#love to see some finland representation

[mita-vittua-olivia]

ALSO, funny experience i had tonight; i was talking to a girl and she asked how things were going after graduation etc i told her well, idk but i have time to travel, for example i wanna go to finland next year.

SHE RAISES HER GLASS AND SAYS KIPPIS, i almost scream because how does she know?? she says her friend has an obsession with finland and is learning finnish now on duolingo … of course i asked why and she said “because of the reindeer”

but i don’t believe it i’m pretty sure her friend’s a kääryleet

[orkbutch]

i am a butch now but i don’t know whether that’s true or not anymore. i want to take T, but at what point am i actually just a trans man? have you question that line in the sand at all yet?

Oh boy.

I can only talk from my perspective on this, others may differ, and thats because "whats the difference between a butch on T and a trans man" is such a new sociological concept that its basically in the very beginnings of its infancy. its SO new, and neither Butch nor Trans Man nor Trans Masc have secure, well established roots as social identities or concepts. It may seem like they do and it may seem like there are rules or lines that are firm, but when you step back, zoom out, and consider them in the context of broader society (and especially compared to the idea of a Man and Woman), they do not. These are social contructs that are actually very early in their construction, and we are doing the constructing like, right now, within this ask.

That said, I can tell you why I don't identify as a trans man fairly easily: I don't care about men or the idea of a man. "Man" as a static concept is like... I don't know what that is. Its almost alien to me.

Now, to ramble that point out:

I have considered if I'm a man throughout my life. The closest I've been to identifying as a man was when I was in a period in my life when I considered that there was at least an aspect of me that was drawn to Manhood. Also, as I came to be read as a man in my public life, i supposed that in social situations when I was being treated as a man and I didn't correct people because I didn't care to, and I even enjoyed it somewhat and leaned into that role, I was essentially Being a Man (socially). So Man came to be a role I found myself in occasionally, and Manhood came to be a vaguely defined something that was intriguing to me.

But these moments of Man Feeling ended up being more like exceptions that proved the rule. Anyone can feel a bit like a man in the right circumstance, because gender isn't static; its something we can and often do play with, and phase through. I feel like music puts me in some heavily gendered spaces, like Everyone has a part of them thats a woman when they're belting along to "I'm Every Woman", yknow. Anyway.

I didn't feel like a man that much. I didn't feel like a woman that much either. I felt like a butch more frequently, because when I do things that indulged my masculinity, when I'm consumed by my love and attraction to femininity, when I think about the queers that I admire most, I felt butch, and was drawn to butches and interesting queer women. Leslie Feinberg, Frida Kahlo, Nancy Grossman, Patricia Highsmith, leather dykes and femme pro-doms, transgender queens... I've just never been that drawn to the experience of being a man. I've never been interested in men, frankly. Every man I've admired has been very much despite being men. Sufjan Stevens, Clive Barker, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, John Waters... great and usually queer artists whose gender is irrelevant because I like their work. The only man in that list who I have some personal affection for is Sufjan Stevens. He is an angel.

If I'm going to be a gender, its going to be the gender I admire. That I aspire to. I don't aspire to any man. Perhaps I aspire to a kind of body or a kind of masculinity, and sometimes men do that, but thats just a lack of other non-man representations of the thing I like. When I see in butches, it feels like a depiction of Me. Also WOW do I So Not feel like a man when I'm with my lovers. Sometimes I feel a bit like a man when I'm in a certain headspace while domming or if I'm having the rare T4T(masc) dalliance, but I feel very dyky when I'm with femmes. I just don't FEEL manhood. And I don't really care for man. Edit: I will say, there is a kind of Queer Man Masculinity that I definitely admire and aspire to, like that depicted by Tom of Finland or various other usually kinky gay art. But again, I don't see the Man part as important - its the masculinity. Btw, imo, there is no line in the sand as far as transition stuff. I'm very dysphoric about my body and that's never been about how I'm seen by others; it's my comfort in my own skin, and doesn't change my indifference to men or manhood. and that is my butch vs trans man ramble

[tomboyjessie13]

I had this scenario in my head for a while and I had ChatGPT flesh it out but I will rewrite it myself, because this is more of a plot bunny but tell me how funny this idea is.

The Scene: Cozy Living Room

The Nordics were gathered in a cozy living room, sitting around a large coffee table piled high with snacks, board games, and a few whimsical ornaments. It was a lazy afternoon, and the atmosphere was relaxed, filled with laughter and playful banter. But beneath the fun, a competitive tension began to simmer. Each of them silently vied for Cindy’s attention, hoping to charm her with their unique styles—much to the unspoken annoyance of the others.

Cindy lounged comfortably among them, blissfully unaware of the brewing rivalry. As she watched, she felt a playful sense of power—she had the affections of all these intriguing Nordic beings, and it was amusing to see how far they were willing to go to win her over.

The Flirting Begins

Norway leaned closer, sharing a story about the breathtaking fjords back home. “You should visit sometime. The scenery is… breathtaking, much like yourself.”

“Aw, Norway, I’ve seen a few pictures, but I’d love to see it for myself!” Cindy smiled, her eyes sparkling.

Denmark, sensing his moment slipping away, chimed in with a loud laugh. “Yeah, but have you seen the wild parties in Copenhagen? I could show you a good time that you’ll never forget!”

“Please, like you could out-fun the beauty of Norway’s nature!” Norway shot back, his voice laced with feigned annoyance, but his eyes betrayed his jealousy.

Finland decided to jump into the mix, attempting to keep the conversation serious. “Well, Cindy, if you’d prefer some tranquility, we could always relax in a sauna together. I promise it’s a wonderful experience.”

“Yeah, but I’d rather have some action! Why relax when you can party?” Denmark interjected, clearly wanting to drown out Finland’s suggestion.

The playful verbal sparring only escalated, and soon Sweden couldn’t stay silent. “If you’re going to party, let’s make it a proper one by having some good Swedish food too. What about some meatballs afterward? You can’t have a party without meatballs.”

Rising Tension

As the banter continued, the mood shifted. Glances became sharper, and little jabs turned into full-on competitive remarks.

“Come on, Finland, your idea of fun is sitting in a hot room and meditating!” Denmark exclaimed, crossing his arms and leaning back dramatically.

“Oh really, Mr. Wild Party? Is that why you’re constantly getting kicked out of venues?” Finland shot back, a smirk forming on his lips.

Cindy chuckled at their silly bickering but found herself slightly overwhelmed by their intense rivalry. “Guys, it’s all in good fun! You don’t need to fight over me!”

“Maybe you should pick one of us then!” Iceland chimed in, attempting to add fuel to the friendly fire. “Everyone knows that I’m the most cultured here!”

The Cockblocks Enter the Scene

Suddenly, to diffuse the tension, Cindy pulled out a bag filled with quirky plush toys shaped like square chickens, aptly named Cockblocks. “Alright, enough of the banter! How about you all take a shot at my new plushies instead?”

“What are those?” Norway asked curiously, raising an eyebrow.

“They’re Cockblocks!” Cindy laughed, pulling one out and tossing it at Denmark, who caught it mid-air.

Denmark’s eyes widened in mock horror. “You’ll pay for this, Cindy! I’m not a cockblock!” He tossed the plush toy back at Norway, who caught it with a smirk.

“Oh, but look at it, Denmark. It’s perfect in matching your personality,” Norway teased, chucking the plushie back at him.

The chaos escalated as each Nordic began throwing the Cockblocks at one another, laughter filling the room as they cleverly made comments with each throw.

The Cockblock War

“Oh, look, Denmark! A perfect representation of how you always try to block my path!” Norway laughed as he pelted Denmark with another plushie.

“Hey! At least I have more charisma than your ‘brooding silence’ act!” Denmark shot back, tossing two plushies in tandem, hitting both Norway and Iceland.

Iceland jumped up, shouting, “That’s it! I’m declaring a Cockblock war!” He grabbed two plushies and started throwing them wildly, almost hitting Cindy.

“Watch it! I’m the one giving those out, you fool!” Cindy exclaimed, laughing as she dodged a flying Cockblock.

“Too slow, Cindy!” Sweden teased and threw a plushie directly aimed at Finland, who tried to shield himself with his arms.

“Guys! It’s practically raining Cockblocks in here!” Finland shouted, attempting to throw them back but ended up tripping over a cushion instead.

Cindy, laughing hysterically at how silly the situation had become, finally yelled, “Okay, okay! Enough! Maybe you should all just use these to block each other out!”

Aftermath of the Playful Chaos

Finally, as feathers exploded from the Cockblocks and laughter filled the room, the Nordics paused, panting from the playful frenzy. They looked around at the mess, at each other, and then at Cindy, who was gleefully enjoying the spectacle of their antics.

“Okay, we might need to work on our aim,” Denmark chuckled, picking up a plushie and tossing it to Cindy.

“Or at least learn to be more civil about this,” Sweden said, trying to catch his breath.

As the laughter slowly died down, all the Nordics found themselves a bit closer, their competitive spirits momentarily quenched by the silliness of what had just happened. They realized how much they enjoyed sharing this light-hearted moment with Cindy and with each other.

Cindy smiled brightly, looking at each Nordic in turn. “See? This is what good fun looks like! You’re all great, but just remember—no blocking!”

With that, the Nordics gathered their plushies, settled back into the couch, and took a moment to find peace in the shared laughter and joy of sibling rivalry, each secretly more determined than ever to win Cindy’s heart, but for now, simply enjoying the moment of camaraderie.

...............Uuuuuhhh...

[avinaccia]

A Completely Objective and Logical Ranking of Every Hetalia Character Song

New character songs are dropping,  I have too much time on my hands, let’s go. 

Also here’s a Youtube playlist for the ~✨nostalgia✨~

Bring it on in the tags 

71. Ah Legendary Class⭐The Awesome Me Highway [Prussia]: Absolutely tearing it up on the drums and on the vocal cords alike (I pray for Atsushi Kousaka). Great for the memes. 

70.  Happy Thoughts Museum [???]: This is listed as an official song but I had literally never heard of the title. Then I listened to it and BAM! Smack back to 2013 watching the teasers for the show on Funimation. Not sure I’d count it as a character song though...

69. (Nice)  My Song that is written by me for me [Prussia]: Deafened me but I can appreciate the industrial grind.

68.  My House is...Quiet. ~With the Trolls~ [Norway]: I have never heard this song, nor can I find any version of it online. By default it goes here and I am so sorry Norge.

67.  Make a Wish to Santa♪ [Sealand]: The discordant notes and childish exuberance only serve to make this sound like a demonic plea to Santa to eliminate the singer’s enemies.

66.  Heaven and Hell on Earth [Rome]: Rome sounds like he’s been in the corner of a restroom. Extra points for the metal version, minus points for the fact that the beach scene was replayed like 1764 times.

65. Canada Complete Introduction [Canada]: Quiet af until Kumacheerio shows up and blows out your speakers. they did you dirty my darling 😔

64.  It’s Easy!!! [America]: I don't think any video of this has ever stayed up for more than 20 seconds. Sounds cool, but like I was listening to 20 different genres at once, someone make him calm down.

63.  Bù Zàiyì the Small Stuff ☆ [China]: I cannot for the life of me find the complete song anywhere, clips have a cool beat though

62.  Let's Boil Hot Water♪ [Italy]: Exactly what it says on the tin..though a bit too close to elevator music for my tastes.

61.  The Fragrance of Early Summer [Japan]: Very ‘from the books’ Japan-esque song

60.  Peace Sounds Nice…[Baltic Trio]: All well and good until the radio demon shows up

59.  W●D●C ~World Dancing~ [America]: How a song can sound like it’s from 4 different decades at once is beyond me

58.  Overflowing Passion [BFT]: This is just drunken karaoke and I have 0 clue what’s going on #iconicforallthewrongreasons

57. Ren●Ren●Renaissance♪ [Rome+Chibitalia]: Wholesome Grandpa with Grandson content - barring the fact that Italy sounds on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Rome has had too much wine.

