders Aiko to head out and take command. But again, Aiko says no. This happens every time! They've got to pull back and regain their strength.

Naturally, this does not calm Rome down. He insists if they keep attacking, it'll be different, and hits Aiko for talking back to him.

Quite possibly from the floor, Aiko correctly breaks down his situation: Rome is always like this. He's always right, Aiko is useless, he does what Rome says. Well, Aiko can't take it any more! He's going to go his own way to do his own thing!

And taking his mobile suit plus a couple of crew members (who came to his assistance when he was struck and now seem very eager to get off this ship), he leaves, Rome shouting impotently after him.

In space, Wistario notes the Zan Clan seem to have stopped attacking, which Range observes was quicker than usual. Where are the gaudy brothers? Well, who cares? Time to dig up some rocks!

Rome gets a report about the Gorgeous Silver and two Gildas escaping the ship. He cannot believe Aiko has turned his back on him. With a roar of rage, he once more demands his brother return.

Watching from the sidelines, Berose wonders what the hell she's supposed to do now.

And there we leave things for this installment. As I said up top, I do feel this started to give us some depth to the Zan brothers. It's nothing unexpected, but it's clear that while Rome is willing to make a performance of caring for his father, he lacks any real affection for the man and just wants him to hurry up and die. Aiko, by contrast, genuinely seems to care about making Rubian happy and definitely craves affection from him. Rome's unthinking aggression in combat is apparently derived from beliefs about the way his dad did things, while Aiko continues to display a greater degree of thought that he can't really do anything with in his brother's presence. It was predictable they'd come to blows and I'm interested to see how this pans out. I think it unlikely Aiko will be in a hurry to genuinely ally with Wistario but I do wonder if he'll do something with Berose's suggestion of negotiation now, even if only as a ploy.

Berose herself gets some extra characterisation too, which is mostly 'this sucks and I couldn't care less about these people', placing her at odds with the other guide we've spent time with. She did leap quite quickly to suggesting ways for the brothers to catch up, though, implying that she could continue to be a source of support for Rome going forward. We'll see.

[tea-and-spoons]

Today’s Tips: Crutches

Hello hello!  I have been a part-time crutches user for the past… three years?  So today I’m going to share some little tips I’ve learned along the way.  I have never used a cane, but I think a lot of this might apply to canes too.

-If you’re trying to decide if you need a mobility aid or not, the answer is yes.  You don’t have to be unable to walk without it to use a mobility aid!  If you think it would help, go for it!  Using my crutches lets me walk farther, with less pain, and less falling, and the freedom is wonderful.  I’m pretty sure that if you’re debating, it’s definitely worth a try.  And if you’re here because crutches are already required for you, that’s good too and I hope you still find what makes them work best for you.

-Decorate!  Personalize!  Bedazzle!  I am a huge advocate for changing the look of your mobility aid to whatever makes you happy.  I scraped all the logos off my crutches, spray painted them blue, and added flower stickers on the cuffs, and it always makes me smile.  Just because they only sell what you need in boring medical colors doesn’t mean you have to keep it that way.  My theory is, I’m going to get stared at either way, I might as well have crutches I like:)

-If you leave it standing up, it WILL fall over.  Seriously, it seems like every time I try to leave my crutches propped up against something, they fall down and make a ton of noise at a very inconvenient time.  If you have to leave them standing up so you can reach them, I wish you luck, and suggest putting them somewhere that minimizes getting bumped into.  Sometimes I lean mine on my legs under the table and that works pretty well.  But most of the time, I lie my crutches down alongside a table or wall, or underneath my chair.  Bonus, this also keeps people from stepping on them so much.

-Forearm crutches vs underarm crutches.  I generally see your regular underarm crutches used for more short term things, like a sprained ankle, but they might also be a better choice if you have limited arm strength.  They also feel more stable if you can’t put any weight on one leg.  I was told that forearm crutches take way more strength, but in my experience, it’s not as bad as I was told, even though I have floppy, spaghetti-noodle Ehlers-Danlos arms (although I do also have the special forearm crutches for people with EDS)  It’s really nice that the forearm crutches are shorter, so they’re easier to store and don’t stab you in the armpit if you’re walking on uneven ground.  In my opinion, they’re just overall easier to maneuver and better for when both legs need support.  Plus, I can let them hang from the cuffs and have my hands free for a moment.  The other thing I noticed with underarm crutches vs forearm crutches is how people treat me.  With regular underarm crutches, I got a lot of “Oh no what happened?!” and “Get well soon!”, none of which apply to me.  With forearm crutches, people seem to get that it’s more of a lifelong disability deal. I was trying to write an unbiased paragraph here, but I guess it’s pretty clear I have a strong preference!  But really, the best option is whatever meets your needs.

-Proper fitting.  If you have access to a physical therapist or other professional who can help you fit your crutches, I would highly recommend taking advantage of that.  Crutches that aren’t adjusted right can wreak havoc on your posture and alignment, and even cause secondary injuries (which is the last thing you need!)  If you don’t have access to a PT, I think these links have some good information:  

https://www.physicaltherapy101.net/forearm-lofstrand-crutches/

https://www.physicaltherapy101.net/walking-assistance/crutches/ 

-Pace yourself.  If your situation allows you to gradually work up to how much time you spend with crutches, you’ll be much less sore!  If not, try to take breaks before you really need them, to prevent the worst of the ouch.

-Carrying things.  This is going to be frustrating, but it also gets easier as you adjust and learn what works for you.  First things first, it’s totally okay to ask for help!  You are not a burden, you are not lazy, no matter what anyone else tells you.  It’s okay to need help.  And for when you are carrying things by yourself, here are some tips:  Pockets!  Very very good.  Backpack or fanny pack or purse is also good.  I’ve seen some people attach a bag to the crutch itself, but in my experience, that makes it hard to control the crutch and you lose your balance a lot.  I’ve also perfected the art of holding something with my pinky and ring finger, while still holding the crutch handgrip with the other side of my hand.  Sliding things along a table instead of carrying is a great one for cooking.  Getting everything you need within reach and then just sitting is also a good strategy to save spoons. 

-Actually getting around!  I think the best thing might be to practice with your crutches on a day you don’t actually need them so you can experiment.  I know that’s not always possible though, and I promise you can also learn as you go too.  For me, doors are the hardest part, so automatic openers are my friends.  My best tricks for doors without automatic openers are:  open door really far and speed through, or use crutch leg or tip to prop door open while you go through.  Although I have gotten my crutch tip stuck under the door like that before so maybe that’s not the best advice…  Again, it’s totally okay to ask for help!  And you’ll get the hang of it with practice.

-Crutches in winter.  Not fun.  If you’re using regular long crutches, they’re going to get stuck in slush or snow on the sidewalk.  I haven’t tried them, but I also know they sell special crutch tips for ice, because regular ones are slippy.  I don’t really have any advice here, so this is more of a caution, and a suggestion to plan ahead!

-Especially if crutches are new for you, you’re going to be all kinds of tired.  The way you walk is now totally different, and you have to re-adjust how you do just about everything, which takes a LOT of mental energy.  It’s totally okay to be frustrated and tired and sad.  It won’t always be this hard, you’ll find adjustments that work for you.  And don’t be afraid to use the resources and accommodations available to you!  They’re there to help you and you deserve support.

I hope you found this helpful, and I would love to see if you decide to decorate your mobility aid too!

Edit:  I just learned a new trick for crutches and doors!  When you’re trying to open the door, make sure you’re standing clear outside of the arc of where the door swings. Otherwise you’ll be trying to inch backwards and drag the door with you, and that’s a great way to fall down.  So just move to the side and let the door swing open. 

[binniesthighs]

eehee here it is the long awaited results of my chaotic ass survey about our hornies it’s so long holy heck, but I have seperated it into a couple sections to make sense of it all (omg if you read all of it lemme give you a kith teehee) ahhhh lol its SO nerdy haha but i hope that ya enjoy nonetheless! ✨

In this essay, I will....(hahah jk jk this is just all for fun) 

1. Demographics Analysis 

2. Polls on Fic Content 

3. Member Specific Analysis 

4. Deep Dive into the Juicy Questions (Confessions) 

5. General Thoughts and Conclusion  

6.  Cute shit that ya’ll said that made me giggle

*Unpopular opinions will be made into their own post to give them ample space and analysis!

Other Notes: 

Out of 100 individuals surveyed, 44 were readers, 2 were only writers, and 54 were both readers and writers. 

Statistical significance can be effected by sampling, selection, and response bias (yeah i took a stats class teehee) and personal biases 

All the the opinions and other analysis presented by me (Ro/binniesthighs) are purely my own oponion and are not factual. you are entitled to interpret all of this information however you like! Anything that i analyze is not definitive! 

while this survey is mostly about stay smutblr, i hope that it can also maybe serve as a template for other fandoms as well with the more general questions! this is a survey for everyone! 

i’d love to hear about what you think about anything presented in this analysis! feel free to send me an ask or comment! reposting is permitted within tumblr or on other platforms if proper credit is given! ❤️ (uwu hehe if you could please help me spread this i would appreciate it so much! i worked really hard on her 🥺) 

1. Demographics Analysis:

Gender Identities of those Surveyed 

~My thoughts: this really came as no surprise to me considering how the majority of kpop fans (especially boy group fans) identify as female! Seeing as I am a Stray Kids/Seventeen blog (both of them boy groups) it makes sense to me that my readers would mostly identify as female! 

Another important thing to note (from a writer standpoint at least) is the wide array of identities that we still have present within the general audience of stay smut blur (SSB)! I’ll get into this later when i discuss favorite pairings to read, however i think that this gives us one more reason to write for a diverse audience of readers who can identify with different types of self-insert fics! 

Top Five: 

Female (81%) 

Non-binary/gender non-conforming (13%) 

Changes by the day (6%) 

Male (4%) 

Demiboy/Demigirl (3%) 

Sexual Orientation of those Surveyed 

Other identities mentioned: 

????, unlabeled, aromatic bisexual, bicurious, demisexual, “just liking who i like”, experimenting, heteroflexible, sapiosexual, depends day by day, “i just like anyone” 

~My thoughts: okkkkk i see us gays of SSB 😏 these demographics were really exciting for me to see! i think that it’s super cool that we have such representation across the board when it comes to sexual orientations present in our community! As someone who personally identifies as pan, this was super comforting to see that there are so many others like me in this little space of the internet! I think it’s safe to say at least from my lil survey that all the bi cuties out here own SSB 💗💜💙

From a literal standpoint, it also makes sense to me that heterosexuality is strongly present as well considering that often the pairs that we read are male idol x female reader so this is the perfect niche! 

Top Five: 

Bisexual (40.8%) 

Heterosexual (26.5) 

Pansexual (17.3%) 

Queer (7.1%) 

Asexual (4.1%) 

Stay Creators!! 

~My thoughts: this one i was THRILLED at seeing oml hahaha and i was so interested to see that this was nearly an even split! 

I think that there’s something to be said about how sometimes we can take our hobbies: (movies, videogames, books, kpop, anime etc)--all things which we really like in totally normal and healthy ways but also kinda like....get hornies about them too? if that makes sense? for example, i have a friend who really likes certain video games/characters from these games as a fan and he’s shared with me that he also doesn’t mind watching porn containing those same characters! (ahahah ya all know what i mean don’t even lie haha) 

what this question proved to me as that there are stays out there who practice “being a stay/being a stay creator” who also are interested in the more...horny side of this hobby/interest 😂

what is even more interesting to me is who i wonder if i’ve  have consumed any of ya’ll’s content while you have consumed mine??? this i am DYING to know aha but it think its best for all of us to stay anonymous teehee ;) 

either way, good on ya for doing what ya do!! you are so so treasured in this community too!! <3 

2. Polls on Fic Content (a long section lol) 

Favorite Pairing to Read 

*other options selected were rankings of favorite pairings so i just added each of them as an entry to the respective category mentioned. 

Top Five: 

Idol x female reader (69%) 

Idol x gender neutral reader (19%) 

Idol x reader x Idol (poly r/ship) (14%) 

Idol x reader, Idol x reader (threesome, not much interaction between the two idols) (8%) 

~My thoughts: once again, this category was pretty self explanatory to me considering that the majority of readers are female identifying, so it would make sense that they would prefer to read smut that aligns with their identity! This is also super present anyway of SSB as i do feel like the majority of writing pieces that I do come along are idol x female reader, and most authors too often disclaim that they are the most comfortable writing this type of pairing as well. 

What’s signficant as well is the interest in reading fics with gender neutral reader self inserts as well! this is my personal philosophy when it comes to writing (specifically with requests) but i think that writing gn!reader is always the safest bet to go as to not make assumptions about readers! for writers i think that seeing this 19% is something important to take into consideration! 

An outlier to me with this demographic was the “poly r-ship” poll garnering a notable 14% in comparison to the idol x idol option which got 10 less votes (4%). what is a little confusing to me about this is how poly r/ships often (but not always) contain idol x idol content, however there is discrepancy with the amount of readers outright saying that they enjoy reading it alone. I’ll get into poly fics later with the unpopular opinions section--however i wanted to plant the seed here hehe. One other caveat to this is the fact that on SSB i feel like idol x idol content is really in the minority and is much more present on a platform like AO3 so this could be another explaination! 

What is kinda cute to me is the fact that readers do really like poly r-ship dynamics more than a threesome (as i defined it, “with less interaction”) so this makes me feel like we are all saps for the fluff that comes with poly r-ship fics ;) 

Favorite Kind of Smut to Read 

male idol smut (67%) 

i read both! (female and male idol smut) (25%) 

depends on my mood (7%) 

female idol smut (1%) 

~My thoughts: Again, this is super expected to me as well considering the above statistics. Since i am a skz blog (a boy group) --as are my moots-- it really makes sense that those who filled out this survey would be into male idol smut! 

what was cool for me to see as well was the number of readers who also read female idol smut as well as male idol smut! personally, i more predominately a fan of boy groups compared to the amount of girl group content that I consume (note: i do also consume gg content). because of this, i think that its really up to personal preferences and the content that you consume that can be reflective of the smut content that you consume as well and ya know, whoever gets your hornies going ;) 

Favorite Genres...Ranked! 

*so this was my fault lol i totally formatted this question poorly in google forms so i’ll try to summarize the most popular rankings with my words haha 

*bc of the way that i miffed it (lol) i wasn’t able to get exact measurements, but rough ones! 

