#is this how you live blog? like this is really just commentary nobody asked for

[itspyon]

how to adapt into dtblr culture for twitter refugees

so you've decided to move here from twitter. welcome and congratulations. this post is basically a big warning that goes THIS ISN'T TWITTER, DON'T BEHAVE LIKE IT IS, LEAVE THAT AT THE DOOR

i'll be teaching you two things, how the site works, and how to adapt your behavior to tumblr ( and really, normal human being ) culture. believe me, it's not that hard and it will actually feel very productive

let's start with the basics and frequent questions

your username can be anything, don't stress about it

your picture can be anything. a lot of us don't even have dteam related stuff up on our profile

your display name doesn't have to be your name. nobody is going to see it when you post, only usernames are visible

check your settings. do it. get familiar with them. turning on and off asks, turning anon off, turning submissions off. click on your blog, go to blog settings, check things there, go to account, your muted things will be there, go to dashboard and customize that. use your settings !!!

yes, pinned posts are fairly important and they tend to be pretty extensive. name age what you post about ( a lot of people here are multifandom !), just don't overshare ( no locations no trigger lists i beg you ). they also usually have a breakdown of your tags at the end

tags

it's a whole thing. some are actually useful. some are just passive commentary

the tags you put on posts ( both when you made the post and when you're reblogging something ) are both global and hosted on your profile. it's why you'll see things like "nameofperson art" rather than just "art". using just "art" will put you in the promoted tag, in this case

you can use spaces on your tags

usually you will tag what type of post you're making ( art, text post, ask post ), and then the contents keep in mind this is how people often mute things, some people tag the current situation, people use and mute ship tags. but this is also how people find things, like the specific asks from one person to another, so "username ask" is commonly used, "irl person ( dream, dnf, etc )" is also seen a lot just watch how others tag things and copy them. nobody will get offended you took their tag formatting, most of us will appreciate properly tagged posts

you do tag when you reblog people. you use tags to comment on things. don't really use replies unless you're, saying thank you to someone or pointing out a spell mistake or asking to add an option to a poll, etc. we don't do replies, just rb your reply

quick reblog and like deets

post popularity is measured in "notes" which is the sum of replies, reblogs and likes. we don't really care much about numbers here and if you start getting crazy about it people will not like it. this is more of a talking and showing site

you can reblog without tags, feel free to

you can hide your likes. you can and should like as many things as you want. they don't alter any algorithm, since there's none. a like is a "i saw this post" notification to the poster

actually posting

people talk a lot. a fucking lot, and it's something you will have to get used to, because it's very different from twitter

there are no qrts. callouts are looked down upon. breathe. if you don't like something MUTE IT DON'T POST ABOUT IT, because no one is going to listen to any callouts. you will have to learn to live with the fact people like things you don't. this will, with time, make you feel very free

the bulk of posting here is asks, as you might notice soon. asks are fun and encouraged. just don't name drop if you're talking about drama please ?

don't be scared to send asks off anon, this is how people will find you and get to know you really. people are also more likely to reply to you

block bait anons. yes you can block anons. yes it will block every blog they make

culture time

i've said this. tumblr is unserious. drama here is approached very differently and with several less layers of panic. you will see death threats. you will see slurs ( said in non derogatory ways ). you will see jokes about serious topics. you will see people say "i didn't like this" and nobody will care

tumblr is a community of individualism. you will like your own things within the thing we share we like. you might not like dream's music, you might not find irl streams entertaining, as long as you're fucking normal about it ? nobody will care and you're free to express your opinions. people will even come ask you about it and just have a chat. we're here for the same content to some degree

tumblr is also a bunch of people who understand they like another bunch of people. that none of the streamers have stopped being human. so you might see people defend things that, maybe, you'd not have thought to defend before. maybe you're even uncomfortable seeing them defending it. this is something you will experience a lot, and you'll learn to properly deal with it as time passes

because again. no one does callouts here unless it is extremely bad. no one cares if you don't really like them. and they also accept people might and will not like them. and that is fine. and that doesn't make either person horrible. you're just different people. and you don't even have to interact

you want to make friends ? ask people things, compliment people's work, genuinely attempt to make conversation. this is not an impersonal website the way twitter is. people don't care about your opinions because they care about you, and you are more than what you don't like

the more positive and jokey and interactive you are the more people will talk to you. there's no "hitting the algorithm", there's no "engagement", it's just people talking to people. so don't be a neg posting bot, and be a person

you will learn to be less miserable. you learn to stop giving a shit and just do what makes you happy. they cannot get you here. there's no qrts. the few antis you'll find can be blocked and you'll never have to directly interact with one. don't be mean to the people in your own community, even if you disagree

again, you are more than what you don't like. learn to be what you like instead. and leave the dooming at the door

[hashtagloveloses]

so are you back on tumblr after a while or you're new? welcome! it's a lot nicer here lately, and, shockingly enough, the website actually works a lot better too, thanks to the hard work of a bunch of very talented people. the mobile app is constantly improving, but if you're on desktop and used to use things like missing e or xkit, the latest helpful extension is XKIT REWRITTEN, which you can go download and read about at @addons that was created by @april, who worked on new xkit back in the day and now works at tumblr itself!

here's some other helpful tips to know:

PLEASE REBLOG THINGS. it's the main form of engagement here. there is no penalizing for spam interaction, most people are not looking at your blog directly, and it is the main way people find you and you find good content to follow. for original content like fanart and fanfic, it also REALLY helps people out. likes are better for like, personal posts, and for storing things for later. also, it doesn't matter if you blog is a jumble of things - it's yours, nobody cares, and that's kind of the purpose of the site

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A PROFILE PHOTO, BANNER PHOTO, AND UNIQUE URL (that isnt like a bunch of numbers or something), or else people will think you are a bot and block you. you don't have to do anything fancy, you can use the default tumblr theme on your blog itself, but just make sure you look like a real account PLEASE

DO NOT CENSOR WORDS. much like on twitter, if you censor a word for a trigger, it will do the opposite of what you want - people's blacklist and mute functions won't work if the word isn't spelled out in the tags or the text of the post. also there isn't post suppression here.

Don't like your dashboard? Getting bored? Feel like your community is getting annoying? JUST FOLLOW MORE PEOPLE (and maybe unfollow some. a block and an unfollow are always ok). nobody cares, or can see about your follow ratio, and it'll help your dashboard feel more lively (you'll also not give as much of a shit about petty dramas). the follow limit is 5000 last i checked

keep your comments to the tags (unless it's like....really funny or adding something good? use your best judgement). the tags are helpful for subject matter, but you should also use them to talk as like side commentary!

Close your ask box to anons and don't share personal information if you don't want to. You are under no obligation to share your name, age, diagnoses, history, location, face, and you SHOULDN'T. and the ask box is great but if it gets overwhelming just close it. If you're a minor, maybe say somewhere that you're a minor, but that's it. (that goes for any social media site)

MAKE YOUR LIKES AND FOLLOWS PRIVATE. for the love of god. just protect yourself.

just like any social media site - be critical about the things people claim are true on here. screenshots, takes, facts, can be skewed and you should do extra research before believing anything just because somebody said it on tumblr dot com

DON'T GET INTO QUEER OR NEURODIVERGENT LABEL IDENTITY DISCOURSE. whether you are young or old, on tumblr or another site, things will just get confusing and weird. if you learn something here that makes you feel affirmed, great! but also please make sure your interaction with fellow queers (or other neurodivergent people) is not limited to just this site. get involved with a local or school lgbtq center if you can, get to know queer people in your life or queer spaces if you can. (and if you can't - go read about queer history somewhere other than tumblr. do research, watch movies and documentaries. look into disability organizing and history outside this hellsite). Label discourse is also how many unknowing queers and others get recruited to T*RFy shit unknowingly so....be careful out there.

Don't get guilted into things on your dashboard. You should definitely care about the things people are talking about, but you don't have to know about every ill happening in the world at once to be a good person. If you're feeling lost, or hopeless and endlessly scrolling or feel guilted by people online, pick ONE thing you can do, for people in your local community, and then just make a reasonable effort to stay informed otherwise.

create an original tag for your "original" posts, aka the posts you make that aren't reblogs, so you can look at them later

explore the QUEUE FUNCTION! you don't have to use it, nobody cares if you reblog spam, but sometimes it's fun!

Don't know who to follow? Go follow the tags of things you like (TV shows, movies, musicians, aesthetics, whatever!), and suggested posts will pop up on your feed, or you can go through the tag and follow some people who look interesting

[twilightmalachite]

2×2 - Children on the Streets 6

Author: Akira

Characters: Hinata

Translator: Mika Enstars

"Hey, Anzu-san, you say that to everyone, don’t you?"

[Read on my blog for the best viewing experience with Oi~ssu ♪]

Season: Spring

Location: Shack

In a tattered storage shed, time and location unknown…

Hinata: Hmmhmmhmmmhmm!

—Pwah, it’s no good~! There really is no such thing as twin telepathy after all! I keep thinking about asking for help but of course, there’s never any response!

But well, we’re in a real mess now, aren’t we?

Any thoughts or commentary, Anzu-san?

Ahaha, this isn’t an apology press conference, there’s no need to apologize!

…Probably. And, this isn’t your fault, Anzu-san.

Well, if you think about it in a broader sense, I guess it could be? I dunno. I guess in a sense this could be your responsibility?

But me, I don’t like thinking in extremes like that! Thinking about things too deeply like that has you looking like some villain from a cheap manga, deciding the entire human race is evil before trying to destroy it!

Everyone deep down looks for villains like that, ones they can defeat without having to hesitate, so as an idol, I feel I should probably embody “that” for them.

But… I’m not someone like that. I feel more like some small fry fighter who gets defeated in the early stages no matter how bad he tries to be.

Hinata: Hm? “Hinata-kun is a good boy”?

Ahaha~, are you really paying attention to me? Are you seeing me properly? You know, even I feel uneasy sometimes.

Hey, Anzu-san, you say that to everyone, don’t you?

Because saying those sorts of pleasant things to hear will have your favorability rating rise with them.

You think of me as some character from some shoddy game who’ll like you, don’t you?

Hinata: …Sorry, I said a bit too much.

I know. I know that’s not the intention you have, Anzu-san.

You love and always have loved everyone, and you’re just expressing those feelings honestly. In your own taciturn, clumsy way.

I just perceived it as being treated as a stranger, I’m the strange one for feeling lonely instead.

Hm? Nah, I’m not rambling on just to make you feel better! Don’t get me wrong, ‘kaaay?

I’m simply just the kind of good-spirited person who keeps smiling and talking no matter the situation.

There’s no point in being depressed, after all. It’s a waste of time. I don’t want to get depressed dwelling in thoughts of being sad and lonely, if I am to keep living.

That sort of thing, Anzu-san, is a pastime reserved for those with the luxury to afford it.

So, I’d like to do something to get us out of this situation without fretting over it too much, so—

Do you know what’s going on?

I have a guess of my own, but I’d like to hear what you think, too.

Anzu-san’s smarter than my idiot self, as the talented producer highly regarded by everyone.

Right. First, let me just confirm something.

This isn’t something set up by you and the others, is it?

Because you’ve been acting strange for so long that even I’m beginning to suspect you may be up to something, Anzu-san.

Right, right. I’m sure it wasn’t~, if it was, you would have approached me about it sooner.

Then all I’d have to do is let you set up a prank and give you a funny reaction.

But since you don’t know anything, Anzu-san, then this must be the real deal, huh… Uh oh~! ♪

Right. I had called you over to clear up a “little suspicion” I had, last night.

Nobody seemed to notice, not even Yuuta-kun, but… I think Ran-senpai might have started to suspect it, he’s a bit unfathomable, even to me.

About how this 2×2 project is a bit unnatural in some areas.

But, when I called you over to question you about it, suddenly a bunch of delinquents came and took us away.

And just like that, we were blindfolded and brought over to this unknown place.

They’ve removed our blindfolds, but we’re tied up and can’t move.

Even yelling as loud as we can for help gives no sign anyone will come to help, so I feel we’re being kept prisoner in some unfrequented place.

Quite the big pinch.

Fortunately, no violence has been used so far, but… Since these guys definitely seem like delinquents, we have no idea what might happen.

I didn’t want to provoke the criminals, so I didn't resist, but maybe I should have gone berserk? That way, at least you would have been able to escape, Anzu-san—

Hinata: I’m sorry. I’m weak. I couldn’t save you, or protect you.

Even though if anything happened to you, Anzu-san, everyone would be devastated.

Hmm, the same goes for me? You think so…?

[ ☆ ]

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[midnightactual]

PSA: Any Problems You Have With Yoruichi Are YOUR Problems

Because I've been thinking about this and kind of building to this conclusion for a while, with things like PSA: Some Muses Won't Open Up To Yours and Yoruichi As An Embodiment Of War, and older pieces like What Yoruichi Wants and The Duality of Yoruichi I want to finally address an ask I got almost two years ago.

(I am not going to restate the premises of those various articles here because... I already did that; it's your responsibility to read them to gain a further understanding of Yoruichi than what I present here.)

