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fandomfluffandfuck · 3 years

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Not to be 👃👃👃 but I'm curious 🤔 whats you're relationship with your male-ness? Like crying and such? Were you raised with the boys🤷‍♂️dont🤷‍♂️cy🤷‍♂️

I don't think this is too nosy, don't worry. Actually, I think it's a good thing. Self reflection is always good. But, because it's not fandom related and probably gonna be a bit of a lengthy ramble, I'll put my relationship with masculinity below the cut-

*sensitivity warning for: discussions of toxic masculinity, body image issues, eating disorders, the Q slur, LGBTQ+ realizations & identity, offscreen hunting, strained family relations, depression, etc.

Before I say anything specific, I'm going to mention that I definitely have had to do a lot of unlearning and lot of work around my masculinity. There are still things I need to work on. Completely. But I do think I have a better relationship with it than, say, the male peers I have at my school. Especially considering the environment I find myself in being predominantly white, straight, and cis (outside of my art specific courses because art kids are weird lmao). White boys who've never questioned their sexuality are... uh... sometimes a bit like rocks lmao. They don't understand a lot of things that I, still a white male, but a queer male have had to confront.

Also- for the purpose of social science, I grew up in the lower-middle class with straight, cis, Christian parents that were older (in their 40s) when they began having children and I'm the youngest. Meaning, my parents are DEFINITELY in a separate generation from me.

Crying - let's start there since you outright mentioned it in your ask. Crying is incredibly difficult for me, point blank. I totally grew up being told that "boys don't cry" and to "man up" or "buck up" if I was crying. So, that's a reason, but also, I typically have other coping mechanisms than crying when something upsets me? I don’t think it's a toxicly masculine thing so much as it's a me, a human being, thing. Perhaps I don't cry often now because I cried all my tears as a kid lmao, I cried a l l the time as a kid.

*insert that CE quote here, [in response to, "what were you at 10?"], "uhh, crying, probably."*

I have two older siblings and as siblings do, they would often beat up on me, but also just- I had a lot of emotions growing up. And I was ignored a lot. So it made sense for me to cry all the time lol, crying meant getting attention or getting mercy haha. I used to cry so much that I was taunted for being a "cry-baby" and a "cissy". Then the teenage depression hit and I stopped. [This is not a flex and not good for you-! But, to illustrate my point, I don't think I cried once between 6th (11y/o) and 12th grade (18y/o) and those were the darkest times of my life so... that checks out]

Queerness - another prominent thing that relates to my masculinity is my status in the LGBTQIA(+) community. Being in the community usually makes people brush me off as less masculine instantly. Sometimes with the stereotypes of queer men, people won't even believe me because I'm not FEMININE enough for them. Femininty, flamboyance-y, or anything like that doesn't equate to sexuality. My voice being deep doesn't mean I don't like dick, Karen. Anyway lol- I generally use bisexual with a preference for women/feminine people (or I just say queer, depending on the person I'm speaking to) as a quick short-hand when I meet people because it’s much easier than saying, well, you see, I have a very difficult time being romantically or sexually interested in anyone unless/until I know them well enough to consider them a friend. And I tend to make friends with women easier than men therefore, even though I don't feel the difference between falling for women, men, or NB/GNC people, I tend to date more women. But, labels aside, because of my sexuality, I've always had to war with the "inherent femininity" of being attracted to men. It used to bother me a lot, imagining being with a man as opposed to a woman, because I thought it made me instantly become the "woman" of the relationship (y'know when the first question by straight people is always "so who's the woman?") , which unlocks another masculinity feel...

Appearance - if you have been around on this blog from the beginning (totally fine if you haven't) then you know that I share a striking resemblance to pre-serum Steve. I'm not blonde and I don't have blue eyes (I have brown, curly/wavy hair with dark green eyes), but I am short and skin-and-bones. I'm 5'6 and weigh about 110-120ish. So. I'm not super muscular. I'm not a big man, I'm just not. It's not how I'm built, even while in the best health I've ever been. Neither are the other men in my family built super "masculine-ly". But that didn't stop me, as a young dude, from working-out incredibly unhealthily, dangerously really, and developing eating disorders. I'm not built in the "classic" or "correct" masculine way (I also have a birth defect, pectus excavatum, but that's more just- oh, I don't look like other people, not specifically masculinity issue). Now, I try to shrug it off on bad days and on good days, work towards peace with it, this is the only body I'll ever have and it mostly works so... what else could I want? We're not gonna talk about genitalia today lol, that's a different line. Just know that I quickly unlearned that gender does Not equal genitalia because the fuck?? It's just flesh. Who gives a shit.

