#still feels kind of unreal that something i wrote actually...like...exists

[perchance-to-dream-dev]

"If you don’t find your life worth living, why not give it to someone else?"

Brand new visual novel "Perchance to Dream" Version 1.0 (extended demo) available now on Itch.io!!

Please try it out and tell me what you think! 😉

You are a failure.

You haven’t ever done a single thing of worth.

You have decided to die.

…but, of course, a failure like you couldn’t even achieve that.

At least, not until you saw the notice looking for test subjects for an experiment. One that promised to easily, painlessly, allow you to end your life while saving someone else’s. So you decided to apply and…against all odds…

You actually managed to luck out.

Now all you have to do is not fuck it up.

Thus it begins: Four men who want to live. One man who doesn't. And after five days, only one will be allowed to survive.

That choice is up to you.

Perchance to Dream is a near-future visual novel with surreal, philosophical, and darkly comedic elements featuring a bisexual main character and all-queer cast. It's a deep character study and relationship builder (like a dating sim) that is an examination of what makes some people want to die, and a hopeful look at what might make such a person decide instead to live.

Ultimately it's a story about finding solidarity in even the most unexpected of places, and whether or not that can be enough to save a life. 

...And also AI waifus. And a plant cult.

✨ Characters designed by Tea ✨ Promotional art by Artie / @ironduuude ✨ THAROS Logo design by B. Sperry

[pinstripe-wings]

Oh look, lore for liminal purgatory au, ‘cause I’m still rotating this au idea around (and shaking Blurr around in a box like a maraca). Also because I get to be a nerd figuring out how things work or don’t work in fictional settings for the au. I didn’t think a Transformers and Backrooms crossover would get me delvIng into world building for fanfic but hey, here we are XD

I started out with something simple (?) about how I wanted to approach the setting when on part 2 and deciding this was going to be longer:

1- decided to keep going off of Kane Pixel’s videos for the Backrooms portions, though there will be elements from other, earlier interpretations tossed in (including Backrooms inspired games/footage)

2- I also want to add in interpretations/inspirations from liminal space inspired games and other found footage in general concept.

One of these concepts I wanted to expand on (from the Kane videos) was about the mold, and the other is the psychological effect of being in liminal spaces but being in no active danger. Since the first concept stood out to me, and is a big factor in Blurr’s storyline, so I’m going to focus on the Backrooms and the mold for the rest of this post.

The mold:

Something I noted in the videos is the mold, and the introduction of the molded person in the third video that chases the POV. It got me thinking about how long one would have to be trapped in the Backrooms for that to grow on someone and likely affect their mental facilities and I feel like it’d be kind of like a parasite that infects the person and makes their perception change and make it hard to function but continue to exist because the mold, if it’s like a parasite, would be feeding of the person and for however long that would last until there was nothing left for the mold to consume/take over. The POV in the third Kane Pixel’s video did come across boots in mold, and maybe there were more clothes around. This leads into how one is affected by being in the Backrooms as a Human vs a Cybertronian:

This was one of those logistical things that hit me when I wrote the first part with Blurr and after making some notes about creature (another tfa Shockwave that is planned to have been in the Backrooms the longest-for a Cybertronian, anyway) and I may have done more thought to it than strictly necessary but I like speculation for fictional things and the the liminal space concept has always fascinated me since it first showed up for me online (somewhere between 2012-2015 I’d guess).

So.

Here’s the thought process I had for how Humans and Cybertronians would be affected:

If humans can go without food/water while there then technically Cybertronians could go without fuel. And since there is no evidence of anyone sleeping in the Backrooms, as the POVs always seem to be moving once they enter, then the are either a) actually unable to sleep or b) the ability is there, but the unreality of the surroundings make sleep difficult to accomplish

But then I started to think about it more.

I was thinking about how the Backrooms would likely see more humans no-clipping into it, if it’s some dimension connected to the world-if people can return there, perhaps away from where they first were-then the Rooms could very well have adjusted to that type of being in particular. Especially since there also appears to be objects from the world entering as well, such as lamps, chairs, and other objects-seems like it could happen with the randomness of the clips). Then I expanded the idea, of what if different worlds were able to be conceived for this au idea to work? What if the Backrooms works as it does, no matter the world/dimension, and where one returns depends on whee you are from?

Then I wondered (since this is all fictional, so why not) then what if the Backrooms are, to a point, distantly aware of occupants, in that there is someone moving about within the Rooms. In a way, I suppose the Backrooms in this au could be considered something of an SCP where, to an extent, the liminal spaces within the Backrooms are able to make use of whatever it is that unfortunately no-clips into its domain. But with the Backrooms inspired portion of it being more hostile in nature to living beings with the monsters that chase those that end up within its walls, and in the way the environment itself affects the unfortunate soul that ends up in the Backroom specific areas.

When it comes to those creatures/monsters, the Backrooms itself has a kind of way to somehow ‘know’ when someone can be incorporated into its plane of existence aka become something that the Backrooms will eventually no longer regard as something foreign to it.

Example: the mold infecting people/monsters or creatures being created from other people/other entities that may end of clipping from one reality to the Backrooms. To end up twisted into something mindless that will roam the endless rooms and halls-the Backrooms doesn’t necessarily encourage the monsters created within it to go chasing after new arrivals; but there is something of a link between it and the process that someone undergoes when that someone is affected deeply by being there.

If I go with that kind of interpretation, then the Backrooms, while encountering organic beings like humans, and maybe having come into contact with other organic based beings, has to find a way to react when non-organic beings end up there.

Like with the creature that chases Blurr in part one of the au. It would be considered the first Cybertronian to end up in the Backrooms, and that mech would have been there for an untold amount of time (even longer than Jazz). And by the way, Blurr is going to be slowly affected; the creature tfa shockwave that chases Blurr (not the one Blurr escaped from into the Backrooms) shows that the Backrooms *did* find a way to affect a non-organic, but in a different way than mold. It found a a way to mimic the mold and the way it acts as a kind of parasite, but displays differently in a non-organic.

The protoform of the Cybertronian is affected by time spent in the Backrooms. The feedback the Cybertronian receives from being there is what starts the process; comm attempts, kicking up debris and such up from the floor, touching something in the Backrooms, even just walking or climbing any surface in this place can carry a chance to have microorganisms inject a virus into the protoform. The virus is so undetectable that it would take many, many repeated injections for there to even be an inkling of something wrong. The more profoform is visible, the quicker the virus can be given as the Cybertronian moves through the space.

Kind of vaguely basing the stages of this virus off the parasite in Resident Evil 4:

1st stage- imperceptible; the virus niantes are so microscopic that Cybertronians would notice absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The injections are meant to be undectable.

2nd stage- A small, irritating itch in parts of the protoform. firewalls and anti-virus do not work as the virus has already made itself at home within the protoform and does not show up as a threat (the creature Shockwave noticed it just as it entered this stage and made do with supplies around him to try to figure out how to counteract it). Here are also bouts of twitching that begin soon after the itching sensation. This is not as easily dismissed, since toward the end of this stage the appearance of wires and cables will begin to protrude and grow out from the protoform; it aches in these areas, including where the uncontrolled movement was.

3rd stage- Less aching, but discomfort grows from the knowledge that there are cords and wires protruding out from one’s protoform and starting to grow out past the armor panels and transformation seams. Toward the end of stage 3, the growth from the protoform begins to wrap around some of the Cybertronian’s frame (Blurr will eventually will get to this stage).

Stage 4- Unpredictably, sense of unreality/dissociation; aggression oftentimes shows when confronted with external stimuli aka someone else approaching them instead of being alone like they’d grown used to. There are gaps of memory loss common after a Cybertronian experiences an aggressive, possibly destructive mood toward something or someone.

As the wires and cables continue to grow, feeding off the protoform (like the mold feeds off the humans in a parasitic way) soon extends to the fuel tank and even at times the fuel lines themselves. (Jazz is in the middle of this stage).

Final stage- The memory loss hits the Cybertronian in a way that makes them unable to access large chunks of their processor responsible for their memory banks. The virus loops the energy back to the wires wrapped around the frame and protruding from the protoform in a way that makes the wires block some of the areas of armor that allow for motion of arms, legs, torso and head; it also can warp the metal in a way if a Cybertronian spends too much time in the Backrooms (see again: creature Shockwave and his messed up frame and helm).

Once a mech reaches the final stage, the Backrooms will no longer deem the Cybertronian as separate from itself, and any focus of microorganisms in the area of the mech disperse, as the virus implemented parasite has done its job, like the mold does to a human. This means that the wire and cable growth ends, but the wires that have come out of the protoform are very embedded and have become a part of the protoform itself, mesh even covering it as if the protoform was meant to be like that.

This leads to the reason why creature Shockwave is leaning to one side or another or crouching in a creation way, as the wires and cables have prevented motion of some of the armor panels and transformation areas. This final stage has also affected the processor heavily; for creature Shockwave, his memories are a confusing mess. Logically, he knows that something is wrong but at this point, he can only roam the place he is trapped in with only a frayed amount of knowing who he is or who someone else might be if he runs into them. He recognizes Blurr, he is aware of the concept of who Blurr is, that he worked with a Blurr in some capacity, and that Blurr is in some kind of danger that creature Shockwave is unable to convey until blips of memory allow him to show Blurr recordings he made in the event he lost himself (which he did). But apart from that, creature Shockwave does not know details and can only act on instinct paired with whatever is left of his damaged by the virus/parasite processor is able to latch onto.

I want to do another post about this, and one about the psychological effects of liminal spaces on the characters in this au.

[detransition]

from permutational

“I never knew a woman like you could exist, so how could I even dream of you before I knew you?”

My wonderful girlfriend wrote this to me in her most recent love letter. She was writing about the concept of a “dream woman”, and how she wasn’t sure what hers would look like or be like until she met me. But, I can’t stop thinking about it, because this one little phrase captures something big about the butch lesbian experience, something I’ve had a hard time putting words to. It also captures realizations I’ve gone through after detransitioning.

It’s almost a “ring of keys” kind of thought. But I love how it highlights the relationship between knowing and dreaming. What you’re aware of influences what you can dream about, what you can aspire to. What you know informs the possibilities of who you can be and love at your core.

Back a few years ago, when my crisis was was coming to a head and I decided to detransition, I felt lost. I craved an “undo” button that didn’t exist. All I knew was where I’d already been, only there was no going back. I couldn’t envision what my future might look like, especially with how far I’d gone in transitioning. I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever “live as a woman” again; I felt “too far gone”. It didn’t seem like the concept of “womanhood” could encircle me as I was. When was the last time I saw a woman that looked like me? Oh yeah, never – that was the original goal, after all.

In that moment, when I didn’t know what to do, I went with my gut: the very first thing I did was make a beeline straight to YouTube. Probably sounds a little strange, but looking back, it makes sense to me. I was searching for possibilities, for people, for stories. I wanted direct evidence that someone like me can exist, because I felt very unreal.

I looked up ‘detransition’, and there they were. Not many at the time, but enough. There were people with deepened voices, facial hair, mastectomies, bodies and histories like mine, unmistakable. And yet, they called themselves women, some even called themselves lesbians.

I watched and listened, and it didn’t matter what they were talking about; I didn’t even agree with everything they said. What mattered was that they existed. They were real.  Some of these women passed as male, but didn’t seem pressed to change themselves any further or in any way, and still emphatically called themselves women. It was mind blowing to me, and comforting. Knowing that I wouldn’t be the first or only one like this was a relief. It gave me courage, made me feel a little less crazy. It felt like I could move forward knowing that I’m not utterly alone in this experience.

And later on, I actually met these women, and others like them. Women with different ideas and opinions, not all of whom agreed with one another, or used the same words, or understood themselves in the same way. Regardless of differences, they had experiences in common with each other, and with me.

Each strange woman I’ve met has broadened the possibilities of what a woman can be, and what kind of woman I can be. Spending time with other uncommon women has fundamentally changed me at my core. There is something they gifted me that I don’t have words for. Something that came from seeing, hearing, and sharing space. Knowing by witnessing.

