#this response is a fic in itself

[ugh-yoongi]

hi! hello! i’ve just read fall apart & redefine and my goddd. i loved it so much! it’s so beautifully written and introspective. i never wanted it to end. what made it hit was the fact that it’s canon compliant...

i’ll never explicitly know what joonie, or any of the other boys have to go through. though, the feelings of fear, grief, and hope are universal. you’ve conveyed that so well here. i just want to hug the boys and tell them that it’s okay. but in many ways aren’t we, as fans, an enabler of that pain? it’s complex. sorry, i’m rambling now. when i find gems like these it reminds me why i love to read.

when it comes to writing i think this is a prime example of quality over quantity. no matter how long it took you to write this, the product is immaculate and speaks volume.

i hope you’ve found a way out of your slump and if not, that you’re on your way there. sending love 🤍

— sana ♡︎

ah, hello! thank you so much for your message *sob emoji* this is so lovely. pls don't apologize for rambling because i'm about to do the same. :')

fully agree with your second paragraph. one of the things that struck me most about the festa dinner was namjoon saying some sort of variation of "i'm almost 30 and i have no idea who i am." like, how do you even start figuring out who you are as a person outside of your job and your celebrity at that point? where do you start? their entire lives, as bts, have been so controlled.

it's fun to have the little delulu moments every now and then, but i usually steer clear of canon compliant because, if i'm being realistic, almost every idol is probably not emotionally-equipped to be a great partner. they didn't have the ability to date around, fuck up, learn, fuck up some more, etc., that most people get. it doesn't make them any less worthy of having that experience, but i imagine it's a lot of self-sabotage because they're so controlled and can't have normal experiences. so... what do you do with that, ya know?

i thought about this a lot when hobi had his release party/joon went to switzerland/tae went to paris. like i would imagine some/most of them do have partners and they just... can't attend or do any of these things with them. at least in an "official partner" capacity but most likely not at all. a member of bts looks at you for 0.5 seconds too long and the entire internet has you doxxed in under a minute. so, what, i just gotta sit around in my bougie penthouse and watch it on instagram? that's gotta be brutal. it sounds awful for both sides.

and the enabling. god. it's really a double-edged sword, because you love these groups and they bring you so much happiness and joy, but rationality often gets dogpiled. not to mention that fans dictate their lives just as much, i.e. that tattoo artist jk was seeing, when bobby from ikon had to "apologize" for having a girlfriend and having a baby even though both are perfectly normal things, etc. even if you, specifically, are not engaging or going on a twt rampage about them, your fandom is sort of just... lumped in with it. and that sucks!

i'm 30 years old. i've dated and gotten married and am well beyond the age where i have any delusions about men PERIOD but especially celebrity/idol men. i want them to just be happy and live normal lives! i want them to have the experiences i've had! i don't care if they're dating or getting fucked and sucked on the regular, but the catch-22 of k-pop is that they're selling you the delusion and it's sometimes hard to fault people, especially those who are younger and therefore more susceptible to it, for falling for it.

yikes. anyway :')

thank you again for your kind message. i really appreciate that you took the time to share your thoughts. i am crossing my fingers that i'm out of my slump bc i have a collab fic due for seokjin's birthday. nothing like the unbearable weight of peer pressure to make me productive.......

sending you love in return! <3

[flowercoasts]

i am as intrigued by memory loss laudna as the next person but i am honestly way more interested in laudna reckoning with the fact that she can now live for herself now, if delilah is gone.

laudna’s life is split into two: before her death and after her death. laudna even says that whitestone “felt like a different life”, that the events that took place didn’t feel like it happened to her, it felt like someone else (which is a whole other bag of worms into coping and trauma response and mechanisms of defense - but, for another time). the only time that line is blurred is with delilah and laudna’s own view of herself. laudna thinks she’s just a puppet, a vessel for delilah to take over at any moment. no part of herself is in her control fully, because the woman who killed her is living inside of her, leeching from her. after the “you were never alive” fiasco, laudna wonders if there was always some part of her that was just meant to be a puppet for someone else, even before her death. laudna’s wrecked sense of self because of delilah’s direct influence and manipulation makes her believe she is barely a person. she has no agency, no future, and no way out. and, at the crux of it all, because she is only sort-of living and not really herself, she makes her purpose to give herself entirely to someone else. laudna is not living for herself, because what is there to live for?

so i would truly truly love for her to go through a path where she realizes she is truly alive, where she has agency, and where she now has to deal with the fact that she can start living for herself. that she has a whole family who loves her. that she has to learn how to reconcile her past with a future that is now available to her. i want to see her deal with trauma she felt she could never escape but now she can. i want to see her heal and grow and learn how to live for herself.

