#there's a couple people who are worse off than me in terms of how much they've done but also theres a couple that are nearly done

[francy-sketches]

I'm gonna have to work on my final project non stop for like a month straight bc I procrastinated on it too much fuck my stupid baka life

[elssero]

kiri offering to be the first person to give you head-

e.kirishima

♰ suggestive, not quite smut, pro hero!kiri x pro hero f!reader, slight angst.

you don’t remember exactly how you got into this situation, one minute you were finishing up your friday patrol and the next you were being dragged to a local bar, mina ashido pulling you by the wrist towards the table which sat your group of friends from high school.

you especially don’t remember how you got onto the topic at hand but your embarrassed. so embarrassed even that your sinking impossibly further into the cushioned seat of the round table your gathered around.

the tipsy chatter around the table has suddenly stopped, heads are turned towards you and you feel the multiple pairs of eyes scanning you- judging you.

it’s denki who speaks first, breaking the very awkward silence that makes you just want to run home and forget this ever happened.

“what the fuck do you mean you’ve never gotten head?”

you can’t help the increasing beating of your heart or the way you immediately look down to your lap, absolutely dripping in shame. he continues and god do you wish he hadn’t.

“weren’t you with todoroki for like a year? and he never gave you head? are you serious?”

the humiliation you feel right now is worse than ever before, it’s worse than that one time you showered in the male bathrooms by accident, infact it’s far worse than that. you can’t even bring yourself to lift up your head from its position looking directly down.

“i- i haven’t no-” you cut yourself off before continuing “it was just- it was never something he expressed interest in and neither have any of my hook ups since- it’s not a big deal- really.”

you finally lift your head up when you finish your sentence to find that everyone’s looking at you. each pair of eyes scanning you with what seems to be a look of pity. you need to get out of here.

“that’s so not cool-“ sero starts before he’s interrupted by bakugo “-not cool is an understatement it’s fuckin’ ridiculous- god i knew he was a loser but i didn’t think it was that bad.”

“it’s fine- honest- it never really bothered me” your lying. and everyone knows your lying by the way your voice drops and the way you can’t meet anyone’s eyes, your worried if you do that you’ll melt into a puddle of shame right there and then.

“should fuckin’ bother you- he’s a piece of shit- not giving his girlfriend of over a year some fuckin’ head what a dick.” he’s got you. of course it bothered you that your boyfriend- that woman constantly fawned over hadn’t even as much as tried to make you cum not once your entire relationship. in the beginning you excused it as him being inexperienced, you were his first everything- or at least you thought you were- nothing seems as clear cut as it once did since your break up 4 months ago. it’s not like he’s been your only partner either, you’ve been with people before and after todoroki it’s just- no one seems to actually care about your pleasure.

your sudden break up with todoroki followed swiftly after you’d begun working as pros- it was him who ended it- claiming he could’ve give you the time you deserved due to his entirely full schedule, whether it was patrol, or an interview, or a mission- you were never entirely sure what he was doing but you knew whatever it was, it didn’t involve you. it’s not like you can blame him, you yourself know how hard it is to start off as a pro hero.

ultimately you thank him, despite the fact you think it’s very unlikely that the two of you will ever even be on speaking terms again- at least not for the next couple of years- his sidekick made sure of that when she accidentally made a comment about them being together a mere 2 days after the two of you had broken up.

but still- you thank him, you hadn’t realised how isolated the two of you had became, attempting to salvage the hanging threads of your relationship by spending every minute of your free time together, you feel more relaxed- like you can focus on things you haven’t been able to give the time to in what feels like forever.

one of which being the group your with now, your own friend group from ua- not todorokis who you had been forced to go out with for the past couple of months- not that you didn’t enjoy their company! they just weren’t your friends.

despite the love and care you feel for the people around you- you need a bit of time to breathe following your confession to the group- you think that denkis shout of determination deciding they need to get you some head is the perfect time for you to escape.

“well- have fun with planning? m’ gonna get a drink at the bar- i’ll be right back” your words are slurring slightly, the embarrassment you recently felt only fuelling your current tipsy state.

“i’ll come with you-” it’s cheery, and you can’t help but smile up at the red head when we takes your arm and leads you to the bar, you watch as he takes a set on one of the bar stools- waiting to be served by the bartender as he beckons you to sit with him.

there’s a moment of silence between you, not completely uncomfortable- you can tell he has something to say but you wait for him to be ready to say it. in the meantime you observe him, he seems a little nervous but you can’t quite figure out why-

“m’ sorry i didn’t say anything back there- i was just- shocked” he’s not looking at you as he says it, it’s clear he feels bad.

“kiri please-” you giggle and you watch as he seems to smile slightly at the sound. “i said it wasn’t a big deal and i meant it!” you look up and and smile before you continue “and its definitely not that shocking either im sure there’s alot of people my age who have never- y’know…”

he catches your eyes now- he’s looking at you with an expression you can’t quite read- “but it is shocking.” he takes a deep breath in before continuing- “it’s absolutely crazy to me than he had you in front of him that whole time never once-” another deep breath- you swear you see him shudder a little before he continues “…tasted you.”

what?

what the fuck???

your eyes are blown wide as you stare at him- that same unreadable expression on his face as he looks into your eyes- he doesn’t dare look away- not now. his eyes are lidded, probably due to his alcohol intake and you sigh slightly when you realise that’s why he’s being like this. he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying and you feel a twinge of guilt at the fact it made your insides feel all warm.

it’s almost as though he can read your mind- sensing your self-dejecting thoughts he decides to continue- although quieter now, he leans in close to you and your breath catches in your throat- “i can’t believe he had the chance to have you and didn’t take it-” he’s moving closer as he speaks- your still frozen in place- “because- i’d do anything for it.”

you stop breathing- “you- you don’t mean that kiri it’s fine you don’t have to try and make me feel better-” you rush it out, your whole body feels hot. he’d do anything for it? you want to believe him- you really do. but you can’t, no one’s ever thought about you like that- your sure he’s just trying to cheer you up.

“don’t do that” his tone is harsh now, eyes still unwavering from yours as he stares you down, you see the look now, before unreadable now you can tell- it’s lust. he’s not in his right mind you think- he’s drunk- even if only having a singular drink so far, not even nearly enough to cloud his judgement to this extent but it’s the easiest excuse you can find right now for his behaviour.

“i’m not saying this to make you feel better- i mean it. every word.” he moves his hand to touch the soft skin of your exposed thigh and you feel your body betray you as your thighs immediately squeeze together in an attempt to feel something- anything.

his words are too much you decide- too overwhelming- rushing a feeling through you that you’ve never quite felt before- you want it. you really want it.

your both broken out of your trance when the bartender hand him over your drinks- ones you weren’t even aware that kiri had ordered as he takes them both in his hands-

“cmon, im sure our friends are waiting on us” he stands up with a smile- urging you to follow him as he turns around and leads you back to the table your long forgetten friends sit.

you don’t follow him- you can’t- your overcome by an emotion you can’t quite recognise as you stand up from your seat at the bar and make a direct run for the exit- putting on your jacket with a hurry as you push open the door with a force that could’ve taken it off the wall. you don’t look back- not for a second.

maybe part 2 incoming idk i’m trying to decide which root to take this :3 lmk!

♰ part 2

[bobbile-blog]

Not sure if anyone’s said this yet but now that we have Laterano events plural I’m fascinated by their (imo) very deliberate choice of protagonists, and there are almost a couple of layers of narrative going on there. I struggle a little figuring out how to get this into words but specifically I think they’re chosen to be people who can carry a narrative without contradicting the orthodox morals of the church. There’s a LOT of vaguely anti-authoritarian rambling below the cut so please kindly bear with me and my English major brain.

I can’t really start there though. One of the reasons this is so brain hurty is how deeply it’s woven into the storyline, so to start, I have to verbalize how Laterano and Arknights writing more generally is different from other, similar settings. Because like, I hear the words “morally negative church in a grimdark setting” and my brain immediately shuts off. Come on, that’s so far beyond low-hanging fruit, if you’ve seen any grimdark setting ever you know exactly what that looks like. And sure, it was fine the first two or three times you saw it, depending on your tolerance for that kinda thing, but it gets boring quick and even when it was new it was kinda uninteresting story-wise. “Religion is always fake because it inspires hope which means everyone who takes meaning from it is either a corrupt grifter or naive and misled” isn’t just edgy nonsense, it’s also basically useless as an actual critique. It tells you absolutely nothing except how to tune out a particular kind of story, and a story that tries to get you to hear less is doing its job wrong.

So, Arknights does something different. Instead of denying the premise of the church entirely, it actually takes it at its word. Laterano is, in almost every definition of the word, a paradise. It is basically unmatched in terms of actual quality of life, with its only competitors being the Durin cities and maybe Aegir, and is worlds apart from now much the rest of Terra sucks. More than that, though, the paradise is specifically tailored to the worldview of a religion with a strong central authority - when I say it takes it at its word, I mean the authoritarian bits too. Laterano is a city that lives in perfect order and peace because everyone follows the law perfectly and they all understand each other and never fight. Empathy is really important for this, as it allows for a believable amount of superhuman societal order. Laterano has very little crime, political drama, or quarrels in general. It’s the promises of a strict higher authority actually taken at face value: everyone follows the rules and that means they have effectively unfettered freedom, because they don’t want to break the rules and therefore they can do anything they want.

Laterano is specifically written to be a believable paradise in a setting that has none, so that when the story then turns around and criticizes that setting, it has significantly more weight. Even when the promises of paradise are taken at face value, there are still issues that cannot be addressed because the system is inherently flawed even in the imaginary scenario where it works. Even worse, the problems that poke holes in the imaginary perfect scenario are the same problems that they face in the real world, like “how do you deal with the interpretation of scriptures” and “hey there’s this racism thing I keep hearing about should we be worried about that or what”. Because of the way this imaginary perfect system works, we then look back on our real world in a new light and understand it a little better. It’s good critique.

Okay so how did we get here and what does this have to do with the protagonists? Well, this starts with Fiametta in Guide Ahead, because she’s a really weird protagonist. This is a cold take at this point but despite being the character on the front of the box, she has very little to actually do with the central conflict of the event. Most of the conflict is handled by Ezell first and Andoain second, and Fiametta mostly putters around putting holes in people until the finale where Andoain receives the answer he’s been looking for, he turns to explain it to the world, and he runs into the only person in the whole of Laterano who does not care about his motivations or his revelation. Her role, in other words, is to replace the climax of Andoain’s story with her own, and in doing so she makes it much harder to actually get a resolution and a meaning out of the story (this should not be taken as a criticism of her character, let me cook). Guide Ahead’s ending is hazy, with only small piecemeal resolutions to its conflicts, and for the longest time that was just the way the event was written and it stood on its own.

But now, Hortus de Escapismo is out and the monkey brain see patterns. Specifically, with the choice of protagonists. Because Executor is definitely different from Fiametta as a protagonist, but there’s one particularly important connection between the two, and that’s that as I mentioned in the beginning, they allow for stories don’t contradict orthodox morality. Fiametta we went over, as she’s uninterested in any of Andoain’s morality and just wants him dead. Executor, though, is purely focused on his mission and views the world through that lens. He only wants to achieve his objective, and while helping the needy is in line with the stated objectives of the church and he does do so when able, it’s secondary to his assigned task. He does change as he gets further into the story, and we’re not gonna ignore that, but we’ll be back to it later. What I mean is more that he is designed as a person who is able to lead a story that doesn’t contradict with the morals of Laterano. He sees the injustice and suffering around him, but that’s not his job, so he doesn’t need to solve it to have a complete story with a happy ending.

This is where it really gets complicated, so I apologize if I don’t explain this very well. I see this as us dealing with multiple layers of fiction: the events of the story, the perspective of the church, and our perspective as readers. Back to the first point - authoritarian institutions almost always use stories to sell people on their brand of order. Simple stories, simple enough that even calling them myths seems like overselling it a little, your “Saint George slays a dragon” kinda thing. This is the point of the second layer, the perspective of the church. I don’t really have an in-world justification for this layer - maybe you could make the argument that it has to do with Law’s perspective on things, but I don’t totally buy that - I think it’s more in a weird narrative transition space for people who don’t read very carefully. Regardless, Fiametta and Executor’s shared indifference to the questionable circumstances surrounding them is designed to let them tell a story to prop up the existing order. Their protagonist status and their missions are specifically constructed to allow them to ignore the suffering around them, and as such ignore the larger questions that might poke holes in the larger order. They’re both playing out the story of Saint George, where they go and find a bad guy and kill them and that’s all there is to it. The story is designed and told specifically for that “that’s all there is to it”.

But, as we said earlier, this is a good critique, and as such it intentionally undercuts this story with the third layer: what we actually see as readers. We are shown the suffering and the injustice, and then get to see our protagonists ignoring that to pursue their goals. This is what gives Guide Ahead’s ending its unique texture, which sets it apart from every other event with a vaguely unresolved ending. We have seen the actual issues with Laterano, and also watched our protagonist explicitly ignore them in favor of her own story. It’s unsatisfying in a way that only really makes sense to me if we as the readers have an understanding of intentional authorship. Whether it be Yvangelista XI or Law or The Actual Real Life Pope, there are issues here that we want to see a resolution to but people are choosing not to address them. Again, it’s good critique. Not only does it push the reader to unpack and understand the actual real-world technique, but it also helps blunt it. You have just seen a plot and protagonist ring uncharacteristically hollow. You then look around to see why that is, and you realize there are many things that should have been resolved that weren’t. The next time you see a story resolve with that same hollow-ness, you know where to look. Surprise! Harry Potter was propaganda the whole time. It’s okay, it was never good, you were just twelve.