Fashion - I'm separating appearance in body here and fashion because I think there's a difference, at least for me. I can't change my body, I can change the fabric on it though lol. Fashion wise I definitely gravitate towards black and dark values as opposed to color, also - perhaps because I'm queer and therefore have always been told I should care about my fashion and appearance in a different way to straight men - I like alternative aesthetics. Which, both, also got me called some pretty nasty things (F and Q slurs included) behind and in front of my back. Both by family and peers. I've had people say they "could tell" I'm gay because I wear clothes that, sure, are oversized because I'm smaller, but still fit relatively well. Because I'm not in camo and cargo shorts and caps pulled down to my eyebrows. Whatever. Within alternative fashion I still am attracted to really stereotypically masculine things: leather jackets, t-shirts or button ups, clunky work boots, thick watches, silver rings (I am an artist okay? Of course I have decorative rings (my friend gave me one that looks like a dragon and I adore it)), chain wallets, straight cut jeans (sometimes ripped if I'm extra edgy, but usually not), leather belts (I had a spiked belt at one point but I broke :( and I can't afford to replace it). I just love the look, classic but edgy. Even though I've been given shit for the way I dress, I've never been able to muster up a lot of guilt about it in relation to my manhood. Just more, like, why do people give a fuck? I dress like this because I like it. Why do you have to get pissy about it? You like what you like. I like what I like. I'm not hurting anyone! C'mon!

Face - as a man, I don't get much messaging about how you. must. be. beautiful. or. you're. worthless. However... the funny thing about mental health issues is that they tend to envelop all of you. I've had quite the battle with my own face. Especially having acne. There's about 5, 6, 7 years of my life with only a handful of photos because I hated it so much.

Hobbies - I'm not built with super huge muscles or super lanky, nor do I dress entirely "traditionally masculine" but at least I really like trucks-! That's masculine as all hell! Right? Just kidding. Other than camping/hiking/some outdoorsy stuff I grew up doing that were considered "boyish" activities because you have to get a little dirty and a little smelly for, I really did not follow the path of traditional masculinity in what I enjoy on the weekends either. I've mentioned it here and there but I'm an art major. I'm going to be an art teacher (which also is seen as a "feminine" thing because teaching is interacting with children and *gasp* how dare a man be around kids! Oh no!) I love making art. Drawing. Painting. Sculpting. Pottery. Writing. Poetry. Etc. All of which growing up, I could see as disappointing to my father because he expected me to be like my older brother. Who followed exactly in his footsteps, being a car/truck/mechanical, fixer-upper kind of guy. They even went hunting together for years and years (I tried to hunt with my father once my brother moved out, to fill some sort of role my father wanted for me but... quite frankly, I found it boring. And I learned quickly that I will never be as close to my father as my brother is to him, which is fair). Always outside on the weekends fixing our vehicles or improving the house or whatever tinkering they did. I was never interested and because of it, I was called a "mama's boy" a lot. But. Eh. I like art. I've had my guilt about it and gotten over it by now. I find the ability to know what kind of car is passing and what's wrong with said car by the sound of the car alone to just be a weird flex now haha. Sure, I've plenty of thoughts of, oh, I should be that way... why aren't I? here and there but... it came from other people more than myself really. I have never been wired that way. I like art, not cars and tools lol

Friendships - sexuality and masculinity get wrapped up together here again. Most of my friends are somewhere in the rainbow. Most of them are women, cis and trans. I find a lot of women I'm not friends with give my the cold shoulder until they find out I'm in the LGBTQ+ community. Then they get really really friendly, which gave me guilt for two reasons for a while... 1) Because it always makes me re-remember how unsafe a lot of women feel around men through social training or horrible, lived experiences. 2) Because it made me feel just like the "gay best friend" who's looped into being one of her [aforementioned female friend] "girlfriends". I still feel that first one - the way society treats women like helpless, innocent flowers but men like uncontrollable predators ready to attack constantly makes me so angry - but the second one I've been working on. It doesn't make me less of a man to be accepted in with a group of women. Im just being included. It's a little upsetting to be stereotyped in such a way but, usually it's something that they don't mean harm by, y’know? Also, to be contradictory, it's actually nice sometimes. I'm not expected to only have surface level relationship as a lot of straight, cis men are expected to with their other male friends that way. But yeah... friendships are always in progress, you gotta work at them, and I have to work at my relationship with my relationships lol.