56.  Roma Antiqua [Rome]: Similar energy to any one of China’s songs - there’s a part of the song where it sounds like he’s singing in the shower, and I will never not laugh at [CENSORED]

55.  Country From Where the Sun Rises, Zipangu [Japan]: Very chill, very Japan, but just meh for me.

54.  Moon Over Emei Shan [China]: Good message, okay song.

53.  My Friend [England]: What a mind palace you must have Mr. Kirkland

52.  With Love, from Iceland [Iceland]: Three words: Heavy. Metal. Puffin.

51.  Having Friends is Nice...♫ [Russia]: Russia is the cutest thing ever

50.  Mm. [Sweden]: Smooth transition from WWE Smackdown to shopping at IKEA.

49.  Why don’t you come over? ~Beyond the Northern Lights~ [Iceland]: I don’t want to be mean but...this does sound like the second closing theme to an anime whose first closing was much more popular (à la Soul Eater)

48. Gakuen☆Festa [Germany, Italy, Japan]: Sounds like a 60s song of the summer but oh dear their voices do not go together. Hella cute though.

47.  Wa! Wa!! World Ondo [Main Cast]: One time I travelled 10 hours in a coach bus with a bunch of teenagers to a city of note in my country, and the only souvenir I bought was the fucking PAINT IT WHITE DVD. Perfectly chaotic, UN ĐĕùX~~

46.  In the Bluebell Woods [England]: In the album cover for this song he’s holding a guitar but this is not a rock song. Still has ‘running through the hills’ levels of dramatism though.

45.  Poi Poi Poi♪ [Taiwan]: You’re telling me that Taiwan, someone whose has *ONE LINE* in Beautiful World (which is criminal tbh what kind of representation-) managed to get an eNTIRE CHARACTER SONG???????

44.  White Flame [Russia]: There’s something to be said for a song that is 3x the length of any Hetalia episode

43.  Ich liebe… [Germany]: Baking cakes for your friends has never been so wholesome.

42.  We Wish you a Merry Christmas [America, China, England, France, Russia]: Nice to see they’ve gotten their shit together since United Nations Sta-hmm.

41.  Ah, Worldwide à la mode [France]: Sounds like a Disney Princess song, hard not to picture France frolicking in a field of flowers.

40.  Che Bello! ~My House is the Greatest!⭐~ [Italy]: Would not be out of place in an advertisement for Sea World.

39.  May You Smile Today [Japan]: THE feel good song of the summer

38.  Let’s Look Behind the Rainbow [Italy]: I will protect you.

37.  I'm your HERO☆ [America]: “Anyone who’s sad or sullen will be arrested” did NOT age well.

36.  Mein Gott! [Prussia]: Alternating headphone effect at the beginning is cool, so is the confidence...the actual singing on the other hand...

35. Nihao⭐China [China]: Listen, all of China’s character songs are great, I just can’t vibe with this one like some of the others.

34.  Pechka ~Light My Heart~ [Russia]: I’m still having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that this and Winter were released at the same time.

33.  Pukapuka⭐Vacation [Germany, Italy, Japan]: Seems just a bit too much like they’re running on a treadmill that’s picking up speed and trying to sing at the same time. Peppy.

32.  Santa Claus is Coming to Town [Germany, Italy, Japan]: This is unironically the best song sung by this trio; can only vibe with for two months out of the year though.

31.  Excuse Me, I Am Sorry [Japan]: Japan’s character traits speedrun. Gives me barbershop quartet vibes for some reason but is catchy as hell.

30.  The Story of Snow and Dreams [Russia]: A superhero anime opening in the making

29. England’s Evil Demon Summoning Song [England]: Sir that is not how you roast a marshmallow, don’t cut yourself on that edge.

28.  Moi Moi Sauna♪ [Finland]: Exactly the type of song you’d expect and it’s wonderful

27.  United Nations Star⭐ [America, China, England, France, Russia]: This isn’t as much of a song as it is a four minute struggle for everyone to sing without America yelling every 5 seconds...Like a particularly musical episode of Hetalia.

26.  Paris is Indeed Splendid [France]: Paris-pa-pa-pa-paris

25.  Absolutely Invincible British Gentleman [England]: Poppy, rocky, polka-dotty

24.  Vorwärts Marsch! [Germany]: To quote the comment section: “This sounds like a German version of I’ll Make a Man out of you.” There’s some truth to that.

23.  Hamburger Street [America]: The product of America’s rapper phase. 8/10 because he’s trying so hard and because I can unironically sing along to all of this.

22.  Hoi Sam☆Nice Guy [Hong Kong]: A song that would absolutely destroy the ankles of anyone in DDR.

21.  I Am German-Made [Germany]: There was once a version that had Germany and Prussia singing at the same time and it sounded positively demonic and Broadway could never

20.  La pasión no se detiene ~Unstoppable Passion~ [Spain]: Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping...

19.  Fall in Love, Mademoiselle [France]: Sounds like it should be in Mozart Opera Rock, I have kiss kiss falled in love.

18. Embrace the Très Bien Moi [France]: This is the definition of SELF LOVE PEOPLE. 

17. Carrot and Stick [Belarus&Ukraine]: Absolutely DRIPPING in 2000s power ballad energy. The type of song that plays on repeat in the mind of the widow whose millionaire husband ‘mysteriously disappeared’ (and the only legit character song ever acknowledged by the anime)

16. C.B.C (Cowboyz Boot Camp) Vol. 1 [America]: AH MAH GAWWDDD

15. Winter [Russia]: Heavy metal fever dream and the perfect song for an angst-ridden teenager

14.  Seychelles Here ⭐ Vacation Island [Seychelles]: UN👏DER👏RA👏TED SONG👏OF 👏THE 👏SUM👏MER👏

13.  Nah, it will settle itself somehow [Romano]: One day I aspire to reach this level of chill

12.  Let’s Enjoy Today [England]: I will never not feel happy when listening to this.

11.  Einsamkeit [Germany]: Ludwig manages to air every single one of his worries about not being good enough compared to his friends and always being perceived as mean or uptight when he’s actually just a softie and now my heart hurts. 💔

10.  Aiyaa Four Thousand Years [China]: A very poignant and beautiful song about the passage of time and the inevitability of its passing; comparable to an ancient ballad complete with explosive crescendos and meaningful lyrics.

9.  Bon Bon Bon❤️C’est Bon C’est Bon! [France]: Peppy, cheerful, adorable, groundbreaking; has been my alarm tone for six years and I’ve yet to tire of it. 9/10 The moaning interspersed throughout has been an interesting wake-up call.

8.  Let’s Enjoy! Let’s Get Excited! Cheers! [Denmark]: This is on par with Everytime we Touch by Cascada in terms of rage potential unlocked (the good kind)

7.  Dream Journey [Japan]: Whoever’s playing the shakuhachi is absolutely KILLING IT. Dramatic, wonderful, great metaphors.

6.  Gourmet’s Heart Beginner Level [China]: Absolute banger, I’m a vegetarian but this would inspire me to eat shumai.

5.  Always with you...Nordic Five! [Nordic FIVVVVVEEEE]: Everyone harmonizes beautifully except for Denmark. Extremely catchy, number placement seemed appropriate. 

4.  Pub and GO! [England]: I love this trash man

3. Maji Kandou⭐Hong Kong Night [Hong Kong]: If you thought Denmark’s song was a banger JUST YOU WAIT. I WILL BLOW OUT MY SPEAKERS LISTENING TO LO-HA-SU.

2. Steady Rhythmus [Germany]: THIS SONG IS METAL AF. Seriously, if it can be classified as ‘hardcore’ by my father and his group of 50-somethings who have decided to single-handedly gatekeep the metal and hardrock genres, it can do anything.

1.  The Delicious Tomato Song 🍅 [Romano]: Beautiful, absolutely awe-inspiring, poignant, catchy lyrics with an extremely deep meaning that only years of meticulous research and analysis can unlock, Romano I love you.

BONUS: Closing Songs

5. Hatafutte Parade (World Series) 

4. Hetalian⭐Jet (The World Twinkle): The song is good, the dancing is cursed 

3. Chikyuu Marugoto Hug Shitainda (World⭐Stars)

2. Marukaite Chikyuu (Hetalia: Axis Powers): nE NE PaPA

1. Mawaru Chikyuu Rondo (The Beautiful World)

[5577v]

masterpost for my versions of various hetalia characters i like bc i want their identities to be respected and their stories to be understood here (will be continued)

mathias (denmark); nonbinary; any pronouns

- gay

- hyperactive adhd and dyslexia (& ptsd?)

- he just like me fr... happy idiot who wouldn't hurt a fly (unless it's swedish) but also has a lot of internalized issues that he only started addressing at around the 70s/80s. she's also not exactly stupid or anything, just awful at reading tones or organizing herself. picked up smoking from his relationship with netherlands. an alcoholic but pretends they're not

- had things going on with tim/netherlands, ludwig and occassionally ber but every time she was just trying to run away from the fact that he's in love with his bestie the norwegian

lukas (norway); ???; he/she

- bi

- generalized anxiety

- it has taken him until like the 2010s that maybe raising herself as a woman for hundreds of years and enjoying it has made her might not exactly cis. also has extreme paranoia but refuses to address it. has a lot of internalized issues going on that he needs to deal with but would rather just look sexy than talk about his feelings

emil (iceland); trans guy, he/him

- ??? likes men

- ptsd and depression

- came to terms with his identity in about the 80s

- has started talking to leon in the 90s online

tino (finland); cis guy, he/him

- pan

- neurotypical

- hard of hearing/deaf

- also TONE deaf xd he always sticks his nose into other people's business and tries to "help" but isn't always exactly helping... also alcoholic no. 2

berwald (sweden); cis guy, he/him

- gay

- asd

- it's hetalia sweden what do you want

eduard (estonia); agender; they/he

- fluctuates/unlabelled

- idk tbh but probably not nt

- just living their best life out of all of them tbh. the only person without constant existential dread haunting them

raivis (latvia); cis guy, he/him

- ???

- generalized anxiety

- definitely more of an actual teen in my interpretation than the uwu-fied version of the manga. smart fella who doesn't know how to deal with having so many things expected from him. of course he fell in love with the one person who isn't expecting anything from him and instead cares about his feelings

leon (hong kong); ???; doesn't mind any pronouns, mostly he/him

- a queer mystery.......

- asd

- tbh his canon version is kinda bland i will not lie... but i still like this goofy guy. i write him as someone like mathias but more tame and less hyperactive. they're still an incredibly strange person though - i HAVE a specific personality in mind but i don't know how to describe it... like every interaction with him is just a fever dream in a way because he's really just saying things and you can't read his expression

my ships that i enjoy:

long term (in my stories) - dennor, estlat, sufin, hongice (i know it's basic i'm sorry)

short term - densu, nedden, gerden, norfin, estice

outside of those charas: gerita, gerfra, ruspru, lietpol etc etc...

i also want to clarify. i'm trans (enby) myself and either me or my hetalia friends have several of the illnesses listed, we didn't assign the characters those to make them "quirky", but because we're projecting and want to see some better representation :]

also - i barely associate them with being countries rly. i mostly see them as people living their own lives who happen to be immortal and represent their citizens, they're not bound to stereotypes or politics or anything.