I guess the last thing is where we go from here, because Executor’s story breaks this mold somewhat. In Hortus de Escapismo, he has to deal with a mission that isn’t actually bounded by his normal rules, and because of that he actually does have leeway to help the people around him. He starts as someone who is totally mission-focused, but by the end of the event he’s done a total 180 and is blocking Oren’s attack, which makes the mission harder but helps the non-mission-critical civilians of the monastery. He breaks from the rigid thinking of “kill the bad guy and that’s all there is do it”, and gives his attention to the people he isn’t supposed to see. I think this is an indication of the direction we’re going to be headed in the future with Laterano events. The events aren’t going to get better - they’re going to keep being just as morally murky and complicated as in the past - but the characters are going to get better at handling it, and when they do, they’re going to actually start to change things for the better.

Goddamn that was a lot of writing for 1 AM. I still have a. Lot of thoughts on this event with stuff like empathy and Lemuen and Federico being an autistic icon(my beloved) but I’m going to leave things there, I think, because if I write for any longer my phone is going to crash when I try to post this. Anyway if you actually made it to the end thanks for listening to me rambling and I hope that made sense. Cheers.

[ghostandsoap]

Beyond the Mask

Simon “Ghost” Riley x Fem! “Gecko” Reader

Tags: Minor injuries. Brief references of child abuse. Maskless Ghost. 

Word Count: 5.5k

“You’re special to me.”

It wasn’t the first time that you had asked.

Every once in a while, you would make the same request to Ghost. It was a request that he always took with ease and understanding of your curiosity. It was a seemingly simple ask, but mutually understood that it was much more important than it seemed.

“Can you please take off the mask?”

But it was a request that he politely declined every time.

“No, love.”

You weren’t the only one who had poked at Ghost to show his face (and been turned down). Just about everyone that Ghost interacted with on a regular basis had asked at one point or another. Soap was the most persistent of the bunch, and he seemed to try harder each time.

So, it wasn’t lost on Ghost that it was a lingering mystery just asking to be solved. He was aware of the fact that it was maddening, which is why he was so patient whenever people asked.

Ghost would admit that as time went on, he felt more and more guilty for turning down something that you wanted. If you wanted something, Ghost would do everything in his power to get it or do it for you. You were deserving of that, and he never wanted you to forget it. But taking off the mask was one thing that he just couldn’t bring himself to do.

He knew that it couldn’t last forever. If he wanted to go steady with you and move into the long term future (which he most certainly did want to do), then the mask was going to have to come off at some point. He wouldn’t want you to commit to something like that without even knowing what he looked like. It was inevitably going to come up time and time again, and eventually he would have to give in.

“Easy, Gecko. Take a load off.” Ghost said, ushering you into the lone bedroom of the safe house.

The stifled groans and muffled whimpers were a sure sign of the discomfort you were in. Each little noise stung Ghost’s heart more and more each time. 

“I look and feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.” You coughed, hobbling into the room quite pathetically.

“That’s because you were hit by a truck.” Ghost said, dropping all of your gear in the corner of the room that he had carried in for you.

“Good point.” You laughed, carefully lowering yourself onto the edge of the bed.

You found humor in the situation, but Ghost hardly found it amusing at all.

It felt like more of a…firm bump rather than an actual hard, physical collision. The truck hadn’t been going nearly as fast as it could’ve been, and the front bumper had really only grazed one side of your body. Still, getting hit by a moving vehicle was bound to cause some damage, and the ever growing bruise on your side was proving that to you. 

Despite the aching soreness and the discomfort, you had been checked and cleared thoroughly of any broken bones or other injuries. You were expected to be moving slow for the next few days, but it was a small price to pay considering that it could’ve been much worse.

Ghost was livid when it happened. 

It was a rookie mistake – quite literally because it was a rookie who had made the mistake of almost running you over. Ghost had no idea who had the bright idea of letting a newbie tag along for this mission. This mission was predicted to take a couple weeks, and he couldn’t fathom how it was a good idea to let fresh blood in on such an important job. 

It had completely been an accident. The team was waiting around for a bit before making the next move of the day when it happened. He had been extremely apologetic (once he actually had the chance to apologize) and nearly came to tears over it. 

Nonetheless, you literally almost became roadkill because the amateur soldier wasn’t paying attention. 

Ghost nearly lost his mind. You had barely enough time to even comprehend what had even happened before the soldier in question had been yanked from the driver’s seat and dragged by his collar for the chewing out of a lifetime. Soap had rushed over to help you to your feet, letting Ghost do all the scolding. 

You weren’t sure what choice words Ghost had used with the rookie, but you could only imagine that he was close to seeing the light of the beyond by the time Ghost had said his piece. 

You managed to make it through the rest of the day without any major issues, although you were much slower and it took the remainder of the day to completely regain your composure. 

Ghost didn’t leave your side after that. He was half convinced that you were going to keel over and die instantly from some unforeseen complication. The rookie definitely kept his distance in the event that Ghost changed his mind about not killing him. 

Ghost felt a little bit better when you finally were able to call it a day. He felt relief knowing that you had the opportunity to get some rest and give your recently rattled body a break. 

“I should’ve choked him out.” Ghost growled, standing over you like the giant that he was.

He knelt on the floor to untie each of your boots, sliding them off of your fatigued feet. He stood back up, one of his massive hands came to the zipper on your jacket, sliding it down the length of your torso until it separated the outer layer completely.

“Ghost, he didn’t mean to do it,” You said, but smirked when you realized what he was doing. “I can undress myself, you know.”

He couldn’t help but chuckle. He manually moved each of your arms one at a time to slip the jacket off of your frame. 

“I know, but I don’t want you moving around too much. I also want to get a look at your side where you were hit.” He explained, motioning for you to carefully raise your arms above your head.

“Why?” You asked, wincing at the sting in your side when you raised your arms.

“Because you’ll lie and say that it’s ‘not that bad’.” He tossed your shirt aside once it was off, revealing your chest and torso.

He took a glance at your affected side that had already served as a canvas for a painting of nasty red, black, and purple. All the way from underneath your armpit down to the top of your hip was visibly roughed up.

“Just don’t want you to worry.” You squeaked when Ghost ran his hand along the area to check for any broken ribs once more.

“I know, baby.” He sighed, giving you the green-light once again for no major issues.

His nerves were settled once again, and he was suddenly aware of how peaceful the room was, and that he had a moment alone with you. The bedroom was cozy and didn’t have much to it. It was tucked away in the back of the safe house, away from the main living space where everyone else was camping out. The moon was shining through the window, casting beams of gentle light all through the room – just enough to be able to see you clearly. His hand cupped the side of your face, your head instinctively cradling into his palm as you made eye contact with him.

“You’re still my pretty girl.” His thumb dragged across your cheek.

“Even when I’m all beat up?” You giggled.

“Absolutely,” He remarked. “You’re still feeling okay, yeah?”

“Yeah, honey. Just tired.” 

“Poor baby.” He purred, taking a seat next to you on the bed. 

He raised the bottom of his balaclava just enough to where he could kiss you. His skull mask had been stashed away a while ago when he was tired of wearing it. His kisses were so much slower and tender when he was feeling worried about you…which was most of the time. When it came to you, Ghost tended to sweat the small stuff.

His grin matched yours when he felt it on the kiss. He had to admit, it was so easy to make you smile. He shifted on the mattress to get situated, leaning his tall frame against the back wall at the head of the bed. 

“Easy, baby. Careful.” He jumped in surprise when you pounced on him, straddling him with a blinding grin on your face.

You hardly even noticed the pain in your side at all now. This was way more important to you.

“Kiss me again.” You whispered playfully, and he laughed.

“I’m trying, but I can’t have you roughing yourself up for a couple of kisses.” He said, his hands running over your breasts through the material of your bra that was still on.

“A couple of your kisses. Not just any.” You corrected.

“Mm. I might give some other places some attention.” He teased.

“Is that a promise?” You gasped.

“Only if you’re good.” He kissed you again, groaning into your mouth when your hips shifted on top of his lap.

He loved moments like this. When you were on a mission (particularly the long ones), it could be a challenge to get to be with you alone. When you had a team around all the time (and Soap’s constant need to know what you and Ghost were up to), finding privacy could be nearly impossible.

A bedroom with a door that actually locked was like a lottery win for Ghost.

He was loving every second of this. It made him think about the next time that the two of you were going to be on leave and you could stay tangled up in his bed for as long as you wanted, wearing nothing but clean bed sheets and each other’s presence. 

He kept a firm, yet cautious grip on your hips to keep you from going anywhere. Ghost loved it when you were this close to him because he could savor every part of you. He never took you for granted, but he surely cared enough to use these moments wisely.

But it didn’t take long for a recurring problem to come to the surface – making out with Simon could be difficult. There was a major barrier that always, without fail, got in the way. 

You huffed when his balaclava slipped back down his face, denying you access from his lips. It was annoying to have to hold the fabric up with one hand and try to roam his chest with the other. This was usually the process: kiss, move the mask, kiss again, repeat. 

Ghost often found it funny how irritated you would get with it, but tonight it felt more like a nuisance to him rather than you. Eventually you stopped, pulling away and letting the balaclava fall back down. Ghost looked at you, his eyes shining with knowingness of what was coming next.

“Can you please take the mask off?”

The famous question. Ghost’s most popular request.

“No, love.”

Usually, you left it at that. If Ghost flat out said no, then you normally wouldn’t push it. Tonight was different though. There was a stronger determination than normal. The circumstances couldn’t have been more perfect. No one else was around to see, and Ghost knew that you would take the mystery of Ghost’s face to your grave.

“Please?” You tried again.

He chuckled, although it was more of a nervous laugh.

“I’m nothing special, doll. I’m just like everybody else.” He shrugged. 

“You’re special to me.” You corrected him. 

He released a heavy exhale that he didn’t even realize he was holding in. Ghost knew that your intentions weren’t anything malicious, and that they were based solely on pure curiosity. He didn’t blame you in the slightest. If he were in your shoes, he knew he would be the exact same way. The two of you spent so much time together, and the two of you shared many precious moments together. If he never got to see your face, then he would be itching to know what was underneath too.

Ghost was thankful that you hadn’t ever pushed him to show you his face. Upon meeting him, you knew the importance of the mask and the purpose that it served. 

“You have seen my face before,” He grumbled. “If you so recall, you walked in on me.”

“That was an accident!” You wailed. “And it was literally for half a second because I turned away so fast. I don’t even remember what you look like.”

“Gecko…” He sighed, a hint of desperation in his tone. “You know I don’t show my face.”

“Ghosty.” You whined, using his nickname that always made his knees go weak.

“You’re really not missing anything.” He bantered, trying to hold his composure.

“Actually…” You hesitated for a moment, because you debated continuing. “I feel like I’m missing a lot.”

Making him feel guilty was never your intention. There was no excuse or good reason to make him feel bad about something that you knew was important to him. But that didn’t stop his stomach from rolling over inside of him the way that it did whenever he felt like he had done something to make you unhappy.

And he knew that you weren’t upset in the slightest, but he still couldn’t help but feel so, so terrible.

“I want to hold your face…I want to kiss you without the mask,” You went on, hoping that he would understand that you weren’t attacking him. “I want to see you.”

That tone in your voice. The whisper of someone that he adored so much was like hearing the song of the soul. He wouldn’t say no to that. How could he say no to that?

“Okay.” He gave a slow nod.

You withheld from making a shocked expression, but that didn’t stop your heart from hitting your shoes and recoiling into your throat.

“Okay…” You echoed, unsure of what he meant exactly.

“The mask can come off.”

Instant fireworks exploded in your nervous system. It was a premature celebration, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

You had to admit – you were nervous. Certainly not as nervous as he was. You knew how important this was to him, and how strict he was about never, ever revealing his face to anybody. It was an urban legend in a way. The mysterious wonder of what the esteemed lieutenant looked like beneath the skull and the stone cold demeanor. 

It was important for you to be conscious of the fact that your reaction was going to be critical. He was perfect to you already, and whatever he looked like certainly wouldn’t change that. But you knew how sensitive he was about this. Any kind of accidental twitch, blink, or show of a potentially sour expression would freak him out big time. You knew you needed to be as neutral as possible and be sure to be even more encouraging.

“Would you be more comfortable if I turn around while you take it off? Or do you want me to do it?” You asked, being absolutely sure that this went the way that he was most comfortable with.

He paused for a moment, his voice sounding even deeper than usual when he answered.

“You can do it.” 

Chills rushed down your spine, translating into a physical shudder. This felt like you were about to discover the solution to world hunger. It felt surreal, as if this were breaking some foundational law of the universe. 

Every motion felt overly voluntary. You tried your best to hide the slight tremble in your hands when you brought your hands to the area just below his chin. Your fingertips were nimble and careful when you slipped them underneath the fabric. Both sides of his lower jaw touched the pads of your fingers – it was a foreign feeling altogether.