Top Five: 

Smut, fluff, angst 

smut n’ fluff (with specific emphasis angst is not desired)  

smut, angst, fluff, 

fluff, smut, angst, 

angst, fluff, smut 

~My thoughts: by far, the most popular ranking that i saw was as follows: smut, fluff, angst. i saw this sososos many times haha also...ya’ll got really creative with your rankings and it made me giggle hehe. So! seeing as this is stay smutblr haha makes total sense that the three most popular rankings that we have were lead by smut! since we’re here for the hornies, i totally get this. 

as for the “smut n’ fluff” or “fluffy smut” category, there was a decent amount of readers that expressed that this mixture is their fave! i’m kinda looping this with the “mixture” option that i also provided for this question since this was the most popular mixture that i was able to observe along with angst + smut. interestingly, i saw a couple mentions of “hurt/comfort” fics with this question too so this went well with this preference. as for number three on this list, we dip into that smut + angst category that I just mentioned as well. there were several individuals who said that they really really enjoy reading smut with angst! 

lastly we get to the four and five on the list: four being fluff, smut and angst. i think this category can also properly represent the folx who tend to like more fluffy fics over the smutty ones, but that can also have suggestive themes too! in five, we have angst, fluff and smut which also is representative of another theme that i saw: as far as plot goes, several people mentioned that they liked fics that start with angst, get fluffier, and then end up in smut, so i think that this could be easily compared! 

*there were also several readers who simply said “all of them” or opted not to rank, (lol me) so this really shows the variability in results! 

Cute stuff ya’ll said (kind of out of context too LOL) 

“... hehE I HOPE THIS MAKES SENSE.” 

“...I KNOW IT [my ranking] LOOKS TERRIBLY SPECIFIC AND IM SO SORRY and I guess the better way to describe that was one that has all 3 with a happy ending lol my b my b.” 

“ ...it just depends on the mood my dude.” 

“... (the smut doesn’t have to be soft i just want the relationship to be soft and i want aftercare and general affection).” 

“(but almost no angst oops)” 

“angst honestly makes me so sad.” 

“... but long fics with angst and slow burn smut/fluff is just WOW.” 

“ my favourite thing is when it's fluffy smut tbh with a little bit of angsty backstory. that is *chefs kiss*” 

“(I'm a sucker for good angsty fics but I cant seem to find them???)” 

“Smut, Fluff, Angst (I tend to be a bit of a purist so no mixture here).” 

“(i can't read pure angst lol) “ 

“(I love how much plot there is in angsty fics but I personally can't read anything without a happy ending, i just can't take it)” 

“ i literally couldn't rank them bc my mood is always changing lmaooo.” 

“ smut, fluff, angst. i know what i’m about.” 

Favorite Length of Fics 

Top Five: 

5k-8k words (27%) 

2k-4k words (25%) 

1k-2k words (20%) 

10k-20k words (15%) 

20k words (12%) 

~My thoughts: this one was super helpful for me to see!! and writers i hope that this is helpful for you too! as someone who tends to rambles (lol) it was very comforting for me to see that long-ish fics are actually preferred! what is really cool about this data too is that it is all super well balanced for the most part and nearly edqual in some parts! how i see this, i think that when it comes to preferences of length, its really reader specific so anyone could like anything! this goes into a little bit the slow burn question that i asked as well too, but it’s really cool to see that when readers do read, they kinda like something to sink their teeth into! 

i wanted to look into how long it takes you to read these words, and it appears that on average, a 5-8k fic can take someone 30 mins to read whereas a 2-4k fic takes about 15mins! idk if this says something about attention spans, but as a writer it warms my heart to know that you’re willing to spend 30 minutes of your time reading something that i wrote! 🥺

another thing i wanted to bring up is the “hard and fast” smut readers--those who like to get straight to the point, get right to business and to the juice! they are also a decently large group too! as for readers who like a nice long fic or a chaptered fic, they are super close in numbers! from this, it’s safe for me to assume that maybe those who like reading longer fics are more inclined to strap in for the long haul with chaptered fics too! 

Favorite AUs to Read 

*the top category that got cut off (thank you google forms lol) is friends to lovers! the one that says “...love” at 48% is enemies to lovers, and the one that has a blanked out title at 35% is strangers to lovers! 

Top Five: 

friends to lovers (65%) 

enemies to lovers (48%) 

high school/college au (40%) 

roommates/neighbors to lovers (38%) 

strangers to lovers (35%) 

Other AUs mentioned by you! 

office au, royal au, vampire au, fake date, idol au, slice of life, boarding school au, childhood friends, soulmate au 

~My thoughts: ok ok so this was RAD to see! i often wonder myself the kinds of aus that my readers would like to see so this was really helpful! circling back on how readers tend to favor fluff n’ smut (friends to lovers) and angst n’ smut (enemies to lovers) i think that we’re seeing some more themes here teehee. 

i like to think that since most of us are of the college age, the college au is super relatable therefore we really like to read it! not to mention that college and high school au’s are super duper cute as well! this is also relatable to the roommates/neighbors to lovers category which is also relatable to us who may or may not have experienced having a roommate or crush on the cutie next door ;) as a couple readers mentioned, they liked more “slice of life” au’s--which both of these categories fall into! i think we as readers like scenarios that feel the most real to us, bc they are the easiest to insert ourselves into :) 

fantasy and thriller, action, more “fiction” tropes are in the minority, however i think that this can be for the exact same reason as i mentioned above where readers like more relatable scenarios. 

Opinions on Slow Burn Fics 

~My thoughts: during polling of this category, this pie cart stayed basically the same the whole time!! that was pretty cute to see! the important take aways from this survey for me is the fact that slow burn fics are generally really loved! again, lol as someone who writes big ol’ long slow burn fics this made me feel a lot better hahaha basically, the general consensus is that slow burn fics are welcome most of the time, however some readers might need to invest a little more time into them! this is also very easily comparable to the above statistics on the length of fics preferred (longer ones being the ones more popular) so here’s a lil more supporting evidence! 

3. Member Specific Analysis 

Bias Survey 

Top Five: 

Chan (19%) 

Changbin (18%) 

Hyunjin (16%) 

Jisung (15%) 

Minho (14%) 

~My thoughts: ok ok ok so this is where it starts getting JUICY hehe (also i apologize once more for making you pick LOL) 

the reason why i asked this question was because i wanted to see if there was a correlation with biases and if there was a probability that members who had more people biasing them (or popularity I guess) were more likely to be read more in smut fics! AND I WAS RIGHT haha isn’t this so fkn cool??? (see more in the next section!) 

for comparison, i went to kprofiles to see their little survey on bias popularity and their top five. 

Kprofiles Top Five: 

Hyunjin (15%) 

Felix (14%) 

Chan (12%) 

Minho (11%) 

Jisung (11%) 

SO oh my god my nerd brain is loosing it over this REE so, what i should note that is those who took this survey on my blog are likely generally different based off of the fact that they are here to read smut specifically, rather than the general holistic popularity survey. It is for this reason that we see Felix much higher on this list and Changbin much lower too (as we know Felix is really well known generally and globally and there are *generally* fewer Bin biased fans). What was really interesting to see what that with Hyunjin, Chan, Jisung and Minho, they still all stayed within the top five! Soooo what i’m saying is.... all of you Hyunjin, Chan, Jisung and Minho fans really must like your smut 😏 and I think that it’s safe to assume that the majority of hard stans come from these four members too ooP (and of course our Binnie too! ;) i see all of ya’ll 👀) 

Members That Get Our Hornies Going 

~My thoughts: AHH DOESN’T THIS LOOK SO SATISFYING? I’M SO PROUD OF HER!!! 

First off, i would like to acknowledge the all mighty power of Bang Christopher Chan for pooling this most hornies god DAMN while i kind of expected this, it is also evidenced in the fics that i write! recently i’ve been tracking the number of notes that my Chan hard thoughts get in comparison to other members and the differences are usually ASTRONOMICAL. He is most def the most popular member for smut for several different reasons, lowkey bc i think that it’s kind of part of his brand?? hahaha if ya know what i mean? 

As for preference from Minho on, we can see a super obvious trend that as age order decreases, we get less and less interest for reading for the member. I’m fairly inclined to believe that this has to do with the fact that most often fans (especially fans older than skz) have a harder time seeing the younger members in a sexual way, so the lack of interest totally makes sense here! As referenced above too, we found that the oldest five members (Chan --> Jisung) are the favorites for smut reading which we can see here as well when the numbers really drop after Felix (Felix coming in at 6th place on my “popularity” survey). 

Bc of these statistics, i do really feel like as a reader, i tend to see much, much more fics involving our top five! As for Seungmin and Jeongin, I’ve also seen people state that they do not read or write content for these two members bc they do not feel as comfortable, so this can also explain the lack of content. Also as we have heard many times, Jeongin is a bit of a hot topic lol within the SSB community, so this makes sense that his readership would be low as well. 

4. Deep Dive into the Juicy Questions (aka confessions) 

Is the fact that you read smut a seggsy secret? 

~My thoughts: JUICE TIME JUICE TIME 

Before I say anything, i wanted to tell you all how all of the juicy questions were totally optional, but i got 100% participation for every single one of them which if find HILARIOUS i guess you all are just as curious as i am?? ;) 

So! for this question, we have an overwhelming amount of readers who said that only their closest friends know which is so cute to me! i love how we can trust our friends with this hehe. i also fall into this category bc like, it’s lowkey kinda fun to talk about? maybe also the fact that i run a smut acct makes me care a little less about it all hahah 

secondly, we have the rather large group of people who said that they wouldn’t dare to tell anyone which is also sooo cute haha idk how to explain it but this was the category that i started out in too until i found the right people! But i totally get ya, reading smut--especially-- kpop smut-- can be embarrassing or cringey to share (not to mention that it is somewhat morally grey LOL) so this is really understandable! 

also my fkn hats off to all of you who said that you didn’t care about who knows that you read smut. here, you dropped this: 👑 you’re much braver than i could ever be. 

When you read smut, do you really feel the hornies? 

~My thoughts: ok, so this one to me was also very interesting for me to see as well! (also if you get uncomfy reading about personal masturbation habits you can skip this one lol) 

the reason why i asked this question was because i wanted to see if people “get off” by reading smut (whether reading it turns you on, or if you choose to use it for “material” to get off on however this might look, might be more of a mental simulation without any real like, physical getting off) candidly, I use smut to get myself off every once and a while, so i wanted to see who else might be in the same group! since becoming a writer however, i read much less and reading it doesn’t hit the same when i was just a reader bc i have a different perspective of being the one writing the smut so i look at it more analytically--i digress. 

it was exciting (teehee get the pun?) for me to see that others also “get off” on smut too--and that they are the majority! teehee it is an honor for me to provide you with the hornies LOL. at the same time, we still have a large group in the “don’t take to seriously” category which was interesting to me too! i can’t speak for these readers, but i interpreted these kind of readers to be the kind who read smut to imagine the scenes and are like “hm, that’s hot, i like thinking about this.” but it doesn’t extend much outside of these thoughts. 

What is the most popular position pairing we like to read? 

*smaller slices of the pie represent multiple favorites which i also seperated back into the categories corresponding to get the best count into what was the most preferred. 

Actual Breakdown: 

dom!idol // sub!reader (51 votes) 

switch!idol // switch!reader (32 votes) 

subidol! // dom!reader (11 votes) 

all of the above (5 votes) 

depends on my mood (2 votes) 

~My thoughts: i feel as if there is a bit of a conflict between which position really is “the best” and while we really can’t know the answer to this question since everyone has different preferences, we can at least find out which one is the most popular to be consumed! 

again, going off of the content that I also see as a reader, i see TONS of dom!idol fics, like, left and right. also, if i may come for all of our necks, 👀 but...there’s really something to be said about the fact that the majority of readers are female and historically and socially, women are typically socialized to be submissive, so i can see why this would be why we would favor this among fics--this is even further evidenced by the fact that male idol smut is also preferred, thus further perpetuating the fact that women have been socialized to be submissive to men specifically. i’m not saying that this is the end all be all reason that this trend is present, but i merely offer it as a possible explaination. this is a much larger sociological conversation, but i think that this trend also showed itself in the types of smut that readers seek out as well--according to demographics. 

sub!idol fics are few and far in-between, and i think that this can also be for the exact same reason as i talked about above! 

When you read smut, do you pick faves to read for? 

~My thoughts: what’s cool about this question is the fact that the “half and half” nature of it also resembles what we saw in the section for favorite members to read! As we see in that chart, 41 out of 100 people said that they read everyone, similar to this question where 48 out of 100 people said that they read for everyone. What this proves to me once more is that when it comes for reading fics, there's a 50/50 chance that the reader will look at, and read it based off of who it is about alone. This is a really powerful statistic, meaning that the members who that a writer might write for really dictates their readership! At the same time, it’s super comforting to know that regardless of what you as a writer might write, there’s always someone out there who is willing to read it! (as evidenced by the 52% of people who read for anyone! this is still a large number) 

Readers: Do you only use Tumblr for smut? 

~My thoughts: when i first started out reading smut, i was in the “i just look up skz smut” group LOL so i wanted to see again if there was anyone like me--which there is! This was more of my interest in seeing if some people view tumblr as “their smut dealer” AHA so that my initial motivation. I was surprised to see that this is not the case! out of 100 readers, 39 of them have their own non-smut blogs and the second largest group of 26 people use tumblr for smut exclusively. 

idk why, but when thinking of this question, it really got me thinking back to the question where i asked if reading smut is a seggsy secret, and there was the group of people who said that it is for them--i’m assuming that these people might be part of the group have non-smut blogs and read on the side teehee. 

at the same time, there is a combined 40 people who said that they use tumblr for smut purposes only which makes sense to me, as those who filled out my survey are readers of my smut blog if you catch my drift haha  

Writers: Do you read smut, or just write it? 

*56 responses correlate with those polled who identified as writers/both as mentioned above 

~My thoughts: this survey is really really cute for me to see bc it means that there is a whole support network or writers out there reading, supporting and here to hype other writers work!! if anything, as a writer because it takes so much time to write, it can become hard to find time to read, hence the “when i have time option lollll (*cough cough* me LOL) thank you all for your honesty with this question! 