[cookingwithroxy]

I don't see a problem with representation of kinks during Pride, we can't just ignore that the kink community saved and spearheaded the fight during the AIDS crisis because "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" And i don't think children(as in anyone under the age of the recommended to be part of south parka audience or whatever) should be at pride because you never know what the reactionaries may do and what could happen. Like if you ignore the bulges in some of tom of finland's more SFW artworks i think that's a pretty public space safe way to rep the leather and kink community. But in general i don't think anyone under 16 should be at a "whatever and however" type or Pride to begin with so realistically speaking in my perfect world this wouldn't even be something in need to clarify

Honestly, I'd love to have a public 'This is for everyone' pride and a private 'And this is for US' pride. We DESERVE this. But thanking the kink community for all the connections and help is still a bit different from having people wear OVERT Fetish gear. If only because we are still dealing with an issue where we're seriously scaring off the normies. *I* don't want us to suddenly face returned pressure because the pendulum swing has gone back the other way, and that worries me. And also it frustrates me that everyone's acting like there's no chance anything regressive will happen, even as the radicals on either side get more and more aggressive by the fucking DAY.

Call me what you will, but *I*'d like to placate the normies for a while yet, you know? They DO still outnumber us by a LOT.

[elidon00]

rambling about cartoons

I graduated this summer and been unemployed ever since. I have had so much (too much) free time. I started watching Ducktales, I’m rewatching Amphibia and I’m gonna start Big City Greens. 

Since it was Dipper and Mabels birthday recently, I wanna talk about Gravity Falls. Gravity Falls was the first cartoon I followed as it came out. I remember being so exited when it came on Disney Channel. I watched it with my sister, she was never (or is) into cartoon and liked more the acted shows. We were really into it and always checked for new episodes. It was also the first I pirated lmao. I learned that episodes came out in the US before Finland, where I live. I watched most of the show legally. Only the last part of the second season I pirated.  I vividly remember watching the shows finale in my bedroom late at night. I had promised my headphones for my sister, so right as the saddest part was happening my sister came to my room asking for the headphones. I was crying and just said “I’m not done!”. It was pretty embarrassing lol.

Alright next thing. My favorite cartoons of all time are: Gravity Falls, OK KO, Amphibia, Over the Garden Wall, The Owl House and Steven Universe. OK KO has a VERY special place in my heart. It so fucking underrated. It’s one of the only shows that can always make me laugh. The animation is amazing, the humor is on point, the story is pretty good, I just love that show SO much. I’m still sad that it got cancelled.

Now, on to Amphibia. Ah Amphibia. It’s been a while since I’ve enjoyed a show this much. It similar to Gravity Falls. I started rewatching it two days ago and am already like over half way done. The season one finale is SO damn good!! The first time I watched it I was in a pretty damn bad place mentally. Watching it again now was interesting. But anyway. Amphibia is something special. Marcy is one of my favorite characters of all time. I love her so freaking much. Also Anne and Sasha are such interesting characters, the whole show is so creative. I hate that some people are complaining about how the first season in mostly “filler”. Like the creator of the show said, every episode is important. The “filler” episodes show how the plantar family grow together and how much they love each other. Like if you skipped episodes and then watched for example “True Colors” it would definitely not hit the same way. You need to see how much they care for each other. I could rant about that forever lol but I’ll stop now.

Now, Steven Universe. This one is hella complicated. I watched it when I was real sad and junk. So now when I watch it, I can’t do it without crying lol. It has many MANY problems that have been talked to death. But, I still love it. That show was the first time I saw a nonbinary person in a cartoon. All the representation really helped figure myself out.

here’s some other stuff. Over the Garden Wall, I watch it every year around Halloween. (it almost time and I’m exited). I’ve really grown to like The Owl House. It’s not my absolute favorite but I still really like it. It has the best animation that I’ve seen in any cartoon ever. It’s amazing. Luz’s voice actor is the best I’ve heard and all the characters are really good and complex, it has so much potential. Then The Dragon Prince. I love it and I can’t wait for it to come back. It has one of the coolest animation style’s I’ve seen.

That’s it. Just wanted to wire stuff down. Been pretty down recently but watching stuff is keeping me afloat. Hope yall are doing good.

[95jezzica]

Some Nordic HCs 01

- Norway is actually the oldest of the Viking trio, but let's Denmark claim the title because he honestly couldn’t care less about being the oldest.

- Their parents were Scandia and North, but Norway is the only one old enough to really remember them, since they died not long after Denmark and Sweden had “popped into existence”.  (I want to note that I hc the Sami people to have their own representations, but they’re not related to the Nordics, and are for another post. It wouldn’t feel right to make them related, considering our history.) 

- Denmark and Sweden are twins. Sweden just had the unfortunate luck to be born after midnight, and thus has his birthday the day after Denmark. (A reference to how Den’s national day is on the 5th of June, while Sweden’s is on the 6th). Yes, Denmark holds it high above Sweden’s head that Sweden is the youngest of the Viking Trio. x) 

- Denmark is 203cm (6′7) tall, Sweden 218cm (7′2) and Norway is the “short” one of the Viking Trio at 180cm (5′9). 

- Because of this many nations who hadn’t seen Norway outside of paintings or photos were surprised by how tall Norway actually was the first time they met him, since he was only short compared to his giants of siblings. 

- Iceland is the youngest of the Nordics and stands at 173cm / 5′6.

- Finland is the shortest at 170cm/ 5′5, but also the strongest of the group when it comes to physical strength. (Probably mental strength too, tbh). 

- Both Denmark and Sweden are smart individuals, but would never pass the Wisdom check. Sweden is just better at hiding it since he's so naturally quiet, and since he's usually able to blame all his stupid shit on Denmark. x’D 

- Denmark finds it hilarious that most of the non-Nordics still don’t know at least half of the stupid shit he gets into is actually Sweden’s fault. x) 

- For many years Norway was the one who made sure Denmark and Sweden didn’t get themselves killed. Nowadays he still does, but at least he has help from Finland and Iceland now. x) 

- Iceland loves his older siblings and Finland very much, but by god does he wish he wasn’t the only normal one. (Spoiler alert: He isn’t one either.) xD

- Norway and Finland are best friends. Fight me. 

- Sweden’s eyesight is complete and utter shit, but he doesn’t realize he needs stronger glasses since they DO help a little compared to being without them. With that said, even with his current glasses his eyesight is absolutely terrible and in modern age Sweden would likely count as legally blind. 

- Because of this Sweden can’t SEE magical creatures, but he can hear and feel them. Sweden also has magic, but prefers not to use it since he’s not as good at controlling it like Norway is. 

- Long before the Viking era Sweden once found a bear cub, mistook it for a puppy, and then adopted it. Needlessly to say Mama Bear wasn’t too happy about it, and Sweden has since then been permanently banned from adopting any animal without the input from one of the other Nordics. (Not that it really stops him). x’)

- Norway loves his mountains and to this day still have a cabin hidden away amongst them. The other Nordics are the only ones to know where this cabin is hidden. 

- Norway, Sweden and Finland also share a secret cabin around Finland’s side of the Thee-Country Cairn. (The name of the place/point where Norway’s, Sweden’s and Finland’s borders meet each other). This is the cabin usually used for the Nordic meetings and/or vacations together. 

- One time Iceland accidentally said ‘Dadmark’ instead of ‘Denmark’. No, he still hasn’t been able to live it down, and Denmark cried tears of happiness when it happened. x) 

- Both Norway and Sweden are autistic, while Denmark has ADHD. 

- Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Iceland are considered cousins to the main-Germanics. (Prussia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Liechtenstein).  

- Everyone except for Finland know about Sweden’s quite frankly obvious romantic feelings for Finland. The only reason why the rest of the Nordics haven’t intervened yet is because they’re unsure if Finland returns Sweden’s romantic feelings or not. 

- (The part of me which ships SuFin wants to say Finland returns Sweden’s romantic feelings, but it took a longer time for Finland to realize his feelings were romantic or if he even wanted a romantic relationship to begin with. If you’re not a SuFin-shipper you can just ignore this part though). 

- Iceland sometimes feels insecure about how different he is compared to the other Nordics, but he takes comfort in that his language is the one who today is the closest related to old (west) Norse. 

- The Nordics know a lot of languages. Those include: . The main Nordic languages. (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Finnish).  . Old Norse (West, East & old Gutnish). . Greenlandic (Kalaallisut, Tunumiit, Inuktum).  . Faroese. . Meänkieli. . The Sami languages. (North, South, Lule, Ume, Pite, East - etc).  . German. (The old trading language back in the days).  . French. (Was the Royal/Court language).  . Jiddish/Yiddish.  . Hebrew. . Russian. (More so Finland than the rest).  . English.  . Spanish, Italian, Mandarin and Greek. (School-level). 

Bonus:  - Sealand is also fluent in Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Irish and Welsh.  - As an internet nation Ladonia pretty much knows all languages which exists written on the internet or within an audio file- but he counts Swedish, Ladonska and Latin (yes, this is true) as his native languages. 

- Sweden is Ladonia’s and Sealand’s Pappa (Swedish for papa/dad), while Finland goes by Isä (Finnish for dad). 

- Sealand originally had a hard time learning Swedish and Finnish, since they’re so different to English, but with time and hard work eventually managed to master them both before tackling the rest of the Nordic languages.  

- Sealand rotates between staying with England and Sweden, and they were once forced to use “Divorced Parents” as a cover when some nosy humans got a little too close with their investigations. Denmark thought it was hilarious. x’D

- Iceland pretends to be a bit grumpy/annoyed about it, but secretly loves it when he is sometimes asked if he can baby-sit Sealand and Ladonia. (Partly because he’s finally not the youngest and gets to be in charge). x) 

. 

[ The End ]. 

(For now?)

[fabulouspizzadelivery]

Ok

Now I have seen a lot of people talking about how amazing the new netflix movie Clause is (and it is, you should really go and see it) but many haven't know who these colorful dressed pepole are that some have called "inuit elfs"

This pepole are the Sami. And tbh is one of the main reasons I was excited to see the movie, bicuase if it's one thing the Sami don't get its representation in film and media.

Now who are the Sami?

Thay are a group of people in the far north of Europe who once followed and hunted reindeer but today heard them like cowboys of the north as well fishing and hunting. There culture is very much a result of the way of living but today there ofcorse Sami who live and work in city's and have other jobs.

The Sami also have there own religon that's similar to both nativ American animism as well old norse paganism. Thay even have a own version of the famous god Thor, known as Horagalles or Dierpmis in sami. But many today are Christian after nations like Sweden, Norway, Russia and Finland pushing for converting the "heathen pepole in the north" to the church. Just one in the many ways the Sami were oppressed.

Thay also have thay own language with many difrent dielects and is related to Finnish.

Now I haven't read or spoken eny Sami seens high school and tbh don't remember much, so I have no idea witch Sami language thay speak in the movie but I guess it may the Sami spoken on northen finland? If enyone who speak it better can corekt me pls do.

As you notes in the claus movie the Sami is also known for there colorful traditional clothing witch just as the language very from region to region.

BUT also a very important thing to know about the Sami is why thay are not often only shown in media but in a good way as good pepole.

Bicuase sadly the Sami have faced cruelty such as cultural and religon opresstion and even genocide. Beaing seen as thieves, greddy, dirty, witches and in all lesser human, mainly by Norway and Sweden. In swedish school books to this day this is bearly mentioned. At Uppsala university in Sweden in the late 1800 and early 1900 swedes gathered body parts such as skulls from the Sami and even forced castration to make sure sweden would have "a healthy truly swedish population" (no wonder hitler liked sweden) and it was just as bad in Norway as seen the 8th november 1852 during the Kautokeino uprising when Sami pepole resisted Norwegian domination and influence. It's a long messy story but there is a great movie about it from 2008 called 'Kautokeinoupproret'

And sadly to this day the Sami face opresstion and racism even tho it gets better.

Just this year some of the first body's were returned after been taken from Sami graveyards for collections at universities and museums in Sweden.