[lesbiansanemi]

Every now and then someone will follow me and in their ridiculously long DNI it will say “Renkaza shippers do not interact” and in that moment I always just. Have so many questions

[tongue-like-a-razor]

I want to scream about Less Talk rn but I will refrain.

[thaliagrayce]

i've been talking abt my voltron playlists and @iveofficiallygonemad asked to hear them and i want to share with anybody who wants!! i know they're not perfect, i'm working on them & trying to make them better. if you have any recommendations for any of them, let me know!! there's like A Lot and i want to give a lil explanation for most of them, so i'm putting them under the cut ^-^

SO first i have my favorite one <3 it's just. all of them. it's the whole team. it's a mess and it's a bunch of different genres because it's them fighting over the aux cord on a road trip. it's them trying to make each other laugh or annoy each other or play something catchy enough it will infect everyone in the vicinity with brain worms.

Hunk: i'm pretty happy with my Hunk playlist! chill vibes. he strikes me as the kind of guy who listens to calm music to try to find his own calm, and that's what i got here :)

Pidge: this is messier and less cohesive than my usual playlist because frankly i think pidge would have a shit taste in music. all over the board. this is a mix of meme songs and 8-bit covers and vocaloid and stuff that i think pidge would genuinely connect with, and i think pidge listens to all their music on shuffle without any regards for genre or mood because they're a gremlin. nobody gives pidge sole control of the aux.

Coran hears 80's music for the first time and loses his mind. He thinks ABBA is humanity's single greatest achievement.

Lance: i have ideas about where I'm going with this but haven't really settled yet. Lance seems like the kind of boy that loves to dance (is that canon? i forgot) so most of these are Bops That Make You Move in some way or another. he likes to present an upbeat face to the world, so there's no angsting in this playlist! we are clinging to the things that make us happy with both hands until our knuckles turn white!

Keith: i'm gonna be honest. i made him a playlist but i honestly don't think he cares about music very much. it's very important to some people! he's just not one of them! i haven't cracked this playlist open in a while but i'm pretty sure it's full of songs that i think he would conceivably train/work out to.

Shiro: this playlist involves the dumbest headcanon i have for shiro that has just not left me alone since i first thought of it. most of the playlist reflects the fact that he had an emo phase in middle school (that one isn't a headcanon, you just have to look at him to know) but BUT there are a few songs on here that are on here because. little known fact. he also went through a Twilight phase that he told nobody about. (keith knows. keith was there.) he has the entire twilight soundtrack memorized. he moved past the story but the music stays forever. he used to daydream about slow dancing to Flightless Bird, American Mouth. the first time Coran mentions that they have to avoid a place because there's a supermassive black hole there, he has to bite his tongue in order to keep a straight face. do NOT ask me why i believe this so wholeheartedly.

Allura's playlist sucks right now. I think it's because in my heart of hearts i know that, were she on earth today, she would go fucking nuts for taylor swift. i have ambivalent feelings for taylor swift. i cannot do allura justice like this. if you see my vision and have recs as to what might actually fit her, PLEASE.

Klance: i haven't done it yet but i'm gonna go through this and sort it to be a sort of progression of their relationship, starting with the more combative Rivalry songs, then slipping into "oh shit oh shit" songs, then maybe ending on the more lighthearted purely romantic songs <3

(i have two songs in a shallura playlist which does not at all encapsulate how much i'm obsessed with them. the tiny cop inside my head is just constantly screaming at me that i'm going to get yelled at for liking shallura. i am going to kill the cop inside my head.)

[ask-ursa-tonypeter]

[fic: db] Peter, in what ways do you find the trauma of what happened still affects you? Tony, are you able to comfort him despite also being the cause in a way?