Behavior - the main behavior I have that has gotten me ostracized for feminine behavior/body language is talking with my hands. But, I don't care. I never really have. Like, oooh, oh no, I'm not a man because I have visual excitement and passion in my hands, how scary! Whatever. Other than that... I get told quite often to be more "confident" which equates to people telling me to "man up" and "take the bull by the horns" because an unfortunate amount of white men, I don't want into every room like I both built and own it y’know? Also I was a hell of a lot worse at one point in my life because I didn't have any confidence and I say crumpled in on myself because of aforementioned body issues. Posture is important though people, whoever you are, whatever your gender, take care of your fucking spine lol.

All in all though, masculine in traditional ways or not, I still am a man. I still feel masculine. I can't tell you what makes my brain feel like that and I can't change it. And now in life, I'm the most confident and comfortable in that as I've ever been before.

Thank you for the ask! It makes me wonder, why people are interested in me, but, this was fun to think about <3

#asks #this is kinda just me on a plate #thoughts #personal #s' life history #lol

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crowsent · 5 years

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👶,⭐,💘, and💻. Love you!!

thank you for ask anon! writer ask game is here if yall wanna send in something. still taking asks for these btw

👶- advice for new writers =

yall this is hella fucking generic but PRACTISE. theres a reason almost literally every writer on tumblr gives the advise of “practise practise practise” and that reason is it works. practise doesnt mean ‘oh just write bc youll automatically get better over time’ it means ‘write bc if you dont, you wont figure out what you need to improve.’ did yall know that i literally had no sentence variation in the past? i started every sentence with [character name] or [character pronoun] and i didnt realise until i was 15/16 and i only realised bc i started writing a lot.

i think there’s a fear of failure with new writers. there’s this lingering doubt of “what if its not good?” and boy howdy i will answer that question right fucking now. it wont be good. when i compare my current work to my earlier work, my earlier work sucked fucking shit. i spelled soldier with a fucking ‘j’ and i had no idea what the hell a point of view was. and thats okay. whoever tells you that youre going to perfect writing is a fucking liar. there is no perfecting writing. 20 years from now, imma look at the writing from today and im gonna think it sucks shit. writing is a process. its a craft. you get better and better over time and the way you get better is by experimenting w different styles, different genres, different ways of writing.

and the only way you can experiment and improve is through practise. in video games, especially rpgs (which are my favourite kind of video games), you struggle in the early game. youre at a low level, you dont have good equipment, you have a hard time moving to the next area. but the only way you progress is by grinding, gaining levels, and getting stronger. same w writing. if youre a level 1 writer, just starting out, no idea what to do, just experiment. fuck around a bit. write crackships, write rarepairs, write niche self-indulgent reader/character fics. at the end of the day, you should write for yourself. its good and cool if other people like your stuff and validate all your hard work, but at the end of the day, the one who should enjoy your writing the most is yourself.

you WILL mess up and you WILL struggle, but thats the only way you can improve. i struggle with pacing the most. still do. but others might have pacing down pat and struggle instead with word choice or pov or something else. cant figure out where you need to improve if you dont write, so just practise and worry about all the fine print later

⭐️- how do you get your inspiration? =

this is definitely not universal, but i just sit on my bed, close my eyes, and meditate. cycle through all my emotions and thoughts and filter them out. then i just toss everything out the damn window. like. id just meditate for a while, focus on breathing, on experiencing the present, picture a field and a tree and myself and breathe. thoughts fly by and i let them happen but dont focus on it.

meditating gives me some semblance of emotional control bc i normally have none, and it gives me kind of this space. this safe space that only exists for me and me alone. so i use that space to let the world drift away. just me and my thoughts and sometimes, those thoughts end up being good writing ideas. but i usually meditate for a set amount of time. like 15 minutes or 30 minutes so i dont write until i finish meditating.

then when i get out of my headspace, i open up my laptop and see what i remember. thinking too hard about something causes it to muddy up. same with art. in digital art, artists flip the canvas to refresh their eyes, see if there’s anything weird or wonky about the illustration that they normally dont see bc theyve gotten used to it. flipping the canvas is like giving our eyes a jumpstart and lets us see what we could do better. in traditional art, its turning the canvas this way and that or repositioning yourself. meditating is like that. a break. a cleanse. a kind of pause where you dont think about anything and just try to process what you already have. you relax and kind of let yourself float down a river of thoughts and sometimes, a fish would jump out of that river and youd go “hey, thats a good idea. i should try that” so when you get out of the river, youre refreshed and ready to go.