This was the moment of truth. Should you whip it off quickly? Should you ease it off of him to give him some extra time to prepare? You didn’t want to ruin this for him because then he’d never show his face ever again. His hands didn’t dare move from your waist, 

Slowly and carefully, you removed the mask from his face. Bit by bit was revealed to you – his lips, his nose, his cheeks. Each new feature that was shown was the next piece of putting the puzzle together. The rate of your heart grew quicker and quicker with each passing millisecond. 

This wouldn’t change the way you felt about him. You had fallen for Ghost because of who he was, not what he looked like. In all honesty, you wanted Ghost to do this for himself rather than for you. You understood that Ghost didn’t quite see it this way, but this was your way of letting him know that he was safe with you. He didn’t need the mask to protect him from you. 

When you made it to the space just below his eyes, you decided to do it like a band-aid. Get it off quick and lose the anticipation of it all. In a flash of a second, the mask was off and there was no turning back.

And there he was. 

If it hadn’t been for your ribcage holding it in, you were sure that your heart would’ve exploded right out of your body. 

He was looking at you with a fixed stare, terrified to look away or say a single word. He was reading and interpreting every minor, barely noticeable movement in your expression. His skin was glowing in the soft light casted from the moon outside. There was an anxious shine in his eyes, his dark irises were saying everything that his mouth couldn’t articulate. He was scared to death.

His balaclava was clutched in your hands as if it would disintegrate if you let go. His lifeline was in your hold, at your complete mercy. There wasn’t a thing that he could do. He couldn’t take this moment back even if he wanted to. 

He needed you to say something. He couldn’t stand the feeling of all the focus being on him, and he couldn’t tell if he was correctly guessing at what you were thinking. 

You were at a loss for words. This felt like a complete shift in the universe, like everything was different when it really wasn’t different at all. You were stuck trying to comprehend the fact that you were really looking at him – the real him.

And he was beautiful.

You weren’t surprised in the slightest. Even if you had no real way to know what he looked like, you knew from the moment you met him that he was good looking. Ghost himself had even made comments here and there that he considered himself to be rather attractive. 

You didn’t understand it. How could someone so brave, strong, and (again) handsome want to shield himself away from the world? If there was anyone that could take on life with stride, it was Ghost. But there was a simple answer to that. It seemed to be the reason for all of the “odd” things and traits about him. 

He wasn’t always like that.

He had to protect himself. There had never been anyone in his life at any point to do it for him. He never had the chance to be a kid. He had to grow up before he even had the chance to be excited about growing up.

His upbringing had everything to do with the mask and the reason that he wore it. It was his version of a security blanket. It was his protection from the evil of the outside world. Because he had learned at a young age that sometimes the worst evil that the world had to offer came from the ones right in front of you, and the ones that were supposed to love you the most.

“Simon…” 

His name – his real name fell from your lips as a tender whisper. The words were laced with appreciation of his trust and absolute adoration for the revealed man standing in front of you. Of course you had said his name before. He had heard you say it plenty of times. 

But he’d never heard you say it in this context, and he surely had never heard you say it when you were looking at the real him.

There was a moment of panic and discomfort for him. He was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was completely exposed. His most prized security measure had been stripped away – now useless due to its absence from his face. The air of the room felt cold on his skin, another reminder that he had given up his primary line of defense. 

There were a million things that were running through his mind, but every single word was caught in his throat and released out into the air with each of his shaky exhales. There wasn’t a single thing that he knew to say. All he could do was watch you stare at him, raking over him and studying every aspect of his face.

“You’re so handsome, my love.” You spoke again, and the blood in his lower extremities ran boiling hot.

His heartbeat stalled for a beat or so when your hand came to his hair. The balaclava had rustled his hair when it brushed against it, but he hadn’t even noticed. Your fingers ran through his dark hair that was (admittedly) not as clean as it could’ve been. His hands were trembling against your hips, his fingertips drumming lightly against the waistband of your pants.

You seemed content to him, which eased his anxious nausea a little bit. The gentle, yet genuine smile on your face brought some comfort. Every sense of the feeling of you touching him felt heightened to the highest degree. He was aware of every strand of hair that ran through your fingers, every feather-like drag across his cheekbone with your knuckle. 

It felt different for sure. He wasn’t used to someone touching that zone of his body. He definitely wasn’t accustomed to sharing it with someone, but he was thankful that you were being so considerate to how he was feeling. 

“I…I don’t know what to say.” He finally spoke, his words coming out in a quavery way.

“You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” You replied with a voice like silk, pressing a kiss to his forehead that sent a wave of electricity through his core. “I’m just looking at you.”

He almost laughed. That’s what made him so nervous. 

This was definitely not something that he had counted on happening today. He always knew the moment would come, but he hadn’t expected it to happen quite like this. It was a weird feeling that he was having. Even though he was seeing you as the same as he always did, it still felt different. It felt more intimate, more authentic. The mask was resting in your lap, a place that he never expected his mask to end up.

“Pretty boy…” You drawled, cupping his face the same way that he had held yours just a few moments before.

His cheeks burned at that comment. A flush of hot crimson red infiltrated his face to the point where he was sure that you could feel it on your hand. He was exploding on the inside with a million emotions that he couldn’t pinpoint to save his life.  

He was so beyond grateful for you. This was something that he had feared and dreaded for a long time, terrified that you would see him as something other than the image that he had worked so hard to create and maintain for himself. But he was beginning to realize the reality of the situation. 

The truth was, you had always been able to see who he really was. That was something that was special about you. The mask only hid him from you in a physical way. There was never a time where you hadn’t seen the person inside of him, and never once had you held an ounce of resentment for who he really was. 

He had always been Simon Riley to you. 

So in reality, this wasn’t the first time that you were seeing him. This was just the first time that you were seeing the face that went with it. 

“You think so?” He asked, his hands beginning to move from their cemented positions.

“Absolutely I do,” You answered, kissing the tip of his nose. “You’re gorgeous.”

“You’re just buttering me up.” Simon cracked a smile, and your eyes brightened immediately.

“Oh! Look at that smile,” The intensity of your grin matched his. “Happiness looks beautiful on you.”

The words rang in his head and echoed out through his ears. Happiness felt even better than it looked. His most consistent and worthwhile source of that happiness was right in front of him, loving on him as if she thought he was the most perfect person in the world. 

He couldn’t fathom how anyone could feel that way about him. He tried his best not to question it, and instead tried to appreciate it and reflect it back to you. He was grateful for you, and he did everything he could to remind you of that. 

“I’m glad you think I’m ‘pretty’ and all,” He tucked his fingertips into the front of your waistband. “But I’ll never be as pretty as you.”

“Now you’re buttering me up,” You giggled.

You kissed him then. The first real kiss with nothing in the way. Oh, it was a wonderful kiss – and Simon made a mental note that, yeah, kissing without the mask was so, so much better. He wrapped his arms completely around you, smothering your frame against his. His nose brushed against yours with every head movement, and every little happy whimper from you swelled his heart more and more. 

Simon pushed you onto your back, keeping you pinned between the mattress and his body. He kissed all over your neck and face to the point where you were breathless from all the giggles and squeaks that he was bringing out of you. When you were close to getting lightheaded, he pulled his head back to give you a break. 

He couldn’t get over how you were looking at him. That look of adoration and care was healing his soul in ways he never thought he’d be able to achieve. There were certain things in life that Simon had accepted long ago that he would never get to experience…being cared for in the way that you cared for him was one of them. This was a dream come true and something he never would’ve counted on in a million years. 

“I know that wasn’t easy for you. I’m proud of you,” You brushed a stray hair from his forehead. “Thank you for sharing this moment with me.”

He felt a twinge of guilt. He really hadn’t done anything at all. You shouldn’t have to thank him for showing his face. The absolute bare minimum of existing as a human. But he knew that you understood why this was important, and that this really was something huge. 

“I wouldn’t want to share it with anybody else.” He admitted.

He was so crazy about you. He wasn’t sure what he had done in his life to deserve you, but he would do it a million times over if it meant spending forever with you. If there was anyone in the world that he trusted enough to share this much of himself with, it was you. 

“I think you need to get some sleep,” He remarked. “Need to rest that side.”

“I could stay right here all night.” You returned.

“I know,” He sat up, pulling you up with him. “But you need some sleep.”

Despite your protests, he arranged the bed to be most comfortable for you, encouraging you to properly get settled to get some shut eye. He grabbed his removed balaclava from the bed, keeping it ready to go when he returned to the front of the house where the rest of the team was.

“Are you comfortable?” He asked, sitting on the edge of the bed once you were all snuggled in. 

“Yeah,” You yawned. “I’m good.”

“Alright, love. I’ll see you in the morning.” He kissed your forehead, standing to leave you be.

Just as he raised his hand to put the balaclava back on, he felt a force stop him in his tracks.

“No. Wait,” You grabbed his free hand, stopping him from walking away. “Please stay.”

The balaclava in his hand suddenly felt heavy, like an intuitive feeling telling him it wasn’t time to hide away again.

“Might I remind you that I’m nearly a giant,” He chuckled, referring to the bed that was just barely big enough. “You need rest, darling.”

“Please?” 

That face. Those puppy eyes that he could never resist. In your defense, you did genuinely tend to sleep better when he was around — you felt more protected that way, and that was something he would never say no to.

So he obliged, setting the balaclava on the bedside table next to you, removing his boots and just his outer layers to make it at least semi-possible to fall asleep. He never really slept on missions (or at all), but if there was even the slightest chance that he could catch a few winks, then he would surely take it. 

He was careful with his movements as he lowered into bed, being sure not to come down too hard with his giant frame and break something. The bed wasn’t the newest or the sturdiest in the world, and he already had reservations about how it would hold him. He chuckled when you snuggled up to him immediately, barely even giving him time to convince himself that the bed wouldn’t collapse underneath him. 

As he had predicted, it was a bit of a squeeze, but that only gave you more reason to be all over him. He hadn’t realized how rundown he was until he was sunken into the mattress, his muscles and bones screaming with celebration when they were finally at rest. He was relaxed, he had you next to him, you were safe — he was all set. There were a few passing minutes of silence, but neither of you were trying to fall asleep just yet. You were still looking at him, admiring  his features and paying attention to every little detail. 

He was admiring you for admiring him, and even though he already knew every inch of you to perfection, he still loved to look at you. 

“If you want to put it back on…” You reached for the balaclava that he had placed on the end table next to you. “I understand if you do.”

He stared at the black and stained white fabric covering. It was the idol of his personality, the foundation of what everyone knew about himself. It was a shield that he kept at all times, his highest form of protection and self-preservation.

But tonight? He could do without it.

“I don’t need it.” He answered.

A pause. Then a beat of disbelief. You weren’t sure if he meant it or if he was trying to satisfy what he thought that you wanted him to do. You never wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do on your behalf.

“Are you sure?” You clarified.

“I’m sure.” He gave a soft grin.

“Positive?” You made sure.

“Positive.”

He pulled you back into his chest once you had set the mask aside. He kissed the crown of your head, dragging his fingertips along the skin of your back. He listened to your breathing, paying attention to how it slowed to a consistent rhythm as you fell deeper and deeper into a slumber. He was still processing everything. He had taken his mask off with no preparation or planning. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him. He was beginning to turn into the man he never thought he’d be able to become. 

For the longest time he had feared that he was too scarred and too frozen over to ever be anything other than a hardened man with nothing but distaste for the world. But he never knew there was a flame hot enough and bright enough to melt that frozen heart of his.

He was thankful for you.

You were the perfect combination of everything he ever needed and wanted. He was thankful for your kindness, patience, and support. He was thankful that you were strong enough to believe in him, yet soft enough to be sweet on him. He was thankful that you cared for him and showed him more love than anyone else had ever shown him before.

And he was always thankful that you had always been able to see beyond the mask.

[weebsinstash]

for the whole marriage thing, it would be kinda funny if you marry someone else out of spite, especially right after Miguel found out that you two were actually destined for each other.