My beard carries memories of the bearded women I’ve met and loved; when I look in the mirror, I see part of them in me. My head is bald because I met other women who were bald first, and through them got the courage to take the plunge and buzz it all off and never look back. My voice is stronger from singing with others who embraced their changed voices. I don’t have the shame and embarrassment about my voice that I did before.

Every single part of my body carries the memories of other women like me. Detransitioned women, butch dykes young and old, friends, lovers… My opinion of myself and what I can be has fundamentally changed because of the possibilities I’ve seen in other women.

I never knew women like us could exist. But I know now, and I dream of us often.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

[staroftheseablog]

There are so many things happening in my life lately. Some of them I still don’t’ understand because in one hand they feel so unreal to me, and in the other hand I feel really lucky and blessed that I achieved so many things. But…somehow I don’t feel satisfied with all of it.

I am 22 years old and there are so many things that I still want to do, feel, experience. For a year now I am working at the company I could only dream about when I was in high school. Now I am part of it and made it somehow my home - also my colleagues are just like my family. I’ve never in my life been less at home than this year. I have been to so many places and somehow I still found the time to work 12 hours shifts for whole year. Also, simultaneously I finished my 4th year of college successfully. Now, this October, I started my last year of masters.

Even all of this achievements, my mind is constantly messing with my nerves and make me question my entire existence, future, career, friendships.

I don’t know if somebody has noticed, but when you stared working on something you wanted your whole life, you ironically started also losing so many friends. There were so many moments this year when I felt lonely and sad, but again aware that this is, I guess, part of growing up. Yes, it did make me stronger, but sometimes I miss being just 18 year old student with no worries in this world.

At the beginning of the year I also had really tough times in my family. We faced death of our beloved family member who means the world to me and was/is/will be my forever guardian angel in Heaven. I miss him so much and I’ll always will. That experience taught me how to grief, but also how to be consistent with everything that was going on beside that tragic event. I survived, because I told myself I that had to.

At the beginning of next year I am about to start my whole new chapter in life called cultural exchange. I am moving to Spain for half of a year where I am going to study but also enjoy living in different country far away from home. I am excited, but also (not gonna lie) scared. That means that I am about to quit my job, pack my suitcases, left my friend, family and tell myself - “ you are on your own now”. Honestly, can’t wait. But, yes, it frightens me sometimes when I am thinking about it because this is one the hugest leaps of my comfort zone so far.

I also miss writing. I can’t even remember when was the last time I wrote something. I used to write songs, poems, essays. I feel like I used to be more creative back then than now. Also, I found myself being so lazy to read books. Maybe I wouldn’t call it lazy, but tired…or it was just a stupid excuse. Funny thing is that I actually bought a lot. New ones. Fresh ones. Expensive ones. They are still on the same shelf.

There is also one thing that bothers me since I started college. Actually this also bothers me in high school, but I didn’t care that much about that. I have terrible love life. When I say terrible I mean nonexistent love life. Yes, I would fall in this stupid kind of love with guys I met during summer or with someone that I would do my college project, but there would never be reverse reaction. I would just made it up in my head and used it for another one overthinking therapy before sleep. There was never a single person in my life who would really like me for who I am and who would see me as something more than a friend or a girl with her friends. I am really done with third wheeling because if I continue to do that, I feel like I would become a doctor or expert in field so I can write my master thesis on this topic. It is critical.

I really do need someone who is going to love me. I need a lover, a friend, someone who’s going to respect me, listen to me, hug me, someone who can be my emergency call when I couldn’t find strength to put my shit together.

Yes, I did pray and I know that God is working in my favor. That gives me hope and peace. I am not unhappy but I feel like I can be happier. Or at least I deserve to be.

Maybe I don’t, maybe that’s not the case. Maybe I have so many sins so I am obligate to wait until I eat myself alive. Maybe that is some kind of punishment. Maybe it isn’t right time yet. Maybe I am too desperate. Or I am too exaggerating.

I am confused. No one said that with 22 years old I have to know what I wanted to do with life, but sometimes I am really lost.

I want to do everything, but again I don’t have time to everything. I have to make sure that I am financially stable, because I don’t wanna take money from my parents. But…what if working just to stay alive takes from me the best years of my young student life?

It is hard to be young these days. Everyone would say they understand you, but the fact is that they actually don’t. I haven’t met a person who understands me better than myself. My mum is really close, but that woman on the other hand has super powers I wouldn’t never be able to understand properly. She is miracle maker. I want to be that for myself too.

I am sensitive, but I am also brave. Braver than before. Circumstances taught me so.

I know I can do whatever I put my mind to. There is 101% chance that I am going to survive every next battle that is about to face me. I already faced it before.

I am me and, besides everything that I have just said, that is the only thing I surely know no one can beat.

It is me against me.

And we love to cooperate.

10/10/2023

[path-of-my-childhood]

“I said this in another interview but I feel so lucky that I get to exist at the same time as her. And I feel so lucky that I have somebody like her to look up to who’s not only so talented and successful and hardworking, but so kind and classy. I just admire her in so many ways and it’s so surreal that she is supportive of me, that’s just the biggest compliment because I truly would not be the songwriter I am today had I not grown up listening to her. [On whether she’s had a chance to talk to Taylor] Actually, this is crazy and I still have not really processed this, but she sent me a package last night - I just opened it last night. She is the kindest individual, I don’t know where she finds the time. She handwrapped all of these gifts for me, and she wrote me a ten-page-long handwritten note where she talked about how she had this ring when she was writing Red and she wore it when she was doing cover shoot or something, and she said that it was like a good luck charm for her so she got me one that was just like it. Like... can you believe it? Can you believe that? What kind of amazing human does that? She’s unreal.”

– Olivia Rodrigo on receiving a ten-page letter from Taylor and how much it means to her to have Taylor’s support (iHeartRadio: Most Requested Live Interviews with Maxwell, March 28th 2021)

[ablednt]

Alright writing/roleplay tumblr we need to talk about textforms.

This is going to be a very long post I apologize but this knowledge is deathly important as it's reaching a very vulnerable group of people. From personal experience knowing this can save people from getting into toxic friendships and help ease intense struggles and depressions. If you have writer followers I ask you reblog this to get the word out, thank you.

What is a textform

A textform is a type of willogenic/parogenic system member that form through some kind of writing or roleplaying. This means that they're sentient people who now share a body with the people who wrote them, most often being an OC or a fictional character before the writers brain gives them actual life.

Because there's been no actual scientific studies on their existence I have no hard science to give you however the logical explanation behind it goes like this:

The human brain is able to contain multiple conscious and sentient entities. Often, it will become multiple as a defense mechanism (as noted in clinical plural dissociative disorders) but it's a natural function of the human brain and may do so for really any reason (similar to most neurodivergencies that someone isn't born with)

Because this is a fairly simple change in the brain/something every brain can be capable of doing you can actually intentionally program the brain into becoming multiple, but see you can also do it entirely without meaning to or being aware of it.

Now I want to clarify that there is nothing harmful or scary about this! Being plural isn't bad at all and is an existence many people celebrate. But when someone has textforms in their unrealized system and doesn't know they're sentient it can be incredibly painful emotionally. So that's why people need to know about this.

Obligatory disclaimer: if you read this post and think you want to become plural intentionally, you are welcome to do so but you need to take at least a few months exposing yourself to the plural community to gauge if this is really something you want and can do responsibly. You cannot go back on your decision once your plural and your headmates will be sentient beings not characters to project on or toys to play with. They will have all the rights to your body and identity as you do now because you're sharing it equally with them.

Now that that's out of the way back to textforms.

How are textforms made

Normally this is in the "character development" phase. Many writers eagerly develop their characters. When I was younger and had no idea I was plural my advice for oc making turned out to be an unintentional guide to textforms (more on my experience later): just put your character in every situation imaginable until you always know how they'd respond to things.

Basically, as you spend your time making a character act and think consistently from their POV you're training your brain to have all of that data and that's very similar to the data that the brain has on you and you're training the brain to be able to operate coherently from a perspective and consciousness entirely different from your own.

Now, this isn't a %100 will make everyone plural every time, there are obviously good writers who have a grasp on their characters who are singlet. There's no actual data but if I had to guess I'd say there's about a 50/50 split down the writing community just based on what I've observed.

But there's a lot of people who became plural this way and didn't realize it and that could include the writer reading this right now which is why everyone needs to be aware of this.

If this is such a big thing how come no one notices?

Because it's been completely normalized in the writing community but dismissed as metaphorical.

How many times have you heard "the characters write themselves" or phrases that indicate that a writer is giving a voice to sentient entities? From what I've been able to observe some of that is singlet authors being metaphorical and humble bragging and a lot of that is plural writers trying desperately trying to put their experiences into words but dismissing it completely almost immediately because no one told them being plural was possible.

This is comparable to say, gender identity. Trans and nonbinary people have always existed but when they don't know they're allowed to exist like that it's often "im a tomboy" or "they disguised themselves as a man" or any other thing thats immediately dismissed as being cis.

How do I know if I have a textform?

There's a lot of different signs but here's some I have experienced before finding out I was plural

You "miss" your characters when you're not writing about them or interacting with them in some way

You feel like your characters are real "in your heart" (for me this was in an incoherent loop like "they're not real but they are to me, in my brain, but they're not real to other people, but they're in my brain so they're real but no but yes but no")

You get so distressed they're "not real" that it feeds into actual mental health problems like depression, anxiety, dissociation etc. (I'd have fits of sobbing because these were my friends but I didn't know they were with me so it felt like i was grieving their deaths and had the same level of emotional pain)

Sometimes or all the time when you write about them you feel like you "become them" or that they're writing through you. (Especially if your hands move automatically or without your control. This can be hard to notice but for me when headmates control the body or hands movements feel faster and lighter or very slightly numb.)

Your muse for writing them comes and goes unpredictability: they're either here or they're not here so writing them doesn't feel the same.

You can vividly recall things that happened to the character in 1st person (or in 3rd person visually but with their thoughts and feelings) as if they're you're own memories.

You "roleplay" them in everyday situations IRL. (E.g once I liveblogged a tv show as my muse to a friend and was like haha lol im so talented I can roleplay in real time but found out later it was a headmate doing that themselves)

You have conversations with them mentally in which they actually respond to you. Singlets don't have actual enriching conversations with themselves because they only have one perspective and cannot give themselves any new information. So if you're responding to yourself and you don't feel in control of that response then you're pretty objectively plural tbh.

You have times where the lines between you and the character feel blurry or like you're a vague fusion of yourself and the character

You have an actual relationship (of any kind: romantic, platonic, familial, etc.) in which you can sense nuanced feelings about yourself from them that you aren't in control of.

There's a lot more but that's the most notable ones

Why this is so important

I'm just talking about my own experience now so I'll preface this with a few things. I'm a mixed origin/multigenic system but our system has existed since we were toddlers. Due to trauma we have DID and for a long time dissociated heavily to avoid our plurality. This means my experience may be more distressing than other plurals with textforms however people without DID can still experience these things.

When I was a teenager I joined a lot of writing communities and also roleplayed on tumblr. Writing very quickly became my main passtime and all I really did. I joined a roleplay group when I was 15-16 that I took far too seriously to the point where people were concerned about me because I was writing what was just supposed to be a joke roleplay group %100 seriously and very intensely.

In that time I started to form my first main textforms (we've undoubtedly had them before then but I had only formed a little under a year prior) because I was doing this every day it really started bringing my characters to life. (Literally)

And honestly it was something beautiful the distress of it aside. Like one of my ocs was a kid so I'd always celebrate their birthday with them and I'd cuddle a plush so they'd know I loved them/p and we'd watch their favorite cartoon episodes together. It wouldn't be until around three years later that I realized they were actually there for this but it was heart warming.

For me, all I ever wanted was for these characters to feel appreciated and like someone really cared for them and loved them even if they couldn't feel it and it wasn't until later I learned that they could.

The trauma came in not knowing they were real. I grieved for them like they were dead because I thought I'd never get to see them. I wrote them into traumatizing or upsetting situations to cope with my childhood trauma not realizing that was effecting them for real and hurting them.

