#so here i am writing an essay as per usual.

[desceros]

Please spare us some more papatello headcannons 🥹🥹🥹 (I bet Donnie is the type to show off his baby mommy)

yessss an excuse to think about papatello tysm anon-chan!!!!

as per usual this got long so i'm sticking it under a cut bc i am OUT. OF. CONTROL.

thinkin about the first day of school. you'd insisted that lavi attends bc it's good for her socialization ("why would she need to talk to other people? i never went to school!" "yeah, hon, and look how you turned out." "perfectly capable of normal conversation!!" "...you asked me to marry you via text." "well sue me for wanting to be sure i got it right when just the thought of it made me flustered!" <- then you're both embarrassed), but donnie's not too thrilled. the whole morning he's sulking, pouting behind your shoulder as you take all the cute photos of her first outfit, writing a 5k word essay to put in her lunchbox saying how much he loves her ("don. donnie. love of my life. she's four. she can barely read go dogs go." "best she practice, then."). it's actually the worst... up until you come up behind him, wrapping your arms around his neck and reminding him that hey. hey. the four year old isn't here. wink. wink wink. (...donnie very quickly begins to espouse the value of a formal education.)

hm. executive decision that lavi has a sweet tooth. she's particularly fond of fruits, and she likes to come up to donnie while he's working and hand him an orange so he can peel it for her. without fail, he stops what he's doing and helps, taking one slice and calling it a 'papa tax'. then, one day, she comes to you and asks if you'll show her how to peel it. you're thinking hm. showing some independence, that's probably a good thing, so you do. only to have to bite your fist when you watch as she goes into the lab and crawls into donnie's lap, peeling an orange, and then handing him half. (he ugly cries a lot that night when he tells you about it.)

once mikey's hair starts coming in, i suspect she'd like playing with it. she'd rope him into having spa nights where the three of you do all kinds of self-care stuff like facials, hair masks, that kind of thing. donnie plays it up like he's super jealous, but you see the way he burrows his face into lavi's hair for their nighttime hug and smiles when it's nice and soft, and then when he comes to you and threads his fingers through your hair, murmuring a compliment at its texture into your nape.

during your pregnancy, he's a nervous wreck. the whole pregnant with a turtle mutant situation is already a lot on his nerves, but then on top of that, you don't call out of work. ("i'm pregnant, don. pregnant people work all the time. it's normal." "i'd argue that being pregnant with a turtle mutant is quite far out of the bounds of normal.") i think... the first real, actually nasty fight you ever have with him might be then. maybe the only one, but it'd be explosive. him concerned that you'll be somewhere, pregnant with what some would call a monster, having been bred by a monster, and if something happens, he'll be in his lab working, helpless, away. you don't take kindly at all to him calling your child (nor himself) a monster, even out of the mouths of hypothetical strawmen, and that plus the way he's catastrophizing every little thing strains your relationship to its snapping point. i think maybe for a solid month or so, it's. it's a real test of how much you love him, and how much he trusts you.

i dunno if i've already WOG'd this but if i did, i'm changing it and this is the official WOG statement that lavi's first word is 'papa' and donnie is FOREVER smug about it (even though, joke's on him, you find it absolutely adorable and are zero percent mad about it)

oh. lavi loves pineapple on pizza. the first time she tries it and it becomes her favorite, you laugh at donnie's face for like, ten years. sometimes you'll just be in the bathroom, brushing your teeth to get ready for bed, and he'll hear you start giggling where he's lying down reading and waiting for you to come in, and he just. grits his teeth bc he knows what's got you going.

there's a baby shark-esque song in universe that has a turtle instead of a shark on one episode of mrs. cuddles, and lavi fucking loves it. it's the worst ear worm in the entire world, and the entire lair quickly lays a ban on ever reminding her it exists. this is ultimately a failure, partially bc she is her father's child and thus the most stubborn creature ever to exist, but also bc leo actually enjoys it and ends up humming it under his breath while he's walking around. raph gets a little twitchy whenever he hears it, but he's the second-most vulnerable to lavi's charms (the first, of course, being donnie) so whenever she asks, on it goes, with him stiff as a board as she sits on his shell and claps her hands in delight.

[viv-hollande]

As Promised, The Israel-Palestine Megapost of Doom

Content Warning: This post discusses both the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict and the current Israel-Gaza War. As such, it contains frank discussions of apartheid, war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides both past and present, racism, antisemitism, colonialism, terrorism and more. As an additional tone warning, I guess: I am by nature a pretty flippant person. I’ve been criticized for that in the past, and probably will be again in the future. I don’t know if it's just who I am, or if maybe I need a therapist. I have tried to reign in some of my worse impulses, especially when talking about the actual events themselves, to try to give due respect to those affected. Nevertheless, if that kind of attitude offends or disturbs you, maybe sit this one out. 

This post is brought to you in its current form thanks to the generous actions of Dr. Henry Kissinger, whose untimely death many decades after it was deserved nevertheless brought me joy great enough to drag me out of angryposting mode and into hopefully more coherent essay-writing mode. So here is the partially revised, partially rewritten, and greatly expanded post that I promised. 

While I don’t have a cohesive thesis, I have written this with the intention of addressing/responding to the state of conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict, and around the ongoing Israel-Gaza crisis. I am focusing substantially on the online discourse because it’s the only thing I have even a chance of changing. I’m a soon-to-no-longer-be-teenage college sophomore without a lot of disposable income. I’ve already called my Senators and House Rep. I really don’t have much influence beyond my power to try to persuade random internet users to be less bad. 

I’ve tried to restrain my tendency for purple prose, self-righteousness, and gratuitous moral judgements; you can be the judge of whether or not I succeeded. I know that I am definitely not an expert or authority on this topic, but neither is most anyone else on this fucking website. It didn’t stop them and it won’t stop me. 

But before that, some brief words on my previous post. Unlike my usual angryposting where I tend to regret everything I say and do while in the anger spiral, I can actually say that I stand by more or less everything I said in that post. I do have one correction and one clarification though. Clarification: the “Stealth Echoes” I am referring to are instances where the word Israel or Israeli are placed in quotation marks specifically. Example: As per a spokesperson of the “Israeli” Defense Forces, “Something something ceasefire violation.” Used as such, the “Stealth Echoes” around Israel or Israeli are used to signal belief in the illegitimacy of Israel. It’s literally just (((echoes))) revived. A few people thought I was talking about the use of quotes in quotation marks. Now, the correction: in my anger, I believe that I overstated the prevalence of the “Stealth Echoes”. I said 20-40%, which upon reflection was too high, brought on by seeing a long string of said posts in rapid succession. I would now say that the figure is closer to 5-10%, jumping up to 10-15% if you include instances of censoring Israeli like I*****i and the use of words like Isntreal. I feel that as a practical matter they are indistinguishable; they serve the same purpose. Whatever the number, it is too damn high and should not be going unchallenged. If you’re using them, stop. If you see someone else use them, either in a tweet or on Tumblr, don’t share them. 

That done, on with the post!

To start with, I want to establish some important concepts and ideas that I’m going to expand upon later so that you are aware and thinking about them going in. Some of these will seem pretty basic, but they are important. Trust me. 

Words mean things. Seriously. Words have meaning, both in isolation and as part of sentences. Many words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use them correctly. Incorrect usage of words deprives language of its utility and power. At certain points in this essay, you might think that I am being overly pedantic, but that specificity is important. 

Humans possess a strong drive to create narratives, especially out of history. This is normal; almost all humans do it. However, the tendency towards narrative creates a pitfall where the narrative begins to supplant the actual events in discussion and popular consciousness. Actual history is reshaped, often through omission or erasure, to fit the existing narrative. It is this narrative, not the actual history, that informs attitudes and debate. This is a problem for all history, but especially with a history as long, divisive, and deeply emotionally effective as the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

Pragmatism and idealism are broadly speaking two competing approaches towards making plans and decisions. Pragmatism is generally concerned with evaluating the state of reality and making decisions based on their objective practical effects. Though they are not necessarily incompatible, pragmatism possesses no inherent obligations to concepts like justice, morality, or good. Idealism, by contrast, is concerned with defining what the world should look like and aims to achieve that goal. This ideal world can theoretically be informed by anything, but is usually defined by morality. I generally believe that what is is more important than what should be. Whether in matters of politics, diplomacy, or war, it is better to evaluate the state of reality as best you can and tailor your goals to what is practically achievable rather than trying to force reality to conform to your idealized future. 

In general, I will try to avoid ascribing intent to any individual or action, except where I feel that concrete evidence of intent is publicly available. Astute readers may know where I am going with this. 

Rivers of ink have been spilled teasing apart the differences between Israelis, Jews, Zionists, Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and more, and between Palestine and Israel. This post is long enough without retreading all of that here. Nevertheless, I will do my best to use specific, accurate terminology where applicable. 

The past is not the present. There are many facets to this point, and they will come up fairly often. For now, just keep this in mind. 

With that over with, on to…

Anti-Colonialism & History

The Israel-Palestine conflict is usually characterized by the pro-Palestinian camp as an anti-colonialist struggle. In isolation, this is not a statement that I would disagree with. The modern history of Israel and Palestine is a history of colonialism, or near enough for government work. However, as I mentioned earlier, the actual history of Israel and Palestine has been reduced to a simplified narrative of righteous anti-colonialist struggle. That narrative erases the genuine complexity and nuance that is present in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I have not the time, patience, nor expertise to explain the 100+ year long history of this conflict; for a reasonably comprehensive, and as far as I know, accurate summation of the origins and course of the conflict, see this video. However, I do want to note some things that I see as important to the conflict or my arguments about it. 

The Jews, whether defined as a group ethnically or religiously, have a historical connection to the land of Israel, and thus possess a potentially (we’ll get to it) legitimate claim to the land; this is, in my opinion, an important intellectual and practical difference from other examples of colonialism.

The ideological motivation behind Zionism was and still is complex, but an important and undeniable part was a desire for a safe haven from antisemitism. Keep in mind, Zionism as an idea first began to spread in earnest in the latter half of the 19th century, during an aggressively antisemitic period in European history. France experienced a surge in the popularity of antisemitic, pro-Catholic revanchists, monarchists and proto-fascists after their defeat in the Franco-Prussian War; this would culminate in the Dreyfus Affair. The Catholic Church itself was a powerful institutional advocate of antisemitism. It took until the Second Vatican Council, in the 1960s, for the Catholic Church to declare as official church doctrine that Jews, literally all Jews, past, present, and future were not in fact categorically guilty of the death of Christ, as had been church doctrine for literal centuries. The 1960s. Russia experienced wave after wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that lasted well into the 1920s, only really ending after the Bolsheviks victory in the Russian Civil War (though this would not be the end of Russian, and later Soviet, antisemitism). The rise of German nationalism was intimately and irrevocably tied in with antisemitism's rise to cultural ubiquity in the German Empire and later Weimar Germany. Even in the United Kingdom, which in the 19th and 20th centuries was positively tolerant by contemporary European standards, reflected in to appointment of Jews in prominent political positions up to and including Prime Ministers, was facing a resurgence in antisemitism. It may seem that I'm harping on the point for far too long, but a) I want to emphasize the truly dire straits facing the Jewish diaspora even before the Holocaust and b) while I would like to believe that the historical threat of antisemitism is accepted as common knowledge, I have been wrong before. See also: previous angry rant.

This point is possibly the most important: many Zionists, before and after the Holocaust, believed that the only way to secure the safety of the Jews in Israel was the creation of a Jewish majority state. Back when the land that was to become Israel and Palestine was believed to be mostly empty, this would have seemed easy to achieve by simply settling the area with a new Jewish population. However, after it became known that the land intended for a Jewish state was in fact inhabited, and by a substantial population no less, any intelligent Zionist would have known that the creation of any substantial Jewish majority state would require the forced eviction of the land's extant, mostly Arabic population.

I was struggling to find a place for this, so it’s going here. I have thus far avoided the use of a popular term used in relation to Israel; settler-colonialism. I have avoided its use because I see it as overused, poorly defined, and ahistorical. According to Wikipedia, accessed 30 November 2023, “Settler colonialism occurs when colonizers invade and occupy territory to permanently replace the existing society with the society of the colonizers.” If defined as such, I argue that the term settler-colonialism is practically useless because it describes literal millennia of human history. Using this definition, I have compiled a non-comprehensive list of examples of settler-colonialism, in roughly reverse chronological order: Israeli settlements in Gaza, Russification of Kaliningrad, Russification of the Crimean Peninsula, Sinicization in Xinjiang and Tibet, started by the late Qing and restarted by the PRC, British conquest of independent Boer states, Boer conquest of modern day South Africa, Ottoman colonization of Greece and the Aegean Islands, Russian conquest of Siberia, the Japanese colonization of Korea and Taiwan, centuries of successful and failed conquests of Cambodia by Vietnamese and Thai kingdoms, conquests by the Inca Empire, European colonization of the Americas, Venetian colonization across the Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, Turkic migrations into Central Asia and Anatolia, the Mongol conquests, the maritime empires of Indonesia, the Muslim conquests and subsequent Arabicization of North Africa and the Middle East, the entire history of the Roman Empire, any of the dozens of examples of Classical Greek colonies in Greece, Anatolia, Sicily, and southern Italy, the Achemenid conquests. Hell, the Phoenecians were so into colonization that one of their colonies eventually became a colonial empire in and of itself, and if you believe that all of those colonies were established on empty, virgin land then I got a seaside condo in Almaty to sell you. Though I don’t have time to go through them all, all of the above examples have either been cited by academics as examples of settler-colonialism, or share substantial commonalities with cited examples in my opinion. My problem with settler-colonialism as a term is that it is fundamentally based in modern concepts of indigeneity and nationalism. To put it bluntly, applying ahistorical modern concepts to a time and place that knew nothing of them is stupid. The vague definitions and overuse of the term compound these problems and threaten to misrepresent a near-universal human practice as an exclusively Western European phenomenon, and serve to complicate and frustrate conversation around instances where a more specific definition would be useful to meaningfully distinguish between it and other colonial projects; South Africa being a prime example. Specific language used accurately is important. All that being said, modern European colonialism more broadly and the effects thereof are important fields of study, and due to both temporal proximity and geographical reach, colonialism as it was practiced by modern European empires has had an outsized negative impact on the living conditions of billions of people currently alive in the year 2023. Sorry for all that, I just had to get it off of my chest. 