Peter: It's… I don't know. I thought after being stuck at home, once I had Dad back I'd want to-- go out and see my friends and like, do stuff we normally used to do but knowing that it was actually him this time instead of...

But I really... haven't. It just-- nothing feels the same now. Which is stupid, because I got what I wanted, right? I just need to-- try harder, probably. I should stop being a baby about it.

---

Tony: He tells me that it helps to have me around, so I guess so. I don't understand it-- I don't know why he doesn't want to send me to prison after everything-- but I'm doing my best to make him feel more... safe.

[house-of-mirrors]

I'm still very early on in the Truth but just did the part of asking the Halved about the Courtesy and uhhhhhhhh I'm not gonna be normal about this

The black sun revolves until its spasming eye fills the spire's window. The distance between you and it distorts, shortening until the eye fills the sky and you can feel the sun's pull, tugging at your weight.

😳

And literally I jumped up from my chair and dashed through the hall because THE DISCORDANCE! Another mouth!

And course my first thought is how can this be interesting in bed with my monster spouse

[doodlingbot]

I am a little slow when it comes to - figuring things out, so what DOES Stanley mean in your last comic? I'm really curious because it's really well put together and I love the style!

I'll never outright say the specifics!

While I would be ecstatic if someone correctly guesses the specifics, this is one of those things where I'm curious to hear what others think he's trying to convey.

It's something that I think is fine if not everyone gets what he's trying to convey right away. It's meant to be something that may be too complicated for Stanley to properly get at with just a few scribbles.

Maybe if he had kept at it longer it would of eventually gotten across but they're both already in a stressful situation, are already tired and drained, and Stanley is stubborn.

[context]

[nari-writes]

"Conner, don’t you get it? Clark is awkward because he loves you. He just has no idea how to deal with everything else. If he didn’t love you,” Lois says, “this would be easy.”

[edeldoro]

.

[pastafossa]

Hey Pasta! I love trt. it’s my all time fav daredevil fic. I have been noticing lately that I am not getting notifications of me in your tag list fics even though you tag me. Is anyone else having this problem? Just wondering what’s up with tumblr lately.

I have no idea, I'm so sorry anon! I know a couple people on tumblr have had this issue with tagging in the past, either with my taglist or someone else's, and I have no idea how they fixed it.

Anyone out there have any suggestions?

[the--highlanders]

does anyone else completely forget jamie gets shot in the invasion or is that just me

it feels like it should be such prime blorbo angst material but it happens so quickly and matters so little to the plot that it just totally slips my mind

[chateautae]

Will See more of mid y/n relationship with her mom??

I adore these questions because yes!! she will acc play a very important plotpoint in the sequel. I left things very open-ended with wifey oc's mother in the original story for this exact purpose. we're definitely going to see development and things change between her and her mother. every parent has essentially worked things out with their children except for them, so it's gonna be an interesting turn of events, especially sincer her and taehyung will acc have differing opinions on it 👀

[bestworstcase]

lowkey all casses feel very Gender but like bitter snow cass feels somehow even more Gender and idk how you managed to make her more Gender than she already was but thank you for your service

the plant horror is a transition fantasy lmao

also transbian cass best cass and murphy @ancientriverbed is responsible for the brainworms on that front so everybody say thank you murphy

[taz-writes]

more D&D fic nonsense. this one's been a WIP for a while... jube and marigold return to their hometown with jube's family to reclaim their old home, which has been abandoned since jube's fam was forcibly exiled around 14 years prior in the wake of the girls running away. this is from marigold's POV, she calls jube 'posy' bc it's a childhood nickname.

She stumbles on something underfoot, and realizes she’s nearly tripped on part of Sage’s old toy car collection. She pauses to pick up the little metal ambulance, weighs it in her hand. It’s cold. 

She hands it to him without a word. Presses it into his hand, and he goes rigid, and his eyes go wide. 

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. 

He doesn’t respond. He stops in his tracks and stares at the car like it’s from another planet. Rolls it back and forth in his hand. The wheels are jammed with dust and rust. 

“Oh,” is all he can say. His voice cracks. 

“...Can I…?” she reaches towards it. She’s walking a line that she can’t see, it’s been so long, but she has to try. Sage looks at her sharply, startled, and clutches the toy to his chest. “...I can clean it,” Marigold says softly. “I, um, I have a spell.” 