So now when you watch Netflix klause you not only seeing something well animated with a lovely story, you see some of the only representation of the Sami outside of scandinavia. Witch is just a nother reason why the Klause is amazing!

[the-god-of-ruining-good-shit]

@sociophobia459 @casey-bean @sandistrudel @aftershockspark and anyone else viewing

This may be the last thing I post on anything, ever. Unless I can be talked out of it by my best friend @depressedsidecharacter, a friend on discord, a friend on Xbox, or one of you, I will be committing suicide soon. I have lost damn near every reason to live and don’t feel like I can go on. It might just be the mental illness talking, but I really feel at a loss. I have almost nothing left, and if you see a post after this, then I have successfully been talked out of it. I might have had a bright future once, but that has all but faded and nothing remains of it. Germany? Finland? Getting a male genitalia and keeping my female genitalia? Broken dreams lost to everything else. No money, no supporting family, so few friends I only need one hand to count them, nothing.

Lili, my Russia is by a creek crying his eyes out and, being a representation of me, is contemplating and planning to go through with suicide, Æ will never get the painting, Franklin will fail to do more with himself, Tennessee will never see her foster parent again and will never find any love, Damir, Iskra, Emelia,and Wilt will get separated and never see each other again, the two horrible Kievans will never face justice, the rest of the Kievans will never see their sons again, the Mons with either suffer or prosper in the wrong way, and all the Ru’s will be lost without their papas. Anyways, I’ve known you for a little over a year, and you’re wonderful and kind. Keep it up and don’t be like me. Ever. I will haunt you if you do.

Socio, you are all a wonderful person who deserves the best in life no matter how long it will take you to get there. You are a wonderful and best friend(s). Hold strong and never let go of hope.

Casey, keep being the awesome bean you are.

Spark, I apologize for getting upset when an old ass artwork was used in a video without my knowledge, permission, or credit. You were right that it wasn’t a big deal and had been there for years, it would be useless to say anything about it now. And I’m still very sorry for how I acknowledged your other amino accounts in other communities in such a way. I truly enjoyed our roleplays together even if, when looking back, they were a bit cringe on my end.

Sammy, oooh Sammy, where do I begin! You’ve been my best friend since at least 2017, and you have been there for me just about every step of the way on my internet journey. From the moment we met on quotev to now, you have been my best friend in the whole world. Our cringy roleplays, that one time autocorrect changed plop into poop when referring to plopping on a couch, our massively chaotic BFF energy, and your everything. I have had crushes on you, and even had a suicide pact with you at one point! Remember that dragon roleplay in dms that one time...? Or that hetalia x ch/cb/SH/everything in between roleplay? Or how I’ve pestered you since December about the parasitoid wasp roleplay? Or that time soundwave and Fantasy was forced into a relationship by our cringy roleplay antics back then? Good times. I miss those. I still remember your lovely cat skull and the fact you’re a witch. I know you’re an Anarchist. I know so much about you, and I always associate you with teal and scarlet. I hope you get to France or Italy to get that culinary degree, and I hope you and your bf have a great life together. You matter so much to me, and I know I matter to you, but I feel like that’s just about where I stop mattering now. I’m just one soul in the sea of billions of others. There are plenty of people just like me, and I wish you luck. I hope you get out of your abusive household soon.

As of Monday, June 21st of 2021, the day of writing this, you may expect me to be feeling sad or in some sort of non-physical pain, when I’m truth, I feel numb. I just feel numb. My idol stepped away from what got me to idolize him, some of my closest friends abandoned me, and my favorite people departed. Most of this was within less than a year. I’ve gotten accustomed to loss, and surely it will be no different if I am a loss. Goodbye.

Wendi Golden, 15, logging off for possibly the last time.

[jojo-reader-hell]

Bucci Gang x Reader: Adheridos Separados

A story about coming home from a foreign country. Focuses on Hispanic!Reader because I need representation. So if you’re not Hispanic congrats, you are now.

You’re filthy.

You smell like a mixture of crotch, urine, and death breath. Didn’t even brush your teeth the morning you left Helsinki nor did you bother at the various terminals you visited.Just jumped out of bed and took off, didn’t even change out of your pajamas.

Hair in knots, beat up leather jacket around your shoulders, you sneak glances here and there as the plane descends. Thank God, she gave you enough money for two tickets, so you were able to avoid tormenting an unfortunate seatmate for five and a half hours. Instead by your side sat your black guitar case, the sole piece of luggage you carried with you wherever you went.

Please… Fucking shit… Please let them be there…

Thank God Finland was only one hour ahead. At first you were worried you wouldn’t make it in time, they didn’t linger during lunch. Not when there were other things to take care of, if the boys got into a fight they left early, or if one of them got a wild hair and decided to eat somewhere else, Libeccio might very well be empty by the time you found a taxi and this makes you sweat even more.

Hurry the fuck up!!

Your boot makes a pattering sound as you bounce your leg in anticipation. You keep muttering under your breath for the pendejo flying the plane to hurry his lazy ass up, hand wrapped around the handle of your guitar case as though you’re going to swing it out at the first person who tries to line up before you in the skinny aisle of the plane. Around you, the world moves on. Some people speak in Finnish, occasionally there’s the obnoxious American tourist gushing and you understand simple words like “ocean” and the ever annoying “oh my gawwwwwwwd”, even some Italians are on this flight, complaining about the lows of negative seven Celsius and how they’re looking forward to the warmth back home.

“Apurate cabron!” you nearly scream it out but it catches hoarsely in your throat.

No one seems to notice your distress. It’s probably for the best. You don’t want to talk to anyone else right now. You’re itching to go, bouncing in your seat when the wheels touch down and barely hearing the roar of the brakes through the pounding of your heart in your ears. You stand even before the seat belt lights turn off, conventional airline etiquette can suck your clit if any of these fuckers think for a minute you’re going to wait for them to get off first.

Rude as ever, you push your way to the front, earning a lot of complaints from the passengers but silencing them with a red hot glance of murder when you bullied your way to the front of the plane.

You don’t even bother to take in the sight of the white walls of Napoli Airport like the tourists do. You book it out of the gate, guitar case swinging haphazardly as you break into a sprint out of the terminal. This time, you didn’t bother to waste another minute with a letter. If you had, they’d be waiting for you with a car, and this would have taken seconds to quell the heartache you felt in your chest.

But to hell with wasting time that could get you home quicker. You didn’t even wait for the snow to melt in the country you were staying in. As soon as she gave you the money to leave you left, not even pausing once to say goodbye to the two old women that had shown you what was in your heart.

Scanning the front of the airport for a familiar yellow color, you manage finally to flag someone down. Quickly you enter, slamming the door once you’re seated next to your guitar case. You don’t let the man get a word in edgewise. Waving a stack of bills in the driver’s face, you tell in lispy Italian where you need to go, not caring that his smile is really a cruel mockery and turning it into a frown when you open your mouth again.

“Did you hear a word I said? Hurry up and drive me there! I know my Italian is not so very bad. ¡Ya me tienes harto! ¡Vete a la chingada!”

The effect is instantaneous. Both languages are not so different that the Italians cannot understand what you’re saying. Often you talk a lot of shit in your native language, earning mean looks from the person that hears it, and the driver swears at you before peeling out of the front of Napoli Airport. There’s something in your eyes that makes him afraid to do more than call you a dirty whore, he didn’t even kick you out when you started back at him in Castiliano. The both of you argue the whole way, bitching at one another until you throw the stack of bills on his lap before you exit, leaving your new best friend with a nice piece of advice:

“¡Tómate tu dinero y mételo en el culo!” you scream.

“Vai a cagare brutta stronza!”

You laugh. You start fucking howling when you slam the door of the taxi, leaning on your guitar as he peels off. Of course the entire street is staring, but you could really give a fuck less.

God dammit… You’re HOME!

“Bahahahaahahaha! D-did you see that?” you’re too choked up, shaking even as it appears you’re talking to thin air. “He… he called me a bitch! HAHAHAHAHA!”

A throaty metallic laugh sounds off next to you, a rather tall figure in black puts a hand up to the only part of her face that’s not covered by her helmet. A filthy word in Spanish blinks across her helmet, and you laugh harder, clutching your stomach and not even bothering with the looks or the mutterings of what a freak you are. You must look like some smelly nut job, but you could care less.

“Come on,” you tell your Stand, gesturing with the guitar case towards the restaurant. “Let’s go!”

The Brainwasher’s coo sounds almost like a chirp. She follows eagerly behind you as you walk the few blocks towards the restaurant. Stubborn asshole didn’t even drop you at the front like they usually did, probably shouldn’t have said you fucked his mother, but whatever. It wasn’t like you were ever going to need to take a taxi again in your life anyways. Finally you look up at the streets you couldn’t stop seeing in your dreams. Everything is clean, just how you left it before the beginning of autumn. Everything stays, but there are some subtle differences in how you perceive the facades, the green awnings and black telephone wires with birds, the red brick buildings and the smell of freshly cooked Napoli fare. It hits you how hungry you were, not just for a meal, but for the comfort you had here in this town.

They have to be here, you think to yourself as you slow your pace and your racing heart, I made it just in time… They probably just sat down to eat and I’m going to walk in on them drinking, probably starting on torte alle frogole or perhaps I’ll catch them in the middle of a bite of veal… And when I get my kisses, they’re going to taste so sweet no matter what they’ve been eating…

Your Stand chirrups in delight, the word “Papi” blinking across her helmet in pink along with a series of hearts all in the different colors of the rainbow. You smile at The Brainwasher, and she gives you a toothy grin in return as the both of you take your time to savor the streets of Naples. You want to take it in slowly, it’s been too long already… But on the opposite side of the coin you feel as though you’re merely trying to hold back the full body vibrating you feel at the prospect of seeing the loves of your life for the first time in what feels like forever.

Strange, you think as you enter the restaurant and see the host’s eyes light up, It never used to feel like I was away very long before. It felt like I’d never left, and I’d actually start feeling an anxiety… now… I feel like I’ve been away too long…

“Singorina Esposito!”

You laugh.

“I told you to call me by my first name.” you grin. “Please, is he… are they all…?”

The words can’t come to you, but he knows what you want and wordlessly ushers you through the tables to the back.

“Of course Singorina Espo- I… apologies! Yes, they’re all here today!”

The fake name you’ve been given never ceases to amuse you. With a bit of morbid curiosity, you’ve come to find the identity one of your boyfriends has given you in order for you to stay long periods of time actually is a throw away name for Italian orphans. But it’s more amusing than insulting, because it can also be a cute way of calling someone “husband” in your native language, and you waste no time informing your boyfriend.

“What? You miss me that much you want to marry me?” you’d asked coyly, laughing at his red face. “Uh? Am I your husband, and you’re the wife? Pining for me every time I have to leave for work? Then come here and give your esposo a kiss~.”

“SHOW HIM SOME RESPECT!”

You stop short of the archway and peer into the reserved area. There’s tea all over the table, the remains of a shattered cup staining the floors with dark liquid and you catch a whiff of Darjeeling. One boyfriend screams at the others, a stranger next to him with gold hair as both have their backs to you. Your breath catches in your throat… There’s an air of uncertainty. You want to call out to them, to say something, but all the things you intended to say to them clog in your vocal cords and you can’t even gurgle out one word in Italian.

The Brainwasher flickers to life next to you.

“Ya llegué.” She whispers softly.

Time stops. Six pairs of eyes fall on you, one unfamiliar, the other five with some sort of confusion. You see the emotions mix, tumble over one another, until warm recognition makes you smile in delight.

“H-…”

A scream, a yelp of your name is all you hear as you’re suddenly pinned to the floor by an overly exuberant mass of orange, leather and messy black hair. The case in your hand is pulled out of your grasp last minute by The Brainwasher, and she has only moments to react before you are completely taken over by bodies.

“MIA RAGAZZA!”