While I accept the ending commentary of that ask, which states that it was meant as constructive criticism and not as an attack, I still want to fully explain something so that nobody interacting with this blog is under any illusions. I choose to do this because this seems to be a recurring problem, and this ask is simply illustrative of an issue that people cannot seem to understand as it is largely outside of their lived experience. So, the pertinent part:

I think you fail to talk enough about Yoruichi's flaws and weaknesses. Just everything she behaves as is this ultimate badass who's powerful and narratively always correct. (She has a motorcycle, 3 degrees, is always on the right side of history, was doing things in WW2 that no other woman was doing (tho maybe they were and i just don't know enough about enough history) she has the tech to go to space, she doesn't need Kisuke or Tessai because she's already smart enough and a talented enough inventor to do it all herself, she has an app for everything that might be minorly inconveniencing, shes a coding genius, etc.). It makes her feel a little flat and feels limiting for her growth and development as well as making her hard to write with bc nothing mine or others muses can do will contribute in a meaningful way. Her weaknesses according to you seem to be 1) she doesn't kill if she can avoid it (but she will if she needs to) 2) She's private 3) ????? that feels like it?????

There are some technical mistakes in this description like: while it's true that she has three degrees, two Bachelor's and one Master's, it's functionally two as one is a continuation of the other; she has quite limited programming skills and doesn't write consumer-grade software, just some functional hardware-level code; her most widely-used solution to inconveniences, the Aifōn, was invented by Kisuke and she would barely claim to understand how it works; and probably some more things I could nitpick. But that isn't really the thrust of this argument.

The argument being made here is that Yoruichi is too perfect and too good at what she does, which seems to this commentator to be everything (although it isn't by any means); essentially, that she's bordering on if not outright actually a Mary Sue.

I'm here to tell you that's exactly what she wants you to believe. Not just your muse(s). You. The mun. She's almost permanently engaged in an active and deliberate psychological warfare campaign against anyone observing her. She's like Medusa, except instead of turning you to stone, the goal of her behavior is to rotate you and to on some level intimidate you so that you don't question her, her work, or her activities. Her purpose in doing this is to be outside the control of you and your muse(s), or anyone else for that matter. She perceives that as freedom, not having no responsibilities or obligations.

There is only one (1) exception to this in her mainline continuity, and she married her. (Digi's Kūkaku.)

There were also only really two (2) times she opened up to muses she felt could maybe take it, and that was received poorly by both when they got to see what was really under the surface. (Plou's Grimmjow and Rach's Hōgyoku.)

Now, maybe your muse(s) never felt or noticed anything was off, in which case congratulations: they're normal people who think about things a normal amount. But maybe your muses did feel or notice something was off, in which case congratulations: they're sensitive or insightful.

So, do they feel inferior or inadequate around Yoruichi for some nebulous reason you can't quite put your finger on? Do you feel like there's always this thin layer of separation between them if you really focus hard on that distance, like fiber optic glass but it seems as hard as diamond? Does it always feel like Yoruichi is playing with your muse, or toying with or finessing them some? Does it feel like some kind of calculations are happening?

It's supposed to feel that way if they can perceive it.

That means I'm doing my job as a mun. Does this bother you as a mun for some reason? If so, that's bleed! And that means:

If you don't like that, that is a you problem.

My muse is in character (more on why later). I am not going to write her out of character for you to feel better or to satisfy your muse(s). That point is non-negotiable. Furthermore, I won't tolerate any suggestions made to me as a result that she's invulnerable and therefore perfect, when I've written scenes like this, and drabbles like this, this, and this.

You aren't entitled to seeing her vulnerable, nor are you entitled to believing that you not seeing her vulnerable means she never is. Your lack of attention or interest is also a you problem.

If you don't like that, there's the door. There are other great variants of Yoruichi around, be they standalone or multimuse. I encourage you to seek them out. (You should do that anyway, and I generally feature their promos in solidarity whenever I become aware of one.) We don't need your custom here, and we won't compromise to have it. I do not care about being your one-stop-shop for Yoruichi, nor do I care about being part of a collection. If you don't like what happens here, leave.

Having made my red lines nicely bright and clear, let's talk about the why of this.

I said earlier that this misunderstanding exists because "people cannot seem to understand as it is largely outside of their lived experience." What the fuck does that actually mean?

Yoruichi is a supersoldier, and odds are you don't personally know any supersoldiers. I'm sure you've seen them portrayed, but most of those were written by civilians who know little to nothing about the nearest actual equivalent, special forces operators. You see, a true supersoldier isn't a mindless killing machine. They have to be highly adaptable to any circumstance, and that actually means being exceptionally personable, socially aware and intelligent, and diplomatic. One generally has to be a people person.

If you don't believe me, consider that most of what Western special forces have been doing for the last 20+ years in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria is interacting with the locals to get them on-side and keep them that way, especially in "tribal" areas. That's why the most common recurring euphemism for special forces is "military advisors". They talk a lot more than they shoot. They cut deals. They smooth things out. They only do action movie stuff when that fails.

This long-form quote appeared very early on here and got no play, but is I think quite important to understanding who Yoruichi really is.

Yoruichi is kind of like a combination of Master Chief Petty Officer John-117, Todd "3465", Jason Bourne, Angus MacGyver, Bruce Wayne, James Bond, and Hal, in a body that would make Bebe Rexha or Shakira blush. I've never made any secret of this. I've been over it again, and again, and again. The difference is that all the apparent weaknesses of those examples are sanded down or filled in and hidden behind a mirror shine. Of course they are! She's the Princess of, and then the actual Clan Head of, one of the Five Great Noble Clans, the most powerful political entities in existence which literally control reality itself and collectively serve as its de facto Emperor. Oh, and she was the first woman to hold that title too. I've talked about that too, as well as how it relates to Kūkaku and why the latter is the exemption (short answer: she can relate fully).

What exactly would make you think that displaying any weakness of any kind at any time is acceptable, given that?

Does that mean no weaknesses exist? No! Not by any stretch of the imagination. She has plenty of trauma of all kinds. She has hang-ups and worries and foibles and doubts. I've been over that again and again too. It's the bulk of her history, no matter how dryly it's related. This is also literally canon:

Do you notice how almost all of this is her internal thoughts, and although she ends with dialogue, she's out all by herself on the lip of Sōkyoku Hill at dawn? She only slips and voices her doubts out loud to someone else once at like the ultimate moment of tension:

Even when her own little brother was bleeding out and poisoned, she kept her cool:

Let me be emphatically clear: your muse(s) are not going to get through Yoruichi's surface layers, her presentation, her mask that she wears to fool them, unless she wants it.

Most of the time she doesn't. It doesn't end well. Other people can't relate. They can't handle it.

Even when she does want to let the mask slip, unless your blog URL is crashingheavens, you're only seeing so deep.

Let me be even clearer: whatever other muse is not so special as to be the chosen one that breaks down what is in this space 430 years of training, conditioning, and self-refinement. That is not a dig at that muse, that is a testament to Yoruichi's own individual strength, knowledge of herself, and self-assuredness.

If your conception of your own muse is so great that you need them to be the chosen one who can do that, you don't belong here. The job is filled.

She is not here to indulge your selfishness. Neither am I. This is Yoruichi's character as I see her. Some things are mutable, some things are not. What we're discussing here is in the latter category. I don't make any apology for that, nor will I ever. That's just how she is.

This doesn't mean another muse can't have a profound impact on her, as the quoted ask fears! Plenty have!

I've cited three examples already, with Kisuke, Grimmjow, and the Hōgyoku, but I'll provide another two with Ururu here and here. Something you'll notice though is that these examples happened largely on Yoruichi's own terms. That's the secret!

Yoruichi doesn't need your muse. That isn't an insult, nor does it mean she doesn't want them around. It only means she will not ever be codependent upon them.

Having laid all this out, this now functions as my warning sign on the matter, and I won't hesitate to tap the sign going forward if anyone complains about this kind of thing to me ever again.

[tubendo]

Excerpt: The Return (ch34)

Well this is my first post on this blog, and it decidedly has to be an excerpt from one of my WIP chapters. This is an excerpt from Chapter 34 of The Return. I wanted to post something I liked but wouldn't spoil anything plot-wise, in case you happen upon this as somebody who hasn't read Into The Fire/The Return. This is for all you Sokkla enjoyers out there who have the energy to slog through my stories.

"Maybe we can help at one of those soup kitchens. The ones that were set up after the battle... because people have lost their homes." Ty Lee gave her an idea, and the Princess nodded. "That will do." she agreed to the proposition, "The reconstruction efforts might be a good place to pitch in though... I doubt I will be of much use building houses. I at least know how to cook." "Heh, you couldn't say that two years ago, could you?" she prodded Azula, who seemed a bit flustered upon being reminded about that. "I can cook." she emphasised her ability, "I had to learn to satisfy this idiot's appetite." she gestured to her boyfriend, who just laughed at her. "You needed to cook for yourself too, you realise that, right?" "Yes, but I have your Gran-Gran for that." she argued, before sighing, "Without Katara, I have nobody to deflect on cooking. She makes what you like." she realised, knowing that she had to make food for herself and Sokka at times, even if she felt it beneath herself; Ty Lee didn't find the idea that degrading, though she understood that Azula was having to unlearn a lot of the biases she'd built up about how she was meant to live her life as a princess. "I'm not expecting you to make all my food or anything." Sokka reassured her, "I know how to cook." "Yeah, it would be a bit weird if you didn't... with the big appetite and all." Ty Lee commented, making him snicker. "Exactly. I had to learn to make sure I wouldn't ever go hungry." The Princess seemed amused by his commentary, before sighing, her expression becoming more uneasy, "You really like eating because you had to get all the food yourself... you were nearly starving when you were a child." she realised, the Water Tribesman's bemused look hardening. "Yes, you're right." he conceded, making Ty Lee grimace; though she knew that life had been hard at the South Pole, she hadn't really considered how much effort they would have to put into each meal- fishing, retrieving seaweed, hunting the animals that could survive out in the icy tundra, "But that isn't a bad thing... I know how to survive, and now, you do too." "The forest actually doesn't seem that bad in comparison." Azula observed, before letting out a laugh, "I was not ready for the cold." "Yeah, it can be a little jarring." Sokka admitted with a sheepish smile, "I felt a bit embarrassed that I actually felt cold when I came back with you to the South." "I think you should be more embarrassed that your sister mistook you for a Fire Nation soldier." the Princess retorted, making Ty Lee snort, finding that idea to be hilarious. "Seriously?" she asked, and Sokka just glanced away, looking flustered. "I had- uh, I grew a beard." "You cannot call what you had then a beard." Azula scoffed, "What, some tufts of brown hair hanging from your jaw?" "I thought it looked rugged." Sokka tried to defend himself, before scratching at the short goatee he had on his chin, "Though I prefer this." "Yes, as do I. It looks far more refined than what you had before." she commented on the goatee, making him smile; Ty Lee thought about it for a few moments, before she realised the odd similarity between the goatee he had and the one Ozai wore, though it was far longer. "Doesn't your dad have a beard like that?" she asked her friend, making Sokka cover his mouth, struggling to hold back a laugh. "Don't you say a word." the Princess warned him, her cheeks flushed red with embarrassment; her anger couldn't disguise her own feelings. "I am both amused and disgusted at the same time." Ty Lee gave her own opinion, knowing the implication of her liking her boyfriend having any chance resemblance to her father was hilarious, if not concerning. "Please, shut up." Azula asked, sounding surprisingly dejected, rather than the usual boisterous, commanding tone that she'd put on when she was annoyed with her.

Yes, if you're wondering, Sokka has had a little goatee (like adult Sokka in the flashback in TLoK) for the entirety of this story, it's just never been drawn into focus, unlike Aang's hair or lack thereof.

[frostythefrostedfox]

#ReadAnotherBook and stop crying about the idw comics

Please fill in the annexed form so your feedback can be properly ignored and laughed at when the owner of the blog has nothing better to do, which is most of the day anyways. Thank you!

And worry not fellow "too-scared-to-use-my-user", brother of "i-need-anon-to-talk-shit", cousin of "i-couldnt-just-read-another-post-instead", there are other posts underway such as why Techno-Karen is a nothing character; how midtiers manages to please everyone by pleasing nobody, how sonic prime is actually really bad, more metal gear fangirling and much more reviews of games that only I like, like Drakengard.

Also, on an unrelated note

I know who you are, so I am glad to see that despite our differences in opinions, you still come back to read the things I say and bitch about all day long, I really cannot wait for your next comment, as these are the only way I have of measuring the quality of the content I provide, but to show you that I care about the feedback and would love to see more of it, I can complain about another "book", just for you, that's right, all you had to do is ask, so simple! That way you can see that I dislike many things, not just one in particular.

One of the parts that I dislike the most about the Archie Sonic comics is how much they stray away from everything Sonic related, yes, they are a part of a different continuity like Sonic X and Sonic Boom, yet those two still maintain the characters for what they are, while here they become basically the opposite, Sonic being an insufferable annoying cunt with an ego as big as the sun, being obstuse and never listening to anything was quite the shocker, considering that Sonic has never and will probably never act like that in any game, why is Sonic being portrayed as this almighty hero that feeds off social clout and only lives to be praised by the masses as if he was Homelander from The Boys; Archie strayed away in more ways than just the characters tho, one of them was also the topic and the messages of their stories, Sonic was never intended to have a conglomerated storyline, full of political drama and serious real life parallels that would make you rethink the way society acts, yet Archie is full of those, Archie believes that it can make itself "mature" just because everyone is mean and walter white is canon to their universe and there are tyranical leaders, but being mature is more than that, and games like sonic 06 really showed that you can still have a "kid friendly" game while having a mature storyline despite its own flaws, big flaws, in the execution of said game.