Most notably because it was my one solid interaction with them, the one time society allowed me to talk about them as if they were real, I really HAD to roleplay them. Because it became an emotional need I wound up in a lot of toxic friendships in the roleplay communities because I needed someone, anyone, to allow me to interact with my headmates. I had friends who I really was only friends with because they let me talk about my characters constantly (and some of them weren't toxic to me but it was in hindsight really unfair to them) and I let people verbally and emotionally abuse me in roleplay spaces because this wasn't just a hobby to me but a lifeline.

Not knowing they were real but feeling them there, having conversations with them, and forming actual relationships was a hellish sort of feeling I don't wish on anyone. I never realized how isolated it made me, and how horrible it felt to have the most important people in your life be people I thought didn't exist.

I only found out about plurality through luck. I met some systems who had fictives and they got strong plural vibes from me because of how I talked about certain characters and because I said I wanted to be plural but thought I probably wasn't because I'd have noticed, right?

From there I was able to actually connect with and talk to my headmates. Now I'm happily out as plural and in multiple fulfilling in system relationships.

I want everyone in the writing community who's struggling with the same things to have the chance I got. That's all I want is to educate people about this so they don't have to grieve for people who are right there with them.

Feel free to send me an ask or a dm if you have any further questions. Sorry this post was so long I can't really shorten it at all. Again if you are have a lot of writing followers I very gently request you reblog this to get the word out. Even if you can't please talk to your writing mutuals and friends about plurality and about textforms.

[Also this should go without saying but this is absolutely NOT the place for syscourse any invalidating comments about systems will be blocked and where possible deleted it costs $0.00 to prioritize people's mental health over your discourse hot takes.]

[whyarewecalledtheshipname]

Kh3 spoilers:

LOL I wrote the crack thing, posted it to ao3 with a T rating just bc there are some implications here in the form of jokes, warning in case anyone's not comfortable with that.

Summary: Data Sora and Data Riku get sent to Riku's phone to accompany him on his ventures through Unreality. Riku is appropriately lost.