So, back to the problem at hand. The point of view that sees Zionism as simply another expression of European colonialism is, in my opinion, oversimplified or even outright wrong. The fundamental problem with viewing Zionism as just another European colonial endeavor is that European Jews were generally not seen as European, but as either foreign invaders or domestic subversives. European Jews were generally excluded from the national identities developing across Europe, with very few exceptions. Where Zionism did recieve gentile support, it was secured through moral arguments and intellectual persuasion, not sinister influence. Zionism, while it was influenced by colonialism, Orientalism, and even aspects of white supremacy, was an intellectual idea and practical endeavor primarily advocated by a subset of the Jewish diaspora. In contrast to European colonialism, which was motivated in part or in whole by a mix of greed, national pride, white supremacy, and the belief in a ‘benevolent’ civilizing and christianizing mission, the intellectual underpinning of Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people possess the most legitimate claim to the land that is now Israel and Palestine as their historical homeland. That belief beggars an obvious question: do they? 

Maybe?!

This is a large part of the reason why arguments about Zionism get so tangled and ugly and GAHH!. Zionism is the product of applying late 19th century concepts of nationalism and a people’s right to a homeland to a people exiled from their homeland over a thousand years before. Except it’s still more complicated than that, because the return of the Jews to Israel is an idea that is as old as the exodus itself. So the end result is that who you support is often decided by your personal answer to any number of thorny, complicated questions. Are the Jews indigenous to Israel? Are the Arabs indigenous to Palestine? If a people are expelled from their land, do they have the right to return? If yes, does that right expire? If it does, then how long does it last? Should special privilege be afforded to a people without a current homeland? What about a people who have experienced suppression, violence, and social rejection? Is it possible for a land to have multiple indigenous groups? If so, what about the right to return? Can one indigenous group act in a colonialist or imperialist manner towards another? 

These questions do have answers, but even a simple yes or no requires additional explanation, elaboration, and will inevitably conflict with opposing answers. The concepts they rest on are complicated and nuanced. One that I’ve mentioned before, and one that you’re probably sick of hearing about at this point, is indigeneity. The reason I harp on this is because it is another modern idea, overused and poorly defined, that is useful, but whose applicability is less universal that an America-centric conception would suggest. Unlike in the Americas, where the dividing line between indigenous and immigrant is fairly clean cut, the Old World’s long list of conquests, migrations, depopulations, pandemics, and famines make the concept of indigeneity really fucking messy. As an example, consider the Turks. The Turks live in Turkey, or at least most of them do. Turkish nationalism, as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, considers Anatolia to be the homeland of the Turkish people. Do you know where the Turks are from? 

Mongolia. 

Or at least that general area. Archeological evidence is a little vague. I had a summary of that whole process here, but it was too long and I cut it. Summary2, the Seljuk Turks came to rule over Anatolia in the 10th century, starting a roughly 1000 year long process of cultural, ethnic, and linguistic conversion. In the late 19th century, the multiethnic but Turkish-ruled Ottomans began to develop and promote Turkish nationalism, partly in response to European nationalism. Because the Turkish people lived mostly in Anatolia when Turkish nationalism was developed, modern day Turkey adopted the status of homeland to the Turks. In conclusion, shit’s wack. 

This is just one of literally thousands of examples of ways in which the concepts of nationalism and indigeneity are, seriously, I’m not just saying words here, complicated. They just are. These questions don’t have simple, satisfying answers and the discussion around them should reflect the nuances of the situation, but usually don't. 

I have seen people expressing sentiments along the lines of, “Sitting back and debating the inexhaustible complexity of the Israel-Palestine conflict ad nauseam is obscuring the active suffering of the Palestinian people.” This is a sentiment that I understand, but do not agree with. It is important to talk about the abuses that Israel is committing in Gaza and in the West Bank, and to condemn them as criminal and immoral. But the discussion around the Israel-Gaza War does not take place in a vacuum. Discussions of the current war and of the wider conflict inevitably leave the realm of discussing what just happened and enter the realm of why. And the answer to that why? is almost inevitably wrapped up in narrative. There is an overwhelming tendency for the pro-Palestinian camp to reject the idea that Zionism might, in even a small way, have a legitimate argument. For most of the pro-Palestinian camp, the answer to the fundamental underlying question of Zionism, are the Jews indigenous to Israel? is no. Full stop. That is the narrative of Palestinian resistance. That is the narrative of anti-colonialism. That is the narrative that says that Israel is a European settler-colony. That is the narrative that delegitimizes the State of Israel. And that is a narrative that needs to change because that narrative makes negotiation and compromise impossible. Delegitimization is to nation-states what dehumanization is to people. Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, President Lincoln referred to the conflict as a “rebellion” and the Confederacy as “rebels”, “insurrectionists”, or “traitors”. Direct quotes. A legitimate state possesses rights, can be negotiated with, and once recognized cannot be derecognized easily. An illegitimate entity must be crushed. Regardless of the crimes of Israel, and oh boy, are we going to get into those, an end to the Israel-Palestine conflict will have to be a negotiated resolution, because Israel isn’t going away. 

I have my own personal beliefs about all of the above questions and more. I won’t share them because they aren’t important, and it's not really my place. However, to reiterate some of what I have said; I do think that the history of Israel and Palestine can be accurately characterized as a colonialist history, but I feel that the narrative of anti-colonialism papers over the moral complexity of the situation and intentionally delegitimizes Zionism and Israel.

Now, you may have noticed that I’ve mostly been focusing on my problems with the pro-Palestian side, for several reasons. Once again, this essay is supposed to be less about the conflict itself and more about the narratives that I have been seeing online. Since this is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian website, addressing that narrative has taken precedence. For that same reason, posting anti-Israeli content does feel a little bit like preaching to the choir. Nevertheless, I have many, many thoughts about Israel and the pro-Israeli narratives, and I clearly have no compunctions whatsoever about screaming my bullshit into the void, so let us now talk about… 

Israel & Narrative

And also a little bit more about the Palestinian narrative. Sorry, everything’s kinda interconnected and it's hard to separate sometimes. 

So I know that I tagged my last post as “kicking the hornets’ nest”, but this next bit is more like throwing a hornets’ nest at a bees’ nest sitting on the back of a tiger, but here goes. 

For at least 90% of the people on this site, the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is completely irrelevant, except for its utility in constructing narratives. 

A bold statement, you say. Well yes, but it’s a bold statement that I will stand by. Most of the discussion on this website, and elsewhere, is being driven by people for whom the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict is either an academic matter, or a cudgel to beat their opponents with. There are, as always, a few exceptions. The Holocaust is one, in no small part due to its scope and relevance even outside Israel-Palestine. The First Arab-Israeli War, and concurrently the Nakba, is another due to its status as as the opening salvo of the Israel-Palestine conflict, due to the immense suffering it caused to the Palestinian people, and due to its close relationship with the right of return, which holds importance both as narrative component and as a practical political issue directly affecting the lives millions of Palestinians. Things are messy and everything has caveats. 

Jupiter the nonbinary MCR stan from Wisconsin did not buy an authentic keffiyeh from a Palestinian factory or participate in the local Free Palestine march because they’re intimately versed in and personally affected by the geopolitics of the Six-Day War. 

They’re doing all of that because Israel is a colonialist Amerikkkan puppet that attacks its neighbors without provocation, and Bibi’s latest genocide just killed a few 9/11s worth of children. 

David, 41-year-old 4chan refugee, closet brony, “Classical Liberal” of the Carl Benjamin variety, born and raised in Buttfuck, Upstate NY, isn’t ranting and raging about the ceasefire agitators over Thanksgiving dinner because he’s thoroughly studied and is greatly aggrieved of the history of terrorism in the Palestinian liberation movement, or because he put the work in to fully understand the 2006 elections in Gaza and wholeheartedly regrets their outcome. 

He’s worked up ‘cause the bus-bombing towelheads have done it again, and he doesn’t give a hoot how many Gazans die ‘cause they shoulda known who they was votin’ for. 

Tumblr user viv-hollande, pro-incest Kaeluc truther from [redacted] USA wasn’t crouched over the toilet losing his lunch studying the long, tragic history of the Israel-Palestine crisis. 

He was losing his lunch because they just bombed a hospital, 500 people are dead, the bastards did it and they’ll deny it just like with Hook and Miller and Abu Akleh, shitting hells it’s never going to end- 

viv-hollande jumped to a conclusion that was informed by a narrative, and proceeded to waste several hours angrily arguing with an Israeli Tumblr user and stubbornly denying credible evidence and what he was seeing with his own eyes because of a narrative, much of which he read about but did not live through. There remain many questions about what happened at al-Ahli Arab Hospital, but the preponderance of evidence has fallen on the side of a Palestinian misfire. If you think that the evidence provided by over a dozen governments, media outlets, and independent analysts was all fabricated on the orders of Puppet-master Bibi, stop. You’re being an antisemite. Please learn from my fuckup. 

The above statement mostly applies to the world worth of spectators to this conflict and not to Israelis and Palestinians themselves. For those who lived through those events, or who have family who lived through them, there is obviously a direct personal connection to that history which, on a human scale at least, really isn’t that old. There are survivors of both the Holocaust and the Nakba still around. 

I also want to re-emphasize, just in case it got lost in the sludge, that the above statement concerns the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, not current events. Even for those far removed from the conflict, witnessing the ongoing bloodshed in real time is still a traumatic experience that is bound to provoke strong emotional responses and influence people’s position on the wider conflict. Narrative or no, seeing dead children is going to have an effect on you. 

With that out of the way, on to the actual pro-Israeli narrative. In no small part due to less exposure, I am less confident in my analysis of the pro-Israeli narrative than I am of the pro-Palestinian narrative, especially as it pertains to Americans arguing online. But, I have divined a few significant main points. 

One of the most important parts of the pro-Israeli point of view is that of a siege narrative. The Israeli narrative holds that the state of Israel has existed under the threat of existential annihilation since its inception. I have also seen in many places a direct conflation of the military and political threats to Israel’s existence with the wider history of antisemitism and specifically with the Holocaust. This goes all the way up to Benjamin Netenyahu himself, who falsely claimed, among other wrong things, that it was the Grand Mufti of Palestine who convinced Hitler to order the Holocaust. This statement was roundly condemned by basically everyone, whether Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian, for good reason. It’s tantamount to Holocaust denialism. 

The pro-Israeli narrative fundamentally denies the legitimacy and/or existence of Palestinian identity and a Palestinian state. In many cases, it denies the Palestinian right to a state in Palestine at all. This stance is directly related to the perceived necessity for a Jewish-majority Israel, and serves to facilitate the forced removal of the Palestinians from Israel and Palestine. In addition to being morally abhorrent, this stance represents a fundamental obstacle to a negotiated end to the conflict. While I can’t prove it, I very much suspect that some, especially the loudest deniers of Palestinian identity, are aware of this and continue to do so intentionally to undermine peace and facilitate Israel’s continued expansion at Palestinian expense. 

For Americans, especially after 9/11, the narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict has been folded into the wider narrative of the War on Terror. Israel-Palestine and the War on Terror are connected, but that connection is a lot more complicated than the American narrative, which, in its own racist, uninformed way, can’t tell the difference between Palestians, Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Afghans, and the completely uninvolved Sikhs, several of whom nevertheless were attacked and killed by racist, overzealous American “patriots”. This conflation degrades the conversation around the Israel-Palestine conflict and reduces the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. And while this last bit is essentially unfalsifiable conjecture, I suspect that the collapse of the War on Terror, and the changing narratives around it, plays a part in why the reaction to the current war has been substantially more pro-Palestinian than past flare ups. 

As you can see, Israel and its advocates are guilty of many of the same tactics and narrative techniques that I criticized so fervently among Palestinians. The biggest, and most infuriating, has been the consistent denial of Palestinian identity and insistence that Jews/Israelis are the one and only true indigenous people in Israel and Palestine, and the consistent delegitimization of any Palestinian state. This attitude has no doubt played a significant role in prolonging and extending the conflict, and with it the suffering of the Palestinian people. For more details on that suffering, let us now turn to…

Israel & War Crimes

“Israel is definitely committing a campaign of forced displacement, possibly amounting to ethnic cleansing, but I remain unconvinced of the crime of genocide,” - viv-hollande

The above statement in my previous post generated some pushback. I expected this, and planned to dedicate a whole section of the longer essay to supporting this claim, and elaborate on my meaning. Here is that. Oh, and full disclosure, this is probably the most pedantic that I am going to get in this, and I fully expect that that will piss people off for eminently understandable reasons. Nevertheless here I go. 

I would like to start by recalling the first of my establishing points: words have meanings, some words have very specific meanings, and it is important to use words with specific meanings correctly or else risk the degradation and dilution of the words themselves. Meaningless words are useless. With that out of the way: 

Genocide, as defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is defined as any of five acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The five acts are: 

Killing members of the group;

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

Deliberately inflicting upon group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. 