A personal gripe of mine is also the artstyle, at times it can look good and fitting, but most the time it looks out of place, wonky and amateurish, most sonic meme reaction images come from Archie for a reason, yet even when it looks good in my opinion, it still has this cartoonish look to it that makes it look very fake to me, but again, this point is entirely a subjective thing as I prefer more realistic artstyles in the media I consume, like the one used in Sonic X and Sonic 06.

I really hope you enjoyed this mini commentary on Archie, I really put a lot of effort into it, I really want people to see that I am able to complain about everything! Mayhaps I'll even make this into a full post about Archie, who knows, but if it does, I want you to know that this was only possible thanks to YOU, if it wasn't for your comment, I would have never realized these things, thanks!

[highqueenofelfhame]

THRONE OF GLASS LIVEBLOG!

So i’m already on chapter like seven so this is a round up of those chapters and my thoughts/fav bits and pieces and things I’m highlighting and tabbing in my book so you guys can get a feel for the things that I like to notate. I am reading from a US edition hardcover copy so I will leave page numbers as well for reference for you noodles. 

Just for funsies so you know what my colorcoding is, I’ll update this like as I need to highlight other characters. I highlight foreshadowing and stuff of that nature in Purple. Aelin is in yellow (gold nightgown). Dorian is blue. Chaol is currently nothing because nothing he’s said has appealed to me enough to highlight him. I’m saving the color green for Rowan. I also use tabs accordingly so that i know where I’ve highlighted things. 

This has literally just turned into a mess of a commentary that nobody asked for and nobody is going to read because it’s long as fuck but if you’d like to hang with me while I blab about this book, please leave your comments and opinions and stuff below! I’d love to know your thoughts and properly discuss the books with you and even if you want to hope into my DMs or ask and chat there I’m up for that as well!

@emdythewriter​ you asked for it so i’m tagging you. If anyone wants to be tagged in updates let me know I guess???? I think i’ll try to update every handle full of chapters. 

For some reason I often forget just how sassy and "I don’t give a fuck" Celaena has been since the very first page. I don’t know why, because it’s something that I love about her so much but I genuinely find myself laughing out loud with just how witty and sassy she is. It’s incredible. Also her bloodthirst is just...so good. 

In true me fashion, the first thing that I highlighted was Celaena fantasizing about killing Chaol on page 3: "Oh, it’d be nice to see his blood spill across the marble." This is just good Celaena content, I can’t help myself. 

The next few things I highlighted are from page 10/11.  "To attempt to flee is suicide." (pg 10) "You knew it was suicide." (pg 11) "I never intended to escape." (pg 11) All of this is pretty dark, but I think that it’s something important to note. That all through the first three books Celaena is struggling with severe, severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Her attempted escape was an attempted suicide and I feel like that doesn’t hit that hard with a lot of people despite how many times it’s said. I feel like her mental health here is integral to her character growth from the first three books. Even in the Assassin’s Blade, she is depressed, suffering PTSD in my opinion, and just downright struggling. She uses her swaggering personality to cover a lot of it up like a lot of people with depression do. I know that outwardly to people I don’t know well, I pretend to be much more confident than I am in reality. It’s a coping mechanism and I feel important to note about her character.  "I wasn’t going to kill him, you buffoon." (pg 12)This just makes me laugh. No other reason. It’s one of my favorite lines from the first book and I love writing her calling people a buffoon. 

"Our beloved king finds you lacking?" (pg 15) JUST GETS ME MAN. Anytime she comes for Chaol you all know that I’m t h r i v i n g.

"Yes, she would go -- to Rifthold, to anywhere, even through the Gates of the Wyrd and into Hell itself, if it meant freedom." (pg 19)This is something I noticed on a reread a few months back but Sarah was really planting those seeds early on and I just, I love it. It was really good planning and plotting to leave that in the very first book of the series and I feel like it goes to show how much Sarah actually planned this out while writing. 

The next thing I marked was some sass from Dorian because I just love Dorian. I feel like he’s the one character that doesn’t like fuck up and he really just tries his best and gets shit on. He’s a cinnamon roll baby, he IS baby, and I will protect him with my life. "”Then I apologize, my lady! How terrible it must be to condescend to answer! Next time, I’ll try to think of something more stimulating to say." (pg 23) This was in response to Celaena only using nonverbal communication and telling him his questions didn’t respond an answer.

More foreshadowing in a sense, and Celaena speaking of her hertiage without anyone (including the reader the first time round!) knowing: "”King Brannon was Fae, and Oakwald is still his. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the trees remember him." (pg 30.) I also highlighted "”Before Adarlan began its conquest, this forest was cloaked in magic."  Just because y’know, in a lot of ways even here, it was. On page 32 along with this thought, I marked "”Small white flowers lay at the foot of her cot, and many infant-sized footprints led in and out of the tent."  The forest and little folk remember Brannon, and they remember Aelin Ashryver Galathynius. They remember Terrasen. And I just love all these little seeds like this that get planted that aren’t just a one off thing. I love when the little folk dip in and out. 

I think about some of the initial conversations that she has with Chaol quite a bit because it all goes into reasons that I just don’t like him. Like, yes she is a criminal but she’s also really young and has endured impossible things and he’s just so judgemental of her and her character straight from the get-go and it just always rubbed me the wrong way. On page 36, she tells him "”But the overseers had been instructed to treat me with extra care, and took the liberty of rubbing salt into my wounds - salt that I mined - and whipped me often enough so that some of the gashes never really closed. It was through the kindness of a few prisoners from Eyllwe that my wounds didn’t become infected. Every night, one of them stayed up the hours it took to clean my back." She tells him this and he still makes several comments that just super piss me off later on that we’ll get to and that I’ll definitely be marking just for the sake of being able to locate it anytime someone wants to argue with me about his character lmao. 

More foreshadowing that I love on page 37: "Magic was dead, the Fae were banished or executed, and she would never again have anything to do with the rise and fall of kingdoms. She wasn’t fated for anything. Not anymore." Like HELLO major foreshadowing that is pretty obvious now that I’m reading but at the time I didn’t take into account what that meant. At this point all we know is that she’s a notorious assassin so it should have raised flags in my head the first time that I read the book that she was something bigger. 

"Still, the image haunted his dreams throughout the night: a lovely girl gazing at the stars, and the stars who gazed back." (Page 38) Like this just straight out shows you the kind of person Dorian is because he is asking Celaena to be his champion assassin but he still sees her as a person. He sees her as more than just a criminal where everyone else kind of treats her like she’s a feral animal almost. It takes Chaol ages before he really treats her like a human being but Dorian did from the very beginning and I just... it shows so much about his character, y’all. So much. 

[fruitcoops]

Hey! I love your blog and your writing, especially how really you make all the characters feel.

I came out to my mom last night and she just kinda dismissed it as "you'll get over it" so I'm feeling kinda shitty. If you have time, energy and ideas, could you write some parent/child hurt/comfort? Possibly with one of the Lupins/Dumo with Sirius?

Thank you :)

Good news anon! I'm your mom now! You deserve all the love and support and I am so proud of you <3 Here's a headcanon list of Sirius and the Lupins (partially inspired by discussions on the server), and SW credit goes to @lumosinlove!

TW for implied bad childhood, mention of the airport outing

- The first time Hope gives him a Midwestern Mom cheek pinch and goes "oh aren't you cute" he just dies a little from sheer affection

- Lyall ruffles everyone's hair (hey, he's tall and a dad. It's just what they do) and even though Sirius is taller than him, Lyall makes an effort to reach up and make him feel included

- Speaking of, Sirius helps him put up holiday lights and it becomes a tradition

- When the news of Sirius' disownment goes public (or whenever Walburga/ Orion talk shit), both Hope and Lyall are ready to throw down 1v1 and Remus really won't stop them

- The armchair in their living room is perfect for naps--Sirius always falls asleep in it at like 9 pm when Coops visit and Hope tucks the nearest blanket around him with a light pat to his head

- (nobody did that for him before her. Sirius has A Lot of feelings the first time)

- Hope knows that Sirius only asks her for recipes when he's super stressed out, so she cherry-picks the most calming and repetitive ones to send him

- He sends her pictures of the finished product with a little " : ) " each time

- Sirius wasn't quite sure how to act around them at first because a) he already had Dumo and Celeste as his adopted parents and b) the Lupins are so,,,,, normal? They're normal, likeable, empathetic people?

- He thought he had to choose between the Dumais and the Lupins and it was very uncomfortable for him until he realized that wasn't true at all--both families loved him in their own way, so he could have both

- All the "I hate my in-laws" jokes simply do not compute

- After the airport (as written about here), he carries the guilt around for a literal age until he comes to understand neither of them blame him or secretly think he's a horrible person

- Lyall lowkey still can't believe his son married The Sirius Black (Sirius notices and thinks it's so fucking funny. Remus is beyond embarrassed)

- At first, Sirius was worried about how Reg would get along with them, but he fit in quite easily. Hope thinks he's the sweetest kid and Lyall thinks his muttered commentary on every hockey game they watch together is hysterical

- There are days Hope fantasizes about personally throwing Walburga and Orion in jail. Not many. But some.

- Reg and Sirius don't talk about their childhood, but the Lupins put it together pretty quick and it breaks their hearts

- Lyall is a chill, quiet, peaceful dude. Would he call Orion a little bitch through a megaphone given the chance? Yup.

- It takes about six months for Sirius to break the habit of going in for a handshake when they meet up and accept the inevitable hug, and when he finally does it's one of the Lupins' proudest moments

- Sirius' physical affection love language thrives in that house

- Sirius: "Do your parents actually like me, or are they just pretending?"

Remus, who has been on the receiving end of Lily's 'haha your parents like your fiancé more than they like you' jokes for half a year: "W h a t."

- All the Lupin love. All of it. Sirius would have been included in the Lupin family reunions/ pictures/ holiday cards even if he didn't put a ring on it

[mittensmorgul]

For anyone interested in long-term residence in the supernatural fandom, please have some observations I’ve made over the decade I’ve been here. Take it or leave it as you will, but I’ve found all of this info useful over the years I’ve been here.

I wrote this yesterday, and it achieved its mission of identifying the sort of folks who would react negatively to it (i.e. a lot of block lists have been updated), so now that it’s been edited for content, it’s going under a cut (because that is how we do things on tumblr in general, unless we have a deliberate purpose for annoying readers with excessively long text posts) for the sake of people who actually do care about the fandom and its history. If that’s not you or your reason for being here, then keep on keeping on with your own thing, I guess. For those who are interested, there’s a lot of fandom resources some of us have been building for years that you might enjoy knowing about.

First off, I’ve been informed by a few friends who’ve read through this for coherency’s sake that it sort of reads like a *shakes cane from porch* fandom grandma complaint, but honestly... I earned this rocking chair and goshdangit imma rock now. So apologies for any “back in my day” vibes or faint aroma of tiger balm this post might give off. Then again, it’s loosely based on a similar post from 2012 so like... time is a flat circle anyway I guess.

1. There is no such thing as “tumblr famous,” unless you’re referring to the hilarious and delightful fic of the same name (please go read it, you will cackle). Posting Hot Takes for imaginary Clout™ on this site is kind of pointless in the long run. Sure you can post solely for the sake of stirring shit and getting notes, but the majority of the folks who do aren’t long term residents of the fandom. They’re just tourists moving through our little beach town for spring break. If you’re actually intent on moving to this corner of the fandom for an extended stay, please bother to really feel out the permanent residents and understand the culture and general mood of the neighborhood. It bears no resemblance to whatever’s going on across town where all the bars and beach parities are happening, and those loud, drunken revelers are, again, gonna disappear back to their regular lives or on to the next party eventually. That doesn’t mean the fandom is dying, it’s just evolving.

(funny how I had several comments implying that I’m just trying to keep the fandom from evolving with this post, because I sincerely do want the fandom to continue on for years to come, and that is impossible without evolution. We can evolve without self-immolating, though. mostly i included point 1 for an excuse to push ancient but hilarious fanfic on you.)

2. Once you post something here, it’s been unleashed to the fandom winds. You never know where it will end up, or who will comment on it or add to it. Remember that time Misha tweeted the link to the Epic Cockles Love Story post? No? It was wild. That was 2012. They all know we’re here, and how to find us if they want to. Please don’t take it to their doorsteps.

Obviously if someone is being a dick on your posts, please feel free to block them, but the whole entire point of this site is to engage people with your posts. Being big mad that someone reblogged your post with comments or supporting evidence, or happy headcanons or “HECK THIS IS GREAT BECAUSE (insert personal story about their experience or whatever else made them Feel Things about your post)” is frankly ridiculous. If your goal is to avoid any sort of engagement with your posts, then maybe try instagram instead. From what I understand, there is a SPN fandom presence there, and nobody can tarnish your original posts with unwanted commentary. But the ability to reblog with additional commentary is a FEATURE of tumblr that builds community through conversation. Otherwise we’re all just talking to ourselves in a vacuum, and that’s what actually kills fandoms.