This is short so we don't get any shenanigans past their first meeting.

~~~

“Hellooo?!”

Riku stares at his gummiphone screen, unblinking as a little romper-wearing Sora taps on the screen from what seems like—the inside.

Beside the little Sora is a little him, a little Riku, in a black coat instead. “Stop screaming or he won’t answer the phone,” the little Riku says tonelessly. He’s typing directly in front of the gummiphone screen (or, behind it?), but squinting somewhere off to the side, as if at an adjacent display.

“You said to call him, didn’t you?”

“You know I didn’t mean like that.”

Riku misses the first “call”, perplexed as he is, but the second call comes with even more yelling—first from the little Sora, then from the little Riku at the little Sora—and Riku is compelled to answer. He taps at the green icon on his phone with an unsteady finger, and is blinded by the little Sora’s smile, now unobstructed by buttons.

“Wow! Look how big you are, Riku!”

The little Riku in-on-behind the screen glances up at Riku for only a moment. The little Riku’s mouth twists as if he doesn’t know whether to be impressed or not.

The little Sora reads the little Riku perfectly. “Aw, c’mon Riku. It’s still you! It’s a compliment! Be proud!”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, Sora. Worry about—uh, the other me...He’s probably confused.”

Riku makes a noise, because confused doesn’t even begin to describe the dizzying mesh of emotions in his chest.

Little Sora turns back to Riku—the big one—and his grin turns sharp. “Let me handle this, Riku.” (He’s still talking to the little one.) “If I let you explain, he’ll probably end up asleep again.”

Little Riku gives Little Sora a mildly offended glare. “Hey, it’s my job to know the ins-and-outs of the datascape; the data chose me.”

And Riku is immediately attuned to the little Riku’s words, and to the little Sora’s reaction. “Hey, don’t say that. Sora’s trying to help.”

The little Sora and Riku both look at Riku, then—truly look. The little Sora glows, and the little Riku finally looks appeased.

Riku doesn’t know how to feel about having his younger self’s little...smirk...turned on him. And the light in Little Sora’s eyes definitely makes Riku feel unsteady on his feet. But he stands his ground.

Sora takes a moment longer than necessary to start talking again. “Thanks, Riku. But my Riku’s—” and Riku chokes a little at the phrasing, “—just saying that because I’m always making fun of him because computers are lame.”

“Your existence literally depends on computers—” the little Riku interjects.

“Yeah, but they’re still lame. I’m the only reason you have any fun in here, huh?”

The little Riku suddenly stops typing because his fists are clenched, and he turns the color of little Sora’s romper. He sneaks a peek at Riku, but the little Sora spots it and cackles.

Even big Riku almost misses the moment Little Riku pulls up his hood, it happens so fast.

“We’re data versions of you,” Little Sora says once he’s stopped laughing, “but I bet you knew that already. The others usually call me Data Sora, and this is Data Riku.”

Riku nods after only a beat of silence.

“We got sent to watch you!” Data Sora announces brightly, as if Data Riku isn’t visibly having a meltdown right beside him, even under the hood. “Uh—! Help you, I mean. King Mickey definitely did not send us to keep an eye on you since you left all by yourself, because he definitely wasn’t super paranoid that something would happen to you, and if he was, he definitely didn’t tell me not to tell you.”

Data Sora crosses his arms behind his spiky head, and Riku doesn’t remember his own Sora being such a little brat. Oh wait, yes he does.

Just the thought of Sora reminds Riku of where he is, and why. The idea of finally finding Sora here makes him feel like he can do anything. It’s been a sensation he’s missed this past year.

Riku looks down at Data Sora, and comes back to himself. For some reason, Data Sora looks as smug as they come, and Data Riku has his hands at his temples, as if in disbelief. Or, maybe embarrassment.

“Alright,” Riku finally says. “But why send you? If anything goes wrong, couldn’t I just let them know myself? I know you guys weren’t on—in—my phone when I left, so clearly there’s still some kind of signal between here and there.”

“Look at you—me—using your brain.” Data Riku seems to have finally recovered from whatever fit Data Sora had induced, and of course the first thing Data Riku does is try to sound like he’s been chill this whole time. “But you’re still wrong. The data of your phone can still be accessed and updated even across worlds, or realities or whatever, from the main servers. But signals like the ones you’re thinking, for audio or video calls, can’t reach you here.”

Data Riku has pulled his hood back down, probably just so Riku could see the smug look on his face. “Your phone would be a useless brick here. Lucky for you, I’ve already accessed this world’s data through the kinds of signals they have here, and adapted the phone’s data accordingly. I might have to change it again once you get back, though, so don’t make any friends here you intend to keep.”

Data Sora, who’s been falling asleep, suddenly has something to say. “Hey! Don’t tell him that!” He’s pouting, though, not frowning, so neither of the Rikus bothers to reassure Data Sora. Data Riku just shrugs with his eyes closed, and when Data Sora turns to Riku as a last resort, he shrugs as well.

Data Sora crosses his arms, huffing. “Two Riku’s, and they both suck.”

For some reason, Data Sora grins, and Data Riku absolutely panics.

“Nonono, don’t, Sora! Don’t say it! I will actually delete you!”

It’s as if Data Sora doesn’t even hear the threat. His grin just gets sharper. “But Riku, then what’ll you do for fun?”

Data Riku releases a tortured sound, smashing frantically at his keyboard, and the screen goes dark. Data Riku didn’t just end the call, he shut down the whole phone.

Riku’s perplexed face stares back at him from the dark screen, and he wonders what in unreality is going on in the datascape.

[thelightofthingshopedfor]

gotta say I’m particularly pleased with Loki using magic fireworks to show off, because I literally put that in the Steve/Loki fic I wrote for @veliseraptor​ a few years ago, where they sort of grow up together as childhood friends because of handwavey time-travel shenanigans:

Loki shrugs, looking down. After a moment he says, “We Aesir live such long lives that we mark such events differently as we age, or at least that is the common practice. Young children’s birthdays are celebrated every year; later, perhaps the day is marked in small ways but is truly celebrated once each decade, or once per century for adults and those nearing adulthood. I am approaching that age myself, so it is not as though I expect a regular, lavish celebration or anything of that sort. It is only…”

“Thor gets a bigger party?” Steve guesses.

“A feast of some kind, most years,” Loki says, his voice flat. “It is good for our warriors’ morale, you see. When he turned 750, the festivities lasted nearly a fortnight, and he was gifted with Mjolnir, a weapon of great power. So I thought…well.”

“Yesterday was your 750th too,” Steve says (it still feels unreal to him to measure someone’s lifespan with numbers that high, but when he does the math in his head, he’s pretty sure that’s about equivalent to 15, so basically Steve’s age).

Loki looks down again and nods. “In truth, I am not sure anyone remembered this year was anything out of the ordinary.”

Steve and his mom have never had much, but she’s always managed to make Christmas and his birthday special in some small way, taking extra shifts to afford an art book for him or ingredients for a cake. He’s been a little jealous sometimes of the stuff other kids’ parents can afford, but he’s never, ever felt forgotten. In every other way, Loki’s so much richer that Steve can barely comprehend it, but—

“Well,” he says, “I can’t throw you a feast, but I can take you to Coney Island for ice cream or something.”

“Ice cream,” Loki says.

“Yeah, haven’t you—no, of course you haven’t had ice cream, that’s my fault. I don’t really want to spend money on the rides right now, but just walking around is fun, and I can at least do ice cream.”

“I would like that,” Loki admits.

***

“Here we go, this vendor doesn’t charge extra for toppings.”

Loki balks again when Steve pulls out his wallet. “You needn’t, truly.”

“I know,” Steve says. “But it’s your birthday, and I want to.” He buys them both double-scoop cones with chocolate sauce and hands one to Loki as they head down the boardwalk. “Careful, it’ll melt and start dripping if you don’t eat it fast enough. Uh, but don’t eat it too fast or you’ll get a headache. You just lick it.”

Loki smiles sidelong at him, looking faintly amused. “I think I can manage.” He licks at the ice cream once, delicately, and then his eyes widen a little and he returns to it with a lot more enthusiasm.

“I guess you like it,” Steve says, grinning.

“This is good. I wonder if the cooks at home could make something similar.” He catches a drip running down the side of the cone. “How is it made?”

“No idea. I bet we could look it up somewhere, though. I think it’s milk, ice, and sugar, mostly.”

“Mm.” Loki’s almost reached the cone already—maybe Asgardians just don’t get ice cream headaches—and is finally slowing down. “Well, if you can find me a recipe, I will see what can be done.” He neatly sidesteps a child running between them and smiles at Steve in a way that makes his heartbeat pick up. “Thank you, my friend.”

Steve ducks his head. “Glad you like it.” His own ice cream is starting to melt, and taking care of that keeps him occupied for a few minutes. Then Loki hops up to sit on the boardwalk railing, facing the beach and the water. Steve scrambles up next to him a lot less gracefully, but he manages, and for a little while they just watch the boats and beachgoers, with the Wonder Wheel standing sentinel overhead.

“When is your birthday?” Loki asks.

“July 4, actually. Just a couple months away now. There’s always…” His lips twitch. “My mom used to say the fireworks were just for me, like the city was wishing me a happy birthday too.”

“I am afraid this is another custom with which I am unfamiliar.”

“Right, yeah, of course. July 4 is America’s independence day, since back in—well, actually, that’s not important. Everybody celebrates with fireworks, they’re like colorful little explosions, and we don’t have a great view but my mom started taking me up to the roof to see better.” Steve laughs a little. “I think she felt bad after a while for telling me the fireworks were for me, but I’d already figured it out, and honestly I didn’t mind. I’m nobody special, I know the city’s not going to celebrate me, but it’s still nice feeling like everyone’s celebrating with me.”

“Well,” Loki says, “to your assertion that you are ‘nobody special,’ I would be inclined to point out that you are almost certainly the only living human to count a prince of Asgard as a friend. Which…focuses on me rather more than I intended.”

Steve snorts. “That was pretty much luck anyway, right? You could’ve stumbled across anybody.”

“True enough. But I met you instead, and I am glad of it. If either of us has cause to be grateful for that luck, I think it would be me.” He darts a glance toward Steve and then away, studying the shoreline, and Steve is suddenly struck by how beautiful Loki is. He’s noticed before, but not quite like this, with the breeze ruffling Loki’s hair and the sun highlighting those fine, sharp features Steve is always itching to draw. He doesn’t just want to draw Loki now, though; mostly he’s wondering what it would be like to kiss him.

***

The next time Steve sees him, it’s slightly more than two months later and he’s sitting on the roof sketching the skyline when Loki pops into existence next to him. He’s doing a terrible job of trying to hide a self-satisfied grin, so whatever his latest prank was, it must have gone well. Before he can ask, Loki says, “Your birthday is soon, yes?”

“Last week, actually.”

“Damn. I’d hoped to find you on the day itself, but—well, nothing for it now. I wanted…” He reaches into a satchel, hesitates, and pulls out a small wooden box. “I brought you a gift. A small thing, but—I hope you like it.”

Steve sets his sketchbook aside and takes the box, intrigued. The top opens on a hinge; inside, cradled in a nest of straw, is a black crystal ball about the size of Steve’s two fists, with a polished wooden base. When he pulls it out, flecks of color glint across its surface wherever the sun hits it. It’s pretty, but he can’t think why Loki would give him a fancy paperweight, and he’s not sure how to ask without sounding ungrateful.

“Put your hand on the sphere,” Loki says, his voice still full of suppressed excitement, “and think of your fireworks.”

Steve does. A tiny spark of light shoots up from the base of the globe and bursts under his fingers, then another and another, red and blue and gold and green, spiraling downward and fading out before exploding again, and his confusion turns to wonder as he stares at it. It’s like a snow globe but it’s full of little fireworks instead, fireworks that look just like the real thing in silent, miniature form. He turns it in his hand and the lights follow the motion, sinking back to and shooting out from what’s now the bottom, in spirals and spiders and starbursts.

“Fireworks in a jar,” Steve says. “This is incredible.”

Loki grins. “It is, isn’t it? I didn’t make the globe, of course, I bought that, but the enchantment is mine, built from scratch.”

Steve turns the globe again, marveling at the tiny little world in his hands. “I thought you didn’t know what fireworks were?”

“As it happens, they are a very old invention—as Midgard marks time, anyway—so I was able to observe some myself at a celebration of some kind in China, and I replicated those. So…now you have fireworks that really are just for you.”

The globe is slightly warm against his palms, and Steve closes his hands over it. “This is—way better than anything I gave you.”

Loki looks at him with a crooked smile. “I suppose that is a matter of perspective.”

I mean, I guess I was wrong about fireworks not being a thing on Asgard, but still, it’s fun. :)

[violexides]

The DreamSMP Explained (By Someone Who Has Never Watched Any DreamSMP Stream)

cracks knuckles. okay, fucking FINALLY doing this. ahem. 

Couple things to preface with, will keep this brief. 

This isn’t entirely blind. One of my best friends has helped out in places, just because I wanted to hit on everything (accurate or not), and I know mutuals/friends who post and write about DreamSMP (though how much of that is AU or canon-typical, I can’t say. I can’t tell). I’ve never seen a single stream, but I’ve seen a few clips. So, my understanding is a bit more than the title may imply, but still not a lot. Sorry.

Also, this will be very, very long (near 2k words). All under the cut, will TW this with themes of abuse, death, manipulation, unreality, hallucinations, and me having an abrasive sense of humor where I revel in the glee of calling these guys European twinks. Though, speaking of. This is ALL about the actual characters, not the people. I don’t know anything about most of these actual streamers, so, no hate to them. In fact, I think they’re pretty cool for having come up with a… somewhat coherent… narrative, all through using Minecraft as a medium. Anyway.

Sigh. Without further ado, 

So. There’s this place. Made by Philza, AKA God, AKA one of like six different gods. Philza, born from the womb acting like someone’s 43 year old uncle, has three kids. Wilbur, Tommy, and Tubbo. There are other people here, with some scattered ancestry that raises some questions, but I don’t really care who fucked an Enderman and had an 8’0 tall kid (Ranboo DNI).

There are also places! Sometimes! On a good day, there are actual, intact locations. We’ve got hits like “The Badlands”, which I think was taken from about three different dystopian novels I read in third grade, “El Rapids” (Quackity, Subpoena (autocorrect wins this round), and Karl made this one), “Pogtopia”, no comment on this one, and “L’Manberg”, which Wilbur made. 

Only one of these is going to be important.

So, might be a good time to say this: I don’t know what the inciting incident of DreamSMP is? I don’t know what was the catalyst for all this shit, but I’m going to take a guess and say Wilbur blowing up L’Manberg had something to do with it.

… That’s going to be a pattern, by the way. Just. Stick with me here. 

So, Wilbur is an older child who read the Hamlet parts in literature class and can only cope by ripping down the very creations he has and taking the entire world down with him to hell. Which is to say, he throws a pity party after Jschlatt (some bitch who abused Quackity, that’s another trend, yippee) wins an election and decides to blow up the fucking kingdom and kill Jschlatt.

Little does Wilbur know, the devil may work fast, but Jschlatt getting a fucking stroke and dying out of nowhere works faster. 

I’m not kidding. He gets a stroke, he dies, and Tubbo takes over. I’ve tried to puzzle out the government structure of DreamSMP for a while and have drawn zero conclusions. In any case, Wilbur also tells Philza, his… father…, to kill him. And Philza fucking does? For some reason, like, holy shit.