So, we’ve clearly seen evidence of four of the five acts which potentially constitute a genocide, so why am I opposed to its use? The answer is intent. This is an issue that has been raised by others online, and the response is always a mix of a) harping on definitions while thousands of Palestinians are being murdered obscures their suffering and allows Israel to act unchallenged and b) here is the evidence that Israel intends to commit genocide. Addressing those in reverse order: 

I have seen many posts with supposed evidence of Israeli intent to commit genocide. But when they are coagulated, they look less like an actual argument and more like a conspiracy board filled with singular quotes, out-of-context statements, and tweets from some random Israeli expressing dehumanizing, borderline genocidal sentiments. I’m sorry, but this is not evidence of intent. Neither is pointing to Gaza, saying, “Look at what is going on! This clearly shows intent”. It doesn’t. Is a genocide happening in Gaza right now? Maybe. Its unsatisfying and frustrating, but intent is something that will likely be impossible to prove or disprove without access to Israeli government documents. It is classified meeting minutes that will prove or disprove intent, not tweets from Israeli bloggers. 

If you are angry at me for harping on definitions and technicalities, that’s understandable. But remember, words have meanings. I am not convinced that a genocide is happening in Gaza. But d’ya wanna know what is happening? 

War crimes. Crimes against humanity. Ethnic cleansing. Forced displacement. Criminally disproportionate military action. Killing and targeting of journalists. Attacks on medical workers and facilities. Attacks on shelter areas. Attacks on UN workers and facilities. 

All of these are crimes. In a just world, their perpetrators would be spending the rest of their lives behind bars. They are barbarous acts of cruelty that should be condemned, regardless of whether or not they meet the qualifications of being an act of genocide. 

Israel’s attacks on Palestinian water sources is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Involuntary detention of children without charge is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

Indiscriminate bombings of civilians are crimes, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip, both before and after the 7 October attacks, is a crime, regardless of whether or not they were committed with genocidal intent. 

The word genocide is used on this platform like a fire alarm. Pull here to warn people about oppression and mass slaughter. But genocide, like all of the other crimes mentioned above, is a word that has a meaning, a definition. That definition is imperfect, but it is what we have to work with. Using these terms specifically and correctly is important. 

It feels sometimes that discussion around atrocities turns into a matter of genocide or nothing. People treat the usage of more accurate and specific, but ‘less severe’ terms as a form of denialism. It is that attitude that makes discussing these supposedly ‘less severe’ crimes incredibly difficult. ‘Cause guess what!

Every single one of the crimes listed above is a barbarous crime, and you should fight and condemn every last one of them with the same fervor as you should genocide. None of them are tolerable, none of them are lesser. They are, one and all, abominable acts of criminal violence. The overuse of the term genocide makes it harder to effectively fight all of the others and perpetrates a narrative, consciously or not, that its a matter of genocide or bust.

Hamas & Revolution

The Islamic Resistance Movement, more commonly known by its Arabic acronym Hamas, is in my estimation the most militarily and politically powerful Palestinian organization in the world. Although its stated goals have changed several times over the years, Hamas has generally characterized itself as a defender of Palestinian nationalism, an advocate for Palestinian liberation, and an opponent to Israel, colonialism, and imperialism. 

Hamas is also an aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization, and every time I see expressions of support for them you should feel sick. I certainly do. 

Open expressions of support for Hamas have been rare, but far from zero. Most of those who do support Hamas uncritically accept the premise that Hamas is an anti-colonial revolutionary resistance organization fighting against Zionist occupation. This post is way too long and my deadline is rapidly approaching, so instead of breaking down all of that, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that that statement is true. Even if true, none of that prevents Hamas from also being an antisemitic, aspirationally genocidal terrorist organization. 

One of the basic assumptions of the anti-colonialist narrative is that colonized=good, colonizer=bad. This flattens nuanced and complicated conflicts and leads to the excusing and justifying of criminal acts on the basis that they were committed in pursuit of a just cause. 

Anti-colonialist struggles are justified according to the right of self-determination. Many of them nevertheless committed criminal acts. 

There is a tendency to treat conflicts, past and present, less as actual events and more like culture wars. It has become fashionable to condemn the United States by rote, to shout “Up the Ra”, without actually addressing the reality of the situation one is commenting on. As an example of what I mean, take Morocco. Last year, Morocco was briefly appointed as the symbolic standard-bearer of anti-imperialism for… winning football matches against tHe DrEaDeD cOlOnIzErS. Today, Morocco is imperialist persona non grata and traitor to the Palestinian cause. Neither of these judgments were made because of the practical, on the ground reality of decolonization, anti-imperialism, or the Palestinian cause. These judgments were made because of the narrative of anti-colonialism. If the actions of Morocco, or anyone else for that matter, work in favor of the narrative of anti-colonialism, then they are lauded. If their actions contradict that narrative, they are condemned. Are there important geopolitical implications of Morocco’s decision to support Israel in exchange for support in Western Sahara? Yes, of course. Realistically speaking, they will probably be minor and mostly symbolic. Morocco isn’t sending soldiers to help occupy Gaza, and Israel won’t be sending soldiers to support the conquest of Western Sahara. Does any of that matter to users on www.tumblr.com? No. 

To the supporters of Hamas, I don’t have a lot to say here. Hamas has been open about its antisemitism, and both Hamas leaders and official Hamas statements have openly called for genocide against Israelis, and sometimes Jews more broadly. Hamas engages in blatant conspiracism and has gleefully spread stories about a Jewish-controlled globalist shadow government trying to bring about the NWO. While they did officially amend their charter in 2017 to state that their fight is with the “Zionist enemy” rather than the Jewish people writ large, I find it difficult to believe that they are being honest with their intentions, and even if they are, the 7 October attacks show that they consider Israeli civilians as part of the “Zionist enemy” and thus fair game. 

River & Sea

In my previous post, I made the assertion that the popular pro-Palestinian slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is an antisemitic slogan. As I expected, I got some pushback on this, but have no fear, I have a qualified justification. 

Slightly modified, I uphold the statement that, as a practical matter, in the year 2023 “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a de facto antisemitic statement. 

To fully explain what I mean here, and to address some of the confusion that I have seen with regards to the history of the statement. Shoutout to @starsakura17 and @screaming-weevil for having a conversation about the term and trying to research the history of the phrase to better inform themselves. That’s something we all, including me, should do more often on more topics. 

As far as I can discern, the origins of the “River to the sea” part of the phrase are unknown, but Zionist sentiments about creating a state between the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea actually predate the First Arab-Israeli War and may predate Mandatory Palestine. The phrase first became associated with the Palestinian cause in the 1960s, when it was used to express opposition to the partition of Palestine and support for a single state in Palestine. How exactly this state was envisioned varied dramatically, but even back then, the 1964 PLO Charter expressly excluded the mostly Jewish immigrants to Palestine from their definition of Palestinians. Gee, where have I heard that before. Now, the PLO do not and did not speak for all Palestinians, and there were many Palestinians and Israelis who advocated for a single state that would be democratic and secular, thus creating a free Palestine between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Thusly, if you asked me in the 1960s whether the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is antisemitic, I would say no, but I would probably note that it is used by antisemites and caution you to be careful with your usage. 

However, it is no longer the 1960s, and the usage and users of the phrase have shifted over time. The most important change is the rise of Islamic militant groups, most of whom have adopted the phrase as a call to destroy Israel and purge Palestine of Israelis and/or Jews. In addition, the geopolitical landscape of Israel and Palestine has changed. In the early 1960s, when the land between the river and the sea was under total occupation by Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and when the idea of a single, secular, democratic state was at least theoretically possible, non-antisemitic usage of “From the river to the sea” was both possible and fairly common. There were individuals and organizations with actual influence on both sides that could have or did try to lead the charge for this exact solution. In 2023, that is no longer the case. 

When I see people using the phrase “From the river to the sea”, my first question is how will that happen? Who will end up in charge of the land from river to sea? Remember, words have meaning, and political slogans do not exist in a vacuum. In the year 2023, there is only one organization with the political clout, popular support, and military might even hope to create a free Palestine stretching from the river to the sea: Hamas. Barring an externally imposed settlement, there is no other entity that could feasibly achieve such a state. You saw what they did on 7 October; what do you think their plan is for the rest of the Jews in Israel? 

If you object to my connection between “From the river to the sea” and Hamas ruling over the whole of Israel and Palestine, then go ahead. Tell me how, exactly, a free Palestinian state from river to sea can be created without giving Hamas free access to the people they openly want to exterminate.

Regardless of its origin, regardless of your intention when you say it, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a statement that has been proudly adopted by the most virulent and violent antisemites on the Palestinian side. Whatever its intention, it is at best a slogan with a confused and muddy history that is deeply linked with antisemitism; at worst it is incitement to genocide. 

SO STOP USING IT. Any slogan that has to be regularly qualified with “but not in an antisemitic way” is a slogan that you should not use. There are better, non-antisemitic slogans already in use; you do not need to cling desperately to this one. 

While I’m here, I may as well address the phrase “Free Palestine from Hamas”. Like “From the river to the sea”, it's a theoretically neutral or even positive slogan. However, I see it most commonly used by those who vocally support the ongoing, indiscriminate destruction of Gaza and slaughter of the people living there. Whatever your intention, this phrase is associated with those who believe that any action is justifiable as long as it might possibly kill even a single Hamas member. 

Conclusion

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter, or at least a more coherent one.” - viv-hollande

If you made it this far, you have my respect. I’ve said a lot here, probably too much. I am sure it means something; I am not sure if it means anything significant. 

A lot of people are probably mad at me right now. Some of that is probably fair. Some of it is probably not. 

I had someone accuse me of being “fundamentally unserious” under my last post, which is a very weird and kind of funny thing to say to a teenager. 

I’m really struggling with how to finish this, ‘cause I am well and truly running low on steam, and I have French homework that I’ve been putting off. I’ve scrapped, like, three entire sections that I either didn’t have time to finish, or that I felt were even more poorly written than the rest of this incoherent mess. Maybe I’ll turn them into dedicated posts. 

As a final conclusion: The Israel-Palestine conflict has been saddled with millions of uninvolved rubberneckers who all seem to have a lot to say about every aspect of it. As humans tend to do, these bystanders have created narratives of war and struggle, of oppression and revolution. It is these narratives, shaped by history, but also by biases, bigotries, personal values, and misinformation. We choose a good side, and subsume that side into our own personal in-group. We excuse the faults in our allies, and exaggerate or fabricate faults in our enemies. The Palestinian cause categorically dismisses the Jewish right to a secure homeland. The de facto leaders of Gaza are aspirational génocidaires. The pro-Palestinian cause as a whole doesn’t care to consider the fate of the Israelis, millions of who were born and raised in Israel and have nowhere else to go. Simultaneously, the Israelis deny the suffering of the Palestinian people, wherever they may reside. Many current and past leaders of Israel are war criminals, and few, if any, of them will be brought to justice. Make no mistake, this is not a case of “both sides”. As the stronger party to the conflict, backed by the strongest nation on Earth, Israel has had most of the power to choose the timeline for the end to the conflict. As it stands, it seems more and more likely that that end will result in the final, irrevocable extinguishing of the dream of a Palestinian state. That end would be a tragedy, and it would be a crime. 

If you’re not sick of me telling you what to do at this point, you have the patience of a fucking saint. To those still here, I say this: condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, and bigotry wherever they occur; all conflicts have long, complicated histories that get flattened by the desire to ‘pick a side’; exact language, used specifically, is a delicate, precious thing that must be safeguarded; Israel’s crimes in Gaza, whether they qualify as a campaign of genocide, rank as some of the worst committed in decades, and the western political establishment’s tacit acceptance and endorsement of that campaign of horrors is, in and of itself, criminal and immoral, and both should be fought with as much energy as you can possibly spare. 

Fuck Bibi, and all those who enable him. Fuck Hamas. Fight war crimes. Ceasefire now. Free Palestine. 

A Message To Israelis and Palestinians

I struggled the most with what to say here. As I’ve repeatedly said, this post is intended not for you, but for the crowds of virtual bystanders to the incomprehensible crimes being committed in Israel and Gaza. As someone with, as they say, no skin in the game, I feel uncomfortable addressing you in a way I generally don’t when confronting my peers. I don’t know if you want or need the perspective of yet another rubbernecker, especially when what I do have to say is so insubstantial. But I would feel remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the people over whose heads I have been shouting for so long. So, for the final time, here goes. 

I am so sorry for what you are going through. To the Israelis, to those living in fear of rocket attacks and suicide bombers, and especially to those who lost loved ones in the 7 October attacks, or who are living in limbo hoping and praying for the release of the hostages, I express my deepest condolences. To the Palestinians of the West Bank, who have suffered the encroachment and aggression of Israeli settlers and Occupation soldiers, and who must soldier on through the ever-tightening vice of apartheid, your resilience inspires me and your suffering devastates me. To the Palestinian refugees, who have been driven out of their homeland and now must wait endlessly for a return that may never come, please know that you are in my heart.  And finally to the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who have been subjected to years of indignity, abuse, and violence, who have endured overwhelming, disproportionate, and indiscriminate retaliation for every terrorist provocation, who have been starved, bombed, shot, beaten, and brutalized in ways that I, sheltered as I am, could never possibly imagine, and who are at this very moment deep in mourning over the thousands and thousands of parents, children, siblings, cousins, friends, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews, acquaintances, colleagues, and everything in between, I offer you have my most sincere apologies and my grief at your losses, pale as they must be in comparison to your own. I don’t know if they’ll help, but they’re really all I’ve got. 

I wish I could offer you hope. I wish I could offer you a solution. I wish I could do something, anything, that would actually have a meaningful impact on any of this. But I can’t. I’m sorry.

[ladyalienist]

What is your position on trauma-related conditions/personality disorders?

Hi! I’m really glad you asked because this is a thing I wanted to make a post about.

So, let’s first start with a bit of general context, shall we? I’ll try to make it as short as I can.