You, out of breath and looking upset: Dude, this is gonna be a lot but, I need your help doing something to spite Miguel--

Hobie: don't even have to finish mate, you've already sold me on it

You: you and I need to get married because I wanna be my own person and rebel against Miguel because he wants US to get married but I don't want to because fuck him and fuck canon and I wanna choose my own destiny idk am I being dumb 🥺

Hobie, who Definitely Has Nothing To Gain Here Wink Wink: alright, that's what I'm talkin about, fuckin mental, let's do it 😌 fight the man ✊️

But no for real, you were actively avoiding relationships and suddenly Miguel hits you with "you and I are canon and I want to start getting to know each other better" and you're, I dunno, would "panic fucking" work. Would you be so bold. You're just trying to hook another person that YOU choose (and again Hobie would still apply here lmao) because, no, no, you can't let canon TRAP you like this!! And it would fucking suck if you had like, neutral or even negative feelings about Miguel. Shit, I've thought of, imagine being his FWB that he's actually catching feelings for but then the Miles Morales Incident happens and, you're just kind of disgusted how he acted, how he spoke to Miles, how he treated Gwen, but before you can officially tell him "hey, I want nothing to do with you anymore", that's when Miguel comes to you wanting to get more serious and he uh, does not accept you wanting to move on

I guess detouring into a different idea but imagine being kind of a FWB or fling of his that you kind of moved on from him from for whatever reason (he can have a temper, he can be too intense, you don't like when he did xyz, or maybe you're a free spirit and don't want to get serious and break things off when you feel he's too clingy) and he like. Cannot accept you've moved on. He's cockblocking you at the Spider Society bars n clubs and little holes in the wall where the adults go to drink and get together. By reputation alone, people know to avoid tou because Miguel wants you back, everyone still sees you as His Girl, like he's claimed you, but he still catches people dumb enough to get close to you (and I imagine his surveillance slips or he gets busy and you have a casual fuck under his radar and he sees hickeys or something on you later and goes ballistic)

But yeah gosh imagine like, he tells you up front you two are canon and not even 24 hours later you can notice the atmosphere has changed in the Spider Society with how people treat you in terms of respect, personal space, not being too touchy or overly familiar, but, most importantly, you just feel. Awkward. It's like everyone knows. Did they all know before you did, or did Miguel quickly spread the news around? You're not sure which of those is worse. He's wanting to get you know you more intimately, he wants to try and take you on dates, but, he sucks at it, he's been out of the game way too long and he's a stressed temperamental half-spider workaholic, so, his dates amount to, him just trying to spend time with you in different ways while trying to make awkward small talk. He takes you to dinner. He sees if there are any movies or entertainment you wanna see in the Spider Society, making awkward attempts to try and hold your hand

But also. Imagine. A version of Miguel that wants to move much faster than that. I mean, you two are going to be canon, so, you might as well get acclimated to him right away, right? He wants you to immediately spend more time with him, he starts controlling where you are and what you do so he can be spending time with you or connected to you in some way, you're living with him in his own residence now, he INSISTS you sleep in the same bed like a married couple, and while he may not immediately demand you do what married couples do, he makes it clear that he wants to eventually. God, you can barely even relax knowing he's in bed with you and he still forcibly cuddles you, getting used to feeling his body against your own (and what if he slept in the nude 😳 he provides you pj's but they're kind of small and thin and he keeps the room cold on purpose so you have to seek his warmth under the covers)

Miguel is like an established adult in his 30s or something all "we'll get to know each other and then we can start planning our wedding. We'll have dinner dates at least once a week and we'll have joint bank accounts--" meanwhile you're just sitting over here like " um 🥺 I um 🥺 have never really even dated anyone before 🥺" and suddenly this 6 ft 9 man is looking down at you realizing there's a lil bit of an age gap and definitely an experience gap and he gets to have all of your "firsts" and he's Just So Weird About It in like, kinda a fetish way. He gets to have your first kiss, your first time (maybe he even wants to wait until marriage), he gets to teach you things, like, lowkey it's kinda like a mentorship as well as a relationship, he's your teacher, your protector, your husband, your jailor

Like imagine you finally have your first baby and you're freaking out and you're so scared and worried about doing everything absolutely perfect and he's just like, so happy but also kind of romanticizing/fetishizing you being a new/first-time mom, he thinks you're so cute, so eager to do good and learn how to do the best for your baby. He teaches you all kinds of things about childcare and being pregnant since, he's already cared for his fiance before his canon event, he remembers all the things he learned to become a dad, all the things he picked up during the second go around, and now everything new he's learned just for you. I mean really if we follow the combo comic/movie canon, you're the first time he's getting a BABY baby and getting to raise it and do everything from the start, and it's his CANON baby so he knows you're both safe.

I just feel like between his literal list of trauma (beaten by abusive father who also abused his mom, he was betrayed and drugged with a highly addictive and agonizing substance to basically be enslaved, he was sabotaged and atomically spliced with a spider while trying to cure said addiction, his pregnant fiance died, his second family died as well as an entire universe) and him not really even having much of an OPTION with breaking canon at risk (which would have such a domino effect because it happening in his Nueva York would dismantle THE ENTIRE SPIDER SOCIETY, so, this is like, QUARDUPLE RISK) he would just. Like damn you don't even need to have yandere stuff in there, he HAS to make you stay with him? Obviously he eventually has no problem with it and fully enjoys the excuse if he wasn't crazy about you on sight, but like. LMAO you're just hanging around HQ with big sad eyes and people are whispering "who's that over there that Miguel is hovering over" "oh that's Miguel's wife. she's scared of him and he's way too intense" "well why doesnt she just leave him" "can't, they're canon, and even if they werent, i dont think he'd allow it. Shit just the other day she wanted to leave HQ to swing through the city and she didn't get his permission first and Miguel activated the Morales Protocol and sent us all chasing after her" "like ALL all?" "Oh yeah it was totally an 'all available units' situation, and once she saw she was being chased she started freaking out and panicking and tried to run, which pissed him off even more, and is why she's got a babysitter now" "oh wow, that's rough... so anyways do you know what they're serving in the cafeteria today?"

[picnokinesis]

Thoughts on Different Types of Representation in Doctor Who (and how fandom responds to it)

So I watched Rogue last night and - okay first, oh my days, absolutely ADORED it, this is definitely my favourite episode of this season, it was just so much FUN and it hooked me right from the start. And then the queerness! I was actually thinking to myself whilst watching it how wonderful it was because it felt like a queer story in a way that wasn't like, showboating about how progressive it was? [editorial aside: this is not comparing it to anything in particular, just a general observation]. The characters were just queer, within this wild and wonderful sci-fi story, but also their queerness wasn't the Only Character Trait they had and their story didn't resolve around their queerness, but their queerness was crucial to the plot in a way that was just lovely to see - and as a writer myself, it's personally the way I love to see our stories being told.

But then I made the mistake of going into the tag - always a foolish thing to do, because for some reason everyone loves to praise this era by criticising the previous era (as if it hasn't been criticised enough...like we know most of y'all hate Chris Chibnall for committing no worse crimes than Moffat and RTD before him...we know). And I found a couple of folks talking about how this episode alone did more for queer representation than the entirety of thirteen's era, whiiiiich at first really Peeved Me Off - like didn't these people understand how important Yaz's arc (especially Eve of the Daleks) was to a LOT of people? But then I was like 'well actually this is interesting', right? Because I think there's two very different kinds of representation going on here - and they're both very important in different ways, but one tends to get lauded as brilliant rep and one always gets put down as not good enough, or even bad rep. And what's the main difference? Whether the characters have a gay kiss or not.

So I just thought I'd share some of my thoughts and feelings on this, and why I think both these kinds of rep are equally important! To be clear from the get-go though - this is definitely not me ragging on anyone who likes more about one than the other (in fact, I think everyone likes one more than the other). This is merely a personal essay about it and the frustrations that comes when people in general do lift one up over the other. I'm gonna put it under the cut though, because it might get a bit long!

So, back when Eve of the Daleks aired, I remember having a lot of conversations about the representation in that episode - in particular with a very good friend of mine, who is a lesbian. And we realised that when it came to rep, we both actually wanted pretty different things. I'm aroace and genderfluid, and so a lot of what I saw in how thirteen was written - especially in terms of her gender (or lack thereof), and also her apparent lack of attraction (at least, in how I read it) was just incredibly affirming to me. I've never EVER seen a character on screen that I could see myself in both in terms of sexuality and gender. Whereas my friend saw things quite differently - thirteen was a lesbian, and they wanted to see that kiss between these two characters, because for them too, it was so rare to see that, and, in their words, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. And we both realised that the reason that queer representation can feel so intense and important is, simply, because there isn't enough of it. We're all desperately reaching for the same small portion - and none of it is ever going to please everyone, or resonate with everyone. The stakes are too high.

So then, when there wasn't this dramatic romantic ending to Yaz's story, when there was no queer kiss, I was very sad for my friend, who didn't get that representation, but so painfully relieved for myself - because I got mine. So then it sucked a lot to see a lot of people getting really angry that this wasn't queer representation, that this was even homophobic - I even had someone tell me that aromantic representation in this regard was always going to be homophobic, because no-one would ever write it to be aro rep, and would instead only ever write it to avoid writing a gay kiss. And the thing that got me the most was that, REGARDLESS of whether they kissed or not, regardless of how you read either of the characters, there was one thing that was certain:

Yaz was queer. In text. Her emotional plotline centred around her realising that she was attracted to the Doctor (who was presenting as a woman - although, again, I don't think she really identified as such). The fact that she and the Doctor didn't get together by the end does not erase that fact.

They didn't kiss - but so what? Are queer people only queer when they're kissing someone of the same gender, or having gay sex? Are queer people not queer in their day to day lives, when they're not doing any of those things? Are queer people not queer when they're not dating? Are queer people not queer when they're trans, when they're ace, when they're aro, when their queerness doesn't resolve around attraction to the same gender?

And, to be honest, I think a lot of my feelings around this stem from the sort of exclusionist rhetoric that we saw a LOT of towards the ace/aro community back in 2012 that we still see now, that we're seeing towards the trans community now, that we're still seeing towards bi people, for pete's sake. It's this in-community infighting, pushing each other down to try and get up to the top, to keep all the "resources" for "the people who really need it", and it causes a serious amount of harm - but the truth is (and to bring this back to doctor who) that it all comes back to what me and my friend were discussing. We're all scared, all desperate to be seen - and when we are seen, it's the most incredible experience and the idea of losing that (or having someone else undermine it) feels inexpressibly awful. Having the thirteenth doctor...I suddenly realised this is what all the straight cis white dudes get all the time. She was like me, and that was indescribable. And then losing her - and having RTD not even be able to have a man wear her clothes because he was too worried about what the tabloids would say to be able to show a gnc person on tv...and then constantly described her as The Woman Doctor for the next entire episode - that hurt. A lot.

I've spoken to other friends who felt so seen in the character of Yaz - those people who realised they were queer later in life, those who fall in love with people and it doesn't end up going anywhere, those who don't get the whirlwind queer romances that people often call 'good representation'. Myself and many of my aspec friends have felt so seen in thirteen's almost entirely romance-less arc, and myself and my trans/genderqueer friends felt very seen in the way that thirteen's character would have been exactly the same if she'd been a man - the only difference was how the other characters around her interacted with her. Gender was something that happened to her. And when I watch episodes like Rogue, even though I don't relate to that representation, I just feel overwhelmed with joy because I know how important it will be to others that I care about. I think my sadness then comes from the fact that the way Thirteen and Yaz were written are just as important to me and many people that I know, but because they didn't kiss, it's not considered queer enough. Am I not queer enough, then? Are my friends not queer enough?

We need more episodes like Rogue, like The Parting of Ways, like Praxeus, like The Doctor Falls, because they are unquestionably and unapologetically queer, in a way that can't be avoided. We also need more episodes like Eve of the Daleks, like The Haunting of the Villa Diodati, like the rest of thirteen's era where the representation is an undercurrent throughout the whole story - but also undeniable, in a way that Yaz's story arc is, even if it doesn't end in a kiss, even if it doesn't end neatly and happily. Personally, I definitely would love to see more stories focused on aromanticism and on transness (especially ones that are written by trans people for trans people, rather than by cis people for cis people), but that's probably going to be down to people like me and other writers that I know actually getting into the script writing industry - and that depends on the people who are already there letting us in. One thing that I've always appreciated about Chibnall is that, after leaving Doctor Who, he began a programme for training up new showrunners with ITV, because: "showrunners are the gatekeepers and too many of the gatekeepers look like me."

Anyway, I probably have more thoughts that I've forgotten, but that's generally the gist of it. I think the more we fight over whether rep is 'good' or 'bad', relating to whether we see ourselves in it or not (rather than 'is this genuinely harmful or unhelpful', which I think is a more crucial question) the more the waters get muddied. We have different needs and wants, and no single episode is going to represent every facet of our community. But each episode, each story like this is a step in the right direction - and even rep that isn't perfect (I have thoughts about The Star Beast, for example) is still extremely positive and important, and definitely something that should be celebrated, even as we keep looking to the future for what we would like to see done differently, done better. And some day, I hope, there'll be so much queer rep, it'll be so normal, that those stakes won't feel so high anymore. It won't feel like everything hangs on how a certain show or storyline or episode is written. We'll all be seen. And that will be absolutely fantastic.

[kerubimcrepin]

Wakfu Manga - Tome 4, Part 1

During every tome his character bio is mostly the same, save for little rephrasings, and yet it's always such a blast. The Brotherhood of Tofu has bewitched him.

I'm insane... I'm crazhyy.

Imagine being an Eliatrope demigod whose entire purpose is chilling and inspiring others to chill. Like imagine spending millions of reincarnations chilling and there's no war or tragedy, besides maybe the fact that you often outlive people due to being a demigod (but even that is remedied by the fact that you have 11 siblings).

Now imagine a war breaks out and shit. Maybe it breaks out twice. God knows if they reincarnated between these two, though they probably did.

NOW imagine that, after defeating the baddie, — even though you're the demigod of chilling, you spend thousands of years in absolute silence in cosmos trying to catch your deity mother's psionic suffering waves to rescue her, and THEN you face a fate worse than death.

Wouldn't it be fucked.

There are some very good Joris moments in this volume — though the peak was in tome 3. He looks pretty interested in this, for obvious reasons.

Of course YOU would know about century-long art projects, century boy.

The fact that an entire planet is just gone and lost is very tragic to me. They'll never know their home, even if the World of Twelve is also home to them.

STOP BEING CUTE!

Not him standing menacingly and looking right at the reader 😭🤣

He is getting so much enrichment from this. So much mental enrichment, like a cat.

He always knows when to say something ominous and scary.

Very good Joris expression.