(and for the folks who just want to blog how they want to blog and don’t want people to engage on their posts at all, please feel free to block anyone you want, as well... nobody wants to step on your toes, but most of us also don’t want to walk on eggshells wondering if this post is one of the “do not add comments for any reason” sorts of posts, either. This is a huge fandom and most people can’t even begin to keep track of every creator and their url du jour, and what their personal rules might be regarding interaction with their content. Including a “please don’t add comments” note at the bottom of your posts-- and not in your tags that won’t even show up on reblogs, but in the actual body of the post-- would sincerely help avoid any awkward or unwanted interactions, too. At the end of the day, you are in control of your own fandom experience and the block button exists.

For the record, I block zero fandom blogs (which is why I posted this, I wanted it to reach a wide scope... refer to the opening paragraphs as to why).

3. Since this post was partly inspired by a tag I left on that post going around about how “previous tags” mean fuckall on this site (which you can read here), just a reminder that if you like someone’s tags or feel they add value to the post, part of the Peer Review structure of tumblr encourages you to PASTE THEM INTO A REBLOG. If you do this, then at least credit the person who actually wrote the tags! Don’t just copy someone else’s tags into your tags on your reblog of the post without credit either. They were not YOUR tags. (I have had this happen to tag rambles I wrote and someone else got credited with them on a subsequent reblog and it is FRUSTRATING). Just... don’t even bother to write “previous tags” because WHAT PREVIOUS TAGS?! Nobody is gonna bother to chase back the chain of reblogs trying to find where the mystery tags came from, friendos. That way lies madness.

(for the record, since some folks seemed to focus on this point solely, writing “previous tags” on a post isn’t inherently a BAD thing, but for anyone who actually is here for more than one-off shitposting, then it’s sort of a pointless thing in the long run. This wasn’t intended to suggest people who ARE here for one-off shitposting are bad or “doing it wrong,” but for people who might actually want to preserve that hilarious joke or insightful comment. People delete posts and entire blogs all the time around here. Links break. I get that the upcoming generation just shrugs at that and moves on with their lives, but heck... you don’t have to accept that all entertainment is disposable if you don’t want to. There’s a bizarre sort of nihilism plaguing us all about the impermanence of pretty much everything that feels like something we should be fighting against rather than buying into wholesale, even in our escapist entertainment. I’m just exhausted by the complete loss of joy in community.

*shouts from the peanut gallery* IT AIN’T THAT DEEP, JUST GET SOME FRESH AIR AND LOOK AT A PUPPY OR SOMETHING

Yes... yes it isn’t really that deep, but bigger picture in the state of reality we’re all entirely disillusioned with, are we supposed to just give up on everything, including the things we cling to because they bring us a tiny spark of hope that we’re not all just trapped in this dystopian nightmare and things might actually be worth living for?

*peanut gallery clinging to burnt husks of peanuts in a barren peanut field* but this is how we have chosen to cope

Okay... you do you... I feel bad for you but if that’s the case then this post is NOT FOR YOU. AND THAT’S FINE. I honestly do not care if you don’t care! I mean, I’m sorry anyone has to live in a world that drives them to that mindset, but I understand. This post is for anyone who might look at their lives and their choices and think “no wait, I unironically enjoy this and want more from the experience of that enjoyment than I’m currently feeling.” Everyone else can continue with their lives as usual.)

4. CONTENT THEFT IS NEVER OKAY. PERIOD. Things like “credit to the artist” or tagging gifs or images you found on pinterest as “not mine” isn’t actually credit. If you can’t source an image or gif set, DO NOT POST IT! We don’t REPOST (i.e. save an image and then create a new post with it as if it was our own creation). We REBLOG (click the little square arrows and reblog from the actual creator). That goes for gif sets, fanvids, screencaps, meta, fic... everything.

(hopefully everyone here already understands this one, but I felt compelled to include some “these are stupidly obvious” reminders anyway, since this is ostensibly some sort of advice column. This is the equivalent of the warning label on your toaster reminding you not to use it in the bath. Like... duh...)

5. Close kin of item 4 is SOURCE YOUR SHIT. 

(for 100% disclosure purposes, I specifically discussed this one in this specific way because of an influx of anon ask messages I received in the wake of the finale. Literally the inciting incident for creating this entire post was what I can only assume was a joking ask about a comment Misha made at a con years ago. Someone actually bothered to take the time to type out those sentences to me. I have no idea what they were expecting in reply, or what could possibly motivate them to send this comment about something so entirely random from, again, several years ago. Just a joke? No idea, but whatever... it got me thinking that there might actually be people who are new to the fandom who MIGHT actually care about the fandom history, and maybe they just don’t know where to go for that info, or how to even begin searching through 16 years of history for things they might actually find enjoyment in, rather than just hauling random out of context garbage out on main and pointing and laughing about it now. People are actually allowed to care about things. It’s not cringeworthy to actually care about things, and you are not alone in actually caring, and there’s this whole big room over here full of people who are thrilled to share in that with you. This post is intended FOR THOSE PEOPLE SPECIFICALLY, so if that is not you, please just continue walking by.)

Yes, I know lots of y’all are new around here right now, but dredging up stuff from years ago that fandom has completely debunked and presenting it as TRU FAX again is just exhausting. We’re not trying to be party poopers, but seriously, we have seen it all and are mostly done with extinguishing bags of flaming dog poop on our front porches for the umpteenth year in a row. I’ve seen a lot of posts that have the same tone as “I saw Goody Proctor dancing with the devil” or “I heard kylo ren has an eight pack” and just... the information is there for anyone who cares enough to find it.

This goes double for “why is nobody talking about this thing I just discovered while watching the show for the first time?!” And, oh hon, we have talked it all into the ground over the last fifteen years. We’re happy you’re discovering it again, but I promise we talked about it plenty when the episodes originally aired. We have such a rich meta history that lots of us have worked really hard to preserve. I encourage you to seek it out, if nothing else than as historical artifacts. The way we have discussed the show has been a 16-year evolution. People have written literal doctoral dissertations on this show. Your shitposts are fun! We love reliving our own experience through fresh eyes, and seeing your wonder at experiencing it all again for the first time! But y’all didn’t invent this fandom in the last six months, either.

Meta Sources and Minerals provided by our friendly neighborhood fandom archivist, @lets-steal-an-archive

Academic books and articles about SPN 

A collection of Meta Essays going back to s1 and organized by topic (all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again)

SPN Heavy Meta Archive (s1-3)

Mel’s Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-12)

Oranges8hands Dreamwidth archive of meta (s1-15, with many similar entries to Mel’s... though ymmv on viewpoint in a lot of these too)

Anyone remember Fandom Wank? Not the concept but the actual LJ... No? Okay have a link to SPN topics that ended up there. Through 2013. We have seen so much... including several fandom containment breaches.

for all your art sourcing needs, please see @theroadsofararchive, the repository for so much fandom art.

need to find a gif of something? canonspngifs is a vast repository of gifsets of the entire series. If the gif you want to use in your post happens to be the first gif in the gifset, in the tumblr gif finder thingy just paste the permalink to that post from canonspngifs (which is easily searchable by episode, character, location, situation, quotes, and sometimes even color and clothing items the actors are wearing... it’s really well organized, especially for tumblr >.>) and the first gif will be automatically linked with credit to the gif creator attached. It makes life easy that way. It’s also convenient when trying to remember something specific but can’t remember what episode it’s from. I’ve used the site to jog my memory before going to the superwiki armed with more specific search results to find episode quotes and references. Or sometimes I just scroll through all the nice gifs for fun, too.

Need a screencap of something and know exactly which episode it’s from? Try Home of the Nutty. You might not find the exact screencap you’re looking for, but they have a complete set of caps of every episode, and it’s an incredibly useful resource for quick reference checks and the like. Just give pages a chance to fully load before clicking on the next one. The site is easily overloaded, but it’s still free to use (and again, with credit... Pretty much every screencap on my entire blog is from HotN unless otherwise credited).

As you can see, this is a fandom built on preserving our history. You absolutely are not required to engage with any of this if that’s not of interest to you, but I can only assume that there are people who would be interested in it if only they knew it existed and how to find it. Well, now they do.

6. A few more notes on tags, and how they work on tumblr. The first 20 tags on your ORIGINAL posts are searchable sitewide, so if you want to be able to find something again, tag that thing first before going on general tag rambles. The only place tags on reblogs are searchable is on your own blog. So you don’t have to put 50 tags trying to get a post seen if it’s a reblog. You’re just spitting into the wind at that point. If you have a filing system for finding things again, then by all means add those tags (again, in the first 20, so they’re searchable), but you don’t need to tag a reblog “destiel” and “deancas” and “dean” and “cas” and “dean x cas” or whatever. Pick one for your personal blog’s filing system, that’s all you need.

(this was only added because tagging and searching on this site is so very broken... I get that a lot of folks don’t care about ever searching their own blogs again for anything, so this one only really applies if you do often find yourself trying to find old posts. If not, then it’s not really relevant.  It took me years to work out a decent tagging system, and at the beginning of my time here I never thought I’d end up camping out here for a decade and falling this deep into the fandom, and I regretted my lack of consistent tags only years later when I realized I actually wanted to be able to go back and find specific old posts again. So... for anyone who wants to err on the side of caution, working out a sensible tagging system really helps if you’re here for the long term. I personally tag content by episode, because some of my other general tags are so large as to be practically useless as a search term. But whatever system you choose to file stuff on your own blog, it really only has to make sense to you. And again, if this is pointless advice for someone who has no intention of settling here for the long term. Please feel free to ignore it. I just wish someone had explained it this way to me ten years ago and saved me the hassle of retroactively tagging something like 30k posts... especially now that using the mass tag replacer is the fastest way to get your entire blog deleted... oops? so yeah, don’t use the mass tag replacer either >.>)

7. Tags on Tumblr DO NOT WORK LIKE TAGS ON TWITTER. If you @ someone in the body of the post, it will show up in their notifications (if they’re the sort of person who even checks their notifications... not all of us do. For the record, I generally don’t...), but putting actor or ship names in the tags on a tumblr post does absolutely nothing. It’s not the same as tagging the actor’s twitter account in a tweet. Nobody’s getting notifications about you tagging a post about Jensen here as “Jensen Ackles.” There is a difference. Please learn it. (and don’t take headcanons and ESPECIALLY RPF or otherwise explicit art or fic from tumblr to twitter and tag the actors in it. That’s just... not okay.)

(I have seen the pearl clutchers getting all in a huff about the mere existence of RPF or even explicit content of fictional characters if it doesn’t meet their purity standards, but tagging those things allows people who don’t want to see it to actively avoid that content here. Nobody has a right to tell people their fictional content shouldn’t exist at all, or that creators of that fictional content somehow deserve harassment or threats for having dared to create such “immoral” content, won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children... and no... you do not do that here. Don’t be the problematic behavior you wish to ban from the world. Learn to use tags to protect yourself from, as i have attempted to emphasize here, fictional content you are personally upset by. That’s a you problem, not a problem for the creators of potentially upsetting content that they tag appropriately for.)

8. General formatting stuff: If you’re writing long text posts, visually break them up so people aren’t faced with one long wall of text. The enter key is your friend. Also, if you put long text posts under a Read More break and send people to your blog to finish reading, please ensure that your blog is actually visually accessible (tiny text, or light grey text on a dark grey background, or a visually busy background might be aesthetically pleasing to you but nobody can actually read it. Loads of folks won’t even try. Which is great if you don’t actually care whether people are able to appreciate your content or not, but something to at least consider if you *do* actively want to encourage engagement with your work. Confirm how your blog looks on both mobile and desktop and make sure it’s actually functional in both, too).

And since I mentioned that most of my experience on fandom tumblr has been in the SPN fandom, here’s a bit of a reminder for folks who are new around here. With the reminder that I have been here more than a decade and still feel like a newbie myself sometimes...

This is an OLD FANDOM. There are many, many people who have been at this longer than some of you have been alive. The average age for creators in this fandom is older than you think (I think of my friends in their 30′s as young’ins okay? okay). With that understood, you are responsible for the content you consume and are exposed to. Curate your experience. Ship and let ship. YKINMKATOK. Don’t deliberately expose yourself to content you find upsetting for whatever reason. Tags and warnings are your friends, not targets for you to attack in some sort of purity war. People will ship things you do not like (or in specific ways you do not like), will say things you do not agree with, and will find their happiness in things you abhor. That is not your concern. Find what you do like, and support and engage with it, and ignore (or block, or unfollow) the rest. Tumblr has a feature that lets you blacklist tags so the content you’re trying to avoid won’t appear on your dash.

Remember the paradox of tolerance.

It is not your job in fandom to police how other people enjoy the fandom. It’s not *my* job to police how *you* enjoy the fandom, UNLESS your enjoyment is in actively harming other real human beings in the fandom. If you don’t like their take on the character or the show or the plotlines or their ships or anything else, you don’t need to engage with their posts at all! The necessary corollary to this is that clarifying misunderstandings or correcting factual misinformation is not “policing.” 

(this is where the peanut gallery reminds me it ain’t that deep, and I plead with them to put down the social media and find just one (1) thing to actually believe in in this godforsaken life, find something other than disdain and cynicism and spite to live for. If those things motivate you to find a larger cause for yourself, then great, use them to your advantage, but use them to find something that makes you a better person or brings you a modicum of joy and connection to your fellow human beings despite living in a dystopian hellscape of a world)

I have seen a lot of posts lately that are founded on the sort of authority that comes with “I watched through tumblr for a few months and then watched the last three episodes of the series” and as such are just... missing the larger context of the entire show, and are unfounded entirely in canon. I 100% appreciate the new enthusiasm for the fandom that we’ve been living in here for years, and it’s wonderful to see new people enjoying the thing we love. Your headcanons are valid, you are valid, but recognize that your headcanons aren’t canon. All of us finale denialists have accepted this in some measure, so we feel you. We truly, truly feel you. But regarding actual canon, we have a resource for that: the Superwiki. Learn it, live it, love it, as Metatron would say.