5. General Thoughts and Conclusion 

Survey on Exposure 

~My thoughts: i kinda wanna close off this survey by getting on my soapbox for a sec lol. At least for me, the most common ways that readers found my blog were: looking up a tag, and from a repost. i think that this really goes to show the power of exposure and certain tactics that you can use to increate readership of your account! new readers, if you’re reading this and you’re just starting out, tagging your stuff is so so important! 

also, as i have said and so so, many other content creators have said countless times before, reposting is so crucial and it takes little to no effort to repost a creators work so that it might reach others! as a writers, we spend hours, and i mean hours creating content, editing, drafting, creating headers all out own time to publish something that we are proud of and for you to enjoy! it means the world to authors when you reblog their work and even more when you give feedback too because this is our passion! we write for free in the middle of our busy lives so the validation makes it all worth it!! 

Conclusion 

~phew! so that’s it! once again, i wanted to thank you all from the bottom of my heart from participating in this lil study! i really hope that it is helpful to writers and readers alike! i wanna give ya all the biiiiiigest Ro huggies!! 💕💕

as i mentioned above, the answers for the unpopular opinions will be made into their own post bc there is a ton of them and i didn’t want to clutter up this doc lol 

don’t ya ever forget that you are important, loved, and special! happy hornies my cuties ;) 

~R 🌹

6. Cute shit that ya’ll said that made me giggle (and hopefully makes you giggle too)

~you all are the light of my life!! each of these comments brought me so much happiness and i love you all so fkn much for that!! also, to those of you who said, “Ro date me” PLZ haha i will date you too!!! too all of the super sweet comments about my writing, thank you so so very much and thank you for reading! it means so much to me!! to all of the i love yous, ahhhh i love you toooooo  💕

“I DUNNO IM BAD AT FUNNY STUFF BUT KNOCK KNOCK I GUESS? -whos there 

RO 

-ro who 

Me, in chan voice: RObber ducky you're the one 

yeah... 

yeah 

bYE” 

“ I didn’t know changbin’s thighs were of such importance until I saw your username but now?? 👀 I am looking respectfully.” 

“ every time chan doesn’t reply to my bubble message i hold my breath and try to die💆‍♀️” 

“ here are my favorite emoji combos: 😐☝️ 😫🖐️ 😂🤏 (i use that one when i get a dick pick and it's rlly small but the person thinks its big-) “ 

“ you are EVIL for making me choose just ONE bias OT8 EXISTS OK!?” 

“ I hope this survey provides you with a lot of useful feedback! -sincerely a big tiddie committee member (you know the one)” [hehe yes i do hai M ;)] 

“ chan’s tiddies... that’s it.” 

“jeogiyo noona hokshi namjachingu isseoyo?“

“ Jeongin is appropriately baby bread because his face is puffy in the morning so it's kinda like yeast rising 👉👉 “ 

“ someone needs to tell hyunjin to put some vaseline or something on his cuticles like I love him a lot but his recent live made me scream sir your cuticles are hanging on for dear life please I'm literally begging you “ 

“ I squeal whenever I get a notification from you and my family think I’m secretly dating someone. It’s nice knowing that they think I can get someone during a pandemic 😁 “ [this one had me SENT] 

“i hope ur dreams are blessed with skz thighs.” 

“ HS Bin supremacy!!” 

“Sta” 

“Ro(ses) are red, violets are blue - DaVinci painted Mona, cause he couldn't find you :') “ 

“✨ dInG dOnG ✨ “ 

“You're doing God's work as a changbin stan xD “ [thank you so much aHA] 

“damn gorl, are you a wifi signal? cause i’m tryna connect 🤔🥴✌🏾 “ 

“Good luck with your survey! I hope you get a big response! You know what else is big..? 

 Chan's feet. (I'm sorry, that was my attempt to make you giggle but I'm clearly not a comedian)” 

“What's the internal temperature of a taun taun? Luke warm! (Haha sorry star wars joke) “ 

“egg“

“just because you’re garbage, doesn’t mean you can’t do great things. It’s called garbage can, not garbage cannot <3 “ 

“Soft-Dom Minho Agenda is the best agenda. I have spoken. Sincerely yours, Javi (@itsapapisongo) “ [this is the way javi] 

“Bang chan daddy supremacy” 

“ro, ro, ro your boat gently down skz’ dick hell yea.” [this also had me SENT] 

“stay smut writers should take “maknae on top” literally“

“idk man i’m just vibing. hope ur day is going well. (changbin voice) da DA da” 

Fin. 

~🌹~ 

Bunch of (Ro)ses! 

@minaamhh @dazzlehoseok @synnocence @jjewibeans @hyunsluvv @unexceptional-h @bobawithchaitea @lechanters @sailorhyunjinz @silencefavarchive @lunarskzzz  @yourdaddychan @bubblelixie @spnobsessedmemes @chaangbin​ @lmhmins @eunaeiekim

[kuromichad]

different subject that’s heavy on my mind rn but since i’m already being harsh let’s get into it. i wish it wasn’t automatically presumed to be some kind of truscum attitude when someone tries to express that different parts of The Trans Community have like, different needs and different risk levels and different experiences and that we have the ability to talk over each other, harm each other, etc... like when i put it that way people generally are like ‘of course that’s true!’ but is it ever really understood in practice? a number of people (not a large enough number, but still) are able to loosely understand ‘you can be trans and transphobic’ when it’s applied to the matter of transmisogyny but when a trans person tries to express distrust of or frustration with afab nb people due to how common it is that that category of person will, despite being trans/nb, espouse bioessentialist, anti-medical-transition, radfem-adjacent if not outright cryptoterf rhetoric, suddenly ‘trans people can be transphobic’ gets applied to... the person with a complaint about transphobia. 

because he’s clearly an evil truscum man! regardless of if the person making the complaint is a trans man or trans woman, oops, lol. he’s a bad person who is attacking and invalidating and totally hatecriming the heckin’ valid, equally at-risk transgender identity of “an afab woman who isn’t a woman except when she pointedly categorizes themself as a woman because being afab makes them a woman who is ‘politically aligned’ with women but she’s not an icky unwoke cis woman because they don’t like being forced into womanhood although Really When You Think About It 🤔 all women are dysphoric because obviously the pathologized medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in transgender people is something that equally applies to cis women just default existing under patriarchy 🤔, and no, equating these things totally does not imply anything reductive about or add a bizarre moral dimension to the idea of being transgender, whaaaaat, this woman who isn’t a woman doesn’t think there’s anything immoral or cowardly or misogynist or delusional about being transgender, they would never say that because THEY’RE transgender, except when she feels it’s important (constantly) to make clear that she’s Still A Woman Deep Down Inherently Despite Not Identifying As One, and none of this ever has any effect on how they treat the concept, socially and politically, of people who actually wholly identify with (and possibly medically transition to) a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, be it ‘the opposite gender’ or abstaining from binary gender altogether or ‘politically aligning’ with the ‘opposite’ gender from their asab. never ever!”

and like maybe that sounds like a completely absurd and hateful strawman to you! but in that case you’re either like, lucky, or optimistic, or ignorant. i’m literally not looking at random nb people and declaring that in My Truscum Opinion they’re ‘really a woman’ just because they’re not medically transitioning or meeting some arbitrary standard of mine. i am looking at self-identified afab nb people, who most often use she/they because, y’know, words mean things, especially pronouns, so people who are willingly ‘aligned with womanhood’ typically intentionally use she/her (sorry that i guess that’s another truscum take now!!! that pronouns mean things!!! the bigender transmasc who deliberately uses exclusively he/him wants it to invoke a perception he’s comfortable with!), who actively say the things listed above (in a non-sarcastic manner). 

like, the line between a person who says “i don’t claim to really not be my asab because i know no one would ever perceive me as anything else” because theyve internalized a defeatist attitude due to societal transphobia, and a person who says that because they... genuinely believe it’s impossible/ridiculous/an imposition to truly be transgender (in the traditional trans sense, beyond a vague nb disidentification with gender) and are actively contributing to the former person’s self loathing... is hard to define from a distance! i think plenty of people who are, in a sense, ‘tentative’ or like ‘playing close to home’ so to speak in their identity are ‘genuinely trans’ (whatever that may mean) and just going through a process. they might arrive at a different identity or might just eventually stop saying/believing defeatist stuff, who knows. but there are enough people saying it for the latter reason, or at least not caring if they sound that way, that it’s like, dangerous. it is actively incredibly harmful to other trans people. and it’s fucking ridiculous that it’s so difficult to criticize because you’ll always get the defense of “umm but i’m literally trans” and/or “well i’m just talking about ME, this doesn’t apply to other trans people” when it’s an attitude that very clearly seeps into their politics and the way they discuss gender.

because it’s just incredibly common for afab nb people (most typically those that go by she/they! since i’m aware that uh, i am also afab nb, but we clearly are extremely different, so that’s the best categorization i’ve got) to discuss gender in moralized terms, with the excuse of patriarchy/misogyny existing, which of course adds another difficult dimension to trying to criticize this because it gets the response of “don’t act like misandry is real” (it’s not, but being a dick still is) and “boohoo, let women complain about their oppressors” (this goes beyond ‘complaining’). a deliberate revocation of empathy/sympathy/compassion from men and projection of inherently malicious/brutish/cruel intent onto men (not solely in the justified generalizations ‘men suck/are dangerous’, but in specific interactions too) underpin a whole fucking lot of popular posts/discussions online, whether they’re political or casual/social, and it absolutely influences how people conceptualize and feel about transness. 

because ‘maleness is evil’ is still shitty politics even when you’ve slightly reframed it from the terf ‘trans women are evil because they’re Really Men and can never escape being horrific soulless brutes just as women can never escape being fragile morally superior flowers’ to the tumblr shethey “trans women who are out to me/unclockable are tolerable i guess because they’re women and women are good; anyone i personally presume to be a cis man, though, is still automatically evil, and saying trans men are Just As Bad is progressive of me, and it’s totally unrelated and apolitical that i think we should expand the concept of afab lesbianism so broadly that you can now be basically indistinguishable from trans men on literally every single level except for a declaration of ‘but i would never claim to be a man because i’m secure in the Innate Womanhood of the body i was born into, even as i medically alter that body because it causes me great gendered discomfort.’ none of this at all indicates that i feel there’s an immense moral/political gap between being an afab nb lesbian vs a straight trans man! it says nothing at all about my concept of ‘maleness’ and there’s no way this rhetoric bleeds into my perception of trans women and no way loudly talking about all this could keep trans people around me self-loathing and closeted, because i’m Literally Trans and Not A Terf!”

again, if that sounds like a hateful strawman, sorry but it’s not. i guess i’m supposed to be like ‘all of the many people ive seen saying these shitty things is an evil outlier who Doesn’t Count, and it’s not fair to the broad identity of afab shethey to not believe that every person who doesn’t outright say terfy enough things is a perfectly earnest valid accepting trans person who’s beyond criticism’ but like. this cannot be about broad validation. this can’t be about discarding all the bad apples as not really part of the group. we can’t be walking on eggshells to coddle what are essentially, in the end, Cis Feelings, because in the best cases this kind of rhetoric comes from naive people who are early and uncertain in their gender journey or whatever and are in the process of unraveling internalized transphobia, and in the easily observable worst cases these people are very literally redefining shit so that ‘actually all afab women are trans, spiritually, all afabs have dysphoria, we are all Equally oppressed by Males uh i mean cis men <3’ because, let’s be honest, they know that the moment they call themselves trans they get to say whatever they want about gender no matter how harmful it is to the rest of us. and those ideas spread like wildfire through the afab shethey “woman that’s not a woman” community that frankly greatly outnumbers other types of trans people online, because many of those people just do not have the experiences that lead you to really understand this shit and have to push back against concepts of gender that actively harm you as a trans person.

like that’s all i want to be able to say, is Things Are Different For Different Groups. and a willful ignorance of these differences leads to bad rhetoric controlling the overall discourse which gets people hurt. and even when concepts arise from it that seem positive and helpful and inclusive, in practice or in origin those ideas can still be upholding shit that gets other people hurt. like, i don’t doubt that many people are very straightforwardly happy and comfortable with an identity like ‘afab nb lesbian on testosterone’ and it would be ridiculous and hypocritical for me, ‘afab nb who wants to pass as a guy so he can comfortably wear skirts again,’ to act like that’s something that can’t or shouldn’t exist. it’s not about the identity itself, it’s about the politics that are popular within its community, and how the use of identities as moral labels with like, fucking pokemon type interactions for oppression effectiveness which directly informs the moral correctness of your every opinion and your very existence, is a shitty practice that gets people hurt and leads us to revoke empathy from each other.

like. sorry this is all over the place and long and probably still sounds evil because i haven’t thought through and disclaimered every single statement. but i’m like exhausted from living with this self-conscious guilt that maybe i’ve turned into a horrible evil truscum misogynist etc etc due to feeling upset by this seemingly inescapable approach to gender in lgbt/online circles that like, actively harms me, because when i vent with my friends all the stuff i’ve tried to explain here gets condensed down to referencing ‘she/theys’ as a category and that feels mean and generalizing and i genuinely dislike generalizations but the dread i feel about that category gets proven right way too often. it’s just like. this is not truscum this is not misgendering this is not misogyny. this is not about me decreeing that all transmascs have to be manly enough or dysphoric enough and all nbs have to be neatly agender and androgynous or something, i’m especially not saying that nb gender isn’t real lmao or even that it’s automatically wrong to partially identify with your asab; this is not me saying you can only medically transition for specific traditional reasons or that you don’t get a say on anything if you aren’t medically transitioning for whatever reason, now or ever. i just. want to be allowed to be frank about how... when there’s different experiences in a community we should like. acknowledge those differences and be willing to say that sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about or that what they’re saying is harmful. without the primary concern being whether people will feel invalidated by being told so. because these are like, real issues, that are more important than politely including everyone, because that method is just getting vulnerable people drowned out constantly.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

Hey I have no you have a difference of opinion about who ships what (in this case your post about the zutara podcast) but you don’t have the right to be right somebody’s opinion just because you don’t agree with them. People have a right to choose what they like & defend it as necessary. It’s not right to put people on blast because you disagree with them. You say you spread love and positivity but are ostracizing people who have a difference of opinion and telling people to block them due to anons and notifications on your blog? Why?

a few things

1) you sent this ask 24 times according to my notifs and idk if it’s a glitch or what, but i hope you’re pleased with how you’re spending your time

2) i’m allowed to think a ship is just dumb, y’know (although i don’t), and post about it on my own blog - the same way that someone has a right to make a podcast all about how terrible a “rival” ship is and berate that. i can think that’s stupid too, thought crime police

3) the post you’re referring to wasn’t even mine. didn’t realize my split second reblogs had to be morally aligned. 