HIS FANGS. HIS FANGS. HELLO?!

Anyway, this being the face he pulls after seeing a past incarnation of Yugo come to terms with his immenent death and never seeing his brother again, is so Joris-core. Of course he'd go "🤨"

But despite his chipper attitude here, his mood and curiosity start to rapidly deteriorate after this moment:

I think that for Joris "I am afraid of being alone so thank god my father and uncle are together with me for centuries and remember me after dying, because I don't know how I'd live otherwise" Crepin-Jurgen — talks of actual proper reincarnation with memory loss are scary and exhausting.

He didn't exactly have anyone to tell him what Kerubim and Atcham would be like, after reincarnating. Maybe he spent the couple of years that they were kittens and couldn't talk, fully convinced that he lost Kerubim forever.

That's bound to leave a mark on a person.

It's especially horrifying and off-putting because of how casual Adamai and Yugo are about death and forgetting. Joris has always valued memories — they may as well be all he has of some of the people he loves, at this point. It's the reason he gifted them his fishing rod — in a way, it is a memory of Khan.

Yet, every time Yugo and Adamai die, some new version of them — a version they won't have control over, a version who will forget everyone they have loved up to that moment, — will spring forth and take their place. They'll have new families. "They" probably had hundreds of children and hundreds of lovers in the past, but were those people even them? Is it going to be "them" after they die?

He likes Yugo and Adamai a lot. The thought that someday some strangers may take their place is... a lot.

I can't discuss this scene without including these two entire pages, because something very interesting is happening here:

Joris, quite carelessly, lifts the pillow that contains two precious items, with an annoyed expression, before aggressively questioning Adamai.

I really think he hates all the reincarnation talk.

Anyway, he has very visible fingernails again. Nail polish win.

The fact that sexy femboy Baltazar is exclusive to Wakfu manga is oppression against teachers and education workers.

Joris is worried that something bad happened, but it was just inter-adventurer party abuse, which is normal.

He's so ready for this bullshit to be over.

Standing a very asocial distance apart from everyone. As is the usual <3

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for blocking my business partner and our mutual friends?

First of all, I want to establish that I'm not an idiot. I don't think I'm the smartest person in the world, I didn't do very well in school, and I'm generally a bit forgetful. I've been struggling with undiagnosed mental illness and neurodivergency for my entire life. My family growing up was very anti therapy and I've only recently brought anything up to a doctor. However, I like to think I manage myself pretty well. I have my own systems for doing things, and they may be unconventional, but it works. I've come to terms with the fact that no matter what I do, I'm going to have to work a lot harder than the average person and get a lot less credit. That's just how it is. I have two jobs, one of which is at a restaurant, and the other is a business that I started with my friend. It's still fairly small and local, but I'm really proud of how far it's come.

Me and my business partner, we'll call her Shelly, have a group of friends that we hang out with from time to time. I honestly don't like them very much, but Shelly, who has been my best friend for over a decade really enjoys hanging out with them, so though I've expressed to her that I want to start seeing them less, I've stayed friends with them, both to make Shelly happy and to avoid any drama that might be caused.

Among this group of friends is someone we'll call Dianne. Dianne will insult and berate me consistently, and then insist it was a joke. Nobody has ever laughed, and I have told Dianne that I don't find any of it funny. The other members of the friend group (aside from Shelly) said that this is just how she expresses that she likes somebody, and tried to make it seem like playful banter, but the insults are incredibly one-sided (I've never said an ill word about her to any of them, and especially not to her. I'm not rude.) and she never insults anyone but me and sometimes Shelly.

Recently ( a couple months or so ago) she started taking digs at my intelligence, as I have been a few minutes late to a couple of our hangouts, and I have trouble with my left and right. I said explicitly that I don't like it when people treat me like an idiot. I tried to be polite, but I won't stand for that. Also, being late and directions are very common things for people to struggle with, so I don't understand why that insinuates that I'm at all unintelligent. She also may have gotten this idea because I don't tend to laugh at her jokes, which are mostly things like "that's what she said" and other cheap and immature sex jokes. She usually tries to brush off the fact that I don't laugh by saying I must be dumb because I don't get her jokes. I do, they're just not very clever and I clearly have a different sense of humor than her.

I just kept trying to avoid any sort of conflict, because the rest of the group makes Shelly really happy. But then it started to get worse. The whole group seemed to be influenced by these jokes, and stopped expecting me to be able to do anything. I wasn't even the designated driver anymore, even though I'm usually the obvious choice because I don't drink. Dianne told me I'd probably crash because she didn't think I could read street signs. I've driven her home multiple times (during none of which she's been sober enough to remember my driving ability) and I've never driven at all irresponsibly while any of them were in the car. The whole group, aside from Shelly, began making jokes about how I was the resident airhead. For my birthday, Dianne got me a toddler sippy cup, and a card that said "Congrats, you're 2!". Get it. Because I'm so stupid I'm basically a child. Ha ha. So funny I forgot to laugh.

The last straw for me was when Shelly sent me a business email that was like "Are you going to be able to get the books done in time?" and basically told me to make sure I wasn't lazy when it came to keeping track of the sales, even though I've never been late with that kind of stuff. I really care about our business, and I keep track of all of the financials and do our taxes. I don't have a degree or anything, I could never afford college, so I emailed Shelly back very passive-agressively about how if she doesn't think I can do it in time, she can hire a real accountant.

We met with the friendgroup the next day and I was incredibly pissed. Dianne made another dig at me, something about our business probably going under because I'm too incompetent to do anything. I snapped. In the midst of yelling at her, I said "I am not stupid. You don't get to treat me like I am." and she said "But aren't you, though?" and I stormed out. I blocked everyone, except for Shelly.

I texted Shelly and said that she could be friends with whoever she wants, but that I'm never speaking to any of them ever again. Shelly said that I was being overdramatic, and that they're all being awkward to her now because they know that we're such good friends. I apologized for putting her in a position where she felt like she was in the middle, but told her that I was not about to take any more of that treatment. I told her I'm disappointed that after all this time, she let other people dictate the way that she sees me. When her new friends call me stupid, I can let it slide off of my back, but when my best friend of over a decade starts treating me like I'm incompetent and I can't get anything done, that really hurts. She told me that I need to learn to take a joke. I blocked her too after that. We've continued having meetings and being mostly civil, but we haven't spoken outside of that, and all the friendship is gone.

I'm mostly concerned about how this situation is going to affect our business, because I have worked so hard and I'd hate to see it fail because of petty drama and insults. I'm now feeling like I made a huge mistake by blowing up. Should I have just kept quiet to protect my job and friendship?

What are these acronyms?

[yellowocaballero]

hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024

This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.

As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.

BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.

It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.

I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.

I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.

TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......

[sleepyfan-blog]

Candy Store

Author's note: this is the next part of Mer-Cedric’s journey in the Celestial Seas AU with his bonded. First. Previous. Celestial Seas Masterlist

tagged: @egrets-not-regrets @kit-williams @bleedingichorhearts @i-am-a-dragon34

warnings: food mention, ask me to tag something if I missed it/something bothers you

Summary: Cedric brings you to his favorite candy store in the small seaside town you and he are visiting.

“How much interaction have you had with humans, before me?” You ask, looking up at the large black and white scaled mer as he flew alongside you as you and he made your way into the small seaside town you were planning on spending a couple of weeks to months working in temporarily as you stocked up on more backpacking supplies - that and the weather was going to be taking a turn for the worse in the next few weeks, and you’d rather have a more permanent roof over your head, than the tarp-tent that you used. 

“Uhm…” Cedric responded, fidgeting a little with his hands “Not much? Outside of emergency situations where they needed my help, as a healer.” 

You blink in surprise, having not known that about your aquatic companion until now. It explained why he had all sorts of satchels and bags carefully strapped to his body, and how he’d known how to wrap up your ankle when you’d tripped over a tree root and twisted it badly, a couple of weeks ago. Cedric had also insisted on carrying you for several days, after. So that your ankle could heal properly. You’d thought that he’d been overprotective at the time… But as he apparently did have medical training, you supposed that it did make sense for you to keep off of your feet while you needed ot heal. “Ah. So we tend to be a curious bunch. I’m not sure how much interaction these people have had with mer-astartes, so there’s a good chance that you’re going to attract a lot of curious attention. Most people should leave you well enough alone… And anyone dumb enough to be rude you should be able to scare off with your size.”

Cedric nodded, a soft hum leaving him, as he looked at the small town you and he were approaching “Oh! I’ve been here plenty of times. You don’t need to worry about that. A couple of my older Bruders live here, with their festhaftend, so the mort-er humans here have long gotten used to seeing us visiting from time to time.” 

“What… What’s a fest… Festhafthend?” You ask, stumbling a little over the unknown word. You politely ignore the fact that he’s once again hinted towards the fact that his people may not be mortal. You don’t know much about the supernatural species that also call Earth their home, but you do know that poking your nose into places that it doesn’t belong will get it bitten off. 

“Hmm? Oh! Bonded. It means bonded.” Cedric answers, as if that’s supposed to clarify things. He doesn’t look or sound cagey, or like he’s trying to hide something…

Which is why you ask for further clarification “What do you mean by bonded, Cedric?”

“Hmm? Oh… Sometimes an Astartes will find a being of Holy Terra - I mean Earth - whom they are bonded to. A bond is… A bond can mean different things, depending on a number of factors and I really don’t understand it but. Some brothers become like father to very young bonded, like siblings in other cases. Sometimes they become bonded like married. Other times it is the Astartes who is adopted by a being of Earth in a parental role. Bonds happen to beings of Terra and Astartes of all kinds.” Cedric explains, fidgeting more with his hands “It is. Hard to explain. In part because I have never bonded myself. It is apparently a very singular experience.”

You have so many more questions, but the genuinely perplexed expression on the young Mer’s face causes you to decide that when you get to a cafe with free or cheap wifi, you’re going to spend some of the time that you use charging your phone and external batteries looking up those terms, to see if there is any information on these bonds known on the internet. Not that you’d take everything said on the internet as gospel truth. 

~

“Oh! Come with me, this place is very good! And they give out some of their products for free! Very tasty.” Cedric almost chirped down at you, his bright blue eyes lighting up with a nearly childish glee, after you’d checked into a relatively cheap hotel room for the week. He was waiting for you at the door to your room, practically vibrating with excitement.

You can’t help but chuckle a little at his clear enthusiasm “Sure thing, Cedric.” You had your external charges charging in the room and had a couple of good prospects for seasonal work that paid decently already… Besides if you absolutely had to, you could dip into the saving that you had, but you were pretty sure it wouldn’t come to that. 

You’re surprised when Cedric practically drags you over to a brightly painted candy shop, advertising over a hundred and seventy different kinds of salt water taffy flavors. The scent of freshly made chocolates and cooling caramel hits your tongue, and your mouth begins to water. You swallow back your saliva and walk into the cool front room.

There is an older woman behind the counter, where you can see a half-dozen different flavors of fruit-based gummy candy, sugar crystals shining pleasantly in the light. You can also see a dozen or so buckets of ice cream with their tops off in a chiller counter, the names of the flavors up for sale. There are dozens of different kinds of chocolate and chocolate-dipped things. On one wall of the candy shop are different flavors of honey. 

The bulk of the shop, however, is devoted to the many different flavors of taffy, each kind in clear plastic containers that reach floor to ceiling. There is a prize wheel near the payment counter that catches your attention. The older woman calls out cheerfully “Hello young Cedric! How are you today?”

“I’m good, Irene! I’ve brought a friend in to see the delicious sweets you have for sale.” He answers with a bright grin “I have aloe ointment and wound-healing bandages for trade. Oh! I also have some of those pain-reliever ointments for trade as well.”

“Oh who’s this friend? A new-... Oh! A human-shaped friend. I see.” Irene hummed, a warm smile appearing on her sun-weathered face. “Are you going to introduce them to Arnault and Roland later? I’m sure that they’d very much like to meet this new friend of yours.” There is a lilting, almost teasing note in her voice “I was wondering when you’d get a bonded.”

“I would like to introduce you to Roland and Arnault, but you are not my bonded. At least I don’t think you are?” Cedric huffed, his ear fins flicking rapidly as they turn a rosy color. He explains that you’d helped him calm down when a thunderstorm had badly startled him, and in exchange for your selfless help, he’d offered to travel with you for a time.

“I see… Well it was very kind of you to help him, dear. Not many would approach a visibly anxious Astartes, especially one they’ve never met before. That was quite brave and kind of you.” Irene murmured, a gentle expression appearing on her face as she reaches over the counter to gently pat Cedric on the elbow. “Do you know what you’d like to try for free this time, Cedric?”

“Mm-hmm! I want to try the chocolate bon-bon filled with lemon creme, please.” Cedric answered, carefully reading off the label, squinting a little at it.

“The dark chocolate, or the milk chocolate? Also the inside is going to taste both tart and creamy.” Irene responded, smiling a little brighter.

“I know! Miss Angela gave me a small slice of lemon meringue pie the other day. It was. Really intense! But very good.” Cedric answered cheerfully. 

“Alright, then. I just wanted to give you a little warning, since I know that Mer-Astartes have a more enhanced sense of taste than we humans do.” Irene hummed, handing over the chocolate he’d asked. “And for you, dear?” She asks, looking to you.