(which you could discover he said in 10.17 Inside Man, thanks to the superwiki! accept no substitutes!)

(and again, there have been people who have been involved in fandom for years who haven’t engaged with canon in years, either! You can play in this universe however you choose, BUT FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY CARE ABOUT CANON AT ALL, WHICH I AM AGAIN POINTEDLY SAYING MIGHT NOT BE YOU, READER, AND I’M NOT SUGGESTING YOU ARE WRONG FOR NOT WANTING TO ACTUALLY ENGAGE WITH CANON, but if you DO want to engage with canon, please have some useful resources. Why do people feel personally attacked by being presented a list of helpful resources? Absolutely baffling.)

(also: words have definitions. “Canon” is a specific thing, meaning in this case “the finished media product that aired on television.” Anything beyond those limits is secondary canon (think: john’s journal, which is not canon but canon adjacent at best...), word of god (i.e stuff said by the writers and showrunners), or headcanon (which includes actor commentary-- they may have helped create the show with their acting choices and whatever, but they are not in control of the story overall). If there’s something you dislike about actual canon, you can reject it and supplement it with your own theories or preferred outcomes-- that’s basically what fanfic is-- but that doesn’t make your theories canon (much to all our dismay, that’s just not how any of this works. This is not to invalidate how anyone engages with the show or the fandom, just trying to clarify what seems to have been a source of unintentional misunderstandings. Your theories do not have to be “canon” to be legitimate interpretations.)

***I am setting this section apart, and did make a separate post of just this following information, because this is where we go from being relatively chill about different parts of fandom choosing to interact in different ways and you do you and blog however you want, to “hey can everybody please understand that the way you are interacting with this specific material might be harmful for specific legal reasons, and stating that you do not care about the consequences of your actions does actively make you the asshole here...” Okay, now that we have that understood:

The spnscripthunt collective has been steadily acquiring new scripts (which are posted in full on the superwiki for everyone to enjoy, for free). The language around how some folks are talking about these scripts is... concerning. For very real legal reasons, actually, and not because we’re feeling precious about the collection and don’t wike it when meanies use them in shitposts.

-First off, these scripts are not “leaks.” They are all verified and legally purchased (or gifted, in some cases, but still acquired entirely above board. we didn’t whack anyone over the head in a back alley for these scripts, or swipe them out of someone’s trailer on set).

(in case anyone was unaware, these scripts are the copywritten protected property of Warner Brothers. So yes, how we use them and share them with the fandom could have legal repercussions. We present them as a collected resource of fandom history which SHOULD fall under Fair Use doctrine, but this is untested legal water. Insinuating that the scripts are somehow not entirely legally obtained, or that posting them for public access involved less than 100% transparent and entirely legal transactions is incredibly concerning.

Once again for the peanut gallery, if you don’t care about any of that and are just having a good time with it, at least be mindful of the work and expense a large group of people have gone through to acquire and present the content you’re all too eager to exploit for cheap thrills. Some of us do actually care and are not exactly comfortable with the fact that others don’t seem to care about burning it all to the ground. We can’t force you to listen or behave as we’d hope you might, but at least be aware of the potential consequences of your actions. All we’re asking is for you to not be the douchebag who sets the whole neighborhood on fire with your illegal fireworks display. Is that too much to ask for? more on that in a second, first... a psa)

-If you see a script for sale and are unsure if it’s legit (or believe it might already be freely available in our collection), please feel free to ask us for advice. Our goal is to make as much of our fandom history available to the entire fandom, and we absolutely do not want anyone shelling out money for stuff you can already find for free.

(seriously, we’ve seen a bunch of resellers cropping up selling printed versions of the scripts we bought and uploaded for everyone to enjoy free of charge, or scripts that are otherwise of dubious origin. We’ve been at this for years now and know what’s actually out there. We don’t want anyone to fall for a scam if we can help it)

-Also, the usual reminder that the scripts we acquire ARE NOT NECESSARILY THE FINAL SHOOTING DRAFTS. In fact, the majority of scripts in our collection are NOT. Changes are made daily to scripts, even during filming. Comparing a Production Draft (white pages, effectively the first “final draft” of what usually becomes a series of drafts before filming wraps) to a much later revision (say... green or goldenrod revisions, several of which we DO have in our collection for comparison) and how those earlier drafts often differ wildly from the aired version versus how similar a much later green draft is to the aired version, for example, can teach you a lot about the television writing process. The link above to the superwiki scripts page has a nice little explainer about how this process works.

Differences between our posted scripts (many of which are white drafts, aka FIRST complete drafts, which will likely go through multiple rounds of revisions before filming even begins) and the aired version of the show are not all “acting choices” or a director or editor just cutting whole scenes on a whim. It’s insulting to everyone involved in production to suggest that’s the case.

(and yeah, fine... whatever, make any sort of posts you like regarding how those changes came about, but at the very least understand that it’s not actually the truth about how any of this works. Don’t care that that’s not the truth and want to make the posts anyway because shitposting is fun and that’s the extent of your sense of humor? FINE! You’re entitled to do that! But at least you DO know the truth now, and hopefully so do the people who engage with your posts. Deliberate ignorance isn’t cute, smooth lions notwithstanding)

There’s probably a whole other post to be made on fandom tagging etiquette, but again I don’t really use the tags enough to know what’s going on with that whole situation. I’ve also probably left a lot of stuff out, so please feel free to add things I’ve overlooked.

Thanks also to @trisscar368 and @thayerkerbasy for help compiling this, too. They were kind enough to escort me through the park to feed these pigeons. Now I need to take them out for ice cream. :’D

So I guess welcome to the neighborhood. Make yourself at home, but like... try not to trash the place while you’re here. Some of us live here by choice, lol.

[twst-campos13]

ah hello!! i'm literally so excited to see a blog for enby and male readers sodjfoijf,,could i maybe request a scenario where male reader is a staff member (idk?? like a librarian?? a nurse??? do they need nurses over there???) and is crushing on crewel but is too scared to confess because he's both Too Dense to pick up any signs of potential reciprocation and also just isn't sure if crewel likes men??? maybe. maybe with a happy ending though because i am a fool,, thank you very much!!

One hopelessly cheesy scenario coming up!! Thank you for requesting! I hope you don’t mind I made reader a librarian who may or may not be a bit of a romantic because i listened to a particular playlist while writing this- (commentary in notes!)

Warnings: none! Tags: male!reader, fluff!

A simple man such as you live a simple life. As simple as life can be in Night Raven College, that is. A prestigious school that holds a student body that can barely tolerate each other. It would be typical for a librarian to be the observer than the observed, but hey, if it means getting out of trivial matters of the school and enjoying the show in your personal bubble, then you have no complaints.

This attitude of yours did come to have its own consequences. You were seen as timid by most students as you were quite closed-off, taking it as a reason to poke fun at you sometimes. You proved them wrong when they step out of line with their fun. Most of the time you choose to ignore them. However, you lived up to your introverted nature, especially when it comes to him.

Tall, dark, and handsome. Approachable but also not at the same time. Sharply dressed and sharp attitude. This man that visits the library ever so often had become your daily motivation to keep on working at this school despite the wage that Crowley gives you.

Divus Crewel, feared and admired by staff and students—also known as the man who stole your heart.

You feel so small compared to him. That would not be so farfetched. He is a remarkable man, and what about you? You are just a librarian at this school. You are like mere dust to him.

Yet, despite this, you continued yearning for him no matter how ridiculous it seems. Perhaps you have fallen too deep in romantic fiction that you make hopeless wishes. You are known to be excellent in reading people but for some reason, you find it hard to read Divus. His perfect posture whenever he would scan the Applied Sciences aisle showed that he is focused on his reading. However, it is his expression you find hard to decipher. He looks dashing as ever, of course, but his thin lips and neutral gaze makes it hard for you to know what he is thinking.

If your life is a novel it would be so easy to know what runs in his mind. What he feels for you. Maybe he could even know what you feel for him. In a story, what makes characters likable is knowing what their emotions, their feelings, their ambitions, and their dreams are, for they are already laid out in ink on pages. Implicit or explicit information, simple or complex structure of personality, it does not matter. You would easily know about them for they are just sentences away from understanding.

And in romance novels…oh, how dreamy they are. How easy they make it seem to fall in love, to confess, and to achieve a happy ending. However, as a librarian, you know the reality of your situation. Your relationship with Crewel is a professional. Strictly, if you were to add an adjective. Is it really strictly professional? Your right brain points out the moments in your life where you interacted with him. At faculty meetings, reunions, at the library…moments like those just feel surreal you almost believed that you made those up on your own. Probably because you initiated each of those interactions yourself.

The only time, where Crewel would come to you himself, are rare. One time he came to the library and checked out a book to read in his spare time. His voice distracted you. It was like cherry wine. Sweet, smooth, enough to make your throat dry and your cheeks flushed. Oh, you could listen to him talk for hours in that tone of his, and he could even make you do anything he pleases.

You greet each other good morning or good afternoon when you pass by each other, and he would smile a teasing one at you as if you two shared a secret with each other. Well, technically you did, for one time you bought him coffee under the pouring rain, and he repaid you for your kindness. Soon enough your coffee exchange became a routine for both of you. It was sweeter than the cream in his coffee. It was more refreshing than the rainy day you shared with each other.

His gaze. His posture. His voice. His smile. Despite those small interactions with each other you are still troubled by what he thinks of you. A friend? A colleague? A special someone? Why is this so hard? Why was it so easy to fall in love? And when things could not get worse for you, your left brain argued that he might not be interested to mingle with a man.

Well, you could find out for yourself, but that would be creepy. Your workspace is in the library! You could not just leave when you please just so you can observe him. You could not use the staff files to your advantage—that is being a borderline stalker. Whatever Crewel’s orientation is, is his to keep and his to disclose to you. Oh, but still. If this were a novel, you could easily analyze the situations that give off evidence of him liking men. Or liking someone like you.

If that were the case you would not have a hard time trying to decipher his words, his gaze, his tone, and his actions towards you. If that were the case…if that were the case…then…well, there’s no then. Divus Crewel is not a fictional character to analyze. He is your coworker, your colleague.

It is hard to know what he thinks of you, at all. You really wished that you could…but the thought of knowing what he thinks to scare you, as well.

Rejection is not that far from reality. Who are you compared to him again? A nobody. A simple, ‘timid’, librarian that enjoys reading romantic and fiction novels and inserts himself in scenarios he makes up for himself just so he can…find the happiness he wishes to have.

But Divus is your happiness. Became your source of happiness. Ironic how he colors the muted floor of the library with his monochromatic appearance. Maybe it is better that you keep your feelings to yourself. You avoid the risk of rejection and humiliation as well as ruining whatever it is your current relationship with Crewel is.

You barely registered the visitor in front of your desk until a familiar red leathery gloved hand rested atop of yours. The contact of the leather sent a spark of electricity through you that you snapped your head up to meet alluring silvery blue eyes. There is only one person in this college that owns those distinct, beautiful, silvery blue eyes.

Divus.

“Have I interrupted your moment of peace, sir?” He asked in that cherry wine voice of his. It made your throat dry up and your face warm. “N-No—no!” You squeaked, shaking your head to brush off the embarrassment. Quickly, you fixed your composure and appeared presentable. As presentable as you could be under his stare that is. You just hope that he found some amusement in your haste. “D-Div—Mr. Crewel, what can I do for you?” You smiled as you speak in a professional tone. The edge of his lips curled into a familiar smirk and still you could not determine what was running through his mind at the moment.  

“I came to return the book I borrowed last week,” he said, placing down the novel on your desk. Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen. Right, he borrowed that last week. It is not your place to judge whatever it is he desires to read. “Of course,” you nodded, “did you enjoy reading it?” You started on a small talk as you take out your logbook for the check-ins and outs of books. “Somewhat,” Crewel shrugged, “I had my eyes set on another book I would like to borrow.”

“Oh? What is it? I’ll go get it for you.” You stood up after sliding the logbook back to its drawer. Crewel did not leave from where he was standing. His eyes were simply on you. You had to hide your nervousness under his gaze. “I had my eyes on it ever since that rainy day, when you offered me shelter in the library until the rain passes,” he mused. “General fiction, I believe, was the genre.”

“If that’s the case then you better tell me the title,” you joked, taking a stool to the genre’s aisle. “Are you certain you can find it?” Crewel coolly challenged. You almost laughed but did not fight the smile on your lips. “Mr. Crewel, I spend most of my time in this library. I know every book and I still have the Dewey Decimal system memorized…” You kept your eyes distracted by scanning the spines of the books on the shelves. You are aware that he is still looking at you that is why you refused to look back at him. You are not sure what will happen if you look back at him while conversing.  

“If that is the case—” why does he suddenly sound a bit close? “—may you find ‘How to Ask your Dense Colleague Out to Dinner?’”