All of them are screaming your name, kisses are planted on every bit of exposed skin. Someone bites your earlobe and you exclaim out in pain, the one who tackled you takes advantage of this and you taste the sweetness of his tongue against yours, hearing him moaning loudly into the kiss. Your tangles are yanked back and you’re separated from your attacker, mouth taken up into another kiss that tastes of strawberries and cream while your lips are smeared with purple lipstick.

“Where the fuck were you all this time?!” screams the one that bit you.

“You didn’t even call or write!” whines the tackler.

Another body just as ripe as yours heaves you all up off the floor.

“Yuck! You stink!” he cries, and you feel tears dribble onto your face as he clutches you tightly to his smelly chest. “You’re so gross… You… You…!”

This whole time you haven’t made a sound. You’re far too caught up in the lips and the tongues that pull you in several directions at a time to notice that you’ve drawn the attention of everyone in the entire restaurant. You don’t even care that The Brainwasher has disappeared and dropped your case to the floor, not when your heart is bursting and you’re being showered in all the love you’ve craved over the last few months. What a difference it made, now that your eyes were wide open and you could see clearly without the other emotions bogging you down.

Remember what I told you. Hold them close. Be thankful for the freedom they’ve given you…

You look up when you hear your name murmured.

There he is… He’s still as handsome as ever. Looking you over with those ocean eyes as his face contorts like he’s going to cry at any moment. The others let you out of their grasp reluctantly, you still feel fingers on your back as you step closer, but you don’t have to move any further.

Olive toned hands take your face up, your skin is covered in lipstick and tears and snot bubbles and you still smell like a toilet but he doesn’t care a whit. He merely swipes a thumb across your cheek, his eyes squinting into a smile, lower lip quivering as though he’s afraid to kiss you.

“I’m home.” You tell him simply. Like you went to the grocery store for some milk.

He says nothing. Takes you up in his grasp and kisses you like his life depends on it, the clean taste of his mouth against yours as you wrap your arms around his neck. As Bruno Buccellati kisses you fervently, you feel the bodies of your other lovers engulf you. Leone Abbacchio’s large hands caress your waist, Narancia Ghirga pulls on the hem of your pants, Pannacotta Fugo and Guido Mista can’t help but take each arm and pepper kisses on every inch they can get a hold of. You’re ensconced in this feeling. Well loved. Steaming hot and relieved from the cold of loneliness you’d been feeling the entire winter.

As you’re being showered in affection, you don’t notice the last pair of eyes viewing this display with a strange, mounting envy. You don’t notice him cock his head as the boys kiss and complement you. Wanting to know who this stranger is, and why it seems that the gangsters before him are so desperate to shower you with affection.

Much to his displeasure, he wants to know why he suddenly wants to take the time to greet you with a kiss as well, to see you squirm and giggle and moan beneath his touch…

[semiotexte]

As the years passed, I learned to think of dreams as an integral part of life. There are dreams that, because of their sensory intensity, their realism or precisely their lack of realism, deserve to be introduced into autobiography, just as much as events that were actually lived through. Life begins and ends in the unconscious; the actions we carry out while fully lucid are only little islands in an archipelago of dreams. No existence can be completely rendered in its happiness or its madness without taking into account oneiric experiences. It’s Calderón de la Barca’s maxim reversed: it’s not a matter of thinking that life is a dream, but rather of realizing that dreams are also a form of life. It is just as strange to think, like the Egyptians, that dreams are cosmic channels through which the souls of ancestors pass in order to communicate with us, as to claim, as some of the neurosciences do, that dreams are a “cut-and-paste” of elements experienced by the brain during waking life, elements that return in the dream’s REM phase, while our eyes move beneath our eyelids, as if they were watching. Closed and sleeping, eyes continue to see. Therefore, it is more appropriate to say that the human psyche never stops creating and dealing with reality, sometimes in dreams, sometimes in waking life.

Whereas over the course of the past few months my waking life has been, to use the euphemistic Catalan expression, “good, so long as we don’t go into details,” my oneiric life has had the power of a novel by Ursula K. Le Guin. During one of my recent dreams, I was talking with the artist Dominique González-Foerster about my problem of geographic dislocation: after years of a nomadic life, it is hard for me to decide on a place to live in the world. While we were having this conversation, we were watching the planets spin slowly in their orbits, as if we were two giant children and the solar system were a Calder mobile. I was explaining to her that, for now, in order to avoid the conflict that the decision entailed, I had rented an apartment on each planet, but that I didn’t spend more than a month on any one of them, and that this situation was economically and physically unsustainable. Probably because she is the creator of the Exotourisme project, Dominique in this dream was an expert on extraterrestrial real-estate management. “If I were you, I’d have an apartment on Mars and I’d keep a pied-à-terre on Saturn,” she was saying, showing a great deal of pragmatism, “but I’d get rid of the Uranus apartment. It’s much too far away.”

Awake, I don’t know much about astronomy; I don’t have the slightest idea of the positions or distances of the different planets in the solar system. But I consulted the Wikipedia page on Uranus: it is in fact one of the most distant planets from Earth. Only Neptune, Pluto, and the dwarf planets Haumea, Makemake, and Eris are farther away. I read that Uranus was the first planet discovered with the help of a telescope, eight years before the French Revolution. With the help of a lens he himself had made, the astronomer and musician William Herschel observed it one night in March in a clear sky, from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street, in the city of Bath. Since he didn’t yet know if it was a huge star or a tailless comet, they say that Herschel called it “Georgium Sidus,” the Georgian Star, to console King George III for the loss of the British colonies in America: England had lost a continent, but the King had gained a planet. Thanks to Uranus, Herschel was able to live on a generous royal pension of two hundred pounds a year. Because of Uranus, he abandoned both music and the city of Bath, where he was a chapel organist and director of public concerts, and settled in Windsor so that the King could be sure of his new conquest by observing it through a telescope. Because of Uranus, they say, Herschel went mad, and spent the rest of his life building the largest telescope of the eighteenth century, which the English called “the monster.” Because of Uranus, they say, Herschel never played the oboe again. He died at the age of eighty-four: the number of years it takes for Uranus to go around the sun. They say that the tube of his telescope was so wide that the family used it as a dining hall at his funeral.

Uranus is what astrophysicists call a “gas giant.” Made up of ice, methane, and ammonia, it is the coldest planet in the solar system, with winds that can exceed nine hundred kilometers per hour. In short, the living conditions are not especially suitable. So Dominique was right: I should leave the Uranus apartment.

But dream functions like a virus. From that night forward, while I’m awake, the sensation of having an apartment on Uranus increases, and I am more and more convinced that the place I should live is over there.

For the Greeks, as for me in this dream, Uranus was the solid roof of the world, the limit of the celestial vault. Uranus was regarded as the house of the gods in many Greek invocation rituals. In mythology, Uranus is the son that Gaia, the Earth, conceived alone, without insemination or coition. Greek mythology is at once a kind of retro sci-fi story anticipating in a do-it-yourself way the technologies of reproduction and bodily transformation that will appear throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; and at the same time a kitschy TV series in which the characters give themselves over to an unimaginable number of relationships outside the law. Thus Gaia married her son Uranus, a Titan often represented in the middle of a cloud of stars, like a sort of Tom of Finland dancing with other muscle-bound guys in a techno club on Mount Olympus. From the incestuous and ultimately not very heterosexual relationships between heaven and earth, the first generation of Titans were born, including Oceanus (Water), Chronos (Time), and Mnemosyne (Memory) … Uranus was both the son of the Earth and the father of all the others. We don’t quite know what Uranus’s problem was, but the truth is that he was not a good father: either he forced his children to remain in Gaia’s womb, or he threw them into Tartarus as soon as they were born. So Gaia convinced one of her children to carry out a contraceptive operation. You can see in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence the representation that Giorgio Vasari made in the sixteenth century of Chronos castrating his father Uranus with a scythe. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, emerged from Uranus’s amputated genital organs … which could imply that love comes from the disjunction of the body’s genital organs, from the displacement and externalization of genital force.

This form of nonheterosexual conception, cited in Plato’s Symposium, was the inspiration for the German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs to come up with the word Uranian [Urning] in 1864 to designate what he called relations of the “third sex.” In order to explain men’s attraction to other men, Ulrichs, after Plato, cut subjectivity in half, separated the soul from the body, and imagined a combination of souls and bodies that authorized him to reclaim dignity for those who loved against the law. The segmentation of soul and body reproduces in the domain of experience the binary epistemology of sexual difference: there are only two options. Uranians are not, Ulrich writes, sick or criminal, but feminine souls enclosed in masculine bodies attracted to masculine souls.

This is not a bad idea to legitimize a form of love that, at the time, could get you hanged in England or in Prussia, and that, today, remains illegal in seventy-four countries and is subject to the death penalty in thirteen, including Nigeria, Pakistan, Iran, and Qatar; a form of love that constitutes a common motive for violence in family, society, and police in most Western democracies.

Ulrichs does not make this statement as a lawyer or scientist: he is speaking in the first person. He does not say “there are Uranians,” but “I am a Uranian.” He asserts this, in Latin, on August 18, 1867, after having been condemned to prison and after his books have been banned by an assembly of five hundred jurists, members of the German Parliament, and a Bavarian prince—an ideal audience for such confessions. Until then, Ulrichs had hidden behind the pseudonym “Numa Numantius.” But from that day on, he speaks in his own name, he dares to taint the name of his father. In his diary, Ulrichs confesses he was terrified, and that, just before walking onto the stage of the Grand Hall of the Odeon Theater in Munich, he had been thinking about running away, never to return. But he says he suddenly remembered the words of the Swiss writer Heinrich Hössli, who a few years before had defended sodomites (though not, however, speaking in his own name): “Two ways lie before me,” Hössli wrote, “to write this book and expose myself to persecution, or not to write it and be full of guilt until the day I am buried. Of course I have encountered the temptation to stop writing … But before my eyes appeared the images of the persecuted and the wretched prospect of such children who have not yet been born, and I thought of the unhappy mothers at their cradles, rocking their cursed yet innocent children! And then I saw our judges with their eyes blindfolded. Finally, I imagined my gravedigger slipping the cover of my coffin over my cold face. Then, before I submitted, the imperious desire to stand up and defend the oppressed truth possessed me … And so I continued to write with my eyes resolutely averted from those who have worked for my destruction. I do not have to choose between remaining silent or speaking. I say to myself: speak or be judged!”

Ulrichs writes in his journal that the judges and Parliamentarians seated in Munich’s Odeon Hall cried out, as they listened to his speech, like an angry crowd: End the meeting! End the meeting! But he also notes that one or two voices were raised to say: Let him continue! In the midst of a chaotic tumult, the President left the theater, but some Parliamentarians remained. Ulrichs’s voice trembled. They listened.

But what does it mean to speak for those who have been refused access to reason and knowledge, for us who have been regarded as mentally ill? With what voice can we speak? Can the jaguar or the cyborg lend us their voices? To speak is to invent the language of the crossing, to project one’s voice into an interstellar expedition: to translate our difference into the language of the norm; while we continue, in secret, to practice a strange lingo that the law does not understand.

So Ulrichs was the first European citizen to declare publicly that he wanted to have an apartment on Uranus. He was the first mentally ill person, the first sexual criminal to stand up and denounce the categories that labeled him as sexually and criminally diseased.

He did not say, “I am not a sodomite.” On the contrary, he defended the right to practice sodomy between men, calling for a reorganization of the systems of signs, for a change of the political rituals that defined the social recognition of a body as healthy or sick, legal or illegal. He invented a new language and a new scene of enunciation. In each of Ulrichs’s words addressed from Uranus to the Munich jurists resounds the violence generated by the dualist epistemology of the West. The entire universe cut in half and solely in half. Everything is heads or tails in this system of knowledge. We are human or animal. Man or woman. Living or dead. We are the colonizer or the colonized. Living organism or machine. We have been divided by the norm. Cut in half and forced to remain on one side or the other of the rift. What we call “subjectivity” is only the scar that, over the multiplicity of all that we could have been, covers the wound of this fracture. It is over this scar that property, family, and inheritance were founded. Over this scar, names are written and sexual identities asserted.