“I think I’ll try the orange gummy fruit slice please.” You answer, as all of them look good, but gummy candy can have an off-putting texture, and you’d rather know for sure before having to pay for any of them.

“Here you go. One orange fruit slice for you.” The older human answered with a kindly smile on her face. “Now, I believe it’s time for you both to spin the prize wheel! One spin per visit, and you get what it says on the slice of the wheel it lands on. The grand prize being a free quarter pound of any kind of candy you’d like.”

Cedric has already finished his piece of chocolate and eagerly glides over to the prize wheel. He grabs hold of it with two fingers and with the barest flick of hs wrist, sends it spinning and spinning, the steady tap-tap-tapping sound of the marker against the spokes of the prize wheel pleasant to listen to.

It eventually slows down and stops just one to the right of the quarter-pound of free candy, giving Cedric four free honey sticks of flavor or flavors of his choice. He immediately heads over to the small jars holding the sticks of honey to choose and you give the wheel a spin.

The wheel spins for less time, even though you do give it a good heave. You’re also able to get the quarter pound of free candy - which amounts to twenty pieces of taffy, among other options. 

You very much enjoy picking out the twenty different flavors of taffy that sound delicious to you, before going over to the ice cream section of the store. The day has gotten nearly unbearably warm, and an ice cream cone sounds delightful to you. Cedric joins you at the payment counter and carefully pulls out two small, tightly sealed jars and slides them over to Irene, who picks them up and nods “Thank you, dears. Enjoy your purchases!”

You blink, having grabbed out your wallet to pay “Are… Are you sure?”

“Oh yes. Cedric’s pain-relieving cream works wonders for my arthritis. This is payment enough. Go on and enjoy the late-summer sunshine! It’s a beautiful day out.” Irene murmurs, gently but firmly refusing your money with a shake of her head.

“Alright, if you say so…” You blink in surprise but nod.

You happily start to eat your ice cream as you wander out onto the wooden boardwalk, Cedric at your side, taking in the sights of the small seaside town.

[lucy90712]

pedri and y/n trying to get over each other but they can’t and after their breakup pedri hasn’t been doing well and his publicist forced him to date someone in order to be the topic of the year again and do well on his socials, but y/n misinterprets that and accepts to date gavi, and pedri also misinterprets that. both y/n and pedri go on breaking each other hearts more until a couple of shots at the bar change it all

A/n: I decided to go with Fermin instead of Gavi hope that’s ok

What a dickhead. How did I ever date that man. Why have I been crying over him when clearly he doesn't care about me at all. Less than a month ago Pedri broke up with me and I've been with mess ever since, we were together for over a year and I really thought he was the one but now it's very clear to me that he wasn't. Three whole weeks after our break up he has posted a picture on his story on a date with his new girlfriend while I'm still getting over the heartbreak. I knew he would move on one day but I didn't expect it to be so quickly and I certainly didn't expect to see him post about it seeing as he hardly ever posted with me. Seeing this makes me wonder if he ever actually loved me or if he fell out of love and how long he stayed with me while he didn't want to be. What makes this all worse is that I know the girl he's with she's a model and she's so much prettier and more successful than me which hurts my self esteem quite a bit. 

Seeing that Instagram story when I first woke up was one way to get myself over the break up as instead of feeling sad now I'm just so mad that I want to forget about Pedri all together. I didn't want to move on this quickly as Pedri was my first long term boyfriend and my first love but he's made it a whole lot easier for me as the feelings I had for him have gone out the window. I never thought my feelings would go away overnight but as it turns out they can and they did and now I'm ready to move on and I have the whole day to live free of the sadness I've been feeling. 

Even though I'm no longer with Pedri I've remained friends with his teammates as they have always been so nice to me especially Fermin. He is close with Pedri but they aren't best friends by any means so I didn't feel bad still talking to him and he still seems happy to talk to me. Fermin was even sweet enough to text me overnight and warn me about Pedri's story which I wish I'd seen before checking Instagram but the gesture was lovely nonetheless. I decided to text him thanking him which he replied to straight away asking if I'd like to go out for coffee to take my mind off things. If he'd have asked me yesterday I would've said no but today I don't have any reservations in fact it will be nice to see him as I haven't actually seen him in person since Pedri and I broke up. 

Fermin came and picked me up and drove us to a smaller neighbourhood just outside the city where there is a quiet cafe that Pedri always told me we should go to but we never did. We both ordered drinks and pastries for breakfast which he insisted on paying for as he invited me to come. Once we sat down together things were a little awkward for a minute as it feels like we shouldn't really be here together but really we aren't doing anything wrong I'm not with Pedri anymore and Fermin is free to spend time with whoever he wants. Fermin broke the silence by asking how I've been and I was honest with him and telling him that I've been hurting but I'm over it now. 