4) i don’t really care if i ostracize people with a “difference of opinion” on something as ultimately small as shipping and if someone doesn’t like it they can just block or unfollow me. a ship shouldn’t be an identity, lol, and i’ve disliked z*tara fandom for almost 8 years now for hella good reason

5) i actually know one of the podcast co hosts (since we were in another fandom together) and she repeatedly harassed me and my friends, blamed us for a lot of gross shitty stuff, and has expressed very transphobic and racist opinions. 

but yeah me as a trans person expressing discomfort over someone being transphobic clearly goes against my moral belief that you should generally treat people with respect and kindness (until/unless they give you a reason not to). totally doesn’t align with anything consistently there

i’m also not a fucking idiot, clearly

[jadadtodd]

psa: this blog is strictly 18+

i’ve been getting new followers since i came back to tumblr and new people have been seeing my blog, so i feel like i need to reiterate a longstanding policy of mine: i do not follow minors.* i do not allow minors to follow me.** i do not befriend minors in fandom spaces.

*if you are a minor and i have unknowingly followed you, please let me know so i can rectify it. i do my best to not follow anyone underage, but i’m only human and not everyone makes their age clear.

**if you are a minor and you follow me, please unfollow me. if you need more than just my desire not to have you follow me to do so, keep reading.

if you’re a minor and want to follow me, i get it. i do. i spent every single one of my underage teen years and the years even before i was a teen on tumblr or in fandom spaces. i followed and interacted with adults. i had fandom friends who were in their 30s when i was 15. i get it. but i’m not okay with being the adult in your fandom life.

that’s something that should be respected without question, of course. but in case you need something more to understand, here are the reasons i’m not comfortable interacting with minors in fandom spaces:

i’m 25 years old. i’m a full fledged adult. i’m not comfortable being friends with minors even in my daily life. i have friendly interactions with my underage coworkers, yes. but i draw the line at that. in fandom and online in general i’m even more strict in that i don’t want any interactions with anyone underage, period.

i post nsfw content sometimes. you might be okay with viewing that content and that’s totally valid. exploring sexuality in your teen years is very important and i’m completely in support of it! but i’m not comfortable being the person who shows you or gives you access to that content.

i’ve been in fandom communities in some capacity for over 15 years now. yes, since i was in single digits. that alongside my age can create an inherent power imbalance between me and any minor.

the amount of my life i’ve spent in fan communities also means i know intimately and personally how toxic adult/minor friendships in these communities can be. even when neither party has intention for it to be anything but friendly and good. i don’t want a part in that.

being a Veteran Fan Consumer also means i probably have different views on fandoms than you do. i’ve been in these spaces a long ass time, folks. my experiences have fostered opinions about what belongs in fandoms, how they should be policed, how they should be interacted with, who should interact with them, what content belongs in them, etc. etc. and these opinions very often don’t align with those of a lot of the younger people in these spaces who have been here a lot less time. which is to say: you probably won’t like my views on fandoms, the type of content i consume, the type of ships/content i enjoy, and even some of the things i post or ways i use tumblr. that’s fine. your opinions are yours and that’s valid. but leave me out of it.

there’s more, but i’m tired and really Going Through some shit so i can’t think about this further. i’ll probably update this to add more points later on. but for now: just don’t follow me if you’re underage. don’t seek interactions with me if you’re underage. i don’t want to be a part of your fandom life. respect that.

[potentially-lemongrass]

hey! um i wanted to ask a bi queerstake member whose dated about this, um I want to marry in the temple and I know that means I'll have to marry a AMAB person, is it bad that I want a nb/nb aligned masc person or at least a bisexual or asexual partner? i feel like i wont find someone like that, I just want someone who understands and is also queer but also fits kind of with the church narrative. is that weird? you dont have to answer this I just wanted to ask since no one talks about it i guess

honestly my perspective on dating has changed a lot since meeting B so I might say something completely different to what I was saying in previous months. (and of course, as always, this is just Ryn’s Opinion TM so take what you will). Also, looong post incoming as this is also a bit of a life update/journal entry since it’s been a while. I’m using B to respect his privacy and as always, I know that i’m super personal on here but please don’t try to doxx me or find out more than I’m willing to share <3 I’m slightly paranoid so I feel like I always need to say that. 

ANYWAY, I am still decidedly bisexual ✌ and so I’ll fight against bi erasure all day long since I’m a cis woman dating a cishet man. I will never be a straight woman and B totally understands and respects that. However, it also doesn’t exactly matter?? since I’ve chosen him so I’m not dating any men OR women.

Before meeting him, I was thinking about dating in the abstract especially since I really never had a serious relationship with anyone. I was fantasizing about dating girls and feeling deeply cheated that the Church was robbing me of that opportunity. I was angry, deeply depressed, and just generally not in a good mental place.

Coming to college was when I decided I wasn’t mentally going to “do” Church anymore. I skipped a few Sundays, and still signed up for Institute but I was angry and very determined to distance myself from the Church. I had to know if I even wanted to do this with my life and part of my master plan was getting a girlfriend. (although with the caveat that dating a girl, *just* to date a girl and not a guy, isn’t the best plan and I should have been more focused on romance)

I didn’t expect to meet B and when I did, I was deeply worried about getting a man who was “Peter Priesthood” and I would never be able to share my queer identity with him. B isn’t at all like that. He spent enough time around the queer kids in high school to really get a feel for the struggle and he’s never ever made me feel weird about it. He’s even encouraged and asked me to talk about it so I didn’t feel like I had to hide anything.

I came to two conclusions (well, maybe two and a half). 1) I’m definitely bisexual. Over the summer, I had briefly wondered if I was a lesbian and comp het was just taking its toll. Nope. Men are hot and my bf is absolutely a snack. So if anyone is looking for advice about figuring out sexuality, just try dating someone. I totally believe that you can know your sexuality without experience but it most definitely helps if you know what you’re talking about.

2) I missed church. I hadn’t realized it until I walked away but I truly do have a testimony and I longed for the presence of the Spirit in my life. So I chose to turn back. I read my scriptures and prayed sincerely and listened at church. No, I’m not entirely happy with the Church. There are things that make me cry and cringe and grit my teeth, but I have decided that I want to be here.

Part of that realization was B. My friend asked me if I could see myself getting married in the temple and I realized suddenly that I could. Suddenly it wasn’t a faceless man dragging me into a suburban life of mommy minivans and LDS conformity. It was the thought of B and I, holding hands and promising each other forever in the most eternal sense and it was me, making covenants with Heavenly Father. He and I both know that I’ve always had real joy in my life when I was doing my best to keep His commandments.

What I really needed was to accept my queer identity and feel like I could date girls if I wanted to. Finding B and finding my testimony were linked, as wild it is to say.

Not to say that that road would be easy. I’m not even close to being ready for marriage. B and I are figuring things out, both between us and with the Church. If faith was neat and simple, it wouldn’t be such an enduring theme throughout all of history.

 But maybe sometime in the next 5 years? Maybe in 2-3 years? I might be Mrs. Lemongrass. (pffft yes we’ll assume we’re taking my tumblr url as a last name lmao)

SO now you’re wondering about how that applies to your actual question. There will definitely be people in the Church who match what you’re looking for. My philosophy is that there really is someone out there for everyone. You’re trying to forecast for the future which is great and necessary but love doesn’t happen in the abstract. A Relationship TM isn’t some nebulous concept or a copy and paste letter. It’s what happens when you and a specific other person like each other a whole lot and it goes from there. Your relationship won’t look like mine or your parents or anyone else’s because you and your future partner are unique people.

So you totally may find someone in the Church who is queer and down for a temple marriage. Keep in mind as well that you may also find someone in the Church who is cishet and that works too. Just because someone isn’t queer doesn’t mean they can’t understand--assuming no one will ever understand you has always felt arrogant and dismissive of the power of empathy imho--so a cishet guy could be just as amazing.

So there’s no need to feel bad about wanting a specific type of person but don’t close yourself off! Enjoy the journey and put yourself out there with confidence. No one is good at relationships; they’re inherently awkward. You’ll say dumb stuff or fart in front of them or they’ll overshare and you’ll panic. Just trust the process, laugh at yourself, and realize the only thing you can really do is live in *this* moment. I hope this doesn’t sound condescending at all! This is just all my big sister advice that I can think of. Remember that you are loved, always, always, always by our Heavenly Parents and They’ll help you figure stuff out.

[woman-loving]

@eiriee replied to your post “@butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker replied to your post “I hate to say it, but...”

Do you have any posts on your thoughts regarding Bi: Notes? It's been on my shelf for years & I've read some of it but not finished.

I do, but they’re older and mostly rambling. The trouble I have with the book is that there’s so much content and framing that I disagree with that it’s hard to hold it all in my head and draw out a structured criticism for it. It’s been quite a while since I looked through it, but here are a couple of things I discussed in my older posts.

So, you know how some people will say that hostility toward women-loving women or woman-woman couples that’s expressed in the language of “lesbians” or “dykes” isn’t really about bi women? Eisner pulls a similar move to put bi women and biphobia at the center of harassment against WLW. They have a section on Sexual Violence in Chapter Four where they talk about men pressuring bi women (and also lesbians) to engage in threesomes or “perform bisexuality” by making out with other women. They then say (bolding mine):

At this point, some of you might be wondering why I consider these types of violence against bisexual women [men harassing women who make out in public, men asking if “they can watch,” etc] as biphobic rather than lesbophobic, since lesbians are often harassed in very similar ways to the ones I described. This is biphobia, however, rather than lesbophobia because this type of harassment is based on biphobic beliefs and perceptions even when they are aimed against lesbians. As explained throughout this chapter, the logic of this type of sexual violence is that bisexual women are “actually straight,” or only performing their bisexuality for male pleasure. When lesbians are harassed in the same way, they are first presumed to be bisexual, and then attached with the same biphobic notions used against bi women. What happens here is a combination of lesbophobia and biphobia: Lesbians first have their lesbian identity erased, and then are presumed to be “actually straight” as a result of being presumed as bisexual. Thus, biphobia constitutes the center here, and remains biphobia even when it is aimed at lesbians.

What we can see here is that this type of biphobia not only harms bisexual women, but also monosexual women, as it is also aimed against them. As explained above, lesbians often receive the same type of harassment as bisexual women when being affectionate or sexual in public. Heterosexual women are often also subject to pressure by strait men to perform bisexuality (privately or publicly) for their pleasure. In many communities (especially ones that consider themselves "alternative," "open," or "liberal"), performative bisexuality might be a standard that all women must meet. This means that in those communities, women are expected and pressured into being sexual with other women for the satisfaction of straight men. Although this mostly harms bisexual women (who are presumed to want this simply because they identify as bisexual), it also works against monosexual women.

What all of this means is that biphobia against women is not only the concern of bisexual women, but of all women regardless of their sexuality identity. [...]

This differs from the “misdirected lesbophobia” discourse, because they’re arguing that all women can be negatively affected by biphobia, and present this as a reason that people should take biphobia seriously. The people who argue that expressions of lesbophobia toward bi women are just “misdirected” are more often emphasizing a disconnect between the effect it has on bi women versus lesbians, and want to see this hostility as “really” only about lesbians (so that “dyke” as a politicized identity is the cultural property of lesbians exclusively). So Eisner’s not being as stingy with the centrality they claim for bisexual subjects in this type of harassment, but it’s still a shit move and denies a lot of ground to what can be considered “about” lesbians.

Ironically, I think Eisner and the “misdirected lesbophobia” camp talk about lesbophobia in a similar way, where the subject of “lesbophobia” must be understood--even by homophobes--as a woman who is exclusively attracted to women. The “misdirected lesbophobia” camp say that “a woman who is exclusively attracted to women” is what’s really on the homophobe’s mind when he calls a woman “dyke,” and therefore the insult can’t be about bi women, while Eisner presumes that a man harassing a woman to perform for him must believe that she’s genuinely open to men and therefore cannot really see her as a lesbian.

I think both sides misunderstand the slippages that occur when people see expressions of woman-women eroticism. I would argue that homophobia against women (which I would just call lesbophobia) often involves a denial that woman-woman eroticism is real/final, and that any women should be permitted to have sexual relations and identifications outside of particular heterosexualities. In other words, it’s possible for someone to know that there are women in the world who call themselves “lesbians” and claim to only like women, and to believe that this phenomenon is bad, without believing that “women who only like women” actually exist. If such a person argues that “lesbians” are just women who can’t get a man (an argument which presumes they want men), this is still a message about what self-identified “lesbians” are like, even though it totally dismisses their own understanding of their lesbianism. But going further, this message isn’t just “about” self-identified lesbians either, because it’s implicitly a message about all woman-woman eroticism and identifications, including bi women’s identity and desire toward women. Arguably, it’s even about women more broadly, in that it suggests that getting a man is a central preoccupation for women, and that perceived rebellious from women can be dismissed as a petulant reaction to failure in this area, rather than a reflection of agency and goals beyond patriarchal expectations.

In any case, it’s inaccurate to claim that this kind of harassment can’t really be “about” lesbians. Eisner’s logic isn’t consistent here, as you’ll notice. If a lesbian is treated as though she were open to men, they reason that actions toward her are reflective of attitudes about bi women specifically, not lesbians. But when a bi woman is treated as though she were “actually straight,” they don’t conclude that actions toward her must reflect attitudes toward straight women, not bi women or lesbians. There also isn’t an option for lesbians to be directly perceived as “actually straight,” even though this isn’t uncommon. Any suggestion that a lesbian might be open to men automatically moves the topic to bi women, meaning that there’s a whole huge area of lesbophobia that fundamentally has nothing to do with lesbians. (I think this move is cruel and outrageous, even if it’s a reversal of a move often used against bi women.) I also think they make the mistake of presuming that men only pressure women whom they think will be open to their advances. While the idea that women might eventually “like it” can be used as rationalization for this behavior, I think the behavior is rooted more in a simple lack of concern for women’s interests and boundaries, when men expect that they can get away with ignoring these.