same principle with showers. more ideas come to you in the shower when you dont have anything to write with bc youre not thinking about it. youre not focusing on finding inspiration or motivation so ideas naturally flow through you. you know that feeling when you want to do x then someone comes along and says “hey you should do x” and suddenly all motivation to do x leaves? same w your brain. focus too much on “i should be writing” or “i want inspiration” and its never gonna come. just let things happen. at least, thats how i do it. some people might get inspiration by reading or watching tv. everyones different so if thats not what works out for you, dont feel pressured to try my method

💘- what’s your favorite AU? Least favorite? =

magic au. specifically fantasy au set in like a pre-modern era. shows like avatar where theres all this magic and fantastical beasts and so on and so forth. semi-modern like six of crows and nevernight are great too. i want that magic to be woven into people’s lives. harry potter is okay but there’s like this separation between magic and muggle. there’s this feeling of “magic” but like as a tool. like a spoon or a gun or a shovel. i want magic au’s that are INTEGRATED with the world its set in.

like in atla, earth kingdom people have trains they move with bending while fire nation people have machines powered by heat and steam. both correspond to their bending and makes sense for the world they live in. but if your plot is like harry potter and its less worldbuilding and more action, then there’s this book series called seasons rising (read it. so good) where there’s a bunch of spells but the spells have character. the people using the spells GIVE it character and it feels much more intimate. pokemon does the whole fantasy mixed w reality better. give two trainers the exact same pokemon and by the time that pokemon reaches lvl 50, its gonna have a different moveset, different fight style, etc bc it was shaped by the world and people around it. i like harry potter but tbh it could have been so much better

for the least favourite au, it’s A/B/O i dont like the whole “omegas are only good for breeding hurr durr” and “alphas are violent and aggressive and cant control themselves around omegas” thing and it squicks me out. major squick. i read the original harry potter squick (THAT one. yeah. you know the one) and i still hate a/b/o more. i get why people like it, and there are one or two fics set in a/b/o au that i enjoy reading, but as a whole, i severely dislike a/b/o fics.

the themes are squick, the character dynamics get so messed up, and shipping dynamics (bc a/b/o fics usually have shipping) just get so blown out of proportion. there are so many a/b/o fics that turn ooc or the character interpretations radically change or something else. no hate against a/b/o fans bc yall are amazing for writing/drawing yalls au. there are things that you can only do in this setting and exploring those things can be incredibly fun for people, but for me personally, its not an au i like to visit.

💻- three works of yours that are must reads =

i. dont know what fandom youre in anon or your genre preferences. so ill just rec you one fic for a different fandom each with kind of different genres. ts masterlist is on my side @hufflepuff-deceit and regular fanfic masterlist is on my writing blog @crownonymous

(BNHA) Viper. its my first serious attempt at fanfic in YEARS and its my baby. currently has 7 chapters, i havent updated it in a while bc im hyperfocused on ts rn, but i love it to bits. its just all of my fav bnha fics crammed into one fic. quirkless kind of villain izuku with stain as a mentor as they work together to bring light to the injustices of hero society and where bakugos bullying has visible and long-lasting repercussions? sign me the fuck up. you can read it on ao3 HERE bc its not on tumblr. kind of fast-paced, has a lot more action scenes than anything else ive written. heavy plot-wise but has a lot of humour and comedy to break things up

(Kimetsu no Yaiba) I Pray To God He Hears You. not related to my other kny fic oleander which is a multichap retelling au. iptghhy is a standalone one-shot and kind of a character study on one giyuu tomioka. i love him so much. giyuu is my baby and i adore him. so of course i wrote a sad fic focusing on him. well technically, the fic focuses on giyuu AND his relationships. SPOILERS for chapters 130 and 131 of the manga. focuses mostly on giyuu and sabito, but there’s a fair bit of giyuu and tanjiro and urokodaki. you can read it HERE bc this is also not on tumblr. also deals with heavy things but more emotion-wise since it doesnt have that much of a plot. loss. grief. moving on. survivors guilt. that kind of stuff. very sad. hurt but with comfort, especially at the end.

(Sanders Sides) Logan’s Birthday Fic: Logicality. just what the title says. i wrote 5 different fics and published them all on logans bday but the logicality one received the most feedback and honestly? the cutest of the bunch. its gonna be crossposted onto ao3 but for now, you can read it HERE on my ts sideblog. theres no plot since its literally just domestic and relationship fluff. and puns. patton is in the fic, theres gonna be puns. nothing but good things and warm feelings bc logan deserves it.

thank you so much for such interesting asks anon! i enjoyed answering these. have a lovely day!

#crowsas answers #kny #bnha #sanders sides

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