Psychologists and psychiatrists are different in many ways, but they both take care of the same kind of illnesses, distresses and problems, and hence need to communicate between themselves and create a taxonomy of the most common kinds of problems they face. In that taxonomy (DSM, PDM, you name it) it is understood, generally, that people might react to traumatic events in an acute way or in a persistent way (what we usually refer to as PTSD).

In that same taxonomy, personality disorders (PDs) are not seen as trauma responses per se: they are something different. Personality is defined as the unique and fairly consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours that distinguish a person from others. When something in the development of personality goes wrong and those patterns become consistently dysfunctional and hurtful to the person and/or to others, we have a PD. There’s currently about 10-15 of them that have a specific label, all with their specific characteristics: I’m not diving too deep into that because else this thing will become a whole essay and I’d have to charge you money to have you read it.

Now, one thing that seems intuitive but apparently was absolutely not to psychiatrists is that thought/feeling/behaviour patterns are not formed in a vacuum, and require a lot of interactions with external influences to be moulded into a specific shape: hence, a thing that isn’t that obvious is that personality disorders come usually (not always, but very often) from a deeply traumatic childhood.

Especially when it comes to the most (in)famous and debated personality disorder: the Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), which many feminists (me included) view as an evolution of the so-called hysteria psychs would diagnose women with in the 1800s.

It is, on many levels, the very same situation: we have young women who react to horrifying and prolonged abuse by becoming “bad women”, “untamed women”, and hence need to be corrected with sedation and institutionalization.

Many ladies here on Radblr are unwaveringly anti-psychiatry, or at the very least critical of psychiatry and of the BPD diagnosis altogether: they think that it is a pathologisation of natural responses to the horrific treatment little girls go through in way too many cases, and a tool of oppression in the hands of a patriarchal paradigm of health and science.

Now let me be clear: I understand those critiques and they are in many ways grounded and valid. This is a diagnosis that gets often given without an understanding of the personal history of the woman who displays symptoms, or gets given way too soon (PDs should not get diagnosed before adulthood and many women receive a BPD diagnosis when they are still adolescents).

I am myself… not exactly enthusiastic about psychiatrists and colleagues alike, and I do not appreciate the modern paradigm of mental health, but you already know that, for you asked this specific question.

The fact is that in other ways it is a myopic view of a complex and nuanced issue. My first problem with the General-Radblr-Critique-of-Psychiatry is that many many people do not understand a simple fact: psych language is edulcorated as fuck and a competent psych keeps that in mind. When a psych writes “difficulties in keeping care of personal hygiene” (non-political random example of a typical consequence of severe depression) it doesn’t mean “eh, haven’t showered yesterday because I didn’t stink”, it means “this person hasn’t showered in months because they cannot find the energy/they do not want to see themselves naked/they are actively trying to rot while alive and are succeeding”.

Another problem is that many people are not aware that PD diagnoses are actually… not that gendered: while it is true that BPD is more often female and Narcissistic PD is more often male, and socialization brings wildly different levels of destructiveness, there are men diagnosed with BPD and women with NPD, and they are not a statistical rarity!

The third and last problem is a direct consequence of the first: a thing many do not understand is that a PD diagnosis is not given because you’re a moody teen who is angry at misogyny.

It is mostly given when you are a fucking menace to yourself and people around you.

A person should get this diagnosis when they have a consistent pattern of destructive behaviour and uncontrolled emotional responses. These are people who self harm, who have risky behaviours (reckless driving, substance abuse and addiction, violent relationships) and who can and will treat others like shit with little to no reason.

Now, it should not be given to adolescents and this happens. It should not be given without addressing the causes, which often include sexual trauma or prolonged abuse, and this happens. Medication should be prescribed very, very carefully and this doesn’t happen. This is malpractice, and it is way too widespread. I will not deny that.

But here are just some funky tales of things people I know with that diagnosis did:

Set fire to the car of one of her ex BFs. Gleefully told me. The poor guy had done absolutely nothing wrong except leaving her, which was well within his rights. She absolutely could not understand why what she did was unacceptable.

Kept a merry-go-round between three different partners. Two of them were abusive pieces of shit. No amount of telling her that they were pieces of shit would have her convinced that they needed to be excluded from her life and that it wasn’t a good idea to keep fighting with A, calling B for sex and company, fighting with B, calling C for sex and company, fighting with C, calling A, and so on and so forth. This kept going on for years, I cannot stress this enough.

“I only like violent sex” (multiple people, on multiple occasions).

Cheating and then becoming flabbergasted at the partner’s anger, which was seen as cruelty towards them (multiple people, on multiple occasions).

Had a partner who absolutely loved and cherished her. Her response to compliments was, on average, “can you not?”. She would complain that she was ugly and no people would want to have sex with her: confronted with the fact that she did, actually, have at least one person wanting her, she blurted out “you don’t count”. Had the same reply for “I love you”.

Proceeded to find a partner whose opinion apparently counted: you guessed it, an abusive piece of shit. Could not wrap her head around the fact that the previous partner did not exactly want to stay friends.

All of this has to be added to the typical description: labile sense of identity, difficulty in understanding the limits in interactions, volatile emotions, black-and-white thinking, destructive rage, deep sense of void, self-harm and risky behaviour.

Does this look like something that should not be treated as pathological? Does this look like something that can go away with just some more compassion for trauma?

In conclusion: while I do agree that this is a diagnosis that can and does get used as a tool to silence the reality of gendered/sexual abuse on girls and women and it has an ugly stigma to it, I do not entirely discard it as useless either. What I’d like to see is a different paradigm in mental health, where people who have experienced earthly hell can find ways to heal (people can and do get a lot better!) and learn more constructive ways to deal with the world, but in order to do that we need to have a precise frame for the problem.

I hope I did explain myself, and if I didn’t please, let me know. I’ll try to be clearer.

[rinwellisathing]

Get To Know People Better Tag Game

I was tagged by @graysparrowao3! thank you!

Three Ships:

So I assume this is like favorites? Okay, I'll try to do separate fandoms as well to keep it interesting and I'll try and make it less common ships, not exactly rare ships per se because like... I am very shy and anxiety prone so truthfully iunno what's rare and not because I don't engage a lot.

Thunderweave (Gale/Rolan) : I really like this one, even more since my fiancee and I RPed it with the idea of transmasc Rolan. It's really kind of interesting and also Rolan deserves a better fellow wizard than Lorroakan and I think Gale is a great fellow wizard being both talented, secure in his abilities, but also willing to see the potential and power in another person. Also I super identify with Rolan and my fiancee does a really good really convincing Gale for RP and cosplay. Kabru/Mithrun: I initially preferred Kabru/Laios, which I still really like honestly, but I read a longer post about Mithrun's disabilities and his trauma and how Kabru treats him like a person when most people don't and like as a heavily traumatized person who became suddenly and severely disabled as a result, I really really relate and hope that my partners will show me that same level of care when they are able (distance has been the main reason why not, my mom has mainly been the one taking care of me since I became disabled so I don't really know what my partners will do in person because one lives far away and one has been called away on family issues since before this became a major issue) Thraina (Thrall/Jaina) : This is the only hetero ship I consistently come back to. I usually prefer Sylvanas/Jaina, but realistically I don't want to put that one here for only one reason. Sylvanas/Jaina has a lot of basis in what it could be (No one at Blizzard who has been there consistently through their entire development is talented enough to have made it work so it's all theoretical and based on what much better unpaid fanfiction writers decide). Thraina, meanwhile was unintentionally somehow written as one of the most equitable, healtyh, equal, and level relationships in all of WoW and it wasn't even canon...mainly because Metzen is a weird creepy misogynist (one of the main reasons I actually mainly write Aggra/Jaina as a ship actually, because both deserve better and are, in theory, better than that bag of derivative Marvel obsessed dicks allows them to be) but anyway, it's just fascinating to me how the healthiest ship in WoW was axed, shut down, and denied despite how genuinely good it was. I could write essays on this, I *HAVE* written essays on this, but I'll spare you. First ship: Domon Kasshu/Chibodee Crockett (G Gundam) but also Meg Giry and Christine Daae (Phantom of the Opera) these were simultaneous, so honestly I had to put both.

Last Song: Where You Are (Moana Soundtrack)

Last Movie: it was this obscure random horror movie I found on Peacock called 'Wait Till Helen Comes' about a child ghost. I tend to since I've been unable to work stay up late making costume pieces and writing and pick random horror movies for background. It wasn't bad, honestly.

Currently reading: Humblewood campaign setting book for an actual play I want to do Faerun 3.5 Player's Guide for flavor bits for my BG3 fanfics and location lore for my BG 3 sequel campaign Cinderwich by Cherie Priest

Currently watching:

Interview With a Vampire Crispy's Tavern Currently Eating: Opera Cake Currently craving: The nastiest, filthiest Durgetash ERP, preferably with my fiancee as Gortash. Favorite color: Purple

Current Obsession: BG 3 Prehistoric ocean animals Junji Ito Sharks in general Costuming Fatal Frame Last thing I googled: Sophia Loren Favorite Season: WInter

Skill I'd like to learn: Shoe making Metalurgy Best advice: You're never done learning until you're dead...even then, let's assume we get reincarnated and then rinse, repeat, start learning again. I'm tagging @iron-bullogna @vialae @vestigialpersonality @dm-dragonpuff

[empressofthewind]

HIIII can i ask 5 and 8 for the fic writer asks? 🥰

hiii 🥰 of course you can!! i'll answer these in reverse order, so i can put the snippet under a cut :-)

8. Is there a story idea in your mental vault that you've never been brave enough to try writing? Is this the year? Can you tell us about it?

Yes!! I have quite a few ideas for Meronia that are based around detective work, but I don't think I really have the skillset to write a compelling and well thought-out mystery. For that reason, I think it's highly unlikely that I'll ever write those ideas, this year or any other, but I'm more than happy to share one! One that I think is a lot of fun is an idea in which Mello is a well-known musical artist and Near is the world's best detective operating under the name 'N'. Mello has a stalker who's been blackmailing him with information about his past, and though Mello is adamant that he can handle it himself, his manager hires Near to track them down. It's not the type of case Near would usually take, but he's a big fan of Mello, so he accepts. Mello is extremely difficult to work with at first because of his resistance to help, but ultimately romance does ensue 🥰

5. Which WIP is first on your list to complete this year? Will you post a snippet?

My absolute top priority for the year is Loving Can Heal as it's been 7 months since I last updated it, and per my original schedule, it was supposed to be finished in October last year 😭 but since I've already posted a snippet semi-recently (which you can find here), I am instead going to be super self-indulgent and share an excerpt from one of my all-time favourite WIPs I've been working on since August 2022, which I'd really like to get done this year. It's a two-part angsty Hanahaki Disease AU in which Near falls ill, and the surgery to cure the disease would mean losing all his memories of Mello. This is from the scene in which he decides to go through with the surgery (it's technically an excerpt from the outline, but I think the final version will end up looking pretty similar):

Finding the words to articulate his feelings is harder than he anticipated, but once his pen carves the first few clean, cursive letters into the paper, the floodgates are opened. Time slips away from him as he pours his heart and soul out onto the page. His message turns from a simple goodbye note to an essay-length recount of their first meeting, the first time they spoke, the first time Near realised he had feelings for Mello, the moment Near realised he was in love. He spares no details, and by the time the letter is finished, the clock reads 4:03am and the cramp in Near’s wrist is almost as unbearable as the sharp pain in his chest. He can’t mail the letter. It’s far too important of an item to have other people’s hands and eyes on it, even just on the envelope, or to risk having it lost in the mail. He’ll ask Rester to stop by Mello’s apartment in the morning, on the way to the hospital, so he can deliver it himself. He folds up the pages, slips them into an envelope and falls asleep, slumped forward at his desk, with all his memories of Mello lying beside him.

fanfic asks for the new year

[compacflt]

pre-publishing notes for slider (actually i meant to poast this yesterday i just forgor 💀), just to put them out there

as per usual i peddle an extreme amount of mis- and straight up disinformation about the aerospace & defense industries in this one. as a general rule of thumb if it sounds like i researched it poorly and/or made it up, that’s because i researched it poorly and/or made it up. like every scene i was like ‘that wouldn’t happen :D’ and wrote it anyway

this one-shot renders my third one-shot (about ice & hangman) entirely obsolete, as if the rooster one-shot didn’t already do that. so just ignore the hangman one. (i only wrote that one cause i felt bad about tagging my fics hangster when they’re barely in it.) Also, this one-shot kind of directly contradicts the end scene of “debriefing” in pretty much every way. i don’t really care, because this is a much stronger ending, but just throwing that out there—this one-shot doesn’t really jive with my other writing for plot/character arc reasons & im too lazy/sick and tired of my other writing to go back and retcon any of it

i only research things i am mandated to by school/a job/journalistic code of ethics, or that i think are interesting, or that i know will not depress me. divorce depresses me so i did not research divorce. Also im pretty sure marriage doesn’t work the way i described it “sign the papers & that’s it” but idgaf . shrug. im having fun

something i Didn’t make up, though: the thesis that iraq/afghanistan went so poorly in the long term partly because our armed services & especially that generation of commanding officers were prepared for total warfare with a near-peer (like the ussr) instead of counterinsurgency tactics against mountain-based guerrilla warfare-stratted forces (like Al-q*eda etc). that’s a very real thesis that ive read in multiple mil history books (“the generals,” ricks; “mil history for the modern strategist,” ohanlon) & co-opted because it’s kind of, in a fucked up way, a good metaphor for ice’s whole deal—he’d been expecting a traditional officer’s life with a woman etc (aka traditional warfare against the ussr, the us’ sworn enemy) and instead found happiness in the weirdest of places, another dude (aka guerrilla warfare) and no one taught him the right strategy for dealing with that; so, pigheadedly, like some US commands in the Middle East for a decade, he just dug in his heels & refused to budge/change his "total traditional war/heteronormative"-based strategy even if it obviously wasn’t working.