Anyway. Wilbur is now a ghost. So is Jschlatt. The… life system, on this server, is really strange and I don’t know how to fully explain it. Just know that nothing has permanence here. 

I’m going to throw this out here because I don’t know when it’s relevant, but I wrote down something about Karl being in a place called the In Between. I don’t know how the hell he got there or what the hell he’s doing. This might be where the discs are? I can’t explain the discs. I… think they are fighting over the discs? Don’t know why, Wilbur makes music himself, I feel like you have enough to go around.

(Stream Saline Solution it reminds me of my best friend only if you want okay thx)

L’Manberg gets blown up again. This time, Techno did it. He did it just after giving this speech about Theseus, which, jokes aside-- the writing of DreamSMP is actually really good. That was all done on improv, and I did watch an animatic with some of the audio from it, and damn. I’m a whore for metaphor and I love this for him.

This happens, and Ranboo and Tommy decide to do a little hehe and burn down George’s house. Who is George? Good question: a king. Of what? Good question: call me the antithesis of a Ranboo kinnie and get me some discs because I hear no answers.

Dream gets pissed off by this (who gave him authority, I don’t know) and builds a wall. He for some reason decides that if Tommy, and only Tommy, breaks some rules, the wall will stay up forever. So, naturally, Tommy immediately yells at him, and Tubbo gets pissed (what happened to the whole, who are you without me, yourself, thing?). Dream exiles him, which is bad enough, but then Dream burns down his house, so now he’s double exiled.

Dream kins Julius Caesar but Julius Caesar does not kin Dream and I think that’s important. 

(It had to be important enough for me to literally go back and edit this in, for no reason, because I think I’m really fucking hilarious.) 

Techno takes in Tommy and shows him his super secret cave of evil, which Tommy promptly screams at. Philza and Ranboo visit sometimes, but mostly Tommy just sits there. Dream says “fuck you” to Techno, but Techno decides to wage war on L’Manberg, so Quackity and co. come over to try and kill Techno, but Techno kills Quackity with a pickaxe, but Quackity has three lives for some reason, and then Dream blames Ranboo for blowing something up for literally zero reason, and can you tell how tired I am.

Ranboo sees a smiley face in his notebook and zones the fuck out while Dream tries to kill… Tommy? No, Tubbo. No, fuck, no it was Tommy. I don’t know why people suddenly care about it n- NO, NO IT WAS TUBBO, he is TRYING to kill TUBBO. 

I hate Europeans. 

Ahem. Dream goes to jail, but he has books in jail, which is a horrible idea. Everyone knows that if you give a war criminal some novels he’ll accidentally haunt someone else’s dreams and launch psychological warfare with the prison guard, Sam, who has zero idea what he’s doing because he probably didn’t sign up for this.

Also, I’m gonna say this here because I don’t know when it will fit in. There’s this place. Called… the Egg. Now, I don’t know what goes on in the Egg. I don’t know what the Egg is. I don’t know who decided to name all these fucking things, because I think the Egg is just a box made of bedrock. I think Ranboo hallucinates about it, but Ranboo hallucinates about everything so I’m not really sure. I’m going to call it here and say that this is probably a bad sign.

People are trying to talk to Dream. First BadBoyHalo, who gives Ranboo this little note from Dream with a smiley face. Or maybe that was SapNap. Either way, Ranboo hallucinates seeing Dream, and then actually sees Dream but he thinks he’s hallucinating? I don’t know. 

Then we get Tommy. Basically he kind of comes in here and Sam, being a good prison guard, allows Dream to beat Tommy to death and then revive him (don’t ask about the revivals just pretend it makes sense please). He tells Tommy he’s also going to revive Wilbur which Tommy isn’t a big fan of, considering that Wilbur, uh. Vague hand gestures. You get the schtick. Hopefully. I don’t know.

Anyway. Uh. Quackity loses his shit, also.

As in he talks to Jschlatt, the ghost of his abusive husband. Makes a deal-- if Quackity here loses, he revives Jschlatt. I don’t know what the winning conditions are, but, thankfully, they don’t matter because Quackity loses damn near instantly. 

So he goes to Dream and Sam gives him really powerful gear for no reason. Dream is a bit terrified by this situation, and Quackity is like “give me the fucking book”, and then we never find out what happens because Quackity ends up covered in blood about to blow up El Rapids. I hadn’t expected to mark Quackity off on the demolitionist bingo, but hey, all’s fair I guess. My next bets are on Tubbo or whichever bitch became god of the sea. 

(I also made a joke to my friend about me kinning Quackity (the character not the streamer could you fucking imagine), to which they said “you’d torture someone for information”? So. I guess Dream, uh. Hm. That explains why Quackity was bloodied. Uh. Oops. Don’t know why he’s playing Poker, though.)

So, for my sanity, as we come to a close, I’m going to start listing lore details that I don’t know nearly enough about but are probably important. Just… bullet point them. Might be a bit tacky of me but I have shit to do, dammit. By that I mean, I don’t have shit to do, but I’ve had this doc open for literally 1-2 weeks and I just want to be freed.

List Of Other Shit That Happened:

Ranboo started an arg, so there’s a character named Z now. Can’t believe the kid I knew in middle school who didn’t know where the Middle East  was made it into the dreamSMP omg! 

Tubbo did something immoral, and we still don’t know who his dad is. By we, I mean me. 

Eret exists. That’s all I’ve got for this one. They’re important. Probably.

Karl hallucinated six versions of himself and left the In Between to go to hell. (Lil Nas X girlboss gaslight gatekeep in this motherfucker!!!)

Ranboo and Tubbo got married because taxes exist </3

More on this last point: they opened a hotel, despite Tubbo being a king, and Tommy got mad at them for getting engaged without his permission. But Tommy was literally dead when they had the wedding so I’m not exactly sure what he was expecting. Either way, he’s fine with it now.

Kids getting adopted oh shit oh fuck. Also, mpreg is canotical. Make this what you will. 

DreamXD is a god now. I don’t know who DreamXD is. I don’t think anybody else does either.

I’m like 60% sure George is dead. 

I’m like 60% sure Philza is immortal.

Going through my ‘notes’ to make sure I didn’t miss anything and I’m just getting more confused, so I think I’m going to call it here. Props to everyone in the dreamSMP for creating kickass lore, I would not summarize any of it ever again if you held me at fucking gunpoint, and thanks to my mutuals/friends for letting me ask a lot of really stupid questions as I try to puzzle this out. And also, another thanks to you all for reading this. I hope to God this was funny. 

I really, really, really fucking hope that Tumblr doesn’t cut this off for a long character count. This is longer than some of my fucking oneshots. My God. This was so fun, don’t get me wrong, but I also want a hit of a candy cigarette. Make it two, actually. Or three. All at once. 

Anyway. Drink some water, stay safe, and remember that statistically speaking, 100% of people with a name starting with “T” need to put down the Greek mythology books and learn about the ethics behind pyromania. Goodbye, Theseus. 

[trashahime]

This is the second part of my evidence for my illusion/unreality theory. I changed it to a Q&A format. There will be a few more parts. I know a lot of you were mostly interested in why the parents are playing the villians but I wanted to explain a few things first. It will be next.

You probably will want to read the first part before continuing:

I decided "unreality" is a better way of presenting the situation so I will use that for now on.

What is meant by "unreality"?

Possibly pure illusion or a dream. Or something like the Matrix. A shared reality only existing in the minds connected to it.

Maybe the girls are actually in "reality" and it's simply a case of some of the other characters being illusioned to look different.

Or maybe a combination. As I said in the first part, Sunrise has hinted at the idea of miniature models with pictures and merchandise. Maybe they are in a minature world created by magic but one actually existing in the real world. Like in the Inuyasha episode with the corrupted sages and human faced fruit.

Why are the girls in an unreality?

In an interview, a Sunrise employee said "if you think it's a trial, then it's a trial." This fits with some general themes I have seen in Yashahime. I think Sesshomaru put his twins in the unreality to test them. The reason for the test I can only speculate about. At the moment, I think it's to prove themselves worthy of taking over as the Inu no Taisho, the position Treekyo said he abandoned.

Why is Moroha in there? Maybe she volunteered to provide support for the twins. Or as a descendant of Toga, maybe she is up for the Inu No Taisho position too.

What's happened in "reality"?

First, I think the story we are seeing in Yashahime is a reflection of what really occurred to the OG crew, including the perils and Rin's story. Think of it as if Yashahime is TV show loosely inspired by true events.

I think the girls were temporarily separated from their parents but never lost their memories of them. More on that later.

I think Kirinmaru really exists but was not a villian. I think he lost control of the real Perils and Sesshomaru, Inuyasha and the rest helped him defeat them. I think a clue to them not being the real Perils is in how they look a little different than what is shown in Myoga's explanation flashback. Those were the real Perils.

I think Rin was attacked/possessed by some kind of evil spirit/demon and possibly corrupted. In the unreality, I believe it will be a yukionna that is the culprit, it may be different in reality. I think she was put in stasis by Sesshomaru until she could be healed. Part of that healing included Sesshomaru sacrificing his sleep for her. I think a clue to that is in the "sleeping" merch where both Sesshomaru and Setsuna are awake. I think Rin was only in stasis for a short period of time.

At the moment, I think Kagura is the mom. I go back and forth as to whether her existence in reality is due to a changed timeline or resurrection. If a timeline change, this reality could be reflected in the unreality by the presence of demons who died in Inuyasha.

Rather than Towa being flung into the future because of a fire, I think she, Setsuna, Moroha and Takechiyo (who I think is InuKag's son) were sent to the Higurashis on purpose via the rainbow corridor while the parents fought the perils. A hint may be in the dream sequence where InuKag is at a shrine courtyard sending Moroha away.

Relatedly, in promotional material, Sunrise hounded on the fact that the girls would be traveling between the present and past but that hasn't really occurred. They also go on about how all three girls are of both eras. I think they are, in reality. In my Reiwa theory I suggest the modern era has become a peaceful time when demons and humans live openly together in peace. I think both sesskagu and InuKag families actually moved to the present because of that but often visit their friends in the past. Besides Sunrise's statements, there's also Setsuna's violin skills, and she seemed to know what a kilo was. Relatedly, Moroha knew what to get when doing modern day shopping and had apparent ease in doing so. I think their memories have been suppressed for the unreality but they still have residual knowledge. Also, Moroha wondered if she was weak because she went through the rainbow corridor, suggesting she had been through it before. I also think the Higurashi's lackluster reaction to Moroha was a hint. They weren't excited because they were already reunited with her. It's also been pointed out by others that a girl in Towa's class looks remarkably like Moroha.

How is reality being reflected in the unreality?

Besides some of the above, in general, I think Yashahime is using parallels and metaphors in the unreality to tell the viewers what happened to the happened to the old crew in reality, including the story of the twins's parents. Some of which we know but a lot that we don't. We will learn the new information through the battles and also through the stories of the side characters they meet.

I think the fact that so many of villians are based on Inuyasha villians may serve multiple purposes. One is a hint to express that just the battles with the old villians are altered copies from reality, so are the ones with the Perils and other new villians. Another could be to express the idea that there was a timeline change and it caused demons to live that should be dead. If so, it could be leading up to showing through a parallel how Kagura is alive.

One specific example of how they used a parallel to provide new information could be the drifting pond episode. I think the lake being pure, then corrupted, then made pure again via medicinal herbs is a reflection of Rin was ultimately healed.

The next part should be up soon. Please feel free leave a note, ask or message if you want more info on a particular part or need something clarified.

Here's a link to my theory about how the perils can be connected to the parents. I need to update it as more info has come to light.

[astharoshebarvon]

I never expected to see that horseshit even in Hannibal/Will pairing. I’d really thought they were exempt from that bullshit.

All I can say is that the thirst for the dominant male/ homophobia is unreal. Female Will Graham—

At this point I don’t even know whether to get angry or simply laugh at such stories. This is beyond ridiculous! Imagine being idiotic enough to even write they aren’t murder husbands, and being weird enough to put in the story, its murder husband and wife.

Please. There has never been a wife nor will there ever be. Dream on.

Thankfully, the cringeworthy self insert fics are still in double digits.

Just say you want to fuck the Dom and can’t stand that two guys love each other and are in a relationship. Literally no one wants to read about your fantasy. Go and write self-insert/OFC with the male and be happy with that. Don’t be this pathetic and try to write your fantasy in the slash ship. Keep your straight agenda to your lame het self-insert ships.

No wonder this bull even bled out to shoujo manga. That is a new low even for a shoujo. Seriously, just say you hate gay people and get out. Having the fucking audacity to write that kind of homophobic content in 2020 is shocking.

There is really no need to be that disgusting. Just write your idiotic, stupid, annoying, brainless, obsessed, creepy fangirl with the male lead and leave gay people lout of it. No need to show again and again how foul you are by bringing them in. You are literally proving what kind of a person you are by writing such crap.

I am just so disgusted by that manga that I don’t even want to remember it if I can help it. Is that how fm couples are being made these days, by being blatantly homophobic and vile/showing het superiority or downright pedophilic content. No wonder those stories never reach more than 50? 60? Ratings on amazon.

Now, if you look at Ten Count, Given, well, there ratings are in 1000 or above 500.

Please, continue being so gross, at one point only garbage people will end up buying that crap.

Mediocre shoujo writers are so fucking threatened by the popularity of BL that they are even resorting to such vile tricks.

Seeing such things just cements what I’ve always thought. People just got better at hiding their homophobia, (we needed change so we turned a boy into a girl in slash fics of the coulple ) it’s painfully obvious what you truly think when you spit out such bullshit. No need to jump through so many goddamn hoops. Hell, I am not even surprised by this behaviour.

 These are the same kind of garbage people who screamed, Yuki should return to being a girl, we don’t like male Yuki.

Shut the fuck up! Luka is literally saying they have the same soul, he can only love once. Yuki is Yuki. So called female yuki was mentioned in passing at best, got two? three ? full pages.

Luka won’t fuck you no matter how much you wish it.

The story doesn’t even have a kiss scene between the fem yuki and luka or any hets while Senshirou breaks off his engagement saying quite clearly he cares for Kuroto. The girl is thankfully not a trash person like the homophobic readers. Neither is she like the one with sairi and touko.

The whole manga revolves around present male Yuki and Luka, their relationship and other bl ships. See the fucking artworks, go and buy Phosphor, its pure BL. There is a limit to how blind or in denial a person can be. 

This manga and anime is shonen-ai, it’s always been that and will always be that. All the main couples are slash. The mangaka is famous for her BL stories.