Eisner makes similar moves in other places. Here they are talking about “lesbian” porn:

Following all of this, I think it would be more accurate to discuss “lesbian” porn in terms of bisexuality. If we follow from the sexual acts performed by the women appearing in these types of scenes, it would be very hard not to notice that bisexuality is here at work. The women in scenes titled lesbian have sex with each other, as well as with men. Even in scenes where no man is present at all, the logic behind the activity is still bisexual, since the women are perceived to be performing for a cis straight male audience.

These representations of bisexuality, in turn, contribute to the cultural construction of female bisexuality as we've seen it in the media depictions above. The media take up on the pornographic logic of bisexuality and send the same messages, but in covert ways. Thus, looking into pornographic representations of bisexual women might help us shed light on social and cultural treatment of female bisexuality in general.

Instead of recognizing the possibility for slippages in meaning, or that there can be inaccurate messages about lesbians as well as bi women (e.g. lesbian sexuality can also be regarded as a performance for men), Eisner finds in these representations an essential and exclusive bisexuality. Now, I do think that media representations of “lesbians” also inform attitudes toward bi women, that looking at them can be useful, and that representations of “lesbians” can simultaneously be representations of bisexuality. But I think it’s a silly exercise to claim that “lesbian” porn is only depicting bisexuality, as if the (fictionalized) dynamics depicted in media have their own independent and singular reality which can be empirically determined. Just a couple paragraphs above this, they obverse that “[t]he women's sexuality is irrelevant since the definitions are not about them but about the men fucking or watching them.” They should have gone a little bit farther with this idea, in my opinion!

While there are times when it makes sense, I think there can also be a danger in treating bisexuality as a singular expression, encompassing same-gender and man-woman relations, when these relations have very different positions in society. I think Eisner tends to treat bisexuality as a singular, marginalized expression that needs protection, including from gay people, in a way that can end up aligning with heterosexism. I don’t remember if this idea featured in their book, but they once made a post saying:

All gay and lesbian readings of mainstream movies and TV are based in bisexual erasure. Because in order to read characters as gay or lesbian, it is necessary to erase the character’s different-gender attraction and relationships.

It’s telling that they’re talking about “characters” having different-gender attraction, because of course these sexually-unmarked, mainstream “characters” are actually imagined, depicted, and normally received as straight. Eisner is again employing some weird media analysis where characters, even across individual imaginings (i.e. from the original creator’s depiction to a fan depiction), seem to have an independent reality. So interest in man-woman relations is an essential part of the character, always. Then, when you want to imagine that the character is interested is same-gender relations, you can only add that as an additional fact, thus making the character bisexual. And then, by becoming part of a (hypothetical) singular bisexual expression which is uniformly marginalized, canon man-woman relations now need protection against gay readings that would “erase” them. Even though these are actually straight characters in heteronormative media. The end result is that we’re meant to always uphold man-women relations as integral to a character’s (or anyone’s?) sexuality and identity.

In general, my impression when reading the book was that Eisner solely wants to look at identity or group belonging as the site of oppression, and doesn’t want to give any attention to the ways that man-woman relations themselves may be relatively valued, legitimized, and enforced over same-gender relations. I can understand the reluctance to look at those processes, since bi people’s potential engagement in man-woman arrangements is often used to deny their sexualities and the possibility that they could face any problems, or even an intensification of problems in some areas over lesbians or gay men. But these processes are still an important part of patriarchal gender systems, and need to be part of the analysis. I don’t have a good quote for it, but this one might suggest a bit of that line of thought: 

The idea of passing as an act of disguise presumes an essence of identity. Without a "true core," a disguise becomes impossible, for the very meaning of disguise comes from the discrepancy between what one "is" and what one is "seen" and "understood" to be. However, instead of being an essentialist notion, passing can subvert these presumptions by showing, in practice, that appearances--including one's very body--are no guarantee for the "truth" of one's identity. From this point of view, passing becomes particularly useful in demonstrating the way in which all identities and appearances are socially constructed, the way identities are written into our very bodies, and the enormous fragility of these constructs themselves.

In the case of bisexuality, we might look at society's insistent attempts to naturalize both homosexuality and heterosexuality, appealing to bodies, genes, hormones, and brains in order to establish that "this" (the sexuality in question) is inborn, natural, and immutable. Under this logic, one is either "born" gay or "born" straight, and thus any performance of their desires is "true to its nature." Being in a same-gender relationship presumes homosexuality, and being in a different-gender relationship presumes heterosexuality, because one's relationship choices are understood to reflect one's inner essence. Bisexuality— and bisexual passing—short-circuits this circular logic by showing that “acting gay” or “acting straight” does not necessarily equate with “being gay” or “being straight.” It allows us to distrust visual presentations and to deconstruct claims of inner essences. In this way, bisexuality may again be one way out of rigid identity constructs, a way of resisting both the lines of separation imposed by them and the hierarchies built upon them.

That’s nice, but you actually don’t need to imagine that same-gender acts stem from a different innate character in order to condemn them, or to institutionalize heterosexuality to the detriment of other pursuits. You don’t need naturalized concepts of essential heterosexuality and homosexuality in order to have a “hierarchy” among social arrangements and practices. In fact, ambiguity between subjects and the inability to finally “prove” that a person is one way or another can actually be beneficial to oppressive systems. When there’s ambiguity, more people can come under scrutiny and face demands to continuously prove themselves by conforming to gendered expectations or distancing themselves from marginalized subjects and practices.

That goes back to my original complaint that bi theorists focus too much on minority sexual discourses. Man-woman sexual relations and kinship can be institutionalized (while same-gender ones are stigmatized or denied) without any reference to “heterosexuality” as one of multiple sexual orientations. It does NOT need a corresponding “homosexuality.” The “gay-straight binary” is not a crucial linchpin within systems of gender. These discourses on sexual orientation do exist and do have more institutionalized backing now, so that more people are now forced to engage with them at some points. But I still don’t see them as really universal or fundamental to gender/patriarchy overall. I think the exclusive focus on discourses of “sexual orientation” leads to distorted analysis, because there’s just more going on in society.

There were just so many things they said that I objected to, and I really just don’t agree with their whole approach.

Although, I was originally complaining about another paper I was reading, which seems to be a Master’s thesis (although that’s hard to believe, because it’s so bad). It’s “The Bisexual To Be Corrected: Interrogating The Threat And Recuperation Of Women's Femme Bisexuality,” which can be found here. This was one part that I thought was especially... lackluster:

As several women I interviewed point out, heteropatriarchy needs people to be monosexual, or attracted to only one gender, in order to neatly hierarchize. It is rather difficult to maintain the disenfranchisement of a group if that group is incoherent, with its members presenting in different ways that shift, slip, and take on a variety of meanings. The notion that women can be attracted to men, women, and other genders simultaneously is a threat, because it points to the fact that perhaps masculinity and femininity, men and women, are not such polar opposites at all... and if men are not the powerful, aggressive, dominant opposites of women, why should they be at the top of the hierarchy? If masculinity is not the opposite of femininity, then perhaps all men are more intimately related to femininity than they would like to think. This line of thought destabilizes the patriarchal order, so monosexism and biphobia punish bisexuals for their attraction to multiple genders—and more specifically, for destabilizing the gender binary. Bisexuality must be erased, invisible, and invalid because it threatens core values of patriarchy that organize and define our culture. [...]

Again, this relies heavily on the idea that clarity between groups is necessary for hierarchy, and that ambiguity is automatically destabilizing rather than beneficial. (Like, not only does ambiguity extend the circulation of the power-effects of these discourses among more subjects, as Storr would say, but it also provides a measure of flexibility to the system: if you can’t condemn and/or recuperate something using one approach, you can try a contradictory approach.) Even beyond that, the idea that you need “facts” and “consistency” in your oppressive ideology is obviously baseless. The author’s understanding of heteropatriarchy is again focused only on categories of people, even though behavior itself can be regulated (and categorized), and everybody’s behavior is subject to regulation within systems of gender. While I think that gender dualism is very relevant to how bisexuality is understood, my thinking is more that bisexuality won’t be a non-issue until gender dualism is undermined, and less that the very existence of bisexuals inevitably results in the undermining of gender dualism. This paper also seems guided by the goal of uncovering intrinsic and maybe unilateral subversiveness in certain groups of people, and I’ve grown kinda w(e)ary of that.

[adobe-outdesign]

Little something for everyone while y’all are in quarantine. Part 2 coming whenever.

Transcript under the cut:

Five Nights at Freddy’s. Where do we even start with this one? FNAF is probably one of the most confusing games out there when it comes to trying to figure out what the hell happened in it. Everyone has their own opinions and interpretations, so I figured I’d provide my own.

Do keep in mind that I’m not going to cover every single part of the lore, as some of it’s fairly self-explanatory. Instead, I’m going to focus mostly on FNAF 4, as that’s where this Gordian Knot of confusion really stems from.

Be warned, this video’s going to contain something truly scary: OPINIONS. [scream effect] Yes, my views on the lore are much different than everyone else’s, so don’t get your springlocks set off just because my theories don’t align with yours. Because for starters…

[Why I don’t think Michael is the brother]

[Mob noises]

Okay, okay, hear me out. Basically, there are two main family in FNAF: There’s the Aftons, comprised of William, Elizabeth and Michael. Then there’s the - is this really their name? Really? okay - Emilys, comprised of Henry and Charlie.

However, in the books Charlie had a brother named Sammy. So the question is, is Sammy canon? And the answer is yes: During Stage 01, we see one of the kids disappear when left alone with Spring Bonnie, which parallels Sammy slash Charlie’s kidnapping in Fredbear’s by William.

This raises another question though: Who is Sammy in canon, then? And I’ll jut outright say it: He’s the Bitten Child. Yeah, I’m kind of amazed more people don’t realize this. The Fredbear Plush is implied to be possessed by Charlie, as its talk about putting the Bitten Child back together parallels the Puppet giving cake in Happiest Day, and the empty girl’s room indicates that the Bitten Child has a dead sister - her being the Plush explains why the Fredbear Plush cares so much about the welfare of this random kid.

Likewise, Charlie and Sammy were twins. The Bitten Child and Charlie have the same blocky sprites, and they both have brown hair and brown eyes.

Most importantly, the Bitten Child is spirited to look exactly like the Puppet. Given that he isn’t the one possessing it, the only way this makes sense if the two were related.

Finally, the Bitten Child freaks the hell out when approached by an employee in a Fredbear suit, and the Fredbear plush says that he’ll “know what happens if he catches you”. Many people believe this means the Bitten Child witnessed the children being murdered, but it’s too early in the timeline for that - Phone Guy says in 2 that the Freddy’s where the murders occurred was shut down and left to rot afterward. The restaurant in 4 is still open, meaning the murders haven’t occurred yet - given some other context, it’s likely they died in 1985.

The only other incident the Bitten Child could be reacting to… would be the kidnapping back in Fredbear’s, where William stole one of the twins while in a Spring Bonnie suit. And the only way he would know about it is if he was there during the kidnapping - which is enough for me to say with confidence that the Bitten Child is indeed Sammy.

Also, Sister Location has a lot of kidnapping references. [I kidnapped you.]

Especially in the Immortal and the Restless. Vlad represents William throughout the games - not dong much in FNAF 1, working the night shift in 2, being in the burning building in 3, and the hidden scene representing Baby not killing Michael who she thinks is William. And what is said every episode?

[The baby isn’t mine]

The baby isn’t his because Sammy literally isn’t William’s child; he’s Henry’s.

However, if the Bitten Child is Sammy, then that means this [Older Brother footage] cannot be Michael.

Now, I know all of you smart people out there are already thinking the obvious: The books are an AU. Couldn’t Sammy be the one kidnapped in canon, thus allowing Michael to still be the Brother? And to that I say: …Yeah. If you want to work with Michael being the Brother, then this is the best way to do it, and it’s entirely possible this is the correct answer. …But with that said, I’m not entirely convinced.

[Why Charlie was kidnapped and not Sammy]

For starters, there’s the simple question of motivation. Why would WIlliam be raising Henry’s kid? Killing kids is kind of his M.O.. Even in the books, he killed the child he kidnapped. The idea of him kidnapping and raising a kid is even brought up in the Fourth Closet… then dismissed because it would be out of character for him, which would be strange if he did exactly that in canon.

As established earlier, Sammy also remembers the kidnapping, which would make it weird if he was the one kidnapped and yet is just allowed to freely wander the neighborhood. What’s to stop him from telling someone else, or even just running away?

Moving on to actual evidence, the map in SL’s breaker room lists the FNAF 4 house and the minigame house as two separate observation areas. This could be to differentiate the two for the player, but I don’t know why they’d be separated in-universe unless they were two separate houses. This would also explain why the living rooms don’t look the same and why the grandfather clock is in two different locations.

Likewise, the Fredbear Plush has either a camera or a walkie-talkie in it to spy on Sammy. However, the private room also reveals that William has the FNAF 4 gameplay house bugged. He shouldn’t need to use the Fredbear Plush to spy on Sammy, given that he can watch him both through the house cameras and the (presumable) cameras in Fredbear’s - unless Sammy is still in Henry’s house, which would force William to slip a camera into the place discreetly.

Speaking of the minigame house, there are a few parallels between it and Henry’s house in the books. The house was connected to an underground location in the Twisted Ones, just like it’s connected to the Sister Location in canon. And one of the rooms contains a tiny toy animatronic - just like the ones Henry built for Charlie in the Silver Eyes.

Continuing on that train of thought, let’s look at that tiny Toy Mangle. Assuming the Toy Chica principle is in place here - that being that the literal toys in this game look the same as the Toy Animatronics - the Mangle here looks like the FNAF 2 version of Mangle, not like William’s Funtime Foxy, pointing to it being Henry’s creation and not William’s. The SL extras even reveal that Funfox was supposed to be purple at first, which doesn’t make sense if it was supposed to match the tiny toy version.

But perhaps one of the biggest pieces of evidence regarding this toy is in Mangle’s Quest. While walking, you can encounter a huge silhouette of the Puppet… which makes Mangle look toy-sized in comparison. This only makes sense if this room was Charlie’s, and the Mangle toy was hers.