After getting over the awkwardness we got on really well which we did before but we always had other people there who were involved in the conversation but apparently we didn't need that as we get along really well without too. Fermin was really sweet and he made me forget about everything else going on in my life and he had me laughing harder than I've laughed in months. Spending time with him reminded me a little of how things started between Pedri and I as once we were given the time so talk we got on like a house on fire and being with Fermin feels like that. 

~~~~~~~~~~

Over the last few weeks I've been spending a lot of time with Fermin and I've found myself falling for him. We have been on a few dates and all of them have been amazing I have had a great time from the second he picks me up to the second he drops me off. We haven't made things official yet but I don't think it will be long because the only reason we have been waiting is so that I can have more time to heal from my breakup but I think I'm ready to commit to Fermin. Pedri has made the whole thing easier as he keeps posting things with his new girlfriend which bugged me for a while until I unfollowed him so I wouldn't have to see him or them together. I can't lie I have been trying to get him back as I've posted things with Fermin as my account is private and I know he sees them but I don't know if it bothers him. 

Tonight there is a team get together which Fermin wants me to go to with him. The first few times he told me about it I was hesitant to go as I know Pedri will be there and not only do I not want to see him I don't want to create an awkward atmosphere for everyone by turning up with Fermin after spending a year going to these things with Pedri. I almost completely said no but after thinking about it I decided that I'd go as I can't avoid Pedri for the rest of my life especially if I want to date Fermin. Before agreeing to go I made him promise to tell everyone that I was coming as his date as I know it looks bad that I've moved in from Pedri with one of his teammates and I don't want everyone to find out right when I turn up and cause drama. Fermin told me that he told everyone and they didn't care and they don't think I'm some sort of whore which made me feel more comfortable about going. 

I drove myself to the address Fermin gave me then I had to park which was difficult but I parked a few streets away and then walked back. As I walked back I saw Fermin waiting outside for me looking at his phone but as soon as he saw me he put it away and smiled at me. Once I was close enough he pulled me into a hug and kissed my cheek. He grabbed my hand and we headed inside which is when I felt really nervous all of a sudden but as soon as we got in and the other guys noticed us they greeted us both normally which made me feel a whole lot better. 

Somehow I found myself sitting at the bar on my own while Fermin sat with his friends talking. Things haven't been as awkward as I thought they might be everyone has treated me like they did when I was with Pedri but I feel wrong being here. I really thought I was over Pedri but being in the same place as him has made me really miss him. That might be how I've found myself at the bar with a drink I don't even really like. Seeing Pedri has me thinking about what I have with Fermin and whether I actually like him the way I thought I did or if I'm trying to pretend I do to make myself feel better that Pedri has moved on. This is the whole reason I wanted to spend more time getting over the breakup as I didn't want to find myself dating someone just as a rebound but I think that's what I've done anyway. 

Just as I was thinking about all of the choices I've made over the last few months I saw someone sit next to me at the bar. I didn't even need to look to know who it was I recognised the smell of his after shave as he's always used the same one. He ordered himself a drink and got me another one which made me actually look up at him. 

"Hi" I said 

"Hey how have you been how are things with Fermin?" He asked 

"I've been better I didn't really know what's going on with Fermin we aren't official and I'm not sure that I want to be" I admitted 

"I'm sorry if it makes you feel better I've not been at my best either" he said 

"What about your new girlfriend you guys seem really happy" I said

"Thats not real my team wanted me to be in a relationship with someone who has a following so this whole thing is for pr we aren't even actually dating we see each other for a few minutes every so often to take pictures of post" he explained 

"Wait so you don't have a girlfriend?" I asked 

"No I don't I'm still trying to get over you" he said 

"Me too" I said under my breath 

"Then why are we doing this we clearly aren't happy" he said 

"You broke up with me that's why we are doing this" I said sarcastically back 

"And I really regret doing it I honestly don't know why I broke up with you I miss you every day and the boys can attest that I've been a mess since we ended things" he admitted 

"I've been a mess too" I said 

"Then do you want to give things a go again we can have a clean slate and we can go slow if you want" Pedri suggested

"I'd love that but I don't want to go slow I just want to go back to how we were but before we do anything I have to talk to Fermin" I said 

Pedri understood and he let me go so I could find Fermin who luckily was on his own so I gave him a look and he followed me outside so we could have some privacy. Somehow I think he knew what was coming because the look on his face told me he was upset but not mad. 

"I know you probably saw me talking to Pedri and I want you to know that I do really like you Fermin but I'm not over Pedri so I think it's best we end whatever's going on between us" I said 

"It's ok I could tell you weren't over him and you seemed really happy when he was talking to you again so I'm ok with letting you go so you two can be happy together" he said 

"Thank you Fermin I really have loved the time we spent together we just weren't meant to be but I hope we can still be friends" I said 

"Of course I'm not fully letting you go because you are too much fun" he laughed 

I gave him a hug and kissed his cheek before heading back inside to find Pedri. Pedri was waiting for me so I told him how my conversation with Fermin went and he asked me to be his girlfriend officially again but we agreed not to act like a couple around Fermin for a while as that felt too mean. We both know that things might be awkward between all of us for a little while but things will get better over time and I'm happy as I got my Pedri back. 

[sophieinwonderland]

(Might as well get this reply to a syscourse post about me out of my drafts too.)

You hit the nail on the head when you said "if it's not fun" that you don't see the point, even if it also has to do with what you believe you're doing to help. You're here to have fun firstly, and if the work of eradicating bigotry isn't fun, you're not all that interested.

I've been here for years having the same discussions, trying to help people when I can and do my best to help grow the community and counter misinformation where I see it.

And there are a lot of days when it can feel exhausting.

I'm one person. And I'm arguably not even an entire one of those. I don't front nearly as much as my host, and most of the time I get ends up dedicated to this.

So yes, I do want some of the time I spend on this blog to be on topics I enjoy.

And nitpicking this just feels gross and manipulative.

I don't particularly care about the anti-psych conversation. I think we all agree there are significant flaws in the psych system. It just seems to me that your plan to fix those flaws would be destroying what's there and rebuilding it completely, where I would prefer the Ship of Theseus approach of replacing it bit by bit.

I don't generally use spoon theory much, but I don't know a better way to put it than saying I don't have the spoons to hash this out. Or at least, it's not somewhere I think would be beneficial to dedicate them towards. 🤷‍♀️

The heart of deradicalization is compassion. To disentangle bigotry from big, messy emotions, you have to approach it from an emotional standpoint.

Absolutely! This is 100% true! If you want to deradicalize, this is the best approach.

When it works, anyway. Thing is, I tried this approach early on. Spent a couple months talking to an anti-endo. I honestly thought we were on good terms and that I was making progress. We had been exchanging questions about our own experiences with plurality.

Then when I was banned, they turned around and cheered along with most of the anti-community.

Even then, I wasn't going to completely give up on compassion. I tried more. But the thing about notoriety, whether deserved or not, is that it immediately poisons any attempt at genuine conversation. By this point, I had already gotten a rather undeserved reputation among anti-endos, and if I tried communicating publicly with one, it wouldn't be long before they got an anon or reblog telling them how bad I supposedly was.

And while I feel my reputation was undeserved at the time, I realized that if I would never be able to convince them, I might as well play into my role as the boogeyman anti-endos want me to be.

No, calling anti-endos worse than parasites and an evil hate group is probably not going to deradicalize them. But they've already been fed so many lies about me personally and are primed to disregard anything I say anyway. Compassion from me won't work.

You know what I think this tactic does do, though? I think it shifts the middle ground for people who can't make a decision. Many people have a natural attraction to the center. It's a logical fallacy, but this too is rooted in emotions.

If the spectrum is "endos are scientifically impossible and are hurting trauma survivors and you're ableist for supporting them," and just "endogenic systems are actually real and valid," what do you think "neutral" means in such an environment? Because to me, it seems like centrism lands in favor of the anti-endo when these are the extremes presented to neutrals.

But amp up pro-endo rhetoric to match that of anti-endos, replying with "anti-endos are an evil anti-science hate group bent on hurting a marginalized community for existing," and now the center alignment shifts a bit more in the pro-endo direction.

And to be clear, this isn't far off from how I've always felt. The only things that's changed was a willingness to say it out loud. But I don't actually need to convince everyone this is true. I just need to shift what appears to be the moderate position to something that would actually be more moderate and advantageous to us.

...

And that brings me to one final gambit I'm making.

That I'm am going to lose people with these idea. That there will be some pro-endos who will be pushed away from this blog by me labeling anti-endos as a hate group or by my tactics in the way I respond to them.

These pro-endos will shift more towards moderate stances.

And that, IMO, can be useful too. Because it positions them to do what I can't, where they'll appear more approachable and "reasonable" to anti-endos. That allows these systems to do what I can't and be able to connect with people on the other side.

There is a reason why I will often turn a blind eye to pro-endos who are saying horrible things about me, personally, and just let them carry on. (As long as they aren't attacking other members of the community.) It's because, whether they are with me or against me, as long as they're pro-endo, they're still useful in spreading our message.

And I'll admit, this might be a dangerous play. Push people too far, and they might go straight to the anti-endo side.

But... I don't see that as too much of a risk... despite playing into the boogeyman persona anti-endos gave me, I have lines I don't cross. I'm not sending threats. I'm not saying people deserve to die. I'm not going on to positivity posts to start fights like Hyaena-Bites did back in the day. And if I see pro-endos crossing these lines, I do my best to rein them in or call them out.

I've intentionally established myself as an extremist in my views and rhetoric, certainly. But not in my actions.

Finally, for all that you position yourself as an expert in psychology, ironically, you yourself are acting in a way that serves to further radicalize anti-endos. Rather than learning and engaging with genuine, known, deradicalization tactics, you are the perfect "enemy" for the genuinely malicious anti-endos to use to convince the ones indoctrinated into thinking they're doing good that pro endos are dangerous.

To be clear, I've never positioned myself as an expert in psychology. I'm a girl with a blog who did a couple free psychology courses and has read a few papers in a very specialized area of interest.

But I think this line of reasoning is silly. Anti-endos are always going to be able to find targets to vilify and make into an enemy.

I just figure that if their enemy is inevitably going to be someone, it might as well be me. I think I'm better able to take harassment than many others in this community.

Putting a giant bullseye on my chest isn't an accident. It's an intentional decision.

But also... am I really? Am I really the "perfect enemy" to convince anti-endos that the endogenic community is dangerous?

Because guess what? There are a lot of pro-endos out there who take things too far. There was the doxxing incident a couple years ago. There are people who send death threats. There are people who send gore. There are genuinely abusive people who have been in various endogenic communities. That's not a problem with the community. It's just a fact that every large community is going to have bad people in it.

And then there's me who... is not always totally polite? Comes off a bit strong? Calls anti-endos a hate group? Calls them evil?

Do you really think this actually compares to the worst things in the community?

Does this really seem "dangerous" to you by comparison?

[briar-rolfes-research-oubliette]

your writing is phenomenal. i write a little bit, but i think one of the biggest struggles i have is with pacing and structuring for anything longer than a couple thousand words. gonna hit you with a ton of questions, no pressure to answer all of them: how do you structure your longer-form writing? what considerations do you keep in mind as you do? are you more of a pantser or do you start with a solid outline and story beats first? what is your 'process' - and how do you approach editing as well?

Okay, I’m ready! Took me a bit.

Thank you, first of all! This is humbling, since in industry terms I’m a debut author. (Or not even. My book isn’t even out yet. It takes ages to make a graphic novel if you have to hold down a day job at true same time. Fingers crossed 2026?) And, since structure has been the hardest thing for me to learn, it’s rewarding to know that it’s paying off!

I’m in the middle of a few planning-stage projects right now, so I’ve been asking these questions myself. Because each story is different (in length, in genre, in terms of what I want it to achieve, and also, because I’m a cartoonist as well as a writer, also in format!) I have to reinvent at least part of the wheel with each project. I’ve learned some constants, though. I’ll try to outline some of them, and rather than just tell you what I do I’ll try to explain what purpose it serves when I do it.

I do think starting small and working up is the right way of learning, because that’s what worked for me, a chronic not-finisher. I sat down and said “okay, what is the shortest thing I can make that I am guaranteed to finish?” and once I had finished that, said “okay, what’s the next longest thing?” and worked my way up. It’s easier to structure a zine than a graphic novel, it’s easier to structure a short story than something with multiple chapters, etc etc… but this isn’t because a longer story has more structure in it so much as that each structural element has to work harder.

HOWEVER, I don’t look at structure until I know what I’m building my structure on. This was the missing piece in my structure learning! So, the things I have in mind when I’m starting a new project are:

What is my genre?

What are my themes?

What is my tone?

Genre is where I get the payoff that I’m working towards. Why do people pick up this kind of story? What’s the most basic appeal of it? I try to keep this as simple as I can, eg:

In romance, the couple have to get together by the end.

In sci-fi, a new discovery poses a new question, which is then resolved

In mystery, the detective has to figure out who committed the crime so that they don’t do it again.

In erotica, the protagonist is liberated from a social norm by a new sexual encounter

In horror, an outside force threatens irrevocable change to everyone who encounters it.

This narrative payoff is (in my opinion) the bumpers on the bowling lane of fiction. If you read a romance where they never got together, an erotica where nobody fucked, a detective story where justice wasn’t done, a horror story where it was no biggie and everyone just walked it off… you’d feel ripped off, right? You’ll see that I’m not saying “in horror there is always a jumpscare” or “in a mystery there is always a red herring,” because I never actually notice if those were missing. Many stories are worse because the author has said to themself “a story like this always has this element.” RIP to all those minor characters who die in fantasy novels during the fight scene at the end of the second act just because Boromir did.

Sticking the landing on that genre promise is what makes a story “feel” complete, and the success of the buildup to that promise is what makes a story feel satisfying in that worth-a-reread way. The overall genre payoff helps me keep my eye on the prize as I’m writing. If I get writer’s block, 99% of the time it’s because I’ve written something that conflicts with it. That’s helpful to keep in mind for editing (awkward scenes/characters/sentences etc are usually also conflicting with the payoff, or at least not helping me get there) and is also helpful to know when I’m doing back of mind narrative debugging while zoning out over the dishes. If I have a character and I want them to end up at that final point in a way that feels natural, what do I have to do to them to make it happen? If they feel stagnant, what beliefs do they have to have at the start that will jar against that end point?

(I believe the Literary phrase for the narrative payoff is the climax, or the catharsis. Catharsis is usually the concept used for horror or for tragedies. But I’m a cartoonist, so it’s easier for me to think of everything as setup for the final payoff of the punchline.)

Also—and this is more my individual philosophy rather than actual advice, but: delivering the payoff matters because it develops my readers’ trust. I’m not owed anyone’s time or attention. In a big world full of competing demands, it’s important to me that my readers know that I appreciate them choosing my work over putting the recycling bin out. And the great thing about reader trust is: it stacks. Trust means a reader is willing to go a bit further out of their comfort zone with me. When someone says “I don’t usually read stories like this, but I gave this a shot because you wrote it,” that’s what I’m talking about. I’m a trans writer who tells silly jokes and tackles weird topics, so I really do appreciate the readers who invest time and attention in me. They’re my 30 sickos, you know, from the tweet?

Anyway. If genre tells me where I’m landing the plane, theme tells me what the jet fuel is. The reason a particular concept is making me insane, aka, my motivation to tell the story at all, is my theme. It’s the question I’m trying to answer. It doesn’t have to be pithy or well articulated—I just have to know the general gist of it. It might just be “it pisses me off when authors do X, so I am going to prove it’s not actually hard to write Y.” What matters is that it’s something I won’t become bored of. My graphic novel, which has been the longest and most involved project of my life, hasn’t bored me once. That’s pretty spectacular seeing as I have ADHD out my ears! I’ve been frustrated, tired, had bad wrists and general creative ennui at points, but “can you have a happy ending if your family doesn’t accept you?” Is a question that hasn’t run out of juice, even though I’ve been answering it for six years now. The theme is often the most powerful if it’s something you don’t know the answer to. When we were talking about whether or not to tackle the marriage equality debate in Australia in my book, my agent told me “you’ll know it’s a good story if writing about it feels like pressing on a bruise.” I think this is what keeps your themes honest. It stops them being preachy and stops them from becoming The Moral Of The Story.

Terry Pratchett said that the first draft is him telling the story to himself, and the subsequent drafts are him figuring out how to tell it to other people. That’s been very helpful to me. Each successive edit will make the themes clearer until I can say “oh, so this is what the story is about.” What I said before about longer stories doing more with each structural element is because of this. Longer stories tend to accrue more themes, usually one per subplot and/or per character relationship. Shorter stories usually address just one. Themes are handy to think about here because if a story looks like it might get too bloated (“no way I can explore this AND this AND this and still stay under 20k words”) you can cut em out and address them somewhere else.

The themes in your fiction are the bit that makes it uniquely yours, like fingerprints in a clay pot. They stop the structure feeling formulaic and make it feel personal. A thousand authors could (and do) write the same premise over and over again, but in their hands each story means something different. If you’ve ever read a story that rings hollow even though it hits all the same notes as other stories you like, I’d say that it’s by an author who hasn’t figured out what interests them in the story they’re telling. Like… there’s a reason Twilight was successful and its many copycats were not. It’s because Meyer had this theme of insane repressed Mormon horniness running through her work, and everyone else just said “ah, so readers like boys who are barely restraining their murder instinct.” No! The murder instinct was juicy because it was thematically complex.