Uraboku was published in Asuka, the magazine which is infamous for never outright saying the two males are in love and are together.

Bloody Mary, X/1999, Kyou Kara Maou are prime examples, they are all shonen ai/BL subtext. Stop trying so hard to deny the fucking truth. The author’s new work, a shoujo, was so poorly received that’s it’s not even funny. Beautiful art couldn’t save it.

Clamp literally said do not call Kamui and Fuuma as brothers. They aren’t friends. They are soulmates! They parallel Seishirou and Subaru, an established, famous MM couple. Fuuma is all Kamui thinks about.

They don’t even mention the obsessed, creepy fangirl.

They are together in Tsubasa too. Stop trying to force your heteronormative bullshit onto everyone.

 No wonder some homophobic / thirsty person had the audacity to write in the fucking wikia of that light novel, this character is not gay you know. It’s implied he might be—

He is literally saying he is gay in the story, he tells it straight to the other party. He’s been gay all these years.

And, you are still trying to push your het agenda.

I totally get where that nonsense came from. He is a very very good looking man.  You want a chance to fuck him and think this is the best way to make yourself feel good. Go and get help if you are that fucking sad of a person. This isn’t normal behaviour, it’s creepy.

You gotta be some other level of stupid if you think they are friends/brothers. Friends/siblings don’t do this with each other.

Some idiots even denied Kurogane/Fai being a subtle couple in Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. You have to be blind as a bat if you truly sat there and thought they weren’t a thing.

Even these two from get backers.

Hell, I think Get Backers author even said yes, those two guys are together. Like, please readers, take your homophobia and get out.

I have to give it to Atsuko Nakajima for drawing such beautiful illustrations. All of her works, whether they be MM, FM, FF are simply too beautiful.

  Stay mad that your imagined het only exists in your head not in actual story. Go read trash like that shoujo or see het pedo shows which thinks 500 year old is attracted to a little 7 year old. You’ll find many trash homophobic people like you there.

Even on manga sites you see idiotic lists like, erotica Not BL, smut with anything but bl, quality smut not BL.

Seriously, how fucking pressed are you that people don’t seem to give two fucks about your fm ships, these fm smut mangas have way less views than BL.

Be decent and write mf smut list, shoujo josei smut or something of the like. You have to mention bl somehow don’t you? This isn’t even pathetic, it’s downright gross. 

No wonder some foolish homophobic trash wrote lies like omegaverse does not belong to slash. You have to be completely shameless and downright stupid to write such horseshit.

Of course, some freaks even like that horrendous, homophobic, monstrous bitch from ten count. To this day I don’t understand how anyone can say such things.

She looked good standing next to kurose. She is good looking.

I just cant—

What a joke! She is human garbage nothing more and ugly as hell.

Ugh, the only place she should be in is a fucking sewer. I hate that bitch so much. She deserves to die a million times for what she did. Her existence is a fucking disgrace.

[hongism]

hi caly boo its ur 🌊 anon! i finally finished the most brilliant darkness and oh my lawd i’m in spain without the s. to put it shortly: U DID NOT DISAPPOINT BESTIE, and it seems unreal that u and ur mind and this fic even exists bc every moment is just polished to perfection, while simultaneously every character is polished to a sort of imperfect perfection(?). i have so many questions and things to say idek where to start, and tho im not good with words and even worse at deciphering hidden meanings, here are just some of my thoughts that i remember from the story.

hello my dear!!! eee im gonna answer separately since i think i’ll be very long-winded as usual but first of all thank you so much :(( this fic is actually very full of subliminal messages and hidden nuances that are weaved throughout which i think could be quite confusing so i apologize for that! if i had managed my time better, i would have adjusted when i started the fic to account for managing those aspects of the fic but alas i’m terrible at time management and i suck so. anyways.

first of all, ngl halfway into the story i lowkey forgot this was a wooyoung fic bc SANNN and also bc wooyoung appeared like 3 times lol. even after it finishing all that, i still had my doubts as to why this is a wooyoung fic, or more like why is san this significant in a wooyoung fic. im still a bit slow on these pls forgive me and im just curious why u made it like that.

i think yeah the most interesting thing about this fic is the emphasis on san over wooyoung. and when looking over it yeah i could have switched san and wooyoung’s characters and called it a day, but wooyoung really in my mind acts as the integral turning point for decisions made in the story. 

the goal with the fic wasn’t really to be hyperfocused on the pairing itself, but rather the emotions and thought processes of each character (aside from wooyoung). wooyoung was kept intentionally mysterious and a bit set apart from the rest of the fic because his role in story was moreso an abstract of hestia, the goddess of the hearth and home. wooyoung’s character appeared in times where y/n was struggling with the thought of home or adjusting to the new changes in her life! wooyoung’s pairing itself was actually intended to be solely platonic at first, but as the story went on i thought having mc develop feelings for him added another turning point in the fic!

moving on, the second biggest question i had is the whole hestia!wooyoung and cafe aurora situation. i did a bit of reading on hestia and only found out that she was the goddess of hearth, which might explain the fireplace and the kind of homey feeling to the cafe. and ‘cafe aurora not really existing to most’ part, which was already hinted at wooyoung randomly disappearing, mc never seeing the cafe before or wooyoung only bringing people he wants into it. i get that him inviting mc must suggest her significance to him, but why was he so adamant about his friends not mentioning him or the cafe to mc before that? wooyoung is quite a mysterious character i think, and given that this fic is supposed to be about him, it’s a bit odd that there’s still so many things left unknown, but its kinda cool that way nonetheless and im guessing u would also like to explain that further outside of the story too.

i think my biggest regret about this fic is the fucking summary.... i wrote that summary well before i even started writing the fic thinking it would go in that direction but it didn’t. and since this fic was for a collab, i left the summary as is because i genuinely cannot for the life of me figure out a better one. but i’m trying to figure out a better one. but i really fucking hate the current summary because it’s not at all what the fic is truly about and i hate it.

however, i don’t hate the fic itself, and the reason why i don’t is because i got to play with both my writing style and how i displayed the story. for this collab we were asked to pick a greek god and one of the seven deadly sins, and i selected hestia and sloth. and initially i had intended to have sloth be represented by the reader’s depression, and wooyoung be a more ‘real’ depiction of hestia. i shifted gears very early on in the fic but what it became is moreso abstract realizations in the characters.

san’s character is meant to be this idea of sloth, and it’s mentioned several times that he doesn’t want to move forward, he wants to go slow, he wants to stop moving so fast through life, and those things point to him being a depiction of sloth

wooyoung’s was harder to encapsulate in a more abstract way but you hit the nail on the head really with the homey feeling of the cafe. beyond that, mc talks about just naturally feeling at ease and comfortable with how things are with wooyoung and being around him, and he takes up this role of being the likeable, warm, cozy, comforting character. it all comes to a head in the last scene where he brings both y/n and san into the cafe.

and again wooyoung’s character is meant to be most mysterious and abstract, but if i had had more time to fully flesh out the fic, i think i would have liked to touch more on him. at the same time however i left it more open-ended and open to interpretation. the significance in him inviting mc in and not being mentioned by the others sooner is twofold. one; the others never really had any reason whatsoever to mention wooyoung. he was a friend outside the circle who never joined in with them when mc was around. i personally in my own friendships don’t mention friends outside the circle by name or anything, just kinda vaguely talking about them unless im certain the people know who this person is. the concept of wooyoung having to invite mc in was more nuanced and vague as well, intentionally so, but that was moreso meant to represent this idea of ‘you can’t make a home somewhere where you aren’t invited’ so y/n couldn’t fully make a home of the place she was in without being invited in and welcomed in, but again that’s something i wish i had more time to fully flesh out.

the hongjoong speech about love (and also the interaction with seonghwa after that) deserves a standing ovation of its own 👏 unfortunately, or not, im not actually going through the emotional turmoil regarding love the same way as hj or mc to be able to fully relate to his words, but the whole ‘if you dont love what u see in the mirror then u dont love it’ mentality really hit me hard, and i’d like to hang onto that when i make decisions in the future haha thank you wise caly! seonghwa and hongjoong’s story is also beautiful, and just like mc said, the more i look at it the more it hurts :’)

the hongjoong speech about love was meant to be something very jaded and specific to his worldview. it actually isn’t wholly how i view love personally, but it was a perfect description to how both he and y/n perceived the love in their own lives. mostly thanks to their own emotional turmoils. the mentality of the mirror quote is something that i think i also struggle with, which is why i included it. it’s hard to do, but even in friendships, i think it’s necessarily to stop and look at the person you were before this relationship and then the person during this relationship. if you don’t love the one you are now, then maybe it’s a sign to reflect and see the bigger picture, so that was a lil reminder to myself and i’m glad it touched you as well!!!

“do you love him, or do you love the idea of being in love with him?” - haha i see what u did there (or maybe i didnt please dont laugh at me if i didnt). its still so good everytime i see it bc i keep finding myself loving just the idea of things time and time again even when this makes total sense to me oof :/

heh yeah again with the more abstract concepts this one was more direct and ‘cliche’ but i fully wanted that cliche in the fic because i thought it suited the situation where mc was constantly struggling with a version of san that she thought she loved vs the version of san she got every time they were together

despite how enlightened she seems to be, mc still made the same choices, and i wanna smack her for it and pat her back at the same time. and maybe also bc of the fact that she feels so differently for the two men that i feel like no ending could really justify her decision, so ending in the vague is probably the best. your ending might kind of allude to someone more than the other already, and tho i still don’t think he’s the best one for her based on just my pov on love, i kinda agree with you. but again, this raises the question of, why a wooyoung fic and not a san fic?

and yeah the whole knife in the chest at the end of it all is that she was still too scared to face the music so to speak. but really i would say she made the same choices up until the conversation on the balcony with san. and you’re absolutely right, the reason i chose the ending the way i did was because either way, there’s no justification. and actually although it might seems like i was alluding to someone specific, san being in the cafe at the very end was moreso to represent that as much as they fought, he still very much loved her and wanted to be loved by her. it was kinda an open casket ending there were no nails in the coffin, the choice between wooyoung and san still stands and an argument could be made for either of them! i think this is a fic that i could see myself revisiting one day with two endings - one for san, and one for wooyoung.

something i didn’t mention earlier about wooyoung’s character being left intentionally mysterious was that he was representing a new and budding love. the honeymoon phase where you’re falling for someone you don’t even really know. you are the reader aren’t meant to really know who wooyoung is because of that beyond what you read about him, so his past and such was left out intentionally to represent that idea of ‘hey wow im in love with a stranger!’ whereas san was this gritty love that’s bad for you. and there are pros and cons to each just as with anything!!

so,,,, why a wooyoung fic and not a san fic? well i picked wooyoung for my collab so he was one of the main focuses of the fic regardless of which direction i took with it. as for why wooyoung wasn’t more forward, i already answered that but !!! i view it as both a wooyoung fic and a san fic. both are highlighted characters with main pairing roles!

i literally just woke up to write this and am going back to sleep ahaha so i apologize if this makes no sense. i somehow felt like i’ve read so much yet so little at the same time, maybe bc there are still so many things i havent fully made sense of, and that’s where i hope you come in and enlighten me. i still stand by my word that this fic deserves so much more recognition despite the lack of explicit smut bc of how much more you’ve explored through character building. love you caly and thank u for working so hard <3 — 🌊

no worries my beloved i hope you go back to sleep and get lots and lots of rest!! and i hope my response helps enlighten the not so clear things as well dgjdklfg but really thank you so much. it was a long fic and hard to get through at times, but as a whole, i’m proud of it and what i created, so thank you for recognizing my efforts and appreciating them 🥺

[detransition]

from permutational

“I never knew a woman like you could exist, so how could I even dream of you before I knew you?”

My wonderful girlfriend wrote this to me in her most recent love letter. She was writing about the concept of a “dream woman”, and how she wasn’t sure what hers would look like or be like until she met me. But, I can’t stop thinking about it, because this one little phrase captures something big about the butch lesbian experience, something I’ve had a hard time putting words to. It also captures realizations I’ve gone through after detransitioning.

It’s almost a “ring of keys” kind of thought. But I love how it highlights the relationship between knowing and dreaming. What you’re aware of influences what you can dream about, what you can aspire to. What you know informs the possibilities of who you can be and love at your core.

Back a few years ago, when my crisis was was coming to a head and I decided to detransition, I felt lost. I craved an “undo” button that didn’t exist. All I knew was where I’d already been, only there was no going back. I couldn’t envision what my future might look like, especially with how far I’d gone in transitioning. I couldn’t imagine that I’d ever “live as a woman” again; I felt “too far gone”. It didn’t seem like the concept of “womanhood” could encircle me as I was. When was the last time I saw a woman that looked like me? Oh yeah, never – that was the original goal, after all.

In that moment, when I didn’t know what to do, I went with my gut: the very first thing I did was make a beeline straight to YouTube. Probably sounds a little strange, but looking back, it makes sense to me. I was searching for possibilities, for people, for stories. I wanted direct evidence that someone like me can exist, because I felt very unreal.

I looked up ‘detransition’, and there they were. Not many at the time, but enough. There were people with deepened voices, facial hair, mastectomies, bodies and histories like mine, unmistakable. And yet, they called themselves women, some even called themselves lesbians.

I watched and listened, and it didn’t matter what they were talking about; I didn’t even agree with everything they said. What mattered was that they existed. They were real.  Some of these women passed as male, but didn’t seem pressed to change themselves any further or in any way, and still emphatically called themselves women. It was mind blowing to me, and comforting. Knowing that I wouldn’t be the first or only one like this was a relief. It gave me courage, made me feel a little less crazy. It felt like I could move forward knowing that I’m not utterly alone in this experience.