This also makes sense considering that Sister Location didn’t exist at the time of 4′s release. Scott claimed you could solve the lore back then using only the first four games, and if this was Charlie’s room, you could do it by combining the knowledge of the Fredbear Plush with Sammy’s missing sister and Charlie from the novels. If this is Elizabeth’s room, the only way that could be would be if it was retconned into place behind the scenes.

Additionally, I don’t think Elizabeth’s death is the correct date for this room to be empty in 1983. Handunit says that CBEAR didn’t open until after Freddy’s closed, as it gave them the opportunity to move into the entertainment space without competition. I’d assume this also applies to the original Circus Baby’s Pizza World, which indicates Elizabeth didn’t die until after FNAF 1. Given that Michael still has eyes in FNAF 1, SL in general had to have taken place after it - it’s unlikely William waited 10+ years to finally send Michael to save her, so her death being after FNAF 1 makes more sense timeline-wise.

Meanwhile, Charlie died in the very first Freddy’s location, before the other murders. HW confirms the FNAF 4 location was this first Freddy’s, meaning that she died in 1983. This not only lines up with her death date in the Fourth Closet, but also explains why the room in 4 hasn’t been cleaned out; she only died recently.

This would also explain why Henry claims that no-one was there to save Charlie. It’s his restaurant; wouldn’t he have, like, been there and been watching her if he was the one who brought her in?

And finally, I do have one massive piece of evidence that I feel proves the idea that Charlie is the one who was kidnapped.

[Chica School Days opening]

I know, I know, stay with me. Each of Toy Chica’s husbandos in these cutscenes represent one of William’s victims and how he killed them, as proven by her talking about running over a dog which aligns with Susie’s death in both Fruity Maze and the novels. There are a total of six people she targets.

However, that’s the thing - there are six victims, one for each of the original five - and the Puppet. That means Charlie’s death has to be included in here. And yet, none of the deaths line up with what we see in the minigames… unless you assume Charlie was the one kidnapped. In which case, there is one that fits…

[Toy Chica talking about kidnapping]

There are six deaths, so Charlie must be included. If the only thing that lines up with her death is the kidnapping scene, then Charlie must have been the one who was kidnapped, not Sammy.

But that brings us back to the original problem: If Charlie was the one who was kidnapped, Sammy is still living in Henry’s house. Which means Michael is not the Brother.

[Why do people think Michael is the Brother?]

Let’s move on to explaining away some of the evidence for Michael being the Brother.

The first and most obvious piece is that we play as the Brother in FNAF 4. Michael lives in the FNAF 4 house, so he must be the Brother. Which is a fair piece of evidence. However, I do think there’s something that explains this: Midnight Motorist.

Yes, the reason this minigame has perplexed so many fans might be because they’ve been looking at the entirety of FNAF 4 wrong. Let’s start with the Yellow Guy, who’s likely Henry. Why? Well, he’s driving William’s purple car and yet isn’t purple himself, so he can’t be William yet must have a connection to him. Henry and William were friends and business partners, so the idea of this being a company car or one of them just borrowing it for the weekend makes sense.

Likewise, every minigame and cutscene in FNAF 6 pertains to one of the main characters. The Puppet minigame for, well, the Puppet; Fruity Maze for William slash Scraptrap; and Candy Cadet’s stories for Scrap Baby and Molten Freddy. Henry is the only main character who wouldn’t have something in-game pertaining to him unless this sprite is him.

Moving on, we see him interact with a green sprite. I’d wager this is Clay Burke, for no other reason other than the sprite is presumably color-coded because we know the character, and because Clay is a cop and therefore could easily kick Henry out a bar.

Out a bit from Henry’s house, we see a grave, and around the back of the house there’s a smashed window and an animatronic footprint. In the books, the Twisted animatronics specifically targeted Henry’s family, kidnapped people through aggressive means, and buried themselves during the day. Given that the Twisteds are just AU Nightmare animatronics, it’s likely one of William’s robots was trying to kidnap another one of Henry’s kids.

However, the kid being targeted doesn’t seem to be Sammy or Charlie. Henry’s wife is still present and this is a different house than the one in FNAF 4, suggesting this is early on in the timeline, as Henry got a divorce and moved shortly after the kidnapping. The kid that was targeted here was old enough to lock himself in his room and make a run for it, suggesting it wasn’t one of the two babies but rather the Brother from 4, who’s certainly enough of an Angsty Teen to lock himself in his room several times.

As we can see by the footprints and Henry’s blase attitude, it looks like the Brother escaped from the animatronic… this time. It’s likely William kept trying to kidnap him until he succeeded, locking him into his house once he was successfully captured after the Bite. The dialogue from the FNAF 4 trailer might actually apply to William; he brought home the Brother, he think he sees a ghost haunting him which is why he’s observing him in the first place, and he treats this whole thing like a sick game.

So with the FNAF 4 house out of the way, there’s only a few other pieces of evidence. The logbook shows Michael having drawn N. Fredbear… but given that the Nightmare animatronics were still in his house, it’s likely he would have seen then at some point during the night.

The logbook also indicates that Michael is Mike Schmidt from FNAF 1, with his pseudonym being a combo of his own first name and “Eggs Benedict”. FNAF 4 plays like FNAF 1 does, and you can hear one of Phone Guy’s calls in the background, meaning the Brother must have worked in the FNAF 1 location and heard Phone Guy’s messages. And while Michael does fit these requirements… there is one other character who fits them even better.

[Continued in Part 2]

[laundryandtaxes]

the thing i find absurd is how you have some pretty radical opinions but when someone questions how that aligns with statements you make, the asker is just reading into things like some idiot. if you can't take a question i'd hate to see how you handle actual criticism. as if working in general -- let alone service industry work -- is romantic lmao. a "communist" romanticising this type of work... i've seen it all.

If you're are unable to understand what someone might call "romantic" about the provision of genuinely delicious food and genuinely delicious beverages to people who maybe saved up for a full month to be able to have a really excellent meal with their partner or their family, or what someone might call "romantic" about the very specific kind of bond you form with coworkers that you often eat two meals a day with (family meal before work and a drink and snacks after), or what someone might call "romantic" about the bond between service industry workers who work in totally different places and have the same baseline gripes and same baseline triumphs, and if you feel the need to square every emotional impulse of yours with your politics, those are all personal problems and problems with YOUR individual relationship to how you pay your bills, no matter how much you attempt to make those problems mine 🤷🏾‍♂️

[decimadragonoid]

The Undertale - RETRACE Rulebook

For those who have read my fan comic project Undertale - RETRACE so far here or on Deviantart, we have reached the end of Chapter 1. Over time, more chapters will be posted. First off, thank you guys so much for tuning in. For those who are just starting to read this comic, welcome aboard! For those who haven't played Undertale yet but are interested in this story, I suggest you play the game through to the end, but it's your own decision.

Before we continue further into the story, there are some rules I'd like you to follow over the course of this comic. I will post this rulebook on existing pages. The rules are as follows...

   * “Is this an Undertale AU?” - No. It's not. This story isn't an AU or alternate timeline, but if YOU want to identify this story as such, then by all means, go ahead. I won't stop you. It’s up to you to decide.

- This story is a new series of events a couple years or so after the original events of Undertale.  * "Why the title 'Undertale - RETRACE?' Why not something simple like 'RetraceTale?'" - As I interpret this story as a new series of events a couple years or so after the Post-Pacifist Ending, calling this story "RetraceTale" or "Underretrace" and sugarcoating it to make my fanmade story known to the fandom doesn't appeal to me, nor is it something I see as beneficial to my vision of the game and my fan project overall. - Long story short, my story is set in the original universe in some way, shape, or form.

   * “What’s up with these new character personalities?” - I just felt it’d be appropriate for the characters to go through certain changes in character development, personality, and intellect. The story is set a couple years after the original Undertale after all.

   * “Are there going to be any RESETS?” - No. Plain and simple.

- In this story, the RESETS no longer exist. Although the word may be reintroduced a couple times or so, no one can RESET anymore, not even Frisk. They decided to willingly discard it forever, and they understand that any future actions will be permanent. They burned this bridge a long time ago.

   * “No! You can’t do that! What if someone dies and it can’t be fixed??”

   * “Keep it, but don’t abuse it.”

- No. Time shouldn’t even be messed with. Not ever.

   * “What’s the purpose of RETRACE?” - The purpose of my Undertale story RETRACE is to create my own interpretation and dig deeper into Frisk’s past to see what life was like for them before they fell into the Underground, as well as unearth a new antagonist.

- Questions include the following…    * What was life like for Frisk before they fell into the Underground?

   *  Did they suffer amnesia?

   *  What were Frisk’s parents like?

   *  What if Frisk actually met a monster long before they fell into the Underground?

   *  Was something or someone responsible for their misfortune before they fell into the Underground and returned to the surface with the monsters, and if so, is that person still around?

   *  If this person was responsible for Frisk’s past events, whatever they may be, is that person still around, intending to bring ruin?

   *  There’s so much ground to cover. This is gonna be one hell of a ride!  * "I really like your art style!" / "Your style for Frisk is awesome!" / "Nice upgraded outfits!" - First off, thank you so much for your compliments on my styles and interpretations for the characters! - I will treat this project as a learning process and improve over time. - As such, I might make slight changes to one or two of my designs, and nothing would make me happier than for you guys to be the witnesses of my improvements and potential design changes!

   * “Frisk/Chara killed everyone! They were responsible for everything!” - Don’t even go there with me. You WILL be ignored.

- You have your way of interpreting the game and Undertale comics, and I have mine. - I've personally seen other comic artists get bashed for their Undertale headcanons, views on the characters, and alignments. This will NOT be tolerated here.

- I can very well choose to depict Frisk/Chara as either a hero or villain if I wanted to. I could even depict the monsters as such. But this comic is not about taking sides. I'm simply making this story out of love for the game, and to tell a story overall.

- Toby Fox left the events and characters of Undertale to our own unique interpretations. There is no right or wrong way to depict the Undertale characters. That’s why comics like this exist. I only write and draw this story out of love for Undertale.

- If you don’t like this comic or my depictions, don’t say anything. Leave. Now.

   * “Can I translate this comic in a different language?” - By all means! If English is not your native language, or if you want to translate my comic in a different language so other people with different ethnicities and cultures can read and enjoy this story, you’re more than welcome to translate it in any language you want.

- All I ask is that you credit me afterwards. Also, be sure to translate this rulebook as well to avoid confusion.

   * “Can I/we dub your comic?” - Absolutely! I encourage comic dubs for RETRACE! All I ask is that you credit me afterwards.

- Show me some talent! ^^

   * “Are there any ships?” - No.

- Here’s the deal… I see the monsters as a huge family Frisk never thought they could ever have.

- And you don’t need ships to do it.

- However, if you say things like, “Oooh! I ship this!” or “This ship bothers me,” that’s okay. I won’t judge you for it. I'm not going to condemn you for shipping anyone. You have your own opinion. But just know that there are no ships to be had in this comic, and I don’t want any problems to escalate.

    * “Which monster do you see as the dad, uncle, mother, etc.?” - You’ll see.

    * “When’s the next page?” / “Bro, you’re taking too long!” / “I wanna know what happens next!” - When I say, “WHEN I CAN,” I mean, “WHEN I CAN!”

- Please don’t ask me this. I don’t appreciate being rushed or pressured, and neither do any other artists out there. It’s disrespectful to me and other viewers.

- If there is any huge delay whatsoever, I’ll explain myself.

- I have other responsibilities besides drawing comics. Of course, this doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy drawing Undertale. In fact, I love it!

- I don’t mind comments like, “I can’t wait for the next page,” “My feels,” “Aaugh!! Cliffhanger,” etc. But please don’t ask me when I’m posting the next page. I’m not a robot. I cannot stress that enough.

    * “Can I use this comic as reference material?” - Absolutely! Just be sure to credit me later!

    * “Can I draw fanart of your comic?” - Absolutely! I 100% encourage you to draw any Undertale or RETRACE fanart! Just be sure to credit me afterwards!

    * “Can I suggest any changes for the story?” - No.

- I have scripted this comic already, so it’s already set in stone. However, I will allow constructive criticism for any visual errors and story errors I might make.

    * “To be continued…?” - When one of my pages says, “To be continued…,” it means you’ve reached the end of a chapter.

- After the end of each chapter, I’ll prepare an askbox so that you can ask questions to any characters that show up in RETRACE or anyone outside the story, whether they be your favorites or any original characters specific to this story.

- This way, I can interact with you all in the most positive and/or appropriate way possible. - In addition, I will also give you the option to dub my askbox and the responses so far, which will be listed in the askbox's description for your convenience.

    *  “What questions can I ask?” - You can ask pretty much anything, so as long as it’s not anything NSFW-related.

- The question can be something totally random, comedic, sad, family-bonding, or related to the story.

- But for the sake of this rulebook, I’ll give you some examples…

    * “Hey, <UT!Character>! How’s life on the surface?”

    * “How’s it hanging, <UT!Character>?”

    * “What kind of hobbies did you find ever since coming to the surface?”     * "What do you like to do with <UT!Character>?"

    * “Any jobs?”

    * “Can I give you a present, <UT!Character>?”

    * “What kind of stuff do you guys do around the house?”

    * “How’s school?”

    * “What are your favorite subjects?”

    * “How did you feel after this happened?”

    * “Will everything be okay?”

- I will randomly handpick any question you ask any Undertale character, original character, or myself. If one of your questions haven’t been answered, don’t repeat the same question over and over again. Ask a different one, and maybe you’ll be lucky.

- If I make up some funny or weird scenario when answering questions, you can add on to the scenario if you want. It’s more fun that way, and it gives me the chance to interact with you all and keep the ball rolling! I wanna hear from you guys, so feel free to ask away!

    * “How many chapters do you plan to make?” - Let’s just say it’s almost as long as Lesser Dog’s extensive neck. When it comes to fantasy, I tend to write a lot. I try to draw and improve my skills as much as I can, but I do exceptionally well with writing it out.

- As such, I’ll also provide Undertale – RETRACE chapters in a novel format after the end of each chapter, if you want it. I'd like to make this project open to everyone who likes Undertale, whether they like comics, novels, or have any preferences, impairments, or even physical or mental disabilities.

- I want everyone to enjoy this story as much as I enjoy making it for Undertale fans, fan artists, and artists in general to see.