On May 6, 1868, Karl Maria Kertbeny, an activist and defender of the rights of sexual minorities, sent a handwritten letter to Ulrichs in which for the first time he used the word homosexual to refer to what his friend called “Uranians.” Against the antisodomy law promulgated in Prussia, Kertbeny defended the idea that sexual practices between people of the same sex were as “natural” as the practices of those he calls—also for the first time—“heterosexuals.” For Kertbeny, homosexuality and heterosexuality were just two natural ways of loving. For medical jurisprudence at the end of the nineteenth century, however, homosexuality would be reclassified as a disease, a deviation, and a crime.

I am not speaking of history here. I am speaking to you of your lives, of mine, of today. While the notion of Uranianism has gone somewhat astray in the archives of literature, Kertbeny’s concepts would become authentic biopolitical techniques of dealing with sexuality and reproduction over the course of the twentieth century, to such an extent that most of you continue to use them to refer to your own identity, as if they were descriptive categories. Homosexuality would remain listed until 1975 in Western psychiatric manuals as a sexual disease. This remains a central notion, not only in the discourse of clinical psychology, but also in the political languages of Western democracies.

When the notion of homosexuality disappeared from psychiatric manuals, the notions of intersexuality and transsexuality appear as new pathologies for which medicine, pharmacology, and law suggest remedies. Each body born in a hospital in the West is examined and subjected to the protocols of evaluation of gender normality invented in the fifties in the United States by the doctors John Money and John and Joan Hampson: if the baby’s body does not comply with the visual criteria of sexual difference, it will be submitted to a battery of operations of “sexual reassignment.” In the same way, with a few minor exceptions, neither scientific discourse nor the law in most Western democracies recognizes the possibility of inscribing a body as a member of human society unless it is assigned either masculine or feminine gender. Transsexuality and intersexuality are described as psychosomatic pathologies, and not as the symptoms of the inadequacy of the politico-visual system of sexual differentiation when faced with the complexity of life.

How can you, how can we, organize an entire system of visibility, representation, right of self-determination, and political recognition if we follow such categories? Do you really believe you are male or female, that we are homosexual or heterosexual, intersexed or transsexual? Do these distinctions worry you? Do you trust them? Does the very meaning of your human identity depend on them? If you feel your throat constricting when you hear one of these words, do not silence it. It’s the multiplicity of the cosmos that is trying to pierce through your chest, as if it were the tube of a Herschel telescope.

Let me tell you that homosexuality and heterosexuality do not exist outside of a dualistic, hierarchical epistemology that aims at preserving the domination of the paterfamilias over the reproduction of life. Homosexuality and heterosexuality, intersexuality and transsexuality do not exist outside of a colonial, capitalist epistemology, which privileges the sexual practices of reproduction as a strategy for managing the population and the reproduction of labor, but also the reproduction of the population of consumers. It is capital, not life, that is being reproduced. These categories are the map imposed by authority, not the territory of life. But if homosexuality and heterosexuality, intersexuality and transsexuality, do not exist, then who are we? How do we love? Imagine it.

Then, I remember my dream and I understand that my trans condition is a new form of Uranism. I am not a man and I am not a woman and I am not heterosexual I am not homosexual I am not bisexual. I am a dissident of the sex-gender system. I am the multiplicity of the cosmos trapped in a binary political and epistemological system, shouting in front of you. I am a Uranian confined inside the limits of techno-scientific capitalism.

Like Ulrichs, I am bringing no news from the margins; instead, I bring you a piece of horizon. I come with news of Uranus, which is neither the realm of God nor the sewer. Quite the contrary. I was assigned a female sex at birth. They said I was lesbian. I decided to self-administer regular doses of testosterone. I never thought I was a man. I never thought I was a woman. I was several. I didn’t think of myself as transsexual. I wanted to experiment with testosterone. I love its viscosity, the unpredictability of the changes it causes, the intensity of the emotions it provokes forty-eight hours after taking it. And, if the injections are regular, its ability to undo your identity, to make organic layers of the body emerge that otherwise would have remained invisible. Here as everywhere, what matters is the measure: the dosage, the rhythm of injections, the order of them, the cadence. I wanted to become unrecognizable. I wasn’t asking medical institutions for testosterone as hormone therapy to cure “gender dysphoria.” I wanted to function with testosterone, to experience the intensity of my desire through it, to multiply my faces by metamorphosing my subjectivity, creating a body that was a revolutionary machine. I undid the mask of femininity that society had plastered onto my face until my identity documents became ridiculous, obsolete. Then, with no way out, I agreed to identify myself as a transsexual, as a “mentally ill person,” so that the medico-legal system would acknowledge me as a living human body. I paid with my body for the name I bear.

By making the decision to construct my subjectivity with testosterone, the way the shaman constructs his with plants, I take on the negativity of my time, a negativity I am forced to represent and against which I can fight only from this paradoxical incarnation, which is to be a trans man in the twenty-first century, a feminist bearing the name of a man in the #MeToo movement, an atheist of the hetero-patriarchal system turned into a consumer of the pharmacopornographic industry. My existence as a trans man constitutes at once the acme of the sexual ancien régime and the beginning of its collapse, the climax of its normative progression and the signal of a proliferation still to come.

I have come to talk to you—to you and to the dead, or rather, to those who live as if they were already dead—but I have come especially to talk to the cursed, innocent children who are yet to be born. Uranians are the survivors of a systematic, political attempt at infanticide: we have survived the attempt to kill in us, while we were not yet adults, and while we could not defend ourselves, the radical multiplicity of life and the desire to change the names of all things. Are you dead? Will they be born tomorrow? I congratulate you, belatedly or in advance.

I bring you news of the crossing, which is the realm of neither God nor the sewer. Quite the contrary. Do not be afraid, do not be excited, I have not come to explain anything morbid. I have not come to tell you what a transsexual is, or how to change your sex, or at what precise instant a transition is good or bad. Because none of that would be true, no truer than the ray of afternoon sun falling on a certain spot on the planet and changing according to the place from which it is seen. No truer than that the slow orbit described by Uranus as it revolves above the Earth is yellow. I cannot tell you everything that goes on when you take testosterone, or what that does in your body. Take the trouble to administer the necessary doses of knowledge to yourself, as many as your taste for risk allows you.

I have not come for that. As my indigenous Chilean mother Pedro Lemebel said, I do not know why I come, but I am here. In this Uranian apartment that overlooks the gardens of Athens. And I’ll stay a while. At the crossroads. Because intersection is the only place that exists. There are no opposite shores. We are always at the crossing of paths. And it is from this crossroad that I address you, like the monster who has learned the language of humans.

I no longer need, like Ulrichs, to assert that I am a masculine soul enclosed in a woman’s body. I have no soul and no body. I have an apartment on Uranus, which certainly places me far from most earthlings, but not so far that you can’t come see me. Even if only in dream …

[johnlockiseverywhere]

Mental Health Series - Depression

Let's talk a little about Mental Health? BBC Sherlock, as other series, just flirt a little with the theme, using it for comic relief or plot proposes. Consequently, it doesn't develop the subject satisfyingly, fixing on stereotypes and creating, most of the time, a superficial or even inaccurate representation. But thank god fandom gave us fanfiction, so we could fix that.

This series will contain an edit picture, a little text talking about the subject of the day and a fic rec with fanfics that abbord the theme.

The conditions and disorders in this edits are the ones that were explicitly mentioned in the series.

Warning: Please, don't use this post as a diagnoses tool.

Trigger Warning: Some of the situations and subjects in this post and these works may be triggering, please always check the tags or the notes first.

Depression

"Losing a loved one, getting fired from a job, going through a divorce, and other difficult situations can lead a person to feel sad, lonely and scared. These feelings are normal reactions to life's stressors. Most people feel low and sad at times. However, in the case of individuals who are diagnosed with depression as a psychiatric disorder, the manifestations of the low mood are much more severe and they tend to persist.

Depression occurs more often in women than men. Some differences in the manner in which the depressed mood manifests has been found based on sex and age. In men it manifests often as tiredness, irritability and anger. They may show more reckless behavior and abuse drugs and alcohol. They also tend to not recognize that they are depressed and fail to seek help. In women depression tends to manifest as sadness, worthlessness, and guilt. In younger children depression is more likely to manifest as school refusal, anxiety when separated from parents, and worry about parents dying. Depressed teenagers tend to be irritable, sulky, and get into trouble in school. They also frequently have co-morbid anxiety, eating disorders, or substance abuse. In older adults depression may manifest more subtly as they tend to be less likely to admit to feelings of sadness or grief and medical illnesses which are more common in this population also contributes or causes the depression.  

There are different types of depressive disorders, and while there are many similarities among them, each depressive disorder has its own unique set of symptoms.

The most commonly diagnosed form of depression is Major Depressive Disorder. In 2015, around 16.1 million adults aged 18 years or older in the U.S. had experienced at least one major depressive episode in the last year, which represented 6.7 percent of all American adults.

Major depression is characterized by at least five of the diagnostic symptoms of which at least one of the symptoms is either an overwhelming feeling of sadness or a loss of interest and pleasure in most usual activities. The other symptoms that are associated with major depression include decrease or increase in appetite, insomnia or hypersomnia, psycho motor agitation or retardation, constant fatigue, feelings of worthlessness or excessive and inappropriate guilt, recurrent thoughts of death and suicidal ideation with or without specific plans for committing suicide, and cognitive difficulties, such as, diminished ability to think, concentrate and take decisions. The symptoms persist for two weeks or longer and represent a significant change from previous functioning. Social, occupational, educational, or other important functioning is also impacted. For instance, the person may start missing work or school, or stop going to classes or their usual social activities. 

Another type of depression is called Persistent depressive disorder (dysthymia). The essential feature of this mood disorder is a low, dark or sad mood that is persistently present for most of the day and on most days, for at least 2 years (children and adolescents may experience predominantly irritability and the mood persist for at least 1 year). For the individual to receive the diagnosis of persistent depressive disorder they should also have two of the diagnostic symptoms which include poor appetite or overeating, insomnia or hypersomnia, low energy or fatigue, low self-esteem, poor concentration, difficulty making decisions, or feelings of hopelessness. During this period, any symptom-free intervals last no longer than two months. The symptoms are not as severe as with major depression. Major depression may precede persistent depressive disorder, and major depressive episodes may also occur during persistent depressive disorder.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is another manifestation of depression which is a severe and sometimes disabling extension of premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Although regular PMS and Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) both have physical and emotional symptoms, the mood changes in PMDD are much more severe and can disrupt social, occupational, and other important areas of functioning. In both PMDD and PMS, symptoms usually begin seven to 10 days before the start of a menstrual period and continue for the first few days of the period. Both PMDD and PMS may also cause breast tenderness, bloating, fatigue, and changes in sleep and eating habits. PMDD is characterized by emotional and behavioral symptoms that are more severe, such as sadness or hopelessness, anxiety or tension, extreme moodiness, irritability or anger.

Some medical conditions can trigger depressive symptoms in individuals. This is called depressive disorder due to another medical condition. Endocrine and reproductive system disorders are commonly associated with depressive symptoms. For example, people with low levels of the thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism) often experience fatigue, weight gain, irritability, memory loss, and low mood. When the hypothyroidism is treated it usually reduces the depression. Cushing's syndrome is another hormonal disorder caused by high levels of the hormone cortisol which can also cause depressive symptoms. Other conditions that have been found to cause depression include conditions such as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, strokes, Parkinson’s disease etc.