What a lengthy title. It sounds very basic and almost like a rule book than a novel. Well, that is General Fiction for you. Though you are quite unsure if such a book exists in the library. “Hm…” you hummed, a finger on your chin, as your eyes scanned the shelves. “I don’t think I have that here…Crowley pays me enough to support my rent and meals, but not enough to buy new books. Plus, the students…”

You heard him chuckle beside you and fought the urge to turn to him. “I believe I was not frank enough. Ah, well, I will put all subtleties aside, then…”

His warm breath tickling your skin was what made you finally turn to him. The proximity of your noses startled you that you nearly stumbled out of your stool if it were not for Divus’ hand grabbing yours to pull you to him. You gasped, shocked, as you landed close to his chest. His other hand supported your waist, and your eyes widened his silvery blues. You can feel your heart hammering against his. Your legs feel like putty when he gave you that teasing smirk. Your name—your first name—sounds surreal from his lips. Your entire world was a confusing mix of vertigo and bright lights.

“Will you go to dinner with me?”

You stared. You stammered. You are flabbergasted and flustered. You were unsure how to react to such a forward question that your brain completely shut down. But you cannot embarrass yourself—you must not. Not when…not when…not when…!

Oh, he will he stop saying your name with such sentiment?

“Is your silence a rejection or a consideration?” He rose a brow and your face flushed even more. “No! I mean yes—I mean—no, it isn’t a rejection—”

“Then you have been anticipating this?”

“Divus!”

He laughed. He laughed at your state. He laughed at your awkwardness. But most importantly his laugh sounds so pleasant. Like he was teasing you and you liked him teasing. You grew shy, averting your gaze from his and fidgeting with your fingers. “I mean…I mean…why?”

Crewel stopped laughing and looked at you. “Why what?”

“Why…me? Out of all people?” You asked as fear and denial keep you from grasping the fact that this is all real and not another scenario you made up during rainy days. Crewel’s face remained passive. Neutral. It was eating at your heart and you just wish what is going through his mind.

“Is it not obvious, puppy?” He raised a brow at you. The hand holding your wrist now tilted your chin in his direction. “It is not by fate or destiny, but a mere law that dictates the gravitational pull of similar atoms that is programmed by the need to chemically bind together.”

You suddenly felt stumped. “W—What?”

“I like you, puppy,” Crewel clarified, adoring the way your confusion turned to pure surprise, “and I would like to have dinner with you. Perhaps another, if the first went well.”

You need some time to process this. Your head felt so light you might pass out in his arms. Actually, you would not mind that in the slightest. His coat is just so soft it feels like heaven. A proper response of agreement failed to come to your mind so instead, you asked him again, “And what if the first does not end well?”

Crewel smiled at you. “Then we shall try again with the next dinner. Mind you, puppy, as a man of science, I am not afraid of failure if trying means more chances of perfecting my goal.”

“And what’s that goal?” You asked and physically stopped yourself from combusting when he leaned closer to you that your noses touch and you smell his cologne, and his bold scent.

“The goal to become yours.”

[comfy-whumpee]

Whumping Safely 101

Many people in this community have mental health problems, face various types of discrimination, and have complicated relationships with some parts or types of whump. In particular, I aim this at people who care about the experience of survivors and others with triggers – partially because I am an abuse survivor who often flirts with triggering content as part of my love of whump.

Keeping your blog safe is difficult, takes effort, and is never a perfect process. But as the community grows and grows, it’s really important that we hold ourselves to a high standard. I would argue that this is a responsibility of all content creators, but especially those of us in the messy playground of whump.

I’ve got three sections in here: content warnings, writing with care, and community interaction. I’ve tried to make it navigable. It’s about 1.8k words. Shorter than a lot of drabbles! I welcome good-faith criticism on this topic and further questions on my own views.

Content Warnings

The biggest responsibility, in my opinion, is empowering your reader to make their own decision on whether they want to expose themselves to your writing. This also happens to be by far the easiest way to help people whump safely.

What to warn

This is a big and ever-changing topic. Some things you should warn for as a rule of thumb are anything NSFW, pet whump and box boy whump, drugs and alcohol, medical and hospital content, graphic gore, intimate partner violence, and animal harm. It can be tricky to draw the line of what counts – what needs a warning? If you’re in doubt, just warn it anyway. It doesn’t hurt.

If someone requests a trigger be warned for, even if it’s something that feels obscure or tame, show compassion and agree to the request. This is someone who cares enough about being able to read your writing that they wrote in! They want to be able to read it and enjoy it. You’re being complimented.

Otherwise, look at what other blogs tag for. You’ll see some variation in styles and levels of detail, but it’s a good way to gauge what people think is warn-worthy, when we’re often writing stuff that would already be R-rated in mainstream media.

Read Mores

The easiest way to make sure people don’t see your triggering content is to use a cut. Tumblr is not a very functional website and likes to delete cuts, but a cursory check of your posted content will usually tell you whether it’s worked. With asks, cuts are very spotty, so don’t be afraid to post an ask response separately with a screengrab of the original question. People often then respond to the ask itself with a link to the post, especially if it’s a whole drabble. Tumblr is weird and bad so just do your best.

Content notices

I.e., a quick summary before the drabble, usually in bold, to state what will be coming. I like to distinguish between using content notes (CN) and trigger warnings (TW) to indicate severity. Others might use the old phrase ‘dead dove do not eat’ to indicate this is a heavy piece, and often you will see qualifiers like ‘intense’, ‘mild’, ‘mention’, ‘referenced’ (i.e. it is discussed but not actively happening), and ‘implied’ (as the opposite of ‘explicit’). I’ve also seen a couple of people use ‘vibes’, which is a really nice way of demonstrating that it’s there, but not the focus. A quick paragraph like this, or just a line, lets people make a quick risk assessment on their reading.

This is also important if you’re sending in asks or requests to people. If you want to ask about something triggering, send an inquiry first about whether the blog is okay to hear it.

Tagging

Tagging is a chore, but it’s your primary way of warning people about your content. The main benefit of tagging is that you can be as detailed as you want, because can be tagging for content in general, not just triggers.

In a best case scenario, you’d tag the kind of whump you’re doing, tag triggers, tag characters, and even your ‘verses, because tagging is your index for your blog. If you tag reliably, you help your future self and your readers find stuff, and you also make your blog really dang safe. People who have unusual triggers can blacklist tags, and will pick up on your content tags to help them.

Don’t just tag your own writing. Tag your reblogs, tag your prompts, tag your asks. Yes, edit your asks to add the tags. Tag your images and gifs. Tag your images as images and your gifs as gifs.

If you aren’t up for detailed tagging for whatever reason, just tag for triggering content, and add stuff to that list if you’re asked to. My usual technique is to make a mental note of tags while I’m formatting and editing before posting.

Be aware that your first five tags will be used in search results. If you’re using tags that are associated with kink too, such as ‘shibari’, you might want to rethink your tag order if you don’t want interaction from those blogs. Also think about what tags might come up in non-whump contexts, such as ‘collar’ or ‘PTSD’. Some tactics for getting around this I’ve seen are adding ‘whump’ after the content or writing the tags in past tense (i.e., ‘collared’).

It is also a good idea to watch out for when you might be reblogging something whumpy that is intended as kink / porn / fetish, especially in images. Tagging these as spicy / nsfw / kink is a sensible move.

Writing with Care

Okay, now for the harder stuff.

I mean here to lay out some guidelines for how to write in a way that helps your reader build good faith. This is a much more nuanced topic, and it’s different for everyone. There will always be differing opinions on what should and shouldn’t be written about, what a good depiction of a sensitive topic is, and how to discuss that topic. I tried to strip this back into absolute basics that I hope we can all agree on.

Maybe your whump involves abuse. Maybe it’s gaslighting. Maybe it’s severe mental health problems, or addiction, or slavery, or you write about or analogise real-world issues. Whump deals with the dark stuff, and that’s a big part of its appeal. But don’t ever forget you’re writing the dark stuff.

(Try to) Know what you’re doing

Some of us play fast and loose with plots, medical accuracy, worldbuilding, and other things that get in the way of the pain we crave. This is all well and good, but when we start using whump that speaks true to people’s lived experiences, we shouldn’t be careless with it. I’m particularly talking about things that get represented poorly in mainstream media, such as abusive relationships, issues around marginalisation, mental illness and disability.

Be critical of media that you’ve consumed. Think about how its depicted things that you want to depict in turn. Look for opinions on fictional representations of those issues. Be aware that you might be more ignorant of things than you realise.

Look at how others are writing these issues, particularly if they’re writing from a perspective different to yours. If you haven’t personally experienced what you’re writing about, e.g., if you don’t have PTSD and you want to depict a character who does, seek out stuff written from or with experience. Listen to the experts.

If you’re looking for stuff about representation specifically, I recommend this collection of posts about ‘Braving Diversity’ cultivated by Writing With Colour, who are in themselves a fantastic resource for this topic, and have recommendations for other blogs that deal with intersecting issues.

Listen to others

Missteps are inevitable. Nobody is perfect. If constructive criticism is offered, that’s also a compliment to your writing. Someone read your work and thought about it, and thought you’d care about improving it. They’re offering themselves as a resource for helping you see your work in a new light.

Criticism is hard and sometimes hurtful, but even if we don’t think it’s accurate, there’s often a grain of truth in it. If someone tells you that your writing is harmful, think about why they’ve said that, not whether or not they’re correct. This is an opinion! Opinions are subjective! But what drove someone to send that in?

You don’t have to respond to all your criticism and definitely don’t respond straight away. Being respectful to those who are trying to help you means taking the time to consider it properly. Sometimes, they don’t need a response. Others, you might want to learn more about what they think before deciding. You might have already discussed the topic, in which case, you might just want to reblog your previous posts.

If it’s sent in bad faith or is outright hateful, you’re well within your rights to just delete it and move on. You might get the same criticism over and over again, and that’s exhausting, and you don’t have to retrace your steps for everyone.

But if it’s new, even if it puts your hackles up, you can always stop and wonder why someone felt that strongly about your work.

Take a step back

One of my better-known characters is a pet whumper who conditioned his victim to adore and depend on him. It’s not always easy to represent how deeply messed up that is within the text – though I think that’s part of the challenge – but in meta-commentary, I am always describing him as a creeptastic bastard lacking compassion and self-reflection. I hope to always give the reader the confidence that I know just how wrong it is.

This is a really simple thing you can do just to give readers good faith in you. Show that you know what you’re writing is dark and messed up. Show your understanding for the issues you’re handling and that they’re complicated. It might seem self-evident, but when you’re writing the really dark stuff, or unhealthy relationships, or institutionalised whump, you can inadvertently create the impression that you just think it’s fun. The fact that it’s fiction does not automatically absolve you. Show that you care about doing it right.

Community Interaction

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet because I will almost entirely be preaching to the choir here.

Be polite to others. Imagine saying what you’re saying to their face.

Don’t send anon hate. Just don’t. If you can send criticism off anon, do so.

Nobody is obligated to interact with you.

Nobody is obligated to monitor their own reader base.

If someone says do not interact, do not interact.

If someone says do not interact, why they’ve said that is none of your business.

You don’t need to spread the word about someone’s bad politics.

Ask yourself if your input is needed, or if what you’ve said has already been said.

You don’t have to take a side.

Take care of yourself. Take breaks. Remind yourself that whump is a small part of the world.

That’s all from me, folks. Stay safe.

[nobody-knose--archive]

i’ve been aching to commentate spirit phone’s commentary for ages. glad i finally got around to it, this was an ejoyable experience. liveblog below the cut

-i'm like half certain i've heard this commentary before. maybe not the whole way through & it was probably actual years ago

-nice hearing stuff like this. in-depth personal view of the album-making process. makes it seem like more of a real thing i could do myself someday

-neil cicierega real person momence

-i could probably go real in depth about neil cicierega/tally hall parallels specifically concerning like. the arc of their musical careers. but i won't, here

-wild how i legitimately don't care much about micheal jackson

-didnt we get a bunch of spirit phone stems from the needlejuice release/his patreon? we could probably hear the funny track he speaks of here in that

-i love hearing musical artists, especially neil cicierega, talking about the meanings of their songs. like, not only has this song been claimed to hell & back by the tumblr gays, but with later ones i just can't see where he gets these ideas from. also, claiming there's any one meaning or plot to a song just seems silly to me

-shoutout to neil reusing a midi from like, 1998, that he made at 12 years old, whose entire melody was reused for the main verses of everybody loves raymond. loved finding that out on my own 2 years ago. now it's common trivia in this fandom. not bad times

-it'd be neat if neil did individual trans tracks here like he did with view monstel, those things are half of why i consider it my favorite album

-it's a lot easier to ignore the creator's intended meaning behind a song when he can't even remember it. thanks neil

-seesaw effect

-and there's my joke all but 1 of my followers wont get. moving on

-what kinds of movie theater lobbies has neil been to where there are arcade machines. i mean im not one to talk but that does sound rather strange

-why do songs' titles even need to be taken from the lyrics. ive never seen that as any sort of requisite. it's like titling any form of prose you can just give it whatever name ya like

-"this part sounds pretty cool right"

-is neil's vocal range only mildly better than mine? with training i could change that

-oh i haven't processed any of the last 25 seconds hold on

-god. a shit ton of vocal modification in this song. it's like neil returned to his roots but with quality this time

-i, as an ace/aro, have never related more to an allohet guy in my life. what is the point of eyes!