And later on, I actually met these women, and others like them. Women with different ideas and opinions, not all of whom agreed with one another, or used the same words, or understood themselves in the same way. Regardless of differences, they had experiences in common with each other, and with me.

Each strange woman I’ve met has broadened the possibilities of what a woman can be, and what kind of woman I can be. Spending time with other uncommon women has fundamentally changed me at my core. There is something they gifted me that I don’t have words for. Something that came from seeing, hearing, and sharing space. Knowing by witnessing.

My beard carries memories of the bearded women I’ve met and loved; when I look in the mirror, I see part of them in me. My head is bald because I met other women who were bald first, and through them got the courage to take the plunge and buzz it all off and never look back. My voice is stronger from singing with others who embraced their changed voices. I don’t have the shame and embarrassment about my voice that I did before.

Every single part of my body carries the memories of other women like me. Detransitioned women, butch dykes young and old, friends, lovers… My opinion of myself and what I can be has fundamentally changed because of the possibilities I’ve seen in other women.

I never knew women like us could exist. But I know now, and I dream of us often.

thinking of detransition? you are not alone

[nonstoplover]

For The Better ~ Michael Corleone

masterlist

Summary: Michael scolds his wife for acting without his approval and things escalate quickly, not quite the way Michael imagined.

Words: 2.3K

Approximate reading time: about 10 mins

A/N: i had this idea one night when i couldn’t sleep, pretty proud of the base situation actually, considering that i wrote it at like 3am and english is not my main language. let me know what you think. hope all you fellow Corleone-fans enjoy this ♡

He slams the huge pack of files on his desk in anger, stepping back towards the window.

“You’re going around making decisions all by yourself that you shouldn’t be without talking to me about it first.”

His tone proves the amount of tension his body shows as he’s standing with his back facing me, eyes probably focused on the view outside the window.

All the previous joy and proudness I felt is swept away in a single moment. It felt so good to do something for other people. People in need. It made me feel worthy again.

I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself before I’d accidentally let anger take control over me and make me speak words I wouldn’t want to otherwise.

“Darling, have you forgot who you’re talking to or simply having a full day with your so called clients made you go blind?” Pure sarcasm drips from my words and I see him stiffen, whole body freezing. “It’s me, (Y/N), your wife, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Michael turns back, his eyes sparkling with such anger that it feels like lightning is being thrown at me.

“I am supposed to be the leader of this family. And I start to feel like I’m being less and less in charge of it,” he growls. “I feel like I’m starting to lose control.”

“Oh so you’re gonna make yourself the poor one that needs to be felt sorry for, huh, now don’t you?” My previous trying to stay calm disappears within a second and I feel the same venom-like feeling bubbling in my chest. “Well, which one of us had to sacrifice her whole life just so she wouldn’t be a problem and a cause of worry to her lovely husband? Was it you? Oh, I’m so sorry, dear.”

I pause for a moment only to let out a huff, something that shows off clear disappointment. After another deep breath and the few steps taken that remained until I reached the other side of his table, I press my palms into the wooden surface, speaking up with a newly found anger poisoning my words.

“Well, please imagine what it is like for me. My family rarely talks with me anymore and when they do, they carefully watch if I slip and say something that proves we did something actually unlawful. They wouldn’t even mind sending their own daughter or sister in prison. God, I wouldn’t even be surprised if they’d hire a secret cop to follow my every move,” I let out another huff in disbelief and I can see Michael taken aback from my sudden burst of anger. “And which one of us had to quit her job that she very much loved, again? You?”

I wait for a few seconds, let my words sink in, but as soon as I see him open his mouth again, I continue speaking again.

“NO, it was me, in case you forgot. And for what? To sit around in a house all day long, waiting until my kind and loving husband finally returns back to spend some so called quality time with me?” My fingers signaling a quotation mark several times high up in the air as I speak. “To not be able to walk around any of our houses without accidentally stumbling upon territories I shouldn’t even know exist and then being scolded about it like a child who did something bad?”

My voice raises more and more until I’m shouting with almost full force, but I’m unstoppable now, not even his shocked, wide eyes and slightly opened lips can do anything to make me stop saying the thoughts I’ve been holding in for so long.

“And when I finally find a way to do something useful, something for a good cause, helping people who need me, and I make one tiny decision by myself being the fucking grown ass woman I am, then I’m being told I’m the reason you started to lose control over leading this family and that I’m messing your perfect life up? Well, thank you, but I don’t need that. I’m better off alone than having to bear with this any more.”

My eyes get watery, making everything blurry in front of me as I choke back my tears, my anger all of a sudden changing into a sad, disappointed kind of hurt.

When I blink the opacity away and I’m able to focus on his features again, I can see Michael standing in a shocked silence, the thoughts seemingly racing in his head, trying to process the words of my speech.

“What, now you don’t have anything to say?” My voice gets even more choked up, wet sounds of hidden crying filling up the air whenever I take a breath.

When he finally speaks, it’s almost inaudible, his voice so weak and quiet. “You really feel that way?”

“Yes.” I sniffle, a small movement of my head confirming.

A tense silence fills up the air of the room as we stare into each other’s eyes, thinking about the situation we got ourselves into.

“I said yes back then ‘cause I was hoping for a marriage filled with unconditional, endless, hell, even undoubted love and caring and understanding, but now I do doubt every tiny piece of it.”

I wait for him to finally say something, to try and talk himself out of it, blaming the complexity of his job as he always does, but he says nothing. He just stands there, facing me without a single movement of his body, and I can’t help but let my eyes wander up and down his whole appearance, taking in his beauty and hating myself for thinking about it in such a heated, negative moment. But he’s just like a gorgeous marble statue I’d adore in a museum, so handsome that it’s still almost unreal.

And I feel my heart break because he looks exactly like the man I once married, the man I fell in love with, and I hate to speak these things out loud, but I know we can’t go on like this without causing terrible, incurable damage in each other.

Few moments pass, and it’s more and more unbearable, and then a feeling comes over me, telling me that I can’t take the silence anymore, I have to do something before I take everything back just to be able to run over and feel his embrace around me again, his arms making me feel safer than ever as they always do.

But as I think back to what I was speaking about only minutes before, I feel the same bitterness building up in me again, venomous words swiftly replacing the loving thoughts in my head.

“God, I don’t even know what I was thinking. The head of the mafia doesn’t have time and capability to love.” Bitterness drips from my words, making the tension in the air even more poisonous.

Suddenly I feel weak, needing to sit down and taking a half step towards the arm chair next to me, I slump down on it. My palms almost involuntarily move up to cover my face, tears freeing themselves to slowly roll down my cheeks, leaving wet stains behind on the warm skin.

“You think I don’t love you?” Michael speaks up, and after my fingers wipe the salty drops off my face, I glance back up at him. He looks at me in disbelief, his question clearly written on his features.

“Well, don’t blame me if I do. It’s not like you often show me signs that you do,” I let out a sigh, eyebrows suddenly furrowing as the next though reaches my mind. “Actually, to be exact and honest, no. You never show me any signs of love, instead drowning me in all the scolding and pity and angry sentences you throw at me. I don’t even know what I’m doing here anymore.”

My voice trails off once more, by the end of the sentence it’s so quiet that I don’t even know if he’s able to hear it as reality sets in inside my mind, just in time with my words.

I shake my head, shaking it unstoppably, fingers disappearing in my hair, tearing at the roots as I try to get rid of the things I feel and think.

“I love you, (Y/N). I thought you knew.” Michael speaks once more, voice gentle and careful.

The only thing I’m able to do is shooting him a dirty look, letting him know that it’s not enough. He can’t make everything right with saying these words. Not this time.

He takes a shallow breath before his lips open again to continue. “I couldn’t be more sad and heartbroken to hear such things come out your mouth. You should’ve told me earlier this is how you feel.”

“I wanted you to realise it on your own or otherwise it would only happen again.” I shrug, the backs of my hand carefully wiping away at my cheeks, trying to dry it up.

“I promise it’ll never happen again. I’ll change,” his voice is much more sure now, he speaks with a new force, trying to make me believe him. “I’ll change because I love you, and I’d never want to hurt you or let you feel this way ever again. You’re the goddamn love of my life, (Y/N), I can’t lose you.”

Hearing those words make my heart beat just a tiny bit faster even in the state I am in, but it’s not enough for me to forgive and forget.

“I honestly don’t know if I can take it anymore. Maybe I should really just go and disappear from this life, from this kind of world you’re living.”

My voice is quiet, unsure, I don’t even know myself what is it that I want, that I feel.

“Please, love. Give me one more chance. Just one more. I promise I’ll let you go if I screw it up again. But I need you by my side. I behaved terrible and what I did is unforgiveable, but just give me one more chance,” Michael says, slowly starting to move around the table. “It’ll be what you imagined it to be. Exactly like that and more.”

He kneels in front of me, one of his hands reaching out to touch my jawline, thumb caressing my cheek gently and very carefully.

“I was letting all my anger out on you and I should’ve never done that. I’m so honestly sorry about that and I’ll prove it to you if you let me. I truly love you with all my being, (Y/N).”

I take a shaky breath, mind racing a thousand miles per hour. I still can’t decipher what I want.

Do I want to give a second chance to him? Is it worth it or will he just do the same things again like today has never happened?

Raising my glance back up to stare deeply in his eyes I notice something strange. Something I’ve never seen before.

Michael’s crying. Teardrops silently roll down his cheeks before falling on the silky material of the shirt he’s wearing.

My hands instinctively reach out to wipe them away. I’m not used to see him so vulnerable, so open.

It’s like he’s the same young boy again that he was when I first met him. When his father was still alive, leading. When he was just an innocent kid, with a desire to finish college.

Not even fighting in the world war changed him like taking the role of the leading Corleone did.

My fingers gently tap away on his skin, trying to dry the wet stains on it.

“I’m sorry.” He repeats in a whisper, voice breaking.

I shush him, still deep in thought to find out how I’ll end the current situation.

“Michael, I love you with all my heart. You know that,” my tone is smooth and caring as my hands force him to raise his head and look into my eyes again. “But you have to understand that I’m truly hurt. A tiny crack appeared on my heart.”

The words form on my tongue before I even have a chance to double check what I want to say, my mind and all my rational thoughts fighting hard to take control over the love in my heart.

“I guess we should try being apart for a little while.”

His heart breaks in front of my eyes, hearing the words he never wanted to hear from me, and I almost take it back, almost, before I close my eyes and take a breath as a reminder that it’s for the better.

“I’m not saying that I want a divorce and that I’ll leave you forever. I just need a little time on my own, okay? It’s for the better.” I whisper, fingers still caressing away on his face.

“I have to earn you coming back to me, I know.” Michael replies, his voice only a raspy mumble as he accepts what I’ve decided.

A small, sad smile makes its way on my cheeks as I move to stand up. He does nothing to stop me, stays in the same position.

I walk towards the door, taking each step slowly since I feel so weak I’m afraid I’d collapse from a quicker pace.

When I glance back at him from the doorway my heart goes cold from the sight. It seems like all energy and life exited his body, shoulders slumped, head hanging low. Quiet sniffling can be heard from him every other second, but otherwise he’s motionless.

No matter what I see and how terrible it makes me feel, I know that there’s no turning back now.

I said what I said, and I meant all of it. If I truly love him and he truly loves me, we have to take this step.

So with the knowledge that I won’t be able to feel any emotion for quite a long while again, I turn my head away and step out of his room.

.::the end::.

masterlist

would you guys be interested in a part two for this one? ---> since there came so many likes and reblogs (thank you, love you), i wrote it:

part two

[sadbirder]

A Comparison Of Contemporary Landscape Photography With Traditional 19th Century Landscape Painting

The aesthetics of both contemporary landscape photography and traditional 19th century landscape painting hold much the same purpose, the objectification of nature as a servant to human kind. Both practices give misguided representations that nature is something which is ours to have. This way of seeing is an anthropocentric hangover that has no place in contemporary aesthetics because the belief that nature is ours to have because it belongs to humans is outdated and no longer practical or realistic in today’s world. 

19th century landscape painting is from a time when all people believed all of everything on Earth was here exclusively for humans to exploit, consume and dominate as they please. There were scientists and thinkers during this century who began to consider that perhaps nature was not here for us. Alfred Russell Wallace wrote in his book, The Malay Archipelago, that he noticed that very large fruits grow on very tall trees throughout the region. He suspected if one of these large fruits should fall on a human from such a height, it would likely kill them. He questioned why and if these plants were truly put there by god with exclusive reference to human kind. I am guessing that at the time, not many Europeans had seen large fruits growing on incredibly lofty trees.

Another figure, who had thoughts like this in the same era, was Henry David Thoreau. His book Walden explores what it is to live off the land without exploiting the land or the creatures on it. He did not hunt or keep animals and he grew a permaculture-esque farm/garden. He did this as capitalism was still growing into the dominant way of living in the western world. It is incredibly compelling to read the experiences of someone rejecting the latest fashion trends, a glamorous life based around financial assets and the need to eat meat on a daily basis in the context of that particular moment on the timeline of human history. The themes central to this book examine the state of the world and the ways in which people live on it and engage with it, the observations Thoreau makes are pertinent to scrutinising how we exist today.

Sunrise - Claude Monet

Landscape painting from this time does not share the same progressive thinking. At least, if it did at all, that is not why the paintings are cherished today. The 3 examples I have chosen, each show a romanticised view of a landscape that has been largely altered by the domineering presence of humans. The views also show people working or give the idea of work. Work is an unnatural process exclusive to humanity, it is the method and process of human domination of nature. In his book, Future Primitive Revisited, John Zerzan refers to this as the division of labour. Zerzan explains that there is a symbiotic relationship between the division of labour and domestication of humanity and nature that perpetuates negative cycles in human social structures.