Adjustment Disorder with Depressed Mood is diagnosed when symptoms of depression are triggered within 3 months of onset of a stressor. The stressor usually involves a change of some kind in the life of the individual which he/she finds stressful. Sometimes the stressor can even be a positive event such as a new job, marriage, or baby which is nevertheless stressful for the individual. The distress is typically out of proportion to the expected reaction and the symptoms cause significant distress and impairment in functioning. The symptoms typically resolve within 6 months when the person begins to cope and adapt to the stressor or the stressor is removed. Treatment tends to be time limited and relatively simple since some additional support during the stressful period helps the person recover and adapt.

Another type of depression is related to changes in the length of days or seasonality. This type of depression is called Seasonal affective disorder (SAD). People with SAD suffer the symptoms of a Major Depressive Disorder only during a specific time of year, usually winter. This appears to be related to the shorter days of winter, and the lack of sunlight in many parts of the country."

- Anxiety and Depression Association of America

Maybe that is the most represented disorder in BBC Sherlock. We can see signs of depression in both John and Sherlock in different moments and in different series. In series one, the image of John's gun in his bedside table and the allusion of a suicide intent and Sherlock's dark moods. In MHR and Series three we can see it in John's grief period and Sherlock's relapse. In series four they are shown in John's grief after Mary's death and Sherlock's other relapse. But maybe, the biggest allusion, even if indirectly, is Sherlock's suicide. The motive may not be related, but the act itself is enough to trigger some discussions about the theme. "Would it be out of character if Sherlock did it for real?" That we don't know. What we do know is that he doesn't believe his life to worth that much and that he has some self-destructive tendencies. Other thing to be discussed is the coping mechanism shown in the series. Both Sherlock and John shown a majority of potentially toxic coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, adrenaline seeking and extreme reclusion.

It's important to talk about the subject. The more educated we are about the matter, more efficiently we can help people around us who are suffering from disease.

And I chose to do this edit specifically because of the period of the year. Mosty because of Yellow September, where people talk and discuss about suicide prevention.

If you are suffering from something similar, please search professional help from a therapist or a psychiatrist.

HOTLINES

Suicide Hotline (US, UK, Canada & Singapore): 1-800-SUICIDE (2433)

Suicide hotline (New Zealand): 0800 543 354

Depression hotline: 1-630-482-9696

Suicide Crisis Line: 1-800-999-9999

National Suicide Prevention Helpline: 1-800-273-TALK (8245)

National Adolescent Suicide Helpline: 1-800-621-4000

Postpartum Depression: 1-800-PPD-MOMS

NDMDA Depression Hotline – Support Group: 1-800-826-3632

Veterans: 1-877-VET2VET

Crisis Help Line – For Any Kind of Crisis: 1-800-233-4357

Suicide & Depression Crisis Line – Covenant House: 1-800-999-9999

SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINES:

Austria: 01-713-3373

Australia: 1-800-817-569

Barbados: 429-9999

Brazil: 21-233-9191

Canada: 514-723-4000

China: 852-2382-0000

Costa Rica: 506-253-5439

Denmark: 70-201-201

Egypt: 7621602

Estonia: 6-558-088

Finland: 040-5032199

France: 01-45-39-4000

Guatemala: 502-254-1259

Holland: 0900-0767

Honduras: 504-237-3623

Hungary: 62-420-111

India: 91-22-307-3451

Italy: 06-7045-4444

Japan: 3-5286-9090

Maylaysia: 03-756-8144

Maurititus: 46-48-889 or 800-93-93

Mexico: 525-510-2550

New Zealand: 4-473-9739

Nicarague: 505-268-6171

Norway: 815-33-300

Poland: 800 70 2222 or 116 123

Portugal: 239-72-10-10

Republic of Ireland: 1850-60-90-90

Russia: 8-20-222-82-10

Singapore: 800-221-4444 or 000-227-0309

South Africa: 0861-322-322

South Korea: 2-715-8600

Spain: 91-459-00-50

Sri Vincent: 1-692-909

St. Vincent: 809-456-1044

Sweden: 031-711-2400

Switzerland: 143

Thailand: 02-249-9977

Trinidad & Tobago: 868-645-2800

Ukraine: 0487-327715 or 0482-226565

United Kingdom: 08457-90-90-90

United States: 1-800-SUICIDE (7842433), or 1-800-TALK (8255), or 1-800-827-7571

◇

Table for One Series

By SilentAuror

32k, Mature to Explicit, Johnlock

Series Progression: Finished

Works: 2

Sherlock has returned to London, only to find that the John he left behind has changed. Why is he spending so much time alone in cafés, hardly eating, limping again? Why has he become so beige? Sherlock slowly begins to realise that this is not going to be as easy as he had thought.

_

carrying up his morning tea

By darcylindbergh

34k, Explicit, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 5

His fingers tremble as he dials and he can’t force them steady. Familiar number, even though he hasn’t used it in two years. He isn’t even sure he should be calling it now, but she’d asked. She’d made him promise.

_

White Tulip

By withoutawish

41k, Explicit, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 1

Sherlock is in love with John Watson. John Watson is in love with Mary Morstan. Sherlock likes Mary Morstan just fine. Sherlock likes drugs more. And most importantly, Sherlock doesn’t like Sherlock.

String theory dictates the laws of the universe. But their story isn’t one that can be boxed up neatly, tied in a heartstring bow.

"After all, the axioms of homeostasis dictate that an infinity sign of negative feedback can only loop back in on itself.”

_

A Satellite Out of Orbit

By SilentAuror

6k, Mature, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 1

For years, Ella has been trying to get John Watson to open up and talk to her about his issues. To her surprise, his longtime flatmate Sherlock Holmes turns up one day, needing her advice.

_

A River Without Banks

By Chryse

203k, Explicit, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 23

"You love this, being Sherlock Holmes."

He had once. When had it all gone so wrong?

 

Fully completed, not a WIP. Updates will post twice a week.

_

Lunar Landscapes

By J_Baillier

57k, Mature, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 21

An accident forces John to face the fact that Sherlock's downward spiral had started long before his flight to exile even left the tarmac.

_

Radioactive Trees In A Red Forest

By Maribor_Petrichor

280k, Explicit, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 73

John Watson is what happens when a man can no longer see a reason to go on.

John Watson is what happens when a man starts to let go.

"It is what it is."

John Watson is what happens when what "it is" becomes too much to bear.

This is a story of the life, death, and resurrection of John Hamish Watson.

_

Precipice

By PoppyAlexander

6k, Mature, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 1

Ten years after his return from the war, lighthouse keeper John Watson meets consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, pacing at the cliff's edge.

_

Right Hand Man

By SilentAuror

42k, Explicit, Johnlock

Work Progression: Finished

Chapters: 4

When John's left arm becomes paralysed after a car accident, Mary asks Sherlock to take him back to Baker Street to recuperate, as she's about to give birth. Despite the fact that the search for Moriarty is ongoing, Sherlock takes John in and takes responsibility for overseeing his rehabilitation as he adjusts to the loss of his arm.

[annathesimple]

What everybody brought to the ESC (sprinkled with my humble opinion)

Albania: desire to call the storm your brother (yeah, I dig it and it made me poetic, shut up), run from civilization and make the spirits of the wild your allies. Also: Cleopatra Mom in a Pride dress can I squeal with joy??!

Armenia: empowering song and beautiful performer. I hope she brings her suit *winks*, oh, yeah, and the braids, the braids!! And a familiar face to Ukrainians! ;)

Australia: stop shitting on them, the pips know what Eurovision is about, look at them this year: try to describe this without the word extra. They just embodied the moth&lamp meme. Brought: the daughter-dress of 2018 Estonia and Russia paired with the sexiest dementor you've seen

Austria: if she will look into me like she did in the music video than maybe I will break down, she is tearing at my walls. Brought:  blue hair to make me listen, and it works.

Azerbaijan: a medal for aesthetic goal. It might not exist yet, but it freaking should. Also, I am stealing so many of the things that they used in the music video, you just watch me

Belarus: that white outfit of hers. Or the legs. No, the outfit. Or the legs?.. Which one of these makes me keep staring? (Also brought all these dislikes from Belarussian people, which reminds me - RIP the potato masterpiece of this year)

Belgium: quality Netflix Original's soundtrack. Also a soundtrack to a montage of you running towards your goal and honestly - it's sweet.

Croatia: KAO HEROOOOOJ!!! Also: piano?? hopefully a piano?? We need it, come on, people need to fill out theirs esc bingos, people want to get drunk and we will help them! Also: stairs?? Possknly many stairs??

Cyprus: "Fuego" got reborn and we are being delivered heavy dance beats again, yay!

Czech Republic: oh, the funk, they stolen it? and added an 80' bassline? I hate it and I love it, you have no idea how hard are my relationship with this song is. But facts are facts.

Denmark: A MOTHERFUCKING HUGE CHAIR, I hope they bring it: I am supporting a policy that if you have a lot of space - you should do crazy shit with it. Also: brought German, cause Germany couldn't

Estonia: Aviici wibes and, oh yeah!, another song about a storm! I vote to start a new category for esc bingo: songs featuring storm in their lyrics or title. Also: guitar? Pretty please

Finland: Darude. As a rule I don't list people here, but the rules don't apply to you once you become a meme. Also: Poison Ivy just came to dance on a rotating cube in the middle of the stage - cause that's what you do, that's what I would have done if only I have been confident enough.

France: good boy, cinnamon roll, his wigs are the best and are not to be snatched, ok??! I am getting serious "Phoenix" wibes. Also: cute glasses!

Georgia: yes! They brought these awesome back vocals for which I love them so much!! Also: I feel like Georgia has its goal to make us love Georgian, and idk about you, but it works on mee~~

Germany: SISTAH!!! It's caraoce night and Elsa and Pocahontas are winning it. Also: can I talk about how refreshing it is to see a female duo?

Greece: actual Greece aesthetic wibes?? Beauty, so much beauty. Also: give them swords!! Allow them swords on the stage, cowards!!

Hungary: a song about a dad! I sense a streak! And I want to kiss everybody responsible for keeping it in Hungarian. Also: whistling! That you cannot get out of your head!

Iceland: they got last place last time so they are angry now, ahah. But honestly, we haven't even started yet  and Hatari is already a meme, and we all know that it's the true currency of Eurovision fame. They are worth an essay, it's just I won't do it here.

Ireland: light happy pop for you to finally relax. And, for some reason, nostalgia? I blame Irish magic.

Israel: an Israeli Freddy Mercury with a strong song and a pinch of Disney sound. Interesting in a good way vocals.

Italy: "ramadan" rimed with "Jackie Chan", a big fuck you to all the haters and international versions of D.Trump. Also: ~~soldiii~~, ~~soldiii~~

Latvia: your soundtrack for soft and quiet, warm night walks. Magic the color of black and crimson velvet. The ocean of the eyes.

Lithuania: that one song that encourages you to stand up and go towards what you want, plants a seed of self appreciation inside of you. Good stuff. And his voice is higher than the expectations of your relatives.

Malta: another aesthetics award!! Also - I can't possibly say no to people who put chameleons into music videos. Also: another member of "nana" squad!

Moldova: this year it's them who is bringing us a ballad: and a solid one, + the voice

Montenegro: oh yes!! Finally!! A grandpa!! With a beard!! Playing a traditional instrument!! The sacred commandments are being followed!! Also snow in May aesthetic.

North Macedonia: a powerful ballad for girls and I am here for it!! Go and break the rules! Make everybody fucking emotional!! We need it and we deserve it!

Norway: the sickest Christmas party in a Narnia setting: LET ME IIIN.The furry jokes. And if u think they will stop any time soon - you are wildly misguided. And now we have another version of what does the fox say!