Genre and theme give me an idea of what the tone is, aka what mood I am building. I guess if genre is my destination and theme is my fuel, then tone is my plane. It’s about how the journey feels. Taking a first class flight from A to B is different from taking the same trip in a crop duster. The people on each plane will observe different things throughout the journey. The same events could happen on both flights, but a reader will feel way more anxious about the crop duster encountering turbulence.

Outside my increasingly elaborate metaphor, this is questions like… Is this setting fun and friendly? Are the characters mistrustful of each other? Is the world fundamentally evil? Can anyone die? Am I using colloquial language? Are swears allowed? How hard should the protagonist’s failures hit them, and how sharp should the consequences for their actions be? Is it realistic, or a bit surreal? Is my narrator (or narrative perspective if I’m in second or third person) sincere? Cynical? Trustworthy? Biased? Can they crack jokes?

Once I have an idea of these things, structure usually slots in pretty easily. As I’m in the thinking stage, if I have an idea for a scene (or a joke, more often than not) that I want to include, I’ll put it in a dot point list. Later on, I will look at these dot points and the structure and say “what goes where?” or “what needs to happen before this thing I want to include to make it make sense?”

Short things I use a three act structure, aka Beginning Middle End, where “middle” is whatever events need to happen to shift my character from their opening position to their concluding one. For longer things, I just whack on a seven act structure for whatever genre I’m working in. I often come back to Jami Gold’s romance structure because I write romances a lot, but also because it’s the only structure I’ve ever really seen that maps internal character arcs along with external events—one of the things I found absolutely the hardest to get my head around when I was structuring my graphic novel. If it’s a genre I know less about, I’ll find a structure that specifies examples for the pinch points, because those are ones I usually have trouble brainstorming. The mystery outline I used for my Disco Elysium fanfiction gave me the suggestions that a suspect should escape, which got me out of a huge block.

So: before I write, I’ve thought very hard about genre and tone and theme, and how my characters need to get from their starting positions to one where if bondage doesn’t happen the story will feel narratively incomplete. I’ve pondered my place in the world, I have developed beef with a handful of authors who I’ve decided have Done It Wrong, and I have image searched “mystery structure seven act”. I have probably gone on four or five research sprees where I learn a bunch about medieval demonology and insect genitalia and radio antennae or whatever.

(I should say a lot of that is just what do for fun anyway. I do think writers tend to forget that we do this because it’s fun. If you’re not having fun doing this stuff, then your reader is probably not having fun either. It’s important to figure out what is fun to you and to find a way to make your process mostly the fun stuff.)

Materially, what I have is a maybe a couple of test scenes I’ve written while working out character dynamics and refining my idea of tone, and a list of dot points that reads like:

Wrap up the subplot with that other guy

Heart to heart

Protagonist gets a boner

Exposition about early printing press

Fight scene (to show they care about each other)

Phone call from side character 12

MIDPOINT: Guy goes missing (or is killed with weapon from earlier? Suspected killed, but actually just escaped?)

JOKE

Bring back printing press thing

Bondage obviously

Catch the bad guy

Resolution (come back to this).

The trap for structure for me for YEARS has been assuming that I should be able to sit down and write out the perfect plan. “I’ll be able to write well so long as I know exactly what I’m doing every step of the way.” But… most of the fun of writing for me is figuring out how to address those missing plot elements as I go. I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but I never intended for my Disco Elysium fanfic to end with an explosion. I figured it out once I wrote the interview scene with Felicity, and then I said “okay, so that’s the resolution. Now, what do I need to do to blow this building up?“

The groundwork I’ve laid is helpful because I know what I can’t compromise on. As I’m heading towards my payoff and hitting these beats along the way, I have the wriggle room for flashes of discovery where I go “wait, fuck, you know what’d be cool as?”

Editing is where I get to make sure that everything lines up without contradictions. I’m very irresponsible; I don’t have the patience to wait until the story is finished before I start editing it, so I often go back and make tweaks on a sentence level. This is often how I get myself out of writer’s block. “What did I say back here, and why does it make me feel like I can’t get to the next point on my structure?”

I also tend to write on my phone in notes app documents or in Scrivener, so I can actually make use of the dead times in my day. I pick up my phone all the time to keep my hands busy, but I rarely sit down at a computer without something more important coming up. Only once the document gets long enough to be unwieldy, or once it’s actually finished, will I sit down with the text on a bigger screen. This really helps me stop myself getting overwhelmed by the idea of The Blank Page, too. I can’t see how much I’ve written or look at much text at a time when I’m writing on my phone.

Other favourite structural things, which I add on in successive edits:

Bookending! For when you have a scene displaying the relationship between your protagonist and a secondary character at the start, then bring ‘em back together at the end to show how things have changed. My graphic novel has something like two… wait no now I’m counting it’s more like four bookend scenes, whoops. I guess I really like these! They’re good for when someone reads your draft and says “I don’t know why this character showed up, they didn’t seem that important.” If the character really IS important, they need to come back. This is handy for me specifically because I love big world with lots of secondary characters.

Callbacks: jokes strike again! But you can use this to achieve other moods. In my Silent Hill fic the words “Empty, bleeding, and different in every way” get used first to describe the town, and then again at the end to describe the protagonist. It’s unsettling both times, but the second time I feel as though it is a little bit reassuring, too. Maybe sometimes it’s good to be reinvented.

Foreshadowing: Lay the breadcrumbs! Make that one character stare at the table in the scene where everyone is speculating on the identity of the traitor, draw our attention to the ceramic statue on the mantelpiece. I love to use the rule of three for this, often describing the significant thing last—or to describe two significant things and diffuse any audience suspicion with a joke as the third thing 😈🙏

Well, this has been a very long post! I wonder what my rules for writing are. UM. I know I have them. I’m nothing if not wildly opinionated!

1. Don’t hang out with writers who think that they’re better than their readers. Storytelling is about sharing humanity, not transcending it. Writing is not a divine gift. There is no muse! Not only hang out with people who do not write, but hang out with people who do not read. It keeps you humble.

2. Don’t break format just for the helluvit, but—if you have an idea about how to pull something off and say, scandalised, “oh my god, but is that allowed?” you have to do it.

3. If you’re having fun, your reader is having fun. If you’re bored, your reader is EXTRA bored. So… don’t write the boring bits. If you don’t know what to say in the scene where the character gets the bus between two locations, just cut it and start the next scene with “When she got off the bus.” Christopher Paolini is an example of someone who has never learned this. On one hand he has a lot more money than I do, but on the other hand, I’ve had a lot more gay sex.

4. Hot take: bad books are just as educational as good ones. I love a formulaic or poorly told story because they give me a chance to engage my structure brain. I like to figure out what went wrong and how. It’s never cinema sins bullshit like “WOW! GAPING PLOT HOLE!!!” but more like “weird, the tone of the climax is jarring compared to the rest of the story” or “well that’s the obligatory breakup at the end of the second act, but why did it happen?” I’ve also learned a whole lot about how to write sex scenes by reading ones that made me say “well, certainly not like that.”

5. Learn to recognise ways you make your own writing noncommittal. “He felt,” “she realised,” “they discovered,” “she thought.” Almost, very, really, nearly. These are all things I do way too much. Don’t say he felt it was, say it was.

☀️🌱☀️

Lastly: If you’re hitting a brick wall, if you’re blocked, if writing isn’t fun… stop.

Read something outside your genre. Dig up weeds in the garden. Watch a friend play a game that is too scary for you. Put a weird doll in the corner of your bathroom, go look through second hand shops for cheap treasures, get an outlandish food on your grocery run. Have a nice chat with a guy who is eighty something, make faces at a baby when mum isn’t looking. Learn to tie a useful knot. Badly paint some furniture. Sit out under the stars with a cuppa, listen to the night sounds, enjoy the feeling of being small. What I’m saying is, you should actively distract yourself with the interesting parts of Being Alive. Whatever feels like a waste of time is worth your time. Internet does NOT count! Do not watch a video, do not read a post! Do things that engage your senses. Do things where you use your hands. Make yourself laugh! Be clumsy, be silly, be messy on purpose. Writing is never more important than being alive, and your brain is never more important than your body. You need to fall in love with being alive. You need to be in the world. One day the gears will click into place and you’ll need to start writing again, furiously, like there’s a fire lit inside of you—but you can’t rush it. You need to take the time to be an animal, and animals play.

Here is a photo of Flea, who is a sixteen year old cat. She has no teeth. Here she is having a great time rolling around in the sun.

Sometimes my zine friends and I joke about things that are zines. Can my tomato plants be a zine? Poets joke about what is a poem. Is my cat rolling on the lawn a poem? Well, in that line of thinking… being an animal isn’t not a kind of writing. You’re making a mark on the world either way.

[xerith-42]

What do you think of the handling for Aaron and aphmaus romance? I know a lot of people who hate it and a lot who love it

Take everything I say here with a grain of salt as my feelings on their romance are bound to change once I actually get to Season 2 in my rewatch/breakdown. I'm mostly speaking from memory here.

As it is now, I'm very disappointed by their romance. While there is wasted potential left and right in Minecraft Diaries, never is it more egregious to me than when looking at Aaron. His introduction into the series in episode 67 is great because it's so fucking vague that the creators can take him literally anywhere they want. And in episode 91 my beloved he gets reintroduced and has it slapped onto his character in equally vague terms that he has beef with Zane.

And even though he doesn't get much else in Season 1, hell he's barely graduated from being a "hot mysterious stranger" as the description of episode 92 describes him, I like where they can take his character. Who knows what atrocities Zane has committed to make him willing to fight Zane to the extent that he is. The problems start when we find out the truth as to why Aaron wants to kill Zane.

Aaron is given so much potential with his backstory and deep connection to the conflict with Zane, but it never really goes... Anywhere. And that's because of the vector in which both Aphmau and the viewer are shown his backstory. In Season 2 episode 42 Aphmau just gets shown Aaron's back story because something something Irene's relic, and it is NEVER EXPLAINED. Because the creators don't actually want to explain it, or even care beyond something something Irene's relic. It doesn't matter how, just that she did.

And this takes away a lot of potential from Aaron because he isn't given the choice to open up about what happened in Falcon Claw on his own. He doesn't get to tearfully tell Aphmau in gory detail what Zane took away from him. There's nothing but his anger that she knows after she's already seen it. And this sucks, because we really could have had a moment of the two bonding here, of Aaron opening up about something he's been understandably cagey about, of Aphmau showing him love and empathy in his time of grief.

I know a lot of people parrot the phrase "Show don't tell" but god dammit sometimes it's best to tell. Sometimes it's worse to be shown. This is one of those moments where Aaron should have been allowed to just be standing in the ruins of Falcon Claw, heard Aphmau come up behind him, and try to push her away. Tell her it's just an old village he found in the woods. And Aphmau can then very calmly and tenderly ask "Then why do you sound like you're about to cry?"

This could have lead to Aphmau comforting Aaron during a difficult moment and solidly establishing a real palpable connection between the two. But instead Aphmau is just shown Aaron's tragic backstory, and then they start romancing each other right after. I don't object to this romance happening, I just would've liked for them to have a little more to go off of. I would've liked Aaron willingly opening himself up to Aphmau and that being the vector for their eventual romance.

And obviously I want this romance to happen NOT at the expense of Garroth and Laurance's characters. I want this romance to happen unexpectedly for everyone, but for Aphmau to be able to actually explain why she and Aaron love each other, especially after his death. Aphmau is a character who has never been allowed to explain her romantic feelings, which is fine if you never plan on pairing her with anyone, but having her ship teased with two people and then enter an explicit romance with another and still NEVER go into details about it is just bad writing.

TLDR: Aarmau angers me because I can see where it could have been a good couple but Jesson had to do a Jesson and be bad at writing.

[bangtannism]

this space is filled with jm solos and people who give too much thought to jm solo narratives

which is why i'm confused that jk biased jkkers (as that anon said even ones that are critical and weird towards jimin) were also upset with the way jk was acting. if it was just jm biased jkkers and solos, i could see it as people using jk for a ship and not liking/supporting him if he steps out of that "perfect boyfriend" and "jm's caretaker" narrative that isn't true or at least isn't ALL he is, but JK BIASED twisting his intentions and actions? that's just crazy....

idk if it's people now seeing jikook (and more so jk) outside of edits and fics or just taekook interacting, but it needs to stop before people become even worse jk (and tae/taekook) antis

i'd love to look at the jikook tag after a ays episode without being made to feel like i'm insane or "supporting bullying and abuse" 😭

there's a few things going on here.

like i mentioned, jm solo narratives permeate this part of fandom. it sucks, but it is what it is, and unfortunately these people tend to flock together, creating an echo chamber that can look to those outside of it as a popular opinion or consensus. the infantilizing of jm is not only maddening, but deeply disrespectful, and if these people really loved him, they wouldn't be doing it.

people are far too impressionable. this goes hand in hand with the first point, but people are swayed extremely easily and the more they see the same sort of opinion, the more they convince themself that the opinion is right. when ays episode 1 first dropped, the first few hours were peaceful and it was clear that the majority of people came away with a positive feeling. once a couple of negative opinions got posted, people started to latch onto that negativity, letting other people's feelings tarnish their experience, and soon it was all over the tag. jk was being weird, distant, uncaring, mean, etc.

the seedier people in this fandom feel vindicated whenever someone says some nasty opinion about a member/ship they dislike and it prompts them to get louder. think about how much more outspoken bigots get when they think they're around like minded people. every single time a shitty take gets posted, be that an original post or an anon message, more people feel that it's okay to also be shitty. this happened bad when tae was announced to be joining jkk in jeju. the tae antis were suddenly all over the damn tag like cockroaches. 🥾🪳

i do think there is a lot of people who are being forced to contend with the fact that jkk are not story book characters living a sacharrine sweet perfect fantasy life where all they do is cuddle and sing each other's praises. sorry to break it to these people (i'm not), but jm and jk are very real people who are a lot more complex than that. they are going to tease and joke and complain and argue and all the rest of the stuff that every other person does. they are also not going to be in the same mood 24/7 and that too is going to affect how they behave and interact. there is nothing concerning about how jkk (or vmk) have interacted on ays so far, let alone something that constitutes the label of abuse. that accusation actually pissed me off beyond belief, because abuse isn't a fucking term to throw around over someone being jokingly sprayed with water.

my best advice to anyone at this point is to use that block button freely and curate a good fandom space for yourself and others. and also just to remember that vmk love each other dearly and no amount of sad internet hate is going to change their reality.

[luv4kokafox]

Wow how do u get the motivation to study like this?

I actually get this question a lot, so I’ve tried to put some tips together that help me to stay concentrated for as much time as possible! 🙏

Here's how I do 3-5+ hours of revision each day on top of school*:

1. Set achievable goals

Everyone falls into the trap of thinking they can do more than they think, but ultimately it just makes you feel bad :( There’s nothing worse than feeling unfulfilled at the end of the day because you haven’t “completed your work.”

They best thing you can do is write out your tasks that need to be completed, ordering them in terms of priority and then get cracking! It’s important to note that forcing yourself to do work will never help, it’ll just make the work looked rushed and won’t be your best, do what you can and don’t feel disheartened if you leave something uncompleted for now!! (finish it eventually, ofc ☺️)

2. Don’t put work over your other needs!

I’ve heard some people say that they’ve put off snacking/drinking and hanging out with friends just so that they can study. I can almost 100% guarantee this will just make you more upset!! If you want to go out, go out. If you want to snack, go get a snack! Don’t ever put off your needs for some short term work when we both know you’d be a lot happier talking to your friends 🩷

I know that out there, there are some people who will tell you they forget to eat or drink when they work. Please do not let this influence you. Everyone works differently, and their way is not healthy.

3. Time management

Setting up a revision timetable, with time blocks or not, can really help you to set out an idea of work you’d like to complete! Make it colour coordinated!! Stick it up in your room, or throw it on your home/lockscreen for a reminder!

Everyone works a little differently, for example, I do have a timetable, but I don’t use it in extensive detail. If something else has higher importance, I’ll finish that. If I know that working on a subject really won’t “help” at the time (I’ll go over this later 😋) then I’ll ignore it. It's helpful to have the idea, but don’t restrict yourself to just what you've written on the timetable!

4. Apps!!

I've also found it helps to have a non-academic goal to work towards! I use an app called “Flora” to set time goals and write to-do lists that helps me to get through the nights. For each task I have, the app plants a virtual tree or plant in your garden! You can customise the garden, the title of your tasks and each plant that you grow. The best thing about this app is that it restricts apps on your phone (you can choose which ones!). It acts as a massive deterrent to spending time on your phone and helps you to focus on your work! You can also work with friends and grow trees together, completely free :)

There are many apps like this, Flora is just the one that I use. Take some time to find one just for you!! (flora is the best tho <3)

5. Choosing the right focus

So you have some homework due in a couple of days, an essay next week and a project due in in a month. You're really not feeling good about the homework and the essay just really isn't up your street right now, but that project? You wanna do that! And thats fine!! It's never good to miss deadlines and procrastinate, but if you feel like doing that work now will just lead to it being rushed and feeling incomplete, leave it until later on! Forcing yourself to do a task might make you relieved when you're finished, but it's no way to cheer yourself up.

By all means, don't miss deadlines because of this! You should always try to complete assignments right as they're set rather than leaving them until last minute. Getting compulsory work done leaves more time for you to be yourself, work on your own ideas and have that extra edge above anyone else!

*3-5+ hours on top of schoolwork is a big commitment. I understand this, and everyone is different. Please do not think that this is how much you should be doing, or how much is what makes a "good student." Do what feels right for YOU.

That's all from me, if anyone has any other questions on how I revise or how to revise, ask away! <3

Have a good day everyone!