Also, I highly recommend you to play the game before viewing this comic. Whether you do or don’t is up to you. Otherwise, welcome aboard! I hope you enjoy this fresh, new Undertale experience! We’re gonna have a ‘skele-ton’ of fun, people! ~ DecimaDragonoid

[ladytesla]

Romance and Revolution: The Terrier Incident part 2

[Part 2 of my shitpost for @daeva-agas!  Featuring yandere Charles, tsundere Joseph, snarker William, tragic antihero Benedict, adorkable Mariot, and Jack the terrier.  Enjoy, whoever reads this.]

Riding a horse through the fog was not the most enjoyable experience in the world.  My hair was soon plastered to my forehead, and my skirts clung uncomfortably to my legs as I tried to stay in the saddle.  Trees loomed out of the gray like sleeping giants, and even the sound of my horse’s hooves were muted.  The terrier, who I had secretly named Spots, didn’t seem to mind. Indeed, it was hard to keep him in the crook of my arm while I held the reins with one hand.  

Suddenly, and without warning, two shapes burst through the fog toward me.  Men on horseback.  My heart began to race, especially when I heard the language they were speaking to one another… they were Mohawk warriors.

“Don’t shoot!”  I cried.  At the sound of my voice, they seemed to falter.  Their horses approached mine at a walk instead of a gallop.  I looked at the one nearest me.  His dark eyes met mine, but he didn’t say anything.  I thought quickly.  The Mohawk were aligned with the British, weren’t they?  Maybe these two were as well.

“I need to speak with General Howe,” I said.  My voice didn’t come out as strongly as I wished it had.

“Why?”  He asked.  There was no hostility in his face… or disdain… or curiosity… or anything, really.

I held up Apple, who yapped happily at the sight of him.

“I’m returning his dog,” I said.  

The man looked at Apple for a time, then in a startling display of emotions, rolled his eyes.

“So you are,” he said. “Are you alone?”

I nodded.  

“Follow me if you so choose.”  His voice was resigned as he turned his horse’s head back toward the direction from whence he had come.  The other Mohawk man rode beside me.  

I had thought I would simply pass Apple over to the nearest redcoat I saw…  Apparently that wasn’t going to be the case.

Looks like I’m going to be late for dinner with Father, I thought grimly.

 The British encampment was decidedly better outfitted than the one the colonists used.  They had taken over a good part of town, using actual buildings for quartering their troops.  We stopped before a large home.  A man in a fine uniform approached us.

“Mr. Brant,” he said, “any news?”

The Mohawk man from before shook his head silently before jerking his head in my direction.  The man looked up at me, and I was surprised as he was.  I recognized him.

“Benedict Arnold, I presume?”  I frowned. I’d heard of him.  He had defected to the British side… and was being branded as a traitor to the American cause.

“Unfortunately,” he offered his hand politely as I dismounted.  Apple leapt from my arms and danced around his feet.  He released me as soon as my feet were firmly on the ground, not meeting my eyes.

“I know this dog,” he said softly.  “What’s it doing here?”

“It was found wandering the battlefield,” I said.  “I’m returning it to General Howe.”

“The general and Lord Cornwallis are in a meeting at the moment,” Benedict said, looking back up at me. I was startled to see that his eyes were two different colors.  It was not an unattractive sight.  “But I can at least show you inside.  This weather’s horrible.”  He looked up at the sky and grimaced.

Reluctantly, I followed him inside, Apple at our heels.  The house was warm and inviting, and I tried not to sigh with relief as I sank into a chair by the fire.  I had barely noticed the other occupant of the room, a white-haired man who awkwardly stood as I entered. “Mr. Arnold, why’s there a woman in here?” he asked.  I was too tired to curtsy, so I nodded at him.  He wore the blue uniform of the Royal Navy instead of the omnipresent red coat of the Marines, the heavy gold epaulets at his shoulders and the lace on his coat a mature contrast to his boyish face.

Benedict paused, and I could see the wheels turning in his head.  His cheeks darkened, possibly in embarrassment at the realization that he hadn’t even asked what my name was.  

“This… young lady,” he said, finding a way around that problem, “stumbled upon Howe’s dog after the battle, and is returning him.”

“Oh.  I see,” the white-haired man nodded.

“My name is MC,” I said. “The dog was actually found by—”

The door to our right suddenly opened, and two men walked out.  The taller of the two, without a doubt, had to be one of the most physically perfect human beings I had ever seen.  I couldn’t stop staring.  He wouldn’t look out of place among the paintings of angels I’d seen at home before. He looked almost ethereal, his pale green eyes boredly sweeping the room until they landed on me.

“Who’s the scullery maid?” He frowned.  “She’s dripping on the carpet.”

My jaw dropped at how rude the comment had been.  And from a stranger, no less!  Before I could respond, however, we were interrupted by the second man, who immediately crossed the room toward us.

“There you are, Jack!” His tired face broke into a soft smile at the sight of the dog.  Apple—no, apparently, his name was Jack—dashed up to his master and leaped into his arms. I couldn’t help but smile as he ran his hands over the dog’s body, checking for injuries.

“I thought I’d lost him,” he said once he was satisfied that Jack was all right.  

“You did, sir,” I stood up. “I, um, have a note for you.”  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter in Alexander’s familiar script, and passed it to him.  He rose an eyebrow at me, then opened the note. After reading the first line, his eyes went wide.

“My lord, you’re not going to believe this,” he said to the other man.

“What?”  The handsome (insulting!) man from before asked.

“It’s from Washington.”

Now everyone in the room was riveted on General Howe.  

“General Washington’s compliments to General Howe,” he read, “does himself the pleasure to return to him a Dog, which accidentally fell into his hands, and by the inscription on the Collar appears to belong to General Howe.”

“These colonials do have manners, it seems,” the man I now knew to be Lord Cornwallis mused with a wry smile.  “But where does the urchin come into all this?”

“I volunteered to bring the dog,” I said through gritted teeth.  “If one of our soldiers had come, they might be fired upon… and there has been enough bloodshed, in my opinion.”

“A proper Englishwoman would never be so outspoken,” Cornwallis frowned.

“And a proper Englishman wouldn’t be so rude to a total stranger,” I snapped back at him.

There was a stifled snort from the corner of the room.  I turned, and saw Joseph Brant looking nonchalantly out the window, as though he didn’t realize we were there.  He seemed to be fighting a smile… if a solemn man like him knew how to smile, that is.

“I have returned the dog and delivered the message,” I said.  “If you will excuse me, I’ll be going.”

“I wouldn’t in this weather,” the man in the Royal Navy uniform piped up.  “Wind’s backing westerly and the barometer’s falling.  A storm’s on its way.  You’d be caught in it before you made it two miles.”

“The Admiral is correct, Miss MC,” General Howe said.  He moved between me and the door, gesturing back towards the fire.  “Please, sit down.”

“Are you really keeping me from leaving?”  I took a step back, confused.  I was a civilian…  I was no good as a hostage…  did the British take hostages?

“If that’s how you choose to see it,” he said simply.  “You returned my Jack to me in good health and good spirits, the least I can do in return you to Washington in a similar state.  I’ll send for something to eat.”

“Perhaps a change of clothes while you’re at it, General,” Cornwallis looked me over with disdain. “She’s more mud than human at this point.  Almost the same color as your terrier.”

I glared at him and folded my arms.  

“I don’t remember doing anything to deserve your insults, sir,” I growled.

“She even yaps like a little terrier, too.”  He let out a soft laugh.  “You’re a brave one, I’ll give you that.  Stop looking like you’re being held prisoner.  You’ll be out of my hair before long, God willing.”  He finally noticed Benedict standing and speaking softly to Joseph Brant.

“Mr. Arnold, come and make your report,” he said, his smooth voice all business.

“Right away, my lord,” Benedict nodded and followed him into the other room.

I looked around.  Howe had gone off with Jack.  The Admiral was speaking animatedly to a stoic Joseph Brant, as though he were doing so to distract himself from the fact that I existed. That just left one person.  I looked at Benedict… and found he was looking back at me.  His oddly-colored eyes widened in shock, and he immediately grabbed the nearest book and studiously buried his nose in it.

Here I was again, sitting by the fire with a cup of tea.  It was only yesterday that I’d sat back at Washington’s camp. How long would it be before I sat there once more?

[midnight-fox-boy]

More About me/Views/Etc.

Hello everyone~! This post will explain more about me, my views, and anything I flnd important to add. This will be kinda long so please buckle up ;3 

General Information

Age: 19 

Gender: Demifluidflux trans guy 

Pronouns: He/him, they/them is cool too

Sexual orientations: Gay, Demisexual

Romantic orientations: Gay, Demiromantic

Alterous Orientation: Homoalterous

Other: Polyamorous

Relationship status: Taken

I love anime, video games, drawing, singing, and just browsing the web. I like to learn new topics, and explore new ideas and sciences. I want to be a therapist someday, but if it doesn’t happen, that’s chill too. I’m polyamorous currently in a monoamorous relationship. I don’t usually participate in discourse but I do have opinions/views on different topics. I am mentally ill and prefer not to be attacked. If I do something wrong or say something offensive, I don’t mean it, or I’m simply uneducated on the topic when I thought I was. I’m happy to take polite criticsm and never mean to do harm to others. So nothing I say is ill-intended. 

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

Views on certain discourse topics

Aspec Discourse: I believe that aromantics and asexuals are inherently LGBTQ+ and should be welcomed. However, it’s up to them if they choose to identify with LGBTQ+ or not. 

Nonbinary discourse. Yes there are more than two genders. And no it doesn’t mean “Neither male or female” Nonbinary means: “Not explicitly a single binary gender” Which can mean someone can be both binary genders, one binary gender and other nonbinary genders, no binary gender, etc etc. So yes. I CAN be a guy and nonbinary. 

Xenogenders: I may not be able to comprehend it 100% But I KNOW that gender is diverse and confusing and you can label your gender however you want. Just be you! You have my support.

Nonbinary Gays/Nonbinary lesbians: YES nonbinary people can be gay or lesbian. Many of them are nonbinary women or men. Meaning they identify with womanhood/manhood no matter how that is. Maybe they have a primarily woman or man gender, maybe they’re man/woman aligned. Whatever. You do not get to dictate who is gay enough or lesbian enough :) 

(NO)MAPS: Are scum. Do not interact, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.If you support them then get the f**k off my blog please! I am a CSA survivor and will NOT tolerate pedophilia.

Am I a transmed/truscum? Am a tucute?: Well, no. I’m none of those. I do not believe dysphoria is required to be trans. As many studies show gender incongruence is all you need, dysphoria manifests in some trans people as a result of incongruence. Gender euphoria also exists. This is not a topic I would like to debate. However, I do believe that dysphoria or incongruence should be medicalized in SOME form in order for trans people to be able to get gender affirming treatments. (Hormones, surgeries). I would love to live in a world where those things are free regardless, however :/ (P.S. I am dysphoric)

Kink/BDSM: Well. I participate in BDSM and kink, but I do not post about it or discuss on my blog. I have spaces for that and this isn’t one of them. So no worries about running into any kinky posts on my blog. That wont happen. If it ever does, it was an accident. 

Transtrenders: I DO believe that RARELY, some cis people will pretend to be trans, not necessarily as a “trend” but to gain something in return, usually online. They may use it as an excuse to chase other trans people, or to have more “power” in a trans based argument. However, when people are accused of being trenders, they are usually not, they are just not what YOU feel gender should be. And people who fear they’re trenders? Impossible. You would know if you were faking. 

Self Diagnosis: I’m divided on this. You shouldn’t self diagnose many things. Like a heart condition, or cancer, or other extremes. But if you know you’re depressed all the time and can’t see a therapist, you probably have depression. If you haven’t been diagnosed with PTSD but experienced something trauamtic and show symptoms of PTSD, You probably have PTSD. If you were confirmed to likely have a certain mental illness but perhaps didn’t fit the “age requirements” for said diagnosis, you can probably take that as an unofficial diagnosis. As long as aren’t flaunting it to seem “cool” (and most don’t) and are using those self dx’s to find help resources online and such, you’re probably good. 

Fujoshis: Touchy topic I know. I do not agree when this word is used in specific contexts.

1) when girls think MLM relationships are “hot/sinful/sexy/dirty��� , especially IRL MLM relationships, I think that’s fetishization, much like how many cishet men view WLW relationships  2) when it’s directed as a hate word towards gay trans men. I’ve been called a fujoshi for being a gay trans guy, and many of you probably have to. It’s wrong y’all. Gay trans men are gay men. Gay nonbinary men are gay men. 

Pansexual vs. Bisexual: Both are valid labels. All multisexual labels are valid. Labels are for you to feel comfortable with, and as long as you aren’t choosing one over the other due to biphobia/internilized homophobia, you’re probably good. Bisexual attracted to all genders? Valid. Pansexual with preferences? valid. Bisexual attracted to many genders? Valid. Pansexual and feeling attraction regardless of gender? Valid. Bisexual and identify the same way? Valid! 

Genital preference: Another touchy topic! The sad truth is that genitals DO matter to many people. Maybe it’s from truama, or an actual repulsion to a genital set. However, it should never EVER be used to excuse transphobia. You can not want to date a trans person who is pre-op, that’s fine, your loss not theirs. However, you cannot use that genital preference to see them as lesser, or as not “real” men/women. I personally have a preference for penises, but it’s only a preference. I would still potentially date a trans guy who is pre-op or never-op, but I prefer penises. But as I’m also gay, I likely wouldn’t date a trans woman who is pre-op/no-op. Because well, she’s a woman. So to summarize, genital preferences are OK as long as you aren’t a dick about it, or transphobic. :) 

Trans people and gender conformity: Alrighty. This is a favorite topic of mine. Do trans people owe gender conformity? Do nonbinary people OWE people androgyny? Nope. Cisgender people are gender-nonconforming all the time without dysphoria. We see butch cis women and Fem cis dudes all the time. So I say, why do trans men and women owe something different? While it is true that early in transition being GNC CAN cause dysphoria, that isn’t always the case. Early in transition I usually avoided feminine things and interests unless I was in the comfort of my home, but now I’m open to, and embrace my feminine and androgynous side. I’m in no way a woman, I just happen to enjoy some stereotypical feminine things. Many trans men do. As for nonbinary people, they can present however they want. Androgynous, feminine, masculine, fluid presentation, mixing it up, genderf**k, whatever. Their body, their choice. Sometimes you may be able to “tell” someone is nonbinary by looking at them, and that’s totally okay. There is no “looking nonbinary”. All looks on a nonbinary person are nonbinary. 