Monet’s Sunrise shows what is still celebrated today as a beautiful sunrise scene. In reality it is a factory. Based on the era in which it was painted, it is presumably full of workers in poor working conditions. The factory is causing a great smog which is completely altering how the view of the river before it appears. The painting beautifies the cancerous smog as scenic and romanticises the factory as if it is something other than an eyesore, filled with miserable people. By extension, it celebrates the idea that humans and nature are here purely to serve capitalism by being functional workers. Humanity, in this painting, is not shown as a part of nature but as a tool for its subjugation.

The Hay Wain - John Constable

The Hay Wain by John Constable gives us a peaceful view of a man working the landscape of his farm with his horse and his dog. This painting is renowned for its beauty. Constable’s paintings have been so celebrated, that the entire area where they were mostly created is still preserved to this day as the Dedham Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB). This so-called beauty is the farmed landscape of south-east England. This area was once, in its entirety; ancient, deciduous woodland but is no longer so due to the consequences of work and human activity.

This molestation of an entire habitat is something the British government seeks to preserve for tourism and capital gain. This is done under the guise of maintaining the lie that the quiet countryside of little England is; A: a reality available for all to attain B: a beautiful thing because it is still in it’s natural state. Again, within a painting celebrated for its beauty in depicting nature, we have ugliness and artificiality. A destroyed habitat, forced animal labour of the horse, a dog breed (Border Collie) selectively bred to exploit obsessive behavioural tendencies and forced to work. Here again, humans, animals and the land represent the means of the domestication of nature in order to create an artificial, human-dominated landscape. This painting tells us that nature only has merit if it has a purpose in serving the functionality of the human world. Nothing about it is natural, or beautiful.

Ivy Bridge, Devonshire - JMW Turner

Ivy Bridge, Devonshire by JMW Turner is similar to the previously mentioned landscape paintings. The natural landscape is sliced by a bridge being crossed by a horse-drawn cart in an area of England densely littered with ANOBs. I am not certain if each of the artists’ intentions were necessarily to celebrate these altered and artificial landscapes as natural beauty in their works. It is said that Turner wrote a poem of his experiences working on the Devonshire commissions revealing that the landscape raised questions about morality for him. It could be that Turner and the landscape painters of the 19th century were attempting to expose the fakeness of the setup. Nonetheless, the paintings are today incorrectly treasured as depicting the beauty of the world in it’s natural state.

The foundation of the idea that these paintings display to us natural beauty come from the views of people who lived in an era when it was conventional to believe that the Earth and nature were there for humans to sculpt in whatever way they liked. This essentially means that to celebrate these paintings today as natural and beautiful is to celebrate human domination of Earth and the domestication of its people and creatures. This celebration preserves two great lies. The first lie is that the Earth, as manipulated by humans, is in it’s natural state. The second lie; This manipulation, caused by human domination, is beautiful.

Thomas Heaton

All of the contemporary-traditional landscape photographers I have looked at are well known on instagram and each of their posts boast thousands of likes, often in the name of conservation. When I look at their photographs, I feel uninspired. How could this be so? Nature is inspiring. They are technically spectacular photographs of incredible scenery but post-production techniques such as the over-saturation of the colours create an unrealness. This is uncomfortable because it presents nature as having to be more than what it actually is to be considered a sight worthy of seeing. While thousands of people do engage with these photographs online, what does it do now for changing how we intereact with nature? How does it change the fundamental way we see the world and does it seek to change the anthropocentric viewpoint that the world is here for us?

Daniel Kordan

This style of photography has not progressed much since Ansel Adams pioneered it last century. Someone told me that this kind of photography is important because it shows people what we stand to lose if humans continue on this path of domination and extraction of nature. I ask the question then, is this tactic flawed? This method of revealing the beauty of nature in photography is not new. It has been a somewhat ubiquitos model for conservation and widespread awareness of nature in photography since Ansel Adams began his career in the 1920s. While this has achieved some huge successes in protecting wild landscapes, these very landscapes are still under threat.

Ansel Adams, Cathedral Peak and Lake, Yosemite National Park, 1938

Climate change, habitat & biodiversity loss are not known as entities who recognise borders and boundaries. Our activies outside proctected areas affect what is within them. I view this kind of photography as a green-washing activity. Consciously our not, these photographers play into the narrative that the landscape is something to be conquered. This is reflected in the corporate funding these photographers receive to travel the world and take these spectacular shots and then share them online with generic captions such as “Get out there and live it.” 

The consequnece of this tactic inspires swarms of amateur photographers into contributing to destructive tourism practices, not to mention the volume of iphones and camera gear purchased. These tourists flood the landscape and attempt to recreate, often successfully, the style of their favourite landscape photographers’ work. They too can share the images on social media and receive kudos for how in touch with nature they are, compliments are given to their highly technical photography. 

This style of photography ignores at large the impacts of current ways in which the human world engages with nature. These photographers leave the inevitable cigarette-butts, food packaging and other litter spread throughout almost any natural landscape out of frame. They might not even see the trash, it is hard to see human waste in a landscape when you do not want to see it. If photographs dealing with conservation of nature showed us the real way in which we interact with nature, would humans therefore be able to finally see nature?

This raises the question of what makes the professional a more worthy artist than the amateur recreationists? The method is also boring, old fashioned and it does not work. Why is climate change etc. getting worse if the tactic of showing people what we might lose is successful? This is because it is not, truly successful. It creates a narrative that the world is our pretty little thing to look at and this objectifies it. Photographers are asking people to look, but not see. In essence, professional landscape photographers whore out to us 5-second-views of a world that really requires vast amounts of time invested in multi-sensory observation to actually see. This tactic does nothing to push for a fundamental shift in how all humans interact with the more-than-human natural world because it does nothing to ensure that nature is seen. If nature is not even seen, how can we challenge the ways which humans see it and engage with it? The practice of how nature is represented in art must change in order to facilitate a change in the ideological practice of seeing nature.

Psychescape - Terri Loewenthal

Photographers like Terri Loewenthal speculate that perhaps the views of nature offered from art is a gendered issue and that we are too used to male-dominated views of the world. She seeks to reject technically-accurate recreations of landscape through photography by choosing to explore imperfection with her photographic practice. She does this in her Psychescape series of works by using a hand-built optic that manipulates the colours and shapes in a photograph at the moment of shooting. She is changing how her camera sees the world, in order to ask us to change how we see the world. Loewenthal intends to achieve this, unlike Ansel Adams and so many after him, by not keeping the human world out of shot. To show views of nature that include humanity which are beautiful in their coexistence.

Contemporary landscape photography and traditional 19th century landscape painting share a similar view of the world in both aesthetics and ideology. They continue to feed a narrative that the human-world is outside of the natural world, that the two are separate.  The practice of doing so has led to a great un-seeing of nature from humans in art and lived experience. We know that we need to change the ways in which humans live and interact with the world in order to ensure that humans can continue to exist in the world. We know that it is necessary for humans to coexist with nature in order to take steps in dealing with climate change and other such natural world catastrophes of the contemporary era. For a long time, landscape painting and landscape photography has refused to play a role in changing how we see nature by showing human dominated views and misleading interpretations of the way that nature is before us. Artists are now seeking to show that humans and nature are part of the same whole. Rejecting views which celebrate the human domination and domestication of nature by bringing the interconnectedness of humans and nature into aesthetics is key to fundamentally shifting the role of art in shaping how humans see nature.

[impulsivelycontentious]

No one reads this or connects it with my other online identities but since I've removed personals involvement from my other social media stuff, and I feel like bitching, I am jsut gonna go ahead and do it.

So I have brain damage. Yeaaaaars ago I threw up so hard I actually ripped open the inside of an artery in my neck, and it threw a clot, and that clot did some nasty shit on its way on through and out.

No doctor noticed for two weeks.

Everyone else did.

Good times.

Anyway.

So now I have a damaged brain. Brains don't grow back. Some areas can regenerate a few cells - notably the prefrontal lobe - but mostly brains fix themselves not by regenerating like skin does, but by rearranging the cells we have to fire to fancy new configurations.

This has been quite the ride. Because shit, it changes things.

I don't even know how much of my personality is consistent. No idea. Let alone everything else.

I have memory loss my nurologist won't akowledge because it falls short of dementia. That was the bar. "You don't have dementia, you know what year it is." Gee thanks there chief.

Anyway.

My brain wasn't too stable to begin with. I have always been prone to logic leaps that occur very quickly and not necessarily in ways other people would make them. My mind is jumbled and a little random and things collide all the time that probably shouldn't.

This has become much worse since the brain damage. See, my brain keeps wiring shit together. Shit it really shouldn't. It changes who I am, what I think, what I can think.

It's actually quite terrifying to realise you're a sack of geletine misfiring lighting at itself.

So anyway. To the point. Yes - I have one of those. Probably. It's somewhere in here.

Oh right, no, another detour. I'm autistic. "Oh yeah, they definatly didn't screen girls when I was a kid because how the fuck did they miss this otherwise" autistic.

Back to the point.

Recently I had this sensory processing ... Whatever the fuck that was. I call them.idssocistive episodes. I don't know how accurate that is. But my mind unhooks from my sensory data. Everything feels muted and unreal - sound, sight, touch, heat. Name it. It's wrong.

I hate these.

It gets particularly nasty because there are nurologicsl consequences. See, my concious mind ramps up it's interpretation of sensory data. It goes all in and leaves the rest of my existence stuffed in this tiny little box without enough space to do dick.

One effect of this is I suddenly become highly obsessive. I think it's a comfort mechanism, I require the same stimulus over and over again or to somehow mentally connect it to the same element. Of course, it could also jsut be that obsessive behaviour towards interests is part of who I am. I am autistic. I DEFIANTLY go all in when something fascinates me. But not... Not like this.

Do you have ANY IDEA how many times I watched starwars 8 in 72 hours? Any clue? Holy fricking ... Something. I watched it fast. I watched it slow. I watched it skipping ahead 10 seconds every 10 seconds. I dissected that thing in micrscopic detail.

It gets better. Because mere hours before I got hit with this episode... I was not a starwars fan.

Nope. I watched it. It was ok. I wasn't going out of my way for it.

And suddenly. Wham. Episode 8. All the time. I watched some 7 and 9 as well but it was like it was entierly because eit was connected to 8.

I cannot even.

And while this is happening, *I know*. I know. I really do. I know this isn't my normal behaviour. I know this isn't my wheelhouse. I know something is deeply, deeply wrong in my brain.

I think it might actually be an ok movie, honestly. But not THAT good. And now it's one of my favourite things. Forever. I have no idea if it's actually good. Did I not give eit a chance the first time? Is my obsessive brain simply emotionally hooked up how? Fuck, I don't know.

So that's why I'm posting today. On this day. May 4th.

I'm seeing a lot of star wars today and it's making my brain tickle with it's own ridiculousness.

Not the whole point though. Because it lasted 72 hours (I watched dit one more time after that and if wasn't near as intense).

But what happened AFTER my 72 hours as an obsessive raylo (oh yeah. I went there. I'm not even ashamed. I am also compeltely content with the end they got, because I do not see that shit working out).

Brains don't regrow. They rewire.

And suddenly, I'm drawing. Like... A lot. I filled pages of doodles. Sketches. I redrew a peice I'd been working on for about a month in a few hours and damnit, it was good. It's not professional quality but I'd never down anything that well before. This goes on for another day. And then I started a story, and I wrote 2000 words all at once.

I'm dyslexic. And words are severely impacted by my brain damage to the point it can cause me phsycial pain to force my thoughts in to words.

And here I am. Going nuts on my phone. The words just spilling out and again - damnit, it was good shit.

My brain was abstracting. Where the concious sort had been shunted, it wasn't directing the abstracting aspect of my mind.

And I was making cognative leaps. My brain was wiring itself together for creativity.

For another 24 hours.

And now, dear reader, we get to now.

I have written 200 words in the last 2 days. They feel wrong.

I started and stopped a dozen images. None of them feel right. And there are objective quality differences.

I can still draw a bit. If I'm not tired. I'm almost always tired - it's neural fatigue, it comes with surviving a brain damage.

I have somehow brain damaged my way in to better skills.

And it's... It's not a good feeling.

Doing it the first time and watching something take place in front of my eyes I don't recognise was like magic. It was euphoric. Amazing. Exciting.

Realising as time wears on that the ability to do this is intrinsically tied in to the way ones brain handles brain damage and sensory processing issues?

Not a great feeling cats. Not at all.

I find myself staring at a document willing words on tot he page that just aren't there anymore and feeling so frustrated I could scream.

Whose idea was this anyway? Why can't I keep my rewiring?

It's so hard dto explain the feeling of loss.

It's not me who did these things. A version of me, yes. But not the one we are keeping.

The one we keep struggles to hold a narrarive in her head and the narrator's tone took 3 rewritten to preserve for a single paragraph.

I don't want to stop. But how do I keep going? I'm not the author anymore and I've always struggled with adopting the tone of others.

So yeah. That's where I'm at. And I wanna talk about it. Because I don't want to be alone. But I can't escape the feeling I'm being dramatic. Terribly dramatic. And so talking about it is hard. How much is my own spin and perception and how much is real?

Did this really happen?

I think it did. But like every story I tell, I don't know. Memory loss. Cognetive issues.

I just wanna tell stories and draw. But the words hurt and the art makes me tired.

It's frustrating is all.

I hate being lighting geletine.

In case you're wondering what kind of cognative leap happened:

That one is april 4th.

And that one April 28th.

🤷‍♀️

Fucked if I know, really.