In a similar vein just so i can beat the allegations that im strategically dumb, the “strategies” against the ussr the boys are playing with in the usna section are intentionally the most dogshit strategies on earth. do not invade russia in a land war. especially not when nukes are on the table. the point is they’re ALL bad at strategy (strat as a metaphor for interpersonal communication).

i get the words “moderate” and “modulate” confused a lot. there’s a couple times in this one when I use moderate and mean modulate. Now it’s too late to edit it. by which i mean i am too lazy. editing anything on ao3 is a Sisyphean task. not worth it.

there's a lot to be said about my ice & maverick's respectability, which is to say, as slider points out, their life together is incredibly normie and boring and regular, except that they're two guys. like there's nothing super subversive going on here. "in the grand scheme of things is this really so bad?" is the question. politically this is a little funky. for metatextual character-arc reasons ice has to agree to an official marriage to prove that by the end he's not afraid to legally legitimize their relationship, but the heteroflexible/straight-passing/socially conservative ice & mav that I have written also probably aren't the kind of guys to acknowledge the struggle & strife & subversiveness of the queer community before them that fought for them to have that right. to quote from an essay by Lauren berlant & Michael Warner ("Sex in public"): "Respectable gays [ice & mav, distancing themselves from other gays] like to think that they owe nothing to the sexual subculture they think of as sleazy. But their success, their way of living, their political rights, and their very identities would never have been possible but for the existence of the public [visibly queer] sexual culture they now despise." just throwing that out there as something that is weighing on my mind having now finished writing this. I think that issue (ice & mav's relationship with/debt to the lgbt community) could be explored with a character like rooster, who might be much more a part of that struggle (especially pre-dadt-repeal)...but idk where or how I would write about it. just something to chew on. I keep finding different ways to politically interpret what I myself have already written which then keeps leading to more fucking one-shots. This slider one for instance was a reinterpretation from the 1980s Cold War politics lens of nuclear doomsday & how that affected a generation of men making shitty/suicidal decisions about their lives. an endless cycle for me. "just one more interpretation...i swear just one more..."

[razorsadness]

I've not been writing many personal posts, because between writing a poem draft a day for the Tupelo Press 30/30, working on future Substacks and mini-zines, random scribblings in my private journal, and daily life and work stuff, well. I have had neither the time nor the inclination.

So this will just be short. Things are pretty good these days. I've been getting through this Mercury Rx with minimal troubles, knock on wood (not like last go-round when I completely lost my shit and had a nervous breakdown). Of course there has been some bullshit, but that's life, Mercury Rx or no—one of my recurring health issues has returned (fortunately it's not one of the Very Concerning or painful ones, just annoying and uncomfortable), I'm stressed about money and everything I need to do as per usual, the kids have been a little extra cranky, and I've had a lot of sleepless, toss n' turn nights. But it has been manageable.

The main Mercury Rx-related things that have arisen are general tech issues, and falling too deep down the nostalgic rabbit-hole and getting sad.

But there have been a lot of good things.

Like getting to see my best L. at the end of March. We ate sushi and talked and listened to music, and it was perfect. I got her turned on to Einstürzende Neubauten! She had never heard them and since I was getting all stoked for the release of Rampen I played her "Ist Ist," plus a bunch of stuff from Alles in Allem, and a few older tracks (though I stayed away from their super-strange-noise earlier albums, because I know her well enough to know she probably wouldn't dig that stuff as much). But anyway, she dug it! She said: "This is weird, but...in a way that I really, really like." My work here is done.

Like Easter—the kids had a great day, and it was one of the least stressful holidays I've ever spent with my parents.

Like taking the kids to Frank's Diner, and getting to watch them experience my favorite breakfast joint. Like the solar eclipse; watching the shadows go blurry and the world get dusk-dark in the middle of the afternoon, without a cloud in the sky.

Like all the writing—as hard as it might be, having to draft at least one poem a day has been really good for me. I've got the seeds of some things I think may be really quite good, one day.

Like all the small things—happy moments with the kids, sunny days, long walks, birdwatching (Friend Crow has returned to the tree behind our house!), books and films and delicious food.

And, of course, it's spring, and I've got that good ol' restless melancholy. I know, I'm melancholic and restless in every season, but in spring it's the most acute. I wanna go, anywhere (I don't care I don't care I don't care), or, to quote Kim Addonizio: it's spring, and it's starting again—the longing that begins, and begins, and begins.

Yesterday I found out that the downtown YMCA, where I used to see a lot of shows as a teen, is getting torn down, and man, I am having feelings. The poem draft I wrote last night, that went up today, is about that. Today I decided to go downtown and take some pictures of it while it's still there. They have it encircled in a tall fence topped with razor wire, but I walked all around the outside, taking pictures, and I also got some further ideas about stuff to write re: my history there but also ghosts and memory and whatnot. I'm eventually going to put it all together in a hybrid photo-and-text essay, which will probably be published as a mini-zine. I thought about how, in my younger years, I would have returned under cover of night to explore and take pictures inside the building. I either would have brought wire cutters to make a hole in the fence, or just braved the razor wire and climbed it. (And then I immediately thought of "On the Ave." At the reservoir you impaled your wrist / on razor wire climbing the fence...) But I'm not as brave as I once was, when it comes to things like that. It's not fear of injury, or even fear of who or what I may encounter inside the building; it's more that, since having kids, I'm not willing to risk getting arrested for shit like that. Taking photos of the outside wasn't as romantic as going inside would have been, but it scratched my exploration itch, and gave me artistic inspiration, so it was good enough.

After that I grabbed an oat milk cappuccino from a downtown cafe, then got back in my car and headed off on various errands. I listened to an old mix tape that a pen pal made me back during the same time frame I was going to shows at the Y (or, well, the 8tracks version of said tape, as I no longer have a car with a cassette player in it), and I'll be damned if those songs didn't sound just as good as they did the first, tenth, one hundredth time I heard them. And the world was full of signs, today, quite literally—a sign outside a church that said Delight in the Small Things, and a sign outside a diner that read Never Let Your Heart Harden. And it was all so much deja vu; driving through those neighborhoods I know so well, remembering what I used to do there, remembering what used to be there, while listening to those songs I know so well. I've been writing so much about my teen years lately, and it's funny, because when I lived here as a teen, I thought I hated this town. There were things I loved about it, but mostly, I just wanted to get out. I was also adamant that I was not from here. After all, I wasn't born here, and only lived here for seven years before moving away the first time. I never envisioned that I'd one day move back here for real, let alone that I'd come to love it for real. I may not live here for the rest of my life (and in fact I don't plan to), but, yeah, at this point it's my hometown, for better or worse.

[whentherewerebicycles]

well immobilizing my entire arm actually really helped for the first two or three hours (thank you for the suggestion, t!!) but the median nerve pressure got too intense and I spent the rest of the night in agonizing pain as per usual. but oh my god only one more night before I get to see the specialist. I am also getting acupuncture and cupping done again tonight so I’m PRAYING it brings a tiny bit of relief to get me through this last stretch. the pain overnight is just like… I just naively didn’t know you could be in that much pain and not have it be an emergency situation lol. like if I thought the ER could do anything for me besides refer me to an ortho surgeon I’d have been there a week ago. how do people live with chronic pain!!!! aaaaa ok sorry mornings are rough because I feel so fragile and raw from the night. but I am doing the things to address it and that is all I can do!! I have to leave the terrifying night behind me and move forward into the day!!!

here we go:

6-7:30 work emails and day planning

7:30-8ish do a quick grocery run to grab something I can take to work for lunch

8-9ish shower/get ready, make breakfast

9:30 leave for work—CALL CAR DEALER ON THE WAY

10-1 work session (no meetings)—draw up faculty roles & responsibilities, email about JA funding, write workshop description, pay student loan bill, edit LB essays

1-2 staff mtg

2:15-2:45 student advising

3-4 CB mtg

4-6 drive home, walk dogs, make something for dinner (I can’t chop anything so cooking is out 🫠)

6-7 acupuncture appt save me… save me acupuncture appt…

try to sleep early

[russilton]

Hello! You have very beautiful art.. I wanted to ask you about your thought on Valtteri ships if you have some? I am deeply in love with Valewis but I would also like your thoughts on dantteri ;)

Hello, Anon! Thank you very much <3

I love this question! I love talking ships I really do.

Romantically, Valewis isn’t for me. Not because I don’t think it would work, but when it comes to Lewis I’m a die hard monoshipper. George or bust! (prior relationships are their own discussion, but always endgame Britcedes over here)

But… BUT! Platonically/Bromantically? I could talk about Valewis for HOURS! ASK KIMY, I LITERALLY HAVE.

(I also go into a LONG essay on Dantteri under the readmore after I’m done talking about Valewis)

I am so down bad for the brotherly bond between Lewis and Val, the bond forged first in proximity then in familiarity. This especially goes for a/b/o au’s, Lewis is a born leader, someone people naturally turn to. Val is that perfect second in command. The quiet bastion that presses against Lewis’ back to prop him up when the pressure gets unbearable. The solem observer Lewis can trust to be level headed when he is facing questions without an easy answer.

I have a kink for positive masculinity, and my favourite way of expressing this in ideas and writing is always with Val and Lewis. Whether it be easy, casual touches that reassure each other (the grasp of a shoulder, the squeeze of an arm) or strong, tight hugs that let them ground each other. I Love talking about the angst of Lewis strung between Val and George when the seat change came, how he didn’t want to favour either but felt helpless when toto asked him what he wanted. He wants George, who has worked so, so hard to get here. Who has fought tooth and nail to climb, climb, climb. He also wants Val, who has stood by his side for years in the wake of Nico’s betrayal. Who had to deal with the pressure of being his teammate without much complaint. Who sacrificed himself for Lewis more than once. Oh bromantic Valewis you have ANGST you have BONDS you have FAMILIAL LOVE. You are PERFECT.

AND THEN YOU BRING UP DANTTERI? Anon I fucking LOVE DANTTERI. That IS my one and true Dan and Val ship now. I usually only have one set mono ship per fandom, I often chop and change everyone else pretty happily. But @blafard introduced me to Dantteri and I have been OBSESSED ever since. I now find it hard to explore other val and dan ships bc I’m always thinking about them (dantteri)

IT HAS SO MANY LAYERS. I know they have a shared history, which I’m still learning (I’m v much in need of a PowerPoint on this topic), but EVEN WITHOUT THAT there’s so much to them that’s just *chefs kiss*. The thing about Dan and Valtteri is they are opposites who have more in common than they would ever admit. They are loud and quiet, broad and long, light and dark. Dan with his blinding grin and black curls who invades Val’s stoic space to run a hand through bright blond hair and preen for the Finn’s rare, soft grin. The spice of Val turning it around on Dan to tease him over shared beers to see him blush.

They are both men who had incredibly promising careers that started to fade with the curse of the second driver. Guys who chased championships like every driver who then had to contend with the brutal realisation that they are no longer the best at what they do.

There is a bond between them in this shared angst, because who else would they talk to? With all respect, Val can’t talk to Lewis about what its like to be second best to him. Lewis is a legend made man in his talent, its just not something he would be able to get the way Dan does. For Dan, he lives under the mantle of being funny for everyone, and ends up feeling unable to break that act. Almost suffocated by the walls he built between himself and the grid, that Val sees right through. Val who looks at Dans tight cracked grin, grabs him by the neck, and hauls him in for the hug he desperately needs. Because Val gets it. He gets what its like to have everyone discussing your plateau as they build the path to your fall.

There’s so much angst to go with that comfort too. Angst in Dan making everything a joke so he can shield himself from being rejected by Valtteri. Every line tipped with a blade so he can whip back and defend his wounded ego rather than let himself be hurt again. Val who’s sometimes so solemn and unreacting it comes off as cold and dismissive, who locks up when faced with discomfort and distrust that Dan views him as Lewis’ shadow. Withdrawing into himself rather than bare himself for once. And can you just fucking imagine what its like for Dan, to see Val as a mirror of himself if he’d stayed at RB. If he would have been slowly pushed out?

Is that worse to imagine than the reality of what happened. Thrown to the side by McLaren in a tarnished heap. Mercedes may have forced Val to accept a role as second, but at least they had the decency to ensure he was placed safely before announcing George.

What happens to Val at Mercedes is Dan’s situation if he was in a team that actually loved him. You can say many things about Mercedes and how they treated Val, but at least they meant it when they called him family.

Dantteri is fucking amazing because at its core its about teasing opposites who bond under shared trauma. It’s about Dan finding a safe space in Val, and Val being allowed to complain without judgement. You can imagine them sharing glasses of gin under the stars as jokes give way to honesty. How they wont look away from the sky in case they must confront their vulnerability, but their fingers wind together and squeeze.

[sasha-uria]

Hey there! this is an project me and @misturearaposa (Mix) been working on and now is done ✨

Mix is the master mind behind this cozy and peculiar tale and i did the illustration of our main character.

Hope you enjoy 💖

Marsella’s office was a mess, as usual. Students’ essays and documents covered just about every surface of furniture. There was a wooden desk in front of the only window, illuminated half by the moonlight, half by an oil lamp that sat on top of it. One of the documents on top of this desk was an envelope with some writing in a dark green ink on it. It read “To the current Master at Ecological and Zoological Studies Regarding the Arcanum; Marsella Kampersois.” It clearly had been opened and most of the pages it previously contained were already being read by the professor. She brushed aside how tired she felt and tied her strawberry blonde hair behind her head so it would stop obscuring her reading. Marsella put the first page, which she had just finished glancing through, on the desk in front of her and continued on.