-professional humming/whistling takes skill. it's different from the recreational or casual stuff. i'd know

-there's a name for the way sound (especially music) gets distorted when moving past you and i can't remember it but it's probably what neil's referring to here in the way he recorded the intro

(- update: it's the doppler effect no need to tell me cas already did)

-as someone who hasnt seen the rugrats or take me there by blackstreet i'll just say it sounded like a bouncy music box melody. nice to hear a song that messes with the typical scales though. lydian & diatonic.

-that's a rather specific thing to be glad about, but given what he talked about in his last full audio commentary about the jew harp i suppose i'm not surprised

-i know that tmbg song now. listened to it & saw the music video too. yep they're different alright

-where the hell does neil get all these instrumence from anyway

-huh. hadnt heard this part of the commentary before making my oc concerning this song but i like to hear neil's approval concerning part of my interpretation

-i love how ive heard a billion different tellings of this mellified man story from lem dem fans talking about this song and neil's is by far the wildest

-good god that does only make it worse neil

-i love making liveblogs of lemon demon albums. with the fullerenes or tally hall i cant name a specific dude to take out my woes on generally but with lemon demon i can just say neil all the time. i like being on a casual first name basis with this dude ive never interacted with once ever

-is sweet bod the one other than cabinet man with a demo in the bonus tracks? i forget

-holy shit the boston molasses disaster someone call up soapy if it doesnt already know, it'd love this

-two thousand nine. god i miss the fiddle solo. the ver with it is truly the best one

-he pronounces it jeff? i've always read it as gef with a hard g. that's what i get for knowing words that are never spoken aloud

-that's a fun meta interpretation of this ghost story that's over a century old. i like that

-i've noticed neil generally does the same synths across a whole album. it's especially more clear in the earlier ones, and does mean i occasionally mix up songs between clown circus & live from the haunted candle shop

-ah! ancient aliens! my least favorite track on this album. i cant even claim to have the least interest in a popular one i've just generally not liked this one much from the beginning. so im curious to see what neil's got to say, i think ive been in ~new commentary zone for a while now

-anyway. newest update on the loolin not realizing a song's funky time signature front: i think this one's in 6/4. or at least switches a lot between time signatures. granted i dont listen to it very often for the reasons stated above

-see the way neil describes it. eldritch horror upon being visited by the unknown at a time when humanity'd hadn't even yet had a chance to imagine such a thing occurring. should be right up my alley. but the sound itself & many of the lyrics simply turn me away.

-must i specify i don't dislike it? spirit phone is neil's best album it not being my favorite doesn't mean i think it's bad yadda yadda nobody should be surprised by this it's not like anyone in these fandoms reads my liveblogs <3

-granted i think this is. the first bit of spirit phone content i've made on my blog ever. so who knows things can change <3

-the transitions in spirit phone are much less view-monster transition tracks & more extended outros. view-monster's were a bit more intro than outro sure but they also seemed directed upon making a 2-way rather than 1-way bridge between tracks. or something like that

-.............soft fuzzy man is an incredible nickname for a cat. i'd steal that if i werent afraid of introducing my relatives to lemon demon

-jirls

-an underlying metaphor is good enough. the literal side of the lyrics are fun. nothing but agreement here neil my good man

-the transition into as your father i expressly forbid it from soft fuzzy man is the best one in this album

-buddy you ask if a musical idea has been used before odds are the answer is yes in this day & age the question is has it been used in the way you're using it. like sure this soul jazz record from the 60s that was sold out in kansas stores for a week used this bassline that youve found yourself copying. but seeing as youre using it in some angsty garage rock ballad type tune does anybody actually care

-doesn't everybody like to say things in an unhinged manner from time to time

-imagine having a guitar dad, i say, with my dad being a folk accordion/fiddle dad, which is infinitely worse in every way

-i think he was in an actual folk band at some point. idk the 90s were weird

-iron my life?

-m-more intimate? there are a lot of ways i'd describe this song but intimate isn't one of them. granted as your father is negatively intimate so from there i guess you've got nowhere to go but up

-...still glad to see his interpretation kinda supports my oc at least

-the way he says characters in songs shouldn't worry about death really strongly makes me think this is some sort of. thematic continuation of stuck from dinosaurchestra, even if there's no real death in there. interesting. would also mean that the dad from these past 2 songs is named carlos betty (no last name)

-i literally never assumed this was a flute solo. piccolo at best. it's pretty clearly a recorder

-my mom plays the recorder. i wonder if she can play recorder better than neil cicierega

-we can throw a party in honor of the crushing weight of responsibility! i simply won't be the one throwing it because i have enough on my plate already <3

-what the hell does "a sense of intent" mean

-i've never heard rush before however i disagree with neil's understanding of 6/4. 6/4 is meant to have emphasis (onbeat or another term i can't remember) on the 1st & 4th beat of every measure, which is greatly different from a measure of 4/4 then a measure of 2/4. it's why his 5/4 always sounds weird, because while it's recognizable in sequences of 10/4, it's more 2 measures of 4/4 with one of 2/4 tacked on the end. that's also how it's different from 3/4. i don't know much music theory but what i do understand i will fight to the death about

-"canonized" that's. a very interesting term to use when referring to a former president

-from now on i will interpret every love song directed at some unseen "you" to be inviting me to marry them for tax purposes. thanks neil for being an aromantic icon

-ah hell yes hell yes man-made object is my favorite goddam song on this album

-short & sweet & good damn vibes. neil's thoughts on it all are only making it better

-wild how he uses very few vocal effects for a song that he clearly is straining his vocal range for. go off neil

-the qualifier of man-made is a wonderful thing. oldest or biggest thing? oldest or biggest man-made thing? what a incredibly important specification. a world of possibilities lie between the two. oh i love it

-just gets me thinking yknow! what we consider weird/impressive in another species, in our own species- what kind of equivalent to that would there be from an outsider looking in? are there alien versions of the significances we place upon things, that we could never imagine? the limits of the human imagination mean we could never conceive of something else in the world that isn't, in some way great or small, just like us- and are we wrong for thinking that? such a juicy topic i wish there were a name for it because it's kinda hard to explain concisely

-spiral of ants. my second favorite song from this album, in fact. a good one to experience

-the vocals are just another instrument. they really truly are. i wasn't going into this commentary expecting to feel solidarity for neil cicierega in this chili's tonight on more than one occasion but here i am.

-like, his whole stance on interpreting songs is something i agree with almost entirely. you can take it at face value, you can dig to their very depths, you can listen to songs without caring what the lyrics mean whatsoever, and those are all fun. & yeah while any of these people can be annoying as one of the types who enjoys gliding on the surface more than anything i find those who dedicate themselves to figuring out the whole meaning of a song over anything else to be both slightly scary & slightly annoying <3 keep up the good work

-i want to make songs for my siblings the way neil makes songs for his sibling(s)

-spinch

-neil really shouldn't be allowed to be this funny like this whole album youre thinking golly! he's just a normal man this neil cicierega! and then he starts listing the cat hacks jokes & you remember he's had ridiculously consistent viral success with all his humorous endeavors and holy shit it's neil cicierega in action talking about his music. god bless you neil

-you're welcome, no problem, my pleasure. good eveternoon, radio audience!

[an0nymousghost]

simblr asks v2

here are my answers! find the questions here.

i wrote soo much ahaha. like however much you think i wrote, i wrote more than that. imo everything i write is gold though

1. are you going to buy the new pack (cottage living) when it comes out? no, it looks really nice but i legit never ever buy packs at launch, especially cause this one is a expansion and it will probably go on sale at some point

2. do you p*rate your dlc or buy it legitimately? buy it legitimately 👌

3. what’s your favorite world? brindleton bay, it gives like seaside cottage vibes. willow creek is good but it’s boring. 

4. if you use a queue, how many posts per day do you set it as? 3 or 4. i used to do like 12 lmaoo what even was wrong with me

5. do you watch sims on youtube? yes, i watch mainly malixa, oshinsims, and msgryphi

6. what are your thoughts on the most recent pack? (dream home decorator) those sectional couches look good! but honestly im kinda annoyed because now it’s even harder to have all the items filled in when i place lots from the gallery. like i’m just saying like a lot of builds will use that pack probably and if i don’t get it then i can’t really use builds/save files 

7. how many packs/kits do you own? lemme count

expansion: all - 10/10 game: 5/10 stuff: 9/18 kits: none xo

24/38 - 63%

8. what’s your origin id? is it the same as your url? 🤗 it’s in my title, it’s celeschul. it doesn’t look that nice in my title but i use celeschul in my package files and i’m guessing people search things like, “celeschul penny hair” or something like that in order to find my cc- so i keep it in there so the search results are easier. i do want to change it though..

but no it’s also not the same! well i mean it’s the username i use for cc. my origin id used to be an0nymousghost but i changed it. i wonder if anyone’s taken that one?

9. is your simblr your sideblog or main blog? main blog ✌️ my old blog @stardze​ is a main blog as well.

my old old simblr was a sideblog but it had like 1 follower and it literally a bot so i don’t think that counts. i have a multifandom sideblog though 

10. do you have a cc finds blog? i wish. i was thinking bout it earlier and that would be sooo neat but sometimes i download stuff that doesn’t have a tumblr post attached to it, and also it’s stressful to keep up with so nah

11. are you wcif friendly? yes sir. in fact i bring the trouble of wcifs onto myself but doing them even when nobody asked.

12. what’s your favorite sized household to play with? (ex. 1 sim, 4 sims) gonna have to think on this one, honestly 1 sim is really fun and stuff goes by so fast. doing stuff with astrid when she was on her own, it was much more efficient. 

for families, i haven’t done that in a while actually. 5, 2 parents and 3 kids is cute tho. why did i write this this is honestly such a hard question

13. if you have c&d, do you play with pets? i feel like i haven’t played with cats and dogs in forever. honestly i just have no paitence. noelle fae was supposed to get a cat (there’s a food bowl + cat bed in her house) but when summer vacation started, the amount of time i spent playing ts4 decreased a lot. (this doesn’t really make sense, i have a lot more time. honestly it just has to do with my recent obsession with a certain anime/manga and some other personal thing)

i did random nightmares in may though and i had pets frequently. g5 didn’t because sofia scarlett lived in an apartment, but g2/3/4 had cici, and g1 had all the cats. but that was back in march so it’s been a while.

14. what lifespan do you use? i really want to do aging off but then i feel like it drags on. but aging legit stresses me out, sometimes i just want to sit down and do some cas stuff but i only have 2 hours in real time and there’s like 4 days left till one of my sims’ birthdays. 

15. if you own a lot of packs, how many of them have you actually played through? just so everyone is aware this question was made for me

i feel like eps require a specific save made for testing them out, but the only save i’ve ever made for an ep is noelle fae’s get famous save. 

that is literally a lie - i made a save for island living with one of my 100bc kids, maisie acapella. i did actually post it on tumblr BUT then i deleted all the posts BUT i reblogged them on my alt account BUT i privated my alt account so i honestly forgot about it

i have never played through discover university or watched anyone do it on youtube, i’ve read gerbits’ story about it so i think i’m pretty qualified. i’ve always wanted to do one with periwinkle acapella but i never got around to it

another ep i know nothing about is get to work

i tried doing a eco life playthrough but i hadn’t watched any videos and i was like..what is going on. so i quit lolx d ;;;;; i mentioned it but the whimsy stories legacy was the first time i had played with the eco lifestyle features so technically i think i know what im doing

i got outdoor retreat literally on monday of this week so i haven’t played through it yet. 

jungle adventure i still don’t know what’s going on. i remember last year before i bought the pack i was brainstorming, and wanted to do a ja playthrough with luna and cedar, who are a couple who i did a random legacy with and it was all queued to post when i deleted everything (if you’re wondering why, it’s because my queue was literally 200+ posts). except this time i didn’t save them to my sideblog so i lost them. 

i still havent had a restaurant in dine out 

also never did the vet thing from cats and dogs

i have no idea what that rock climbing thing is from snowy escape but i did most of the other stuff because rn g5

city living i did through psc stage 5 and also it was the first pack i bought anyways

the rest of them are either stuff packs or i ended up playing them through casual gameplay (seasons, parenthood)

16. what do you do as you play sims? (ex. listen to music) i listen to music most of the time, or listen to commentary youtube videos because i am an alpha chad. i also used to talk with my friends on voice call but i don’t do that anymore 🥲

17. which sims challenges have you tried? random legacy, whimsy stories, perfect sim challenge, 100 baby, legacy (just the plain get-to-10-gens one), random nightmares, berry zodiac, astrology legacy, apocalypse

i feel like im forgetting some.. honestly most of the stuff i did before simblr was either 100 baby (i love that challenge) or random saves that lasted for 2 seconds. 

18. do you like the new(ish) hair swatches? nah. 

i do appreciate that most cc hairs have a true (ish) black, thank god! and the fact that the hair update is what inspired me to update and fix a bunch of hairs with different issues is pretty nice. but will i use them? no. 

plus it takes up like 5 gb? depending on how many packs you have.