Anti/Anti-Anti?: Honestly I’m still confused in all of that stuff. Fiction CAN and HAS affected reality. That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy certain thinsg seen as “taboo” but there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. PEDOPHILIA. You should not write, nor consume, fiction that presents a CHILD with an ADULT. It’s true that some pedophiles will write these to bring minors in and harass them. Even then, it gives stories for those sick f**ks to read. Do you REALLY want a pedophile reading your story? I guess I’m anti-ish. You can enjoy things that are otherwise problematic as long as you don’t let it affect how you treat people in the real world. Maybe you liked reading that fictional story about kidnapping and got off to it or something weird like that, as long as you aren’t trying to kidnap anyone or shit like that, I guess you do you, keep it to yourself though.

“NB” - Nonbinary or Non-black?: I went with POC voices on this. I will no longer use “NB” to mean nonbinary on my blog. You will likely just see “nonbinary” or “enby” used by me. 

Aspec, autistic spectrum or Asexual/aromantic spectrum?: I’ve seen very little evidence or claim on the side of “autistic spectrum” being the term. Many responses ive seen and sources claim it means asexual/aromantic spectrum, and has even been echoed by autistic people, a lot of them. If I see evidence suggetsing otherwise, I’m happy to change my language. I don’t want to be ableist. 

Butch/Femme, lesbian terms only?: I say no. I’ve seen a lot of articles, personal accounts, and history on the use of butch and femme. And none suggest they were terms only used by lesbians. From what I can tell, this idea seemed to be spread by “radical” lesbians and TERF’s. In history, many lesbians tried to distance themselves from all men, and encouraged non-lesbian women not to associate with men. This is obviously just a small tidbit of what they did in that time. However, I personally don’t use butch or femme, and don’t really plan to.

Specifically “weird” or crazy seeming kinks/BDSM styles: All I say is, you do you. If all parties are adults and consent to it, good on you. Just, keep it to yourself or in spaces dedicated to those things. As long as you don’t get off to ACTUAL CHILDREN, or try to bone or jerk it to an animal, you’re probably okay. Also don’t do incest, that stuff is bad. 

!!If there’s a discourse topic you’d like to see here, you can PM me or send me an ask. I’m happy to shed my opinions on stuff, but they will go here!!

[kitcunninghamroject3]

Evaluation

“This project is about experimenting with Photographic imagery and applying it to a 3D Context. Photography is traditionally associated with printed or on-screen imagery, but during this project you will be encouraged to critically analyse and integrate research, contextual understanding, materials, methods and skills to create a 3-dimensional Photo Sculpture.”

My final piece for this project is pretty much a 3-dimensional Christian Cross which is upside down, which is made up of 6 photos that i have taken of a church in the centre of town near the grovsnior casino. I came up with the idea by taking inspiration from a photographer, author and sculptor called Richard Artschwager who created images of 3 dimensional boxes all aligned in quite a ravish way creating a phsycadelic vibe amongst the work, for some reason when i glassed at this image the more i felt like it was turning into a upside down cross and once i saw that i thought it was the perfect opportunity to base my work on the christian faith due to my distant views and feelings of the faith and what i represent it with i guess you could say this is my personal biased opinion though as there would be no way of changing my mind. This would be more inspiration from my views and personal journal that is my head.

Work shop that inspired me was one we did with Jordi where we used one of are photos and place it over  a net, in this case i used a photo of my friend Olly Liddar and place his face over a cylinder. I took this inspiration as i thought it would be perfect to place my images on a set of 6 Netted cuboids to then later glue the together creating a upside down cross. this is the only inspiration i took from workshops for this project as i thought it most related to the idea behind mine and how i would achieve this in the most fluid way.

the materials i used to create my final piece was paper, scissors, and glue. can’t really say to many materials were involved in making my final piece as it wasn’t to hard to make and docent involve much materials. Sticking it all together was quite a tricky job as prick stick is commonly known to be relatively unreliable and wasn’t holding to well in some cases. I can’t really say the materials used in making my final sculpture could relate towards the space my sculpture was placed in, as it was just paper and glue. I guess you could say that the paper relates to the space i choose because it represents an area that is dark and gloomy and some would maybe say that paper looming with dark and gloom, due to the sad mass production of paper that starts off from a trail of dishonourably cutting down trees for our own personal gratification in many different aspects.

The photos that i have taken for my final sculpture relate to my work, as my sculpture appears to be a upside down cross or commonly referred to The cross of saint peter or petrine Cross which is in a inverted Latin cross traditionally used as a Christian symbol, but in recent times is used to represent the anti christian symbol. which makes more sense to be represented in that way. The reason why Saint Peters cross is symbolic as such instead of satanic is due to the fact that he was the 12th apostle of “Jesus Christ’ like “Jesus” himself saint peter was also crucified for being a member of the christian church and was crucified upside down. Which i find to be quite ironic that one of “Christs” disciples had more of a memorable crucification than the lords saviours own son as i feel the inverted cross has become more depicted throughout history and is kind of a big “ may your biscuit always fall into your tea” (this was a polite way of saying F**k you, thought this would sound better)- also due to the fact that the old testament tired to turn this round by giving saint peter his own personal symbolic cross that is noticeably different to the original, i find this all very funny that most people represent this as a satanic symbol this in my option that the christian faith is dying out slowly but surely, which will be a good day for some people that are like minded as myself i can’t say I’m the only one. to sum it up my photos are also taken of a church so i all connects in some weird way which makes sense in my brain may not in others. It also relates to the area that its in as my hole sculpture is about the negativity surrounding christianity, that sounds like I’m discriminating i should say religion in general. but the cross represents the christian faith more so than others. The area it is in appears to be evil and mistreated along with my inverted cross and the christian faith.

Well if i had the funds i would have liked to have printed it onto glass and i only really thought about this once i had finished and no longer have the time i also thought that it would be tricky because i don’t really have the materials to make a 3 dimensional cross out of glass and print my photos onto it, i think with this whole project i was bit ambitious especially when thinning about my initial idea so eventually i had to lesser myself and settle for paper.

If I’m totally honest i feel that i could have done a lot better with my assignment but i didn’t really allow myself much time and didn’t give it my all, as i was never really to interested in making a sculpture but don’t get me wrong i have up most appreciation toward the brief and the skills that i will be learning. Due to the way that my brain works or the way that i am if i don’t like something i become the definition of a  procrastinator i try to put something off as much as possible. In this case i deeply regret this because i feel that i have kind of stuffed myself for this project and have left it all far to late and have put myself under more pressure and stress than i can bargain with. I wouldn’t say I’m to happy with my work or final outcome and didn’t really go through a process when coming up with the idea that you can see but thats kind of how i role, which i guess isn’t an excuse and some people may not understand that my way of generating ideas or coming up with something is up in my head and don’t feel to much that i have to generate ideas as i can already see the final outcome so perfectly in my head.

If i could change the outcome if i had more time i would go back and start the whole assignment over again but theres no such thing of going back and doing it again. so i have to make do with what I’ve got. i chose the location in my image as i wanted it to be something on the grunge side as my final outcome was more on the sinister side, i set fire to the cross as i thought it would add some sort of affect toward the images and was ironic as its like the burning of the cross, lets just hope i don’t go to hell from this antic. overall I’m quite happy with it now but i am still not a fan due to the fact that building a sculpture isn’t what i wanted to do.

[blackwatchstray]

Rules for everyone not able to see the actual side, click on the tiny thingies, etc - and for me, if the browser crashes while I edit them to fit the thing

Basics

Don't be a scumbag. 

What does that mean? No random witch hunts out of personal vendettas, no starting wars about ships of any kind, no hating on Ocs (duh) or the insulting/hating on the portrayal of other people – simply put, I don't wanna be pulled into a war, especially yours. Your character can be the biggest piece of shit on the world, I really don't mind, go ahead but I really have little to no time to deal with people who make fun of others just to feel better with themselves.

Drama-Llamas: 

If you want to pick a fight, you won’t have any success here.

Godmodding:

No, thank you. However I'm perfectly fine if you decide to write what would happen if the plan of your character succeeded to lengthen your posts. I do that too after all.

As it stands – do not control my character. Unless agreed upon or for scenery changes aka moving from one place to another. For the sake of timeskips, scene skips, etc this is fine.

Relationships: 

Don’t just assume a certain relationship to my character. You can always ask me and I’m totally fine if your character knows mine, especially if you're Black – or Overwatch, just don't expect them to be official lovers, friends or family. Everything else? Is fine. I won't forbid you to have a purely visuals based crush on Feral, for example. He has one on a certain Blackwatch member too, so there's that.

Please don't be intimidated by me. I'm as scared of you, as you are of me – probably more even.

On writing

Selectivity:

I'd love to write with everyone but my anxious mind and horrible self-perception causes me to turtle and avoid reaching out. Even more so if a try for interaction ends in being ignored. So, if you want to write with me – are interested in Feral, by all means, come at me, send a meme, as random as it may be as long as it isn't romance or smut related I'll figure something out – and likely return to bother you later on. Still, all things combined I can be counted as semi-selective.

Universes/Alternative Universes/Crossovers

Given Feral is already – in one way or another – an AU version of my main RP character I'll limit interactions to the Overwatch universe and/or my AU verses listed under verses. If your character still works in these scenarios – as in for Overwatch a somewhat dystopian futuristic setting that I always feel hesitant to call Cyberpunk, you're more than welcome! Just please don't be upset if Feral might call your Robot character an Omnic.

More on verses

As it is now I operate on the following principle: Each version of Feral has one main verse. What this means? Everything that happens in the Blackwatch Era is in one Universe, everything that happens in the Recall universe is also one universe, and so on.

Duplicates

If I ever happen to get into the situation to RP with duplicates of canon characters, I'll break the former rule and set up multiple verses to the time era. I might then set up Mains though.

Activity

Hi, I'm slow and my mental health is giving me hell. Together with my other problems I tend to not get myself motivated to write, so when I say I'm slow, I mean I'm really, really slow. My sense of time is all kinds of fucked up and 90 days can feel like a week to me when it comes to writing. I'm sorry about that. I'm not disinterested, just fucked up.

Length:

From one line to paragraphs it really depends, on my mood, the alignment of the moon, how much something triggers Feral basically. Most of my writing is his thoughts because I like exploring those, so if you are one of those 'If I can't hear it anyways it doesn't belong into the RP' kinda people, you won't be happy here. You don't have to match my eventual wall of text anyways – as long as it feels like you put effort into it, that is.

Memes | Starters | and so on

Are free for everyone unless stated otherwise, or if they are smut. But please don't like starter calls if you will ONLY write ONE single reply and ignore the thread from there on. I hate that. Also don't like starter calls if you will never answer on the offered post – or at least tell me you don't know what to do with it. Otherwise you'll only shatter my motivation to write anything.

If you reblog a meme, please send something in or reblog from the source. I can understand if you don't wanna leave an IC meme but if it's just informative asks towards the character? It takes a second to send one random symbol in and save the day of a person.

Ocs:

I like Original Characters, more than canon ones at times. The universe has enough space  for unknown relatives, other former Overwatch members, civilians, random passerbys, superheroes and so on. Ocs give a universe more life and I like that. So you're welcome here.

Minors:

You are welcome here but I am not responsible for you. If you choose to look at content not suitable for you, it's not my fault. But I'll do my best to make avoiding it easy.

Everything nsfw will be tagged! Innuendos and gross flirting however will not. Everything going beyond that, naked skin, descriptions, getting turned on by danger and or violence will be tagged by my nsfw tag. Everything getting a definitive mature/R-rating gets my tag AND the nsfw tag, just to be sure.

NSFW:

I am of age. Feral is of age. Still, given not a single nsfw thread (smut) of mine has EVER been finished. I'll just resort to accepting the unsaid truth that I just suck at smut rp and I will probably not pursue them any further. Allow me a second of salt here: Thanks past people, I got it now.

Violence, innuendos, invitations for sex will be here plenty. Feral's young version has a very twisted worldview that drives him towards a very promiscuous, risky and unhealthy lifestyle. Whatever it takes to not having to sleep alone.

And that should be enough warning for:

triggering content:

Feral's past is a mess ranging from child abuse, cannibalism, violence, murder, twisted worldviews, mutilation, body horror and other things. His future, aka Recall Feral isn't any better. And both will mention snippets of their life from now and then.

I'll do my best to tag those. Due to my vast uncertainty what might be triggering to people, I'll put a general 'dark places' tag on everything I deem eventually uncomfortable to people.

Shipping:

Shipping with Feral?

Is easier than you might expect – and oh so much harder than it will seem. He crushes easily, if you're after bedding him? Just be nice and he'll offer himself up anyways just to make your character stay. Pursuing romance however is a completely different deal. Your muse will have to work for it. It takes time, understanding and care. At least for the Blackwatch version. And due to the timeline of the blog, he will have lost your character one way or another in the Recall verse. Which is likely rather unlovable.

As a general note? Shipping is only enabled for Blackwatch Feral but I won't deny you the fun of trying to get Recall Feral back if you managed to win over his younger version

multiple partners?!

Feral is polyamorous. So if you're fine with polyamorous ships? Great! He likely won't have a problem with it. If you are not. Your character will have to explain it to him. So unless that conversation has been held, all ships will be in the same verse! Unless with duplicates of course.

How to pursue a ship:

See if the characters work out, just let it flow. Be courageous. If your muse tries to make a move on Feral and he doesn't want to, he will let you know. While it's really nice that people come to me and ask “would ship xyz work?”, I kinda feel like it's betraying the character. I'd rather let Feral have the choice than me.

Other blabla:

Feral's opinions aren't mine. Seperate RP from real life – meaning, if he hates your character, we could still be good friends.

I'm really awkward. I have a hard time talking to people unless they clicked with me or it is about one of my obsessions. Those being shadowrun, megaten, dragon age and some random animes I watched. But even those might not work at times.

English isn't my mother tongue and I suck at grammar. His fucked up accent during dialogue is intended though.

Also, hey, if you feel better with showing you read those, why not Like this?