“Our guides are Onlen and Briannee, a local couple who live in a village just outside the Asheyran woods. Brianne is one of yours: Amantenese born and raised, but she moved here after her parents died and, eventually married Onlen. So I’m not that interested in her.”

A warm smile pushed through the exhaustion in Marsella’s face as she read that line. It was clear that her friend was still as blunt and socially “unique” as they were when she first met them.

“Mister Onlen himself, on the other hand, is fascinating! We always hear stories about how mysterious the Folkbound are but let me tell you Marsella: the stories do not do them justice! On our way to their village, we passed through a few Niamenese settlements, but none of them had Folkbound in them. So up until we met Onlen, the team and I had only seen the average person going about their day, not different in the slightest from you and me. I am sure you are curious, so I’ll just get it out of the way first: Yes, he does have them!”

Sketched just below this paragraph was what seemed to be a pair of human ears with pointy ends which slowly curled into something that resembled a short flower’s stalk.

“His canine teeth are also remarkably long and sharp, and his hair has a faint, but pleasant smell that I can’t quite describe. Brianne tells me he never takes baths, only cleans himself in the rain or under a nearby waterfall. He knows an awful lot about medicinal herbs and just plants’ properties in general. His behavior is certainly ‘normal’ most of the time, but sometimes he acts like a completely different person, with periodic mood changes to boot. Nothing too extreme, though.”

Marsella grasped the paper a bit more firmly and her eyes suddenly seemed completely devoid of the sleepiness they were presenting up until then. She saw briefly what the next paragraph started to describe and soon sat a bit more upright on her chair, excitement and curiosity taking over.

“As for his partner: we didn’t see it for more than two full days at first. He assured us it was around, but we never even got a hint of its presence. It wouldn’t be until we were finally preparing for our first deep foray into the woods that it showed itself. And what a sight it was! She was no more than 12 centimeters tall; her skin was a deep foliage green with some protuberances that resembled little thorns all over the legs, arms and back. She did not have wings per say, but instead a pair of cloak-like extensions from the back of her shoulders that resembled long and red silky petals. It was like looking at a walking rose. Her head, at least from the back and sides, also reminded me of a rose bud. I was never able to see her face, however, as she wore a tiny mask made of tree bark which was devoid of any distinct features or adornments. The first time we saw her was when the team was packing our provisions and Onlen came from the edge of the woods to check on us. She was sitting on his left shoulder, legs dangling in a cute, childish manner as he walked towards us. We were stunned, but Onlen never made any introductions or try to explain anything. He acted as if we had been seeing her the whole time. In fact, it was as if he thought we knew her our whole lives. As we made our way into the woods, he finally told us her name: Flian. Nothing more than that, however. None of us asked anything either. Mostly because it felt intrusive, but also because as much as no one on the team had personally seen one before, it isn’t like commons pixies are completely new and unknown in our field. As the time passed and we headed deeper into the woods, she would switch from riding on his shoulder to floating up from tree to rock and tree again, accompanying our pace from above. It’s quite a sight to behold. She really didn’t fly around exactly, it looked more like her little “petal cloak” was carried by a gentle breeze, allowing her to glide and float around. She also never made any sound. I don’t mean just vocalizations. Her movements, her breathing, nothing seemed to make any noise, even a small one.”

Marsella put the finished page on top of the desk and scribbled some notes on a journal that laid right beside the two pages she had finished. Before she could continue reading, however, she noticed that on a corner of the note she had just finished was a sketch of the pixie. She assumed she couldn’t see it before because it was being covered by her thumb and fingers as she held the paper. She took a good look at it and then continued on.

“Something that I noticed after a few hours is how, no matter what she was doing – whether it was floating around, walking on top of tree branches or splashing around in little puddles (still not making any sound while doing it.) She would ALWAYS land right back on Onlen’s shoulder whenever he and Brianne got closer, started whispering to each other, holding hands and so on. She’d always stay on the side of his body opposite to Brianne, though, and start grooming his hair, tapping his cheek and at one point I even saw her tickle his right ear after Brianne, to his left, almost tripped and supported herself on her husband. It didn’t seem to bother Onlen, however, as his reactions ranged from ignoring it to simply looking at her and making weird faces that I couldn’t interpret. At most he once turned to face the pixie and motioned a fake bite towards her, which made her jump off him for a second before landing right back again.”

Putting the papers aside for a moment, Marsella felt her exhaustion creeping in again. She pulled a bottle from one of the corners of the deks towards her and uncorked it. She looked around, searching for a cup amidst the mess of her office, and decided she could not be bothered to get up from her chair for a more thorough search. Bottoms up and she felt a warmth spread from her stomach to her chest and limbs, put the bottle on the desk again and though of sealing it with the cork again, before deciding to leave it open. She picked the papers again and continued to read.

“During our first night, our couple of guides told us a little bit about their lives, how they met, fell in love and all of that sappy stuff. I’ll spare you of that torture, something I wish someone could have done for me. Onlen did, however, sprinkle some interesting information here and there. His bonding with Flian happened when he was fourteen. A little late for the average Folkbound, as you know. Apparently he was a bit of a recluse as a kid and because of that it took him a little longer than most to actually find a Fae partner who’d actually bond with him. He said a year before he met Flian, he almost got bound to a lovely little toadstooler who used to cross his path now and again. But he tells me it bonded with a younger girl who lived close to him one day because she apparently gave it treats and sang to it. When he was telling this story - with a tinge of melancholic nostalgia in his face - I noticed Flian starting to look a bit agitated, fidgeting around on his shoulder. Brianne seemed to notice it too and her reaction fascinated me. She quickly flicked her husband’s forehead and made him change the subject or rather move on with his story. Her tone was playful, but I could see a hint of worry or apprehension in her face. Onlen told us that, eventually, he met a common pixie drowning in a pond and after rescuing her, she would visit him everyday until eventually, they were bound. The details aren’t uninteresting, but it was the known stuff for common pixies. They exchanged vows, she told him her name and she pricked his thumb on one of her thorns and it was done.”

Marsella made some more notes on her journal before taking another gulp from the bottle and continuing to read.

“The following morning we left the forest and the team made a quick trip to the nearest village to buy a few things. Briannee went with them and I stayed behind with Onlen. He did not speak for the whole day. In fact, I barely saw him save a couple of times. First when I was cooking a bit of soup a little after noon and he came out from his house, looked at me and my cooking pot as if he could not even begin to understand what I was doing, before going back inside. The second time was right before Briannee and my team were coming back. It was starting to get dark and I had barely noticed them coming into view on the road when I noticed Onlen sitting cross-legged on top of a boulder close to the entrance to the woods. Flian was in front of him, doing something. It was a bit far and the light was getting dim, so I couldn’t ascertain it, but it LOOKED like she was dancing. I had slept a bit after eating so I did not see when he left his house, no idea how long he was sitting there for. I got up from my napping spot and went to ask him what he was doing, but I was met with silence from him and a furious gaze from Flian. She still had her mask on, obviously, but I could tell because she stopped dancing abruptly and turned towards me with a fierce and almost violent movement. I felt as if I could see a pair of cold eyes staring at me even through the tiny bark mask. I subconsciously turned around and left, but as I walked away, I stole a quick glance back at them and noticed how Onlen had his eyes closed and a stiffness in his posture. After I made my way towards Briannee and the rest of my team, she must have noticed some confusion or curiosity betrayed on my face, because she immediately looked in the direction Onlen was and then back at me again. She started to explain it and as soon as I realized what she was telling me, I immediately grabbed her arm and dragged her as I ran back to the boulder again.”

Realization also dawned on Marsella as she read that last sentence and she quickly pulled her journal closer, preparing herself to make more notes as she read on, excitement inundating her mind.

“It was a scouting charm, apparently. I could not believe it. Sure, I had expected to see a genuine Folkbound spell at some point during the expedition, but to finally see it after studying and reading so much bout it, I could barely contain my excitement. Briannee explained that he was probably preparing it to scout the woods in search of a better path, since the previous day we didn’t see any signs or tracks. She also told us how it worked, or at least she tried her best to pass on what he had told her: As we know, common pixies can connect their senses remotely to many different species of flora in a certain radius. What we don’t usually hear about is how they can supposedly share this connection with their bond partners. This is what was happening, apparently. At that moment, Onlen’s mind - or more accurately, his senses - were jumping from flower to flower forest inwards, searching for a better direction for us to travel in the next day. When my team finally caught up to us, they also observed Onlen with me, making their annotations quietly after Briannee reprimanded us for the distraction when we were talking amongst ourselves and sharing insights. She went inside and we only followed after we finally felt like we had enough of observing that man sitting motionless on a rock and his little Fae companion dancing.”

“The following night we stopped and made camp after a whole day of walking through the woods. Onlen had been quiet, even more so than usual. We had, in fact, made our way towards a completely different direction from the previous day as he assured us that Flian helped him see that this trail would be more successful in finding what we were after. Speaking of Flian, she had a very different demeanor this time around. Instead of playing and floating around like the previous day, she had been tucked away inside Onlen’s clothes for almost the whole day. With all that in mind, when we finally had our little camp set up come night, I asked Onlen if there was anything we should worry about. He asked all of us in the research team how much we knew about the Fae. Honestly, I had expected this talk to have come much sooner, seeing how hard we had to search in order to find a Folkbound who would agree in guiding us for this expedition. Even when we found Onlen, a little over two months ago, we had to go through a lot to convince him. I told him we were no experts in Fae, specifically, but also assured him we were pretty competent researchers. After a few minutes of discussion, he still seemed apprehensive, but decided to give us a more in-depth lesson. Onlen explained how the Fae are usually regarded as two different categories or tribes. There are the ones with whom the Folkbound usually bond with, the ones they call The Seelie. On the other hand, there are those with whom no Niamenese should ever partner with. The Unseelie.”

For a second, Marsella fought back an urge to roll her eyes. Her friend knew she was aware of these classifications, so if the next paragraph was going to be a lengthy explanation about the grouping of “good” and “evil” Fae folk, she would have to remind herself to smack her good colleague the next time they saw each other. However, as her eyes glanced at the first few words of the next sentence, her frustration was quickly replaced with curiosity and she prepared herself to make more notes in her journal.

“Apparently the fools who published the studies on these classifications either did not pay a lot of attention or they simply were not smart enough to understand. As Onlen explained it, the Seelie and Unseelie tribes - or courts, as the Niamenese usually refer to them - do not, in the slightest, depict the moral standings of their members. It is not as simple as ‘good faeries’ vs ‘evil faeries.’ According to him, a faerie of the Seelie court can very well be evil and cruel, SPECIALLY when partnered with a morally contentious human, as they are as much susceptible to their partner’s influence as their partner is to theirs. What sets an Unseelie faerie apart from a Seelie one, then, is the kind of bond they form with their partner. You see, Marsella, as we learned very recently, a faerie can bond itself to any species of living creature, it doesn’t need to be a human. In fact, it is more common for other animals and even plants to be bonded to Fae folk than for humans. However, no matter what kind of creature is bound to them, there is ALWAYS a component of trust and consent or respect and care, in the case of plant life. A Seelie faerie will never forcefully bond with an unwilling creature or do so with ill intent. That’s where Unseelie Fae come in. As Onlen put it, the Unseelie will almost always bond with an unwilling partner, be it to exploit them, consume them, corrupt them, you name it. They disregard a rule or instinct that all faeries should acknowledge and respect. He explained to us that there ARE some faeries who don’t force themselves upon their partners and, when bound, don’t exactly act to harm them, but are still considered part of the Unseelie court because of another crucial taboo that they violate: The ‘rule of attachment’ or ‘rule of the veil’, as Onlen described it.”

Marsella placed the finished page on the desk and quickly began reading the next. She no longer felt like she needed another drink to stay awake. Her attention to the letter was unwavering now.

“When you, as a Niamenese, willingly make a pact with one of these types of Fae, you are immediately ostracized. Depending on the specific species, you may be exiled, imprisoned for life, or even hunted down and executed. No other Folkbound will ever accept you as one of their own. And this ‘rule of attachment’ or ‘rule of the veil’ is the reason. He explained that in a ‘normal’ bond, whenever one of the partners dies, the other has to accept, mourn and never bond itself to another. That usually addresses the faeries, since they live much longer than their human or animal partners. But if in any circumstance, a Folkbound were to lose their faerie partner, they have to adhere to this as well. What the Unseelie Fae usually do, however, is disregard this rule. It varies from species to species and how powerful they each are, but it can range from a Fae keeping the corpse of their partner as a cadaver host from keeping them alive in wrong and wicked ways, with some of the most powerful ones even bringing them back to life entirely. Some of them may not have the power for any of that, but they still violate the taboo by bonding with new partners after their previous one died. It started to occur to me, as I’m sure it is occurring to you now, where the problem in this expedition lied, in the eyes of the Niamenese.”

As her friend correctly deduced, the realization indeed hit Marsella and she let herself melt onto her chair. She felt the shock of new information reshaping her views and shedding new light on their whole topic of research: This wasn’t just foolish and dangerous in the eyes of their local guides. It was a matter of searching for a creature who defiled their beliefs and way of life. She straightened herself and pushed through her conflicted thoughts before continuing to read.

“As we talked more through the night, Onlen finally addressed the reason why he agreed to guide us in looking for our research subject. He wasn’t doing it to educate other people about their culture and the ways of the Fae. He said Flian was actually the one who told him he should accept it just for the small chance that ‘the outlanders might help find a way to understand and correct that dark and sad side of her people.’ As he told us that, I noticed how Flian was standing on the ground between him and I, the light from the campfire illuminating her in a way from an angle that made me unable to see the front of her head. I must admit that hearing that this tiny, almost otherworldly creature was the one who pleaded with Onlen and reached out for us was a bit unnerving to me. And judging from the fact that the whole team had difficulty sleeping that night, I’d say it was unnerving to them too.”