19. post the latest screenshot you took 📸

i live in cas

20. what is the cc/ingame hair that looks the most like your own? i think that dream home decorator side part hair looks a lot like my hair. honestly i havent see much like my hair but that one is kinda-? close

21. who is your favorite sim of yours and what is their story? noelle and alari fae i think! 

link to post

noelle is blonde and has blue-grey eyes. she wears purple contacts pretty often though (because she wants to 😌)

alari has light brown hair that is kinda curly, and she’s got pretty vibrant blue eyes. 

they’re sisters, alari is 3 years older than noelle. noelle was 19 and alari was 22 when they got spotted

they worked as models when they were young adults. their jobs involved dyeing their hair blue/pink, and they would model like clothes and stuff. anyways, they were pretty successful. like not ultra famous but they had enough money to not work for the rest of their lives. 

their modeling group was made of 4 girls, the others were named paisley autumn and they were green and red, respectively. some things are: 

paisley and alari started dating during this 

autumn was a single mother to a little girl named destiny

noelle dated many people during this but never ended up finding the one <3

when their contract ended after like 6 years, paisley and alari went to go live together and noelle decided to get into acting. so thats when get famous playthrough started!

there’s more but basically they’re like oc’s with sims on the side. xoxo

22. if you use cc, are there any cc creators that you have like ALL of their items? this is such a good question! i hoard hair very heavily (my folder is 11gb) i so i have like 97% from most of the popular hair creators. 

i think i had legitimately EVERYTHING from simstrouble though, i went through multiple times to check and i also have all of her retired stuff. 

i have everything from ridgeport i think-? because of the fact that she uploaded all her stuff in one big zip. 

i think that’s it.. for a long time i also had everything by clumsyalienn, but then i ended up deleting it and only keeping my faves. 

and looking at my collection, maybe ah00b? i might be missing a couple but i at least have like 99%.

23. what’s one pack you think is underrated? dine out, it’s laggy af yes but it’s such a nice thing for my sims to do. 

24. what are your favorite sims stories/legacies? melons by gerbits always and forever

this question was inspired by this ask anyways so 

25. if you could change one small thing about ts4, what would it be? most of my suggestions are pretty complex but literally just - when you add tray files, they appear at the top. my life would be so much easier

this took me literal hours to answer

[johannadc]

Mark Gatiss on Agatha Christie

Today, the British Museum held an evening of programming about Agatha Christie. The first session featured Mark Gatiss (who in addition to being a fan, wrote a few of the Poirot episodes and appeared in another), James Prichard (Christie’s great-grandson and head of the company Agatha Christie Limited), writer Sarah Phelps (who's been writing Christie TV adaptations without having read or seen any of her work before, and no, I don’t care for them), and moderator Rebecca Rideal (top left). 

The following are my notes on Mark’s comments on the topic. (There were other good points made by others, but come on, this is my blog.) 

(Oh, and yes, it was the Bond lair background. I would have liked to have seen his shelves.) 

In the first section, going over some of the key moments of Christie’s life, the moderator asked him to talk about Agatha's disappearance. He noted that this was during the release of a very popular book, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and how she was the most famous woman in England while she was missing. 

The next topic was about how Christie had influenced him.

"I read most of them when I was a kid on holiday -- the best place for them. I couldn't stop reading them... I was literally gasping at the end of Roger Ackryoyd.”

He noted that there are so many ways to approach her works. There’s the “very cozy version; a more arch version, like the Ustinov films, sort of high camp, that's also Agatha Christie; a very straight version, such as Joan Hickson’s Miss Marple; then much darker versions. She can take them all, like any great writer, withstand them.” The different adaptations keep them healthy and alive, not a fossil, not just keep the brand alive but keep people interested. 

“To boil it down, she was an extraordinary mind. There are ideas in some of the short stories that other people would have used for the rest of their lives.”

What are the unique challenges that present themselves when adapting body of work in a particular time period?

“It’s a joy doing things set in that time period. All Poirot are essentially set in 1936, a very busy time period.” There’s a reason she survived and all competitors have fallen away. He talked about Dorothy Sayers, saying Wimsey was a beautiful character but nobody remembers the plots. When adapting, “it’s a gift if the actual mechanics of the story are absolutely copper-bottom brilliant. The ones I did were later books, regarded as not the greatest, but still so many lovely things to mine.” 

"Cat Among the Pigeons" was “really clever, lovely setting, could have tons of fun with it. All that's a gift. I chose to channel all those influences - arch version, cozy and fun, plus dark version with people getting their heads bashed in. You're in safe hands. She's done it all for you.” 

A question to all panelists about if they’d watched adaptations before was answered with, “The question should be how many times I've watched them.” Mark then told a story about how he got married while shooting Poirot, “Appointment With Death”. “The day before the ceremony, David [Suchet] came over in full costume and blessed me. Ridiculously moving experience.” 

What are the key ingredients for a Christie story and your favorite adaptation?

“That’s hard, she had so many brilliant ideas, she rings the changes all the time. Presenting herself with a problem, what can I do differently... Does it so breathtakingly. Just when you think how she does it, she tricks you again... Puzzles are very important. What she does, sometimes I think unconsciously, is smuggle in a lot of social commentary, sly humor. Wonderful kind of clarity to it.” 

“Hand on my heart, because I  watch it at least six times a year, has everything for me, is the Ustinov Evil Under the Sun. Absolute glory, brilliant way of taking quite a serious book and having massive fun with it, yet taking all the detection very seriously. Glorious.” 

[devotionthatcorrupts]

ok so you sent me an ask about my tags, but i've always loved yours!!! i like it when people have tags that are poetic or songs or references or inside jokes. how did you choose the ones you use? they all seem related but if there's a story, i'd love to hear it!

I'm so happy to hear that I put so much effort into having a coherent tagging system on here it makes me delighted when people like them. They actually are all unrelated source wise but they are all themed around what I think the character/relationships central thesis is. these are going to be long so I'm going to put it under a read more.

knighthood as religion is dean's tag because I believe his core narrative is centered around being both raised and personally devoted to the idea of being a protector and shield for people but in particular sam in a way that goes beyond duty and exists as a devout calling. without that he lacks purpose and ambition (even though he doesn't but the fact that he actively chooses not to pursue anything outside of this adds to the religious sacrifice inmho) protecting sam, and through assocation, sam himself are his deities creating a very specific moral code that he operates under that only he understands and holds himself too. it's both a critique of his character and what I see as a personal tragedy as john raised him this way and he never really had a choice or an option to exist any other way - the fact that he embraces it is almost a non-existent point because he was created to be duty bound and dies duty bound in a way that he revels and finds peace in because he's always known that was his fate.

the devil that was is sam's tag because his identity is created on being lucifer's vessel despite the fact that his personality and nobility is the antithesis of it. his early narratives are wrapped around him struggling to work against this nature and briefly, embracing it as a means to an end but then ultimately rejecting his function and form and becoming himself again even if it is at a high cost that he never full recovers from. sam is actively choosing to not be what he was created for and so "the devil that was" is this idea that he both was, is, and isn't demonic and in way, that's the only act of agency he's allowed to consistently keep throughout the series. he doesn't own his life, body, purpose, direction, or connections but he did prevent himself from being the vessel of lucifier and I think that's central to the way that I understand and appreciate his character.

two people shorten a road comes from the irish term bóthar with that being it's literal translation as a means of saying "company makes the journey pass more quickly" and that companionship makes life better. I don't use that tag for them anymore because what I like about their relationship has changed but I still think it's a good tag. my brother tag at the moment is just the winchester brothers as placeholder until I find something new. the road leads nowhere is somewhat connected to two people shorten a road and it's my thesis of the show tag about how the entire story is about the fact that they are falling a pre-destined plan (both within and outside of the meta) that their journey is ultimately meaningless and that they revel and seek out that meaninglessness because the road itself is the only home they've known and they have never sought out, or settled at a destination. it's both a jab at the show's insane, convoluted narrative and a mythical commentary on their purpose.

I wait for you at roadside mass is my sastiel tag which I don't use as much anymore because my interest in the ship has waned as I've focused almost exclusively on s1-5 but it's the idea that sam is religiously devout and cas is both a representation of the divine, proof of the divine, and also a vessel for divine love. sam is always traveling and since he grew up in a family that wasn't interested in religion he has no concept of a stationary church or house of worship and so cas in many ways embodies that for him. cas is his holy house and he waits for him by the roadside for him to hear his prayer and create space and connection to the divine.

childhood is a kingdom where nobody dies is my pre-series tag and a edna st. vincent poem (my url is also from an edna st. vincent poem she is a very important poet to me) about the transition from childhood to adulthood and ultimately, the departure for it in a way that feels very appropriate for the winchesters. it's also a play on irony, as their childhood was filled with death and also a bi-product of the death of their mother but also they did not die, and their father did not die and in a way they learned to accept that as long as that didn't happen death lacked permanence.

love is where the knife goes in is my samruby tag and it's just about their jesus/judas relationship just the foundation of what it's like to love your own betrayer, knowing that they plan on wounding you and wincing when it goes in anyway even if you are waiting to hurt them in term and how if you experience that enough you start associating love with wounding, that even the wound itself become a deceleration of affection in its own way.

the motherless oven is my winchester family tag and it's from the title of a graphic novel from the same name that has no relation to supernatural but the phrase has always stuck with me and i feel like it embodies the family well. they are a hot-tempered, relentless family that are all trapped within each other and because of each other and all mourn and represent the absence of mary in their lives. they are both their own tomb and also entombed within their romanticization and martyrdom of mary.

and those are all of my active tags! I still want tags for ruby, john, both of the boys in relation to their father because each of them have a fascinating relationship with him, cas, and maybe the winchesters + cas because that is an engaging dynamic as well. I do not like deancas and don't blog about it but I probably would come up with a fun tag for it if creativity struck me.

thank you again for asking!!! this was so much fun to type out. I've been wanting to write out something like this for awhile because I have put a lot of thought into each tag.

[haleigh-sloth]

I would love to hear what your overall thoughts were on Snk if you don't mind sharing since I literally don't know what to really think of it and I don't really know of any blogs in Snk fandom. and I love your BNHA takes so much. I'm extremely attached to the characters in Bnha especially Touya, Shoto, main villian trio and the main heroes. Bnha has always gave me the feeling from the beginning that its going to have a happy and optimistic ending. I grew more attached to it for that reason.

Ask #2: I just started watching SnK a couple of months ago and I'm now on season 4 (now I've already seen the ending before I even started watching it.) I decided to watch because my bf has been watching the show for years now and I wanted to catch up with him. Before I started watching it I was aware that its not a light-hearted or happy show. Characters literally die left from right. I didn't really form a connection with the characters for that reason since I went into the show with that mindset.

Part 2. From the very beginning of Snk I already had the feeling it won't have a happy ending or satisfying ending for some fans. I asked my bf and he said (SPOILERS) that he can already see Eren dying at the end. For me I feel very neutral about the ending I literally have no opinion at all because I already seen the ending before starting the show and I have really no idea how I'm really supposed to feel about the ending. I never really look at Snk blogs since I'm not really that attached.

Two different asks, answering together to avoid the risk of getting more SnK asks because I truly don't have much more to say than what I'm about to.

I can direct you to a few blogs that talked about SnK, but I've seen said blogs get extremely hateful comments in their inboxes so I'll refrain from tagging them.

But anyway--I don't have any meta thoughts on SnK.

I can say that I truly enjoyed the ending and I don't feel that it could have ended any better. If the author was going to make the main character the final boss, then this was the best ending we could have asked for. If the author was not going to make the main character the final boss, well, there's no point in discussing it since he didn't take that route.

TBH all I really want to know is.....what...ending....did these people... want?

So, I can understand some people being upset that Eren was made the final boss, but there was...a ton of set up for that well before the manga ended. People had time to jump ship well before the ending came out. But regardless, I get it. If people aren't used to tragedy stories, then I can understand feeling hurt. But also, as the second anon said--SnK sets the tone from the FIRST. FUCKING. CHAPTER.

What does it tell us?

NOBODY is safe. ANYBODY can go at any time. Protagonist armor existed for a little bit, but it wasn't going to last forever, because Eren wasn't the kind of main character that had Main Character Syndrome™️. He isn't Izuku Midoriya, who is supposed to end up as this hero that redefines the meaning of the word. No, Eren was never that.

I started SnK when I was a senior in high school, in 2015, and then I got distracted from that and didn't watch or read it for YEARS. I only JUST picked it up in February and finished it off when the manga ended. So for me, my attachment I had to any of the characters had kind of disappeared. I didn't want Levi, Mikasa, Armin, or Annie to die, but I wasn't super attached to any of the other characters.

As for the ending--honestly. I only bitched about peoples' commentary earlier because someone reblogged a post of mine that talked about "series that betrayed their readers", and they put "snk" in the tags, and that irritated me.

I honestly don't know how else it would have ended besides the main character obliterating the entire earth. Like I don't know what people were wanting. That would have been a shit ending, how would that have been satisfying for anybody?

No, I think the ending where MOST of the main cast survived and got to live long lives was the best it could have ever been given the type of story it was.

As the second anon said, it was never going to be "happy", although imo, SnK ended as "happy" as it could have.

BNHA is definitely a happy ending type of story. It's not set up for horrible tragedy, and if Hori did for some reason shift gears and go that way (he won't) it would ruin the entire story and everything it's told us so far.

Suffice to say, SnK isn't really my type of story. I only finished it because I started it in high school, and had seen it was coming to an end so figured what the hay, might as well finish what I started. BNHA is way more up my alley. I'm avoiding stuff like JJK and anything that's grim dark and edgy for the sake of being....like that. It's just not for me, and I'm not in a spot to read stuff like that right now.