Poland: if you haven't heard them already - probably they brought smth you haven't really expected from them as a folk band. They make me feel things. The outfits!! I said THE OUTFITS!!

Portugal: a true to life representation of my last two brain cells. It's so eary, so unusual that I am in love. Back in my days (and it's like a week ago) I had to do a half an hour long deep YouTube dive to get to music like this. Artttt

Romania: abandoned mansions aesthetic, possible mythical wibes, yessss, bring it to meee!

Russia: Lazarev. They brought Lazarev. You know who he is, what can I say except for: why is his signing is so good??hmm

San Marino: a true leader of "nanana" squad appears!! I like to think that's how San Marino celebrates all of its national holidays. They've always came to Eurovision to party, and they are proving a point once again.

Serbia: I know many like to complain about ballads: but come on, we need at least some, and Serbia delivered, at least we always can rely on Balcan countries for that! Also: I hope she brings her crystal horns with her to the stage, they paid them so much attention!

Slovenia: depressed youth love brought you some indi to relax but also to float into space contemplating your choices.

Spain: is here to cure your depression in case any of the previous songs triggered it. Brought a party, the Sun, and the most Spanish sounding thing I have ever heard. I feel like they thrive out of dandelion wine.

Sweden: changed their formula a bit and suddenly in works on me, and it works very well! There is a literall door to heaven above the stage! That's where they came from! Also: I am in love with the back vocal singers.

Switzerland: a Spanish wibe + some Asian notes/sound?? + heavy dance beat = yeah, they got me, it is indeed good to dance to.

The Netherlands: brought sensitivity and forced it on me, brought tears and put them behind my eyes. Goodness gracious, whyyy

UK: such a sweet happy song, love how the entries from UK tend to be so sunny and bright recently. Brought me desire to hug my friends and close ones.

Please note that I have no intentions of offending anybody, we all are here to have a good time. I respect everybody on this list.

[another-mexico-oc]

HETALIA AND COUNTRYHUMANS: Pros and Cons

Hi! Before I start PLEASE DON´T MAKE A “WHICH ONE IS THE BEST” WAR, I personally enjoy both fandoms, and both have their good things, as well as their bad things. Also, this is not a “Who did it first” thing, because let´s be honest, national personifications are not a contemporary idea, they have been for several years, there we have Uncle Sam (U.S.A), Marianne (France), John Bull (U.K.), etc. 

So, without further more, let´s go with the analysis:

HETALIA: 

Pros: 

Being the work of a single author, the characters have an established design and personality.

The author, Himaruya Hidekaz, could have gone down a conventional path while writing the story of the manga, particulary during World War events, depicting some characters as the villains, and therefore, the others as the heroes who have to defeat them. But fortunately, he didn´t. Unlike some war movies and other media, where they try to portray some countries as the good guys who had to defeat the evil enemies, Hetalia is written as if it was only the rivalry of two groups, which give me the next point...

In Hetalia, no character tries to be portrayed as if it was the best or the worst country. Himaruya designs his characters based on both, good and bad stereotypes of the country. Everyone has their good qualities, as well as their own flaws. Personally, it´s hard to choose a favorite character, everyone is likeable and no one feels like a Mary Sue.

The country characters have no power over their bosses (presidents, kings, prime ministers, etc.). This is a way for Himaruya to justify some terrible events that occurred during History. The countries have to follow orders, or are influenced by the boss they have at the moment. Although sometimes it is show that countries can share opinions and discuss with their bosses. If they have something on their minds or want to do something, they have to consult it with their boss first, to get their approval. And sometimes they are even UNAWARE of their bosses choices!

Cons: 

Even if Himaruya tries his best to give every character a likeable personality based on the country stereotypes... he has also made some mistakes and inaccuracies. This caused hard consequences, like the government of Korea banning the anime and the manga, all because of the country representation, not to mention the rivalry between Korea and Japan. Also, some countries personality doesn´t seem to be accurate. For example, many people agree that, though Finland and Sweden characters are likeable, the author have switched their personalities.

You can find some historic inaccuracies in the manga and the anime, so don´t try to rely totally on Hetalia to pass your next history exam. For example, I heard many polish people complain about one episode, which takes place during Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The Poland character was depicted as weak, who gives up quickly and depends on Lithuania to win the battle. 

Giving all this information, Hetalia is not for everyone. Not all people are big fans of humor involving stereotypes or terrible events like war. Yeah, war is awful, but I think Hetalia partially mocks how useless war is. And there always will be the person who will say: “No! Not everyone in my country is like that! This does not represent me!” I´m mexican, and even if I don´t drink tequila or say common mexican phrases like “Wey, que pedo!” I can still laugh of my own country stereotypes (of course, those I don´t consider racist or denigrating). Talking about Mexico...

The lack of Latin and African countries, as well female characters. Yes, at first the Hetalia focus were the Axis and the Allies, the main countries who got involved in WW2, but then Himaruya started to introduce other nations, even the micronations! And yet we don´t have enough latinos or africans. In part I can understand why. For what friends who have visited Japan have told me, and for what I have seen on the internet, japanese people are still very unfamiliar with the latin culture. It´s a little sad, because, for example, my country has a very interesting story with other countries. And about the female characters, yes, we have Nyotalia, which is practically an AU where the characters are gender-bent, having the majority of them being girls, but in the normal Hetalia universe, we have more men than women. Himaruya had shared sketches of Portugal, Korea and Poland, who originally were going to be girls, but apparently he changed his mind and decided they were going to be guys. I don´t know how he chooses a character gender, but I think he should not be afraid adding more female characters, seeing some of the already existing are pretty badass. 

COUNTRYHUMANS: 

Pros: 

Apparently Countryhumans is free from copyright, so anyone can have their own depiction of their country, and can establish their own personalities and design... 

(Which is not very complicated, because the countryhumans designs consist in the country flag as their skin color, they usually don´t have hair and their eyes are completely white, so you just have to add the clothing).

The countries you don´t find in Hetalia can be found here! I love to see Mexico and all Latin America in this fandom, their personalities and their interactions between them and other countries.

The fandom from all the world can share more accurate historic events, as they have more knowledge of the history of their countries and what actually happen in those places.

Therefore, the personalities of the countries can be a little more accurate.

Countryhumans can be depicted as both, women or men. 

In conclusion, as you are free of copyright, if you are not happy with the representation of your country, you can design your own depiction and we all are content, right?

Cons: 

What can be a pro can also be a con. As Countryhumans has no what we can consider canon characters of all the OCs, we cannot decide which of the designs will be the most accurate or the most representative, as everyone has their own favorite depiction. And yes, there can be a lot of Mary Sues in the fandom. (There Mary Sues in the Hetalia fandom too, but those are created by the fans, not by Himaruya)

Oh no, here I come with the controversial issues... Remember what I said in Hetalia, that Himaruya tries to not to classify the countries as heroes or villains? Well, the Countryhumans has this problem... sometimes. For example, I have read fanfictions, and watched fanarts, in which Mexico is depicted as the poor victim of the evil U.S.A. who wants to control everyone, and also the mean Spain who slaved him for years. I am not saying U.S.A or Spain have never done something wrong, but as a Mexican I can tell that Mexico has also made mistakes in the past, and it´s not the poor victim some authors describe. 

Also, in Countryhumans, the way the authors justify the horrible events of the past, is separating the present country from their former one, and then we have: Nazi Germany and Soviet Rusia, who are completely different people from the Germany and Rusia of today. That´s not the problem, actually is a good way to justify the history of the country. The problem is how authors can represent this two polemic figures...

Therefore, Countryhumans is not for everyone either. There are still people who are very sensitive with the Nazism or the Soviet Union era, and watching this two depicted as “cute” or “cool”... can be creepy. Like I said before, in Hetalia at least they try to avoid political and social themes (the american dub and the dark Hetalia is another theme, the last one was created by the fandom itself), so Germany is never referred as a nazi, nor Russia is ever called Soviet, and both had to follow orders of their leaders orders, even if they didn´t want to, and the countries don´t have to represent the boss ideology.

In conclusion, both have good and bad qualities. Yes, both can have a toxic fandom, but they also have people who are interested in history and like to see how these countries can forget the past and live in harmony together. 

Hetalia satirizes history and mocks war and stereotypes, while the fandom and Countryhumans do the same, but also can explore the things Hetalia doesn´t, like other countries, dark history or other themes. 

In both cases, we can tell the World History is very complex, that is hard to be 100% accurate when you try to explain it with anthropomorphized countries. However, is more enjoyable to learn about other countries, their history and the culture through Hetalia and Countryhumans than a textbook. Even when you have watched both of these, reading a textbook is no longer boring. So, if you are an Hetalia fan or a Countryhuman fan, or both, enjoy your fandom and try to avoid the toxic part :)

[butimacommander]

I’m 2 years older than you, and i feel so embarrassed sometimes when i catch myself being a bit too ‘addicted’ to crisana , like, im 6-7years older than them , it sucks how much it shows that lgbtq isnt represented enough that i’m there desesperated for any wlw content :(. I tried atleast to tell myself that the characters are 22 loool , i just fkn love their dynamic “dark-sweet” and also great acting damn

Hi anon, i’m super happy you sent me this, since this is something i’ve been actually thinking about quite a lot especially after skames has basically taken over my life, so you’ll get quite a lenghty response now since i’ve spent a bit too much time thinking about this haha.

Basically, if you look at any “young adult” show like pretty little liars or vampire diaries or riverdale or what not, they are all supposed to be high school kids right, but we don’t really think about it since some of the actors were literally 30. Even if i think of the big ships that i’ve had, like willow and tara or lexa and clarke (such tragic examples), they were 17-19 as well. So, all of these characters are basically supposed to be the same age as cris and joana, but it doesn’t feel like it at all since the US loves to have these people being played by older people, which often leads to them not even acting like high school kids (and being overly sexualised). My fave example of this is PLL and how i never really saw anything wrong (when i was younger) with aria and ezra since the actors were basically the same age, but now when i think about it’s so so wrong. If aria would have been played by an actual 16 year old we would never have been ok with it. So not to get too societal, but there’s a massive problem in my opinion in hollywood with age representation. We’ve all been taught to obsess over high school aged people since day one. 

So, in addition for us being used to obsess over high school aged people, there’s the factor that at least me personally, i never got a high school romance partly due to the fact that i was not out to the majority of my high school friends. I know five years isn’t that much on a grand scale, but at least here in finland five years has changed a lot, and i see a lot of young people living out and proud way differently than it was only five years ago. So, at least for me there is a relatable lgbtq+ sized high school romance hole in my heart, which is literally being healed by watching shows like skam. I wanted what crisana has (and still do) so much in high school, and it’s almost bitter sweet to see someone else have it.

What i’m trying to say here is that i don’t think there’s anything to be embarrassed about. I’d still happily watch emily and naomi in skins, even though the actors were the same age as Irene and Tamara are, so i don’t see why i should feel bad watching this just because it’s actually portraying people of their age accurately and “innocently”, hence they feel younger to us. At least i am just obsessing over crisana due to the story, amazing acting, well rounded characters and the dynamic, not because i just want to see two high schoolers make out. I think you can really see it in the tumblr posts that people are obsessing over these two because of the “right” reasons and i hope it stays that way! 

In addition, tamara is born 1999, meaning that she’s actually not that young, and sure Irene is born 2001 (which sounds so weird to even type), but she’s 18 now as well. Also, they are both bi in real life, also dating in real life, so this is literally the most accurate chemistry and wlw romance and representation that we could ever get, so lets just enjoy it now. But i think it’s good to be aware of the fact that we are a bit older (and ive seen ppl a lot older here as well) so we maybe should look at them and watch this a bit differently than if we were 15.