Below this paragraph, Marsella saw a drawing of the pixie as her friend had described above: A sketch of the faerie’s head looking up directly at them but with the whole “face” - or bark mask, in this case - shadowed by a source of light behind her. She felt a sudden chill permeate her and quickly moved on.

“The next morning was uneventful, the whole team clearly was still a little shaken up by Onlen’s words from the previous night. We kept walking in the direction he had scouted with his Folkbound charm two nights earlier. Briannee made us a quick lunch at noon - or what we supposed was noon, it was very hard to tell so deep into those woods - and we kept going without stopping for as long as we had light. As the day went on and the little glimpses of sky we could through the canopy would get rarer, we started noticing a cold mist settling all around us. Or to be honest, we noticed it after we were completely surrounded by it. It wasn’t thick enough to completely obscure our visions and it mostly stayed low, at most reaching 10 to 15 centimeters high. But it certainly felt like a sea of cold smoke extending to every direction. Everywhere we looked, there were two certainties: giant, old and shriveled trees and thick and white mist on the ground stretching for as long as our eyes could see. We kept marching on for another hour or so and by the end of that time, only torches and lamps lit our way. At one point, one of the team members stepped on something and as he reached down to see what it was, we were all a little unsettled. A human skull, looking like it had belonged to a young child, was resting on his open palm. Onlen shouted something in Niamenese and quickly ran from his side to stand closer to us in the research team. We felt a tension in the air, but I believe it only really dawned on us that something was amiss when we saw Flian float out from her little refuge in Onlen’s clothes and start moving erratically through the air around him. She would float in one direction, point at something that we couldn’t see, float in another direction and point that way. When I asked Briannee what was wrong, she only said that ‘we had found them’.”

Marsella’s eyes opened wide as she put the finished page down and immediately saw what started the next one. Before the first paragraph in this new page, a new sketch greeted her. A human skeleton partially covered by moss and dead leaves, stared her down through the page. On its head - skull - a long and dark crimson cap hung to the side. Covering the left eye socket. From the skeleton’s torso, a squiggly arrow sketched pointed to the writing “host?”, while from the skull, another arrow jotted out with the tip pointing to the word “subject?”.

“From the ground, previously concealed by the thick mist, three fully grown human skeletons rose. We had indeed found them. After months of research, travel and local convincing, we had finally stumbled upon our subjects. I was so excited that I momentarily ignored the danger of the situation, even as I heard my team screaming in surprise. Briannee yelled for me to stop and only then did I realize I was walking towards the creatures. Onlen was a few meters in front of us, between the subjects and I. I saw him run towards them with Flian floating away in the same direction, but as one of the skeletons made an erratic swipe of its arms to presumably try and grab him, Onlen stepped aside and ran past it. He kept running away from our group and all three of them turned around and started chasing him and his faerie companion. Their movements, for the brief moment I was able to see before they were all gone in the darkness of the forest, was unnerving. It felt wrong, as if all the bones were being dragged around by some invisible puppeteer. We all stood there with bated breath as Briannee told us to watch our surroundings and make sure no other skeleton arose around us. My heart was racing and my thoughts were running wild as I took out my sketchbook and subconsciously started drawing right there on the spot, standing up and having only the faint light of my lamp to help me see the result. Before I even finished, we heard Onlen returning from the shadows and Briannee ran to check on him. That took me out of my trance and I immediately asked him where the subjects were. He said he got rid of them and before I could even protest it, he tossed something my way. Only after I caught it, despite my surprise, did I notice it was a burlap sac with its ‘mouth’ tied in a knot. After feeling it around a bit, I noticed a faint movement coming from within. Onlen told me my ‘target’ was inside and that I was not allowed to open it until after I left Niamenese lands. I thought of protesting that, as well, my curiosity clouding my judgment, but one look at his face, illuminated in a somber way by the faint lamp lights, made me reconsider it. After carefully analyzing his expression I also noticed Flian standing completely straight on top of his right shoulder. Her petal cloak was wrapped around her, covering her arms and most of her torso, instead of hanging behind her like usual, it gave her a resolute and unpleasant atmosphere.”

Marsella once again felt a sudden chill and fought the urge to check if her window was open. It wasn’t, it never was and she knew it. She put down the newly finished page on the desk and went back to reading.

“The whole way back to the entrance of the woods was filled with a strange tension. No, it would be more accurate to say there were three tensions in the air, competing to see which one would make the group crack first. One was the tension that team and I constantly felt since Onlen handed me that sac. The pressure we fought hard to keep in check, the NEED to open it and immediately start our long awaited research. To think our object of study was there in our possession, but we were not allowed to study it was almost killing all of us. The second tension was the total silence tha Onlen immersed himself in since he told me not to open the sac. His steps, his breathing, his occasional whispers to his wife. None seemed to make a sound, but at the same time, it was a silence that felt heavy in our eardrums. It was almost as if he exuded an aura of stillness around him that pushed outward from him and collided with us in its way. Flian, of course, also seemed closed and distant. Even from Onlen himself. Despite riding on his shoulder the entire way back, she did not play around with her Folkbound at any time. Briannee did all of the talking with us during the trip back out of the forest, but even she sounded quiet and drained. Then, there was the third tension… This one, I suspect, was only felt by me. It was a strange mix of almost palpable feelings coming from within the sac. I could feel the subject’s fear, curiosity, and loneliness. At one point, I could swear I heard something like a faint voice coming from it and I had to fight really hard to keep myself from opening the burlap sac. When we finally exited the woods and arrived at their home, two full days after our encounter in the mist, Briannee quickly helped us pack while Onlen disappeared in the direction of a little stream which ran down from the nearby waterfall where he usually bathes, as his wife told us days earlier. She made it clear that he would not be coming back to see us off and that she would, in fact, like us to depart as soon as possible so that she could go and join him. I should also point out that as we exited the forest, I noticed that Flian was no longer riding on Onlen’s shoulder. No one in my team seemed to notice when she left or where she went, so we just left it at that. Despite our exhaustion, we respected Briannee’s wishes and departed as soon as our travel preparations were finished. We traveled for almost four more days before finally officially being out of Niamenese lands and one full morning on top of that to reach the first Amantenese settlement. By this point, the team and I had already grown used to the urge of opening the sac, so we refrained from doing so immediately upon arriving in Amanten. We decided we were all too tired and we’d wait until after we rested at an inn before digging into our research.

That night, however, I felt that third tension from the track back from the woods pulsing in my ears again. As I lied in the bed of my room in the roadside inn we came across, I looked at the sac resting on top of the little bedside desk. I got up, opened it and let its contents slide onto said desk. An adult human skull covered in dirt and riddled with little cracks in the bone stared at me, devoid of any life. On its side, spread onto the desk like a soft fabric, the long and crimsong little hood or cap that adorned it before. As I started to reach for it, I saw movement. Subtle, slow, weak. What I thought to be a dark red fabric revealed itself to be a sort of amorphous, living substance and from the borders of what would be the opening of the cap, parts of the ‘cap’ started to stretch out towards the skull like little tentacles. It latched itself to the bone and moved until it was ‘upward’ and close to my face. Suddenly, a pair of black beads showed themselves. Little dark eyes looking at me with intense curiosity and longing. There it was, finally! The creature I had waited so long to meet. Seeing it up close and harkening back to Onlen’s explanation of the Unseelie Fae, I immediately understood its common name. This was never a deceased human who came back to hunt the living in violent revenge.

No… this was a fragile, desperate creature who clung to its deceased host/bound partner even after their demise. Manipulating its animated corpse and feeding on its clotting blood as it deteriorated and nothing but bones remained. Bones and a little, bloody Red Cap.”

Marsella put the last page down on the desk and noticed she had been staring at her journal for quite some time, pen in hand, but nothing came to mind. She opened one of the desk’s drawers and pulled a sheet of paper more proper for a letter and started to write a reply. In her excitement, she failed to notice she did not read the final sentence in her colleague’s message.

“It was speaking to me, Marsella. It was scared and starving and I felt for it. I hope you understand.

Your friend and colleague, W. Asarui.”

[purlturtle]

💞, 🤲, and ☯️ for the fic asks!

Hi and thank you for asking! 💜 Those are some really neat questions; let's do this!

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

Saying "everything" is too easy, huh? 😁😁😁 So what I love doing is the imagining beforehand, be it by myself or with a friend (hi @anandabrat ! 👋) . Since that's fanfic, but also often AU or canon divergent, I'm gonna call it worldbuilding - but it's also character work and plot work, of course.

I do love the wordsmithing too; it gives me great joy. But the building of the story is in first place.

🤲what do YOU get out of writing?

Oh, escapism into a world where everything goes as I please... 😅😅😅 My writing is my happy place; i am right there with my characters, living through their highs and lows, their joys and heartbreaks (yes i have made myself cry while writing, why do you ask?) - it's a safe way to experience emotions, and I can steer how and where those emotions go. Isn't that great?!

☯️how do you think engaging with each other through tumblr, twitter, comments, kudos, creates healthy fandom experiences? How do you deal with that if you're not a social person/experience social anxiety?

I am a very social person 😅 i wanna connect to everyone who shares my interest, or who has interesting interests that they share and that make me go "oooh! 🤩"

I think it's not the engagement per se that creates a good/healthy fandom experience but the way that you approach it. Like, being an ass in someone's tags or comments is "engagement", technically, but where does that end? Aggravation is not a good feeling. So, yes to engagement, and I think Tumblr is perfect for that in a looser way than AO3 - but AO3 is perfect too, for the specific purpose of connecting about fic. Tumblr, you can connect to people about more things, but it's usually a lot faster, snappier - except for those long-ass lovely tag essays and analyses and metas and reblog chains where people just build on each other's love for a thing. And that's beautiful, because that's how that love just *grows*!

I would like to encourage anyone who has ever wanted to react to something i said and then not done it because of social anxiety to absolutely go ahead and do it. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Let's rotate our blorbos together and hey, if your rotational vector ain't the same as mine, no worries, i still wanna see it - could be fun, right? So go ahead, don't be shy. I always love to hear from you. (Generalized you, and you personally, gothprentiss!)

Thank you for the questions! Loved it! Here's the rest of the questions, if anyone else wants a go!

[reflections-in-a-critical-eye]

Hello again! I'm the pimple anon (which is a strange name! But hey, I've embraced my insecurities!)

And, right off the bat, wanna say that I think all the points you made are completely valid and I am thankful, that you took time out of your day to respond.

Now honestly, I didn't at all allude that the reason BTS might disband (if ever or if they did or had done) would be because of their interpersonal reasons of affection or romance or anything like that, implying some sort of a "love triangle", or weird "jealousy" or whatever between the members. If my writing gave off that vibe, that was completely unintentional.

And like I wrote I enjoy ALL the ships in BTS even the polyamorous ones LOL because they are all so much fun. But I'm pretty conscious that these imaginations don't bleed into the reality of things, because 1. I'm not privy to their personal life. 2. They share only what they want or are required to. 3. They are humans and not made-up characters in someone's fantasy. 4. Unless it directly is from them, almost everything is speculation.

With that being said, I have followed BTS from the very beginning to now and really looked at them through almost neutral lenses, in a way that my bias is all 7 of them. So really everything that I wrote, was just an observation and not really a "story" I weave to feed or soothe myself!!

And like you wrote Jimin is highly emotionally intelligent, and I, 100% believe that too. But watching BTS from the earlier days to recent times, there does seem to be something unfathomable between him and Yoongi. And I'm not saying it's romantic per se, because chances are most likely it's not, however even just looking at them interact on TV it's unmistakable. It's undoubtedly subdued to the extent, I see some "people" completely call BS on it because they just can't "see" it. I disagree though, and again this is not to ship Yoongi and Jimin, but from my point of view their interactions are always so subtly different from how they interact with the other members, it's very intriguing.

Jimin and Jungkook, on the other hand just seem to click. Like two pieces of a puzzle. And watching them throughout the years realize this themselves has been almost cathartic. It might be platonic too between them, but it seems to tither on the edge of romantic! And it's not subtle at all. Their interactions are loud, in our faces, for the world to see and try to recognize for what it is.

Ahh, forgive me, again, I've written an essay!! It's just that, none of Jimin's interactions with Namjoon, Seokjin, Taehyung, or Hoseok carries this sort of visible chemistry (for the lack of a better word) as he shares with Yoongi and Jungkook.

But to finish off, I do immensely enjoy differing points of view, except when it gets too territorial and overtly antagonistic, I run away in that case!! Thank you again for responding and sharing your point of view. Hope you have a lovely day :)

Omg, you're calling yourself pimple anon! That's funny. And cute. Embracing it is the best thing to do, way to go 💪

Thanks for coming back and adding to some of your initial thoughts. The thing is, I know you personally weren't implying anything about love triangles and disbandment reasons. It's just that I usually start from one topic or a smaller issue and then I make a general point from it and it may go into a slightly different direction. So it was not because I didn't understand you or anything, I just wanted to expand on a larger issue and a phenomenon partaining to shipping, that's all. And anon, when I said story, I didn't mean it in a bad way. I wasn't mocking or not taking you seriously. Agh, tone is hard to express in a written form. So sorry about that. If I would have thought you were writing some bullshit or anything, I wouldn't have offered that type of response. So, we're good here, I hope 😊

And about the specific topic, you used the perfect word in this ask and now I understand more what you were trying to say. Chemistry! Yep, that's it. And I totally agree with you. But my opinion also comes from a biased perspective because I do enjoy more watching Jimin and Yoongi and Jimin with JK. I've said this before, if shipping two people would be up to my choice, it would be JM and Yoongi. Because of that chemistry. Because there is the je ne sais quoi lingering all the time. I find that with JM and JK as well. I know others will disagree completely, which is why it will always be a matter of personal preference.