“...Oh.” He nods. Hands it to her gingerly, and she swirls the dust away, watches Prestidigitation spin it off into nothingness. And then he takes it back, and tucks it into his breast pocket, and neither of them can quite look at each other anymore. 

She barely knew him, before they left. He was… something like eight years old when she and Posy ran away. 

She’s starting to get why Posy runs away from things.

[caparrucia]

Full offense and pun fully intended, but I genuinely think the very existence of "dead dove, do not eat" was a fucking canary in the mines, and no one really paid attention.

Because the tag itself was created as a response to a fandom-wide tendency to disregard warnings and assume tagging was exaggerated. And then the same fucking idiots reading those tags describing things they found upsetting or disturbing or just not to their taste would STILL click into the stories and give the writer's grief about it.

And as a response writers began using the tag to signal "no, really, I MEAN the tags!"

But like.

If you really think about it, that's a solution to a different problem. The solution to "I know you tagged your story appropriately but I chose to disregard the tags and warnings by reading it anyway, even though I knew it would upset me, so now I'm upset and making it your problem" is frankly a block, a ban and wide-spread blacklisting. But fandom as a whole is fucking awful at handling bad faith, insidious arguments that appeal to community inclusion and weaponize the fact most people participating in fandom want to share the space with others, as opposed to hurting people.

So instead of upfront ridiculing this kind of maladaptive attempt to foster one's own emotional self-regulation onto random strangers on the internet, fandom compromised and came up with a redundant tag in a good faith attempt to address an imaginary nuance.

There is no nuance to this.

A writer's job is to tag their work correctly. It's not to tag it exhaustively. It's not even to tag it extensively. A writer's sole obligation, as far as AO3 and arguably fandom spaces are concerned, is to make damn sure that the tags they put on their story actually match whatever is going on in that story.

That's it.

That's all.

"But what if I don't want to read X?" Well, you don't read fic that's tagged X.

"But what if I read something that wasn't tagged X?" Well, that's very unfortunate for you, but if it is genuinely that upsetting, you have a responsibility to yourself to only browse things explicitly tagged to not include X.

"But that's not a lot of fic!" Hi, you must be new here, yes, welcome to fandom. Most of our spaces are built explicitly as a reaction to There's Not Enough Of The Thing I Want, both in canon and fandom.

"But there are things on the internet that I don't like!" Yeah, and they are also out there, offline. And, here's the thing, things existing even though we personally dislike or even hate or even flat out find offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable existing is the price we pay to secure our right to exist as individuals and creators, regardless of who finds US personally unpleasant, hateful or flat out offensive/gross/immoral/unspeakable.

"But what about [illegal thing]?!" So the thing itself is illegal, because the thing itself has been deemed harmful. But your goddamn cop-poisoned authoritarian little heart needs to learn that sometimes things are illegal that aren't harmful, and defaulting to "but illegal!" is a surefire way to end up on the wrong side of the fascism pop quiz. You're not a figure of authority and the more you demand to control and exercise authority by command, rather than leadership, the less impressive you seem. You know how you make actual, genuine change in a community? You center harm and argue in good faith to find accommodations and spread awareness of real, actual problems.

But let's play your game. Let's pretend we're all brainwashed cop-abiding little cogs that do not own a single working brain cell to exercise critical thinking with. 99% of the time, when you cry about any given thing "being illegal!!!" you're correct only so far as the THING itself being illegal. The act or object is illegal. Depiction of it is not. You know why, dipshit? Because if depiction of the thing were illegal, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. You wouldn't be able to educate about it. You wouldn't be able to reexamine and discuss and understand the thing, how and why and where it happens and how to prevent it. And yeah, depiction being legal opens the door for people to make depictions that are in bad taste or probably not appropriate. Sure. But that's the price we pay, creating tools to demystify some of the most horrific things in the world and support the people who've survived them. The net good of those tools existing outweighs the harm of people misusing them.

"You're defending the indefensible!" No, you're clumsily stumbling into a conversation that's been going on for centuries, with your elementary school understanding of morality and your bone-deep police state rot filtering your perception of reality, and insisting you figured it out and everyone else at the table is an idiot for not agreeing with you. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down and read a goddamn book.