P.S. I don't mind long asks. I really don't. There's nothing to forgive. If you come back in my inbox for other occasions, you can sign yourself as pimple anon, I'll remember you 😄Have a lovely day as well!

[mehoymalloy]

i was looking for good photos for a meme for my friend and found your photo set titled A curator, a masterpiece, and a restoration. i am in awe of it. i have a shit ton to say but i'm already writing an essay. i might come back and say everything i like but here's a short bulleted list

first thing i noticed was Aloy's facial expression. she almost looks stiffened with a negative emotion, or something extremely positive or unexpected. as if Tilda is telling her something she has trouble comprehending

Woman Reading a Letter between them is a great bridge. it's almost a hint as to what Tilda may be saying to Aloy, and why she is reacting the way she is. i'm reminded of your description of this painting in ch 7 (?) of Prometheus Bound, when you said that the painting has warm tones. the last photo in the set gives everything a warm hue, which i really appreciate because it 1. supports your description of the painting and 2. the base's hue is too cold and impersonal for me, and the filter helped lessen the chill.

i've actually hardly looked at Tilda until writing this. i am very enthralled by Aloy's expression. it's interesting that Aloy has half her face towards the camera while Tilda only has ~1/3 in view. it looks like she is aloof and feeling sort of superior (as per usual) and she has a relaxed expression. her eyes are less open than Aloy's, and her eyebrows are lightly weighted, whereas Aloy's are heavy with feeling.

there is a great dichotomy between Tilda and Aloy:

light and dark (purple armor w/white accents vs white suit w/ black and gold accents),

organic and manmade (machine parts (which you could argue is not organic but to me the machines are very organically like... presenting? yes they're machines but they're realistic idk) and cloth vs swirling metals and hexagons and fluid golds and implants) (distinct lines vs melding edges)

cool vs warm (Aloy has warm undertones, reddish hair, whereas Tilda has cool undertones and sandy hair)

shadow vs illumination (Tilda's suit reflecting and her skin catching more light vs Aloy's light-absorbing armor, less illuminated save for the focus)

prehistoric vs futuristic (shield, gold fluid, blue lights, suit embedded into jaw vs spears, bows, birds feathers, armor from prey/predator remains)

perfection/minimalism vs imperfections/maximalism (Tilda's perfectly clear skin, atom-perfect suit, gold and glittering accents, shining, hair in segmented, flowing, almost featherlike strands, little frizzing or whatever the term is vs Aloy's scars (less visible), freckles, the scuffs and dents on her armor, the bags under her eyes, messier hair pouring haphazardly around her shoulders and back and weapons, the tiny strands of hair peeking out from below her focus vs Tilda's high cropped sides)

i like that you were able to catch Tilda using a hand gesture because she does it often. i think she tilts her head a lot as well, sometimes moving one eye closer to Aloy (like she does in the photos)

wow ok so i lied. i guess i needed a break to analyze some photography. personally, i am drawn to the warmth of the last photo and the framing of the first photo. :^)

I'm so glad you like it as much as you do! I think this was one of the first photos I took of Tilda, waaay back when I was debating trying to write at all. Your interpretations of all the little details in the shot is super interesting (and stuff I never would have thought of unless prompted), so thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts!

[danpuff-ao3]

Writing Rambles

...cuz I'm a writer and I feel like talking about writing 😄

Under the cut for easy avoidance!

Fics in the Oven:

Super Secret Mystery Project: closer and closer to being done! I'm estimating I have about 25% left to write? But let's be real...numbers are not my strong suit. I'm not entirely sure words are my strong suit, either, and yet here we are! I'm still hacking away at it. Pulling my hair out over it, the usual. I basically spend the work week sobbing and whining about it on my lonesome so that I feel refreshed enough to actually write on the weekend. So yeah. It's a nightmare but I see the light! (Also: I love it so much.)

Snarry Kinkuary fic: 1 done! To be posted on the 14th if I don't chicken out!

Riddledore Kinkuary fic: rough draft done. Just needs a bit of a shine, but I've got time. To be posted on the 27th!

Snarry Kinkuary/Kinktober fic: potential sequel to Obscene in the works! I'll post it for the nearest kink-event whenever I finish it. With luck that'll be this month, but I really gotta minimize my stress!

Other Kinkuary fics: tentative ideas for a Draco/Sirius fic. The barest scribbles of ideas for Ginny/Gwenog, Ginny/Rolanda, and/or Hermione/Lavender fics. But again, no stress allowed! (Or so I tell myself over and over and over just in case it actually sticks one day.)

Year of the OTP: no firm plans, but a determination to write a Snarry for each month of the year, per the YOTP prompts. If I can't actually manage, I suppose it will be okay. But it's very low stress I think! Surely I can manage at least a drabble a month, right...? (Let me not hold my breath on that one.)

Snarry Bang: a few ideas I need to compile and run by my teammate...cuz I'm not really sure I can resist the allure of Snarry Bang.

smile with sweet surprise: really need to work on chapter 3, but I'm not letting myself think about that too much until I get Super Secret Mystery Project done. This year for sure, though!

Lavmione: I really wanna write a Lavmione fic this year. A work with more character and meat to it than Kinkuary is really calling for. I don't know that it will be long, per se, or what it will be about, I am just having a lot of Lavmione feelings rn and I think they'll have to come out sooner or later. Potentially Maytime for a few events...

Magic in the Stars: need to edit a few more astrology essays to post on AO3 around the start of April! Not a high priority, but definitely on my to-do list. (Realistically once I start I won't want to stop until I finish.)

Other stuff...maybe I'll finish my Dralbus fic this year! And the sequel to The Christmas Prince. Oh and my Scarry fic. And another Yes, Daddy fic that's been a WIP for way too long. And Merlin only knows what other bright ideas I'll have before the end of the year...

Events: Oh yeah I'm running events, aren't I?

HP Chan fest: set to wrap up at the end of winter! It's been pretty chill and it helps to have an awesome co-mod! And on March 7 my 2 very questionable/problematic fics will go out to my poor subscribers, mwahahahaha. 😏

HP Fruit Fest: and as one fest ends, another will begin. Currently working on getting HP Fruit fest set up to run through spring! Doing this one solo (unless anyone wants to volunteer to help.) Another one designed to be chill because we all deserve a nice chill fruit I mean fest, right?

Okay since I have one wintertime fest and one springtime fest...do I need to come up with fests for the other 2 seasons, too? 🤔 Oh no why did I have to have that thought? Someone stop me!

[mythica0]

My belief system! I told you all this rant was coming, so here it is!(copied from my notes, hence the formatting/conversational type wording, as I was writing this as a sort of presentation)

So, if anyone is reading this , it’s likely that you don’t understand “the spirit world” or “the human world” what I mean when I say “imaginary but real at the same time” and why I’m so adamant that things like Santa, ghosts, other beings we can’t see, etc. exist.

In this essay- nah I’m joking, this isn’t an essay, but still important for a lot of my “crazy antics” as some would put it .

Now, if you hear me rant about a bunch of stuff that makes no sense but I insist is real, you might think I need to go into a mental hospital , but don’t worry, I’m not crazy. (Note: I will be talking about it this like it is objective fact. It isn’t, it’s a belief system, talking about it in this manner just makes it easier to explain/understand)

The Human realm, as I’m sure you could guess, is where we live. Where we preform our day to day lives . Everything here is tangible, in some form or another.

However, then there is the Spirit realm. This side of the universe has a symbiotic relationship with belief. Things that people believe in, usually come from here, and what people believe in, shows up here. Although there are exceptions (flat earth doesn’t show up here, for example. )

Most things here are not tangible, and are separated from the human realm. There are exceptions, such as hauntings, or sightings of things typically seen as faked or bs .

This is where things like the afterlife and ghosts reside. The previous paragraph is also why only what you believe in can effect you, if you don’t believe in it, the spirit realm can’t get to you, due to its reliance on belief.

So simply, if you believe in it, it probably is somewhere in the Spirit realm, if only because you believe in it. Every god and goddess of every religion lives here, being able to communicate with each other. But not people.

Most people cannot contact the spirit realm in any way, other than the basic effects they have in the world. However, there are, you guessed it, exceptions. I am one of those exceptions. I was born with the ability to contact creatures and beings in the spirit realm. That is why I can talk to ghosts, why they seem to be attracted to me. This is also how I have my lab, something which resides in the spirit realm and I can change at my will. This is how I know all of this stuff(based on life experience, again, not objective fact)

Stuff like that is also what I mean by “imaginary but real at the same time” it’s that it’s real, in the spirit realm, purely because I choose to make it so. Because I know that if I believe in it, in the spirit realm , it is true.

People start to believe in things this way as well. When they are open minded and trying something new, it gives the Spirit realm a chance to make them believe in whatever they are trying, which is an opportunity they pounce on, because belief makes them stronger. (This won’t work if the person is just trying it as a joke and doesn’t actually think it will work)

If you dont believe any of this quote on quote “nonsense” then You are closed minded, and will never experience it. Not a bad thing, per se. But just a way this manifests.

so be open minded, try new things and I’m sure you’ll discover something.

[harrison-abbott]

Personal Experience [From Italia].

So, I just got back from Milan, where I stayed for a full week. Had a fantastic time. And would encourage anybody to go and visit.

 There was one thing that happened whilst I was there, that I wanted to write about. It happened via my literary Tumblr blog – through the messaging system on there. Here’s what occurred:

 I had been out and about in the town and had really enjoyed it. And when I got back to my hostel I wrote some stuff on my blog; a fairly simple post about how I loved the vibrant zeal of Europe. And whenever I return to the Bloc, I always think that it was just so stupid that the UK left it. That Brexit was such a naïve disaster. I mentioned that I was Scottish in the post; and also said that I wasn’t overtly nationalistic as a Scotsman or Briton: only that I admired the rich energy of Europe and hoped the United Kingdom would reconnect with the Bloc in the future.

 A few hours later I saw I had some messages. From this other person, who had no profile photo, and was only called ‘Anonymous’. He’d sent me like fifteen messages. (I actually don’t know if the person was even male, but I’m guessing it was a man.)

 The 15 messages were snippets of this most hideous garble. He opened by saying, “Go back to the United Kingdom you Scottish bastard! And stay there! Don’t bring Milan into your political views.” And then he was calling me a “kilt-wearing, tartan, alcoholic Scot. Get some experience, you drunk arsehole!” Alongside saying that Europe belonged to the “Nazis in Germany; and that Europe was controlled by them”.

 I don’t remember the exact lines, but, man: it was just staggeringly offensive. [And also shit writing. Lols.]

 Anyway. I was really surprised and it was a bit upsetting. Because I’ve never in my 30 years experienced any racist abuse for being Scottish. ^ And as I mentioned above, I originally said in the post that I wasn’t a nationalist, per se. I still love Scotland, but, umm, when I’m writing stories, novels, poems, essays, personal writing, I’m not usually wearing a kilt.

 I called up my friend Henry after I’d gotten the hate mail. He was helpful about it and said he’d had similar experiences across his life. Henry is Scottish too. But he has an English accent (because his parents are English), and just because that’s how he talks. He said he got a lot of shit for being English in school, and … he’s from Scotland. That actually sounded way worse than my experience in this case.

 The incident didn’t ruin my holiday by any means. I was hurt for a few hours and I posted on Tumblr again about what’d happened, and received this array of supportive messages from folks that follow me. Which cheered me up a bit.

 I suppose I couldn’t understand why somebody would attack me for being Scottish. It sounded like this man, whoever he was, was basing his knowledge of Scots on the Simpsons character Groundskeeper Willie. This cartoon character is not offensive – because it’s a joke. It’s the Simpson’s writers making fun of the stereotype and is not meant to be taken seriously, and that’s what I thought about it when I grew up watching this beloved sitcom.

 I’ve worked with many people from other nations across my life. And I’m often interested in their language: I try to learn their words for English words, just out of a curiosity in linguistics. And I ask them questions about what it’s like in their country.

 Moreover, when I went to university, I had loads of friends who were non-UK, and they’re still my mates. From Germany, Singapore, Czechia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ireland, Polska, America – all sorts of places. I just liked them and got on with them. And they helped me out if I had problems, and me them.

 (Just for the record: I am notoriously clumsy when it comes to trying to speak other languages. Or just plain bad, rather. For instance, there was a time when I was at a wedding in Poland. And was introduced to this woman. And I held out my hand to her and said, “Dziękuję!”, which means “Thank you.” She just blinked. It could’ve been worse: she could have laughed. And it was super embarrassing, but ultimately only funny.)

 Hmm. In a tiny way I can now understand why people get so offended over racism. Of course, my thing was only small in terms of the horrors that other folks suffer across the globe.

 Going back to the England thing again: my father is English, so I always found that anti-England stuff insulting as well. I love England too and many people who have influenced me were from there (William Shakespeare, John Lennon, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, George Orwell, Pete Townshend, William Wordsworth, Graeme Greene … Paul Scholes. There are many). The whole point is that I adore the creative minds from England.

 There was this other occasion – just as final example – where one of my mates was coy about ‘coming out’ to me as being gay. And he finally told me, shyly, after a few months. Then asked me what I thought about it. I said, “I don’t care.” And he just laughed because it was a refreshing answer.

 The main conclusion is that bigotry should be eradicated through knowledge. Having a wealth of knowledge is the most crucial thing. I hope education spreads across the world.

 I suppose I could’ve written this essay and posted it to that bigot who attacked me anonymously online.

 But I figured a quotation was more relevant for the mood I was in at the time. So I just wrote back to him:

 “I am the Walrus. Yoo goo coo choo.”

 And he hasn’t responded with anything since.